Startle and Illuminate

by Carol Shields

  One of our collaborators is the economy—plays, for one example, are formed by the amount of money available for actors, staging.

  Use clichés as comforting murmurs—comforting to the characters.

  It is hard to take sentences out.

  Be bold all the way through—keep the reader’s attention.

  People like to read dialogue. This is a way to provide the relationships between people and information about age, class, gender, what they do without spelling it out. Dialogue can give tone to your writing and keep it transparent. Say your dialogue out loud so that it sounds natural.

  Use lots of contractions and don’t be afraid of using “said.” You can paragraph each new speaker with “he said,” “she said.” Put “she said” in the middle of long dialogue, not at the end.

  The best way to introduce yourself to the basis of storytelling is through fairy tales and the Old Testament. Storytelling reminds you to use freedom in story—to jump into it.

  “I can see it.” This must happen or the manuscript is dead.

  Finding a voice can take lots of false tries. It takes time to settle into it. If you are lucky, things arrive in the passage of time. Once you find it, stay faithful to a voice.

  Writing is going the way of film—quick cuts. Paragraphing can move you easily, and is a good tool. Mavis Gallant often has one-sentence paragraphs.

  Be careful about using dreams—they are fascinating to the dreamer only.

  If you use flashbacks, there must be more than one, each must be of a similar length, and there must be a pattern of how they work out.

  Description is the right detail in the right place. Don’t present details in lists; keep the reader’s patience in mind.

  Style is a sum of the choices you’ve made. You don’t need to back off from telling why you’re changing style, but changing style needs transitions.

  A playwright must include the audience in a web of enchantment.

  A play must have a “through line”—a term dramatists use. I think an audience needs a person, not just a theme or motif. I can say this after seeing three plays in one week, only one of which had enough epoxy to hold it together. Oddly enough, though, even seeing bad plays is instructive when in the act of writing one. You can see what is possible.

  In the short postcard story form (a story that would fit on a postcard) the concentration is on tiny details, miniatures, and then the immense, in surprising ways. Sudden fiction is like postcard stories.

  When you use a bank of cultural references, you know you’ll miss some people.

  FROM THE LETTERS

  CAROL KEPT UP CORRESPONDENCE WITH HUNDREDS OF FRIENDS, readers, colleagues and others. Many of the letters she exchanged with the writer Blanche Howard have been collected in a 2007 book published by Viking Canada, A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, edited by Blanche and her daughter Allison Howard. The first letter in that book is from Carol to Blanche, writing from Saint-Quay-Portrieux, France, where our family was spending a sabbatical year. At that time, Carol had published two books of poetry but had yet to establish her career as a novelist. This first letter evokes the questions often heard from writers who have just had their first book accepted and who want to know more about contracts, copyright, advances and the like.

  August 6, 1975

  St. Quay-Portrieux, France

  Dear Blanche:

  I am writing to you for some advice; I’ve finally finished the novel I was writing and finally (after being turned down three times) found a publisher for it. The contract arrived yesterday and, although everything looks fine, we haven’t the least idea about such things. Don had the happy idea of writing to you—which pleased me since I’ve been wanting to write to you anyway—and seeing what you think. I know you aren’t a lawyer, but you have been through this and may have some ideas. If you do I would love to hear from you.

  Blanche wrote back with sound advice—the contract seemed standard and “was probably adequate.” This was the start of several decades of thoughts on deeper, broader topics: writing, the meaning of life, reading, politics, family, self.

  In later years my mother sent letters of advice to her students at the writing program at Humber College, Toronto, and to many others, including me when I began to write columns and stories. She was a keen advocate of writing as a vocation, telling me, in a letter dated May 27, 1987 (when I was about to set off to live for a year in England and Italy), “I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have this portable profession, and I always wonder how other people manage.”

  We had written a story together, published in 1985 in my mother’s collection Various Miracles, called “A Wood.” She wrote to me in October of that year to propose doing “another one together. How do you like this as an opening line? “My rhumba teacher is forever proposing marriage. This is ridiculous since I’m already married.” Unfortunately I don’t seem to have leapt on this invitation—I met the man who would become my husband shortly after that, so perhaps I was distracted by courtship.

  Nicholas and I have chosen the letters below from among the many letters of advice she sent to student writers, mainly through the Humber program, that we found in the archives—Carol printed and kept copies of the letters as she sent them. (We have removed identifying information.) The problems and issues she describes in the manuscripts she was reviewing are common, if not universal, and her advice would serve anyone who is writing or planning to write. Her thoughts on “thickening” come up often as she encouraged her correspondents toward “thickening, explaining, describing, taking it slowly, letting the pages breathe. And occasionally going in a little deeper, a sudden plunge that takes the reader by surprise.”

  January 11, 1995

  Carol to AG

  Can you provide me with a project plan? Are you committed to short stories or would you really rather be working on a novel? I do understand that the size of the work can be worrying, but novels are written in small scenes, just as stories are. The question is one of density, I think. I also think you should ask yourself what you like to read, novels or stories? (I always believe in writing the book you want to read.)

  January 31, 1995

  Carol to KA

  You say you store opening lines. Are you saying you want to put your greatest emphasis on those lines? Atwood says she builds her poems around one line, and that line can occur anywhere in the poem. If you look at her work you can often find it; it is a line that uses words in a striking sequence, where the compression startles and illuminates.

  In [your poem] why not use the description you wrote in your letter, the tears flying out like missiles. This is far more powerful than the slow rolling tears in the poem.

  I wouldn’t worry about punctuation. But you might want to remember that its = possession and it’s = it is. You’re quite right that line breaks and space do the work [in poetry] that punctuation does in prose. Periods and commas mostly come up like clutter in poems (my opinion, not shared by all). I wouldn’t worry about grammar too much either, you can catch that later. It is important, though, to avoid “poetic” words, pretty words, archaic words and any thought that doesn’t feel fresh.

  What to do when new thoughts surface in a poem you’re writing? This would vary, but it might add all kinds of richness to put them in. There’s no reason a poem has to be linear. Diversions can illuminate as well as distract, and they can give a kind of randomness and texture that feels like truth.

  You say your work merits a nod or a laugh, but don’t you really want more; don’t you want your reader to say, “Aha, I’ve felt exactly that way too, but I’ve never seen it articulated.”

  I remember being shocked that Sylvia Plath used a thesaurus when writing poetry; it sounds so, well, unpoetic. But she’s good at finding the exact word, a different word, a word that’s full of allusive power.

  February 6, 1995

  Letter from Carol Shields to CZ

  You ask if there is one
problem that beginning writers share, and that brings me to my big point. The most common problem, after clichés or point of view, is the use of too many underdeveloped scenes. I do like your terseness, but feel that the scenes need to be longer; they need to be set up, fully furnished, given an “atmosphere,” then trusted. You can stay in the scene as long as it’s still yielding up something useful for you, and you can expand the scene by dialogue, by description, by the use of side-stories, and especially by giving us the content of the person’s head, the thoughts, reflections, responses. This leads to much thicker writing, but I think you can still keep your crispness. An example is the scenes on the ship. We need more of the atmosphere of a tour ship, the smells, the daily schedules. You talk about art classes; what else is offered? You have the dinner scenes, but not much else. Who else is on this cruise? What is the weather like? Where is it anyway? I suggest that you double this chapter. And that you get it solidly in place before you go on with your draft. I don’t have much sense of the sister here either, other than that she’s beautiful. What does she do all day on the ship? Who is paying for this trip? She sounds, perhaps, too nice. I gather she’s a widow—do we need to know more?

  In the second chapter, I don’t always feel secure in time and space. Where is their house, what kind of neighbourhood? How “comfortable” are they? I find it odd that she’s thinking of leaving him, because I don’t quite understand if she’s just bored or fed up or if there’s more going on here. The children don’t feel as though they’re really there. I guess I don’t understand this household reality, but I think I would if you’d thicken the details and give me more.

  I don’t plot my novels really. I have a sense of where I’m going, but I don’t know how I’ll get there. I do assign myself a structure though. I think of it as raw boxes (chapters) that I’ll fill with SOMETHING. I always know how many chapters I’ll have and what the time period will be. But that’s about all.

  February 6, 1995

  Carol to KA

  Poetry, it seems to me, needs to be terse, elliptical, allusive rather than “on the nose” in its content.

  I also want to comment on a few things you mentioned in your letter. You say you read to learn ‘why my life wasn’t the same as others’.” This strikes me as a profound theme, and one you might work with. I suppose this is what we all do, but you’ve said it clearly. It has the midnight ring of truth to it. I wouldn’t worry—at this point—about being confessional. In a sense all writing is confessional. The trick is to be personal but not private in the kind of writing.

  You say the “words just come, almost from my subconscious.” My sense is that this can be a problem. A poem, even free verse, is shaped and somewhere in the poem there needs to be a line or two that gestures toward the poet’s deliberation. We need to see a thought not tossed out, but formed. Poetry needs to feel natural, that is, use the language we speak, but it very seldom comes out as we speak or think.

  February 19, 1995

  Carol to KV

  I’m rushing this back to you after a single reading because the mail seems very slow between Canada and Tokyo; I’ve no doubt the delay is with Canada.

  First, I do thank you for your warm words of praise. Second, I think you have some wonderful, rare and exotic material that should help you find a publisher and an audience. I urge you to make the most of this “special” material, explaining and commenting on it, never losing sight of its strangeness.

  Your central question—can a western person ever fully comprehend an eastern way of thinking?—is an interesting and compelling one, and it might be useful if you raise it right away. (You can always take it out later if it seems too intrusive.) And you might want to try to find a way to rephrase this question in every chapter; this will help you keep it in focus, and help this reader know your direction.

  Your questions on the back of page 11 indicate that you already grasped the most worrying areas. If you have a problem, I would think it would be pacing. Yes, you do have an awful lot in chapter 1. The fire, and the loss of her career seem to be over far too quickly. So, perhaps, is her parting from S. You can make her more reflective, more humorous about her passions, more confused about her future.

  March 10, 1995

  Carol to KA

  I’ve just reread your letter and want to respond to a couple of points. The difference between “tossed out” and “formed”—the 5th stanza of [your poem], the final four lines: these feel shaped to me, containing the naturalness of speech but indicating a kind of torque you’ve put on the words. They leap out, something shaped, the way the word “falls” leans toward the word “mausoleum,” for instance, and the way the word “weight” connects with “heavily” both logically and in terms of sound.

  I was interested in what you said about your generation being conditioned to expect immediate return for attention. This has always seemed to me the difference between prose and poetry: that poetry must go off like a flashbulb. No I don’t think you need to educate your reader, but you do need to provide the flash, and perhaps you’re right that surprising language gets in the way. It is really the way one word is placed surprisingly against another that sets off the flash, not verbal eccentricity.

  And, no, I don’t think terseness always pays its way. “Summer through the back door comes flying” is rich in its long opening line, made me think of Whitman’s “Lilacs.”

  Two things in your letter suggested ideas for future poems you might consider. One: your notion that you had nothing to say for a long time. Could you write about this? And how you found out that you did have something to say. And two, your suggestion that you feel you should be “nice”—I urge you to not be concerned with niceness in what you write but perhaps to write about the struggle with niceness. (And, oh brother. I’ve had that struggle.)

  April 2, 1995

  Carol to KV

  It was good to hear from you and see where you had gone since the last mailing.

  First, let me say this seems to be going along well. It might be interesting to see E’s thoughts go back to the US occasionally, and all she left behind. I would try to pattern in these thoughts, maybe once every third page or so. Does this sound too artificial to you?

  I’ve marked a variety of suggestions. V.p. means vague pronoun. I always know what you mean, but think you should reorganize the sentence so that there is not even a shred of ambiguity.

  You’ll see I marked a few awkward sentences—they work grammatically, but gave me “pause.”

  And I’ve suggested breaking up quotations several times. This mainly makes it easier on the reader, keeping track of the speaker, and the tone of the speech.

  These are small points. My big point is that I am wondering if you should consider shifting W’s speech patterns. I know what you’re doing, really I do—you want to give the flavour of his speech. But sometimes this has the effect of pigeon English, and might even be unintentionally comic. You might need to ask yourself: how do I want the reader to perceive this man? He is wise and intelligent; and you want, I think, to show him that way. If you have him speaking a formal and correct English, rather than broken English, you may be twisting the linguistic truth, but you will also be using a convention that is well understood and, I think, generally well accepted by readers. My feeling is that this is important—at this point in the novel—to consider. Please give me your thoughts on this issue. I’m probably dead wrong.

  I’ll look forward to reading more. Interesting your comments on Shirley and New Age. These distinctions are not understood here—not generally anyway.

  When I write “really?” I’m just reacting to the information. Saying to you: is this true? I think you mean it to be taken as true. Right?

  The letter is just right.

  The pacing is fine too. You’ve slowed it down, good.

  All good wishes.

  April 17, 1995

  Carol to AG

  I’ve made a few scratches—hope that’s okay—pointing out places
where I thought you had commented, unnecessarily, on what you had already made clear. The writing stays crisper if you can resist explaining, and I think most of your material stands up without it.

  Everyone organizes their writing differently, but I think you should definitely keep on doing what you’re doing—writing short scenes and not worrying too much at this point how they’re going to fit together. Keep sending them to me as soon as you have a few—though it’s better to send by mail than fax, since our one fax machine serves the whole Arts building and it is guarded by a rather dour soul.

  Your short scenes work well, though some of them need setting up in time and space, just a hint or two at the top of each one. And I needed to know Pepper was a woman much sooner.

  As you pile up your scenes, you may find you want to deepen them occasionally, and that you can do this without jolting the rhythm—letting us know, for instance, that S is not just dateless, but deeply lonely …

  June 18, 1995

  Carol to ML

  Most of the things I’ve mentioned before: the repetition of words and whole phrases. Sometimes I think this is accidental and sometimes I believe you do it for effect, building to a crescendo. I think it could look like a stylistic tic, and could weary or exasperate the reader. I’ve marked most of these places, suggesting that you rework the sentences so that you reach the desired force in another way.

  It seems to me, too, that there’s an overuse of semicolons and colons. I suggest that every time you find yourself using one, you stop and see if you can restructure the sentence so you don’t need one. (Ed Carson gave me this advice years ago, and I bless him.) Their occasional use can be very effective.

  Some passages need tightening in order to keep the reader reading, and I’ve marked most of them. Mostly it’s a case of excessive detail, accuracy served but rhythm and interest sacrificed.

  August 14, 1995

  Carol to IL

  Your letter with its questions and observations was like a little essay on writing, and I enjoyed it enormously. I think I fall on the intuitive side of writing, not always knowing everything about my characters, and often not really knowing what a story or even a novel is ABOUT. On the other hand, I don’t believe stories write themselves or that characters “take over.” (When people talk about these things, I think they’re really saying that one has released the imagination a little. Someone wrote me this week to ask what happened to Maria in The Stone Diaries, and I had to confess I didn’t know for sure.)