Sleuth, page 4
Never lose sight of the fact that storytelling is a vehicle for human connection. When your theme runs beneath your writing like the figured bass in a fugue, your characters gain depth and resonance, and your plot line becomes clearer and more intense. When your reader puts down your novel thinking that her mind has been enlarged by her connection with you, then you’ve done your job as a writer.
Just as knowing the identities of the murderer and the victim and understanding why the murder was committed give you a solid structure upon which to build a novel that satisfies the reader who seeks diversion and pleasure, so too knowing the “big idea” behind your novel will help you to keep your theme in focus as you write. It will also save you tons of time and endless frustration.
For a writer, there is no darker moment than the one in which you realize that the effervescent idea you’ve been pursuing has taken you nowhere and, worse yet, is about to burst. But the questions “What is the big idea behind my story or novel?” and “What is my thesis or theme?” not only give you solid ground on which to begin but can also be useful diagnostic tools when you go astray.
If you’re confronted with a piece of writing that suddenly seems—like Stephen Leacock’s famous horseman—to be riding madly off in all directions, then go back to your beginning point. Retrace your path, and discover where you lost sight of your theme or thesis.
Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.—Margaret Atwood
I’m going to use What’s Left Behind as an example of the importance of remembering at all times what you hope to achieve with your work. When I was writing the first draft of What’s Left Behind, I had problems keeping the theme in sharp focus, and I had to relearn some lessons. These lessons, of course, are ones I’ve taught students of writing for years but apparently forgot to listen to myself.
Here’s one nugget of wisdom that seemingly slipped my mind. Decide on the right title for your novel as early in the process as possible. Charles Dickens is said to have chosen the title Bleak House before he wrote a word of the novel. I can’t remember how many titles I tried out before I finally hit on What’s Left Behind, but the fluffiness (there’s that word again) of the early drafts was reflected in the fact that I continued to struggle for a title when I was well into writing the book.
Canadian novelist Alastair MacLeod says, “Writers write about what worries them.” One thing that has become an increasingly acute worry for me in the past fifteen years is urban sprawl, the creeping blight that threatens so much of our agricultural land and the sense of community in our cities. Few elected representatives or officials seem to be prepared to seriously examine the untrammelled civic growth that leaves a poisonous legacy for generations to come. I wanted to write about that, and I wanted to deal with the troubling undercurrent of irrationality running through contemporary political life. I knew what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t clear on how exactly I was going to say it. As soon as I settled on the title What’s Left Behind, I was able to see the problem and deal with it.
The title What’s Left Behind resonates on two levels. The novel opens on a May morning so perfect Joanne believes it merits a haiku. She and her husband, Zack, the mayor of Regina, are preparing for their son Peter’s marriage to Maisie Crawford, a woman wholeheartedly embraced by Peter’s family. Maisie’s maid of honour is her twin sister, Lee, who sees herself as a steward of the land she owns and is actively supporting Zack’s campaign to pass a referendum on a set of bylaws ensuring that the city’s future development is carefully planned and respectful of rural land that has been used for farming for generations.
When the fight over the referendum leads first to the poisoning of Lee’s prized heritage poultry and later to her murder, questions are raised about the kind of world we, as a society, want to leave behind. Our ethical and environmental decisions will shape our children and their inheritance. What kind of people will they become? What will they inherit?
The fact that the murder victim is someone close to Joanne’s family brings the title’s second level of meaning to the forefront. The sudden death of a loved one leaves those who remain struggling to discover how they can use the fragments of the life that’s left behind after the death to build a new life that will have purpose and beauty.
The title What’s Left Behind is a signal to my readers that I was in control of my material—that the killing of Lee’s prized birds isn’t simply a plot point. The wanton slaughter of the poultry reveals the ugliness humans can be driven to when their goals are thwarted, and it foreshadows the murder to come. As well, in irreparably severing a link to the past, the killing of the birds underscores the novel’s theme that what’s done cannot always be undone.
A final note about titles. The title the writer chooses while working on the manuscript is known, not surprisingly, as the “working title,” and you should prepare yourself for the possibility that your working title is not necessarily the title that will appear on your book’s glossy cover when it reaches the bookseller.
The final titles of three of the eighteen Joanne Kilbourn mysteries were not their working titles. The first novel, Deadly Appearances, was originally titled “Murder in the Granny Flat.” My publishers thought that title gave away too much of the plot and replaced it with the somewhat generic title it has borne for almost three decades. A Colder Kind of Death was the choice of James Adams, my first M&S editor and now the visual arts editor of the Globe and Mail. We were floundering for a title, and he came up with A Colder Kind of Death. It works well with the novel, and I loved it from the start. The eighteenth Joanne Kilbourn mystery started out as “The Other Self,” but my publishers weren’t wild about my choice, so when I suggested A Darkness of the Heart they jumped for joy.
A Useful if Apocryphal Story
At least five people in the book business have told me this story; I can’t vouch for its truthfulness, but it makes a valid point.
An up-and-coming writer has an appointment with a famous agent. The agent’s office is on the fifty-eighth floor of a building in downtown Toronto (or Vancouver or New York City, depending on the teller of the tale). By coincidence, the writer and the agent step into the elevator at the same time. After a quick introduction, the agent says, “Tell me what your novel’s about.” The writer murbles and burbles in generalities until the elevator reaches the fifty-eighth floor. When the writer attempts to follow the agent out of the elevator, she raises her hand in a “halt” gesture. “Push the down button,” she says. “If you don’t know what your novel’s about, you’re not worth my time.”
The story might be apocryphal, but its moral is clear. If a writer can’t state in one sentence (or two at the most) what she is hoping to communicate through a piece of writing, she needs to rethink her piece.
Literature moves from the particular to the universal. As a writer, your job is to develop your themes through fully rounded characters whose actions and dialogue reveal thematic patterns for your reader to discover. Make your world real, and you can explore the great themes.
Before we move on to the in-depth exploration of how you can most effectively use the elements of fiction to connect with your reader, a quick overview of some tips to manage your writing process might be useful.
Write every day, even if it’s only for fifteen minutes or to jot something down in your notebook or to do a quick edit on your work from the day before. Day-by-day engagement with your work keeps the connection alive and the juices flowing.
Never leave your writing in a bad spot. If you know a quagmire awaits you, the temptation not to go back to your laptop can be almost irresistible. Some of my best writing moments have come after I’ve gritted my teeth and stayed at my laptop till I’ve worked through the problem. Ernest Hemingway said, “Always leave the pump primed.” It’s good advice. And novelist Jodi Picoult tartly observed, “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.” If you’re in what a writer friend of mine refers to as “suck mode,” then the process will be painful, but take a few deep breaths and forge ahead.
Many writers, and I am among them, believe that two quiet hours at 5 a.m. equal four hours of regular work time. Ignore this advice if you are a night owl.
When you’re stuck, leave your desk. Go for a walk. Make tea. Play with your dog or cat. Meditate. Whatever you do, don’t start surfing the net, don’t make a phone call, and don’t get together with friends. If you do, other people’s words will pour in where your words should be. Create a space for your words. Be patient.
Use the Pomodoro Technique. Work for twenty-five minutes. Give yourself a five-minute break, and then get back to work. I’ve been doing this since I started writing. Until a couple of years ago, I had no idea this particular strategy had a name, but it does, and by any name the technique works.
Trust your instincts. If a character begins to surprise you, follow him to see where he takes you. In 12 Rose Street, I have a character who is a slumlord and an enthusiastic proponent of rough sex. He is reptilian in appearance, and after a bitter battle with his father he had his birth name legally changed from Harvey Mewhort Jr. to Cronus to suggest his affinity with the ruling Titan in Greek mythology who came to power by castrating his father Uranus. Cronus is an unlikely hero, yet, when he is faced with a decision to risk his own life or the life of a child, he chooses to risk himself and pays the price.
Trust your instincts even when you don’t want to. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a character is lifeless, a plot line is limp, a symbol is leaden, or, horror of horrors, your whole manuscript has the vitality of a long-dead mackerel. Give that draft of the manuscript a decent burial and start again. Try some creative recycling of the characters and plot points that didn’t work in the first draft. You might be amazed at how they snap, crackle, and pop the second time around. Remember P. D. James’s wise counsel: “Nothing is ever wasted.”
Never give up.
Learn to be your own editor. I begin every day rewriting the last page or so I wrote the day before. I always find something to shift or change. And working on the familiar material helps me to reconnect with the manuscript and gets the juices running again.
E. L. Doctorow said that writing “is like driving a car at night: you can never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Keep the faith.
Chapter 5
Point of View/Narrative Perspective
To put this most simply, point of view is merely a decision the writer makes that will determine through whose eyes the story is going to be told.—Elizabeth George, author of the Inspector Thomas Lynley mysteries
Six of my novels have been made into movies, and I have watched with respect the care taken to cast each role. The casting director goes through literally hundreds of actors’ resumes, culls most of them, and then chooses the actors who will be called in for a test. These actors are asked to read scenes alone and with other actors. The process is repeated until those ultimately responsible for producing the movie decide that they have found the actors who can best bring the screenplay’s characters to life.
Casting the right actor for a role is a rigorous procedure. Writers must be equally rigorous in deciding which narrative voice and perspective will best serve their novels. Take your time. Try writing a scene from different points of view. Try it in the first person. Try it with several different first-person narrators. Try it in third-person subjective. Or try it with an omniscient narrator. Then consider which method of narration felt the most natural for you and which allowed you to communicate most effectively what you wanted to say.
First Person
The story is told through the eyes of one person using the pronoun I. I’ve used a first-person narrator for both the Joanne Kilbourn series and the Charlie Dowhanuik series. I’ve also used first person for one novella and one very short piece. It’s a good fit for me. I like getting inside a character’s head, and I like imagining what life must look like through her or his eyes. It’s a personal call, and I seem to slip into it easily, but it might not be for you.
Trust your instincts. The one time I’ve used third-person narrative was for “The Foad Toad,” a comic short story I wrote for University Affairs. It focused on a male professor in late middle age who couldn’t or wouldn’t adjust to the tectonic shifts in university culture that had occurred over the past fifteen years. I began the story using a first-person narrator, but I quickly shifted to third-person narration. The protagonist, Phineas, is a sympathetic character, but I realized that it was important for the point I wanted to make that the reader not see the university wholly through his eyes.
That said, there are times when a first-person narrator is just what the doctor ordered. Remember Ms. X from Banff? She was a charming woman with a beautiful contralto voice and the kind of energy that warmed a chilly room. There was nothing technically amiss in the manuscript she gave me. Everything that needed to be established was established, but the piece was grey and lifeless.
When Ms. X and I talked about the problem, I was struck again by the force of her personality. As is often the case, there was a character in her draft much like her. I suggested to Ms. X that she rewrite a few pages in the first person using the point of view of that character. The revised piece pulsed with colour and life. Ms. X had found her character’s voice, and that voice brought her story to life.
Take a few narrative perspectives out for a spin. You’ll know when you’ve found the one that works best for you.
Advantage of First-Person Narrative
First-person narrative is a powerful tool if the mystery you’re writing is character driven. Because readers see everything through the eyes of the narrator-protagonist, they come to know your protagonist intimately. The reader is privy to the protagonist’s thoughts, opinions, emotions, and reactions. Reader and narrator form a bond. The fact that information is revealed to the reader as it is revealed to the narrator creates a sense of immediacy that further strengthens that bond. Yet, because everything the reader knows is filtered through the lens of the narrator-protagonist, the reader never sees the complete picture, never has all the information. The reader has only the narrator’s perception of what others are doing.
That said, as readers we have double vision. We are inside the head of the narrator-protagonist when we read, but when we reflect on what we are reading our thoughts are our own. We form our own judgments, and they might differ from those formed by the first-person narrator.
If the writer is in control of his material, then he can use this double vision to show that the perceptions of his protagonist are flawed. She could be unwittingly blinded by love or past history. In this case, double vision allows us, as readers, to glimpse the truth and to gain a new perspective on the narrator-protagonist.
Canadian writer Sinclair Ross uses the double vision perspective to stunning effect in his novel As for Me and My House. The entire novel is written as a diary kept by a preacher’s wife during the dirty thirties in Saskatchewan. In her diary, Mrs. Bentley—we never know her given name—presents herself as a loving wife who sacrifices herself willingly for her husband. When he repays her selflessness by impregnating a woman in the church choir and the woman dies in childbirth, Mrs. Bentley welcomes the newborn baby to their family.
We see everything and everyone through the eyes of this first-person narrator, and at first glance Mrs. Bentley seems to be a paragon. However, a careful reading of the novel shows a darker side of Ross’s narrator-protagonist. When Mrs. Bentley says of her marriage “I hollowed myself out so that I might enclose him,” I felt a chill, and when I reread the book I saw that the narrator’s own words reveal a much darker Mrs. Bentley, a woman who believes that the roses on her wallpaper are like eyes, following her and judging her, and that her husband’s parishioners deliberately time their visits to catch her with her floors unscrubbed and her dishes unwashed.
Ross uses his readers’ double vision to create a layered and compelling protagonist, and As for Me and My House is deservedly a classic. In a later chapter, I’ll talk about how I use my readers’ double vision to show how Joanne Kilbourn’s need for acceptance blinds Joanne to the true nature of a character whom she has loved since childhood.
Multiple First-Person Narrators in a Single Novel
Emerging writers frequently ask me about the wisdom of using more than one first-person narrator. I understand the appeal. The threads that bind human beings together in relationships are as complex and fragile as the filaments of a spider’s web. It’s inevitable that a sensitive writer is drawn to the prospect of probing that web from different first-person perspectives. That said, I invariably advise against the use of more than one first-person narrator simply because, as a rule, juggling two or more narrators is hard and often unrewarding work.
If you are truly committed to using multiple narrators, I recommend that you read Louise Erdrich’s novel The Plague of Doves. That brilliant novel illustrates both the power and the danger of using multiple narrators. For the most part, Erdrich’s use of many voices to tell her tale works well, but the narrator given the responsibility of tying up the loose ends at the conclusion of the novel is weak, and to my mind the ending feels cobbled together. The Plague of Doves is a terrific book, but a writer should always finish strong, so there’s a lesson in that ending.
When your Grade 6 grammar teacher told you that for every rule there is an exception, she must have been anticipating Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel/blockbuster film Gone Girl. Flynn’s novel is a breathtaking example of how a skilled writer can use two unreliable narrators to draw the reader into the maelstrom of a marriage gone terribly wrong.
