When Readers Read My Novels...

A couple of weeks ago, I broke out the white board, easel paper, index cards, and every plotting prop I could think of, and started flipping through some of my (too) many books on craft.

I picked up one of the more popular ones, Plot & Structure, by James Scott Bell and I started reading from the very beginning. There’s a very nice review of this book here. I’m quite sure when I bought this book, I raced through the whole thing as fast as I could, but this time, I took my time.

He’s got some interesting exercises in the very beginning of the book that I was far too impatient to try when I first read the book and it's likely they wouldn’t have helped me much then. The very first exercise in the book is this one:

“Set aside ten minutes of undisturbed writing time. For those ten minutes, write a free-form response to the following: When readers read my novels, I want them to feel _________________________________at the end. That’s because to me, novels are __________________________________________.” pg. 20.

The purpose of this exercise is to analyze the mini-essay and gain some insight into the type of plotter you are. I found the question startling because I’ve never thought about what I'm doing in terms of how I want it to impact the reader and I've never meditated on what novels are to me.

Without giving it much thought, this is the gist of what I wrote:

When readers read my novels, I want them to feel introspective at the end. I want them to consider that a life is the aggregation of millions of decisions, some tiny and some enormous. I want to explore the notion that every human being constantly navigates choices and is presented with scores of opportunities to choose action over inaction, sacrifice over self-interest, generosity over greed, and freedom over security. Some decisions, many of them seemingly insignificant, are crucial and the consequences can ricochet in all directions, impacting and altering other lives. Do I choose to close my eyes to the neighbor I suspect is being beaten by her husband, or do I intercede? Do I cling to safety, marry the first person I love, stay with the first company to offer me a job and never leave my hometown? Do I react and adapt to what life sends my way, or do I take risks? Do I walk away from the known, the safe, and the secure and become an artist? An entrepreneur? A heroin addict? A parent? I want readers to enter the world of my characters and to see through their eyes, even when those characters are quite different from them. That’s because to me, novels are a reflection of the series of the often random causes and effects life presents to everyone.

It's not my ultimate writer’s statement, but it’s a starting point and something I can continue to ponder and come back to.

I thought another of Bell's exercises might lead me closer to nailing this down. The idea is to pull some of your favorite novels off the shelf and then analyze them by asking a series of questions. I thought that I might find some common threads that would lead me to a better understanding of the kind of writer I want to be.

These were the titles I wrote down as I scanned the shelves:

A Fine and Private Place, by Peter S. Beagle
The Tortilla Curtain, by T. Coraghessan Boyle
Dry, by Augusten Burroughs
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell
How the Dead Dream, by Lydia Millet
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh
Old School, by Tobias Wolff
The Dogs of March, by Ernest Hebert

The questions about each book are: "What is it about the lead character that captures you? What is it the lead is trying to get away from? When did the story kick into “high gear”? What was the main opposition to the lead’s objective? How did the ending make you feel? Why did it work?" pg. 21.

I am much too lazy to go through the series of questions for each book, but I did think about them. In many of the books, there's not a whole lot of external "action", but the characters do change significantly from the beginning of each story to the end. In some of my selections, several characters within the same book experience profound change.

Both of these exercises were useful to me because it’s easy to get caught up in the flow of the WIP and not stop now and then, re-vector, and continue to ask these very basic questions.

How would you fill in the blanks on the first exercise, or either part of it? The first blank isn’t that hard to fill in. The second one is a little harder. What are novels, to you?

And/Or

Off the top of your head, what are a few of your favorite novels?

Aromatherapy

Most of us try to incorporate descriptions of the five senses into our writing, but it’s not easy. Visual description tends to come the most naturally, followed by sound and touch. Taste and smell usually fall somewhere quite a bit further behind.

The olfactory sense is the one most closely linked with memory and it’s the only sense with direct access to the amygdala, which is the emotional center of the brain. With that in mind, the descriptive use of smell in fiction can be a powerful tool to further deepen our portrayal of a character. What can be even more interesting is an association of one object or person with a scent or odor that wouldn’t necessarily be apparent to all characters.

Maybe the smell of cherry pipe tobacco reminds one character of a kindly grandfather, or perhaps one not so kind. Freshly cut grass, lilacs, roses, the smell of the ocean, freshly baked cookies, baby shampoo, bubble gum, freshly cut pine boughs, vanilla, almond, citrus and specific perfumes generally have positive associations for most people, but not necessarily all.

In a workshop I took last year, one of the writers described a character as smelling like nail polish and cookie dough and that description has stayed with me since I read it. I find the most interesting descriptions are those that associate the smell of one object with another that wouldn't seem to have any association. I know someone who swears Fritos smell like feet.

Just before I joined the Air Force, my friend, Teresa and I rented rooms in a house that belonged to a foreign family. We were so worldly (not) that we had no idea where they were from, but it was a very large middle-eastern family and whatever it was they cooked all the time was pungent and the odor was not recognizable or pleasant to us. We had nothing we could compare the cooking smell to, but we would regularly ask each other, "do I smell like the house?"

I’m not sure what you have to eat to get it, but when someone describes puppy breath, I know exactly what they mean. Corn Nuts, I think.

Any smell can conjure up a negative association or trigger a memory. Whiskey breath, cigarettes, spoiled meat, burnt popcorn, decaying flesh, a certain aftershave, bicycle tires, brakes burning, mildew, ammonia, bleach, vomit, musk, horses, leather, sweat, hot asphalt, a sweaty penny...

Smelling Listerine or cinnamon gum may be torturous for a character that was attacked by someone with it on his breath. The smell of burning leaves in the fall may remind one person of Thanksgiving and another of a terrible house fire.

I will recognize the scent of the Jean Nate bath splash that my grandmother always used (and that we always gave her for Christmas) for the rest of my life, although I probably haven’t smelled it in over 30 years. My mother wore Chanel No. 5 and that will always be her smell. A wood burning stove makes me think of my cousin, Ruthie’s house, Noxzema reminds me of my Aunt Nancy, and the smell of old dog reminds me of the carpet in my grandparents' house. The smell of tequila reminds me that after swearing off it forever, I really mean it now. Patchouli makes me think of my friend Denise and of a guy I used to work with who clearly had no sense of smell because I could track everywhere he’d walked that day by following the smell.

Do you consciously try to use the sense of smell in your fiction? Care to share any examples? What smells trigger strong emotional reactions in you?

And now, for your auditory and possible olfactory amusement…

Dennis Cass Is...Hysterical!

I'll be posting about Head Case: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain, by Dennis Cass when I do my monthly What I Read This Month Instead of Writing or Doing Laundry post, but I just ran across this post and video on his paperback book launch and it is hysterical. Make two minutes and go watch Dennis.

It's always good to learn from the pros!