Little Kids Can Write Books Better Than You
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
We semi-regularly volunteer with the most awesome nonprofit in the entire universe, chaperoning the fine young people of Brooklyn as they bravely sally forth upon the perilous battleground that is Learning the Craft of Fiction. We have also noticed of late in the slushpile a shocking number of queries from writers who are possessed of stunning credentials, have published short stories in All the Finest Literary Journals, and who send us, upon our eager request, their debut novels, which are written in such breathtakingly lovely prose that it is sometimes upwards of forty pages before we realize NOTHING IS HAPPENING, HAS HAPPENED, OR IS GOING TO HAPPEN. How are these seemingly disparate elements related, you ask us? Why, we'll tell you!
Here's something kids figure out right away: an important part of Crafting Fiction is Keeping the Reader Interested. Seem obvious, yes? But sometimes one gets so carried away on heady flights of turgid prose that one loses sight of all clear objectives and shortly thereafter launches one's rapture-inspired offspring into the mercilessly cruel seas of the Slushpile, having forgotten altogether to arm it with the Life-Raft of A PLOT.
Take this fine advice from young T., a third-grader from Park Slope: "It's like when you think you are going to care about the book, but then no stuff happens, so you get bored and then you read a different book." Or wee L.: "If the people aren't doing anything cool the book is dumb." Writing Literary Fiction does not give you a special exemption from being interesting, dear author-friends. Making cool stuff happen is not! beneath! you!
Where is our whiskey! Someone send it at once please! And an intravenous shot of R. Chandler!
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I love those kids. Thanks for this, Rejectionist. It seems to be OK if nothing is happening in Lit Fiction. I went to Lorrie Moore's reading this week, and though the chapter she read was well-written, NOTHING WAS HAPPENING! Yeah, try to write lit fiction where a lot is happening, COOL STUFF, and it gets rejected cause it couldn't possibly be literary. Let's here it for the kids! Yay!
I've admired your avatar for so long on other blogs I just had to visit.
Good stuff. I'm sure those kids are better than any of us because they haven't had the creativity schooled out of them yet.
If you recall, Raymond Chandler admitted he had some trouble plotting. He's one of my favorite authors anyway.
Um, hi! Some of us have been reading serious fiction since third grade and therefore maybe think that seeing black-and-white words propelled across white pages and evoking real human fictive characters, faithfully representing the complexities of human consciousness, and providing perception-enhancing description can sometimes be way cooler than "something happening." Not that something happening isn't necessary, of course - just that something is always happening when it seems like nothing is happening. Teach the children well, not vice versa, right?
BAHAHAHAHA!
This post made me snicker out loud and then panic until I'd read my book's synopsis and realized... whew! Stuff actually happens :).
Thank you for the awesome reminder that we need to have plots, not just write well!
I just read Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" and spent the first half of the book (in which nothing much happens) trying to imagine how it would fare in the slush pile. (Stuff does eventually happen, although I don't think the Park Slope kids'd be as enchanted as I was.)
P.S. I do remember trying to write stories when I was around 7-9 years old, fantasy stories where kids would go on adventures, and I could never finish any of my stories since I never had any idea how I wanted them to end. My 9-year-old daughter has a much better concept of plot and structure than I did at that age.
That was the best post ever.
I have a feeling this was the evaluation group for Dan Brown...
Oh, come on, I had to go there!
See, this is why I write trash.
Why is it that the really good writers lack a good plot (or one at all), while writers with great ambitions and ideas can't actually write for crap? They need to team up or something...but what this really means is that good writers with good ideas are in high demand by publishing houses and agencies!
Plot? We don't need no stinking plot.
When I was seven or eight I wanted to write a ghost story about a "lady in white"-type ghost called The Lady of the Evening, but for some strange reason I never figured out, my mother wouldn't let me. :-/
When my mom was a girl she once wrote a story about three sisters named April, May, and June who were born three months apart. It was years before she realized why everyone who read it laughed at her.
It's funny that this got to you this week - maybe it's in the air? I was just raving about the same thing...mainly this trend of MCs being sick or passed out for large portions of the book. Very silly.
Shit. Does this mean my new novel, The Book of Stasis, is in trouble?
And Thor... come on, I know you want a few smashing hammer scenes in your story, and some big thunderstorms... and at least one fistfight with Loki. I know you do. The Dark Side of the Plot is Strong Within You...
On a serious note, I think the Rejectionist is saying there's a difference between "faithfully representing the complexities of human consciousness" (as you said) in a story structured around a series of interconnected and forward moving events (and that's forward in terms of narrative arc and not merely the linear progress of time) and one "faithfully representing the complexities of human consciousness" in a story structured around nothing and going nowhere.
"Real life" is often boring, incidental and tone deaf. Representing it carefully and perfectly does not always bode well for an interesting book. Story, by its nature, is a structuring of events - I've often thought of it as fictive memory, for memory often works in the same way, by shaping and giving form to a sometimes incoherent and erratic set of events. Memory provides plot, and so do stories.
If it doesn't have plot, it probably isn't a story. Which is not to say it might not have other worthwhile merits, though it might be difficult convincing people to agent, publish and buy the embodiment of these other merits.
My best,
Bryan
I think that the point is that writing about nothing but writing it beautifully will not get that sale. However, writing about something really smashingly throat grabbing and writing it well-enough might.
Other than the small few who live for beautiful prose and beautiful prose alone, most book buyers want a damn good read in which something most definitely happens.
The wise aspirant tries to do both, of course.
A great post! Inspired me to blog about my first ever piece of plotless writing, age 11 and a half (a cruise ship lack-o-drama about a midlife marriage meltdown).
Kids do give great advice. My niece told me 'Never start a story with 'once upon a time' or it'll be rubbish and no one will buy it.'
I do love coming here. Your pain is our gain :-D
Bookstores are filled with plot. Books that "got that sale." Maybe that's why the publishing industry isn't exactly flourishing? Because smart and interesting books where not enough happens are passed on for books where stuff happens but a month later no one really remembers or cares or is inspired to read and write and live. My point is just to raise the bar, not lower it to a third-grade reading level (I remember reading aloud the sexy bits of Judy Blume's "Forever" to cuties at recess, when I should have been reading them the Molly Bloom section of Ulysses, of course. Yes, I said, yes!)
Can I be blunt? Please, Rejectionist, feel free to slap me down and pull this post if you find it offensive.
Thor, your whole "I'm too erudite to wallow in the sty of mediocrity with the rest of you pigs because I read *serious* books in third grade" schtick is seriously underwhelming me here. I come from a reading family. I could quote Longfellow when I was two and by the time I was four I was reading Shakespeare. And you know what? Our individual precocity or lack thereof is entirely beside the point here.
The whole notion that there are two kinds of novels -- highbrow, intellectual, literary novels that are important and lowbrow, popular novels that are common and vulgar but, alas stealing all the limelight from their more worthy cousins is, frankly, bull. There is only one kind of novel. The kind that tells a story. And in a story, *something* has to happen.
Each novel is an act of communication, from the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader. The art, the trick, the goal is to tell your story in a way that will capture their imagination. A "smart, interesting novel where not enough happens" to hold the readers' interest (let's play Spot the Contradiction kids!) is a failed act of communication. You can write what you think is the loveliest, most "important" book in history, but if it's 300+ pages about JimBob Taylor sitting in the laundromat watching his dryer spin and realizing that lint and stray socks are a metaphor for his life, no one's going to read it (barring the dryer blowing up or aliens landing somewhere around the second paragraph, of course).
There are, however, two kinds of writers. There are writers who are willing to learn from advice and criticism and refine their craft and there are amateurs.
Dear Loretta, Janet Reid is a lucky lady.
Dear Loretta, you misunderstand and condescend. I'm currently 150 pages into Infinite Jest and nothing much has happened. I believe books should have plot, of course, but I think other "craft aspects" are more important, especially the prose's authority, a fully evoked world, emotional/psychological complexties etc. Not to condescend to third graders, but I don't put much stock in their advice. Give me Sebald or give me death! (That's WG Sebald, BTW, not Alice Sebold.)
Except for the third-graders who are reading serious literature, of course.
I'll listen to any elementary school students reading at a level at least a dozen years above their own.
Rejectionist,
your whisky is here on my bookshelf. Feel free to swing by for a swig.
And yea, I was a clever beast when I signed her up, I was!
Hey Thor,
While I agree that the authority of the prose, a fully evoked world, and psychological and emotional complexity are really important, none of them work if you don't have a plot. Infinite Jest is full of plot. Oodles of things happen. Tennis tournaments, suicides, secret agents, art that drives people mad. Reams of interesting events in that book. Now, yes, DFW sends the reader out on a variety of wild tangents, a technique not for every reader. But even the odd tangents usually have some odd stuff happening in them. And the plot doesn't even have to be odd, fantastic or particularly loud - it simply has to define some sort of interconnected narrative. Otherwise it's merely a series of floating vignettes or a cloud of thought and consciousness.
Look at the great literary novels and you'll find very carefully worked out plots. There may not be guns and explosions, but the events will have a very precise structure. It's hard to build that human story without that plot skeleton as the base.
Those are my two shiny bits of copper, I guess. Okay, maybe that was three. Inflation and all.
My best,
Bryan
Dear Bryan: In Infinite Jest so far, Kate Gompert talks about her suicide attempt (she doesn't commit suicide), kids are at a tennis academy (they don't play in tournaments), etc. The scenes aren't very dramatic, people talk a lot, there's a plot about why Hal freaked out in the first section and maybe some other stuff re: ONAN, but otherwise most events are narrated after the fact, not dramatized in scene (how stuff usually happens in novels). Theme is happening, subtext. Expert characterization and intelligence and sadness and masterful language is happening.
Dear Loretta: There are two types of people in this world: those who are ever apt to believe that people (or their products -- ie, books) can be reduced to "two types" and those who respect the natural complexity of EVERYTHING.
Thor,
That doesn't mean there isn't a plot. And that book is at the far experimental edge. If the plot is the bones, DFW has built a very fat man indeed on top of that skeleton. He pushes the edge, with his digressive and voluminous style. But there's still something there, enough that Hal Incandenza's story has been stuck in my head for the last fifteen years (though probably getting a little blurry around the edges now...)
I agree - and we'd both agree that with most memorable books, the memorable aspects have less to do with "what happened" than our immersion in a world created by the author's sensibility -- intelligence, wisdom, audacity, generosity, sentence tact/syntax --and the book's general sense of oomph and heft.
Thor,
I'd agree with that, to an extent. I just don't think all those great things work without a functioning plot. Everything just flops in on itself, otherwise. You get a jelly man. Which is much different than a jellyroll. Which is making me hungry.
Buen provecho!
Gracias.
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