reading like a writer: what is at stake for y-o-u, you?

All month we’ve been examining our main characters personal stakes. We have been raising them, amping them up, creating ultimate stakes, and making our main character face a moment of irrevocable commitment, a point where there is no turning back. We’ve turned to Donald Maas—read his words. We’ve read my words—in the form of my main character in Between Us Baxters, Polly and we’ve read and examined the stakes of Lisa Railsback’s main character in Betti, in Betti on the Highwire.

 

But what about us—as the writer and creator of these words and worlds? What is at stake for us?

I began writing and studying fiction in 1998. It is now 2011. I published for the first time in Cricket, the literary children’s magazine in 2004. I published my first novel in 2009. What was at stake for me then is different than what is at stake for me now, but I believe strongly though that what is at stake for us as the writer/creator may change with each project we take on, it is very important  for us to access and think about. 

When I work with my private students I ask them a zillion questions. Mostly about their main characters, what the character wants and but eventually I ask the writer what is at stake for personally in the writing of the project they are currently working on. One of my students was very brave in answering, what was at stake for her as she tackled drafting her first novel:

…Getting it right – giving this theme the attention it deserves, in a real and organic way, without having the novel seem preachy or lecturey (I just made that word up, sorry!) I guess another thing at stake is whether I can actually do this – whether I can actually be a writer that tackles real issues (sometimes I have moments where I don’t think I’m smart enough or deep enough or intellectual enough or creative enough to do this…) or whether it’s just a pipe dream and I don’t really have the guts/courage to do it. 

Ah, living up to the potential the story demands of us. That coupled with personal belief is always at stake. Can I do this? Am I up for the challenge? Am I smart enough? Talented enough? Do I have what it takes? What if I fail?  It doesn’t matter if one has an MFA or is published these niggly fears still come up but we writers are brave. We face our fears over and over. We bring them to the page. We create and infuse our characters with the same such human fears and only in the process of putting ourselves in touch for what is at stake for ourselves do we make progress, on the page and in life. 

I am writing my first older YA. What is at stake for me in this project is not relying on my developed Southern voice. Also at stake is accessing personal and raw emotions I am not sure everyone I know and love will approve of. I am creating characters, not passing off real life as fiction, but I am putting on the page something of my life experience. I am writing older. I am writing from a boy’s point of view. I am scared and I am attempting to be patient and brave at the same time. Is it working? Some days, yes. Some days, no. But I am glad to have a new things at stake for me in this work. 

Take Away:

Consider you work-in-progress, what is at stake for you as the writer? What are your fears? Can you use them in the writing of the manuscript? Can you “be” with the fears and not let them stop you? How do you feel about the work after being honest with yourself about how much you want it—to get it right, to do it well, to be read, to use new muscles? (My guess is after being clear with yourself about what is at stake you feel braver and bolder and more ready to keep at it, no matter what.)

Reading Like a Writer: Irrevocable Commitment

The first two weeks of April we have been discussing personal stakes and ultimate stakes which has led us to what Donald Maas in Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook calls the irrevocable commitment—the moment of no turning back.

Let’s go back to look at Betti on the Highwire by Lisa Railsback. Refugees Betti and George are attending their first 4^th of July celebration with their adopted families. Everyone is joyous, relaxed, and having fun at the typical 4^th of July celebration, but no one has warned Betti or George about fireworks.  Railsback writes:

Maybe the Buckworths, and the rest of the Americans, didn’t know about the BOOMS. All of them were very busy pointing at the sky. “Ooooooo,” they cooed. “Ahhhhhhh! Ohhhhhhh!” Some rose to their feet and a few Melons in the audience were actually clapping.

Auntie Moo said there is no way in America, but sometimes war comes out of nowhere. Sometimes it comes for no good reason at all. A people disaster.

George peeked up from the ground. “Babo?” His eyes were scared and sparkly and wet. We looked at each other and nodded. We didn’t have to say a single word.

I grabbed his hand and we shot up from the blanket and…

We ran like crazy (258).

One does not think of the “irrevocable moment” in the novel as a running away. But for George and Betti (known as Babo in her native country) disaster can strike at any moment. War has come to them—in the form of booms and sky explosions and together they run to safety.

This works and works well not just because of the juxtaposition of what the child reader knows about the 4^th of July but because of the juxtaposition of what usually happens near the climax—the main character charging ahead. Here when Betti and George retreat, their adopted families know in a very different way than they have known before of the internal scars and survival skills Betti and George have. Also, this irrevocable moment, Betti and George hiding in a port-a-potty on the 4^th is followed by another. Once hidden will Betti and George come out? Will they try to save their adopted families? Will they learn that not all men with black boots are soldiers? One reads on to find out.

Take Away:

Where and when is your main character’s irrevocable moment? Is it expected by the reader? Is it the opposite of what the reader thinks will happen? Why or why not?

Reading Like a Writer: Personal Stakes

For the month of April we are going to be discussing each Monday morning what is at stake—for our protagonist, for our antagonist, and also for us as the author.

Donald Maas in Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook writes:

Personal stakes are more than just what a hero wants to do. They illustrate the why: Why this goal and the action that must be performed matters in a profound and personal sense. The more it matters to your hero, the more it will matter to your readers, too  40).

Such is the case in one of my favorite novels of 2010, Betti on the Highwire by Lisa Railsback (Dial, 2010). Betti couldn’t have higher stakes. She is an orphaned refuge (in an unnamed country, which is what the author intended) and at a circus camp she oversees the “leftover children”—others who have been harmed, orphaned and almost killed. Soon, however, she is adopted—as is her friend George and is living in America.

Can one think of higher stakes—a higher wire for Betti to walk?

Here’s a passage:

            That’s why the villagers say our circus camp is haunted.

They say that the circus ghosts are still flying all over the place. They can hear the circus music floating through the woods on windy nights. Sometimes they think they hear gasps and clasps from the audience, and faint, happy singing from the circus people. The villagers won’t visit our circus camp because they are afraid.

That’s what happens during a war. Everyone is afraid of everything ( 3).

In my own novel Truth with a Capital T, the stakes are far less dire than surviving and healing from a recent war, but for Maebelle, they are just as high.  As she tries to find out what her talent is—what makes her special as she has no longer is in the gifted & talented program Maebelle does many a foolish thing. She attempts to bake a blackberry cobbler from an old family recipe—to disastrous results. She clogs—persuading her friends to join the dance competition with her and the stakes rise drastically when Mr. Phelps, the town librarian and historian sends Maebelle home with a research book: Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad  ( Anchor Books,  2011).

Maebelle reads a post it, Mr. Phelps left on the cover of the book for her, “Maebelle T.—take a good look at the quilt code. Let me know if you spot anything that looks like these around Oak Alley.”

Maebelle gets to work, reading and analyzing the patterns that made up slave quilts and what they may have signified to an escaping slave hoping to find their way to freedom. These quilts are a mystery and as Maebelle reads the book about decoding the clues the quilts contained she wonders if she will decode a mystery of her own: who is Ruby Red? And what is in the locked wing in her grandparent’s antebellum home?

By the end of her first night studying the book, Maebelle’s personal stakes, her investment in helping Mr. Phelps with his research as well as her dedication to finding out who Ruby Red is has increased.

That was enough for one night. There was a lot more to the quilt code, but my brain was all zigzaggy trying to understand. Everything Ozella had told the author was common knowledge to slaves. It wasn’t common knowledge to me. I was glad to see it was written down and even gladder Mr. Phelps had chosen to share it with me. Now I knew what to look for, even if Ruby Red still remained a mystery.   (173)

Later Maas goes on to write: “Raising personal stakes is especially crucial in character driven stories…raising  the stakes—the inner stakes—will deepen the reader’s concern about the outcome.”

So writers—roll the dice and raise those stakes!

Reading Like a Writer: The Bravery of Rita Williams-Garcia

I love One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia and am so glad it racked up during awards season. There was no award out there it didn’t get recognized for—except maybe the Edgar, which it is not a fit for. To recap the shiny stickers for One Crazy Summer we have: a National Book Award finalist, a Newbery Honor winner, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction. Hear, hear!

The book is outstanding for so many reasons. So. Many. Reasons. But my applause is for Rita Williams-Garcia's unparalleled bravery.

Delphine and her sisters Vonetta and Fern not only stole our hearts, they captured the spirit and societal changes going on in the late 1960’s at the onset of the Black Power Movement. The very first paragraph grounds us in the era as the three sisters take off on an Oakland, California bound plane with the line, “Those clouds weren’t through with us yet and dealt another Cassius Clay-left-and-a-right jab to the body of our Boeing 727.” Later in the first chapter, Delphine goes on to add:

“Big Ma---that’s Pa’s mother—still says Cassius Clay. Pa says Muhammad Ali or just Ali. I slide back and forth from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. Whatever picture comes to mind. With Cassius you hear the clash of fists, like the plane getting jabbed and punched. With Muhammad Ali you see a might mountain, greater than Everest, and can’t no one knock down a mountain.”  (3)

It isn’t just the references to a famous boxer that set the tone and time. The girls mother—Cecile, the main source of conflict—as the girls try to bond with their mother who left them years ago does much to capture the time and place. Cecile is a poet. She is bound by words, not by family strings. As I read Cecile, who comes across not only as unlikable but obstinate, unloving and un-self sacrificing, I found myself bonding with her. I felt like one of the women from For Colored Girls Who Have Suicide When the Rainbow is Not Enuf by ntozake shange had stepped off of the stage and into Delphine, Vonetta and Fern’s lives. I wanted to hate this woman who wouldn’t call her youngest daughter by her name, who didn’t shield the girls from pain, who didn’t cook for them but I didn’t. The girls can’t either and by the time the book comes to a close there is movement in terms of the mother/daughter conflict that the book grapples with that is at the epicenter of the societal changes and the Black Panther exploration.

Along with Cecile, one multi-layered woman, I adored the no holds barred way Rita Williams-Garcia examines race. As a white reader, I cringed when passersby in the airport stop to give the three “cute colored” girls money and want to take their picture and Delphine comments:

“The lady opened her pocket book, took out a red leather change purse, and scooted coins around, searching for the right amount for adorable, well-behaved colored dolls. Big Ma would have thought that was grand, but Papa wouldn’t have liked it one cent. Now it was time to do what Papa had told me: see after my sisters.

‘We’re not allowed to take money from strangers.’ I said this polite enough to suit Big Ma but strong enough to suit Papa.

The redheaded stewardess was appalled by my uppity behavior. ‘Don’t you know when someone is being nice to you?’

            I put on my dumb dodo face to fake not knowing what she meant.

What was the sense of making the stewardess stand guard over us if she refused to protect us from strangers? She thought it was all right to have the large white woman gawk at us, talk to us, and buy our attention. We might as well have stood by ourselves.”  (17)

I not only cringed at the white woman’s demeaning behavior but applauded Delphine’s thoughts and the oh-so-smart way she reacts—by walking the racial line of the times but not giving in to such idiotic behavior. I also applauded the fact that kids—white, black, biracial, Asian, Indian, Native American, etc.—were going to be reading that passage, and the airport scene that comes near the end of the novel.

One Crazy Summer is as vibrant as its cover and as complex as the changing times it depicts and will long be a favorite book of mine, all year round, not just in February.

Reading Like a Writer: Academic January, The Conclusion

Academic January is officially coming to a conclusion. In week one, the parameters of the Character Desire and Plot discussion were introduced. In week two, we examined Sharon Darrow’sPainters of Lexieville, our action oriented example and in week three we took closer look at Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie, our character oriented example, which brought us to week four and our combination example, Kimberly Willis Holt’s National Book Award winning When Zachary Beaver Came to Town.

And, here we are on the last day of the month we are finally at THE END. 

Conclusion: The Relationship Between Character Desire and Story Structure

 This examination of character desire and plot did prove that Katherine Paterson’s motto, “Something’s got to happen. Someone’s got to change” is a reminder for all authors to heed (114). The three authors examined here demonstrate that a connection between character and plot exists within the three listed classifications: action-oriented, character-oriented or a combination thereof. Each of the authors, in her own unique way, is successful in depicting what it is the main character yearns for within the plot of her book, whether it be Pert’s longing to leave Lexieville behind or India Opal’s desire to create a family or Toby’s wish to have a summer like no other.[Image]  It is interesting to note that only in The Painters of Lexieville does the main character “get” exactly what she wants in the manner in which she hopes (although Pert does make many sacrifices to see herself safely out of Lexievile). This may be a benefit of the action-oriented novel where an author must clearly outline the main character’s desire as it is the protagonist’s choices, actions, and reactions in pursuit of an external goal that fuels the plot. In contrast, in a character-oriented novel like Because of Winn-Dixie, the main character’s desire is more subtly revealed as the story progresses. This may be so as emphasis is on what the main character feels, versus the actions the protagonist takes, throughout the novel. However, in an action-character-oriented novel, like When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, a combination of both the straightforward and the more subtle approach to revealing character desire is at play to depict both aspects of the work.

Character desire and plot cannot be extricated from one another. One must exist for the other to exist. As Stephen Fischer, quoted by Burroway in Writing Fiction, states, “Structure is the art that conceals itself—you only see the structure in a badly structured story, and call it formula” (40).  None of the authors examined here wrote to a formula, but each elevated her structure, and its depiction of character desire, to a level of concealed and deliberate art.

The Works Cited

Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, 6th edition. New York: Longman, 2003.

Darrow, Sharon. The Painters of Lexieville. Cambridge: Candlewick, 2003.

DiCamillo, Kate. Because of Winn-Dixie. Cambridge: Candlewick, 2000.

Holt, Kimberly Willis. When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. New York: Random House, 1999.

Kress, Nancy. Beginnings, Middles, and Endings. Cincinnati:  Writer’s Digest Books,1993.

Lukeman, Noah. The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002.

McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Regan Books, 1997.

Nolan, Han. “Creating Fiction: A Journey to Truth.” One-on-One Plus Conference. Rutgers, New Brunswick. October. 2003.

Paterson, Katherine. The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children. New York: Dutton, 2001.

Pattison, Darcy. “Keep it Moving: Pacing a Novel.” Children’s Writer’s Guide 2002:  1-2.

Reading Like a Writer: Academic January, The Character-Oriented Novel

Academic January continues. This is week three in our series on examining Character Desire and Plot. In week one, the parameters of the discussion were introduced. In week two, we examined Sharon Darrow’s The Painters of Lexieville, our action oriented example and here we are in week three taking a closer look at one of my very favorite novels, Because of Winn-Dixie.

Character-Oriented: Because of Winn-Dixie

    Unlike the action-oriented novel where the emphasis is on how the external events shape the main character, the character-oriented novel relies on character development as its driving force. Yet this does not mean a character-oriented novel, such as Kate DiCamillo’s Newberry Honor book Because of Winn-Dixie, is without plot. Burroway quotes nineteenth-century German critic Gustav Freitag as stating: 

[plot is comprised of a] pyramid of five actions: an exposition, followed by a complication (or nouement, “knotting up” of the situation) leading to a crisis, which is followed by a “falling action” or anticlimax, resulting in the denouement. (40)

    DiCamillo arranges her story structure with these same building blocks. However, since the emphasis in a character-oriented novel is on what the character is experiencing emotionally, not on the action of the plot, how DiCamillo develops her characters is critical.  

    Like Darrow, DiCamillo’s first task is to develop her implicit promise—the contract from writer to reader that hints at character, conflict, setting, and tone (Kress 7-8). Whereas Darrow demonstrated her novel’s implicit promise by outlining her main character’s desire amid key action scenes, DiCamillo’s approach is not as easily deciphered.

    DiCamillo relies heavily on her novel’s title to convey the implicit promise. The prepositional phrase title, Because of Winn Dixie, seems to answer a question. The reader opens the book on a mission to discover what that question could be. In chapter one the reader learns that Winn-Dixie is a stray dog and in chapter two that his rescuer, India Opal Buloni, is new to Naomi, Florida. The new girl in town is a common story problem. Therefore, the reader may guess the novel will focus on how India Opal Buloni’s life changes after moving. How or why does her life change?  Because of Winn-Dixie, of course, the scruffy dog she drags home from his namesake, the Winn-Dixie supermarket.

    On the surface level Because of Winn-Dixie is about a girl and her dog. Yet, as Noah Lukeman in The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life states, “The task of a writer… is to create characters on the verge of change, characters that will, in some way be unrecognizable by the end of the work” (82). In a character-oriented novel, having characters that are on the verge of change is a key way that an author may depict what it is the main character longs for.

   Therefore, to discover what character change Because of Winn-Dixie hinges on, one should look at how DiCamillo depicts India Opal as protagonist and the father, as the most important secondary character, early on in the novel. As the book opens, the two are not at odds with one another, but the readers senses India Opal’s loneliness and her father’s emotional reserve. The eventual outcome this beginning suggests is that the father-and-daughter pair must make a satisfying connection to one another to be unrecognizable by the novel’s end.

    In examining India Opal’s relationship with her father, the reader begins to identify the over-arching story problem. India Opal is lonely, not simply because she is the new girl in town, but because she yearns for a parental connection. India Opal assumes her long absent mother will fulfill this longing. With Winn-Dixie by her side, India Opal has the courage to ask the preacher ten things about her mama, one for each year she has been alive. The preacher begrudgingly shares this information and India Opal rushes to her room.

         I wrote them down just the way he said them to me so I wouldn’t forget them,

         and then I read them out loud to Winn-Dixie until I had them memorized. I 

         wanted to know those ten things inside and out. That way, if my mama ever

         came back, I could recognize her, and I would be able to grab her and hold on to   

         her tight and not let her get away from me again. (DiCamillo 29-30)

    However, the reader suspects what India Opal does not. The parental connection India Opal longs for will not be forged with her mother, but with her father.

    To render this relationship unrecognizable by the novel’s end, DiCamillo uses a common character development technique. She shifts the portrayal of the father from a flat into a round character. This is not the only character development technique at work in the book, but it is the one that supports the overarching story-problem of India Opal’s establishing a deeper parental connection.  

    By definition, a flat character is one-dimensional and is often depicted as a stereotypical caricature. A round character, one who grows and changes, is more complex. DiCamillo’s first line of business is to portray the father as flat and one-dimensional in India Opal’s eyes:

My daddy is a good preacher and a nice man, but sometimes it’s hard for me to think about him as my daddy, because he spends so much time preaching or thinking about preaching or getting ready to preach. And so in my mind I think of him as “the preacher.” (13) 

    Here India Opal labels her father as his job title, preacher, versus his family title, Daddy. This is a subtle way for DiCamillo to allow room for India Opal’s character growth. Also, it paints a one-dimensional portrait of the father where the reader is encouraged to bring any and all preconceived notions to the reading. Whether or not the assumptions prove to be correct do not matter. What does matter is DiCamillo’s characterization of the preacher. For the time being, he is flat.

    DiCamillo then further shades the father’s characterization by using an extended metaphor to personify his most distinguishable character trait, his silence. In the first scene in which India Opal and her father interact, India Opal thinks: “Sometimes he reminded me of a turtle hiding inside its shell, in there thinking about things and not ever sticking his head out into the world” (DiCamillo 16). The stereotype of the preacher is now coupled with the caricature of a turtle-man. 

    The novel’s rising action does not rest solely on the various ways Winn-Dixie brings friendship and joy to India Opal’s lonely world. Midway through the novel, Winn-Dixie, the dog symbol of unconditional love, begins to work his magic on the emotionally distant father-daughter relationship. Here, DiCamillo starts to shift the characterization of the father, depicting him as slightly more complex. During a thunderstorm India Opal worries that the preacher will not tolerate Winn-Dixie’s pathological fear of storms. Yet, the father surprises India Opal, and thus the reader, by putting his arm around the dog and responding: “We have to make sure he doesn’t get out during a storm. He might run away. We have to keep him safe” (DiCamillo 78). India Opal is filled with a rush of love.

All of a sudden it was hard for me to talk. I loved the preacher so much. I loved him because he loved Winn-Dixie. I loved him because he was going to forgive Winn-Dixie for being afraid. But most of all, I loved hum for putting his arm around Winn-Dixie like that, like he was already trying to keep him safe. (DiCamillo 78) 

    This is the reader’s last exposure to the father before the climax where DiCamillo assembles the entire cast of characters at a party, thrown by India Opal, to celebrate her family of friends. However, the father’s characterization from a flat into a round character has not been completed. The father-daughter pair still must forge a new bond for their relationship to be unrecognizable by the end of the work.

    To accomplish this task, DiCamillo weaves the various story threads together when a boomer of a thunderstorm puts a damper on the party’s festivities. Amid all the rushing and racing, Winn-Dixie disappears. After searching all over town, the preacher is ready to give up. A hurt India Opal yells: “You’re always pulling your head inside your stupid old turtle shell. I bet you didn’t even go out looking for my mama when she left. I bet you let her run off, too” (DiCamillo 165). When the preacher begins to cry in response, DiCamillo juxtaposes the early image of the father as “turtle” that India is still upset with, with the vulnerable dad the preacher has become.

We stood there hugging and rocking back and forth, and after awhile the preacher stopped shaking and I still held onto him; and I finally got the nerve to ask the question I wanted to ask.

            “Do you think she’s ever going to come back?” I whispered. (DiCamillo 166)

    DiCamillo waits until this moment to have India ask about her mother’s return. It is not until the father develops from a one-dimensional caricature, to a fully rounded character, that India Opal is able to speak of her deep-seated wish. It fits for this declaration to come at the climax of the book, rather than at the beginning of the novel, because it has taken the building of the story events to bring India Opal to this moment of catharsis. India Opal is ready to hear the “no” she knows is coming and her father is ready to speak it. At this point, the two are a full family, without the mother and for the time being even without bridge-builder Winn-Dixie.

    In reviewing Weiss’s earlier-cited definition, a character-oriented novel should keep its emphasis “on what the character is experiencing emotionally rather than on the action itself. Character development rather than plot is moving us through the story” (Pattison 2). DiCamillo’s early portrayal of the preacher leaves room for the conflict of the story to shape both the preacher and India Opal. His emergence as a round character is hard won and takes his daughter, the protagonist, to free him from his “old turtle shell.”  This done, India Opal’s journey is complete; she has achieved what she has longed for, a deep parental connection.

    As previously mentioned, developing a primary secondary character from a flat into a round character is not the only character development technique DiCamillo employs in Because of Winn-Dixie. She builds scenes upon scene in which India Opal meets and begins to love characters with a “checkered” past in order to heal her own. Among these characters are: Otis, a guitar strumming pet store owner and former convict and Gloria Dump, a strange old lady and recovering alcoholic who has become a mother-figure in India Opal’s life. Through developing strong ties with these two characters India Opal’s forgiveness for her mother, whose drinking was the reason she abandoned India Opal, grows. And perhaps of more importance, these supporting character relationships prepare India Opal to forge a closer bond with her father.

    India Opal’s new family, a rag-tag bunch of Naomi citizens, an ugly dog, and her father, satisfies her innermost longings. The fact that one has to look so closely at how DiCamillo achieved this effect demonstrates how crucial character development is in the plot construction of a character-oriented novel.