What Makes it True?

Just got back from following a link that the folks at Hunger Mountainposted on Facebook. It’s a post from Patrick Ross‘ blog called “What Drives Some Memoirists from Truth to Fiction.” In it Ross explores the gray area between truth and truthiness. He touches on the contradictory pressures of telling a good story in the best possible way and the ethics of recreating an incident as accurately as possible.

Perhaps most useful are the three rules he advises the memoirist to follow when navigating the treacherous terrain of a personal story that might be painful to relate:

1. Believe in your story.

2. Rely on your writing to maximize its impact rather than exaggeration.

3. Write not out of revenge but out of love.

Learning to Trust the Unreliable Narrator

Ken Webster as Thom Pain

I saw a one man theater piece last night at Hyde Park Theater called Thom Pain, Based On Nothing.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a Ken Webster fan for years, and we used to work together pretty regularly.

I know playwriting is not a typical Yellow Bird topic. But I woke up today with this play still living in my head. Specifically, it left me with a really big question that I felt I needed to answer. How does one successfully write a story using an unreliable narrator?

I’m usually not much of a fan of the unreliable narrator. And, before last night I would have told you that it has no place in live theater. But I’m here to tell you this morning that I was wrong. Ken Webster’s interpretation of Will Eno’s script is a must see proof of just how wrong I was. You’ve got one more week to see what I’m talking about, but it’s selling out fast.

Don’t fret, I’m not reviewing the play. It just left me with my question about that pesky, often annoying device known as the unreliable narrator. I have a hard time empathizing with a story teller who I don’t trust. Such a device can be fun at first. It can add tension by forcing the reader (or audience) to parse the information the narrator is giving and decide what to believe or not. But that kind of exercise quickly gets old and descends into the realm of the gimmicky.

So what was it about the play I saw last night that kept that from happening? As a writer, I needed to figure out what Eno did differently when he created Thom Pain.

The Albertine Notes is part of this collection

The last unreliable narrator I remember was in Rick Moody’s novellaThe Albertine Notes. The plot of that story demands an unreliable narrator: it’s the story of a guy under the influence of a drug that alters not only his consciousness but general human history, as well. Even given those imperatives, my growing distrust for the narrator was confusing and off putting. Though, I must admit I’m glad I finished it. The story does have enough a payoff at the end to make it a worthwhile read.

So, what is it that makes an unreliable narrator palatable? I think it’s as simple as empathy. It’s that age old story telling truism. If you don’t care about the hero, then you don’t care about the story. And, somehow, despite all of Thom Pain’s attempts to push me away last night, I found myself caring about his struggles. His life – his twisted path to happiness – mattered to me. So I stood up and clapped at the end. And this morning I woke up with that character’s words still bouncing around in my head.

I’ll close with a telling moment from last night. After a particularly well written and delivered line, I heard someone sitting behind me whisper, “What a great line.” And it was, Thom Pain had just said, “I disappeared into her. And she, not knowing where I went…, left.” The narrative took on a universal dimension in that moment. All humans can relate to that feeling of being so in love with another person that you lose yourself. Just as all humans can relate to the fear inherent in such a letting go of the self.

I guess that’s what makes an unreliable narrator work: He or she speaks just enough important truth to make the audience stay with them through the preponderance of their lies.

The Book Designer Has the Answer

Self publishing is hard.  Not only do you have to write the dang book, you have to do everything else involved in getting it ready for public consumption. And then you have to navigate the labyrinths of marketing and distribution. Just figuring out where to begin can be daunting.  But being a self published author does not mean you have to figure it all on your own. There’s a website out there that can help.

Thebookdesigner.com was created by Joel Friedlander, who literally grew up in the world of printing and publishing. His knowledge on the subject is exhaustive. I first discovered his website when I was looking for Microsoft Word formatting tips and shortcuts. His blog turned me on to the versatility and power of the “find and replace” tool. Now thebookdesigner.com is my fist stop when I’m looking for advice on solving any sort of formatting issue. The only problem I’ve found with the site so far is that it’s so darned big and full of information that it kind of sucks you in. I’ve gone there looking for one piece of information, only to spend several hours wandering through its seemingly endless cache of knowledge.

But don’t worry, Friedlander has done an admirable job of organizing what could be an overwhelming amount of information. Check it out for yourself. Even if your not a self-publisher, I’m willing to bet you learn something useful.

In Defense of the Passive Voice

Here’s how my current favorite style manual, The Little, Brown Handbook, defines passive voice:

“The passive voice of the verb indicates that the subject receives the action of the verb. Create the passive voice with be, am, is, are, was,were, being, or been followed by the main verb’s participle.”

It gives this example: “Her latest book was completed in four months.”

The main point to take from that definition is that “the subject receives the action of the verb,” as opposed to the subject performing the action. To make the above example active, you would write it like this: “She completed her latest book in four months.”

Seems pretty straight forward, right?

Apparently not. I regularly run into writers who work from the assumption that any use of a “to be” verb constitutes the passive voice. This is not true! (See? That last sentence was active even though I used “is.”)

I offer this post in defense of the passive voice. Not only is it frequently misunderstood, it’s not always the wrong choice to make as a writer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it should be your “go to” sentence structure. But sometimes it makes sense to use it.

For example, I once worked with a novelist who was revising a first person POV YA sci-fi thriller. He tended to overuse the passive voice, constantly describing things that happened to his hero until the manuscript read like a journal of events the narrator simply witnessed. We worked a long time on rooting out all that passive voice and making his hero into the prime mover of his novel. But he had a chapter where his protagonist fell into the clutches of an antagonist with mind control powers. So I encouraged the author to go crazy with the passive voice in that part. It made sense, because his hero had lost all agency. The passive voice captured his protagonist’s predicament perfectly because he had become, quite literally, the puppet of the antagonist.

So, don’t fear the passive voice. Just make sure you use it deliberately. Like any grammatical construct, it deserves its place in your writer’s toolbox. But, like any tool, it can be dangerous if you don’t understand what it is or how it works.

Training Your Brain to Self Edit

The brain is a funny thing. It’s brilliant when its creating, conjuring up amazing ideas and stories out of nothing. But sometimes the brain can be too brilliant.

When we write, our brains know what we’re trying to put down on paper faster than our fingers can keep up. This game of catch-up often leads to mistakes, typos, words missing letters, sentences missing words. Of course, spell check will help with these. But what about that pesky problem in the English language of words that sound the same but are spelled differently? Our brain is our best tool to catch those, but here’s where the too brilliant part comes in: Our brain corrects those mistakes without making us aware of it.

It’s like those games where you can read a sentence even if words are backward. The brain is looking for meaning, not grammar, and as long as it can get the meaning, it doesn’t worry about anything else. And if you wrote those words, with their mistakes, the brain already knows the meaning.

So, how to find and fix the problems? You need to trick your brain into seeing your words as if for the first time. There are lots of methods:

• Print out the pages and read on paper. Seeing the words in a different medium can jog your brain to concentrate more on the details.

• Change the font or color of the words on the screen. This can push your brain to think that what you’re reading is new.

• Read out loud. This is my personal favorite. By forcing your mouth to actually say every word on the page, you’re forcing your brain to read every word.

Next time you’re editing your own work, try these tricks to find and fix more errors.

Yellow Bird Editor Samantha Clark also blogs at SamanthaClark.wordpress.com.