Sorry, I skipped writing about workshop #7. That day the group workshopped THE CHAPTER, the one I’ve been dreading writing ever since I started writing my novel. This chapter is based on what my 93 year old relative, a pathologist told me about his experience in Hiroshima. I knew this story was going to not only take me out of my comfort zone, it would force me to go face to face with my worst fears. For that week, my brain was pretty much a mess, trying to make sense of the story I needed to tell. I was amazed I was able to produce anything coherent.
The other day at the Omoide meeting (Japanese American writers group) my friend Lori Matsukawa mentioned she read Jamie Ford’s new book and she brought up this term epigenetics. https://iexaminer.org/jamie-ford-takes-on-themes-of-intergenerational-trauma-and-epigenic-inheritances-in-his-newest-novel-the-many-daughters-of-afong-moy/
Online epigenetics is dryly described as “the study of heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence.” What it means to me is - there are remnants in my body, my mind of trauma from before memory or earlier generations. I call them ghosts or yūrei floating around the back of my mind. Others might call this mental illness or even the muse.
Maybe trauma is at the root of my writing. Even though I have no physical injuries myself, the trauma suffered by my parents and their generation during WWII has imbedded itself into my brain cells. And until I can write about them, they are going to keep haunting me.
When I look back on my notes from writing workshop #8, I see the theme of epigenetic inheritances. Most of the folks in Chuck’s workshop are writing about trauma we haven’t experienced ourselves. But as each person reads their story out loud, we can recognize when the author is holding back or skittering around the edges.
Chuck talks about the vertical and the horizontal of stories. The horizontal is the sequence of events. This happened and then this happened and so on. The vertical is the amount of emotional tension. Chuck has suggested that the vertical in the stories is often weak or not strong enough. A famous example is the difference between these two simple stories: 1) The King died. Then the Queen died. 2) The King died. Then the Queen died of grief.
In Ethan’s story “Game Over” two brothers fight over a Gameboy. I suspect that the character of the mother is kept in check out of fear of what might be revealed about the young son’s true feelings about his divorced parents.
In Daniel’s story about Gray Ghost Caribou, I felt the writer was hedging by pointing out that the main character listened to NPR before embarking on his quest to hunt the hunters. By hedging, I mean the writer includes information to show the reader - see? I’m not really such a bad guy. If you’re going to have someone murder somebody, I want to really believe he is capable of that.
I loved Jake’s (from North Carolina) style of writing in his story A Cruel Lesson. Wonderful character sketches! But Chuck was right. The writer needed to thread a compelling story line through all the characters, pulling them all together. I especially wanted the ending scene at the cemetery to have a great punch tying in the revelation of the daughter’s death to the lessons on the ice. Jake’s story reminded me of the documentary about the Trashers hockey team. The film “Untold:Crime and Penalties” was a fascinating journey into this bizarre violent world with their own rules.
I like using old parables as Rosie did in her story It’s Just Breakfast but again, Chuck was right. This parable needed to be pushed much harder to twist the outcome so we are surprised. Use people’s expectations to suddenly turn us into a different direction. I wanted irony, dark humor and pathos to connect us to the main character.
I hope Tom understood me when I said, “I don’t like the wife.” In Tom’s story A Killer Story, I understood the presence of the narrator’s wife to be his conscience. I was told once, to ask yourself in times of difficulty - what would Mom say? Same thing. In life, I want to make the right decisions. But in stories, I want to see what happens when the characters make the wrong decisions. I don’t want a wife/conscience telling him how to make the right choice. If I ever meet Tom’s wife, I’m sure I’ll like her.
In Chris’s story Returns, I agree with Chuck’s suggestions. Add something like a foreign accent to make the main character more unique and surprising. Cut the summaries and exposition. Add pathos.
Chuck wrote his comments on my piece about the Hiroshima bomb. I was especially taken aback by his comment “add the photos.” The photos were what horrified me the most but I realized he was right. I have to put the photos back in again to balance out the technical details and ground the reader in the terrible reality. So here’s the photo I added at the end of my story - yes, it’s a real photo taken of the human remains collected by the Occupation forces. After reading my story and seeing this photo, you’ll never look at specimen jars the same.
I was reminded to tap into epigenetics, the trauma that remains in your body from the past, to draw out the vertical in the story line.
You have a wonderful way of writing about the workshop and encapsulating the key points. And how you apply them to your own writing - well, you're using your epigenetic trauma well. Nice work, Nana.
I appreciated your story. I think more people need to write about this sort of trauma so we learn from it. That way it hopefully never has to happen again.