Short Story • 2/6 • Eckleburg

Narrative Voice with Alice Munro and Ernest Hemingway

All writers, if they are being honest, pay homage to the master writers who came before them. In this revision process, we are going to identify a favorite writer and voice, the voice that makes you envious and feel at home all at once. We are going to use this voice to further fine-tune your own voice in your work.

Choose a favorite writer and work. This writer and work should reflect the following in your current workshop manuscript: genre (fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, intermedia, cross-over or combination of one or more genres.) This must be an identification you make for yourself. Someone else making this identification for you will be less effective. If you find you are having difficulty deciding on which writer and work best suits you and your manuscript, email me and let’s discuss it. While you are considering this, think about whether or not readers have compared you to other writers in the past. Be wary of choosing a writer who wrote before the modernist era. Language aesthetics have changed considerably since fin de siecle and you will want to fashion your own voice in such a way that it is both uniquely your own and also meeting your contemporary readership. Mixing in classic elements is fantastic but should be done with surgical skill so not to alienate a contemporary readership.

Once you have identified your writer and work, acquire the first 300 to 500 words of this work. Maybe this is already in your library OR find a free copy located online. Purchase the work if you must. Either way, this writer and work should be yours already, so let’s make it part of your library. Make sure you choose a work you can acquire within a day or two. Most everything is available in digital download format.

Now that you have your narrative voice model, 300 to 500 word excerpt, read it aloud. Read it aloud so many times that you can recite the first few lines without looking at the page.

Next, hand write or type, whichever works best for you, the excerpt. Some writers who use this narrative voice technique feel that hand writing is necessary to absorbing the voice of the model work, however, those who have grown their craft in a purely computerized era, may feel that typing is their preferred creative writing modality and so typing works best for them. Do whatever is best for you.

Once you’ve written or typed your chosen excerpt, I want you to replace the predominant setting and character(s) of this excerpt with that of your workshop manuscript. For instance, if you choose “Hills Like White Elephants,” you will replace the two main characters lines with that of your two main characters, or if your work only has one character, replace one of Hemingway’s characters with your own. Perhaps Hemingway’s story turns its focus from hills to urban buildings, abortion to loss of a job. Perhaps the train station and tracks become a Manhattan cafe and cab filled streets. Use Hemingway’s voice (or whatever your Hemingway is) to recreate your manuscript in the tone, setting and voice of Hemingway’s classic. (Obviously, Hemingway in no way needs to be your model. I have a love/hate relationship with Hemingway, personally, so please do not feel Hemingway is a suggestion, merely an example. Perhaps, Alice Munro is yours.) [/tab]

“Runaway”

Alice Munro

Carla heard the car coming before it topped the little rise in the road that around here they called a hill. It’s her, she thought. Mrs. Jamieson—Sylvia—home from her holiday in Greece. From the barn door—but far enough inside that she could not easily be seen—she watched the road where Mrs. Jamieson would have to drive by, her place being half a mile farther along than Clark and Carla’s.

If it was somebody coming to see them, the car would be slowing down by now. But still Carla hoped. Let it not be her.

It was. Mrs. Jamieson turned her head once, quickly—she had all she could do to maneuver her car through the ruts and puddles the rain had made in the gravel—but she didn’t lift a hand off the wheel to wave, she didn’t spot Carla. Carla got a glimpse of a tanned arm bare to the shoulder, hair bleached a lighter color than it had been before, more white now than silver-blond, and an expression that was both exasperated and amused at her own exasperation—just the way Mrs. Jamieson would look negotiating this road. When she turned her head there was something like a bright flash—of inquiry, of hopefulness—that made Carla shrink back.

So.

Maybe Clark didn’t know yet. If he was sitting at the computer, he would have his back to the window and the road.

But he would have to know before long. Mrs. Jamieson might have to make another trip—for groceries, perhaps. He might see her then. And after dark the lights of her house would show. But this was July and it didn’t get dark till late. She might be so tired that she wouldn’t bother with the lights; she might go to bed early.

On the other hand, she might telephone. Anytime now.

This was the summer of rain and more rain. They heard it first thing in the morning, loud on the roof of the mobile home. The trails were deep in mud, the long grass soaking, leaves overhead sending down random showers even in those moments when there was no actual downpour from the sky. Carla wore a wide-brimmed old Australian felt hat every time she went outside, and tucked her long thick braid down her shirt.

Nobody showed up for trail rides—even though Clark and Carla had gone around posting signs at all the campsites, in the cafés, and on the tourist-office bulletin board, and anywhere else they could think of. Only a few pupils were coming for lessons, and those were regulars, not the batches of schoolchildren on vacation or the busloads from summer camps that had kept them going the summer before. And even the regulars took time off for holiday trips, or simply cancelled their lessons because of the weather. If they called too late, Clark charged them anyway. A couple of them had argued, and quit for good….

“Hills Like White Elephants”

Ernest Hemingway

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.

‘What should we drink?’ the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.

‘It’s pretty hot,’ the man said.

‘Let’s drink beer.’

‘Dos cervezas,’ the man said into the curtain.

‘Big ones?’ a woman asked from the doorway.

‘Yes. Two big ones.’

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills.

They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

‘They look like white elephants,’ she said.

‘I’ve never seen one,’ the man drank his beer.

‘No, you wouldn’t have.’

‘I might have,’ the man said. ‘Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.’

The girl looked at the bead curtain. ‘They’ve painted something on it,’ she said. ‘What does it say?’

‘Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.’

‘Could we try it?’

The man called ‘Listen’ through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.

‘Four reales.’ ‘We want two Anis del Toro.’

‘With water?’

‘Do you want it with water?’

‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘Is it good with water?’

‘It’s all right.’

‘You want them with water?’ asked the woman.

‘Yes, with water.’

‘It tastes like liquorice,’ the girl said and put the glass down.

‘That’s the way with everything.’

‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.’

‘Oh, cut it out.’

‘You started it,’ the girl said. ‘I was being amused. I was having a fine time.’

‘Well, let’s try and have a fine time.’

‘All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?’

‘That was bright.’

‘I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it look at things and try new drinks?’

‘I guess so.’

The girl looked across at the hills.

‘They’re lovely hills,’ she said. ‘They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.’

‘Should we have another drink?’

‘All right….’

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Character Presentation: Indirect Methods

Indirect Methods

from Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft

AUTHORIAL INTERPRETATION

This form allows for the most versatility and “godlike” access to characters and motivations. In this, the descriptions can move around in time and with any character; however, this versatility comes with a cost. Authorial interpretation will also likely distance your reader.

INTERPRETATION BY ANOTHER CHARACTER

This form of interpretation can bring the reader in close to both the character giving the interpretation as well as the character being interpreted.

BUILDING DRAMATIC TENSION AND CONFLICT BETWEEN METHODS OF PRESENTATION

Consider the Following in “Tenth of December”:

The boy lives in a science fiction fantasy world. The narrator (author) describes the boy’s appearance and motivations. The reader gathers the boy’s descriptions through authorial interpretation. Then the boy sees “a man”:

Then he beheld, halfway up Lexow Hill, a man.

Coatless, bald-headed man. Super skinny. In what looked like pajamas. Climbing plodfully, with tortoise patience, bare white arms sticking out of his p.j. shirt like two bare white branches sticking out of a p.j. shirt. Or grave.

What kind of person leaves his coat behind on a day like this? The mental kind, that was who. This guy looked sort of mental. Like an Auschwitz dude or sad confused grandpa.

Dad had once said, Trust your mind, Rob. If it smells like shit but has writing across it that says Happy Birthday and a candle stuck down in it, what is it?

Is there icing on it? he’d said.

Dad had done that thing of squinting his eyes when an answer was not quite there yet.

The boy describes to the reader this man (interpretation by another character) and the man’s motivations. The boy assumes the man is “mental.” The reader understands the man is committing suicide, but the boy assumes the man is just a confused “grandpa.” In this moment, the conflicts between character presentations of the man build dramatic tension. The reader knows something the boy does not know and perhaps fears for the boy’s safety. Is the old man dangerous not only to himself but to others?

Reading Assignment

“Tenth of December”
by George Saunders
Read the Entire Work for Free at The New Yorker

[dropcap]The[/dropcap] pale boy with unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms hulked to the mudroom closet and requisitioned Dad’s white coat. Then requisitioned the boots he’d spray-painted white. Painting the pellet gun white had been a no. That was a gift from Aunt Chloe. Every time she came over he had to haul it out so she could make a big stink about the woodgrain.

Today’s assignation: walk to pond, ascertain beaver dam. Likely he would be detained. By that species that lived amongst the old rock wall. They were small but, upon emerging, assumed certain proportions. And gave chase. This was just their methodology. His aplomb threw them loops. He knew that. And revelled it. He would turn, level the pellet gun, intone: Are you aware of the usage of this human implement?

Blam!

They were Netherworlders. Or Nethers. They had a strange bond with him. Sometimes for whole days he would just nurse their wounds. Occasionally, for a joke, he would shoot one in the butt as it fled. Who henceforth would limp for the rest of its days. Which could be as long as an additional nine million years.

Safe inside the rock wall, the shot one would go, Guys, look at my butt.

As a group, all would look at Gzeemon’s butt, exchanging sullen glances of: Gzeemon shall indeed be limping for the next nine million years, poor bloke.

Because yes: Nethers tended to talk like that guy in “Mary Poppins.”

Which naturally raised some mysteries as to their origin here on Earth.

Detaining him was problematic for the Nethers. He was wily. Plus could not fit through their rock-wall opening. When they tied him up and went inside to brew their special miniaturizing potion—Wham!—he would snap their antiquated rope with a move from his self-invented martial-arts system, Toi Foi, a.k.a. Deadly Forearms. And place at their doorway an implacable rock of suffocation, trapping them inside.

Later, imagining them in their death throes, taking pity on them, he would come back, move the rock.

Blimey, one of them might say from withal. Thanks, guv’nor. You are indeed a worthy adversary.

Sometimes there would be torture. They would make him lie on his back looking up at the racing clouds while they tortured him in ways he could actually take. They tended to leave his teeth alone. Which was lucky. He didn’t even like to get a cleaning. They were dunderheads in that manner. They never messed with his peen and never messed with his fingernails. He’d just abide there, infuriating them with his snow angels. Sometimes, believing it their coup de grâce, not realizing he’d heard this since time in memorial from certain in-school cretins, they’d go, Wow, we didn’t even know Robin could be a boy’s name. And chortle their Nether laughs.

Today he had a feeling that the Nethers might kidnap Suzanne Bledsoe, the new girl in homeroom. She was from Montreal. He just loved the way she talked. So, apparently, did the Nethers, who planned to use her to repopulate their depleted numbers and bake various things they did not know how to bake.

All suited up now, NASA. Turning awkwardly to go out door.

Affirmative. We have your coördinates. Be careful out there, Robin.

Whoa, cold, dang.

Duck thermometer read ten. And that was without windchill. That made it fun. That made it real. A green Nissan was parked where Poole dead-ended into the soccer field. Hopefully the owner was not some perv he would have to outwit.

Or a Nether in the human guise.

Bright, bright blue and cold. Crunch went the snow as he crossed the soccer field. Why did cold such as this give a running guy a headache? Likely it was due to Prominent Windspeed Velocity.

The path into the woods was as wide as one human. It seemed the Nether had indeed kidnapped Suzanne Bledsoe. Damn him! And his ilk. Judging by the single set of tracks, the Nether appeared to be carrying her. Foul cad. He’d better not be touching Suzanne inappropriately while carrying her. If so, Suzanne would no doubt be resisting with untamable fury.

This was concerning, this was very concerning.

When he caught up to them, he would say, Look, Suzanne, I know you don’t know my name, having misaddressed me as Roger that time you asked me to scoot over, but nevertheless I must confess I feel there is something to us. Do you feel the same?

Suzanne had the most amazing brown eyes. They were wet now, with fear and sudden reality.

Stop talking to her, mate, the Nether said.

I won’t, he said. And, Suzanne? Even if you don’t feel there is something to us, rest assured I will still slay this fellow and return you home. Where do you live again? Over in El Cirro? By the water tower? Those are some nice houses back there.

Well, that’s nice to hear, he said. Thank you for saying that. I know I’m not the thinnest.

The thing about girls? Suzanne said. Is we are more content-driven.

Will you two stop already? the Nether said. Because now is the time for your death. Deaths.

Well, now is certainly the time for somebody’s death, Robin said.

The twerpy thing was you never really got to save anyone. Last summer there’d been a dying raccoon out here. He’d thought of lugging it home so Mom could call the vet. But up close it was too scary. Raccoons being actually bigger than they appear in cartoons. And this one looked like a potential biter. So he ran home to get it some water at least. Upon his return, he saw where the raccoon had done some apparent last-minute thrashing. That was sad. He didn’t do well with sad. There had perchance been some pre-weeping, by him, in the woods.

Well, I don’t know, he said modestly.

Here was the old truck tire. Where the high-school kids partied. Inside the tire, frosted with snow, were three beer cans and a wadded-up blanket.

You probably like to party, the Nether had cracked to Suzanne moments earlier as they passed this very spot.

No, I don’t, Suzanne said. I like to play. And I like to hug.

Hoo boy, the Nether said. Sounds like Dullsville.

Somewhere there is a man who likes to play and hug, Suzanne said.

He came out of the woods now to the prettiest vista he knew. The pond was a pure frozen white. It struck him as somewhat Switzerlandish. Someday he would know for sure. When the Swiss threw him a parade or whatnot.

Here the Nether’s tracks departed from the path, as if he had contemplatively taken a moment to gaze at the pond. Perhaps this Nether was not all bad. Perhaps he was having a debilitating conscience attack vis-à-vis the valiantly struggling Suzanne atop his back. At least he seemed to somewhat love nature.

Then the tracks returned to the path, wound around the pond, and headed up Lexow Hill.

What was this strange object? A coat? On the bench? The bench the Nethers used for their human sacrifices?

No accumulated snow on coat. Inside of coat still slightly warm.

Ergo: the recently discarded coat of the Nether.

This was some strange juju. This was an intriguing conundrum, if he had ever encountered one. Which he had. Once, he’d found a bra on the handlebars of a bike. Once, he’d found an entire untouched steak dinner on a plate behind Fresno’s. And hadn’t eaten it. Though it had looked pretty good.

Something was afoot.

Then he beheld, halfway up Lexow Hill, a man.

What kind of person leaves his coat behind on a day like this? The mental kind, that was who. This guy looked sort of mental. Like an Auschwitz dude or sad confused grandpa.

Dad had once said, Trust your mind, Rob. If it smells like shit but has writing across it that says Happy Birthday and a candle stuck down in it, what is it?

Is there icing on it? he’d said.

Dad had done that thing of squinting his eyes when an answer was not quite there yet.

Something was wrong here. A person needed a coat. Even if the person was a grownup. The pond was frozen. The duck thermometer said ten. If the person was mental, all the more reason to come to his aid, as had not Jesus said, Blessed are those who help those who cannot help themselves, but are too mental, doddering, or have a disability?

He snagged the coat off the bench.

It was a rescue. A real rescue, at last, sort of.

[dropcap]Ten[/dropcap] minutes earlier, Don Eber had paused at the pond to catch his breath.

He was so tired. What a thing. Holy moly. When he used to walk Sasquatch out here they’d do six times around the pond, jog up the hill, tag the boulder on top, sprint back down.

Better get moving, said one of two guys who’d been in discussion in his head all morning.

That is, if you’re still set on the boulder idea, the other said.

Which still strikes us as kind of fancy-pants.

Seemed like one guy was Dad and the other Kip Flemish.

Stupid cheaters. They’d switched spouses, abandoned the switched spouses, fled together to California. Had they been gay? Or just swingers? Gay swingers? The Dad and Kip in his head had acknowledged their sins and the three of them had struck a deal: he would forgive them for being possible gay swingers and leaving him to do Soap Box Derby alone, with just Mom, and they would consent to giving him some solid manly advice.

He wants it to be nice.

This was Dad now. It seemed Dad was somewhat on his side.

Nice? Kip said. That is not the word I would use.

A cardinal zinged across the day.

It was amazing. Amazing, really. He was young. He was fifty-three. Now he’d never deliver his major national speech on compassion. What about going down the Mississippi in a canoe? What about living in an A-frame near a shady creek with the two hippie girls he’d met in 1968 in that souvenir shop in the Ozarks, when Allen, his stepfather, wearing those crazy aviators, had bought him a bag of fossil rocks? One of the hippie girls had said that he, Eber, would be a fox when he grew up, and would he please be sure to call her at that time? Then the hippie girls had put their tawny heads together and giggled at his prospective foxiness. And that had never—

That had somehow never—

Sister Val had said, Why not shoot for being the next J.F.K.? So he had run for class president. Allen had bought him a Styrofoam straw boater. They’d sat together, decorating the hatband with Magic Markers. WIN WITH EBER! ON THE BACK: GROOVY! Allen had helped him record a tape. Of a little speech. Allen had taken that tape somewhere and come back with thirty copies, “to pass around.”

And he’d done it. He’d won. Allen had thrown him a victory party. A pizza party. All the kids had come.

Oh, Allen.

Kindest man ever. Had taken him swimming. Had taken him to découpage. Had combed out his hair so patiently that time he came home with lice. Never a harsh, etc., etc.

Not so once the suffering begat. Began. God damn it. More and more his words. Askew. More and more his words were not what he would hoped.

Hope.

Once the suffering began, Allen had raged. Said things no one should say. To Mom, to Eber, to the guy delivering water. Went from a shy man, always placing a reassuring hand on your back, to a diminished pale figure in a bed, shouting CUNT!

Except with some weird New England accent, so it came out KANT!

The first time Allen had shouted KANT! there followed a funny moment during which he and Mom looked at each other to see which of them was being called KANT. But then Allen amended, for clarity: KANTS!

“You are breaking so many laws right now I don’t even know where to begin.

So it was clear he meant both of them. What a relief.

They’d cracked up.

Jeez, how long had he been standing here? Daylight was waiting.

Wasting.

I honestly didn’t know what to do. But he made it so simple.

Took it all on himself.

So what else is new?

Exactly.

This was Jodi and Tommy now.

Hi, kids.

Big day today.

I mean, sure, it would have been nice to have a chance to say a proper goodbye.

But at what cost?

Exactly. And see—he knew that.

He was a father. That’s what a father does.

Eases the burdens of those he loves.

Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.

Soon Allen had become THAT. And no one was going to fault anybody for avoiding THAT. Sometimes he and Mom would huddle in the kitchen. Rather than risk incurring the wrath of THAT. Even THAT understood the deal. You’d trot in a glass of water, set it down, say, very politely, Anything else, Allen? And you’d see THAT thinking, All these years I was so good to you people and now I am merely THAT? Sometimes the gentle Allen would be inside there, too, indicating, with his eyes, Look, go away, please go away, I am trying so hard not to call you KANT!

Rail-thin, ribs sticking out.

Catheter taped to dick.

Waft of shit smell.

You are not Allen and Allen is not you.

So Molly had said.

As for Dr. Spivey, he couldn’t say. Wouldn’t say. Was busy drawing a daisy on a Post-it. Then finally said, Well, honestly? As these things grow, they can tend to do weird things. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be terrible. Had one guy? Just always craved him a Sprite.

That’s how they got you. You thought, Maybe I’ll just crave me a Sprite. Next thing you knew, you were THAT, shouting KANT!, shitting your bed, swatting at the people who were scrambling to clean you.

No, sir.

No sirree bob.

Wednesday he’d fallen out of the med-bed again. There on the floor in the dark it had come to him: I could spare them.

Spare us? Or spare you?

Get thee behind me.

Get thee behind me, sweetie.

A breeze sent down a sequence of linear snow puffs from somewhere above. Beautiful. Why were we made just so, to find so many things that happened every day pretty?

He took off his coat.

Good Christ.

Took off his hat and gloves, stuffed the hat and gloves in a sleeve of the coat, left the coat on the bench.

This way they’d know. They’d find the car, walk up the path, find the coat.

It was a miracle. That he’d got this far. Well, he’d always been strong. Once, he’d run a half-marathon with a broken foot. After his vasectomy he’d cleaned the garage, no problem.

He’d waited in the med-bed for Molly to go off to the pharmacy. That was the toughest part. Just calling out a normal goodbye.

His mind veered toward her now, and he jerked it back with a prayer: Let me pull this off. Lord, let me not fuck it up. Let me bring no dishonor. Leg me do it cling.

Let. Let me do it cling.

Clean.

Cleanly….

Read the Entire Work for Free at The New Yorker

Writing Assignment

1. Open your 3,000 word or less excerpt or story that you used last week. Use this same narrative for your exercise this week.

2. Identify the two main opposing characters. Identify and label, in the manuscript, the point at which each individual character is first introduced to the reader. Identify and label these points of interpretation. Are they direct or indirect? Authorial, by another character, etc.

3. Rewrite these character descriptions so that one character is described via authorial interpretation and one character is described via the other characters PoV. You can do this in either first-person PoV or third-person subjective (close in on the first character’s perspective).

Discussion

How does the method of presentation increase dramatic tension within the narrative? What specifically does one character assume about the other character that the reader knows is not true? How might this wrong assumption support the overall conflict and arc of the narrative?

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Tone, Written Speech and Jimi Hendrix

Tone is a slippery thing, as in film making or music it’s only part technical. You can learn what effects pedals Hendrix used, which minor blues scales he relied on, and that will help you get closer to understanding why his ‘Star Spangled Banner’ sounds different that the stately (i.e. boring) version they play before ball games. You can discover that Winston Churchill sought out Germanic (specifically Old English) roots over Romantic ones – think of the difference between a belly full of anger and an abdomen full of ire – but in the end that’s only part of what gives the language of the ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech its punch and immediacy. You can read up on which cameras Kubrick used, which framing ratios he favored, and you’ll start to get a better idea of why The Shinning is so unsettling.

This course will discuss these kind of technical aspects – which, in prose are word choice, sentence and paragraph structure, grammatical and syntactical ‘deviation’ (i.e. when to break the rules of classic composition) – but they’re only part of the overall picture. Many of you will discover that, if you can write well, you already have an innate sense of these technicalities; formalizing them will simply give you a clearer idea of why some lines feel good and some don’t. The goal of this course is not to change how you write, just to illuminate how your writing works when it works.

That, in part, is because there’s more to tone than technique, because technique is all about the writer. Tone is subjective, it’s all about the reader. It’s not how you write, not what you say, but how what you write affects the reader, how they hear what you say.

Tone is your relationship with the reader and, as in any relationship, you – as the writer – can’t argue with the reader about how they feel. (Of course you can, but the end result is like being right after a break-up: you won, but you lost). You can’t say, but that’s not what I meant! This doesn’t mean, though, that all your relationship to the reader is necessarily a G-rated sitcom marriage. It can be, but it can also be sadomasochistic: you can tell your reader to go fuck themselves, if you’ve also given them a reason to stay (e.g. you’re funny, or sexy, or there’s a mystery to be solved, or your writing is just that damn good). Sure, they’ll say, sometimes I really hate that author, but then they’ll sigh and add, but I keep going back for more. The bottom line is this: the reader feels whatever they feel and you can’t change that.

But you can influence it.

That’s the other part of tone: thinking about how what you write will come across to a particular kind of reader, often at the expense of another kind of reader. Hendrix knew that his use of dissonance and distortion would be understood by the Woodstock crowd, not as a failure to master the classical arrangement, but as a commentary, as a musical metaphor for an America – as a state, a philosophy, and a zeitgeist – that was coming apart at the seams. But there’s a whole generation that thought Hendrix wasn’t ‘in’ on the commentary, they thought he was just making noise. Churchill was speaking in front of the House of Commons but he was speaking to the British working class, he understood that the Latinate vocabulary of the aristocracy and of higher education would make him sound removed from the streets where Nazi bombs were landing; he played a role and it paid off, but among other politicians he developed a reputation for being common (a reputation assisted by his renowned love of gin). And Kubrick deliberately designed a hotel that can’t exist in Euclidean space: in the famous tricycle scene (think: come play with us) the child maps out an impossible floorplan. Watching the film, you sense this, and it creates an unreal feeling, a sense of unease that Kubrick slowly capitalizes on it. It’s the opposite of classical establishing shots – where the viewer is shown where everything is so they can understand the space that the film takes place in – and if you try to watch his film as a realistic portrait of characters, Kubrick’s giving you the finger. If, on the other hand, you’re watching his film as a surreal dream, then you can appreciate what Kubrick’s after.

In next few weeks, in addition to specific technical aspects of tone, we’ll discuss two spectrum of relationships with the reader: ‘familiar’ to ‘didactic’ and ‘earnest’ to ‘ironic.’ For example: Kubrick and Hendrix are both ‘familiar,’ they assume you know what they’re doing and why. But Hendrix is ‘earnest’ – he really believed his version of The Star Spangled Banner represented his feelings about the world; Kubrick is ‘ironic’ – it’s much harder, near impossible, to figure out what Kubrick believes about the world. Churchill is necessarily didactic – and I use this example because, quite often, didactic writing in fiction (especially dialog) feels like a speech (often, a preachy speech). But his attitude falls somewhere between earnest (i.e. he passionately desired British victory over the Nazis) and ironic (i.e. his speech isn’t a transparent extension of his self, but instead a ‘voice’ calculated for maximum effect).

The kind of relationships we’ll be talking about are built one sentence at a time: halfway between your command of language and the reader’s understanding of it.

Written Speech

Speech – dialog, as recorded in prose – is something that warrants a dozen courses, and so there’s no way to do it justice in one week. But we can’t ignore it, either, because written speech condenses many of the issues of tone to a critical mass. In a very real sense, all narration is recorded speech – someone is telling us a story, even when it’s in the guise of omniscient description. (Just think, if your work succeeds, it will likely one day be an audio book. Someone will have to read aloud what you wrote, and not just your dialog).

When it comes to actual dialog, word choice and syntax become really important. Unlike film makers, writers can’t rely on the delicate systems of non-verbal cues that make up so much of human communication. Sure, you can try:

‘I think,’ she touched her temple, ‘I think maybe we should take some time.’

But how does ‘she’ touch her temple – erotically, gingerly, in frustration – and for how long does she pause between the first and second ‘think,’ how does the tenor of her voice expand and contract, how does her pitch rise and fall? You can enumerate these things – some writers labor, beautifully and exhaustingly, to do so – but, at the end of the day, what’s on your page is a character, not an actor. At the end of the day, you have to trust your reader.

And that’s the thing about written speech: it is sheet music. The reader is the musician.

Part of this means a kind of surrender: there are shitty musicians out there. Say you write a gorgeous conversation – realistic but lyrical, sparse but deep – that serves as the coda to a short story. It’s wry, and yearning, it makes your chest shiver when you read it back to yourself. It’s perfect. There are some readers out there who will fucking butcher this scene. And some who will, in the theater of their own mind, bring it to life, make it excruciatingly alive, just the way you’d hoped.

It’s like giving a part to Nicolas Cage. You might get Adaptation and you might get Con Air.

Yes. Con Air. Let that sink in. You’re playing Russian roulette with your darlings.

And you can give notes, of course. You can tell your reader about the characters and – in a novel – you can really take your time and develop their speaking patterns. In short stories, there’s less time to build the invisible scaffold around dialog – what the reader knows about the character that makes visualizing conversations possible for them – and, conversely, the conversations are that much more important. They have to move the plot forward and develop the character. With dialog you can show and tell, at the same time, which is good, because time is short.

Reading and Viewing

Homework. That’s right. Homework.

‘Hills Like White Elephants’ – No, I’m not that guy, who references everything back to Hemmingway. But this story is one of the most dialog-heavy pieces you’re likely to find (outside of a contest for dialog-only flash).And, to be fair, I’d like you to read this story as much for what’s wrong with it as what’s right with it.

It’s a fairly realistic use of dialog: consider the repetition and overlap, the absence of didactic and expository passages – we don’t often, in our private conversations, catch each other up on our own backstories – and the simplicity of the back and forth pattern.

The piece is familiar. The title is already making assumptions: it assumes you know what a ‘white elephant’ is (i.e. a gift which has an upkeep in excess of its value, for example giving a cat-person a puppy, which has to be fed, walked, trained, etc) and that ‘white elephant’ is sometimes used in place of ‘elephant in the room,’ slang for a conspicuous taboo left unmentioned, and also that the ‘operation’ mentioned is an abortion. The piece is also icily ironic; the rift between the minimalist narration and the author is vast and deep. It is difficult to say, exactly, what Hemmingway meant by the piece, and one possible effect is that it means nothing. (Brett Easton Ellis takes all three pages out of this very short book and just runs with them).

Any episode of Gilmore Girls. (I recommend these clips, if you’re not familiar with the show).

In addition to balancing out the Hemingway, Gilmore Girls shows a radically different kind of dialog. It’s fairly unrealistic: this is how we’d talk if we had three or four (very clever) writers feeding us an endless river of cultural references and we had multiple ‘takes’ to pull off these lung-draining rants. No one stutters, trips over their words, repeats themselves (except for comic effect), or uses ‘like,’ as a tourette-like interjection. And it’s thoroughly familiar, the references occasionally get explained – again, for comic effect – but almost always move by too quickly for comment. Same with the references to the show’s own considerable domestic mythology. You either keep up or don’t. It’s also fairly earnest, despite the show’s occasional (and painfully good) satirical takes on wealthy WASP culture, the central characters are essentially a dream-ideal version of the mother and daughter bond, as imagined by showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino.

Consider these two dialog modes: realistic, minimalist, ironic vs. stylized, hyperbolic and comic, earnest. Think about your own dialog style and – if you don’t have a ‘style,’ per se, then think about a piece of your own that you like. Where does your piece fall? Is the conversation didactic or familiar or somewhere in between, is it more earnest or ironic? Does your conversation sound like something you might overhear, or is it stylized for a certain effect (comedy, absurdity, tragedy, etc.)?

Assignment

Critics and authors alike throw around the word ‘realistic’ a lot, but what does that really mean? Real world dialog can be a beautiful thing – a chimera of spontaneous performance and the accumulated history between the people talking – and it can also be a grinding, pointless mess.

The first part of your assignment is to go out and record – to the best of your ability – an actual real world conversation between (at least) two people. Transcribe to prose only the words spoken, leave out character descriptions, gestures, intonations, sighs, laughs, smiles, farts, eye rolls, snorts, etc.

Post your recorded conversation in the forum. Have a look at the conversations posted by your peers. What can you tell about the people speaking? What are you missing?

Even if this isn’t quite a reliable, statistically significant control group, it will still give us some idea of what ‘natural’ speech is like, degree zero for storytelling. Struggling to understand these pieces can help you appreciate what it’s like to be a reader – you don’t have any information except what’s on the page. It’s important to remember that this is often where you reader is starting from when they start your story.

The second part of your assignment is to write a short prose piece (>1,000 words) comprised entirely of dialog: two – or more, if you dare – characters, talking to each other, with zero additional information. No tags – he said, she exclaimed, they shouted – no gestures, nothing but dialog. The conversation does NOT need to be in the realistic style of your ‘recording.’ It can be comedic, absurd, minimalist, or whatever style you like. If you’d like, you many use the dialog – but only the dialog – from a piece you’ve already worked on.

This might be hard. This should be hard.

Remember a few things.

First – the point of this exercise is not to write a successful short piece, the point is to try and figure out how much scaffolding you should add to your dialog and, conversely, to see just how much of the weight of character development you can lift with just dialog. When you comment on your peers’ work, think about what you wanted, as a reader, to know about the people speaking. What do you wish you knew? (It’s unlikely, for example, that you wished you knew a character touched their jaw, or looked down for a moment – but maybe you did!). How much were you able to appreciate reading only the back and forth?

Second – this course is not designed to change the kind (i.e. genre) of writing you want to do, so don’t write a ‘realistic’ piece if that’s not your idea of a good time. In fact, part of the point of these two assignments is to try and demonstrate that almost all dialog writing – whether it’s a conversation in a kitchen or a dungeon or on a spaceship – is stylized to a certain extent. The only important question is, when you stylize dialog – make it less like natural speech and more like spoken prose – what are you accomplishing?

Third – as you’re writing your dialog, think about how the characters speak. What kind of vocabulary do they have? (And do they use it correctly?) Do they have an accent or speak a dialect or pigeon – and are you going to try and represent that? Do they use regional idioms? (Think, for example, of what they call a large sandwich – a hoagie, a hero, a grinder, a sub…) What kind of syntax do the use, do they speak in complete sentences, or use implicit parts of speech. Do they reference contemporary culture and – if so – does the person they’re speaking to get these references? (And will the reader?). As the conversation evolves, how does the way your characters talk change? If they get angry, or sad, or excited, to they grow verbose, or terse, or profane?

Okay. Good luck and good night.