Summertime reruns: Starting a Novel

Today's Novel Matters rerun comes from Bonnie Grove. It first appeared in May, 2012.

Happy summer!

I’m not in the habit of quoting Zig Zigler, but the dude once said, "You don’t have to be great to start you have to start to be great." 

It’s a nice quote if you can picture saying it sans the fist-pump and jazzercise music playing ubiquitous at those brain-washing seminars.
 
Beginning a novel is daunting. Ever since Patti Hill talked about writing as stuffing an octopus into a mayonnaise jar, I haven’t been able to get the image out of my head. 
 
How does a writer go from holding an octopus in one hand and a mayonnaise jar in the other to a tidy stack of papers with his name neatly typed on the cover page?
 
If starting is the most crucial step (and it is), then starting well will save hours (months? Years?) of frustration in rewrites. 
 
Fiction is personal. No two writers come at it in the same way, and no one can say, “This is the definitive method of how to begin writing a novel.”
 
One writer begins with a character that shows up in her head and won’t go away. Another follows the crumbs of a plot, a series of “what if” questions. For another it’s the setting. Yet another (and this is how I usually begin) it’s theme. (update: I no longer begin a novel with theme alone. I've come to a point where I realize I must wait until a number of idea coalesce into a rich soup headed up by plot.)
 
Regardless of what jump-starts you to dive into writing a new novel, there are two questions you need to ask yourself before you put pen to paper. 
 
The first question is: Who is telling this story? 
 
When you discover the answer to this question, you lay the foundation for a myriad of complex literary devices. Discovering your narrator means you’ve discovered:

 Your setting. Real people live in real places—they come from somewhere. 
 When (in time and history). Narrators live in the present—even if they are dead (The Book Thief, American Beauty). 
 Which tense you will write in. Past tense (the current champion in novels everywhere), present tense? Which is best. Is anyone out there writing in future tense? 
 Voice. Ah voice, that misunderstood device of writing. Both simple and baffling. Knowing who is telling the story means you can listen deeply to that voice that lifts the words off the page and lives in the reader’s heart and mind. 
 And the biggest of them all Point of View (POV). Knowing your narrator means the POV (almost) decides itself. First person? Third person limited? Omniscient? Second person (rare, but wonderful when it’s done well)? 

Now, I’m not going to say that if you choose this kind of narrator then you automatically will have this kind of POV. It doesn’t work that way because each novel is different, and the more complex the story, the more layers of questions arise. 

But. 

If you spend a good chunk of time fiddling with the question of who, something amazing happens: you get traction under your story at the very beginning.
 
The second question to ask is: Why must this story be told now?

The word “now” is key to the question.  It’s not asking “is my story timely?” or, “is this culturally contextual?” Those are questions about things that lie outside your story. 
 
Why must this story be told now is a question that, when answered, brings a sense of intimacy, urgency, and intrigue to your novel. That tingly feeling you get when you open a novel and feel pulled in immediately. 
 
Why now? What desperate thing has happened that means the narrator is compelled to speak today. Now. Immediately. That not telling the story now would be wrong, perhaps tragic. 
 
Why is now the best time to tell the story? Knowing this will help you know where your story begins.
 
If you’re starting a new novel, ask yourself:
 
Who is telling this story?
Why does the storyteller need to tell this story NOW?
 
These questions will lead to more questions, which will lead to answers, which will lead to you typing THE END with a flourish.

Story is Dreaming With Eyes Open

Have you ever awoken dream-tossed; rattled by the visceral content of your mind left to roam wide and free in the night?

Mornings like that used to frighten me until I realized human beings ought to be startled by how far out the fences of freedom are set. They are a long way out, so far in fact, it takes more than a lifetime to reach them. Understanding that settled some things for me; cut some fetters from my wrists. Waking dream-tossed, amazed or horrified by the stark presentation of my deepest humanity, is, I now see, the entire purpose of story.

When I wake from a naked encounter with my dreams, I have actually woken from a hidden part of my own story: The bits I can't manage to focus on while awake will mosaic together the missing pieces of me as I dream. When I wake, I have lived through chaos and upheaval without leaving the comfort and safety of my bed.

Then, books.

Story stands us up in the eye of alteration and disruption without overturning our waking lives but managing, mentally and emotionally at least, rearrange the furniture.

Life after encountering great story (be it one we read or one we write) cannot remain identical to what it had been before. The shock of story stains us bright colours, throws open the window and transforms us into prisms that toss stories onto the walls almost against our will.

The more books, the more colours.

Repeated, intentional encounters with story have the accumulative effect of growing us as people, but not to the end we might have thought. I once believed story could help me find completeness, fullness as a human being.

Now I wonder if there is such a thing as completeness, capacity of fullness, an end point to be reached while there is still dirt beneath our feet, a story trail to follow, and another night of dreaming ahead.

Transformation and Redemption in Story

Back in the day, I took an English course at the University of Alberta. The professor was young, passionate about literature, and a wholly likeable guy. He was also passionate about preaching the dictums of postmodernism. He told us that postmodernism is the way of the future.
I wasn’t convinced.
One day he raised a finger to the ceiling and declared that most popular of postmodern edicts: “There is no ultimate truth!”
I cleared the earwax out of my ear and said, “Come again?”
He passionately re-exclaimed, “There is no ultimate truth!”
I liked the guy so I refrained from rolling my eyes. “Except,” I said. “That by proclaiming that there is no ultimate truth, you are in fact proclaiming an ultimate truth.”
He reddened.
I said, “Don’t you really mean to say that there is no ultimate truth except this one, that there is no ultimate truth?”
He stuttered.
“Except,” I went on, “If you believed that, then you would be soundly in the camp of the religious who would declare that they too hold to one ultimate truth. And in doing so, does that not unmask the whole thing as simply looking for another way to redeem ourselves?”
His surprising answer was that he began to cry.
In that moment I understood two things: 1) I was so going to fail this course, and 2) I had grown weary of the cultural meat grinder of postmodern deconstructionism.

On Monday, Katy pointed us to a video called The Arc of Storytelling by Bobette Buster. The whole video is interesting, but I’m focusing on the content from around the nine-minute mark to the end, which is where she talks about story as the vehicle by which we understand by “seeing” that transformation is possible, and redemption is attainable.

Every one of us has come through that meat grinder of postmodern thought. We’ve focused our questions and attention on deconstructing the notions of what it means to be human, and of pretty much everything we see, touch, think, hope for, and believe. But what I have noticed is that entire generations of people are weary, frightened, and hopeless. And these deconstructed people are looking for stories that show them they are more than the sum of their parts.

Transformation and redemption

Bobette Buster focused on transformation as the key story element that captures audience (reader) imagination and elevates that story to the position of “success” or “worth keeping”. I like how she phrases this by pointing out the transformation brings the character fully alive. It’s more than proving we are capable of change, it’s the hope that we can (will) become people who meet life head on with gusto, verve, purpose, and passion. Yes, purpose. Not mindlessly wandering from home to work to the TV set, to bed, and then start all over again the next day. But to know what it is we’re here to do, and then have the guts to go out and do it. Fully alive.

Buster ties the concept of transformation to redemption, which she means not in the theological sense per se, but in a more general sense. Still, redemption is more than the second chance; it’s a state of being in which transformed, fully alive live. The place where we understand that regardless of circumstances we are supported by someone or something greater than our self.

The generations who grew up inside of postmodern deconstructionism are still looking for the redemption story their guts tells them is out there. Even after been weened on the notion that such a thing doesn't exist. Stumbling, getting lost, losing hope, finding it again, they are searching.

For these people, ultimate truth is an answer they must be left to discover on their own (hence their distain for preachy stories with an agenda), but they are looking to story to remind them they are more than the sum of their parts, they have purpose, and a hopeful future. That they can be the heroes of their own lives.

Writers who are people of faith need to keep two things in mind: transformation is a journey that cannot and should not be summed up in a single prayer. It is a journey, and that fact must be respected in our story. Secondly, redemption isn’t what we think it is. It’s better than that. It is a state of being that allows us to experience our fully aliveness. People don’t want to transform into churchgoers, they want to transform into wholly alive human beings with the courage to face difficult, even impossible odds, with courage, knowing there is “an inexorable force in the universe there to support you if you keep going, you will discover the faith, the courage to move on.”

Until we can approach the concepts of transformation and redemption sensitively, and understand the journey that they entail, rather than racing to the finish line, we will be stuck in the postmodern meat grinder, proclaiming that our ultimate truth is better than that guy’s ultimate truth.

To put it another way, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

Curiouser and Curiouser

My husband and I have reservations at a bed and breakfast in the near future. We have visited several different B and Bs in the past and we have found them much more enjoyable than staying in hotels (when we can afford it). Sigh. They can be pricey. People either love them or love their privacy too much to share a bathroom or the breakfast table with strangers. Some people won't even consider it. It's probably cultural.

Our favorite B and B is The Jabberwock Inn, based on Alice in Wonderland, with quotes from the story and bits of whimsy in unexpected places. A converted convent, it sits perched on a steep street directly up from Cannery Row in Monterey, California. You can see it here, if you'd like. It's been quite a few years since we've been there - way back before the economy took a nosedive.

What is it about invading the home of strangers and eating at their breakfast table that is so appealing? I think it brings out the voyeur in me. Of course, I don't invade their privacy or wander out of proper bounds. I simply wonder what it would be like to live there, to sit on the porch overlooking the bay every morning and smell the old-house scents and hear the wooden stairs creak and the clock ticking in the hall. To be awakened by barking sea lions and surf, with the fog lacing through the branches of a craggy cypress outside the window. It makes me want to crawl into someone's skin and write. I want to know the past inhabitants, their stories of happiness and loss, of sacrifice and devotion. To witness them marching through their days of monotony and tragedy and miracles. Curiouser and curiouser.

I think it's a sad fact that if you want to sell your house you are advised to 'stage' your home by putting away any and all personal items. Prospective buyers need to imagine their own possessions in your living space and not be distracted (or put off) by yours. I understand the concept, and I know it works. But haven't you walked through an open house and caught glimpses of family life, despite their best efforts? You can't hide the stories. There might be a little handprint pressed in the cement patio or a giant bag of 'large breed' dogfood in the garage. The scent of Old Spice in the bathroom or Youth Dew in the master bedroom. Perhaps one side of the closet is empty. Maybe the upholstered chair shows claw marks or an outline of a child's drawing has bled through the paint on the bedroom door. Are they selling the house to move closer to relatives or have they lost their home to foreclosure? Are they expecting a new addition to the family and need more room, and would that be a baby or an elderly grandparent? Very different stories with different endings.

If you look around your home, even without any personal items displayed, what would it say about you? Consider the general appearance. Are you a fastidious neat-nick or do you have different priorities? Possibly you're dealing with poor health in yourself or a family member and it's just too low on your list to worry about. It would be easy to tell the difference with a little bit more sleuthing. Is the garage full of ceramics waiting to be fired or do you have a spare room filled with scrapbooking materials that keeps you preoccupied? Are there copious medical supplies beneath your bathroom sink and the scent of Betadine in the air?

Maybe your laptop is open to a project you are responsible to complete and had to bring home from work. Are the books on your shelves classics or romances? The movies on your shelves comedies or adventures? The car in your driveway plugged in or up on blocks?

If you staged your home for an open house, what is it about your life that would unwittingly tell a story?

The Cruciformity of Storytelling- A Novel Matters Video

Video text:

Preachy. An explication the storyteller strives to avoid. But how to circumvent “preachiness” while simultaneously weaving a strong moral argument into the fabric of the story?

Katy wrote an article posted on our sister blog, She Reads entitled Eyes to See. In it she points to the storytellers need to consider broad and deep the life teaming around us in order to become arrested by things previously unknown or misunderstood. This, I think is an excellent first step: the action of willfully putting aside our own way of understanding the world in order to truly see the world as others do. Only when the storyteller confesses her blind ignorance can she begin to see the heart of the story she is trying to tell.

Out of this step come neat things begin to pour out of imagination. The storyteller finds a new hero. A broken one. Oh, not the pretty blonde with a winning smile and a broken heart. Not her. Rather, the storyteller whose eyes are open finds the outcast. The ignored. The powerless. The reviled. And in these dark places sees startling beauty. Not the need for redemption, instead she sees the tendrils of glory already present. The places where redemption has already broken in and found a miniscule toehold. Inside this dark-bright crawl space, the storyteller sees the hard nugget of true story.

Pouring from this step, comes the next, where the storyteller abandons her message in order to explore the message God has already written into the life of the beloved outcast. The story is no longer what the writer thinks it must be, but is transformed into the story that is the one the teller has no power over. The story that will not bend to an outside agenda—r egardless of how benevolent that agenda seems.

From here, the story populates with characters who swirl around the beloved outcast. Each of these characters, regardless of their role in the story’s structure, live out (model) a different aspect of the beloved outcast’s story. Together they fill out the complexities of their dark redemption-in-progress. They link together in surprising ways in order to demonstrate all the moral choices available. The storyteller does not pluck out those who embrace darkness, rather she seeks to understand the choice in order to bring its fullness to the page.

And, after this tapestry of character and story are in place and the story emerges, the teller sees herself staring back from the pages. She sees the plumbed depth of her own humanity, need, weakness, and desire. And having seen this, understands the story she will tell is one that makes room for everyone to find themselves. It is a story of inclusiveness and humanity. It is an act of love.

The Good Friday Blind Spot

"Could not a book with just a masterful sliver of God in it carry the fullness of His message to the mind [. . .]?" Latayne asked on Wednesday.

My biggest mistakes as a writer have happened in the moments after I decided

I knew the whole story. When I thought I understood where the story must go and why. In those moments I relaxed into cliched phrases, pat answers, short cuts, and the easy way out. When I believed I knew what the story was "about", it was as if I had set a pot on the stove and simmered the contents to reduction. And in the dense mix there was no longer room for characters to speak and act their own truth. There was only slavish devotion to the singular point of my positive message. My desire to impart truth strangled the art of story, drained the mystery out of faith, and delivered a stillborn idea.

I'm learning to approach my writing with fear and trembling. I am a writer with faith, but I do not know the fullness of His mystery. Jesus came to earth, but I have no idea what it is like for God to slip into skin which sweats and burns and callouses. He was betrayed, but what is it to look into the eyes of the man who will sell you yet love him so intensely you will die for him? Jesus sweated blood in Gethsemane, but what is it like to teeter on the edge of spiritual and physical no-man's-land, to forge with your life a trail no one has walked before?

I'm learning to stop fooling myself into believing the life of faith is easily explained. That is can be summed up with a happy ending. That victory looks anything like we think it must.

I'm learning that the moment I believe I know the whole story - novel, or faith - is the moment I need to repent, and go a different way. The way where victory is not easily recognized, where success looks like losing your life, and the happy ending is no longer the point. I must abandon my pot of reductionist ideas, and embrace the vast wilderness of a love that costs us everything.

Let us get so lost as writers, as people, that we are willing to be led through the wilderness.

We at Novel Matters wish you a blessed Easter.