START WITH PAIN YOU KNOW:
Last post, I talked about the writer's net, how to gain ideas for writing. One place a lot of us start is with our pain. I took a class on trauma writing for my master's program. I learned a lot, but the main message I took away from that class was that writing, art, speaking, expressing one's pain is a valid and healthy way to cope and to heal. Keeping it in can help it fester. I wrote my master's thesis about the power of fiction, a safe, imaginary space, to aid in the healing process. It's called "Fairy Tale into Fantasy: Emotional Healing through Genre Fiction."
Little did I know when I took that class or write that thesis that trauma writing would become such an important part of my life. I just wrote a novel about a woman traumatized by loss seeking healing. Before my masters program, I had experienced no trauma out of the ordinary. I had lost pets and my elderly grandparents and had been through some hardship, but I didn't fully understand the concept of trauma as I do now.
PAIN BY DEGREES:
Trauma in all its varieties is different for everyone. People going through the same kind of loss, even the very same loss, can have a very different experience. A couple I knew experienced a miscarriage. For her, it was traumatic and world-changing, while he only felt bad for her but felt none of the pain. When my brother died a month before I lost my baby, some of my family felt it deeply while others had emotional distance and did not truly grieve because they'd had little to do with him in years. There is no single way to look at loss or pain. Even the same person can experience each loss differently. I had been close to my brother in childhood but hadn't seen him for a while before he passed. It was painful to hear about his death, but since he wasn't directly in my world at the time of his passing, he already seemed more like a memory. To lose him was painful but didn't send me into the process of deep mourning and grief like my baby's loss did because my whole world circled around my baby's every breath up until that last day. Even my individual miscarriages have had various impacts on me, depending on where I was emotionally, how far along I was, whether or not I'd prepared myself for another loss, and all kinds of other factors.
WRITER AS ACTOR:
But regardless of the kind of trauma one has experienced, it changes one's perspective, one's emotional state, one's everything. I look at pictures of myself before 2010 and see a different person, a person with a smile that lacked the weight and understanding of pain I have now. I now speak a language known and understood by those who have lost. I write about my pain to speak to others who have been there and to help them feel understood. I also write to help others find healing in a safe space of vicariously living through my characters. For those who [thankfully for them] don't yet speak that language, don't yet understand deep trauma and loss, I help them see, if only in a small way, my perspective of loss. If one has never been raped, it is hard to portray the experience in a way that speaks to those who have been there. If one has never lost a baby, that's also a difficult experience to understand for outsiders. One can still try to convey the pain, can research, interview, find ways to borrow others' experience, but it may not reach the level of realism of the writing of someone who has been there. It's kind of like an actor's attempts at realism. A childless actor can take on the role of a mother for a show, but it's much harder to draw on something real without experience to back it up. She can think back to their love for a pet to simulate a mother's love, but there will still be people who aren't convinced.
WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
Whatever your trauma or hardship, there will be people who understand and who can be helped through a process of healing with your writing. There can also be people who learn from your writing what it's like to be there, so they can help others. This is how fiction writing can have a kernel of truth and can become more meaningful than just a story told to amuse. Say you have lost your home in a fire or have been dumped or have had a friend betray you. Almost everyone has been through loss or hardship of some sort. That is the place to start your writing. What pain do you understand that others may not? What language do you speak that only those who have been there understand? That is a place to start your writing both for your healing and for the healing of others. Because as you write, you will also find healing yourself.
The Real First Step:
I'm sure many people think step one in writing is to take out the pen or device and start writing. But when I start there, I don't have much to say. I stare at the page and hope for words to magically appear. I end up writing drivel about writing and writer's block. Or I write from somewhere shallow and meaningless.
No, for real writing, for good writing, it starts with the Writer's Net. What, you ask, is this net? If you want to write, go into the world, either yours or another, and look for something that inspires you. Listen to conversations. Watch for something out of the ordinary or for someone to be doing something that catches the eye. Then come up with a back story, a crazy explanation. I was at a bus stop two days running and had someone hand me something. One time, it was a token they didn't need. I can't remember what the other was. But from that, I wrote a story about a kid who gets pieces of a techno puzzle. From there, he can open a passage to another dimension. Be looking around for interesting turns of phrase, for crazy thoughts or words. Open your net and be on the look out for things to get snagged in it.
Right now, I'm having my kids help me write a chapter book for preteens about animals. Everywhere we go, every conversation we have, we're all on the lookout for a chapter title here or a plot point or character there. The novel I just submitted for publication started with a conversation with myself that was along the lines of, "Self, they always say write what you know. So what do you know?" I decided I knew what it was like to be a chubby, nerdy Mormon living in northern Utah. That's not a story I've read. So that's where my character began. Every family activity went into the net. I took notes on places we went, watched for fun or intriguing things that could show up in my book. She is not me, and her story is not my life. But she started somewhere real.
Food for Thought:
They say an artist/author doesn't have bad days, only material. That, I can say with some authority, is a lie. Authors feel trauma at least as much as everyone else. But an author has a chance that others may not, and that's to share the trauma with others, give them a window into their pain. Julia, my main character's, life is not mine, but her pain over the loss of her baby comes from a real place. See my other blog for that.
Writing doesn't begin with the story nor even the pages and pages of characterization and back story and geography the writer works on be
fore he or she can begin the story. Writing begins with the net and with life. Start somewhere real, somewhere meaningful, and/or somewhere quirky, and your reader will come along for the ride.
CHARACTER INTERVIEWS:
I blogged once about the importance of characterizing, but I haven't yet mentioned how I do my characterization. Sometimes in the past, I've either downloaded or invented a questionnaire, which I answer from the point of view of my character. That can work, but I often find myself answering questions that aren't particularly useful to the story. Even when the questions are useful, I find I'm writing around what's important instead of getting to what motivates my character. Some writers use these questionnaires to great effect, and it's something writers can try to see if it works for them. All one needs to do is google to find one. Here is one of many: [Character Questionnaire]
APPROACHES TO CHARACTER TYPING:
But like I said, questionnaires like that, at least on their own, aren't enough for me to create fully developed characters. These questionnaires, however, can be used to supplement something else. I now start with a character theory called the Enneagram. One can start with one of several systems of personality typing, including the Meyer's-Briggs system used by employers and universities to help people choose a job or a major. [Meyer's-Briggs] Another simpler route may be the color system. [Color Typing ]There are countless other personality systems out there. I would start with a personality type from one of these systems to get down the core of the character then fill it out with a questionnaire or just pertinent details about the character. History? Family? Loves? Hates? Appearance?
I use the Enneagram because it comes ready made with details about how the character might realistically interact with other characters, their relationship with their parents, their desires and fears, etc. [Enneagram] I pick a primary character type then what's called a wing, a character type on either side of the main one that tempers and modifies the main character type. So for instance, in the book I just submitted for publication, After the Dream, my female protagonist is Julia, a Loyalist with Investigator tendencies. Her primary identity in the beginning of the novel is based in intense loyalty toward her husband, who doesn't return nor value her loyalty. But when that husband is gone from her life, she become a lost soul. Afterward, Julia spends so much of her time in her own head as a Investigator [also called a Thinker] introvert that she struggles to get outside her own reality enough to try romance again. Meanwhile, Pedro, my male protagonist in the same book, is an Individualist [also called Artist] with Investigator tendencies. His world, whether he's in a relationship or not, tends to be an emotional ride of introversion. It is hard for two introverts, accustomed to their own internal difficulties, to connect in the social world outside their own heads. Just knowing the basic character types helps me understand dramas and conflicts that the characters may deal with as they go forward.
FOR EXAMPLE:
In the book I'm working on currently, Pigs Fly, the extroverted Connor, an Enthusiast [also called a Thrillseeker] with Loyalist tendencies, has left behind his buddy Pedro and his other friends. He is a thrillseeker without thrills, a wolf without a pack. He meets up and clashes with Robin, an extroverted Reformer [or Perfectionist] with Helper tendencies who can't stand him.
On the Enneagram website, toward the bottom of specific character type descriptions, there is a link to descriptions of character interactions your character might have in a relationship with any of the character types. In other words, if you have the gist of how you want your character to relate with another character, this may help you decide on the types of your other character. Also, this may help relationships in your book gain a sense of realism.
Knowing and understanding your character helps create a realistic foundation of drives, desires, internal and external conflicts, and fears to give your character a sense of weight and meaning. Once one knows the basics of a character, he/she can then vary up the basic character and make him or her truly unique and realistic.
Above is a well known cliche in the world of weddings, but I also think it's a viable approach to writing. There are countless other approaches out there, but some might find this helpful.
Something old:
Know your genre. There are few truly new genres that come out, so most of us can read what has been written and published, particularly with publishers in which you might be interested. It's the familiar advice: read what you want to write. Know the forms and the requirements of your genre and publisher. Several publishers have specific word counts, fonts, etc. For this, you can go to their websites or the old, trusty "Writer's Market" either online or in book form. Know the industry. Do your research.
Something new:
Once you know the genre and how it's usually written, you can vary it up a bit. Try a new approach to differentiate yourself from all the other voices clamoring for attention. Most romance novels are told from the woman's perspective, either in first or third person. In my books, I'm trying a method I've seen done on rare occasions, most notably in The Help. I'm writing first person from the male and the female perspective. It helps that I have a husband and other friends and family who can help me capture the male voice. It also helps that I was raised among the boys, so I often identify more with the male voice and male characters, anyway. A good percentage of the dreams I can remember feature me as a male character.
Why not speak with a voice that others haven't used as much? One thing I notice about romance novels is that they're often about beautiful, perfect, white women [or occasionally men] who lack disabilities. The same goes for much of the fantasy I've read. This seems to be the ideal, the perspective considered the norm. Yet there is a wide array of readers who don't identify with this idyllic fiction, so many voices not heard. Readers like a character with whom they can identify, yet how can one identify with perfection? Most protagonists in books and novels have at least one minor problem or flaw, but other than that one little flaw, the characters are often perfect.
Yet there's an increasing number of popular stories that have begun to buck the norm of perfection. Look at "Shrek." I think one reason for this series' popularity is that it dares to go where no other pretty fairy tale has gone, into the world of overweight main characters who are physically imperfect, namely green. One of my protagonists in the first book is a Latino who deals with prejudice. Both of my protagonists are overweight and have physical and health problems. One popular series of books I really like is the Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan. To me, part of the charm of the series is the main characters have disabilities, namely dyslexia and ADD. My main characters of After the Dream both have mental disabilities, he depression and she PTSD, both of which are more common than most people believe. In my next book, Pigs Fly, I have a protagonist with ADD and one with the autoimmune disorders Hashimoto's and Fibromyalgia. I think about the indie movie "Blind Dating" about a blind man who struggles to get a date simply because he's blind and start to wonder where else this kind of exploration of alternative voices can take me.
Something Borrowed: These next two are after for primarily after a rough draft is produced. Writers don't write in a vacuum, or the good ones don't. It's always a good idea to seek eyes outside your own head to review your writings. Find writing groups, so you can borrow their brains for alternative approaches and ideas. No matter how wonderful something sounds to your own brain, chances are it could be made better with the help of others. And don't be afraid to let them come at your writing with a big red marker. Sometimes, it hurts, but one cannot improve as a writer as long as one is doing the same thing over and over.
Something Blue: There are two ways I can take this, both of them in the revising stage: blue as a descriptive word and blue as an emotion. When I'm drafting, I just write and leave the editor at the door, or I can't get anywhere. It's in the revising form that I really work on description, making sure to carefully look over my language to make sure it is descriptive enough to transport the reader into my world and yet not so descriptive as to choke the forward progress of the story. I'll cover this in more detail in a later post. As noted, blue can also be about emotion. When I'm writing, I mostly want to get parts of the story down. It's after the fact that I can go back and beef up the emotional strength of the story.
This whole blog post shows yet another aspect of good writing, which is not taking a cliche at face value but rather turning it on its ear. During the second draft, one can also go back and check for cliches that remain something familiar, something the reader has seen so many other places that they've lost count. Cliches can occur in characterization, in turns of phrase, in every aspect of writing. If you let your writing remain a cliche, why write? Say something new, something meaningful and you will truly make your mark in the field of writing.
I know for a lot of experienced writers, much of this will be obvious. To novices, much of it may be new. Regardless, it can sometimes help to see things from a different perspective, a new way of seeing something we already know.
For the last year and a half, I have been working on the first novel of a sort of LDS romance trilogy, a tag team novel that starts with After the dream and is about Julia and Pedro, who discover that the illusion of happily ever after doesn't last and then have to pick up the pieces and start anew. The next one will feature one of the major characters from the first one and will be called Pigs Fly. It's about Connor, a man who decides he will only marry when pigs fly, then he meets a female pilot with a pet pig. The third, Drama's Queen, features Connor's mentor, Gayle, who is a woman in her late fifties/early sixties and has decided since romance has never worked out for her, she only ever needs to worry about taking care of her elderly mother and running a community theater. Then a man comes along to complicate things.
I have been wanting to get properly published in a popular market for as long as I can remember. I have children's books and other short pieces to send out, but it always feels like pressing things get in the way of moving forward on my dream. There is no satisfaction like seeing that email that publishers have received your manuscript after a lifetime of wanting that. Of course, it will be better yet when I get an acceptance. But that email ranked among the best Christmas presents I've ever had. It means I followed through on a commitment to myself at long last. Now, to push forward with the next.
I hope everyone who reads this had a wonderful Christmas season.
A Movie that Didn't Work:
I tried to watch "Tomorrowland," one of the newer attempts by Disney to get people jazzed about their amusement park rides. I like the director. He's Pixar. He wrote "Up," "Wall-E," "Monster's Inc," both of the first "Toy Story" movies, and directed "Iron Giant." The man's a genius. [Pete Docter] Yet I slept through half of the movie and don't particularly feel the need to watch it again to see what I missed. It makes me sad because it feels kind of like this movie, in spite of the man behind it, lost its soul to the Disney machine. Or never had one to begin with BECAUSE of the Disney machine.
Why?
So I asked myself why didn't I care? Where did this movie go wrong? And then I thought of how this show felt more like the live-action phone directory "X-Men 3" than it did "X-Men Origins." The visuals were awesome. But I didn't care. The characters could all have died in a massive explosion, and it wouldn't have bothered me. Why? Because it made the standard mistake I wouldn't have expected of a genius like Mr. Docter. I watched the entire first third at least, and I couldn't tell either main character from any other kid/adult on any other movie. They didn't have quirk. They didn't have a puppy, the quickest and easiest way to make an audience care. They didn't have a child or someone they loved and lost or simply loved in the first place. No tragedy or angst and little humor. They just stayed flat, without a heart with which I could identify.
Card's Story Types:
I understand part of it is the story type Mr. Docter employs here. Orson Scott Card discusses four types of drives in a story. [Story Types, #OrsonScottCard] I'm sure others have described this, but his descriptions are the ones that stick with me. One has to complete the story arc dictated by the type of story being told, or it will not feel complete and satisfying. A writer can employ multiple aspects of the basic types, but one tends to be the true driving force.
1. Question-Driven:
One type is question-driven. Think murder mystery. Who dunnit? The story ain't over until you answer that one driving question. Any kind of story can have a question drive, but that doesn't always make them totally question-driven. Questions can propel any story and make it more compelling. Much of the Harry Potter series is driven forward by questions. How did his parents really die? What and where is the Chamber of Secrets? That sort of thing. But if your story is primarily question-driven, you can't start with who dunnit and expect readers to be satisfied when your murder remains unsolved, but your main character lives happily ever after. This is not "Tomorrowland," though some questions did attempt to propel it forward. What are those lapel buttons? Why do they take one somewhere different when touched? But the story wasn't over when the questions were answered.
2. Plot-Driven:
"Tomorrowland" is more like two other types, plot-driven and milieu. When a plot drives the story, the author usually begins with a world with major problems. With the beginning of the movie, they tried to introduce a problem with the world, that the future is in danger. It was such a nebulous and clichéd problem that I wasn't really convinced. But that's the basic idea behind plot-driven stories, that something is wrong with the world that needs to be fixed, and the story isn't done until it is fixed. Once again, with Harry Potter, the novels aren't done until the blight on the world, Voldemort and the Death Eaters, are killed or imprisoned. Most fantasy and sci fi stories fall here.
3. Milieu:
But really, first and foremost, "Tomorrowland" is, in my mind, the least interesting of the types, the milieu story. The story is a tour of this magical futuristic paradise, Tomorrowland. This makes sense because it's a movie about a Disney theme park ride. But any story where the world IS the main character tends to fall flat for me. Even Lord of the Rings, the prototype for a large segment of modern fantasy novels, fails to keep my interest all the way through because it is clearly milieu. The characters are just a feature of the landscape. Card points out that all elves, dwarves, even humans are fairly interchangeable with others like them. The only thing that makes them unique is that there tends to be one of each: Legolas is the only elf on the quest, Frodo or Bilbo, the only Hobbit on his respective quest, Gandalf the only wizard, etc. This is not to say that it's not a great work of modern writing. I appreciate its merit and its importance in books and movies to come. I just personally don't find it all that compelling. The movies succeed more for me because the movie makers worked harder to make the characters unique. But the first of the Hobbit movies fails for this reason for me because of the mass of indistinguishable dwarves. As in a milieu story, Harry Potter tours the Wizarding World, but that is secondary to the characters' voyage, making that series primarily something else.
4. Character-driven:
That something else that most drives the Harry Potter series is the kind of story I find most compelling. It is character-driven. In a character driven story, the main character is somehow dissatisfied with life, unhappy in his own skin. The story ends when he has grown, improved what is wrong, or come to terms with life. Harry begins an awkward kid, miserable in his own skin because the people around him make him miserable. It ends when his character rises triumphant and has gained the confidence he lacked before and has gained mastery over his world. Everything else is secondary to this. Yes, we tour various aspects of the Wizarding World. Yes, we have our questions answered. And yes, what is wrong with the world is now fixed. But more importantly, Harry is happy and in a much better place in his relationship with himself.
What's Lacking?
This character-driven aspect is the part totally lacking in "Tomorrowland." The flat characters learn things and might change in relationship to each other, but there is no growth because there wasn't really a starting place to begin with. The "characters" took a back seat to the land all the way through, so there is action and movement without growth or development. This is where "X-Men 3" totally and utterly failed as well for me because the movie makers made a huge mistake in relying on the audience already knowing and caring about the characters. I did know and care about them, but I wanted that renewed. I wanted Wolverine to remind me who he was, Jean Grey to remind me why two heroes are vying for her love, and so on. When that didn't happen, and when even what I did know about the characters was betrayed and undermined by what I saw on the screen, the movie fell totally flat. Any new characters were introduced by face, name, and powers but not by why I should care about them. I know the movie makers must have realized this in retrospect because its sequel erased its existence, inserting time travel into the story to make sure "X-Men 3" never happened.
So What?
And here's where the writing part comes in. Rule number one for me, and for most people whether they realize it or not, is make me care. Give me a character about whom I can and do care. I will forgive special effects flaws. I will forgive a weak or somewhat silly plot line or writing. I will forgive a world that isn't entirely convincing. Obviously, it's best if I don't have to slog through all of that because you focus on improving it all by the end of the writing process. But I will forgive all of this and stay with you to the ends of the universe if you first make me care about your character. Give him or her a heart, someone to love, someone to mourn, and humor to draw me in. If an atomic bomb had wiped away all the characters by the end of "X-Men 3" or the book Fellowship of the Ring, I would have yawned and gone to bed. But I will follow you anywhere, cry when the character cries and soar when he triumphs, if I first care. This is your so-what, your compelling force that will take me through a question-driven mystery about which I may not otherwise care, a plot-driven, cliched sword and sorcery yarn, or even a milieu tour of your tired universe. Within two or three pages, give me someone to love, to identify with, to be for this moment, and you have me and other readers no matter what your genre.
Rule number one when you want to be a writer is write every day, no matter what. I'm editing every day, sometimes rewriting, but I wonder if it counts. I have a story inside, several actually. I need to let them come out. But when procrastination is easier than writing, fresh writing doesn't happen. Every day, I do something. Most days, I read my last manuscript with my husband. I want to get it done, get it edited and submitted for publication. So yes, it needs to be priority one. But it can't be my only priority, writing-wise. I juggle so many things, like everyone does: family, work, life. But if writing is truly important to me, just like with anything, I need to show it. I think I'll go do some writing now.
