Letters to a Young Writer: The Pilot Light

In the last letter I talked about those times in writing when you get stuck, or bored, and you either don’t know how to proceed or you just don’t feel like it, and you give up.

I said that making a daily habit of writing can help you through those times. It’s like keeping a pilot light lit for a furnace. The pilot light keeps burning all the time so that a bigger fire can be ignited quickly and easily when needed. 

A habit of daily writing keeps the creative flame alive during those times when you’re stuck and the writing isn’t going well, or hardly going at all. Eventually the ideas and the inspiration and the energy will come back. And they’ll probably come back sooner if you keep a pilot light on.

Something else that helps is faith.

Over the years I’ve learned to trust the creative process, to let it work rather than trying so hard to control it and make it work . There are days -- lots of days -- even now when I can’t see my way forward or I get bored and tired of something I’m working on. But I’ve discovered that even at those times, the creative process is still going on in a part of my mind I can’t consciously access or control. I’ll get dejected and feel like I’ve got no ideas, no inspiration, and then one day a fresh new idea will suddenly pop into my head. It always seems as if it came out of nowhere, but really it came from all the work my mind was doing “behind the scenes.”

That’s what I mean by having faith. Keep at the writing, and those moments of inspiration will come.

For some other thoughts on how to spark ideas for writing, see my post on five important questions for writers (and other creativepeople).

Letters to a Young Writer: Getting Stuck

In earlier letters I talked about what to do if you want to write but you don’t know how to get started or what to write about. Sometimes (and for some writers, all the time) that’s not a problem. You know what you want to write and you don’t have any trouble getting started. The ideas and images and words just flow out onto the page, and it’s great.

Then you hit the Swamp.

That’s what I call the place that you come to as a writer where you get bogged down and stuck. You stop. You don’t how to go on, or you don’t feel like it. Trying to write feels like trying to walk through waist deep concrete that’s quickly hardening.

You give up.

 As a young writer I spent a lot of time in the Swamp. As a teenager I already knew I wanted to be a writer, but the problem was I couldn’t seem to finish anything I wrote. I’d have an idea and start off on a wonderful wave of writing energy but soon the energy would run out and the story would sit there, unfinished.

So how do you keep going? How do you get out of the Swamp?

First thing is to figure out what it is that’s stopped you. Sometimes the problem is that you can’t see where to go from here. You’ve come to a blank in the plot. Or sometimes you do know the ending, but you lose interest in the story as a result (if you know how it’s going to turn out, why bother writing it?). Or maybe you stop simply because writing is such hard work and you’re sick and tired of it.

The good news is that you can make use of the Swamp. Getting stuck and blocked and stopped are all natural parts of the writing process. Sometimes they happen because we really need to take a break. We need to stop and step back and take a wider look at what we’re doing.

So if you can’t keep working on a particular story for whatever reason, then let it sit for a while. That’s fine.

The key is to keep writing something. It took me a long time to learn this, but making a daily habit of writing is crucial.  

Write every day. Even if you only have the time for a few sentences. Even if you feel like the worst writer that ever lived. The story you're working on may be stuck, but that doesn't mean you are. Work on something else and you won't stay in the Swamp very long.

 

I’ll offer some more thoughts and strategies on getting stuck and how to get unstuck in the next post.

Storylives

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.
                                                                    -- Joseph Campbell


And this may be one of the reasons human beings in every culture, through all time, have told and loved stories. Sure, stories can instruct us in how to behave, and provide explanations for the way things are, but there's also something in stories that isn't about meaning. We don't read or listen to stories, or watch stories on movie and television screens only in order to extract a meaning from them, but to have more life. To make our own lives wider, deeper, richer, by experiencing the lives lived by people in stories. With stories we get to live many lives, many lifetimes, within one.



Photo: Canada Day, Edmonton, by T Wharton

Nicholas Pendrake

The streets of the city were alive with music and colourful banners and cheering crowds. War had been declared against a nearby kingdom and the people of the city were happy. They loved war.  They loved it, that is, as long as the messy, bloody part took place somewhere else.

And now the latest host of young men and women, shining and beautiful in their bright new armour, were riding off to fight for the honour and glory of their city. One of them was a young man named Nicholas Pendrake.

As a boy Nicholas had learned woodcarving from the old man who looked after his family’s garden. Nicholas became very skilled at carving wonderfully detailed figures of animals and birds out of unlikely scraps of wood, but of course such a talent was of no use to one who was being groomed for knighthood.

Like most of his friends Nicholas had caught war fever early in life, and when he was old enough he put away his carving tools and learned to wield a sword.  And now, on his seventeenth birthday, war had been declared and he and his friends were riding at last to glory.

The battle was brief but savage. Hundreds of young men and women were injured. Many lost their lives. The stream that lazily trickled through the valley ran foaming and red. Nicholas took an arrow in the side and lay on the battlefield through the night, thirsty, cold, and in agony. He screamed for someone to help him, screamed until his voice went hoarse, but it was well after dawn before he was found by his comrades and taken home.

The war ended and little changed, except for the rows of fresh mounds in the graveyard on the hill. The people of the city were already dreaming and planning for the next war. Nicholas was young and strong and his body healed quickly, but his former brightness of spirit did not return. He avoided his friends and took to wandering the woods and hills around the city.

One day his father’s mother, whom he had never met, came to see him. All that Nicholas knew about her was that she lived in some small, far-off, unimportant place called Fable, and that his parents seldom spoke about her. On the rare occasions they mentioned Nicholas’s grandmother they seemed afraid of her, and he had never known why.

The old woman was a surprise to Nicholas. She was cheery and quick-witted and laughed a lot. One day she took Nicholas for a walk and asked him what he hoped to do with his life. To his own surprise Nicholas found himself confessing his feelings to this woman he hardly knew.

“I thought I knew what I wanted in life,” he said. “Everyone told me I was meant to be a soldier, a fighter, and I believed it. But it was what they wanted, not what I really wanted. I just didn’t see it.”

“You were told a story,” his grandmother said, “and you believed it was the only one. That happens to a lot of people.”

Then she told him a story of her own. A story about another war, one that had happened so long ago few remembered it. That war, Nicholas’s grandmother told him, was not over some trumped-up grievance between one city and another. It was not an excuse to steal another nation’s wealth. It was not about glory. It was a war to keep the world from losing its stories.

“Why haven’t I heard about this?” Nicholas asked when his grandmother had finished. “How do you know about it?”

“I know because I have tended the weave of stories that is our world, as loremasters have for many ages.”

“Loremasters?” Nicholas asked. “What are they?”

“You are one yourself,” the old woman said cryptically. “Only you don’t know it. There have been loremasters in our family for many generations. Your parents feared that you would follow in the craft, and so they left Fable and hid the truth from you. I cannot blame them, for they did it out of love. The life of a master of lore is a dangerous one, even more dangerous than that of a soldier.”

When it was time for his grandmother to return home, Nicholas asked to go with her.

And so began the apprenticeship  of Nicholas Pendrake the loremaster.  But it was also the apprenticeship of Pendrake the toymaker. Like many a keeper of stories before him, he found that he needed another trade to earn his daily bread. And so he took up carving again, and made wonderful toys for the children of Fable.

When he was older Nicholas returned to his native city and brought his old rusted armour back with him to Fable. He kept it on display in the library of his toyshop, as a reminder of the folly of believing that only one story can be true.

Writing Dialogue

The writer found the kid standing in his office doorway. The writer was busy.

“What is it this time?”

“Dialogue,” the kid said. “It’s hard. To write it, I mean. I was wondering if you could help me.”

The kid had a notebook in one hand. A real paper notebook, the writer noticed. That was promising.

“Are we speaking?” the writer said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, are we speaking. As in right now.”

The kid shrugged.

“Well, yeah.”

“Right. Then do that.”

The kid smiled nervously, as if one of them was possibly an idiot but it wasn’t quite clear yet who.

“Um, do what?”

“You’re having conversations all the time,” the writer said. “With all sorts of people. You’re always in dialogue with somebody or other. Aren’t you? Young people these days are always yacking or texting or twittering or whatevering. So what’s so hard about writing the stuff, then? Just write down what you hear.”

The kid frowned.

“Yeah, but. Well, talking like this is one thing. It’s real life. Writing it down is different.”

“How is it different?”

“Well, you need your characters to talk about what the story needs them to talk about, right? Not just any old thing. But you don’t want the dialogue just providing exposition, either. You know, Tell me again, professor, why are we exploring this ancient ruin? Gee, Bob, my new assistant, don’t you remember we’re searching for the lost treasure of Petawawa?”

The writer made a snorting noise that might have been a laugh.

“And you don’t want them just blathering on either,” the kid went on. He was really fired up now. “You don't want the small talk people make in real life. How are you? Doing good. And you? Can’t complain. You know, the banal stuff we say to each other on a daily basis. You can’t--”

“Sounds like you’ve already got a pretty good idea of what dialogue shouldn’t do,” the writer said.

The kid blinked. He looked at his notebook, then up at the writer.

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“That’s a pretty good start, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, yeah. But … there’s more to it than that. Isn’t there?”

The writer didn’t answer. Instead he gestured for the kid to come in, and then to sit down on the chair across from his desk. The kid did so, with his hands in his lap like a nervous job applicant. The writer stepped around to the other side of his desk, sat down and tapped some keys on his laptop. A moment later his printer whirred and a sheet of paper slid out. The writer plucked the paper from the tray and handed it across the desk.

The kid leaned forward in the chair and took the paper but didn’t glance at it.

“Um … what is …?” he murmured.

“Take it and read it,” the writer said. “Maybe it’ll help. In the meantime, as you can see …” He gestured to the stack of loose pages on the desk beside the laptop.

“Oh, right. Yeah, right, um, sorry. I’ll let you get back to work.”

The kid jumped up from the chair and backed away from the writer's desk.

“So is it okay if I ...” he began.

“Shut the door on your way out,” the writer said. He was tapping on the keyboard, not looking up.

“Right. Sorry. Thanks!”

The kid shut the door ever so gently. Once he was alone in the hall, he blew out a big breath, then lifted the sheet and read.

TWELVE TIPS FOR WRITING DIALOGUE

Ask yourself, why do I want to use dialogue? What can dialogue do for my story? Make a list of all the things dialogue is good for. In the tips below you've find some examples (and also some things dialogue is not good for).

Avoid using dialogue for exposition. Don’t use your characters as Handy Explainers. If they simply have to explain something, if there’s really no way around it, use the following tips to keep the exposition from becoming obvious, straightforward, and boring.

Save dialogue for important exchanges between characters.

People talk to other people because they want something. Know what your characters want (or don’t want) and you’ll know what your characters need to say (or will avoid coming right out and saying).

Avoid dialogue tags that draw attention to themselves. E.g., “He hissed,” “She warbled,” “He enunciated,” “She replied.” Don’t worry about over-using the good old tag “said.” It’s so familiar that readers barely register it consciously, like a mark of punctuation.

Dialogue is wonderful for revealing character. In your notebooks, write lots of “practice” dialogues between characters. Have the characters say all the things to each other (or to you) that they wouldn’t really say in the story. You may not use most of this stuff in the actual story, but you’ll get to know your characters better. You’ll know better how they speak, and what they are likely to say, or keep quiet about.

Use dialogue to create tension. How? Have your characters talk around the central issue. Avoid getting to the heart of the matter too soon. It might seem that getting the characters into big arguments, yelling, screaming, etc., is the way to inject drama into a scene, but as soon as you have the characters “blow up” at each other, oddly enough the tension usually deflates like a punctured balloon. The suspense is over.

Silence can be part of dialogue.

Dialogue is also a physical act. It’s something that we do to each other, and with each other. So make it physical. Use gestures and actions. (And in a case where you’re using your character as a Handy Explainer, think about how they might provide exposition without words; e.g., by gesturing to something, or acting something out).

Remember the rest of the world. What else is going on around the characters engaged in dialogue? How might the rest of the world intrude on the dialogue and throw in a surprise, or increase the tension, or add comic relief?

Use indirection and deflection, the craft of keeping the reader guessing and on her toes. How? Try this exercise: try writing a dialogue scene in which a question is always answered with another question. See how long you can keep this going. Read some of your favourite writers and see how the great moments of dialogue are usually full of surprise twists, non sequiturs, questions answered with questions, evasions, silences … anything to keep the dialogue from becoming one direct statement after another and putting the reader to sleep.

Often in real life conversations are inconclusive. They don't come to the point. Conflicts are left unresolved, or new conflicts are created. People talk at each other and don't listen. Try that with your dialogue. Leave some things unfinished, unsaid, as a way to keep the reader wanting more.

Image from Gabe Wong's "Method & madness" wall at the Art Gallery of Alberta