Continuing the theme of the ‘Poet’ post, I’ve been thinking not only of the importance of making sure each and every word is vital to the piece of writing as a whole, but also of the importance of listening.

First, we listen to the rhythm of the words.  This is important, and most writers know to read their work out loud and listen to how the sentences flow, how the dialog sounds, and so forth.  The ear hears what the eyes sometimes miss.  If, in reading out loud, certain words are skipped over, or a sentence comes out verbally different from how it’s written, it’s probably because the way we read it sounds more natural.

Second, we as writers need to listen to our characters.  This isn’t as common, but is just as important.  In an early piece years ago, I had a character actually say to another character, ‘I’m so bored with all this.’  This bit of dialog showed up mid way through the story, in the infamous ‘sagging middle’.  The editor I was working with made a very kind notation in the margin that sometimes our characters tell us when something is wrong.  How right she was.  I rewrote, and made sure that character didn’t get bored again.

A friend of mine, recently published, has an interesting tool for when her story sags or stalls.  She sits down at the dining room table with her characters and talks to them.  Asks them their opinions on the story, and so on.  She then jumps up, runs to another chair, becomes the character, and answers the writer.  In this way she found out that the character she had pegged as the murderer, wasn’t, and an elderly female character really wanted to be the murderer and had excellent reasons for that desire.  My friend laughs, sheepishly, when she talks about this, and hopes no one ever sees or hears her.  But she has found an even more intimate way to interact with her story than just listening to the characters.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’m that uninhibited.  After all, when I read my writing out loud, I whisper.

But at least I’m listening.

I have always positioned poets up on a pillar.  Seriously.  I admire them from far below, because as I’ve mentioned before, it takes me 80,000 words to get a story across and poets can do it in a few stanzas.  If you question whether a poem can tell a story read the one I’ve posted over on the sidebar.  Trust me, if you’re a writer the poem will haunt you with all the unknown back story and unsaid threads.  I don’t understand poetry, I’ve failed at writing it, I know nothing about the types, styles, or whether something is a cinquain or a haiku.  I still covet the ability to write them though.

I have two friends and one nephew who write amazing poetry.  Their words transport me away not just to place, but to emotions.  They can call up peace, melancholy, even deep homesickness when I’m sitting on my favorite chair at home.  I study their words and take away this lesson that is self-evident but I need to repeat often.  Every single word counts.  And taking the effort to think about each word makes a significant difference.

When I’m in the throes of writing though, I can’t slow down to study each word.  I speed along, caught up in the story, and worry about whether it’s the perfect word or phrase during editing.  I imagine poets edit, too, but I have this idealized vision of them sitting alone, looking very much like a poet, and channeling beauty into the first draft.  Makes me envious.

Poetry seems to me to be the very barest of bare bones of a story.  So for a challenge, sometimes I take my novel and try to write the entire plot into a poem.  I call it a free-style poem simply because I have no idea what I’m doing.  The end result though, has been interesting.  If I can surgically remove everything to end up with the poem/plot, suddenly what I am left holding is a synopsis.  Definitely not poetry.  But a synopsis that clarifies what I’m doing and makes me take a second look at all the subplots, making sure they are relevant and needed.  Trying to think like a poet forces me to be ruthless with all the prose I think is so literary and perfect.  Without fail I find that less is better.

Stephen King says something similar in his book On Writing.  He says the final draft is the first draft minus ten percent.  Heck, I think my final draft is the first draft minus fifty percent.  Or even more.  Some day I’ll learn to cut as I write.  But I doubt I’ll ever get to the point of writing a poem.

When  young I was introduced to the ‘Borrowers’ series by Mary Norton and I devoured them, and then over many years, reread my tattered copies, eventually reading them to my son.  When he was three he took a screwdriver to the wall, creating a back door for the Borrowers.

There are other books with similar themes.  ‘The Littles’ come to mind.  Those books were written after the Borrowers, and my  younger sister read them avidly.  But to me they lacked something.  A few months ago I discovered that there was one final ‘Borrowers’ book I had never heard of, written in the 1980’s, long after the others.  I purchased it and it was like slipping right back into an imaginary world full of friends that I had missed.

Reading it after many years of writing though, caused me to look at it differently.  I wanted to discover the secret of why those books so appealed to me.  There are the obvious reasons: strong characters to care about, awful villains to fear, adventures that pull you out of your every day existence.  But those reasons can be found in any good book, so why did these so resonate?  One answer I have come up with is the setting.

The stories take place in very old Victorian era homes in rural England.  The descriptions are so well written that the setting becomes a character in itself, equally important to the story.  Set the Borrowers in the middle of London and they would not appeal to me as much.  But put me under the floorboards, with dust sifting down, with Arietty sitting next to the grate looking out at a world forbidden to her, of grass and sunshine and birds…and I’m there breathing that fresh summer air coming in.

Setting in a story cannot be underestimated.  I’ve found that out in my own writing.  Inevitably I find my stories in the mountains.  Deep forests, whitewater, granite.  I’ve managed stories set where my family homesteaded in rural Montana, and those stories have been okay, but the mountains are what pull at me.  I find mystery in the shadowed mossy trees, I find my characters in the people who choose to live with bears and cougars (and maybe even Bigfoot?).  Again, the setting becomes a character vital to the story.

Finding a balance in writing description can be tricky.  Too much and the reader skims, bored.  Not enough, and the reader leaves.  I am coming to believe, thanks to those little people in the walls, that if setting becomes alive for the writer, if it becomes more than just description, then the whole story comes alive.  And maybe will become a story someone will read and read again.