One of the most effective ways for writers to improve their craft is to read intentionally. But, what does reading intentionally really mean? To me, when I read as a writer, I observe the way the other uses craft–either on the macro or the micro level, and see if there are any techniques or strategies I can incorporate into my own writing. I don’t always read like this, as it distracts, to some extent, from my ability to fully immerse myself in a story for pleasure, but, reading (or watching or listening, depending on the medium) for craft not only is an important part of my writing practice, but also has allowed me to get something out of almost anything I read, even if it is something which I would not–or do not–otherwise enjoy. It is especially important for a writer to read broadly and outside of their genre, as casting a wide net exposes one to a wider array or strategies and techniques.
In this series of articles, I will write about one element of craft I learned from a specific writer. Of course, in most cases, I learned more than one technique from each author, but for the purpose of this series of articles, I will focus on just one per post.
As with my Rules What Rules series, I will list previous entries at the top of each post, as while I plan on writing many of these, they, most likely, will not be in consecutive posts.
What I learned From Oscar Wilde: How to Write Witty
The defining trait of Wilde’s writing is his wit. While he certainly does other things well (Dorian Gray, for example shows how a great high concept can elevate an otherwise conventional story), if you ask the average reader about Wilde’s writing, the first thing they are likely to mention is his clever wit. For this reason, Wilde is one of the most quoted writers. His short, sentence-long witticisms often appear on posters, t-shirts, stickers, and memes. As a writer who has been accused of wit (see my stories here and here for examples) I am especially interested in dissecting Wilde’s technique.
In general, Wilde’s wit works depends on subverting the reader’s expectations by finding a cliched phrase or idea, then changing the second half of the of phrase in an unexpected or ironic way. It relies on the reader’s prior knowledge of a common phrase or societal convention, and the way the sentence is constructed syntactically to make the ironic turn.
Let’s look at a few examples:
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
“A gentleman is one who never gives offense unintentionally.”
“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
On a syntactical level, Wilde’s sentences set up an expectation in the reader’s mind. When he write, “I have the simplest of tastes,” he sets up the expectation of a second half that espouses frugality; “A Gentleman is one who never gives offense” seems like the kind of advice Polonius would give to Laertes, and one would expect more of the same type of banality; “A good friend will” is beginning of a cliché involving being stabbed in the back, etc.
The second half–or in some cases the end–of each line flips that expectation on its head. “The only way to get rid of temptation….is to yield to it. The end is completely unexpected. It not only subverts the conventional wisdom, but also reveals the emptiness of the common phrase and, therefore, it criticizes a societal norm, in this the repressive Victorian culture of Wilde’s time, as well. The other quotes work by the same principal: A good friend never would stab you in the back, they would stab you in the front! A gentleman never gives offence…saving for when he intends to.
Many famous witticism follow Wilde’s example. Dorothy Parker’s “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think,” and Yogi Berra’s “Nobody goes there anymore it’s too crowded” are both examples of this technique as well.
To write a witty quip like Wilde, I would start with a well-known cliché. Let’s take (because it’s the first one I thought of as I was writing this) “The grass is always greener on the other side of the yard.” Next I would find a dramatic context in which to use the cliché, preferably one which alludes to the meaning or message which the cliched phrase is trying to teach us.
Off the top of my head:
“Mr. Wilde,” I said, “Mr. Rubin seems to be jealous of your fame and success.”
“That is to be expected,” Wilde replied. “The grass is always greener on my side of the yard.”
Perhaps it’s not perfect, but I think it illustrates the point. The second character–Mr. Wilde–subverts the cliché by changing the second half of the phrase to something witty and unexpected. In an actual story, I’d choose a cliché that matched the dramatic situation, theme, or context of the larger story, but I this example is sufficient to illustrate the point.
I hope that you can use this technique in your own writing, and I encourage you to read widely and with a purpose so that you can continue to build your writers toolbox.
Every year, on the week of his birthday, the comics world celebrates the legacy of Will Eisner. Eisner’s work in the comics field is legendary. From his groundbreaking work in The Spirit newspaper serial (including pioneering the splash title page), to inventing the graphic novel, to his contributions to comics education and analysis through titles like Comics And Sequential Art, to his pioneering of alternate publishing paths, there are few creators who have contributed more to the comics field than Eisner. In honor of Will Eisner Week, I’d like to break down one of my favorite comics pages, which comes from his graphic novel, A Life Force (available in the seminal Contract With God trilogy).
Here is the page:
Page from “A Life Force,” by Will Eisner
You might notice that his is not one of Eisner’s spectacular splash pages, rather it’s a regular storytelling page from the middle of the story, but it’s an incredible bit of visual storytelling where every element serves a purpose.
First, a bit of background: the story is about the human will to live even in the face of the poorest conditions. The human life lived in poverty is compared, through a series of vignettes to that of a cockroach. On this page, our protagonist Jacob, is on the ground, forlorn, in an alley underneath his tenement apartment on the fictional Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx.
***
Let’s start with panel 1, which is part of a row of 3/4 of the page-length skinny vertical panels. Despite the length of this panel, the character, Jacob, is drawn small. There is a lot of white space between him and the top of the panel, and there are no word bubbles either, which emphasizes the size of the negative space. The size of the figure relative to the space highlights his smallness and enhances the central conceit of the story, the comparison of the human’s life with that of a bug.
This contrast is further emphasized in panel 2, which is identical in size and shape to the first panel. In this panel, the hand-lettered words call down to him from the sky, high above the alley where the protagonist finds himself. The figure of Jacob is a bit larger than it is in panel 1, though his attitude is slightly changed, as he now gazes up toward the sound of the words (more on this movement later), but the there is less negative space in the panel, both because of the size of the words, which are large for comics dialogue, and because of the lines in the background which extend further up the panel. The words seem to fill the panel, which contrasts it with the emptiness of the one which immediately precedes it.
In addition to being large, the words are unbounded by a speech bubble, further contrasting them with Jacob’s dialogue in the panels immediately preceding and following this one. It is also spoken by an off-panel character (the speaker is not visible in the panel). These physical characteristics of the lettering, along with the repetition of Jacob’s biblical name, give the dialogue a biblical feel and remind the reader of the themes of the search for meaning and humanity’s relationship with the God found throughout the Contract With God trilogy. Since we do not yet know the speaker, we are reminded of God calling down to a prophet. Even when we find out the speaker in the next panel, the idea of God speaking to a human remains in our minds, layered simultaneously with the revelation of the speaker’s true identity. This technique is unique to the sequential story medium (through there are similar techniques in other mediums like the Homeric simile), as it relies both on the distinction between the individual, static panels, and the sequential nature of the story.
In the third panel, the off-panel dialogue is gone, opening up the space of the top half of the panel again. In the bottom half of the panel, the figure of Jacob continues to grow. Not only is he drawn larger, but his pose has changed as well. In panel one, he is hunched over, leaning against a wall, almost lying down. In panel two, he looks upward as he hears the voice. In panel three, he has started to get up. His back is straighter than it is in other panel, and we see his face more clearly as well. This upward movement is further enhanced by the placement of the speech bubble, which identifies the off-panel voice as “Rifka.” His attitude has changed from downcast, to questioning, to at least a neutral pose. This positive shift, along with his growth in size and his rising from his prone position further hints at the divine voice theory. Perhaps there is something god-like in the voice? Perhaps there is revelation? Inspiration? Perhaps there is–or is going to be–a change.
But no. In the final panel of the top row, the dialogue beats Jakob down, both literally and figuratively. It is, in fact, his wife, yelling down from their tenement window at he good-for-nothing husband, exasperated at his antics, and ordering him to come upstairs for supper. The content of the dialogue is enhanced both by the amount of words and by the shape of the panel. The words can hardly fit in the skinny panel, and extend down much further than Rifka’s previous dialogue. The openness of the negative space is gone. The sky is crowded with the words, which beat down on Jakob.
This is also the first panel where both characters speak. Jacob’s words, still bounded by their traditional speech bubble, move upwards over his head, creating a visual conflict with Rifka’s words. From the relative size of the words, it is apparent who is winning. Indeed, despite his agreement to come upstairs for dinner, Eisner draws Jacob a bit smaller, and much more bent over than in the previous panel.
The bottom row of panels is markedly different from the first. There are three distinct actions, but unlike the top row, there are no panel dividers. This gives the sequence a continuous motion where we do not pause as long to consider each image, rather we see the action more continuously.
It is important to note, that though Jacob gets up, he is still bent over, hunched beneath the weight of his problems, bent and nearly broken by his life’s burdens. We never see his face in these panels, and the anonymity of these actions make them synecdochal for the human experience. The bent over poses, the short height of the panels, and the smallness of the door in the final panel recall the metaphor of the cockroach as well, as Jakob seemingly skitters down a narrow passage, back to a hole in the wall.
***
In addition to the panel-by-panel storytelling, there page as a whole is constructed brilliantly as well. The four tall, skinny panels on the the top row, recall the Dropsie Avenue tenements. Though there is no establishing shot of the neighborhood on this particular page (that happened earlier in the story), the tall thin shapes resemble high-rise apartments, and the fact that there are four of them squeezed into the top row remind the reader of the crowded, urban setting.
The long length of these panels also pushes down on Jacob, who is hunched beneath their massive weight in the bottom row. This reminds the reader of the environmental factors which contribute to his depression, and further highlight the effects of the setting, which is another key motif which runs through Eisner’s trilogy.
***
All-in-all, this page is a masterclass is sequential storytelling, a reminder of the power and possibilities of the comics form, and a strong example of Eisner’s skill both as an artist and writer. I encourage you all to check out or refamiliarize yourself with his work.
I know I will the next time I sit down to write a comics script.
Happy Will Eisner week to you all.
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In the first post I published on this blog, I bemoaned the reductive nature of writing advice. “If you write like everyone else,” I wrote, “your writing will read like everyone else’s.” While I have gotten away from that theme from time-to-time, I try to return to it every now and then as part of my series: Rules: What Rules? which consists of a series of blogs that deal with common pieces of writing advice, and then present a famous work–by a successful author–which breaks those rules. My aim is not to criticize these authors—I enjoy all of them, that is the point. Rather, I present their works as examples of successfully writing, which might cause you to reexamine the writing “rule” critically. I am not advising you to ignore these rules, rather to take control of your own craft, and consider your choices actively. As always, I believe there is more than one path to success, more than one formula for great writing. Consider these posts synecdochally. The specific rule is not the point; it speaks to a general attitude which is prevalent within the contemporary writing community.
In each blog post in this series, I will give a brief summary of the rule, followed by a case study of a successful author, work, or series that breaks that rule. Finally, I will provide some analysis of the rule and the alternative techniques the featured author makes. Since the posts in this series will not necessarily be consecutive blog entries, I will link each piece to previous entries.
Stories, we are all taught at a young age, have a beginning, a middle, and and end. This fact–for it rarely stated as anything but a fact, goes back at least to Aristotle, who explained the basic plot structure, or, as he called it, protasis, epitasis, and catharsis, using the metaphor of string. In the first act, the protasis, the various plot strands are introduced, in the second act, or epitasis, the strands are wound around each other so that they tighten into a rope–the plot thickens–until can’t be wound tighter, and then in the the third act, the catharsis, the strands are cut at the climax of the action, and fall away.
Modern critics have taken Aristotle’s ideas and adjusted them to focus on character instead of plot, but, the general idea remains the same.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning-poet-and-screenwriter David Mamet, one of the most successful and influential contemporary writers, also advocates for the three act structure in his book Three Uses of the Knife. The title of the book comes from this Leadbelly quote, which is one of the cleanest representations of the three-act plot: “You take a knife, you use it to cut the bread, so you’ll have strength to work; you use it to shave, so you’ll look nice for your lover; on discovering her with another, you use it to cut out her lying heart.”
In fact, nearly every writing class, from kindergarten through the graduate level, as well as nearly every independent course or article for writers, advocates for a three act structure. You might think it was the only way to structure a story.
And yet…
There are many successful stories which do not follow the three act structure. Shakespeare’s plays have five acts. Many successful modern plays (Waiting for Godot and the Elephant Man immediately come to mind) have only two. The Glass Menagerie has seven scenes which are not divided into acts. Star Trek (The original series) is a four act show, as is Eugene Oneill’s The Ice Man Cometh. Kishōtenketsu, a traditional Japanese story structure also has four acts.
It’s worth noting, additionally, that the ancient Greek plays and epics which Aristotle analyzed in the poetics were not conceived as three act stories either. The plays were told in a series of scenes and choruses, and the epics were largely episodic, and if anything, tend more toward a circular or two act structure than three.
Analysis
I’m going to start off by saying there is nothing wrong with the three act structure. It’s a fine way to tell a story. It’s just not the only way to tell a story. The examples above prove there are others.
I do not object to the existence of the three act structure when it is appropriate. What I object to is the reductive nature of writing instruction and criticism which tries to shoehorn every successful story into this framework. Tennessee Williams could have made The Glass Menagerie a three-act play if he wanted to. He wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as Three Act Play, for example. If he didn’t include acts, there must have been a reason. Similarly, I cannot tell you how many lessons I’ve seen where a teacher tries to teach a Shakespeare play like a three act play.
Moreover, for most of history, the three act structure was a critical tool, not a creative one. Aristotle–who has been proven wrong (through still historically important) in most fields said Sophocles plays were composed of three parts. There is nothing to indicate that Sophocles felt the same as he was composing them.
Modern analysis, which attempts to reduce Joseph Campbell’s hero journey (itself a critical rather than compositional tool) to a three act structure, is an interesting crutch, but are likely more accurate as a description of how modern stories synthesize the hero’s journey with the three act structure, with the older, epic form. It may be useful for some writers–and work for some stories–but they should not be considered one-size-fits-all prescriptions, and there are other types of circular narrative (see Alan Moore’s writing and writing about writing for examples).
Experimenting with different structures can help us get out of our ruts and solve common compositional problems. When I teach, I often suggest my struggling students try a simpler structure to begin with. A two act structure is a powerful structure with a long history. It allows the writer to set up parallels and juxtapose moments by placing their characters in similar situations before and after a central event or turning point. Many writers have the most trouble with the second act. Why not get rid of it, and just focus on two? Other students may have difficulty with the beginning or the end. Why not follow Shakespeare’s example (he is generally considered the greatest writer of all time for a reason) and try to plot your story across five acts to resolve those issues.
More generally, however, all of these divisions are tools rather than rules. Even if we focus exclusively on the hero’s journey narrative, there are all sorts of ways to divide the story structurally. We can, of course, divide it, into the classic three act structure around the crossing of the threshold, the journey, and the return to the familiar world; but we can also divide it into four acts, up until the character crosses the threshold, from the crossing to the underworld/belly of the beast. the heavy price, the return, changed, to the familiar world (this divides the circle into quadrants); or even into just two acts: descent and return. The pie, being a circle, can be sliced in infinite ways. The writer should choose whichever form works for them, and leave the critics to their own analyses.
On top of that, Star Trek, The Eastern forms like the Kishōtenketsu , Shakespeare, the great Russian novelists, and the post modernists who consciously reject classical forms, show the myriad of other forms a story can take.
Again, there is nothing wrong with the three act structure. It’s a great structure, and many successful stories use it. As writers, however, it is important to recognize that there are other ways to write a good story. Limit yourself at your own peril.
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If you’ve been following this space for a while, you know that I often draw inspiration from various museum exhibitions I patronize throughout the year, (And if you’ve not been following for a while, I bid you welcome.) Writers can learn a lot from other creative professions, and I am particularly drawn to the way painters approach their artistic practice. I’ve often written about lessons I’ve learned from famous painters (including this post about Matisse and dealing with impossibility of perfection), and Miro’s description of his creative process in I Work Like a Gardener matches my own. It is no surprise, then, that upon visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cubism and The Trompe L’oeil Tradition, I found something I could relate to my writing practice. While the show, which showed the influence of Trompe l’oeil on the cubists, featured many exquisite paintings by the great cubists Picasso, Braque, and Gris, it was a picture of marble texture from a French painting manual which caused me to consider my own writing practice.
Consider the following picture:
A picture of marble from a French painting guide
It is a full-page example of how to paint textured marble from a French painting manual contemporary with the time Georges Braques was learning to paint. A classically-trained French artist was expected to be able to replicate the look of various materials so that they looked realistic. There are similar examples in the manual which show the materials and techniques needed to paint wood, paper, stone, etc, realistically. The French painter was expected to be able to replicate these materials in their work to such an extent that viewer would not be able to tell the difference between the imitation and the original.
According to the exhibition, the goal was to emulate Parrhasius, who according to Pliny the Elder, entered into a competition with Zeuxis to see who could paint the most realistic painting. Zeuxis painted grapes so realistically that a bird flew up to it (thinking they were real grapes). Parrhasius’ painting appeared to be behind a curtain, and Zeuxis requested that the curtain be drawn so that he could see the painting, except the curtain was actually what Parrhasius had painted. Zeuxis admitted defeat and said that while he had deceived birds, Parrhasius’ painting was so realistic that he had deceived another artist.
While this level of skill might seem mythical, the trompe l’oeil painters got pretty close. Consider this painting of two chipped, plaster reliefs by Jean Etienne Liotard from the exhibition:
Trompe L’oeil, by Jean Etienne Liotard
Braque, being trained in the tradition, was expected to achieve a similar level of skill.
While the cubists did not paint realistic, representational art, they were classically trained. One can see the skill they had for imitating materials and textures, especially, in the works presented in this exhibition. The challenge presented by the gallery cards early in the exhibit was to try to figure out which elements of each paining were painted, and which were collaged. It was often nearly impossible to tell.
Take for example, this painting by Picasso.
Painting By Pablo Picasso
In order to achieve this level of skill, an artist would have to spend hours painting entire canvases of textured material, like the one presented above. Its inclusion in this show not withstanding, no one is hanging a picture which imitates a slab of marble on their wall. But, to achieve the requisite skill and become a master artist, painters like Braques and Picasso would have to spend hours in the studio working on pieces that were not intended for exhibition or sale, whose only purpose was to help them hone their own skill. Only by spending hours practicing, could he become the artist they wanted to be.
So, what does this have to do with writing? As I’ve written about before, writing advice tends to focus on product rather than skills: How many words are you going to write each day; how much time are you going to spend writing; how many books/stories/poems are you going to finish/publish/submit this year. These types of goals are important, but they neglect a key component of improving as an artist: intentional practice. While the current theory of writing instruction, from K-12 to the post-graduate level is that writing makes you a better writer is likely true to some extent, it neglects skill development as an important part of a writers’ development. What little skill-based advice there is tends toward over-simplified, trite advice like avoiding alliteration oreliminating adverbs. While I’ve criticized these one-size fits all approaches to writing advice in the past, they are symptomatic of a the larger issue. Skill-based advice and instruction gets boiled down to this type of shallow nonsense because most writers do not take the time to authentically and intentionally work on aspects of their craft as writers for fear of falling off the hamster wheel of productivity.
When was the last time you worked on your metaphors? By this, I mean not trying to come up with a perfect metaphor for a story your working on, but just sitting down and writing a series of metaphors (or similes, or personifications, etc) to get better at the actual skill. When was the last time you wrote dialogue that was unconnected to a character you were already writing? I bet it’s been a long time.
Years ago, I did an exercise from The Creative Writers Notebook where I had to come up with as many portmanteau as possible. Portmanteau is not a device I use often in my writing, but that was all the more reason to do the exercise and to expand my tool box as a writer. It’s been too long since I’ve done those kind of exercises regularly.
Meanwhile, artists post pictures of their figure work, or their progress drawing a particularly difficult body part like hands. Intentional practice and skill development, is a part of their tradition, and it is not, to the same extent a part of ours.
If we look toward non-creative fields, we would see the same thing. A boxer works on the speed bag to improve hand speed, but they do not come into the ring spinning his hands the way they hit the bag; a basketball player works on dribbling drills to improve ball-handling, but the intricate patters they practice are made to improve coordination rather than be practical, in-game moves; a musician practices scales, but does not play those scales straight through in performance. As writers, we should understand that, much like these other pursuits, practicing the component skills of our craft is an essential component of growing in our art.
The hashtag #7BooksToKnowMe is popular right now. I’ve decided to participate, but as usual, I’ve overthunk things. Rather than, as I’m sure was the original intent of the exercise, just listing seven books I like or that sum up my taste in reading, or, as many people seem to be doing, listing my seven favorite books, I intend to address the prompt as it is written. What seven books would help someone who didn’t know me, get to know me better. That list would be different from my seven favorite books, although their would be some overlap, because the list of my favorite books would include multiple books in the same genre (or even subgenre), while the list of the books to get to know me would be specifically chosen to showcase different aspects of my personality.
I have not included books directly related to the works I’m currently writing. While Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe have dominated my reading list recently, and while I love them both, I am not sure that would make the list once the projects on which I’m working is over.
This list is also a snapshot. Books that would have appeared on this list at other points in my life, like On The Road,The Watchmen, Wuthering Heights, Through the Looking Glass, A Storm of Swords, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are not on this list. The books on this list might not be if I did this again a year from now, or even tomorrow.
With that preamble out of the way, here are my seven books to know me:
Dune, by Frank Herbert: I first read Dune when I was in the 11th grade at the recommendation of my history teacher, Dr. Stone. I had asked him for a college recommendation, and he agreed, but wanted to meet me during a free period to get to know me outside of the class. He asked me what I liked to read, and when I told him I liked science fiction, he was flabbergasted that I hadn’t read Dune. It was, by far the greatest book recommendation anyone has given me. I read it and immediately loved it. I ended up writing one of my college application essays about it (in those days, there was no common app, and I wrote a total of 13 essays for the 11 schools to which I applied).
Over the years, Dune has influenced nearly every aspect of my life. The philosophy of the book influenced me greatly at a time when I was figuring out the type of person I wanted to be, but in addition to that, lessons from the book affected other, less-obvious aspects of my life, ranging from the way I played basketball (not responding to a trash-talker unnerves the trash talker in any sport), to the way approached martial arts matches (to many lessons to list individually, but the Fremen made me a better fighter.) I still keep a file of Dune quotes all these years later, and with every re-read, I find more to add.
The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkein: The Hobbit is the book that made me want to be a writer. I ordered in from the Scholastic Book Club in 7th Grade, and, while I was reading it, I thought, “hey, maybe the games I play with my castle Legos are actually stories people would want to read.” It is also a smaller story than The Lord of the Rings. The fate of the world isn’t at stake (at least we don’t yet know it is when we’re reading it). It concerns the fate of one group of dwarves and one particular hobbit. In my own work, I tend toward the small stories rather than the larger ones.
Tolkien became my favorite writer, and The Lord of the Rings (which Tolkien thought of as one book) would be my desert island book, but if the point of the exercise is to get to know me, then The Hobbit is the one to read.
Shoeless Joe, by WP Kinsella: This is the book that Field of Dreams is based upon. It is, in my opinion, better than the movie, and I love the movie (it’s the only movie which made me cry). The book is about baseball, and about fathers and sons. It reminds me of my father, who gave it to me before he passed. Much of my relationship with my father was based around sports, even when our fandom was a metaphor for other things which we may have been more reluctant to discuss. Sports have played a huge role in my life, and I have my father to thank for that too.
Daniel Deronda, by George Elliot: Speaking of traditions and how they’ve influenced me, this is the book which addresses the traditions in which I was raised most thoroughly and most sympathetically. My reading tastes tend to the classics, but I was always bothered by the way the books–even the ones I loved–addressed Judaism. From Dickens, to Shakespeare, to Pyle, the negative stereotypes and outright slanders present in so much of Western literature always bothered me. There are a few books with sympathetic Jewish characters (Ivanhoe comes to mind), but none offer the depth and perspective of Elliot’s novel, which includes both religious and secular Jews, and addresses each character authentically without ignoring the prejudices which existed in society.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams: I considered putting Good Omens on this list, as it introduced me to both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, two of my favorite authors, and two others whose books would be on my list of favorite books, but when I think about–and the fact that I’m rapidly running out of space on this list–I wouldn’t have read Good Omens if I hadn’t read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. So why not just put Hitchhiker’s Guide on the list? Well, the thought did cross my mind. Adams introduced me to the dry, British wit and humor which has been such an influence on my life. But, he wrote other books too. Choosing a deeper cut in itself reveals an aspect of my personality. Moreover, I am running out of space, and I haven’t mentioned the Romantic poets yet. As this book features Coleridge, it will have to stand in for them as well.
Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut: Kurt Vonnegut is another author who has been hugely influential on both my worldview and my writing. Slaughterhouse 5 was the first Vonnegut I read. I always admired his writing, which is simultaneously literary, speculative, and humorous. Some people say that Terry Pratchett does for fantasy what Douglas Adams did for science fiction. I have sometimes said that I hope my writing will, one day, have a similar relationship with Vonnegut’s.
If you understand those last two sentences, you are probably my type of person.
The Tao of Gung Fu, by Bruce Lee: My martial arts practice has been a major part of my life. I’ve been practicing since I was 8. I am drawn to the philosophical aspects as much as to martial practice. The Tao of Gung Fu includes Bruce Lee’s best essays about martial arts and Taoism, and should be essential reading for anyone who practices martial arts.
Looking back on this list, I feel like it’s a failure. While the selections do reveal aspects of my personality, I am remiss to have left out Ursula Le Guin, Charles Dickens, Gaiman and Pratchett, Poe, Marlon James, Colum McCann, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and so many others. While it’s an incomplete picture, hopefully it does, indeed, help you know me better.
Now it’s your turn. What are the seven book to get to know you better?
This past weekend, I attended New York Comic Con. While I did not have a table this year, which was unfortunate because I have a new book to sell (you can help me make for it by buying it here), I was able to attend the various professional panels aimed at writers. This year’s slate of high-profile writers was particularly strong, especially in the fantasy department were Terry Brooks, Brandon Sanderson, and Diana Gabaldon offered insights into their writing processes and careers. Below, I have collected the advice I found most helpful and interesting from both the top names and from the many other writers who paneled, and loosely organized that advice around a number of themes. I hope you find them as helpful and inspiring as I did.
Writing Process
Me and Brandon Sanderson
If you’re writing process isn’t working, then change your process–Chuck Wendig
When faced with an overwhelming amount of editorial feedback or critique, change something small. Changing something small reminds you that you have power over the piece–Peter V. Brett.
You can write a novel in a year writing 400 words a day. That’s about 1-1/2 double spaced pages–E. Lockhart.
The only feedback you get until you publish is that wordcount number adding up–Diana Gabaldon.
Who do you listen to? A really good editor. Anyone else, I’ll listen to an see if they have anything valuable to say, but you get a lot of feedback from people who don’t know anything. You’ve got to stand up for yourself–Terry Brooks.
The best feedback is from people who already like your work but who want something slightly better– (in my notes, but I didn’t write down who said it).
Take something you love and put it in a different context. I loved Faulkner. I wanted to put the way he dealt with class, the rich and poor, in a new element. Tolkien’s structure seemed like the perfect structure for that rich/poor dynamic–Terry Brooks.
Write out of order to avoid writing block. Move to a different part of the book, either to an exciting part or to an easy part–E. Lockhart.
I usually go through about 10 drafts–Karen McManus.
On writing comics: I write differently if I know the artist, if it’s an artist I’ve worked with before. If I’m workin g with a new artist, I’ll describe more—Jimmy Palmiotti.
Plotting vs Pansting
Terry Brooks giving me some writing advice.
I don’t write in straight lines. I don’t write with an outline either–Diana Gabaldon.
There is no such thing as plotting or pansting. Every writer does both. They are tools. If you don’t use both, you’re not using all the tools available to you as a writer–Brandon Sanderson.
I always start backward. I know the whydoneit and the whodoneit, and then plot backwards–Kara Thomas.
I tend to start with the big idea, but I’m not sure what it means–Karen McManus.
Plotting is like a Jenga tower. If you take one small thing out, the whole tower can collapse–E. Lockhart.
Character Development
The “Titans of Fantasy” panel l-r: Sanderson, Brooks, Gabaldon
We are all people. People make dumb decisions. It’s ok for characters dumb decisions because that’s what real people do. That makes characters feel real–Wesley Chu.
Sanderson’s second rule: flaws are more interesting than characters themselves–Brandon Sanderson.
I did what most writers do. I gave the character a flaw or two–E. Lockhart.
As the character’s power increases, their power becomes more evident–Brandon Sanderson.
I try to include “good” characters who have to deal with mental illness. Most of American media is like if there’s someone with a mental illness in your book, they’re probably the bad guy. We need to change that–Dan Wells.
I consider the antagonist and the villain as two separate characters: The villain is evil. The antagonist prevents the characters from getting what they want, but they should be relatable. We should be able to understand to understand them. Our main character could end up going in that direction. One example is Ms. Marvel. There are villains in that show, but the parents are the main antagonists. Another is Lord of the Rings. Sauron is the villain. He’s pure evil. Gollum is the protagonist, but what decisions got him there? We can see ourselves making those same decisions–Brandon Sanderson.
Villains don’t have to be villains from the start. They just have different agencies—Karen McManus.
Designing Plots
Meeting NYT #1 bestseller Wesley Chu, with whom I discussed writing Martial Arts.
The thing that bugs me most is repeated plot arc. Too many writers write the same plot over and over again. It’s as if, because they were successful with the first one, they just hit the reset button on book 2 (or series 2, or season 2) and write the same thing again–Brandon Sanderson.
The mystery needs to matter to the character, not just to the reader who is trying to figure out the mystery. There have to be character consequences for the reveal–Karen McManus.
Don’t have your conflict shoot your reader’s empathy for your character in the foot–Brandon Sanderson.
All mysteries have a reveal. Not all mysteries have a twist–Kara Thomas.
Point of View
Best Advice I’ve received as a writer panel w/ Chuck Wendig, Naomi Novak, Wesley Chu, Terry Brooks, Peter V. Brett
First person turns on how interesting the voice of the character is–Brandon Sanderson.
If you’re writing a scene, and you know it’s a good scene, and it’s an important scene, but it’s just not working out like it should, change the point of view. You’re probably writing it from the wrong perspective–Diana Gabaldon.
Writing Rules
Mystery/Thriller panel w/E Lockhart, Karen McManus, and Kara Thomas.
You should violate every rule–Terry Brooks.
The value of rules is that they make you look at your writing and analyze it in a technical way–Naomi Novak.
All writing rules are bullshit–Peter V. Brett.
But bullshit fertilizes–Chuck Wendig.
All writing rules amount to “don’t write badly.” They attempt to turn an art into a science–Naomi Novak.
Use writing rules like cooking, not baking. There are rules like ‘don’t dump in the whole package of salt’ and recipes are important when you start, but eventually you don’t have to follow the recipe exactly, unlike baking. You’re going to be tasting, adding more or less flavor according to preference. There is a preferential aspect, a matter of taste–Chuck Wendig.
50 years ago, the rules were different. 50 years from now, they’ll be different too. Trends come and go. What’s commercial comes and goes–Wesley Chu.
Pitching and Finding an Agent
How Not to Succeed in Comics Panel w/ Scott Snyder and Brian Azzerello
Querying sucks–Wesley Chu.
I was at a party once and an agent asked me what my book was about. I [was hesitant to share my book because of all the big authors he represented]. He told me “You don’t refuse books; I refuse books. If you want your book published, you have to put your work out there–Peter V. Brett.
I was trying to write to the market. It wasn’t until I wrote the books I wanted to read as teenager that I was able to sell my work–Karen McManus.
Reading
Joe Illidge at the Comic Book School Editors on pitching and professionalism panel.
Read outside your genre. Find the things that people do well in those other genres you love to read. They have skillsets and ideas we don’t have. Find out what they do and bring that into your own genre–Terry Brooks.
It’s not a matter of genre, it’s a matter of patterns–Diana Gabaldon.
You have to read mindfully and critically–Chuck Wendig.
Everything you read impacts you–Terry Brooks.
One of the things that makes us most worried as writers is that we’re going to copy someone else, and yet we’re an amalgam of all we’ve read and experienced. We need to look at what’s influenced us and tear it down to the emotions and then build it back up into something new–Brandon Sanderson.
General Advice
Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells
When you work with people you like, all of your bad decisions seem good–Brian Azzerello.
Writers need to experiment. Writing the same thing for a long time would be a mistake–Terry Brooks.
Find people who you can tell the truth to, and who will tell the truth to you–Scott Snyder
You’ve got tp challenge yourself. You can’t rest on your laurels–Terry Brooks.
On imposter syndrome: I picture myself reading my book in front of a whole crowd at Yankee Stadium, and 60 thousand people are going “boo!”–Scott Snyder.
Sometimes, the magic works–Terry Brooks.
Influence people in a positive way. Give them an experience in space and time–Terry Brooks.
In the final analysis, your work is your brand– Joe Illidge.
Humorous Comments
How do I title my book? Poorly–Dan Wells.
On giving a 5 minute answer to a lightning round question: Have you seen the size of my books? That was fast for me–Brandon Sanderson.
I enjoy the process of writing. Once it’s done, I couldn’t care less. Except for getting paid. I enjoy that–Terry Brooks.
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Final Thoughts
There was so much variety in the advice given at nycc this year. Each of the writers took their own path and some of them disagreed with each other. There is not one way to succeed, there are many. Find the advice that speaks to you and implement it. It is, ultimately, comforting to know that their are so many paths to success.
Like everyone else, I am shocked and appalled by what happened to Salman Rushdie this past week. Not only is Rushdie one of the greatest living authors, he is also a champion of free speech and a model of principled bravery in the face of real danger. He is also one of my favorite writers.
If you only know Rushdie from his most famous and controversial work, The Satanic Verses, you should check out some of his other work as well. The booker-winning Midnight’s Children is, deservedly, his most highly regarded novel (and probably the right place to start if you are a Rushdie novice), but my favorite is Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which masquerades as a children’s fantasy book, but is actually about the dangers of censorship.
I’ve also learned a lot as a writer from Rushdie, who, in his melding of Eastern and Western traditions, often breaks a lot of so-called “rules” of writing. Here is a blog I wrote about his used of adverbs back in 2021.
Last week, I saw the Matisse’s Red Studio exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. The show features the painting after which it is named, but also focusses on the artist’s other works, especially those featured in the Red Studio painting. It is a really good exhibition and I enjoyed it immensely as an art lover. I also learned a lot about Matisse’s creative process, and as I often do when examining another creative’s method, found things I can incorporate into my own writing process.
The MOMA’s gallery cards are exceptional. Instead of just listing the name of the piece, the artist, and the medium like most museum’s do, the labels which accompany the art at the MOMA often include full paragraphs about the work which contextualize the piece and give some insight into both the importance of the work and, when known, the artist’s process or artistic vision.
One can learn a lot by reading the cards. For example, I learned that not only was Matisse a tinkerer, he often left vestiges of the original, or drafting, stages of his work in the final piece when he revised. Take, for example, this painting.
The position of the leg was obviously changed, which can be seen in the extraneous line near the lower half of the extended leg. There is also evidence that Matisse tinkered with the position of the figure’s arm (on the same side of the body), which he attempted to disguise in the shadows.
Here is the same painting with the relevant areas highlighted.
In many of the other paintings, the viewer can see pencil lines, presumably from the sketches he made on the canvass before he started to paint. They are not noticeable at the distance from which one usually photographs a painting, but up close, you can see them clearly. Here is an example:
What struck me most about these pieces was not that Matisse revised so much as part of his process. The world of the writer–and I assume the artist as well–is oversaturated with advice about revising one’s work. Revision is part of the process and it is par for the course. Rather, what stood out to me was that these vestiges remained in the final piece.
Many writers, many artists, many creative people in general, will work on their pieces in a futile pursuit of perfection. I have been guilty of doing so myself, working on a piece right up until the deadline, trying to make it as perfect as possible before submitting it for publication. I make sure to give myself deadlines, to seek out open call with hard deadlines, and rarely self-publish because I often get in my own head about revision.
There is an old saw in the creative world, “Finished, not perfect,” and like most oft-repeated advice it has become cliché and, in doing so, has lost much of its impact. It’s something people say, post about on social media, and hang up on posters in their classroom, and then ignore when it comes to their own practice. Seeing the Matisse pieces on the wall–and reading the gallery cards–is much, much more impactful.
Because, here’s the thing: No one notices the mistakes when looking at the paintings on the wall. Those who did not take the time to read the gallery cards, most likely, did not notice them at all. I certainly did not until I after the labels pointed them out to me. As someone who sees every mistake in everything I write, even–and especially–after its published, there’s a powerful lesson in that.
In the first post I published on this blog, I bemoaned the reductive nature of writing advice. “If you write like everyone else,” I wrote, “your writing will read like everyone else’s.” While I have gotten away from that theme from time-to-time, I try to return to it every now and then as part of my series: Rules: What Rules? which consists of a series of blogs that deal with common pieces of writing advice, and then present a famous work–by a successful author–which breaks those rules. My aim is not to criticize these authors—I enjoy all of them, that is the point. Rather, I present their works as examples of successfully writing, which might cause you to reexamine the writing “rule” critically. I am not advising you to ignore these rules, rather to take control of your own craft, and consider your choices actively. As always, I believe there is more than one path to success, more than one formula for great writing. Consider these posts synecdochally. The specific rule is not the point; it speaks to a general attitude which is prevalent within the contemporary writing community.
In each blog post in this series, I will give a brief summary of the rule, followed by a case study of a successful author, work, or series that breaks that rule. Finally, I will provide some analysis of the rule and the alternative techniques the featured author makes. Since the posts in this series will not necessarily be consecutive blog entries, I will link each piece to previous entries.
The pithy way this rule is usually stated is derived from a 1986 Writers Digest article by Frank L. Visco which took the form of a list of “rules” the author had “learnt” (sic) over the course of his writing career. The article, which has been quoted in numerous places, has been circulated widely, especially in recent years, through meme culture and social media. The statement in question leads off the set of rules, in which the statement of each rule violates the very principle it purports to teach.
While the article is a bit tongue-in-cheek, the rules it professes are, by and large, considered “good” advice by the writing community.
Alliteration, especially when done excessively, is supposed to be distracting. It supposedly takes the reader out of the story and makes them focus on the delivery rather than the content.
And yet…
There is a long tradition of using alliteration in English language literature. In fact, alliteration has been there right from the beginning. Anglo-Saxon epics, such as Beowulf, which is considered by many to be the first foundational text of English literature, is built around an alliterative structure. Seamus Heaney’s landmark verse translation keeps this structure, and his translator’s introduction explains his methods, the anonymous poet’s techniques, and the traditions upon which they both draw better than I ever could.
Shakespeare used alliteration (Love’s Labour Lost, for example), but I’d like to begin our discussion in earnest with a poet from the next generation, Alexander Pope whose poem Sound and Sense is both a poem and an instruction manual for writing poetry. Throughout the sonnet, Pope uses the techniques he wants his reader to learn, most of which have to do with the sound the language make, including alliteration, but also rhythm, meter, assonance, and consonance. These devices are categorized as “sound and sense” devices to this day. In the couplet that gives the poem its title, Pope writes:
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
This couplet states the poem’s argument, which is that the poet–or any writer for that matter–should use their devices in harmony with, or to accentuate the content and/or message, of the piece. Throughout the piece, Pope uses the devices he intends to teach, but does not name them explicitly.
Pope employs alliteration throughout the poem, including in the above-quoted couplet. The leading “S” sound is repeated 3 times in the stanza’s second line, and five times in the next couplet:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
The alliterative sound is not necessarily in consecutive words, which is actually the correct way to write alliteration. As least where poetry is concerned, alliteration is not, as it’s commonly defined the repetition of a sound at the beginning of a word, it’s actually the repetition of that sound on the stressed syllable.
One of my favorite examples comes from Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous poem, The Raven:
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
The repeated S sound occurs at the beginning of “silken” and “sad,” but in the middle of “uncertain” and “rustling.” But read the line out loud. Notice how the S sound falls on the stressed syllable, whether it comes at the beginning of the word or not:
AND the SILken, SAD, unCERtain RUStling
If you transpose “silken” and “sad”, the alliteration won’t read as well, first, because of the meter, and secondly, because the alliteration won’t sound as natural.
The reason Poe’s line works so well is that the sound does, indeed, echo the sense. Not only is there an onomatopoeia in the “s” sound, which mimics the curtains rustling in the wind, but the hypnotic use of alliteration combines with the trochaic meter–the opposite of iambic, which is the most common English language meter–highlights the dream-like quality of the encounter (“while I nodded nearly napping”; the nightmarish Raven perched atop the bust of Athena, a symbol of rationality)–to “shush” the reader to that dream state with the repeated, soporific “s” sound.
When I wrote my poem, The Widow’s Walk which was recently published, fittingly, in Love Letters to Poe, I attempted to emulate Poe’s alliterative style. The opening line of the poem reads:
She wends her way around her walk And round and round she goes.
Scanning the opening line, we get:
she WENDS her WAY aROUND her WALK
The alliterative “w” sound is used on the stressed syllable (although I use iambic rather than trochaic meter in this poem.)
Some might say that alliteration is an antiquated device found mostly in older poems (and poems like mine which pay homage to them), but modern poets use alliteration prominently as well.
In her poem, Fugue, from her new book, Call Us What We Carry, superstar inaugural poet Amanda Gorman writes:
excerpt from “Fugue” by Amanda Gorman
The first line of the excerpt employs alliteration in the same manner as Poe. The D sound is repeated on the stressed syllable. Later in the excerpt, Gorman uses alliteration in a similar manner to an anglo-saxon poet, as she moves the “f” sound around to different places in her lines.
Later in the collection, Gorman highlights alliteration as an essential literary technique, one which defines the poet, and speaks to the power of poetry. In her poem “Memorial”, Gorman writes:
But why alliteration? Why the pulsing percussion, the string of syllables? It is the poet who pounds the past back into you.
Thus, arguably the biggest contemporary superstar in poetry (is that even arguable at this point?) uses alliteration in her poetry.
Gorman, Poe, Pope, and the Beowulf poet refuse to avoid alliteration; the rest of us should follow their example.
***
Alliteration works in non-poetic writing as well. One of my favorite examples of alliteration in prose writing comes from Charles Dickens’ description of the storming of the Bastille in A Tale of Two Cities:
Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke — in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier — Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours.
Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! “Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils — which you prefer — work!”Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot.
In the first line of each of the two excerpted paragraphs, Dickens uses similar phrases which feature alliteration. In each example, Dickens’ uses the repeated hard “d” sound to represent the thud of the cannons against the walls of The Bastille. Like Poe’s, Dickens’ alliteration is also onomatopoeia, and, therefore, as Pope advises, even in prose, the sound echoes the sense. Moreover, the missing “d” in the second paragraph highlights the fact that one of the two drawbridges has been taken out by the rebels’ cannons. The missing “d” sound highlights the missing drawbridge.
Another more modern example is found in the film V for Vendetta, written by the Wachowskis and directed by James McTeigue. In one of the most popular scenes from the film, V, played by Hugo Weaving, gives a speech in which nearly every word begins with the letter “v,” in tribute to the Alan Moore’s comic which inspired the movie, in which each chapter title is a “v” word (in fact, many of the “v” words used in the speech are taken directly from those chapter titles).
V for Vendetta “V” speech
When I watched the movie in the theater, this speech drew appreciative applause from the audience, who seemed thrilled by the alliteration as the speech built to a crescendo–take that, Frank L. Visco!
Of course V for Vendetta followed a long tradition of comic book alliteration. The great Stan Lee loved alliteration, especially when naming characters: Peter Parker, Sue Storm, Read Richards, Matt Murdock, The Fantastic Four, the list goes on.
I could go on as well, but I think I’ve made my point.
Analysis
So, why is alliteration looked down upon? It seems that it’s because people misinterpreted a joke. Visco, who ironically uses alliteration to criticize its use, was clearly writing tongue-in-cheek. One could even say that the fact he opens with the alliteration “rule” shows he recognizes its power. Meme culture has contributed to the proliferation of Visco’s rules, and, as with so many other things, its has stripped the the original article of its context.
While it is true that alliteration can take a reader out of the story or be distracting if its used poorly, the same could be said for any literary technique. A bad simile or metaphor will take the reader out of the writing just as quickly; poor rhythm in poetry will do the same. Any device can be overused, and the writer must strive use them all judiciously. That is true about alliteration, but it is not unique to alliteration.
The fact is that proper alliteration makes writing memorable, which is why it often used in marketing. It is a signature device of writers ranging from Edgar Allan Poe, to Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, to Amanda Gorman.
Avoid it at your peril.
Be sure to check out the links page to read some of my published writing, and to follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
A. A. Rubin 