Chuck Q & A - Third Quarter 2005
*Covers Workshop topics 19 - 21.
1. Question submitted by productiongirl:
Regarding Chapter 19 (Effective Similes), you wrote that "a limited number of physical details make up every reality." How do you know when you're over-doing it on the details? In another words, how much is too much?
Chuck Responds:
First, before writing any scene ask yourself: What needs to happen here? To me, the main purpose of description is to pace out action. Once you know the actions that must happen in a scene, then you'll know how many details you'll need to control the delivery of that action. You don't want too much happening at once, and details of the setting and characters will space out your physical tasks so they each occur clearly to the reader.
If the "task" or plot point of the scene seems bogged down - you're using too much detail. Detail slows the action. Cut all but the very best, most-telling, details.
If your action seems confusing, look at adding details that will help ground the scene and keep each gesture and action clear.
Again, reading your work aloud will give you a good idea if events happen too fast or slow.
2. Question submitted by Dr.Jekyll&Mr.Hyde:
In the Thumbnail essay you talk about the paradox of storytelling. It's after the fact yet it still needs to create a sense of immediacy. Survivor holds such a paradox but does a shape apply to it? You have a situation where you think you know the ending. The story is pushed forward by the urgency of the situation. But paradoxically I'm still pulled by the question: Will he live?
Is Survivor a Thumbnail variation? The reader knows (or thinks he knows) the outcome yet there's still enough uncertainty that makes him question the ending (the beginning Thumbnail).
Chuck Responds:
To me, "Survivor" is an O story: It starts in crisis and drops into deep flashback. Like Fight Club and The Great Gatsby. Most of the book is flashback, moving forward to the present moment. If it were a true Thumbnail it would reveal more of the plot at the beginning. On top of that, the ending it hints at is only a red herring - because the narrator won't really die.
This constant promise of death is what the "unreliable narrator" wants you to believe, but it's not the truth. Remember… your characters never have to tell the truth. Hell, it's more fun if they don't.
By the way, my screen agent at CAA reports that the new screenplay for "Survivor" is "genius."
3. Question submitted by siholmes:
You mention the shortcomings of the 'and then..' form of story telling, but after establishing the overall shape I find my work still slips into linear form. How important is shape within individual chapters and scenes? Any advice?
Chuck Responds:
It might be that a linear form works best for your story. The goal is to find a shape that serves the story: an opening that's gripping and compelling, and a regular way to introduce new material and move the story through time.
The toughest job can be deciding how to imply time passing in your story. You don't want to bore your reader with every moment, but you want to create a sense of days or weeks happening over pages that your reader will consume in a few hours. To do this, during the "slow" moments - as characters take long drives in a story or the narrator sleeps, or nothing important happens - you cut to flashbacks or Big Voice or flash forwards (like in Lullaby). Just a moment spent away from the present-day plot line can imply that an hour/day/week has passed. Plus, instead of presenting a boring scene (characters alone or idle) you've shown another form of information important to the story.
4. Question submitted by fluffhood76:
There seems to be a lot of structural essays these days. Which I definitely love. How many more do you anticipate covering? Also, with regards to "The Enlightened Witness," this character is the most intriguing to me, because of the open-ness, or opportunity to 'create something new', but he/she almost always seems like a passive character... and this idea of creating something new, seems more like a fantasy, than a reality. It's something in my mind that I can't completely grasp YET. The first part is more of a question, the second, I suppose is a comment, but would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Chuck Responds:
About story structures, I'm not sure how many more I'm aware of. At least one more. About the enlightened witness, yes it's passive.
One goal is to create your reader as the enlightened witness, letting him/her see the folly of too much resistance or passivity. All the characters may be destroyed, but if your reader learns something useful, then you've done a great job.
I'd argue that a goal of depicting an enlightened witness is to keep their vision as lovely but indistinct as possible. You want that vision to appeal to as many folks as possible. The moment you start giving the details of Big Chief's idealized salmon hunting future, it starts to bog down and lose appeal. So, yes, that "new" thing occurs best as a vague possibility or vision that the reader fills with his/her own desires.
5. Question submitted by jptormey:
I guess this is about clichés, or how to avoid specific one, but more it's about form.
I've been reading Larry Brown (R.I.P.) for a while now after discovering his work through this website. I'm not from the South, but I feel a real connection to the working class characters and settings, and the guy knew how to tell a damn entertaining story. I often see him described as a minimalist, and his best stuff (for me) was usually in third person.
I know you like to work mainly in first person to lend your stories a deeper degree of credibility. But do you have any advice or guidelines for people who find themselves working in third person narratives but who would like to remain true to some of minimalist tenets you have been teaching in this forum?
Chuck Responds:
Even working in the third person, you can still follow all the other rules I've given: Limit thought verbs, avoid abstract forms of measurement or judgment, further the plot through action, limit dialogue and use attribution, use on-the-body sensory details, avoid adverbs and 'telling' your reader how the characters feel, etc. Just following these rules -- as best you can -- will make any story, in first or second or third-person, better.
6. Question submitted by kasey_carpenter:
Regarding "The Cycle" - it seems that this shape lends itself almost exclusively to a horror application, there has been some discussion here about that, can you give us any examples where this style might be applied to a non-horror application?
Chuck Responds:
For a great non-horror example, look for the Dorothy Parker short story: The Standard of Living. It's sad and sweet and funny. The cycle story depends on a character lacking awareness and staying in denial as long as possible. The character avoids transformation and enlightenment - which can leave readers angry and unfulfilled, except in horror where we expect the worst.
Horror stories are automatically accepted as "cautionary tales." If you're babysitting and you hear something in the dark basement: Don't go down there! We look at horror stories for worst-case scenarios. So a dark ending is fine.
But, with most other fiction we look for redemption and growth which almost never happens in a "cycle" story.
7. Question submitted by octavio77:
What is wrapping a sentence? i know that should be something i should know but could you please help me out with this one.
Chuck Responds:
I'm sorry. I have no idea what that means… can you give me some context?
8. Question submitted by Mark Grover:
What's the best way to keep my head above water and not give in and keep writing even if someone (not in this workshop) tries to make me think my work is shit. I mean, I know if we're gonna take this seriously, we have to take and give constructive criticism, but there are a few clueless people out there who don't like to read anything disturbing and then get weirded out when they do read it. What's the best way to deal with them?
Chuck Responds:
I'll use this question as a chance to talk about "clocks" or countdown devices in stories -- from a setting sun to a pregnancy - some device that gives a sense of time passing. Running a clock is a good way to add pressure and stress to a scene. It can be a real, actual clock or countdown, but the first "clock" I ever used in a story was a blow-up sex doll. In this early story, I depicted a man in love, dressing a blow-up doll to look like the woman he lusted after. He "seduced" it, drinking lots of beer, but as he slyly unzipped the back of its dress, the zipper snagged the rubber skin. Even as the man was humping it, the doll was losing air. It became a sad, comic race for him to achieve orgasm before his beloved went flat. Enough said.
My writing workshop at the time (not Tom Spanbauer's) read the scene and refused to read anything I ever submitted after that. Some people told me they cried with disgust. Well, God Bless them. I was miffed, but I moved on to a better workshop and a group of friends who howl with laugher at my darkest ideas.
You should've heard them LAST night, laughing in shocked disgust at the next book - but laughing nonetheless.
People come to books for different payoffs. Some want comfort and some want to be challenged. Try to charm them by balancing your awfulness with vulnerability and heart. If extreme behavior reveals weakness and need or anything redeemable in a character, people tend to accept the extreme.
Or, use people's distain to train yourself for the future. Remind yourself -- The point is not: "Will people like this"… the point is: "Will they remember this?"
9. Question for Chuck submitted by scanner_erik:
Everyone wants to write the great novel, but there are more unfinished novels than there are short stories. What structural and elemental changes in your writing did you have to face when you started to write novels compared to short stories?
Chuck Responds:
Writing with the intention of creating a novel takes so much more patience than writing a short story. You have to accept the fact the whole isn't done, and (oh holy shit!) it might not resolve itself in an incredible way. Oh lord, you might just be wasting your time! All the hours you've spent researching and writing, and the project might turn to crap at the final moment.
You can just toss a short story that disappoints you. But a novel represents a chunk of your life, and you agonize over it until the plot resolves itself.
Writing a short story is like casual sex with a stranger. Writing a novel is a marriage - you have to trust that you've made the right choice, and go forward on the strength of your commitment. Still, I write every chapter as much like a story as possible: advancing the plot, creating set-ups and completing pay-offs. Instead of worrying about the whole incomplete monster, I focus on getting each part right before I move forward to the next part. Every novel is only a collection of stories: What is their job? How did they meet? What is their fatal flaw? Why can't they be happy in the world? What do they do for fun?
10. Question for Chuck submitted by venterminator:
Goals are such a fluid thing in writing. The beginning writer wants to be the paid writer, or the famous writer. Others just have the goal of relieving stress or having fun. You are a famous writer, a "made" writer. What does an author like yourself set as goals once you've reached a pinnacle? A cult of adoring fans, successful books, and you're featured in the "literary" section, not just horror! What keeps the juices flowing, and what are your goals from here?
Chuck Responds:
The month I sold the Fight Club manuscript to WW Norton in 1995, I went to a family reunion in Hamilton, Montana. Sitting around, drinking beer, my brother-in-law asked me how much money I'd made from the deal. I evaded the question because I knew my advance had been small. Instead, I asked why he was so curious. And he said, I swear: "Because I want to know if it would be worth my time to write a novel…"
Well, that got me all huffy. As if writing was about the money. Just another lottery ticket that meant access to your real-real dream.
All pompous and drunk, I told him that if that was his attitude he shouldn't bother to write. And even sober, that's my stand.
I write because it lets me meet with friends each week. Writing gives me permission to research and explore topics I'm curious about. It calms me down. It gives me a way to deal with irresolvable bullshit. To me, writing is the goal - not the means to another goal. Writing really is its own reward.
At that same family reunion, I finally told my brother-in-law what I'd been paid for my first novel, and he just laughed.
If you want a boat or a big house - or attention -- there are much easier ways to get it. My goal is always to surprise myself and my friends by finding a better story and a better way to tell it.
