"So You Think You Can Write?"

Sometimes in the solitary world of a writer, a window opens and a neighbour from across the street calls over, “Saw your picture in the TC!” and gives you a thumbs up. Since Sunday’s newspaper hit the streets introducing the judges for the “So You Think You Can Write?” contest, I’ve become a little more visible.

This morning, my favourite birder, who walks Dallas Road with his walker in hand and a pair of binoculars around his neck, stopped me. “I didn’t know you were a writer,” he said. “I wish I could write.” I wish I knew a tiny fraction of what he knows about waxwings, but all I could do was smile and nod.

I’m not used to the attention. Not used to having a man call down from his ladder, “Didn’t know we had a celebrity judge on our street!” I didn’t know there were so many people who read the Times Colonist. Would they follow the contest? I wondered. Would they vote for their favourite writer? Would they boo the judges’ decisions?

I’ve already been tagged as the “emotional judge.” In an interview for the Camosun website, I confessed to liking stories that moved me to laughter and tears. Isn’t that what all good literature does? But I guess people are looking for different kinds of experiences when they read. So, I’ll take the title and try not to get too emotional about it.

I’m looking forward to the contest, to learning the names of the finalists. We don't know yet who the writers are because it was a blind judging. I'm looking forward to the actual part where the writers perform before the reading public and the judges get to talk about writing. It’s a conversation I’ve been having for a long time with students and other writers. But this is a chance to have it right out in the open, like cleaning one’s gutters or weeding the garden.

In closing, I wanted to thank TC's Tanya Chasse whose idea it was to run this contest. Without her, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. “So You Think You Can Write?” contestants will be announced this Sunday in the TC and I, for one, will be running next door to steal my neighbour’s newspaper to learn the names.

Blocking the Movement of Characters

A word of advice as you move your characters around the page. It's not necessary to block each movement because the details can overwhelm the reader. An example to address this is changing: "Ellen comes around to the armchair and sits down. Her whole body is shaking." To: "Ellen's whole body is shaking as she lowers herself into the armchair."

In the first quote you have a sentence that is pure blocking followed by a sentence with the interesting detail. Merging the two lends authenticity to the interesting detail, eliminates a less dynamic sentence and allows the reader the freedom to imagine the layout of the room to suit them.

In first person it can be especially intrusive to block the characters' movements and you end up with something I call the "cooking show" effect whereby it sounds like this: "I'm adding two eggs and then I'm folding them in." Characters shouldn't be narrating their lives as they go, just living them.

Example,

I opened the door and found my wallet lying open on the seat. (cooking show)

Inside the car, my wallet lay open on the seat. (not the cooking show)

Creative Nonfiction -- A Talk by Wayson Choy

Wayson Choy, author of The Jade Peony, spoke at the Humber School for Writers about creative nonfiction and the courage it takes to write it. His talk was called “Speak, Memory” and here are the notes I took:

What used to be called memoir is now called creative nonfiction. It encompasses writing that is from a personal point of view, experiences as we understand them, not necessarily “the facts.”

Understand the difference between the truth of your experiences and factual truths. For example, you have an investment in the mother you know as mother. Your story about your mother may be different from a sibling’s story. Write your story.

What is essential to the story is often invisible, such as emotion. Writing at the literary level means to write with a keener sense of knowing. The things you comfortably remember are boring. Don’t settle for what is comfortable.

Some people worry about what others will think. What will my mother think? What will my father think? “I’m comfort-blind,” said Wayson Choy. “I want discomfort. Education is the process of disturbance. I want the truth of my experience, not illusion.”

Wayson Choy talked about his background: “Chinatown [in Vancouver] was an outside colony where people were not wanted. It was a ghetto.” We internalize the oppression we experienced growing up.

Be aware, he warned the audience, about “toxic certainties.” Any certainty, especially when you think you are one degree better than someone else, is a toxic certainty. “Drop your judgments so you see the world new,” he advised. “Sit down. You have a theme. Love? What are your certainties about it? What judgments?” These certainties cause us to skirt around the story. “Love has no rules,” he stated.

If you are writing a memoir that matters, know yourself. It takes courage and daring. Astonish yourself.

Ten Tips for Writing Fiction

At the Humber School for Writers, Miriam Toews and Richard Scrimger gave their “Ten Tips for Writing Fiction.”

1. Every story has a forward tilt.
 
2. Use your best energy for writing – your best time of the day.

3. Know your main character before you begin.

4. Be brave. Every occupation has its risks. Be as honest as you can, as intelligent as you can. Miriam Toews said, “I feel nervous before I write, exhilarated.”

5. 90 Minute Rule: Commit to ninety minutes of writing. You can stop at that point or go on. It’s okay to stop. You’ve accomplished something.

6. Give your subconscious time to work on the problems that arise in your novel.

7. Take your notebook with you, Miriam Toews said. “I jot down everything. I stop mid-conversation and write something down. I’m a writer. I don’t have a fall-back career.”

8. About writing fiction, Richard Scrimger advised, “Stay on message. Ring in the fire.”

9. When writing a novel, it’s helpful to make notes as you go. Miriam Toews writes these notes in caps and puts them at the end of the document. Other than that, she tries to write the story chronologically. “All my odd anecdotes usually work. I write them intensely.”

10. About calling yourself a writer...Why not? Maybe there will be a time when people will know you’re a writer by what you do, not what you say. If you are constantly writing, what else are they going to call you?

The Story Takes Place Somewhere Local -- Alistair MacLeod

In his workshop at Humber School for Writers, Alistair MacLeod talked about the importance of place. Here are some of the points he made.

Literature takes place somewhere.

People write about what worries them – what they think about. In different regions, we worry about different things. In most places in Canada in November people are worried about the oncoming winter. Winter will kill you if you don’t prepare for it. But in Victoria in November, people have different worries. They’re not so worried about snow tires.

Let’s say you sit down to write a story about a missing son. It’s a universal worry, right? The son is 15 years old. What happened to him? The specific worry is regional. He might have cracked his snowmobile up or gone through the ice, but not in Victoria. In Victoria, it’s a different worry. No snowmobile. Maybe the boy was on the bus late at night and was stabbed. Maybe that’s what happened to him, but as a mother living in Victoria, you’re not going to worry about your son freezing to death.

Geography affects our ability to make a living.

On the West Coast and the East Coast, people worry about the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans). What’s the DFO doing about low sockeye salmon stocks? What’s the DFO doing about the lobster catch? What’s the DFO doing to help those affected by the global recession? The DFO, the DFO, the DFO. In Manitoba, they don’t talk about the DFO; they talk about CWB (Canadian Wheat Board). They talk about the price of grain and the CWB, the CWB, the CWB.

If a writer does these specific worries well, people identify because we all have worries about feeding our families. We’re all dependent to some degree on resources and whether the steel mill or the saw mill is being shut down in our area.

Think in scenes that take place in a specific locale: in a kitchen, at a bus stop, in a graveyard. Don’t think in terms of events like WWII. Think in terms of the woman walking down the street with a parrot on her arm. What street? A street in New York City. Is that Woody Allen’s New York City? The place you choose will give you images to draw on. New York images, Saskatoon images, Vancouver images.

As a writer, it’s your job to bring the news. Bring the issues that affect us. Ground these issues in a specific locale.

Alistair MacLeod Talks About Plot

Every morning I took my seat in Alistair MacLeod’s workshop at Humber College and I scribbled down his words so I wouldn’t forget them. Here’s what he had to say about plot.

Plot is when you can go in anywhere in the story and ask, “Why?”


Alistair drew a string of boxes on the board and in each box, an event. Queen died. King died. Dog died. Prince died. So far, there is no plot here. Plot is a causal, not chronological series of events.


So how do you make the events into something more? You link them with cause and effect. When the queen died, what effect did it have on the king? Then what happened as a result? Plot consists of an action and the consequence of that action.

When the queen died, the king fell into a deep state of grief, neglecting his young son. He trusted his brother to raise the boy and as a result the prince grew to become a cruel and arrogant young man. One day, the prince was out hunting and a dog crossed his path. It was an ugly thing and the prince struck it down with his sword. The dog died and in that instant a spell was cast on the land.

That's just a quick example to illustrate cause and effect. Next time you are shaping a story or a novel, consider how one event leads to the next.

What Makes or Breaks a First Page?

Craig Pyette, editor with Random House Canada, and Robyn Read editor with Freehand Books, have seen their share of first pages. They know what they like and what they don't. Recently, they spoke to a group of seventy writers at Humber School for Writers eager to hear the words, "Yes, send us your manuscript. We’d like to read the whole thing.”

Set a scene on page one. Get the reader invested. Show, don’t tell us, what the character is like.
The page must show substantive editing. Proofread several times.
The opening sounds contemporary, relevant to today’s reader. (Avoid openings that sound too much like an early Canadian novel – too much like Sinclair Ross, for example).
Dialogue shouldn’t need commentary around it. It should be strong and stand on its own.
Too many plotlines on page one is a problem. It means there’s going to be too much editing involved in clearing them all up.
I won’t go to the next page if the writing is too “spelled out” for me.
Body language, the adjustment of a purse on the shoulder is good. It provides a beat between things, provides pacing. Avoid too much head nodding, shaking of heads. Head gestures are overdone.
A kooky character is interesting. “The father’s paranoia grabs my attention, but then you go and kill him off on page one. I was just getting to like him.”
Establish the point of intrigue soon.
A hint of zaniness on the first page is good.
Don’t start with weather. It was a dark and stormy night…”Uh huh? Where have I heard that one before?”

The first page is important. People walk into a book store and open the first page. What are you going to put on it to get their attention?