Take a Trip
There are two kinds of stories: somebody takes a trip or a stranger comes to town.
While I resist pocket-sized writing cliches—don’t get me started on kill your darlings—I like the above quote, which neatly conveys that story is always triggered in one of two ways: by an internal choice a character makes (e.g. taking a trip), or by an external event that puts pressure on a character, forcing them to react (e.g. a pandemic). In other words, a story’s inciting incident can come from within or without.
This quote came up during a discussion with my nonfiction workshop* about structure, but it applies equally to fiction. All narrative has both an external arc driven by action and events (plot) and an internal arc, the character evolution caused by those events. Sometimes when we don’t like a story it’s because the balance is off—either we’re getting too many dramatic, exciting events or we’re getting too much character interiority, which makes a story drag.
This idea of taking a trip or a stranger coming to town makes sense when we consider ourselves as the protagonists of our everyday lives. Sometimes we wake up with the urge to do something. Sometimes we wake up and something outside our control and design has occurred, something that directly impacts us. A year ago, I left a day job at UNC, an internal choice driven partly by external events—a pandemic sent the world home and with time on their hands, many people began to think about the stories they wanted to tell, that maybe this was a good time to do that, that maybe I could help. The internal and external are always inextricably linked, and that complexity makes narrative rich and satisfying.
I’m not happy a pandemic has visited our planet, but I am happy to be doing work I love and am grateful for every person who chooses a creative act, puts their imagination into the world in any form. Also, if Covid hadn’t happened, I know I would’ve found my way forward via some other route. This is the pleasure and tangle of fiction writing--there is more than one way to move our character toward an eventual realization or action.
Fiction Writing starts at the Durham Arts Council next Tuesday night, and I could not be more excited to be in a classroom with masked strangers inventing characters and spouting plot possibilities, one of my favorite pastimes. What if your character missed the bus? What if the bus never came? What if the phone rang with bad news? Or good news? What if today was the day your character woke up and decided it was time to eat something different for breakfast or learn how to fly fish or buy a new outfit or call an old friend or get on a plane or...I can do this all day long.
Adulthood is a strange combination of trying to locate, operate, and sometimes repair our inner compass while simultaneously managing external burdens we cannot avoid, that sometimes make us feel powerless. It is easy these days to believe that taking a trip, literal or figurative, is out of the question, but I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s a world of possibility right where you stand.
Keep writing, friends.
J.
*At the time, we thought the source of this quote was Flannery O’Connor. The internet seems to suggest it might have been Tolstoy or John Gardner. I don’t think it really matters, so long as you take that trip.
Write Your Life Story at the Carrboro ArtsCenter
Write Your Life Story starts on Monday, October 25th at the Carrboro ArtsCenter! In this daytime memoir class, we’ll be digging into our pasts and turning meaningful moments into narrative. We’ll also learn memoir techniques that make our stories engaging and emotional. If you have stories you’ve always wanted to tell, now is your moment.
Write Your Life Story at the Iowa City Senior Center
The new memoir class I’m offering is inspired by the time I spent with the Write Your Life Story group at the Iowa City Senior Center many years ago. I spent Friday afternoons listening to them read aloud. I learned a lot from those writers about what the world was like before I arrived in it, and we laughed a lot. For a glimpse of this vibrant group, please watch this two minute TV spot on the group’s pandemic migration to Zoom.
Many of us find revision challenging, not exactly sure what needs to be improved or how. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll review the list of questions every writer should ask as they enter the revision process, practice concrete strategies for successful revision, and compare first drafts to final drafts to see how revision can take a piece from good to great. This class is aimed at both fiction and nonfiction writers. Participants will leave with clear ideas and techniques for revision as well as the confidence to revise successfully. This workshop will meet on Zoom on Thursday, December 9th, 6:00pm-8:00pm ET. Sign up now.
Prompts aplenty on Patreon
Are you looking for more writing prompts to inspire your writing practice? There are plenty over on my Patreon page, including a new prompt today that’s free and includes some of my thoughts on and memories of Halloween. Becoming a patron is a wonderful way to stay in touch with your writing and support my creative work. It will also earn you my eternal gratitude.
To Go Poem
My co-resident at Weymouth recently sent me a poem by Susan Griffin entitled Three Poems for Women. I could not find this poem correctly reproduced on the internet, so here it is, in her handwriting. Don’t be surprised when I tell you she is working on a memoir about feminism and patriarchy.