The Place For My Writers Notes

Original Posting 25 Jan 2010

Writers Digest, August 2008, page 71-72 have an article by Steve Almond with the title, "Background." It starts out with the little story that follows...

"Years ago I served as a teaching assistant in a fiction class. The instructor was a sweet grouch with a penchant for dogma. One day, someone asked if there was anything the narrator had to reveal on page one. He sighed deeply. 'The narrator should tell the reader everything he needs to know in the first sentence.'"

Steve goes on to explain that the teacher emphasized that we should know who the protagonist is, where we are, and what the situation is.

Steve reminds us that he believes the Hippocratic oath of writing is: never confuse the reader. And when we thrust a reader into a story without the facts, we're confusing them!

He gives an example of a student story that starts out:

I can remember the first time I saw her It was hard to miss her that night.

When you read that, you want to know who the speaker is, who she is, where they are, and what makes her hard to miss, at least. Steve says that in the student's story, all that information was much later in the story. His suggested rewrite started out:

The first time I saw Tammy Feldman was at Deke's Sadie Hawkins bash. She was wearing a plaid mini and doing shots off my girlfriend's belly.

What do you think? Is the rewrite clearer? One thing I notice is that we still don't know who "I" am, but...

Here's another beginning. What do you think about it?

His shirt was red and his knuckles were warped and there was broken glass under his feet. He could hear shouting. He headed for the road that would take him back to her.

Guess what? This is about a protagonist who gets into a bar fight and heads for refuge with an old girlfriend. Did you guess that?

But you don't want to bury the beginning in background details, right? So which ones do you use?

Steve suggests a simple rule of thumb -- make sure the reader knows at least as much as your protagonist. In that last example, the hero knows he's in a bar, he's had a fight that made his shirt bloody, and that he's trying to escape. So let the reader know that, too.

Give the reader the facts that create the emotional significance of the scene...and they'll go right along with you.

So why do we hide information? Uncertainty -- we (the writers) aren't sure where to start, and then don't go back and revise. Insecurity -- we may try to create curiosity by hiding facts, but it isn't what happens that makes a story interesting, it's the how and the why. Arrogance -- sometimes writers think it is beneath them to explain to their readers. But if you're not writing for the reader, who are you writing for?

Steve's final paragraph...

"Readers are by nature generous creatures. They come to a story, or a novel, eager to lose themselves in an imagined world. This requires that they attach themselves to the fate of one or more characters. But this empathic bond can only occur if authors share with us -- as soon as possible -- the specific fears and desires of their creations."

Make sure your first sentence has enough background to let the readers dive in.

Write?

First posted 10 June 2007

Ho, ho.

My wife told me I wouldn't enjoy it, and she was almost right. It's one of those odd Japanese shows that I usually avoid. This one focuses on various people who have been separated from family or friends, usually for years, and brings them back together, or at least brings a note.

However, one of today's . . . you can't call them contestants, can you? People who are looking for a missing connection? One of the people on today's show caught my imagination. A young man, with a sad story of going to a bar . . . one or two nights a month, for a year? and falling in love with one of the bar girls. A waitress? No, let's call her a hostess, one of those graceful young ladies who helps you drink in a Japanese bar, listens to your talk, and then moves on to the next table.

Anyway, He said he was sure that she was also in love with him, although of course the bar rules prohibit consorting with customers. But then one day she disappeared. He proclaimed that he had offered to marry her, and then she disappears! And he really, truly would like to meet her again. So the show did their magic, getting a detective to track down the vanished hostess . . . and what does the panel recommend? Well, before even hearing his story, they were mostly against the meeting. Basically, they thought the hostess was probably just trying to get money, and that he would do best to forget her and go on. Then he protested, no, no, she wasn't that kind of girl! And the second vote? Still mostly against meeting.

And now, behind the door, there might be the girl, a note from her, or maybe nothing (yeah, we've had a few who simply refused to deal with the whole thing, although that's unusual). What do you think? [cut to commercial . . . they always have a commercial at this point, with the door just starting to open]

Frankly, at this point I was thinking about the exercise. Imagine, if you will, that young man and the hostess. Feel free to add in the bar owner or other customers, or perhaps his family? But focus on the story of him falling in love, discovering the disappearance, and his attempts to find the missing girl. Was she out to take his money? Did she disappear to save him from himself? Or was there something else behind her disappearance? I have to admit I heard the story and thought that she was probably more honest than people were giving her credit for. I thought she saw that he was falling for her, and left for his sake. After all, if she was really after his money, sticking around would have been easy.

Anyway, have fun with the vanishing hostess. Why did she leave? How can he find her? He doesn't even have a glass slipper.

You can also tell this from her point of view, of course. Or intertwine the two stories?

tink

PS. On the TV show, she was not behind the door. Instead, there was a note simply saying that for her it had been work, not love. She had gone on to another job and was very happy with her life. She hoped he would go on with his life and not try to find her anymore.

Do you think he will be able to forget her?