A Critique from Dickens

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I've been reading David Copperfield this month.  It's one of those books that, if all were right with the world, I would have read years ago; but all is not right with the world, and I went against the flow and chose to read Dickens' lesser known works, like Little Dorrit and Martin Chuzzlewit, first.  I'm not sure why people generally start with either Oliver Twist or Copperfield, but my being contrary and departing from the norm has given me, I think, a different perspective on Dickens.  A Christmas Carol aside, I started in on his darker, more dramatic books first; now I'm going back and reading his earlier works, and I can go about it without the notion that they are gloomy and depressing.  Compared to Bleak House, they're positively comic!

At any rate, as I am coming up on the end of David Copperfield (only a couple hundred pages left - I'm practically grazing the finish line), I've begun to think all over again about my appreciation for his writing.  And then it occurred to me to wonder, whatever would he think of my writing?  I thought about it a little while, rather tickled by the idea, and came to the conclusion that he would probably be horrified by modern day writing in general.  And I don't mean what a book snob like myself considers sloppy writing - flimsy characters and thin prose - the sort of things that are objectively bad no matter what generation you live in; I mean the more subjective Standards.

The size of a novel, and the trend nowadays toward "shorter and easier to read books" - mine are large by today's standards, but they're still dwarfed by Bleak House.  The notion of pared-down casts - Dickens would have had a good laugh over that.  Verbose description being the Devil's own child.  And as for characters...!  If he found Jane Eyre appallingly independent, Regina would have him positively thrashing in his grave.

I thought to myself, as these flitted across my mind: "Oh, I can have some fun with that."  So I decided to write up a critique of myself from Mr. Dickens' perspective, as a parody of the Victorian standards and the modern day standards both.  It is at once laughably arrogant on my part and completely self-deprecating, so you are not allowed to take it seriously on any level.

My dear J—,

The next installment is in progress, albeit slow and, at this time, a little tedious. But Bob will keep me going, and being so near the end I cannot stop now. (Though I have half a mind to kill them all and be done with the business.)

You will by this time probably have heard of that new work, released upon an unsuspecting public a fortnight ago, by the incorrigible Mrs. H. I confess it painful, to my sensibilities, at least, to observe the unbridled pleasure with which that public has already caught it up: I hear nothing, morning, noon, or night, but one or another reference to this work. It glares at me from shop windows, and with such garish looks! It is beyond my ability to comprehend its attractions, and yet only last Friday, when I went out for a walk, I saw no less than four persons with it in hand. One of them had the distinctly mouldy air of a dustman; another was, if you can believe it, Lord R. He hid it beneath his hat when he saw me coming.

I had already heard various scathing critiques of Mrs. H.’s new piece of literature, from friends and family, and I soon made my mind up that I should not touch the creature at any cost. It was only when our mutual friend T. happened to mention, in a particularly unguarded moment, that I was featured in its pages that I yielded to my baser feelings, laid down two shillings, and took away the book. It was a moment of weakness, for which I am sure you can forgive me.

Well, I have all but reached the end of the thing, after pausing several times with wounded sensibilities. Mrs. H. performs feats worthy of legend at a speed wondrous to behold; the tale stops for no man; in a mere two hundred pages, the plot is already coursing forward like an ardent tug-boat, bearing the reader in its wake. I found myself appalled at the thought that such a brief work could capture the mind of the public; that the same men and women who demanded to know if Little Nell was dead have now embraced this.  If Little Nell were not already dead, I would be tempted to kill her out of spite.

As for Mrs. H.’s characters, though I admit they are not altogether bad—I was quite gratified by a certain indefatigable female who passes through the pages early on—though I admit, as I say, that they are not bad, Mrs. H. would need a round two dozen more before the story could be called intricate. And the heroine! She is enough to make your blood run cold; Mrs. C. B.’s own rebellious orphan becomes a saint by comparison.

My own appearance, somewhere near the middle of the book, was thankfully brief. I have not yet decided whether it was intended to be favourable or not; I lean toward the latter conclusion. I seem to recall a letter from Mrs. H. some while ago, the subject of which I have now forgotten, but which was (I believe) congratulatory in tone. I can only conclude, judging by her ambiguous reference to me now, that she was not favourably impressed by Dombey. That is of little consequence to me, but I am now turning over the idea of inserting Mrs. H. in the Current Work—as a dose of retribution. I have little doubt, however, that the esteemed lady would not hesitate to return the compliment.

Yours,

C. D.

Like Nobody's Reading

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I read a quote the other day.  It was probably on Pinterest - most quotes are - and I have not the least idea who said it.  (Which is good, because I'm going to disagree with it, and I hate disagreeing with famous people.)  I can't locate the quote now, but in essence it said

write like nobody's reading.

I thought, when I came across it, that is sounded good and pithy and like something we need to hear.  Most of us have had times where we get ourselves into a bind wondering if what we write will be appreciated. I know I've had panicked moments when I think, "What if people think I hate cats because Regina dislikes them?  What if they think I don't like to read because Tip doesn't?  What if people misunderstand these characters' relationships?  What if they twist my words and come out with something horrible?"  The questions range from the petty to the dire, and if allowed to grow, they could quickly become overwhelming.  In one sense, therefore, this "Write like nobody's reading" quote has a point.

But I believe there is another side to the coin, a side I had not particularly noted until reading Dorothy Sayers' book on the Trinity and the creative mind, The Mind of the Maker.  (I wrote something of a synopsis for this after I finished it back in September.)  In her work she draws a parallel between the economy of the Godhead and the economy of the mind of creative man - a reasonable object, seeing as we are made in the Image of God.  The first two "persons" of this imagining, creating mind are simplest to see and to explain; they are the Idea, that thing that exists in our heads before ever we begin to write, and the Energy or Activity, where the Idea is translated into something understandable to others.  But of course the third is rather more elusive, which to me makes Sayers' parallel more credible.

The third "person" deals, in essence, with the power that brings about proper communication and appreciation in the mind of the reader.  It is that thing which conveys the spirit of the Idea as expressed in the Activity.  It is that thing which, when present, creates the vital connection between the reader and the writer through the book.  And it is absolutely necessary.

In her book - which I continue to recommend for all writers - Sayers generally uses the example of a playwright, being one herself (as well as a novelist and an essayist, but that's beside the point).  It is critical, she writes, that when a man is penning his play, he keep in mind the perspective of the audience.  What is the audience going to understand by this wordplay?  How are these props going to appear?  Will the scene be conveyed?  She uses a humorous example of a play that failed to do just this; instead, the writer (who really should have been a novelist instead) substituted a long passage of "stage directions" - those sections in italics at the start of a scene in a Dover Thrift edition of Shakespeare.  Thunder.  Darkness.  Woman in bed, tossing and turning as if in pain.  Woman cries out, twisting sheets in hands.  End of Scene I.

This is an exaggeration, and yet it is an exaggeration that applies to all creative fields: whether you are writing a novel or a play, a failure to figuratively place oneself in the viewer's chair will result in a terrible disconnect.  At the heart of the matter, the fact is that mature writers, the ones not just starting out (and that is an important caveat), must write as though someone is reading.  Because isn't that the very thing we desire?

he that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

- john locke, an essay concerning human understanding

We want to be minded.  We want to be understood.  And in order to do so, we have to be able to have minds in two positions at once: that of the writer, designing and creating; and that of the reader, following and learning.   That is why, while we cannot allow worries about what others will think to paralyze us, we also cannot ignore them.  They have their place in helping us to convey our story, and the vital spirit of that story.

Growing Art

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We all want to improve.  

I make that a blanket statement, because while there are those writers who already think their writing is as good as it gets, us saner folk still have days when we look at our work and think, "Oh goodness.  I really, really stink at this.  Did I write that?  That is so stupid.  Backspacebackspacebackspace...!" and daydream of a time when our writing is polished to perfection.  (At least, I do.  On rare and not terribly lucid occasions.)

Our desire to improve in the craft of writing is what drives us to read the self-help books and writing blogs dedicated to the subject.  We dig through all the posts on fight scenes or dialogue, hoping to glean something that will make our writing in those areas shine and stand out from the crowd.  We fret and sigh over cliches like "black as pitch" and practically rip our hair out over stray adverbs.  We chew our nails as we wonder if maybe our fantasy world isn't as original, after all, as Patricia McKillip's.  And on top of all that, as Christians we often stretch our brains to amazing lengths to find out how we can fit the Gospel or maybe just a prayer into the plot - because that's what we're supposed to do, right?

Now, some of you know already that I'm not a huge fan of self-help books.  I'm not going to denigrate them, though, because I know that they can hold very useful information and have helped numerous writers work out difficult parts of the writing process; I know that for myself, I frequently store away the tips on such blogs as Go Teen Writers, to be implemented at some later date.  Nothing beats an extensive library and broad tastes, but it is nonetheless helpful for us to see things broken down, the parts examined in detail and then put back together again. 

All things in moderation, however, for this approach can be overdone, and then nothing so thoroughly robs a story of its life.  This self-help business often - necessarily, even - looks at writing in a mechanistic fashion: take it apart, look at the cogs and gears and gerbils, then assemble it and voila! a story!  It can fail to recognize that a story is much less a machine than it is a living organism, needing to be nurtured, not to have its leaves and roots pulled out and inspected.  We simply end up trying too hard.

That is a difficult thing to say without sounding as though I'm implying that writing is an easy flow of words onto paper every single day with no agonies whatsoever.  But of course that is nothing more than a fantasy, and not even a pleasant one when you start to think carefully: what, after all, is writing without any work?  We do have to labor over our stories.  We do have to make the plant grow, and we do have to get rid of all the bugs and the fungus and the what-have-you that distort it.  The point is not to sit back and clear your mind of all the wisdom of other authors and readers. 

The point is to have the right mindset.

Writing is an art.  It isn't the same as putting together the parts of car until when you turn the key in the ignition, the engine comes to life.  It's an art, a work of creation, a tying together of a multitude of thought-threads into a story that feels - and in some ways is - alive.  That is not something that can be taught.  And because of this, we cannot go into self-help books and the like expecting to be shown how to write.  We can be shown how to polish our words.  We can be shown how to spruce up dialogue.  We can be shown when to leave a cliche and when to reinvent one.  But in all that, we cannot be shown how to write.

We can't be taught this, and yet I do believe we can learn it.  We learn it individually in the process of our writing, and also in the process of our living.  Because being a writer is not just an expression of what we do, but of something we are.  I don't know that it is essential and I won't run off on a philosophical rabbit trail; it is enough to realize that writing is a necessary part of who we are.  And I think that perhaps the process of improving our writing is not, after all, so much the process of polishing grammar and the like (however important that is).  It's a process of growing.

Salt of Description

pinterest: the white sail's shaking

As I was preparing to sit down last week and write a post on the subject of using all five senses in descriptions, I looked at my blog feed and discovered that Go Teen Writers had just done such an article.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call unfair.  However, I decided I would go ahead and write my own thoughts on the matter, and in the end you can read both posts and compare.

Descriptive passages have never come to me with quite the same ease as dialogue.  Perhaps this is because dialogue tends to follow a more logical procession from point A to point B, or at least from point A to point Q back to point B, while description is more intuitive and emotional.  But difficulties notwithstanding, I do enjoy writing these scenes.  I enjoy them because it is a pleasure to take a step back or forward and examine the world in either broader scope or closer detail - and because, by looking at a scene through the eyes of a character, I see things in a different light.  (That is part of the brilliance of fictional people: not existing, they still manage to be so real.)  While of course still utilizing my own senses, I am at the same time accessing the senses of the character.  Separating those senses into the five common ones, and leaving out the sixth sense of intuition, each one provides rich means of vivifying description.

sight - touch - hearing - smell - taste

We depend very heavily upon our eyes, so it's no wonder that descriptive passages tend to be heavy on this aspect.  I don't know about you, but when I'm reading a description, no matter how well I can smell and feel and hear and even taste the object, I would very much like to know what it looks like.  The man may smell of horse and sweaty leather boot-soles - grand!  The pipe may make music like the wind across the surface of a lake - brilliant!  The decorated cake may taste like the cover of a hardback book - disgusting!  And yet, without a few choice visionary descriptions, it is difficult to bring to the reader's mind exactly the same image that was in the writer's thoughts.  I can imagine a great deal about how the man in question feels about bathing, and even create my own mental image of him; but my imagination is probably quite faulty.

Descriptions based on sight tend to get a bad rap, I find.  This is reasonable, as many take this as the easy course and write off a hasty description about how the man is 5'9" and tanned (or is that dirt?) and has piercing green eyes, which evokes nothing.  However, it is possible to go to far to the other extreme and eliminate all sight-based descriptions.  Strike a good balance!

The next four senses are, I think, the most fun and provide more food for the imagination and for one's originality.  This is especially so if you mix and match them, and do not simply use them in obvious settings.  Of course if you're describing a stew, you'll want to describe its taste - but what about its appearance, or the sound it makes falling into the bowl, or its texture?  If a flower is in question, appearance and smell are obvious.  But how do the petals feel against your skin?  How does the wind sound thrumming over its leaves?

Another good thing to do, and one which is used powerfully by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliff, is to link senses together in descriptions.  Colors can be used beautifully in these descriptions.  Something might taste scarlet - similar, perhaps, to saying it tastes like blood, but far more evocative in the writing setting.  Perhaps the flower smells the way honey tastes on a day in midsummer.  A laugh can sound like silk running through one's fingers.  Oftentimes these sorts of descriptions leap to one's mind and can't be actively sought out, but if you're watching for them, you'll see them more frequently.

Caveat!  (I do tend to have caveats, don't I?)  Descriptions of any one kind ought to be used sparingly, sprinkled rather than dumped into a story.  Too much of a good thing is still too much, as they say.  These are thoughts to keep somewhere in the back of one's mind during difficult descriptive passages, not to have always and obsessively in the forefront of one's thoughts.  I find they're like salt: useful in small doses, not so useful in large.  ...Unless you're Sutcliff, because she pulled it off amazingly.

Thoughts on Thinking

 "There is no doubt that some people who look intelligent, are intelligent; and there is no doubt that some people who look idiotic, are idiots."

- arthur c. custance, genesis and early man

But whether idiotic or intelligent, all people do think after one fashion or another.  Self-conscious thought is one feature of Man that is uniquely his, an element of what it means to possess the Imago Dei, and I don't believe any scientist or doctor has yet proved that it can ever be lost to a human being. 

This is not, however, to be a particularly philosophical post - all breathe a sigh of relief!  I want instead to take a peek at how this profoundly common action of thinking plays a role in the lives of our characters. Naturally, the way our characters think will be reflected in the way they speak; but it comes out even more starkly and with less polish in what the Experts call "internal dialogue."  (I'm not sure who thought that was a good phrase to use for it.  It makes me think of some gastronomic complaint.)  These are simply the character's private thoughts, the ones he never actually voices, but which are recorded so that the reader can get a peep inside the his mind.  In "stream-of-consciousness" stories, as far as I can make out, the story is driven and formed entirely by the narrator's thoughts; but in most novels, the internal dialogue is limited to a few italicized lines here and there when the protagonist's thoughts need to be known.

Internal dialogue is a very useful thing, especially when you feel yourself drifting away from the narrator's point-of-view, but until recently I had never stopped and considered it in detail.  Internal dialogue was simply the character's thoughts, and I wrote them as they came to me and seemed necessary.  However, the other day as I was looking over my writing it occurred to me that neither real people nor characters think in exactly the same manner; the voice of one protagonist's thoughts will likely not be the same as the voice of another protagonist's thoughts.  (I do keep coming back to voice, don't I?)

For instance, at the time when this realization popped up, I was comparing the two narrators of The White Sail's Shaking - Tip Brighton and Marta Rais.  They are very different characters and neither talk nor think in the same manner.  Tip talks to himself, aloud and in his own head, so that in many of his thoughts he refers to himself in the second person.  Marta, on the other hand, is much more normal: she thinks of herself as an "I."  This actually makes her more difficult to write.  In the scenes where Tip is alone, there can be that invisible "second character" - his own projection of himself - to allow for some dialogue; with Marta, I have discovered that I can't use the same technique.  Instead, I'll probably have to go back through her scenes and give her something physical to talk to, like Scipio.

Another interesting thing to consider is how one character's way of thinking can develop through a story.  Even more words seem to be written about "character arc" than are written about "internal dialogue," but it seems to me that when as a protagonist matures, he or she has to mature in the fundamental area of thought as well as in action.  Although the character himself does not essentially change from page one to the end (just as we don't essentially change from childhood to adulthood), every aspect of his life is altered to one degree or another.  The very manner in which he looks at the world will be different, maybe vastly, maybe only a little.

What comes first to mind could either be an example or a counter-example, depending on how you look at it.  Whichever it is, it comes in the form of Margaret Mitchell's much-reviled character Scarlett O'Hara.  Throughout the story there is a recurring theme in Scarlett's thoughts: "I'll think about (whatever) tomorrow."  It comes up repeatedly and reflects Scarlett's unwillingness to stop and consider her own actions, to consider the world around her in an at least semi-objective manner.  This theme carries through all the way to the end and to the climactic scene, where Rhett has left her and Scarlett is sitting alone in her house, thinking about what she can possibly do next.  And then she recalls Tara.  Tara, which she loves above everything else, which is more important to her than anyone or anything in the world.  She'll go back to Tara.  And with that of course comes the famous last line: "After all, tomorrow is another day."

This ending drives home the fact that Scarlett has not changed - and yet, at the same time, it shows that she has changed.  Only a little, I'll grant you, but in the phrasing of that last quote there is a subtle development.  Previously her line was, "I'll think about it tomorrow."  At the end it becomes, "Tomorrow is another day."  And there is a difference in that, because in a way she is facing rather than hiding from the future.  Even a character like Scarlett does have something of an arc.

So internal dialogue, gross as the phrase may be, is really a fascinating and useful little thing.  It doesn't usually play a massive part in a story, but the part it does play is important and just plain interesting to consider.  How do your characters think?  Looking back over the course of a story, have you ever been surprised to see developments that you never planned?  I certainly have - and I think it may be one of the most rewarding aspects of writing.

A Different Point of View

Here I am, returning at last to the questions on You Haven't Got an Appointment! The next one I was going to answer is Yaasha Moriah's first:

As a female, how do you craft your male characters in a way that is true to the male perspective? How do you know if you have their viewpoints right and are not carrying feminine elements into their characters?

Yet another question that I am very excited to answer - you gals have done a grand job coming up with applications for the Circumlocution Office. Yaasha's is particularly applicable, as the protagonists of my last novel and my current one have been men; and in The White Sail's Shaking I have to write from Tip's perspective in some scenes and Marta's perspective in others. And it can be awfully hard.

So, how do I write from a male perspective. First off, I have to say that I find it easier than writing from a female perspective. That may seem odd, and frankly I haven't quite figured it out myself. The best way I can explain it is that men are much more concrete, logical, A-B-C thinkers and so their point-of-view is easier to demonstrate, whereas women tend to be more visceral and (let's face it) illogical. Balancing a woman's emotions with her thought processes is a much more delicate business than threading a man's feelings through his actions, at least for me. Because I do less in the way of character sketches and character "crafting" than some writers, I have difficulty explaining the ins and outs of how I manage a man's perspective, but here is what I have to offer.

Observe. As a female writer, observe the men in your life - brothers, fathers, husbands - and how they interact with the world. Also, observe the male characters in good, solid literature. An excellent example, albeit somewhat hackneyed, is Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice fame: he is a strong, silent type, but he is also shy and uncertain when it comes to his relationship with Elizabeth Bennet. Men do have emotions. In some ways, the very fact that those emotions tend to be steadier than a woman's make them more powerful; if you've ever seen a grown man cry, you know what I mean. Characteristics of men and women are not cut and dry; both are made in the Image of God, and they share elements.

Just write. Write your character as he is, and then sit back and analyze it. Critiquing him before you even write two scenes with him in them will probably not help; writing a character, I find, is the best way to work out their kinks and quirks. Also, the more male characters you write the better you are likely to become at discovering how to do it without either making their point of views too feminine or making them stereotypically masculine. Practice makes almost-but-not-really perfect, after all.

Get others to help. My dad is my best critic. Some people won't show others their novel until they are finished; I like to give my dad chapters as I write. He'll tell you (or maybe he wouldn't, but he tells me) that I tend to make my male characters too pacifistic in the first draft*, and he helps me iron that out in the second. Having him read my stories is extremely helpful and fun, and gives me, well, a different perspective. So if at all possible, I advise getting a father or brother or husband to critique your writing for you. It's extremely embarrassing at first, I will grant, but it pays off in the end and becomes enjoyable as you get used to it.

I don't know how well that answers your question, Yaasha, but I hope it does! I had fun scribbling up some semblance of a reply, and I hope to answer your other one soon.

*but just wait until you get to the duel, Dad.

art by Chris Rawlins, deviantART