April 9th, 2009
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 7th, 2009
C’est moi, alors!
This is a portrait of me (der) by the portrait artist Alan Dayton, who is doing a series on creative people, lately writers.
As I’ve said previously, some rather remarkable and bizarre things have come my way as a result of publishing a book. One of them is certainly the photo-shoot/interview that Mr. Dayton did for me, and its result, this amazing, rather Gallic-looking painting. Certainly, never before have I sat on my couch in my favourite dress while someone bent over me almost medically, noting aloud the exact colour and striations of my eyes.
I consider myself hugely lucky to have been the object of Alan Dayton’s considerable talent, but I am also quite baffled. Now a portrait of me exists in the world, and, like my stories, I’m not able to follow it around and tell people what it means. I have to trust that viewers of this art will “get it,” whatever *it* is. Because of course, I have even less agency here than I do in my writing; this portrait is really Alan’s creation, and I just provided a little inspiration.
And yet, I do get the opportunity to say something about it, as I’ve been asked to write a mini-essay about the experience of being emportraited for the catalogue. But what will I say? Any ideas? Even though I’m *involved*, I’m still way underqualified to write about art, and never have before.
We’ve been here many times
RR
April 6th, 2009
“I don’t understand” in Japanese
Wakarimasen.
I think this one’s going to be key.
All the cops in the doughnut shop
RR
Post-weekend update
So I got to do my GritLit reading yesterday and it was awesome; therefore I am not allowed to complain about the myriad things that went wrong with the universe this weekend and continue to do so (snow??) Ahem.
Sometimes, when life is chaotic and difficult, I am comforted by filling out forms. Not hard forms, nothing tax-related–things I know the answer to. I like very short answers that fit in slots, or even better, can be checked off! So simple, so clear, so little room for chaos or difficulty.
I am particularly fond of the Canada Council form that writers have to fill out after participating in literary festivals funded by the CC. The form is short, direct, and easy (mainly opinion questions, which are hard to get wrong, as are items like one’s own address). Also, since lit fests are inevitably so very much fun, the form is basically an invitation to have a good kvell about how great the committee was, how nice the venue was, what delicious food was served, how awesome the audience was, etc., etc.
So I filled out the form this morning and basked in the warm memory GritLit joys, and this mainly blotted out things like:
Cup of tea #1–site of bug drowning
Cup of tea #3–spilled on sweater
Weather–sleet
Voice–sounds as if I should be telling midnight callers what I’m wearing (sweater covered in tea)
Inbox–overflowing
Rose-coloured readers–far too dismissive of the works of Reese Witherspoon
They’re tryin to tell me how to feel
RR
April 4th, 2009
As of now
In case the suspense was getting to you, as of now I can speak a little bit, very quietly and squeakily, but at least actual words aloud. Since this is incredible progress over yesterday, which was spent in complete silence, I have decided to extrapolate this progress to me being able to do my planned GritLit appearance tomorrow at 1:30 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. I plan to spend today resting my voice, drinking all the tea in Hamilton, and feeling that life is extremely unfair, but if I can do the reading tomorrow, I might just get over it.
Complaints I would like to register with the universe:
1) Rainy weekend.
2) Typing this on horrible dial-up connection–probably won’t even be able to post in the end.
3) Movie *Clueless* not as funny second time.
4) Doctor at walk-in clinic was baffled by my condition, and finally demanded, “Well, could you speak *before*?” As if I were trying to pull a fast one and make her give me a capability I never had before, like the old joke, “Doctor, doctor, will I be able to play the piano after the operation?” Except this doctor was not joking at all.
So, as usual, my complaints are not really complaints so much as the usual shoe-scuffs of life. I really do hope to see anyone who is around at GritLit tomorrow–if my plan to attend changes, I’ll certainly post it here and I imagine the GritLit folks have a website where they post such info, as well. I would check into that, but, you know, dial-up!
No way no way
RR
April 2nd, 2009
All panic, no disco
At less than 20 hours until my reading for 65 high school kids, I have nearly no voice. WTF? I’m not even sick, just silent.
Home remedies I have tried so far:
–green tea
–chamomile tea
–multivitamin
–gargling with salt water
–frosting (not really a remedy; I just found this cache of leftover frosting)
Any other suggestions for me? At this point, I can’t even muster the voice to call to cancel the event. It’s going to be extra lame if I have to get someone else to do it!!
He could not know another tiger
RR
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
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