A Celebration of the Human Spirit

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The Boston Marathon course ran past the front steps of the apartment building where I grew up in Brighton. We lived a bit after the twentieth mile, just over the crest of Heartbreak Hill. Since Patriot’s day was a holiday and we had no school, we’d go out every year and watch, a rite of spring, along with opening day at Fenway Park.

Back then, there were a paltry two or three hundred runners, not the twenty-five thousand plus of today. There were no prizes beyond a laurel wreath and the beef stew waiting at the finish. But thousands of onlookers would line the streets and offer complete strangers water and encouragement.

Another connection was when my dad was a kid, his scoutmaster was a man named Clarence Demar. Now, I suspect few of you have heard of him, but he won the Boston Marathon seven times around the 1920’s. He wasn’t a pro. He didn’t win prize money or endorsements. He just loved to run. He worked as a printer in Boston and used to train by running to and from work.

Of course, today the marathon is a bigger deal. Prize money was first awarded in 1986 and top finishers now compete for more than $800,000. The marathon is televised broadly and sponsored by large corporations. But most of that hullabaloo involves only the first few hundred runners, superhuman specimens who run faster per mile than most can conceive of and keep it up across hill and dale for twenty six miles.

They weren’t the ones targeted. The bombs were set to go off around four o’clock. That’s when the nine-minute-a-mile guys come in. These are people that will never win anything, if you don’t count the respect of friends and family and the pride in their accomplishment. Many of them are running for charity or in memory of a loved one. Lots of them have used the marathon as a goal, the pinnacle of a journey back from some hardship—stroke, cancer, addiction or personal loss. For them, the marathon is more than a road race. It’s a celebration of the human spirit.

Into this celebration came some deranged mind. It doesn’t matter whether their cause was political or religious, or they were just delusional. What they sought was not only to kill and maim innocent people, but to steal dreams.

Some people say that dystopian fiction is so popular today because we’ve become cynical. I think it’s because such stories show an individual’s ability to prevail over hardship and to shine even in the worst of circumstances. That’s the triumph of the human spirit—our ability to be at our best when things are at their worst..  And no one can steal our dreams.

 

 

My Writing Style

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Matthew Arnold wrote: “Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can.” Hemingway said it a bit differently: “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the simplest possible way.”

I believe good writing is clear thinking, saying what you mean in the simplest possible way.

The problem for fiction writers is that we don’t always know what we mean when we stare at a blank screen. And we certainly haven’t rounded out those imaginary new friends we call characters. Much as when we move into a new community or take a new job, it takes a while to get to know people. That’s why a writer needs time to live in the story, to dwell inside the heads of his characters.

Over a series of rewrites, I try to understand my characters better. What is it is they want? What obstacles stand in their way? Then I lead them head on into those obstacles and let them battle their way through.

I try to say things in the most straightforward way. One of my favorite quotes is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of that gem of a book, The Little Prince. He said: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” I aim to remove the unnecessary.

At the same time, I understand that a novel is a partnership between reader and writer. No reader will ever feel the same about the characters and the story as I do. My task is to give sufficient detail to stimulate their imagination, to provide enough brushstrokes to meld with their life experience and let them paint a picture of their own. Only in this way can the reader suspend their disbelief.

In previous blog posts, I give a couple of examples of this kind of use of detail:

So what style do I strive for? Be clear on what I’m trying to say, then say it in the simplest way. Provide sufficient detail to stimulate the imagination of my partner, the reader, but leave room for them to add their own distinct influence on the image in their mind. Only then will the magic of fiction work. Only then will they believe what they’re reading is real.

Why I write speculative fiction

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I’ve always been suspicious about reality. Is what we believe merely a reflection of how we’ve been raised and what we’ve been taught. Anyone who has traveled knows other cultures see the world differently. And anyone who has spent extended time in a hospital or war zone has learned the hard way that one’s sense of reality can be easily fragmented. We conveniently construct a world view that suits us—at least until something challenges it. That’s the writer’s job. What better way to challenge our view of reality—and therefore enable the potential for change—than to invent new worlds and show how characters cope within them.

There’s a poem I heard long ago by Wallace Stevens:

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill . . .

And least will guess that with our bones

We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt . . .
And what we said of it became
A part of what it is . . .

 Our sense of reality in many ways defines how we live, but it’s constantly evolving. The job of the artist is to be the catalyst for changes in the way we view our world. By telling what we saw and how we felt, we can change the perception of reality and therefore how people perceive themselves. Ultimately, that will change how they behave.

What better way to do that than to write speculative fiction about alternate worlds?

The Greatest Thing I learned in School

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In the seventh grade, I began a six year college preparatory school, the elite school in the city and accessible only via an entrance exam. Ninety-nine percent of its graduates went on to college, many to Ivy League schools.  But only one in three graduated.

I felt pretty confident. I had a good education to date and all the skills to succeed. But I had never read for pleasure.

The kids in this school were very competitive—what we used to call “grade grubbers”—even at such a young age. On the first day of English class, our teacher, Dr. McNamara, hit us with a stern warning. We were all failing and would get an ‘F.’ No studying would help, no exam would change it. There was only one way we could improve our grade.

Dr. McNamara was a bear of a man, with a big round face, jowls and the almost expected wire-rimmed bifocals. He glared at us through them and drew us all to the edge of our seat.

“For each book you read,” he said, “I will raise you one grade. If you read five books in the term, you will get an ‘A.’”

Our marking term was one month long. I suspect none of us read that much in six months. But then, like a magic salve to the wound, he handed out “the list.” The list consisted of about three hundred wonderful books, and not the stodgy classics, all of them books to delight the young.

That year I read the complete works of Sherlock Holmes and wanted to be a detective. I read The Saga of Andy Burnett and dreamed of running off to become a mountain man. I read The Lord of the Rings and pictured myself as the ranger, Strider, and someday, if I was worthy, king of the men of Numenor.

I was twelve years old.

Of course I never become any of these, but I’d been given the lifelong gift of reading and have never stopped.

The most important thing I learned? Through books, I could experience other worlds, be in the minds of other people. And though fiction may never translate directly to reality, I learned something even more important—the power of possibility

Why genres exist?

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Did you ever stand in an art gallery, look at a painting and think,” it’s a girl squatting beside a bird’s nest.” Then the guy next to you says, “It’s a man walking a dog.” The two of you step closer to see who’s right, and the illusion dissolves into brushstrokes.

Books are like that. Why should a bunch of letters crawling across a page evoke so much emotion? “I loved that book. It changed my life.” Or “I couldn’t stand it.”

The reason? A novel is a partnership between the writer and the reader. The writer tosses out a few details, a dicey situation and a compelling character. The reader fills in enough to suspend their disbelief and accept what they’re reading as real. How they feel about a character depends on what their imagination has added to the words on the page. Every reader brings to the table all their biases, good and bad, to create a story uniquely their own. That’s why no two readers’ perception of a book is the same.

So why genres? Genres give us a convenient tag to place on a story, a marker that tells us whether the partnership is likely to work or not.  They help readers find what they want.

Does that mean we should be restricted to our chosen genres? Not at all. In fact, many best sellers are read far beyond their selected devotees. A Publisher’s Weekly survey recently found that 55% of YA books are bought by adults.

YA Fantasy? How many of us have caught Grandpa George with his nose in Harry Potter? Teens in a burnt out dystopia, scrabbling for food? How many of us have seen Great Aunt Agnes reading The Hunger Games?

Why? Because any genre will evoke powerful emotions if the characters are well drawn and believable, the writing strong, the premise and plot compelling. And if these are wrapped in universal themes, the book will grab your heart.

Fans of dystopian fiction like a story about a world gone awry where a character fights to survive. But what if the author adds to that character the longing to be loved or accepted as he or she struggles to find the line between right and wrong? And what if through all their pain, they learn that some things are worth dying for?

Then you have a good story, well told. And that will always transcend genre.

The plot thickens – how to start a story

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Many writers have an image in their mind of how to begin a plot. First, you come up with one or more compelling characters who want something badly. Then you make it hard for them to get it.

Over time, I’ve heard others talk about how they like to envision the situation that starts their story. One said he sends his characters up a tree and throws rocks at them until they find a way to come down. I heard Michael Palmer, the writer of medical thrillers, say he imagines a cannibal’s cauldron, puts his characters into it, lights the fire and nails down a cover on top of them. Then he watches them figure a way out.

Sol Stein, one of the great editors of all time, in his book, Stein on Writing, talks about the crucible, which he describes as “the container that holds the characters together as things heat up.” According to Stein, “characters caught in a crucible won’t declare a truce and quit. They’re in it till the end.”

I write dystopian fiction and think about it a bit differently. I like to create characters with an intense aversion to the dark, place them in the darkest place I can imagine and watch them fight their way back to the light.

What’s so hot about dystopia?

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The Telegraph in London recently wrote about dystopian fiction: “Wizards and vampires are out. The market in teen fiction is dominated now by societies in breakdown.”

What’s so attractive about burned-out worlds and people scrabbling for food in hollow shells of cities?

A closer look shows dystopia has been around a long time. Panic about the cold war and the atomic age produced such classics as George Orwell’s 1984 and William Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, as well as movies like On The Beach, Dr. Strangelove and Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston’s famous last line: “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

Today’s cause of dystopia seems to be more varied. Environmental disasters replace war as the source of the apocalypse (the horrible remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still substitutes abuse of the planet for nuclear annihilation). Artificial intelligence goes wild (The Terminator). Social experimentation creates bizarre rules and mores (Divergent). Brutal dictatorships oppress the people for fun (The Hunger Games). A world is wasted without any explanation and people stagger around trying to survive (Cormac McCarthy’s The Road). And then there’s that most insidious of dystopias, the one driven by good intentions, where those in power impose their ideology on the population.

Not a pretty picture. So why so popular, especially among young adults, those just coming to terms with a world that’s not quite dystopian but more awful than the innocent visions of their childhood?

The answer is what makes all great stories appealing.  An individual wanting more from life, discovering things are worse than they thought and finding the courage to confront a world gone awry.

So parents relax. Your children aren’t dwelling on burnt out worlds. They’re doing what children have done since time immemorial. Prodding the system to test its limits and discovering how to spread their wings and fly.

Details, details…A cool cup of steaming tea

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Writers are always taught to show, not tell. A good example of this is at the beginning of The Night Circus, the wonderful debut novel by Erin Morgenstern.

Early in the book, Prospero the Enchanter is called into his theater manager’s office, because a five-year old girl has been left for him, brought in by a lawyer along with her mother’s suicide note. Other than being told that her eyes are a smaller, wider version of Prospero’s, we know little about the girl. She is left alone with a cup of tea, awaiting the magician. An odd situation to be sure, and one that makes the reader want to learn more.

The scene is set. Prospero sees the girl, reads the letter and realizes she’s the daughter he never knew. A lesser writer may have given us details about each of their reactions—he winced, she shed tears or snarled at him etc. But this author shows us so much more about their relationship with a simple cup of tea.

“The girl looks up at him again. Dark eyes narrow beneath her curls.

The teacup on the desk begins to shake. Ripples disrupt the calm surface as cracks tremble across the glaze, and then it collapses in shards of flowered porcelain. Cold tea pools in the saucer and drips onto the floor, leaving sticky trails along the polished wood.

The magician’s smile vanishes. He glances back at the desk with a frown, and the spilled tea begins seeping back up from the floor. The cracked and broken pieces stand and re-form themselves around the liquid until the cup sits complete once more, soft swirls of steam rising into the air.

The girl stares at the teacup, her eyes wide.”

Character established. Relationship defined. Mission accomplished.