Your Voice, Please

The issue most novelists face isn’t a career like tinker, tailor, sailor, or spy, but, more likely, the residual from being or having been doctor, lawyer, or teacher. What might those last three share in common? A style slanted toward instruction coupled with “the curse of knowledge.”

First about that style. At least somewhat academic and professorial, there’s a plethora of multi-syllabic verbiage, as opposed to “lots of big words.”  The lofty tone is often characterized by passive voice, rather than “passive voice occurs frequently.” Contractions, unfortunately, are usually avoided. Sentences are long and complex but not necessarily rhythmic.

Determined to foster the meticulous understanding that previous professions demanded, novelists sometimes “tell” and then “show,” or “show” and then “tell”—just to make sure. Finally, educators and professionals often applaud this structure: Here’s what I’ll say, now I’ll speak my piece in detail, and, oh, since you perhaps missed it (possibly because you spaced out due to the endless repetition), I’ll just go over it one last time. 

First of all, novels need storytelling, suspense, and secrets. Edifying isn’t part of the recipe. In fact, what E.B. White said about poetry applies equally well to the novel: 

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

And yet, ironically, the novelist obsessed with being clear at any cost might misstep anyway. Sadly, “the curse of knowledge” often interferes. As Steven Pinker explains,

I think the curse of knowledge is the chief contributor to opaque writing…It simply doesn’t occur to the writer that readers haven’t learned their jargon, don’t seem to know the intermediate steps that seem to them to be too obvious to mention, and can’t visualize a scene currently in the writer’s mind’s eye. And so the writer doesn’t bother to explain the jargon, or spell out the logic, or supply the concrete details—even when writing for professional peers.

Although Pinker’s emphasis here is nonfiction, the task of guiding readers through a fictional world can present an even greater challenge. After all, to compose a scene, novelists must know tons about setting, background, arc, motive, stage business, and conflict. No scene will be successful unless writers collect far more than will ever make it into the book. 

But here’s the problem. The prepping that helps a novelist create a better page increases the difficulty of assessing what readers don’t know or can’t follow.

So what’s the solution? You can’t undo the fact that you used to win cases or still consult or occasionally volunteer to teach here and there. You can remember that a novel isn’t a brief, a lecture, a lesson plan, or a diagnosis. So.

~ Walk in your reader’s shoes as often as you can.

~ Informalize your voice. 

~ Build bridges.

~ Provide grounding.

Tip: Great storytellers neither teach nor preach.

Winter Light

Chanukah, the festival of light, commemorates the miracle of a scarce supply of oil burning for eight days. What better time than now to revere light? Many of us fade at least a little during winter, missing what fosters happiness, not to mention inspiration.

The symbolism of light is rich and ancient. Shakespeare’s Juliet has this to say of her lover:

When he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

This tragedy complicates dark and light, as all insightful fiction does. But no matter what your faith or lack of it, light represents goodness and illumination; it’s a gift from and to the gods or God. Light’s presence has always protected us from animals, spirits, and fear of the unknown.

What’s that got to do with your novel? A great novel offers subtle and surprising enlightenment. In that sense, isn’t every novel a festival of enduring light?

Festival. The word originally described religious gatherings and social bonding, later adding group entertainment and celebration of the arts. The novel encompasses all of that: a good time, a cultural expression, and both strengthening and questioning of norms.

Tip: Incorporate all the elements of festival into your novel.

As a writer, you’re in the fortunate position of gathering and distributing all the “available light.”

~ Find the light.

Whether with candles, fireplace, imagery and the prose you create or enjoy, gather all the light you can. Unless you collect the light, how can you possibly share it?

~ Study the characteristics of light.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. ― Truman Capote

           

How recently have you questioned light and dark, good and evil in your novel?

~ Revere the intrinsic symbolism of light.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. ― Martin Luther King Jr.

What better time than right now to revisit this relationship? Can you do that in your own novel?

Use your fiction to reveal the light that represents our hopes—and burns beyond our expectations.

Seeing the Magic, Making the Magic

Say it’s winter, and you’re lucky enough to be on a southern beach instead of imprisoned in a northern cold front. Say you like that beach enough to put it in your novel. The easy, obvious course is describing the easy and obvious. Here goes: hundreds of folks glistening with oil or tanning lotion splay out on beach chairs facing the sun. Behind them, the waves lap rhythmically, soothingly. It’s true. Absolutely.

But who cares?  No one, really. No magic here. Only the easy and obvious.

Tip: To convey something magical, first you must see—not just skim the surface, but really see.

It’s actually harder to see than to craft sentences about what you’ve uncovered. Seeing is far more than half the battle.  Happily, looking deeply and creatively is a skill. Like any skill, it’s something you can learn. All you need is patience, practice, and determination to keep seeking what’s initially invisible.

A writer I know remarked on wanting to find what’s beautiful and special about any location. Even though many admire mountains and ocean more than farmland, finding magic wherever you are makes you a better novelist.

That’s the whole trick: looking past pedestrian clichés and tired, superficial imagery to the mystery and magic. In that world—which is actually everywhere—magic surrounds you, encompasses you, infiltrates you. Replace sunbathers (yawn) and raucous gulls (yawn, yawn) and lapping waves (not yawn but ouch!). How about a sliver of moon accompanying a star or two when your protagonist’s the only one in the hotel pool at 5 a.m. Or a protagonist who, with only blessing for compensation, walks the beach, forking litter from seaweed and broken coral, stowing other people’s refuse in a giant garbage bag.

~ Find the magic of fantasy.

If you’re lucky enough to imagine what elves lovingly whisper during elf trysts, or the spell an elderly       wizard casts when he knows his long life is winding down, then you transcend the ordinary.

~ Find the magic of reality.

Every novelist needs magic, and not all of us can or want to conjure elves, wizards, or unicorns. But magic is everywhere. All you have to do is really look, and you’ll begin to really see. Abracadabra.

There it is. Yours for the taking—yours for the giving. A version of blessed.

Fiction and Flux

 Novels trace change. Think about that. Fiction begins by making trouble for an appealing protagonist. After that, all but the darkest stories follow that protagonist through a series of changes yielding resolution, if not success, happiness and a pot of gold at rainbow’s end.

No one wants to notice those incremental changes in the protagonist. That would resemble watching the wizard work the machinery behind the curtain in the land of Oz.  Change should evolve mysteriously. Yet every scene must advance the protagonist to the climax.

Tip: Justify each scene by centering it around an incremental change in your protagonist.

This is easier to execute than you might think. Try these techniques.

• Plan how the scene will affect your protagonist.
• Revise scenes to incorporate protagonist maturation.
• Coordinate external events with internal realizations.
• Let the antagonist induce growth in the protagonist.
• Use your minor characters to help the protagonist evolve.
• Mesh the external environment with your protagonist’s arc.
• Represent many kinds of change, from psychological to moral.
• Consider how small changes help deliver your theme.
• Imagine your novel without this particular scene.

This last one is the toughest, but perhaps the most instructive. Don Maass, at a Writer’s Institute at UW-Madison, said that every scene should be so essential to the whole that the entire structure collapses without it. Every scene must contribute. Every scene must capture change. That’s more credible, of course, because nothing in the world stays still. It’s also more engaging, because the protagonist’s growth inspires our own.

Yes, you might lose some scenes and have to revise others. Isn’t it worth it to have a novel that’s realistic, dramatic and haunting because it proceeds—inevitably—to its outcome?