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Book Report Maia Caron


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THE ART OF FICTION, John Gardner

 

How the book helped me as a writer:

 

The copy I have is dated 1984, and it was interesting to see what I’d underlined in red, what my younger writer self found important. There were many great insights and to be reminded of things like not starting a sentence with an infinite verb phrase, were valuable.

 

Gardner wrote, “The reader cannot understand or believe the change unless some clue is provided as to the reason for it.” And “moment by moment authenticating detail as the mainstay of fiction.” I find myself struggling as I revise, finding so many instances where I have not provided enough of a reason for one of my characters’ actions, and then in other parts, hit the reader over the head too much trying to make a point. So I still need to strike more of a balance in this regard.

 

“It’s physical detail that pulls us into the story. The realist must authenticate continually, bombarding the reader with proofs . . . in the form of closely observed details—that what is happening is really happening.” He concludes: “…create a kind of dream in the reader’s mind and avoid like the plague all that might briefly distract him from that dream.” This made me realize why backstory is not needed in the first fifty pages. If I remember this, I can cut that exposition, even if it’s one line that I really thought I had to have there. It most likely will wake the reader from the “dream.”

 

“We must be drawn into the characters’ world as if born to it.” Importance of Act Zero, the backstory in the mind. And, “The writer’s characters must stand before us with wonderful clarity.” This brought home the idea that my characters’ voice must be strong. The reader must be inside their heads. This also results in narrative drive, or as Gardner describes it, “our sense that we’re onto something.” I kept this in mind when I was revising the first 50 then first 100 pages.

 

“No fiction can have real interest if the central character is not an agent struggling for his or her own goals but a victim, subject to the will of others.” I had this problem in my first draft: Josette was not taking enough action. I was reluctant to show her as openly rebellious because I thought it wasn’t true to what a Metis woman would do/say in that time period. Male domination and the power of the church would surely keep her resistance in the mind, right? But then this and Maas saying that you cannot dramatize a character too much, changed my mind.

 

Gardner wrote about the need for clarity and presenting facts with “smooth logicality, perfect inevitability,” to keep the reader engaged in a “perfectly focused dream,” “where the writer momentarily suspends meaning in his sentence (almost always a bad idea), forcing the reader to run on faith for several words, hoping that out of seeming chaos, some sense will emerge.” This seemed to be in conflict with the AS module on writing scenes with delayed cognition. In his chapter on Technique, Gardner also criticized delayed cognition thus, “Irrelevant distraction, even if it works, in a feeble way, makes the reader feel manipulated.”

 

 

THE WRITING LIFE, Annie Dillard

 

I was delighted with this book. So glad it was recommended and can’t believe I haven’t read it before. For some reason, I was confusing it all this time with Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

 

What she said that resonated:

 

“Writing a book, full time, takes between two and ten years.” And, “Only after a writer lets literature shape her, can she perhaps shape literature.” I felt that I haven’t been wasting my time only reading books by authors I feel I can learn from, studying those books, and underlining like mad.

 

The AS course has helped me bring my first draft into manageable form, but I have still been struggling, staring at the outline, wondering what’s wrong. In this book, I found the most help from passages she wrote about how difficult it is to write a novel. She put so many abstract feelings about it into concrete terms. Sage advice like this, for instance:

 

But my favourite, which helped me get a better sense of my book in its first draft, trying to fix it: “Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.”

 

Conflict with the AS course: Dillard wrote, “An ordinary reader picking up a book can’t yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing’s modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.” I thought this was in conflict with the AS course’s claim that the first five pages is so important in terms of creating a strong hook and using evocative language. How do editors judge a book by its first sentence, paragraph, page if it is the case that an ordinary reader takes half an hour to connect to a book?

 

Or: “Novels written with film contracts in mind have a faint but unmistakable, and ruinous odor.”

OR: ‘Why would anyone read a book instead of watching big people move on a screen?”

 

I’ve never read Dillard’s books, so thought I’d check out the opening of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and see how she handled it, because it seemed like the advice above conflicted with AS salon advice of creating “cinematic verve.” Her prose is fresh and visceral and she creates cinematic verve on the page.

 

WRITE AWAY, Elizabeth George

 

I had read Write Away years ago. I appreciated being reminded of advice such as, “It’s critical to know the basic need for each character because the denial of that need leads directly to the pathological maneuver.” That helped me more clearly define why my protag was in denial. I’d studied the psychology of abused women and why men abused, so I could more accurately and vividly portray the back and forth inherent in the circumstances.

 

In regard to her chapter on landscape, she wrote three things that inspired me:

“Landscape is the total experience in a novel”

“Anything in a character’s environment can serve as an indicator of his internal landscape.”

“The place mirrors the condition of the characters.”

With this advice, I was able to strengthen landscape description with what I’ve learned in AS.

 

What George said about the “sky” in landscape resonated with me. In the prairies, sky is enormous and full of weather. So to describe it is important to me. I went to Saskatchewan two summers ago and really studied the sky, because I’m from the mountains in British Columbia. Sky is different there. I often look at pictures of the prairie sky in winter and summer to really understand how to describe it.

 

I also was inspired by, “No one on earth keeps reading a story without feeling emotion and connection,” and “If you can come up with a dynamic scene that illustrates the character’s emotional temperature, you stand a very good chance of hooking the reader.” All stuff mentioned in the Modules, but good to get it in a different way here.

 

She also said something that really made me think about my opening: “What are the agendas of your characters in your hook?” I’d been thinking “goals” but “agendas,” while basically the same thing, made me approach it in a slightly different way.

 

George’s chapter on Voice had me rethink my opening sentences. I realized that I wasn’t in my protag’s voice enough in the first sentences. So I changed that.

 

On Character:

“Creating character in advance allows a novelist to write convincingly in the voice and of an experience totally unlike her own, allows a writer to adopt a persona, dissolve the boundaries between herself and her creations.” This is in keeping with AS assignments that asked me to strengthen my “Act Zero.”

 

On Scenes:

Scenes are for drama, so make sure the events you render are dramatically depicted—that it adds something necessary to the story’s development: information, revelation, discovery, sudden change.

 

Make sure your scene creates dramatic questions in the mind of the reader.

If the scene you’re creating doesn’t do any of this, you have something that doesn’t need to go into a scene. It can be handled in narrative or indirect dialogue within dramatic narrative.

 

In regard to creating suspense (not a quiet paragraph on the page), George wrote, “The reader wants to know right away what’s going to happen on three fronts: To the characters, to the situation the characters find themselves, and to the plot. This made me realize that I need to make it clear in the first few chapters WHY Riel is so important to the Metis, and what end product they expect from him.”

 

One thing I noted from George’s book was her repetition that she “knows” when a scene or her writing is good when she feels it in her body. I think this might be in conflict with the AS program. It’s certainly in conflict with mine. I’ve often felt “great” about some scene I’ve written in the past, but when I look back at it later, it’s anything but great.

 

She also wrote, “Begin a scene at a low point and tension should rise as the conflict brews.” I presume this does not apply to the opening scene, or it would be in conflict with lessons in AS.

 

 

WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL WORKBOOK, Donald Maas

 

I couldn’t get my hands on the book assigned, but did get Maas’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook.

 

I found this book to be perhaps the most valuable text aside from the AS course itself. As a literary agent, Maas knows what sells and what makes a great story. I did the exercises at the end of each chapter and think it improved my story.

 

His idea of adding heroic qualities to my protagonist made me look at the first scene and give her small actions that revealed her heroic qualities.

 

“Strong commitment on the part of your protagonist will generate strong commitment on the part of your reader.” This advice hit home to me. The editor who did the developmental edit on my manuscript mentioned that my protag always seemed to let things happen to her. There were no great costs to her actions or the actions of others around her.

 

And his advice that it takes work to make inner exposition vivid mirrors emphasis the AS course puts on the same thing.

 

I learned also about heightening turning points, something that I’d first heard of in this course: that, as Maas writes, “Stories must stride forward in pronounced steps. Most authors are afraid of exaggerating what is happening, of appearing arty. That is a mistake. Stories, like life, are about change. Delineating the changes scene by scene gives a novel a sense of unfolding drama, and gives its characters a feeling of progress over time.”

I was afraid of being ‘arty.” I was confused at the fine line between being subtle and not beating the reader over the head. I think I know now how to be subtle by not stating something overtly and not be so afraid to magnify action/drama in a scene.

My editor said I wasn’t developing conflict in a scene, sometimes “stealing” it from the reader by not letting the reader see it played out fully in the scene.

 

I didn’t find anything in conflict with the AS course.

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