Who Is Wallace Stevens?

When I recently solicited search engine help from a computer geek, that’s the question I got, followed by, “Is Wallace Stevens a corporation?”

Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955), arguably the greatest poet America has yet produced, may not be recognizable to everyone. After all, not many poets are. But he should matter to every writer, which, of course, includes novelists.

Tip:  Know your audience well enough to present details responsively.

Here’s what Stevens could encourage writers to consider: 

~ Audience. 

This poet’s name, beloved to certain writers and unknown or only vaguely recalled by others, clarifies the question of audience. Until you’ve identified yours, you’ll never know what to take for granted and when you explain too little or too much. Readers (including agents) discard possibilities from both ends of the spectrum: feeling patronized, or feeling that they spend more time with Wikipedia and the dictionary than the novel itself. Neither is much fun.

As a novelist, it’s your job to know whether your readers are likely to be familiar with Wallace Stevens, Grace’s version of “You Don’t Own Me,” or The Battle of the Bulge.  Write for everyone, and you might wind up writing for no one.

~ Mystery and inference.

Stevens urges us to “Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.” What’s the invitation here? Rationality can sometimes be—too rational, too clear, too blazingly bright to let creativity  flourish. Close your own eyes so you can open your reader’s.

~ Symbolism.

“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor,” Stevens says in “The Necessary Angel, Essays on Reality and the Imagination.”  Both the poet and the novelist need an original vision, accompanied by figurative language that lets readers see beyond the ordinary.

~ Concreteness

In that same book of essays, though, Stevens insists that it’s the relationship between the individual mind and the sound, smell, taste, sight, and touch of the physical world that lets writers fulfill reader needs: “The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.” Because of that, “Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.”

~ Unity of content and its expression.

Yes, great ideas can be expressed badly, and shallow observations phrased exquisitely. But in the most compelling verbal moments, the quality matches. And the language seems to reinforce the mood, the idea, the emotion. That’s why “A change of style is a change of meaning.”

~ Ambiguity.

Some of the greatest literature is accessible only if the reader is casual about exactitude, so “The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.”  Poetry becomes quite difficult if one expects an identical literal meaning from every reader every time. Hmm. Can’t we say the same of certain esoteric but highly influential novelists like Virginia Wool and James Joyce?

~ Inspiration. 

In “Sunday Morning,” Stevens postulates that “Death is the mother of beauty,” Is it the knowledge that life is finite that helps us appreciate the pathos of the seasons, that makes us want to draw? Paint? Write?

That’s who Wallace Stevens is. Want to know more? Start with “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “Evening without Angels,” “Sunday Morning,” and “Adagia.” 

The Sentence

The sentences that compose novels aren’t analogous to the ingredients in cupcakes.  Because some wonderful sentences say very little. Others convey a great deal despite cliché, repetition, clumsiness, or worse. The good news? While there’s no manual for acquiring voice and vision, everyone can improve at syntax. And probably everyone should. Who wants to bake cupcakes with inferior ingredients?  Or write a novel deadened with a lousy sentence here or there?

Folks agree more about quality in cupcakes than sentences. Genre, reading rate, tolerance for ambiguity, enthusiasm about complexity, ear for rhythm, and other factors all contribute. And novelists won’t improve syntax by saying, “Well, it sounds okay to me.” A writer’s tolerance for “okay” is often greater than a reader’s. Put yourself in the ear of someone who didn’t write the sentence.

Listen. Really listen. Without rationalizing or shrugging off. That’s the first step toward prose like Neil Gaiman’s description of Fat Charlie seeking a more accurate name:

He would introduce himself as Charles or, in his early twenties, Chaz, or, in writing, as C. Nancy, but it was no use: the name would creep in, infiltrating the new part of his life just as cockroaches invade the cracks and the world behind the fridge in a new kitchen, and like it or not—and he didn’t—he would be Fat Charlie again. — Anansi Boys,

Sentences needn’t be long or complex to resonate. In Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier uses the external world to capture the internal:  “The memory passed on as the light from the window rose toward day.” Tracy Chevalier’s creates character in The Lady and the Unicorn with “Jean Le Viste’s jaw is like a hatchet, his eyes like knife blades.”

Which elements do all these sentences share in common?

Rhythm.

Create sound patterns without relying on passive voice or words that fail to supply both meaning and sound. Read authors you love aloud. Read your own work aloud.

Economy.

            If it’s not adding, it’s subtracting. Make every word work.

Verbs.

            One good verb can replace a chain of adjectives and adverbs. Energize.

In the end, though, the sentence is as elusive as Amy Tan’s description of love in The Hundred Secret Senses

It floods the cells that transmit worry and better sense, drowns them with biochemical bliss. You can know all these things about love, yet it remains irresistible, as beguiling as the floating arms of long sleep.

A lovely sentence floods the senses, too, by wedding content to presentation. What makes some sentences “irresistible”? That’s beguilingly unknowable. But the mystery of sentence beauty isn’t permission to disregard it. Keep chasing the solution to that mystery. By revising.

Tip: Make your sentences as “beguiling” as possible. All of your sentences.

Tracks in the Snow: Mystery, Meaning, and Metaphor

Last weekend we woke to unidentifiable footprints out the front door. After omitting the usual suspects (Cat? Dog? Raccoon? Fox?) we were at a loss. Still are. Still perplexed. And slightly perplexed is mightily entertaining. It triggers the imagination, invites you to solve a puzzle, and keeps you alert and engaged. Will there be a different, better hint?

Tip: The great secrets of fiction leave you wondering, long after the clues melt away.

In this sense, every novel is a mystery novel—whether or not you include corpses or detectives. Your readers try to guess what’s ahead, what this detail signifies, and how the protagonist earns the ending. If you’re doing your job right, they continue guessing. Until the end. That’s where the surprise materializes. Not a total one, of course. The best endings leave readers scratching their heads over all those clever clues—not one of them misleading—that cause the ending. But never obviously. That’s where ambiguity comes in.

Milan Kundera observed that “The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.” To approach an almost-imitation of life, fiction can’t be too clear. After all, in reality, when is any choice or belief or outcome ever crystalline? For example, is the borderline between life and death always a given?

That’s why Joyce Carol Oates said that novelists toy with “The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to ‘overcome’ doubt.”  If you already know all the answers, are you sure that fiction is what you want to write? 

Like Oates, Scott Turow, famed for legal thrillers, believes that “The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.” What motivates folks to keep reading if you spell everything out?

Readers want footprints—visible, but not unequivocally identifiable. One of the best ways to get there? Metaphor.

Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse relies heavily on the central metaphor of its title. But what exactly does it mean? The unattainable? The illuminating? The permanent in the face of mortality? Art? Love? All of the above?

The fun is guessing, just as it’s fun to speculate why Jonathan Franzen called his book “Purity,” why Shauna Singh Baldwin chose the title “What the Body Remembers,” or the precise meaning of the bloom at the center of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The White Rose.

Guessing keeps people turning pages. Or pondering pawprints. Those melted before we could figure them out. And that’s okay, because “Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity,” Sigmund Freud claimed. And ambiguity is the privilege of drawing your own conclusions.

We can continue daydreaming about what marvelous creature strolled across our yard in the dark of night. Ambiguity lets things linger in memory. Fiction holds that same power. If you let it.

Dialogue: Animosity or Virtuosity

Consider Nancy and Kevin. This brother and sister mostly got along, though it’s years since they’ve been close: marriage, kids, careers—they drifted. But neither Kevin nor Nancy predicted that dad’s death would endanger their relationship.

Unless you’re related to Nancy and Kevin, why would you care? Because the demise of Kevin and Nancy illustrates how dialogue works. Or doesn’t.

Kevin’s fury might launch a scene. After all, he maintained Dad’s hardware store, plus keeping his lawn mowed, snow blowed, and roof repaired. Nor was Kevin’s schedule exactly overflowing with spare time for someone else’s life.

“Your life? What about mine?” Nancy wants to know when she adds her lines to the script.  Hardly her fault that Kevin took years getting Dad’s house in shape to sell. Especially since her husband graciously took Dad into their home. Of course Dad didn’t intentionally torment every member of Nancy’s family (even Rover). But his dementia irritated, exhausted, and freaked them all. Every day. For years.

Who’s right? Nancy. And Kevin. Life has enough actual bad guys. Fiction shouldn’t. Readers must believe both stories. That promotes dilemma—the most genuine source of tension. Make dilemma drive the script characters play out when they interact.

Tip: Good dialogue comes from a forceful, credible, well- justified script for each character.

You get there not by replicating reality, but simulating it.

~ Brevity.

In the real world, Kevin and Nancy might shriek, accuse, and bellow. Or bicker twenty-nine separate times over a four-month period.  That won’t propel fiction.  Their conversations need to be short, snappy, and subtle. And two or three times beats twenty-nine.

~ Subtext.

Kevin might actually scream, “If you can’t understand what this cost me, I never want to speak to you again!” Makes sense. A bit tepid, though. Why read on, when we can predict what’s next. Besides, wouldn’t it be more fun (not to mention more accurate) to wonder if Kevin’s rage disguises hurt? There’s greater ambivalence in “I can’t believe you’d say that,” or “I don’t even recognize you.” Cliché, yes, but reflective of complex emotion. That’s how they became cliché.

~ Equality.

In real life, courts determine guilt or innocence. In fiction, everyone’s both. If you despise Nancy or Kevin so piercingly that you can’t design two defensible versions of the so-called facts, you have no business telling their story.

Want virtuoso characterization and dialogue? Handle animosity not as if it were a heat-seeking missile, but a feeling we all experience at least occasionally. Emotion is intricately complex: rage mixed with pain, greed laced with regret, righteousness tempered by anxiety about never speaking to your sibling again. Make sure all your characters can justify themselves. Because each person both believes his or her story—and doesn’t. Unless dialogue reflects that, it won’t infuse the depth, intricacy, and credibility your story deserves. Because your readers do.

Muddy Waters

Clear as mud. Don’t muddy the waters. Still waters run deep. The number of expressions fretting about clarity suggests deep concern, if not absolute obsession. How clear is clear enough? That’s not just a general issue; it’s a major writing one. How much “mud” will readers tolerate? How clear is so obvious that all the fun’s gone? Without polling everyone, how could you possibly decide? Here’s a little bleach for that cloudy water.

~ Audience.

Identify whom you’re writing for. One gal’s transparency is another gal’s sun-in-your-eyes. One guy’s drone statistics is another guy’s droning on and on. The more precisely you can pinpoint the kind of people you hope will read your novel, then the more precisely you can pinpoint what will please them. Do they like an absolutely firm foundation—with everything laid out? Or would they enjoy a little ambiguity? At what point does mysterious become confusing—and thus boring.

Assess clarity in fiction that resembles yours. What do they leave out? What do they spell out? Do this repeatedly, and you’ve begun charting a course.

~ Context.

We play guessing games because guessing’s fun. It’s not fun, though, if readers must guess how these sentences connect, how we got from there to here, where the characters live, how old they are, and what could possibly motivate them to behave this way. Think journalism: “why” must follow “who,” “what,” “where,” and “when.” Nor do you get to ignore those essentials. Just don’t bury the good parts beneath logistics.

No one likes being lost. Readers struggling with context can’t infer concept.

~ Concept.

Many readers enjoy inferring ideas, emotions, and themes. These readers want enough well-placed clues—and then? The freedom to reach their own conclusions. Taste exerts enormous power here. You’ll find readers at both extremes: those who don’t mind a bit of “telling” for clarity and those who mind even a nip of “telling”—no matter how much it clarifies.

Differentiate the details readers can’t possibly infer from those that certain readers want to discover for themselves. If you still can’t decide, aim for a point midway between obscure and belabored.

Use the fiction you read and feedback from those who critique your work to develop an ear for when to be clear, when to be slightly cryptic.

Tip: The writer should help the reader focus—and the right amount of clarity accomplishes just that.

What about the Dialogue No Character Ever Speaks?

Dialogue shapes novels. There’s an unspoken dialogue between a novel and its readers that shapes the quality and impact of fiction.  In Novel Voices, Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabelais interview Siri Hustvedt, who has this to say about the dialogue that keeps us reading fiction:

The reader situates himself somewhere between the immediate here of the world in which he reads and the there of the book. He enters a state that is between himself and the voice of the book. Reading is also entering a dialogue of sorts because a book is nothing until it lives inside the reader, who makes the book come to life.

You can’t have a dialogue without both parties participating. But readers can’t do that unless some things are unsaid, some points never made. How else can readers interpret through the lens of their own memories, experiences, and appetites? Of course no one wants a novel to be an empty blackboard, awaiting the reader’s imprint. But no one wants every detail laid out, either, because that makes it impossible for readers to discover meaning for themselves.

Which factors let readers participate in the experience of fiction?

~ Plot events.

This is restricted to what the characters actually do or execute or say. What they contemplate, how they commiserate, whether they circumnavigate—all that excludes the reader, because it’s talking to rather than with.

~ Dialogue between characters.

Again, this is restricted to what the characters say rather than what they say “lazily,” “cheerfully,” “thoughtfully,” or “stormily.” Once you add adverbs or any other filter, it becomes a lecture—not a dialogue.

~ Subtext.

           

Pose questions that sound like questions and seemingly definitive statements that imply questions. If you like, write down exactly what the character wants to say. Afterwards, though, revise until your characters sound like real people—dropping hints, insinuating threats, and generally playing games.

           

~ Ambiguity.

Much as you’d like to, never, ever “tell” readers exactly what you want them to notice, believe, defy, or applaud. Drop clues. Unfurl your plot. Make your characters suffer enough to change. What will readers absorb from that? It’s up to them.

Tip: Let readers participate in the dialogue. After all, it’s why they’re there.

Who’s Doing the Heavy Lifting?

People read fiction for various reasons—escape, entertainment, and illumination, information, or insight. But probably not one reader would add “enduring an exhausting workout” to that list. That’s what the gym—and the job—are for.

Tip: The less hard the writer works, the harder the readers have to.

Novelists can fatigue readers with what they put in or leave out. Here’s a partial list:

• Picturing context for the characters.
• Transitioning between moments, places, and external/internal realms.
• Shifting point of view.
• Including numerous characters.
• Assigning distracting character names.
• Introducing ambiguous metaphors.
• Isolating images, subplots, and themes.
• Composing lengthy sentences with multiple phrases and clauses.

Many readers enjoy ambiguity; that isn’t on the list. Readers don’t enjoy having to guess and compute. Sometimes that’s unvoidable. Attempt to make everything clear and easy, and you could wind up sounding graceless and boring. As often applies to the craft of fiction, balance is the key. These questions help test whether you make readers cope with something they needn’t.

• Do you ground your characters in physical space?
• Do you avoid unnecessary shifts, especially of short duration?
• Do you transition whenever you change time, place, point of view, etc.?
• Do you include the smallest number of characters you can get away with?
• Do your characters have accessible names, i.e. as close to familiar as credibly possible?
• Do taglines help identify characters, i.e. the one with green eyes or that oversized purse?
• Do character names start with the same letter or sound similar?
• Does every symbolic reference make complete sense on the literal level?
• Do you weave imagery into motifs, or recurrent patterns?
• Does every single subplot link to the central one?
• Are your themes tied both to the protagonist and to each other?
• Do you divide sentences for rhythm, variety, and clarity?

 Responding to all these questions sounds like a lot of work. It sure is. Novelists are supposed to work hard so readers don’t have to. Occasionally, you’ll have no choice: The plot or theme or psychological exploration simply demands a certain amount not of obscurity, but of complexity. Just be able to honestly justify asking your readers to “work.” And never put them on duty more often than you can help.