The writer as destroyer and creator

I was reading the Guardian books page today and came across an interview with AS Byatt. The quote under the headline read “In my work, writing is always so dangerous. It’s very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.”

Intrigued, I followed the link and read the entire article. In context, Byatt is discussing characters that she has written who are writers. The full quote is:

“The book [The Children’s Book] touches, too, on what Byatt calls ‘one of the steady themes of my writing that I don't understand - as opposed to several that I do. I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.’”

Interestingly enough, later on in the article Byatt refers to herself as a sort of creator. The writer makes things, constructs things – characters, worlds, dramas. She sees them as three-dimensional.

Writers as creators and destroyers. Two sides of the same coin.

The creator seems obvious. Writers – fiction writers – create every time they sit down to work. World building. Character development. Dialogue and action. They all spring from a glimmer of an idea and bloom on a blank page.

Writers as destroyers is not so pleasant-sounding but ultimately appropriate on several levels. Like a god, we build a world, a character. Like a god, we can run it all down. Characters can die. (And be reborn, if necessary.) Books can end without a satisfactory conclusion. Worlds end tragically. With a strike on the keyboard, the writer rules all.

She might be talking about the artist’s worldview and how that can ultimately ruin her. Many artists, writers and otherwise, become known because of their personal demise. There a link between the artistic temperament and depression, solitude, suicide. It is terrifying to think that you can get that lost in your art.

But maybe it’s because artists can see the end as well as the beginning. Tragedy isn’t surprising. We know that every hero has his flaw. We know nothing is perfect. We know the work that goes into constructing something that needs to appear effortless.

The writer is the magician and sees every trap door, plants the cards up her sleeve. The knowledge of the trick takes away the wonder. It's a little sad - we all need a bit of wonder.

Details, schmetails!

I’ve been told that one of my strengths in my short fiction is my ability to distill a moment down to one important detail. While I am only a so-so judge of my own work, I do know that I purposefully focus on details to illuminate the meaning of a story. Whether it works is a different story. I have also been told that this ability to zoom in on a single image, thought, detail might not carry over to the novel form. Big difference between six pages and three-hundred.

While I writing the first draft of my novel, I haven’t been too concerned about transmitting a technique I use in short stories to the longer form. Until, that is, I began work on my newest chapter. It’s a transition chapter at best; at worst, it will never be included. But the words need to be written because it is all back-story for my protagonist that will directly influence another character’s decision. Somehow this information needs to be given and the best I could come up with for now is a break in my third-person point of view to a first-person account of his childhood and early adulthood. I might eliminate this chapter during revisions if I can find a better way – dialogue, flashbacks, what have you.

As I was working on the chapter this weekend, I began to offend myself with my liberal use of small details. In my defense, I like to think that well-planned, distinct details can really provide a lot of bang for your buck. One ideal detail can demonstrate a character’s entire world view.

But these were by no means ideal details. They were first draft details. The worst kind.

I have to cut myself some slack. Maybe some will stay in the story. Maybe some are just in there as markers for me to remember how I want a character or setting to be imagined. I just need to push through this chapter to get to the next in which the action picks up again. I’ll fix them during revisions.

This concern recalled a book I recently finished, Kate Mosse’s Sepulchre. Overall, a good book. A biographer journeys to France to research Debussy but is actually searching for her family’s past. A parallel story set in 1891 intertwines with the present. History, France, romance – I’ll take it.

One thing irked me about Sepulchre, a small detail relating to details. In the modern day chapters, especially in the first couple of them, the protagonist is described as pulling on Banana Republic jeans or sporting an Abercrombie & Fitch sweater. Now, I have nothing wrong with these two brands (see this lovely dress and pair of jeans here) except that I can’t really afford them.

What I want to know is why these details mattered.

Our heroine, Meredith, is at the end of her Ph.D., most likely not making a ton of money. We actually learn of her financial woes because she keeps checking her bank account online until her book advance is deposited. So does she spend all her money on name-brand items and subsist on Ramen? Does her adoptive mother splurge on expensive clothes to make up for Meredith’s troubled childhood? After I finished reading Sepulchre, it seemed that there was no answer for those stand-out details.

I assume that Mosse wanted to find strong ways to delineate between the heroine of the present – Meredith – and the heroine of 1891 – Léonie. I felt she had already succeeded in that by her shift in narrative tone. Even though all chapters are in the third-person, Leonie’s chapters feel stiffer and Meredith’s read modern. The sentences are longer and more formal for the past and shorter and chattier for the present.

Mosse must have felt that adding details like Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch would ground Meredith in the present. Those details only served to catch my attention and raise questions that I don’t think the author ever intended as important. It doesn’t matter what brands Meredith wears so long as she is comfortable enough to traipse through a cemetery and search the past for clues.

This is unlike chick-lit, or at least chick-lit about women focused on fashion. Name-dropping about labels is required in those books because that is how those characters see the world. And even then sometimes it gets to be a little much. At least those details are appropriate to the tone of the genre.

These label-specific details stand out in the way I fear my clunker images will: bright and atrocious and remembered after the last page is read. For now, I’ll let my terrible first draft details stand. They are by no means name-dropping details but they are my personal brand of details and way too heavy-handed at this point. They’ll last as long as the first draft takes and then it’s the red pen for them! Unless, of course, I really like one and decide to keep it.

Disappearing acts

I went to Tobias Wolff’s reading at Bryn Mawr College earlier this week.  I have a huge crush on Toby (he may not know we’re at such a personal level, but we are) because of a short story of his called “Bullet in the Brain.”  It is a beautiful, very short story about a man’s love of language.  It is about loss and regret and has a sharp sense of humor to boot.  I find this story to be the epitome of craft; it is amazing what he can do in about six pages.

I’ll stop the love fest there.  What I really wanted to write about was something Toby said during the Q&A portion of the event.  To paraphrase it crudely, he said that even when we’re alone, we’re not alone when we’re with a book.  He talked about his memoir This Boy’s Life and how he wished he had read a book when he was a teenager that made him feel like someone understood him.

Some of the best books I’ve read made me feel understood.  They might not have been the best written books but just about anything can be forgiven if a character feels your pain, can name it, describe it and eventually live through it.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle was one such book for me.  (And it’s well-written, so doesn’t need to be forgiven anything.)  I read it in third grade, a little younger than the YA label advised but what are you going to do?  The protagonist Meg is brilliant and misunderstood and trying desperately to find a place in the world.  Obviously, this was my plight as well, even at eight.

Meg’s world was not my own.  I didn’t have a scientist mother who cooked on the Bunsen burner or a younger brother who wouldn’t speak.  I did have a missing father, in a sense, and Meg’s mission to find him - using tesseracts to move through time and space, no less! – made me feel that anything was possible.  Her world was preferable to mine most days.  (Also, I didn’t have a popular boyfriend to tag along and help.)

I disappeared into books during my childhood when I needed to hide from the world around me.  I was notorious for not hearing someone shout my name while I read on the couch, even when they stood just behind me.  I still do that sometimes.  When I need a break from everything and I have some time to disappear, I’ll take to my bed with a book and ignore the world.  And I am alone and not alone.

And again, the book doesn’t need to be a Pulitzer.  In fact, sometimes an easy read, a completely plot-driven book will suffice because no one wants to think when your head already hurts. 

(I will admit the silly Twilight series got me through one particularly bad weekend.  And one weekend is all it took for those four books.  They dissolve on your lap they’re so easy to flip through.  And that’s not necessarily a compliment.  It’s just a fact.)

When I was reading Lauren Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton - and no, I hadn't taken to my bed again; it was on the commuter train - I was reminded of this disappearing act I pull.  She writes:

“When I was small and easily wounded, books were my carapace.  If I were recalled to my hurts in the middle of a book, they somehow mattered less.  My corporeal life was slight; the dazzling one in my head was what really mattered.  Returning to books was coming home.”

Not every book will change the world or even the thoughts of one person.  Some just tell a really good story that people want to read and maybe will distract them from their own pain and fears.  I only hope than anything I write can someday be a prop in someone else’s disappearing act.

When a secret isn’t a secret, but merely a minor plot device.

A few weeks ago I rented Roman de gare, a French film I’ve been wanting to see for over a year. I really enjoyed the movie but was anticipating a resolution to a small detail – a bit of conversation – that was never fulfilled. Despite appreciating the ending, I couldn’t shake my dissatisfaction.

Without giving any major plot points away, here is the small detail:

Pierre has agreed to pretend to be Huguette’s fiancé while she visits her parents and daughter in the French countryside. Pierre goes fishing with Huguette’s daughter and when they return, they joke to Huguette that they have a secret. She is infuriated but has to let it go since her engagement dinner has begun.

I fully expected the secret between Pierre and Huguette’s daughter to be revealed at some point in the film. When it wasn’t, I got annoyed. Why would a writer reveal the existence of a secret only to have it remain a secret?

Like Chekhov’s gun, if a secret is referenced in early in a film, shouldn’t the secret be revealed in the end? As a writer, my instinct would be to insert something as loaded as a secret in order to exploit the secret later in the story.

But what about the use of withholding a reveal? Maybe a secret could be as ominous as a loaded gun sitting on the table. The knowledge of the secret could weigh heavily between people and create the tension of the story. A character might need to keep a secret and that could be his goal in the story; if the secret was revealed, that would be a failure on his part. All of these options would be predicated on the author’s aim.

But in Roman de gare I couldn’t see the reason for withholding the secret – until I looked more closely at the context of the secret. The secret between Pierre and Huguette’s daughter was not an important detail, a bit of information to be discovered. It was the mere existence of a secret that mattered, influencing a later confession by Huguette. (She assumes what the secret is and reveals the details to Pierre along with the fact that her daughter would know this information. Pierre says that isn’t the secret, pointing out that her daughter chose to keep that one to herself.)

The secret had become a minor plot device that was necessary for Huguette’s confession to happen. If she hadn’t felt threatened that Pierre had learned something about her she’d rather him not know, she never would have confessed. Her confession brings them closer and justifies Huguette’s actions in the final act of the film. All actions have consequences that lead to new actions that have more consequences and on and on. Viewed this way, the information being kept secret doesn’t matter.

Maybe the fact that I jumped the gun on the whole withheld secret thing says more about me than the screenplay. I do hate secrets so it was an emotional reaction as opposed to a writer’s instinct. And I think I elevated a minor plot device because I expected it to mean more. I have seen small details matter greatly in films before (I’ll talk about In Bruges another time) and assumed Roman de gare was the same type of film. I think in many ways it was, just not with this secret.

So, lessons learned:

One - Don’t assume all movies pay as much attention to detail as others.

Two - Even if the movie does pay attention to detail, don’t get too bogged down in picking which details are the most significant. Trust the author and, if she's any good, all will be revealed.

Three - When I write I know I can’t worry about a misinterpretation of a detail or plot device by my audience. Obviously, misinterpretations will happen. But it does call attention to being as clear and purposeful as possible with my writing. The best I can do is try to make details and plot devices intentional.

Welcome to Writing Implements!

Writing Implements is a conversation I'd like to start with other writers about honing and identifying our craft. I am about to graduate from an MFA program in Creative Writing but know that my education does not end because the bell has rung.

As I complete my first novel and continue progress on my second full-length play, I want to find ways to fully discover my personal style and technique. This can best be accomplished through conversations with other writers and close readings of novels, short stories, plays, essays . . . The list can go on; anything is game.

I may find a style that makes my heart sing to read it and will begin experimenting with my own writing.

I may find things I hate and know I will never include in my stories.

I just know I’ll find something.

I hope you enjoy the journey and tag along when you can.