You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’m going to write a novel this year. This isn’t exactly my first go at this kind of project. In fact, this will be… either number 20 (if you only count those novels what have had some version of my own name on the cover) or number 33 (if you include those I’ve ghosted for someone else) or number 35 (if you include the two I wrote but never sold). With all that, you’d think I might have turned a few dollars, attracted a little fame, at least been able to settle in front of my keyboard as a full time job. None of that has happened. Yes, I won an award or two, I shook some hands at book stores and sat in front of the room at obscure conferences. I even had the chance to pester a production crew in Vancouver as I watched one of my novels get (very loosely) translated for TV. Still, at the end of the day I never graduated from mid-list scribbler. In fact, you could make a good argument that my career peaked around 1997 and has been on a none-too-gentle descent ever since.
Close to two decades after I sold my first novel, I’m still hauling myself out of bed for a day job and getting in what words I can type at lunch, at night, and in airport lounges. To be absolutely clear: I can give you pretty decent tips on how to construct a book that’s readable, even sellable, but this is not one of those “how to be a best selling author” classes. If I had that formula distilled and bottled, I wouldn’t have to explain myself, and I wouldn’t have to tone down my New Year’s celebrations knowing that the next morning I’ll be back in the office. I’m not an author. No one ever popped a champagne cork to celebrate the arrival of one of my books. I do not own a tux. I’m a writer. I’m a craftsman. I build books the way the Shakers built chairs: solidly, competently, and to the best of my meager ability.
If that level of self pity hasn’t scared you away… congrats, you may have what it takes to be a writer.
Here’s the way I think this will work. Each week, I’ll give you a glimpse of what’s going on with my project, where I am, what obstacles are responsible for the dents where my head has impacted the wall, and those much rarer occasions when something makes me feel like this is going to work. I’ll share a chunk or two of the work in progress, mostly so you can see just how rough a rough draft really is. I’ll also pitch in a… man, I hate to call it a lesson. I’ve taught creative writing at a local community college, and while that was a blast, I don’t want this to be a repeat of that experience. I want this to be a mutual aid society: I’ll give you what insight I can, and hope that all of us find opportunities to lean on each other. Somewhere down the road (e.g. not tonight) I’ll offer to look at your work. I know that some of you are coming in with manuscripts in hand. For now, I’m going to ask you to set them aside, or better yet, if they’re complete and ready to go, stick a stamp on them and send them off to vacation with a potential agent or editor. Once that existing manuscript is out of the way, I want you to join me on page one, a nice clean sheet.
Okay, here’s the first non-lesson. Back near the start of my journeyman career, I was lucky enough to spend a week learning from editor, writer, and all around interesting character, Algis Budrys. Algis had a little story he told to illustrate his idea of a simple narrative structure. I suspect that the number of people who eventually heard that story from Algis numbered in the tens of thousands. Most of them probably remember it better than I do, because since I heard it in summer of 1991 I’ve rethought, rearranged, and retold it many times. I’ve used this to discuss plot with 6th graders and in post-graduate classes. So, with apologies to the much-missed Mr. Budrys and to all those who have better memories for the original tale, here’s my version of the Sarah Jane story…
That picture at the top of the page? That's Sara Jane. She may well be the best music student ever in the history of Wet Prairie Minnesota High School. Certainly her teacher, Mrs. Johnson, thinks so. This very day, Sara Jane has the opportunity to preform before renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, and if she does as well as Mrs. Johnson thinks she can, Sara Jane can win a scholarship to Juilliard, the most prestigious musical academy in the country, and Sara Jane’s dream school.
Mrs. Johnson has offered to give Sara Jane a ride to the performance. After all, Mrs. Johnson is going to accompany her on the piano, and they can ride together. But Sara Jane turned down the offer. She’s taking no chances today. She has lined up a cab that will pick her up from school promptly at 2:30, which will get her to the auditorium in plenty of time to practice, put on nice clothes, and spiff up before her time on stage.
The only trouble is, it’s now 3:30, and the cab has not come. Consulting her bus schedule, Sara Jane sees that if she runs a couple of blocks, she can catch a bus that will have her to the auditorium by 4:30. She won’t have time for practice, but she’ll still be on time for her performance, and that’s all that counts.
So she takes off down the street, but before she can get to the bus stop, she sees a familiar car, and then a familiar person on the sidewalk. It’s kindly old Dr. Brown who lives next door to Sara Jane, and she thinks, “I’m saved. Dr. Brown can give me a ride.”
But before Sara Jane can even open her mouth, Dr. Brown starts to speak. “Boy, Sarah Jane, have you heard?” he says. “Big fire downtown. Big big fire. Everything’s backed up for miles. Well, I’ve got patients waiting and I have to hurry if I’m going to get through this traffic. See you around the neighborhood, Sara Jane.” And he gets in his car and he drives away.
Now Sara Jane knows why the taxi didn’t come, and she knows that even if she waits for the bus, it won’t be there either. At least no on time. The fire downtown has everything backed up. She has no way to get to her concert.
While this is dawning on her, an old Chevy with tail fins rolls up in front of her. A guy sticks his head out, sees Sara Jane with an umbrella in one hand and a violin case in the other and says, “What you doin’ fiddlin’ around in the rain, girlie?” Then he chucks a empty beer can at her and drives away.
Well Sara Jane gets mad. Who wouldn’t get mad? This was going to be the best day of her life, and everything has gone wrong. She thinks about what the guy in the Chevy said, and she decides it’s not a bad idea. She sticks her umbrella down the back of her coat, steps out into the street, pulls out her violin, and begins to play. This does get her some attention. The attention it gets is the police, who stop to arrest her (and these days, probably break out the pepper spray).
But before the police can arrest her, Sara Jane starts bawling about the taxi, and the car, and the concert. Finally, the policeman just says, “Get in the car.” Then, using his extensive knowledge of back alleys and short cuts in Wet Prairie, Minnesota, he gets Sara Jane to the auditorium at… 8:47. The concert’s been over for an hour. By now it’s dark, and rain is pouring down, but Sarah Jane gets out of the car and slogs through the rain to the door. She shoves open the doors at the top and finds that everyone is gone, except for Itzhak Perlman and Mrs. Johnson who have their coats on and look ready to leave.
Sara Jane shoves Perlman into a chair, stomps down to the stage, throws her wet hat and umbrella on the boards, points at the piano, and growls, “Play!” With that, Sara Jane pulls out her damp violin and starts to saw away. As she does, she can only think about how this was the most important day of her life, the day when everything needed to go right, and now nothing has gone right, everything has gone wrong, and why does the world have to be filled with jerks, rain, and beer cans?
At that moment, Sara Jane realizes that the song is over. She’s finished, and she didn’t even hear a note of it. The blood drains from her face. She thinks, “I’ve blown it. I will be flipping burgers in Wet Prairie for the rest of my life.”
Then something happens. Out in the audience Mr. Perlman stands up and begins to applaud. Sara Jane looks over to see that Mrs. Johnson is weeping.
Just then Mrs. Johnson leaps off the piano bench, runs over to Sara Jane, and hugs her tightly. “Sara Jane,” she says, “You’ve always been a gifted student. You’ve always been technically brilliant. But today… today was the first time I heard real passion in your music. Real fire. Today you are a real musician.”
The end
This is a story. What makes it a story? Well, it has a character. That character lives in a setting full of old cars, rain, and school buildings. Let's call it a context. She has a problem, or a conflict.
Stories are about characters, in context, with a conflict. And what happens in a story is that we try to address the conflict. We may not succeed right away. In fact, it's important that we don't. If Sara Jane got to that concert on time and everything went well, we might still have a story, but it would be a boring story. In a good story, characters fail. In fact, they fail repeatedly.
But they shouldn't fail stupidly. They shouldn't just keep beating their heads against the wall without making progress. Each iteration of failure should bring knowledge about the problem. That knowledge may give the character a new approach, or it may inform the character in a way that reshapes their idea of what the problem really is. It may even reveal that the problem is not a problem at all.
Finally, after several attempts, the character reaches a resolution of the problem. It can be ultimate success, ultimate failure, or even something in between. All can work.
But there's one more thing that has to happen. It's the step that comes when Mrs. Johnson rushes out to give her little speech. It's validation. Validation is the part of the story that says "what you just read isn't the beginning or the end, it's just part of a larger story." Validation assures us that the little drama we just followed will have impact that rings down past the time we've watched. It's the "who was that masked man?" moment familiar to generations of Lone Ranger fans.
OK, non-lesson over. Next week, I'll talk about stories that don't appear to have these points, and how it's not just validation that can expand the story beyond the print.
And now I'll have to apologize that this ends abruptly. I've spent the better part of two days trying to create a little animated film of the Sara Jane story. It sounded like a cute idea... forty-eight hours ago, before the effort ate my weekend.
As a result, I don't have a lot of time to address what I'm working on in my own novel. Instead, I'll give you the opening paragraphs.
25 August 1989
The job never got old, but the people did. The first time Dwayne Terry slipped into the little back room at JPL, most of the men and women out front had looked like refugees from grad school. There had been a lot of bushy hair, scraggly beards, wire-rimmed glasses and several examples of truly hideous plaid pants. That had been the summer of 1979, and few of the scientists had wanted to talk to him. Dwayne had huddled in his glorified coat closet for nearly a month that time, nursing cups of cold coffee and listening to the muffled cheers and announcements that filtered through the door.
On that first visit, most of the people out front had pretended that he wasn't there at all. If they could avoid running into him, they did, and when they couldn't, they scowled. Dwayne understood their anger. After all, he got a five minute sneak peek at something they had been waiting a decade to see. Of course they resented him.
He'd been back again two years later and even on that trip he could tell that attitudes were loosening. With drawers full of data to evaluate and the prospect of fresh wonders at hand, the JPL crew were pinned between a banquet they had only started to digest, and an equally well-spread table just ahead. There'd been a few sneers when Dwayne came out to brew a fresh pot, a few glares when he took a donut from one of the open boxes, but only a few.
Most of the time in those first two summers, there had simply been too much work to worry about what people thought of him. With only a five minute window between the time an assembled image appeared on on the screen in his closet and the time it was released to the world, Dwayne had been forced to work so fast that his head ached and a steady trickle of tears ran from his tired eyes. He had thought, after all the time he'd spent looking at images of Cuba, and Vietnam, and Iran, and the Ukraine, and El Salvador that he understood all the forms that rock, ice, and water could take. He'd been wrong about that. Even without the cover of vegetation, a near infinite set of features appeared on the flickering screen. Over and over, Dwayne had to decide, is this natural? Is it random? Is that line an artifact of bulging ice? Is that curve the edge of a crater? Is there anything here that shows intent?
There were tools available to him that allowed him to obscure, delete, or completely block any image that could not be explained by the combination of natural processes operating over massive spans of time. He’d never had to use them. Though those first two summers, and on his shorter visit in the balmy California winter of 1986, Dwayne had watched, watched, watched, and done nothing but act as a five minute delay in a pipe that stretched back decades.
When he walked into the building just after New Years in 1986, many of the same people who had been there a decade earlier were still around. A lot of the beards were gone. A lot of the guts were bigger. Some of the hair had been marked with gray. Dwayne never had trouble remembering a face. Just as he could spot a missile base under the cover of jungle and camouflage nets, he could spot familiar bone structure under a decade of life. They accepted Dwayne as one of their own, with little of the old resentment. It was autumn for them all, the last big event on a calendar two decades playing out. Everything, and everyone, was already burdened with a kind of pre-nostalgia that made even "that Defense Department jerk in the closet" part of the gang.