believing the story

In the middle of Frank Delaney's novel Ireland, an engaging 560-page narrative about Ireland and Irish storytellers, there's one paragraph that jumped off the page at me and said "Take me home with you." Or perhaps it whispered "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Whatever. But it's a memorable paragraph for all writers, and readers, and here it is.

A story has only one master—its narrator; he decides what he wants his story to do. I know, I have always known, what I want my stories to achieve—I want to make people believe. Believe what I tell. Believe in it. Believe me. Belief is the one effect I'm always looking for, and I apply every device, every pause, every gesture, every verbal nuance and twirl, to that end. To achieve it, I myself have to believe; if I don't, who will? I must believe ancient Ireland was as I describe it. The swords really did ring loudly off the shields. And the armor surely gleamed in the sun.

It’s just one of thousands of paragraphs in a novel chock full of delightful Irish stories-within-the-big-story, but there it is on the top of page 278, like a gold nugget that I discovered when I turned the page.

The paragraph is the beginning of a chapter-long letter written by the master storyteller, an elusive oral storyteller whom our young protagonist pursues around Ireland, telling his own stories along the way. Most of the advice in the letter applies to the oral tradition, but much of it also shines a light into the dark corners of the written story.

The narrator is the master of the story. A fiction writer narrates his story, whether he uses third-person narration or lets one of his characters tell the story first-person. Even in the quiet telling of the written story, the voice of the narrator rings out.

It’s almost the first decision I make in creating a story—selecting the point of view. In “Pickles and Shawnilynn and Me at the Mall,” a short story about three 8th-graders who spend an afternoon at Kahala Mall, the voice of Anna, the “Me” of the title, sings from first sentence to last. She is the master of the story, and letting her narrate was the perfect choice, even if it meant much time spent asking friends and strangers about current teenage slang and favorite teenage shops at the mall, and then visiting some of those shops. Just a word of warning—the Hello Kitty shops (Sanrio Surprise at Kahala Mall, in case you want to verify this) are incredibly, and dangerously, pink. Sunglasses would have helped. My eyes were sore for days afterwards.

“I want to make people believe,” Delaney writes. “Believe what I tell. Believe in it. Believe me.” I read the paragraph in Ireland long after I wrote the “Pickles” story, but these words describe exactly how I felt about my short story as I was writing it. Part of the believing deal is getting the setting and details right. Yes, Carl’s Jr. is right next to the Kahala Theatre movies at the mall. Yes, you can see school kids sitting there eating their French fries and talking. And yes, you can go to Claire’s and buy blueberry nail polish. After the movie your mom might pick you up in front of Long’s. Easy to believe.

“To achieve it,” Delaney continues, “I myself have to believe; if I don’t, who will?” Absolutely true. The writer is the first reader. He must convince himself first. I carried Anna and her two best friends around in my head for weeks before I wrote a word of their story. And as I began to write the story she became more real.

Then I had a chance to read the “Pickles” story aloud for the first time to a group of writer friends, in a workshop on voice. As I read Anna’s story, she became more real to me than most of the teenagers I’ve met. She was in my head, and I was riding along inside her head, at least for one Saturday afternoon at Kahala Mall, as she and Pickles and Shawnilynn watched the Ratatouille movie and Anna told about the big surprise and the super cool stuff that happened at the mall. Of course I believe.

Frank Delaney’s Ireland is a hymn to the joy of storytelling. Now there’s a phrase I want to take home with me, “the joy of storytelling.” If the story doesn’t bring me joy, how can I expect it to bring joy to a reader? Or a listener, for now that I think of it, I realize that my favorite stories are also great read-aloud stories. Give me a good narrator, the “master” of the story, let me hear that narrator’s voice as the story spins out, draw me into the story, in from the cold, and I am home free.

“Pickles and Shawnilynn and Me at the Mall” is scheduled for publication in October 2009 in the next collection from Bamboo Ridge Press in Honolulu (Anna’s hometown, by the way, and home to Kahala Mall and the frightening pink shop).

in praise of small moments

There’s a short scene in Fargo that nobody talks about much. It’s not one of the big scenes that everyone  who sees the 1996 Coen brothers film remembers.  Not one of the action scenes, like the kidnapping of the car salesman’s wife, or the sporadic bumbling violence of the two hired kidnappers, or the woodchipper scene and chase on the ice near the end of the film.

No, the final scene is a quiet little moment, in bed with the heroine, Marge Gunderson--a very pregnant small-town police chief (Frances McDormand in her Oscar-winning role)--and her husband, Norm, who has submitted his painting of a mallard in a competition for future postage stamps.

And no again, it’s not a sex scene. But it’s very much a love scene. In this final scene of Fargo the husband and wife lie close together in bed and talk, just talk, and it’s so sweet and real and the antithesis of the earlier violent scenes that it’s thoroughly satisfying to watch. It brings the film to rest on a note of peace and order restored in the warmth of home and the marriage bed. It’s our payoff at the end of a long and bumpy ride. Here’s the complete scene:

__________________________

A BEDROOM

We are square on Norm, who sits in bed watching television.

After a long beat, Marge enters frame in a nightie and
climbs into bed, with some effort.

                         MARGE

               Oooph!

Norm reaches for her hand as both watch the television.
At length Norm speaks, but keeps his eyes on the TV.

                         NORM

               They announced it.

Marge looks at him.

                         MARGE

               They announced it?

                         NORM

               Yah.

Marge looks at him, waiting for more, but Norm's eyes stay
fixed on the television.

                         MARGE

               ...  So?

                         NORM

               Three-cent stamp.

                         MARGE

               Your mallard?

                         NORM

               Yah.

                         MARGE

               Norm, that's terrific!

Norm tries to suppress a smile of pleasure.

                         NORM

               It's just the three-cent.

                         MARGE

               It's terrific!

                         NORM

               Hautman's blue-winged teal got the
        twenty-nine cent.  People don't 
               much use the three-cent.

                          MARGE

               Oh, for Pete's - a course they do!
       Every time they raise the darned
               postage, people need the little stamps!

                          NORM

               Yah?

                          MARGE

               When they're stuck with a bunch a
                the old ones!

                          NORM

               Yah, I guess.

                          MARGE

               That's terrific.

 Her eyes go back to the TV.

                          MARGE

               ...  I'm so proud a you, Norm.

 Norm murmurs:

                          NORM

               I love you, Margie.

                          MARGE

               I love you, Norm.

Both of them are watching the TV as Norm reaches out to rest
a hand on top of her stomach.

                         NORM

               ...  Two more months.

Marge absently rests her own hand on top of his.

                         MARGE

               Two more months.

Hold; fade out.

_________________________

I love these small moments in film and fiction and music and art. It’s easy to miss them. Don’t blink. But they are worth our attention, and worth returning to. That’s why I want to write a few small essays this summer about the kinds of small moments and details that brighten a story or a musical piece, a movie or a painting. They have a way of charming us, of drawing us in.

In fiction they can give us a sudden insight into a character, or a relationship. Or they can simply delight us in themselves, perhaps like a found object, a small shell on a beach. These small moments, small scenes, appear in many different forms.  The story-within-a-story is one common form.  A dream, which is a type of story-within-a-story, is another.  Some small scenes appear to have no direct connection to the main plot, and they challenge us as petite riddles to make the connection.  Sometimes the small moments are all about a minor, secondary character, someone who may not appear anywhere else in the narrative.  This walk-on has his moment in the spotlight and then moves on, but if the scene is done right we don’t forget him.

In a painting sometimes our eye is drawn to a detail, perhaps a person, or something, in the background.  Soon we are puzzling over that part of the work, studying the clues that keep us from turning away and moving on.  In music, say in a favorite song, there is a word or phrase, a small moment in time, that we anticipate, experience one more time, and then carry that moment with us through the rest of the song, and beyond.

Fiction writers, who are told to focus on the big scenes, the big moments in the story, need to pay attention to the small scenes as well. They give the reader, and the writer, a chance to breathe, to stroll along a side path before returning to the main highway of the plot, where characters chase each other until something big happens. I think those small scenes are a little like coffee breaks, when we sit down with a friend and tell small stories (within the larger stories of our lives), or talk about our dreams, or maybe just say, “Norm, that’s terrific!” or “Every time they raise the darned postage, people need the little stamps!”

a poem for summer

Here's a poem of mine to celebrate the imminent arrival of another summer.  Try reading it aloud, and slowly.  After all, summer is a time to slow down, to cool our jets, to savor the moment.

“Melon”

Two men on a porch,
old friends, old friends,
fifty years and more,
in a town left far behind,
taking it slow and easy,
making it last.

“What’s your hurry?”
one of them asks
as I walk by,
my usual pace,
on my way
to someplace else.

“Come on up,”
he says with a wave,
his hand flowing smooth
through the summer air,
drawing me in,
right up the walk.

“You’re one of those
burnin’ daylight men,
aren’t you?” And I laugh.
”Not much daylight left,”
he says, “not much to burn,
I reckon.”

“I guess not,” I say.
“Come have some melon then,
here’s a chair,
cool your jets,
as my grandkids say.”
I smile and nod, my jets cooling down.

“Charley,” he says,
and his friend looks up,
melon juice on his lips.
”What?” Charley says.
”Cut the man some melon,
that’s what.”

“OK, Al,” Charley says,
and he takes the knife,
small and beat up but sharp,
the world’s best surgeon at work,
the honeydew his patient,
its life in his skilled, weathered hands.

He cuts a generous slice,
holds it before me
like the magi’s gift,
for me, a stranger
on their ancient porch,
and waits for me to taste.

There are no plates, no forks,
no napkins, nothing but
the melon and the three of us.
They watch me bring it to my mouth,
the light green sweetness on my tongue,
and me humming as they smile.

“Good melon,” Al says.
“The best,” Charley replies.
I cannot speak, only hum,
the melon possessing me,
the chair my home,
the porch my world.

“You never had melon
like that before,”
Al says, and he licks his lips,
and Charley cuts me another slice
and one for Al
and one for himself.

And so it goes,
as the daylight fades,
and there we are
between day and night,
and I have traded
one journey for another.

By the time the fireflies
light the yard
another melon has appeared,
larger and sweeter than the first,
and Charley hands me the knife
and tells me all his surgeon tricks.

“Good melon,” Al says.
“The best,” Charley replies.
And then they sit back,
the melon endless like this day,
and close their eyes
and listen to me hum some more.

 

take five

"Take Five” is many things, from the title of a classic jazz piece—composed by saxophonist Paul Desmond and made famous by Desmond and the Dave Brubeck Quartet as the first jazz instrumental to sell a million copies—to, on a much smaller stage, the title of a column that I write for Words of Paradise, the newsletter of the Aloha chapter of Romance Writers of America.

The phrase, as we shall soon see, also has meaning for writers, God bless them and their smoking keyboards.  Why are those keyboards smoking?  Maybe it’s because their masters are hot and heavy into yet another rewrite, perhaps the fifth rewrite. Maybe it’s “take five” because the first take, the first draft, was a start but only that, and now it’s months later and you’re in the middle of a fifth draft, and you could have listened to the Brubeck piece a million times until it was stuck in your head for all eternity, and you could have learned to play the piano and mastered the 5/4 time of “Take Five,” but you didn’t because you’re lost in yet another draft of yet another story.  Don’t get me wrong, I love writing.  It’s in my blood and bones.

“Take five,” of course, is simply a way of saying “take a break.”  Take five minutes and then come back.  The original Brubeck recording of “Take Five” lasts five minutes.  It’s as cool as Desmond’s sax, and the seldom heard lyrics, composed by Brubeck and his wife Iola, open with these cool lines:  “Won’t you stop and take a little time out with me, just take five; Stop your busy day and take the time out to see I’m alive.”

To take five, then, is to take a little time out from your day to do something vital but often overlooked.  

I usually think of time management in terms of hours, thinking “here’s what I can accomplish in the next hour,” beginning when the big hand is on the 12.  We get 24 of those each day.  

Looking at my watch, however, when I see all the numbers that mark the big hand’s hourly journey, beginning with one, I begin to see time in five-minute segments.  “Here,” time says, “take five.”   Then five minutes later, time says, “Take five more.”  It’s as if time tosses us a nickel tip, and then feels a bit cheap and returns to the table to toss us another nickel.  But time keeps on tipping.  The nickels keep landing on our table.

What can we do in five minutes, besides listen to “Take Five” or take a short break from whatever we’re in the middle of at the moment?  Here’s a short list.  Just one list of many.  Feel free to make your own.

1. Dream.

2. Dream some more.

3. Write down the dream, as a story title.

4. Give the dream to a character.

5. Write to find out what happens to the dream.

That’s five nickels, 25 minutes.  That last five minutes will be just a start, of course.  The big hand makes one circle, then another, and another.  Three hours later the story is all you can think of.  It will be there the next day, waiting for you to follow it down the winding road of dreams.  When you’re done, take five.  You’ve earned it.

does romance have a chance?

So there I was last Sunday, watching the final day of the Masters golf tournament. April in Georgia. Hypnotic just to take in the beauty of Augusta—its fame well deserved, unrivalled among golf courses, except perhaps for that part of Pebble Beach that runs alongside the mighty Pacific.  All that green, green grass, the azaleas, the water, the classic stone bridges, the white bunkers, the tall trees.  Ah yes, so relaxing to sit back in a recliner, with a cool drink in hand, and observe spring in Augusta. Listening to the soft music of birds in the pines.

It’s all perfect. But then they put the golfers on the course and give them clubs and little white balls to try to hit down those long fairways and onto the emerald greens, and see who can get home with the fewest number of strokes.  Without having a stroke, because it’s not so relaxing for the golfers. Especially if it’s late on a Sunday and you’re in a three-way playoff and you’ve already been through the wringer trying to get home on the back nine without totally falling apart.  Especially if you’re Angel Cabrera and you’ve taken the scenic route with your tee shot on 18, the first playoff hole. Kenny Perry and Chad Campbell are both sitting pretty in the fairway, but you’re off in the woods, and your ball has come to rest behind one of those tall pines and there’s no way out, you’re toast, and the gods of Augusta have laughed at you and gone off to ride to glory with the other two guys. 

You have no chance. All that work for four days, outplaying Tiger and Lefty, the two best golfers in the world, and now you’re behind a tree. Everyone expects you to just pitch out into the fairway, but you’re looking into the woods.  More trees.  You can’t be serious.  What’s your plan, to say a prayer and try to get through those trees and on up the fairway?  

Spectators have scattered.  Make way for the crazy man!  Angel is like a man suddenly lost and looking for a miracle.  What is he thinking? Nothing to lose?  He stands next to the tree, plants his feet, and prepares his club for the Hail Mary.  I hold my breath.  He brings the club down hard on the ball and it flies away.  Then we hear the sound of golf ball on wood.  He’s hit a tree.  His next shot, no doubt, will be from another zip code; is that the 10th hole on the other side of the woods? The camera zooms in on Angel’s face.  His eyes are big.  What has happened? Has his prayer been answered?

And then the camera spots the little white ball in the green fairway, its journey through the woods over now, and it’s in the 18th fairway, and the gods have laughed at Angel and given him a break. Maybe they will let him scramble in on this first playoff hole just to see what happens.  What happens is that Perry and Campbell have trouble hitting the green.  Angel, however, having seen the tall pines up close and personal, having emerged from the woods a wild man but somehow blessed by the gods, proceeds to show the other two guys how to finish a hole. He scrambles to make par.  Campbell misses his par putt and is eliminated.  Perry and Angel head for the second playoff hole, and the gods—having seen something they like from the Argentinian they call El Pato, the Duck—ride with Angel Cabrera to glory and the Masters championship.  "Here," the gods whisper in his ear, "have a green jacket."

Quite a ride.  An amazing Masters finish.  Tiger and Lefty, playing together and attracting huge galleries, charging all day to catch the leaders and coming up just short.  Then three mortals, underdogs like the rest of the world to Tiger Woods, battling down the stretch.  And on that first playoff hole, lost in the pines, his hopes apparently shattered, at that moment the biggest underdog of all, Cabrera going for an improbable, desperate shot, and taking us all with him on an unlikely finish.

I watch as they replay that shot.  Again he attempts the impossible.  Does Angel have a chance? You’d have to be a little wild and crazy yourself to bet on him at that point, although the odds would be tempting.  

Why do I think of that moment as romantic?  Maybe because there’s something wonderfully romantic about challenging the gods, shunning the safe, logical path, and opening a window for luck.  Sports fans for ages have cheered on the underdog.  We love unlikely happy endings. Does romance have a chance? Sometimes. There are so many obstacles in its way.  Maybe it’s a game for underdogs.  Maybe the gods smile on us when we dare to be a little wild and crazy.  Just a lesson I learned last Sunday watching an Angel.

dining alfresco ... in two takes

The following is in response to the writing challenge in my February 4th blog on hearing voices.  

Take One: 

Again with the menu. He always orders. He has impeccable taste. We always sit at this table. He tips the maitre d’ (which is short for maitre d’hotel, a fact of which he reminds me periodically, as if I need reminding). He always sits facing the view, and I sit facing the other people, which is fine with me because I want to study the other people. Occasionally I study him, but not for long. He oozes predictability. You could call it stability, or dependability, but what I see oozing from him is predictability.

We are dining alfresco, and naturally he reminds me from time to time that in the 16th century alfresco meant “in a cool place.” It is cool out here, on the patio. “In Hawaii,” he reminds me, “we would call it a lanai.” Well, yes, we would, if we were in Hawaii, which we are not, and never will be. Couples go there on their honeymoons, or anniversary trips. I don’t see a lanai in our future, no honeymoon, but ... perhaps, just maybe, an anniversary. 

One day we will be at sitting at this table, much as we sit now, the candle the same, the buildings the same, the stars the same, and he will put down the menu and remind me that this is an important day in our relationship, the third anniversary of our first date, at this very restaurant, where we sat at this very table. Yes, and he first ordered my dinner, and I first studied him carefully. Yes, he will proclaim, a little too grandly, our third anniversary, and I will gasp. He will take this gasp as a sign of delight, of approval, but he will be wrong. His judgment, unlike his taste, is not impeccable. I study the candle. Dining by candlelight, how romantic. Perfect for a first date, a time when all the bright illusions and hopes of a new relationship float above our heads like small balloons that believe they will live forever.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not complaining. But one day I will simply say no. No, thank you, you are kind to ask, but I cannot accept. I will not dine alfresco with you again, or watch you tip the maitre d’, or watch you study the menu. Au revoir, I will say, and remind him that it’s what they say in France, or if we were in Spain I would tell him adios, or in Italy arrivederci, or in England cheerio, or in Japan sayonara, but we will be in America, where “so long” works just fine. And then I will be strangely sad for a while. And I will miss the lobster bisque.

Take Two: 

I like a man who takes charge. He tells me the lobster bisque is excellent here, and I say fine. He seems to have impeccable taste. I like how he tipped the head waiter (he called him the maitre d’, which he said is short for maitre d’hotel) so we could have this wonderful table under the stars. 

Then he tells me that he has just ended a long relationship with a woman who suddenly said goodbye one day. He chose not to ask her to stay. So I lean over and pat his hand (and notice that he has a really good manicure), and I tell him that when God closes a door he opens a window. Then I turn to look at the stars, and show him my profile, which is quite good I am told. 

Then I ask him if he has ever been to Hawaii, or if he wanted to go some day, and if we closed our eyes we could imagine that there were tiki torches everywhere, and Hawaiian music, and wouldn’t that be wonderful. And then I sit back and let him talk some more, and he tells me that we are dining alfresco, and what that meant in the 16th century, and I am like so impressed.

hearing voices

Lately I’ve been hearing voices.  Again.  Voices in my head.  But don’t get nervous.  The voices aren’t telling me to do bad things.  They’re just talking to themselves, or having conversations, and that’s absolutely a good thing.  If you write fiction, telling stories that need to be true but need not be factual, you want characters in those stories.  You want your characters to talk to each other, so they might as well talk in your head.  I draw the line at talking back to these characters, however, especially in public.

On March 7, at the RWA Aloha Chapter meeting, I will be leading a fiction writers workshop on voice. We will be looking at the writer’s voice, the narrator’s voice, and the character’s voice. How do they differ?  Do they ever overlap?  And how do you find your voice?  It’s probably not something you lost, but rather something you discover over time.  Years, in fact.

The workshop will include a special section on book design with graphic artist Stephanie Chang, who will talk about imagining your book and matching design with voice.  Stephanie and I have been working on the design for my contemporary romance Chasing Cowboys.

If you’re looking for a homework assignment, here’s one.  Imagine a  young man and a young woman seated at a table.  The man appears to be studying a menu. The woman doesn’t have a menu.  Is she talking?  What is she thinking?  There’s a lighted candle on the table, buildings in the background, and stars in the night sky.  A romantic setting.  So what’s missing?  We need voices! Make them talk.  You have the characters and the setting. Now write the scene.  Give them distinct voices.  Give each an agenda perhaps; decide what it is each one wants.  First date?  Last date? Is there trouble ahead, trouble behind?  

In addition to the dialogue, decide on a narrator for this scene.  You can  go with a third-person narrator, or you may choose one of the two characters to be a first-person narrator.  

Finally, try to give the scene these three things:  (1) a tantalizing beginning, in the voice of the narrator or one of the characters, perhaps introducing some conflict or tension;  (2) a middle in which the characters learn something or change in some way; and (3) a strong ending, a definite resolution.  Don’t leave your reader hanging!
 

When your scene is written, test it.  Read the scene aloud.  Try reading all the lines of one character, then go back and read all the lines of the other character.  This is your chance to fantasize about how the stage and screen lost a great actor the day you decided to become a writer instead.  “And the Oscar goes to ...” 

Then wake up and rewrite your scene. At some point in this process, listen to your own voice as you tell yourself that you are one creative genius.  Just make sure that nobody’s around when you start talking to yourself.