Premature Articulation

Many authors have said that the question they're asked most often, and also the silliest, is "Where do you get your ideas?" Some have pithy answers that make me laugh, and others not so much. It is an interesting question, though: does a successful author have dozens or hundreds of ideas, can they summon one up at will, or what?

One of my favorite writers is Dick Francis, writer of not quite forty mysteries. While he writes with mostly unique characters, his protagonists are often so similar in character and moral strengths that they could almost be the same person in a different line of work. There are enough differences in his plots and stories, though, to mark each book as its own, and apart from a bit of uneasiness in the last few before his retirement, they're uniformly wonderful.

Two things that stand out for me when I read him is, first of all, how easy to read he is. This is not an insult and does not derrogate his work in any way. I think it rather helps explain part of his appeal, the sheer fun of reading his stories. Henry James can also be engaging but he's not, as one may put it critically, although not too critically since it may imply there are certain barriers, not unlike reading this passage which is meant, although perhaps without much skill, to illustrate a more difficult construct of text than that of Mr. Francis. In other words, it's not a lot of work to read Dick Francis but it is a lot of fun.

The second thing that stands out to me is that after I finish one of his novels, I often look back at what the book was really about. It usually strikes me that, as opposed to the "blockbuster" novel mentality, the stakes played for are not huge: Auric Goldfinger isn't trying to corner the global supply of gold, a rogue Russian submarine isn't about to launch an unauthorized nuke on South Beach, etc. It may be that an unbalanced and over zealous trainer has found a way to get away with cheating at the Grand National, or that a pilot is stranded on a Caribbean island during a hurricane with some people of questionable motives.

The tension and peril in the books is localized and of interest almost uniquely to the characters themselves. Since they exist only at the mercy of Mr. Francis' pen, the interest in these events can only be sustained if we have interest in these fictional people. And we do, very much, which is why the books work so well. If someone were to ask me what a Dick Francis book was about, I'd say it doesn't really matter so much as who it's about.

Which brings me to the point of this entry: I'm not Dick Francis.

My own natural style seems to be creating what to me are exciting plots. To do this well, though, you must have compelling characters. The fact that each is meaningless without the other puts the whole plot vs. characterization argument into the dustbin where it belongs (and yet it still gets talked about in every writing conference I attend), yet I believe that different people are more naturally adept at creating one or the other.

For reasons I've written about in earlier entries, I will not outline a novel any more than I will talk about it in detail until after it's written. If I did, all the energy would be sucked out of the project, it will feel like it's already been written, and all the joy and pain required to get through the actual writing will be hollowed out like a souvenir gourd from a Mexican market. There just ain't no heft.

I've also written before about how beginning writers can begin to write too soon, or begin putting words on paper without a clear knowledge of structure and pacing and the actual crafting of a book. But I've found there's another issue with premature articulation that I'll call lack of preparation as opposed to a novice lack of writing know-how.

Before I fell ill/injured/left to rot supine in my bedroom, I was working on a thriller novel with what I thought were some very compellng, drama laden elements and peopled by a cast of characters, especially a villain, that would allow me to hit the target I was aiming for. Didn't work out that way.

Forty six thousand words into it, I have nowhere to go. Events are in motion, people are in jeopardy, back stories are established and lurking in the background, suspense is rife in the air...

But I don't know what my main characters really want. Therefore I don't know why they're motivated to do what they're doing. I've taken it as far as I can and the next word I write will expose it for the mishmash it must inevitably be. Whoopsy.

Would an outline have prevented this? I can only say: bite me. WIlliam Faulkner didn't outline. He said that he sets his characters off down the road and follows up behind them, watching what they do. Sounds good, if, unlike me, you really know your characters.

To rectify this I'm developing a new methodology, one of preparation, that I will use before I begin another novel. I would like to use this system as a stepping point to rewriting that existing large portion of a book into something viable as well as another book I have in my mind, one that's very different. Essentially it's a list of questions I've come up with, things that I have to know before I can begin to write, about not only the main characters but also about the plot itself, including what Harry Whittington called the "plot key." This is the actual key that unlocks the story to the reader.

So while I feel real good about this approach and believe wholeheartedly that this kind of preparation would allow me to write without a major roadblock (minor ones are okay, they're part of the great fun of writing), I still have to come up with the actual answers to the questions. I'm finding that this is a whole new ballgame, one that I think I will have to research.

Is it a brainstorming problem? Targeting yourself for a divine spark? Channeling Dickens? I'm not sure. All I really know is that I don't want to give up on my forty six thousand thriller. It has become clear that instituting this new, more structured methodology will require practice, perhaps some new skills, and a lot of work.

And that's okay. Like Harlan Ellison once said, "It shouldn't BE easier! Art is not supposed to be "easier." Art is supposed to be harder. Commerce should be easy. Friendships should be easy. Good marriages should be easy. Driving a car should be easy. Getting laid should be easy. Art should be DIFFICULT."

Crap, he's right.