AN INTRODUCTORY
CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM
(MONOGRAPH NUMBER TWO)
by Dan Lukiv
B.Sc. (mathematics), The
University of British Columbia (UBC), 1976;
Teacher Training (kindergarten
to grade three), UBC, 1977;
Writer’s Digest’s Advanced
Novel Writing Program, 1997;
M.Ed. (creative writing), The
University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), 2003
Introduction
This introductory creative writing program exposes the
student to all major literary genres. It offers the teacher a simple,
methodical teaching process and the student straightforward assignments that
address fundamental writing concepts. The assignments and concepts can be
teacher-delivered through the lecture-format. But a simpler teaching method
also exits. The teacher could distribute the course to students, encourage them
to get started, and answer questions as they arise—answer them either personally/individually or through
group discussions.
In the program, I repeatedly refer to examples of poetry
and fiction. Often I use my own work, to help me explain particular concepts of
writing in the various genres. Sometimes the same poem or fiction excerpt shows
up in more than one section because, logically, that poem or excerpt may exemplify
more than one concept. I hope the occasional repetition does not bother
anybody.
Table of Contents
Part I—For Teachers
Chapter 1—Direction
for Creative Writing Teachers from Three Research Studies
Chapter 2—What Is
Creative Writing and What Is a Creative Writer?
Chapter 3—A
Marking Rubric
Part II—For Students
Unit
1:
Unit
2:
Unit
3: I. The Scene; II. More Scenes;
Unit
4:
Unit
5:
Unit
6:
Unit
7:
Unit
8:
Part III—Resources for Students and Teachers
The
Lead Guitarist (part of Unit 4)
For
Writers Only (part of Unit 6)
Part IV—Arthur (Canadian poet), Thomas (Canadian poet), and
Elizabeth (Canadian fiction writer): Recommendations for Elementary and High
School Teachers
Chapter
1—Arthur
Chapter
2—Thomas
Chapter
3—
Part I—For Teachers
Chapter 1—Direction for Creative Writing Teachers from Three
Research Studies
I conducted three qualitative research studies that
explored events in elementary and high school that had encouraged three
established Canadian writers (respectively: Arthur [pseudonym, in the name of anonymity],
a poet, Study I [MEd research], 2002f, 2003b, or 2003c; Thomas [pseudonym], a
poet, Study II, 2004b; and Elizabeth [pseudonym], a fiction writer, Study III,
2005e, 2005f, 2005g) to seriously take up
creative writing as adults. In the sense that what events in school encouraged
Arthur, Thomas, and
In the first person point of view, each teacher
should ask him/herself whether or not:
I promote the joy and wonder of silent reading
of poetry and fiction____
I promote the joy and wonder of listening to
poetry and fiction fluently read aloud____
I promote the joy and wonder of listening to
songs____
I promote the wonder of uninterrupted language
experiences____
I promote the intrigue and wonder of flights of
imagination fuelled by the connotative and imagistic value of words____
I promote the excitement of verbally punning
and joking____
I promote the excitement of students’ informing
others about they have read____
I promote the joy and exhilarating freedom of
writing down thoughts and feelings based
on poetry and fiction read, and I openly value those thoughts and feelings____
I promote the exhilarating freedom of choice of
reading material____
I promote the satisfaction and excitement of
receiving sound direction about how to write well, and I do so
compassionately____
I demand, from a humanistic point of view, the
best from students____
I value, love, see each student as
sublimely unique____
I encourage students to be the best that they
can be, no matter what their gifts or deficits are____
I provide lots of opportunities for students to
write poetry, stories, and plays____
I provide opportunities for students to use
their writing in performances (e.g., public reading, plays)____
I read students’ good writing—even non-assigned
work that they bring to school—aloud, as examples for others____
I have students read their own good writing
samples aloud, as examples for others ____
I provide special events—for example, concerts
in which students are the performers—that may become memories students use as
writing resource material____
I present students’ writing to established
writers who praise the works and/or provide helpful direction____
I provide a variety of reading experiences
(poems, stories, non-fiction), in the hopes of instilling a love of stories and
a quest for knowledge, providing students with subjects to write about____
The more checks a
teacher has, the more closely his or her school-based events exemplify,
collectively, the phenomenon of what events in school encouraged Arthur,
Thomas, and Elizabeth. For an in depth look at the events that gave rise to
this checklist, please consider Part IV of this text.
Chapter 2—What Is Creative Writing and What Is a Creative Writer?
Arthur, Thomas, and
Elizabeth provided me with rich interviews filled with memories of relevant
school experiences—relevant with respect to my research question, that is. I
speak of these experiences in terms of elementary and high school as opposed to
college and university. I speak of these participants as creative writers, as
individuals who produce what I will shortly define as creative writing.
Although somewhat circular
in logic, that last sentence answers: “What is a creative writer?” Likewise,
mathematicians produce mathematics. Physicists produce physics. Music composers
produce musical scores. Dancers produce dancing. These individuals stand
defined by what they do.
So, then, what is
creative writing? Although I believe that generally all writing is creative—in
fact, I believe that generally all thinking is creative (Smith, 1990)—I do not
want to dwell on those ontological premises. I define creative writing of poets,
fiction writers, and dramatists in the same way many others define it:
Creative writing is writing that expresses the
writer’s thoughts and feelings in an imaginative, often unique, and poetic way.
Creative writing is guided more by the writer’s need to express feelings and
ideas than by restrictive demands of factual and logical progression of
expository writing. (What is Creative Writing?, 1999)
In the words of distinguished novelist Ernest J. Gaines (born in 1933
C.E [Our Common Era]), creative writing is “imaginative writing....Though the
creative writer draws from factual sources, sociology, psychology, politics,
religion, etc.,...he should use all of that information imaginatively—never
[just] factually” (Gaines, n.d.). Creative writing, then, conveys feelings and
personal ideas more than information, as opposed to expository writing, which
conveys information more than feelings and personal ideas (What is Expository
Writing?, 1999).
Now that I have
provided a picture of creative writing, I’ll provide in the next chapter
a rubric for marking it.
Chapter 3—A Marking Rubric
How should creative
writing teachers mark students’ work (see, e.g., Lukiv, 2001f, Chapter One:
Sunglasses and Evaluation)? I place no dogmatic direction before teachers, but
I do provide what I would call a reasonable rubric (see, e.g., Laurie, 2005).
Each assignment, in any given unit of work, that involves creative writing as
opposed to an expository response could score 25 marks, divided up according to
these categories:
a. 5 marks: degree of effort.
b. 5 marks: degree of originality/creativity
(see Chapter 2: What is Creative Writing and What Is a Creative Writer?).
c. 5 marks: level of appropriate grammar and
technical skill (a departure from usual standards, as in the case of e. e.
cummings’ upper/lowercase and line formatting anomalies, and in the cases of
James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and Donovan
A. Landers’ stream of consciousness, should come with an explanation from the
student about the need for such a departure).
d. 5 marks: degree of willingness to discuss
how to improve an assignment (with respect
to individualized teacher-student conversations).
e. 5 marks: degree of effort to complete a
final draft with respect to discussions about how to improve the work (i.e.,
with respect to d).
A student who tries
hard (a: say, 5/5) but turns in a work that lacks originality (b: say, 0/5) and
displays poor grammatical structure and technical skill (c: say, 0/5) may still
score a passing mark by conversing with his or her teacher about how to improve
the work (d: say, 5/5) and then writing up a final draft that incorporates at
least some of the teacher’s direction (e.g., with respect to grammatical
changes, aesthetic considerations, and cliché-ridden statements [e: say, 5/5]).
The student could score 15/25, for this assignment. Of course, if the work
ranks as perfect: score, 100%.
I haven’t discussed
what constitutes a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 out of 5 for each of a, b, c, d, or e. Laurie
(2005) creates a marking rubric for high school arts students’ art projects,
which could correlate with many of my assignments if I considered her “Not Yet
Within Expectations” as a 1, “Meets Expectations (Minimal Level)” as a 2,”Meets
Expectations (Higher Level)” as a 3, “Fully Meets Expectations” as a 4, and “Exceeds
Expectations” as a 5 (p. 15). But each of these “numbers” still requires a
working definition. Rather than create a possible dog-pile heap of definitions,
I leave them for individual teachers to conceptualize—teachers who, I’m sure,
are fully capable of defining what a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are to them for each of
a, b, c, d, and e.
As for expository
responses, teachers may wish to mark according to the a, c, d, and e
categories, or they may wish to mark according to the b category too. Really,
just as all thinking could arguably be termed creative (Smith, 1990), so could
all writing (see the previous chapter), at least at some level of originality.
Part II—For Students
Unit 1
Contents:
What do you
want to get out of this course? Be specific. That will help me (hereafter, your
teacher) help you focus on your interests. If you tell me that you want to
write a novel, that you’ve wanted to write a novel ever since you said your first words—Is that comic relief (Comic Relief, 2007)?—and that your entire happiness in life rests
on your writing a novel this year, then I’ll consider altering some assignments to
accommodate your obsession, I mean interest. (Please note: In this course, I
draw attention to assignments by writing them in bold, blue, 16-font text.)
Please consider, however, that what seems colossally
important today may not rank so in a year or decade or two. For example, when I
took Creative Writing 202 at the University of British Columbia, back in 1974
in the previous century—yes, the
previous one—lanky, dark-bearded Professor
Harlow (born in 1923) asked, “Why don’t each of you students tell us what you want to get
out of this course.” In the workshop-setting class in
the classroom with water-stained walls warped by age, I said, “I, I want to learn how to write a good children’s story. I’ve
always wanted to write children’s, um, stories.” I gulped. Did I sound narrow minded? Simple minded?
Well! Fine if I did, I figured. I wanted to write children’s stories! But within five years of that confession, I
found something else of colossal importance. Writing poetry. The day I saw my
first poem in print, in a literary journal called Repository (no, not Suppository),
I remember thanking Professor Harlow in my heart for introducing me not only to
the art and craft of fiction and dramatic writing; he taught me lots about
poetry writing too.
My hope as your teacher,
then: that you will write in several genres, experiencing their distinct, and
sometimes not-so-distinct, flavours, and that you will one day get some of your
work published (in literary journals, magazines, newspapers, even books (The
Canadian Writer’s Market [McClelland & Stewart] and The Poet’s Market and
The Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market [Writer’s Digest Books]
will give you access to names and addresses of publishers). If you wonder what
I mean by genres, then consider these: poetry, fiction, the play (for stage,
tv, or radio), and the mime.
Again, what do
you want to get out of this course?
II. The Mime.
Consider the following lists
of verbs:
is scuttle
have chomp
was scream
were pound
am fling
Which column list above
sounds or seems more interesting to your eye, ear, or emotional psyche? If you
say the left-hand list, then you have just begun to worry me. The words in the
right-hand list possess an energy that the limp others simply don’t have. Writers know that. They also know that if they
are to keep their readers entertained and interested in their work, energy-charged
verbs in the active as opposed to the passive sense definitely
help.
Active
At
the talent night in the dimly lit log restaurant, Martha sang—actually, she screeched through—”Puff the Magic
Dragon.”
Passive
At
the talent night in the dimly lit log restaurant, “Puff the Magic Dragon” was sung—actually,
was screeched through—by Martha.
As Bates (1980) points out, “the active voice gives writing a sense of strength,
energy, vitality, and motion. The passive voice slows things down” (p. 20). You should answer for yourself why the
active example of Martha exists more energetically than the passive one (see,
e.g., Active and Passive Voice, 2004). If you believe, on the other hand, that
the mighty passive dwarfs the weak active, and if you like is better
that fling, then my worry for you has jumped to a quantum level.
Mime, and I don’t mean
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, relates to activity, as biology
relates to life and as mathematics relates to if and then.
Mime relates to activity means that the mime, “a play in which the actors use gestures and movements,
not words” (Mime, 1993, p. 119), =
distilled action. Red Skelton used the mime in many of his stand up acts, and
audiences loved his miming expertise, his emphatic facial expressions and
limber arms and legs. I know I did.
Why do I keep talking about the mime? To set up this
statement:
Write like a mimer mimes.
Just as I said you should answer for yourself why the
active example of Martha exists more energetically than the passive one,
you should also answer for yourself why you need to write like a mimer mimes.
To help you come to terms with this last italicized
statement, write a mime, giving stage directions for your mimers. Make sure you
have a beginning, middle, and end (as in a story), and if you have a theme that
shows us something truthful about life—that would be great.
And, as you write, think about tools. Certainly a
carpenter’s tools include things such as a hammer, saw, tape measure, and
level. Certainly a mimer’s tools include his arms, legs, expressions, emphatic
and descriptive gestures (Benefit From, 2001)—his entire body. A writer’s tools include at least energetic verbs in the active
voice. To help you write your mime, by your keeping your mimers physically
active through your use of directions that employ energetic verbs in the active
voice, here are two published examples of short mimes, written by two of my
former students, for you to consider:
Breaking Up
by Laura Larose (17 years old). Published
in CHALLENGER international, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1998, p. 3.
Characters: a young man (M) and woman (W).
W: Sitting on the floor, head on her knees, sobbing.
M: Enters, looks at woman.
W: Notices man, turns her face away from him, and wipes her tears away.
M: Concerned, he approaches her, crouches, and puts his hand on her
shoulder.
W: Angrily she pulls away, and quickly stands.
M: Also angry, he stomps his feet and punches his hand.
W: In pain, she places one hand on her chest, and then clutches it into
a tight fist.
M: Roughly, he grabs her, hugs her.
W: She pushes him away, and sadly turns her back to him.
M: Confused, he spreads out his hands as if to ask, “Why?”
W: She sits down sadly.
M: Turns and walks away, takes one glance at her, then he exits.
W: Lowers her head to her knees, sobbing.
Did you notice the lack of verbs the like of is,
had, was, have, were, am, will, will
be, have been, are, should, could, and would?
Such verbs don’t really give life to a mime, don’t they?
Untitled
by Pat Figel (17 years old). Published
in CHALLENGER international, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1999, p. 4.
Characters: A young man (G); another young man (P).
G: Sitting as his desk, a perplexed look on his face.
P: Walks in, puts his hand on G’s shoulder.
G: Pushes the arm away.
P: Gets a look on his face as if to say, “What?”
G: Looks back as if to say, “Sorry.”
P: Brings out his hand in a friendly gesture.
G: Accepts it and shakes it.
P: Leaves room, looking back with a smile and a wave.
G: Stays sitting down, but he too smiles and waves back.
Do you have a better sense of how writers should
write as mimers mime? To create energy, writers use energetic verbs in the
active voice just as mimers use physical action and facial expression? Yes, I
know we can’t create energy (The Law, n.d.)—but in the dramatic sense, writers
can. Do you have a better understanding of how writers and mimers create a
sense of something happening?
For the writer, often the use of action-charged
verbs translates into character action. Interestingly, a character’s action, in
other words what he or she does, and, for that matter, what he or she says in a
dramatic context of conflict between him or her and someone or something else,
defines, at least in part, that character’s personality, make up, manner, sense
of being, individuality, uniqueness. Knott (1977) speaks of
characterization [as] a by-product of watching
people in action and hearing them speak [dramatic action if in a dramatic
context (of conflict)]. When they do this [action], they reveal [through drama]
who and what they are. But this means the writer has to know his people
so well that he literally cannot imagine them doing anything “out of character”
[action that doesn’t fit their personality]. As his people come to life
[through action], as they begin to react to each other [more action], to
struggle [through action] their way to some resolution, they must choose
[through actions] only those options that are consistent with their
character—that is, with the writer’s own sure knowledge of them” (p.
50-51).
Really, “interest is
engendered by what a character does” (Hatcher, 1996, p. 22). His or her
motivation catches the reader’s eye/interest in the context of “characters are
living, thinking creations, and they have reasons for doing what
[action] they do” (Banks, 1988, p. 53).
A story told through action, then, transcends a reporting. The following
joke that I wrote (1997d, p. 26) reads as an anecdote, a reporting, void of
much dramatic action (note: Skipping in itself is an action, but without
conflict, it cannot rise to the level of dramatic action):
Our Dog Steals
Our dog steals—a boot
here, a doll there. He’ll pant in exquisite delight, standing over his loot in
our yard.
Once I had to return a purse to a neighbour. She wasn’t
impressed.
Then he brought us a mucky rabbit carcass. That rabbit—that pet—had been the
prize of the purse lady’s children.
I shampooed and blow dried it. That night I sneaked into
the purse lady’s yard, depositing “fluffy” in its cage.
My wife threatened to disown me. But my plan was flawless!
Except: the next day, as I slinked to my car, the purse
lady saw me from her yard: “Hey, you! Do you know what happened? Yesterday our
rabbit died, so I buried it, but now it’s in its cage! And it’s all—clean and fluffy!”
I wrote the anecdote (a fictionalized account of a true
story one of my former grade two students had told me) up as a story, with
action that helps characterize the first-person narrator, his wife, and the
neighbour. The action of what characters do and say fills scenes that create a
sense of reality that the joke version lacks. Breakfast All Day (Issue
10, 1998a, p. 29), a magazine printed in
***
A Thief in the Family
Why is our dog a thief?
Yesterday morning, on my way to my Neon Sport, as I toted
an armful of marked papers for my grade three students, I tripped over a welder’s
helmet. The papers flew up, and I crashed.
With my wind knocked out, I sat on dewy grass, beside
Toby, our gargantuan brown mongrel. He licked my face.
I didn’t yell at him. I certainly didn’t want to attract
any neighbour’s attention, and so, once I’d felt my strength returning, I
dumped the helmet in our shed, where many other items—stolen items—lay in a
heap: a glove, an assortment of toy cars, a Cabbage Patch doll, a baseball, a
pair of runners, a sweater, a shoe, and a pair of boxer shorts.
Who owned these things? How would I return them?
I phoned my wife during my lunchtime:
“Hi, hon,” I said, using the students’ phone in the
hallway. “Guess what Toby left in our yard today?” I chuckled. “A—”
“Ralph,” she said, “we have a serious problem.”
“Mr. Friedenburger,” a ten-year-old named Robbie said,
tugging my free arm, “there’s a fight in the playground, and there’s blood.”
“Ralph,” my wife said, “there’s a rabbit in our yard. It’s
mucky and grey—and dead! I think it’s the
Carlsons’ pet.”
“Mr. Friedenburger!” Robbie said. “Aren’t you going to do
something?”
“Well?” my wife said. “What are we going to do?”
“Are you sick, Mr. Friedenburger?”
That afternoon, I gave my students 30 minutes of
Read-What-You-Want and one hour of Do-Your-Own-Art-Thing-And-Don’t-Bug-Me. As
they worked, I thought about the gloom that had haunted me when, at nine, my
car-smashed dog, Queenie, died in my arms on our porch. The thought was too
horrible to relive. But there I was, in front of 24 self-absorbed primary
students, trying to forget my dead pet. I tried not to think that the Carlsons
had three children who’d loved Buffy, their rabbit, and that it had often
followed them around the yard, like a Siamese cat or family dog.
I thought about families we knew—families who lived on farms and would like a dog (“A
dog that steals and kills neighbours’ pets,” I thought).
When I got home, I found the rabbit in our mud-room. But
it definitely didn’t look dirty. It sat on all fours, and its fur looked
fluffy, clean, and silky. I bent over, peering closely, to make sure it was
really dead.
I stood up, finding my wife with her hands on her hips. “I
shampooed and blow-dried it,” she said.
I swallowed, studying her face, trying to detect the
early stages on insanity. But in spite of her strained expression, she appeared
well put together: mascara, eye shadow, puffy hair, the blue dress I love.
“What’s going on, Betty?”
“We’re putting it back tonight. Nobody’ll ever know.”
“It’s dead,” I reminded her.
“I know,” she said, with her teeth clenched.
She worried me. “Hon, I’ll tell you what we’re going to
do. We’re going to find Toby a new home.”
“Ralph!” she said, aghast. “My father gave me that dog
before he died.”
“I know.” Then I groaned.
“Tomorrow,” she told me, “you’re going to start building
a fence.”
Scratches at the door told us Toby was home again. I was
afraid to look outside. Maybe I’d find somebody’s purse. Or another dead pet.
Later, after two Spanish coffees each, we ventured into
the October night air. I packed the corpse under one arm; Betty clutched the
flashlight in one hand.
Toby (locked up) scratched at the back door to get out. If
we ever tied him up, he’d howl as if he’d been gut-shot, and if we ever locked
him indoors, he’d scratch and scratch the front or back door and fill the house
with an odour that only a vulture would enjoy.
We sneaked along our lane to the Carlsons’ yard—two houses down. All was quiet except for the distant
sound of a train passing through town.
We found the chicken-wire cage open—not surprising—and then carefully I placed the rabbit—dead Buffy—inside.
He resembled a little, lost, dark cloud in the starless
night.
Had the Carlsons discovered that the rabbit was missing?
Well, no plan was perfect. I heard a car door slam in the driveway. A motor
started. Headlights flooded the yard with light. Fortunately, we were hidden
behind a thicket of rose bushes.
On the brink of humiliation, we ran back to our house. I
felt guiltier than usual letting out Toby to wander the streets, but his
disgusting odour gave me no other sensible choice.
“Tomorrow,” my crazed-looking, puffing wife told me, “you’re
starting that fence.”
We had another Spanish coffee each, and then we crashed
in bed.
The next morning, as I headed to my car, I found Toby
ripping apart a book—The
Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. In
the lane, I met Mrs. Carlson. She waved for me to stop my car. My heart beat
accelerated. I felt sweaty. My hands and feet felt cold. I pushed down on the
window switch, and as the glass descended, I noticed how loud the electric
motor sounded.
Mrs. Carlson stuffed her head into my car, almost knocking
me over with tobacco-breath: “Mr. Friedenburger!”
“Call me Ralph.”
“I’ve just got to tell someone!” She was about forty, and
her face reminded me of Genghis Khan. “Our pet rabbit died yesterday! I buried
it! I buried it while the kids were at school! But this morning! There it was!
In its cage! And he was, you know, dead, but all clean and fluffy!”
***
Do you agree that energetic verbs such as toted, marked,
tripped, flew, crashed, knocked, sat, licked, yell, clutched, and dumped create
opportunities for action (in terms of movement or character
interaction/conflict) more than less energetic verbs such as has, was, am, are,
should, and is.
Isn’t is
essentially a boring verb (Landers, 2005a [born in 1953])?
As a point of interest, why do you suppose this excerpt
from The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903/2004), a famous silent film—in fact, it created a standard that many classic
silent film directors thereafter tried to reach for (Smith, 2004)—uses so many active verbs?
Great Train Robbery, The (1903)
by Edwin S. Porter [lived
1870-1941 C.E.].
Story by Scott Marble.
1 INTERIOR OF
RAILROAD TELEGRAPH OFFICE.
Two masked robbers
enter and compel the operator to get the “signal block” to stop the approaching
train, and make him write a fictitious order to the engineer to take water at
this station, instead of “Red Lodge,” the regular watering stop. The train
comes to a standstill (seen through window of office); the conductor comes to
the window, and the frightened operator delivers the order while the bandits
crouch out of sight, at the same time keeping him covered with their revolvers.
As soon as the conductor leaves, they fall upon the operator, bind and gag him,
and hastily depart to catch the moving train. (Porter, 1903/2004, part 1)
List the verbs in this Train
Robbery excerpt that translate into dramatic action.
Do you agree that words for writers are like brush
strokes for artists? To help you think about brush strokes, I mean words, and
how powerful they are for communicating thought to others and creating in
readers a sense of immediacy, let’s explore
something writers call stream of consciousness—a unique form of expression that requires the author
to consider words in all their cultural, psychological, sociological,
historical, even spiritual glory. Dorothy Richardson (lived 1873-1957 C.E.)
wrote Pointed Roofs (Richardson, 1915/2004), “the first stream of consciousness novel in English,
although [she] disliked the term…, preferring to
call her way of writing interior monologues” (Dorothy Richardson, 2006, Writings, para. 1). I also
prefer the term “interior monologues”; it seems less ambiguous and more self explanatory
than its stream of consciousness counterpart, but convention shelved
Stream-of-consciousness writing asserts itself through
such strange combinations of words that your thinking about it may reinforce in
your mind how thoughtfully writers must use them, just as how artists
must use brush strokes. Consider Hemingway’s (lived 1899-1961 C.E.) thoughtful use of odd
combinations of words in his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929/1997).
The story—based on Hemingway’s own
experiences—is set in World War I
In chapter 32,
Henry thinks to himself with the second-person
pronoun of “you,” the longest usage of the technique in the novel. The
narrative also loses it journalistic precision and slips into ungrammatical,
awkward sentences: “...but you loved some one else whom now you knew was not
even to be pretended there; you seeing now very clear and coldly...”
This is Hemingway’s foray
into…stream-of-consciousness writing…, and it not only pulls the reader into
Henry’s mind, but has another effect: it signifies how much Henry has removed
himself from his former way of life. He must temporarily detach himself from
his person to see how he has detached himself from the army, and he does this
by stepping outside of himself and addressing himself as “you.” (Wayne, 2002,
Summary and Analysis of Book Three, Book Three: Chapter XXXII, Analysis,
paragraphs 1-2)
In the following
stream-of-consciousness example, you may sense Henry’s detachment from the WW I
Italian war effort, as he mentally prepares to reunite with Catherine, the
woman he loves:
You did not love the floor of a flat-car nor
guns with canvas jackets and the smell of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain
leaked through, although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns;
but you loved some one else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended
there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly—not so coldly as clearly and
emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one
army moved back and another came forward. You had lost your cars and your men
as a floorwalker loses stock of his department in a fire. There was, however,
no insurance. You were out of it now. You had no more obligation. If they shot
floorwalkers after a fire in the department store because they spoke with an
accent they had always had, then certainly the floorwalkers would not be
expected to return when the store opened again for business. They might seek
other employment; if there was any other employment and the police did not get
them.
Anger was washed away in the river along with
any obligation. (Hemingway, 1929/1997, pp. 209-210)
During a first, perhaps hurried, reading, this excerpt
might seem like strange combinations of
words, even inept combinations. But Hemingway didn’t win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 (Ernest
Hemingway, n.d.) for incompetent writing. If you don’t see Hemingway’s choices of words as thoughtful, I encourage you to
re-read the excerpt. Remember that our own interior monologues sometimes
utilize bizarre cubits of grammar. Thoughtful word choices help a writer
capture that bizarre quality according to his or her own stylistic choices,
needs, and biases.
Stream of consciousness/interior monologues, then, come
in a variety of flavours. Ernest Hemingway (e.g., A Farewell to Arms, 1929/1997) is one. Gertrude Stein (as in the following excerpt
[she lived 1874-1946 C.E.]) is another:
[From
her The World is Round:] But mountains yes Rose did think about
mountains and about blue when it was on the mountains and feathers when clouds
like feathers were on the mountains and birds when one little bird and two
little birds and three and four and six and seven and ten and seventeen and
thirty or forty little birds all came flying and a big bird came flying and
they flew higher than the big bird and they came down and one and then two and
then five and then fifty of them came picking down on the head of the big bird
and slowly the big bird came falling down between the mountain and the little
birds all went home again. (as quoted in Rico, 1983, p. 139)
Rico comments on this passage
as one that
rushes
headlong without pause, connected only by a myriad of “ands” and a pattern
of interlocking recurrences: “birds,” “mountains,” “down,” “flying/flew,” “feathers,” all of which set up their own punctuated rhythm.
Stein once compared her writing technique to the frames in a motion picture
that present a moving series of instantaneous visions in a rhythmic pattern.
(p. 139)
Do people really think in the
way, according to Stein, Rose thinks? If you, the reader, accept, go along
with, Rose’s stream of consciousness/inner
monologue, then the answer might as well be yes.
I have three more stream of consciousness flavours to
present to you. Globally the most well-known one: James Joyce’s (lived 1882-1941 C.E.) Finnegans Wake, which
famously
opens with the second half of the sentence that starts at the very end of the
book. This circular view on history was inspired by the Italian philosopher
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), as is suggested in the novel: “The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms
begin” (FW 452.21-22). Vico postulated a cycle of three ages
(the mythic or theocratic era, the heroic or aristocratic era, and the human
era), followed by a period of renewal, which he called ricorso.
The overall structure of Finnegans Wake shows
a similar pattern. The
text
is divided into four Books….Book IV
consists of only one chapter, a ricorso which “brings us back to Howth Castle and Environs” on the first page of the novel. The capital letters
H, C, and E refer to the main character, HCE (which can stand for Humphrey
Chimpden Earwicker, Here Comes Everybody,
…The “characters” in Finnegans Wake are
archetypes or character amalgams,
taking different shapes. For instance, ALP, the mother or the female principle
in the book, often appears as the river Liffey, running through Dublin….The …title Finnegans
Wake refers to the Irish ballad “Finnegan’s
Wake” about a man called Tim Finnegan. This hod-carrier
falls from a ladder and seems to be dead. At his wake, the mourners start
drinking and spill some whiskey on Finnegan’s face, which brings him back to
life again.
…By leaving out the apostrophe
in his title, Joyce turned Tim’s case into a universal tale of Finnegans who
fall and wake again. (Van Hulle, 2002, paragraphs 2-5)
Clearly, according to Van Hulle’s (2002) comments, “the book is far from simple”
(Finnegans Wake, 2006, para. 11). “The book is far from simple” also
according to the following: Typically,
for the stream-of-consciousness writer, words, images, events and thoughts
emerge from the reality he or she tries to create inside the minds of conscious
characters, which can create a complex panorama of symbols and allegory, but in
Joyce’s case, he steps as a writer into the sleeping, the
unconscious, mind, spinning a reality through dreamscape. In that sense,
Joyce creates a reality of his own. His new
reality is completely freed from the rational logic which dominates our waking
state. Instead it resembles the logic of the dreaming mind, or the working of
consciousness, where images are subject to constant movement and
transformation. In place of realistic characters, in Finnegans Wake Joyce
creates types: “Mister Typus, Mistress Tope and all the little typtopies”. The
spatiotemporal interaction in Finnegans Wake not only conveys the idea
of time without boundaries between the past, present and future, but it also
expresses the relativistic fusion of time and space into a timespace continuum.
(Zanzi, 2005, Joyce’s Concept of Time, para. 2)
Given this “new
reality,” the book ends with
Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done
through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread
wings like he’d come from Arkangels, I sink I’d die down over his feet, humbly
dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There’s where. First. We pass through grass
behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us
then. Finn, again! Take. [Note: Finnegans Wake] Bussoftlhee, mememormee!
Till thousandsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long
the (Joyce, 1939/1976, p. 628)
Where does that last
sentence end? Well, the book “draws in mythologies, theologies, mysteries,
philosophies, histories, sociologies, …[etc.], and dozens of languages to
create the world drama in whose cycles we live” (Finnegans Wake, 2006,
para. 11). In phase with that comment: “As well as leaving the reader to
complete [the last sentence] with his or her own life, it can be closed by the
sentence that starts the book—another cycle” (para. 12):
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of
shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d’amores,
fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this
side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war:
nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens
County’s gorgois while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice
from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatick: not yet, though
venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s
fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of
pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow
was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. (Joyce, 1939/1976, p. 3)
I ran my SpellCheck through these Joyce quotes, and it died.
The book, a dream
sequence, or anti-sequence, in terms of Joyce’s non-sequential flow of time
that mixes up past, present, and future, begins with these
Finnegan-dream-thoughts by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, who in the waking world
may be a man called Porter (Barger, 1998). If the text reads as an interior
monologue of HCE while he dreams, then we could name the monologue a stream of
unconsciousness. In the novel Margins (Landers, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c,
2005d, 2005e, 2005f, 2005g, 2005h), in which the main character, Donovan A.
Landers, semi-sleeps, his interior monologue exists as a sort of stream of
semi-consciousness.
The stream travels
backwards in time through a barrage of questions that Donovan asks. For
example, “Who is Geronimo?” At a literal level, he is the principal of Donovan’s secondary alternate education program for senior
students who find themselves in a substandard school “outside” the regular
school system. As students, they are marginalized. As a teacher outside the
regular high school where so-called real teaching happens, so is Donovan.
Geronimo, an administrative outlier, really, doesn’t fit into mainstream education too well either. The
stream of semi-consciousness refers to Donovan’s school, which has just burned to the ground, due to
an Aveo that ended up nose first in the school’s stairwell and somehow ignited itself.
Donovan, also a poet, weaves some of his poems into his
monologue, as his tired mind explores marginalization from a variety of points
of view. The monologue refers to other characters: Jacobina, his frustrated
wife who finds motherhood without a career frowned upon in her circle of
acquaintances; Pavlos, a student on the run who still thinks he is being
charged for a murder he didn’t commit; Jim,
a Jehovah’s Witness way outside mainstream
religion; Machteld, Donovan’s youngest
daughter who often feels left out; and others.
Again, “Who is Geronimo?” At the symbolic level, who is anybody, and especially
who is anybody marginalized? Here is Landers’ novel’s entire stream
of semi-consciousness (2005g):
[[Jacobina said, “You look really worn out, Don.” Yes. Sleep. What is sleep? Is. What is is? What is an
Ethiopian? What is an Ethiopian not? What is
Now, write, for as long as you can stand, brush
strokes, I mean words, any (even nonsense) words that come to mind—any thoughts, phrases, clauses, sentence
fragments, or whatever other language you notice galloping about in your mind.
This will be your stream of consciousness. I hope you notice how powerful words are for
communicating thought, even peculiar stream-of-consciousness thought, to
others, and for creating a reader’s sense of
immediacy.
IV. More Stream of Consciousness
Let me stir
your imagination. Imagine a stream of consciousness that someone you know
(friend, relative, schoolmate, or workmate, or a character you invent) might
experience. Put yourself in his or her mind. Be someone else for awhile.
V. Show, Don’t Tell
Again, let me
stir your imagination: Write a paragraph to display a character’s predominant emotion (assuming one exits),
but don’t tell us what emotion you’re displaying. In other words, show
us through action, through how the character acts. Define his or her emotion
through that action (does this remind you of the mime?) and perhaps through
dialogue. You might even record his or her thoughts (include only specific
thoughts that help describe one emotion).
To help you crystallize in your mind what I mean by
showing, as opposed to telling, consider this series of examples—of King Quibil—from my novel for children, entitled Quibils and
Quirks (1997e, 1998, 1999):
From
Chapter One (note the showing in these examples)
“Chop off their heads!” hollered King Quibil—a five-foot tall fur ball, with two arms and legs, who
was waving a sword. “Chop off everybody’s head! Teach them a lesson they’ll
never forget!”
From Chapter Eight
The king leapt onto a fallen tree to
make a speech:
“Quibils, a friend of ours has been
insulted, treated like a common skunk!” He shook his fist. “We’re going to town
this moment, to get to the bottom of this!”
From Chapter Ten
King Quibil pounded his Royal Rod on
the stone floor. “This means war!”
From Chapter Twenty
King Quibil whacked his Royal Rod on
the hard floor. “I’ll ask the questions!” He scowled at the Royal Attendant. “Where’s
Hooper?”
From Chapter Twenty-One
“What? Who told you our plan?” [King
Quibil’s] hair puffed up. “They’re spies!”
Consider, too, this example:
Tom stepped inside the classroom and slammed the door
behind him. An algebra text on one dusty shelf fell over. He stomped to his
desk, sat down, and glared at Bobby, nervously seated next to him.
“What’s your problem, ya dumb fart,” Tom said.
Telling instead of showing Tom’s demeanour might read as follows:
Tom was angry and belligerent.
Action certainly can help describe a character’s mood or disposition. Hall (1989) agrees:
Action
is the most effective way to demonstrate character….Action catches the eye. It shows instead of telling. It demonstrates traits. It interests
while it informs, and the image, and so the demonstration, remains fresh in the
reader’s mind’s eye as
exposition or static description will not. (p. 46)
You, the student, may heartily agree with that quote, but
you may ask, “Where do characters come from?” Where did your characters come from who you used in
your mime? Perhaps they came from your memories based on real or vicarious
experiences. Often,
the
characters we create are drawn in part from people we have known or observed,
without our in any sense attempting to recreate the person on the page. I may
borrow a bit of physical description, for example, or a mannerism, or an oddity
of speech. I may take an incident in the life of someone I know and use it as
an item of background data in the life of one of my characters. Little touches
of this sort from my own life experience get threaded into my characters much
as bits of ribbon and cloth are woven into a songbird’s nest—for color, to tighten
things up, and because they caught my eye and seemed to belong there. (Block,
1979, pp. 74-75)
With this discussion on
action and character in mind, remember to show readers your character’s predominant emotion—but don’t tell.
VI. Student’s Favourites
You’ve arrived at the last assignment of this first unit.
Take a little time to think about what you enjoy writing. List some of your favourite stories, novels, plays, and/or
poems (you’re welcome to write up the poems, if you wish). Say what you
especially like about each favourite in your list. You’re welcome to refer to favourite scenes,
chapters, and/or lines. This exercise
should help you think about what you especially like to write about. And what
you especially like to write about will be a source of great energy for you
when you do write.
That sort of energy in your heart translates into
passion. Likely, your passion expresses what you know about people, places, “sociology,
psychology, politics, religion, etc.” (Gaines, n.d.). What you know—whether you write sci-fi fantasy or
realistic, contemporary drama—should form a reservoir of data: life data, life
experience. With regard to that data, Bryant (1978) explains that
what Joseph Conrad said about all
novels…applies: you must create a world in which you “can honestly believe,”
yet in some way “familiar to the experience…of…readers.” That means researching
the historical or scientific, or imagining the fantasy world of your novel, knowing it thoroughly as a
consistent world….And it means your creatures and their story must connect
symbolically with contemporary people and concerns. (pp. 22-23)
Bryant (1978) quotes the writer’s adage, “Write
what you know” (p. 20). But she adds that “the injunction to write what you know must not become
a strangle hold on the imagination” (p.
21). Writers can learn what they need to know through research.
Stephen
Crane…wrote about battles he had never fought or seen, wrote
with no combat experience at all, but he talked with men who had before he wrote
The Red Badge of Courage. And although Civil War veterans complained
that Crane got some of his facts wrong, their complaints became irrelevant as
readers realized the deeper truths of his classic which became a new model for
men-in-battle novels. (p. 21)
Evens poets may find a need to do research, to enable
then to write knowledgably about their subjects. I have experienced and
fulfilled this need repeatedly as a poet, even more so than I have as a short
story writer or novelist. I know that research into the lives and antics of
ravens helped Landers put together the following poem:
Corvus Corax—The Raven
(1998, pp. 10-11)
Siberian storm
front-prophet,
MacBeth-black
cloud,
And Poe’s ache—
This trickster,
This ravenous clawer of
Fruits and seeds
And rotting flesh,
This coniferous roamer
And desert nomad,
Croaks like a mournful
hag
Or mimics that
diminutive
Brainless crow.
Inuit carvers
Immortalize this
prankster-
Thief haunting ice
fishermen,
This vaudeville clown
who dumps
Snow on
Yellowknife-victims
Beneath steep metal
roofs.
In the torrent
You fed Elijah
Between ravines and
crags,
Your thunderbolt
blackness
Filled aerial
somersaults
And upside-down fly-bys
In courtship
Or mere play.
You taunt wolves—
Peck their hairy tails—
But feast on their feast
Between tricks that
The Haida often recall.
You croak of the glee,
the surprise,
The excitement and anger
and
Tenderness in the blood
Of every man,
Of every Noah sending
forth
A query—
“Is all well
On dry ground?”
You are the
shaggy-throated
Roamer, the blue
jay-cousin,
And cleverest passerine.
When you mate, it is for
life,
And there is no child
abuse
In your beak or claw.
You are the clown of the
forest,
The king of the pun.
To me, that poem speaks of more than
art and skill, but also of knowledge. Without Landers’ acquiring a knowledge of ravens, his art and skill
would have, I’m quite sure, fallen on their
noses.
I took an interest in the
picturesque city of
The Toll Bridge
(2002j)
About south of Pap Doc’s headlust of secrets,
Freighters
Caribbean-fondled diesel
Between manicured gables
and pastel storefronts
Of
Curaçao of giant
cactuses, divi-divi trees,
But not giant ones,
And wonderful oil
refineries
And desalting-mongery.
In
The Queen Emma (your highness)
Pontoon Bridge opens
widest for the warm
Ships
That belch between this
pastel drama, and
Draws toll for
Footers in shoes.
No toll for the barefoot
and callused.
In
When the ships are
north,
Or who knows where,
The rich hide their
shoes
And the poor borrow
Shoes to wear.
One day, I took an interest in
dragonflies; my research allowed me to create this poem:
I Have Never Traveled
Beyond (1999a)
I have never traveled
beyond
The crack of gunfire;
O, I’ve visited backyard
swimming pools
And steamy swamps
And mountain-locked
lakes where
Dragonflies turn at 2.5
G’s
And dance
In mosquito-air
And shore-side ballrooms
of
Green.
I’ve seen them
outperform
Timid damselflies
(That rest with upturned,
Not sideturned, wings),
In 60 mph sprints
And moment’s-notice
backward-, forward-,
Sideway-, or
hover-steps.
30,000 images to 80% of
its brain-mass
Locate mosquito-meat at
60 feet
At dusk—
And 24 frames per second
of “In Love and War”
Are still-photos
For this sniper
extraordinaire,
This metallic flash of
blue
Or green or yellow.
The wet larva,
Sometimes after years of
skin-altering,
Settles on a reed;
The change, the growth,
Like the workings of
testosterone
In a boy’s blood—
Watch the skin
along the thorax split:
A new life,
A new hunter of aphids
and beetles
And tiny frogs,
A new sniper in
Philippine-
Canyons,
A new jewel for ponds
and
Riverbanks—
A new insultingly-named
Helicopter
Within the zing
Of bullets.
I have never traveled
beyond
The crack of gunfire,
But I have seen
dragonflies
Everywhere.
I don’t claim to be a foremost authority on dragonflies, but
I managed to utilize what I had learned about them to write a poem an editor
deemed worthy of publication. By the way, that poem reminds me of Dorothy
Bryant’s (1978) reference to Anton Chekhov (lived 1860-1904
C.E.) who said we should write our stories “in our own blood” (p. 20 [her paraphrase]), meaning that our passions,
not just our personal interests and related research, should drive our writing,
and who also said that “we shouldn’t bother to write unless we [feel that passion]” (p. 20 [another paraphrase]). I apply that last
sentence here: Research should prepare us for writing poems (stories, too, of
course) that emerge from our life’s blood.
Here is one about a very poor place called
Bowls Beneath Leaks
(1998/1999, p. 14)
To cement, glass, and
steel,
Where spires gleam above
Traffic-whine,
tetracarbon-
Clouds, and florescent
shorts
On camera-festooned
tourists.
But above this arcade,
Los Cerros cling to
hillsides
That rain churns into
gravity-ravaged
Muck:
Steps become cataracts,
and
Garbage-toboggans race
down
River-filled gutters
Like oysters down a
throat,
And zinc-roofed homes of
Rain-blackened boards or
Flattened cans or
Packing cases
(“This side up,” some
still read)
“Elbow” for space and
boast signs:
“Pego Cierres” (“I Put
In Zippers”),
“Cortes de Pelo” (“Haircuts”),
“Se Venden Helados” (“Ice
Cream Sold”).
Consider a sunny day:
In one of 500 barrios
(Some named after “saints,”
Others after hope
(El Progresso
(Progress),
Nuevo Mundo (
El Encanto (Delight))),
A boy’s voice in a
battered
Loudspeaker cries out:
“Onions! Yuccas!
Plantains!”
(In English?)
Barter-quick poor close
deals
With this barter-quick
child
On his bent tailgate.
Nearby,
A bow-spined man spray-
Paints a 23-year-old VW
In an unpaved street—
A side-street packed
hard by
Foot
and tire and sun—
But he releases the
trigger
To watch a long-chassis
jeep
Climb the 18% grade of a
“highway”
Called Si Dios Quiere
(If God Wills).
And in that jeep,
Twelve passengers, with
Knees crammed under
chins,
Inhale each other’s
odour.
A fat lady guards a bag
of tomatoes
From too many feet.
The driver, after
spitting tobacco-gob
Out his windowless door,
Pampers the clutch with
a “good”
Place to stop;
Two wild-haired women
In tattered dresses
Tumble out the back
doors,
And then the jeep
Trails a water truck
that
Drips at a seam
Like a bleeding soldier.
The two women enter
A bodegas—a green-paint-
Peeling-off-like-old-labels-on-
Old-cans home to a
school,
Pharmacist/doctor,
And household items,
like beer,
For the poor.
No house numbers,
No glass for barred-up
windows, and
No mailmen to pace the
maze of
Cramped walkways between
Hill-rooted homes—
Homes
In which coffee and
bland
Arepa with jam are
As common as babies,
Homes
In which hospitality,
In spite of armed
robbery and suicide,
Makes ranchitos warm for
many
Who often say,
“Están en su casa.”
(“Make yourselves at
home.”)
I have never been to
Not Under Arktos, The Bear (2002h)
An ice-tide of breadth,
Shrinking and spreading in earth flow,
Circling a fish drawn up and solid
In five seconds,
And steel dropped, turned to shards.
Brutal beauty, this ice-desert-
Home of the wingless midge
And Aristotelian balance to the
North Bulk.
See the
Big as
Fed by seven solid floes,
Puking ice berg cities
Of blue mammoth
For chinstrap penguins
To jabber on.
James Cook awed and repelled and attracted
By windswept blue
Ice-islands
Sloshed and dunked by tyrannosaurus teeth
Of sea-salt and whirl.
Send the gold-rush skins of blood-bare
Seals to
Step on mainland moss
that can’t hide
One print for one
decade.
Dig a great heal into
this humpbackless,
Ozoneless antipode.
This ice-fist freezes
What it can.
Research: Worth the effort. If you find yourself lacking
in the knowledge you need to write a work of fiction, poetry, or drama, then
don’t short-change that work by focussing only on art and
craft. Without knowledge of our subject, we may provide wrong information.
Edgar Rice Burroughs did that when he created tiger-fighting Tarzan—but “there are no tigers in
Back
to assignment VI. Students’
Favourites: In case you’ve forgotten what the assignment is: List
some of your favourite stories, novels, plays, and/or poems. What do you
especially like about each one? Perhaps the list will help you think about what
you especially like to write about. I
said earlier that What you especially like to write
about will be a source of great energy for you when you do write. I
modify that statement to read What you especially
like to write about based on knowledge of your subject will be a source of
great energy for you when you do write.
Remember this phrase: writing based on
knowledge of your subject. Apply it! Know your material! Or learn what you
need to learn! Given appropriate information, “a man can write about a woman in childbirth” (Bryant, 1978, p. 22), “a woman can write a story set in a male army barracks” (p. 22), “an adult can write from the point of view of a
child” (p. 22), and “a middle-class black from the point of view of a poor
white” (p. 22), but
three
things are necessary. First, objective observation, as much as is possible.
Second, the imagination to expand, to create “the unseen from the seen” [quoted from Henry James]. Third, dipping down into
that deep part of yourself where you are like all other human beings, feeling
as they feel, knowing as they know, living their story as you write it. (p. 22)
Students:
1) know your material (objective observation/reading); 2) apply your
imagination; and 3) search into that interpersonal part of yourself that
connects with many others—or run the risk
of embarrassing yourselves and receiving a steady stream to rejection slips.
End
of Unit 1. Seven more to go.
Unit 2
Content:
Elements of Fiction
Once upon a time: Really, that’s how all stories start.
Once upon a time each of us is born, and once
upon a time everybody meets [his or her love or loves] and once upon a time
something happens that makes our lives difficult or interesting, and we set out
on quests, well-meaning or ill-advised, that will lead us to a sad or happy
ending to the story. (Offbeat, 2004, para. 4)
You, the writer, add in the protagonist (the hero of the
story). The protagonist or main character becomes the writer’s main vehicle for action in terms of people engaging
in dramatic action and dialogue. By dramatic I (again) mean in the sense that
the story or play or narrative or dramatic poem has characters who deal with
conflicts.
A main character needs three attributes:
—A need or
want: to find the secret of the lost
gold mine, to escape the evil dragonmaster,
to win the heart of his or her one true love—whatever….
—A strong
point: courage, love, generosity—some personality trait that confers on him or her the
potential for triumph.
—A
fatal flaw: fear, greed, laziness,
gullibility—some trait that, unless overcome,
may lead to the character’s downfall.
(Kittredge, 1992, p. 56)
Of course, protagonists—main characters—and other “characters
who want something are interesting, and the higher you set the stakes, the more
interesting their stories will be” (Kittredge,
1992, p. 56). One definition of a protagonist: a combatant (Protagonist, n.d.).
That definition helps us see him or her as someone who fights against a
problem. The writer hopes for a positive correlation between the depth of the
fight (D) and the severity of the problem (S). The amplitude of readers’ interest (A) varies directly as a function (f) of
that depth and severity (in the world of mathematics: A = k[f(D,S)], for some k—i.e., A varies to some degree k times
the function f of D and S). In the world of drama/fiction,
a high amplitude for A translates into a page-turner. As the problem worsens,
the story, or the protagonists’ decisions and
actions, drives itself forward.
Our
character will try to solve the problem, but his or her efforts will only worsen
the problem. Still, our hero or heroine [protagonist] won’t give up; instead, through actions and insights that
grow from the [protagonist’s] strong
point, he or she will learn about the fatal flaw. With this
knowledge, the character will make a final, enormous story-climaxing
effort—overcoming the fatal flaw, using
the strong point, and triumphing over the story problem. (Kittredge, 1992, p.
53)
There was a time, back in 1977, while I was taking
Professor Harlow’s Creative Writing 497 course at
the
I sat before his
cluttered desk, and he looked over his black-rimmed glasses, somewhat
apprehensively, at me:
“Dan,” he said, “I read
your story…It’s awful, Dan. I only marked up the first three pages, because
after that I couldn’t stand it any longer. I mean, I read it all, but…it was
just awful.”
I didn’t shrink like
“Yes. This isn’t a
story, Dan.” He looked at me over the upheld story-pages as if they were a
chasm between us that he was trying to eliminate.
Not a story. I was definitely
thinking about that. But I had lots of knowledge, or so I thought, about the
elements of fiction! Plot. Scene. Transition. Theme. Protagonist. Antagonist.
Conflict. I could even write clear prose, or so my English 303 composition
teacher had told me. But, somehow, according to Professor Harlow, I had not
written a story.
“Not a story?”
“No. A story is about
somebody with a problem that gets worse and worse, until some sort of
resolution takes place. What you have written is not a story.” Again, he was
looking over his glasses at me. He was looking for a spark of understanding.
Then he made sure I understood what he meant. He provided examples of stories
we both knew. He spent a lot of time reasoning with me, helping me understand
those examples.
That event was like a
revelation, silly as that might sound until one reads the often inept products
of neophyte writers who don’t understand what
This discussion of character draws up from my mind the
question, Who tells his or her story? As part of some Aboriginal oral
traditions, community-approved custodians tell stories.
These stories have been handed down for
thousands of years. Story telling is such a special part of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people’s culture as it explains the creation of all
things, why things happen, where to go and not to go, how to find food,
cultural practices, laws, history, family associations, tribal boundaries and
the relationships with every living creature and feature of land, sea and air.
Story telling is an important
oral tradition of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups. Like
traditional Australian languages, cultural stories belong to specific
Traditional Owners groups. Permission to tell these stories can only be given
by the custodians of these stories and this should be respected. (Traditional
Use, n.d., Story Telling, paragraphs 1-2)
In some stories, given the first person point of view,
the main character exists as a sort of secondary custodian. For example,
“Drat!” I said, peering out the window. I
breathed on the glass and fogged it up. I wiped a circle, drawing a peep hole,
and spied a soggy world. “The ground is wet, the air is cold, and I’m stuck
inside,” I complained.
“Morris,” called my mother. I
heard her rattling dishes in the kitchen. “Clean up those pots and pans.”
“She’s been so grumpy,” I
thought. “Ever since she brought Tommy, my new brother, home from the hospital,
she’s baggy eyed, bad tempered, and boring. Who needs a mother who never takes
me to the zoo? Either she’s nursing Tommy, cuddling him, or she’s cooking or
cleaning. Tonight she’s cooking shepherd’s pie. I hate shepherd’s pie! And I’m
getting sick of my brother’s endless crying. His mouth ought to be corked.”
(Landers, 2005k, Our Television is Weird, paragraphs 1-3)
Morris, the main
character, the protagonist, the narrator (secondary custodian): As Morris
speaks, thinks, and reacts, we construct a picture of him in our minds. The
author-created story comes to us through Morris’ senses (sight, smell, touch,
hearing, taste, intuition, and humour: our seven senses). But Morris and the
author define two different custodians. The author (primary custodian) writes
about Morris (secondary custodian) who relates his thoughts, actions, and
sensory input to us, the readers, creating a specific “relationship among
writer, character[ ], and reader” (Burroway, 1988, p. 58) as a sort of contract
that the writer honours throughout the story, without employing “illegal”
shifts of points of view (1988).
Therefore, Landers wouldn’t suddenly shift,
without substantial aesthetic or structural needs, to writing about Morris in
the, say, third-person (he-did-this, he-did-that) point of view. You might call
such a shift custodial bad manners. Other “contracts” can exist: For example,
sometimes the author and first-person narrator-protagonist define the same
person (custodian), as in an autobiographical novel (see, e.g., Landers, 2005a,
2005b, 2005c, 2005d, 2005e, 2005f, 2005g, 2005h), creating a “relationship
among [writer/character] and reader.”
Not surprisingly,
A first-person narrator may be a major
character and is often its protagonist…. [, but] a first-person narrator may
also be a minor character, someone within the story but not centrally involved,
as in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” which is told by a member of the
town who is not active in the plot but has observed the events. The author’s
choice of point of view has a significant effect on the story’s voice and on
the type of information given to the reader. (Definition of Point of View,
n.d., para. 1)
In this context of
point of view, and other literary elements, the author must set a very
important stage for a “willing suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge, quoted in
Rosenberg, 1992, p. 75).
The notion is crucial to what all fiction
writers are really after: getting our readers to agree to pretend, just
for a while, that these characters are real people with real issues in their
lives. Adhering to whatever point of view [first, second, third, or multiple
third person; or omniscient; or objective] you choose can help with that
because you won’t be giving the reader any unnecessary reminders that your
story is, quite literally, a string of lies. [Even autobiographical novels
invite their authors to fictionalize to some extend for the sake of
drama/reader interest.] It’s much better to help them pretend, instead of
making it difficult. (1992, p. 75)
The author’s choice of
point of view can help create the needed “willing suspension of disbelief.” In
short, the wrong choice may work against that suspension, as in the following
short story excerpt: I have, in the name of academic interest, changed it from
third person to second:
You squeezed the button on your can of Lysol spray,
filling your living-room with strong-smelling mist.
“Take that!” you said. “Miserable germs!” You coughed on the clouds of mist, but you
didn’t care.
“I
hate germs and I hate dirt!” you said.
But killing germs didn’t make you feel better. You
gazed angrily out your living-room window. Scraps of paper littered the road.
Dust covered sidewalks. For that matter, dust covered everything. And factory
and car exhaust fogged the air.
“I can’t stand it!” you exclaimed. “Why
is this city so grimy?”
You yanked at your hair. Two
handfuls fell to the floor. But you didn’t take any notice of you two new bald
spots. You anxiously searched the sky. You watched a thick bank of dark clouds
roll in from the west. They twisted and billowed. Soon they’d drench the city
with rain polluted from dirty air.
“I’m going to clean up this miserable city once and
for all!” you shouted. “I’ll be a hero!”
You jumped up and down. One foot knocked over your
fishbowl. The rug soaked up the greenish water, while Flipper, the goldfish,
flopped about and gasped. You tossed Flipper into a coffee pot and then left
your home. (Landers, 2005l, The Day the Sky Rained Soap Suds paragraphs
1-8)
The second-person point
of view may have worked fine for Hemingway’s short-lived stream of consciousness,
highlighting, deftly focusing the reader’s attention on, Henry’s detachment
from the Italian army and separation from Catherine, the nurse he loves. But in
my “The Day the Sky Rained Soap Suds” example, the distance generated between the main character—the “you” person—and the reader
through the use of the second-person point of view does not work well. For me,
that story in second person lacks the necessary immediacy that the third-person
version generates. The second-person result: a less than “willing suspension of disbelief” for the reader; for the writer, an unacceptable
result.
The second-person point of view, simply put, “exists, [but] it
is not used very often because making the reader part of the story can be
awkward: ‘You walk to the end of the road and pause before heading towards the
river’” (Definition of Point of View, n.d., para. 1). In short, there exists an
awkwardness to this relatively little explored point of view, which could refer
to the reader generalized or to a particular reader or character (e.g.,
Hemingway’s Henry) as the “you”
(Burroway, 1998). Delineation of character tends to fog up.
In the spirit of the
previous two paragraphs, the original excerpt from “The Day the Sky Rained Soap
Suds” reads, more appropriately, as follows:
Abner Normal squeezed the button on his can of Lysol
spray, filling his living-room with strong-smelling mist.
“Take that!” he said. “Miserable germs!” He coughed on the clouds of mist, but he didn’t
care.
“I
hate germs and I hate dirt!” he said.
But killing germs didn’t make him feel better. He
gazed angrily out his living-room window. Scraps of paper littered the road.
Dust covered sidewalks. For that matter, dust covered everything. And factory
and car exhaust fogged the air.
“I can’t stand it!” he exclaimed. “Why
is this city so grimy?”
He yanked at his hair. Two handfuls
fell to the floor. But Abner Normal didn’t take any notice of his two new bald
spots. He anxiously searched the sky. He watched a thick bank of dark clouds
roll in from the west. They twisted and billowed. Soon they’d drench the city
with rain polluted from dirty air.
“I’m going to clean up this miserable city once and
for all!” he shouted. “I’ll be a hero!”
He jumped up and down. One foot knocked over his
fishbowl. The rug soaked up the greenish water, while Flipper, the goldfish,
flopped about and gasped. Abner tossed Flipper into a coffee pot and then left
his home. (Landers, 2005l, The Day the Sky Rained Soap Suds, paragraphs 1-8)
Do
you agree that reads much better than the second-person version? As weird as
third-person Abner appears, the reader has good opportunity in this story to
identify with or relate at least at some abstract level to this pathologically
obsessed clean-freak. The story works. Its “willing suspension of disbelief” meets Coleridge’s approval. I think.
I caution the student,
then, about using the second-person point of view (although exploring the unorthodox seems to capture many
writers’ imaginations); I also caution him or her about using the omniscient.
This “least restrictive point of view” (Rosenberg, 1992, p. 78) allows the
author to “comment on what’s going on in the protagonist’s mind or in a minor
character’s head, but also he or she is perfectly free to discourse on events
happening offstage, or warn the reader that something is about to happen” (p.
78). The author may make political, psychological, sociological, historical,
religious, ad infinitum references from the present, past, and even the
proposed future. Do you see a danger here?
In the hands of an
inexperienced writer, does this freedom relate to a teenager who wants more
independence than his or her wisdom and experience warrant? In view of a “son’s
or daughter’s urge for greater independence, what are parents to do? [Isn’t]
that urge…like a compressed spring held in the hand[?] Let it go suddenly and
it will fly off uncontrolled in an unpredictable direction” (Making Your
Family Life Happy, 1978, p. 152). The inexperienced author who lets him- or
herself go with the omniscient point of view may find it “makes the
reader [too] aware of author manipulation and can lead…the author…into
depending on coincidence rather than character for plot complications” (Irwin
& Eyerly, 1988, p. 51).
The well-apprenticed
writer may, however, create the necessary “willing suspension of disbelief”: He
or she may use the omniscient point of view to develop “a sense of atmosphere,
then quickly and smoothly shift[ ] direction into third person, focusing on
just one central viewpoint character” (Irwin & Eyerly, 1988, p. 51; see
also, Backes, 2006). But “an entire book written with the omniscient point of
view does not allow the reader to identify with any one character or know whose
story you are telling” (Backes, 2006, para. 6).
The mature writer
recognizes what Backes says, and therefore thinks through which characters’
thoughts he or she relates, and when or where in the story they should appear,
even recognizing that he or she, as a narrator, becomes a character in the story. In fact, if the novelist or short story
author writes as him- or herself, then logically his or her voice will echo
throughout the fiction: “Fielding’s voice is heard in Tom Jones as is
that of Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities (1859)” (Points of View, 2005,
para. 1). Here reads the start of A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the
epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all
going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the
period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest
authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the
superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large
jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of
Dickens (lived 1812-1870 C.E.) the narrator and
satirist begins this memorable work with word strokes of irony, darkness, hope,
and political insanity. Dickens, socially and politically wide awake, prepares
the reader for the best and the worst of his usual armload of characters. His
voice provides a perspective throughout that in a way creates a Dickensian
universe in which the story breathes heavily, and yet, throughout the novel,
the “willing suspension of disbelief” does not falter.
The much less
experienced writer of fiction may, however, irritate the reader and destroy
that “willing suspension” through something called author intrusion, especially
when he or she ineptly wields omniscience. When the author makes a character say
or do something out of character or when the narrator makes an omniscient
statement that gongs rather than harmonizes with context and plot, then that’s
author intrusion (Rosina, 2006). In other words,
[the] author uses language in such a way that
the reader is aware of the reading and the author. If writing fiction is like
photography, then author intrusion is the finger on the lens….The problem can
be…writing that is too flowery or filled with too many obscure words. (Byerly,
2005, Waking the Reader up, para. 2)
The experienced writer’s characters speak and act according to their
personalities and circumstances, generally eliminating the problem of author
intrusion. Experienced writers know when to place appropriate limits on the
omniscient point of view, remembering that although they may make all kinds of
judgemental, sociological, psychological, religious, moral, historical,
ethnographic, and allegorical interjections, any of these that clash with
context, plot, or character must be deleted (Burroway, 1988).
Experienced
writers let their characters be themselves, no matter what point of view used.
I have discussed the first-, second- and omniscient-points of view already. Now
I’ll elaborate on the single- and multiple-third-person varieties. By
single-third person, I mean the reader sees a single character’s thoughts. For
example, Landers (2005i) uses this viewpoint in the following picture-book
story, told from Joe’s perspective:
Joe the Cliff-Hanger
The day Joe climbed up
towering Canyon Cliff, he slipped and fell:
A
H
H
H
H
H
H
But his safety rope
saved him—and while he trembled, and his teeth chattered, he climbed carefully
to the top.
“There’s a gooseberry
bush,” he said, feeling better, “and I love gooseberries.”
But then Joe saw a
hairy beast tramping amongst a clump of leafy trees. Out walked a grizzly bear,
standing up on two legs. He was enormous. His eyes looked fiery. His claws
shone.
“RRAAARROOOOOO,” growled the ferocious bear.
“Raroo,” Joe said, in a squeaky voice.
The bear opened his
huge mouth wide. He had jaws like a steel trap. Teeth gleamed like butcher
knives.
Joe wasted no time. He
scurried up a jack pine.
“Na, na,” Joe said,
gazing down at the grumpy bear. “I’m the king of the castle.”
Around and around the
tree lumbered the angry bear. Finally, he became dizzy and left, thrashing
fiercely through the forest as he walked.
Joe waited until the
thrashing sounds had disappeared, and then he started to climb down the tree.
“Mountain climbing is
for mountain goats,” he said. “I’m going home.”
But a gust of wind
swooped down from the sky. Joe then discovered he’d scaled a rotten tree. It
snapped and fell over:
A
H
H
H
H
CRASH! Joe hung
alongside Canyon Cliff, clutching a spiny limb. His feet dangled in deep, deep
mountain air.
“Help!” he cried.
But no help came; the
limb snapped. Down he fell:
A
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
Splash! An eddy of wind had pushed Joe away from
the deadly rocks below. Instead of plunging to his death, he’d landed in
“I’m alive!” Joe exclaimed, and he blew bubbles.
But he wasn’t safe. A monstrous fish, with too many
teeth, was about to chew Joe to bits. He kicked his feet and swam with all his
strength.
Fortunately, the fish was too fat to catch up.
Joe, dragging himself up a sandy beach, had escaped, but
he felt too tired to stand.
“This is the worst day of my life!” he said.
Then, because he was too weary to do much else, he fell
asleep. Then he woke up. His mother was knocking on his bedroom door.
“Time to wake up, sleepy-head,” she said.
“Is it really morning?” Joe asked, from beneath his
crumpled blankets.
“Of course it’s morning,” she said, sticking her head
inside his room to look at him. “Do you think I’d wake you up in the middle of
the night?”
Joe peeked out at her and the green walls that surrounded
him. “No,” he said, feeling foolish. “I guess not.”
“What do you plan to do today?” his mother asked.
“I thought about mountain climbing,” Joe said, trying to
remember what Canyon Cliff and
She frowned. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Joe said.
“I’m glad you were,” she said.
“Can I stay home and bake cookies?” Joe asked.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
“Thank you,” Joe said. “Thank you very much.”
Really, the “third-person
viewpoint offers a [good] sense of reality” (Irwin & Eyerly, 1998, p. 52). “Joe
the Cliff-Hanger” presents Joe’s, and Landers does not intrude upon it through
author intrusion. This is Joe’s single-third-person story!
But what about the
multiple-third-person viewpoint? What does that mean? A story, or in particular
a longer fiction (a novella or novel), may employ this viewpoint in the sense
of the author’s non-intrusively telling the story through more than one
character.
I used
multiple-third-person viewpoints in my children’s novel, Quibils and Quirks (1997e,
1998, 1999), allowing the reader to experience the madcap, sci-fi fantasy
adventure through the “thoughts, actions, reactions, even psychological
hang-ups” (Irwin, & Eyerly, 1998, p. 52) of many characters. Consider the
beginning of the novel in its week-by-week-serialized format (note the
occasional omniscience [in blue]):
Chapter 1: The End of Porksville—
Or Professor Hamburger Arrives at a War
“Chop
off their heads!” hollered King Quibil—a
five-foot tall fur ball, with two arms and legs, who was waving a sword. “Chop
off everybody’s head! Teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!”
Armed quibils filled the south end of
Battle cries mixed with gasps and screams. The king, his
belly full of peppermint tea, yelled, “Charge!” People ran north along
The bald butcher wanted to grab his meat cleaver and
storm the quibils. The baker wanted to use his fish net to capture the king. He’d
have held the king as a ransom for peace. But each man had two broken legs.
Both squirmed in wheelchairs, rattling along
They sped by a row of birch trees that “joined” the
bakery to the grocery store. Behind the trees, in a clearing, Professor
Hamburger, in his time machine, landed.
This invention—aside
from the control center—resembled a 4x4
car, without fenders, boasting many red, yellow, and blue flashing lights. As
it landed, it banged and banged, as loudly as a
Then
the banging and wavering stopped.
Professor
Hamburger, inside the time machine, heard screaming and yelling.
Next
Episode/Chapter 2: Meet our story’s hero—orange Hooper Quirk.
Last Episode/Chapter 1: Professor Hamburger, in
his time machine, landed in Porksville, and heard screaming and yelling.
Chapter 2: Why Is The Mayor Wearing a Diaper?
The
professor, a skinny man with a wild beard, heard the horrible noise and
shuddered. He climbed out of the control center—it could have been a doorless wheel house from a
tugboat—and headed nervously to the row of birch trees.
He peered between two trunks. Quibils, waving swords or
clutching spears, chased people! Quibil-stink nearly made him pass out.
Dizzily, he escaped back to his time machine.
The banging and wavering returned. They stopped. Inside
the time machine, instead of Professor Hamburger, sat a dazed Hooper Quirk.
Where
was the professor?
Orange Hooper, a 10-year-old boy with cauliflower ears,
was trying to shake off his first ride in the time machine. But he had no time
to recover. He heard that racket!
“Chop off their heads!” somebody bellowed.
“What on earth?” Hooper exclaimed. But as he studied the
awful spectacle from between two trees, he, unlike the professor, smelled
nothing strange.
Meanwhile,
as Hooper trembled, the mayor, in a diaper, was gurgling in Dr. Dewknob’s
office.
“You’re a great help,” the doctor, who had a shiner, told
the mayor. “Quibils are attacking people, and you’re sucking your thumb.”
The mayor pulled his fat thumb out of his mouth, and
said, “Goo, goo.”
Next
Episode/Chapter 3: We begin to answer: “What led up to this quibil-invasion?”
And we meet Hooper’s carrot-munching family.
Last
Episode/Chapter 2: Hooper saw attacking quibils, and the mayor said, “Goo,
goo.”
Chapter 3: Home Sweet Home
Let’s go back to two days before
the quibils invaded Porksville, to begin to see what led up to this disaster:
The Quirks lived in an orange cottage centered in
“Open that window,” Mrs. Quirk, who had a swirl of red
hair, said. She stirred a pot of carrot soup. “I can’t stand that wretched pipe!”
Mr. Quirk eyed wincing Hooper. They sat at the kitchen
table. Mr. Quirk smoked his pipe, exhaling greenish clouds.
“Why don’t we eat porridge like normal people?” Hooper
said, cringing, holding up a carrot flake as if it were a cockroach.
“That reminds me,” Mr. Quirk said, “tomorrow you start
school.”
“All right!” Mrs. Quirk slapped a ladle on the counter. “I’ll
open the window myself.”
Mr. Quirk blew smoke into a long stream. Then he said, “You’ll
learn about history and geography.”
Mrs. Quirk glared at her husband. She opened the kitchen
window, sat down, and poured herself a bowl of carrot flakes. “Maybe there’s
oats in the pantry—if beetles haven’t eaten them!”
“What’s history?” Hooper asked.
“It’s different from herstory,” Mr. Quirk said. “Boy
things versus girl things.”
Mrs. Quirk sprinkled sugar on her flakes. “That’s French.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Quirk said. “History is about men, but
herstory is about women.”
“I want to be a martian,” Hooper said.
Next
Episode/Chapter 4: Find out why Hooper wants to be a martian.
Last Episode/Chapter 3: Mr. Quirk told 10-year-old
Hooper, who wanted to be a martian, about school: “You’ll learn about history
and geography....History is about men, but herstory is about women.”
Chapter 4: Why Do Quibils Stink so Much?
“I
want to be a martian,” Hooper said.
Looking at her son, Mrs. Quirk closed one eye. “I don’t
know any martians.”
“But geography,” Mr. Quirk said, “is all about wood—pine, spruce, and birch.”
“I want to be a martian,” Hooper said, “because I want to
be green.”
Somebody pounded on the door.
“Come in!” Mrs. Quirk said, looking
irritated.
The door swung open. There stood Mooch, a quibil—a four foot tall fur ball with skinny arms and legs.
And a chicken tail sprang up like a fountain on his head.
“Well, well,” Mr. Quirk said. “Come in; have a bowl of
carrot flakes.”
But the Quirks had never noticed
how dreadful Mooch (or any other quibil) smelled.
After breakfast, Hooper and Mooch headed outside. Hungry
Hooper feasted on a mouthful of raspberries. But Mooch—a lover of raspberry leaves—flinched.
Then
Mooch, sitting on a willow stump, dangling his legs, said, “I want to go to
school too. I want to learn to read.”
As they spoke, clouds swept across the evergreen hills.
Soon galloping wind shook bushes.
“There’s a storm brewing,” Mrs. Quirk said, standing at
the open kitchen window. “You’d better get inside before you’re blown all the
way to
Next
Episode/Chapter 5: Will smelly Mooch also attend school?
Last Episode/Chapter 4: Smelly Mooch wanted to go
to school like Hooper. (Remember: quibils weren’t stinky to Quirks.)
Chapter 5: How Many Kids Eat Spiders?
“But I feel nervous about attending school,” Mooch said,
his hair dancing in the wind. “Besides, I’ve never met any other humans. So
maybe you should go to school alone the first day.”
Hooper
agreed. “Then I’ll describe the whole day to you.”
“And if I like it,” Mooch said excitedly, “I’ll go with
you the next day.”
Then Mooch, who loved a storm, jogged home to gather
slugs and liquorice root—gifts—for the king.
Hooper, back inside his warm house, heard wind howl in
the chimney. He saw his father, seated at the kitchen table, reading a mouldy
book.
“This dictionary by Professor Hamburger says quibils are
stinky two-legged rodents,” Mr. Quirk said with surprise. “What do you think
about that, Mable?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Hooper said, flattening his
wind-tossed hair. “Professor Hamburger is a fool.”
“Hooper!” Mrs. Quirk said. “Don’t speak like that.”
“Why not? You call Dad a fool.”
“Yes, well,” Mrs. Quirk said, “you never mind about that.”
*
The next day, Hooper, shy about meeting his classmates,
was relieved as he entered the log school. In short, at first they didn’t see
him. They had their backs to him and were watching a hawk-nosed boy chew a
daddy-long-legs.
Next
Episode/Chapter 6: Hooper meets
As you can see, I jump about from character to character,
for dramatic effect, using the multiple third-person point of view, but I also
throw in a dash of omniscience.
One more point of view remains for me to discuss: the
objective or lens-of-the-camera viewpoint. The author who employs this point of
view does not describe his or her characters’ thoughts or emotions. The author writes actions,
gestures, facial expressions, descriptions, and dialogue, but no workings of
the mind. Consequently, “readers know
only what is going on in front of them, never gaining any direct insight into
what a character is thinking or feeling—just as though they were watching television or a
movie” (Rosenberg, 1992, p. 80).
Rosenberg
(1992) warns writers about “using camera eye [objective viewpoint] in a
novel….Camera eye automatically distances readers from the protagonist, and few
readers will put up with that for a whole book” (p. 80). That may explain why
Steinbeck uses an interesting mix of the objective and omniscient in Of Mice
and Men (1937/1975).
The story of George Milton and Lennie Small is
a simple tale of two migratory ranch hands who have nothing in the world except
each other. George took Lennie, who is child-like in his mental capabilities,
under his wing following the death of Lennie’s aunt. The relationship between
these two men embodies the spirit of friendship and is the basis for the
expression of all themes in the book. (Lemke, 2001, para. 4)
In Steinbeck’s story
about George and Lennie, he reports what he sees fit to report, but that
implies his bias or personal point of view colours the work. Cline (n.d.) says
There is no such thing
as an objective point of view.
No matter how much we may try
to ignore it, human communication always takes place in a context, through a medium,
and among individuals and groups who are situated historically, politically,
economically, and socially. (paragraphs 1-2)
I have to agree with
Cline. Actually, authors, no matter what literary point of view they use,
colour their work through their own personal biases, pet peeves, passions,
perspectives, ontology—reality (Lukiv, 2004a). Perhaps you will agree with this
statement: Although the objective viewpoint means the reader should know only
what a camera would see (
Can the objective
viewpoint, then, be purely objective? Apparently, no. Really, how could it be
purely objective for Steinbeck as he wrote Of Mice and Men, especially
given his view of the “historical[ ], political[ ], economic[ ], and social[ ]”
(n.d., para. 2) climate of late 1930s California that established a setting in
which his characters interacted. Additionally, Steinbeck—in terms of themes he
explores—omnisciently moves his “camera” here and there, “filming” in its field
of vision the banks of the Salinas River, a ranch bunk house, Crook’s harness
room home, and the barn, much as the camera person who films and edits clips of
x1, x2, and x3. He even steps inside Lennie’s
mind at the novel’s end, revealing thoughts that turn hallucinogenic,
manifesting themselves for Steinbeck to “film” with his “camera.”
In the novel, we read
such words and phrases as “unhappily,” “uncomfortably”
and “with dignity”[. Similar examples] continually show up in the course of the
tale….At one point in [the] first section, when George asks Lennie what he has
in his pocket, Lennie makes a simple denial, “cleverly”…But according to whom
is this statement “cleverly” made?…In many other places in the novel certain adverbial and adjectival modifiers clearly emanate from
the omniscient awareness of the novelist. (Of Mice and Men and Other
Novels, 1996, pp. 18-19)
Omniscient awareness?
Don’t statements here prove the novel’s viewpoint is essentially omniscient?
Yes, if you like. Many would say yes
(see, e.g., Of Mice and Men: SparkNotes, 2006).
Consider this further example, in which
omniscience lies in Steinbeck’s interpretive comments (placed in italics by me)
about what the “camera” sees:
Lennie reluctantly reached into his pocket. His
voice broke a little. “I don’t know why I can’t keep it. It ain’t nobody’s
mouse. I didn’t steal it. I found it lyin’ right beside the road.”
George’s hand remained
outstretched imperiously. Slowly, like a terrier who doesn’t want to
bring a ball to its master, Lennie approached, drew back, approached again.
George snapped his fingers sharply, and at the sound Lennie laid the mouse in
his hand. (Steinbeck, 1937/1975, p. 9)
But
I said Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men using a mix of the omniscient and
objective viewpoint? Where, then, does the objective viewpoint arise? I’ll
start answering the question by referring to this viewpoint as third person
objective (Point of View Handout, n.d.) in light of the abundance of he said
this and she said that and he did this and she did that statements
that lack omniscient adverbial and adjectival modifiers and references to
thoughts and feelings. In spite of Steinbeck who colours scenes by directing
his camera, here is one example of that objective viewpoint:
Slim took his eyes from old Candy. “Huh? Oh!
Hello, Crooks. What’s’a matter?”
“You
told me to warm up tar for that mule’s foot. I got it warm.”
“Oh!
Sure, Crooks. I’ll come right out an’ put it on.”
“I
can do it if you want, Mr. Slim.”
“No.
I’ll come do it myself.” He stood up.
Crooks
said, “Mr. Slim.”
“Yeah.”
“That
big new guy’s messin’ around your pups out in the barn.”
“Well,
he ain’t doin’ no harm. I give him one of them pups.”
“Just
thought I’d tell ya,” said Crooks. “He’s taken’ ‘em outa the nest and handlin’
them. That won’t do them no good.”
“He
won’t hurt ‘em,” said Slim. “I’ll come along with you now.”
George
looked up. “If that crazy bastard’s foolin’ around too much, jus’ kick him out,
Slim.”
Slim
followed the stable buck out of the room.
George
dealt and Whit picked up his cards and examined them. “Seen the new kid yet?”
he asked.
“What kid?” George asked.
“Why,
Curley’s new wife.”
“Yeah,
I seen her.”
“Well,
ain’t she a looloo?”
“I
ain’t seen that much of her,” said George. (1937/1975, pp. 55-56)
Perhaps you see this scene working, as do many other similar dialogic
scenes in spite of the objective viewpoint
“distanc[ing] readers from” (Rosenberg, 1992, p. 80) the characters,
because it metaphorically parallels the distance between the actual lives of
rootless George and Lennie and their imagined lives as property owners.
The book, then, possess
a certain objectivity in places, an omniscience in others.
*
That Steinbeck gets away with his use of his
point-of-view choices in the work means that he establishes a “willing
suspension of disbelief.” I’ll explain further: In spite of the maxim that art
mimics reality (Schulwolf, n.d.), and therefore art stands in a sense a lie,
the fact that Of Mice and Men stands as Steinbeck’s imagined
reality that George and Lennie might experience has not bothered too many of
the tale’s readers. Most have accepted the lie. They have acquired a “willing
suspension of disbelief.” They have made the “fiction true” (Updike, 1988, p.
4). Studied in universities, colleges, and high schools, and turned into
To say that a work of
fiction works also means that in the end,
“things work out” (in the resolution), and the reader
has a sense of completeness, even though the ending might not be happy.
Resolution
By completeness, I mean,
in part, that if you are writing a short story, or, for that matter, a novel, and
in its opening setting you mention a rifle above a fireplace, then you’ll need
to “shoot” it off before “the end,” or
the story will lack proper resolution (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov,
2004-2005)—although some might argue against that dictum (Lehmann-Haupt, 2003).
You are welcome to break “Chekhov’s dictum,” but beware of breaking rules/laws
before mastering how to use them (Lukiv, 1999b; see also, Chapter 8 of For
Writers Only, later in this course).
So, when does that resolution
take place? In the words of Gunn (1988), with regard to the short story,
after the climax comes the resolution, the
resolving of the situation established early in the story, the solving of the
problem. The situation should be resolved by the actions of the protagonist,
not by an outside agency; and the situation resolved must be the situation that
launches the story. The protagonist can fail or succeed or, in more
sophisticated stories, both fail and succeed, and the story can be a tragedy or
a comedy, or something in between. The resolution also is called the falling
action. (pp. 17-18)
That definition of the resolution essentially applies to
the novel too. I say essentially because the novel, with its world as
opposed to the short story’s microcosm,
likely presents the reader with a number of major characters, with one
protagonist who stands out. Along with those characters: Their dramatic
conflicts should flow into climaxes, even though the one climax of the
protagonist should stand as the novel’s
A tidy story/novel relates to
that action or sequence…that [addresses] the
conflict [equilibrium implied]….The major combatants come to blows. The
protagonist meets his antagonist(s) for the final battle. The central dramatic
question is answered. There is a win, a loss or a draw, although [readers]
prefer [stories/novels] with winners and losers, not draws.
The climax is fairly easy to
identify. One of the key ways of recognizing a climax is that [the resolution
or] all the actions following the climax are an acceptance of the
situation derived from the climax. (p. 83)
If you understand what
I’ve described in this section entitled Elements of Fiction, then you’re ready
to write fiction. Stephen Vincent Benet called the short story “something that
can be read in an hour and remembered for a lifetime” (quoted in Boles, 1988,
p. 5). I might call the novel “something that can be read in [quite a few
hours] and remembered for a lifetime.” If you understand what I’ve described in
this section, perhaps you’re ready to write a truly memorable work. I hope you
are. But even if you aren’t yet, you
soon may be, especially if you fully realize that writers deliberately weave
the elements of fiction into their stories and novels—as deliberately as I just
typed deliberately.
I. Plot Types
Fusion and sequence plots are
two examples. In a fusion plot characters make decisions that bring them “together”
in a pivotal or climactic scene (e.g., Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet [1597/n.d.]; and my Quibils
and Quirks, 1997e, 1998, 1999), whereas in a sequence plot a linear story
line focuses on one character, whose decisions take him or her from the story’s
start to finish (e.g., Landers’ Margins, 2005a, 2005b,
2005c, 2005d, 2005e, 2005f, 2005g, 2005h).
In a more general
sense, however, all stories fall into one of three plot-type categories:
1. Man against man;
2. Man against his environment; and
3. Man against himself.
Some might argue that a
fourth type, man against society, also deserves recognition, but really this “fourth” could
logically fall into “man vs. man conflict” (Allingham, 2001, 3d, para. 1).
List a movie, story, or novel that falls into each of the
three plot-type categories.
II. Point of View
Flip through a
short story collection. Find a story written in:
1. First person; and
2. Third person (write down the titles and
names of the authors).
First- and third-person are the most commonly
used points of view used today.
Take a page
from one of these stories you referred to in II, point of view and
rewrite it, switching from first- to third-person point of view or vice versa. Notice how the change alters the tone and sense of
the story. The first person viewpoint creates for the reader a great sense of
immediacy, as if he or she were personally living the plot, whereas the third
person viewpoint creates a sense for the reader of watching ever so closely the
events and how they relate to the characters involved.
IV. Writing a Short Story
Write your own
story. It could be a spy-thriller, a murder mystery, a romance, a horror story,
a character study, or an-erupting-volcano-threatens-Montreal story. Relate
whether your story is man against man, his environment, or himself.
For your story, you’ll need a main character
(protagonist) with a problem that gets worse and worse, and you’ll need a
satisfying climax and conclusion/resolution/falling action/denouement (you
might want to look this last word up). And use plenty of energy-charged verbs
to breed plenty of action!
Write like a mimer mimes
Remember that words like “talk,” “race,” “glance,” “yell,”
“lift,” “bend,” “kiss,” “punch,” and “glide” denote action, whereas words like “is,”
“are,” “was,” “will,” “have,” and “am” don’t. Admittedly this last bunch, the
actionless verbs, are necessary at times, but too many of them create a
passivity or lack of energy in a story, transporting it into that universe of
tales readers don’t bother to finish reading.
To help you think about the elements of fiction that I
have written about in this unit, consider searching for those elements in the
following story, written in a picture-book style for 5- to 10-year-olds
(Landers, 2005j):
Laura
In 1902, Laura, a lonely dressmaker, lived with her cat,
Snuggles, in
“Everything I own smells like chicken fried rice,” she
said, picking up Snuggles and pressing his nose to hers. “Even you smell
like chicken fried rice.”
She decided to move to the woods, near crystal
How she loved that home. And how she loved to wrap
herself in her goosefeather quilt at night.
But soon she knew that she was still lonely.
“I need some fun,” Laura told Snuggles one hot day. So,
that same day, they hiked to
After she’d swum, she and Snuggles enjoyed a picnic.
Laura ate chicken sandwiches and drank lemonade.
“Life should always be this wonderful,” Laura said.
Snuggles, with his belly full of chicken and cream, lay
on her lap and purred.
The next day Laura planned another picnic. “But I need
more food,” she told Snuggles. So she walked the short distance from her woods
to Pineville to buy bread and sausages and cheese.
One lady on
“Yes, I am,” Laura said, gazing downwards.
“Well—I’m in a big hurry,” the lady said. “I’ll visit you
tomorrow. Don’t you live in Mushroom Woods?”
Laura sighed. “Yes.” She wanted some company.
A young man then whistled at Laura. She felt her face
blush.
While she was leaving town, the same young man approached
her. “May I help you carry your grocery bags home?” he asked.
Laura, noticing his dark moustache, giggled. But she
nodded “Yes.”
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“In Mushroom Woods,” she said quietly.
“Pardon me?”
It was hard, but Laura made herself speak up: “I live in
Mushroom Woods.”
“Yeah?” he said. “I hope you like mushrooms.”
Laura smiled. “I do,” she said. She noticed that he had
broad shoulders.
After that, Laura and that man, Charlie, saw each other
lots. One day they went swimming together in
Charlie’s eyes were bright blue. He splashed Laura. She
splashed him back. He asked Laura to marry him. She felt so excited that she
began to cry.
Laura and Charlie got married in Pineville. Laura had
made her wedding dress. In fact, some of the women at the wedding wore dresses
that she had made.
After the wedding, Laura and Charlie loved to sit by the
fireplace at night. They loved each other and Snuggles. But they felt lonely
sometimes.
Laura and Charlie decided to have a baby.
One year later, one fall morning, Laura gave birth to a
girl. They named her Mary-Anne.
Mary-Anne screamed a lot. But they loved her. They loved
her so much that they couldn’t imagine life without her.
One night, as Charlie enjoyed the fire in the fireplace,
he said to Laura, “Let’s take Mary-Anne to
Laura, cradling and nursing Mary-Anne, said, “So you can
splash me as usual?”
Charlie laughed and pulled at his moustache. “The
sunshine and fresh air will do Mary-Anne good,” he said. But he looked closely
at Laura and frowned. All the night before she’d tried to soothe Mary-Anne who’d
had an upset stomach.
Laura sighed. She felt so tired that the thought of
packing a picnic lunch made her feel more tired.
“Maybe,” Charlie said, stroking Snuggles on his lap, “I
should take Mary-Anne tomorrow. I’ll pack a lunch, and you can sleep all
afternoon.”
The next day, after Charlie had left with Mary-Anne,
Laura lay with Snuggles on her bed. Her goosefeather quilt made her feel warm
and cozy.
Snuggles purred.
Laura said, “Do you ever feel lonely, Snuggles?”
Snuggles kept purring.
“Neither do I,” Laura said. And then she fell asleep.
V. Writing Poetry, the
Implied Author
In a sense, you had to become
the protagonist while you did exercise IV. You had to think like him or her.
You had to get inside his or her brain. You must also get inside the brain of
the implied author of any poem you’re writing that does not describe
your perspective, your psyche—you. Oh, yes, you’re writing
it, but who is the one speaking? He or she is the implied author. When the
voice of a poem I write defines me, I am the author and no implied author exists;
however, when the voice defines somebody else, I am still the author, but I am
not the implied author. When you write a poem you describe the feelings and
thoughts of someone indeed, but that someone can, frankly, be anyone you make
up. Does that make sense? If at the end of this section your answer is no,
speak to me (e-mail me if you’re one of my
online students) about your confusion.
Now, you already tried to get inside the brain of someone
else when you did exercise IV in Unit One. [Remember?: (Unit One) IV. More Stream
of Consciousness. Let me stir your imagination.
Imagine a stream of consciousness that someone you know (friend, relative,
schoolmate, or workmate, or a character you invent) might experience. Put
yourself in his or her mind. Be someone else for awhile. Don’t tense up. Relax.
Unless, of course, you want to be tense. Write. For as long as you can stand.]
Perhaps revisiting that exercise helps you see that poets and fiction
writers’ non-conceptual, non-reflective sense of the lifeworld
(Elveton, 2005)—their sense of the world
they live in—and their formal conclusions,
knowledge, and thematic objectives colour their implied authors’ choice of words and characters. What Steinbeck was
and all that he stood for coloured how he made up George and Lennie’s personalities and motivations, their psychological,
socio-emotional, and cognitive identities.
(By the way, the lifeworld of any individual exists according to his or
her experiences; memories; knowledge; emotional, intellectual, and otherwise
intelligence; creativity; genetic psychological dispositions; emotional scars;
triumphs; losses; social, familial, and romantic interactions; beauty marks;
physiology; choices; biases; assumptions; and collective viewpoints and
conclusions.)
In my following poems, notice the voices of the implied
authors. Those voices are not mine, although they do at implicit levels
represent my thematic directions; my non-conceptual, non-reflective sense of
the lifeworld; and my formal conclusions and knowledge (let’s face it, I wrote these poems!). Simply
stated, those voices reveal my implied authors’—my first-person narrators’—personalities. But: I am the author, given my ontology
(Lukiv, 2004a), given my sense of reality or existence, given me. And yet, I am
not the implied authors of these poems any more than John Steinbeck is George
or Lennie in Of Mice and Men.
Grean
Peace (1997b, p. 26)
I don’t know why I like
coffee
In a Styrofoam-cup;
Maybe I like killing off
Ozone.
What about you?
Do
you really care about bugs,
Herbs, and hardwood from
Rain forests?
I don’t,
But I care about coffee—
Himalayan’s the best,
and
This lousy jewellery
shop
Where I’m bought and
sold
Like a Clerk X
(When did that Malcolm
guy
Get shot?)
For six bucks an hour—
They’re lucky I’m not a
thief.
I could rob this joint;
My wife could use a big
Rock.
Anyway,
I deserve this coffee
break,
And the way I figure it,
Ozone can go to hell.
I Heard on CBC
(1998c, p. 78)
I heard on CBC
That this engineer guy,
Like he invented an
alien
Abduction prevention
Security system,
Aye?
You plug it in beside
Your bed,
And it measures these
ion things
That aliens make.
The buzzer goes off,
Aye,
And so you wake up and
decide
If you want,
You know,
To let the aliens abduct
You.
I heard for 399 bucks
They’re selling like
hotcakes.
Exchange Program (1998b,
p. 32)
I
think I ought to be
A
politician,
Aye?—
And,
like, send those anorexics
To
Or
other
Wastelands—
We
could adopt all their beer-bellied
String
beans,
You
know?—
And
like feed them—
Then
those horn-hipped
Ex-babes
with no boobs
Could
do what they’re bent on doing—
Starving
to death.
Memories (2000b)
Laughter doesn’t remind
me of
Anything,
Not of Peter Sellers’ “party,”
Nor the mad mad mad mad
Pilgrimage to “W.”
Laughter doesn’t remind
me of
The day I fell into the
pond outside
Sedgewick Library—
You laughed so hard
You pulled a muscle in
your neck.
You had to look straight
ahead
For a week.
I should have looked
straight ahead.
I wouldn’t have tripped
over the
Stone ledge.
Laughter doesn’t remind
me of
Your soft hand in mine,
And it doesn’t remind me
of
The deep color of your
lips
Either.
My Home (2002g)
Midhbar—
Oasis of amhaarets
(A word Pharisees
Spit)—
Is my home,
My wind and rock,
My snakes and scorpions
That thrive where I eat
And urinate
And will die.
This is my barrenness,
My yeshimon,
That surrounds me like
my
Heart
And
children.
A Boy on a Horse
(2002b)
A ghostly hand rips
The
cord between
Me and the round earth.
And there I am, riding—
A pharaoh without a war,
A sailor adrift in a
Mine field of
manure-scabs.
I clutch the bow,
Push back on the stern,
And dangle legs in
Barracuda-water,
While they watch
the sailor,
The city-sap,
Sail like a helmsman
without
Arms. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”
They might as well force
Me to sing
For these buxom aunts
And boozed-up uncles.
“Do ‘Old MacDonald.’”
“Don’t be a spoil-sport.”
“Don’t forget to quack, quack,
Quack, like a duck.”
I hate them, these war-
Creatures of Genghis
Khan.
I hate their barn-stink.
I hate these wormy reins.
And what right,
I might add,
Do they have to be big
And to jerk?
I see my parents gazing
Up, up at me, smiling
As if they’ve drunk
Too much beer.
Give me back me—
A new king on a
White horse:
Ha!—
And take me home to my
Skateboard.
A Boy and His Bear (2002a)
Teddy bear,
teddy bear,
Jumping on
me,
With cute
little body
All covered
with hair,
How could
you do this
To someone
of three?
How could
you do this
To someone
like me?
Are you upset
I forgot
you again,
Under my
bed
For a week
and a day?
Remember, a
boy,
With such a
wee brain,
Has many a
toy
With which
he must play.
But teddy!
Don’t cry!
You’ll
still be my friend!
We’ll stay
together
Right
through to the end.
We’ll
cuddle and kiss
And hide
under covers;
We’ll fight
and make up
Because we
are brothers.
I’ll never
forget you
Ever again.
Come on,
dear teddy,
Let’s play
with my train,
So dry off
those tears
You silly
old bear;
You’re
going to get moist
And ruin
your hair.
I’ve told
you once,
And I’ve
told you twice,
I’ll never
again
Put
you on ice.
But now
that I look,
And now
that I see,
You’re
falling apart
Right at
the knee.
Oh teddy
bear, teddy bear,
Look at you
now.
Your seams
are so wide
As you sit
and you stare.
Tell me
what happened,
You silly
old bear.
Tell me
what happened,
And make me
aware.
You mean I
did that
By hugging
And kissing?
I squeezed
you so much
You lost
all your fat?—
Oh teddy
bear, teddy,
We’re
getting nowhere.
Don’t you
know that
I really do
care?
To stuff
you and fix you
I really
must try,
But should
I tell Mummy
How you
made me cry?
Now write a few poems. I think of poems as
super-concentrated language emerging from “life’s blood.’ Many poets use this language to explore the essence
of experience. In terms of super-concentrated language:
Poetry should make your “toenails twinkle” (Dylan Thomas
as quoted in Drury, 1991, p. 5). What did Thomas mean? If they don’t make your “toenails
twinkle,” they aren’t poems. Emily Dickinson, however, defined poetry
differently: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I
know that is poetry” (as quoted in Drury, p. 5).
Who needs drugs?
If a “poem” stops you shaving, it really is a poem figured
A. E. Housman (Drury, 1991, p. 5). Robert Graves thought a poem should
make “the hairs of one’s chin...bristle” (as quoted in Drury, p. 5).
Emily, I believe, didn’t shave, so she had her own ideas. I wonder if she knew
Beethoven’s friend called Furry Lisa. William Wordsworth defined poetry as the “overflow
of powerful feelings” (as quoted in Drury, 1991, p. 5).
Do you agree with these people? I know I do. At any rate, write a few poems—metaphysical,
extranatural (poetry in a spiritual context), narrative, lyric, dramatic,
metrical, rhyming, or free verse (Bugeja, 1994) or any other type (Types
of Poetry, 2000-2006).
You should find definitions for the main divisions of poetry in a literary
dictionary (e.g., Dictionary of Literary Terms [
For each poem written with the voice
of an implied author, write a paragraph
that describes that person. Tell me quite a bit about him (or her). I want to
know what he thinks and feels.
You might
wonder why I’m asking you to describe your
implied author(s). Writers typically draw together notes (see, e.g., Walker Percy
Papers, n.d.), sometimes extensive, about
their characters in fiction and even poetry, to make sure they fully understand
and can clearly visualize their own creations. How vividly can a writer write
about the thoughts, feelings, behaviour, physiology, or physical features of
somebody who only vaguely exists in his or her psyche? Two of my novels contain
a large collection of bizarre characters with not only very different physical
characteristics, but also very different motivations, perceptions, lifeworlds.
I knew: Once characters’ differences
blur in the writer’s mind, the characters on the
page lose clarity for the reader.
As
I wrote those novels, I kept files of extensive notes about my characters,
notes that I regularly read to make absolutely sure no blurring took place in
my mind. When I write a poem through the eyes of an implied author, who like a
character in a novel or story or play is a creation of my mind, I clearly
define that person’s psychological, emotional,
motivational and otherwise make up, even that person’s physical features. The more real the implied author
is to the author, likely the more real the poem to the reader. Many people who
know about this need for character delineation write commercially available
self-help books or computer programs especially for novelists (see, e.g., Novel
Writing?, 1996-2006). These books or programs may also help poets define their
characters and implied authors.
VI. Brevity, Thematic
Poetry Collections, a Warning for Writers
In the Charles Dickens’ days in
Writers, especially novelists and short story writers,
understand the significance of that last sentence. Boles (1988) explains:
In
many commercial stories [and novels] of the kind published up through the
[19]20s and into the ‘30s,…background [detail] was as bulky as a horsehair sofa,
dominating the induction of a story while its characters, and its readers,
waited for the action to start. Dress styles were lingered upon, furnishings
were depicted at paragraph-length, fabrics were named and sometimes priced.
This opulent sandbag approach to a story is no longer necessary or at all
desirable. (p. 14)
The author today who fills
pages with description had better write ingeniously fascinating, entertaining
prose. Even historical and science fiction that frequently requires enough
detail to establish context and setting had better rise far above the
pedestrian. My warning: Writers who refute this advice may find themselves with
drawers full of rejection slips.
Generally speaking, then: Don’t say things you don’t need to say. Brevity is the key. Consider the
following brief description and ask yourself if it captures your attention:
But
know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here.
For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural
affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce,
without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up [with pride], lovers
of pleasures....” (New World Translation, 1984, 2 Timothy 3:1-4)
In about sixty words of
prose, we find a global condition defined inductively. Brevity.
To help you focus on brevity, I’m not going to ask you to write prose. Rather, in view
of poetry’s innate need for concentrated
language, and essence of experience, I’m going
to ask you to write some particularly word-lean poems in the spirit of Mark
Twain’s comment to a friend: “I would have written a
shorter letter but I didn’t have the time” (quoted in Guidelines for a
Thank-You Letter, 2006, bullet 6)—and in the spirit of Anton Chekhov’s
statement that “the art of writing is the art of abbreviation” (quoted in
Boles, 1988, p. 6). The exercises will
help you think about how few words your prose can get away with while at the
same time the exercises will help you hone your poetry-writing skills and learn
about an established, word-bare word-form.
Haiku (2005a)
Perhaps that word brings to your attention a concise form
of poetry, one that many call imagistic, with line one of 5 syllables, line two
of 7, and line three again of 5 (Wakan, 1993). You may say that every word must
count; that often permanent and transitory images are linked for an evocative
effect; that the present tense is essential; that a seasonal word grounds the
poem in time; and that the words show, in images, but do not tell the
reader how to feel. Such a traditional view, however, is often replaced by
innovations that push the boundaries that define haiku today.
Rengé, editor of Haiku Headlines, “prefers
In
terms of fine modern haiku, no.
We might think of haiku as “poetry of suggestion, of
understatement” (Virgil, 1991, Introduction), as poetry of “moments of special
awareness that...make one feel the wonder of the ordinary seen anew”
(Introduction), as poetry of essence that establishes “a delicate mood, a deep
emotion by new associations of images” (Introduction). Although the haiku poet
doesn’t generally tell the reader what emotion to feel, he provides “his reader
just enough of a glimpse of a reality to allow the reader to experience the
emotion it engendered in [himself]” (Introduction). The haiku poet provides
that glimpse through images exquisitely
objective and concrete (Welch, 2004).
You’re welcome to apply what I’ve said about haiku to a
related form called senryu. Some people like to argue about what makes a haiku
versus a senryu. “You could say,” according to Naomi Wakan, “that senryu
make you laugh at human foolishness, and haiku make you ponder or wonder”
(1993, p. 62). Others have their own distinctions: “Senryu are usually humorous
or satirical....Unlike haiku, senryu do employ poetic devices such a
simile, metaphor, personification” (Virgil, 1991, Introduction). For me, haiku
may also use literary devices (Ament, 2003) such as simile, metaphor,
personification, and onomatopoeia, and, for me, haiku
1. refer
exclusively to nature,
2. often contain concrete imagery that appeals
to the senses, and