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WU Un-Conference Wrap-up, Part 1

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Therese here to introduce you to Jeannine Walls Thibodeau. Jeannine has been working behind the scenes for WU for quite some time, helping out as a part of our guest-post team. She generously agreed to help recap the WU Un-Conference, utilizing notes from several sources, so that everyone in the WU audience might benefit from our gathering in Salem. Not an easy job, believe me. Today through Wednesday, you’ll see condensed takeaways–some jewels we think you’ll be able to use to make your writing better now.

We want to thank author Melanie Conklin for letting us republish some of her beautiful note-taking art within our recaps. Melanie’s debut MG novel, Counting Thyme, will be published by Putnam in 2016. (You can view more of Melanie’s art, and stay abreast of her writing news, on her Twitter feed.) Thank you, Melanie!

Take it away, Jeannine!

It’s difficult to succinctly say exactly what the Un-Conference was to all of us who attended. But the consensus seems to revolve around the following: It was inspirational. It was motivational. It was a transformative experience. About ninety writers traveled from all over the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe (England and Spain) to attend, most of whom hadn’t met in real life.

But what exactly made the Un-Conference like no other? Was it the focus on the craft of writing, rather than fevered pitch sessions? Was it the way workshops required reflection and sharing? Was it because of the location—Salem, MA, formerly known for witch trials, and the early morning walks exploring the city? Was it the shared meals, whether in character or being our very own selves? Was it the realization that no one’s gut clenches? Was it throwing so many introverts in a group with some gregarious extraverts? Was it the permission to let the demons out on our characters? Was it the bedtime stories when we were able to hear our friends read their own stories? Was it writing in the tavern with our new besties? Was it exploring cemeteries at night? Was it those late-night poker games full of hilarity? Was it sitting in the lobby wrapped in blankets, drinking and laughing? Was it the sharing and love we experienced because of the loss of two of our own, Lisa Threadgill and Bob Stewart?

Yes. It was.  It was all that.

Here’s a peek at individual sessions, with special thanks to Erin Thomas, Mike Swift, Don Maass, Brunonia Barry, Brin Jackson, Therese Walsh, Jennifer Roundell, and Jan O’Hara for their notes. This post would not be possible without all of you!

Lisa Cron, Wired for Story, Parts I and II 

Part I

What is a story? What are we talking about? Story is how. What happens is the plot, the surface of the story. It is not what the story’s about. Story affects someone, namely, the protagonist, the person whose skin the reader is in. The plot gets its meaning based on how it’s affecting the protagonist in pursuit of their difficult goal (or quest, story question).

All story is change, and all change is hard—good as well as bad. How the protagonist changes as a result of the change in the story: this is the important part. You need to know a lot about your protagonist before you can even begin to write.

All protagonists come with two preexisting conditions: something they really want, and something they need to overcome in order to get it.

Five Steps/Layers to Dig Through before Writing, Revising.

What If: There needs to be a clear problem that the character is going to have to deal with, ideally in a certain timeframe.

Who: Everything in the what-if gets its emotional weight from how it affects the protagonist. Your “who” starts to transform the “what if.”

Why: Why does the “what if” matter to the protagonist?  This comes back to the preexisting conditions, which need to be firmly cemented before this point.

Worldview: How did the protagonist come to be the person they are, in terms of what’s changing, when they step onto the page on the first page? If you want to force your character to see with new eyes, how can you do that if you don’t know how they were seeing things on the first page?

When: The place/time the story starts is where the character doesn’t have a choice except to act. Do you ever hear the first tick of a ticking clock? Not usually. You notice after it’s been going for a while. By the time you smell the smoke, the fire’s been burning for some time.

Part II

You need to know the very specific details of this thing that is holding your character back. “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”

A seminal scene, or something like it, needs to be in the novel. It’s not enough for the author to know it. Sometimes there can be parts of it that are just for the author. It’s not enough to be general with it. It’s about knowing in full detail the specific moments when the “lens” that your character uses was shaped, when they were changed. Because that will define how the character makes sense of the events of the novel. Most of the backstory will come into the book because it’s what the character will be thinking about as he makes decisions in the novel.

It doesn’t matter what happens—what matters is how it affects the protagonist and what meaning they’re reading into it. We can’t know that without a sense of what they’ve been through and where they came from.

Meg Rosoff, Throughness

Think of your brain as a colander. A million things happen to you every single day of your life, and 99.99999999% of them you’ll never think of again. They go through the holes in your colander. But every once in a while, throughout a lifetime, something sticks.

If we could each empty our heads out onto the table, nobody’s “pile” would be the same as anyone else’s. The stuff that’s in our heads, the stuff that stuck, is the most important thing about us—not just as writers, but as people.

As a writer, you spend a lot of time in your unconscious mind, and that’s dark. That’s where the dark things live.

drawing by Melanie Conklin

 

Meg decided to take up riding horses—around 50 years old. Started into jumping. Switched to dressage. Dressage is old. “Dressage” means schooling.

The language that goes with dressage involves two words that get used a lot. One is “connection,” one is “thoroughness.” Meg kept being told she needed to be more “through.” She looked it up on the American Dressage Association site, and learned that it is “the supple elastic unblocked connected state that permits an unrestricted flow of energy from rider to horse and from horse back to rider.”

Meg’s insight: What if we think of the rider as the conscious mind and the horse as the unconscious mind?

The quality of your unconscious mind will inform your writing and will be the most important thing about your writing.

Brunonia Barry, Method Writing—and Eating

Method Writing (and Eating) with Brunonia Barry at the Witch's Brew Cafe
Method Writing (and Eating) with Brunonia Barry at the Witch’s Brew Cafe–photography credit Mike Swift

Our job as writers is to make our characters come alive for our readers, but first they have to come alive for us.  A technique she uses is method writing, much like method acting.

She uses a two-step process for character development. First she writes extensive biographies for all of her characters, then, once she knows them a bit, she uses this exercise to embody them, walking around and behaving as they might for days at a time, even ordering the foods they might like in restaurants, basically doing everything she can think of to “become” them and discover their personal perspectives.

The purpose? To find your character’s deep authentic voice.

The definition: Identifying emotionally with a character and assuming the character’s personality in the process.

For the sake of this session, she asked participants to choose a character they’re currently working on and to fill out a simple chart to remind themselves of that character’s traits; this chart included traits such as physical description, likes/hates, vices and quirks. Then she asked them to become that character for the duration of lunch.

Biggest fear?

What does the character want?

What’s keeping him or her from getting it?

(Note: These questions are the most important. Pay particular attention to them.)

John Vorhaus, If You Must Fail, Fail Big

If failure ‘doesn’t count,’ then what you’re doing doesn’t matter. So do things that matter, but reframe the failure side of things.

If you don’t like terms, change the terms: redefine failure so it becomes success. “I have succeeded in failing big!” Because of our fear of failure, we fail to dare. In order to dare, we must kill (or at least manage) our fear of failure.

Examine each problem and break it down into smaller problems:

[pullquote]A great story will create anxiety about something that’s important to your reader. When you run in fear from other people’s reactions, you are not communicating the human condition, but protecting yourself. The purpose of storytelling is to improve the human condition. In fact, the writer’s highest calling is to explain the human condition to other humans for the purpose of the betterment of all.[/pullquote]

Fear of other people’s reactions. A great story will create anxiety about something that’s important to your reader. When you run in fear from other people’s reactions, you are not communicating the human condition, but protecting yourself. The purpose of storytelling is to improve the human condition. In fact, the writer’s highest calling is to explain the human condition to other humans for the purpose of the betterment of all.  (Treat this statement as a useful fiction, if it helps.) Instead of product, focus on growth: we can always grow in our craft.

Fear of people saying, “What you’re selling isn’t worth buying.” Selling our work has a tremendous emotional burden, but we have to get over it. There’s a part of your job you don’t like? Guess what? Everyone has a part of their job they don’t like.

Fear of bad writing days. Bring full self-awareness to your process: deepen your understanding for yourself. You can always succeed at that.

Liz Michalski/Brunonia Barry, Setting as Character

A few tips to keep in mind when creating setting:

  • Use all of your senses to create a realistic portrait.
  • Remember that the physical landscape can be very powerful because it is not easily under your protagonist’s control (i.e., the weather) and in terms of landscape, can go years without changing.
  • Create a setting so strong and unique it becomes a character in its own right, the only place your story could be told. Allow it to grow and change with time, so that it evolves along with your protagonist.
  • Write a full biography of place, to help develop that sense of place in the book. Part of this biography is research, part is the pictures you choose to take—no two people will write about the same place the same way.
  • Changes in a setting (how it’s changing in the period of the book) can underscore what’s going on with the characters. Objective correlative.

Meg Rosoff, Voice

We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. Voice is about what you have to say that no one else can say.

Turning points in life are one of the most important things to look it in finding who you are, finding your voice.

Meg ran this workshop as a series of questions, which she called “Boot Camp Exercises for the Brain.” There were approximately 40 questions she fired off. Here are a few to get you thinking:

(Don’t think too hard. There are no right or wrong answers. Write quickly—Meg went through these pretty fast, so there wasn’t a lot of time to second-guess in between.)

Somebody you would like to erase from your life.

You find $1000 in a paper bag on the way home. The note inside says it’s yours—there’s no need for you to take it to the police or try to find the original owner. What do you do with it?

If you found out you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do tonight?

What year (any year, past, present or future) would you like to visit? Why?

What moment would you like to go back in time and change?

What stands in your way?

Ray Rhamey, First Pages

Key story elements that a writer can use to create a compelling narrative are:

  • Story questions
  • Tension (in the reader)
  • Voice
  • Clarity
  • Scene setting
  • Character
[pullquote]If you would like to have a PDF copy of the First-page Checklist, click here for a downloadable copy.[/pullquote]

A First-page Checklist

  • It begins with connecting the reader with the protagonist
  • Something is happening. On a first page, this does NOT include a character musing about whatever.
  • What happens moves the story forward.
  • What happens raises a story question—what happens next? or why did that happen?

Come back tomorrow for Part 2 of our WU Un-Con Recap!

About Jeannine Walls Thibodeau

Jeannine Walls Thibodeau can't remember a time in her life when she didn't want to be a writer. She was dismayed at the age of five that a four-year-old had already claimed the title of youngest author. She graduated from Emerson College with a degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing, and has had her work appear in a creative writing textbook and several small journals. She's currently at work on her first novel that she's determined to complete by March 2014.

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Comments

  1. Great job, J9! I think what most strikes me in reading the recaps is the importance of attending writing conferences. I mean, as awesome as her points are here (and as valuable as they’ll surely be to many), you don’t really experience the power of a Lisa Cron session by reading her words. Seeing Lisa begin and power through a session is like starting a Briggs & Stratton with no throttle governor. She just roars to life, mows through your mental weeds, and leaves you breathless.

    I know, my realization is nothing new. We hear that all of the time: “You must go – attend writing conferences.” And although I’ve been to one other, I sort of waved the advice off. I thought of it as valuable, but not critical to growth.

    But today, I finally, truly get it. I am reading the words here, and they are valuable. But I realize, in the rush of memory of the actual sessions, that my experience in being there, feeling the adrenaline rush that accompanied the points that applied to my work, feeling the reactions of others, the exchanged conversations just after – all of it (as you so beautifully describe) came together for me in a powerful way. I so clearly see and recall the palpable energy born of being among my fellows. I know I grew from the experience. As a writer and as a person.

    Thanks to J9, the presenters, the note-takers, T and everyone who helped put the UnCon together, and to everyone that contributed to my awesome experience by sharing it with me.

    • Vaughn, YES to all you’ve posted! While I was compiling this, so much came back to me. First, the sessions I attended, and the lessons I learned there–I actually got goosebumps while reading through the notes. Then of course, there were the conversations that happened because of those sessions–connecting with so many writers at so many different places, and the friendships that happened because of the Un-Con. It was really a life-changing experience for me.

  2. Ah…this brought the week back in the most delightful way. Lisa, Meg, John, and Brunonia (those were the presenters of the classes I took in this recap) were always my mentors, but to have met them and studied under their guidance was like being given a Make A Wish request without having to die.

    I agree with Vaughn, with one caveat: Writing conferences are critical to a writer’s growth, but this UnConferences was critical to my writerly well-being. Thanks, Jeannine, for compiling these.

    • Mike! THIS: “Writing conferences are critical to a writer’s growth, but this UnConference was critical to my writerly well-being.” That says it all. You were one of the joys of the Un-Con, and thank you so much for your help with this post.

  3. This would have been quite the project, Jeannine! Thank you for putting it together for those who were unable to attend the UnCon. There’s some valuable information here!

    These posts will bring back fond memories for those of us who did attend as well. As I read the notes on Wired for Story I imagined Lisa Cron pacing at the front of the room as she spoke. I laughed at the memory of my somewhat flubbed introduction of Brunonia Barry followed shortly by my having accidentally followed a tour group into Hawthorne’s birthplace instead of staying with the Setting as Character class. (Where was my brain? Talk about a lost opportunity to get a full Mod Squad photo!)

    I could smell the sea air, taste the food at The Witches Brew, and hear the laughter all over again.

    What a great way to start my morning!

    • Oh, Kim, thanks so much! I know I said it to you this morning, but rereading your comment makes me wish you could see me smiling!

  4. Very nice summation. Thank you for taking the time to put it together.

    If I’d known there was going to be a poker game, well, then I would have dropped everything a caught a flight. :-)

    • Well, Thomas, now we know what to put in the promo for the next Un-Con! Thanks for your kind words.

    • It certainly was an amazing conference. Looking forward to the next one, and to getting to know you better, too! Happy 2015, and (to quote a wonderful woman) write on!

  6. Jeannine,

    Thank you for doing this. Those nights in the lobby under blankets, laughing and drinking white russians with you and Marta and Anna and Tonia. And, on the last night, Brin’s “Neon” dance that startled the man in the chair behind her, who kept peeping over his newspaper to see what the hell we were doing. And Anna and Marta convulsed with laughter as Brin made her moves.

    And, of course, the reminder to get back to Meg’s questions.

    I didn’t attend John’s session on Fear of Failure. I had planned to go but didn’t well enough and had to miss it. Having the recap here is great.

    Thank you.

    • Sevigne, our time spent under blankets in the lobby laughing was some of my favorite time at the Un-Con…but YES! Get back to Meg’s questions. I did recently, and was surprised by some of what I’d jotted down quickly. (And some of *that* is going to inform my story in surprising ways, I’m guessing.)

  7. It’s not easy to net out one session, let alone a whole conference full of lessons. Good job! I learned ‘stuff’ just from reading this. Xo

    • Thank you, Thea, and I’m so glad! Everyone was so generous with their notes and takes on the conference…it was definitely difficult to try to whittle down so many smart and valuable tips. I’m really hoping you’ll be at the next Un-Con! xo

  8. Ah, the memories…. Thanks for the recap, J9. Brings back all the feels. It was such a week of learning and expanding craft knowledge, and it gives me a buzz to read the notes here on the sessions I attended. But it was also a week of connection and shared experience and emotion, of laughter and tears and awe.

    <3 to all.

    • Yes, Jo! You should have seen me while I was compiling these recaps. I *may* have cried more than once…

  9. This is so friggin’ awesome. Thank you for putting it all together, J9. The amount of aha! moments and game-changing techniques in these notes are a treasure and this post a deep keeper. The only thing that can top its awesomeness is the experience of being there, in Salem, with the WU tribe. I am renewed and grateful for the privilege of such an amazing experience.

    • Bernadette, I feel the same way you do. I keep coming back to my notes (both in my notebook and here) and every time I do, I recapture a bit of the Un-Con. Let’s keep it going until the next one!

  10. I keep wishing I could magically be transported back to the UnCon and experience it all over again. You’ve done the next best thing by recreating the moments for us. Thank you so much! I’m so thrilled and grateful to have been a part of the experience, and for the ongoing connections to the incredible people who shared the experience.

    • You’re welcome! It was actually a lot of fun putting these together–I *almost* felt as if I was back in Salem again. The sessions were invaluable as were the friendships we cemented.

  11. Thanks for doing this for everyone, Jeannine. I’m going through and taking notes- figured it couldn’t hurt to write more than a few things twice so they stick in my colander for good.

    Writing in the tavern, blankets in the lobby, bedtime stories, poker games, being sneered at by the train conductor, midnight gallivants in the cemetery, all those hugs… Yes, all of that.

    As for the learning experience- I’m still hanging out in the recombobulation center. ;)

    • Oh, Tonia! I can’t wait to see what sticks in your colander and what you’ll write about next. I feel as though I’m *still* learning…