The only reason that I refer to the process of writing as a complicated one, is that I can’t pin down how I do it exactly, like technically. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I have been in enough writing groups, and I have taught enough creative writing workshops and worked with enough editors (and endured almost as many rejections) to realize that there are some basics we need to keep ourselves familiar with. Show, don’t tell…don’t use ridiculous hyperbole…avoid logic errors that have your protagonist doing silly things to cause a false sense of tension…don’t have someone toss their head, since the reader might ask, “Where did it land?” Ha, ha, I am familiar with all of the commonplace rhetoric.
And while we’re on the subject, I do have to admit that my biggest flaw is that I love constructing character portraits so much that I sometimes forget to move the action forward. People fascinate me, and I honestly believe “story” is born more of character-idiosyncrasy than “blocking.” Yeah…let’s have a chase scene. Big whoop. Let’s engineer the mechanics of a bar fight that spreads to the wedding party in the cocktail lounge. Ho-hum. Let’s have a sex scene! And another! And another! Let’s have the killer stab the poor dear in his basement SIXTY TIMES! I’m fighting to keep my eyes open.
All sarcasm aside (it’s really irony, but who’s counting…), I would much rather know initially what makes a character tick than create his or her scene mechanics. Of course, I realize that plot is important and I will confirm right here that I am a firm believer in interesting story-action. I am simply taking this opportunity to reveal my greatest love and flaw, because this kind of self-reflection is important for the growth of any writer. So yes, I simply love to do historical and psychological breakdowns of characters. Still, when it’s all said and done and I am preparing to draft, I do realize that I cannot start a story unless I have at least the big point “A” to point “B” in reference to the plot structure, and to be honest, part of my “process” is cutting most of those lengthy character portraits straight out of the text on my second run-through. It hurts, but in the end, I don’t want to read someone’s personnel “file” either, at least not for too long. I want to know them just enough to bring me from point “A” to point “B” with a bit more meaning than a car chase.
And back to process, I am a compulsive writer, a nut-case who does this every single day, usually early in the morning, and if we are telling all, I must say that once I am in the zone I am not paying much attention to the mechanics. Oh, they’re all around me, on my shoulder, standing in a near corner casting a shadow, in the back of my mind screaming that “this won’t work,” or “that plays false,” or “she wouldn’t say that in a million years,” but I’m really not listening. Often, I will be at work for hours on end and have no recollection of what I wrote when I am broken out of the session. In a distant sort of way, I know that as a result of being a college professor and a harsh critic, I was using a “shading technique,” going circular with it, advancing sentence by sentence and going back for constant self-corrections. What I never do, is rework the same paragraph for eternity. Though it is common practice for writers and editors to tell new writers to draft like hell and fix later, I have gained enough experience that my shading is a quick deal, and I crank out around five pages of finished copy every two days or so. Of course, I might “work a section” for a bit longer, but I don’t get caught in the skip in the record like so many preach against. And looking at the copy with fresh eyes, not remembering what the hell I fought with the day before is a strange and special pleasure, like someone with Alzheimer’s looking at his past mad ravings backward in the mirror and seeing valid bits of poetry and clever pieces of insight (though admittedly rough around the edges and corners).
Of course, when we speak of plot points like the linear concept of “A” to “B,” we have to discuss just how many details are to be thought of pre-drafting, those that are actually set into the aggregate of these cornerstones. A famous writer (who I am a fan of by the way) recently said on a podcast that an author should know the beginning, middle, and end, chapter and verse, moment for moment in the form of a detailed outline before starting his or her novel. That way, it is clear what the work for the day is going to be. I am more from the camp that would celebrate discovery writing, as in, having a vague idea of “A” to “B,” maybe shadows and threads of a possible “C,” “D,” and “E,” and little else but the desire to blaze a new path. I strongly feel that if I know everything that is going to happen long before writing it, the ideas will go stale, also locking me out of wonderful possible discoveries I could make down in the trenches as my characters grow into the story around them. I do realize that sounds rather “artsy,’ so I will put it in “technical” terms, especially since this blog post is supposed to be about “process” and measurable things we can utilize in a concrete way, or discard in a defiant one.
Plainly, if I know long before writing them, the way the twists are going to go, it is easier to fall into telegraphing them. If it takes me the loving pain of the long and meticulous process to get there, surprising me as the proverbial Alzheimer’s patient discovering his poetic worth over time, common sense and the laws of probability would indicate that my readers on that wonderful “fly by” they do in a page-turning pleasure read, won’t see the surprises coming.
In my latest novel ‘The Witch of the Wood,’ I didn’t know who the Dark Guardian was going to be until I used the shop teacher as the red herring. I didn’t know my hero was going to have command over canines until they flooded the tunnel-entrance to his lair, and I hadn’t a clue that I was going to invent a character parallel to the devil, until it seemed this antagonist was defeated too easily and I had him run to the sewers (allusion to hell) where he had an army of rats waiting to help him.
In terms of process, for me, it is circular and continuous.
And as for the reason to do it in the first place, it is specifically so I will not know exactly what I am going to do the next day.
Michael Aronovitz
Author of ‘The Witch of the Wood’
http://michaelaronovitz.com/
