Characterisation

Yesterday I attended my first ever Webinar: a web-based seminar on Characterisation. It was organised by the TBA Lounge, an American site, and was set to happen at 9.30pm Thursday Eastern American Time. This corresponded to 11.30 am Friday in Sydney. As well as filling in holes in my knowledge of how best to reveal characters in writing, it was fun to connect and interact with a lecturer and audience on the other side of the world. We, the participants, had the use of a bar for written responses, and a "golden hand" icon that allowed you to ask questions using the microphone on your computer or laptop. If you wished, you could just remain quiet and take notes in the traditional way.

Topics advertised for exploration were:
* The Golden Rule of the emotional response
* Creating three-dimensional characters
* Giving your character roots
* Techniques for revealing characters
* How to write speech, narrative summaries and internal dialogue

The most important insight for me was to understand the differences between what the lecturer called "external emotion" and "internal dialogue", both of which which she placed at the other end of the pole from "narrative summary".  Examples of each were given, and we had a homework task based on the former two aspects to be marked by her. The main difference between the first two is that internal dialogue is thoughts and responses seen from inside the character's head, while external emotion is gestures and clues seen from the outside by the narrator. Narrative summary covers a lot of information efficiently but is not as emotionally responsive for the reader.

The lecturer gave literary and media examples of characters to illustrate her points, for example Peter Pan in the book by J.M. Barrie and character references from the French film "Amélie". Another task set during the lecture was to focus on the characters of well-known people, such as those photographed from Madame Tussaud's (above) and imagine them placed in conflictual situations to see how they would react. One example was to imagine how Gandhi would react if he were forced to attend a modern day night club.

Overall it was a positive experience for me, because it filled a gap in information, however I would not be happy to pay the price of enrolling in the site on an ongoing monthly basis.

Editing Skills

We've been talking a lot about giving and receiving valid feedback in our writers group recently. It's one of the main benefits of joining a writers group: to receive feedback on your writing. Because we're a mixed group, i.e. not focused in terms of genre, the task of critiqueing one another's work is complex. We usually choose to break into two groups, poetry and prose, which still leaves us with a wide field of genres.  Obviously, it would be easier to critique one another's work if we were all writing in the same genre, e.g. Creative Nonfiction, or Romance Writing, or Crime Fiction. We could then focus more narrowly on the aspects to do with good writing within that genre. But as we are a mixed bunch, we have to consider one another's creative goals, when critiqueing, before we launch into feedback. Some of us have expressed a concern that our feedback is too "soft", that is, that we are overly concerned with not hurting the person's feelings, rather than on being honest. However, others have been aware of the sensitive nature of giving criticism, especially in a group setting, and feel that it is right and proper to tread carefully, or at least to be well-informed when critiqueing. Another point to consider is that it is preferable to become your own self-editor, ultimately, and to know when you get it right. 

Over the past year, we have started developing a list of points to help us improve our skills in this area.

Guidelines for Giving Criticism

1. As an editor of others' work, it is important, ideally, to be widely read.

2. Take into account the basic issues of narrative structure, characterisation, evocative and atmospheric language, vivid settings, scenes creation, and believable dialogue:  relevant to all types of good creative writing.

3. Take on the task of critiqueing with a positive and helpful intention; read carefully, trying to understand the writer’s point of view and creative goal; consider the genre and the narrator’s purpose in writing.

4. It is better not to offer criticism if you do not like the genre or style of writing under consideration.  

5. Is the emphasis more on story, as opposed to experimentation with language focused on psychological or philosophical issues?

6. Remember that some people may be highly sensitive in relation to some pieces on offer. This is especially true for new writers, or those who have not offered their work for feedback before.

7.Think carefully about what is not working for you, and what is working, before you offer criticism. Give the positives first and say why. Give the negatives next, and say why it doesn’t work for you, and how you think it could be made better.

10.Be truthful in your criticism. The writer needs guidance not niceties.

Guidelines for Accepting Criticism

1. Be prepared to receive negative, as well as positive criticism.

2. Try to separate yourself from the work as much as possible.

3. If possible, look on your work as a “product” after it is “out there.”

4. Look on feedback as a valuable means of improving your writing.

5. Be ready to respond to negative criticism if you feel that it is not warranted; give your reasons

for your opinion.

6. Rewrite your work in accordance with the feedback received, and see if it is better. 

7. Do not change your work if you still disagree with the criticism.

8. Remember that all writers have received negative feedback at times.

9. One suggestion is not to show your work until you feel confident about it.

10. A sure sign that you can write is that you keep going after knockbacks.

Bipolar Baby

This is an excerpt, much reduced, from a memoir based on our daughter's struggle (and ours!) with Bipolar Illness.  Nonfiction is true: fabrication not allowed. However, creativity is not only permitted, but essential, if you want the reader to continue turning the pages. Creative features include: strong characterisation, realistic dialogue,  imagistic and metaphorical language, appropriate voice, and vivid scenes. Some of these aspects may be evident in the following extract.

May 1999. Kate sits perched on the new navy lounge, painting her toenails pink. The acrid smell of fumes invades the loungeroom and my senses, and I wish silently that she could move out.

“Careful it doesn’t get onto the fabric,” I say, treading on eggshells.

Kate moans, but continues to do it.

“Could you do it in your room?”  She moans again: “Look, I’ve nearly finished.”

I think once again, as I look at my ice maiden daughter, that she should have been born in the northern hemisphere to a fair-skinned couple in an English lakeside town. One day in calmer times, Kate and I had found this run-down, post-war fibro-and-timber cottage that sits on cliffs and looks out over a tree-filled basin; eucalypts, Mediterranean pines and Bangalow palms, co-exist beneath a vaulted sky across which planes and birds fly as if projected on a screen.

I dare not push her; I tread lightly now, afraid of the ‘terrible tantrums' that had come on fifteen years too late.

***

Kate was a much longed-for baby. I had waited five years into my marriage before I conceived. I secretly wanted a girl and it was as if she had heard my silent wish and come to me in my late thirties, drawn by an invisible pull. The experience of being pregnant, of giving birth, and of holding her in my arms eclipsed everything that had gone before.

November 1980: Felt the first flutterings yesterday, like a tiny sea-horse gently weaving its way deep inside my belly. I am seventeen and a half weeks. I was very tired last night, having made a big effort, washing and ironing all the baby clothes. I was exhausted and lay on the bed and felt the baby move for the first time. Felt strangely high and marvelled at the feelings. It has been fluttering ever since, getting ever more strenuous.

May 1980: Kate looks like a wise teddy bear with puffed eyes and a round face. We call her ‘Our Cuddly Bear’. I have dressed her in hospital nighties because they are so comfortable; Mum was horrified and told me to put something nice on her for visitors to see. She latched onto my nipple quickly and I realised she had a strong grip on life.

She is so relaxed and so fair: an unlikely child for two dark parents. I can’t believe she is really mine. I sing ‘Don’t Break My Heart in Two’, just as I did when she was inside me. I love staring through the bars of the bassinet next to my bed, but mostly I pick her up and bring her into bed with me.

***

While pregnant, I had read ‘The Continuum Concept’ by Jean Liedloff, who had lived with the Iraquoi Indians in South America, and noticed that the children there were happy and free of neurosis. I had decided to follow a ‘total access’ policy of child rearing. Kate and I thrived on it. I called her ‘Katie Bear’ because she was warm and cuddly and merged her body with mine in symbiosis.

“Why doesn’t she ever cry?” Mum asked when she visited from the country, “It’s not normal.”

I loved breast-feeding, and extended it until she was two. I was proud of her Snow White looks, her strawberry blond hair and blue eyes.

“She’s a good looker,” the doctor on duty had said that first morning. I knew that I had given birth to the most beautiful baby on earth.

***

Fast forward 26th April, 2003: She is lying on the cold floor of the bathroom, stinking of stale alcohol and bad breath. The words ‘fuck you’ spat forth at me with such venom that I shudder in every cell of my body; only a few hours before she had been telling me how much she loved me and that she could not go on without me. The hair dryer is already attached to the bath in readiness. I know I should hug her, press her cold flesh to mine, but I feel sick; her smell sickens me. I am afraid of her superhuman strength. I hate the look of her: the way she is writhing out of control, screeching insults and swearing. Hyena-like… not my daughter. There is broken glass everywhere—she has been trying to kill herself with knives and with glass shards. My job is to prevent her, but I feel broken too; one part of me wants to tell her to get fucked; the real part loves her to death and only wants to save her from herself.

***

The day of Mum’s death, 19^th May 2003,  passed by quickly, being overshadowed by her granddaughter’s hospitalization, the funeral taking place on Kate’s 23rd birthday.

***

Today Kate is an ‘8’. She slipped a little mid afternoon, but went up again at night. What a relief! The medication is at last starting to take effect. I have only recently begun asking her to give a mood score out of ten, and she was able to respond promptly and easily. The first day she was a ‘4’. Then it rose for short periods to ‘5’, then ‘6’ and yesterday things really started to look up, when it went up to a ‘7’.  And she has been an ‘8’ nearly all day today!

On Monday we went through a catharsis. We were all feeling a little depressed. It seemed like Mark and I were being pulled down into the cavern with her. Her mood had fluctuated during the day, as if trying to find a level.  It was very frustrating. I didn’t know what she wanted or what she would propose next, and I found myself wanting to argue with her and becoming negative. Then suddenly it was as if a heavy stone was lifted and her spirits rose.

I long for the day when I will be able to write the following words in my journal:

She has awoken like Sleeping Beauty from a long deep sleep and opened her eyes on a new world. 


First Prize for Memoir Port Macquarie Hastings Fellowship of Australian Writers, Nov 2010

Seeing and Telling

Point of view refers to who sees the action within a story or novel. You can have multiple points of view, so long as shifts from one character to another are adequately marked, by way of punctuation, for example by starting a new paragraph for a change in point of view. Traditional novels of the nineteenth century were often recounted by an omnipotent narrator, one who saw everything, knew all that was going on and oversaw the voice or voices of the novel in an explicit way. Individual characters' voices were portrayed via dialogue alone. This was true of the Russian novels, (e.g. The Idiot by Dostoyevsky) often resulting in large works that had a wide focus: social, temporal and spatial, united by the voice of the narrator.

It is not always easy to explain the concept of Voice, and there is a great deal of confusion surrounding this concept. The omnipotent narrator is a dying breed today, and most writers are able to call upon different voices for different creative purposes. In more recent times, the person who tells the story, the narrator, is linked to the question of voice in an often implicit way. It is, perhaps, better to give examples of this. One good example of a perfect use of Voice, is by Tim Winton in his novel That Eye The Sky. He writes in the first person, vividly depicting the voice of an eleven year old hero, Ort Flack. In doing so, he uses a lot of grammatically incorrect sentences and sentence fragments, just as in dialogue, suggesting the young person's voice, while at the same time being careful not to overdo the technique:


I don't sleep that good. Never have. Even when I was little and Mum or Dad put me to bed, I'd lie awake until they'd gone to bed themselves--longer even. It's lonely in the middle of the night with just you and the sky and the noises of the forest. There's no one to talk to except that big sky. Sometimes I talk to it. Sounds funny, but I do. Ever since they brought me home from the hospital the time I was so sick, I haven't slept good....Dad won't sleep much good when he gets better, that's for sure. Still, he's not much of a sleeper anyway. (Penguin, 1986, p.13 )

Grammatical correctness is thus sacrificed, from time to time, for the sake of the voice: "Tegwyn and me are walking."(p.31); "Mum makes herself a second cup, and me too; makes you feel real grown up, two cups. She looks like she's gonna say something for a sec...and says nothing. She smiles."(p.91)

Winton combines several techniques for portraying voice. One of these is his use of colloquial language and special vocabulary, including slang, and another is his use of short abrupt sentences interspersed with longer ones. In this way he manages to produce Ort's voice without overdoing any one strategy all of the time.

Another example of an effective use of Voice that I came across recently is in a short story "Dying, Laughing" by Susan Johnson, a writer who has recently returned to live in Brisbane after ten years in London. The story about a young Aussie mother is told in the third person. Kylie is totally out of her depth in disciplining her two young boys; and yet she comes across as a strongly rebellious personality, fighting depression, angry but also capable of nurturing; all shown by way of the narrator's voice, impersonating someone like Kylie. The story contains aspects of satire, irony, humour and blackness interwoven and held together by the tell-tale voice. As in Winton's story, the writer intersperses sentence fragments with longer sentences, and uses slang and colloquialisms to add humour and colour:

Children wanted everything! All the time, all at once! If she'd realised what a child was, before she'd accidentally made one, she would have run a mile...Bloody Nixon, born whinger, crying when he came out, starting as he meant to go on. Nixon her first born, skinny and long as a rabbit, crying on the roof. ... On the floor, where he usually laid himself, full-length in front of the fridge, to be exact, his mouth open so that you could see the black pit leading into his gullet. Sometimes she wondered what she could stuff in there to stop the sound: honey? Lollies? Her fist? He had the largest pair of tonsils she had ever seen: two fat glistening nubs of flesh decorating either side of his throat, two undulating, pulsing, alien attachments that fascinated her... She knew she didn't know much about anything, not really, so now she thought about it she wasn't even sure they were tonsils. (GriffithReview32, p.59)
(See Susan Johnson's website at http://www.abetterwoman.net/)

Of course, the emphasis of the writing may be more on experimenting with language in a way that is investigating psychological or philosophical issues, rather than on telling a story. In this case, the voice of the narrator may be even more implicitly drawn. This is the case for Carol Chandler's Story The Ruby Ring and my own story Crow (See Anthology Bondi Tides at http://bondiwriters.blogspot), where the choice of language and ideas determine the voice used, rather than the story line or characters involved.

Kindle

Kindle DX

I have finally purchased a Kindle. Amazon has now released this bigger model (9" diagonal) that suits me well, since I wear reading glasses and suffer from tired eyes from time to time. I love the pictures, focusing on famous literary figures of the past, like this one, "Sybilla", that appear on the screen when you turn it off.

I am just starting to learn about the main features, of which there are many, and am already nearly through my first downloaded book: The Art of Creative Nonfiction by Lee Gutkind. He's a great writer and an excellent teacher. This is a good one to start with, as it contains excerpts of creative nonfiction essays in the appendix.

Like the good academic that he is, Gutkind defines the term "creative nonfiction" in the beginning, before proceeding to give examples of, firstly: Creative Features, viz the importance of Scenes and Dialogue, Framing, Imagery, Characterisation, Theme--just like in fiction; and then, the Nonfiction aspect, i.e. the story or content, which he likes to think of as the teaching part.  During his discussions, he uses examples from his own writings and places them in the context of his "immersion" technique that involves merging with the lives of the people he is depicting, such as at the transplant hospital, the Mayo Clinic, in his own city of Pittsburgh. And in the appendix there is a lot of important information for new writers, admittedly focusing on American input, but also applicable in general.

Lee Gutkind

What I think I will download next is his book that presents more examples of this genre of writing: The Best Creative Nonfiction.

Haiku

These Kyoto Garden photos were taken in 1977 by Paul Atroshenko, an old friend and artist whom I met in Bondi during the sixties. He spent five weeks photographing some of the most beautiful gardens in Japan.  See his website at http://www.atroshenko.com/

I am not an expert on writing haiku, but I am fascinated by this form of poetry. Two members in my writers' group, Gavin Austin and Cynthia Rowe are skilled at creating these short poems set in the Japanese tradition.  Cynthia is the editor of Haiku Xpressions magazine. What I like about this form of poetry is the discipline it requires. You must write, using the minimum of words, about an experience often set in nature, often linked to the seasons, without using similes or metaphors, rhyming, punctuation, personification or abstract images and language. A haiku is always untitled.  Juxtapositioning of images, typically oppositional ones, is usual, as is the depiction of a moment in time (an aha! moment).

This latter aspect was driven home to me recently by Cynthia when she told of a member of her haiku group who arrived by car with an egg-bound spider exclaiming: 'Help! A haiku moment!' as she proceeded to take the creature carefully outside into the garden.

When I googled "Haiku" and "How to Write A Haiku" recently, I found surprisingly good, if a little technical, summaries under Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku) and at Wikihow  (http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Haiku-Poem). The Wikipedia article points out that "the essence of haiku is 'cutting'... often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a cutting word between them." And, according to Wikihow: "The Japanese haiku and the English language haiku have several critical differences. In Japanese the haiku is composed of 17 sound units divided into 3 parts--one with 5 units, one with 7 units and another with 5 units. Since sound units are much shorter than English syllables, it has been found that following the Japanese example results in a much longer poem."  The haiku in English has been written for about seventy years and the form is still evolving. It often contains around 8-12 syllables. The trend  has been to shorten the number of syllables in each line, and to represent the 'cut' by way of linking two of the lines, either the first two or the last two.     Basho (1644-1694), considered by many to be the master of haiku in Japan, wrote: "Haiku are a way of seeing, hearing and feeling, a special state of consciousness... Learn from the pine about the pine, from the bamboo about the bamboo...No matter how well worded your poems may be, if the feeling is not natural, if you and object have not become one, your poems are not true haiku, but merely imitations of reality." 

 

From Non-fiction to Fiction

The Love Beggar: Non fiction

 It's not just a question of changing the first person into the third, or changing names of characters and of places. Turning your personal narrative into fiction, as I have discovered, involves a huge task: it means starting over. And the question that keeps battering at my door is: What is it/are you trying to say? What is it about? Easy to answer, perhaps, when the narrative is just your own story told in a creative way. But turned into fiction, it seems to me to demand a raison d'être all of its own, to beg a justification for being, a reason over and above the fact that it depicts a real life or part thereof, representing a "truthful" narration of events.

When it was non-fiction, I called my novel "The Love Beggar". This seemed to typify what it was about,  bringing all the disparate bits and pieces together under one thematic banner.  I was the narrator of the story, in which there were several love beggars, of whom I was one. Now that I have fictionalised it, however, this no longer seems appropriate. The story has changed, is changing more and more into something "other".  I am no longer the narrator. Who is? That is the first question that I now struggle with. Is it a middle-aged person like myself? Is it a friend of the family of which I write? Is it one of the country uncles? A city cousin or aunt? A school friend now middle-aged? One of the story-tellers of the time about which I write? I like this last possibility. Perhaps it is Uncle Bargy, the stutterer, or even Mrs Hooley, who lived on the river bank not far away from our place in South Grafton.

Now that I live in a city, have done so for many years, should I not be writing about urban issues? Why go back into the past, to a country setting, when there are lots of issues to write about in the city?

All I know is that I like to write and to create narrative structures that are seductive enough for others to want to read. Is that not reason enough to justify my art? I also know that I like the company of other writers, and that I enjoy reading their works and encouraging them almost as much as I like writing  myself. I see this as a win/win situation; even if I never get to be published, I am able to follow my passion and to improve at it.