Mad Skills – Page 3

Your Protagonist’s “I Want” Song

May 10, 2018 By Kathryn Craft

Today’s mad skill comes to us via Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the music and lyrics for one of my favorite musicals, Wicked, based on Gregory Maguire’s bestselling novel of the same name. The show tracks the early life of Elphaba, the girl who is destined to become the Wicked Witch of the West. On an episode of American Songbook at NJPAC (full episode here), Schwartz spoke of including, early on in his musicals, what he calls the “I want” song. I think we novelists can learn something from contemplating the intent of this song, which in this case is the protagonist’s first.

On the show, Schwartz demonstrates how his first two attempts at writing Elphaba’s “I want” song fell flat. His son Scott, a talented theater director, pointed out why: the lyrics were generic to the point of cliché.

Make the desire specific

The audience didn’t need Elphaba to explain that she wanted to do good things in order to feel significant; they needed to know what achieving significance would look like for Elphaba. She is not “everywoman.” She is a witch. From Oz. Reviled for her green skin. The twist in Maguire’s telling is that she is also the story’s protagonist, so Schwartz had the challenge of creating a psychological bond between the audience and teenage version of the wicked witch who would one day send flying monkeys after Dorothy.

His son’s advice: “Have her show up at school and do something that earns her the right to sing.”

Schwartz gave it a try. After Elphaba performs an inadvertent act of magic in class, her teacher decides to tutor her in sorcery—with an eye toward introducing her to the great wizard. Everyone in Oz wants to meet the Wizard so he can fix what’s wrong with them. Now Elphaba might get her chance.

She hangs hope for her future on the imagined details of this interaction in the want song, “The Wizard and I,” made all the more stirring because we know from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that her name will not one day inspire the same kind of “celebration throughout Oz” that she envisions.

That little bit of story packs so much power: someone has seen through Elphaba’s skin color to a “talent” she’d been timid about exposing, but which has now been deemed brilliant. Her dreaming offers more than a peek at her soft underbelly; she exposes her most desired life story, full monty. Even if you haven’t seen this show, I’m sure you are already anticipating—perhaps even wincing at—the ways in which Elphaba’s story will not unfold as expected.

So how can we grab the power of the “I want” song for our characters?

Keep desire at the core of your story

Since your character will arrive at page one of your story with his deep desire already formed, it’s never too soon to start orienting your reader to what she or he wants. Some authors foreshadow the desire in their opening lines, as Julie Christine Johnson did in her debut novel, In Another Life: [Read more…]

13 Ways to Engage Your Reader with a Despicable Character

April 12, 2018 By Kathryn Craft

I’m not one who believes that character likability is key to winning over the reader—for me, “relatability” is more important—but there is a character in David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize) whose lack of moral compass challenges even my liberal stance.

After a night out with his college friends, Hugo has sex with the woman that Olly (his friend and the designated driver, no less) has admitted he’s in love with. Later, he hides near a phone booth and listens, amused, to Olly’s private despair as he begs for the return of her love. He’s slept with the mother of another of those friends and when with him, thinks about her naked. He tells a regular bedmate, a Brazilian nurse, that he’ll never introduce her to his parents because they don’t have that kind of relationship, and wonders “why women are uglier once they’re unpeeled, encrusted, and had.”

He steals and sells the valuable stamp collection of a former mentor suffering from Alzheimer’s and banks the money under an assumed name. He regularly fleeces another friend at cards, assuming his rich family will refill his coffers, resulting in such debt that the friend drives his last precious asset, a mint condition 1969 Aston Martin, over a cliff to end his shameful existence. Hugo’s reaction to hearing the news, after disbelief, is about the car: “I could weep. All that money.”

This character is a reprobate. What does it say about me that I cared about his story journey? Don’t judge me…yet. Suspecting mad skills, I had to go back and figure out how Mitchell won my interest.

1. First, there’s the character’s name: Hugo Lamb. Seriously—a huge lamb? Subliminally, the author is promising that the character has soft parts.

2. Hugo appreciates, in great detail, the work of 20^th-century British classical composer Benjamin Britten.

3. He is entertaining. When he sees a beautiful woman in church:

The Kraken in my boxer shorts awakes.

4. His intelligence is on display during a long, off-the-cuff argument on the nature of power.

5. When it suits him, he’s loyal and protective. An undergrad in politics, he poses as a postgrad law student to warn off aggressors that threaten his group of friends.

6. The reason he knows about the brigadier’s stamp collection is because he visits him regularly in the nursing home to read to him.

7. Someone appreciates Hugo for who he is. At one point, Olly’s “girlfriend” tells Hugo:

“The problem with the Ollies of the world is their niceness. Niceness drives me mental.”

…

You, Hugo,” she kisses my earlobe, “are a sordid, low-budget French film. The sort you’d stumble across on TV at night. You know you’ll regret it in the morning, but you keep watching anyway.”

8. He is self-aware: [Read more…]

Proving Your Protagonist Has What It Takes

March 8, 2018 By Kathryn Craft

Many writers of contemporary fiction start their stories with their protagonist in a fairly low place, barely tolerating his existence. It’s a modern-day, first-world setup: without trees to chop and a cabin to build and fields to plant, our hero-to-be is disillusioned in some way, unable to kick into gear and effect change. Then something unexpected happens, knocking our hero all the way to rock bottom, from where he must either choose to change or die. It is a fight for psychological survival.

This is a hero’s journey that many writers have experienced. We may have plenty to say about it that could be meaningful to others who are struggling. It may even be the reason we write.

But when translating this story to the page, there is something writers often leave out: proof of your protagonist’s agency. We may care about the problem, but why should we believe this sullen soul is capable of showing us the way beyond his ennui?

You need to give us some hint, early on, that the protagonist has the potential to greet change head-on and conquer whatever obstacles might stand in his way.

To demonstrate how an author might embed such proof of agency, let’s look at the opening of Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love. Our narrator is octogenarian Leo Gursky.

Paragraph 1

When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.

Okey dokey. I think this “hero” will serve our discussion.

Continuing on with the rest of the long first paragraph:

I’m surprised I haven’t been buried alive. The place isn’t big. I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, kitchen table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet to the front door, impossible, I have to go by way of the kitchen table. I like to imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to round the toilet and the kitchen table in order to arrive at the door. If it happens to be Bruno, I let him in without a word and then jog back to bed, the roar of the invisible crowd ringing in my ears.

Paragraph 2:

I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, I’d bet on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a big production out of finding my wallet. He stands in the door holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I’ll finish off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.

[Read more…]

Making Best Use of Historical Elements

January 11, 2018 By Kathryn Craft

When protagonist Josie Tyrell mentions that John Lennon had just been shot in the opening of Janet Fitch’s novel, Paint It Black, we immediately know that this story is set in 1980.

Having served its primary purpose, some writers would drop the historical reference and move on. Not Fitch. She makes such good use of Lennon’s death in her opening that one wonders if she chose that era just so she could have access to it.

Let’s look at how she drops this information into the second half of her first paragraph, after a few sentences that establish that Josie Tyrell is modeling for an artist friend:

Henry Ko wasn’t painting well today. He had to stop every few minutes to wipe his eyes on the back of his hand, while Double Fantasy circled around on the studio stereo. Everyone was playing it now. John Lennon had just been shot in New York, and wherever Josie went, people were playing the same fucking Beatles songs until you wanted to throw up. At least Double Fantasy had Yoko Ono.

Already Fitch has used the event to characterize Josie, who does not want us to forget the woman behind the man. But Fitch also uses the event to create subtext. I’ve added footnotes to show a connection to the story to come, illustrating how Josie’s perception of Lennon’s murder will weave into the fabric of her story:

On the cover that leaned against the dirty couch, John and Yoko pressed together for a kiss they would never finish.¹ People were always trashing Yoko Ono, blaming her for breaking up the Beatles,² but Josie knew they were just jealous that John preferred Yoko to some bloated megaband.³ Nobody ever really loved a lover. Because love was a private party, and nobody got on the guest list.

¹In just a few pages, Josie will find out that her boyfriend, Michael—who said he was going away on a trip to concentrate on his painting—has killed himself.
²Michael’s mother will blame Josie for his problems.
³Michael’s mother is a renowned concert pianist, and her competitive condescension toward Josie will prove to be Josie’s main obstacle through the rest of the novel.

Then, Fitch adds in another, more esoteric historical fact:

Henry kept crying about John Lennon. Josie felt worse about Darby Crash. Darby had just killed himself in an act of desperate theater,⁴ a gesture swamped by the Beatle’s death like a raft in the backwash of a battleship.⁵

⁴Foreshadows Michael’s suicide.
⁵Foreshadows Josie’s narrative arc—she doesn’t want to get swept away by Michael’s death.

Back to the painter’s studio. When Ko ends the session, he and Josie get high together. More foreshadowing:

She toked along with him, knee to knee, and thought about the guy who shot Lennon. Shot by a desperate fan. On the news, fans were always desperate.⁶

⁶Desperation, and Josie’s need to rise above it in a way that Michael could not, will be a theme throughout the book.

Still high, Josie heads back to the cabin she shares with Michael, hoping he has returned home from his painting trip. [Read more…]

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Bring Your Dialogue to Life

December 14, 2017 By Kathryn Craft

Do you strain to find little bits of action to enliven your dialogue that rise above “he ran a hand through his hair,” “she raked her fork through her potatoes,” or my favorite riveting action, “he leaned in”? This scene from Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, suggests we may not be giving ourselves enough to work with.

The set-up: Joe Cavalier has escaped Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City, where he hopes to create superhero comic books with his cousin. At an artsy party in a mansion belonging to the family of young Rosa Saks, he hurts his finger in an oddly heroic way. Rosa invites him upstairs to see her paintings.

The question tosses Joe into a quandary. Chabon then provides subtext that infuses the scene to come [portions excised for brevity]:

From the time of his arrival in New York City, he had never permitted himself to speak to a woman for pleasure…he had not come here to flirt with girls…he could justify his own liberty only to the degree that he employed it to earn the freedom of the family he had left behind.

Sounds like a no, right? But then Joe experiences an irritant that drives him into the very sort of scene he’s been trying to avoid: he overhears a German accent. Enraged, Joe says, “I would love to see your work.”

In excerpts from this long “getting to know you” dialogue between Joe and Rosa, which begins on p. 246, watch for two dialogue techniques that effectively bring to life this dialogue: misdirection and modulation.

Misdirection unfolds as if a deck of questions and a deck of answers have been shuffled together incorrectly. Because questions are not paired with their answers, the reader has to pay closer attention to understand what’s going on.

Modulation uses setting and narrative commentary to extend the scene’s complexity. Each spoken line invites the artful layering of meaningful detail or memory.

Yet Chabon isn’t all about craft here; he’s also using the nature of the dialogue to evoke the artistic process itself. Here are some examples.

“Speaking” is not limited to the characters

Watch as the room speaks to Joe of Rosa’s character.

In addition to her tiny, girlish white iron bed, a small dresser, and a nightstand, she had crowded in an easel, a photo enlarger, two bookcases, a drawing table, and a thousand and one items piled atop one another, strewn about, and jammed together with remarkable industry and abandon.

“This is your studio?” Joe said.

A smaller blush this time, at the tips of her ears.

“Also my bedroom,” she said. “But I wasn’t going to ask you to come up to that.”

There was something unmistakably exultant about the mess that Rosa had made. Her bedroom studio was at once the canvas, journal, museum, and midden of her life. She did not “decorate” it; she infused it.

The characters bring the setting to life as the setting brings them to life

We are told to use all of the senses; here Chabon offers good reasons to use them. Rosa goes over to the phonograph and switches it on. [Read more…]

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