In a recent workshop, novelist Barbara M. Britton said, “What are your three favorite movies? What do they have in common? Those are apt to be the themes and topics you hold dearest as a writer.”
In the last analysis, It’s a Wonderful Life is all about home and family. Public Domain photo.
That impressed me, because it’s true.
How does it apply to Your New Favorite Writer? My three all-time favorites are sentimental Christmas movies.
I like many kinds of films. I’m tickled by screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby or The Gods Must Be Crazy. I like great political satires such as Romanov and Juliet, Dr. Strangelove, or The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming. I’m bolstered by writing, directing, and acting brilliance as displayed in Casablanca, Double Indemnity, The Third Man, or any film by the late, great Hitchcock.
But the three I would choose to answer Barbara’s question are: Meet Me In St. Louis, It’s a Wonderful Life, and We’re No Angels. The first is a cozy domestic drama, the second a stark morality play with an Everyman hero, and the third a blackish comedy in which the stock villain gets a hilarious comeuppance.
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So, what do these three flicks have in common? And what does that say about the subject matters and themes in my own writing?
“Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Judy Garland comforts Margaret O’Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis. Screen grab, fair use.
These films are old. Meet Me In St. Louis came out in 1944, It’s a Wonderful Life in 1946, and We’re No Angels in 1955. I like people and things that are my age. This backwards look is my brand, if I have a brand. The fiction I write tends to be historical. Most of the posts here relate, one way or another, to times past. I like to explore the days of yore because I think that all treasures worth having, all the secrets of life, reside there.
Why Christmas movies, in particular? I happen to be a Christian and attach theological meaning to Christmas. To me, it seems Christmas is when our Creator showed how much he cares for us by taking on all the burdens of our creaturehood. The birth of Jesus is the event that starts the reconciliation of God and man. That theme strikes a deep chord in my heart.
In these films, the characters—ordinary folks like you and me, not rich and powerful people—have their lives, their homes, and their families restored to how they should be. In a deep sense, this is a kind of homecoming.
One of the chief plot lines of literature is that of someone returning home. Odysseus, the Prodigal Son, E.T., Dorothy Gale—all are bound on homeward journeys. In the films I love most, the characters have not necessarily left home, but their homes are threatening to leave them.
The Smith family of St. Louis, the Baileys of Bedford Falls, and the Ducotel family in the French Caribbean colony of Cayenne all face crises in which their homes are about to disappear, leaving them suspended, as memoirist Dinty W. Moore might say, “between panic and desire.”
The purpose of the plot is to break open a new dispensation, a new state of affairs in which the characters can find their way home. A path is opened. In each case, this shifting paradigm of reality comes as a mental transformation.
Three of Santa’s helpers drop in on a distraught family, just in time for Christmas. Aldo Ray, Humphrey Bogare, and Peter Ustinov in We’re No Angels. Fair use.
In St. Louis, Alonzo Smith suddenly realizes that success is not counted in dollars or prestige, but in his family’s happiness. In Bedford Falls, George Bailey is awakened, through Divine Intervention, to the fact that all these years he has not been wasting his time in meaningless sacrifice but investing in the currency of abiding love. In Cayenne, the inward epiphany comes not to the family whose home is saved but to the trio of criminals who enact that salvation. It doesn’t seem to matter who has the revelation, as long as the audience gets to experience it.
So I guess the cat is out of the bag. I like stories that bring people home, bring them in from the cold, reunite families, and restore harmony in local communities.
In The Price of Passage, I wrote about people displaced from their homes—Norwegian immigrants and fugitive slaves. They prove Thomas Wolfe’s assertion that you can’t go home again. They are called to rise above their loss of home and create new spaces where they and their offspring will eventually find their harbor.
In Izzy Strikes Gold!, I focused on a 12-year-old boy being jolted from his comfort zone by family circumstances. Will Izzy have to leave home? If so, will he find a new home? Those are the dramatic questions addressed.
My current manuscript follows two brothers who can’t coexist at home with each other; their mutual resentment is too great. War intervenes and poses the question whether the brothers will ever be able to find each other again and re-establish their family relationship. I don’t know that answer because I haven’t read the book yet.
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What is the point of all this rumination? Simply to help me find and become more aware of the central themes in my writing. Ideas that reside close to the writer’s heart make for authenticity in his voice. So these are the kinds of things a guy likes to know.
See you next week, Dear Reader, when it will be about Something Completely Different.
Visit of the Wise Men, from an 1894 Sunday School lesson, by lithographers Harris, Jones & Co. of Providence. Public Domain.
Tomorrow will be Christmas Eve. On Thursday morning, as Santa’s sleighbells jingle away to the North, the Big Day itself will arrive.
This will be my eightieth Christmas on Earth.
The first few of those eighty are lost in the mists of time, permanently and perpetually outside my experience. But I recall clearly the next several after that. I remember times of gathering and feasts of togetherness.
After the workday—most folks used to put in a whole day on December 24—Mom and Dad piled us into the car and we drove in darkness over the hundred miles from the city of Streator to the little town of Knoxville on the Illinois prairie, to gather with family.
1936 Plymouth, from an old postcard. Fair use.
The car was a 1936 Plymouth or a 1939 Chevrolet—both of them relics from an old-time gangster movie—or, later, our first modern car, a 1954 Plymouth. I sat in the back seat with my sister Cynda. We all four sang Christmas carols all the way down the road. Over the river—both Illinois and Spoon—and near some woods but mostly through plateaus of snow-dusted corn stubble, to Grandmother’s house we went.
It was all about gathering. Being together.
The “-gether” part of “together” is really the same word as “gather.” From Old English gaderian, meaning to unite or join.
We gathered together with Grandma and Grandpa, with Uncle Dick and Aunt Jane and Cousin Rick, with Uncle Garrett and Aunt Edith and Cousins Steve and Betsy, with Aunt Jo and Uncle Earl, with Aunt Jean and her boyfriend Richard Henderson, with Aunt Sue and Aunt Linda; with Grandma’s sister Aunt Bertha and her husband Uncle Harry Young; with Dad’s parents, my Grandma and Grandpa Sommers, who had no other children left in the Midwest and so joined the LaFollette mélange; and sometimes we would even see Grandma LaFollette’s brother Uncle Roy Dredge and his wife, Aunt Eva.
Eighteen of us including the unpictured photographer, who is probably Aunt Bertha, plus General George C. Marshall on the cover of Life to prove it’s Christmas 1950. Your New Favorite Writer is the boy at lower left, chin on hands.
That made twenty to twenty-five of us all celebrating Christmas in Grandma’s house. Gathered. Together. And the best part was: we all knew each other. We knew one another very well. We were kin. There’s hardly a better way of understanding love than gathering at Christmas.
“Fear not,” says the prophet Isaiah, “for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.”
It’s a grand vision of gathering together, members of one tribe, one kindred.
That’s what we did on those long-ago Christmases. Our tribe came together, at least those of us who could. We came from east and west and north and south and called one another by name.
I did not know this fact at the time, but I know it now: It was not the toys that mattered most, nor the turkey and dressing and pie and cake. It was the coming together of the people. The spindly tree, illuminated by strings of gaudy colored lights over which Uncle Dick and Uncle Garrett and Uncle Earl had slaved for hours on the living room floor getting all the bulbs to light up at once, was the totem pole, the magnet that gathered the kin.
Rice pudding with lingonberries. Fair use.
In my wife’s family it was much the same, only with a Swedish accent, because her mother’s folk were all Swedes, first- and second-generation Swedish Americans. So they had warm glögg with almonds and raisins in the bottoms of the cups; rice pudding with lingonberries; meatballs and gravy; limpa rye bread and dopp-i-gryta, the dipping of bread in fatty broth. But mostly with them, it was the people coming together, even if they were all Swedes except my wife’s father, who was Norsk.
The decades bring forth change. Families are smaller now. Folks tend to be more spread out, east and west, north and south. In our house this Christmas we will have Jo and me, my sister Cynda and her husband Steve, our daughter Katie and her children Elsie and Tristan (teenagers!). Plus Katie’s friend Valerie. Eight, all told. Still, it’s a coming together, a gathering.
Most of us will attend our church’s Christmas Eve service. It’s a Congregational church, meaning the local congregation governs itself autonomously. Such a church is said to be a gathered church, that is, one formed by a process of kindred souls simply gathering together. And indeed it’s more like a family than like a formal institution. We’ll read the Scriptures and sing the carols and burn up a few candles in the process. But the main thing is, we’ll gather together.
We have within us the seeds of hate and the seeds of love. When we gather together around the Christmas tree or the communion table, we nurture the seeds of love and starve the other ones.
Two greatly different realities are available to us in this world. I prefer the gathered one.
May you gather this season with whomever you have to gather with. And treasure the time, the place, and the gathering. It’s the best Christmas gift.
For decades, she flew flatwise across the vertical top of our yearly Christmas tree—be it pine, balsam, or spruce.
Some people place a star on their tree—to represent the Star of Bethlehem, I suppose. Others place an angel. Most of the angels, like the stars, are built in vertical format, the better to occupy the top of the tree, which is usually a single evergreen spear, jutting toward the ceiling.
But our poor little angel, I’ve never known her name, was made in such a way she could only lie horizontally. We hung her from the vertical top branch, but she lay sprawled across its middle, resisting all upward tendency.
There is something to be said for the horizontal. When Your New Favorite Writer studied the photographic arts, he learned that horizontal lines and shapes suggest calm, tranquility, rest, repose. If you want to show strength, go for the vertical. For drama, diagonal lines and swirly shapes are great. But horizontal composition speaks of peace.
We stopped buying cut trees at some point a few years ago—maybe the forty-dollar point. Instead, we trimmed our potted Norfolk Island pine for Christmas.
The Norfolk pine lives outdoors in spring, summer, and fall. At the end of all that warmth, we huff and puff and carry the big tub with its delicate little tree indoors. Originating on Norfolk Island, it would never survive a Wisconsin winter.
Norfolk Island, in case you’re wondering, is nowhere near the same-named city in the Tidewater region of Virginia. Rather, it’s an external territory of Australia, located in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and New Caledonia. Its namesake pine, Araucaria heterophylla in case you’re interested, is not a true pine but a closer relative of the hoop pine and the monkey-puzzle tree. In other words, a subtropical specimen.
It’s a pretty, willowy plant with short-bristled branches that droop as they get longer. You can’t hang heavy ornaments on it, or the branches will droop more than they already do.
Our little angel, a real lightweight, qualifies for the top of the Norfolk pine. We used to hang her on the upward-pointing spear, just as we did with our cut trees in prior years.
This year, however, is different. The Norfolk pine grew too tall to be brought in through the door. My wife, anticipating this problem, cut off its top in the spring. The little tree, in a touching burst of cooperation, grew replacement branches horizontally. So now, instead of a vertical spike on top, we have a horizontal bed of interlocking branches.
Just the right place for our little angel’s true vocation, which rhymes with fiesta.
Something about that seems to fit the peace message of the season.
Sleep well, sweet angel; and flights of pine boughs loft thee to thy rest.
Detail from Rembrandt, The Night Watch, 1642. Public Domain.
. . . Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. . . .
—Shakespeare, “The Seven Ages of Man” from As You Like It
Young men with beards think they can fix everything for us.
Not long ago, clean-shaven young men thought they could fix everything for us.
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Well, STOP THE PRESSES, Dear Reader, because I’ve got a news bulletin: Everything is not fixed.
They’ve worked at it and worked at it and fought fiercely for their constituents and—guess what?—the only part they left out was the fixing of everything.
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Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be endured.
As to those things that can be fixed, we’ve mostly got to do it ourselves.
To imagine that politicians will fix everything—or would, if not thwarted by opposing, evil, politicians—is arrestingly naïve.
If politicians solved more problems than they create, we’d run out of problems.
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Of course we must have politicians, to divide the spoils among us and administer our public institutions. But Politics holds no key to a New Jerusalem where streets are paved in gold and teardrops never fall.
Here’s the fact of it: We are all in this together, Dear Friend: All broken, jumbled, confused creatures muddling our way through swamps of untoward circumstance.
Swamps of untoward circumstance . . . Paul Klee, The Man of Confusion, 1939. Public Domain.
Each of us gets one life, and it’s altogether imperfect. We are mixed creatures. Our lives are spotted, blotted, their meanings and messages obscure.
Perhaps God could have made us perfect—but at what cost to our souls?
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Beware the temper that looks to some hero to come along and straighten it all out.
Making idols of the prominent, or of the adamant, leads us to loathe our neighbors. Hatred and suspicion of those we live with is the worst form of hell on earth.
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It might be better just to relax.
Resolve to enjoy what life throws at you, pain and pleasure together, weal and woe alike. Do what good you can, when you can. Forgive others. Forgive yourself.
This—right here, right now—is your chance to witness the grand spectacle of human existence from a front-row seat, and it will be over before you know it.
. . . I would put this in verse. Or if I were Shakespeare, I would write it in blank verse and make it comical, tragical, or historical. But I’m not Robert Frost, and I’m certainly not William Shakespeare, so here it is, and you’ll just have to imagine it’s poetic and comical, tragical, or historical:
(Written in Late October)
My dog took me out for a walk around the block on a sunny, windy day with gold leaves flying through the bright blue sky.
The question was in some doubt, as our glorious summer has been hanging on irrationally long. But today, it’s football weather, gorgeous weather, and one feels the stirring of one’s blood as locust and birch betray their year’s-end destinies.
Every year it’s easier to see the autumn as a metaphor for my time of life.
This year I am eighty. It has only now dawned on me that when my time comes, there will be no protocol or ceremony. I’ll just leave. All that pertains to me will dry up and blow away in an instant. I may live on in memories for a few years or decades, but that’s all.
It means I’m radically free.
Suppose I were busy assembling an empire, and only Tierra del Fuego remained beyond my grasp. Should I die with that region unmastered, or should I manage to complete my world first—no matter. When you’re gone, everything and everyone else keeps going.
That’s how it is. Life is change.
Whatever is important, all I can do is enjoy it now.
My life is equal parts pleasure and delight. There is little of pain or even mild discomfort, so far. I am content, and Fooboo is pleased to drag me around the block.
Tom Huggler’s The Woman She Left Behind is exactly what historical fiction ought to be. A mature novel for the intelligent reader. It’s a powerful story of human desires and connections in a historical setting that’s rendered with loving attention to small details as well as the overall feel of the era. So you read it because you care what happens to the characters, and the history lesson is a valuable added bonus.
It’s early 1862, a critical time in the western theater of the American Civil War. Widowed farm woman Rachel Barnum of south central Michigan gets a telegram that her elder son, Dwight, is ill and languishing in a Union Army hospital camp after fighting at New Madrid, Missouri. Alone, in the sketchy weather of early spring, she sets out in her farm wagon behind a pair of draft horses, headed for Cairo, Illinois—the nearest Army installation to her son’s location.
Her trusted hired man, John Welch, pleads with her not to go: let him, an experienced man, make the trip on her behalf. But Rachel is determined to bring her firstborn, who may be dying, everything a mother’s care can do. She leaves her younger son and two teenage daughters in Welch’s care. A woman alone, driving into a battle zone, she faces bad roads, rudimentary accommodations, uncertain riverboats, and the hazards of war.
Readers will understand the urgency of Rachel’s quest and sympathize with her struggles. Huggler’s sure-handed narrative follows Rachel through frustrating delays and maddening obstructions as she seeks her wounded son.
The story is a fictional interpretation of a very real journey by an actual Michigander named Rachel Barnum. At the end of the fictional narrative is a long, informative author’s note in which Huggler tells about the process of researching Rachel’s story and converting it to a novel. Huggler tells of his own 21st-century journey across the same landscape Rachel traversed more than 150 years ago. It’s a great piece of travel writing appended to a wonderful historical novel. The author’s note alone is worth the price of the book.
Huggler
Tom Huggler is a seasoned writer of nonfiction, former president of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, with many books and articles in the woodsy vein to his credit. His first book was a conservation novel for young readers, and now after a long career he returns to fiction with Rachel’s story.
It’s a story everyone should read, a great Christmas gift for any historical fiction reader you may know. Highly recommended by Your New Favorite Writer.
Being the seventh part of a seven-part series based on Your New Favorite Writer’s recent WWA workshop “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One.”
I can’t tell you how to write a great beginning. But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:
1. Engage the reader immediately.
2. Do not drown the reader in information.
3. Introduce important characters and plots early.
4. Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.
5. Shape early action toward later plot points.
In recent weeks, we’ve looked closer at each of these five big ideas. I hope you’ve discovered ways to write livelier, more compelling beginnings for your novels, short stories, or screenplays.
But can we say anything, in general, that summarizes these five big ideas in a way that’s true to the reality of writing fiction or, for that matter, narrative nonfiction?
Structure is King
As you may have surmised already, Your New Favorite Writer believes we all need a working knowledge of the universal story template that seems built into the human psyche. The five big ideas all rely, ultimately, on knowing what can happen within the space of a manuscript or screenplay that logically exploits our craving for dramatic and narrative order. So the concepts of beginning-middle-end or Act I-Act II-Act III and the major plot points are essential equipment in the writer’s toolbox.
Not Each But All
It’s also important to note that the five big ideas—or any other valid ideas you may be offered for making your work sing—do not operate one by one. You need to make them all work with each other. You must not only introduce important characters early, you must avoid awkward information dumps while doing so. Furthermore, they must be introduced in ways that presage plot developments to come along later in the story. It all has to work together.
This is really hard to do. That is why we big-league writers are so highly paid.
Let the Protagonist Protag
One thing I have probably under-emphasized in this series of posts is the central importance of the protagonist. In the last analysis, the story is always about the protagonist. The more active the protagonist, the more story there is to tell. And the rule is, the protagonist must protag. (That’s what we in linguistics call a back-formation, kids.)
To protag is to act. To protag is to be unpredictable. To protag is to have big things at stake. To protag is to take hold of the story, turn it upside down, and shake it till all the loose change falls out of its pockets.
You can be cute. You can tell the story from the viewpoint of a secondary character, but it will be the secondary character talking about the protagonist, like Watson and Sherlock. Unless you have a very good reason for doing so, why bother?
You can tell the story from the viewpoint of the antagonist. But still, it will be the chief opponent talking about, or more likely scheming about how to counter, the actions of the protagonist. Of course, the antagonist, if worthy, may be very active as well. But here’s a thought: The moment you catch your antagonist protagging, you really ought to ask yourself if you have a protagonist disguised as an antagonist. In that case, may the good Lord help you, because I can’t. You’re going to have to turn everything around. But you may have to do that. Remember, a bad guy can be the protagonist. Anyone who has ever read the works of Patricia Highsmith can attest to that.
At some point, preferably early in the process, you’re going to want to ask yourself, “Whose story is it?” And if you can bring yourself to answer honestly, you have identified your protagonist. Make sure he, she, or it protags.
It’s best if the protagonist is active, or at least mentioned, early in the narrative. Remember, this little series is all about beginnings.
So What?
When you understand basic structural concepts, when you realize all your tools must work together, and when you come to grips with the vital activity of your main character, you have an opportunity to build the beginning of the story toward what will happen before the end. You will be more likely to include only those actions, events, and speeches that make the story flow with a decent profluence from beginning to end.
If, Dear Reader, you will trouble yourself to re-read the preceding paragraph, you will find it is a nice, pretty, nearly irrefutable, paragraph. I’m very proud of it.
But if you are an experienced writer, you already know that no matter how well you master structure and all the other elements that must work together, your story may astound you with all the twists and turns it takes before you type “The End.”
Try not to be disappointed if you have to go back, once you thought you were finished, and write a new beginning to match the middle and end that actually showed up for work.
But having at least thought about the general principles discussed here, you may recognize the contours of your work for what they are. And this should make it easier to rewrite the beginning.
Being the sixth part of a seven-part series based on Your New Favorite Writer’s recent WWA workshop “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One.”
I can’t tell you how to write a great beginning. But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:
Engage the reader immediately.
Do not drown the reader in information.
Introduce important characters and plots early.
Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.
Shape early action toward later plot points.
This week, let’s look at the fifth Big Idea: Shape early action toward later plot points.
When you write the beginning of your story, it is very helpful to know what the middle and end are going to look like. The beginning establishes the conditions under which the rest of the story is revealed. If you don’t know what’s going to happen in the middle and end—or if you do think you know, but it changes when you actually write it—then you may have to go back and rewrite the beginning to match the rest. Do not be alarmed. This is actually pretty normal.
It’s all because every story has a structure.
Plot Points
As we mentioned in the first installment of this series, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This seems obvious, but it can help us understand the dynamic aspects of story structure.
And structure is vital. If you have no structure, you have nothing. This becomes alarmingly obvious when you’re trying to write a screenplay. Movie scripts are all about structure. If the structure does not follow good, long-established storytelling traditions, chances are it will not be filmed. If it is filmed, it will quickly find a niche in obscurity.
Beginning-middle-end is also what we know as a “three-act structure”:
Act I: The main characters and situations are introduced. An inciting incident gets the story rolling. A challenge is issued, or arises, that cannot be ignored, and we know this is what the story will be about. The emergence of this Big Question or Main Challenge, in its true dimensions, kicks us into the main part of the story. Therefore, it’s often called the Act II break—that is, the break into Act II from Act I. That, and the inciting incident, are plot points.
Act II: Complications arise. The protagonist—let’s call him hero for short, though not all protagonists are heroes, and not all heroes are protagonists—meets obstacle after obstacle and overcomes them or is defeated by them. If an obstacle defeats the hero, he or she must make a new attempt to overcome it, or else find a way around it. These actions reveal the hero’s character and add meaning to the story. Act II is twice as long as Act I or Act III, but there is an interesting structural trade-off. Halfway through Act II—which is also the midpoint of the whole story—something happens that works dramatic, almost magical change in the story. It goes from light and sunny to dark and forebidding. Or vice versa. Maybe something happens that reveals new vistas of meaning. Whatever it may be, a striking change of color—of meaning, of urgency—occurs at midpoint. After midpoint, Act II continues, building more tension as the hero faces higher and higher hurdles until at last everything is set up, or stripped down, for the Final Confrontation, the payoff of the whole story. The gears shift as they did at the Act II break, only now we are thrust into the last part of the story. Therefore, this movement becomes the Act III break. The midpoint and the Act III break are plot points.
Act III: The chips are down. The hero has removed his mask of timidity and incompetence, the villain is at his evil maximum, and the Battle Titanic begins. The outcome of that battle is the action climax of the story. The main dramatic question is answered and the final situation arrived at. Usually a few loose ends need to be tied up. This is called the denouement, a French term that means “untying.” So the untying ties it all up. Very satisfactory. (See also “ravel/unravel.”) At any rate, the denouement ought to be as brief as possible. People can usually see what is accomplished by the climax. There’s little need to belabor the point. The action climax and denouement are plot points. The term “action climax” suggests there may be other kinds of climax. And there are: internal climaxes, moral climaxes, emotional climaxes. But only the action climax is a plot point. The others are more in the nature of thematic material.
As Usual, So What?
The reason Your New Favorite Writer mentions plot points is this: The plot points tend to give the story its emotional punch or dramatic force—especially the midpoint and the action climax. And this punch or force is greatly increased if those plot points recapitulate themes already present—foreshadowed—at the beginning of the journey. It’s like in Scripture or folk tales, when certain events are seen to be the fulfillment of earlier prophecies. The prophecy adds weight to the actual event.
Therefore, when you write the beginning, it’s good to have in mind the things that are going to happen in the middle and the end, so that speeches or actions prominent in Act I can come back to haunt the reader in Act III.
So, once you have told the whole story, it’s a good idea to check the beginning and see if it includes elements that suggest the end. If not, maybe you can work some in.
Being the fifth part of a seven-part series based on Your New Favorite Writer’s recent WWA workshop “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One.”
I can’t tell you how to write a great beginning. But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:
Engage the reader immediately.
Do not drown the reader in information.
Introduce important characters and plots early.
Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.
Shape early action toward later plot points.
This week, let’s look at the fourth Big Idea: Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.
The Bane of Information
Today’s topic may seem to repeat what we said two weeks ago: “Do not drown the reader in information.”
Why do I keep harping on the negative value of information? And how is this week’s diatribe different from that of two weeks ago?
Information is a blessing because readers need to know what’s happening in the story to appreciate and make sense of it. Information is a curse because it can get in the way and prevent readers from appreciating and making sense of the story.
To absorb this paradox, we must consider two concepts. The first is profluence.
Profluence
Profluence, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a copious or smooth flowing.” In geology, it is the inexorable tendency of water to flow downhill—over, under, and around obstacles in its way. Eventually, water will find its way to the sea; but it can be detained for quite a while by something like Hoover Dam.
Profluence in literature means the smooth flow of a story. John Gardner, the late American novelist and professor of writing (not John Gardner the late British novelist) wrote:
John Gardner. Public Domain.
“By definition—and of aesthetic necessity—a story contains profluence, a requirement best satisfied by a sequence of causally related events . . . .”
“We cannot read a whole novel in an instant,” Gardner said, “so to be coherent, to work as a unified experience . . . narrative must show some profluence of development. . . . Page 1, even if it is a page of description, raises questions, suspicions, and expectations; the mind casts forward to later pages, wondering what will come about and how. It is this casting forward that draws us from paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter. At least in conventional fiction, the moment we stop caring where the story will go next, the writer has failed, and we stop reading.” (My italics.)
Profluence is the forward movement of the story, despite obstacles placed—by the author, who else?—in the characters’ way.
Now hold profluence in mind, Dear Reader, while we look at the duality of information.
Duality of Information
Information can be harmful to a story while also being necessary to it, because there are two kinds of information.
External data provides substance, coherence, and setting—a sense of time and place—to the story. Names, dates, physical descriptions, historical events, and all the various acts and milieux that describe and color the plot of the story are external data. Some are essential parts of the story, others have no part in the story and should be omitted. The author must figure out which is which.
Internal facts are the needs, desires, motives, impulses, and emotions of the characters. These things are essential to the story, but the author must know where they fit, how they relate, and how they make the story move forward, and must find a way to make that clear to the reader.
You need both external data and internal facts to tell the story, but it’s easy to include non-essentials that just bottle up the profluence while omitting necessary items.
That’s why I say, “Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.”
Confused yet?
No? Then let me further clarify: Information, in the form of external data, is what is usually meant by “exposition.”
Exposition is looked upon as a necessary evil. Exposition is thought good when slipped in all unbeknownst to the readerbut bad when inserted in a clumsy, fat-fingered way.
Who is to say what is finesse and what is clumsiness? Your New Favorite Writer, that’s who—always ready to rush in where angels fear to tread.
But Gentle Reader, since I don’t really know better than anybody else what is clumsy and fat-fingered, versus what is brilliantly subtle, let me divert you by suggesting three possible ways to HIDE EXPOSITION IN PLAIN SIGHT.
1. Include It in Dialog
Yes, you heard me. Put it in dialog. Only, the dialog must have at least a fig leaf of action.
You can’t just have Character A say to Character B, “That man was fire chief in Little Grove when it burned down 16 years ago.”
You must have a scene. The characters must be doing something reasonable for them to be doing. It’s ideal if it can be a scene that moves the plot forward in clear and obvious ways. But failing that, you can create a brief scene where at least the characters are doing something coherent, and timely in the plot, and in a situation where it’s natural for them to talk about Little Grove’s former fire chief.
The one thing you ought to avoid doing is having characters tell other characters things they already know and that they know they know. “Gee, Cindy Lou, do you remember the time 16 years ago when we went over to Little Grove to watch it burn down, and you remember, that man was the fire chief?” That’s the sort of thing that gives writers a bad name.
And including exposition in dialog is not your only choice.
2. Free Indirect Discourse
Free indirect discourse happens when the reader absorbs the thoughts and knowledge of the viewpoint character. It’s like saying:
“Yada-yada-yada,” Sally thought.
Only you omit the quotation marks and the attribution, “Sally thought.” You need to give the reader some clue whose mind you are in, but once you do, you just write the yada-yada-yada in the character’s mind as if it were facts being narrated.
Here is the opening of my historical novel, The Price of Passage, previously referred to in the third installment of this series:
Norway
February 1853
Anders Gunstensen jumped up from his straw pallet, struck a match, and re-lit the oil lamp. What was the time now? How soon could he start for North America?
He teased open the gold case of the watch Grandfather had given him.
At that moment Uncle Torgus burst into the barn with a great bang of the door. “Anders, you oaf—wasting my lamp oil in the middle of the night!” The old man swayed left and right. He smelled of hard spirits.
The cattle, accustomed to Torgus’s rages, neither lowed nor bellowed.
In the first paragraph, sentence one establishes that Anders Gunstensen is the character whose viewpoint we are experiencing. The second and third sentences, wondering about the time and when to start for North America, are free indirect discourse. They are written as if an omniscient third person narrator is asking these questions; but the reader perceives them as questions in Anders’s mind. Even though it doesn’t say “he thought,” or “he wondered.”
That’s the beauty of free indirect discourse. It looks like standard third-person narration, but it feels like being inside the character’s head. And while you’re in there, you can include anything you want the reader to know, as long as it’s something that character (a) would be aware of and (b) might have on his mind at the moment.
Free indirect discourse is so slick it feels like cheating. And, in a way, it is. But you can get away with it. The catch is, you become addicted to using it, and pretty soon your whole story is written inside a character’s mind, with no actual scenes of action and dialog.
Use it with caution—but it’s just too good not to use at all.
Yet, there is another, better way to hide exposition in plain sight. In my opinion it’s
The Best Way
Include it in real action. Make it part of the plot. Here’s a simple example: In writing my first novel, The Price of Passage, I needed to get the protagonist, Anders, from Norway to America. Yet he was a lad without large means. How could I provide him with enough money to make the trip?
As a novice, I was unduly concerned about the credibility of his ocean voyage. I imagined finicky raders skewering me for sending a poor young man on an ocean voyage (despite the historical fact that thousands of similarly poor people found ways to make that voyage!). I invented all sorts of elaborate mechanisms involving loans from Uncle Torgus, wheeling and dealing and trade-offs, which I would naturally have to explain in mind-boggling detail before I would let Anders set foot on board the ship.
All those detailed explanations of how he financed his ocean trip would have been needless exposition shoved into the first chapter. It would have drowned the reader in information, and would have bogged down the profluence of the narrative before it even started flowing.
What else could I do?
Remember the gold watch Anders had received from his grandfather? It’s right there, in the second paragraph of the passage given above, where it helps get the plot rolling. Anders’s great desire to emigrate prompts him to jump up to check the time. To do that he must light the lamp so he can read his gold watch, the one he got from Grandfather. The light burning in the barn at night prompts the oppressive Uncle Torgus to come in and chew Anders out, which is the first bit of conflict in the book (on page one!). My point being that the watch is a plot device, pure and simple.
You might think the gold watch has fulfilled its function, but rest assured, Dear Reader: That valuable old watch will re-appear before long and be sold to pay for a transatlantic ticket! That, too, will be the watch functioning as a plot device. But we thereby avoid the need for any exposition about how a poor boy could afford to travel! So plot has done the job of exposition. The problem—which was only a problem in the mind of one particularly dense aspiring author—is thereby solved.
It’s always best to have something happen, to have a character do something—and in that action, the character will reveal everything the reader really needs to know, and the story will keep on flowing.
Next week: Shape early action toward later plot points.
Being the fourth part of a seven-part series based on Your New Favorite Writer’s recent WWA workshop “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One.”
I can’t tell you how to write a great beginning. But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:
Engage the reader immediately.
Do not drown the reader in information.
Introduce important characters and plots early.
Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.
Shape early action toward later plot points.
This week, let’s look at the third Big Idea: Introduce important characters and plots early.
Why?
The opening is the most important part of your book for engaging readers and getting them to read the whole book. The main characters and plots are the heart and substance of your story. If they don’t show up early on, the opening is cheated, the characters and plots are cheated, the reader is cheated, and you the author are cheated.
Important Characters
The important characters are the major characters: protagonist, antagonist, leading allies of the protagonist or antagonist, and operational or catalyst characters who trigger main plot points.
The Protagonist makes the story happen. The protagonist is motivated by deep desire and takes actions to realize that desire. The protagonist should be front and center in your opening and, above all, should do something. A protagonist who simply reflects on what is happening, or who meekly follows an agenda set by someone else, may be the leading cause of readers dozing off. The Protagonist must protag.
The Big Bad Wolf. Disney Pictures. Fair use.
The protagonist is not necessarily a good guy. Think of the Big Bad Wolf in the tale about the Three Little Pigs. It’s the hungry wolf who makes the story happen. His fondness for pork is the root of all action. We may not want him to achieve his desire, but we are deeply invested in the question of whether or not he does.
The Antagonist is the chief obstacle to the protagonist’s quest. The antagonist may be an impersonal force, as in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. More commonly, the antagonist is a person whose interests collide with those of the protagonist. If the protagonist is a good guy, then the antagonist is a villain. Or if, as in “The Three Little Pigs,” the protagonist is a villain, then the antagonist—the wise and doughty little pig who built with bricks—is a hero.
Both protagonist and antagonist have allies or helpers. Some of those allies are minor characters, but the chief allies are major characters. A hero’s allies we call sidekicks; a villain’s allies are henchmen. If one or two of these will play important roles, they should appear in the early pages—at least before the beginning of Act II*, when your story shifts into high gear.
*It is very useful to know something of traditional three-act story structure. I recommend Syd Field’s book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, a simple, straightforward introduction to story structure. It applies to prose fiction or narrative nonfiction just as much as to movie scripts.
Uncle Billy realizing he is about to kick the movie into Act III. Paramount Pictures. Fair use.
Important Catalysts—characters who may not be main plot drivers but who do something that injects a key plot point—should also be introduced early. Is a catalyst character is important? Well, how important is that character’s action to the plot? Think of Uncle Billy, portrayed by Thomas Mitchell in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, which almost everyone has seen. Uncle Billy doesn’t do much in the film, except at a key point his action or inaction triggers the major crisis of the story. I won’t say more, in case you are the one person who has never seen the film and you still want to be surprised. Suffice it to say that Uncle Billy’s one major contribution to the plot occurs rather late. It’s really, I believe, the thing that kicks Act II into Act III. But because that contribution is critical, director Frank Capra makes sure we know who Uncle Billy is, and what kind of a person he is, by giving him little bits of business that build his character all through the movie, from Act I on.
Go thou and do likewise, Gentle Reader.
Important Plots
All stories, or almost all stories, have a Main Plot, also called “the A Plot.” If you cannot discern a main plot, it’s either a failed story or an “experimental” narrative. You probably want to have nothing to do with either. You probably want your story to have a clearly delineated main plot.
The length of the main plot defines the duration of the story. The main plot shows up early by definition. It is that sequence of causally-related events that reflects the struggles of the protagonist and the counter-moves of the antagonist, and that results in the protagonist getting his or her desire, or not. If a plot does not start to show its face in Act I, it’s not the main plot.
Most good stories also have one or more Secondary Plots, sometimes called subplots, sometimes referred to as “B Plot,” “C Plot,” and so forth. These plots involve secondary, but still important, characters; or they involve another aspect of the protagonist’s quest. Secondary plots develop alongside the main plot, complement it, sometimes mirror it, and add interest and complexity. Think of a romantic comedy. The main plot brings the leading romantic characters together; and there’s almost always a subplot that unites the secondary romantic characters.
Such plots, like the main plot, tend to last throughout the story. They start early, usually in the first act, and are often resolved along with the main plot in a sort of neat bundle. For example, the main romantic couple and the secondary romantic couple may celebrate a double wedding. Check Shakespeare.
There is no rule about secondary plots, but most good stories will have one, two, or three that stand out. That is, a B plot, a C plot, maybe even a D plot. These develop in tandem, weave around one another, and add to the strength and meaning of the main plot. For example, the Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man all have secondary plots alongside Dorothy’s main plot in The Wizard of Oz.
There are smaller subplots—but enough with the capital letters, already! These minor subplots may involve a minor character and last for a brief time. They may intersect with a key part of the main plot, like Uncle Billy’s fateful action late in It’s a Wonderful Life. Or maybe they may be a brief distraction—comic relief, for example—in the otherwise long, unrelieved tension of the second act. When one of these little bitty subplots works well, and stays within its limits, it is like the sparkle on a diamond.
Next week: Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.
