I'm thrilled to announce Talking to the Dead has been chosen as a winter selection of She Reads! This wonderful book club is passionate about connecting readers with fiction they will love. It is an honor to have my novel chosen as one of three winter selections. You are invited to learn more about She Reads (info below is from their website), and, of course, you are invited to join the She Reads book club and get connected to great fiction, authors, and readers! It's about making the most of your reading experience! Here is more info:
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"Writing is solitary, obsessive, and prickly, and that makes literary friendships all the sweeter. Here is a new series that celebrates affection and loyalty between solitudes."I recommend Garrison's site to you if you are, like me, the type who enjoys a peak behind the drapes.
Today, I'm posting the second workshop I taught at a recent writer's conference. This one on the writer's favorite friend - words. Here, we revisit our old buddies and learn to sharpen our writing without dulling our sensibilities. Enjoy!
In our first fiction workshop we talked about concepts involved in crafting a novel – deep POV and subtext – related to showing vs. telling.
One of the best ways to grab the attention of an agent or editor is to be interesting. That may seem obvious, but you might be surprised how many hopeful novelists forget this rule. Today, I’m going to take you beyond grammatical sentences, beyond correct phrasing, beyond simple words, into the realm of “attention grabbing interesting” through the use of word choice.
I said this morning that all writing concepts are really large ideas crammed full of the concepts that comprise them – we talked about bubbles inside of bubbles. This holds true with word choice. Two bubbles that are, if not one inside the other, are at least stuck together and over lapping are word choice and voice.
I’m not doing a workshop on voice today – but it’s important to understand word choice in fiction as being germane to your voice as a fiction writer and to your characters. The words you choose to tell you story need to be words that fit with the voice of the characters, the era, the setting, and above all, with your voice.
But let’s not get all in a ball about that today. I throw it out there as a kind of beacon – as you grow as a writer, find your voice and practice fearless word choice, you’ll develop into the kind of writer editors and agents say yes to.
Two pieces of advice about words: Continually add to your vocabulary. Bring words into your stable often. Not just words you know the definitions of and can pronounce correctly if need be, but words that expand your everyday language. Words you reach for when writing need to be words you reach for when speaking. Improving your vocabulary will improve your writing.
Trust your muse. An industry has been built around teaching people how to write. This has been helpful to many, but more often it has been confusing. The new writer is left quivering in the corner uncertain which error he has committee (but he is certain he has committed an error) that means certain death of his beloved story. We’re a bit tied up in knots when it comes to the rules of writing. In learning the rules we’ve become bound by them. My strong advice is to learn the rules so that you and your muse can successfully bend them, and, at times, even break them. There is a huge difference between a writer unintentionally breaking a rule and doing so with purpose. And the reader always knows the difference.
If that advice makes your insides do the happy dance, may I suggest a writing book that will really get your belly in a polka. Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s guide to punchier, more engaging language & style by Arthur Plotnik. It's a wonderful book that will help you get your writer's funk on.
There are nearly endless choices of focus for a workshop on word choice, but I’m focusing on my top three:
Verbs and adverbs
Word crutches
My second favorite Trope
The goal of this workshop is to free your mind, and hopefully your creative muse, enough to take some writerly risks when it comes to word choice. I’m hoping to take the lid off the jar – allowing us to have some creative fun.
Verbs and adverbs – We’ve heard all sorts of rules about verbs and adverbs in our writing journey. What are some of them?
Passive verbs
Adverbs are evil
Two iron clad rules; Verbs – make them strong. Adverbs –don’t use them.
The reasoning is sound – strong verbs convey greater meaning and do not require help from a descriptive adverb, and adverbs do little shore up weak verbs. They aren’t as helpful as we might like them to be.
First things first – let’s talk verbs. Two major issues with verbs are “passive verbs” and “weak verbs”. We’ll start with passive verbs.
Passive verbs: What are passive verbs? What are passive verbs? How can we identify them?
A trick to finding passive verbs in your work:
1. Take a highlighter to your work and underscore each use of the verb “to be”: am, are, is, was, were, will be, has been, have been, had been, etc.
2. When you find a “to be” verb in a sentence – look for the subject of the sentence. Often, weak verbs happen because the subject of the sentence is misplaced within the sentence, or is missing from the sentence. The subject of the sentence is the thing that performs the action. It is the person responsible for the verb.
An example of a sentence containing a misplaced subject: The child was bitten by the dog.
The passive verb “was bitten” is our red flag. Then we look for the subject of the sentence, which is, of course, the dog. The dog is the subject because the dog did the biting – not the child. The subject must appear before the verb. Placing the object in front of the verb renders weak verbs.
This seems simple, but it can get tricky fast. Let’s look at the sentence I just gave you, that I hope you jotted down – if you didn’t, jot it down now. “Placing the object in front of the verb renders weak verbs.” Where is the object of this sentence? The object is the word “object” because is the thing the verb is acting on.
Where is the subject?
The subject is missing. The subject has been omitted from the sentence. The correct sentence would read something like, “If you (the subject) place (the verb) the object (the object) in front of the verb (the indirect object), you (subject) render (verb) weak verbs (object).
So a second thing to look for when you’ve discovered a weak verb in your manuscript, is an AWOL subject.
Sometimes, when I am crafting a compound sentence I will write the simple sentence first, and then add in the complexities I want. This keeps me on the active verb straight and narrow.
I don’t intent to cut the ends off your creativity by insisting you format every sentence you write following every rule of grammar all the time. What I am suggesting is you master this rule of strong verbs, so that while you are crafting creative sentences you don’t risk losing your reader with passive verbs. Most of us have heard the saying, said tongue in cheek, “Mistakes were made”. The verb is passive, the subject is missing – but it’s funny precisely because it is a vague non-admission of guilt. You can see parents coming home after an evening at the opera, only to find the main floor trashed by their teenage son and his friends. The boy turns to his shocked parents and says, “Mistakes were made.”
It breaks the rules – but it does it on purpose and it works.
Okay, that was a glance at passive verbs. Now we’ll look briefly at weak verbs – don’t panic – remember, I’m posting this workshop on my blog later. You’ll be able to read through it at your leisure. For now, we are getting our hands dirty, working with these concepts, which will help you when you revisit the workshop later. Okay! Weak verbs.
We can weed passive verbs out of our manuscripts and still be left with weak verbs. What makes a verb “weak”? I’ve done a fair amount of reading about weak verbs – and while there are technical answers rooted in grammar, for the writer, the answer can be distilled to this: weak verbs are general in nature, strong verbs are specific in nature.
The nurse hurried down the hall.
“hurried” is vague. It doesn’t help us picture the nurse as she moves down the hall. It isn’t technically incorrect – it isn’t “wrong” to say she hurried, but there are sharper verbs we could use. Verbs more specific to the manner in which the nurse hurried down the hall.
If I said “The nurse smashed down the hall” – it paints a brighter picture, both of the action and of the nurse. I’m picturing a wide set woman in whites, elephanting her way toward the double doors at the end of the hall. It adds specificity of action and character.
When I post this workshop on my blog – I’ll include exercises for you to try. For the sake of time, we need to press on to the next verb related category:
Adverbs are words that describe the verb, they are easy to spot because they most often sport an –ly ending.
We’re told to expunge our work of –ly words. This is solid advice. For those of you who took this mornings fiction workshop, use of adverbs often translates into a form of “telling” rather than showing. In general, the overuse of adverbs is frowned upon in the industry.
I emphatically suggest you review your work and omit almost all –ly words from your manuscript. Strong verbs – which we’ve just talked about – do not require a descriptive – in fact, paring an adverb and strong verb weakens the verb. Editors often refer to this as “padding a sentence”.
Let’s revisit our nurse sentence with a strong verb:
The nurse lumbered down the hall.
The verb lumbered is strong – it’s visual, packed with meaning.
If I added an adverb: The nurse lumbered heavily down the hall – how important is the contribution of the adverb to the meaning of lumbered?
It isn’t. Lumbered carries within it the meaning “heavy” – the reader doesn’t need it underlined.
When you omit adverbs from your manuscript, you’ll often need to replace your verb with a strong verb – a verb that is specific in it’s meaning.
Remember: Strong verb = strong meaning.
However! While gunning for adverbs can be a writer’s sport, the rule against using them can feel confining. Some of us may feel it dampens our muse. Here is a trick taken from Art Plotnik’s Spunk & Bite which helps us make peace with our –ly friends.
“Take a forceful adjective, add –ly to make it an adverb, combine it with the target word, and voila!
The example in the book is this: the strong adjective: withering. Add an –ly. Combine it with a target word, say cute – and you’ve created a “burst of wry wit, a mini-statement. Witheringly cute.
Practice by choosing one or two of these strong adjectives and pairing it/them with a target word of your choice:
Lavish
obnoxious
scrawny
wounding
thundering
My examples: “Lavishly exclusive” “Obnoxiously kind” “Scrawnily intelligent” “Woundingly beautiful” “Thunderingly scant”
Omitting adverbs is a good rule, but don’t sacrifice your muse on the alter of correctness. Learn how to bend the rules to create memorable writing that works. Loosen up and have some fun sometimes. Adverbs, used sparingly and with expertise can add oomph and interest to your work.
Leaving the world of verbs – let’s talk about another bugaboo that plagues the pages of every writer’s novel:
Word crutches: Writers have words and phrases they use repeatedly – these are referred to as word crutches. In her article, Targeting Enemy Words, Sandra Miller defines crutch words as:
“words that you fall back on when you can't find a better one--or when you are hoping to dilute the force of what you are really saying. Crutch words are especially likely to come out when you write about a subject that you fear will upset your readers. Every writer has different crutch words they rely on.”
Some of my crutch words are “bit” as is, 'she felt a bit suicidal', and I have a few weak verbs that are word crutches for me: “took”- when I edit my day’s writing, it’s not unusual for me to find my characters tooking all over the place. They took steps toward things, then took more steps away, they took things away, took things to heart, took control, took a break – blah blah blah – too much tooking. “Went” is another crutch word I expunge regularly – “she went to the sink, stripped and went to the backyard.” Too much wenting to be interesting reading.
Everyone’s crutch words will be different. If you do the work of cleaning up your manuscript by cutting passive verbs, replacing weak verbs and executing 99% of adverbs – it will be much easier to spot your crutch words – you won’t be wading through thick jungles of wordiness.
To find your crutch words read your manuscript and highlight words that appear frequently, especially in the same paragraph. Make a list of words that you use often. This will serve as a reminder as you’re writing, not to fall back on old friends, but to reach for clarity of meaning by using the appropriate word for the circumstance.
Repeating words stand out to a reader. I’ve read novels I loved, but found word crutches that stood out. In one YA fantasy novel I read recently the word “thrummed” appeared too often for comfort. It’s a stand out word, not often used in modern speech, so it’s use stood out. In another book I read by a favorite author, I couldn’t help notice the word “black” used over and over. Granted, it may have stood out more to me because use of the word black is used less often in recent years and the book I was reading was dated, but the author used the word a few too many times – and it became a word crutch.
Also look for phrases or actions that repeat too often. If you are writing a tear-jerker, for example, you may find yourself with characters who are constantly tearing up, shedding tears, choking back tears, spilling tears, jabbing at tears with a tissue, wiping away tears – see how repetitive it becomes?
Writer’s need to reach around the words, phrases, and verbs that sit at the front of our imaginative shelf. We need to reach for fresh, interesting words and phrases that tell the story and make the reader sigh with joy.
Discovering your word crutches can be eye opening, but it must be done – and it must be done for each manuscript you write. Just because the words: dangerous, never, and alarmed were crutch words in your last novel about a fairy from the underworld on a murderous spree in modern Chicago, doesn’t mean they will be crutch words in your new novel about an expatriate Russian princess turned arms dealer in the Cold War era. They might be the same, but I guarantee you’ll find new ones with each story you tell.
Speaking of fresh and interesting phrases – we’ve arrived at our last category -
Tropes: A literary trope is a common pattern, theme, motif in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning.
Two popular tropes writers use are simile and metaphor – we’re going to touch on simile today. Originally, I’d thought I would teach on both simile and metaphor, but the as I prepared for this workshop, I realized I couldn’t do the metaphor justice in this format. It’s a workshop in and of itself – so I’ve settled on talking about my second favorite trope, the simile.
But first:
What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?
Similes make explicit comparisons – home feels like paradise
Metaphor implies the comparison. – The place God forgot
Similes are fun – second favorite or not, I love them and use them often in my writing. While writing we can reach for all sorts of comparisons and illustrations that sound savvy, funny, iconic, or what have you – but the question needs to be asked: does this simile play nice with the other concepts, characterizations, and themes in the book? Or does it stand out like a prom queen in army boots?
Obviously, I’ve just used a simile. What makes this simile work? What makes it apt?
But, It’s specific, we can picture it. We can see a lovely girl thumping around the dance floor in clunky boots.
The prom queen simile works also because it highlights the problematic ways trope use could stand out – awkward, even ugly. The simile is tactile, sensory, slightly wry.
I’ve read similes like, “His smile was like the wind over the sands of the Sahara.” The sentence continued, explaining the trope: “vast and impersonal”.
The simile falls flat – it doesn’t work.
Here’s a hint – if you need to explain your simile or metaphor, you need a new simile or metaphor. If your simile requires you to defend why you put the two ideas side by side, then to two ideas don’t belong side by side. Look for a better simile. Although, I could have almost forgiven this author if his explanation of the simile was because the man’s smile was “gritty”, or “eroded”. Almost. But not quite.
Three questions to ask yourself when crafting tropes is to ask yourself:
Does this bring clarity?
Does this fit with and respect the rest of the novel in some way?
Would the scene be better without out it?
This is the rub for every writer – to be original and interesting without crossing over to the dark side of tropes where a manuscripts becomes padded with pithy phrasing and zippy similes. Clever trope isn’t a substitute for great writing filled with motion, meaning, and story. But when it’s right, – such as this one, found in Martin Amis’ Yellow Dog, “Her head dropped by degrees, like the resilient jolts of a second-hand” – when it’s right like that is, then your work sings.
I bid you good writing.
I was in Edmonton last week, teaching fiction at a writer's conference. Because I am a meanie and don't provide my workshop participants with handouts (it helps us to focus on the material when we are forced to make notes, and it helps us to organize what we are learning), I promised I would post both the workshops I taught on this blog.
I hope all my readers will find something in these workshops that help them on their writing journey.
The first workshop I taught was on Showing VS. Telling in fiction writing. It introduces two components of the concept - POV and subtext. Enjoy!
Showing VS. Telling in Fiction Writing
Let’s begin at the beginning. What do we already know about Showing Vs. Telling in fiction writing?
*Fill in your understanding of the concept here: _____________________ *
Like all aspects of writing the concept of showing vs. telling has multiple layers. Showing vs. Telling is a concept we pull out of the context of the novel in order to examine it closely, but in doing so we find that it is not a simple disconnect. It is, in fact, made up of several components of writing. It isn’t a concept that can be talked about with accuracy apart from the concepts that comprise it.
So, if we look at the concept of showing vs. telling as a bubble, floating above our heads. We can grab hold of the bubble, and pull it towards us, examine it from different angels. But when we look inside of the bubble, we see it actually has several other bubbles inside. They work together to fill out the larger concept, the give the bubble shape and meaning – substance. Then, well see that this bubble called show vs. tell is part of an even larger bubble. Okay, let’s all sing Tiny Bubbles.
The purpose of this workshop is to look inside the bubble of Show vs. Tell, and discover some of the inner bubbles that give the concept it’s shape and meaning.
The most typical answer to the question, “What is showing vs. telling” is something along the lines of “telling is stating something happens, showing is describing what happens.” And while that definition is, in some ways, technically correct – it misses the point, and makes it easy for writers to miss the point as well. It isn’t enough to describe events in detail – there must be a purpose for both the details you are describing and the characters that are performing the actions.
**She hurried down the path toward the dark palace, the cloak draped over her arm. The birds over head sang their goodnight song. She shouldn't have stayed so long at her friend's house. She walked faster, picking the hem of her skirt up with her free hand. She pushed a low hanging branch out of the way as she hurried past. She reached an opening in the trees that lead to the valley that would take her to the doors of the palace. She stopped and draped the cloak over her shoulders and tied it at her throat. She checked inside the bag that was slung across her torso. Fire sticks, water, a small cloth, her Father's book of Hope and a forgotten apple.
She pulled the apple out of the bag and bit into it. She made quick work of the apple and threw the small core and stem into the forest behind her. She slapped at her dress, removing most of the dust from it's folds, then took the small cloth from her bag and wiped at the stains around the hem of her dress. She replaced the cloth and stepped into the grassy meadow. It was wet with evening dew. She picked up her skirts and rushed on toward the place gates. **
This is a great example of a writer employing the definition that “showing” is giving all sorts of details about what a character is doing. We hear some lengthy descriptions here – she is moving all over the house, doing housework – there is a hint here and there that there is some sort of reason she’s doing this. The scene mentions exposed nail heads – obviously pictures taken off the wall. Lots going on in the scene. And it talks of all sorts of movement – but for all the detail about what she’s doing, it’s still telling. It’s flat. A list of mundane activities being spelled out in succession. This is an example of why showing isn’t just description of what is happening. It mostly ends up as over explaining things the reader doesn’t need explained.
POV as part of showing:
The author has substituted Point of View (POV) with teasing the reader.
POV is a pillar of “showing” – it’s a brace for the concept, because POV not only introduces characters to the reader, it grounds the reader immediately, creating a safe and trustworthy place for the reader. It isn’t enough to be able to picture what a character is doing – we need to care about the character, relate to her, and feel an interest in finding out more. We need POV immediately. Not only do we want to see POV right away, we, the readers, want to see deep POV.
Let me talk briefly about deep POV - The publishing industry has been moving toward deep POV for the last few years – this is in contrast with the omniscient POV of the past. A couple of important points about deep POV – you might want to make a note of this – it isn’t about first person vs. third person or if you write in present tense or past tense. Deep POV is the presenting characters in a well rounded sense, utilizing character information from their mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual aspects. It’s a multi-dimensional presentation of character that begins the moment the novel opens and continues to develop until the end of the book.
Another point about deep POV – it isn’t referring to just the lead character. This is a bit confusing, because we talk about a book being told from a certain POV – the main character. But all that is, is naming the protagonist. What we are talking about today is the writing skill and tool of deep POV.
But all of your characters have deep POV and they all need to explored in your novel from start to finish. Even though you won’t tell your story through the voices of every character in your book – they still have POV. All of us, in this room, have a specific POV – and all of this plays an equal part in the event we are experiencing – all of us comprise the bigger picture of this workshop.
A great article on deep POV, written by the wonderful and talented Camy Tang is found here: http://storysensei.blogspot.com/2005/11/deep-point-of-view.html
Read it when you get home – it makes bags of sense and will help you both technically and artistically understand deep POV.
But, in the end, it leaves us flat – it doesn’t give us an insight into the character, only that she bought green beans sometime before this scene took place. It’s just telling us some information. The reader is being spoon fed information, rather than being allowed to explore the scene, the character and the meanings behind the actions.
The excerpt demonstrates the major problem with typical surface explanations of show vs. tell is it often translates to long, detailed text describing dull things without giving the reader the “why” of what she is doing. It doesn’t let us care about the character and therefore is flat, a dull list of household chores. Showing is about helping the reader understand, care about the scene, and draw us into it through our senses by the proper use of deep POV.
My body was somnolent, but my restive mind barked out orders to keep moving, stay awake, stay watchful. I paced on rubbery legs, longing for unconsciousness. My mind, luminously awake, sewed blindfolds of anger and forged a strong rope of despair. Bound and helpless, I spoke: “Kevin?” Only the ticking of a clock responded. I picked up a cushion from the sofa and hugged it like a lost love. “Kevin, are you there?” I waited for an eternity. I closed my eyes and concentrated on trying to hear his voice. I listened until my head hurt. The silence whistled to me. **
Can you see the difference between the two scenes when it comes to use of deep POV? What are some of the things you notice about this excerpt in relation to POV?
Write your stunning insights here: _________________________________________
The use of deep POV grounds the reader in the scene – we are no longer watching a character perform a series of tasks – although, there are still a series of tasks she performs – rather, we are “in” the scene with her, feeling the weight of sleep deprivation, of grief, of helplessness and false hope. All of this is “shown” instead of told, in part by use of deep POV, giving meaning and purpose to the actions the character performs – there is a purpose, clearly stated, for what she is doing. But at the same time builds emotional interest, and shows us something deeper is going on – in other words – it is showing.
There is one more excerpt I want to share with you – this one is to prove there are no excuses when it comes to using POV as part of showing. This is the opening paragraph from Latter-Day Cipher by Latayne C. Scott.
**There on the damp pine needles, Kirsten Young lay on her back, a serene Ophelia in her dusky pond of blood. The dark irises of her bloodshot eyes stared unseeing into the branches above her. The sun had burst through the clouds after the sudden downpour and now blazed above the canopy of conifers and aspens in Provo Canyon. Deep in its recesses, the light filtered down in vertical sheets of champagne dust that played across the body.**
Interestingly, as the scene continues, we find the real reason why we, the readers, are so firmly planted in this eerie place - we are viewing it from inside the POV of the killer. A wonderfully chilling bit of expert writing that moves us effortlessly into deeper and deeper POV.
Myth busters #2 – You should never use Telling.
There is a piece of “telling” in this scene, and it uses telling in exactly the right way. The author gives the name of the place we are standing, “Provo Canyon”. Latayne just tells us – just says it. But it is using telling correctly. It would have been mundane and dull if she had launched into a lengthy description of a canyon – this is a thriller, we don’t need lengthy scenery descriptions, we just need to know where we are. Secondly, the name of the canyon, “Provo” tells us what we need to know about the setting – we’re in Utah. This serves as foreshadowing, this is a novel involving Mormonism.
So that was our myth busting –
Moving to the next bubble – away from POV -
What is interesting about the excerpts from Talking to the Dead and Latter-Day Cipher is how they invoke emotion in the reader.
Emotions as subtext
Let’s talk about emotions – Emotions are the hot button in fiction. When it comes to showing vs. telling, emotions are key. This is going to lead us into the second bubble we are focusing on today – the first bubble was POV, the second bubble is subtext. But before we get into the gritty details of subtext, lets ease our way in by looking at emotion. Emotion is a good doorway into subtext.
The following is an excerpt from an unpublished work.
**The sun high in the sky. Waves of heat rising from the sand, but he didn't feel the burning. He walked, step by step over the sand. Careless interest changed to fear as he looked toward the horizon. A wave of wind and sand approached from the distance, heading toward him. He looked around him for a suitable place to hide, but found nothing but flat sand. The frightening presence of the sand storm swept closer.
Terror urged him to run - but to where? In what direction? He turned his back to the swell of sand and ran.
From somewhere—his own lips?—came a scream shrill with panic.
The wind picked up around him and his own heart’s hammering pounded in his ears. He fought to control his stark horror as he tried to out run the encroaching sand storm.
In a moment of stark horror, the storm was upon him. He cried out in agony, "Save me!" **
Focusing on emotions -What about this scene makes it “telling”?
I hope that you’ve noticed that deep POV is missing in this scene as well – the reader is left to guess at the character’s inner world and can’t make much sense of what his happening. It would be a good idea to study this later at home to help you understand deep POV.
But what we’re focusing on here is the emotions in the scene.
The author assigns emotions to the character: Terror, panic, stark horror.
Naming emotions often translates to “telling”.
It doesn’t connect us to the event experientially – the reader doesn’t dwell inside the experience of running through deep snow – we’re simply told about it in general terms. Horror is a better genre description than emotion. Terror – what does it mean? What does it feel like? Where do you experience terror in your body?
Naming emotion usually is “telling” as opposed to showing.
Her is an example of showing emotion from Sharon K. Souza’s debut Every Good and Perfect Gift:
**Jonathan took DeeDee to her appointment on Tuesday morning to go over the results of all her lab work, while I kept the baby. My stomach churned the whole time they were gone, and I paced like a pent-up puppy.**
I like this passage for a couple of reasons – one, it is an example of effective use of telling – Jonathan took DeeDee to her appointment. . . etc.. It’s one short sentence that gives us the details we need in order to move on with the story – she doesn’t catch us up in un-needed details. Then, in the next sentence, Sharon invites us into the character’s emotions through the art of showing – she doesn’t name the emotion, but we all understand perfectly what the character is feeling.
That isn’t to say its always wrong to name an emotion in fiction.
Here is an example of naming an emotion that works:
Fallen by David Maine
**The words settled around his heart like an infection. That might have been the turning point, Cain thinks now. As he has thought many times over the years. That might have been the moment when he decided, at age fourteen, that one day he was going to have to kill his brother. Not for humiliating him, no. His father had done that. But for saying he deserved it.**
An emotion is clearly named: humiliation. But with that last short sentence “But for saying he deserved it”, gives the reader an emotional chill, it adds a dimension of something hot and boiling under the simple words – something dangerous.
Subtext is more easily recognized by its absence - oh blah, the story is flat and clichéd - than it is by its presence -the words lingered long after I put the book down.
In his book, The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot, Charles Baxter says subtext is ". . . the realm of what haunts the imagination: the implied, the half-visible, and the unspoken." He also uses the phrase, "unspoken soul-matter".
It may sound mysterious, but it isn’t as vague as it may sound at first brush. It is the art of leaving something unsaid about the stated theme and mood of the book. Your story has a plot, setting, a theme, a message – all of which are stated in the book, through story and the things you explore.
Subtext is used to paint depth of meaning into the pages of your story. It is felt by the reader even though the subtext isn’t explicit. It is the ultimate tool of showing vs. telling.
Rather than me giving definitions of subtext – we’re going to look at one quick example and then we’ll do a short exercise.
In Gilead, Marilynne Robinson creates John Ames, a Reverend, elderly and ill who writes to his too young son about his life in hopes of imparting something of himself to the boy who will grow up without his father. Listen to all that is not said here:
"And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing. I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve."
The themes in Gilead are forgiveness, and restoration. They are about reconciling ourselves to the truth of who we are and who other people are. But the thread of yearning for the one thing he cannot have – more time with his wife and son – runs throughout the novel in subtext. Even though he has accepted the truth – he will die soon – the faint echoes of loss and yearning are poignantly felt by the reader.
Subtext whispers the deeper or hidden things though absence, or hinting that something deeper is going on. It brings meaning to dialogue and character development, and adds dimension and interest to the story. Its one of the elements that makes the truly story compelling.
Let’s try an exercise:
A character says, “I don’t understand why you’re arguing with me.”
Imagine a scene – a snapshot in your mind where one character is saying this to another character. (get examples – look for characters, context, setting, back story). Very quickly – what are you seeing in your snapshot?
Now, think about the same line of dialogue, but add a subtext of meaning – the character says the same line, but the subtext. What the character is feeling underneath the statement is “I want you to love me.”
The character delivers the same line, but the subtext is his or her need to be loved by the other character.
What changes in your scene when you add the subtext of “I want you to love me”?
Something that would change for me would be the way the character is standing, perhaps her posture, or what she does with her arms and hands. The expression on her face changes, the tone of her voice – the way she says the words, not in the clipped tones of someone in charge, but in pleading bleats that trail off, and lack conviction.
Subtext isn’t willy nilly – you don’t grind it into a scene just because you can. It connects with your plot, and with each character. It whispers specific meanings of your overall theme – subtext ties the book together as a whole one scene at a time.
This has been a brief introduction to two components of compelling storytelling – deep POV and subtext – two bubbles inside the larger bubble of ‘showing vs. telling’. It’s a lot of information to take in in one sitting, but fear not – you have the Camy Tang article which will help you understand deep POV better – and this workshop will be posted on my blog (www.fictionmatters.blogspot.com) in the next week or so, for you to read over, print off – or ignore as you choose.
Thanks for sitting in today.
I bid you good writing.
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