Work! The Writing Lessons of Hamilton
By Greer Macallister | March 7, 2016 |
image by Eli Christman
Most of us, whatever we write, don’t write massive Broadway musicals about early American history featuring an ethnically diverse cast capable of imparting our stories in soaring melodies, stunning harmonies, and astonishingly complex verses of rap.
As far as I know, the only person doing that is Lin-Manuel Miranda, writer of the incredible Broadway smash “Hamilton.”
However! No matter what we write, there are lessons to be learned from other people’s writing, across genre and form. So I thought we might take a quick look at “Hamilton” and talk about three possible lessons from the text, and how we might consider incorporating them into our own work.
The caveat here is that I haven’t seen “Hamilton” (and given the ticket prices and availability issues, I’m not likely to.) But in a way, that’s the best way to come at this. I’m working from the words and music, without visuals. (Except, I have to admit, I’ve watched this video of the three actors who have played King George lip-synching to “The Schuyler Sisters” approximately 183 times – and those are probably not the visuals Lin-Manuel Miranda really had in mind.)
Anyway.
Three things “Hamilton” does that you might try in your own writing:
- Tell more than your hero’s story. Alexander Hamilton is not the narrator of “Hamilton”: that honor goes to Aaron Burr, who, if you recall, actually shot and killed him in a duel. It’s a bold choice, and not what we’re used to seeing in books and movies about Great Men. And Burr isn’t the only person who speaks for himself here. Many of the characters have their opportunity to speak their minds (I’m thinking particularly of Angelica and Eliza Schuyler) and that makes them feel like full-fledged people, not just foils and props. You don’t necessarily want to switch from a single POV to a whole slew of them, but even if your non-hero characters don’t speak for themselves, think about their stories independently, not just how their actions serve the main plot.
- Sometimes, less really is more. Description can make or break a story, and sometimes, you have to know when not to go overboard. One of the most affecting lines in the show’s opening song, “Alexander Hamilton,” describes how Hamilton and his mother were both ill, “half-dead”, after being abandoned by his father. Novelists might be tempted to indulge in description here, choosing details to show the squalor of their surroundings, the desperation of their situation, but Miranda doesn’t indulge. (Frankly, in a show that covers this much ground, he doesn’t have time.) But the brief mention of their circumstances ends with a short line that speaks volumes: “And Alex got better but his mother went quick.”
- Forward isn’t the only way to go. We see the hero meet his wife – they’re introduced at a ball by her sister – and we hear everything that’s said by all three. But later on, we hear the internal thoughts of a character, and realize that what we thought we saw wasn’t the whole story of what was happening. This isn’t something to overuse. Withholding information from the reader is always dangerous. But on occasion, it can have a huge impact.
Q: What other lessons have you taken from a work you really enjoyed, not necessarily in your chosen genre or form?
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister earned her MFA in creative writing from American University. Her historical novels have been named Book of the Month, Indie Next, LibraryReads, Target Book Club, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. Her latest novel, The Thirteenth Husband, is inspired by Aimee Crocker, the Paris Hilton of the Gilded Age. Macallister also writes the ongoing Five Queendoms epic fantasy series as G.R. Macallister. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston, MA. www.greermacallister.com
Hi Greer: Lessons from other works? I just watched the series finale of Downton Abbey. And as much as I love the show, the characters, the writing, I was disappointed in the story conclusion and surprised at the lack of real drama. Petty tensions didn’t make it at all. The ending was way too happy for all (although Edith deserves happiness but it was watered down by everyone else finding it too). Everything worked out just dandy to the point of being a bit gooey. And nobody died! Love your post today. You’re right that sometimes ‘less really is more.’
Netflix produced a mini-series a little while back called Happy Valley. Deceptive name! As a long time BBC fan I guessed that any crime story taking place in Yorkshire would likely be dark, but this one surprised even me. There were scenes in this series that had me gripping the chair, with a bad guy who becomes astonishingly sympathetic by the end. It was masterful storytelling, with backstory, woven in by increments that made me want to know more and more. I only just heard about ‘Hamilton’ from my sister, and I will definitely check out that lip-synching video! Thanks for your post.
The faint fangirl shriek you might have heard would be me, squeeing from out here in Seattle. :) I *adore* HAMILTON. Lin-Manuel Miranda won a Macarthur Genius grant for a very good reason!
I like that he makes the “antagonist” Aaron Burr sympathetic — even if we don’t agree with his dissembling, even if we’re not supposed to agree, he’s given ample chance to show that, despite his differences, he’s genuinely fond of Hamilton, even as he’s envious, even as he’s resentful. It makes the ending that much more poignant.
I also love how Hamilton plays on previous works, throwing back to older Broadway Musicals as well as famous rap songs and rappers. He throws in “you’ve got to be carefully taught” from South Pacific in a line in “Aaron Burr, Sir”… he references the musical 1776 when he sings “Sit Down, John” to John Adams in The Adams Administration. Even Gilbert & Sullivan’s “model of a modern major general” for Washington. At the same time, “The 10 Duel Commandments” is a direct play on Notorious BIG’s “The 10 Crack Commandments.” There are callbacks to Busta Rhymes and Eminem and any number of previous rap acts. The wordplay is delicious and worth studying on its own, I mean, when does a national financial system’s development make you want to dance? When Miranda writes it!
Authors can definitely learn that any subject can be entertaining, engrossing, funny and poignant. It’s about the characters, more than about the events. Giving the characters depth and personality, even their own style of music, each pop with life and draw us ever deeper into the narrative. King George’s music is 60’s Brit Pop, very Herman’s Hermits. Jefferson’s voice is like old Morris Day & The Time, sort of funky, compared to the whip-fast modern complex rap Hamilton delivers.
Not to mention the diversity. Everyone in the cast is black, hispanic, asian… only King George, played by Jonathan Groff, is white. Obviously, historically that wasn’t the case. But nobody blinks an eye, because as he says, it’s “telling the story of the country as it was, looking like the country it now is.” It’s a beautiful handling of diversity, showing that diverse people are just that, people. People capable of carrying a major story without it being commercially unpalatable, or without their diversity being the dominant factor that sets the story apart. (That honor would go to the writing and music, and the story itself.)
Sorry. I am such a genuine fangirl for this work. (Work! ) I could write a dissertation, and it seems that I have. But if you like musicals at all, this show is a masterclass in writing on a number of different levels. I highly recommend it. Thank you, Greer, for starting my Monday with a smile! :)
Good luck getting tickets to “Hamilton”. The $10 ticket lottery can be won, I’m told, but you have to be patient.
Great lessons, Greer. Plenty of lessons are drawn from television and movies, but how about from other media? Or nature? Or life?
Take skyscrapers. Here in New York they are ever present. Tall. Unchanging. That’s a lesson unto itself. The unchanging element gives a setting its meaning and is a symbol against which the struggles of characters–their eyes on the ground–play out.
Every once in a while we need to look up and see that there are constants. For my protagonist, what or who is that constant? Is it a home, a love, a belief in something? Maybe it’s the inner quest itself, the road the end of which you cannot see but which you trust is taking you somewhere.
I think you can take anything…an empty tin can in the gutter…and turn it into a writing metaphor. Which is good, since anything that gets us to dig deeper and do more with our stories is a help.
So why not “Hamilton”? Except that it is so hard to get tickets. Thanks, Greer. The Magician’s Lie is coming up in my to-read stack. Looking forward to it very much and it wasn’t hard to get.
“Withholding information from the reader is always dangerous. But on occasion, it can have a huge impact.”
The problem can have unintended consequences.
When designing a book you hope will be reread, the first time through withholding evidence can lead to a surprise, the second time through will reveal what the writer did to maintain the suspense – and then the trick is over permanently.
Memento and Pulp Fiction have an impact designed that way; in novels, thrillers and mysteries are designed to reveal in a controlled way.
But there are some stories read over and over (such as Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes), in spite of the fact that the reader knows what ‘happened’ after the first time.
I’m guessing the writer has to make the journey fascinating either way, so the value of the story doesn’t reside in the trick ending.
Great post! After I watched the movie, “Selma,” I had similar thoughts about how it told more than the hero’s story; each character was so clearly going through his or her own drama and had his or her own thoughts and opinions and emotions — and thought they were the central player. It requires a little more paying attention in a novel with strict POV of only one or two people, but it’s definitely a storytelling goal. The movie also made me think about how infrequently MLK was alone, and when he was alone, his thoughts were not lofty and triumphal; that was a good characterization reminder for me.
I study song lyrics and track titles. The lyrics tell succinct stories that people at large can relate to. That’s what we all want to do. We’re lucky we get more words to do it with. And the titles have to be attractive, communicative, and evocative in even fewer words. I pay attention to what works for me and other people.
I also study film dialogue and scene construction. It’s fascinating how short scenes are. Much shorter than the viewer thinks.
PS My family is obsessed with Hamilton. It is in near constant rotation in our house. :)
Hi, Greer:
“What other lessons have you taken from a work you really enjoyed, not necessarily in your chosen genre or form?”
Curiously enough, that’s the subject of my post scheduled for tomorrow!
Also curious: due to my being the director of WU’s Head-in-the-Sand Department, I was utterly unaware of this mega-phenomenon until today, when your post and an article on Digg simultaneously alerted me. (I’m now immersing myself — even reading the review in the American Conservative, which surprisingly, given the right’s typical preference for Jefferson and Madison, was a total rave.)
The most immediate lesson I take away from Hamilton echoes something Jo Eberhardt said yesterday in one of her comments, concerning the Germanic/Nordic notion of Wyrd: a sense of time and fate by which the past, present, and future all effect each other.
Hamilton manages to make the past seem alive in the present, not by mere analogy but through creative re-imagination that remains true to its source.
I think this is an important lesson for any writer addressing the past — to see how its lessons aren’t merely echoed by the present, but reconfigured and relived.
Or, as Mark Twain famously never said: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Wonderful post. Thanks.
This isn’t a “work” per se, but I’ve learned a lot from watching singles tennis matches. They are the ultimate one-on-one protagonist-vs-antagonist conflict.
I watch how power shifts from one player to another and back again, how a player gets discouraged and regains confidence, how sometimes the outcome of a match is up in the air (so to speak) until the very last point and other times seems suddenly to sweep to an inevitable conclusion.
From watching how pacing plays out in real-life contests, I’ve learned a lot about how to use it in stories.