Tag Archives: writing

The Logic of Writing

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logic puzzleArtists, and that includes writers, have the stereotypical reputation for being impulsive, living and working by intuitive steps. Beyond all else there is—so it is often believed—an emotional basis to creativity. Surely some. From this writer’s point of view, what is also fundamental is rational logic. To write true, to use a Hemingway term, a story must unfold in a logical sequence of events. Crudely put, a plot is a series of cause-and-effect sequences until the ending has a logical resolution. When cause and effect are not logical, readers balk. “Doesn’t make sense.” “I can’t follow the story.” “Too many coincidences.” “You lost me.” “Not believable.” “Implausible.” In fact, there is a veritable dictionary of phrases that are used to reject stories which have no innate logic. That doesn’t mean a story can’t have the unexpected or surprises. Indeed, if the unexpected is simultaneously perceived as logical, the reader is pleased, even delighted. Just witness the enormous success of mysteries in which the logic explanation is there, but hidden. The extraordinary popularity of Sherlock Holmes is due, I think, because brilliant logical deductive reasoning is his character. Of course, to compose three hundred pages or more (or less) of logic, is anything, dear Watson,  but “Elementary.”

Writing by the seat of your pants

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flight controlsThe expression “flying by the seat of your pants” is a term that seems to come from the early days of aviation. At that time, there was little or no instrumentation to tell you how your airplane was flying, how your engines were functioning, where you were, and in what direction you were headed. So you felt—via the seat upon which you sat—all those things.

There are writers who know exactly what they are doing, where they are going, and—so to speak—all about the book they are piloting so they can bring the ship down for a perfect landing. I have written books when I have known all those things, too. Nice work when you can get it. Not at the moment. In my current project I’ll be flying on—if you will—when I suddenly say to myself, “No! Not that way. Better go this way.” Or, “Look out! You are about to crash!” Or, “You are in the fog. Find a way out!”

To continue this not-so-lofty metaphor, I am hoping that the passengers—my readers—won’t notice all these lurches and turbulence. I hope that we’ll land in the airport safely—wherever that might be. But … best keep your seatbelts buckled.

The exact wrong word

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repetitive writingWhen one writes, and one is into the flow of writing, it’s not only easy to repeat the same word, it is a common practice. I’m not referring to big, key words, but the small words that are actually more ordinary in conversational English, rather than literary writing. These are words like just, only, really, meanwhile. They could be phrases like it seemed to me, I stood there, the next moment. I’m sure you can think of many more. Their very repetitions blunt the edge of your prose, and make their use, when vital, very less meaningful. One can, and one does. go through a manuscript and pluck out these weak straws, but it’s so very easy to miss them, more so when you’ve gone over your book a few thousand times. It is here that the computer really makes a difference. Your computer can do what I believe is called a global search and bring these words and phrases right to your eyes and you can do something about them.

Exactly When

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journalKylee, of Madison, Wisconsin, asked me, “How old were you when you knew you wanted to be a writer?”

As it happens I know exactly when. At the beginning of 1955 I decided to keep a diary. On January the First, I wrote, “Considering this a very important year in my life—the school musical, graduation, summer, first year of college, I thought it would be a good idea to record these events … because I wish to clarify my own thinking and ideas.”

The diary has long lists of books I was reading, as well as quotes I liked: “For words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.” (Tennyson) The pages are full of my own wise thoughts, too. “Read Plato. Not bad.” It chronicles my seventeen-year-old efforts at writing, reading, my love of the theatre, and my crushes on girls. 

On March 28, 1955, I wrote: “Well, I finally said it out loud. I intend to stay with the theatre.  In the theatre one can do everything in the world—write, build and be anything or anybody … There is so much to write about.”

I had decided to become a writer, a playwright. From playwright to writer of books for young people is a whole other story. But March 28, 1955 was the day I knew I wanted to be a writer.

Pentimento

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Go back and try againWhen you are reading a book it’s easy to feel the continuity and arch of the story, especially when it flows right along. But what about a writer’s mistakes, the wrong turns taken? Hopefully you don’t see the evidence. You don’t see them because, if the writer and editor have done their jobs, they are no longer in the book. Those false steps were erased. Who was it that said the writer’s tool—a pencil—has two equal ends—the leaded end and the eraser end?

Now I’ve been working on a book for a good number of months. Generally speaking it was going well. Then, perhaps a month and a half ago I decided on a big change, and worked accordingly, so that that change manifested itself everywhere. But after all that was done, I decided I had made a poor decision. That meant going back and eradicating all traces of that choice. It was as if, having painted the house a certain color, cellar to roof, I realized my selection was poor. Even before I repainted, I had to remove the old color—(hopefully) all of it. 

So on one level I lost a month’s worth of forward progress. Yet I have learned, that even this kind of work—and some of it is drudge work—brings the writer into a better understanding of the work in hand. 

There is a perfect art term for this: pentimento. “A sign or trace of an alteration in a literary or artistic work; (spec. in Painting) a visible trace of a mistake or an earlier composition seen through later layers of paint on a canvas.” OED

Every book has such layers.

Fictional logic

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Readers don’t often think about logic when reading fiction, but they know it when it’s not there: “That makes no sense!” Or, “I don’t believe it.” Or, even “But on page thirty, you wrote . . . .“

Fictional logic, by which I mean cause, motivation, and result, needs to be seamless, perhaps invisible, yet that logic is the inner core of the story. It makes a story go from page one to “the end.” Yet, it if it is too obvious, the tale seems predictable, perhaps dull. Too obscure and the reader can’t follow the trail. To make it more complex, I love the notion I have quoted many times, Robert Frost’s dictum, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”

What’s a writer to do? He/she must imagine—and set down—the whole complexity of the characters’ world, but in the subtlest way possible.

As in life, all people are complex. Imbedded in that complexity are multiple choices. The complex character thus can logically do any number of things, and the reader will believe.  Is that hard to achieve? Oh my, yes!

Making Connections

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connectionOne of the key factors in writing a novel is memory, which is to say, the ability to remember what you wrote, while remembering where you are going. One of the strengths of the novel is the making of connections, connecting what has happened to what will happen, remembering character traits, or other details that bind the book together, that can give it depth. Consider, for example, the Harry Potter books, which, taken as a whole, and in this context, are a huge achievement. Make no mistake, readers can and will take the author to task if you make a mistake, if the shoe, so to speak, which was put on the right foot, appears on the left. Readers, I believe, love those connections, particularly when you catch them by surprise, yet they grasp what you have done. The seed dropped, so to speak, on page two, which flowers on page two ninety two, smells sweet. Not only do readers love it, writers love it, too.

To write is to write.

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Be quietOver my years as a writer I’ve learned not to talk about the work when I am in the process of creating a story. The more I talk about the story, the less it is on paper, so to speak. When I talk about what I am writing, it seems to lock up the free flow of invention. It stifles intuition. It’s as if I become committed to the idea of the story, rather than to the story itself. The worst thing I can do is intellectually define the story. My job is to make the story come alive in my writing, not in my talking. To talk about the story implies that what I say is in the story. For example, if I say my story is about an intelligent person who makes a foolish decision, it doesn’t mean I have written that. I’ve only talked it. That’s why when someone asks me what I am writing, I duck away. Indeed, the more someone tells me what they are going to write, the more certain I am that it will never be written. To write is to write. The talk can come later.

“Why do your books change style so often?”

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ice cream coneTory from Greeley, CO, writes: “Why do your books change style so often?”

My usual response to this often-asked question is, “do you only like one flavor of ice cream?”

My changes of style occur in part because it’s much more fun to write in different ways. Simply put, it’s challenging to write different kinds of books. Repetition can be boring.

The more interesting answer is to quote Flaubert—the French novelist—who said, “Style is a way of seeing.”

In other words, the way a book is written is part of the book itself. Style is, if you will, a silent character in the book, the character who allows the plot, the characters, and the ideas in the book to be expressed in different ways. Is the language terse? It is poetic? Does the action unfold slowly, quickly? Is the story tense? Languid? Or is it a mix of these things?

For each book I write, I try to decide how the story is to be told. Indeed, each time, I need to think who is telling the story. In short, the story teller is always part of the story.

A heap of manure

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Fossil fernYears and years ago, when I was in college—and already determined to be a writer—I had a number of vital mentors. ( If you are a young writer and you have a mentor who takes you seriously, you have a very great gift.)  In any case, one of my mentors was a singer by the name of Lee Hays, the baritone for the popular singing group The Weavers. He was also a writer. A family friend who lived in the neighborhood, he took an interest in me and my writing. One day I came back from college and (unabashedly) handed him a pile of my writing and asked him to critique it. He requested that I come back in a week. Which I did.

“Well, Lee,” I said, “what do you think?” 

“Well Avi,” he rumbled in his wonderful, deep Arkansas accent, “It takes a heap of manure to make a flower grow.”

I have never forgotten that remark, not just because it was wonderful, funny, and apt, but because it also has never ceased to be true. What the writer writes, for the most part, is bad. Poor. Inept.

Good writing is all about rewriting. The hardest part of writing for me, is not the act of creation, per se, it is that I know what I am writing is bad stuff. But you have to have the bad to get to the good. 

Stuck to my writing computer is a small fossil fern. I know it took millions and millions of years to create. That’s a lot of manure. But  . . .  it’s very beautiful now. It’s there because I am trying to write something that will be good. In time . . .