Elements of Style

Recently I picked up William Strunk's Elements of Style. I had not looked at it in years, and I was struck by its relevance. Admidst the verbal anarchy of email and the blogosphere, this book provides an oasis of clarity. In 71 pages, Strunk dismisses the pompous, the passive and the indefinite.

On page 14 "There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground" becomes "Dead leaves covered the ground." On Page 15, "A period of unfavorable weather set in," becomes "It rained every day for a week." And on page 35, "In many cases, the rooms were poorly ventilated, " becomes "Many of the rooms were poorly ventilated."

Mr. Strunk, a friend and teacher of E.B. White, wrote, "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecesary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

All writers should read and reread this little book.

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Who's Talking Now?

I recently saw the remake of "True Grit." It's a stunning movie, (if you can ignore the gore and rattlers.) The Cohen Brothers have outdone themselves with costumes, scenery and cinematography. They could well win some Oscars but for one thing, I think. The antiquated speech was often difficult to understand.

I haven't read the book or seen the original film, and I intend to do both. Then I'll know whether the speech "impediment" was due to poor direction or poor enunciation.

The human ear adjusts easily to the spoken word, even if the language is archaic. It takes only minutes into a Shakespeare play to catch the rhythm and puzzle out the metaphors.

Which leads me to the speech of my characters. In my present manuscript, I don't "hear" my characters the way I want to. I want to hear the Virginian drawl without using ellipses. I want my reader to be able to distinguish the characters speaking without slogging through tag lines, at least, a lot of them. It is through their speech patterns that characters become three-dimensional and lock themselves in the reader's mind.

Today's writer has fewer tools available. Backstory has been declared burdensome and description a drag on the pacing. Narration is a "no no." That leaves dialogue and swift action to push the plot along.

Who's talking now? The reader wants to know...without trying (or ellipses.)

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Get to the Point, Fast!

In today's story telling, we don't have the luxury of the long, spun out tale. In movies and TV novellas, the action has to splatter onto the screen in the first five minutes. Daddy's left the family, or murderer is lurking close by, or lover is already lurching toward someone else. All right up front. It's the same in books; no more delicious descriptions of scenery, no languorous chapters detailing the daily lives of the characters before trouble bubbles up. So I have to get with the program, like it or not.

But something can be learned from earlier authors. I am presently reading Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle" (1948) and am studying how she introduces backstory. She uses the device of a teenager's journal. An early entry describes how they came to live in the castle. In "Bridge to Terabithia," Katherine Paterson inserts salient background facts throughout the first chapter, where the plot is prompted by a new family's move into the neighborhood.

Backstory is problematic in my novel now under revision. As the book is heavy on family history, I need to insert more of it to explain the tension between the main character and the supporting characters. Why is the main character so frustrated with the supporting characters? Why does she react the way she does? I've experimented with changing the voice, but that's not going to solve the problem of motivation.

One solution might be to have the first chapter take place at an earlier time, maybe five years before the plot actually begins. In this chapter I think I will introduce the two characters who ultimately give my main character the most grief, but who will be, in fact, part of the solution to her problem, which, I know, I know, she must really solve herself.

And I know, I know, I've got to stop planning it and get to the point of writing it down!

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Writers Needed

A recent trip to Israel and Jordan made me consider why the three great monotheistic religions flourished and spread from that region. For me, the best reason was the fact that these religions were nurtured first by the spoken word and then by the written word. Increasingly, their followers set down on paper the theological narratives, Old and New Testaments, and later, the Koran, followed by written interpretations of these narratives. Following them came the historians. My favorite on this trip was Flavius Josephus and his 1st century AD account of the siege of Masada, and Egeria, a 3rd century nun who kept a travel diary of her visit to the Holy Land, where she describes a visit to the house in Capernaum, thought to be that of St. Peter.

Now, as well as then, writers remain mankind's historical conscience, whether they are creating fiction or recording facts. The highlight of my trip was when I met Sister Gemma Del Duca, a nun who is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education in Jerusalem. When I told her about Meg Wiviott's picture book on Kristallnacht (listed on this blog) she practically leaped into the air. "There's not enough being written for children about the Holocaust," she said. "We need more. Much more."

Writers, whatever your topic, keep on writing! The world needs to hear from you.

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The Care and Feeding of Characters

Coincidently, yesterday I came across two articles about what I will term "the care and feeding of characters." One was in the local newspapers: an article on New Jersey author, Wendy Mass, who has published several middle grade books. I've read one, "Every Soul a Star." In this book she used a chapter for each point of view; five characters in all, I believe, told the story. In the article she presented some pointed questions about character building: "What about your main character's best friend?" What's your character's favorite TV show?"

This gave me pause. I'm setting out to revise a middle grade book I just finished. How well do I know my characters? Have I really focused on what food they like? How they feel when they get up in the morning? How they feel about their siblings? Their Parents? Ummm...maybe the answers to these questions would help me sharpen some interaction and enliven my description.

A second article appeared in the Arts section of The New York Times: "Next Big Thing in English: Knowing They Know That You Know." It made me consider what makes a reader care passionately about the characters in a novel. Character A detests everything about Character B, and the reader agrees with Character A, until something happens to make the reader see that Character B is everything Character A has dreamed of, only Character A can't see it. But the reader is saying, Come on, A, it's so obvious..."

This doesn't just happen. A writer can only achieve this kind of reader interest if the characters have been well defined, allowing for the sudden change in the reader's perception of Character B.

Ahh...I've got my work cut out for me.

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Changing the Way We Think

Recently I attended a conference on South Asia, which sought to illuminate some of the very difficult problems in this area. Cynthia Schneider, a Georgetown professor, said, "Stories, not policy papers, change the way people think." In her opinion, the United States could make an impact by supporting cultural development in this part of the world. She said the telling and retelling of stories is vital to the human condition, and that while many people in these countries cannot read, they all have access to television or media delivered via cell phones. And they are all hungry for a good story.

If this is the case, the writer in any country has a very special task in society and in history, whether he or she is published or not. As writers, I feel we have an obligation to take note and record the narratives of relatives and friends. People's lives matter. If from these records we ultimately produce a book that is published, well, wonderful. But the recording of the narrative is what is important.

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Details, Details, Details!

In writing for childen we are often advised to keep our eye on the action, the plot engine, and the goal of the protagonist. Pause for description or too much information, we are told, and the reader (or worse yet, the agent or editor) just may close the book. Forever.

But a phrase in Diane Schoemperlen's's Our Lady of the Lost and Found caught my eye yesterday: "I have put my faith in the transformative power of the telling detail, however small and apparently insignificant."

That set me to thinking about why I read, and yes, why I read as a child. I loved (and still do) the descriptive passages that transported me to another time and place. In my reading today, I stopped to savor the descriptive details I that encountered:

Verlyn Klinkenborg, in today's Times essay, Snowing Forward, calls the color of the winter sky "diluted turquoise." Dicken's description of the London cold in A Christmas Carol as "piercing, searching, biting," makes the reader rub his fingers together just for warmth. In The Long Winter, Wilder tells us "the blizzard was scouring against the walls and the winds squealed and moaned in the stovepipe." With these words she places the reader smack in the middle of the prairie storm.

So in my revisions this coming year, I will be adding more detail, desperately trying, of course, to avoid making the plot engine conk out. As Schoemperlen says, "the most ordinary object becomes extraordinary in the process of observing it and putting it into words."

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Scratch, Scratch

At present my thoughts on writing are not positive. For the past two weeks I have been wondering why I am doing this at all. Two novels completed and circulated; none accepted. Two or three others in progress. I am a competent writer, but I think in today's market, writing that is catchy and sarcastic, with an enormous plot engine bursting with action is what is needed. I can't do this.

My characters are standing in the wings waiting to be called on stage again. But why should I let the curtain rise if all they are going to hear are boos and hoots from the audience?

I look at the bookshelf where one of my current manuscripts sits, each chapter in a separate colored folder. If I chucked the pile it it would give me more space...for books, someone else's books, of course. Is that what I want?

And then I hear a mouse scratching in the far wall. We live in the woods and a mouse or two always slips in for the winter. Should I set a trap tonight and catch it, ending its story too, or do I ignore it, at least for now?

Scratch, scratch. That is what a writer's characters do. They join us on walks, meet us coming around the corner, or they are lying in the bed when we go to make it. They won't leave. Ridding the house of mice is easier.

So, I have to live with them, the characters, not the mice. But can I continue to commit them to paper?

I'll think about it.

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Views on Point of View

I have just finished Carl Hiaasen's SCAT. The book is compelling, and quite a page turner. It's a good "read" for a middle grader, and even for a reader few decades older.

Why was SCAT compelling? Well, I really cared about the main protagonist. I didn't agree with all his thought processes, but he came across as sincere and honest, and he had a big problem to solve, one that got more complex at the plot developed. The supporting characters were well drawn, but did not diminish the main character.

And what about the "villains?" Hiaassen had sections devoted to just them and their nefarious machinations. Technically, a children's writer sticks with just the protagonist's point of view. Hiaasen breaks this rule, successfully, I think.

So, I'm asking myself, and anyone who's reading this, which technique is more attractive to the young reader, strict single point of view, or a chance to "get behind the scenes," going where the protagonist cannot go?

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A Detour in the Journey

After six weeks with three grandchildren, ages 10 to 16, my husband and I left on a long-planned trip. I had no preconceived notions about the journey. I was just happy to be going where I didn't have to cook for three weeks!

The subject and location of the journey were complicated, but as it turned out, we were lucky to have a guide who brought tremendous perspective to what we saw. Three days into the trip, the writer in me was screaming "article." The trip focussed on a subject that is little discussed and yet very important in today's world. When we returned, the article was half written in my head. Now I'm doing the research to support my ideas.

However, I'm already halfway through my current novel. Letting the novel's manuscript sit will certainly cause me to lose momentum. Perhaps the non-fiction writing will help the fiction writing. We'll see.

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Summer School

This summer I've had three grandchildren ages ten to sixteen in the house, along with their summer reading lists. I was determined to read all those books with them, and did. The experience will shape my writing from now on.

With the sixteen-year-old I read All Quiet on the Western Front and The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti. He's a challenged reader and struggled with the often arcane figurative language. When I got him to slow down and explained to him (image by image) how the authors were using the imagery he understood. His face lit up and he said, "Oh, I get it."

I'll now work harder to write in a way that will capture the attention of a struggling reader.

The thirteen-year-old put aside Twilight and breezed through To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace and The House on Mango Street. In the meantime she picked up The Prince, read most of it and said, "This has some good stuff in it." Her school requires her to keep a detailed journal as she reads each book, making note of passages that she feels are important to the story and recording her interpretation.

I now understand the necessity to keep the reader engaged, moving the action along but pausing to emphasize the theme at appropriate points in the novel. More importantly, I will no longer be afraid to use words that might challenge a young reader. How else will they increase their vocabulary?

The ten-year-old had an appetite for just about anything, including Twilight. Encouraging her to read less sophisticated (and scary) books that she could enjoy was the challenge here. If You're Reading This, It's Too Late was her favorite, but she found the 1944 Melendy series equally interesting.

Mystery is important to this age group; how does a writer keep a secret until the end, all the while planting clues that won't give it away?

Thanks to this summer vacation, I'll return to my writing with renewed interest and the determination to create, with a novel, the opportunity for a young mind to travel to a different time and place.

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Can I Take You Back?

To me one of the hardest things to do in creating historical fiction is to get the reader to identify with the problems of the characters at that time in history. In the last fifteen years, the ability to communicate instantly has increased beyond the wildest dreams of Edison and Bell, or anyone else, for that matter. Our modern environment, air pollution not withstanding, is squeaky clean compared to earlier centuries.

Can today's middle-grader place herself in a time where there are no cell phones, text messaging, i-pods and other forms of electronic communication and entertainment? Can she imagine itchy woolen stockings, vermin-filled rush floors, and no refrigeration? What about the smell of manure, woodsmoke, fresh-mown hay?

And if my heroine's caught up to her ankles in pig muck while her father has gone off in their only conveyance, the horse and buggy, and she smells...oh no, it's not woodsmoke. The cabin is burning! Will my reader think I am just making this up? Will she sweat through the challenge the heroine faces and cheer her on to saving her home alone? Without dialing 911?

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To Season, Not to Smother

I'm reading Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Simon and Schuster, 2007. I'm working on the first draft of a historical novel and was interested in seeing how she handled her topic. She has done what many writers, including me, find difficult to do: She sprinkles the back story like she is seasoning a dish. She enhances the plot. She does not smother it.

The story is about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. It starts as one of the main characters, a young Italian girl, arrives in New York City via Ellis Island. Now, had I been writing a book on this topic, I would have been tempted to start in the miserable village in Italy, or at least have one good scene in Ellis Island...a marvelous description opportunity...but she mentions the Island perhaps three times...and no more. On she goes to the plot. She weaves into descriptive scenes both action and emotion. Characters are defined by their action and their speech. No looking in store windows or mirrors to adjust their hair. We are aware of their shabby clothes and their foreign language, but action is primary on every page.

It's been a good lesson in restraint.

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Who Is in Charge?

I started writing my current novel using some character sketches and short stories I had written several years ago. I've wanted to write this book for some time, but had no real idea as to how I was going to do it. The novel is based on my mother's childhood and I have at hand a lot of oral history. But where does reality end and fiction begin? My fellow writers advised me to go for straight fiction and not worry too much about historical accuracy, at least not in the first draft, and that is what I have done.

The interesting thing is that the characters I have created have taken over. As I started on the most recent chapter, I knew where the characters were and what had happened to them already, but I had absolutely no idea what would happen next. I knew where I wanted to be at the end of the novel, but no idea how I was going to get there. But as I started working on the chapter, the characters told me what they had to say and how they felt. I was not really "in charge."

Of course this is only the first draft and quite possibly I have too many characters. Maybe the last chapter will come first and the fifth chapter last. Maybe more incidents are needed, and maybe some have to go. But in the revisions to come, I'm going to do the same thing: listen very carefully to my characters. They know their story better than I do.

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The Pleasure of Words

"'I am half sick of shadows,' said the Lady of Shalott" has been going through my mind ever since I had a cataract removed. I was sick of shadows; cataracts prevent clear vision in situations of alternating light and shade. But the phrase from Tennyson's poem made me think of words...alliteration, and the use of letter combinations that give such pleasure to the eye, the mouth, the brain.

I looked up a few more alliterative phrases of earlier authors: Poe's sentence in "The Cask of the Amontillado":"I again paused, and, holding the flambeaux over the masonwork, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within." And I bet you haven't seen this identified in a while: "Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away."... the last lines of Longfellow's "The Day is Done."

Careful and thoughtful choice of words in children's literature is key to timelessness. Consider the opening line of Henry's "Misty of Chincoteague," "A wild, ringing neigh shrilled up from the hold of the Spanish Galleon." Or O'Brien's first sentence, "Mrs. Frisby, the head of a family of field mice..." and my favorite opening sentence, "The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world," from Robinson's "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever."

As writers for children we are plot-oriented. Every word, action, character, must "move the plot along." That's probably true, but I sometimes think that in our haste to get tothe end, the BIG MOMENT, we fail to stop and consider words for their own merit, their sound and hidden meanings. So in revision, once we've hammered out the details of plot, character and setting, we need to add the "music;" words that will make our phrases memorable for the reader.

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Words, Words, Words

I spent a little time during the holiday intervening in word exchanges between two teenage grandchildren, each eager to verbally squash the other. They accomplished nothing but to irritate me; Each was impervious to the other's oral salvos.

"Hey," I said, "isn't this the season of 'comfort and joy,' 'merry gentlemen,' etc.?"

"Oh, Grandma!" was all I got from each, along with litanies of the other's negative aspects.

We got nowhere, so I sent them off to their computers.

Well, as a writer for children I'm supposed to be listening to what children say, using their colloquialisms, understanding their thought processes. My dear grandchildren gave me nothing to immitate. My dialogue must move the plot along. Each word counts, like a cog in a wheel. Without the word the plot fails.

I think what I have to do is examine the frustration behind children's arguments and capture that in dialogue that is both understandable, yet rich enough in word and phrase to convey the emotions driving the plot. It's a challenge, for sure, but it beats trying to reason with two cantankerous teenagers!

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Never Say Never

"Never, never never!" said my two and a half year old grandson when, at the Thanksgiving dinner table, his father suggested that flinging food might have to be treated with a time out. Well, time out it was, and the little boy returned to the table to eat a bit more in relative calm. But what struck me was his use of the word, "never." It is not the same as "no." To me "never" suggests possibility as well as the negation of that possibility. To me it is a very abstract concept for anyone under three.

Subsequently,for the past few days I have been considering language and all its wonderful nuances that we humans, thousands and thousands of years into the practice of it, are able to use. I have been thinking of the very poor use of language such as swearing and gutterspeak and of the exalted use of language heard in the soaring sentences of the prophet Isaiah, particularly at this time of year.

Writers are keepers of language, whether we publish or not. It is we who take words and craft them into lasting images. It is we who are responsible for recording the histories and hopes of mankind, whether it be in diaries, letters or manuscripts. This thought is what keeps me writing, and perhaps I will "never" give up.

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The Written Word

I just returned from a mini conference on religion, where the point was made that the world's great religions have succeeded because of the written word. In studying ancient cultures, one is struck by the exclusivity of early religions. Many were only for males, others only for people from a certain social class; little if anything from them survives in writing. This fact led me to consider how very precious is the written word, whatever the level of content, whether it is the work of a monk in a 8th C scriptorum, the diary of an Italian immigrant from Sicily, or the latest post on a right-wing political blog. As writers we are privileged to take the letters of the alphabet and put them together to create scenes, conversations, tragedy, comedy; to create a few sentences that someone, some day might remember.

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Character Narrative

During the past week we've been hearing about the "narratives" of political figures. This led me to think about the "narratives" of the characters about whom we write. Of course, the main character's narrative is easy. That's what our story is about. But I think we often neglect the narratives of other characters in the story. They appear, interact with the main character and disappear from the scene or chapter. Often we are told that there are too many of these secondary or minor characters. The reader has trouble remembering them. I think perhaps the problem is that we neglect the "narratives" of these secondary characters. As good writers, we must give them a "bio" as well, so that they are memorable, even if their presence serves only to move the story along.

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So Many Stories, So Few Words

In traveling across the country this summer, I was more aware than ever about the millions of stories of the people who settled this amazing land, from the sad stories of the little babies who never made it to their first year to the stories of those who lived to a ripe old toothless age still hauling water and fighting to protect whatever property they were able to scrape together. I want to get some of these stories down on paper but am often stymied by the challenge of making the material attractive to today's young readers. Again and again I go back and work on "action" verbs and active situations, cutting out descriptive passages in favor of what will "draw in" the reader. And yet...I personally love good descriptive writing.

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