Description, Dialogue and Development

As the time fast approaches for me to devote my working day to writing rather than `theraping’- a great leap into the financial unknown- I am trying to digest Stephen King’s wise words, or internalise them, in therapy-speak, so that he becomes my inner guide, helping me as I begin to craft that bestseller.

This week I’m looking at what he has to say about description, dialogue and character development.

Description is what draws the reader in to participate in the story. `It’s not just a question of how to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.’ It’s a matter of balance, he suggests, with thin description leaving the reader `feeling bewildered and nearsighted’, while overdescription `buries’ the reader in details and images and hinders the forward momentum. I know that one of my great faults as a writer is a tendency to use too many adjectives, similes etc and it serves as a useful reminder to `kill all your darlings’.

King’s main point is that description `begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.’ Which is why whenever I see a film that’s been made from a book I’ve loved, I’m always disappointed by how the hero or heroine is portrayed, as I’d imagined them totally differently.

In summary, good description `usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.’ The way he does this is fascinating: he takes time to call up `an image of the place’ (or person), drawing from my memory and filling my mind’s eye, an eye whose vision grows sharper the more it is used.’ Almost like a writerly trance. I’ve found I can do this in the middle of the night most easily or when swimming.

He goes on to discuss the use of similes. When they work, `a simile delights us in much the same way as meeting an old friend in a crowd of strangers does’. When it doesn’t work, then the results are funny and- to use a favourite word of mine- discombobulating. The example King uses is `He sat stolidly beside the corpse, waiting for the medical examiner as patiently as a man waiting for a turkey sandwich.’ He contrasts this with a favourite simile from Raymond Chandler: `I lit a cigarette that tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief.’

Dialogue is crucial in defining character. He cites HP Lovecraft as a terrible dialogue writer, `it’s stilted and lifeless, brimming with country cornpone (`some place whar things ain’t as they is here’). King refers to dialogue as a skill best learned by those able to listen to others, so I hope my soon to be erstwhile profession will have helped with that- I’ve spent thousands of hours listening to people’s life stories from all around the world. I’ve often fantasized about having a map and putting in a pin for every new client- I believe I’ve covered most European and Asian countries and quite a few Latin American ones. That said, I don’t have a musical bone in my body, so accents, dialect and cadence are something I know I will really have to work at.

King contrasts examples of poor dialogue with the skill of Elmore Leonard, in whose books conversations are lively exchanges that tell us a great deal about the characters. For King the best stories are always character driven. Annie Wilkes, the nurse in Misery, is frightening particularly because we get to see the world through her eyes and she’s not purely evil or mad, she also feels pity. `If you do your job, your characters will come to life and start doing stuff on their own.’ They need above all to grow and change, as the story unfolds and the reader accompanies them on their individual journey.

King declares that his characters are determined purely by the story he has to tell, `by the fossil, the found object, in other words.’ Which takes us back to Michelangelo and the block of marble, as mentioned in my previous blog.

Part Two on Stephen King and the Writing Programme

The programme King advocates is 4 to 6 hours a day of reading and writing. Apparently, Anthony Trollope had a day job as a clerk in the Post Office (and our red mail boxes were his invention). He wrote for two and a half hours every morning before work.  If he was in mid-sentence at the end of the allotted period, he would leave the sentence unfinished until the next morning. I'm not sure I could ever reach such heights/depths of rigidity, but I suppose the principle is to create a routine and stick to it.

King himself writes every morning and admits that for him not working is `the real work'.  `When I'm writing, it's all the playground.'  I'm really looking forward to starting to play- the past few years certainly feel like there was too much drudgery and a marked absence of fun. He believes that the first draft of a book should take no more than 3 months to write. He likes to manage 2,000 words a day, but allows that beginners can start with only 1,000 a day and take off one day a week- but no more or you lose momentum.

It's important to shut the door, wherever you are writing and avoid all distractions- phones, the internet etc. He writes to hard-rock, but personally, I need absolute silence and can get easily distracted, even by a loudly ticking clock. No problem locking away my phone, however. It rarely seems to bring good news.

In terms of genre King says you should begin by writing what you love to read, which makes perfect sense. I've always distrusted people who feel they could write a Mills and Boon novel cynically, to make money. People often tell you to write what you know, but his advice is sounder: `Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex and work.'

He states that novels consist of 3 parts: `narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.'

It's here that he has a perhaps radical point to make, that stories `pretty much make themselves'. He feels that plot is `the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice.' He goes on to say, `I want to put a group of characters in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free.' He's not just the novel's creator, but its first reader. When he writes down the first few pages of an idea, a situation, he describes it as having `located the fossil; the rest, I knew, would consist of careful excavation.'

This chimes with my (somewhat vague) memory of Michelangelo's approach to creating a sculpture- that the sculpture was already imprisoned within the block of marble and it was the sculptor's job to carefully `reveal' it , chiselling away with his tools.

`A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a `What-if question.'

So here's one I've got: what if I give it my all and fail?

Beginning your- successful- Writing Life, Thanks to Stephen King

I've decided to cut down drastically on my therapy practice and devote myself (almost) whole-heartedly to what I enjoy most in the world, namely writing. To this end I am preparing myself by digesting the second half of Stephen King's excellent book `On Writing' and what better way of doing this than summarising/ annotating it in my blog!

I draw immense strength from King's encouraging words: `it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one'. I've never been afraid of hard work and I've had sufficient confirmation from agents and teachers that I am- at least- a competent one.

The two main things you need to do to progress from one state to the other, according to King, is to read a lot and write a lot. He calls himself a `slow reader', but still manages to get through seventy or eighty books a year. I know I've grown lazy in the past few years- too exhausted by troubled and troublesome kids and my busy practice- and want nothing more at the end of the day than to suck on `the glass teat', but this is going to change. The one thing I haven't done is to stop buying books, so I reckon I have at least a year or two's worth of reading gathering dust in teetering piles.

King suggests teaching yourself to read `in small sips' as well as in `long swallows' and this I already do, taking a book on the tube or bus or train, to waiting rooms and the toilet, although I draw the line at his suggested use of `long and boring checkout lines' to absorb a few pages. I do, however, remember reading in numerous parks and playgrounds and soft play areas, when my kids were little. He also suggests reading on the treadmill, which I've never tried, rather than listening to music or watching TV.

He says you can learn a lot of what not to do by reading bad books, citing Valley of The Dolls, Flowers in the Attic and The Bridges of Madison County as examples. Interestingly, all three have been made into films, the last a very successful one, so I would argue that the stories themselves must be good ones.

He says that being `swept away' by a book is the result of a combination of `a great story and great writing'. He believes that you cannot hope to `sweep someone away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.' Very much the same principle applies to therapy- you cannot hope to take a client to a depth of understanding of their own psyche until you have plumbed those depths in yourself with your own therapist. Which is why I had six years of therapy and have acquired a degree of self knowledge. Which helps me not to kid myself about my chances of success.

Part Two tomorrow.

Charlotte Bronte at her desk

My Anorexic Daughter and the Red Buoy

Last week my 17 year old daughter, having at last been discharged from an eating disorder clinic, suddenly decided she `wasn't allowed' to eat or drink anything. She's sitting her A levels this year and is very keen to go to uni in the autumn. Her clever, ambitious brain was telling her she needed to go into college every day and keep doing her homework and practice papers. Meanwhile, the anorexic voices had begun to shout louder and louder that she didn't deserve to eat.

She sent me a series of texts:  `I can't have anything to eat or

                                                 drink.  xxxx'

                                                `The thoughts are too strong. xxxx'

                                                `It's all just too hard. xxxx'

I've tried all the `You can do it, try harder, I believe in you' speeches. I'm a therapist, I know how to word encouragement and support, but I understood that that wasn't going to do it. Even as I write this, I know it sounds `corny', but I felt the only tool left to me was the strength of our love for each other.

One of the things we both love best in the world is swimming in the sea and because we are people who like goals and pushing ourselves, we always swim out to a buoy in the distance. I got her to visualise this, using all the senses, the water warmed by the sun, but with sudden cooler currents, the taste of salt on our lips and drying on our cheeks, the flash of white limbs below the surface, brushing against ribbed seaweed, the sound of distant shrieks and laughter from the beach.

Once she could imagine that, I introduced a bottle of still lemonade (her favourite, when she's able to drink) that we were passing back and forth to each other as we swam, so we had the energy to reach the red buoy in the distance. I told her we were a team, supporting each other or both of us would fail. We were determined to succeed, so we needed the energy the lemonade would give us. I believed that together we could get to the red buoy. Girl power (or aged mother and girl power!)

She agreed to see if she could drink something, when she got back from college. She got home, drank a big glass of water and ate an apple. Later, she had a full dinner, including her favourite crumble and custard.

I'm not saying that's it, she'll never struggle again, but now, at least, she knows she can win over the voices and doesn't need to go back on the tube. She's not alone in her battle. She gave me a Mother's Day card yesterday in which she said: `You are the strongest mum ever and I'm lucky to have you. You have never given up on me, even when I've felt like giving up on myself. I would do anything for you and I love seeing you happy.'

And that means the world to me.

Guest Blog by my Husband, due to being ILL!

I love my wife.  I struggle to think of many things which would impede that seriously or for long.

There are habits of hers however, which I find - curious.  Buying wrought iron furniture and carrying it large distances, because it's a bargain (so is a life without a broken back); folding over slices of pizza while eating them, or buying tins of weird things and adding them to ready made pizza (just eat it, properly).

And trying to get published.  For several years, this has been an ambition of my wife. But that's probably an understatement characteristic of my former profession: it's one of the most important things in her life, the yardstick by which she measures her success.  She wants her name on the cover.  It's important.

Now, I understand writing and the joy which arises from that process.  I love that she loves it.  I'm happy she enjoys it. But I dispute profoundly the significance of publication.

Is it really co-incidental that those famous for football or for their ability to remove their clothes and subsequent popularity with footballers, or for their former careers robbing banks or presenting TV programmes, also turn out to be capable of churning out publishable tomes?  

No.  Of course not.  It's published because someone - first the agent, then the publisher - believes (for whatever reason) that enough people will buy it to make them money.  Their `I absolutely love this', `I really have a special feeling about this' are code for that.  

Sometimes, of course, the reason they see the £ signs is literary merit; the correct judgement that this is a great book, that people will love. Sometimes the reasons are sheer nonsense; written for daft reasons, for daft people... and promoted by.... profit-maximising rational economic agents, flouncing around burnishing self-importance, their own un-published books and their English degrees.

So, why on earth - what possible reason - could there be - to pin your happiness on the whimsy of this deeply irritating group?

I don't know.  It baffles me.  I find it hard to articulate quite how little I care about these people or about what they love or don't love.  

It means nothing. They mean nothing - of any importance to me.  They are worth nothing to me.  But of course, my contempt means and is worth even less.  

Because of course, I'd buy into the nonsense bag and baggage, and simper along with the best, as soon as I saw my wife's name on the cover.