Writing with your ear
Hi, friends.
I hope this finds you vaccinated and that you are making some space in your life for what’s possible. This terrible semester is winding down and I’m beginning to think about what’s next. There has been lots of chatter here and there about what changes folks want to make to their lives and routines post-pandemic. I hope you are taking stock of what matters to you and are putting some plans in motion. After so much inertia, I am ready to see some dreams take wings.
Story.
I don’t think we talk enough about the sound of stories when we talk about writing and revision. So, I want to switch things up. Instead of a written story, I’m linking to Tommy Orange reading “Copperopolis.” Give it a listen and let’s talk about it.
Craft tidbits.
It sounds like poetry, doesn’t it? You can hear the rhythm of the piece as he reads it. The way the sentences just slide into one another. Let’s take a look at some of the ways we can steal from poetry to make our prose more musical.
The story begins simply enough. Orange focuses on the heat. On the image of shadows.
The heat here is dry and mean and everywhere. It crushes. Seeps. Floats up in waves like smoke. Gets into the brain. Slows thinking.
I pass under the shade of an oak and look down at my shadow which is joined by the shadow of a tree so mangled by, or mingled with branch shadows, it becomes a new thing. A shadowed object. Like a knot. Like me or the tree. The blending of images only possible where light can’t be.
The punctuation here is mine, but that doesn’t take away from the acoustics of the piece. There’s a alliteration of the S sounds (wafting like those waves of smoke) and the rhyme of me, tree, be.
These images in the beginning are the ones that he will will return to as his story unfolds. The mangled shadow tied to the narrator’s suicide attempt. The shadow echoes the dark purple circle of his blacking out. The death of the fly. When you are bringing in images, let them all be of a piece.
One of the things that Orange does is repeat the same prepositional phrases within the same sentence.
My four-year-old son Alex isn’t old enough to know how to be afraid of me the way the rest of my family is afraid of me.
And then a few sentences later:
I’m a haunt they’re afraid to be afraid of in front of because of what it might do to me.
That’s four instances of afraid in two sentences. It’s deliberate. Both of these sentences could be shortened but that’s not what he’s after here.
Images. Alliteration. Repetition. These are all part of his toolbox. He’s also going to use an extended metaphor to compare writing to being a Subway Sandwich Artist:
The scaffolding is similar. You begin the build in order to begin the order. What kind of bread? Toasted? No two sandwiches are the same. Variance is the constant.
Eventually, all the strands Orange has been weaving come together. The language here isn’t as fancy. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s the moment where we see the setting, the character’s POV, and the plot converging:
My plan is to say it was for a book of poems I’m working on. I’ll tell them I was researching. I have even written some poems as proof alongside the note for the robbery. The book will be about stealing and greed and hunger for gold. About how this whole country is based off of theft of land and how much that all has to do with this region, this gold country.
As a former bank teller and now your writing friend, this was funny to me. But also. Please don’t rob a bank. (One time the Kroger branch of our bank did get robbed and who was sent down there to be the substitute teller while everyone went to the police station to give their statements?)
There is revision advice here, of course, within the text. Plainly stated:
I want to strike that part of the robbery note and save it for a future poem called No One Gets Hurt. I need brevity and clarity.
Sometimes we overwrite. We make it too complicated. It takes a bit to know when you let up. It wouldn’t make sense to pull out all the stops at the very moment you’re advocating for brevity. For clarity. That sentence demands to be short and sweet. (But also: listen to the sounds. Brevity. Clarity.)
Sparks.
Write a story about weather. Think about how the heat, or cold, a storm, or snow, ice, hail, etc. could cause problems. How it cancels plans, how it is a thing to survive, the destruction it leaves in its wake.
OR. Give your character an ill-conceived plan. It doesn’t have to be as criminal as robbing a bank. Something like: running away. Streaking. Knocking on the door of that weird house at the end of the road.
Revision. Look at your speech patterns. What are they? Do you have a lot of simple sentences? A lot of long sentences built clause after clause building to some kind of rhythm? Do you make use of repetition? How could you bring some in to make more music? What about word choice? Where could you make substitutions to make more alliteration? Assonance?
Other tidbits.
Tommy Dean has started Unchartered, a new magazine for genre work. If that’s your thing, check it out.
Fairy Tale Review has opened submisisons for their issue on dreams and sleep.
Jami Attenberg has announced the dates for #1000wordsofsummer as May 31-June 13. If you are looking for a push to get some words down on the page, I highly recommend.
In that vein, does anyone else need some accountability? Mondays in May, I’m going to host an accountability group via Zoom where we check in and declare our intentions for the week. If you are interested, let me know in the comments below.
Likewise, I’m thinking of doing a more frequent round up of submssion opportunities on my Instagram account. If that sounds like something you are interested in, give me a follow.
That’s it Scribblers. Off you go to scratch out some beautiful sounding stories this Sunday ~
Marsha