Conflicted

Exercise Your InkTank

All of the handbooks and guides and professors and writers will tell you that conflict is important. Without it, the story is an anecdote without a turn. It’s as flat and as compelling as a paper moon held to a cardboard sky. But the blunt instrument isn’t the only tool in our storytelling arsenal. Conflict can be rendered with surgical precision. A mere tonal shift can be as compelling as a catfight in an alley, if not more so. The problem may be that the word conflict has some dicey connotations: battle, clash, combat, fracas, struggle, war, rivalry, brawl, fight, rancor, animosity. If we’re not interested in writing about those kinds of things, we may feel like we don’t need conflict in our stories. On the other hand, we may mistakenly think that inserting a fracas or two should fulfill the conflict requirement on our storytelling checklist. In order for the occasion of the story to be apparent to our readers, though, they must be able to sense (though not necessarily pinpoint) a certain pressure in the storytelling. They have to feel that there are stakes and the stakes have to be interior to the story—they can’t feel like they’re being imposed on the story from the outside.

The reason I resist the word conflict a little is because it tends to reduce all of the many pressures and forces possible in a story to the level of plot. It isn’t enough to say that a thing did or did not happen between some people. And it isn’t enough to say that the thing was or was not important. The storytelling must be expressive, perhaps even performative. The storytelling is what makes verisimilitude a possibility, not the events of the plot. The problem editors and teachers see most frequently in manuscripts is a failure to artfully manage and synthesize the tensions and pressures that result from the events and relationships at play in the story. Here’s a list of common problems in order of their prevalence:

1. The Poorly Selected Entry Point.
The story begins either before or after the true occasion of the storytelling. We leave the story before the impact of an event is felt (leaving us feeling high and dry) or we enter the story after the event of interest has passed (leaving us feeling like we’ve missed all of the action). The view needs to shift a little.
2. The Anecdote That Passes Itself off As a Story
If I told you what happened to me at the dog park the other day, you might listen because you’re nice. The exchange between reader and writer is different. Folks often mistake the interesting anecdote for a good story and attempt to write it as they’ve told it. The problem with the interesting anecdote it isn’t a compelling story. Invest in character and voice and let the plot evolve organically from there.
3. The Case of the Missing Occasion
If the reader must ask of your story, “Why is the narrator telling this story of all the stories in all the world?” you are in for trouble. There may be more than one answer to this question available in a good story, but if a reader has to struggle (or worse, extrapolate) to find it, your storytelling has missed the mark.
4. Bring It to A Head
Tension and pressure in a story must culminate somehow. If the characters in the story don’t respond appropriately or don’t respond at all to conflict, the impact of the story won’t be heard. (I’ll concede here that a non-response can be an appropriate and natural response if done well, but I’ll also say that confrontation is always more interesting than avoidance.) On the other hand, high drama doesn’t always fly either. Try to stay away from language that forces meaning on the reader.

Cage Fight
Conflict doesn’t happen on the level of the plot alone. In fact, if the storytelling is working well, it happens everywhere, from the level of the language up. Together, we’ll generate a list of word pairs. Then we’ll write a passage that stages one word in the pair against the other. The goal is to create an effective sense of pressure and tension without relying upon an event to direct the storytelling. Put these two words in the ring and let them duke it out.

Three Things Above All

Exercise Your InkTank
Storytelling Structure

We all know a good story when we hear one. We’ve been hearing them all our lives, which makes us experts. When a storyteller takes a false step, we sense it immediately, instinctually, deeply. Writer Italo Calvino draws a comparison between storytelling and telling jokes—when the teller’s timing is off, the joke fails. Jokes have to be exact and precise to succeed and so do stories. Calvino says that, to his mind, exactitude means three things above all: “(1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; (2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable images; (3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination.” Our topic of interest for this evening is the plan, but the plan can’t stand alone, as we will soon discover.

Some writers allow the story to evolve organically as they work. That means that they follow the words themselves, rather than a map they’ve conceived beforehand. But even those stories must follow a system of logic if they’re to be successful. The writer is always revising, pulling things into line. It doesn’t matter when the plan is formed, but how well-defined and well-calculated it is. It’s important to acknowledge here that the plan is ultimately for the reader—not the writer. Like you, your readers are expert listeners. If they sense you’ve made a false step, they won’t give you the laugh when you most want it.

What is a well-defined and well-calculated plan? This is the question that causes all (or most) of the drama. The idea that there is a sure-fire plan that fits any storytelling model is attractive because it’s easy. It turns a delicate art into a clunky equation: see graph on handout. You’ve probably seen this thing or things like it in the past. Many stories fit this model: they have discernable beginnings, middles, and ends; they have rising tension and conflicts; and they take place over a discrete unit of time. Not all successful stories fit this model, though, and having all the parts that make the whole does not ensure success. A lot of people find this out the hard way—after they’ve invested in novel writing software, for instance, or a course on manuscript marketing. A well-defined and well-calculated plan is one that guides the reader through the storytelling, using the structural patterns and storytelling conventions with which we’re all familiar. The reader senses the punch-line as he or she reads, senses the parts of the joke merging together. Part of the satisfaction for the reader is in using the story to imagine the punch-line (that engagement is probably more important than the punch-line itself) and part of the satisfaction is in the storytelling itself (meaning the quality of the language and the images invoked) and part of the satisfaction is in recognizing structural patterns. Success is contingent upon these things above all. The reason the graph doesn’t work is because it doesn’t take the complexity of the art into account. It tries and fails to stand alone.

What structural patterns do readers expect? This is a question any writer can answer just by reading. Open almost any novel and you’ll notice space breaks and chapter breaks—these are signs of an operating structure or plan. There is always a system of logic behind the breaks—a pattern—and the pattern leads the reader through the story. Chapters don’t need to be a specific length in terms of the number of pages, but they do need to be a specific length in terms of the advancement that occurs within them. Breaks within chapters don’t need to occur at specific intervals, but they do need to occur at regular intervals. Readers get nervous when the structure of the novel seems to determine the shape of the content, rather than the other way around. Structure evolves, it isn’t imposed. Let’s take a look at some novels and see if we can recognize any structural patterns.

Drama
In order to accommodate those who yearn every week for a writing exercise, we’ll use the pool of novels to conduct an experiment in tone. Select a passage with an apparent context and identify the tone of the writing with an adjective or two. Re-write that same passage (in your own words) so that the tone shifts dramatically.

Grit Nature Dirt Self

Exercise Your InkTank
Nature

Writer Mary Gaitskill argues that the primary difficulty with sex in literature is our tendency to confuse and conflate reverence and politeness. It strikes me that if there is a problem with nature in literature, it’s probably similar: our tendency is to conflate respect and reverence. Nature writer David Gessner writes in “Sick of Nature,” “Too often when I flip through the pages of contemporary nature books the tone is awed, hushed, reverential. The same things that drove me away from Sunday School. And the same thing that drove me, unable to resist my own buffoonery, to fart loudly against the pews.” He reminds us that Thoreau’s book Walden has its share of bad puns and fart jokes too, including “references to Pythagrians and their love of beans.”

In attempt to convey the respect we feel is due the natural world, we’ve set it (and Thoreau as its writer-hero) above (ordinary, real, concrete) life. And by setting it above, we’ve set it beyond life in a sexless, humorless place, where (as Gessner phrases it) “nature becomes a kind of bland church.” We’ve inadvertently made it exactly what it’s not: untouchable and uninteresting. The point is, we need not treat nature with the stilted language of reverence and worship in order to demonstrate or evoke respect for it. In fact, we might better demonstrate our respect for nature by writing about its presence in and as ordinary life. Let’s write about it with the true grit and dirt of, well, true grit and dirt. Let’s bring it out of the exalted sky and back into our lives. Perhaps we can care better for it here.

Early Birds
Writers have long argued that the language we habitually use to talk about nature is problematic. Exhibit A: the word wilderness. It refers to untouched, uninhabited, uncultivated land. But the truth is that we’ve had our hands on nearly everything. Less than 5% of old growth forests remain in North America—we destroy 10,000 square km of ancient forests every year. We think of wilderness as other. We have to get away to get into it and once we’re there, we’re supposed to re-connect with it. But why can’t it be with us all of the time? Why can’t we stay connected? If we change the way we talk about nature, perhaps we can change the way we conceive of it and if we change the way we conceive of it, perhaps we can change its value and meaning on a larger cultural scale. In a very real way, many writers now see themselves as the most powerful (and necessary) tool in the environmental movement’s current arsenal. But whether or not you view your work as an instrument of change, you’re a person living in this world. We all have a history with nature. Think about your earliest experiences with it. I’m not necessarily talking about the first time you went camping. I’m asking you to look inside your everyday life. Write about it as you would any early experience, using the language of the personal narrative. Keep the inflated and elevated language of reverence out and aim for the true dirt and grit of ordinary life. Do your small part to change the lexicon.

Some compelling nature writers to investigate, should you feel compelled to do so: Joy Williams, Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, Rachel Carson, William Cronon, Rick Bass.