A Few More Cool Exercises on Developing Characters

Before I continue with more of the very cool things I learned at Grand Lake, I have to make a confession about writing exercises. I love doing them when I have adult supervision, but I never do them when I’m alone.

My free time is limited so I always feel like what little of it I have should be spent adding words to my story. I used to think that time spent writing anything else was just a way to procrastinate about my WIP, but I’m not so sure about that now. If I could wind back the clock to the point where I really got stuck on The Foundling Wheel, I’d use the time I wasted on obsessive circular thinking to try some exercises that might have gotten me moving sooner. I'm learning.

Here are more of the exercises I did in the workshop with Shari Caudron:

1. Draft a scene wherein the character is getting dressed. Show us the room he’s in, the clothes he’s putting on and bring us into his inner-most thoughts. What is he thinking about as he gets ready for his day? Note: When telling a story, don’t introduce these details all at once. Allow readers to get to know your character gradually.

My free write was the inspiration for the new, real first chapter of my WIP. The original free write had lots of details that told me things about this character’s marriage and her husband. I hadn’t written anything about where my character lived before, but I suddenly saw it all. When I wrote about her getting dressed, I saw her pulling clothes from a stack of folded laundry in a basket. I knew she’d been washing and wearing the same few outfits for weeks and not bothering to put them away. I saw a whole lot of things I hadn’t seen before. This simple free write was the one that opened the floodgates for me. Funny how that works.

I didn’t recognize the significance of Shari's exercise note until I started writing this post. I knew that in the free write I was loading on detail because it was just an exercise. I would never include six or seven details about setting in my WIP, but by going overboard on detail in a free write, it helped me find one or two keepers I might not otherwise have thought of.

2. Choose an important secondary character – ideally, an ally – and answer the following: Who is he? Does he have unusual tics or mannerisms or figures of speech? How is he affiliated with the main character? Describe his relationship with the protagonist.

3. Choose another secondary character – one who is opposed to the protagonist. Who is she? What is unusual, or striking or memorable about this person? Actions? Profession? Personal history? How is she opposing the protagonist? What does she want?

4. Create a scene with your protagonist and his main adversary. Show your character wanting something, and his adversary opposing him. Weave in details about your character from the exercises above, or perhaps some odd things you noticed about people here.

5. Now take that same scene and weave in some realistic dialogue. See if you can work in some overheard dialogue from the last couple of days.

6. Now that you’ve spent time getting to know your character, introduce him or her to readers. Look at the character introductions on the next page [the attachment had sample excerpts from a short story, a novel, a personal essay and narrative non-fiction]. Using them as models, draft a page wherein your character first appears on the scene.

The exercises on secondary characters netted me a lot of great new material. There is a character I knew I needed to write and I knew he'd play an important part of the last third of the story, but I hadn't written anything about him yet. Prior to working on him at Grand Lake, I had too many ideas about who he was and I hadn't focused enough yet. He came to life for me up there.

I wanted to share what I got out of this workshop for two reasons. The first is that maybe one or more of these exercises will come in handy for one of you. The second is that blogging about the exercises really helps me to clarify how and why they work for me and in fact, that’s probably the biggest benefit to blogging about the writing process. I find that trying to capture my thoughts on an aspect of craft helps me to figure out what I really think.

I’m curious. Do any of you find that blogging about a subject helps you to understand what you really think about it?

We’ve all experienced periods of working on our WIP when we’ve been in the zone. I find that free writing puts me in another type of zone. Has anyone else felt that? Do any of you back away from your WIP and use writing exercises to help you to solve specific problems?

Getting to Know You

In my last post, I talked about an assignment to observe and describe interesting things about the other people I was with at Grand Lake. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was reticent about describing my fellow work shop attendees. I can’t recall a single exercise before this one where at least two or three people weren’t willing to share something they’d written, but with the exception of an amusing snippet of dialogue or two, everyone clammed up when asked if he would like to share.

This experience made me realize how much more freedom we have in writing fiction than in writing narrative non-fiction or memoir, and I’m not talking about simply freedom from upsetting real live people. It’s about how much more creative we can be when we allow ourselves to break away completely from the first image we had of a character, particularly if that image was inspired by reality.

In the first exercise of our work shop on building better characters, we split up into pairs and we interviewed each other, the interviewee acting as her main character. Give this a try. It’s fun and you may find out some interesting things.

I interviewed my partner first. She’d done her five minute reading two nights before, so I had a good feel for her story. She (her character) was in a second marriage and had young step-children. I asked her about her relationship with her ex-husband, how her parents felt about her divorce and remarriage, what her religious background and beliefs were, whether or not she had close friends, what the biggest source of conflict in her current marriage was, what she did for a living, what her financial situation was like, where she was raised, etc. My partner was able to quickly answer some questions and others, not so quickly.

When she interviewed me, I had to organize my thoughts quickly to provide straightforward answers without going into a lot of back story. Imagining myself as my main character talking to a new acquaintance who knew nothing about me was a great way to cut to the chase. I took it as a good sign that she quickly got sidetracked and was asking more “what happened then” questions than questions about the character herself. There were a number of things I needed to do to develop my character more. As a bonus, I learned that from a plotting perspective, there were some specific things that needed work. I was able to jot down a detailed to-do list from this interview.

In the next exercise, we talked about visual details. Most of us find literal physical description boring, but other details, like tics and mannerisms are not. Some of the questions Shari asked us to think about were:

What is the first thing a casual observer would notice about your character?

What do your character’s choices reveal?

Whenever a character has to make a choice in life, that choice will reveal something about personality and values. Think about what choices your character has made for the following: cell phone ring tone, dog’s name, the car he drives (versus the car he really wants to drive), favorite breakfast, most listened-to iPod songs, etc.

I could think of hundreds of details that all speak to who my character is. Details related to where she lives, housekeeping habits, how she dresses, how she wears her hair, where she works, what or if she cooks, what restaurants she eats in, whether or not she goes out to movies, what movies she watches, what books or magazines she reads, what television shows (if any) she watches, where she shops, Beatles or Stones; all of these things focus in on who she is.

Here are some questions that cracked open my character and the entire story for me:

What characteristic does the character loathe in other people?

I hadn’t thought about the question for my character before, but once I did, I knew the answer and realized that informs a great deal of her actions. Now that I recognize this, I can use it to much better effect in determining her actions and reactions.

In what way do her actions go against her stated beliefs?

I knew the answer to this immediately. I also knew that this is something that all human beings struggle with from time to time and that it’s a beautiful source of conflict and tension to work with. I realized I should play this up more.

If you’re writing a story, what characteristic does your main character loathe in other people? Is this something you were aware of, or did you have to think about it? How about the next question? Do your character’s actions go against her stated beliefs, and if they do, are you using this to build up conflict?

I’ll post more on the work shop exercises during the week…

Who, Indeed?

Every workshop I attended at the Grand Lake Retreat with the Lighthouse Writers Workshop earlier this month was excellent, but the one that really helped me break through some barriers with my own work was Shari Caudron’s Who Are These People? Bringing Your Characters to Life.

Shari Caudron, MA, MFA, is the author of two books: Who Are You People? (winner of the Colorado Book Award and chosen for Entertainment Weekly’s MUST List), and a collection of personal essays, What Really Happened, (named a humor finalist in the Book of the Year Awards).

A career freelancer, Shari has published more than 500 articles and essays in magazines and literary journals. She’s been a Lighthouse faculty member for five years and also teaches in the Master’s program at the University of Denver. For more on Shari, visit www.sharicaudron.com.

After the retreat last year, I read her award winning book, Who Are You People: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America.

From the back cover:

“You know those people who get passionately, fanatically, obsessively into things? People like doll collectors or Star Wars fans or that lady down

the street with gnomes all over her yard? Award-winning journalist Shari Caudron noticed them too and she was, well, jealous. Not having such a passion herself, she wondered: who are you people?”

The book is the culmination of a three year journey that took the author across the country to, among other places, a pigeon race in the Bronx, storm chasing in Kansas, ice fishing in the Rockies (Grand Lake, in fact), the World Boardgaming Championships, and a convention of Furries (I confess to voyeuristically flipping to this chapter first since I’d seen the Furries in episodes of The X-Files and CSI).

Reading about the author’s experiences with these groups is fascinating in and of itself, but she digs further to analyze how these passions relate to the way we live today, to identity, belonging, God, genetics, acceptance and communities. So it’s probably not a coincidence that I’m talking about Shari and her book in an online community of writers.

The book is fascinating, insightful and it’s funny. I give it five stars and I recommend it to anybody who’s a student of human behavior and of our culture – and who isn’t?

Shari’s workshop was on Thursday and to my surprise, she gave us an assignment two days before.

“To craft believable characters, writers need to become students of human behavior. The need to notice not only what people say, but how they say it. They need to spot the kind of pinpoint detail that can reveal character. They need to pay attention to quirks – the odd tics, the stubborn mannerisms and idiosyncrasies that make people unique.

To prepare for our workshop on Thursday, I’d like you to:

1. Spend the next couple of days listening, really listening to how people talk. But don’t just listen: jot down bits of dialogue and strange turns of phrase and cool, made-up words. (Hey, you’ll be carrying around a notebook, right?)

2. Notice – and write down – particular details about people: socks that don’t match; a goldfish tattoo; sunglasses worn indoors; chipped red toenail polish; a shirt buttoned improperly.

3. Unique bits of action; the person who won’t let different foods touch on a plate; the workshopper who’s always late and apologizes profusely; the morning jogger who runs backward for several minutes at a stretch.

The idea is not to embarrass anyone (we won’t be sharing names!), but for you to begin to notice the idiosyncratic behaviors that make characters seem true to life.”

My initial reaction to the pre-class assignment was resistance. There was no way I could write those kinds of things down, and I absolutely couldn't share my observations in public. When I describe a character, I often use what I see and hear to draw conclusions or even make value judgments about them and even when those judgments are positive or benign, I'm not sure a real person would like the way I'm describing him. The retreat was the ideal environment for doing this exercise. We were rooming with people who were strangers before the first overnight, we were sharing bathrooms, eating all of our meals together, workshopping together and hanging out together. People were on vacation doing something they loved with people who got them. I'd guess that each of the people I spent time with at Grand Lake was more genuinely herself in that environment than she is in real life. It was people-watching paradise.

Observing and recording the way people acted for the purpose of this exercise was very different from anything I’d previously done. It taught me that in relying on my inclination to create characters entirely from memory and imagination, I was missing out on a lot of very cool detail. My characters are each an amalgam of complete fiction and of aspects of many people I’ve known or met or at some point in my life, but because I’m pulling description from my imagination, I’m only using what it occurs to me to use. In some cases, it’s not bad, but overall, it could be much better.

I noticed that when I studied people I didn’t know very well, everything I could see, everything they said and the way in which they said it informed my impression of what kind of person they were. That seems obvious because most of us do that all the time, but I don’t think we’re necessarily conscious we’re doing it. Conversely, I think we tend not to notice as many details about people we feel we already know and for me, that includes some of my characters. It’s especially true of my main characters. Because I feel I know them so well, I now believe I am not describing them well enough to communicate what I take for granted to my readers.

In my next post, I’ll get into the workshop and the exercises that resuscitated my work in progress.

Are you the kind of person who creates dossiers on each character? Do you document everything about them from their astrological sign to their credit score before you begin the first chapter? Or do you start with a general idea and discover who your characters are as you write them?

Off to Grand Lake With Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Those of you who've been reading for a while know that I can't say enough about Lighthouse Writers Workshop, a non-profit creative writing school that we are incredibly lucky to have in Denver.

In February Lighthouse was honored with the Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. I just discovered this short film about the school. The video features Lighthouse Program Director Andrea Dupree, Denver's Poet Laureate Chris Ransick, screenwriter Alexandre O. Philippe, and board member Marcelina Rivera (incorrectly ID'd as faculty). On a side note, debut novelist and Pajama Gardener Carleen Brice is a board member for Lighthouse. Lighthouse was started by Andrea Dupree and Mike Henry in 1997 and now has a membership of over 1,000 writers. The story of how Lighthouse came to be is here.




Tomorrow, I'll be headed up to the 11th annual Grand Lake Retreat for five days of writing and reading in beautiful natural surroundings. You can see details about it here or read about some of my experiences at the retreat last year here and here.

It will be interesting to see how my experience this year differs from last year. When I signed up for the retreat last year, I'd never attended a writing course before. I was headed into to completely unknown territory and I was terrified. For all I knew, I was walking into The Algonquin Round Table, prey to a modern day version of "The Vicious Circle". I was sure everyone there would be accomplished, brilliant and expose me for the talentless hack I was. Naturally, it was nothing like that. It was the single best step to becoming a better writer I could have taken.

After attending the retreat last year, followed by several courses at Lighthouse throughout the year, I anticipate the week with the same sense of excitement I'd have if I were headed to a summer cottage in the woods with friends and family.

I'll have lots to share when I return, but I'll be checked out from July 6th through the 11th.

Five Writing Strengths

My friend and fellow Lighthouse Writers Workshop member, Kristi at Yoga Gumbo tagged me with a meme to identify five writing strengths I have. Like most others, I am more than happy to enumerate my weaknesses, but I'm a little reluctant to come up with strengths. After reflecting, I found it was an important exercise.

I’m just doing it in public.

1. I handle description well. Because of the workshop I just finished, I actually do have some external feedback to draw on. The most consistent positive critique I received was this.

2. My writing voice is somewhat distinct. I think people who have read my work could identify an excerpt of mine in a lineup.

3. I am not sentimental. As much as I tend to fall in love with a piece of dialogue, or the pretty turn of a phrase, I have no hesitation about cutting things that don’t fit. I believe this is known as “killing your darlings”.

4. I read a lot. I do this to learn and I am certain there is a direct correlation between reading and writing well.

5. I’m developing an ability to provide useful critique. I never anticipated how important the art of critique would prove to be in my journey. People place a lot of focus on seeking meaningful feedback, but I have learned a great deal about my own writing by learning how to closely read and provide feedback to others. I’m working to further develop my eye and my editing abilities in order to become a better writer.

I plan to revisit this list every few months. This was a useful meditation and I plan to follow it up by honestly thinking about my weaknesses – in private – in order to focus my goals.

Although I grimaced a little when I got the email from Kristi, telling me about this meme, I realize she gave me a gift. I hope the five people I tag will consider it the same. Even though I’ve only listed five people, I hope everyone who reads this post will give it a try. Leave your answers in the comments here if you're willing to share!

Kristen at From Here to There and Back

Ello at Random Acts of Unkindness

Charles at Razored Zen

Shauna at For Love of Words

Patti at The Patti-O

The Tobias Wolff Experience - With Audio

Some of you may remember me talking about my big, exciting Tobias Wolff weekend last month. Lots of activity packed in a short span of time and it was awesome! Tobias Wolff was in Denver and there were three phenomenal events sponsored by my beloved Lighthouse Writers Workshop and of course, I attended all of them.

Tobias Wolff was inspiring, personable and entertaining and my friends, you have the opportunity to share in that weekend with me. If you go here, you’ll see the most recent of a series of posts about the Tobias experience. There are two recordings you can listen to – each somewhere around 45 minutes and well worth making the time for.

Part I of the talks includes a reading from Wolff’s novel, Old School and his short story Bullet in the Brain.

Part II is novelist Eli Gottlieb’s interview with Wolff where they discuss everything from boring characters to writing workshops to mentors to Operation Homecoming to an anecdote about Raymond Carver being a chocolate hoarder.

If you make the time to listen to these segments, I promise you’ll be glad you did.

If you scroll around the Lighthouse blog, you can read some additional information about the experience, posted by my personal heroine, the Program Director for Lighthouse Writers Workshop and Literary Goddess, Andrea Dupree. Yes, I understand the meaning of restraining order, but I think the blogosphere meets the 250 yard distance I’m supposed to keep away from her.

Despite my penchant for yammering on line I did not ask Mr. Wolff any questions and you’ll certainly be impressed to know that the only question that I seemed to be able to focus on all weekend was to ask him how he felt about being portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie adaptation of his memoir, This Boy’s Life. I am sooo cerebral. I declined to ask my burning question and could only stammer out that I thought Old School was the ultimate novel for writers when I stood in line to get my copy signed. Fortunately, there was nobody standing guard with a taser as I made my star-struck way to the man.

Is it just me, or does anybody else get all Disney World goofy when they have a book signed by a famous author?

The Light is Changing

The light is changing, do you see it? The temperatures are still warm, but it’s getting cooler little by little. The first of the yellow mums have started to bloom in my yard. It’s that “back to school” feeling that has sent many of us back to some kind of work routine that signals the end of lazy summer days.

Monday night I started an eight week novel writing workshop and the timing is perfect. The week long retreat got me started on the right foot and lately when I sit down the write, I’ve managed that magical balance where I can turn off my editor and let it flow, knowing that every few chapters I can go back and make edits, and tweak and fiddle. There are ten of us in the workshop and over the course of the eight, two hour sessions we’ll alternate discussions on craft, books and shaping the novel with critiquing. We’ll have the opportunity to get two 10-12 page excerpts critiqued by our instructor and we’ll submit one excerpt to the group for critique.

I’m a pretty disciplined person anyway, but there are few things that get me to buckle down, focus and produce like a deadline, and now I have one every week for a while.

Scott was mildly amused when he walked into the kitchen yesterday and found me with my laptop, chunks of manuscript with my red inked edits all over them, a dictionary, thesaurus, E.B. White’s Elements of Style and the Chicago Manual of Style spread out all over the island counter. It’s an odd feeling to try to ready pieces of a partial first draft for review and critique. I wonder what the expectation will be as to the state of completeness of this stuff. I’m 11,536 words and 53 double spaced, 12 pt., Courier New pages into a first draft – to be exact -- so I vacillate around about how much I should tinker and add, how much I should clean up, how much I should focus on these three submissions alone and how much, if anything, I should be doing to add to the story over these next eight weeks. Some of the students are farther along in their stories than I am, but just as many are not as far along. I guess what we submit for critique and those nine submissions I get to critique will be in a variety of states.

It will be interesting and I’m looking forward to it. This will be the very first time I have the chance to be involved in a critique group and I’m incredibly grateful that it is structured and the instructor will be providing her critiques too.

This very specific incentive made me wonder about how other writers motivate themselves and set goals. The processes people follow seem to be as varied as each person. Do you make yourself sit down for a set period of time? Set a word count goal for the day, or the week? Set goals for revising a number of pages? If you have a full time job, other than writing, when do you manage to get most of your writing done? Is writing easier/harder in the fall and winter, than in the spring and summer? How about goals for your work? Do you have a goal set for when you want to finish your project and look for an agent (if you don’t already have one)? Is it a very specific “by the end of 2007” or is it something vague, like before my 40^th, 50^th, 60^th birthday? What keeps you going?

Chapter One and Beyond With Jenny Vacchiano

Every workshop and discussion I attended at the Grand Lake Writers Getaway with Lighthouse Writers Workshop a couple of weeks back was outstanding, but the workshops called Chapter One and Beyond and Sweating the Small Stuff provided me the most immediately useful practical information of all of them.

The workshops were both led by Jenny Vacchiano, MFA. Jennifer’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as 5280, Redbook, StoryQuarterly, Cimarron Review and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She was 3^rd runner-up for the 2005 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in the novel-in-progress category. Jenny was awarded a 2006 Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute Fellowship for work in the same novel. She earned a BA in English from Grinnell College and an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College.

It’s no secret that a novel’s first chapter or prologue is critical. How well the first pages are written will determine whether or not our readers want to continue reading.

We talked about what makes a lead character compelling, establishing the setting or story world and establishing voice, which is directly related to the point of view we choose. We talked about story questions that should be established at the start, how much we should reveal and how much we should leave open ended. We also talked about the importance of laying out what the character wants and who or what is standing in her way. Finally, we discussed the kinds of things that can slow the start of the story down: too much back story, too much character or setting description and starting the story at the wrong point in time – often we’re tempted to start the story far earlier than we need to.

Jenny provided us with a number of questions to ask after every chapter. I found these questions to be perhaps the most useful tool I now have to remain organized and focused on where I’m going.

Some of the questions to ask after each chapter are: What actually happens in the chapter? What question or questions have I left the reader with that are compelling enough to keep her reading? What might happen next? Even if you already think you know what will happen next, this question can open up possibilities for other actions that may be even better. Are there secondary characters, images, objects or symbols that appear in the chapter that might resurface later to develop or reinforce your theme(s)? Have I addressed specific plot points? Developed subplots? Created sufficient tension?

If I stand back to look at the big picture of how I’ve plotted my story, refer to the inciting incident that got the character moving in the first place (whether it’s part of the story or not), take a look at the major conflicts and crises that will eventually lead to the climax of the story and the eventual resolution, evaluating each scene and chapter individually, within the context of the story arc is invaluable. It helps to ensure that each is serving a purpose inherent in the overall structure.

In Sweating the Small Stuff, Jenny challenged us to take ourselves out of the writing process and put ourselves into the editor’s role and scrutinize each scene and chapter, asking the kinds of questions an agent or editor would

To facilitate evaluating each individual scene in a chapter, we did an exercise where we took a printed chapter and literally cut the pages up to delineate individual scenes. We taped the pages that belonged in each scene together and then laid them out on the floor. In some cases, people found they had short scenes that were unnecessary. In others, people found that changing the order of the scenes worked better than what they’d originally envisioned. The same can hold true with the chapters themselves.

Do we present questions that are plot driven and character driven? What are the stakes associated with the questions we pose? When we provide answers to questions, do we introduce new ones? Is our lead character making decisions and/or significant non-decisions? How many of these are decisions there is no turning back from? What are the consequences of the character’s decisions? Do decisions lead to a spiraling sequence of events? Finally, as we get to the story’s resolution, what has changed? How is our character different than he was at the start, or how is her world changed?

By breaking a draft down into manageable pieces and analyzing each on its own merit and making notes after each, I found it was much easier to objectively gauge how well the story was working. When we exchanged chapters with another writer and we each analyzed the work of the other, using the same criteria, everyone was able to see things through the other person’s eyes that they hadn’t been able to see themselves.

Two things that Jenny said that also stuck with me:

Revision is not tinkering or editing
Try retyping your draft when you revise, instead of opening up an old draft

What advice on craft have you been given, or can you offer that you've found especially helpful?

Twenty Questions

In a workshop I recently attended, we did an exercise I wanted to share. Quite simply, it was to list twenty questions we’d like to answer about a character. As all of the exercises were, this was done quickly, the better to tap in to the subconscious. These were my twenty:

1. What are her religious beliefs? Does she believe in God? Belong to a particular church or religion?
2. What does she believe happens after we die?
3. Does she believe that passion can be sustained in a long term relationship?
4. What is her favorite flavor of ice cream?
5. Does she read, and if so, who is her favorite author? What are her favorite books?
6. What does she think of TV? If she watches, what shows does she watch?
7. Does she like to cook? Is she any good at it?
8. What are her most personal thoughts about her children?
9. Does she have close friendships, and if so, with whom?
10. What kind of relationship does she have with her mother?
11. How does she feel about money? About wealth?
12. How important are material things to her?
13. Does she think back on any of her former lovers with longing or regret?
14. Does she have any annoying habits or idiosyncrasies?
15. Is she a good driver, or a poor driver?
16. Does she have any phobias?
17. Is she exceptionally talented or skilled at something?
18. Is she unusually challenged in any area?
19. What is her decorating style?
20. What kind of clothing does she wear?

What kinds of things do you think would be particularly interesting to know about one of your characters?

Writing a Great Scene, Part II With Andrea Dupree

Andrea Dupree, MFA serves as the Program Director for Lighthouse Writers Workshop and interim Director of Liberal Studies at the University of Denver’s University College. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, 5280, Virginia Quarterly Review, Confrontation, and elsewhere.

She received her MFA in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston, and her BA in English and Political Science at the University of California, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

And she is funny. She’s really funny, so of course I loved her sessions.

Andrea taught Writing a Great Scene: Part II at the Lighthouse Writers Getaway last week. The workshop complemented Writing a Great Scene: Part I, where we used movie deconstruction to analyze narrative structure. In this session, we analyzed four excerpts from great books and followed each exercise with writing our own scenes.

In the first exercise, we looked at a scene from Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. I’ll excerpt the first two paragraphs that we examined here:

“After four days of rain the sun appeared in a white sky, febrile and dazzling, and the people who had left for higher ground came back in rowboats. From our bedroom window we could see them patting their roofs and peering in at their attic windows. ‘I have never seen such a thing,’ Sylvie said. The water shone more brilliantly than the sky, and while we watched, a tall elm tree fell slowly across the road. From crown to root, half of it vanished in the brilliant light.

Fingerbone was never an impressive town. It was chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere. That flood flattened scores of headstones. More disturbing, the graves sank when the water receded, so that they looked a little like hollow sides or empty bellies. And then the library was flooded to a depth of three shelves, creating vast gaps in the Dewey decimal system. The losses in hooked and braided rugs and needle point footstools will never be reckoned. Fungus and mold crept into wedding dresses and photograph albums, so that the leather crumbled in our hands when we lifted the covers, and the sharp smell that rose when we opened them was as insinuating as the smell one finds under a plank or a rock. Much of what Fingerbone had hoarded up was defaced or destroyed outright, but perhaps because the hoard was not much to begin with, the loss was not overwhelming.”

Andrea read the entire scene (a bit longer than this excerpt) aloud and then we read it to ourselves and noted the details. We noted the sounds, sights, smells, tactile details and sounds. We talked about transitions into and out of the scene and then we wrote for fifteen minutes. I wrote a scene for the new story I’m working on. This particular exercise was a particularly valuable one for me because detailed description is something I tend to skimp on.

In the second exercise, we read an excerpt from Tobias Wolff’s memoir This Boy’s Life to analyze the character arc. I won’t excerpt the scene here, but for those familiar with the story, we read the scene where the main character is given a .22 rifle by his mother’s boyfriend. The scene describes ever escalating desires in the character: first he wants the rifle, once he has it and isn’t supposed to handle it when no one is home, but just wants to clean it, then he needs to carry it around, eventually he’s aiming it out the apartment window at people and finally, he ends up shooting a squirrel. We discussed this scene in great detail and the idea of character’s wants and desires. We followed the discussion with a writing exercise and wrote about a character who wants something tangible very badly and either does or does not get it.

As Kurt Vonnegut said in his Creative Writing 101 Tips, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” This is a great exercise and a great reminder to make sure that we’ve done that within our own work.

We then read the Ernest Hemingway short story Hills Like White Elephants. It’s a very short story and is a conversation between a man and a woman sitting in a train station café. What we can pick up from the dialogue – although it’s extremely subtle – is that the relationship between the two has changed, that she has become pregnant and he wants her to have an abortion, although he will not say so and she wants him not to want her to have an abortion. She will also not say so. It’s a wonderful example of the use of subtext. I loved this exercise. We talked about how frequently people really do say exactly what they mean and how uninteresting dialogue is when we don’t show this natural tendency for people to talk around things. We talked about how dialogue is not limited just to words, but is reflected in setting, gestures and silences. We followed the discussion with a writing exercise and wrote about an argument (real or fictional) between two people where the true feelings of the characters are not expressed.

Hmm – this was a great sanity check. Now and then, when we read a conversation where each character’s thoughts are clearly laid out it does seem a little contrived. Unless it’s a therapy session where each is honestly laying out thoughts and true feelings, we as human beings tend to rarely say what we’re thinking. It occurred to me that this is especially true within close relationships.

For this discussion about writing great scenes, we analyzed: sensory details, a character’s nature being at odds with his/her appearance, the art of not saying (or subtext) and changes through action. I think all writers tend to be stronger in some areas than others and prior to sitting through this workshop, I think I minimized the importance of thinking about each and every one of these aspects of scene. They’re all important and by looking back to these four exercises and doing a sanity check on scenes I’ve written, I’ve been able to improve them quite a bit.

Do you tend to skimp or go overboard in certain areas? What are you working to improve in your own scenes?

A Story is a Promise

For the next several days, I’ll be posting about the experiences I had with the Lighthouse Writers Workshop at the Grand Lake Writers Getaway last week.

My first workshop was called Great Scenes & Sequences, Part I, led by Alexander O. Philippe, MFA. Please check out the link to read his impressive bio and credentials.

Alexandre is a charming, bright, talented screenwriter and film maker and a charismatic instructor and speaker. He was born and raised in Switzerland, where he hosted film salons for his parents’ friends starting at the age of thirteen.

In this workshop, Alexandre used great movie clips and film deconstruction to break down the narrative elements of successful scenes and sequences.

Alexandre started the class off by reminding us that a story is promise. He sketched out the classic three act story format. I’ve attempted to recreate my notes from class in the drawing below.

We loosely defined scenes as story elements that convey setting, a period in time, occur in real-time, permit a slowing down of the action, include action of some kind, include one or more characters and may include dialogue. We then further defined a sequence as a series of scenes that are linked together. In fiction, a sequence may also constitute a chapter.

Much as there is a story arc to the entire work, each scene or sequence also has an arc and must serve to define character and/or move the story forward. To illustrate this, Alexandre showed us a film clip of the opening sequence in the movie Minority Report, a movie based on the Philip K. Dick short story published in 1956. This example shows us a very fast moving sequence of linked scenes in which we’re shown a man and woman about to engage in a sexual encounter, who are then observed by another man who bursts into the room and violently murders them. These images cut back and forth to The Division of Precrime, where we see the images of this crime being transmitted via three “precogs” who are somehow wired up to an elaborate audio visual display, showing this futuristic division images of a crime that is about to be committed. Immediately, we’re given a crisis scenario – a violent crime is about to be committed, the division has been given the names of the victims and the perpetrator and need to determine where the crime scene is. We cut to Tom Cruise entering the building and exchanging some banter with a coworker. This chit chat quickly characterizes Tom Cruise as dedicated, but also somewhat personable. The stakes continue to be raised as the team is having difficulty with the address and the clock is ticking – they are maybe 15 minutes away from the time the crime will be committed. Enter Colin Firth, from a separate federal agency. He is observing the Washington, DC based Division of Precrime and his oversight raises tension further. As the team continues to work, he’s brought up to speed on what’s happening – a show, don’t tell method of providing exposition. Cut to a scene earlier that morning in the home of the woman and the perpetrator. We now see that there’s tension at breakfast, the man she’ll later be in bed with is hanging around in a park across the street from the house, the husband notices him and mentions it to the wife, who changes the subject. The husband is obviously suspicious as she tries to rush him off to work. At nearly the last moment, Tom Cruise deduces where they are through the use of the images generated by the precogs, the team arrives at the crime scene, stops the crime from being committed and apprehends the perpetrator. The final image in the sequence of scenes is of the Division of Precrime about to put some kind of device on the perpetrator and the perpetrator is obviously terrified of this happening. Tom Cruise’s face doesn’t show him as especially happy about this, possibly just resigned.

A great deal of things are accomplished in this rapid fire opening sequence of scenes. We’re given some insight into character, we know something about the fictional organization, the basis for the premise of the story – which is grounded in the age old fate versus free will question – is established, we have an inciting incident to launch the action and we are left with a lot of questions that compel is to keep watching (or reading). Who/what are the precogs? What is the federal guy doing monitoring this program? What’s the ominous device that the perpetrator is terrified of?

Alexandre uses film deconstruction to very effectively illustrate the components of dramatic structure and he further uses a sequence from the film classic, To Have and To Have Not to further illustrate the more subtle nuances of characters, each with desires they are unwilling to outwardly state. The dialogue based scenes are a great illustration of the use of subtext.

The other great example Alexandre uses in illustrating dramatic structure is the story of The Wizard of Oz. We have an inciting incident just prior to the start of the story (movie), where Toto has bitten Miss Gulch. We are drawn a picture of Dorothy, who feels like she doesn’t belong and wishes she could be over the rainbow. To protect Toto, she decides to run away and runs into the tinker, who encourages her to go home, but then the tornado hits – Plot Point 1 – and sets up a situation where she’s reached a point of no return because she lands in Oz – on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. The Major Dramatic Question becomes, will she get home again and the underlying premise of the story that supports the entire plot is that there’s no place like home. Throughout the story, Dorothy is hit with increasing stakes and crises. First, she needs to find the wizard, then she does and he sends her off to get the broom from the Wicked Witch of the West, finally she does and the Wizard turns out to be a phony, but finally, we do get Resolution and she goes home and finds that each character had what they wanted all along and that there is no place like home.

One of Alexandre’s basic assumptions throughout the workshop is that we must know how the story will end. We can pre-write without knowing exactly what will happen, but by the 100 page point, we need to know where we’re going to end up so that all scenes and sequences can lead to that moment. He quoted William Golding as saying that everything drives to the final chapter and in order to honor the promise that the story makes at the beginning, we need to provide a satisfying resolution and answer the major dramatic question.

So an inciting incident that may or may not occur within the story starts us off, and through sequences of scenes that may constitute chapters, Plot Points provide mini climaxes to each act by delivering story events usually greater than any other prior to it them in each act, Crises provide moments of opportunity that eventually culminate into the story’s Climax and finally, we provide Resolution and at that point, the Major Dramatic Question should be answered.

In the classic three act structure, we use Act I to put our protagonist in a tree, in Act II we throw rocks at her and in Act III, we bring her back down.

It was a great workshop and the use of film deconstruction was an immediate and effective way to illustrate dramatic structure. This session served to anchor my thinking throughout the remainder of the week. What is the purpose of each scene? How does it serve to advance the story and/or develop the character? Is it building toward the last chapter, supporting the premise and working toward answering the Major Dramatic Question?

Retreat Reflections

One of the great things about growing older is the ability to recognize a profound or significant moment or event while it’s happening. I arrived at Shadowcliff Lodge in Grand Lake, Colorado for the Lighthouse Writers Getaway and until the final workshop finished on Saturday, I was in a world unlike any other I’d ever experienced.

The location was idyllic. I arrived shortly after three o’clock last Monday and since dinner and the welcoming reception weren’t until six, I took advantage of the free time to sit on the deck overlooking the river so I could relax with a book. The roar of the water rushing by was punctuated by the sound of birds. Soon, thunderheads gathered over the lake and I could hear distant booming and see the grey trails of rain pouring from the clouds over the water. No road sounds. No dogs barking. No sirens. No click of a compressor signaling the impending blast of an AC unit.

I’d been nervous about attending the retreat. People began trickling in and we all exchanged the same questions. What are you writing? Where do you live? Have you been on retreats with Lighthouse before? In all, there were twenty four of us signed up and assigned to live on two floors of a three story wooden lodge. There were seven Lighthouse instructors. That first night after dinner, we all gathered together and the faculty members read to us from pieces they’d published or were working on. They were amazing. One read from his fourth novel, another from a short story work in progress, an essay, poems; they were all published authors.

My new roommate Sarah and I sat in the day room on the third floor of the Cliffside Lodge and talked until midnight. It was the beginning of a week long slumber party.

That night when I looked up at the sky, it was a deep, black expanse, illuminated by brilliant white, fiery stars that I can’t remember seeing in the same way since the summers of my childhood.

The following morning I went to my first workshop. This kicked off four days packed with writing exercises and discussions about books and writing that far exceeded anything I could have ever anticipated. I attended nine workshops and four book discussions and every single one of them was interesting, sparked my creativity and taught me a great deal. Every one. I'd never gone to a writing workshop before. A writer from Boulder told me that the sessions we were attending were every bit as good as those she attended in her MFA program.

The first student readings were on Wednesday night. I really did not want to do it and initially was sure I would not. I’d never read my work in public; had rarely let anyone read it at all. Anxiety mounted after I was added to the batting order. I’d be reader eight of thirteen. It was difficult for me to understand why this struck such a primitive terror in me. I’m in sales. I stand up routinely in front of groups of people and speak all the time, sometimes to hostile audiences and my palms don’t even sweat. Of course – I didn’t build the product I’m pitching, so I don’t have an emotional investment in it. If my audience isn’t in love with what I'm selling, it doesn’t hurt my feelings. Wednesday after dinner, the nervousness really kicked in. I remembered that the beta blockers I take every day to prevent migraines are supposed to help with performance anxiety, so I washed one down with a beer before we all gathered for the readings. When my turn came, I apologized in advance for reading too fast – I knew I’d never be able to slow it down to the cadence I’d been hearing – and I did it. I didn’t look up while I was reading, as the more relaxed, experienced readers did, but as I got going, they laughed when I came to a section that I thought was a little amusing and I settled down. When I finished, they clapped – I think I even heard a whoop. I don't know who the whoop came from, whether it was for the work or just because that person knew how nervous I was. It doesn't matter. I crossed a plateau.

I have to say something about the people I spent six days with. There were over thirty of us in a constant state of togetherness and every person was interesting, bright, supportive and generous. Never in my life have I been in such a large group where I literally enjoyed the company of every person. We got to know each other pretty well in such a short time. The age range was from twenty-something to eighty. People came from all over Colorado and our backgrounds represented every possible type of lifestyle and personality. A love of words and writing were our bond.

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned the solitude and the isolation I’ve experienced in the often lonely vocation of writing. Friends in cyber space have provided the kind of support that led me to seek out Lighthouse Writers Workshop. I can scarcely describe the joy I feel in finding other writers in the Denver area with whom I’ve made real connections. For many months now, I’ve felt somewhat like a person with a third eye, arm or leg – just a little out of place when I'm with others. I got to Grand Lake and found it filled with people just like me and it feels good.

Before I left for the retreat, I believed the experience would signify a turning point and it did. It truly changed my life.

What experiences have you had that marked a milestone for you in your writing?

Writer's Retreat

Tomorrow I’m heading off to a writer’s retreat in beautiful Grand Lake, Colorado. The retreat is the 10th annual event, hosted by the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. I've been looking forward to the coming week and wanted to share a little bit about the sessions I’ll be attending.

We check in to the Shadowcliff Lodge late tomorrow afternoon. Shadowcliff is a rustic mountain lodge and I’ll be sharing a room with two other writers. All meals will be provided, but there will be shared bathrooms and some shared meal setup and cleanup. I’m thinking this will be very much like going to summer camp. Shadowcliff Lodge borders Rocky Mountain National Park and the roaring North Inlet Stream. It’s located on a cliff that overlooks Grand Lake Village and the Colorado Great Lakes area.

Dinner is scheduled for 6:00 and will be followed by a welcome reception and a faculty reading. The faculty of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop is impressive!

Tuesday Morning I’ve chosen a session called Great Scenes and Sequences, Part I, taught by Alexandre Philippe.

Lunch will be at noon, followed by a Short Story Book Talk. There were several books to read to prepare for the retreat and the short story selection is Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson.

In the afternoon I’ll be attending Write a Great Scene, Part II, led by Andrea Dupree.

Dinner will be followed by participant reading.

Wednesday Morning’s first session will be Dramatic Structure, led by Alexandre Philippe.

After lunch we’ll have a Poetry Book Talk, which I am sure will be led by Denver’s Poet Laureate, Chris Ransick. The poetry book selected is The Wild Braid, by Stanley Kunitz. I believe this book was published shortly before the death of the 100 year old former Poet Laureate of the United States.

The afternoon session led by Jenny Vacchiano is Your Creative Autobiography, followed by dinner and an evening discussion on Movie Deconstruction.

On Thursday, my morning session will be Cinematic Writing, led by the novelist William Haywood Henderson.

Our afternoon book talk will be on the memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, followed by dinner and then Game Night and/or Night on the Town.

Friday’s morning session will be led by Jenny Vacchiano on Chapter One (and beyond).

After lunch, we’ll discuss Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson.

Friday afternoon, I’ll be in a session led by Jenny Vacchiano, called Sweating the Small Stuff, followed by dinner and a final participant reading.

Finally, we’ll wrap our week up on Saturday morning with a discussion on the Ins and Outs of Publishing, say our goodbyes and go home inspired.

There is so much that I am looking forward to about this week. It almost doesn't seem possible that I'll be spending an entire week, packed with interesting and informative sessions and discussions with other retreat participants and the talented faculty of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

I feel like this experience will mark a turning point.