Some of you may be discouraged. You didn’t realize it would be this hard. But listen to this: Professional writers with years of experience struggle. They get anxious, they get blocked. They throw up with despair. They might have written dozens of successful pieces, but this time they think they might not be able to do it. This time they can’t figure it out.
The job of editors is to help writers through these crises of nerve and guide the writers to a successful conclusion. That’s my role. All of you have now written a draft. Congratulations! Now comes the work of polishing and revising. That’s what we’ll spend the rest of the semester doing. Most of you have heard the expression, “Writing is re-writing.” The poet Robert Hass, who visited campus last spring, offered a variation: “You can’t revise nothing.” What he meant was that you have to write a bad poem before you can make it a good poem. So there’s a psychological barrier to be crossed. But you have crossed it. You have written drafts that have many good qualities, but you’re not finished yet. And I have focused strongly on what’s missing, and not such much on what’s working.
That’s the nature of editing. It’s the nature of doing something successfully is to do all the steps necessary in order to succeed. Most writers will comb through a manuscript a dozen times just cleaning up the language and improving the style.
But we’re not at that point yet. We’re still working on the central idea. What is the story about? How can I revise, report and delete with an eye to the main theme? That’s why I’ve emphasized the opening so much. The opening should contain the seed of the story. All the major elements should be there, and developed strongly enough so that the rest of the story flows out of the promise of the opening.
So step back a moment, the way a painter backs away from her canvas and looks at it from a distance. Gay Talese would literally back away and look at a piece of writing through binoculars. I’m not recommending that. Gay Talese got so obsessive he had writer’s block for ten years.
But here are the four key things to consider.
1) The opening. What is the need of my character or characters? Have I established that? Can I say what it is? Have I closed the opening section with a strong quotation or a powerful moment that creates some suspense or some emotional intensity?
2) The background section. The background explains why the character has this emotional need. You probably have lots of background information, but how do you know what to include? Include only the background that helps account for the need of the character. That’s why most writers write the opening first and why they are obsessed with the opening early in the writing process. If it isn’t clear to you what to include in the background, chances are you have figured out the character’s need.
The background might include not just material about the character, but also material about the problem. What do we know about the new urbanism? How much money is involved?
3) Chronology. The opening establishes the problem and the character’s need. The background expands upon the problem and the character’s need. The chronology takes us back to the beginning and helps us see how the situation and the character evolved over time. But the chronology does not include everything that happened to the character. It’s everything related to the main theme of the story, that emotional need. Still, that can be a lot of things.
4) Ending: The ending loops back to the problem or need that has been set up at the beginning. Perhaps the character or at least the writer has arrived at a better understanding. A lot of endings are about the future of the character or characters. It’s time to think back over the narrative and see how understanding the past might give us a glimpse of the future. A quotation, if it has the right emotional intensity, can be a good way to end. Look through your notes and see if you have such a quotation you can write towards.
Writing with details
When professional writers review student applications to graduate writing programs, they look for students who write with details. A good story is filled with details. Capote, for example, knows what Herb Clutter ate for breakfast: an apple, and he can build on that when he says that day, with the clear hard sun, was a perfect day for eating apples. He also knows that Perry Smith has asprin, root beer, and Pall Malls for breakfast. Not just cigarettes but the brand of cigarette.
As you look at the writing sentence by sentence, add details. Some of them you already have in your mind or your notes.
But you may need to do more reporting. You may need to ask your source for those details. Remember the person you are interviewing lived through the story. He or she doesn’t remember all those details in the telling. You may have to pry them out of your sources. Most people are not story-tellers.
You have a great advantage with the Internet. You can get almost instant access to facts about obscure places in Southeast Asia or the number of soldiers suffering from PTSD. You can pick up details by scrutinizing photographs and maps.
Narrative Style
A narrative is a story about people acting in a place over time. Most of the sentences, maybe even all of them, should be written with a people as the subjects of the sentences. The subjects could be individuals, a musician, a baseball player, a mother, and the subjects could the groups of people: the city planners, historians. Do everything you can to keep people in your sentences.
It’s hard to go wrong when the writing is focused on people.
But if you write with concept nouns, with abstractions and ideas, the writing goes flabby, the focus gets lost. Remember you are writing about what people did. When you are sitting there struggling with a sentence, ask yourself how you can write it with a person acting. If you can’t, try cutting it. Chances are you’re not going to lose anything of importance.
Test this principle of writing in your reading. Look at Talese’s profile of Sinatra. See how much it is about people doing things. Follow this simple principle and it will carry you a long way in writing narrative.
