Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

What follows is the opening paragraph from “The Debt Economy,” an article written by James Surowiecki that appeared in the November 23, 2009 issue of the New Yorker:

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that all financial crises are the results of “debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale.” The recent financial crisis was no exception, with everyone — homeowners, private-equity investors, our biggest banks — taking on enormous amounts of debt. If it’s frustrating that the government is footing the bill to clean up the mess, it’s even worse that the government helped pay for the debt binge that created the mess in the first place, thanks to a tax system that actually subsidizes borrowing. Debt didn’t get dangerously out of scale because the system was broken. It got out of scale, in part, because the system worked.

Let’s narrow in a little further:

Debt didn’t get dangerously out of scale because the system was broken. It got out of scale, in part, because the system worked.

Try reading these two lines out loud.

Notice how in the first sentence your voice travels downhill to the word broken. Then, in the second line, it travels back up to end (brightly in tone, but ominous in meaning) on the word worked.

I think this is very nice. You could argue that it’s a little mechanical, but you also have to agree that it’s an effective way of erasing one set of expectations and replacing them with another. (Which is what Surowiecki needs to do in order to advance his argument.)

Like any technique the two-line reverse can be used for ill:

He left the house that fine spring morning never having felt more alive. What he didn’t know — nay, what he couldn’t know — was that this was the day he would die.

But it can also be used (slightly) more subtly.

Imagine a paragraph about a guy arriving late to deliver a big speech at an important auditorium. He hurries through the stage door. Minions scurry to get the proceedings started. He checks his breath. Wipes the sweat off his palms. He gets to the wings just as the person introducing him gets something in his bio wrong. Then this:

He takes the stage expecting to see an audience filled with hundreds of people. Instead there is one.

The “two-line reverse” gets you out of the droning quality of early drafts, where the sentences come one after another with little relationship to each other. Try it the next time you want your work to have a little more music.

Your assignment is to jot (and I stress that word JOT) down the scenes you would expect to find in a story based on the following premise:

Two childhood friends unexpectedly fall in love during a trip to New York.

The scenes do not have to be in order. They do not have to cohere. They do not have to be original.

This is an exercise in reacting to an idea. Keep it fast and loose and automatic.

Please post your results in the comments or send them to me at dennis <dot> cass <at> gmail <dot> com and we’ll put them to good use.

Final thought:

Duplicate answers are beyond okay. So if you see something in the comments and you feel that it’s already been covered, please post anyway. The more people who contribute the better.

A reader writes:

A few months back, you posted (here) on the idea of carefully crafted “tent poles” — which, as I read it, meant key scenes, Big Moments, not necessarily with fights and explosions but with a lot of propulsive (even if intellectual) energy. You didn’t say explicitly in your post to construct the tent poles first, and then go back and cover them with canvas (as it were). But that’s what I’ve been experimenting with. And I think it’s working. So far.

My question: can you think of a handy set of guidelines for how to establish a rhythm of such scenes? This might factor in the length of the novel, the kind (action-y vs. less so), maybe the number of characters, the POV, whatever. I’ve got one HUGE tent-pole moment — the climactic chapter — and maybe six or eight lesser ones. Structurally, I can imagine a plotline in which the tent poles were gradually ramping up to the huge one; I can imagine a rhythm established by the lengths of these scenes, and the lengths of the scenes which tie them together; I can imagine a rhythm in which the energy alternates more or less evenly, going UP, down, UP, down, etc. until finally there’s a sort of pause — an extended down, I guess you could say, followed by the big UPPPP of that last one. Not looking for some precise mathematical or geometric rule, of course. Just wondering if you see relative value in one vs. another.

Without seeing the work it’s impossible for me to give you feedback on structure, but I think you’re on the right track in how you’re thinking about tent poles:

You seem to get that the number of tent poles is finite

If you feel you have 27 key scenes then you either can’t tell the major from the minor or you’re trying to do too much in one work.

You’re right about rhythm

Go too long between tent pole moments and your reader might get bored. Pack them too close together and your reader might feel overwhelmed. Finding that right balance between tension and release is key.

You’re also right that tent poles don’t have to involve plot, big character movement, etc.

While pondering this question I kept thinking about the scene in the film Gone with the Wind when Scarlett O’Hara is at the train depot and the camera cranes up to reveal wounded Confederate soldiers stretching to the horizon.

A tent pole moment can be as seemingly insignificant as a transition or an aside, but it has that “wow” factor that makes you love the work and want to keep going.

Final thought:

Getting back to your question about sequencing, I think the best thing you can do is to stay loose and playful.

Screenwriters and television writers often write the gist of scenes on note cards and pin them to a cork board.

See what happens when turn  your tent pole moments into building blocks that you can move around in space.

I’ve decided to move the party online.

Between now and August 9th you are invited to send me a paragraph from a work in progress. I will choose a handful of grafs to critique on this blog using the hot new Paragraph Party method.

Here are the rules:

1. You are to send me one paragraph only

Please do not send me your entire novel and tell me to “pick whatever paragraph you think needs the most work.”

2. Please provide a little context

You don’t have to go nuts, but let me know if the graf from a short story, memoir, YA novel, etc. It would also help to know if it’s from the beginning, middle or end.

3. In sending me your paragraph you represent and warrant you are the author of said paragraph

Please do not try to trick me by sending in a paragraph written by E-R-N-E-S-T H-E-M-I-N-G-W-A-Y.

4. Do not bother me about the status of your paragraph

It’s August. I work in publishing. Keep your expectations low.

Send your paragraph to dennis <dot> cass <at> gmail <dot> com. Good luck and see you next week.

Great party last night. Solid crowd. Good energy. No fights.

Here’s the recap:

I tripped over my own rules when I projected the Hemingway paragraph from yesterday’s post, only to realize that it only contains two sentences and thus violates my three-sentence requirement. I’ll either tweak or dump that rule.

Otherwise the material held up well.

I was especially pleased with the demonstration paragraphs, which we used to help diagnose student work. There are, of course, all kinds of grafs, but it was nice to be able to refer back to the Hemingway (taking care of business), the Clarke (almost pure voice) and the Mason (somewhere in between).

There was another nice moment when we talked about how reading is an unselfconscious act, while writing is a highly selfconscious act. We used this concept to keep us from overthinking our critiques.

It’s easy to put on your smartypants writing hat on and forget that reading is a very simple act. As writers we obsess over every detail, but as readers we’re more inclined to take the text as it comes. This highlights the importance of taking care of the basics.

We’ll see what the evaluations say, but it seemed to me that another strong feature of the class was calling attention to each paragraph’s entrance and exit. Each graf is like a little story. You hook, you build, you resolve (but not too much). In the last example of the night, we were able to radically improve the paragraph simply by cleaning up the out.

That’s all I have for now, my friends. Be good and mind your paragraphs. You are nothing without them.

The first Paragraph Party happens tonight. It’s sold out, which is encouraging, and there’s already talk of running it again. (More information TK.)

As part of my preparation I’ve redefined the paragraph. Here are my thoughts:

1. At least three sentences

A handful of words that start out indented is not a paragraph in my world. There’s not enough time/space to fully develop an idea, communicate a piece of information, or evoke an emotion.

(Sidebar: Next time you see a one-sentence paragraph, try testing it out as the last sentence of the preceding paragraph or the first sentence of the next. You with me on that?)

2. A pleasing shape

Enter, develop, exit: you can’t go wrong with the basics. Check out this graf from Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Love Life”:

On the table beside Opal is a Kleenex box, her glasses case, a glass of Coke with ice in it, and a cut-glass decanter of clear liquid that could just be water for the plants. Opal pours some of the liquid into the Coke and sips slowly. It tastes like peppermint candy, and it feels soothing. Her fingers tingle. She feels happy. Now that she is retired, she doesn’t have to sneak into the teachers’ lounge for a little swig from the jar in her pocketbook. She still dreams algebra problems, complicated quadratic equations with shifting values and no solutions. Now kids are using algebra to program computers. The kids in the TV stories remind her of the students at Hopewell High. Old age could have a grandeur about it, she thinks now that the music surges through her, if only it weren’t so scary.

We enter with the “could just be water” mystery. We exit on a primal emotion. In between there’s a nice, building portrait of a retired, alcoholic math teacher that the world’s left behind.

There’s nothing fancy about this paragraph, which was first published in The New Yorker, by the way. It just works.

3. A primary objective

A great paragraph can be a three-ring circus of awesome, but it still has a Primary Objective. The P.O. could be anything (plot, character, voice, etc.) but the paragraph must meet this objective. Otherwise it’s a failure.

Take a look at this graf from Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES:

We came into the town on the other side of the plateau, the road slanting up steeply and dustily with shade-trees on both sides, and then leveling out through the new part of town they are building up outside the old walls. We passed the bull-ring, high and white and concrete-looking in the sun, and then came into the big square by a side street and stopped in front of the Hotel Montoya.

Hemingway busts some signature moves in this graf. Say “high and white and concrete-looking” out loud and feel your voice rise and drift and then crash down, just as your eyes would when driving past a large, imposing structure.

But he’s also doing very basic work. He’s getting you to the hotel. Take this paragraph slowly (phrase by phrase) and marvel at the clarity: over plateau, up road (trees on side), level through new construction (old walls in background), past bull ring, into square, stop at hotel.

Paragraphs like these are like potato chips: you just keep eating and eating and eating until suddenly you realize you’ve plowed through half the bag.

4. Music and energy

This graf is from Susanna Clarke’s showstopping fantasy novel JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL:

It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely clever than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married up on the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.

That voice! Saying “the Tuesday.” Writing “how kindly disposed the world in general feels” instead of “how the world in general feels kindly disposed.” Dryly portraying death and resurrection as “advantages.”

Voice is more readily identifiable in a satire like JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, but even more serious writers can learn from the tempo, timing and pacing of comedic writing. One of our goals in the glass will be to become more aware of the music in our own work.

In the delightful and essential HOW FICTION WORKS, James Wood writes about the concept of “getting in.” (Wood is quoting someone else, but I lent out my copy so the real credit will have to wait.)

The idea is that not only must we draw our characters well, but also quickly.

Over the course of the story, a character may take us on the emotional/psychological/literary equivalent of climbing K2, but we can’t go anywhere with them without that first firm foothold.

I was thinking about this concept the other day while watching In a Lonely Place, a 1950 film noir drama directed by Nicolas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart. Check out how screenwriter Andrew Solt gets Bogart’s character in.

SCENE:

A warm night in Los Angeles. A convertible (driven by BOGART) stops at a light next another convertible (driven by a BIG LUG). In the passenger seat is a LOVELY BETTY.

LOVELY BETTY

Dick Steele! How are you?

BOGART

[Reaction shot as he draws a blank.]

LOVELY BETTY

Don’t you remember me?

BOGART

Sorry. I can’t say that I do.

LOVELY BETTY

Well, you wrote the last picture I did. At Columbia.

BOGART

Well, I make it a point to never see pictures I write.

BIG LUG

You! Stop bothering my wife.

BOGART

Oh . . . you shouldna done it, honey. No matter how much money that pig’s got.

BIG LUG

You pull over to the curb!

BOGART

What’s wrong with right here?!?

BOGART gets out of his car in the middle of the street ready to THROW DOWN, but the BIG LUG drives off.

Now isn’t that just lovely?

The “you wrote my last picture” bit is a tad clunky, but it’s immediately redeemed by the next line, which not only establishes Bogart as a self-hating screenwriter, but also a misanthropic self-hating screenwriter who has zero interest in playing the game. (He could have easily recovered with a lie or some Hollywood-style ass kissing.)

But the real treat is that final exchange. A lesser (or at least a modern) writer would have padded the scene. We’d have our post-modern tentativeness and our blustery one-liners. Instead we get a character who is so spoiling for a fight he can barely get his car in park.

All that in nine lines. In a novel you could get all that done in fewer than two pages.

My challenge to you:

Take a look at the key people in your current project. Are you getting them in fast enough? Are you getting them in hard enough?

Good luck.

Imagine William Shakespeare sitting down to an early draft of Romeo and Juliet and trying to figure out the whole Montague/Capulet thing. Quill flying, he cooks up genealogies that go back six generations, elaborate sketches of each family member, and an intimate history of every insult and betrayal. Then, after a moment’s reflection, he scratches it all out and writes:

If you’re a Montague, then Capulet = bad.
If you’re a Capulet, then Montague = bad.

That settled, he moves on to figuring out the coolest way for his tragic lovers to die.

Years ago, when I took my first writing classes, I was taught (by multiple teachers) to write detailed biographical sketches of my characters. The assumption was that if my protagonist were a poor boy from a coal mining town, then I needed to know exactly how dirty his clothes were, how young he was when he got his girlfriend pregnant, and what he called his truck.

The flaw with this exercise is that it produces a lot of detail, but not a lot of meaning. As the Shakespeare example shows, belief is more powerful than biography. A Montague believes a Capulet is evil and vice versa. ‘Nuff said. To the audience it doesn’t really matter whether that belief is rational and justified, or insane and unfounded. Audiences understand that, for the purposes of this story at least, the only thing that counts is intensity.

In fact, belief—that love transcends all, that Juliet is dead, that I can’t live without my Romeo!—drives Romeo and Juliet as much as desire does. The conventional wisdom says that a character’s actions are determined by their wants. This is true, but their wants are governed by belief. The cruel empress who wants to crush the rebellion because she believes it will make her rich will behave differently from the cruel empress who wants to crush the rebellion because she believes her minions lack the ability to govern themselves.

As a writer, you not only need to understand the beliefs of your characters and their world, but you’re also responsible for making those beliefs compelling and complicating (though not necessarily complicated).

Getting back to our poor coal miner’s son, consider the stark differences between the following characters:

The poor boy from a coal mining town who believes that his poverty is a personal character flaw that must remain hidden at all costs.

The poor boy from a coal mining town who believes that his poverty is a great injustice and that others need to be confronted with the realities of his background.

The poor boy from a coal mining town who believes that it’s his fault his father never left the mines to fulfill his dream of playing professional baseball.

In his wonderful novel Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell writes: “Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind’s mirror, the world.” Remember this sentiment the next time you sit down to your manuscript and the page will come alive. (This mentality spices up query letters, too.)

Final thought:

If there’s a danger in using this technique, it’s that once you start thinking in terms of belief, you’ll start seeing it everywhere. Eventually, you’ll have to confront your own biases and shortcomings. Looking back, my coal boy is good enough to illustrate a point in a blog post, but as a character he feels thin, stereotypical and borderline offensive. (Dirty clothes, a pregnant girlfriend and a truck with a name? Is that the best you can do, Dennis?) It just goes to show that no matter where you are in your career, you must never stop developing your intelligence, your knowledge of the world, and your heart.

Good luck.

If only writing them were as easy as formatting them

Before I start blasting away with Facebook and Gmail, I wanted to give the good readers of DCWYTBMA the first shot at an exciting and innovative new class I’m teaching at The Loft.

It’s called Paragraph Party and it’s based on the simple premise that writing lives and dies at the paragraph level.

If you can make paragraphs that are energetic, shapely, informative, stylish, thoughtful, purposeful and true, then you’re going to have a wonderful career.

If you can’t make those kinds of paragraphs, then you’re going to have a much less wonderful career.

Solution: Paragraph Party!

This is not a mechanics class. We’re not going to be talk about topic sentences and supporting sentences and so forth. Instead we’re going to use the paragraph as a springboard for talking about all aspects of writing. And we’re going to do it using student work. And we’re going to do it live.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up for the class.

2. Before class you will send me a paragraph from one of your many delightful works in progress.

3. I will take all paragraphs and load them into a special Paragraph Projecting Device that I have commissioned expressly for this purpose.

4. On the day of the class I will project paragraphs onto the wall. Then we’ll break them down and build them back up until they’re perfect little gems of pure delight.

5. Jokes, asides, wisdom (and possibly snacks) included.

The first Paragraph Party is on Tuesday, August 4th. The cost is $40 for nonmembers, $36 for members. Space is limited, so if you’re interested sign up now. You will not be disappointed.

See you in school.

You with me on that?

Have a fine weekend.