Why Make It Literary?

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I've been blogging about how to make your writing more literary.  I guess I should have started with WHY make your writing more literary?  I usually don't get very personal with this blog, but for me, it all started when my baby died.  I had gotten my master's.  I knew how to make my work more literary, how to add meaning to a story because I'd spent four years of my bachelor's degree and three years of my master's degree learning how to dissect other people's work.  The next logical step would be to add what I'd learned to my work.  But WHY didn't strike until I lost my baby in a tragic accident.  Suddenly, writing for the sake of writing and telling a cliched story just because I'd made it up, and it was in my head felt like a hollow pursuit.  Unless you know why you're writing and for whom, there is little point to adding more writing to a world already bursting with words other people have written. 

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I guess I should back up and explain what literary writing is.  Literary writing simply means writing that brings more meaning to the words on the page.  Non-literary writing might have a guy walking into the room, sword drawn.  Literary writers are keenly aware of the symbolism of the sword (manliness, power, anger, intent to cause destruction, display of his psyche reflected in that one item); the meaning of his features (the color of his skin or eyes or hair and what that might mean about his culture or ethnicity), his wardrobe (armor on body and head meant to block out the world and protect him from danger, mental and physical; blue because he's been depressed since his wife died in childbirth), the symbolic meaning and foreshadowing presented in the room he is leaving, and the suspense the reader experiences as he passes through the portal and over a threshold with any number of symbolic depths, and the meaning of the future held in the room he's entering.  A literary writer doesn't just write words on a page to show stuff is happening but imbues actions, clothing, setting, items, characters, etc. with symbolic power, with meaning beyond just what is presented on the page. 

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A lot of people think of literary writing as just what is canonical, just what you read in your English class because you have to get a good enough grade to get your mom off your back or open doors in your life.  It's all boring stuff that is too dense to be interesting and meant for stuffy scholars in institutions closed off to outsiders.  But literary writing can be everywhere.  The Harry Potter series is rife with symbolism of childhood and the coming of age, birth, death, and resurrection, and magical items full of not just in-world power but also power to enter the mind and transform into something beyond what they are.  Many other fun and popular pieces, such as the Percy Jackson series and almost everything by Rick Riordan, Roald Dahl's pieces for children, Mark Twain's works, particularly Huckleberry Finn, anything by Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, the Lord of the Rings series, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm, books by Robert Louis Stevenson or Alexandre Dumas, stories by Ernest Hemingway, poetry Emily Dickensen, and so many others you may pick up just for fun have been written with attention to meaning beyond the surfaces and can and have been dissected for greater understanding by students in classes around the world.  

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I'm not saying that your work has to be the kind that students the world round will study in their English classes.  But if you can instill meaning beyond the surfaces, bring themes and symbolism beyond what you put on the page, you're actually doing something that may open minds and make people not just enjoy but think.  People of all ages like to be challenged.  Have you considered meaning beyond the surface in your work?  What kinds of themes or greater meanings are already present in the novel, short story, poem, etc you just wrote?  If there aren't any, can you put some in?  Can you turn that chessboard, handkerchief, hat, or pocket watch into something that makes a reader think of the character's past, present, and future all and once and make the reader think and feel just with the presence of one symbol?  I'd recommend reading some of the great literary works to see how they do it.  Poe's work,  Emily Dickensen's work, and the fairy tales aren't very long.  You can read them in a few minutes and you can find them everywhere.  What meanings do you see?  How can you do the same?  Feel free to review this blog and many others for ideas.  

Listening to the Music

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I've been blogging about how to make any piece of writing more literary.  This week, it will be about just general writing advice. One of the most important steps of revision is reading aloud.

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First off, when you read a piece of writing aloud, you can listen to the rhythm of your writing.  If it's good, it will read smoothly.  Probably, your first read-aloud will be about cleaning up the language, fixing mistakes.  If you can read aloud with someone, they can listen as well and catch confusing bits.  This is the step during which you may hear overwriting (she trotted on her horse can be cut to just say she trotted), redundancies, incorrect usages, and other issues not caught by your grammar/spell-check.

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As your actual writing smooths out, you can start listening for other things, not just to avoid sounding bad but actually to make it sound good.  Keep in mind that even unrhymed poetry or regular prose can become poetic when you pay careful attention to sound.  You can enhance assonance and alliteration, or achieving unity through using similar sounds, when the events of the story are going well. You can also use longer sentences and chapters.  When things start to be intense, you can use harsh sounds, short sentences, and short chapters to make the prose mimic events of the story.  Cut out as many adverbs as is possible when you can use a powerful verb instead. Why walk angrily when you can stomp instead?  Experts say use said, whispered, or shouted as much as possible instead of other dialogue tags and cut out adverbs in dialogue tags because dialogue tags are just for making it clear who said what.  Are there places you can use an action instead of a dialogue tag?  If you have a program like Autocrit or Grammarly, these can help with your editing and proofreading. 

Once your language sounds good, and the prose is as strong as you can get it, you may be ready for a writer's group and/or beta reader, someone who can give you feedback.  Few people can succeed in writing without a good reader who can give them feedback.  You're getting there. You can do this. 

What's in a Name?

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I've been blogging about how to make a piece more literary.  A lot of authors just randomly choose names.  It feels right, or it's personally meaningful to the author.  They randomly choose it from a phone directory.  They arbitrarily choose it because ... fill in the blank.  Literary authors do very few things randomly and without meaning.  Yes, some have randomly chosen names.  But if you want your piece to feel meaningful, start by giving careful thought to your major characters' names. 

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Think through classic works. Willy Loman is the main character of Death of a Salesman.  His name tells you right away he's not high status that, in all ways, he's a low man.  Think of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.  She's always exploring the world around her, socially, emotionally, and physically.  She is always asking questions and scouting out the truth.  Luna's name from the Harry Potter series brings to mind the moon and its associations with the word "lunatic" because she's both dreamy and pastel like the moon but also a bit nutty.  These names suggest to the reader a meaning that helps enhance and enlighten their character and their place in the book. 

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Alternatively, you can use a character's name as a literary allusion.  If you were to name your character Peter, James, John, James, Mary Magdelene, Adam, Eve, Gabriel, Moses, Noah, or a host of biblical names, you'd want to know the figures from the Bible in order to make your character more meaningful, to draw on a source that much of the modern world knows.  Peter from the Narnia series is noble and heroic, a leader like Peter in the Bible, for instance.  It's one thing to name your character Gabriel and have him be just a guy named Gabe.  It's yet another to make a sly and clever biblical allusion with a character who is by action or calling an angel.  The author should know exactly what he/she is doing with the name and what kind of literary history he or she is referencing.  The same is true if you use any literary name.  If you name your character Darcy, Perseus, Lizzy, Hamlet, Emma, Don Juan, Alice, Anne (with an E), Cordelia, Juliet, Miranda, or any other name your reader will automatically recognize, use it carefully.  A literary name is a quick and easy way to call on a wealth of literary allusion, but only if you, the author, know the history of the name. 

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Then again, you could use the name for ironic purposes.  Your character may be named Chastity and yet be a lady of the streets.  Suddenly, her name means more and makes your reader want to know more.  What if you had a Lucifer who sought to live in an upright and kindly way, while his neighbor, Jean Baptiste, is stealing from him and smearing his name?  Such irony (as in defiance of expectation) can be used to make a statement, bring in some other meaning, or for humor.  In the series "Sleepy Hollow," a character started to pray, "Jesus..." The other inmate in his cell responded with something like, "Yeah?  What do you want?"  The name is automatically humorous because of how it's used in the story.  But if you use a character's name for humorous or ironic purposes, that should be clear.  This use of literary names should result in a clear addition of humor or meaning.   Otherwise, a reader could easily consider your choice of a name a poor one and question your skills as a writer. 

Think through the names you're using for your characters.  What do they suggest right away, just with the word associations therein?  Is its meaning appropriate to the character?  Does your character's name bring to mind another literary character?  Does it work?  How can you bring out more meaning than you already do?  If it doesn't work, is there a better, more meaningful name you can use? 

Making the Most of Time

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Because of the pandemic, most of us must shelter in place.  Some of us still leave the home for work, but a lot of what filled our time before--sports, plays, movies, etc.--can't happen because of the current situation.  What does that leave most of us with right now?  Certainly not money, at least in many cases.  But what it does leave us all with is time on our hands that we didn't have before. 

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How can you use that time?  It's easy to while away the time without accomplishing anything productive.  Any number of streaming services can fill the void left behind by entertainments of the past.  But if you want to make the most of your time, you need to take charge of that time.  Instead of letting life come as it may, set up a schedule that carefully budgets your time and most of all leaves time for writing, editing, and other activities related to furthering your writing career. 

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How does this work? Step one is to set writing-related goals.  How much do you think you can get done in a day, a week, a month?  Figure out which tasks you can get done each week then by when you want to get some major goal done. For some, setting up incentives works.  Would you write more for a candy bar or movie standing by?  For others, they feel the need to penalize themselves if they don't get the goal done.  You could commit to donating to a charity if you don't fulfill your goal, for instance.  Find a way to hold yourself accountable for those goals. Maybe it will be enough to write your goals down and share them with someone who cares enough about you to check up on you. 

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Step two is to write a list of all you need to do in a day, a week, a month.  Most of us have at least a couple of weeks to a month in the current situation.  Schedule your day in whatever increments work for you.  Figure out a time each day you can work on your writing-related activities.  For some of us, it works better to write in the morning, some the afternoon, some the evening, and some the middle of the night.  You know yourself.  What time works for you?  What time do you actually need to set aside for your writing?

Once you have your goals and your time budgeting in place, it's time to execute them.  It's not enough just to have them.  You have to use them.  What are your writing goals for this break?  How do you want to keep yourself accountable?  How can you budget your time to make sure those goals actually happen?  If you do all of this, you're far more likely to come out of the next month feeling fulfilled and like you spent your time wisely than wondering what you just did with your month in isolation. 

Framed

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I've been blogging about various ways in which writers can make any piece more literary.  One technique that has appeared in literature almost from the beginning is the frame story.  We've all read them.  The story opens with a character telling a tale or multiple characters telling multiple tales.  The main narrative is framed by another story.  Most times, it's used as a device in order to distance the author from the story and to allow the author to make commentary on the story. 

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Centuries-old stories from Egypt, Greece, Europe, and beyond employ this technique.  The Odyssey, One Thousand and One Nights, and The Canterbury Tales all feature this technique.  The storyteller's frame story often makes the story a fiction even within the fiction of the story.  It distances the story from the reader, makes it seem fanciful or somehow unreliable.  The Princess Bride is a fairly recent book, which was adapted into a movie, about a grandfather reading to his grandson a fantasy story, which is framed as an actual tome, though it's actually a fiction story framed by yet another fiction story.  This allows a modern voice to summarize and make satiric and reactive, self-aware commentary on what appears to be traditional fiction. 

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Modern writers will sometimes use this technique for some of the same reasons but also sometimes in order to create the illusion that the events of the story actually happened.  Rick Riordan will sometimes start his fantasy series--such as the Red Pyramid series and the Percy Jackson series--based on mythology of various cultures, with the main character warning the reader away, saying you, too, could find out that you're in the same situation with the characters in the book.  It gives the reader a sense of inclusion but also tension, thinking that this danger could be the reader's danger as well.  It makes the story feel more personal.  Likewise, the Bunnicula series is framed by the main character, a dog, who swears his experience with a vampiric bunny is the truth.  Since it's a story written by a dog, it's clear the reader is supposed to take this to be a fiction. 

There are several ways that modern readers can use frame stories.  Research and read some of them.  Is this a technique that could work for you?  How may it help you frame your reader's reaction to your story or stories? 

Totally Meta

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I've been blogging about ways in which you can make any piece of writing more literary.  One kind of fiction that has become increasingly popular is metafiction, which is, according to the Oxford dictionary, fiction that acknowledges its own "artificiality or literariness by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions." In other words, it's a piece that breaks down the fourth wall and acknowledges itself as a piece of writing or some other kind of media.  Metafiction can make for fun parody and/or a meaningful piece that makes statements about its a genre and/or life. 

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Children's book authors employ metawriting in order to show children the power of words.  The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is all about making literary conventions literal, thereby drawing attention to them as self-aware constructs within the novel over which the protagonist (i.e. the reader) can have influence.  A popular movie from the eighties was based on Michael Ende's The Neverending Story.  It's a movie about a boy reading a book in which the characters go on a quest to seek the boy reading the book.  By this, the reader within the book and (by extension) the reader of the book (or watcher of the movie) become part of the Neverending Story.  Through its meta nature, the book makes statements about the destructive nature of decreasing interest in books and the imagination in the modern generation.  In a similar way, Cornelia Funke's Inkheart draws attention to literary conventions by having characters capable of reading characters out of books, making the characters come to life.  The main villain comes into being in this way.  One of the characters is even able to make things happen through writing.  The Inkheart trilogy draws attention to the power of reading and writing to shape the world.  A popular meta children's book that explores its own world through self-aware meta techniques is Shannon Hale's Ever After High, especially book three.  The characters listen to and interact with the narrator, who goes mad and then must be replaced by some of the characters.  Since the characters can control and manipulate the story through their words and actions, the reader gets the feeling he/she, too, could have magical powers endowed by the power of writing.  Metafiction is a potent technique in writing. 

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Meta stories have become increasingly popular for adults in various media as well.   There is humor in breaking down that familiar fourth wall, that division between audience/reader and the protagonist and the events surrounding him/her.  Ferris Bueller talks right to the audience on a regular basis throughout "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."  This is part of the charm and humor of this movie.  The same technique appears throughout "Deadpool."  Self-awareness like this deconstructs the divisions between fiction and reality and can disarm and fascinate readers and audiences within every media, genre, and age group.   When we start "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," we're swept up into a medieval fictional search for the grail.  These scenes are interspersed with scenes wherein modern investigators are trying to track down a murderer.  (Spoiler alert)  The movie ends on a very meta note wherein the main characters are arrested for the murder by those modern investigators, which would make no sense if the story weren't so very meta.  Metafiction blurs the divisions between reality and fiction and makes us question what we think we know.

Think of ways that you can use metafiction in your writing.  My son's book involves characters who reference chapters, talk about the children reading the book, and interact with the author at various points.  The books are "illustrated" by one of the major characters.  Would your story work with meta aspects?  How would the use of meta techniques change or influence your story? 

You Know the Type

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I've been blogging about how to write in a more literary fashion.  One very common theme literary authors use in writing is the archetype.  Literary devices.net states that "an archetype is a typical character, an action, or a situation that seems to represent universal patterns of human nature."  Universal patterns, themes, and meanings are critical to shaping literature.  Using a good character archetype can effectively elevate your character beyond just a specific cowboy, artist, barbarian, etc. and turn him/her into a statement on the human condition capable of making a statement or social commentary in every scene he or she enters. 

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Without much thought, many of us could name several archetypes we know.  The common archetypes, as listed on Literarydevices.net are the hero, the mother figure, the innocent youth, the mentor, the doppelganger, the scapegoat, and the villain.  Some sources include 12 archetypes.  Others could name many more.  It would not be hard to name several of each type in literature.  Fairy tales are full of all of these, transparent in that so many fairy tale characters are named by type rather than individual names (Stepmother, Ella ("elle" in French means girl), Jack (a generic term for boy), Witch, Wolf, and so on.  In Star Wars, it's easy to name several of these as well.  Luke starts an innocent youth who eventually becomes a hero.  Padme is the mother figure.  Obi-Wan is the mentor.  Darth is the villain. You get the idea.  They're everywhere in literature because they come from and speak to the human condition and the "collective unconsciousness," as Jung calls it, or simply the culture.  In using these archetypes, we're alluding to all others like them.  We're inviting the reader to compare our mentor, mother, hero, etc. to those that came before in a way that can be fruitful and meaningful.  

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In the recent series "The Mandalorian," the creators of the show calls on a vast lineage of movie westerns when the titular main character walks into a bar without saying much and easily handles all who oppose him.  The audience recognizes this universal type immediately, and all they know from stories past sits below the surface.  We all know what to expect.  Except he then becomes intriguing, unique, different when he breaks type and becomes surrogate daddy to The Child, aka Baby Yoda.  This is a story we haven't necessarily heard before.  Traditional mentor becomes innocent child.  Hero/antihero/villain becomes mentor/father figure.  This is new and exciting.  

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The danger here is when we allow those archetypes to remain an obvious and flat stereotype.  If the witch is just a faceless villain in a classical fairy tale, that's okay simply because they're types more than characters.  However, if we just use a type instead of making in unique and fresh or self-aware or relatable or meaningful, we're not writing in a literary fashion.  We're not saying anything deep or profound except we believe in lazy writing.  What makes your witch, wolf, hero, villain, princess, etc. special?  Why should we root for your hero?  What makes us care about her?  Is your villain relatable?  Does he have motivation the reader can understand?  Does your hero have human failings?  Is she self-destructive, angry, vindictive, envious?  Is your innocent youth not so innocent after all?  Could it be that the wolf and mentor are really one and the same?  

Go through your characters and figure out in which archetypes your character may fit.  What makes them universal, understandable, and relatable?  What literary lineage are you drawing on to make this character?  How does this help?  How does the presence of a scapegoat or mother figure or some other type make allusions or invite comparisons to others in that type?  How does he/she stand out and make this character unique?