“Now in this paragraph/sentence/section here, can you tell me just what you were trying to say?”
Answer …
“Well, I think it would have been better if you’d written that …”
In perhaps three or four cases I was able to reassure some people who had worked very hard that the work, at least, was evident. For the rest, I just felt very flattered.
Rilke says in a letter that in the end all criticism comes down to a more or less happy misunderstanding.
I suspect he is right—which is why the literary worth of a workshop like Clarion cannot be defined by simply reviewing what, critically, went on.
—New York City
1970
*The Clarion Writers’ Workshop is a writing workshop, held annually since 1967, that specializes in imaginative writing, fantasy, and science fiction. It runs for six weeks during the summer, June through July, with a different professional writer in attendance as instructor every week, with one branch held at Michigan State University and the other, Clarion West, held annually over the same period, in Seattle, Washington. Since 2004 Clarion South has been held in Brisbane, Australia.
* Vonda N. McIntyre, whose story “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” four years later would win a well-deserved Hugo.
** The then-sixteen-year-old Jean Marc Gawron, who three years later was to write An Apology for Rain (1974), and three years after that, Algorithm (1978).
Thickening the Plot
I distrust the term “plot” (not to mention “theme” and “setting”) in discussions of writing: it (and they) refers to an effect a story produces in the reading. But writing is an internal process writers go through (or put themselves through) in front of a blank paper that leaves a detritus of words there. The truth is, practically nothing is known about it. Talking about plot, or theme, or setting to a beginning writer is like giving the last three years’ movie reviews from the Sunday New York Times to a novice filmmaker. A camera manual, a few pamphlets on matched action, viable cutting points, and perhaps one on lighting (in the finished film, the viewer hardly ever sees the light sources, so the reviewer can hardly discuss them, but their placement is essential to everything from mood to plain visibility) would be more help. In short, a vocabulary that has grown from a discussion of effects is only of limited use in a discussion of causes.
A few general things, however, can be noted through introspection. Here is an admittedly simplified description of how writing strikes me. When I am writing I am trying to allow/construct an image of what I want to write about in my mind’s sensory theater. Then I describe it as accurately as I can. The most interesting point I’ve noticed is that the writing down of words about my imagined vision (or at least the choosing/arranging of words to write down) causes the vision itself to change.
Here are two of the several ways it changes:
First—it becomes clearer. Sudden lights are thrown on areas of the mental diorama dark before. Other areas, seen dimly, are revised into much more specific and sharper versions. (What was vaguely imagined as a green dress, while I fix my description of the light bulb hanging from its worn cord, becomes a patterned, turquoise print with a frayed hem.) The notation causes the imagination to resolve focus.
Second—to the extent that the initial imagining contains an action, the notating process tends to propel that action forward (or sometimes backward) in time. (As I describe how Susan, both hands locked, side-punched Frank, I see Frank grab his belly in surprise and stagger back against the banister—which will be the next thing I look at closely to describe.) Notating accurately what happens now is a good way to prompt a vague vision of what happens next.
Let me try to indicate some of the details of this process.
I decide, with very little mental concretizing, that I want to write about a vague George who comes into a vague room and finds a vague Janice …
Picture George outside the door. Look at his face; no, look closer. He seems worried …? Concerned …? No. Look even closer and write down just what you see: The lines across his forehead deepened. Which immediately starts him moving. What does he do? … He reached for the … doorknob? No. Be more specific … brass doorknob. It turned … easily? No, the word “brass” has cleared the whole knob-and-lock mechanism. Look harder and describe how it’s actually turning … loosely in its collar. While he was turning the knob, something more happened in his face. Look at it; describe it: He pressed his lips together—No, cross that line out: not accurate enough. Describe it more specifically: The corners of his mouth tightened. Closer. And the movement of the mouth evoked another movement: he’s pressing his other hand against the door to open it. (Does “press” possibly come from the discarded version of the previous sentence? Or did wrong use of it there anticipate proper use here? No matter; what does matter is that you look again to make sure it’s the accurate word for what he’s doing.) He pressed his palm against the door … And look again; that balk in his next movement … twice, to open it. As the door opens, I hear the wood give: You could hear the jamb split—No, cross out “split,” that isn’t right … crack—No, cross that out too; it’s even less accurate. Go back to “split” and see what you can do; listen harder … split a little more. Yes, that’s closer. He’s got the door open, now. What do you see? The paint—No, that’s not paint on the wall. Look harder: The wallpaper was some color between green and gray. Why can’t you see it more clearly? Look around the rest of the room. Oh, yes: The tan shade was drawn. What about Janice? She was one of the first things you saw when the door opened. Describe her as you saw her: Janice sat on the bed … no, more accurately … the unmade bed. No, you haven’t got it yet … Janice sat at the edge of the bed on a spot of bare mattress ticking. No, no, let’s back up a little and go through that again for a precise description of the picture you see: Janice sat on the bare mattress ticking, the bedding piled loosely around her. Pretty good, but the bedding is not really in “piles” … the bedding loose around her. Closer. Now say what you have been aware of all the time you were wrestling to get that description right: Light from the shade-edge went up her shoulder and cheek like tape. Listen: George is about to speak: “What are you doing here …?” No, come on! That’s not it. Banal as they are, they may be the words he says, but watch him more closely while he says them. “What—” he paused, as though to shake his head; but the only movement in his face was a shifting—Try again: … a tightening … Almost; but once more … a deepening of the lines, a loosening of the lip—“are you doing here?” Having gotten his expression more accurately, now you can hear a vocal inflection you missed before: “are you doing here?” There, that’s much closer to what you really saw and heard. What has Janice just done? She uncrossed her legs but did not look at him. Ordinary grammar rules say that because the sentence’s two verbs have one subject, you don’t need any comma. But her uncrossing her leg and not looking up go at a much slower pace than proper grammar indicates. Let’s make it: She uncrossed her legs, but did not look at him …
Now let’s review the residue of all that, the admittedly undistinguished, if vaguely noirish bit of prose the reader will have:
The lines across his forehead deepened. He reached for the brass doorknob. It turned loosely in its collar. The corners of his mouth tightened. He pressed his palm against the door, twice, to open it. You could hear the jamb split a little more
The wallpaper was some color between green and gray. The tan shade was drawn. Janice sat on the bare mattress ticking, the bedding loose around her. Light from the shade-edge went up her shoulder and cheek like tape.
“What—” he paused, as though to shake his head; but the only movement in his face was a deepening of the lines, a loosening of the lips—“are you doing here?”
She uncrossed her legs, but did not look at him.
And if you, the writer, want to know what happens next, you must take your seat again in the theater of imagination and observe closely till you see George’s