Category: Fiction philosophy

Archives for the Holidays: How to control people’s thoughts with words

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Happy Thanksgiving, if you celebrate it! While I stay on top of holiday cheer, I’m posting some of my favorite posts from the archives. This one was originally posted last year on December 10.

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How to control people’s thoughts with words

I’m almost afraid to publish this post.

It feels like passing out a loaded gun to every random stranger that passes by.

In the wrong hands it could be very dangerous.

But when I think about it, it’s already in the wrong hands. The hands of con artists and cult leaders and politicians. And there is no way to take that power from them except to make everyone else aware of it.

Have you ever thought—I mean really thought—about the power of language? Keep reading >>

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Should you write for yourself, or for other people?

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Image by AntToeKnee. Check out his profile to read his hilarious bio.

When you sit down to write, who are you writing for? Are you writing only for your own amusement (or catharsis?), or to entertain other people? And which is right?

If you write only to please yourself, you’re in danger of contracting Ugly Baby Syndrome—thinking your creation is perfect no matter what anyone else says. If they don’t like it, you are personally offended. If they say pages full of poetic scenic description are boring, you say they are uncultured swine. You throw a little pity party because nobody understands your unique method of expression.

Well, you’re right. Nobody understands you because you’re not explaining yourself well.

Here’s the tough truth: being unique doesn’t make you good. You may be expressing yourself, but you are refusing to express yourself in a language anyone else understands. You are being selfish. If you want to be understood, you have to speak to them in their language first. Start where you have common ground. That means putting the story—its integrity, pace, and structure—above your pretty-words ego.

If you write only to please people, well, you’ll become a people-pleaser. A sellout.The irony is that this is another form of selfishness. You’re really writing for the attention, the prestige, the money. As soon as you find something most people seem to like, you’ll just keep writing that same story over and over again—change the names and the settings, but the same plot every time. You don’t dare to be different. You don’t dare to write the truth about your own life and struggles and the hard things you’ve learned. You turn into a formula fiction factory. On your new book cover, your name is larger than the title because people already know what’s in any story you write. You’ve stopped being an artist. You have ceased to express yourself. You are not telling the world anything it doesn’t already know.

So what’s the answer?

Write for yourself. Edit for your audience.

Maggie pointed this out in the comments of this post.

When you pour out that first and second draft, write what you enjoy. Write the kind of story you love to read. Write who you are in the grittiest, nakedest way. Write what you want to say to the world.

The ironic result is that a lot of other people probably love what you love. A lot of them have felt what you have felt. What you write could appeal to them on a deep level.

When you move on into the rewriting and editing stages, have them first in mind. You expressed yourself. Now, translate that expression. Help your audience understand you, and help them have a good time of it. Put the story above your ego. That means showing truth, not preaching it. It means cutting out extraneous drabble; letting go of your sentimental attachments if they don’t support the story. If you are in love with an unnecessary character, or you adore a setting that hinders the plot, or you’re attached to a line of dialogue a character would never say, cut it out!

Your writing ability should serve the story, not the other way around. First the truth-telling. Then the truth-translating.

That’s how to create something both you and your audience will love.

 

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 What sentimental attachments do you have to detrimental elements of your work? What truths are you afraid might offend people?

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Drunk with Dandelion Wine and in Charge of a Bicycle: a Tribute to Ray Bradbury

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photo by Sam Howzit

 He arrived with a seedy two-bit carnival, The Dill Brothers Combined Shows, during Labor Day weekend of 1932, when I was twelve. Every night for three nights, Mr. Electrico sat in his electric chair, being fired with ten billion volts of pure sizzling power. Reaching out into the audience, his eyes flaming, his white hair standing on end, sparks leaping between his smiling teeth, he brushed an Excalibur sword over the heads of the children, knighting them with fire. When he came to me, he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose. The lightning jumped into me. Mr. Electrico cried: “Live forever!”

I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard.*

Tuesday of last week, Mr. Bradbury died.

I sat thinking for awhile about what I would say about him. What was special about his work? Certainly, he had a dark and fantastic imagination. He had an amazing sense of place and a unique way with words. He’s one of the few writers I would read for his voice alone, story aside.

But none of these things do him justice. They are all symptoms of a deeper thing that I feel strongly but that I’m not sure I can put into words.

Remember how everything felt when you were a kid? How much more terrifying and wonderful everything was? Before you got so busy. And jaded. Before you let yourself become ashamed of loving comic books and Saturday morning cartoons and Nancy Drew. Remember how palpably exciting it was to merely pretend to be the captain of a ship? The magic of anticipating Christmas morning that was not only because of the presents? The hot, perfect freedom of summer, and how eternal those three months felt?

We felt things then we can’t seem to feel anymore. We get inklings occasionally, like catching the faintest whiff of a familiar scent, but it seems we’ve forgotten how to really feel them.

Bradbury brings it all back.

 He writes in the passion of feeling we had when we were children. I don’t mean “passion” and “feeling” like drama. I mean magic. Wonder. His words are dripping with it. We drink them and become intoxicated with it.

Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip, for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.***

Ray Bradbury never forgot the boy in him. When he wrote, he didn’t have to twist his brain around to squeeze out words like so many of us do. He opened a fire hydrant of his own childhood wonder, and magic came gushing out.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.**

Bradbury’s stories are time machines. Except they don’t take us back to a particular place or era. They take us back to ourselves.

When it is a long damp November in my soul, and I think too much and perceive too little, I know it is high time to get back to that boy with the tennis shoes, the high fevers, the multitudinous joys, and the terrible nightmares. I’m not sure where he leaves off and I start.*

The boy mentioned at the top of this post was Ray Bradbury 80 years ago.

And it will be Ray Bradbury forever.

“Now it’s your turn,” he prods us toward our own landmines:

“Jump!”**

 

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* Zen in the Art of Writing: Drunk and in Charge of a Bicycle

** Zen in the Art of Writing: How to Climb the Tree of Life, Throw Rocks at Yourself, and Get Down Again Without Breaking Your Bones or Your Spirit, A Preface with a Title Not Much Longer than the Book

*** Dandelion Wine

What to do if your novel has no point

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On my desk is a tiny contraption which, when cranked, plays part of Here Comes the Sun. It has no other purpose. Unlike a music box, you can’t store stuff in it. It doesn’t even play the whole song. I paid $9 for this contraption. I could buy nine full songs on iTunes for that.

But it was worth every penny. I would totally buy it again.

In fact, it’s the second one I’ve bought. The first one is on my desk at work and plays the Pink Panther theme song.

The point?

Not everything has to be a cure for cancer. Not everything has to be an insightful commentary on the human condition. Not everything has to be educational or inspirational or profitable.

The world needs more things that exist just to make us smile.

Don’t fret if your adventure novel is more Cussler than Homer. Don’t be ashamed because you prefer to write about elvish magic than about social issues. Don’t let the pseudo-intellectuals look down on you if your science fiction masterpiece is less Fahrenheit 451 and more Beatnik Rutabagas from Beyond the Stars. Those people are like Vulcans at a baseball game. They just don’t know how to have fun.

The power to brighten someone’s day is just as valuable as the power to help someone get a new perspective, or accept a hard truth, or take action for a cause.

Some things exist to save the world. Some things exist to make the world worth saving.

I, for one, am willing to fight for a world in which things like this exist:

 

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Sam Betrays Frodo: A Mockingjay Review

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SPOILER ALERT for Mockingjay (The Hunger Games) and Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings).

Just Say No

Image by Marc Falardeau

After finishing the Hunger Games trilogy, I was torn between:

  1. Wanting to learn the author’s techniques so I could make my readers feel as strongly for my characters as I did for the Hunger Games characters
  2. Never wanting to put anyone through what I went through reading Hunger Games

I’m not a depressed person, nor particularly moody. A poorly-ended book will leave me angry and disappointed, but not devastated. Mockingjay, however, left me in a turmoil of tears late into the night and gave me a sick feeling every time I thought about it afterwards – which was often, since I finished it mere weeks before the first movie came out, and there were reminders everywhere, from a stray Catching Fire book jacket in a coworker’s car to Hunger Games recipes on the Yahoo! homepage.

As I lay awake that first night, trying to pinpoint what bothered me so much, I realized it all boiled down to one scene. One word, really.

First, the writing is brilliant (aside from heavy exposition in book two). The author asks moral questions without ever preaching. The prose is so clean, you forget you’re reading—you just get sucked straight into Katniss’s head. And Katniss is a complex character, flawed in ways I can relate to, yet heroic in ways I hope to be. I was afraid when she was afraid, I fell in love when she fell in love, and I grieved when she lost everything she cared about. As the story progressed, and more of my favorite people were murdered, I felt more and more beaten down, just as I saw Katniss beaten down. But one thing carried me through, which began in the very first chapter: I could always depend on Katniss to defend the weak.

Despite all her flaws, when she saw an innocent person threatened, Katniss was filled with righteous anger, and fought for them even against her better judgment. That’s what made her the Mockingjay.

The author brought Katniss down to her lowest point, which so many writers are squeamish of doing, but which is necessary for a great story. You must bring your hero to the edge of death; physically, emotionally or both. In that moment, your hero must make the ultimate decision. The exact decision varies with every story, but at its core it is always the same: right or wrong.

At this point, no one would blame him for making the wrong decision. But if he makes the right decision, even if the villain kills him afterwards, even if the whole world gets blown up or he doesn’t get the girl after all or whatever, your hero has won. Because no matter what the villain can do, he cannot break your hero’s spirit.

So I can forgive Ms. Collins for killing several of my favorite characters—even Prim, though that felt enough like the betrayal of the story. I can forgive her for estranging Katniss from her mother and best friend. I even think Katniss ended up with the right guy.

But I can’t forgive Ms. Collins for one thing. When the surviving tributes voted on whether or not to hold one last Hunger Games to punish the innocent children of the guilty Capitol officials, Katniss said Yes. For Primrose.

In that moment, Katniss died.

At her lowest point, she made the wrong decision—something I can’t blame her for in the least, but something that makes Katniss’s battle for innocence and goodness and decency all for nothing. The rebels may have defeated the Capitol, but Katniss, the person we were really rooting for, lost. Not just people she cared about, but her very self. The villains succeeded. They destroyed her.

We’re left feeling betrayed—and worse: hopeless.

As I drafted this post, I stopped to wonder why Lord of the Rings didn’t devastate me like Hunger Games did. After all, we fight through three books just to see Frodo decide to keep the ring at the end. But then I realized: Frodo isn’t Katniss. Frodo is hijacked Peeta. Samwise is Katniss. It was his friendship that carried us through the story, not Frodo’s strength. So when Frodo broke, we were sad. But Sam was still true, so there was victory. Imagine if instead, Frodo had destroyed the ring, but Sam had turned on him at the last moment. Not even the victory over Sauron would have redeemed that wrong.

So when you have brought your hero to his knees and he is about to make his choice, stop and think. What is this story’s Samwise? What promise do you need to keep to your readers?

And Ms. Collins, if by some slim chance you are reading this, I beg you: get them to change just one word in the Mockingjay screenplay.

Let Katniss say No. For Primrose.

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