Writing from the Inside Out (14 page)

 

 

This exercise asks that you look solely at each character in your story, one right after another, to ensure that each one has an arc of expression honored in a way that fits with the chronology supplied by your story as a whole.

Where I have a scene of interaction between characters, and the story is about a past or future tension, I may need to reveal information in a peculiar order. If a key bit of information about a character happened in the past, but does not come into active play until two-thirds into the main story arc, I may wait until then to mention the bulk of it, for the sake of pacing and mystery.

1. Begin with a secondary character. What is his/her story? What order works best, based on what you know about the overall story's superstructure?

2. Develop a brief story path for each character. Where is she/he (as the protagonist in his/her own story)?

3. Sketch out any changes that may have come about for the main character, based on your explorations of the secondary characters (or are they figures?).

4. Does the narrator have an arc that changes as the story progresses? Does his/her distance to the characters change, and why? Does his/her distance to the reader change?

 

 

Many writers care most about the story within the characters (rather than the characters within the story). This exercise is helpful when you hit a snag with plot or development, or whenever the story lacks the kind of charge you knows is possible. It gets the writer to develop more intimate knowledge of the story within a character.

Write from within that character's voice, on and on, until you resolve the block. Basically, sit down with that character and allow him to tell his version of what's going on. Choose a character in your story that hasn't been fully fleshed out by the narrator/speaker. Place that character in a scene and get her to talk about her experience within the story. What's her perception of the other characters? What's her ambition? What's on her mind in general?

Ideas for using this material:

Use it as-is, interspersed at different points in the story

Change the point of view and give that material to the narrator

Follow the light shed by this monologue and develop the story in other areas so that it does more justice to the full spectrum of its characters

 

 

It's good to give a lot of thought to how the structure you're providing is ordering the reader's experience.

A chapter — understood to be a kind of formal segmentation of the reading experience — helps to sustain tension. Chapters also give the reader a stopping point that feels like a breather rather than being conclusive in any way. When a chapter has a title, that title names a frame for the next episode.

The main thing to keep in mind when choosing where to end a chapter and begin the next — so the book feels like a continuous read — is to conclude a chapter when conflict has been resolved but only when the stakes have also been raised.

In concluding a chapter in which some conflict has been resolved, you give readers a bit of white space, and thus offer them an opportunity to take a breather. In concluding a chapter where the stakes have been raised, you demonstrate to the reader that the book has in no way given up its ghost or showed its cards.

Without chapter breaks, a sustained reading experience of continually raised tension can feel exhausting. The reader doesn't have permission to stop. The chapter break is the book's way of saying,
you may rest here if you like
.

Immersive reading experiences such as novels never offer such a rest with the feeling of completion. The implicit agreement is that if the reader is involved in the book, she wants to stay, and so the chapter break comes as kind of a tease, signifying that the book is attentive to the reader's energy. Because a chapter is only a provisional completion, the next chapter will creatively offer the pattern of build-and-release, as will the next. Chapters reveal the habits of the book as a linear experience.

Headers are not chapters, necessarily. They allow a kind of meditation on a theme, which lends itself to an order that feels like a structured conversation or a series of lectures. With each new header/subheader, the reader knows that he is getting into a new theme, and that it's related to the main thesis, and has a parallel structure (meaning that each main header has the same significance or weight). Likewise, each subheader is a section with its own independent existence, which branches from the larger topic. The book may want the reader to see the shape of its structure.

Creatively, a writer has many opportunities for giving order to a book. The use of white space is the most basic way. White space signifies the passing of time without issue, and simply gives the reader a visual break. Between audio tracks on a record of music, a few seconds of silence allow the listener to clear his/her head before entering into another musical experience. Reading can offer the same clearing through white space. Chapters give white space and also the scaffolding of their own device, whether titled, numbered, or both. Paragraphs give white space as well; how long or short to make one's paragraphs is worth considering. I've noticed in recent years that books tend to give more white space by having shorter paragraphs. The silence offered by the absence of text creates a kind of self-consciousness and an emphasis on what was just previously said.

Another tool for ordering work is to make a formal shift. A classic method for this is the
haibun
, a Japanese tradition related to the haiku, which in its most basic form is a variance between prose and verse. Creatively, I can do the same thing by including images, quotes, shapes, boxes around text, highlighting excerpts, and things of that nature. This visual organization can be rewarding for the reader because of the variety it offers.

Your writing can also be a performance or an art piece (like an artist's book). As the writer, you can dictate the rules of engagement for your text. If you want it to be something participatory, you need to make the rules clear to the reader.

Does my writing flow like a conversation? A novel? Does it follow the chronology of a person's life? Is the story's time parallel to the flow of time, or are there multiple threads of chronology? Does my piece want to be organic, meditational, flowing with a kind of outline supplied by headers and subheaders? Is my writing more a work of poetry? Am I including other media besides text? Is it a collage?

How will I order the reader's experience? Do I draw on any other specific writers for formal inspiration?

 

 

Approach
– The way in which I set out to write something. For example, when following a prose poem approach, I prioritize images and resonance above wording, using language in which the imagination or dreaming dictates.

Emergence
– What arises from the writer's chemistry with the listener. Language can be seen as a form of emergence from symbols and sounds and patterns in chemical impulses. Chemistry can be seen as an emergence of physics — the play of elements. One emergence is not necessarily more complex than another, because what we see depends on the mode of our consciousness. If a formula for emergence exists, it is to trust openly and to invite wildness so that there is interaction among the modes of consciousness.

Method
– An overarching technique. The writing marathon is an example of method.

Mode
– The way that I write based on my expectations of form and function. The structure that the work takes is not necessarily predetermined by my mode of writing.

Piece
– A bit that stands on its own is a piece. Whether long or short, it's simply referred to as a piece. The writer's life is a piece. A day is a piece. A glimpse is a piece. The internal dialogue of a public speaker is a piece of the reality amid another piece, a simultaneous one, that the speaker is giving a public speech. Private and public are pieces against each other, and sometimes they are pieces with each other, and become of a piece. Musically, the two pieces can be perceived as a musical chord or at least an interval in music — two or more notes sounding together. The frequencies and timbres resonate within and against each other, and what is produced can be felt as a piece in itself — a piece of a larger ensemble, of a larger work — a life's work, and the work of oneness. Depending on one's perspective, all is at work or pieces are at work.

Shape
– The reader's perception of the written piece's structure. Some moments will appear larger or more significant to different readers, and so a work of the same structure will have different shapes.

Structure
– How the writer organizes the elements of the written piece. Musical structure deals with the flow of images. Supportive structure handles and manages interactions.