Hush!

The Easiest Writing Technique in the World

 A lot of what we do as writers is hard. Designing a plot that’s simultaneously surprising and logical. Writing characters that are entirely fresh, yet never forced. Writing a beautiful sentence. Writing 10,000 beautiful sentences in a row. But now and again, you realize that some of what we do could be very easily done and that we don’t do it nearly enough.

Of these techniques, the very easiest is – well, I’ll tell you in a moment or two. But first, an example from my own experience. My latest novel is a detective story narrated in the first person by the young female protagonist. Naturally the readers wants to know what she looks like but equally, it would be very easy to damage the integrity of her voice by having her tell the reader things that didn’t emerge from a natural intersection of plot and character.

And I discovered that even if my character happened to walk into a room that had a mirror in it, she didn’t have any particular interest in talking about what she saw there. So I had a character who was, from the reader’s point of view, invisible. Mysterious. Then I came to a scene where her height mattered (my character is short, five foot two), so the reader learned about that. Finally, about three quarters of the way into a 120,000 word novel, my character looked into a mirror and noted that her hair was short and dark. Height apart, that was the first time she had conveyed any information about her looks at all. I’m now just about to embark on the third novel featuring that same character and I still can’t tell you what colour her eyes are.

This technique – the simple withholding of interesting or important information – can be extended far more broadly than simply data about personal appearance. If your character has a troubled relationship with their father, let’s say, you can drop a teasing hint to that effect in chapter one, come back to it in chapter four, broaden it and deepen in chapter eight – and not actually get to the final revelation until chapter twenty five.

If your book depends on a mystery of this sort, naturally you’ll construct it perfectly well without any nudging from me. But not all mysteries have to exist at the heart of a plot. Any information that’s clearly (and teasingly) withheld provokes a desire in the reader to read on. Even something as simple as withholding information about hair-colour can add, if only a little, to the narrative compulsion of the book.

The delight of this technique is that all the writer needs to do is – nothing. That bearded neighbour you’ve created sounds like an interesting character, right? Brilliant! So leave him in the shadows. He’ll get a whole lot less interesting once the bright light of total revelation shines on him. That strange relationship between your protagonist and her father – drop a few hints, then walk away. Do nothing. Just allow your story to trot happily along. You’ll get time for those essential disclosures much later on.

And I’ve got a theory about why so many writers (especially new ones) seem in such a rush to reveal all. (You know the sort of thing I mean. Frazzled mums who suddenly stop to stare in a mirror and appraise what they see. Tough action heroes who, before chapter one is quite complete, have to give you a data-dump of their age, weight, fitness, battle skills and the like.) As writers feel the burden of these secrets too. It’s painful for us to withhold. And of course, even if we can restrain our instinct for honesty and openness for three full writing months – we may still only be a third of the way into a novel, which means that all our patience still comes across as hurried. Abrupt. We also tend to think that a novel should move fast. All action and plot twist. But suspense requires more or less the opposite of action. Action delivers excitement. Withholding delivers suspense. And you need both.

So take it slow. Enjoy your secrets. Take pleasure in tantalising the reader. See how far you can stretch out those disclosures. Slow is the new fast.

Harry Bingham is the British author of a number of books, including his forthcoming Talking to the Dead. He also runs a company which offers feedback on writing as well as a variety of writing courses.

On changing up the order of your story, Amy said:

This is a great strategy – thanks so much for sharing. I sometimes get so bogged down in “what happens next” that I forget to think about what happened yesterday, or last week or ten years ago, that is really much more insightful than what happens “next.”

Good point, Amy — we’re so anxious about following our momentum and keeping something boiling in the pot the next day and the next that we forget to look at the time sense of our writing in a larger way, adjusting weeks, using flashbacks, etc. This problem of changing the order is a necessary part of thinking about your story on the “macro” level once in a while.

Mary said:

This is a really important aspect of writing & I’m glad you brought it up, BLH. I recall reading an author who adhered to the formula that EVERY chapter had to end with the main character just on the verge of falling off a cliff, being shot, getting knocked out & so on.

This became so repetitious that I longed for a break, perhaps a chapter ending with the character sitting in an armchair reading a magazine.

While this particular book involved an ‘action hero,’ any ‘formula’ used by a writer in how chapters begin, evolve & end gets equally boring if it is never varied. In artwork–painting, I mean–one is advised: ‘never make any two intervals the same.’ This applies to composition, edges, color combos, etc.

Nice connection to something I hadn’t heard before about painting, Mary — I think your point about varying intervals is highly relevant to writing. If you have the same transition over and over between scenes — such as the character waking up from a dream in a cold sweat, or getting ready for the day in the same way — the story will seem repetitive and dull. Changing the order makes readers feel more confident that they are in the hands of a lively, fresh story.

Margaret said:

This is a great tip. In the novel that will be out in July, one of my writing buddies pointed out a reordering opportunity to me. I ended up with a far stronger, more interesting story as a result. Why hadn’t it occurred to me to reorder? I was stuck in thinking that the existing order *had to be* the order — one of those mental blindness things I find all to easy to fall into with my own work.

Great point, Margaret. We often get married to the order of the story the way we originally wrote it — it just settles in that way, and we are afraid of the effort it would take to re-shuffle. But the story only came out in that order because of what mood you were in or what scene you felt like writing — it is not inherently the best order. We need to be thoughtful and critical about every aspect of our stories, including the order.

On my post about assembling your story like a jigsaw puzzle, Tina wrote:

To write, I need an emotion. Sometimes it is a bit of a jigsaw when I feel several emotions hit me at once and most times it is difficult to sort them out. I usually feel like I am at the edge and ready to work my way inward if I feel like I must write about something, but more often than not I am just starting the journey and have no idea how to proceed. I have years and years and years of writing to look back upon, but nothing ever as concrete as the front of the box of a jigsaw puzzle in which to find the end of the puzzlement. Now wouldn’t that be nice if it could be wrapped up so neatly?

Good point, Tina — I also wish that for our novels, we could just peek at the picture on the box and get a glimpse of the whole glorious completed image! As you say, though, it’s emotion that can motivate us to start working inward from the edges. We can assemble story structures and scaffolds all we want, but without emotional connection, they’re just hollow frames, stories pretending to be stories.

Margaret said:

The key decisions, for me, are the context of the story — where and when it takes place, whose story is it, and the beginning and the end. Once I have those, I can begin filling in the details of the plot: the inciting incident, major plot points.

It’s interesting to see how everyone’s particular framework or scaffolding differs. As Margaret writes, one way to get that backbone down is to have a concrete sense of place, time, and ending. I agree that I need a strong sense of place, and I need a direction, whether it’s the ending or not. Those can form the borders of the puzzle, or the context in which everything else is contained.

Thanks, commenters — keep responding, and I’ll keep responding too. See you next week!

This week’s tip is:

Make a List of Three Things

As I’ve written in another post, the rule of threes is pretty firmly ingrained in the human psyche. You could read a psychology book to find out why (though I’ve read a few and haven’t found out if anyone knows). Whatever the reason is, writers and storytellers have known the power of threes for centuries and have exploited it in fairy tales, jokes, and speeches. The truth is that lists are extremely interesting to read most of the time, and they’re highly effective devices in fiction. They tell a great deal about a character and the situation in a stark, spare, and convenient format.

For one, they tell us that the character is exacting and meticulous — the kind of person to make lists. But beyond that, they’re a modern way to express life and all of its concerns. They also show an attempt to divorce oneself from emotion. Faulkner uses a list in a powerful way in his classic novel As I Lay Dying. The mother in a large Southern family is dying. We see the house from each character’s perspective. The son Cash’s chapter is presented as a numbered list, ordering all the tasks that must be done to build the coffin. It’s chilling, but also tender, showing the great care he takes in his work and the restrained, haunted emotion lurking between the lines.

So I’ve shown you the power, and oddly enough, the degree of emotion that can come forward in a list. But what about the the list of three? As I’ve explained, the number three seems to have a special place in the human brain. It is just enough of something for a person to recognize a pattern. Two items could be a coincidence, but three makes a sense of order and logic. Writers love to play with expectation and make the third item something different.

So here’s how it works: give us two words of description that establish a pattern and mood. “The sky was gray, cloudy…” Here, it’s almost like I’ve set up the punchline for a joke. We’re waiting for the third item to either confirm the pattern or shake it up. A third word confirming the pattern would just be dull, though; good description calls for freshness and verve. So how about, “The sky was gray, cloudy, and shot through with purple streaks.” Not what you were expecting, right? But it gives us a lot of fresh information about the odd way the sky was looking. So the next time you find yourself assembling a hat trick of description, look to surprise expectations rather than confirming them.

Happy Memorial Day, readers! Writerly Life is taking a break this holiday so that I can spend time with family. It’s a good day for that, but it’s also a good day for a little reflection — on the long and sobering meaning of the day, and on all the people who allowed us to have what we have. Whether that’s armed forces, or a beloved mentor or friend or parent who encouraged your writing, remember them today. And I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

There’s something both unsettling and fascinating about hoarding as a problem. As I’ve learned from the book, “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things”, hoarding has a real basis in the brain and is not a simple materialism or infatuation with objects. It is a deep-seated attachment to objects because of the memories or the potential they represent, and fundamental emotional failure to see an object as different from a beloved person. And yet we non-hoarders can’t help seeing the problem as a moral failing, a simple laziness or slovenliness on the part of the hoarder. We are horrified and fascinated by the cluttered and often unsanitary home of an extreme hoarder — and that’s why so many reality tv shows have cropped up lately, offering voyeuristic views into these chaotic homes.

Part of me is fascinated by this serious problem, and I wanted to learn about it, I think because I find the result so repugnant. I need a great deal of organization in my life, and if a house or a room is truly messy, I feel very uncomfortable. While I have plenty of slob-like habits, at least when it comes to my important papers and writings, I’m a neat-freak. So it horrified me to learn that hoarders don’t just accumulate useless things — the valuable is often mixed in with the trash, so that flipping through junk mail will reveal hidden bank checks, or opening a water-logged paperback book will show old family photographs. To live in a home with the uncertainty of where the important things are would be very distressing for me. And apparently, it is deeply distressing for a hoarder as well, and it’s why a hoarder might hold onto everything, fearing the loss of something valuable.

The book also got me thinking about whether the culture in which we live has an impact on the apparent rise of this disease. It seems that there have always been hoarders; they appear in literature and records going back at least a few centuries. But compulsive shopping seems to have stepped up lately. Maybe the culture’s emphasis on things and how acquiring things is a source of happiness is having a very detrimental effect on us. And it’s not just for hoarders. People without the problem of hoarding report owning more objects, and labeling more objects as necessities, than previous generations. People now travel with suitcases full of gadgets, clothes, and other entertainments they claim are essential and crucial. When did we get to the point of defining an ipod or makeup or other items essential to our lives?

The problem of hoarding is a medical one, but it raises interesting questions about our own lives, whether we hoard or not. How much does our inner stability and happiness depend on external factors? If we were truly tested, and an object that was truly dear to us — a family heirloom, a sole photograph of a great-grandparent, love letters — was thrown away, could we let it go? How far would we go to keep it? To what extent are we prisoners of these objects rather than masters of them?

The truth is that all people have some objects that they say they must have that could never be discarded. These are the truly precious things, the things that we would be betraying our sense of self to throw away. The only difference between a healthy person and a hoarder is that the hoarder has far more items like this, and is unable to distinguish between these ultimate items and the trash of ordinary life. But to some extent, it’s difficult to draw the line and claim we can say what the most important objects are to another person. That experience of memory and connection is just too personal.

This week’s tip is:

Don’t Make Your Character a Better You

There’s a lot of wish fulfillment that goes into fiction writing. Writers have the power of creation in their hands; they can re-make an argument they really had with someone, but make it turn out in their favor, or turn their characters into a better version of themselves. The temptation is always there, but it usually makes for weaker, more self-indulgent writing. I’m reminded of a classic New Yorker cartoon that has a writer smiling and writing, “‘You’re a writer?”‘ she exclaimed, her perky breasts heaving. ‘God, I love writers!’”.

Beginner writers often accidentally fall into this wish-fulfillment in a couple of ways. First, we fall prey to vanity. Young female writers, this young female writer included, start out by creating a hero that is themselves, but better in every way. They spend a lot of time cultivating the character’s sparkling eyes, waves of (blond, red, black, or chestnut) hair, slimness, and general desirability. It’s natural; it’s our own insecurities and desires coming out on the page. But leave that stuff outside the arena, sport! It doesn’t belong in a story that deals with real people, not dream people.

Second, beginning writers can’t help making their heroes the victims in every situation. They believe themselves to be innocent or wronged in one way or another, so they write scene after scene in which their character, completely innocent, is wronged by everyone around them. They make characters jealous of the hero, or threatened by the hero’s talents. This, again, is our own insecurities and desires lurching onto the page. If we take a moment and try to create a character honestly, portraying someone is sometimes guilty and sometimes innocent, we’ll not only write better; we’ll also learn a thing or two about our own guilt and innocence in the real world. It’s often comfortable to imagine ourselves as better than we really are; but sooner or later, we’ll have to come to terms with who we really are.

Just this week I’d had an occasion to look back at early chapters for the first time in months. I was proud of a good deal of it, but a lot of it had me itching to revise as well. And yet I’d told myself that it was time to push forward and not revise until I got to the end. Now I’m not so sure. At some point all writers probably ask themselves: when should we look forward, and when should we turn back?

1. Don’t let a bad mood turn you around.

Momentum and forward drive is an important, powerful thing. The first element of this decision is not wanting to lose that forward motion. I think I’ll have a better sense of the plot’s motion if I keep trudging forward. And writers have bad days all the time; sometimes, we’re just not ready to write more, or the writing is difficult, and that doesn’t mean that it’s time to return to the beginning. It might just mean that it’s time to take a break for the day and try again tomorrow.

2. Are there unanswered questions?

Looking back at those early chapters was an eye-opening experience for me. I’d completely forgotten some elements of the story or turns of phrase. At one point, I’d even placed my character as living in a different town. Obviously, there are things that need to be changed. Those neglected story elements need to be beefed up, and the simple factual errors need to be corrected. But is now the right time to make those changes? I think the question for writers should be whether we just can’t leave it alone. It’s similar to what meditation teachers say if you get an itch while you’re supposed to be meditating. If you just keep fighting the urge to itch, you’ll just be thinking about it instead of meditating. So just scratch it! There’s nothing wrong with attending to a need or satisfying an urge quickly so that you can return to the work at hand. If these small errors continue to bite at me, I may just take an hour, go back and change them. The real work of revising can wait.

3. Do you need to find out more things before you can revise?

Another reason that I’d err on the side of moving forward is that sometimes we aren’t ready to revise because we haven’t found out how the story will end. Your knowledge of what comes next will greatly influence what threads you want to tease out of the beginning; if you don’t understand the full scope of your novel yet, you won’t do a great job of editing. That’s why I think I need to get farther and discover more before I can satisfactorily work on those earlier chapters. They’re calling to me, making writing a hard slog, but I’ll just have to keep going until I truly understand where this novel is going.

Lerner’s protagonist is the definition of a navel-gazer. He is hyper-aware of his own perceived inadequacies as a poet, certain that everyone around him is putting on a pose of artistic-ness the way he is, and self-conscious to the point of mania. He carefully composes his facial expressions to have just the right mixture of boredom and profundity; he spouts airy aphorisms about the nature of art and metaphor that are meaningless, yet that he hopes will be lapped up as deep; and he constantly lies and deceives about his own art, mostly in the hopes of impressing various female Spanish characters. He is clearly not likable, but there is something genuine at the core of this book, something very timeless in its post-modern flailings.

That’s what I took to be at the heart of this beautifully written, intensely myopic novel: a very old question about reality and whether it can be rendered in art (the modernist perspective) or whether it is only artifice (the post-modern perspective). We can see something through this character’s mental hang-ups. As one character says with impatience, “Stop pretending that you’re only pretending to be a poet.” The novel wants something real to be there, and continues to dig, rather than throwing up its hands in a po-mo despair. The very first scene moved me; it showed our narrator wandering through a museum in Madrid, and seeing a man moved to tears in front of a museum. The narrator is intensely skeptical of the reality of this stranger’s emotion. Surely he is putting on an act, pretending to be moved by art in this way so as to seem profound. But we can hear the doubt, the uncertainty, in the narrator’s voice. Maybe, just maybe, art can access something genuine in us.

So if you enjoy novels grappling with these issues, and don’t need a breakneck plot, I highly recommend Leaving the Atocha Station. I found it fascinating.