JOURNAL ENTRY #70August 1, 2010
The final draft of Echo is complete and on its way to the printer, for a November release. I’m always struck by the difference between a first draft, which is barely intelligible, and the version that actually sees print. During my years as an English teacher, I was dismayed by my inability, in many cases, to persuade students of the value of doing a second draft of their essay. It helps immeasurably.
I’m not sure there’s any acquisition during our high school years more valuable than developing communication skills. Learning to write solid sentences and to read with understanding and a critical mind. And of course, one of which we seldom if ever hear, learning to listen. (Okay, maybe getting social skills in line ranks first, but I’m not sure that isn’t largely the same thing.)
The second draft, at least in my case, is always light-years beyond the first. And I have no doubt that will get some people wondering how bad the first one is. The answer to that: It’s bad. It’s incomprehensible. The characters haven’t come to life yet. People are always opening doors they’ve opened just two paragraphs earlier. They repeat themselves. They make no sense. And Alex doesn’t always have a rationale for his conclusions. It inevitably takes several drafts to get to a level at which the book, or story, will read reasonably smoothly.
I’m headed for NASFIC the weekend of the 6th. It’s being held in Raleigh, NC, which is only a few hours’ drive from here. Raleigh was, for many years, the home of the Sycamore Hills Workshop, which I attended regularly during my early years as a writer. The most valuable aspect of the program was that I got to meet and hang out with people like Nancy Kress, Jim Kelly, Lew Shiner, Harlan Ellison, Mike Bishop, Jim Morrow, Karen Joy Fowler, Charles Sheffield, Mark Van Name, John Kessel. It was also where I discovered my allergy to sunflower seeds. But that’s another story.
I’ll be helping with a writing workshop at NASFIC. Which has gotten me thinking about some of the things I learned at Syc Hill. The critical insight was that, while most people think of fiction as storytelling, it is really far more like theater. Most aspiring writers go wrong because they don‘t think in those terms. They don‘t realize they‘re supposed to be creating an experience rather than simply telling a story. Fiction isn’t storytelling; it’s theater.
Imagine watching South Pacific. Late in the second act, Nellie tells Emile that the romance is over. She’s discovered he’d had two children by
a native wife. And the director freezes the action and comes on stage to explain the prejudices that existed against dark-skinned people, underscoring that this is why Nellie is upset. It isn’t because Emile had had an earlier encounter. And of course Emile sings one of the showstoppers: “You have to be taught to hate; you have to be carefully taught.“
A director who reminds the audience that he’s back stage manipulating the action pulls the audience out of that 1945 war zone and reminds them they are sitting seventy years later in downtown New York. Or wherever.
Many aspiring writers do precisely that. They stop the action to explain how the star drive works, or to give details about the protagonist’s family, or to overload us with the description of the forest in which our hero has become lost. Or, for that matter, they put an air base in the wrong state (as I did, in MOONFALL). Or they get the grammar wrong. And if you’re thinking about the copy editor, it may get past him too.
Anything that reminds the reader he’s sitting in a chair at home, reading quietly, rather than lost on that dangerous mountaintop as the snow picks up, kills the illusion. All the negative stuff that workshops discuss, those slow starts, too many characters, characters with impossible names, wooden dialogue, all of it, has to do with shattering the illusion.
Even writing too much, as some people do because short fiction is usually payable by the word, or because they think that longer is better, is self-destructive.
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I got a call to jury selection yesterday. Unfortunately, this comes during the busiest part of my year. I’ve been through this several times, and have never actually been chosen to sit on the jury. Once the lawyers find out I’m retired law enforcement, they tend not to want me anywhere near the courtroom.