I belong to the Eros writer's group, a mailing list for writers of erotica. (Go to Mary Anne Mohanraj's page for more information; sorry that I can't tell you exactly where on her page she has the info.) The intent of the list is to critique one other's stories, swap market information, and occasionally chat. About writing. (Okay, occasionally we talk about our sex lives. Doesn't everybody?)
Herewith some of my chats on the topic. I've intentionally not included any of the followups and removed names because I don't have their permission to reveal their identities.
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 16:51:19 -0500 (EST)
I was reading a submission and thinking about the difference between a "story" and an "interlude" and how one might go about changing the latter into the former. (I don't have the previous chat on the topic, so I'm starting from scratch again.)
In particular, I'm thinking about the most economical way to do it, a kind of two sentences at the beginning, one at the end, bam, there's a story instead of an interlude method. The key has to be the difference between interludes and stories. What makes an interlude an interlude and a story a story? Even a joke has the quality of being a "story."
It won't surprise you to learn that I have some thoughts on this. :-)
'Way back when, I did competitive improv -- the judges could end your scene if you committed the sin of being boring. Some of the things we did to improvise narrative then seem relevant to the question.
One of the keys seems to me to be the idea of a transition. You can get a story if the statuses or emotions of the participants change (or you imply that they're about to change; see Raymond Carver's story Fat). You can also signal the end of the story with reincorporation, bringing back an element from earlier in the tale, in a novel or surprising way. Jokes often do both of these: you get to the end and the punchline may bring back some element from earlier, or the punchline involves a change in status.
If you have an interlude that you want to turn into a story, it's possible you could look for an implied problem or status at the beginning and then add some kind of transition or resolution at the end.
Obviously you can have a trivial change and it won't be as entertaining as when we were making it up on our feet. ("Bob was horny...Bob was sated.") There are other standards we apply, too.
Any other ideas on what makes stories stories?
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 13:47:54 -0400 (EDT)
Someone asked when it is appropriate to begin a new paragraph in dialogue.The general rule is:
Start a new paragraph whenever a new person begins speaking.
New person, new paragraph."Mary!" John said. "Mary, snap out of it."
"What?" said Mary groggily, still floaty and warm from her orgasm.
Some characters are exceptionally long-winded, so their speeches will go on for several paragraphs:
Note that the end of the first paragraph doesn't get a closing quotation mark, because it's about to be continued."First," said Lucas, "I'm going to tie you both up. Then I'm going to being licking you at your toes, Mary. But I can't stop at your toes. I'll move up your shins to kiss the soft backs of your knees, the tender flesh at the inside of your thighs. Then I'll slip one finger inside your panties and begin to tease apart the delicate lips there. Don't wiggle too much. You wouldn't want to force my fingers inside your sweet cunt.
"John, you will be helpless to stop it. It would be terrible if she liked it, wouldn't it? And do please struggle. It turns me on."
For a character's dialogue, you generally start a new paragraph in the same way you'd start a new dialogue in the narrative: when switching ideas. Little chunks of dialogue by a single person don't necessarily need to be done this way:
"Quit talking and do me," Mary snapped. "John, struggle if that's what he needs to get me off. I waited twenty-three years for my first orgasm and I'm not waiting more than ten minutes for the second."
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 15:21:42 -0500 (EST)
I've commented in a couple of critiques about present tense, and Someone kindly asked me, "What's this thing you have about present tense?" I sent him something about this, but I've had more time to think about it.
The question is, what about present tense? Why does Jordan dislike it? As a technique, what do we gain and lose by it?
CAVEAT: I offer this for discussion purposes only; I'm not trying to comment on anybody who has recently posted a present-tense story and I'm not trying to say this is the One True Way. Writing is craft and art, not paint-by-numbers. Every tale is different; every tale requires its own decisions.
LAST WARNING: Opinions ahead! Free and worth every penny!
I dislike present tense unless I think it's being used for a purpose. An entire story told in memos (for whatever reason) would be in present tense -- because memos are in present tense. Unless there's a reason, my bias is for stories told in the past tense.
One reason is simply convenience for the reader. Most fiction is written in the past tense and it's simple and convenient to read. We're all used to past tense fiction. Past tense also carries with it the implication that the events were important.
The second reason has to do with the nature of stories. I distinguish between stories and incidents. (I've blathered about this before.) The events of a story mean something in the world of the story -- they change the characters or the world or the reader. Non-trivial cause and effect. Years ago I read that a story should be about the most important event in a character's life. I don't fully agree with that, but that's part of the sense of story for me.
In an incident, or a mood piece, or a word picture or whatever one chooses to call a non-story, the events (while interesting) don't necessarily change the world. Suppose right after finishing the story, the characters plunge into the same set of events again -- in an incident, they'd behave exactly the same way but in a story they can't. At the end of Pinocchio, he's a real boy. Scarlett has discovered she loved Rhett and has lost him. O has discovered her true nature.
A story told in past tense carries (for me) a bit more import. And because I'm very big on story, I tend to like the traditional forms as well.
Present tense carries with it the sense that "this is the way things are." The characters will not change. I think this is one reason why present tense is so common in incidents or mood pieces. Because this recognition of non-change was an underlying theme in lots of slice-of-life academic fiction over the past thirty years, present tense is common in academic/literary fiction.
If your story is about that realization -- that things do not change, that they remain the same -- I think that's a valid use for present tense. If your story doesn't have a traditional plot -- if (for example) it builds symbolically through repetition of symbols or situations, then present tense is a great tool.
Interestingly, "revelation" is one of the items that Ansen Dibble lists in her book Plot as a substitute for plot -- the unmasking of some truth. The people don't change, but the underlying truth is unmasked. (For the curious: she lists the techniques Mosaic Structure, broken down into the formats mood piece, character study, slice-of-life, theme and variation, and allegory; Collage, a more fragmented version where the energy comes from violent extreme contrasts or disjunctions or intricate detail in the parts; and Revelation.)
Anyway, I've wandered from my original question: as a technique, what do we gain from present tense?
I think we agree here. Good writing, whatever the techniques, is (by definition) superior to bad writing. I'm not trying to dictate anything. I'm trying to spark discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of a particular technique.
If I am trying to dictate something, it's that we all try to gain command of the many techniques of writing, that we think about what we're doing, and that we try to come to some kind of understanding of why stuff works or doesn't. That way we can write better stuff.
The understanding will be highly individual; what works for me may not work for others, and vice versa. (I don't think I've ever, in the history of this mailing list, said that a particular technique was bad, a priori, though I may have said I thought it was inappropriate for a particular story.)
What I'm still groping for is suggestions on what the advantages and drawbacks of present tense are. What are present tense stories that worked for people? Why were they better than stories in the past tense?
I've suggested:
Think about MaryAnne Mohanraj's story, "Mint In Your Throat," for example. In terms of events, it's a pretty simple story -- I can see it retold as "how I got away" in a different version. By putting it in second person and present tense, there are (for me) implications about all women through all time...that despite it being a shattering event, forced sex can have an element of arousal.
MaryAnne has suggested that present tense can be used to cajole the reader into making some assumptions, which I think is interesting.
On the alternative issue of person, Someone has also suggested that second-person is a useful tool for forcing the reader to think about the persona being presented, which I think is interesting. It's a little bit metafictional (not a bad thing), using the technique to draw attention to the processes of reading.
I think SomeoneElse has an interesting point in that he points out that he's interested in providing "a seamless (or seemingly seamless) narration, where the story unfolds without the audience being aware of its underlying mechanics." That's certainly true of most "commercial" fiction (what used to be called the slicks and became replaced by television (another :-)). But metafiction also achieves effects by making the reader aware of the mechanics.
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:08:42 -0500 (EST)
[Too tight on deadline to write my own stuff or to read other people's stuff, but CHAT? Can do that. Hey, I must be a real writer!]
So-and-so asks about realism. How important is it?
How long is a piece of rope? To paraphrase a famous dead white male, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his genre."
For Barbara Fucks Me Blind, I want internal consistency but I don't care about whether they use lube or not. (If I shoot my wad before I get to an inconsistency, I may not even care about that.) Barbara Fucks Me Blind has no serious intent. It is not literature. It is for fun.
I like smut and porn and junk. I read sciffy and cheesy adventure fiction and the occasional Harlequin, I read almost as much junk fiction as I eat junk food. I don't think there's anything wrong with knocking off a junk opus before tiffin. Theodore Sturgeon, a man whose writing I greatly admire, did more than his share of junk. Robert Silverberg still does.
Sometimes, though, I want real fiction. I want real food. I want stuff that really does comment on life, whether it does it through hyperrealistic detail or through some dark glass of fantasy. I want something where I can turn it over in my mind later and think about it.
For my money, fiction is about the construction of an illusion. You make the reader believe in the illusion for the duration of the book (and sometimes, if we're very good and lucky, longer). Details are important. They convince us of the truth of the story. (Yes, that is what a twelve-year-old in love would do. Yes, that is how this kind of woman would say good-bye. Yes, that is how a horse would act as it was being winched down to Catherine the Great.)
Forgetting some details can be as bad as including the wrong ones. A missing detail makes the dream less vivid; a wrong detail can shock the knowledgeable reader out of the story.
If I'm retelling the sexual parts of Gilgamesh for whatever reason, I'm in epic mode. Gilgamesh fucks a hundred women and his lance is still erect. He squirts enough seed to wash down the Aegean stables (to mix my myths). That's the mode of the epic.
If I'm telling a more realistic tale, then I need more realistic details. I care about shit and I care about lube and I care about whether the horse is jumpy. I care about Catherine's need to fuck a horse. Why now? Why a horse? Why choose this way to go about it? Will achieving this goal really help her?
Whoops. Out of time.
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 13:55:43 -0400 (EDT)
Most of what I wanted to say on this topic has already been said by Anonymous. (I feel for you on the style-guide issue, Anonymous. Here, have a curmudeon cracker, look, it's Ambrose Bierce.) Redundancy has never stopped me before, so why should it now?
Since much of this argument has consisted of appeals to authority, however, I'll throw some in:
From the commercial fiction camp:
"The lack of rhythm in style--too many short sentences or too many long sentences in a row--is almost always an unnatural state resulting from too much worry over getting the proper mixture. Most people think and talk and write in a natural mixture of short and long sentences; you'll always get it if you forge about it and concentrate on telling your story. This will be a problem only if you make it so."
--Scott Meredith, Writing to Sell
From the literary fiction camp:
Read either (or both) of John Gardner's The Art of Fiction (Notes on
Craft for Young Writers) or Rust Hill's Writing In General and the
Short Story in Particular. (I haven't a copy of either in the office,
and I'm too lazy to go fetch one out of the car.)
* * *
I don't think anyone needs to count the number of words in sentences. Read it aloud. Have someone else read it aloud. How does it sound?
Sentence length is used to create an effect, but it's not the only tool in the toolbox. Short sentences slippery with sibilant sounds and ample alliteration create a different effect from short sentences bristling with harsh glottal sounds. Short sentences made up of long words create a different effect from long sentences made up of short words.
Some of my orgasms build in a continuous river-rush from the first kiss through the urgency of undressing and the need to press skin against skin, discover, uncover, and share in the moist secret places of our bodies and our hearts, pressing, stroking, fondling and then--surprisingly easily--I am in her, pushing and attempting to fill her with my cock, with me until it all comes flooding out in a vast almost cosmic sense of oneness with her, with my lover, with my beloved.
[85 words, 1 sentence]
Other times it's not like that at all. Other times we're disjointed, fragmented, shattered by our lusts or by other matters of the day. Kiss. Lick. Fondle. Stroke. Touch. Grope. Hands in pants; her fingers around my cock, my finger on her button. She moans. I moan. We undress. And so on.
[Mostly sentence fragments]
Those aren't great examples--I just threw them on the page (well, screen). They strive for different effects.
The question really is, are your sentences doing what you want? If not, change them. How do you know? Listen to the critiques. Feel free to ignore the advice.
Mine included.
[Pass me another curmudgeon cracker. Oh, good, H. L. Mencken. I always bite the heads off first; it's just appropriate.]