I
Want to talk about how to write a story?
And the first command command in the writing fiction is sit your ass in the chair
some of us need Velcro Pants
Thinking about writing is not writing the story doesn't exist before the act of writing
You're in your chair, but your central character will be at the end of [this] rope a desperate man taking desperate measures
Only Trouble is interested
And everything you don't want to happen to yourself or your family or your friends
Should happen to characters you love your hero, but you keep putting obstacles in his way
Writing a story is taking the path of most resistance
You dip your pen and the ink and you begin at the edge of a cliff you [said] and try to express
What's inexpressible and that makes you nervous?
You know that every story is a failure
But you also know the writer is the one who has not stalked or even fazed by failure
And that makes you fearless you begin not knowing where you're going to end up
But trusting in your imagination in the writing process to get you there you write about what you don't understand
What you don't know is more important than what you know because that's what engages your sense of wonder
[you] [sit] and you [insist] on meaning?
But not on answers the point is not to answer but to question
Not to solve but to seek not to preach but to explore and you also know this
that life is stranger than fiction because
has to make sense
No matter how luminous your prose how?
Fascinating your central character if you don't have a plot a narrative shape
If your essential character isn't striving to accomplish something meaningful
then the reader will put down your story and
The plot [-] every story is this
You have one central character who wants something?
intensely and goes after it despite opposition and as a result of a struggle comes to a win or
Lose so you take that definition, [and] you let the plot do your thinking for you
It'll lead you quite naturally to
Considerations of theme setting point of view and so on so let's say you begin
Let's begin with a married couple the belles and with the requisite trouble in mind
You open with the death of their child?
and you see if the marriage can survive
the agonizing Loss
the Bells 20 year old daughter [hope]
Has died now you don't have to use an allegorical first name, and you may decide that doing so is
Heavy-Handed and if you do you'll revise [your] [writing] [a] first draft nothing is carved in stone
The bells are home alone after [the] funeral after the burial after the distressing but obligatory
reception for Family and Friends
Here at the house
Alice is sitting on the sofa slumped in the corner
teacup in one hand
tissues in the other hand
Grady sitting in a ladder bat chair elbows on his knees staring at his folded hands
Grady believes if he had been listened to hope would still be with them now
And he wants alice to admit her role in what happened, and you wonder what did happen?
Grady says to Alice
When you write a story you have two choices you can show or you can tell you're right seeing or summary
Scene is Vivid [an] intimate summary is [distant] and efficient
Seeing is where the writer engages the imagination and the emotions of the reader
everything important in your story should happen in theme and
this looming
expression of Grady's
Resentment is certainly that so you begin as close to greatest
Pronouncement as you can when everything but the action is [over] if this is a story [about] a marriage in trouble
You don't need years of prosperity and bliss
But before you can write this scene you need to look more closely at the stage that you is sediment
At the bereaved bells in their living room
Because when people speak they also act
And you need to know the potential of the room and every detail in that living room
Will tell you about the people who live there?
Running a story is archeology not
Every detail will make it to the page in Black and white
But more importantly every detail
Will afford you insight [into] the characters the details that make it will be those that are vivid and [significant]
So now you know your characters a little better you feel more confident to go back to the scene
Greatest blue tie is stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket
You notice he has a scar [on] his left hand [his] left wrist
And you know that every scar tells a story?
But will this story be relevant to yours you'll find out
He has a Malaga ring a religious charm used for healing purposes and the shape of an eye
Pinned to his lapel. He bought it from an old woman outside a church in Shibuya, New Mexico
You decide Grady has Glaucoma
When he told a woman he wanted a Milagro for his daughter as well the woman said
What's wrong with her and he said everything?
Now if you hadn't stopped to get look more closely and grady and get to know him better
You would not have stumbled on [to] the themes of vision what we see and what we don't [in]
Healing and you're already writing about death and about marriage and about grief and about loss, and you haven't even started
and what about
Grady saying that everything was wrong
What did he mean by that?
You decide to find out so you write about hope in your notebook?
When you learn that hope was a drug addict who?
robbed her parents blind and
Died alone of an overdose in [a] vacant lot
you had dawned in
back to the living room
Alice's black here is bags streaked with Gray and held off her face with Turquoise barrettes
When the sweater slips from her shoulder you notice your left arm is
Tattooed with a flaming heart
on the coffee table is an emblem of their loss a
framed photo [of] Baby hope on a Beach blended
Floppy blue hat on our head zinc oxide on her nose
When you look past alice, you can see the staircase that leads up to hopes better
You know you'll be up there soon to try to uncover what you can of hopes secret life
Under the coffee table is a thread of gold you see it the bells
Don't it's a necklace and [you] [wonder] what role this piece of jewelry will play in the story?
Alice sets your teacup down on a copy of food and wine
There's a sleek black cat
Sitting resplendently on the Bookcase shelf on
The Windowsill is a potted lily
Which tells you it's easter
you know the irony you realize you could use the seat maybe
Season to set the tone for your story and now you've got the themes of renewal and rebirth to consider
Grady reminds alice that he was against throwing [hope] out of the house after her last relapse
You wanted her to hit bottom he says and she did
Alice feels like she's been clubbed in the face
What does she say?
What does she do?
You watch her?
Intently, and you wait
With a pen in your hand
She smashes the teacup
the cat blasts off [into] the kitchen
She calls grating the monster. She cries until she can't catch her breath you write all that down
Great. He knows he should go to her but he's frozen
with Anger and overcome with guilt
when alice runs to the doorway
He follows her and tries to calm her down. She pushes him away runs out to the driveway and screams
The neighbors peek out their open windows
She runs off
Your story's underway
But whose story will you tell them Grady's or alice's one
Central character remember the decision you make will depend on the themes you want to explore on the
Character who is more interesting to you perhaps the one with the most to lose, so let's say you decide
It's crazy story, and what he wants us to bring out his home
To heal the wounded he's open to repair the damage that
Hopes addiction and Death have done to the marriage he wants redemption
Now his desire to bring alice home has to be
Considerable motivation provokes action you can't write [about] a passive central character
so he [loves] her he
[can't] live without her he wants her forgiveness for absolution he wants redemption
Now you know he has sufficient reason
To try to save the marriage and every time he does
you'll write a scene in fact you can simply write the obligatory scenes all the way to the end for the
a cute moment of the story
Who's going to tell the story?
[Grady] can talent or a third person narrator can tell it and grant us access to Grady's thoughts and
feelings and maybe to Alice
All First-person narrators are unreliable they have a stake in the outcome if you want Grady's
Reliability to be a part of the meaning of the story [then] [you'll] let him tell it
but if you want to focus more clearly
on his concerted efforts to save the marriage then you'll let a third person [narrator] tell it so
Now you have a central character. You know what he wants and why he wants [it]
And now he has to struggle against obstacles you can [write] about a passive central character, so you leap ahead
To the evening when grady goes to Ellis sisters condo and asked her to come home
She says her home was with hope he said she threw around when she needed us most and the argument escalates
Alice is not coming home grady went there to bring her back and drove her further away
But he can't stop oh, we have no story
Struggle Implies
protracted effort and
impassioned conflict your next scene
Alice agrees to go to lunch with grady
They're both back to work
He's an [admired] High School guidance counselor
He works with troubled kids
And he's always secretly believed that parents have allowed
Addiction to happen to their children and now you know the source of his [gil] in a sense of failure [at] the restaurant
Alice says
She's gotten an apartment. She's moving out of his place and into hers
Great is incredulous
Why did he know anything about this later when she comes by his house to get her clothing and some pieces [of] furniture?
Grady is helpful [and] understanding
Because he wants to persuade her to stay but she comes with a friend Austin from the radio station
Where she works and the move is over in 20 minutes?
Waiting ever gets to [randall] [alone] alone without us
now the only obstacle so far has been at us and you're wondering if there might be some other impediments and
so
One Day
grady sits at the kitchen Table
Poring over the photographs and the family album
You and he are trying to discern just what it was that his beautiful daughter
Decided enough with ballet and tennis. I'm going to be a [darrel] it
Great his heart is broken and his resolve is wearing thin
And there you have it
Will be given to us to struggle against his own despair
He won't give in and he calls alice
And he leaves a message on your voicemail asking her to come to marriage counseling and now you know the [next] scene
You'll have to run as he leaves the [mesh's] a keep message. He wonders if she's listening
You think she is?
He wonders if she's alone [you] think she's not
the plot thickens
At counseling grady says he wants to say
But with Dr.
Stroud ask alice what she wants she says a divorce [a] new life
She tells grady she loves him, but can no longer live with him
The ongoing conflict has to be resolved Grady can lose Austin losing with Alice
Make a note to get to know Austin better. He's an important character our grady can win [alice] comes home
After 23 years of marriage she knows whom that much at least [and] you'll end your story with a see
here's one possibility
Alice is on the sofa reading a book by lamplight, but she's been on the same page for an hour
When grady looks at her. He sees a halo around her head his glaucoma remember
He thinks Saint Alice
But he notices the book the photo is gone from the book coffee table
And he realizes she's holding it behind the book punishing yourself with the image of her loss and in that moment
Grady understands the time
Will heal some wounds and he will eventually get [over] the loss of balance
But in one case time will make no difference, and he will never recover from a shattering loss of his daughter
bringing alice home
Has shown grading the futility of their decision to live together?
Your draft is rough
But you'll smooth it out in revision because the truth is stories aren't written
They're rewritten you have to have something to rewrite [at] this first draft
We've been talking about to expect more from a first draft just to
Misunderstand the writing process [if] at first you succeed try try again
The plot Led you followed and now [you] have your causal sequence of events
And you have your essential beginning middle and end
And now you can go back and add the connective tissue of summary Flesh out the scenes
You've already written write the scenes that you discovered along the way like the afternoon
Outside the church in Chimayo the evening that grady discovered the brook the necklace that you've given his daughter on her 16th birthday
and you probably should do something with [that] marvelous tattoo of
Alice's, but what?
Well, you'll figure it out as you write because your ass still in the chair and just created a brave
New world and made up these people who never existed before and you're so excited. You can't get up