I drove three hours from Seattle to attend Chuck’s writing workshop, and get marionberry pie. Was it worth it?
Lesson #1 Avoid filtering. A couple of the workshoppers presented stories lush with description. The narrator or the main character tells us how wonderful or pervy their world is. Chuck pounced on the use of “I heard the birds sing” type of sentences. He said, just say the birds sang. I take that to mean - let the reader experience the story instead of having the narrator tell us about it. Instead of saying “I ate the pie and it was delicious! I’ve never had such wonderful pie.” Say “The pie filling tasted of ripe marionberries, lemon and love.” Sorry for this silly metaphor but I have to reach since time ran out before they could workshop my story.
Lesson #2 Avoid writerly words. As writers, it’s fun to be able to use words that make us sound clever or profound or funny. (I’m dying to use the word Schadenfreude) But as Elmore Leonard said, “If it sounds like a writer wrote it, rewrite.”
My interpretation: Don’t write something like - “The starving young boy devoured the pie as if he were a pup cruelly discarded by a callous bitch intent on only her own pleasure.” This is not the starving young boy speaking. It’s the narrator showing off.
Chuck adds, “Burn the tongue.” In other words, use words the way the character would use them - or misuse them. If the character is a starving young boy eating pie, he would say something more like, “Man, this pie rocks… almost as good as the one from King Soopers.”
Lesson #3 Make objects unique to further the story, reveal character or raise the stakes. Chuck noted that pills appeared in one story, but then they never appeared again. In his Fight Club story, a gun appears but the main character makes specific modifications to the gun (drills holes into it) to make the scene memorable. My take: I love pie, but not just any pie. I love marionberry pie.
Chuck said the objects need to be always present and have a payoff. In last week’s workshop (see the last post), he noticed the old dog that appeared in the middle of my story. I had poor Benny accidentally pee on the kitchen floor to show how old he is. Chuck said, “Use that old dog and his pee.” So at the beginning of the story, I had Grace mop up the dog’s pee with the newspaper announcing WWII. Then I had the dying dog pee all over Grace’s legs at the end of the story. Now those objects (old dog, pee) heighten the tension in the story, engages the reader and ties the story together.
My pet peeve. No matter how fantastic, gory, erotic the opening scene is, I want to know WHY the characters are in this scene (and why are we reading this). The writer doesn’t have to spell it out but I love hints showing me what direction we are going in. One story started off with a main character doing art therapy. I want to know WHY is he doing art therapy. Is he suicidal? A murderer? Having a nervous breakdown? Unless I’m an art therapist, I’m not going to be very interested in the experience of doing art therapy itself. In other words, I want to know what problem the main character is facing. Then I will want to know how he tries to solve that problem using the art therapy class.
So WHY did I get the marionberry pie? I’ve never been a good pie maker. My skills as a mother of three did not include baking. But somehow I feel like the ability to bake a good pie is a part of being a good American mother. Am I trying to make up for my deficits by getting this pie? Maybe. I’ll take some of the pie over to my 30 year old son on Capitol Hill. Maybe he’ll love me more.
I didn’t know about marionberries until I left Colorado (where I got divorced) and came to Seattle. I love the fact that I can only get good marionberry pie in Portland, and nowhere else. Not only did I drive three hours, I had to dig around to learn about Lauretta Jean’s bakery. So now this pie sits on my kitchen countertop, glowing like a valuable treasure . Over the next few days, I’m going to savor and enjoy every bite.
Another pet peeve. It has to make sense. In the 1941 San Francisco story I brought last week, Grace used rat poison to kill her dog. I told about that part of the story to a dog owner friend. She said, “No way would I use rat poison in that situation. Rat poison would be messy, painful and awful to watch.”
So I replaced rat poison with Grace’s sleeping pills. This actually gave me the idea of having Grace be prescribed sleeping pills because she feels terrible guilt. This adds depth to her character. In an earlier chapter, I will insert the sleeping pills she has to use to help her sleep after the car accident which killed her parents. So in a way, Grace is killing part of herself when she puts down her dog. Using objects repeatedly in different ways is fun for the reader to discover. She’ll naturally draw connections between different scenes and characters.
Wow! The workshop let you rework your story with such interesting ways with objects. The pills and the pee, certainly did help build up the tension around Benny. I'm sure as a device it will come in handy to serve the reader for the remainder of the story too.
If you go for another session, hopefully you will be placed near the front of the line to workshop your next story!
I'll be heading to Portland on Monday and can wander to Lauretta Jean’s bakery for this marionberry treat. But, I've been starving on this Mediterranean diet that has me swearing off carbs. Maybe it's time for a cheat day. Time to eat the pie!
Thank you for laying out the information in a fun and exciting way. I enjoyed the way you incorporated each lesson into your own examples. It helps me retain the information and hopefully I will be able to use each leason to enhance my stories.