Words

One sunny Sunday afternoon as my son played in the Kiddie Park my thoughts were interrupted by Hudson Bridge.

“Words carry great weight.” He said this as if he had a lot on his mind.

“Something bothering you?” I asked genuinely concerned.

“Words.” He repeated, “Carry great weight. In the beginning there was the Word, take my word, hanging on every word, don’t say another word, don’t put words in my mouth, choose your words carefully, word of law.”

“And don’t forget, the bird is the word.” I added grinning from ear to ear.

“Papa, ooma mow mow.” Hudson said without humor.

“What I am trying to explain is that words are how we communicate, relate to each other, explain ourselves, argue a point, describe what we see. You get the picture?” Hudson looked at me with searching eyes.

“I see.” I said not having anything better to say.

“Do you?” He replied as if he was speaking to a three year old. “As story tellers our words must convey not only plot, character personality, scenery, time, and place, we must convey feelings, smells, colors, thoughts, tastes, touch, hot and cold. Try to describe the taste of milk without using the word milk or cream, or, the color orange without using the word orange. If one of our characters is to die we must describe the death in such a way that it becomes real. We need the reader to feel the death in a visceral way. We want the reader to mourn or cheer the death and the only way to achieve this is with words. How do you scare a reader so bad they have nightmares when all you have are words to work with? It is through common experience and choice of words. When a politician gives a speech how do they get the crowd to cheer in the appropriate places?”

“Same way?” I answered.

“Not much conviction in your answer.” Hudson said patting me on the back.

“If we all share common experiences then it shouldn’t be that hard.” I stood to see if my son needed me for anything which he did not. He was running around like a deer in the wind chasing leaves.

“We may share common experiences but we experience them differently. As writers it is our job, our responsibility to make sure each reader experiences the same thing in our stories and all we have are words.” Hudson said as I sat back down next to him on the park bench.

“Words are heavy.” I said to him as we watched my son twirl himself on the swing.

Murder

 

“Have you ever killed someone before?” Hudson asked me one Sunday in July.

“Killed anyone?” I asked not sure I heard him correctly.

“Damn boy, don’t repeat me like a parrot!”

I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted or not being called a boy. After all, my boy was playing on a swing, laying across it on his belly winding up the chains the letting it go to spin around in dizzying glee.

“If you mean murder, no.” I said with a suspicious feeling he may have.

“I have killed and buried more than I care to talk about.” Hudson said out of the corner of his mouth, the sly look of confession in his eyes.

I wanted no part of this conversation for fear of becoming an accomplice after the fact. He pressed on anyways.

“Death is a peculiar thing.” He paused to laughed as my son got off the swing and stumbled around like a drunkard. “Killing even more so. You have to describe each breath until the last.”

That is when I realized he was talking about writing.

Hudson continued. “Readers want to feel each slice of the blade as it divides the flesh as easily as a butcher’s blade cuts gammon, smell the release of the bowels as the excrement snails down the legs, taste the rust of  blood as it fills the mouth drowning words of mercy.”

My stomach lurched and I felt as if it was me that had just got off the spinning swing.

“You have to choose your words carefully. Take the readers on a car chase through hell without a seat belt. Have you heard the term show don’t tell? It’s wrong. You want the reader to feel, taste, touch, see; experience. They are the ones committing the act, they are the victim. Your words must paint a picture so vibrant and vivid the readers become a part of the story.”

“Is this possible using nothing more than the written word?” I called over my shoulder as I picked up my son who had fallen to the ground like a Friday night drunk. He quickly ran back to the swing, threw himself across it and began winding the chain again until only the tips of his feet touched the ground; “WHEeee!”

“We do it with the spoken word don’t we?” Hudson continued as I sat back down on the bench and lit a cigarette. “There was a time when we would sit around a fire telling stories about the sun moon and stars. We created gods with nothing more than the spoken words. Our job as fiction writers is to tell a lie so compelling it becomes truth. At least until the book is closed. The best way to learn this beautiful trick is by reading. Learn how the masters did it. Charles Dickens, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.”

“Who?” I interrupted.

“Lewis Carroll. Now don’t interrupt.  Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Doyle, Hugo, Capote, Burroughs Willian S. and Edgar Rice. It’s a long list. Perhaps the most important thing to do is write, write, write. The more you write the better you will get.”

Read a Book To Write a Book

I began to collect books on writing. This may seem be an oxymoron, read a book to learn how to write a book, but it does work. I now have in my ever growing library a few books that cover the subject. Among my favorites, and would suggest reading are, Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones”, Heather Sellers, “Practice of Creative Writing”, Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and Ned Stuckey-French-French’s “Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft”, William Zinsser, “On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, and Stephen King’s, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” I have read these books and the advice within their pages are sound and helpful.

Out of all of the book on writing in my collection my favorite is a four book box set titled, “Creative Writing Course: Famous Writers School”. The books in the set are simply titled, “Creative Writing Course 1, 2, 3, 4. These “text” books are from a correspondence course for writers during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time nearly every Newspaper and magazine had ads for the course, you would cut out the ad and send for, or “apply”, for the free aptitude test. According to the ad a prestigious list of writers which included, Paul Engle (long-time director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop), Rod Serling (of Twilight Zone fame), mystery writer Mignon Eberhart, Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton, and romance author Faith Baldwin. Day-to-day operations were managed by Gordon Carroll (Reader’s Digest editor) and John Lawrence (former president of William Morrow publishers) were to read and grade students work. It all came to a head when Jessica Mitford investigated and exposed the 48 million dollar scam. Because of the scandal Mitford’s article created The Famous Writers School filed for bankruptcy in 1972.

I bought the set of “Famous Writers School” books at a Goodwill for $1.50. I love the background story behind the books. The books themselves do give good advice for aspiring writers and mine have sections that had been underlined by someone, perhaps a “Famous Writers School” student. I wonder how they felt when the school was found to be a scam, I wonder if that same student is now a published author, or were their dreams ripped away by the scam.

 

For a more complete story about Jessica Mitford’s investigation check out https://davidgaughran.com/2014/12/16/how-jessica-mitford-exposed-a-48m-scam-from-americas-literary-establishment/

 

 

 

A Grave Responsibility

“Writing is a grave undertaking. There is a funeral in every word.” Hudson Bridge told me one Sunday afternoon in June. The sky was that clear blue that makes it hard to believe it’s real and not a page out of a novel. “What do you mean by that?” I asked. His answer was rather long.

“We writers are creators.” Hudson began. “We create worlds and breathe life into all we inhabit them with. We are the words of our characters, we cause them to walk into peril, raise them up with humble tears to become heroes, give them love and allow them to feel the raging of death. We hold all they are going to do and say within the realm of our imagination. It is our responsibility not to make their lives seem artificial or meaningless. We must, as creators, believe our characters are physically real and the world we create for them exist. If we do not, how do we expect the reader to believe? We have the grave responsibility to bury our dead, have the reader attend the funeral, and feel the loss. We must feel the tears first if we expect the reader to. As creators we desire the readers to laugh and cry along with our characters. We want them to feel fear as our characters take each step down the stairs to the cellar of misery. Our desire, or at least it should be our desire, is to have the reader feel the cobwebs that hang from the shadows on their face as they descend those stairs. We must make the reader smell the dry heat of an attic full of  memories, feel cold of a crisp winter’s day, the rebirth of an eternal spring, and the carefree days of summers by the lake. Each line we write is to draw the reader deeper into the story, make them a part of it, convince the reader that the words they are reading are truth. The blank page is the universe in which we create our worlds. We must bleed ink on every page.”

I have held this close to my pen every time I pick it up to write. Hudson Bridge’s words live within every letter I scribble on the empty page. As a reader I expect reality in every book I pick up. As a writer? I will let my readers be the judge. One thing I do know is, we do not want our characters to die with the closing of a book, no, more than anything we want our characters to live on long after the story is over.

The First Line

One thing Hudson Bridge said to me on a particularly warm day in August has stuck with me. “The first line is the most important sentence in a story. All others follow it.” He went on to explain that the first line is the hook that draws the reader in. “Take Dickens, he was a master of first lines, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worse of times…’ ‘Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought.’ ‘London’. These are just a couple examples of Dickens first lines. “Do you read Dickens?” He asked looking at the line on his hands, I believe he was looking at a map. “You should.” He said before I could answer.

Hudson went on to tell me about a trip he took to Boston back in the 1972. He said he took the trip for no other reason than a change in pace. While there he visited the Combat Zone, the once notorious area of downtown Boston known for strippers and prostitutes. “It’s all gone now.” He said with the air of sadness. There he saw a young woman walking down Washington Street wearing pink and like a flash the first sentence for a story came to him,  “She carried the scent of Ivory Soap, wearing that pink usually reserved for little girls; and prostitutes.” He went on to say that all the sentences after it were easy. It was as if that first sentence wrote the story. Another first line Hudson Bridge was proud of was from an epic poem he had been working on and had just recently finished titled, “The Gallows: A Western” It is such a simple sentence but it make the reader want to read on, “Time Waited” These two simple words speak volumes because what they say is impossible. “Sometimes it will take two sentences.” he told me. “The rain danced in the street and on the sidewalk. Margaret Pike hummed Singing in the Rain.” This he said is from a short story titled, “How Did That Song Go?” I, for one, wanted to learn more about Margaret Pike.

The point Hudson was making is that the first line may be the most important line for any story you may write. That is a lot of pressure, but don’t let it get you down or stop you from writing. The trick is not to over think it, don’t make it more complicated than it really is. Keep it simple. There is no need to use flowery metaphors or a colorful simile. The best way to create a near perfect first line is to read. It is through reading that we writers learn the art of our craft. We learn how other authors’ first sentences work. Decide what changes you would make to their first sentence and how that would change the story as a whole. The best advice Hudson Bridge gave me is, “write, write, write you can always edit.”