Character Development: Lessons from Amy Tan

By Beth Kephart

In the early pages of Amy Tan’s debut novel, The Joy Luck Club, we meet Jing-Mei Woo shortly after her mother’s death. In taking her mother’s place at a mah-jong table, Jing-Mei learns that her mother’s friends have raised $1200 so that Jing-Mei might go to China and meet the half sisters her mother was forced, by war, to leave behind as infant twins so many years ago. “You must tell them about her life,” these friends insist, but Jing-Mei asserts that she doesn’t know a thing. “She was my mother,” Jing-Mei says. As if that one word—mother—is all this grieving daughter knows.

“‘Tell them stories of your family here. How she became success,’ offers Auntie Lin.”

“‘Tell them stories she told you, lessons she taught, what you know about her mind that has become your mind,’ says Auntie Ying.”

In re-reading The Joy Luck Club in preparation for my late-April conversation with Tan on the Free Library of Philadelphia stage, I pressed a bookmark right there, against this page, closed the novel, and wondered. What if we began our own character development work with this mandate in mind: Tell the stories they told, the lessons they taught, and the mind that has become our own.

We could spreadsheet this if we were really stuck—one column for stories told, one column for lessons taught, one column for the ways in which the Other in our lives has become part and parcel of the way we love, fear, or yield to the world.

I could, for example, choose my father, who might not have been the world’s most prodigious storyteller, but the few stories he did tell organized themselves into reliable categories—adventures with a few childhood and college friends; the long wait for my mother to say yes to his (two) proposals; late-night combustions at an oil refinery and mid-winter turmoil in an executive suite; later-in-life travels with new friends. My father had a way of telling—few adjectives, few adverbs, as few words, indeed, as possible—and I can only remember a handful of times when he was the star of his own story.

What, then, were the lessons that he taught? Humility, I’d log into my spreadsheet. The long reach of his arch-enemy, anxiety. The importance of hard work. The necessity and satisfaction of putting family first. The power of quiet over shout. (There’s more.)

And finally (and of course this is the hardest part of this assignment): How has my father’s mind become my own? Well: His legacy of anxiety is certainly right here, everywhere, so terribly constant. His sense that our greatest value comes from what we can do for others has hovered over my own heart, dictated the choices I have made (for better, for worse). His abject disinterest in stealing any show. (I see myself on too many literary panels, speaking last or not at all.)

How about you? Who is your Other? (Who are your Others?) How would you fill the columns on your character spreadsheet? And couldn’t it be true that it would be so much easier now, this assembled information in hand, to write toward that person, with truthful and intriguing depth?

But would you be you done? Would your character development be complete? In her new book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Tan’s characters are avian. They’re the hummingbird that feeds from her hand. The Pine Siskins that toss more seeds than they swallow. The baby Scrub Jay learning to master the feeder. These birds have arrived in Tan’s world without a known history, without a reliable list of stories told. And yet, Tan uses her great powers of observation to develop the birds’ characters. She beckons them with a whistle, with suet, seeds, and mealworms. She draws the curves of their beaks, the length of their feathers, the tuck of their tails. She watches them watching her, and it is in this way—the Other observing the Writer, the Writer observing the Other—that Tan begins to differentiate these birds, to make them not part of a broad feathery flock, but a there-is-no-other-bird-quite-precisely-like-this-one-bird singularity.

Are there lessons in this for us, as writers? Might we wait, as Tan so patiently waits, until a greater understanding comes to us? (As opposed, say, to simply writing down what we already know, what has become almost the caricature cliche.) Might we draw our Others, collage them, return to old photographs to see them newly? (As opposed, say, to simply applying the well-known descriptors—brown hair, green eyes, hooked nose.) Might we see ourselves through the eyes of our Others—or do our best to imagine such a thing?

Tan has produced, among many other things, novels, memoir, now this illustrated bird journal. Genre does not matter here. Whether we are writing fiction, memoir, poetry, opera, or a screenplay, whether the characters are people or crayons or bugs, there are lessons in Tan’s work for all of us. There are Others to whom and which we owe our very finest work.

________

Beth Kephart is the author of some 40 books in multiple genres. Her new books are My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera (Temple University Press) and You Are Not Vanished Here (coming in early June from Juncture Workshops). More at bethkephartbooks.com

Learn to tell a story of yourself that in some way contains the stories of others. Join Beth Kephart for her CRAFT TALKS Masterclass, Character Development: Writing the Other, part of a new series of longer writing workshops for in-depth learning and moments of creation within the class. June 1, 11AM-3:30PM Eastern ($175 Early Bird). More Info/Register Now.

I Gave Up Creative Writing for a Decade

It was the best thing I could ever have done

By Anna Rollins

The summer after graduating with my Master’s in English, I made myself a promise: I was going to write.

During my course of study, I’d begun a collection of essays about characters at my Appalachian fundamentalist Christian school and had been told the work had potential. I didn’t know what the collection was about necessarily, but I was determined to figure that out in process. My teaching job did not begin until the fall, I had no children or pets, and my husband’s salary covered our bills, giving me the luxury of both time and resources.

I was going to spend the summer writing my book.

I started by creating a schedule. My entire day would revolve around writing, with hour-long mental breaks to, say, clean the bathrooms, go for a run, read, or prepare dinner.

And I stuck to this schedule. The days were a dream—everything wonderful except for, well, the writing. When the clock said it was time to sit down and work, I froze. I struggled to form sentences. The ones I did compose were meandering, uncertain. I’d re-read my paragraphs and become distracted midway through. I was bored—and my words were boring! I tried to push through the haze by writing in new locations, or by alternating between my laptop and a journal, but each day, the work was drab and without tension.  

What lit me up was reading. I devoured mental health essays by Lauren Slater, new journalism by Truman Capote, and autofiction by Tim O’Brien. As the weeks passed, I gave myself permission to consider reading part of my daily regimen. Reading good literature, I reasoned, would make me a better writer. But I soon found myself dreaming up ways to incorporate these texts into my fall classes. Eventually, I stopped writing my own creative work and instead turned my attention to composing lesson plans. 

By this time, it was halfway through the summer, and I had come to a conclusion: look how much excellent work is already out there. I don’t need to add to the noise with my own mediocrity. Especially if I am hating every moment of it.

At the time (and even still), I did not find the sentiment defeatist. It was inspiration in reverse. The idea felt revelatory: if I’m not enjoying writing, I don’t have to write. No one was forcing me. There were so many great stories out there already, and despite what social media memes parroted, the world did not necessarily need mine.

And so I extended my permission-giving once again. I will stop writing. The decision was complete relief.

But I continued to read voraciously. Nothing excited me more than a perfect sentence, a compelling idea, a brave admission.

“It’s weird,” my husband said one evening as he observed me finishing my third book that week. “You read compulsively. More than anyone I’ve ever met. Don’t you want to create something too?”

“I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said by someone else probably more talented than me,” I replied defensively.

Five years later, after my first son was born, I began to write creatively again. My life had contracted to the four walls of my home, making it harder to explore the world. I felt a desire to explore ideas on the page. Each morning, I wrote for ten minutes in a journal, whatever I wanted, whatever popped into my head. I wrote without the intention of publishing. This small practice was just my opportunity to play on the page, something fun to do in a day filled with domestic duty.

When my second son was born, I began to write more. It certainly was not because I had more time. It was because I had to—I finally had something to express, and writing felt even more necessary. I didn’t need accountability or a schedule. I’d reached a point in my life where the page was one of the only places I wanted to be.

Ten years after receiving my Master’s in English, I finally became serious about publishing my creative writing. I pitched essays to popular outlets and within two years’ time, published nearly fifty of them. I got an agent and a book deal. It appeared to happen fast. But all my work had been simmering for over a decade.

Taking those years off was not a waste. Those years of compulsive reading were necessary. I needed to read great literature, to live, and to discover what I had to say.

As for the essays I began in graduate school? Only a few of those sentences made it into my forthcoming memoir. But I needed to write that entire collection before I could compose the work I’m publishing today.

___

Anna Rollins’ work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, Electric Literature, Joyland Magazine, and other outlets. Her forthcoming memoir, Famished, (Eerdmans, 2025) challenges scripts that encourage women to take up less space and not trust their own bodies, messages that are common in diet and purity culture. She is a faculty member in the English department at Marshall University. She is running a free monthly series called “Path to Publication” where she shares pitches for work she has placed in popular outlets. Follow her on Substack and Instagram @annajrollins.

Toward the Walrus: Remembering Why You Like Writing

By Lindsey DeLoach Jones

Last year I taught creative writing at a residential arts high school for gifted students. My students had applied and been selected from across the state, and they were wildly talented. But a couple of weeks into the semester, it dawned on me: they didn’t like writing.

Presumably, they had liked it at one point—back when it lived in their diaries and book margins and notes apps, back when a pen and paper inexplicably produced, inside their lonely middle school hearts, the thrill of connection and discovery. But between the decision to study it nearly full-time and the moment I entered their classroom, the relationship between my students and their writing had turned acrimonious.

This was a problem, obviously, because compulsory writing is almost always bad. The writer’s reluctance seeps into the work, so it lacks that quality of aliveness that can spring only from the author’s own aliveness during creation. I’ve graded enough undergraduate essays to tell you: when writing becomes a hill to climb instead of a field in which to romp, the strenuous labor of the writer transfers to the reader. So the act of creation that was a hill-to-climb creates a reading experience that is also like climbing a hill.

But I wasn’t just concerned about reading a bunch of bad writing. I desperately wanted my students to enjoy their craft. By the tender age of sixteen, they had practically bet their lives on their talent. If they couldn’t muster some enthusiasm for it, it was going to be a long road.

This is how I began thinking about play.

---

I once took a writing class in which, during freewriting, the instructor tossed out random words to incorporate into whatever sentence we were composing at that exact moment—words like walrus and raspy and kaleidoscope. During the first round, I expected the exercise to produce nonsense. I assumed it was a warm-up to the real thing we would write next.

But what we came up with wasn’t nonsense. Sometimes it was (bizarrely) brilliant and off-kilter in the best way. Our brains stretched past the easy grab (a familiar word or metaphor) toward something new. Would I have naturally compared my father to a walrus? No. But hey, in that description I’d just accidentally (and almost subconsciously) written, I stumbled upon a new idea about my dad, something I never could have accessed on my own. Maybe I was reminded of the bristle of whiskers, or mottled skin tough as leather, or brute strength in unexpected form.

The spontaneous quality of the writing was sometimes smart—but always fun. When the writer is surprised during creation, the reader is surprised while reading. And when surprise is done well, it is fun.

Anyway, I was sick of climbing hills. I read everything I could find about play in the classroom, then about play in general. I wanted to access the same whimsy in these students I’d accessed in my own writing class when my instructor had thrown the wheels of my thinking off the rutted grooves of my brain into the wilderness beyond. Toward the walrus.

---

Mid semester, I had an idea. At home, I grabbed a giant trash bag and headed to my own kids’ playroom. Into the bag I stuffed crayons, board games, watercolors, Play-doh, and MagnaTiles. The next time I went to school, like a petite female Santa, I hefted the bag onto the center table. 

This, I said, is today’s assignment.

Play.

For a brief moment (during which I considered hurling myself out the window), they were dead silent. And then they smiled and huddled around the trash bag like it was Christmas morning. They made Play-doh sculptures and drew with magic markers and, over in the corner, played a heated game of Twister.

This was not brilliant pedagogy on my part. I was discouraged and exhausted and throwing pipe cleaners at the wall, hoping something would stick. Well, something did. I watched as, for a couple of hours, these pressurized-cans-of-teenage-angst laughed, breathed deeply, and acted silly.

---

Play unlocked our work together for the rest of the year. One week I brought in just the Play-doh and asked them to sculpt (badly) an object that was important to them before writing about it. One week I made them sketch metaphors as if they were literal. One week I brought in an improv comedian who made them wiggle their arms and shout silly phrases. Minutes into a freewriting assignment, one of the students froze mid-sentence and said, “Oh my god. I just remembered why I liked writing.”

In turn, play seeped into my own work. After a couple years working on a book I was now sick-to-death of, I began to experience a cognitive loosening around my writing practice. As if by magic, I had loads of new ideas, and the work seemed fun again. I wrote without a publication or audience in mind; I wrote because it felt good.

Play is not free. You must be willing to relinquish your fears of what other people will think, cast aside time, loosen your rules, open yourself to embarrassment, and be willing to surprise even yourself.

But silliness isn’t a warm-up for the serious thing you’re going to create next. Play is, itself, a mindset that proliferates possibility. The more we learn about writing, the more entrenched we become in rules and routine. But beyond the rules, something weirder and wilder is happening. You can find it only if, when you want to reach for what’s expected of you, you stretch past it. 

Past the predictable toward the weirder, wilder walrus.

___________

Ready to be more playful in your writing? Join Lindsey for a CRAFT TALKS webinar (TOMORROW!) Revive Your Creativity: The Energizing Art of Playful Writing.

Lindsey DeLoach Jones is a writer and editor living in South Carolina. On her Substack Between Two Things, she writes herself out of (and occasionally into) tight spots.

Creative Sleep and the Writing Life, Part II

By William T. Vandegrift, Jr.

In an essay for the Brevity Blog titled Creative Sleep and the Writing Life, I explored various sleep patterns and how they have had an impact not only on me, but on many well-known creative people throughout the ages, ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Thomas Edison.

I advocated the biphasic sleep pattern, which is common in Europe and Latin America. You sleep for a brief period during the night and then take a nap in the afternoon. I find that this regimen allows me to be more productive. I have more energy, and my creative side is much more active.

Since drafting this essay, I decided to explore sleep habits further and address the restlessness that I experience during sleep. I often have bad dreams. Vivid dreams, as my doctor calls them; she considers them a side effect of medication. The elusive, fragmented images of my nightmares often haunt me into the next day, and they leave me feeling disjointed and discombobulated.

As a child, I was plagued with night terrors. Until I reached my early teens, I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and was told that it sounded as if I were being murdered. Fortunately, as I got older, the regularity of these dreams decreased.

In an effort to eliminate the nightmares that I still have on occasion, I did extensive research on nightmare therapy. I found that if you are beset by either dreams of mild disturbances or dreams of tragic proportions, you can try using a variety of techniques to overcome them.

It is possible to rewire your brain so that you have control over the outcome of your bad dreams. This reworking of the brain allows you to rewrite dreams and achieve more desirable endings. What a breakthrough this is!

Before going to bed, I tell myself that I will remember my dreams. I review the nightmares that I sometimes experience, and I imagine potential outcomes for them. I work on changing the dreams so that they have a positive closure. I discovered it is possible for me to be present in my dreams, and when they shift in a dark direction, I can talk myself out of them. I can step back, then forward, and then back once again. I can harness the dream. If I lose control of it, I stop myself and pull out completely before it takes a turn for the worse. This requires practice and effort. Once you master this technique, it becomes second nature.

Clinically speaking, this phenomenon of being present in your dreams is called a lucid dream. This is a state in which you reach a point where you’re aware that you are dreaming. You are asleep, yet present and participating in the dream, and have free rein to creatively explore and control the outcome.

While in a lucid dream, remind yourself that you are safe. Be aware that what is around you isn’t real. Pull back as needed and then reenter the dream when you are better able to control the outcome. Allow yourself to be an active spectator and not a passive participant. Choose how you want to respond. Seek alternative solutions. Let your subconscious roam but with the conscious mind alive and alert to keep it in check.

Many artists have used lucid dreams to produce their work, such as Stephen King, Mary Shelley, and Salvador Dali, to name a few. Through dreams, you, too, can explore your creative side and find inspiration.

I have discovered that I can “write” while dreaming! Before going to sleep, I think about what I might be struggling with in my writing. It can be a chapter that isn’t working, a stilted passage in an essay, or a character that needs further development. This doesn’t only apply to art but can be useful to help resolve different situations in our daily lives. We can create any desired outcome through our dreams.

When I wake up from a lucid dream with an epiphany or a solution to a problem, it is imperative that I get up and write it down (legibly!) before returning to sleep. The reason for this is that dreams can quickly fade when you wake up. Many times, I have woken with a breakthrough that was so immense, I told myself there was no way I would forget it, only to wake the next day with no idea what my epiphany was. These must be captured right away before they escape within the murky recesses of your memory.

Dream therapy has opened doors to many sides of my creativity. It is easier for some than for others, but it is a technique that can be developed over time and with dedication. I now experience less anxiety. My writing has improved, and I find that even a mere sliver of a lucid dream can awaken my artistic side and bring forth much success with my creative work.

___

William T. Vandegrift, Jr. is a biphasic sleeper. A graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, he has published numerous author interviews, short stories, and essays in various journals, including The Writer’s Chronicle, Cutleaf, Mollyhouse, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Quarterly West. William reads voraciously and is always cooking up a storm. He lives in New Jersey with his husband, two dogs, and two cats.

Writing Memoir Goes Like This

By Cassandra Hamilton

You decide to write about a topic; let’s call it orange. You embrace writing about orange. Near the end of the first draft, you realize you’re writing about rainbow.

Excited about this rainbow discovery, you begin anew, throwing yourself into the passion of writing about rainbow, the thrill of researching rainbow, of waking invigorated by rainbow dreams. You’re tickled noting rainbow synchronicities (“Oh wow! A car drove by with a rainbow sticker just as you said, ‘Fluffy crossed over the rainbow bridge!’”). Soon you’re making non sequitur rainbow references and irritating loved ones by spying rainbows where there are none (Grandma was especially cruel barking, “Enough, Dumbass! It’s impossible to see a rainbow in a drought!”).

Feeling misunderstood, you hole up in your home and fall into your writing. Between stints, you doodle rainbows on checks, bills, and grocery lists like NASA shooting recordings into outer space seeking alien connection. You long for a rainbow connection; are depressed that none materialize.

You resort to eating boxes of cereal in mixing bowls. Keep on courting this rainbow obsession until one day, without warning, you find checking your dog’s poop for worms far more interesting than rainbows. Worse, you note you’re slightly allergic to thinking of rainbows.

Daily, you smear Calamine lotion over angry hives multiplying on your chest as you struggle to press on, rough it out, cough up even the bleakest jumbled words on rainbows. You pull your hair. Stop showering. Fantasize about burning every damn page you wrote on rainbows.

You develop an ulcer. One night, popping twice the antacids your doctor recommended, you realize your piece isn’t about rainbow; it’s about crystal. No! It’s far more complex. It’s a crystal representing a quantum equation. Your mind fills with exclamation marks. You whoop, pop a cork, slug fizzy drinks—until the exhaustion from birthing this work hits you like a prize fighter’s left hook.

You fall into bed. Sleep for twenty-six hours.

While you dream, a black bear ambles onto your property, scarfs your bursting blueberry bushes. You like bears. In theory. As symbols of wild power in pictures on your phone. But this bear, belly bursting, enters your dream. Crawls into your bed. Spoons your spent limbs. Whispers in your ear, “Utter ‘rainbow’ or ‘crystal’ again and I’ll come back to eat you.”

You bolt awake! Stumble distressed into the morning, out into your yard, straight to the bushes. Seeing the branches stripped of fruit, you get goosebumps. Right then, you divorce your obsessions.

But now what else is there to write?

At your desk, you yank out fresh paper. You decide to write of the familiar: how Great Grandma smoked cigars on the porch of the log home she’d built by herself; how on the weekend when Mom got a kitten from Allen Ginsberg, Great Grandma made bear stew (the most savory meal Mom ever tasted); and how years after Mom died, you found her gnarled elbow of driftwood, nabbed the day she left Italy and said goodbye to the man she’d dated, a real, bonafide prince.

Oh! Writing’s grand! Bliss.

Well. Until…

One day while brushing your teeth and staring at the bags under your eyes, it dawns on you: you’re writing about love.

You think of a man you loved who’s phoning again after years of silence. He may/may not have the capacity to fully love you. You spit in the sink. Time for a new draft!

You write on loving this man. Conjure memories of late nights reading side-by-side in bed, comforted by the fur on his toes, his feet rocking back-and-forth like a metronome. Your heart feels soft and mushy and you nearly pick up the phone to call him, you’re so enamored of those furry symbols of home—until you remember the old scathing arguments, books snapped shut in disgust, the bookcase empty when he packed and left.

You rip into tiny pieces the last thing you wrote. Take a walk to cool off. Watch dragon shaped clouds.

Here, you feel the wind that’s carried your fire. Feel so clearly what set you ablaze through orange, rainbows, crystal, the quantum equation and, yes, even the man.

At a fresh page, you step into cracks within. Open inner doors to the universe. Write in dragon trails so hot, so true, reader’s palms will sweat holding your words.

Yes, this is where you surrender to your story. You accept the story is boss. The story decides how it wishes to be written.
___

Cassandra Hamilton is a disabled artist/writer with traumatic brain injury and central vision loss in one eye who creates from dreams, shamanic journeys, and life. Her writing has appeared in international literary magazine Beyond Words, Brevity Blog, 101 Words, The Door Opener Magazine, Rivereast News Bulletin, The Glastonbury Citizen and three Writing It Real anthologies edited by Sheila Bender. While working on a memoir, she teaches Active Dreaming (a synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism), including workshops on Dreaming and Writing.

Getting Together Again

I’m going to a writers’ conference! With workshops and panels and book sales and a lot of strangers and oh dear god what if none of them like me? What if all the workshops are too advanced, or too basic, and I have no idea what the Liminal Space Outside the Academy: A Feminist Perspective Through The Work of Dickinson and Gay As Realized In Graphic Novels panel is talking about? Am I too old? Am I too young? What if I haven’t had anything published yet?

Good news: we’re all welcome. Conferences, both online and in real life, are a great chance to meet and talk with writers of all ages and stages. Most conferences have purple-haired college kids, silver-haired seniors, and a variety of pantsuits, piercings, ties and tattoos in between.

I’m just about to teach at the Woodhall Writers Conference this Saturday, and I’ve just taught at the HippoCamp Creative Nonfiction Conference in Lancaster, PA. There were/are some terrific panels (none of them use the word ‘liminal’) on publishing, researching, writing, promoting and a lot more. (It turns out the key to getting ahead as an author is pretty much the key to everything else–work hard, be nice to people, and don’t tweet “Buy My Book!” every hour because everyone else will mute you.)

Some thoughts on how to make the most of attending a writing conference.

Before you go:

1a) For a virtual conference, set up a reasonably private space and brief your family that you won’t be answering calls or texts unless someone’s on fire. Have your water and coffee handy. Maybe make some meals in advance so you can enjoy thoughtful breaks rather than rushing to your kitchen. Consider starting your day with yoga or a walk, even if you don’t usually, to energize the morning.

1b) Going live? Decide whether to stay onsite. Conference hotels are often expensive, but when your day starts at 8AM and the last reading finishes at 11PM, it’s nice to have a last glass of wine and hit the elevator instead of the pavement. If budget’s an issue, see if you can get a roommate–most conferences have a message board to share rides and rooms. Or, if you’re more of a hermit, retreating to an offsite AirBnB might be your jam. I’ve been fortunate to be in a sunny, plant-filled studio this week, and it was worth it to book a few extra days on each side of the conference for personal writing time.

2) If you have an author website, update it. Make sure your links aren’t broken and that your most current work is represented. If you have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc, check your page from a friend’s account and see what shows up first. Any embarrassing pictures? Is your top post a rant? You’ll be friend-ing/following a bunch of new people, and you want to give a strong first impression. What if an agent loves your query in a workshop and clicks over during a break? Be you online, but be the best you.

3a) Check your virtual space: does anything look like it’s growing out of your head? Is your background over-bright or distracting? If you’ve got a book out, display it on a shelf behind you!

3b) For live conferences, pack comfy shoes, layers and a jacket. Most convention centers and big hotels are freezing, especially first thing in the morning. Dress code at most conferences is Casual Friday–professional but comfortable, often a little quirky.

4) Get on Twitter. Specifically Twitter. Find out what the conference hashtag is and follow it. Even if you never tweet again, Twitter is where people are commenting on the panels, making dinner plans, and announcing schedule updates. It’s worth it to be in the loop. If you’re virtual, chances are there’s some backchannel messaging going on, too, and it’s a great way to connect with fellow attendees.

At the conference:

1) Go to everything. It’s worth getting up early, it’s worth staying out late. Sleep when you go home. That said,

2) Don’t be afraid to bail. If you’re exhausted and can’t focus, slip upstairs to your hotel room or turn your camera off and take a power nap.

3) Make the first move. As the Victorians said about fellow houseguests, “The roof constitutes an introduction.” It’s OK to sidle up to a conversation in progress, make some smiley eye contact and start listening. Find people on social media and see what they’re up to. Like what someone just read? Send a private chat message. When in doubt, start with “How were your workshops today?” And the best follow-up question ever: “What do you write?”

4) Volunteer. If there’s a chance to be read or heard, jump on it. There’s always a pause before the first person volunteers–fill that pause. After the first person it will be a scrimmage and not everyone will get a turn.

Corollary: Ask good questions. Before popping up to the mic or raising your hand during the Q&A, ask yourself, “Will this be relevant to at least half the room?” If your question is “I’m writing a memoir about my mother, do you want to buy it?” phrase it as, “What topics are you seeing in memoir right now, and what are you looking for? Are there a lot of parent-child stories?”

When you get home:

1) Follow up. Everyone whose card you took, send them an email saying how nice it was to meet them, and/or connect through your preferred social media. If you’ve got free time, send out a few links to articles you think would interest specific people. Start building your literary citizenship by being useful and kind.

2) Keep the energy going. Register the domain for that blog idea you talked about. Query that agent who seemed really nice. Ask someone to be your writing buddy.

And of course, write write write.

See you at the Woodhall Press Writers Conference this Saturday! I’ll be giving a keynote address; there are small-group workshops, a pitch panel and more. Register here.

___________________
Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. Want writing news, events, and upcoming webinars? Join the A-List!

Angel Talk

A guest post by Melissa Ballard:

I’m sitting at my desk, getting ready to write.

Translation: I’m checking Facebook.

I hear a rustle, followed by a sigh, and I see movement out of the corner of my eye. When I look up there is a tall, slim woman with spiky blonde hair lounging on my upholstered chaise. She is wearing black Vans, ripped jeans, and a black t-shirt with “Rabid Feminist” in white letters. Her scent is that of excellent coffee; the to-go cup she’s holding must be from the Slow Train Cafe.

“Who are you?” I ask. “How did you get here?”

“I’m your angel, Gloria. Never mind how I got here. So, how many words have you written this morning?”

“Um, I don’t do word counts. That doesn’t work for me. I just write, mostly when I’m inspired. Sometimes for a long time, sometimes not for very long.”

She snorts. “So, then, none? Zero? You haven’t written anything and it’s almost noon?”

“Wait, are you the Angel of the House that Virginia Woolf wrote about? I thought you’d be smaller, and wearing gauzy robes, with long hair in a loose knot. But if you are that angel, you should know I cleaned the refrigerator this morning.”

Gloria rolls her eyes. “Are you kidding me? This is the 21^st Century. I’m here to make sure you’re writing. So, what’s the problem?”

“The fridge was really dirty. I found sticky stuff that had dried in all the ridges of the vegetable crisper. And in the fruit drawer, bits of the orange plastic mesh bags from the clementines we ate six months ago. Oh, and a couple of cat hairs. We don’t even have a cat!”

“Great. Next time write first, then clean. And now that you’ve cleaned, why aren’t you writing?”

“Well, right now, I’m composting.”

Gloria sniffs. “In your office? Why don’t I smell anything?”

“No, no, it’s a term from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. It’s when you’re thinking about what you’re writing, but not actually writing.”

Gloria squints at me. “What’s that noise? Oh, it’s Natalie. She’s groaning at the way you’ve used her idea about the need to process some experiences before you can write about them, and turned it into a procrastination device. How many books about writing have you read, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A few.”

Gloria rolls her eyes again. “I have something for you. Catch!”

I usually miss when someone says “catch,” but this time I reach up at just the right time. It’s a good thing, too, because the object is small, but heavy and sharp.

It takes me a minute to realize: it’s a one-inch picture frame.

I smile. “Anne Lamott. Bird by Bird! Right? It’s a metaphor for focusing on one small part of a piece, instead of constantly worrying about the bigger picture.”

Gloria groans. “So, you’ve read that one, too.”

I nod. I squirm in my desk chair, hoping to block her view of the shelves behind me, which are crammed with writing manuals, collections of essays about writing, and memoirs about writing.

“So, it’s not as though you don’t know what to do,” she says. You just need to get out of your own way and write. My work here is done.”

Gloria disappears as quickly as she came. I stare at the empty chair.

Perhaps I imagined her.

As my eyes wander back to my computer screen, I read a card I’ve placed on my desk, in my line of sight. It’s a quote from Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind:

Forget expectations.

Just write.

And, finally, I do.

_______________________________________________

Melissa Ballard composts, checks Facebook and, occasionally, writes from her desk in Oberlin, Ohio. You can read her essays at https://melissaballardsite.wordpress.com/

It’s An Illusion

Entertainment at the annual Brevity office party

A few years ago I studied at Writers In Paradise with the wonderful Laura Williams McCaffrey. I brought pages from a young-adult novel, thrilled to share for the first time with people who didn’t know me, didn’t love me, had no vested interest in my happiness. My hope was they’d be gripped by suspense from the very first page, the start of a countdown to a terrifying conclusion.

They found it blah. It didn’t grab them. Sure, the voice was nice, but it was just a teenage girl thinking. Where was the action?

I said, “But there’s this countdown…”

“Countdown to what?”

And that’s when I realized I’d left out a key piece of information. In ten drafts, I had failed to give the reader the most important detail: The protagonist has a gun in her lap.

I’d spent seven years with this character and story in my head. For me, the gun was just there. Why wouldn’t it be? But it wasn’t on the page.

Editing memoir, I often see the same quirk of a major missing piece.

Dad’s an alcoholic? That’s why he acted like that? It’s not in here for the reader. Adult-writer-you might want to make that clear even if child-narrator-you is oblivious.

There’s a ton of money supporting this giant home renovation in another country. The reader wants to know at least briefly how you got it.

Wait, there was an implied sex scene after the picnic at the end of that chapter? Please write enough of it that we know it happened. Even if you just take off her shirt or stroke her hair.

It’s hard to remember all the information readers need to make sense of our story–not because there’s too much to tell, but because we already have a full background briefing. We’re sick to death of the details. We’re afraid to be too obvious, to overwrite, make our work too simple or somehow un-literary by speaking plainly.

I’ve said before, all books are mysteries. Just as if we read a whodunit where the murderer didn’t show up at all until the page before he’s caught, the reader feels ripped off if they don’t have the breadcrumbs to follow your trail. Think about re-reading a classic sleuth novel, and the pleasure of noticing all the clues you missed the first time around, how each puzzle piece falls into place, the last detail snapping into focus right at the villain’s unmasking.

Writing memoir also calls for careful clues. Show the life experience on the way to discovery of illness that shows you can fight (or are fighting for the first time), and the team of doctors, family and friends fighting with you. The hints of family history overheard as children, that now you know were secrets covered up.

It’s counter-intuitive, but don’t surprise the reader. When we reveal the hidden reasons behind our torment, or show our triumph, or beat the tumor, we want the reader instead to be shocked. Fascinated that it turned out this way, but realizing that of course that’s how the story had to end. We want our books to be heavily laden vehicles with bad brakes, rolling down hills toward brick walls. We’re shocked at the impact–but having watched the dump truck full of chickens gather speed, we’re not surprised. If the brakes suddenly worked again, stopping the truck abruptly inches from the wall, it’s still a powerful shock (plus relief!) but again, it’s not a surprise. One way or another, everything pointed to an explosion of feathers and squawks.

Take a look at your essay, or your manuscript. What’s the stunning conclusion, the revelation, the connection the reader makes at the last minute? Go back and find the clues. What logically leads to this conclusion, step by step? Is it subtle enough to still need to finish the story to find out what happens, but clear enough that a reader who doesn’t know the plot already will say, “Ohhhhhhh. Yeah. That had to happen–it’s the only way.”

The illusion in our heads is of a fully realized world, provided with every necessary action and relationship to contextualize our story. The reader only gets what’s on the page. Give them enough cards and top hats to be in on the illusion, too.

__

Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. Want writing news, events, and upcoming webinars? Join the A-List!

Five Quick Fixes To Make Your Essay Better Right Now

Not “feeling it,” but need to get some writing in? Don’t have time for a long sit at the coffee shop, but you might have fifteen minutes before carpool? Technical fixes are the way to go.

1. Check for “was verb-ing” constructions. In Microsoft Word, do a wildcard search:

1. Open Advanced Find and Replace
2. Check the box for Wildcards On
3. Put this in Find, including the <> part: <was [a-z]@ing>
4. Repeat with <were [a-z]@ing>
5. Each time a “being verb-ing” construction pops up, ask “Is my intention here to communicate an ongoing state that is still happening?” If the answer is no, switch tenses. Was running=ran. Were talking=talked.

2. Remove most of “that.” Many writers use “that” as a tic rather than for deliberate emphasis or grammatical need. “That” adds a slight stiltedness to your natural writing voice. Again, use your trusty Find and Replace. Keep only the “thats” you need for sense.

I never considered that he would run away

I never considered he would run away.

3. Start and finish sentences with strong words. When possible, restructure sentences to begin and end with nouns or verbs rather than prepositions or filler words.

Besides all that, he was mean, kind of.

Pat was also kind of mean.

When you’re comfortable putting strong words in the anchor positions, start paying attention to the sounds. Sharp consonant sounds (d, g, k, p, etc.) make good emphatic sentences:

Pat was also kind of a dick. On Wednesdays, he threw rocks at his dog. 

For more flow, choose sounds that slide into the next sentence, like m, n and s:

Pat was mean. Everyone knew about the poor dog, and what happened on Wednesdays.  

4. Count prepositional phrases. Long sentences can be great. But when a sentence feels clunky, sometimes that’s due to too many prepositional phrases.

We walked down the hall on that afternoon, the birds diving into the water beneath the windows, where we’d sat last week pledging our love for one another.

Prepositional phrases navigate time and space. Each new phrase relocates the reader: down the hall, on that afternoon, into the water, beneath the window, where we’d sat, last week, for one another. It’s not just that the sentence is long–it’s that the reader mentally visits seven different locations.

5. Use a word cloud. Using an online tool like Wordle, copy-paste your whole document to create a picture of all the words you use. The words are sized according to their frequency. For over-used words (often that, just, got, around, felt, looked, like) do a search, and each time the word pops up, ask if it’s needed and if it’s the right word in that location. Edit ruthlessly. The big exception is “said” in dialogue–usually, “said” becomes a neutral word like “the,” and it’s better to use “said” than get fancy with dialogue tags.

Bonus thinking time: If there’s a “bad guy” in your story, or someone opposed to your objective, imagine the story from their POV. How are they acting heroically within their own worldview? What do they believe in? How are you thwarting them? Next time you revise, keep in mind there’s another version of the story in which your opponent is the hero. Give the reader little hints of that story, too.

Happy writing–with or without inspiration.

__

Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. Want writing news, events, and upcoming webinars? Join the A-List!

Stop Making Sense

Have we got an offer for you!

How did I get here?

Would you like to improve your writing craft today? By, say, 10%?

This doesn’t apply to everyone of course, but after editing essays and books and posts for the Brevity blog, for experienced writers and new writers and everyone in between, I’ve noticed a lot of repetition.

Not from book to book, although I see that. Not even from paragraph to paragraph, although I see that too.

Within the same sentence.

Sometimes it’s telling as well as showing:

He looked like an old man with his grey hair and gnarled hands.

Tell it once:

His hands were gnarled.

Better yet, show it in an action:

He ran a gnarled hand through his grey hair.

He picked at the tablecloth with a gnarled hand.

Sometimes it’s showing the same thing multiple times:

Jane patted my shoulder, gently massaging my arm to calm me down as she said, “Shhh, there, there.”

Show it once:

Jane rubbed my shoulder. “Shh, there, there.”

(Using an action as a dialogue tag is a great way to avoid repeating information.)

Sometimes it’s a festive riot of showing, telling, and over-explaining:

I picked up my phone and texted my boyfriend:

Mike rhutho wywugeybk ajboaubuo huhis ihi abidvyts

Although the only thing I spelled correctly was his name, when I sent him the text I thought it was very clear.

 Pare it down:

I texted my boyfriend:

Mike rhutho wywugeybk ajboaubuo huhis ihi abidvyts

I thought it was very clear.

Texting implies the phone is in the narrator’s hand. There’s comedy in the juxtaposition of the garbled text and “I thought it was very clear.”

As writers, we worry we’re not good enough to get our point across in fewer words. That our audience won’t “get it.” As memoirists, this hits even closer to home—what if someone reads my book and they don’t understand me? What if I don’t sound logical, or reasonable? What if I don’t make sense?

But spelling everything out distances the reader. Instead of offering the whole picture, spread out the pieces. Putting together clues to understand behavior, noticing dialogue and actions that seemingly contradict each other, guessing a character’s thoughts from their gestures—all these moments of detective work engage the reader more fully in the story. Don’t lay the evidence out neatly with an explanation—let them meet you on the page to investigate the scene of the crime.

This also applies to “filtering”:

I looked at James as he stomped over.

I knew his balled-up fists meant trouble, and I felt terrified.

I heard him shout my name.

“Looked,” “felt,” and “heard,” all remind the reader, “There’s a narrator seeing and feeling and hearing these things. You’re reading a book.”

James stomped over, his fists ready for trouble. “Caroline!”

Removing the filtering lets the reader imagine themselves in the narrator’s shoes. It’s subtle, but it puts the reader a tiny bit more in the emotion of the scene. It lets them feel for us, instead of telling them what we felt.

If you’re having a wildly creative day, by all means go generate new material. But if you’re having a day where you should do some writing…and you’ll feel better if you do…but it’s all kind of looking like a slog—start slogging. Pick some pages and use the Find tool to spot “looked” “felt” “heard” “thought” and variations on those verbs. Ask of each one, “Do I really need you here?” Scan your sentences for repetitions and over-explaining. Ask in each place, “Can I make the reader work a little harder?”

It’s not our job to make everything make sense. Our job is to lay out enticing clues and let the reader solve the puzzle with us. To immerse them in our world–but learning, feeling, and making their own sense.

__

Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. Want writing news, events, and upcoming webinars? Join the A-List!

Photo credit: Cinecom Int’/Island Alive/REX/Shutterstock (5871592c)