How to revise your novel (part 1)

Originally posted: August 17, 2020

Manuscript evaluation is one of the things I do for a living. In a nutshell: I read someone’s manuscript and return detailed notes to get them started on re-writes. Every story is unique but there are several common issues that plague all our drafts (mine too). If you’re struggling to revise your manuscript, here are three things to watch for:

UNFORMED CHARACTERS

In early drafts most secondary characters are blanks and the antagonists are one-note. Protagonists might be morally complex and more fully formed but there’s often something still missing, usually motivation. What’s making them act destructive? Why are they so helpful? Why do they care so much about this issue/ person/ place/ thing? When it comes to characters, you need to interrogate them thoroughly until you know everything about them.

TOO MANY CHARACTERS

Squint at each character. Make sure they earn their place. Sometimes characters are vestigial organs. Though necessary at the start to help you understand the protagonist, you might find they’ve served their purpose by draft two or six. Thank them for their service and then let them go.

Two or more minor characters can often be merged into one. A couple of years ago I was reading my friend Jamie Fitzpatrick’s novel, The End of Music. There’s a character who appears on the first page, who sparks a nostalgic memory for the protagonist, Carter. Later, she re-appears unexpectedly as the manager at his mother’s nursing home. She’s a pretty minor character but plays a necessary role. In earlier drafts these had been two different characters but somewhere along the way Jamie’s editor advised him to merge them. The merger makes the story stronger. It gives the reader a little dopamine hit to meet the woman again and remember her from the first page. And her presence in both parts of his life strengthens the theme of nostalgia and memory (which his mother in her old age is losing).

PACE

When it comes to our own work, most of us are terrible judges of pace. But readers are very very good at sensing slow parts of the book. Does every scene advance plot and/or character (ideally both). If not, jettison the scene. Or strip it for parts to graft on elsewhere and trash the rest. Much of revising is also moving the puzzle pieces around. Swapping around scenes and chapters, shifting beats within a scene, passages of prose, action and so on. Think about arcs, not just character arcs, not just story arc, but the smaller arcs that happen within a scene or chapter or even a conversation. Are the stakes present early enough or do they arrive at the very end like a footnote. And if so, is this what you intend?

This is part one of a series on re-writing and revising. The next post covers conflict, flashback, and action.

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.