June 5th, 2009

Revenge Lit

The Revenge Lit contest in support of Terry Griggs’s new novel, *Thought You Were Dead* rages on. It’s not too late to get your entry in (June 12!) Mine is on the site now, although in lieu of a title I put the name of the contest, because I am an idiot. So scroll down until you hit an entry called “Revenge Lit”…then roll your eyes and, if you feel like it, read on.

He robbed the Glendale train
RR

April 9th, 2009

Standard Plot Graph

After some Sturm et Drang with my attempt to do a typographic one, I broke out the old Paint program (remember grade 6, when that was the *bomb*??) And now, presenting

The Inverted Checkmark/Standard Male Orgasm*

The first jag on the top line is the crisis, which more elementary plot graphs (and stories) omit, as on the bottom line (which looks far more like an actual inverted checkmark). So, for the curious, now you know!

*thanks for the terminology, Andrew!

I fought the war but the war one
RR

Plot Hypocrisy

I had not intended to teach a class on plot to my beloved grade 10s and 11s. Plotting is neither my great strength nor my great interest, and the kids had already gotten pretty far imagining the stories they’d like to write. I felt that the stories would naturally assume the shapes that would suit, as mine do…eventually.

How much I had forgotten about being a high-school writer!!

Their ideas were all over the place, encompassing a life-time or several, entire court prosecutions in the prologue, marriage and divorce and reconciliation and childbirth in an (allegedly) 4-5 page story, or ideas that had dozens of characters roaming free plotless and happy. This is, of course, *exactly* what I did as a whippersnapper, and it’s actually what I still do today. But these days, after the plotless and happy first draft, then I write four more drafts, ask everyone’s advice, obsess for weeks, and finally tone down my ambition and work the piece down into something a reader could actually understand, and maybe even relate to.

I sensed that the teens would not be willing or able to do this. So I rather grudgingly taught a class on plot.

I drew the inverted checkmark on the board (can’t find a decent online image for some reason; sorry). The short horizontal line at the beginning to introduce character and setting, the sudden upward tilt indicating a change or catalyzing event (Flannery O’Connor’s fabled knock at the door, which I didn’t mention, fearing blank faces), the jagged peaks of crisis and climax, the short slope down of falling action, straightening out to resolution.

They were familiar with this sketch, drew it out in their notebooks, answered my questions easily, and seemed to have quite a bit of new insight into how they would shape their stories.

I was relieved.

I felt like a giant hypocrite.

I rarely write stories that fit into the inverted checkmark pattern, and in a distant part of my mind, maybe I thought of it as a bit simplistic and constraining. But as I worked through it with the students, I was surprised at how efficiently it presented information and moved a reader from strength to strength. I was surprised at how many good examples from books I loved I was able to fit into the check, even examples from my own work. I thought maybe I should reevaluate my antipathy towards the plot graph.

At the end of the lesson, I admitted, “If any of my colleagues were here right now, they’d be laughing pretty hard. I don’t actually do this very often. This is only one sort of story.”

And then I drew some other plot graphs for them–a spiral, a flat line–and talked about the pros and cons of writing on those structures! The kids looked alarmed, and I didn’t even get into my personal faves, which are the double-line plots, parallelling or criss-crossing.

Even the above paragraph feels sort of like a lie, because I rarely think of the shapes of my stories until I’m well into them, and I *never* outline in advance (although I often write an outline of the second or third draft, in order to see where I’m going wrong). It was only while thinking on the bus home that I realized that I often write stories with two lines running on.

I think this means I’m out of control. Definitely really inefficient. I hope the students will learn to do better than I do, although not *necessarily* on the inverted checkmark pattern, good as it is. And maybe I should look into that a bit more, really, for myself.

I guess this is what’s meant by “do as I say, not as I do.” And also, “we learn by teaching.”

If you change your mind / will you let me know
RR

April 2nd, 2009

Ditto

It is so handy when someone else says exactly what I’ve been thinking, but wittier, and in the Globe and Mail so that everyone else can appreciate it too. I’m going to print out Craig Boyko’s essay on short stories and novels and pin it to the front of my sweater.

(via Kerry)

In the field behind the cages
RR

April 1st, 2009

Setting It Up

As you might have been able to glean from the occasion dysphoric comment here at Rose-coloured, or my eye-rolls in person, my current manuscript is not coming together as well as I’d like. Of course, it’s very early days, but I feel that if I could just establish a strong set up for the initial plot developments, the writing would roll on smoothly from there. But that simple structure keeps getting mired in extraneous detail, so I thought it might help me to lay it all out simply here on the blog, and perhaps a helpful reader will know where I’m going wrong, or perhaps simply getting it all out of my head and into a public space will clarify things for me all on it’s own.

Ok:

We begin the chronology with a young woman in a high-school chemistry class. She is both late and unprepared because of an argument with her mother that morning, and as she walks to her seat, her teacher notices her face is streaked with tears.

The teacher is a bit of an asshole, though, and he only makes her be lab partners with the other tardy student, a burnout named Kevin who is stoned at 8:30 in the morning, and who knocks over their retort stand midexperiement, spilling the suspension all over the Lululemon Groove pants that the girl–her name is Genevieve–worked all those hours in her uncle’s Tim Horton’s franchise to afford.

Genevieve runs out of class and down to the gym to hide under the bleachers and brood, and then attempt to sew up the acid-burned hole in her pants with her pocket sewing kit. Just when she’s got her pants off, though, Kevin somehow manages to find her there, and she stands frozen before him in her thong. There is a moment of eye contact in the shadowy, sweat-stained space, and then Kevin comes closer and Gen drops her pants and sewing kit, and without a word they embrace.

After they lose their collective virginity in 20 minutes of safe-sex passion, they pull themselves off the crashmat and have a frank and earnest discussion about all the disappointments and frustrations in their lives. Then Kevin cuts off one cuff of his baggy jeans to help make a patch for Gen’s jeans. She is deeply grateful, but as she sews it on, she begins to sense that the contamination in the lab room has given her super-human abilities. She also feels that she can trust Kevin with the knowledge that her mother is emotional abusive and withholding.

To her shock, he only believes the emotional abuse and not the superpowers. Kevin insists that the suspension was only supposed to smell like bananas, and Gen rejoins that it wasn’t the right suspension because he put in twice as many drops of the green stuff as he was supposed to because he is a giant waster.

Hurt, Kevin runs out from under the bleachers, out of the school, and into the parking lot where he is run over by a Hummer. The driver is narcoleptic, and passes out at the wheel when she brakes on top of Kevin. Gen had only gone outside to see if she could bum a smoke from someone, but when she notices the massive ugly vehicle parked on top of her true love, she remembers all the love and joy of the past hour and a half, and she races to his side.

Kevin is of course only barely conscious, but he manages to whisper, “You were right, I f*cked up the suspension and your mom is a total b*tch and I will always love you!”

And Gen says, “OMG, I love you too,” and then she notices that supernatural-powers-tingle once again, and she lifts the car off Kevin. Then they kiss.

I’m not totally sure what happens after that, but I think it’ll involve Kevin and Gen totally destroying her evil mom, and maybe that science teacher too. And then the epilogue is a year later and the happy couple are celebrating the birth of their first child, and Kevin gives Gen a bottle of banana-scented perfume, and they remember how far they’ve come. And then they kiss.

As you can see, obviously this is going to be a kick-ass book when I actually get around to writing it. But really, working out the general ideas for the plot is the hard part, and it looks like I’ve got that in the bag. Go, me!

He rewards my good behaviour
RR

March 25th, 2009

Writing exercises: how to get over yourself

I spent today running three workshops with 30 kids each–I can barely hold my head up, but the experience was amazing, and in a few cases I was genuinely excited about the promise of more work by these kids. The interesting thing about most of my students, and I’d have to gender-stereotype here and say especially the boys, is that they are in no danger of taking themselves too seriously. They don’t draft and they don’t fret; if it’s not good the first time, well, then it’s not going to be good. An amazing proportion of the work *is* good, that’s the startling thing, which speaks to a) natural talent and b) the power of egoless writing.

It’s harder for an adult to write without hoping to impress someone, even ourselves. We aim for perfection, truth and posterity, and are crestfallen when we just obtain accurate interesting prose. Not that a little truth and perfection isn’t a lovely thing, but writing fast and furious, without wondering, “But is it *beautiful*?” can often show a writer just what he or she is capable of.

Here’s a couple exercises given to me a few years back by my wonderous mentor, Leon Rooke. I had a bit more free time back then, but I’d still recommend doing these if you have a free weekend. They’re fun and low-pressure, if a lot of work. I’ll bet you’ll be as surprised as I was at how much good material you produce. Lots of nonsense, too, but you can’t make a cake without breaking some eggs.

1) Write 20 opening paragraphs. Go from one to the next if you can, and don’t follow up on any of them until you’ve got all 20 down. Use as many different voices, tenses, tones and styles as you can.

2) Write 3 stories in 3 days. I guess this one would take a long weekend, or you could space 3 days apart. But only 24 hours allotted to each story, which means you probably can’t revise at all on this draft. Which is ok. Really. I promise. Unlike the whippersnappers, I won’t check your work.

And now I have to go, because the funny thing is, *I’m* being workshopped tonight. It’s a theme day. And so, I must make pizza.

Sweet summer all around
RR

March 15th, 2009

Something to strive for

“That language still dazzles and delights. The usual thing is to insist that Runyon had an amazing “ear” for natural idiom, but, as Cy Feuer points out, Runyon’s dialogue is essentially unplayable, too far removed from any human idiom to be credible in drama. What Runyon wasn’t doing while he was sitting in Lindy’s was just listening and taking dialogue down. Writers with a good ear (Salinger, John O’Hara) certainly listen more acutely than the rest of us, but what they really have is a better filter for telling signal from noise, and then turning it into song….

“Writers with a great ear, like Chandler and Runyon, give us their words, but they also give us a license to listen–a license to listen to street speech and folk speech with a mind newly alive to the poetry implicit in it….one grasps that Mamet’s aim is to capture not their voices but their souls….”
–Adam Gopnik, “Talk It Up”, The New Yorker, March 2, 2009

March 12th, 2009

The Kids Are All Right

A few people have asked me how my residency at a local high school is going–I teach grade 10 and 11 creative writing every Wednesday through the Descant Arts and Letters Foundation’s SWAT Program. I won’t be able to go into detail about my students’ specific weirdnesses and wonderfulnesses, because I think if they found out I was posting about them on the internet, they would quite rightly stop coming to class in protest.

Within the bounds of the privacy act of teenhood, I can tell you that I love my classes and that I am exhausted. Teenagers have a lot of energy, and this energy is resulting in some really funny, honest, interesting work. It’s also resulting in a lot things information needing to be repeated, things falling on the floor, papers getting lost, people not writing their names on their work, not being in uniform, not understanding the assignment, not understanding that the assignment was supposed to be handed in, and/or being in the bathroom when the assignment was mentioned.

Much as I love learning, love talking, love a challenge, I am very much not a natural teacher. I am a selective chatterbox: show interest and I’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know; show indifference or distain, I’ll clam up like the proverbial shellfish. One of the many incredible challenges of teaching is to have enough faith in what you are saying to keep saying it to people who…aren’t super into it. I think I’m lucky to have quite engaged, intelligent students, but they have a lot on their minds, and as soon as I see attention waver, I get intensely doubtful about the whole endeavour.

If we were chatting over lunch, this would be the point in the conversation where I’d hunch back in my chair and say, “But of course, what do I know? What do *you* think?” Sometimes I can, in fact, throw the discussion point to the class, but sometimes I’m not at place in the lesson where I can do that (or I throw it open and no one responds) and then I’m stuck pursuing my thesis that I believe, though I am fast losing faith in my ability to explain it.

This is unusual for me, and very hard–I hate trying to convince the unconvinced; I’d rather just allow them to remain unconvinced. Also unusual for me is granting people permission to go to the bathroom, so let’s just say the whole experience is foreign, but I’m learning a lot from trying to stick to my guns, as well as from the questions I get asked.

I’ve listed some of the things we’ve been questioning and discussing below. For sure I have my own opinions on these matters, but since I’m not so sure I can prove’em anymore–or that these are questions on which definitive answers are possible–maybe I’ll throw it open to the blogosphere and see if anyone responds. What do *you* think about:

1) What does bubblegum taste like? What does Red Bull taste like? What does Axe Body Spray smell like? What does Christmas smell like? What does hair smell like? What does the inside of a vacuum cleaner smell like? What does a sour-cream doughnut taste like?
2) How much imagination is too much? When can you make it all up and when do you have to do research? Why is ok to write a fantasy novel about an imaginary kingdom that you made up, and not ok to write a prison novel without knowing anything about prisons? Or is it, in fact, ok to make up an imaginary penal system and set it not Canada but “Canada”? Because it’s *fiction*, after all–people should know that, right?
3) Do all major characters in books have to have flaws? Can you think of a character in a book (or a movie) with no flaws? Do all villains have to have some complexity or good qualities? Can you think of a villain with some good (in a movie or a book)?
4) What can you infer about a man who wears cords with his t-shirt tucked in? What can you infer about a woman who wears a dress with holes in it? What can you infer about someone who is very pale and always wears hats? What can you infer about someone keeps a barfridge in his bedroom? What can you infer about someone who hangs salamis up in her kitchen?

I await your responses eagerly. Cause really, what *do* I know?

Oh I take a look at that picture
RR

February 22nd, 2009

My Plot Variant Exercise

Three different plot variations inspired by this scenario–woman attempts to step into crosswalk, man jogs a few steps to catch up from behind her and grabs her arm to pull her back.

#1.
Her foot was almost off the sidewalk, when he cupped his palm around her elbow when and somehow managed to yank her back. His heart pounded, but not much, it had been so quick. He saw the dumptruck turn left into the condo construction lot before she turned on him.

“The hell? What do you want?”

“You were about to walk right in front of that truck. I just—”

“It turned. It was turning.”

“But I didn’t know, it was coming straight—”

“It signalled.”

He drew himself up a little, still under her hairlines. “It’s never safe to jaywalk, you know.”

#2.
Tentatively, he jabbed her arm as she was about to step off the kerb. Pushy, yes, but he just had to see if it was Sienna. Sienna, after all these years, the same silky hazelnut hair down her back…

She turned, a faceful of freckles under wide Britney sunglasses, a tiny mischief mouth. Not Sienna.

“Oh, sorry, I thought I knew you from—”

“Do we?” Underneath the big lavender lenses, her eyebrows scrunched.

“No, I’m sorry, I—”

The brows unscrunched, popped back over the tops of the glasses. “Yes, from the gym, of course.”

He startled, took a step back. Did she go to his gym? He didn’t look at people very closely there, mainly–certainly no eye-contact. “Is it that?”

“Of course!” She flapped her hands, yanking shopping bags up and down. “The free-weights hog, from—”

“Well, I don’t really hog them. I just use a range….” He grinned.

“Yeah, you do.” She grinned back. “Everyone at Bally’s knows about you.”

A taxi whizzed by, windows crowded with heads.

“Bally’s?”

She nodded, still smiling.

“I guess you’ve…ah, got the wrong guy. I go to Trainers.”

Her smile fumbled, eyebrows reclenched. “Trainers?”

“On, ah. Bathurst. Good gym.”

She stared.

“Just a case of…mistaken identity. I guess.” And, not knowing what else to do, he brushed past her into the crosswalk.

#3.
He couldn’t believe it when the white “Walk” man appeared and she actually turned to go.

“Wait,” he said but her shoulders continued to twist as if she would not wait, and his hand shot out to snatch her elbow.

She spun, silk hair flowing away from her shell ears, so lovely. Her eyes were wide on his face. Her mouth of opened pink, but she didn’t say anything.

“I just—so, we’re broken up, then?”

“Broken…? Were we– It was just a coffee, David, a couple of times. We were never–“

“It was, Aisha…something. To me. I felt, with you, I felt— God, you’re amazing, you know that? You don’t even know that, do you?”

“David, I don’t want–“

“I think I could impress you, Aisha. When I think of how I feel about you, I think I could be impressive. I could do anything.”

“David, I’m sorry–“

“Aisha, would you listen? You don’t listen.”

“David!”

He looked down and saw his hand still on her arm, his fingertips digging white bloodless dents into her honey skin.

When your home is your headstone
RR

February 12th, 2009

Writing Exercises: Newspaper Character Sketches

Using a daily newspaper (or internet variants thereof), do any or all of the following:

–write a typical day’s schedule for one of the letters-to-the-editor writers
–write a resume for a baby listed on the Births page, 30 years in the future
–write a holiday-greeting letter for one of the people listed in the Personals/Matchmakers pages
–write a Facebook profile for someone who posted one of the classifieds under “Misc.”

I’ll post whatever I come up with for this exercise in a couple days!

I don’t know if you drive / if you love the ground beneath you
RR