Family Matters

family history--a chronicle of causal familial events that helped shape a character; the cultural environmental forces in which a character evolves; generational behavior and the attitudes in which such behavior is viewed from within the family and from external sources.

Family is such a splendid launching pad for the definition of a character, giving traditions to be applauded as well as traditions to be shunned. A character may become a victim of such tradition or a beneficiary, not to forget a martyr. If a character is informed, "All our family did their undergraduate work at Yale," and the character had hoped instead to attend The Rhode Island School of Design, might not there be a howl of conflict raised? And what about the implication that the family did undergraduate work at Yale, suggesting that graduate school venue may be an option, but graduate school itself was more a directive?

Families are social bands, dispensing tradition, learning, social and financial resources, all provided with varying degrees of love or complete lack of love. Characters may be assumed to have responded in some way--as actors in stage and film renditions respond continuously to one another--to their family origins, but also beyond their family influence in terms of wanting to break from family behavior and set out on a fresh set of responses.

Two widely differing examples of family effects on present-day characters are found in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and Jim Harrison's Returning to Earth. Each has as a pivotal issue the impending death of a patriarch and its effects on the survivors. Told from the point of view of the outsider, Charles Ryder, Brideshead is essentially the story of the Flyte family, who own the Brideshead estate, their Catholicism, its effects on them and Charles Ryder, who has a close friendship with his Oxford classmate, Sebastian, and a romantic relationship with Sebastian's sister, Julia. Returning to Earth focuses on the approaching death of Donald, a middle-aged man of mixed Finnish and Chippewa heritage, terminally ill with Lou Gherig's disease. The narrative begins with Donald, who is dictating his story to his wife, Cynthia. Reminiscing on his connection with his Indian heritage, Donald recalls the influence of his father's cousin, Flower, on him. "Flower shook my brain like one of her many rattles hanging from the rafters of her tar paper shack." Each of these authors is remarkable in a specific way, deft in the ability to describe the reverberations of family into the dance the individual members has with life.

Not Adverse to a Little Conflict

adversary--a front-rank character whose agenda and/or interests directly conflicts with that of another front-rank character; an opponent in a story.

Just as characters with goals provide the catalyst for story, so too are stories propelled by individuals adverse to their goals and intentions. Often resting between these two sides is The Prize, the status or power or reward striven for by each. Cowboys and Indians, Indians and the cavalry, Earthlings and Extraterrestrials, cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers,rural and urban, the youthful and the elderly,laborers and management; all these and additional pairings have the potential for good relationships, which is splendid in real life but rather dull in fiction. Readers enjoy the potentials for rivalry; they expect rivalry blossomed into adversarial relationship when they pick up a story.

Even if the primary character is going up against a philosophical or social clash, both sides of the argument must be rendered with a human representative. Walter Scott's Ivanhoe presented the clash of cultures between the Saxons and their invaders, the Normans, which was indeed adversarial enough, but Scott appropriately heeded the need to have representatives of each opposing force on stage, if only to glower at one another. If the clash involves addiction, the adverse position--failure to quit the addiction--must be demonstrated. If the clash involves two or more contestants of notable analytic, artistic, or even athletic ability, the adversarial position must be represented as some competition among candidates for a position, say surgery resident, tenure track professor of history, artistic endowment recipient. If the clash involves Man and Nature, both sides must have representatives, easier to demonstrate in the adversarial relationship between Capt. Ahab and The Great White Whale, but not how, even there, Melville left a human survivor, Ishmael, to tell the story of the clash and to interpret its outcome. When encounters between individuals and a particular culture or zeitgeist are concerned, it is less problematic to have characters representing the opposing forces.

The most effective way to produce an adversary for a front-rank character is to produce a character who is at least one way has an admirable ability. The more effective and seemingly invincible the adversary, the greater the likelihood of the protagonist's ultimate victory seem convincing and satisfying. It will appear to the reader that the deck has been stacked if one of the contestants is, however skilled, evil personified while the other is Sir Galahad writ large.


family--a group of consanguineous individuals; a single- or multi-generational unit of relatives; a non-consanguineous group who have some connective association such as an alumni group, members of a religious group, longtime members of the same work group, a heterosexual or homosexual group who have formed live-in partnerships.

A family may be whatever a group of individuals define the group's boundaries. To have legal validity, a group must meet state, tribal, or national conditions, which immediately becomes story material given the arbitrary nature of conditions. Families are, for better or worse, gatherings of individuals who know one another's strengths and weaknesses, who may know secrets or be blind to their potential. Family is a Petri dish for story, the mold of agenda, intent, control, and tradition proliferating at every gathering of the clan. Happy families may be all alike, if one could only find them somewhere within every family is an unhappiness that influences behavior and tradition, dictates who from the outside may enter, and what the consequences are of undesirables trying to marry their way in. Even families that affect a patina of happiness and closeness have somewhere within their history an attitude that leads to a substantial story.

Reality Check

In our personal lives we interact with friends, family, associates. If we are of the writing bent or the teaching bent, we interact with students and readers, wanting to exchange with them on yet another level than the level of friend, family, and associate. To these students or readers, we want to convey, to pass along information, to encourage. As well, we want to entertain. There is no expressed or implied hierarchy in the listed order of these things. It is not wrong for instance to want to entertain our students or encourage our readers.

There is yet another level at which we interact, offering many of the things we offer to our friends, family, and associates; in the bargain we add the things we wish to offer our students and readers. This level is, of course, the level of the self. I surely have moments where I wish to entertain myself or encourage myself. There are also moments where I wish to pass along information, moments where I am reminded of the process I go through when I wish to offer a sales person a check or credit card but cannot find my wallet, which is to say I cannot always locate the encouragement or entertainment I hope to offer myself, much less the information.

This laundry list of associations and associates and relationships is multifarious depending on my mood in a given moment and my target of intentions. Whether knowingly or not, I draw on this swath of associations, responses, and agendas while informing the interactions between characters, either in short stories or longer works. This point is a border crossing between countries; it is easier to get into Mexico or Canada than to get out of them and back to the U.S.; the Brits seem to want to know what took me so long in getting there in the first place and at least during the gurgling administration of George W. Bush, they seemed to wonder why I would want to return to such a place.

Going from relations between self and friends, family, associates, and the like to relations among characters is going from arithmetic progression to the exponential--because there are so many of them and relatively so few of me and friends, family, associates. One of the first things I notice when crossing the border is that spoken language becomes different; it is no longer conversational, thus such conversational tropes as I might use need to be harnessed. "How are things going?" innocent enough, needs to be countered with "You're asking how things are going?" Of course I could render that response "You're asking how things are going?"which in fact does add an edge of attitude to the response somewhat different than the mere repetition.

As things stand, the mere repetition, "You're asking how things are going." suggests/infers/implies the respondent being absorbed in another task and the possibility that a request for a progress report about the respondent's mental or physical well-being borders on a distraction if not an imposition.

Or look at it this way. An individual utters another character's name, punctuating it with a question mark. "Marta?" Which may be taken to mean Is that you? or Are you there?

Add one word, an innocent enough word. "Now,Marta." Suddenly an edge is there, possibly impatience. And by adding one more word, "Damn it, Marta," we have seemingly exploded possibilities for dialogue as opposed to conversation. Yet there is more to come. Look at the possibilities of mere repetition. "Marta. Marta. Marta." How quickly such a repetition yanks us by the collar into the dialogue, curious to see what happens next as opposed to hoping the characters will conversationally reveal some dramatic tidbit.

When we are in the dramatic arena, our characters are seeming to converse but are conversing with their emotions instead of their minds, sending us readers signals by which we interpret the dramatic cloud over the arena that is scene. In such cases, silence is not silence but rather the characters playing on what their feelings are whispering to them.

Imagine yourself trying to please someone, say a work-level superior or a teacher. Allow yourself to feel that emotional agenda. Put an identifying sticker on that in order to come back to it when you need one of your characters trying to please another character. Imagine you, trying to please yourself.

Now, shut up and listen. Even the pause or silences are valuable.

Next week--or maybe this week, the tennis game of truth.

The Myths of Sissy Fuss

As is her wont, Squirrel got me to thinking, not in that self-critical, turn-off-the-association-of-ideas way that sometimes comes along to protest an otherwise productive writing session, but in the nature of all the myths about writing I've brought to the table from my callow youth onward, and from which I have tried to disassociate myself and as well in the nature of all the myths students, authors, and clients have brought forth.

Myth Number One: Write only what you know. True enough, there are times we need to do some research, to find out about what was and was not in existence at a given time or place, where the subway stop really in mid-town Manhattan, where the red Line stops in Boston, how high Mt. Kilimanjaro really is. That said, I should have no "right" to portray female characters, Captain Nemo should have remained a ferry boat captain, all my remaining characters should be male, white, etc. And heaven forefend I should write something set in a past historical landscape or a future imaginary one, nor should I write about alternate universes I've never been to.

Myth Number Two: Show--don't tell. Hey, there are times when you have to tell because doing otherwise will take a hell of a lot of pages and bore the pants off the reader. And besides, telling helps with the perspective; after a while, the reader gets to see which events are more important.

Myth Number Three: Dialogue replicates conventional speech patterns. Have I got news for you. To disprove this quaint notion, try eavesdropping on conversations while waiting in line somewhere, or in a doctor's waiting room. Conventional speech is often boring, noncommittal, or non-responsive. Dramatic conversation has the sound of speech but is more barbed, specific in its way, revelatory of the speaker or the speaker's agenda and/or psychology.

Myth Number Four: Beginning writers should use first-person point of view because it is the easiest. Lots of luck if you believe this; the I needs as much dimension and layering of traits as any other dramatic POV. You start listening to this kind of stuff, you'll discover all your characters sound alike.

Myth Number Five: You--whoever you are--among all others who write, are unfortunate because everyone else's family is more eccentric, dysfunctional, funny,opportunistic, dramatic than yours. It only seems that way. Take a look at Uncle Harry. And what about Aunt Viv. And you really think Aunt Mavis was Uncle Ralph's first wife? Yo, ask around.

Myth Number Six: As in real life, characters always say exactly what they mean. Where do you get this kind of stuff?

Myth Number Seven: Sending out novels and short stories to agents and editors will make you so cynical, you won't be able to write. Where do you get this kind of stuff?

Myth Number Eight: Talent is the most important element in getting your stories published. I'm beginning to be concerned about you. If you want something important to hang onto, try persistence.

Myth Number Nine: If it isn't painful, it isn't any good. True enough, you may encounter some truths and discoveries you hadn't anticipated, but if you're looking overall for an "isn't" try: If it isn't fun, it probably isn't any good.

Myth Number Ten: Make sure you explain everything. Readers don't like to be left in the dark. , Yeah, Right. Henry James explained everything. You always know where you stand in Finnegan's Wake. Flannery O'Connor left no loose end unresolved. When a reader wonders what's going on, they are often exhibiting a characteristic known as suspense.

What Comes First, the Chicken or the Ego?

Such was the early nature of my vision that I naturally supposed plot came before anything else, giving way to individuals, characters, who would take on traits and abilities even as I was taking on the kinds of traits and abilities my teachers wrote about in less-than-friendly terms on my report cards.

Since all of the things I truly enjoyed, whether it be the rather unruly, Mississippi-like path of Huckleberry Finn, or the sclerotic excesses of Ivanhoe, had plots and I wished to apply for membership in the writers' club, I thought plot was an absolute necessity. I even thought that the men and women who wrote stories had some remarkable gene that allowed them to pluck forth from the cosmos or ether a complete plot before they began writing. Not only young, foolish.

Some years, a great many reams of paper, and a number of typewriters later, I experienced what I thought was an epiphany but which was really only being thrown off the horse one time too many. Following the easier-to-assimilate course of epiphany, I reasoned that I would mosey up to plot via characters about whom I already had some sort of inkling. For the next years--relatively productive years, I might add-- this got me out of the slush pile and into the acceptance pile to the point where I actually had a bank account and assignments that openly admitted my tools were words and ideas. There was a minor setback the one and only night I actually dreamed a full-blown plot that, come the morning, did not seem ridiculous. I think I remember which novel that was, but I can't be sure.

Later still, I moved to the plateau of thinking it was neither plot nor character that provided the opening velocity but voice, which is to say the tone, attitude, and spirit of the contentions that would be played out in such narratives that I produced. Voice has been the big one for me over a long span, but earlier this evening, while pursuing Sally up the modest upthrust of Hale Park, toward a stone fence that reminds me of strolls in Devon, my mind wandered beyond the girding of loins for the fast-approaching writers' conference where I lead the late-night fiction workshop, wandered into the later reaches of this year, November, to be explicit, where for the same writers' conference, I am to lead one of the so-called intensive weekend workshops. My theme is to be point of view: who's telling the story, and why?

Whoops. I may have abandoned voice, which I dearly love, in favor of the more prosaic point of view, the one or ones through whose eyes the story is experienced. This may be genuine--dare I say it? evolution. It may also be that I've just come by a small, wonderful camera, which, given its size, has versatile and effective capabilities. It is a Lumix FX-30 with an ambitious Leica lens, reminding me as I heft it and pour through the instruction book of the focal-plane Leicas I used to be responsible for dusting and cleaning during my tenure after school and on Saturdays at The Brighton Way Camera Shop in Beverly Hills. Point of view is nothing less than who is holding the camera, and what that camera sees because of how and where it is pointed. A midget photographer in a room filled with professional basketball players would likely get lovely shots of knee caps. Similarly a tall photographer in a room of midgets would get some stunning and revelatory shots of male pattern baldness.

I am also mindful of Fathers and Sons, a memoir, and a rather loving one at that, of what it is like to have survived through the Waugh family, arguably one of the more dysfunctional, even more so than, say the Bushes.

Everyone in a family has a point of view, causing family gatherings and holidays to be remarkably cheerful or remarkably acrimonious, and sometimes these two polar opposites exist simultaneously. My late sister was a lifelong joy to me, an observation that could suggest she substituted for the things provided from parents, but no; they, too were great joys to me. My sister and I simply did not see eye to eye on my mother. Although we both adored (not too strong a verb here) my father, we saw Annie differently, my issues with Annie stemming, I think, from routine teen-boy/mother issues and ultimately rounding out quite nicely. My sister often joked that when I was out of the house, my mother was transformed into another person, another mother with another set of agendas. I countered by teasing my sister with having been traumatized by the witches in The Wizard of Oz and Snow White.

I see that this walk with Sally has at the very least given me some notes for November and a way of looking at story that could make it more yet of a crucible in which things are heated to the point of combustion, where they promptly run over the sides and cause merry hell to break loose.