How to write indirect dialogue

Originally posted: March 9, 2020

This is the third post in a series about dialogue. Start here, if you’ve missed the others. This post focuses on indirect dialogue (my personal favourite).

Indirect Dialogue

Indirect dialogue is reported in the third person so you get the feel of the exchange, without the actual words. In Susan Sinnott’s novel Catching the Light, Cathy is having trouble reading and is working with a tutor called Sarah who thinks she has dyslexia:

“Cathy had asked her father about her mother’s reading difficulties: were they really that much worse than Cathy’s? And he said yes, definitely. So she asked Sarah about that brain mix-up thing, dyslexia, and afterwards Dad said yes, Betty had all those problems too. So how did mom cover it up better than Cathy had? Dad said he wasn’t getting in to that, better ask mom.” — Susan Sinnott, Catching the Light

Like summary dialogue, indirect cuts to the chase without any tedious back and forth. It also allows you to speed through time and cover multiple conversations very quickly. In this one paragraph we are shown three distinct conversations. You can almost imagine Cathy zinging back and forth between a tete-a-tete with her father in their living room to a chat with her tutor the next day, back home with her dad later that evening. Efficient.

What differentiates this passage from summary dialogue? With indirect, unlike summary, you get a hint of the actual words characters say. You can hear them a little more clearly and as a result, have a better sense of their personalities.

Dad saying: yes, definitely. Betty had all those problems too. Then later, resisting Cathy’s questions, refusing to get into it, deferring to mom. All of that is very nearly direct dialogue. The reader can extrapolate body language, relationship dynamics and so much more from these short fragments. Now the author could have put these words inside quotation marks to indicate direct dialogue. But she’s chosen not to, presumably because she wants us to know that this is Cathy’s version of what her father has said. We’re getting her father’s words through her, not from his own mouth. It’s not 100% reliable.

Psychic Distance

Direct dialogue (which we will explore next) gives you a character’s exact words. You are right there with them as they speak. But with summary and indirect dialogue, a character’s words are mediated through the narrator. There is a psychic distance inherent with summary and indirect dialogue that doesn’t exist with direct dialogue.

Imagine a friend is telling you about a fight with their partner. Your friend is the narrator and you are getting the story (and any words that were exchanged) second hand. Summary and indirect dialogue are like that. The reader is kept at a remove. I’d argue the remove is greatest with summary dialogue. Indirect can be almost indistinguishable from direct dialogue (Dad said he wasn’t getting into that. Better ask mom). Summary and indirect dialogue have their uses. But to get in close, to close the psychic distance, there’s no replacement for direct dialogue.

How to write direct dialogue

Originally posted: March 18, 2020

This is the fourth in a series of posts about writing dialogue. If you’ve missed the previous posts, start here.

Direct Dialogue 

Direct dialogue is the one we all know and tend to overuse. It’s word-for-word what the characters are saying. It’s useful when you want to get in real close, write from within the scene, at a moment of crisis, discovery, decision, or climax. Direct dialogue not only ups the drama, it is more precise at revealing character because we have their exact words.

Character

Word choice indicates education, class, age, familiarity with language, ethnicity. When you are writing direct dialogue, think about this: who is this character? What life do they live? What’s their background? The more you know your characters, the easier it will be to put words in their mouths. Where so much dialogue falls down, I think, is when characters are skeletons without flesh, when they haven’t been fully imagined by their authors. As a result, their dialogue comes off as a poor ventriloquist act and the reader only hears the author saying all the words. You want the dialogue to sound authentic, like something this character would legitimately say.

An Example

In Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion, a young woman called Zee talks about her hero Faith Frank:

“I know she represents this kind of outdated idea of feminism,” said Zee, “with more of a narrow focus on issues that mostly affect privileged women. I totally see that. But you know what? She’s done a lot of good, and I think she’s amazing. Also, the thing about Faith Frank,” she went on, “is that while she’s this famous, iconic person, she also seems approachable.” — Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion

Normally, I’d be skeptical of such a long passage of dialogue. Long passages of dialogue have a habit of being information dumps, which is why one tip is to pare it all back. But overall, I think Wolitzer’s dialogue here is pretty good. It’s doing more than just conveying information about Faith, who becomes a central figure in the book. Look at what is revealed about the speaker, Zee. Hers is a millennial and current take on feminism. It’s woke. It’s mature. But lines like “I totally see that” and “But you know what?” signal that the speaker is still young, in that liminal space between girl and woman. (Zee is a first year in college). Also, note the change in register. “Narrow focus on issues that mostly affect privileged women” sounds like something that could be in an essay. But then Zee switches to simple language when she gets earnest and speaks from the heart: “She’s done a lot of good, and I think she’s amazing.” See that? Head and heart. The dialogue is working hard and multi-tasking and it’s sounds real.

Advice

1. Don’t forget about body language. Gestures and ticks reveal character. A character who constantly rubs their nose as they speak is indicating something. A penchant for cocaine, a lie, nerves, a pimple.

2. The way a character speaks is revealing too. Is she loud? Are they quiet? Are his sentences choppy and short or long and convoluted? Remember: if you’re stuck on dialogue, the problem is you don’t know the character well enough.

3. When you are revising a scene, read all the dialogue out loud. Every single word. Read it all slowly. If you get bored, have the urge to skip sections, if you are squicked out by how awkward and false it sounds, those are strong clues something’s wrong.

4. A common problem with direct dialogue - which you can hear when you read it out loud - is that it comes out inert (aka boring). Rule of thumb: dialogue must do more than one thing. It can reveal character, advance plot, create tension, enhance mystery etc. etc. Writing instructors talk a good game about multi-tasking but I haven’t yet heard anyone articulate HOW to perform this sleight of pen. Listen, I don’t have a good answer for this either. For me, it’s more like, if the dialogue is weak, I ask myself is it multi-tasking? If not, maybe I just do the easy thing and erase it. Fall back on summary or indirect or try to write the scene without dialogue at all.

5. Direct dialogue is the most difficult type to master because it’s slower and more precise than summary or indirect. My advice is to use it sparingly and in passages with lots of talking, combine it summary and/or indirect.

In my final post in this series, we will look at how to do this - take summary and indirect and direct and put it altogether.

Mastering dialogue

Originally posted: March 23, 2020

This is the fifth and last in a series of posts about writing dialogue. If you’ve missed the previous posts, start here.

Putting it altogether

So now you’ve got your three screwdrivers. You know how to use them. Let’s get to work. I’ve already beat this dead horse but  one more smack for good measure: direct dialogue is the most over-used, slow moving, and difficult type of speech to write well. On trick is to use it sparingly and nestle a few sparse sentences inside a passage of summary and/or indirect.

Here’s an example from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: 

“Ammu asked for the Station House Officer, and when she was shown into his office she told him that there had been a terrible mistake and that she wanted to make a statement. She asked to see Velutha. Inspector Thomas Matthew’s moustache bustled like the friendly Air India Maharajah’s, but his eyes were sly and greedy. ‘It’s a little too late for all this, don’t you think?’ he said. He spoke the coarse Kottayam dialect of Malayalam. He stared at Ammu’s breasts as he spoke. He said the police knew all they needed to know and that the Kottayam Police didn’t take statements from veshyas or their illegitimate children Ammu said she’d see about that. Inspector Thomas Matthew came around his desk and approached Ammu with his baton. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I’d go home quietly.’ Then he tapped her breasts with his baton. Gently. Tap tap. As though he was choosing mangoes from a basket. Pointing out the ones he wanted packed and delivered.” — The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This scene is an important one. An innocent man is facing execution and Ammu must stop it. Here we have the highest stakes possible. Still, if the Inspector was polite and simply said: ‘Ma’am I can’t help you’ the scene would have fallen flat. Remember what I said in the first post: if Character A wants something, the tension is higher if Character B refuses the request.

This pace is quick here because the dialogue is mostly indirect. There are only two lines of direct dialogue and as a result they stand out. Can’t you hear the Inspector saying these words? The condescension drips. It makes the reader feel protective of Ammu and nervous for the innocent man on death row. The reader is stressed. Roy has saved up her direct dialogue for the lines that count, the ones that will elicit emotion.

In the first post, I said that the best dialogue is multi-tasking. Here, the dialogue is creating tension, evoking emotion, and conveying character. The Inspector’s dialect marks him out as lower class. But Roy isn’t just wielding the screwdrivers here. She’s reaching for other tools in her box. Through narration she reveals the Inspector’s bustling moustache, his greedy eyes (note the disconnect - this man pretends to be friendly but really he’s a snake in the grass). Through body language we see his eyes on Ammu’s breasts. Through action she shows the weaponized the baton.

When you are reading, pay attention to which tools the author is using and how they are being used. Then apply what you’ve learned to your own work.

But first!

Dialogue is the single most difficult thing to write well. Even experienced authors who write books full of beautiful prose and compelling drama, fall flat on dialogue. I’ve asked authors who do the job well for their secrets and they always say some version of the same unhelpful thing: it just comes to me/ I hear the characters in my head. To be honest, this is my experience too. In fact, I don’t like to write direct dialogue until it flows free and easy, until it strikes like lightning.

My theory is that poor dialogue is a symptom of a bigger issue, which is incomplete character development. You must do the work of building your character, of knowing them better than you know yourself. And once you have done this, created a Pinocchio so realistic he could be a real boy, he will come alive of his own volition and surprise you with what he says.

If that fails and you’re stuck and think the dialogue (and anything else) in your manuscript could benefit from professional feedback, I’m available for hire and taking bookings for the summer. Meantime, here’s a handy dialogue exercise and eight more technical tips.

Trick for dialogue

Originally posted: August 27, 2019

Recently, I was having trouble writing a scene. In this scene a man and a woman are having an argument. The scene is third person, past tense, from the woman’s point of view. So I knew more or less what she was going to say, her motivations, her fears, her desires, but I had no clue how the man would respond. Or, more specifically, I knew how he would respond but his exact dialogue and body language, all of that was a question mark.

I don’t like to write passages of dialogue unless I’m in the zone and the characters’ words are flowing freely. In my experience, forced dialogue comes out stilted and false. At the same time, this scene is pivotal and I didn’t feel I could move on until I’d gotten some kind of rough draft down. (Which is another way of saying I’ve been procrastinating on writing the difficult scenes for too long and now it’s high time).

Then one morning as I lay in bed, circling around the characters in my mind, wondering how I was going to get into the scene, I had an epiphany. Why not write the argument from his point of view? So that’s what I did. And just to break myself out of the rut I was in, I decided to write it first person, present tense. Immediately his words and body language, his inner life, appeared. Once I was in his head, I understood his motivations, his desires, his fears. And after I knew all of those things, it was obvious exactly what he would say and do.

Exercise complete, I took another stab at the scene. From her perspective again, third person, past tense. Viola.

ps. Have you got a completed draft of a novel that could benefit from another pair or eyes? I moonlight as a manuscript evaluator which means I give constructive feedback on works-in-progress. Character and dialogue, plot and pacing, it’s all in my wheelhouse. I’m taking bookings for the summer so get in touch for more info or a quote.

The voices in your head

Originally posted: February 10, 2017

Characters come into their own when I first hear them speak. And that's how I primarily write dialogue - it bubbles up from the unconscious part of my brain that is always at work. I may have trouble with story arcs and pace but putting words in characters' mouths has always felt natural.

But like any other part of the craft, there is some element of science here too. Here are some technical suggestions:

1. Don't rely too heavily on dialogue to carry plot or develop character.

2. Less is more. Three lines of dialogue? Odds are you need only one. Remember: what is left unsaid is often more powerful than what is said.

Fictional dialogue has to seem realistic without actually being realistic.
- me

3. Dialogue gets good when it isn't straight forward. When characters lie or hold back or speak at cross purposes. This is how you bake in irony, double meanings, and conflict, thereby making the scene more layered and interesting.

4. Don't underestimate the power of indirect speech. It proceeds at a swifter pace - helpful if your characters have a lot of talking to do - and is easier to nail than direct dialogue.

5. Dialogue should multi-task. If dialogue reveals character and ratchets up tension, if it propels the plot forward and makes you laugh, then it's all much more interesting.

6. Read the work of other writers and see how they go about it.

7. Listen closely to how real people speak. Listen to rhythm and cadence, how thoughts are phrased, the way people of different ages and backgrounds sound. Pay enough attention and you'll develop an ear for dialogue and an instinct for crafting it. Also, you can straight up just steal things you overheard friends and strangers saying.

8. Which is not to say that your characters should speak the way real people do. For one thing, we talk way too much in real life. Fictional dialogue has to seem realistic without actually being realistic. Allow a sentence to stand in for a monologue. Sure, in the first draft, write all the pauses and ums and uhs and verbal ticks and quirks of accent into a character's speech. But then later, when you're revising, delete, delete, delete and just leave a few things behind, a little bit of seasoning to give the reader a taste.

No

Years ago, in the waning minutes of what would be my last day at a certain mediocre job, the HR rep hustled into my windowless office, pushed a piece of paper under my nose and declared: “You have to sign this.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Belinda*,” I said, before tossing a lit match on a trail of already-poured gasoline and burning the damn place down.

via GIPHY

Metaphorically, of course.

Everyone who has toiled in 9-5 servitude knows all the myriad and cliched ways a workplace can suck so there’s no need to itemize my grievances against this particular job or why I peaced outta there. The incident is only noteworthy because it was the turning point after which my whole professional life changed. Though of course I didn’t realize it at the time.

In the novel I’m struggling to write, the turning point is proving elusive. Which is a serious issue that’s been stressing me out. Maybe you’ve noticed the obsession? But the other night, as I was going to bed, that day from a decade ago, the unexpected pivot in my own life, returned to me. Along with the words that proceeded it.

I don’t have to do anything.

It’s a good bit of direct dialogue, isn’t it? Concise. Pointed. A struck match. I wrote it in my notebook and then took that sentence on a meditative walk.

There’s very little we actually have to do. And yet we all do a hundred, thousand, million strictly unnecessary things, things we don’t want to do, because of some vague sense of hafta. So what makes a character who has spent 200-odd pages of a novel sloughing through these self-imposed obligations, finally say enough? I don’t know. I’m still working it out. For me a lot of writing involves pondering esoteric questions and waiting for insight.

---

Meantime, I’ve been reading Richard Wagamese’s profoundly beautiful last (unfinished) novel, Starlight, and Genki Ferguson’s delightful debut Satellite Love (it has illustrations! a book for adults with pictures!). Lots of e-newsletters have popped up during the pandemic and this piece about furniture catalogues and longing at Grief Bacon is very good. Tom and I have re-started our two-person book club and are tearing through Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

We’ve also been watching the last season of Dark, which is an excellent study in plot and an example of a story that takes a circular shape. Trashy Britcom Toast of London is our palate cleanser.

I listen to podcasts almost non-stop. A recent stand out was Code Switch’s episode A Shot in the Dark about the Covid vaccine and the Tuskegee Experiment; I promise they don’t tell the story you think they’re going to tell. And I’ve been catching up on the back catalogue of NPR’s Throughline (a history podcast). This episode about astrology was fun.

There isn’t a whole lot to do in these lockdown days but I gave online yoga a go and am a reluctant regular. And recently, I got a set of grips which are coming in handy on icy trails.

*not her real name

Community spread

The handles of a bright green Sobey’s bag loop around a door knob. Moments later, inside the house, a text bubble appears on a phone. “Dropped it off. Enjoy.” A couple of days later, another ping to a different phone. “Hitchcock mystery. 1,000 pieces. Difficult. Interested?”

Jigsaw puzzles are something I deliberately avoided during the lockdown last spring. Not because puzzles seemed hopelessly dull (they did) but because I had a feeling we were trapped in a long game and some pastimes would need to be saved for later.

Towards the end of summer, after life had settled into a pandemic normal that allowed us to see friends again - albeit in small groups, often outside, with precautionary hand sanitizer and a polite Regency-era distance - I started a note on my phone. Covid Winter: a to-do list that included a couple of TV shows, cooking projects, and, yup, puzzles.

For months the list remained theoretical. September turned to October became November, then December. There was a long stretch where the case count was zero. Even when cases appeared they were travel-related and the two-week arrival quarantine meant they were immediately contained.

On New Year’s we went out to dinner with some friends then back to someone’s place for board games and laughs. We sat around a table, elbows nearly, though not quite, brushing, slapping down cards and collecting tricks, tallying up points. Everyone was eagerly discussing the vaccine which our friend the ER doc had already received. January rolled in snowy but quiet and it felt like we might avoid a second lock down, sail into the vaccine queue and straight on through to the “after” times.

Needless to say.

Puzzling

Have you ever done a mystery puzzle? It’s like this: you get a whodunit scenario. The puzzle, when completed, reveals the crime scene, full of clues you must decode in order to solve the murder. The catch is there’s no picture to guide you. The image is revealed only through assembly.

Of course this is an analogy for novel writing. It’s equally tedious and frustrating and even when you know you have all the pieces, that somehow they do all fit together to form a coherent whole, there are moments of doubt.

Turns out puzzles are fun. At least in lockdown when cracking into a new puzzle on a Friday night with a bottle of wine constitutes a big weekend “plan.”

First time around, when we hunkered down last spring, everyone was baking. Cinnamon buns, root beer cupcakes, and lemon curd doughnuts materialized on door steps, their bakers waving through the windows as they went by. This time around, there’s a brisk trade in puzzles. I think about those cardboard boxes being shared between households, crossing thresholds we can no longer enter, all the ways we hold fast to a sense of community.

On Saturday we venture out to a lake we’ve never visited to tramp around a warren of winding snowy trails. A perk of lockdown: discovering gems that have been here all along. In the car on the way home, a text from my friend Joel arrives: a photo of a leaf in a jar of water. I’d admired his ZZ plant and he’s propagating a cutting for me. One day, a plant will appear on my door step and Joel will stand on the street waving through the window.

Even as every square on the calendar remains blank, even as lock-down is extended and we’re not sure what the new normal will be when we re-open, as long as anticipation remains, so too will joy.

TSN turning point

Originally posted: November 27, 2019

One day in July 1984 biathelete Kari Swenson was abducted in the mountains. I heard her story the other night while making dinner and listening to the podcast Criminal. I was struck by Kari’s ordeal but also left thinking about craft because there is a lot we can learn about storytelling by paying attention to the facts of this story and its construction.

If you haven’t heard this episode yet, please have a listen because the rest of this post is one long spoiler. Then come back and we’ll take the thing apart like a clock and figure out what makes it tick so well.

Preface

Kari Swenson is bravery personified. To say nothing of tenacity and grit. She was shot point blank in the chest and had the presence of mind to save herself by slowing her heart down. And then, after it was all said and done, she threw herself into training and returned to competition. And Alan Goldstein was a hero. I was moved first and foremost by their courage and humanity.

But as a writer there’s a mercenary instinct that kicks in any time I encounter a well constructed narrative.

Three Act Structure

First, note the classic three act structure.

Act one introduces Kari and Alan and establishes setting. The action begins when Kari, the protagonist, heads off for a cross country run alone in the mountains. Next, comes the inciting event: meeting two terrifying men.

Act two is focused on the abduction and the search crew’s efforts to find her. The tension is rising, climbing toward the peak of Aristotle’s arc. Kari is chained to a tree. Alan, introduced in act one, bursts in to save her. Alan is shot and killed. Kari is shot in the chest. This is the climax.

Act three takes us through the aftermath. Kari is rescued and survives. Moreover, she trains hard and returns to competing in biathlons. The abductors are caught and sentenced to jail.

So far, so conventional right? As a story this one is perfectly satisfying.

The TSN Turning Point

But then comes the sleight of hand, that moment when the story surprises us with an unexpected turn of events that, in hindsight, was predictable.

In this story, the WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW moment, comes when we realize that a whole bunch of people have got the heroes and villains mixed up.

At first, I was outraged. A young woman is abducted and shot in the chest and a man is shot dead in the face and the murderers are valourized by the media and people all around the world. How is this possible?

But then as I thought about it more, as I remembered gender politics, and the Rape of the Sabines, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Freemen on the Land, libertarians, and the Cult of Cheeto Jesus, well in hindsight the public’s love affair with a couple of unwashed white male terrorists is par for the course. CAN I GET AN AMEN?

Conventional stories (Red is stalked by a wolf in granny’s clothing, then saved by a passing woodcutter and lives happily ever after) are fine. But the stand-out stories, the ones that stay with us, that we re-tell to our friends, and dissect in long shouty blog posts, those stories have something more happening. Which brings us to…

Stakes

Most stories have external stakes (will the protagonist get out of this alive?) and emotional stakes (will she thrive?). In Act Two the external stakes are front and centre. In Act Three the external stakes are resolved and now the emotional stakes become important. Eventually those stakes are resolved as well and we share that moment of elation when Kari gets pulled up to the podium by the third place competitor.

But exceptional stories, those ones that resonate far longer and make us really think (or in my case silent scream in my kitchen and now here on the internet) are the ones that have philosophical stakes.

What does society value - a young woman’s life or that of her abductors? Do we care more about the man who died to save his friend or the outlaws on the run? All through acts one and two, going into act three, I didn’t think basic morals (the philosophical stakes) in peril. I assumed Kari and Alan were the heroes and the two psychos who shot them were the villains. Bet you did too.

Then: surprise! Society is immoral. Oh wait…we already knew that.

If the abductors were black do we think for a second they’d have been valourized? What is broken in human nature that makes us root for certain evil men? What about the narrative of the wild west and the whole long arc of the western canon and pop culture and Barbara Walters? Who is to blame and also how and when are we going to put an end to this bullshit? One reason this story is so powerful is that we are left with more questions than answers.

Framing

There’s more architectural detail that I noticed in this story. Note that the story is framed by the present. The episode is bookended by present-day Kari looking back on this one episode of her life. That was a conscious structural choice the storytellers made. In one way, it deflates some of the tension. We know from the jump that she’s going to live.

But go back and listen to the first beats of the story. What do you hear? Breathing. Kari breathing. And shooting. Lovely foreshadowing. This is an intimate opening too, one that puts us right into her body as she talks about the athleticism involved in her sport, the importance of breathing. If this was a fictional story, I would say: note the attention to detail. Remember: character is king.

At the climax of the story, what was foreshadowed takes place. She’s in agony from the gun shot wound and realizes death is close. Here at the crucial moment, she returns to her training and slows down her heart beat. This ability to control her breathing, combined with her athleticism, is what ends up saving her life.

In conclusion

Three act structure + external and internal stakes = perfectly fine conventional story. Philosophical stakes + turn of events that is simultaneously unexpected and predictable = exceptional story.

There is an architecture to every narrative, an unobtrusive but vital structure that holds the whole story together. Learn how to spot it and your writing will improve. If you’ve got a story that could use some architectural assistance, I can help. I moonlight as a manuscript evaluator which means I give constructive feedback on works-in-progress. Character and dialogue, plot and structure, it’s all my jam. I’m taking bookings for the summer so get in touch for more info or a quote.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Originally posted: June 20, 2016

Here's some writing advice I got a few years ago about plot and structure: banish the words "and then" and replace them with "but", "therefore", and "meanwhile."

But is the idea of conflict and opposition. The good guy wants something but the bad guy stands in the way.

Therefore there must be an escalation of action and tension. The good guy does something to get around the bad guy but he hits a roadblock he must overcome.

Meanwhile suggests a parallel narrative, two plots happening in tandem. When one story hits a climactic peak, you cut away ("Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...") to the other.

Editor Tony Zhou explains in this video and if you still don't get it, check out his post on Vox.

Cathedral

Originally posted: February 15, 2016

And then there's Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, a book with more than its fair share of plot, "a gothic cathedral of plot!" At 800+ pages, maybe plot, erected on such an intricately designed scale with flying buttresses and gargoyles and stained glass, is necessity more than extravagance.

The Luminaries sat on my shelf for some time, sitting there like a door stop screaming "commitment." Then one January day, I was looking for a new read, something dense and hearty that might also help me break my online habit, and there was The Luminaries waving its hands, calling out: "pick me."

January seems tailor-made for mammoth reads. This is when - if you live in the northern hemisphere, at least - you want to crack open Middlemarch or The Byatt’s The Children's Book or the complete Sherlock Holmes. Cuddle up by the fire, tuck in to something substantial, and try to tune out the internet's siren song.

The Luminaries is set in gold-rush 19th-century New Zealand. A dead man is found in a cabin. A prostitute lies collapsed on the road. The richest man in town has gone missing. And on a night of torrential rain, a council of twelve convene a secret meeting. What is the thread that binds these things together? Eight hundred and thirty two pages later, you find out.

Catton adopts the 19th century Gothic as her style. Her narrator is all-knowing and arch, moving freely in and out of different characters' points of view. Everything is explained and very little is submerged. There are cliff hangers galore. In the role of the villain: an enigmatic man with a scar. It's the kind of page-turner that might have been written by a 21st century Wilkie Collins. All the suspense and classic story-telling of an earlier age with modern-day good sense (which is to say you find any simpering Angels in the House).

But perhaps this all sounds hopelessly outmoded. Haven't we moved beyond conventional plot and story-telling, evolved past the need for narratorial hand-holding? This reader has not! I found The Luminaries completely refreshing.

And make no mistake, Catton's characters are well-drawn and complex with flawed motives and inconsistent, deeply human, actions. Her scene-setting is on point. Themes of land appropriation and colonial entitlement, racism and inequality are handled with intelligence and empathy. Agency is found in unexpected places. (At one point a villain casts aspersions on the local prostitute, only to be reminded that as many men bare him a grudge, there are twice as many who love and would protect her.)

The Luminaries - which won a slew of prizes including the Man-Booker and the Governor General's - is immersive and sustaining. After a while I forgot the internet existed.

Lost the plot

Originally posted: February 10, 2016

Tessa Hadley has perfected a magic trick. And I want to know her secret.

She writes these novels - the most recent one is the excellent The Past - that break the rules of plot. Specifically the main rule that plot should progress in an Aristotelian arc. Characters are introduced. The scene is set. There is pressing conflict and tensions mount toward a peak. The handgun is shot, secrets are revealed, the story blows wide open. Then, climax discharged with, characters settle into a new normal and denouement eases into conclusion.

That is the formula. It's what readers expect, what keeps pages turning. But then along comes Tessa Hadley. And she's got no truck with any of that.

In The Past four middle aged siblings gather in the country home of their grandparents. Hadley tells the story through the eyes of the grown children and then, rewinding a few decades, from the point of view of their mother. Secrets are revealed, sure. There is a mystery, yes (the decaying carcass of a dog is found in an abandoned cottage) but it doesn't feel very pressing. There is a romance, yes. But it isn't very urgent. Doesn't this sound like the world's most boring book?

And yet, The Past is a compulsive read. I finished it in just a few days and then was sorry it wasn't longer (this, incidentally, is how I devour all her books and stories). What is it about Hadley? Her prose is faultless. She has a way of finding words for the things that are indescribable; her writing thrums with arresting moments of insight. And in her stories, character is queen. Her imaginary people - so flawed, so foolish, so endearing - continue to resonate long after the last page is read.

Is this the secret? Can conventional plot be replaced by insightful, well-crafted prose and pitch perfect characters? Are those three ingredients sufficient to propel a story forward? Somehow, I don't think it's as simple as following a formula. My suspicion is it's the exceptional writer who can pull this off, conjure story without plot. And those rare birds aren't giving away any of their secrets.

Upcoming events

Heads up about two upcoming events that I’m taking part in: one this Sunday and the next on Monday. Writers at Woody Point is re-broadcasting the conversation I had last August with Ian Williams about his Giller-winning novel Reproduction. It’ll be available on Facebook for 24 hours only, beginning Sunday at 7pm NDT. This session is free and open to the public. You don’t need a Facebook account to watch. This conversation was originally broadcast live in August 2020, during Writers at Woody Point 2020.

On Monday, I’ll be live on CBC Radio’s Cross Talk taking questions about writing from callers. There’s always a small possibility breaking news could bump me off to Tuesday but barring that, you can call in to have your craft questions answered at 709-722-7111 // 1-800-563-8255

Cure your writer’s block

Sometimes writing is a challenge. We sit at our desks, pens in hand or fingers poised over the keyboard and….[drum roll]…… NOTHING. I had a spell like this during lock down last June. With no where to go and no one to see, I had plenty of time to write but every day, I sat in the garden, and laboured away with limited success and much frustration. Finally, I remembered something important (the cure for writer’s block!). Writing is not the only work.

Reading is also the work

No book exists in a vacuum. A book is always in conversation with others on the shelf. Books that share similar sensibilities, books with overlapping locales and themes. Books that influenced yours whether because of plot or character or prose or narrative style. One thing I’ve learned to do at the start of a new project is to brainstorm a reading list. Books I need for research purposes and ones that might offer inspiration. So I gave myself a break, write very little and read a whole lot, coming up for air in between to put more books on hold at the library (ours had just opened for curbside pick up). Bliss.

Learning is also the work

Controversial opinion: MFAs are overrated. Certainly they are expensive. You know what’s free? Live recordings of Tin House Craft Talks. Writing is a difficult thing to teach well so on those occasions when an author perfectly enunciates some aspect of craft, it’s worthwhile to pay close attention. This lecture by writer Alexander Chee, on character and plot and early draft woes, was good enough that I listened to it three times, the last time with a pen in hand.

Chee, like me, is firmly in the character first, plot second camp. For him, character is destiny and he offers concrete suggestions on how to interrogate your characters until you discover (I’m paraphrasing here) the specific things that could only happen to them, because of a combination of who they are (fate) and the decisions they make (free will). In this way, you arrive at your plot.

When I’m advising other authors, I say you have to know two big things: what does your character want more than anything? How far will they go to get it? But you can’t jump to these questions first and expect immediate answers (trust me, I’ve tried). You work toward the big questions by figuring out all the other stuff. What family was this character born into or raised in? How many siblings? Was money tight? What about religion? First love? First heart break? Vocation? How do they portray themselves to the world? What are they blind to in themselves? How would their employer describe them? Their best friend? Their lover? Their parent? Who do they envy? Who do they pity? What about themselves do they hate most? Hide most? Chee recommends a number of exercises including subjecting your characters to the questions in a Tarot Reading. He shares Zola’s cue card exercise.

Chee’s lecture was also a timely reminder to slow down. To cultivate patience. Characters are a little like very good friends. Relationships are built over long stretches of time. No one shows you their skeleton closet right away and even if they do, it takes a while before you know them well enough to intuit the secrets they are reluctant to reveal.

And anyway, “the story of a life is not a novel,” says Chee. You dream up a life story, yes. But then, you must be intentional, picking and choosing what to reveal and in what order. Without intentional shape, there’s no propulsive drive, no taut rope leading the reader from first page to last. Chee’s craft talk got my mind whirling. Afterward, I managed to eke out something approximating a scene. Turns out this is also where inspiration comes from: other books, other authors.

ps. Was this post helpful? If you’d like more feedback, specific to your project, you can hire my services. Get in touch for more info or a quote.

Character is king

Like everyone else with a Netflix account, I was obsessed with the first season of Stranger Things. The Stephen King font and creepy opening music, the retro 80s vibe, that nerdy kid with no teeth....all of it hooked me.

Lit Reactor were also fans and Max Booth III wrote a great column about what the show can teach us about characterization. Without giving away any spoilers, let me summarize a couple of the key points:

1. Don't introduce a character with a massive exposition dump, unless you want to bore your reader. Reveal your characters gradually; allow the reader to meet them over time through the course of the story. Think about how we get to know people in our lives...bit by bit over time, through what they say and do and how they look and how others interact with them. Why should characters we meet on the page be any different?

“Think of exposition as narrative calories. You’re only allowed 2000 of them per book, so you better spread that shit out or you’re going to get hungry awfully fast.”

— Max Booth III

2. Create nuanced characters. You can write a scene - as the writers of Stranger Things do - where two characters are in conflict but no one is really the bad guy. This, I think, is more often than not how conflict works in the real world. Both people act poorly. Or there is a misunderstanding and each person acts according to their narrow understanding of the situation. Heroes and villains are boring. Anti-heros are compelling. Villains who have endearing qualities, who can evoke even a bit of empathy, are more interesting.

3. Play around with stereotypes. Everyone expects the highschool Queen Bee to be a one-note bully. But what if she's not? What if she's deeply insecure about her dyslexia? Or is revealed to be heroic?

4. Character is King. Above plot and setting and scene, there is character first and foremost. Nothing makes me more perplexed than a character who acts in an inauthentic way; this is what happens when characters act in service to the plot. Ask yourself: is this really what this person would do, how they would feel? And be honest! Sometimes the plot as you originally envisioned it has to change. My advice: Create complex interesting characters and then follow where they lead.

Character, first. Then: plot

Character is foundational to stories. If you’ve hit a road block in the plot and aren’t sure what happens next, the solution can be found in your characters. Over at Glimmer Train (RIP) MFA director Josh Henkin explores the link between plot and character. Like me, he argues that plot is discovered by interrogating character: "My graduate students often tell me they have trouble with plot, but what they're really telling me is they have trouble with character. I remind my students to ask themselves a hundred questions about their characters. Better yet, they should ask themselves a thousand questions, because in the answers to those questions lie the seeds of a narrative." This is a truth I know and yet somehow often forget. When you're stuck on something, go back to character.

An important caveat when it comes to characters: beware accidentally writing a rotten egg.

ps. I offer a manuscript evaluation service. If you have a draft that is in need of feedback, you can hire my services. Get in touch for more info or a quote.

Character alignment

Originally posted: March 18, 2016

A podcast I love is Imaginary Worlds, a show about "how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief." Even though I'm not a sci fi/ fantasy nut, I'm  hooked on this show. Mainly because it gets at what I am interested in: story telling and fiction-making.

The most recent episode, on the topic of character, is especially instructive. Good versus evil and all the shades (six, to be exact) in between.

The Three Types of Evil

1. Evil but law-abiding: a character like Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter books whose uses rules as a way to enact her cruelty but would never act outside of the law. Remember: Umbridge was never a Death Eater. But maybe only because that was "illegal."

2. Evil but neutral about the law: a character like Voldemort who cares nothing for laws and institutions and definitely does not mind killing even loyal followers when they cease to be of use.

3. Chaotic Evil: an anarchist villain whose only motivation is upheaval. The Joker!

It's a valuable exercise to think about character in this more in-depth way. Beyond morality, how do your imaginary friends interact with the law? Kirk and Spock are both good but one is law-abiding and the other will happily bend the rules. And that difference is where the conflict in their relationship lies, it's what makes the dynamic between them rich. Or consider Marvel heroine Jessica Jones who is actually good but wants so desperately to be neutral, a lone wolf. The conflict in the show then becomes Jessica Jones versus herself. Of course there's also a dastardly villain but this internal battle of woman vs. herself is the true emotional heart of the story.

Go listen to Imaginary Worlds to hear about the rest. The episode is called "Why they fight" and it runs 23 minutes.

Rotten eggs

Originally published June 17, 2020

You know when you’re baking, cracking eggs into a bowl and one is rotten? This happened to me once: the green and grey ooze slipped between my fingers, the sulphur turned my stomach. A bad book is a rotten egg. That stink, it lingers. When I say bad book I don’t mean purple prose or dud dialogue. When I say bad, I mean dangerous. Recently I had the ill luck of what seemed like a carton, a rash of rotten eggs.

Crimes against fiction: an incomplete catalogue

There was the historical fiction wherein the only Indigenous characters were dead, their ghosts floating around. The book where every female character was either a virgin or a whore. (The writer is a misogynist, I texted a friend. That’s it. That’s the review.) And the YA I can only describe as a smorgasbord fit for a glutton for punishment. The cast included a predatory gay man, a gay kid whose sexual assault was a weak plot device in service to the straight protagonist’s betterment, and a one-note single mother with a neglected child (Black, natch). By contrast, the two-dimensional trans character was a relief. At least the kid didn’t get killed or beaten up. The whole mess, slap-dash and badly written, reeked of what it likely was: a cishet author trying to capitalize on #trends and a publisher asleep at the wheel. Or worse: rotten egging the author on.

Then came the novel about two urbanites - a Black transgender woman and a bi-racial man - who, on a whim, take a cycling holiday in rural Spain. Naturally, the author is an old white guy. And like Lionel Shriver delivering a keynote in a Sombrero, every beat of his book twanged false. From the conceit of the trip to the characters’ ease on the trail to the cringe-worthy rap lyrics to the way the man repeatedly thought of his best friend as if she was a man. Trans women are women. The end. If you’re going to write about characters who are nothing like you, do your homework. Google hiking + Black and traveling while trans for a start. I get it. The book was an elaborate troll, the literary equivalent of Black face. Hint: if you drip contempt for Black and Trans people in real life, it’s going to show in your fiction. What’s amazing to me is a publisher (in 2019!) gave this pathetic temper tantrum a platform.

The heart breaker was the book by an author whose work I’d previously enjoyed. For 200+ pages it had me. Excellent prose. A propulsive plot. An Indigenous point-of-view character with a redemption story arc. But if you know even one true thing about the way Indigenous people are treated, you’ll guess what came next. The Indigenous character, the only one in the book, was murdered by the white protagonists who drugged him first to make it look like he was drunk, then set the building on fire, so that after he burned inside everyone thought he’d caused the accident. It was played off to the reader as a mistaken case of “self defence.” This is why Indigenous authors get up in arms when settlers write about them. THIS IS WHY. Because it’s not enough they are being murdered by cops and civilians in real life, writers must kill them on the page too. Look, I’m sure the author’s intentions were good. But you can’t be ham-fisted about Indigenous justice. You can’t prioritize plot twists over politics, not when the real life stakes are so high.

What’s the harm? It’s only fiction, sure.

In this, the year of Our Lord twenty bloody twenty, I can’t believe I still need to spell this out:

1. The unrelenting imagery of dead Indigenous people in fiction desensitizes us to their deaths in real life so that we don’t hold killers or governments or oil and mining companies accountable, so we don’t demand justice.

2. Trans people are still fighting for basic equality because society refuses to recognize their genders. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Books that get this twisted, books featuring characters who confuse their best friend’s gender, are piling on to the problem, preventing trans people from having basic human rights.

3. Perpetuating the myth of the predatory gay man makes straights hysterical about their children’s real life teachers or the man next door.

Reading is a powerful education/ miseducation tool. Through a story, we step into someone else’s body and experience the world as them. And if we go gallivanting in Spain with two Black characters, one of whom is trans, who don’t at any point fear for their safety or get dirty looks or hassled at the airport then when the Black and trans people in our lives or on the news tell us about the bigotry they experienced, we are less likely to believe them.

Readers trust authors

But…but…I hear someone say. Yeah, you there in the front, Satan’s Advocate. I hear you arguing readers aren’t stupid. They know fiction is imaginary. Sure they do. That must be why readers assume every debut novel is autobiography, why people keep asking if I was an immigration lawyer. That must be why the husband of an author I know got dirty looks after she published a story about an affair.

A couple of years ago, I was at a literary festival watching an author read a passage from her novel. It was a sex scene between a woman and her Indigenous lover. He was described in animalistic terms. There may even have been references to bestiality. I was sitting with a group of Indigenous authors. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. I can’t begin to imagine what they felt, hearing this white lady read this passage and knowing that everyone else in the packed theatre (mostly other white people) was hearing it too. We were all made complicit then, in that display of settler arrogance, as we listened to yet another incarnation of the Noble Savage fever dream. Afterward, at the signing table, readers came up to the author and asked “So is this accurate? Is this what life is like in the North?” “Yes,” she said, and blithely scribbled her name in their books.

Tell the truth

“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.”

— Oscar Wilde

There is a contract we enter into when we read a story. The author assumes authority; the reader suspends disbelief. Using the tools of craft we train the reader to trust us, to accept every word on the page. Fiction shapes the way readers understand the world, thereby influencing the world itself. We have a responsibility then to tell the truth.

The truth is not a tired trope or a dangerous stereotype. The truth is something you discover with humility, research, empathy, and the wise counsel of Subject Matter Experts (or as some people call them, Sensitivity Readers). When you don’t tell the truth—

Sorry. Let me rephrase that.

When you lie.

When you lie and claim that Black people are as safe as white people in all spaces. That queer people enjoy the same privileges as straight people. When you stubbornly insist a woman is a man. When you perpetuate the idea that the only good Indian is a dead one or a Noble Savage. When you tell these lies in black ink, with the authority of the printed page, you are either incredibly irresponsible or an asshole. Take your pick. And in telling these lies, you are making actual people’s real lives more difficult, more fraught, more dangerous.

How to do it then, how to write from outside your perspective? Glad you asked.

Bury your tropes

Originally published: July 1, 2019

Recently in a fiction workshop someone asked the question every sensible writer dreads: how do I write characters who are outside my own personal experience, who are not white/ straight/ cis? I say that every sensible writer dreads this question because in my experience the ones who steam roll right in with more bluster than caution are morons. And their lazy attitude is doing everyone - their readers, their characters, and other writers - a disservice.

HUMILITY

Begin with humility, I told the group in my workshop. Your ignorance is an uncovered manhole and if you’re not careful, you’ll topple in. For example, do you have just one gay character in your cast? Does the character die? Does the death happen soon after the character finds love? I’m not psychic. Your character is a trope (google: Bury Your Gays). This is why we must begin with humility. Because, to quote a certain blustering steamroller, of the known unknowns.

RESEARCH

What we are striving toward in our fiction is truth. Accuracy, veracity. And how can you paint a realistic portrait of, for example, a non-binary character, if you are cis? Without humility, without research, without knowledge, guess what you’ll do? You’ll make that character magical. Or die. Or both.

Friends are a great resource. I’ve been helped along the way by so many of mine. For example, In Indonesian there is one word for temperature hot and a different one for chilli hot and these words are pedas and panas and non-Indo speakers can never remember which one is which and this is such a fantastic nugget that I was like a child on Christmas when I used it in a story. And also the contraction “Indo” is wonderful. How was I ever going to know that on my own? (That story, by the way, is called Lord of the Manor and it was published in The Dalhousie Review.) So step two: have a diverse group of friends. But that’s really just life advice.

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition.”
- Daniel Kahneman

Devour books and articles and whatever you can get your hands on to help you understand the worldview and background of your character. Read other fiction featuring characters like the one you want to create. If your character is Muslim, please read books written by Muslim authors. Seek out interviews with the authors of these books. A while back I was listening to Jen Sookfong Lee on the podcast Can’t Lit. She was talking about naming her Chinese characters and the importance of choosing names that could be pronounced by Chinese parents. I immediately filed that nugget of knowledge away for later. (Thanks, Jen)

Sensitivity readers are professionals you can hire to steer you clear of those manholes. Remember the known unknowns!

A STORY

Months ago, while was casting my new novel, I created this fantastic character called Emmanuelle. She’s a 13th-generation Nova Scotian from an evangelical family with a minister father (hence her name). Em is a teacher and an extrovert. She’s got a rowdy group of friends who come to her apartment and sit around painting their nails and watching Survivor (this is circa 2001). I know her apartment, the bo-ho chic furniture and wall hangings, the sticky kitchen floor, the triangular rainbow sticker just beside the peep hole on her front door, the humid bathroom with its patch of black mould by the tub that always returns no matter how often it gets scrubbed away. I have an image of Emmanuelle too, tall with very dark skin and tight curls that spray out the top of her head like a fountain. She is wonderful. I know her so well I can hear her voice, deep, a little husky, a singer who might break out in jubilant song at any moment. She sang in her church choir for nearly two decades and though she threw over faith when she came out, she still loves all the old gospel hymns.

But then I was plotting out the book and because Em’s not the main character, because she’s a semi-minor actor who is there in service to the main character (as all the characters are of course), the plot dictated that she had to die. And at some hideous point I realized what I had been about to do. Kill my only lesbian character. Worse, kill her in order to trigger an emotional epiphany for the straight dude. (That’s two tropes, by the way) I was in Vancouver having dinner with Dina Del Bucchia. I told her my dilemma. I probably had my hands over my head, quite possibly tugging on my hair. Dina was kind but the verdict was unanimous. So now I’m back to the drawing board with the plot. Because, I want to be fair to my characters and one gay character getting killed in a book full of gay characters is fine but what I was doing was diving face first into a manhole.

KNOW YOUR TROPES

Here is what happens. Gay and trans characters die so often in fictional stories, we see this plot point repeat over and over, and then it becomes a cliche that’s lodged into our brains as fact. (The Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks about this cognitive bias in chapter five of his book Thinking, Fast and Slow.)

Then when we straight/ cis writers sit down to write a gay or trans character we unconsciously reach for whatever information we have and up comes this tired refrain, which we don’t even realize is a trope, and we unthinkingly, unconsciously, repeat it on the page. It is a self perpetuating cycle. This is the danger of writing from outside of your own experience. Without caution and care, without humility, without research, you will perpetuate a lazy cycle that does everyone a disservice, most of all the community of real people who you are trying to recreate on the page. And then if your ego is fragile because you’re a special snowflake, and someone calls you on your bull shit, you’ll dig your heels in and yell: “Political correctness has gone too far! Don’t tell me what to do! This is fiction and I’m a writer!” And the rest of us will be over here, eyes rolling out of our damn heads.

And let’s pause to think about this trope for a moment. Why are all these gay and trans characters dying all the time? Is it because the rest of us have a deep buried hatred of them and are enacting mass murder on the page because we can’t do it in real life? Think on that and tell me if you still feel good about knocking off your only trans character.

I don’t know if Em will make an appearance in this book I’m writing because I’m reworking the plot. But she’s in my head now so she’s bound to turn up somewhere. I’m not killing this particular darling. I’m saving her for later.

MANHOLES TO SKIRT

It helps to know all the ways you can unintentionally fuck up. I brainstormed a few tropes to get us started. Please chime in, in the comments, if you know any others. I am still learning just like everyone else.

The magical/ wise old black man

Related: the magical Indigenous character

Indigenous characters who are described in animalistic terms. Please. NO.

The predatory lesbian (Who invented this nonsense - religion? hysterical men? all of the above?)

I love Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and in my opinion (not every brown person’s opinion) he works because The Simpsons is a show full of tropes. That’s the whole gag. But if there’s only one brown character in your book and they are driving a cab or working at a 7-11 and have an accent then you have FAILED. Fifty points to Slytherin if said 7-11 guy dies.

The white saviour

The token. You know how on TV shows the token black or gay or brown character has all white/ straight friends? Yeah. That’s not a thing in real life.

In fantasy stories: the good guys are white, the bad guys are black. (Chandler Bing voice: Could you be more racist?)

Adorable asians. RO Kwan writes about this stereotype playing out in real life so have a read and take care with your descriptions.

SEMINAL

Last Fall Tom was reading a book by John Updike. I don’t know which one because it’s not important. Tom said: It’s about a man who leaves his pregnant wife for a younger woman. Uh-huh, I said, bored already with this predictable bit of masturbatory fantasy certain male authors seem keen to replicate. Then a few days later, Tom reported that the book had taken a dark turn. Let me guess, I said. The wife goes nuts and kills the baby? Tom was amazed by my psychic abilities. How did you know? he asked. Have you already read this book?

LOL. I’ve read enough books by male authors, particularly of a certain vintage, to know that some (#notall but #toomany) men are lazy and incapable of writing realistic female characters. To them women = hysterical, doe-eyed, back-stabbing, dangerous, sex-pot, BOOBS. They get pregnant and either terminate the pregnancy in some back alley way that results in death or they throw their babies off a cliff because…I don’t know??… bitches be cray, I guess. Or more likely because on some fundamental level these men believe we aren’t responsible enough to care for children and therefore shouldn’t have the right to decide what happens inside our uteruses. Yeah. Suck on that nasty thought for an hour.

We have a running joke in our house about these seminal authors and their jerk off fiction. It’s also the subject of ridicule all over the internet. If you’re a man writing about a woman, DO BETTER. My pal Jamie Fitzpatrick is a great example of a straight man who writes convincing, complicated, wonderful female characters so I know it can be done. It probably helps if you respect ladies and believe we are equal members of society. Once again, just some basic life advice: don’t be a raging asshole.

BE SPECIFIC

Specificity is the soul of strong writing. Real life is specific and your fiction should be too. Every time a light-skinned brown actor plays a south Indian on screen, an angel in heaven dies. Skin colour isn’t something you just slap on a character like height or glasses. Skin colour is specific. People from north India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have lighter skin than anyone from south India or Sri Lanka. Even in Sri Lanka, there are significant differences. Tamils are darker than Sinhalese. Burghers are even lighter. Some could pass for white. And why does it matter? Because shadeism is real and pernicious and you have to know the character’s skin tone if you’re going to know the most fundamental things about them. By the way, if you don’t know what shadeism is, you have no business writing from the point of view of a brown character. Go do some homework. Ask your loved ones who are brown (not strangers or acquaintances…please don’t force strangers to teach you things you could learn on the internet). Hire a sensitivity reader.

AGENCY

Recently, I was sharing the stage with another brown author and the moderator asked her the following question, AND I QUOTE: “I was surprised by your book because your characters are from Iran but they didn’t seem oppressed.” This is the kind of bullshit non-white writers have to deal with but that’s a post for another day. Please don’t be like that ignorant moderator. Remember that everyone has agency and all your characters should have some degree of it too. This is really important, especially when you are writing about characters who come from communities that have been sidelined in the western canon. Making characters passive to their fate is lazy writing. Find where their agency lies and explore it on the page.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Diversity on the page begins with diversity off the page. Are all the radio programs and podcasts you listen to narrated by straight, cis, white people? Ditto the books and essays and magazine and online articles you read? What about television and movies? What about the people in your life? Diversify your life and you’ll find it easier to bring that richness to the page.

I’ve barely scratched the surface here. I teach a single session online workshop on writing from outside your perspective (it’s called Writing Who You Don’t Know. Get in touch for more details or a quote if you are interested.) Meantime, here’s some further reading:

In Appropriate: Interviews with Canadian authors on the writing of difference edited by Kim Davids Mandar

Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples by Gregory Younging

At Book Riot: 7 Manholes to skirt

At The Belladonna: a run down of some familiar tropes

At Midnight Breakfast: an illustrated guide

At Lit Hub: a wonderful essay by Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda

Write who you don’t know

Originally posted: December 4, 2020

The Canadian Press interviewed me about every blowhard’s favourite topic: authors writing outside their perspectives. How do we create characters whose identities (skin colour, class, sexuality, gender, disability) are different from our own? Is it possible to ace the job and should we even try?

When the request came in, I almost turned it down. Despite what certain dinosaurs might like to believe, this isn’t a straight forward subject. It’s complicated and nuanced and too often dismissed as censorship. (As if there’s a giant mute button Brown people can press to silence writers we despise. HA HA HA. WE WISH.) I wasn’t about to let some unknown reporter twist my words to serve the Old White Man Agenda.

But my publicist assured me the journalist was sensible so I gave her quite a bit of my time and I’m not sorry. You can read the piece here. I was glad to see the article included interviews with other authors including Kim Davids Mandar who edited In | Appropriate, an excellent collection of interviews all about this subject. If I was the head of an MFA program, I would make the book required reading.

This Fall I’ve run two online workshops on “Writing Who You Don’t Know.” The first was for a small group in Alberta and the second for about 70 writers from all over the place including the US and the UK. The turnout at the second workshop was shocking, especially given it was Saturday morning and a number of west coast heroes rose before dawn to Zoom in. But then again, maybe it’s not so surprising. This is difficult work, tricky to pull off. Traditional how-to manuals offer no guidance, too little attention is paid to the subject in classes, and the homogeneity of the industry ensures there’s no sober second thought. Then some poorly written, trope-infested book comes out, the Internet pounces, and all the fragile snowflakes whine about how they will never again win a Booker just because they are straight white men (oh, for a mute button).

All to say, I’m here to help. I’ve got a one-hour workshop and a two-hour workshop, both test-driven and well received. And listen, if you’ve been following me here for any length of time, you know I’m not a charlatan. I’m a thorough and meticulous researcher. I put together thoughtful workshops that give attendees food for thought as well as practical craft advice. If you belong to an organization that would like to host an online workshop, get in touch for more details, references, and the price.

Welcome

New year means a new website and some new projects. First up: this semester I am the (virtual) Writer-in-Residence at Memorial University. In this role, I’ll be teaching four stand-alone craft workshops. They are free, online, and open to anyone, anywhere and you can register for them now. I’ll also be popping up here and there on line and on the radio so keep an eye on the events page.

To kick off the residency, I dropped into the State of the Arts video series for an interview with Lisa Moore. Elsewhere on the internet, I had the great pleasure of interviewing authors Xaiver Campbell and Alexander MacLeod for the Sparks Literary Festival. You can watch both videos below. (We taped these in person sessions when Covid cases in the province were near zero, there was no community spread, and life was much more free and easy in St. John’s. Sigh).

In print, I wrote a column for Maclean’s on the new Netflix series Bridgerton. It’s in the February issue and available online.

This website is very much DIY and still a work in progress. If you’re wondering what’s happened to all the old blog posts… some are here and some will be showing up in the next few months. If there’s a specific post you want, leave a comment and I’ll dig it up if I can. Three of the most popular posts are now housed in the new resources section.

Join Lisa Moore for an interview with Sharon Bala, the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at Memorial University's English Department. And don't forget to check out Sh...

Poetry police

Originally posted: January 25, 2021

During the Inauguration, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman stole the show with her poem “The Hill We Climb”. I watched the ceremony the same way I read my reviews - breath held, jaw clenched, and squinting - because remember the confetti canon and the armed terrorists who stormed the capitol? Luckily, it was fine. No one got assassinated and I had the privilege of witnessing Gorman’s performance in real time. It was a tour de force and 99% of the millions who saw her agreed. But you know…there’s always the one per cent.

The next day, a fellow author posed a question on Facebook (I know, I know): I'm not a poet, they said, and asked the experts to weigh in. Was Amanda Gorman's "poem" any good?

This is a writer whose work I have long admired. Their latest book is currently sitting on my coffee table. I wasn’t expecting the professional hit to come from inside the house, you know? Critique is one thing but imagine someone solicited opinions on your book by derisively calling it a “novel”? I waded into the comments to find out what the poets were saying.

Those Himalayas of the Mind

“people need heroines… it just gets trying to see sentimentality elevated to art”
“Well, the problem is, people will now think, oh that's what good poetry is. When it isn't.”
“it is what a lot of people would LIKE poetry to be. Feel-goodish stuff.”
“can we expect anything different from officially sanctioned and mandated poetry?”
“It is a speech, not a poem.”
“will soon be forgotten”
“the whole thing was a lie… and stank of currying favour…Makes sense that she has presidential aspirations.”
“If she sticks with it, maybe, MAYBE, depending on more factors than I can name, she will write a poem….I want to be generous to her, so I can sincerely say, you had a lot of feeling there, Amanda, if you like, if it gives you something you can't get anywhere else, just keep going.”

Oh, you thought that one was comically bad? I saved this gem for last (formatting: mine):

“I did not like the poem.
She was using words that should not be in poems.
It's more a rockstar performance than art.”

The House of Poetry

At last check there were 300+ comments and most of them were not of this ilk. Savvier poets pointed out that what Gorman wrote and performed was indeed a poem, of a type classified as occasional poetry, that it comes from traditions of spoken word, slam, and hip-hop, all of which are meant to be experienced live and in the moment, not read off the page like narrative and lyric poetry. My favourite was the commenter who prosaically declared: “The house of poetry has many rooms.”

The poets who move between rooms are a generous lot. They were offering up a hell of a lot of free educational labour and I’d like to believe some of the grumps took note and learned something. But, as one persistent commenter made clear, over and over: hope is for dupes and liars. So more likely they stayed stubbornly put in the draughty old wing, sucking on their sour grapes.

Just so we’re clear: Amanda Gorman is a Harvard graduate. Her unpublished poetry collection is a bestseller. None of this derision matters a whit to her success. But some of these writers, I imagine, are teaching and mentoring less fortunate emerging poets. Is this the level of arrogance and ignorance they bring to those encounters? Easy to see why so many young writers, especially writers of colour, feel disillusioned with traditional creative writing programs. Because often this kind of critique - which has more to do with who you are than the quality of your work - is a hell of a lot more subtle and insidious. The burn is baked into the subtext and you can’t quite articulate why you feel the criticism is destructive rather than constructive.

So it’s instructive to consider what the critics found triggering. Gorman’s ambition, for one. How dare she? (Once at a party, while I was out of town, a cranky old poet snarked about my ambition to my husband, and then asked him not to tell me what she’d said. lol)

The laziest critique in the world is to ridicule what you don’t understand. Gorman’s spoken word influences are foreign to her detractors so they dismiss her art as a speech. A stump speech. She’s just gunning for the Oval Office, after all.

Powerful people have elevated her to Capitol Hill and put a microphone into her hand. It must be because she’s young and they can bend her to their will, use her as a mouthpiece of the state. The trigger here is agency. Who gave her that? Let’s pretend we can take it away.

The hope in Gorman’s poem is belittled by people who, conveniently, have no idea what it’s like to be a Black woman in America facing down a climate catastrophe that’s going to plague her long after the rest of us are dust. Gorman’s hope is an act of resistance, not a folly of youth. It’s also the burden of resilience that’s foisted on Black people, and women, in particular. The poetry police are shockingly unimaginative.

And then of course there are art’s perennial twin questions: is this any good and who gets to decide? For too long a homogeneous cabal have been the arbiters of taste. But now the times, they are a changing. The house of poetry has built new wings. And some of the old guard are….well old and scared, it seems like.

The Myth of Zero Sum

Gorman is a triple threat - young, Black, and a woman. I’m sure every bitter poet on that Facebook thread would balk at the insinuation that their dislike stems from racism. Fine, that’s their truth. Here’s the incontrovertible truth: Black women are rare in poetry workshops. They’re almost never students or teachers or included in the canon. Because the whole damn institution is racist. And when you are part of the institution, some of that stink sticks to you. You must be vigilant about hosing it down (yes, me too. All of us). But if you don’t pay attention, you won’t even notice. It’s 2021. I can’t believe I’m still having to spell this out.

It’s hard out there for a poet. There’s no fame, no fortune, entirely too little respect. When you are part of a marginalized group and the podium and shelf space is limited and the publisher says: “we love this book but we’ve already got an immigrant novel coming out this year” (lol. true story) it can be complicated to witness someone else’s success. It’s easy to mistake the game for zero sum. It’s easy to denigrate the perceived competition, especially when you think the competition should be more marginal than you. It’s the same ugly psychology that drives the anti-immigration sentiment in immigrant communities. I paid my dues; why should this new guy have it easy?

Here’s what many writers of colour have figured out: we’re better off working together than against each other. Constructive critique is necessary. Envy is not. So we indulge our sour grapes in private. Then we get the fuck over ourselves and cheer for the home team.