Fussell Fussing

I’ve previously written about Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory,” and have to conclude that while Fussell has introduced me to other writers I should probably read, I’m probably not going to read this book again.

He makes a good argument. Over and over and over again. And over again. I’m pretty sure he could have argued that writers’ experience in World War I and their familiarity with common motifs and metaphors in English literature were going to influence each other and probably mean some of the motifs and metaphors would be used in an ironic fashion in a lot fewer pages than he uses in this book. And that’s okay. He’s an academic, and it’s his job to go on and on and on and on and on about what he believes in. I’m a blogger; I get that.

But I can also be brief.

Outlining – Again – to the Rescue

Above: How I feel when I get new ideas for a novel I'm working on.

I was once worried that I’d cut Doleful Creatures down too much.

I’m now north of 81,000 words and I’ve got a lot of story to write; I’m now worried it’s bloating up again.

But as I keep on saying, there’s a lot of story left to write. And to make this re-write more efficient, I’m resorting to my most hated of writing tasks, again: outlining.

So here’s what I’ve got to do to finish this thing up. Some of it is already done, but a lot of it is not:

Beavers, Jarrod, Chylus, Aloysius and the hawks at the dam. They start building.

Man in the Rock blown out of the second cliff, down creek, settles into the lady’s world in a deep pond.

The lady on the way, searching, knowing her realm has been found, but cannot sense entrance, nor where J&A are.

Magda comes to dam, lets them know the lady is on the way. They beg her to go back for a diversion so they can get into her realm first to see if they can do something to stop whatever nefarious mischief she’s up to or could do if she finds her way in.

Magda goes, Chylus is reluctant to have her go, but he is needed in the realm.

Magda off to fight the lady with animals she can find, the sparrows come to help.

The lady sense J&S finally, but is stopped on her way by Magda and company. She calls her starlings for help.

J&A penetrate into the realm, talk with the elephants.

Battle rages. The lady fights her way through and finds an entrance to the realm.

Below, Man in the Rock and the others on various tasks. Man in the Rock talks with the shadow of the lady left. Others foment rebellion among the captive animals.

The lady arrives, absorbs her shadow and grows in strength.

Silence of the animals and their departure causes her power to shrink and she fades, becomes itty-bitty snake.

Denouement

Even this outline has some serious writing nuts to crack. What, exactly, does the Lady hope to do once she’s back in her realm, deep underground in the dark with a bunch of cranky animals? Why couldn’t she go there whenever she wanted? Maybe the magpies blocked her off? But they how did Jarrod and his kind get out? Are they the canary in the mine as far as nasty uncorporeal entities invading Earth? I just don’t know. Plot creep, I suppose. But it’s better than a revision ago, when I didn’t have much of a plot to speak of.

What’s more frightening: I think I’ve got to go back and edit at least one more time again anyway, in order to more fully develop the characters of Chylus and Jarrod. It’s funny to see Jarrod really taking a back seat to other characters, seeing as he started out as the main bird. Subsequent rewrites, however, have helped me develop other characters as I saw how they fit better into the story. In doing so, however, I’ve neglected my main character and his corvid sidekick. So back to the drawing board for them.

Given what I’ve got to write, I won’t be surprised if this book hits 90,000 words before the end.

Then I have to find more beta readers to help me before this book takes over. As if it hasn’t already.

In Canis Corpore Transmuto . . .

Nathan Bransford writes that what ends up in a finished novel “should represent a mere fraction of your ideas.”

Writes Bransford:

As the painting atop this post alludes, a novel should be a tip of the iceberg above a much larger base. That base is everything you know about your characters' back stories, the history of your setting and your characters' forefathers, the technology, the government, etc. etc. etc. Chances are only a fraction of this knowledge will ever come into play, because the key to exposition is to only tell the reader what they actually need to know to understand the events of the novel.

As I home in on finishing the seventh edit of Doleful Creatures, I begin to see the wisdom in his words.

And I also begin to see how revision helps the ideas flow.

At first, Doleful Creatures was going to be a twee little tale of how animals living on and near a bankrupt farm save the farm from foreclosure.

But I got distracted as new ideas came in. Let’s say the book’s evolved since then, which you’d know if you’ve read my latest attempt at a query letter.

I have killed a lot of darlings writing this novel. But I have also brought in new darlings to replace them. And, inexplicably, I might have figured out how to get a second novel out of the first, if the first ends up going anywhere.

At the end of Rev. 6, as I have already noted, I’d cut the novel by 12,000 words. I’ve since cut about 4,000 more, but have managed to add another 17,000, and I’m not done with the story yet. This gives me cause to celebrate and yet cause for concern: I do still have a wonderful story here, but it’s going to require another editing for consistency, and for at least one more character augmentation. 

Teaching English at BYU-Idaho is Making Me A Better Writer

It struck me early this morning that for the last few edits of my novel Doleful Creatures (fantasy, about 80,000 words, I’m looking for beta readers), I’ve focused on two things: First, making the story better. Second, making the characters better with the story. I want to talk about the second thing in this post.

Revision Seven has been the Revision of Aloysius, the badger. In previous revisions, he’s been merely a cranky foil to pretty much everyone else in the book. However, I hinted at his crankiness rather than made it clear why he was so cranky. So in this revision, I brought the crankiness into focus. In doing that, I brought in a lot more of the backstory which now seems critical to the entire story, and also helped flesh out two other characters who had also been hinted at and are now much more pivotal, even though we only learn about them in flashback.

Revision Six was the Revision of Magda, the crow. She emerged as the true leader of the crows rather than her more laid-back and more juvenile hubby Chylus – and that’s okay. She’s become the glue that’s keeping the novel – and all the other characters – together.

What this tells me is that I’ve probably got another revision to do, this time focusing on Jarrod, the main character. I have done some with him as I worked on Aloysius, because their characters are somewhat intertwined, but it’s clear I need to do more.

What’s prompting all this?

Why, teaching at Brigham Young University-Idaho, that’s what.

First came a student discussion on poet Gregory Carr’s “ThisI Believe” essay, in which he says the following:

When I write a poem, I process experience. I take what’s inside me — the raw, chaotic material of feeling or memory — and translate it into words and then shape those words into the rhythmical language we call a poem. This process brings me a kind of wild joy. Before I was powerless and passive in the face of my confusion, but now I am active: the powerful shaper of my experience. I am transforming it into a lucid meaning.

My Pathways 106 students have latched onto this statement this week, hoping to use it to remind them to process their own feelings and memory as they write their own belief statements. As I read their comments, I came to realize that’s what I need to do with my characters in Doleful Creatures – I have to help them take the “raw, chaotic material of feeling or memory and translate it into words, and then shape those words” into the rhythmical language we call a novel.

I’ve been hounding students all along that it’s stories that help us remember points and concepts – now I need to remind myself of that very thing as I try to turn a fictional world into something that can get a point across.

Then let’s move on to my English 101 class this semester, where we’ve had a lively discussion on S.I. Hayakawa’s Ladder of Abstraction. They were struggling to understand the concept until I found this website (geared toward public speaking, but it easily applies to writing as well).

Having a concrete example of the abstract helped my students a lot – and in explaining the concept to them, it hit me: How much ladder climbing (and descending) am I doing in Doleful Creatures?

So I stop to check myself, near the end of the seventh edit: Not as much as I need to. There are instances, in flashback, where it’s clear to me what’s going on. But the abstract has to meet the concrete of the reader’s reality – and I’m not yet succeeding at that. If I want to get across the abstract concept of the book – what would have happened if the sixth day of creation stopped before the introduction of mankind – I have to get to the concrete of the matter: How do animals react to man in the world today, and how might they react if there were no men around at all.

I find myself missing the mark (but that’s okay; the concrete reality of what I’m trying to do with this novel only arrived in the seventh revision. So – sigh – more revisions to follow.

But in helping these students see the value of adding these concepts to their writing tool chest, I’m reminded myself of these tools’ intrinsic value to me as a writer.

A Rough Day of Editing

Last night, I was thrilled that in editing Doleful Creatures, I’d gotten the word count back up to its original 75,000 before the Great Kill of Revision Six.

Today, after writing more than a thousand words while editing the next few chapters, that word count is barely clinging to those coveted 75,000 words.

I cut a lot. I probably should have cut more. And the cutting, even after the revision six bloddletting, was painful. But again, I’m getting a better story out of it. I got rid of some stuff that was redundant even with the adjacent chapter, so that’s got to be good news.

Twelve chapters to go, and I’ll finish revision seven. I’m optimistic I could still hit 80,000 words, as I’ve added a lot of storyline that still needs to be wrapped up before the story is done. And it’s good storyline that bolsters the good storyline I had beforehand.

But still, there is doubt . . .

Four be the things I’d been better without:

Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

-- Dorothy Parker