I've been re-reading Hooked by Les Edgerton. I've posted about it before, but I just LOVE the section about story-worthy problems - it's wonderful.
"Good and worthy story problems derive from the small and the particular and the individual. Not the grandiose. Don't begin a story with the intent of writing about a grand topic, such as freedom for instance."Yes! This reminds me of Ralph Fletcher's saying, "The bigger the topic, the smaller you write." We can't write a story well if we're trying to focus on ALL of something. We need to narrow the topic until we can make it personal, emotional, powerful. Les Edgerton provides a fabulous example:
...some years ago we had civil strife in this country over states' rights versus federalism and slavery, among other things. We called it the Civil War. ...there were a great many essays and speeches written on both sides about the conflict - even without chat rooms - and most of those are now forgotten except to academics specializing in such knowledge.Wow. For me, this example was like a punch in the gut - but in a good way. The first time I read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I was crying at my desk, in front of my students, by the end of chapter three. It's powerful stuff. And Edgerton's right - it's because of her focus on specific people and their lives that we react as strongly as we do. No one has ever made me care about characters more than she did. That book hurt me, which is exactly what she wanted it to do.
What lots more people do remember about this chapter in our history, however, is a little book titled Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by a lady named Harriet Beecher Stowe. This book had a powerful effect on the nation, both the North and the South. Why? Because she focused on one particular, the life of Uncle Tom and the effect of slavery upon him.
By narrowing our story's problem and limiting its focus, we make it more emotionally powerful. Edgerton says it better than I can: "Always get your story down to the level of individuals. We can see individuals. We can't see The Forces of Capitalism vs. The Forces of Communism."
What piece of writing advice/wisdom do you most appreciate?
I love this idea. It might even help me take this mess of a first draft and hone in on how to revise it. Because I might have a great idea for a premise and world-building, but I still don't know my MC well enough to tell HER story within this premise and world. (That's been the problem with the darn thing the whole time.)
ReplyDeleteYep! I hear you there . . .
DeleteMy appreciation of writing advice depends on my mood. Today it's "Finish your novel, because you learn that way more than any other." (James Scott Bell in The Art of War for Writers.)
ReplyDeleteI definitely need to follow that advice! :)
DeleteGood stuff. Thanks! (And Uncle Tom's Cabin hit me like a truck, in all the right ways, when I read it in high school.)
ReplyDeleteIt's STILL one of my favorites, and I know it's because it made me feel deeply on so many levels.
DeleteYes! The point about focus is an excellent one.
ReplyDeleteLearn to write *this* book has been huge for me. Every book brings new challenges, and I never have the same approach
ReplyDeleteThis used to stress me out, like I wasn't doing it right somehow. Now I let the book show the way. Liberating.
Wow, that is FANTASTIC writing advice. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHere's my latest favorite: "Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly."
ReplyDelete– Joshua Wolf Shenk
Great example. I have Hooked on the shelf. Might be time to pull it down for another read :)
ReplyDeleteGood advice here and in the comments.
ReplyDeleteTwo of my favorites from Ann Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD:
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”
And also pretty much every line of Stephen King's ON WRITING. But these two in particular:
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”