Putting it All Together

It’s our last week of workshop, and for all intents and purposes, our last week of class. It’s time to put all the elements together now; everything you’ve learned up until this point—character, scene, dialogue, setting, as well as careful attention to language and image—work together with a deliberate structure to complete a short story.

Again, this can be either fiction or nonfiction, meaning you can make up all these elements, drawn from what you know, of course; or you can draw more deliberately from memory, shaping your first-hand experience through structure.

What am I talking about with structure? Plot. Though it may not always need to be mapped out as perfectly and painstakingly as you may have learned in your middle school English classes.

Anne Lamott tells us that “plot grows out of character,” and that “the development of relationship creates plot.” She argues that the “process of discovering the story will often take place in fits and starts,” which is why we’ve been taking time to explore the elements of story without deliberately putting it all together until now.

It can be helpful to think of plot in a more formulaic way. A very basic formula for drama includes setup, buildup, and payoff, and it always includes movement (59). There is change, there is motion.

A more involved formula is one Alice Adams offers, and she calls it the ABDCE formula, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending (62). A formula can be a great place to start, because it offers a gentle guide. But no matter what, the story is still about characters, and they drive plot.

You’ll see what I mean when you delve into the reading for this week, which draws exclusively from Bird by Bird:

Plot (54-63)
False Starts (80-84)
Plot Treatment (85-92)

Your writing assignment for workshop next week is to write a complete story, with beginning, middle, and end. It should focus on character, include a conflict and a resolution, and make use of scene, dialogue, and setting. You’re more than welcome to try out a formula. Due Tuesday at noon to your workshop group, and please do offer each other feedback by Thursday at noon so you have plenty of time to take comments into consideration for revision due in your final portfolio which you’ll turn in no later than exam week Tuesday.

What’s included in your final portfolio? I’ll give you a more formal assignment next week, but you might appreciate having a heads up.

Much like your midterm portfolio, you’ll include your journal with observations and meditations and exercises. In addition, you’ll include (revisions of) the assignments you workshopped—the flash essay, character description, scene with dialogue, as well as your complete story revised. That story is where I’d like you to focus your energy, as I imagine at this point in the quarter your energy is waning. It’s been a tough one, and you’ve done a great job. So, just plan on putting all those pieces together, work on the story, and I’ll ask you to do some informal reflection on your writing process and writing this term. If you need an extension, just ask. And, again, I’ll put it more formally in its own blog post next week. This is your advance notice.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I hope you got a chance to relax over the long weekend.

Scene and Dialogue

This week we're adding onto the reading a bit while also catching up a little, practicing dialogue and scene, with an eye for setting.

Because where the action is unfolding has something to say about the characters and sometimes what and how they're saying it.

Take Junot Diaz's Nilda, for example. Where in the world is this happening? What do we know about the larger place? What about the smaller places, where the scenes unfold? What comes to mind without returning to the text? For me it's the basement, the couch, the street, the pool. I think of the toxic creek near the landfill. It all provides subtext about class, and class is linked to race, and both have something to do with Rafa's cancer and the way it plays out. Gender and sexuality, especially hyper-masculine posturing, is also a major part of this story.

How characters talk and speak to each other often is at the heart of scenes, though it's somewhat limited and minimal in Nilda. However, it's efficient. Sometimes less is more and we can really draw a lot from very little in terms of what people say and how they say it.

This week, in your journal, keep writing observations, and consider drawing from Anne Lamott's Index Cards chapter how you keep track of moments, scenes, bits of dialogue you may want to remember and/or use later. My best friend is a playwright, so mastering dialogue and the way people speak has been central to his development as a writer. When he was starting out, he often wore head phones while riding the train and being in other public places, but without playing music. He attuned himself to other people's conversations and wrote bits of them down--without them knowing. This may sound a little creepy, but it's actually a wonderful exercise for writers in learning how people actually talk and how voices are different and speak to character. If you can, eavesdrop on a conversation going on around you and write it down in your journal.

Another exercise: do Anne Lamott's practice on p.66 in the Dialogue chapter of putting two people on an elevator who can't stand each other, who want nothing more than to avoid each other, and make the elevator stop. What happens? What do they say? What do they do?

Alternatively, put two people with a different conflict in a different place. This can be from your memory, or made up entirely, or some mash up of drawn from memory and made up. Write the scene, with dialogue. And make sure you're formatting dialogue correctly. Check the stories in Scribner for guidance, but generally speaking, dialogue is captured in quotes, and each new line of dialogue or speech from a character begins on a new line, indented, with an attribution. A different character's response will appear in its own quotation marks, on a new line, indented.

The scene, in a particular place (setting) you describe, with dialogue, between two or more distinct characters, is what you'll submit for workshop next week. Minimum 500 words.

Your reading assignment for next week is Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" from Scribner, and it's full of distinct scenes and dialogue that indicates character (especially for the mom--not the difference between her speaking in English and thinking in her native tongue), so watch out for that.

Hold the phone, y'all. . . .

So sorry for the delay, friends. I've had another family emergency. We're not out of the woods, yet, and I've been delaying writing a post for you until I felt I could give it my all.

Then it dawned on me that I was letting my perfectionism get in the way, and that it might be useful to just do what I can and be transparent with all of you about it because no doubt you've struggled in these ways in the past--or maybe even right now.

Let's face it: we're all struggling individually and collectively. And even though we're separated from each other (heck, we've never even seen each other face to face!), we can still help support each other in our growth. Because that's what this is about. I believe that truly.

We have a month to go together. How can we make the most of it?

I have to say to you collectively, now that I've been in touch individually about your midterm portfolios, that I am infinitely impressed with what you accomplished. Each of you. And all of you. Every single one of you did all the work, and you did it honestly. As in, you really brought yourselves, in this moment, exactly as you are, to the page. And for me, as your reader, what I felt was that I came to understand something essential about you and your stories and your ways of seeing. In many ways, I feel as if I've gotten to know something true and real about you as a class in ways I haven't when our usual methods of teaching and learning haven't been disrupted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm still looking for the gifts in all this.

OK, so what about your assignment for next week?!?

We're moving into setting and place and how to build that in prose. Though still building on character as well, because the way we craft the places and spaces our characters inhabit also say something about who they are. I'll do a better job explaining this and giving you assignments soon, but for now, please:

READ:

From Bird by Bird, the sections Dialogue (64-73), Set Design (74-79), Index Cards (133-144), Calling Around (145-150); and
From Scribner, Nilda, by Junot Diaz (144-151)
(page numbers will be different if you're working from Kindle or perhaps different editions than I have)

WRITE:

In your journal, please continue writing meditations and/or journal entries that capture life during the pandemic in as much detail as possible for you. All this practice of perceiving and capturing in words sensory details should be leading to a habit that leads to vivid prose. This week, pay particular attention to capturing setting and place. What do your surroundings say about you and the people with whom you're quarantined?

Questions re: Nilda on MSTeams for you to respond to and your formal writing assignment to come. . . .

Also, in workshop, please make sure to offer constructive criticism in a way that is helpful as well as positive statements about what's working well in your workshop group's pieces. Ask questions about what doesn't make sense or use of language that is predictable. Begin to ask more of each other's work, but do so in a respectful way that still leaves the writer in charge of where to take the writing. Remember our value to each other is as honest readers letting the writer know what our reading experience was. It's up to the writer to decide what, if anything, to do with that feedback.

More . . . soon. . . .

Character

I firmly believe that people always show you who they really are. Even liars eventually reveal their true selves in one way or another, more often than not through action.

Remember this: character is revealed through action.

Yes, of course physical description matters as do names, and I certainly want you to include these things in your writing, but I really want you to think about action, including scenes and dialogue as the building blocks of character.

Think about it: we know who people are because of what they do, how they behave, and how they react to circumstances. We build relationships over time through shared experiences. By doing things together, we become bonded.

This is also how we show who our characters are on the page.

In "Bird by Bird" Anne Lamott gives us a lot to think about in her chapter on Character (p 44-53), and that’s part of your reading for next week. “One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can’t,” she argues on p. 47, after suggesting that “pages and pages of straight description . . . will probably wear us out.”

She also suggests that we ask a series of questions about our characters in order to help understand and listen to them, because “you need to find out as much as possible about the interior life of the people you are working with” (45). Some questions to consider about your characters:

*how do they stand?
*what do they carry in their pockets or purses?
*what happens in their faces and to their posture when they are thinking, or bored, or afraid?
*whom would they have voted for last time?
*why should we care about them anyway?
*what would be the first thing they’d stop doing if they found out they had six months to live? Would they start smoking again? Would they keep flossing?
*what do they look like?
*what sort of first impression do they make?
*what does each one care most about, want more than anything in the world?
*what are their secrets?
*how do they move?
*how do they smell?

“Everyone is walking around as an advertisement for who he or she is—so who is this person? Show us” (46).

Aha! There’s that word again. SHOW. Show more than you tell. That’s looping back to action rather than description. Of course we need both in prose.

In your journal, answer that list of questions about the person you’d like to write about. This can be a made-up person, a fictional character; it can be someone you know whom you’re trying to capture as accurately as possible; or it can be a hybrid of the two—or a fictional character based on many different traits culled from several people you actually know.

And here’s another exercise for your journal, though you’ll also be using it in your writing due for workshop next week Tuesday:

Character exercise: A little less conversation, a little more action

When you meet someone, you do not start by announcing your height, weight, hair, and eye color, so please do not introduce your character to readers like this. But how to avoid describing looks and physicality without chunks of exposition?

Consider this line from James Joyce’s "Ulysses": “He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.”

Joyce takes advantage of a moment of action to shed light on Stephen’s looks and his anxious demeanor.

Try your hand at conveying your character through action by first writing a list of physical traits that apply to your character. Next, with that list at hand, write a scene where something is happening — whether it’s a conversation, laundry-folding, cooking, etc. Weave references to your character’s physicality into the action. Include this scene in your writing for workshop next week.

***

In addition to reading the chapter on Character from "Bird by Bird", please also read the short story "Silver Water" by Amy Bloom from the "Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction" (p. 72-79 in my edition).

As you’re reading, take note of how characters are introduced and established. Who are the strongest, clearest characters in your mind after you finished reading and why? How do you know who the narrator is? Her sister Rose? Her mother? Her father? The doctors? How much of how we know them is revealed in description and how much in scene or through action and dialogue?

Literally take notes about what is shown and what is told. Then head over to MSTeams and respond to at least two of the questions I’ve raised in the Posts section. I’m hoping we can have a little bit of a discussion over there about the stories we’re reading as writers to help cultivate our understanding of craft together.

Then, for your writing due next week, write a piece of prose focused on a character of your creation. Include the physical description from the exercise above in which the physicality is woven into action. Also include some dialogue. Give the character something to react to. Yes, there can be other characters, too, and you’ll also have to keep in mind the narrator as a character as well. Lamott addresses narrator in her chapter on Character.

Most importantly, have fun creating the character in prose and sharing the writing with your workshop group. Let’s make it between 500 and 750 words.

So, to recap, here’s your to-do list for next week:

1.Read the chapter on Character from Bird by Bird as well as the short story Silver Water by Amy Bloom from the Scribner Anthology.
2.Go to the “Posts” section of our MSTeams site and reply to the questions I’ve posted there about character in the short story.
3.Do the writing exercises above in your journal (to be turned in with your final portfolio at the end of term), answering the list of questions drawn from Bird by Bird about your character and then crafting physicality in action.
4.Write a character sketch to turn in to your workshop group by next week Tuesday, May 12, at noon. It should be between 500 and 750 words and SHOW character in scene, perhaps with some dialogue, as well as physical description in action. Consider HOW you’re revealing who the person is to your reader and how much you’re revealing in action and how much you’re explaining through description. You need some of both, but try to rely more heavily on SHOWING in ACTION.
5.When you workshop each other’s writing, be especially responsive to how you know who the character is and how the writer has chosen to reveal detail in action.