Immediate Fiction

by Jerry Cleaver

  The best approach is to learn to tell a strong story while staying in a single point of view in order to master the kind of skill you need in order to be able to switch points of view effectively. If you can't do a single point of view well, you can't do multiple points of view well either.

  This switching of point of view is often called omniscient point of view or omniscient narrator. Here "omniscient" refers to knowing what's in everybody's mind. I like to distinguish between simple multiple viewpoints (switching point of view, but not expressing a knowledge beyond what's happening at the moment) and an omniscient narrator who comments, in a separate voice, on what's going on and anything else he or she wants to bring in (philosophy, interpretation, nudging the reader, etc.). The omniscient narrator knows everything about what's happening and what's going to happen and how it relates to the greater scheme of things, and he lets us know it by addressing us directly and telling us about it.

  A modern example is The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. An early example is Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (one of the first great novels in the English language). Scott Fitzgerald's works provide other good examples. He often makes comments to the reader in otherwise third-person objective stories and novels. When done badly, this approach is called author intrusion. When done well, it's called omniscient narrator. If it appeals to you, do it. It takes a lot of practice to do well. Your comments have to be so clever, astute, penetrating that they do not distract the reader from the illusion you must create to make your story believable. Fitzgerald often made sparkling little comments that were nuggets of insight and well worth taking time out for.

  An example of a more broadly omniscient narrator could be the following statement (paraphrased from The French Lieutenant's Woman), inserted after a man has just shown a great attachment to his mother. "Now, remember, this was fifty years before Sigmund Freud. It was a time when a man could show deep devoted and obsessive love for his mother and no one would question it." Here the narrator is not only addressing the reader but also referring to events that won't take place for fifty years and that will never even be a part of this story. That takes guts. But he pulls it off with great charm that adds another dimension to the novel. It's a tricky game. As always, the question you must ask is, Are you gaining more than you're losing when you do it?

  A nonparticipating narrator is one who rarely carries his weight and is often in the way. He's part of the story but is used as nothing more than the teller of the story. He's an observer, and that's all—a bystander with nothing to gain or lose. This approach used to be fashionable, and some great stories have been told this way, but these narrators often seem heavy-handed and artificial—characters whose shoulders you have to peek over to see the story.

  Another issue is tense. Present tense is being used more and more. "When she opens the package, she finds a strange little statue." Some people feel present tense makes the experience more immediate, more present. The only thing that makes your story and your character present and immediate is story craft—your skill. Tense cannot make up for weak storytelling, nor can it hurt strong storytelling. If the story and characters are alive, the reader quickly becomes oblivious to tense. The tense fades to the background as the characters come forward and take over. Present tense is being used a lot today, so it's your choice.

  So, we have person point of view, character point of view, narrator point of view, and tense. It's not so important how we label any of these. What's important is that you have an idea how these devices work and realize that you do not have to use any of them exclusively. You might find ways of mixing and blending. If it feels right, do it. If it wants to happen, let it.

  EXERCISES

  A child wanting her rejecting, abusive mother to love her. "If you loved me," the mother tells the little girl/boy, "I would be happy. I'm not happy, so you don't love me." The child does everything that she or he can think of to please the mother—gets good grades, cleans the house, takes care of the mother—but it never works. The child feels that if she loved the mother enough, her mother would treat her better. The child and the father have a good relationship, and the mother is envious and tries to wreck it.

  A man (or woman) goes to the doctor for a physical and gets a clean bill of health. He begins wondering what would've happened if he had terminal cancer. The character goes home and tells his family that he's going to die soon. He wants to see how upset his family will be and how important he is. He may not be totally conscious of his reasons when he does it. He will find out painful things about his family and himself.

  A character discovering one of his or her parents is gay.

  [12] The Ticking Clock

  FITTING IT IN

  Someday you're going to write. Someday? Which day? When you're suddenly faced with a few free hours on a weekend, when the work levels off on your job, when you get promoted and have less pressure, when you go on vacation, when you retire? How much free time do you need before you start? How long should you wait? Will you know when the time is right, and will you know what to do when it comes? Well, I can tell you, do not wait until your life opens up and you're faced with starting cold with no discipline or writing skills. The longer you wait, the harder it's going to be to start, and the less chance you'll have of succeeding if you do start.

  So, you should (and can) start now. The promise of this course is that I can show you how to write a novel, screenplay, or stage play without disrupting your lifestyle or sacrificing your sanity—and that it will be possible and relatively painless.

  In this chapter the techniques are tailored to helping you overcome the particular difficulties you face in making writing a part of your daily life. If you're serious about writing, you can (and should) start now. If you do, when your life opens up (if it ever does), you'll be ready

  and able. But what if it never opens up? Well, you don't need to wait around for such an opportunity. This system makes it possible for you to do it now.

  You have a full-time job, a wife, kids, extended-family obligations, and maybe lots more. Where are you going to find the time? Even if your life isn't that loaded down, even if you do have the time, but you're not getting anything done, how do you manage your time (and yourself) and make something happen? Where do you start?

  Well, first, I don't believe you have no (zero) time. With this method, you have to find a tiny bit of time. How tiny? How about 5 minutes—5 minutes a day? Think you can find that much? You can always sneak away to the washroom and lock yourself in a stall to steal 5 minutes. OK, let's say that you're willing to try it—the 5-minute method. It's not much time. Most of us, no matter how busy we are, can take time out for 5 minutes once a day.

  What can happen in 5 minutes? Well, has anything of great importance ever happened to you in that amount of time? Ever make a discovery or have an inspiration? How long did it take? Einstein said that all of his great ideas just came to him. He was a genius, so your ideas may not be as great as his, but the process that gets you there is the same. Great ideas often occur in a flash. A 5-minute inspiration would be very, very long—and rare. What can happen in 5 minutes? Plenty—if you know how to use them. And you will, because that's what this technique is all about.

  It's not just the 5 minutes themselves that are important. The effects of these sessions reach beyond the actual time you put in. So, in a sense, the 5 minutes add up to more than 5 minutes, especially when you consider the results. Also, it's the first step in preparing yourself to write a novel when the time comes, which is sooner than you think, as you'll see when we get to the rest of the technique.

  But remember you can't afford to be casual about these 5 little minutes a day. Just because the time is only 5 minutes doesn't mean it's not crucial. It's the key to making everything work—your first important step forward.

  Of all the methods I've devised to get people started and keep them going, this 5-minute method has been the most successful. It's a daily fix that keeps you connected to your writing. OK,
but what are you going to do in those 5 minutes? Not much, at first. The first thing is to simply get the feel of taking these 5 minutes out, get used to the routine, get comfortable in this little piece of time away from everything else you do each day. So, you don't do anything more than tell yourself, "OK, this is the time I'm going to use to work on my writing once I get used to being here on a regular basis."

  It's a relaxed, meditative state of mind that you're getting into. For our purposes, this meditative state is just awareness of yourself and where you're at, awareness of being here in this place for this time. That's all. So, at first, you go there and do nothing—you put in your time, and that's it. No matter how foolish or ineffective it seems or makes you feel, do it.

  This meditative state is the place where everything begins. And later, once you're into using this time to get something done, whenever you feel too pressured or strained or under the gun to do, to accomplish, anything, you return to this state, you fall back to doing nothing, to regain your balance.

  Now, some people have trouble relaxing, doing nothing, wasting time, not going anywhere. I know because I'm one of those people. As soon as my foot hits the floor in the morning, the pressure is on to move, to do, to accomplish, to get something done, to make something important happen, etc. I've learned to let up, but it's something I have to look out for. And that kind of pressure is a major obstacle to doing anything creative, since there are so much mess and waste that are a natural and good part of the creative process.

  If you're the type that pressures yourself in this way, it helps to first realize that maybe this old puritanical ethic (an idle mind is the devil's workshop, etc.) is excessive or even nutty. It certainly is in my case. I once sat down to try meditating for 5 minutes and nearly jumped out of my skin because, in my world, you were never supposed to be doing nothing, and if you caught yourself doing nothing, you damned well better not be enjoying it. (This is all very Western. The Eastern cultures have a tradition of meditation, of letting go of the mind, of letting it settle down, to achieve an inner state of emptiness and relaxation that brings on insight and enlightenment. Now, I'm not talking about religion or spirituality, but simply a way to reach a deeper level of your mind.) So, if the Puritan is in you, it usually helps to be aware of it and consciously tell yourself it's OK to just sit.

  Also, relaxing your body in a conscious way is a good way of relaxing your mind. (The mind, if left alone, will relax and clear itself. That's not only meditation, but part of what's called the relaxation response, which is well documented in Western science.) I want to leave no stone unturned in all of this, so I'm even going to give you a method for relaxing your body.

  Start by taking a deep breath. As you let it out, let your body go. Keep your breathing relaxed. As you go on, concentrate on what you're relaxing, get a sensation of it, and then let go of it. Now, relax your face. Your scalp. (Sounds wacky, I know. Do it anyway.) Your ears. Relax your eyes and all the muscles around and behind your eyes. Then one at a time, relax your mouth, tongue, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, chest, stomach, back, pelvis, legs, feet, toes. Take another deep breath and exhale, letting everything go all at once. This helps a lot to get me started, and I'm a pretty tense guy. Once you've done it a few times, you can do the whole thing in thirty seconds.

  This whole relaxing, letting go, do nothing approach should assure that you will do your five minutes, that you will put in your time, be

  cause you can never use the excuse that you're not up to doing it, that you don't feel you can accomplish anything, that you're not in the mood, or that you can't handle it today, etc., since the only thing you have to accomplish when you don't feel up to it is to do nothing, and you can't claim that you're incapable of doing nothing, can you? Well, even if you can, don't let yourself get away with it. The important thing is that you go there, put in your time, do your five minutes, each and every day—no matter what. No excuses, no time off.

  Now, there are exceptions to all of this. Some people find that trying to relax in this way only makes them more tense. If you're that kind of person, don't do it. Also, some people like to work from tension. There's good stress as well as bad stress. And you don't have to do it the same way every time. One time, you might feel the need to setde yourself down and relax first. Another time, you might be charged up and ready to go as soon as you sit down.

  FIVE FOR THIRTY

  The other critical part of this method is that you must commit to following it for 30 days straight before you evaluate or reconsider it or debate with yourself about the value of it. Since it takes a while to get used to and since the goal is to accumulate momentum, the only time you'll be able to see the results and possibilities is after you've done 30 days. So you must make a nonnegotiable contract with yourself to do them. Just do them. Thirty days. Keep your mouth shut. Don't evaluate. Don't discuss it. Keep a record. Then, after 30 days, look back and see what you've accomplished. You'll be surprised at how much you've done and how much you're in the swing of the whole thing.

  The 5 minutes a day will in themselves help you to make progress, but they will also keep your imagination stirred up, start things mov-

  ing in the deeper levels of your mind and keep them moving, so when you do get more time, you'll be ready to go.

  Deeper levels of your mind? What does that mean? The subconscious—the place where most of your mind and your imagination lives (or hides out) when you're not using them. No one has the final answers to how the mind works, but it's easy to see how it works for our purposes. I'm sure that you've had trouble trying to remember something, racked your brain, then finally given up, only to have it jump into your head hours later when you're doing some totally unrelated activity. That's the subconscious. Ask, and you will receive. Believe it or not, you can learn to use the subconscious and depend on it to help you write—even when you're doing something else.

  Now, that's pretty far-out, and I don't want to give you the impression that you're going to write an entire novel subconsciously. But your subconscious is your best friend in all of this. It keeps things warm, primed, and ready to go when the time comes. But you must make daily contact with it in order to keep it focused and working.

  How much can your mind do, on its own, without your conscious direction? Well, we know it can retrieve a forgotten name. How much actual work it does varies with the person, but it can do a significant amount for everyone. After you get into this 5-minute routine, you'll often find ideas and solutions waiting for you when you go there. That's because your subconscious doesn't stop just because you do. It goes on for some time after you leave. How long? Who knows? No one knows the mind that well, but you'll often find chunks of your story (character, scene, plot) popping up the moment you turn your attention to it.

  The most extreme example of this is the famous poet John Milton (Paradise Lost), who had a photographic memory. He'd so internalized the process of creating poetry that he dreamt poetry written on a page, remembered it when he woke up, and then copied it down. His subconscious was serving up completed poetry. Consciously, he was totally absent.

  Milton is the extreme. If you had that kind of brilliance, you'd know it by now. But, in principle, that's how the mind works in all of us. And it's the steady, regular, daily practice that makes it happen. When you internalize the craft, more and more ideas pop out of you fully formed, without your having to bang away at yourself all the time. That's when it gets a lot easier and a lot more fulfilling.

  Unfortunately, many writers quit long before they master the craft and experience this kind of excitement. And they quit not because they lack ability, but because they believe they lack ability and blame themselves for the inevitable troubles every writer has to overcome. So, sticking with it until you master the process, until it becomes part of you, is the key. And the first step is to write or make contact with your writing for 5 minutes every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. No days off. No 5-minute vacations.

  One caution:
easy as these 5-minute periods seem, you must plan ahead for them. If you have a busy schedule, you can't count on remembering, in the midst of the flurry, to do your 5 minutes. If you have the kind of life that allows for 5 minutes and little more, your chances of thinking of it during the day are slim. If you just leave it to chance, you may find yourself in bed at night ready to drop off, realizing that you didn't do your 5 minutes. By then it's too late and too difficult to try to do it. You must take steps ahead of time to get it done.

  Even though it's just 5 minutes, you have to plan ahead for how you're going to work it in. These basic 5 minutes a day are so important that, at the risk of going overboard, I'm even going to give you some tricks to ensure you remember to do them. Here they are: Put a note on your dashboard, and do 5 minutes before you take off in the morning. If you take the bus or train, wrap a note around your pass or ticket or your money so that as you get on the train, you're reminded to do 5 minutes on the train. Put a note on your desk if you want to do them first thing at work. A trick I use when I need to remember something important is to write it on a three-by-five card. OK, but where do I put the card so it'll remind me? I crumple it up into a wad and put it in my pants pocket with my keys and change. (A flat card is too smooth and easy to miss. I know. I've tried it.) That way, I run into this crumpled, out-of-place lump several times during the day. A whole sheet of paper crumpled in your pocket is even bigger and might be the size wad you need. Wacky as it seems, this is the kind of trivia you have to attend to, and this is the kind of determination you have to have. One writer I know puts his watch on backwards to remind himself to do his 5 minutes. (If you're worried about remembering why your watch is on backwards, put a note in your pocket that tells you why your watch is backwards.) Putting messages on your own voice-mail is another method.