Wisdom From Our Theater Friends

Sometimes I read books in fields tangential to publishing to see if I can find a new way to look at a writing issue. Currently I'm re-reading Sonia Moore's "The Stanislavski System" about acting technique because I find acting books contain useful tidbits about character. (And also because I was tearing my house apart looking for my Billy Mernit book, "Writing the Romantic Comedy," with the side effect that I now have a huge pile of rediscovered books I want to re-read.) (And yes, I found the Mernit, mis-shelved in baffling fashion with a stack of old chick lit novels. Go figure.) (Though, now that I think about it, that kind of makes sense.)

Anyway. Re-reading Moore, and ran across this paragraph which I thought I'd share. Not about character craft, but about audience relationship with the performance. From the chapter Elements of an Action, section Communion--

To make the meaning and logic of his actions understandable to the spectators, an actor must communicate with them indirectly, through his communion with other actors. ...[W]hen an actor has direct contact with spectators he becomes merely a reporter instead of a live character. This relationship disrupts the truth of the performance and distracts the audience from the play itself. An honest, unbroken communion between actors, on the other hand, holds the spectators' attention and makes them part of what takes place on stage.

This reminds me of a drawing we used in one of my dramatic writing classes in college. Character One and Character Two interact with each other, and the audience witnesses the interaction:













Please forgive my insanely crappy drawing skills. But despite my inARTiculateness *har*har* this drawing might make clear what we're talking about. It's about how a scene is perceived and how to control the attention of the viewer.

When we translate this concept to fiction, we're basically talking about point of view and the old "show, don't tell" rule. In other words, whether in theater or on the page, when characters interact directly with each other, the action is more interesting. When the characters interpret the action directly TO the reader-- whether through omniscient narration, exposition, or other methods -- it's less compelling.

Why is this? Dunno. Maybe we're just hardwired for it. I mean, what's more likely to capture your attention -- film footage of a train colliding into a car, or a guy with a mic talking about it? Direct experience just feels more compelling, even if we're merely witnessing that direct experience from a safe distance. I mean, nobody actually wants to be driving that car. But the film footage of the wreck itself might go viral.

So, how do we work this to our advantage in fiction? Use some of the things we've spent over three years exploring on this blog.

• Pay attention to how your narrative is weighted. Check the proportions of your narrative elements. You do this by looking at how much space they take on the page. In most ordinary commercial fiction scenes, there should be lots of action and dialogue, with the next biggest chunk coming from interior monologue, and then description. Exposition should be minimal, regardless of the form of the exposition. (NOTE: I'm not telling you to totally eliminate your exposition. Just keep it lighter than the other elements.)
  
• Make sure your interior monologue is true interior monologue, that is, not summary that tries to pretend to be interior monologue. Example: She wondered if he would like an apple pie for their picnic is not true IM. Would he like an apple pie for their picnic? is IM. She wondered is a thought tag that interprets the nature of the thought for the reader, so it removes us from the direct experience of her interior monologue. (NOTE: I'm not telling you that all thought tags are per se evil. But use them deliberately and sparingly for effect. Okay, Alicia? lol)
  
• Use gestures in place of mood words to make the experience more vivid. (Show, don't tell.) Example: She felt angry at him is less effective than She threw her napkin at him.
  

Do you see how these things sort of interrelate? They all have to do, more or less, with narrative distance between the reader and the characters. The default should be something closer, rather than farther, but the main thing is to become conscious of the ways you can push the reader back just by simple word choices and narrative choices.

Theresa

Another Paragraphing Point, Sort Of

A friend emailed me with a question related to the following three sentences, and she has graciously agreed to let me post it here. Here are the three sentences:

“So do you see why I need your help?” he asked.
“You need my help?” she asked.
Although her features remained subdued in the way of most mourners, a small note of eagerness had entered her tone.

The question was whether the third sentence should be a stand-along paragraph. (Dialogue tags were added to clarify the he/she speakers, but we can assume they would not survive editing. We're in "his" pov.)

Right away, I noticed two things about that final sentence.


First, the Progression of Ideas

The second and third sentences progress like this:
"dialogue"
Facial expression
tone of voice

The tone is separated from the dialogue by a lot of words. These two pieces, tone and dialogue, do fit together. So it might be work to put both sentences into the same paragraph, but the intervening words were a little disruptive of the link between those pieces. Speech, facial expression, tone of voice.

This, in fact, is probably what led my friend to think of this as a paragraphing issue. Does she attach "his" impressions to "her" dialogue because of the tone of voice reference? Or should those impressions be set off on their own? She was approaching the matter as a pov question, which at first blush makes sense. We wouldn't normally attach a dialogue beat of internal monologue from the pov character to the dialogue of the non-pov character.

So my first thought was to reverse the order of that second sentence, something like:

A small note of eagerness had entered her tone although her features remained subdued in the way of most mourners.

But before I even went so far as to think through whether that sentence was any better, a bigger second problem showed me a different solution.


Second, the Abstraction

her features remained subdued in the way of most mourners

What is this? You might be tempted to call it description, but what does it describe? I bet if we ask ten people what subdued mourning features physically DO, we would get a range of answers. Is the mouth downturned or held tight? Are the eyelids held open or dropping down? What is happening on the forehead and in the jaw? Is the angle of the head affected?

We don't know, and the reason we don't know is that this isn't clear description. It's his conclusion, his interpretation of the meaning of her expression. He sees something on her face, and interprets it as subdued mourning. We don't know what he sees, though. We only get the conclusion.

So is it interior monologue? No, these are not his direct thoughts, his brain's chat reel. It's a summary statement of his conclusion but it's not presented in interior monologue.

This is "telling," in other words, a very small-scale intrusion of narrative summary -- very small, so small that I nearly missed it. And I am a dragon about this sort of break in the narrative, so that's saying something.


My Advice

So here is what I wrote to my friend:

I suspect what's throwing you off is the leading adverbial clause.

IOW, the pov in that clause is diluted because it's summarizing his conclusion rather than reporting what he witnesses. What do subdued features look like? Is she droopy and mournful or stoic and grim? How can we tell the difference when we look at someone's face? What actions or physical conditions key the emotion?

So for example --
Although her lips tightened with the mourner's effort at self-control, ...

Or,
Although her eyelids drooped with the customary mourner's sorrow, ...

Or whatever.

But the point is that you would be shifting the verb toward a physical action (tightened, drooped) and away from the abstract summation (remained).

Once you do that, I think you'll realize that the paragraphing choice here has more to do with emphasis than with logic flow. (Because you'll be tightening the logic at the small scale.) So then you can decide whether you want to link the dialogue to the actions as a supplement to the dialogue, or offset the actions for more emphasis on the actions.


My recommended fix accomplishes two things. There's no longer the impression that a character's thoughts are being attached as a beat to another character's speech. And the clause is now firmly in the realm of action, something that makes a much better beat.

Because it's set up like a beat now, she can attach it to the dialogue or not, as she chooses, to create the emphasis she wants.

Yes, I left the main clause alone. And yes, there were things I wanted to tinker with there, too. Two things. Anyone care to guess what those two things might have been?

Theresa

My Radar Works Fine, TYVM

My schedule, on the other hand, leaves a bit to be desired. But I turned in a book today and cleared another very large project off my desk, so I've got that posty feeling and a bit of time to indulge.

All the way back in the post on present participial phrases, I asked folks to provide examples if they wanted them handled here. Ever the good sport, Murphy volunteered.

Hollywood could have a field day filming horror movies here, she decided, wincing as the gates creaked and moaned, puncturing the oppressive quiet and causing a group of crows which dotted the lace canopy of trees that stretched out overhead, to burst from their perches and fly away.

There's a lot happening in this sentence, and the other commenters provided loads of good suggestions to edit this sentence. But I have to tell you, the thing that leaped out at me was not the present participial phrases, but the thought tag,

she decided,

Which is something I've wanted to talk about for quite some time but just haven't gotten to it. So, thank you, Murphy, for the nudge.

What Is A Thought Tag?

You all know what a dialogue tag is, right? It's the little bit that identifies the speaker of the dialogue.

"But I thought she was going to talk about participles," the commenter said.

The part of that sentence which falls outside the quotation marks -- the commenter said -- is the dialogue tag. Easy. You all know this, I'm sure.

A thought tag is like a dialogue tag except that it attaches to interior monologue. Instead of tag verbs such as said, muttered, blurted, etc., which describe the manner of speaking, thought tags describe the manner of thinking.

Hollywood could have a field day filming horror movies here, she decided

In this sample,the interior monologue is

Hollywood could have a field day filming horror movies here,

And the thought tag is,

she decided

Still pretty easy, right? Thought tags take verbs like wondered, thought, believed, figured, hoped, pondered, and so on. They're pretty easy to spot in the narrative.

One Danger With Thought Tags

Thought tags can serve many useful purposes -- in Murphy's sentence, for example, it creates a pivot point between the interior monologue and the description which follows -- but there is one big danger with using thought tags. They can create narrative distance between the character and the reader, in some cases going so far as to convert the interior monologue to narrative summary.

(Not talking about Murphy's sentence now. Hers uses the thought tag wisely.)

Think about it like this. A dialogue tag identifies who the speaker is, right? And a thought tag identifies who the thinker is. But if you're writing in deep third person, the identity of the narrative point of view character should already be known to the reader. It should be obvious. And that means the tag should be unnecessary for pure reasons of thinker attribution.

To understand how this creates narrative distance, compare,

If she invited Sally, then the table would be full but she would have more women than men. So maybe skip inviting Sally and have an odd number of guests? No. And she couldn't invite Jim without inviting that horrid wife of his, so they were out.

which has no thought tags, to the same passage with thought tags,

She realized that if she invited Sally, then the table would be full but she would have more women than men. She wondered if she ought to maybe skip inviting Sally and have an odd number of guests? No, she decided. And she couldn't invite Jim without inviting that horrid wife of his, so they were out, she concluded.

Can you see the effect that the thought tags create? Instead of the pov character relating her thoughts directly, the narrator is "telling" them -- interpreting the nature of those thoughts as realizing, wondering,deciding, and concluding. In a more exaggerated version of this exact effect, the interior monologue is not presented at all but is interpreted in its entirety by the authorial narrator.

She thought about her dinner party seating chart and decided not to invite Sally, Jim, or Jim's wife.

This is narrative summary. The real event (that is, the sequence of thoughts leading to a conclusion) is summarized and encapsulated for the reader. Despite the presence of the tag "she thought," we're not actually in the characters thoughts at all. If you were listening directly to the character's thoughts, the words used would probably be quite different.

One Final Thought - Reflecting Character Minds

Intimate points of view such as deep third must, by extension, reflect the character's state of mind. Think stream of consciousness, which is a purist form of deep third and can make a reader crazy. (Hello, James Joyce? Just what the hell is up with that Ulysses thing, anyway?)

But this principle can be used with a lighter touch to achieve certain effects in the prose. Is your character being chased by bad guys who want to kill her? Her interior monologue might be choppy and breathless. Is your character luxuriating in the sensual pleasure of a bubble bath? Her interior monologue might be languid and loose.

For a good example of this dynamic, take a look at The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. In the early part of the book, Quoyle, the protagonist, is experiencing emotional trauma and his thoughts reflect that. The narrative is disjointed, even fractured in places. But as the book progresses and Quoyle begins to heal, his interior monologue takes on a more lucid, even graceful, tone.

If you want to avoid presenting a fractured interior monologue that might be hard on the reader, then one helpful technique would be to insert thought tags and create narrative distance. But generally, if you're writing in an intimate point of view and hoping to bond the character to the reader, you can deepen that intimacy by stripping out your thought tags.

Theresa

Narrative Summary

And so, the door at Walker and Daughter was open a little bit late and eventually a little bit later than that. Soon enough, at the end of the long workweek, a few regular customers took to popping in with their knitting -- sweaters and scarves and cell-phone socks -- and asking questions about all the mistakes they'd made while commuting on the subway.

"I just can't get the buttonhole right!"

"Why do I keep dropping stitches?"

"Do you think I can finish it by Christmas?"

Without ever putting up one sign or announcing the creation of a knitting club, these women began regularly appearing in the evenings and, well, loitering. Chatting with one another, talking to Anita, gathering around the large round table in the center of the room, picking up where they had left things the week before. And then, one Friday last fall, it became official. Well, sort of.

~~ The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

If you've ever wondered what good narrative summary looks like, that's it right there, baby. Narrative summary (sometimes also called narrative compression, condensed narrative, summation, transition, etc., etc.) is a variety of exposition that takes events occurring within the story's real time and condenses them into a tight, focused summary.

The events are not narrated in real time. There is no scene in the sense of a singular event presented moment by moment in the order of occurrence. There are characters, but who are they? There is dialogue, but who speaks it? There is a point of view, but no viewpoint character allowing us to experience the events through her perspective.

Instead, a mash of Fridays after work are presented as a circumstance -- not an event -- giving rise to a conclusion. After many (indistinguishable, lumped-together) Fridays at the knitting shop, a club of knitters was created. Not scene and sequel, but situation and result.

A friend gave me this book to read because she was taken by the unusual narrative style and wanted me to see it. (Hi, A! *waves*) I can see why she had the reaction she did. Almost the entire book is presented in some form of exposition, and we just don't see that much these days. Beautifully written, engaging, entertaining exposition. Just when you thought it was buried forever next to the dinosaurs, here it comes back, full of life and breathing fire.

Even though we've been clinging to deep, intimate points of view for a while -- and by "we," I mean readers and authors and industry folk alike -- there have been signs that objectivity was making a comeback. If you've been listening, you've heard those signs right along with me. A reviewer complaining about being bored with first person stories. Two friends at the bookstore, picking up and dropping title after title before agreeing that they all "sound" the same. A book lover raving about a romance, and then adding almost wistfully, "But I kind of wish we'd known more about the parson's wife," or some other character who played a pivotal non-pov role.

Prose has been cozy and intimate for so long that objectivity feels like something totally new. Remember Sherry Thomas's first book, Private Arrangements? Remember how it started with that almost Victorian passage about the definition of a good marriage? Talk about deft writing. That book came out just shortly after Friday Night Knitting Club. And I'm sure if you think about it, you'll quickly identify other stories, or other places in stories, where the viewpoint character isn't immediately identifiable. Or maybe there was a viewpoint from outside the story, as in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, or The Crimson Petal and the White, two stories on the more literary end of the spectrum that created narrative distance not through pure objectivity, but through the eyes of a disinterested external narrator.

I'm only on page 80 or so of Friday Night Knitting Club, so it's far too soon to draw any conclusions about the text as a whole. But the text up until this point has been heavy on narrative summary, light on intimacy. There are bits which are firmly rooted in the pov of this or that character, and given the popularity of this book, it seems as though readers are having no trouble connecting to the characters. I am certainly engaged by the text.

Does that seem like an oxymoron? Have we spent so many years flogging the deep pov/show don't tell horse that we've forgotten about other methods to become transported into the narrative?

Don't get me wrong. A solidly crafted limited-subjective third person pov is always going to be an important tool in the writer's kit. It might even be in the top five. But narrative trends come and go, and if the trend is moving toward broader perspectives, then expository writing might just find itself becoming a more important tool.

Theresa

Don't waste space

Even good writers sometimes lose focus. Often it's only a line or two of slack summary or position blocking, but if it comes across as that-- as filling in-- it breaks the narrative drive and the "reality" of the fictional dream you're creating.

Vagueness is always the enemy of verisimilitude.

These vague passages are often right at the beginning of a paragraph, sometimes the beginning of a scene. Often it's just one sentence that performs one job -- making a transition, or moving to a new setting-- but not the job of keeping the reader in the experience.

Here's an example:

Phillippa arrived at the airport.

That gets us to the new situation, but what's missing? Yes, often the rest of the paragraph supplies the point of view, the setting, the emotion. But even one line of just utilitarian narration can lose the reader's attention and that all-important belief. We can't afford to waste space, any space at all, but especially that essential real estate at the beginning of a paragraph. In fact, transitions are exactly where you don't want to slack off, because the reader really needs to experience the change of scene, POV, or situation as something vital and IN the story.

So how to infuse some vitality into those dull lines? A lot will depend on the viewpoint approach. If you're in a close POV, go to the character, and narrate it from her perspective. If you're in Phillippa's POV above, make it about her experience, not some generic arrival.

When Phillippa arrived at the airport, she looked around anxiously for her mother. But she wasn't at baggage claim, and Phillippa finally tracked her down-- typical-- at the bar.

Notice that making the movement (arrival) in a dependent clause leaves the all-important independent clause for something in the character-- a thought, a perception, an emotion.

So what if you're in a more omniscient or distant POV? Well, the great advantage of a more distant POV is the flexibility it gives in description. No need to filter the description through a character-- you can use your own observations and voice to fill in the world of the story.

The flight from Memphis came in so early, the airport was almost deserted, most of the stores shuttered and dark. But the bar was open already, or still, and it was there Phillippa found her mother.

Point is... you can't afford even a line that breaks the continuity of the narrative you're creating, the world you're building for the reader. When you revise, watch for those wasted-space lines and see how you can make that part of your narrative-- incorporating your voice, your setting, the character-- something that makes this more than just a space-filler. Challenge yourself. You can do it. :)
Alicia

Redlines Ten: Backstory

Most writers occasionally find themselves battling backstory. This is a battle you can win. Let’s start by defining a few key terms.

What Is Backstory?

Remember the timelines that decorated your high school history text? If you were studying World War One, the timeline began with an assassination and ended with the Allied victory.

Your book can be mapped in a similar way. The first event in the book is the starting point of your timeline. The final resolution of the plot is the end point. Everything that happens in chronological book time between these two points constitutes your plot.

Here is the simplest definition of backstory: every relevant *event* that occurs before your book’s timeline begins is backstory. If the event can be plotted on your book’s chronological timeline (like the battles of World War One in the history text) then the event is plot. If the event precedes your book’s chronological timeline, it is backstory.

Confusion over backstory sometimes results from misunderstanding this definition and confusing bacsktory with narrative summary.

What Is Narrative Summary?

Narrative summary is a technique for compressing events within the book’s chronological timeline. We use it to avoid writing a scene that would focus on relatively minor details.

For example, let’s say your heroine’s car breaks down and prevents her from catching a plane to meet the hero. Perhaps writing a car repair scene with the heroine and a mechanic would slow down the pace of the romance. So we compress these events in narrative summary at the opening of the next scene:

Five hours later, Susan stashed her carry-on bag in the overhead compartment of the wrong flight. She had a new water pump in her car and was finally on her way, but her wallet was five hundred dollars lighter. Damn the mechanic for not letting her call Marco from his shop. She eyed the plane’s in-flight telephones, praying that she would soon be able to reach Marco.

This paragraph weaves details from the current scene on the airplane with the previous skipped breakdown events. The summarized details of the breakdown might have been dramatized in a scene--Susan begging for assistance, worrying about Marco and her flight. These events might even result in a dynamic scene, and would have fit within the plot.

Regardless, the narrative summary is not backstory, even though it contains event information that happen outside the current scene. The events themselves still take place on the chronological time line of the book’s plot. People sometimes use the term “backstory” to describe narrative summary, but that is merely shorthand. The two elements of the narrative remain separate creatures, no matter how they are described.

How To Fix It

Whether you are using narrative summary or backstory, the effect is the same. The forward momentum along the timeline is broken, and the reader is removed from straight narration in to exposition. But the editing fixes are slightly different.

Think again of our timeline analogy. Narrative summary does not interrupt this flow, but merely compresses events on the timeline. If your readers complain about narrative summary, the fix might be creating a new scene to dramatize the compressed events. Alternatively, you might be summarizing irrelevant events like showering and eating. These don’t require summation and can be cut.

If your readers complain about too much backstory, examine the backstory in relation to the current scene. Ask yourself how the *action* of the current scene would be different if the backstory did not exist. If the answer is, “not at all,” then cut the backstory. Backstory is only relevant if it qualifies the current event on the timeline.

If backstory is necessary to explain current plot events, then you cannot cut it. Instead, trim it as much as possible. Give the reader just enough to allow them to comprehend how the past event is linked to the current event. Use a minimal number of words, and return to the story timeline as quickly as possible. The story, after all, is what keeps the reader turning pages.

Special note for romance writers: Internal conflict in romance often has roots in the characters’ pasts, which can lead to misplaced emphasis on the past, even when the current scene provides ample conflict to drive the plot. The fix here requires re-balancing the scene to focus on what is most pressing at that moment on the plot’s timeline. Minimize or cut background information to achieve this balance.

Sequels (rather than scenes) are a more natural place to develop backstory because sequels tend to rely on interior monologue and exposition feels more natural when blended with interior monologue. The key, again, is to use a light touch. Let the character ponder the backstory, but balance the backstory against the current plot, much as you would balance background information.

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Redlines One (on paragraph logic faults) can be found here.
Redlines Two (on dialogue sequencing) can be found here.
Redlines Three (on using frames within scenes) can be found here.
Redlines Four (on avoiding the need for "sequel") can be found here.
Redlines Five (on description) can be found here.
Redlines Six (on passive voice) can be found here.
Redlines Seven (on strong verbs) can be found here.
Redlines Eight (on tension statements) can be found here.
We'll skip Redlines Nine because its topic has already been covered in other posts.

Theresa