On Writing: The Art of Story Blog

The Art of Writing BlogDear Writer:
There's nothing more fascinating than the study of story (and life) through contemporary and classic books and films. I write this blog for all those who share my love of story as a reflection of the human condition (plus it gives me a venue for my obsessive need to analyze and deconstruct.) Enjoy!

Margaret South

 

Females vs. Franzen

September 8th, 2010

Before the book even hit the stores, women authors cried foul when Jonathan Franzen got good reviews.    We’re talking major authors here.  Best seller Jodi Picoult, the renowned Jane Smiley, and first-Oprah-book-author-ever Jacqueline Mitchard to name a few.

 I’m no friend of Jonathan Franzen.  Once he treated Oprah and her book club with contempt those years ago, that was it.  Nobody disses my Oprah and gets away with it.  What a little snot.  Of course, Oprah was equally snotty in her passive aggressive “I don’t wish to make anyone uncomfortable so I will retract the invitation.”  That’s just a polite girl’s way of saying, “Oh yeah?  Well I didn’t want you on my show anyway.”  When he became the cast out underdog, I liked him again.  Then he wrote that snide article in the New Yorker, which was really funny I have to admit, so I had to like him even more.  In contests like these, the writer always does get the last word.    But I digress. 

 In spite of Franzen’s ego-driven personality (I admit this is just a guess because in fact I have never met the man but let’s just say he’s famous and having worked with many famous people I’m in a position to know), the man wrote a brilliant book with “Freedom.”  Brilliant.  He created a female protagonist, so driven and so flawed, the fact she doesn’t seem to care about anyone else but her damned self doesn’t prevent us from falling a little bit in love with her.      

 Why is it that someone else’s success brings out the worst in us?  The writers who complain about his favorable notices have gotten plenty of favorable notices themselves.  So what’s up?  I saw the same thing in Bette Midler when all she wanted to be was Cher.  Really.       

 With a nod to my women writer friends, I know, it’s easy for me to give him his due because I’m not competing for his market.  I get that.  Many’s the time I gnashed my teeth over someone “stupid” getting the job over me, or bemoaning the “old boy” network.  I’m not saying gender bias doesn’t exist.  It does.  Life isn’t fair.  The point is, it doesn’t do any good to dwell on it and define yourself by it, not one bit.  It’s just a waste of your not inconsiderable talent.   

 So Ladies, the guy wrote a fantastic book.  Put on your Big Girl Panties and deal with it.  Get back to work.

The Ten Most Common Writing Mistakes

August 23rd, 2010

  

 

1.  An Essay Isn’t a Story

I’m often asked, “Can the villain be an idea?”  Nice question often asked by intellectuals and the answer is no.  The point of writing a story is to create characters who represent ideas and to have those characters act out the ideas for which they stand.  In a story, stuff happens to the main character, and as a result, the main character changes.  Without this change, there is no story.   

 2.  A “Perfect” Main Character

We love our main characters, don’t we?  We identify with them.  They express our point of view on the world.  So it’s hard for us to give them a flaw.  We want to think of them as perfect.  Trouble is, perfect human beings (aside from being oxymoronic) are not very likable.  When we see that a character is flawed, and makes mistakes—even big ones—we like them more.  Because they’re human.  Like us.

3.  An “Unlikable” Main Character 

My Disney executive friends always insisted that the main character be “likable.”  They would often complain that our main character in a script was “unlikable.”  So what makes a character likable?  What might be likable for some is not so for others, right?  Here’s a good rule of thumb.  Make sure your main character cares about someone other than himself.  (At least, if you’re writing a “Scrooge” type of hero, make it clear he has the capacity to care about someone other than himself.)

 4.  Starting with the Backstory

When you write a life story, you don’t have to start the day your protagonist is born.  When you write a sweeping historical saga, you don’t have to start at the beginning.  Backstory needs to be doled out in very small bites.  In the film “Casablanca,” for example, screenwriting twins the Epstein brothers hold back what happened in Paris until we can hardly stand it anymore.  They didn’t start the story when Ilsa first meets her husband, or even her lover.  They start it much later, when the three characters come together in crisis.    

5.  Passive Verbs

Think in terms of scenes when you write your story.  What do you want your reader to seeTo hear?  What happens? Every writer has heard the maxim, “show, don’t tell.”  Fix this by writing a scene using only active verbs.   

 6.  Bad Men and Good Women

OK this pet peeve of mine isn’t the only cliche in the book, but it’s become the flavor of the month.  Too often, the women in the story are good and the men in the story are bad.  To be fair, I admit that many women writers work from what they imagine to be their own experience.  I personally question their perception.  In life, some of the meanest villains are women.  And so it is in story.  Balance your characters so that you show an understanding and appreciation for both sexes.   

 7.  Relying on Dialogue and Description to Build and Express Character

In life, we define ourselves not by what we think or say, but what we do.  And so it is in story.  The things a character does define him as a character.  Focus on the actions you character takes.  That’s why, when you’re writing your outline.  You need to see the main character move the story forward.  Sure, stuff happens to us, but it’s what we do about it that makes the difference. 

 8.  Low Stakes

Story can be defined as a test for the main character.  He has to overcome the obstacles in his way in order to get his due at the end of the story.  What is the prize?  What are the stakes?  Money?  Fame?  (see Mistake #10, “ A Story without Love”)   

9.  A Main Character Who Doesn’t Change

Story is about transformation itself.  A character makes a profound change in his outlook as a result of the events in the story.  Therefore, if you take me on a long journey and everything is pretty much the same at the end of the story as it is in the beginning, you’ve wasted my time.  As Alvin Toffler said, “Change is not merely necessary to life, change is life.” 

  10.  A Story Without Love

Life is about love.  Always, always, it comes down to the same thing.  We’re only as good as the love we’re able to share with another.  So you might think you’re not writing a love story, but you probably are.  Don’t avoid it.  Give your main character a love interest.  At the end of the day, if your heroine overcomes all the obstacles in her way, what better reward than to get the guy?

Knitting and Writing and Tennis

August 21st, 2010

 

Happy to announce I finished knitting a blanket today for my new baby niece Abigail.  Some people read to relax at the end of a long hard day, but because my day job involves a fair amount (!) of reading and writing, it’s usually not relaxing.  When I read, my engine gets going and that’s not good for sleep.  It’s one of the hazards of my business.  So, I knit.     

Needlework provides a lesson I often share with my writers.  The writers who come to me have incredible talent and a brilliant work ethic and they inspire me with their stories.  Sometimes, they get discouraged.  You might even say they want to throw in the towel altogether.  As a knitter, I get it, I really do.  You work every day, stitch after stitch.  Somtimes you want the project to go faster, but it won’t.  Sometimes you think you should give up; it was a stupid project to begin with and nobody even cares if I do this.  But you don’t give up.  You keep going, stitch after stitch, row after row.   Soon, you have a blanket or a sweater– or a novel.

One day a writer had gone wrong in Act One and wondered whether to go back and fix it, or just leave it for now and get to the end?      Funny, I’d just asked my knitting mentor, Ursula, the same thing.  Here’s what she said:  “Don’t be ridiculous,  you can’t fix every single mistake.  You’d never finish.  Just keep going!”  But as she spoke, she was ripping out row after row of my pink scarf, bringing me back to where I first went wrong.

I still plug along with my knitting and painting and other pursuits because in spite of the frustration and discouragement, I keep getting better and better at them– except tennis.  I had to throw in the towel on that one.

Striving for perfection and negotiating with those inner critics.  Whether it’s knitting, writing, or tennis, we’re all in the same boat!

Gunfire on My Street!

July 25th, 2010

Ok so it’s about 10:30PM.  Husband’s away taking care of his father in the nursing home.  I finish the chapter of Lee Child’s “61 Hours” (a nice read for this hot summer in Georgia, especially since it’s set in a snowstorm of South Dakota), turn off the light and do my deep-breathing-instead-of-Ambien routine (works well and does not cause a bad mood in the morning).  Next thing I know, the dog is frantic and there’s a POP POP POP and I tell myself not to get up because it couldn’t possibly be gunfire.  But it does turn out to be, in fact, gunfire. 

My daughter hits the floor so as not to be struck down by any stray bullets.  My son goes directly to the window so he can see the whole thing.  A gender thing, maybe?  My 82 year old mother joins us and we end up on the front lawn meeting the neighbors for the first time and try to figure out what happend.  Turns out, there was a high speed chase and the perp made the unfortunate decision to turn into our neighborhood, which is a dead end.     Bad move.

According to my son, the guy got out of the car and started running through the backyards, then across our lawn.  The cop in pursuit ordered him to stop.  He didn’t so he got shot.  Our whole street is a crime scene.

Who said living in the South would be boring?