Pixie Dust
By Donald Maass | May 4, 2016 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Tina H
What’s the food that sends you into paroxysms of delight? What’s the music that moves your hips? What’s the first place you’d visit again? Who’s the person you most want to spend an hour with over coffee? With whom would you most like to get drunk? What grave can’t you bear to visit? Which books have you reread more than twice?
If I ever get the chance, I’ll revisit the Basil SSB Railway Station in Switzerland, the place where one hungover New Year’s morning I had the perfect cup of coffee, a brew I’ve been trying to recreate ever since.
My first concert was at the Rainbow Theatre in London, 1973, row seven, when after two silent years Eric Clapton, in rehab, was welcomed back to the stage to play with his friends Pete Townsend, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood and Jim Capaldi. The concert was recorded but my memory of “Layla”, live, remains my ultimate musical experience, pure transcendence that even now can send me into a reverie.
I’ve sailed in many waters but the bay to which I’d return is breezy Little Pleasant Sound on Cape Cod, where I took my son for his first gusty day sail on a fast catamaran. We nearly broached but his shrieks of glee and cry, “Do that again, Dad!”, made me as happy as I’ve ever been.
I return to Powell’s World of Books in Portland, Oregon, as often as I can. Honestly, I could live there. (One can survive on Americanos and marionberry muffins, I’m convinced.) But it was seeing a Guttenberg Bible at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University that connected me to the history of printing and publishing and made me feel that what I do for a living matters.
Patisserie Valerie is today a chain bakery across England, but back in the day it was a lone, battered and beautiful café on Old Compton Street in Soho, London, where the black tea was thick and the pastries were brought to your table on three-tiered trays. There I showed my wretched adolescent poetry to British poet Hugo Williams. In his long hair and leather jacket he opened my eyes to revision and made a writer out of me.
Books. There are books in which I’d like to live. Harvard in the 1940’s of The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer. London in any of the decades covered in Anthony Powell’s twelve volume social saga A Dance to the Music of Time. The café society of New York City in 1939 in Amor Towles’s Rules of Civility. River Heights, Ohio, the original, in the 1930’s. (River Heights? Think Nancy Drew.)
There are everyday delights and then there are the delights of a lifetime, the ones we never forget and which remain as vivid and meaningful now as they were originally. Our lives give us those pleasures but so do our most treasured books.
So here’s my question: What are you putting into your work in progress that will provide that kind of delight for your readers? Food, drink, friends and comfort are undeniably associated with our most delightful times, but what makes those times meaningful are not the places or what was there, but who was there and what those experiences meant to us; i.e., what we did and what we felt.
In Peter Pan, fairy dust is what’s sprinkled on mortals to allow them to fly. Pixie dust has entered English usage to mean anything intangible and seemingly magical that creates great good luck or success. In fiction, it’s the magic that makes a story delightful and that delight is something we can feel in reading any novel.
(Pixie dust or angel dust, by the way, is also a euphemism for PCP, suggesting that what is delightful can also be a source of hallucination, darkness, death and sorrow. At the end of Peter Pan when Peter revisits a now-grown Wendy in London, Tinkerbell has died and Peter no longer remembers her. Delight dies and that’s meaningful too.)
Perhaps the greatest delight of literature is language itself, as Peter Pan itself reminds us. Some delightful lines from J.M. Barrie’s classic:
- “Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
- “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
- “Never is an awfully long time.”
- “Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever.”
- “Oh, the cleverness of me!”
- “All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
So what is the pixie dust you’ll sprinkle on your current novel to make your readers’ imaginations to fly and to permanently engrave your story in your readers’ memories?
Here’s some dust you can sprinkle if you like:
- What food delights you? When did you first eat it? Who and what made that experience so special? Recreate that—not the food necessarily but the experience—in your current novel.
- What music transports you? When did you first hear it? Who and what made that experience so special? Recreate that—not the music necessarily but the experience—in your current novel.
- What was your greatest adventure? Who was with you and what did it mean to you? Recreate that—not that adventure necessarily but the experience—in your current novel.
- What place would you revisit in a heartbeat? What people and what activity makes that place so special? How did you change? Recreate the place—not the geographic location necessarily but the people, what you did there and how you changed—in your current novel.
- What was the moment when you fell the most in love? What happened? What was different in that moment? Transpose that moment into your current novel.
- What’s a moment that greatly tugged at your heart? Who was there? What happened? Use as many original details as you can to recreate that feeling in your current novel.
- At what place, in what moment, were you most transported out of yourself? What made that moment mystical or transcendent? In what way did it transform you? What has never been the same thereafter? Capture that experience in your current novel.
- What are the most delightful things about your favorite novels? Make a list. Make sure to include some of those things in your current novel.
- That you can recall, what’s the most delightful use of language in literature? What rhetorical devices, style or voice make that language so delightful? You know what to do.
Who says novels must always be serious? Who says there can’t be pleasure on the page, just for the sake of it? What’s wrong with relishing pancakes, swaying to old timey tunes, kissing on an autumn afternoon, returning from a trip not with a toy for your kid but with a story, standing in awe at the edge of a canyon, whispering goodbye at a grave that you never hoped to see?
The experiences of a lifetime are the true pixie dust, and that delight belongs in your fiction.
What pixie dust are you sprinkling in your manuscript today? What delightful experience will you give your readers?
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Don, I remember vividly going on the Peter Pan ride for the first time at Disneyland, with my dad. I was five or six. It was magic. Literal pixie dust. And I do believe I’ve used that feeling in a couple of books.
You also reminded me of that wonderful scene in City Slickers where the three friends are riding along and decide to share their best day and worst day. It’s beautifully written and elevates that film from so many others in that genre.
Yes, funny how, in the right hands, a silly comedy can delight and elevate us. Mr. Shakespeare knew that and you do too. Thanks, Jim.
Oh and BTW, if I may, sounds like what made that Disneyland ride so special was not so much the ride itself as that you were with your Dad.
Every once in a while–riding scooters with my son in McCarren Park, say–I’m aware that we’re making the memories that will warm and anchor him in later life.
Last night I sewed one of my old Boy Scout jamboree patches over a rip in his favorite stylish sweatpants. In the elevator on the way to his school bus this morning he asked, “You can take the patch off if I outgrow these pants, right?” Puzzled, I said yes and asked why. He said, “I want to save it and give it to my kid someday.”
I will take that elevator ride a hundred times, baby.
Wow. Beautiful. That scene would have knocked me out in a book, just as it did this morning.
Dang you guys. Now I have to clean my glasses again and probably go work out before I can get back to my writing.
Usually it takes Rick Bragg to do that to me.
OMG, your elevator, boy-scout-patch moment made me spill a tear into my morning cup of coffee. (Yes, I do believe it enhanced the flavor).
I LOVE this article!! Thank you! I needed this so much right now. I’ve been looking at ways to elevate my work beyond it’s first-draft status. And in the case of my antagonist (who actually does find his mom’s PCP supply and tries it out) I’ve been struggling with his motivation, and how it ties to the protagonist’s journey. Now I get to ask myself fun questions like, “What are the pixie dust moments in my story, and how can I get both characters to experience them. How will those moments get them through their ordeal? Are they longing for those moments? Or running from them? And like you told your son, will they find those moments (or create them) and can they used those feelings as anchors?
Thank you so much, Don!
Birgitte- Moments that like are extra special to me because his attachment was so hard won, as you know.
I know. Your memory-making journey with him is extra special because of that. What a lucky guy he is. And what a beautiful soul you are nourishing. <3
Don, what I adore about your posts, is how much they pull us into the emotion of events. How they make situations and characters real, relatable, loveable.
But I must admit, what I love most of all, is hearing about your connection to your son. Yes, of course you share to teach us a lesson in writing, but in doing so you share a small piece of yourself, a private moment, and I am grateful for the human connection you offer so freely. Thank you.
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Dee- Yeah, the emotions. Big topic for me. I’m getting set to deliver my next book, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, to Writers Digest Press. My main emotion upon hitting “Send” will be relief!
I hope you save those patched sweatpants! Such a tender moment. He’s learning how to be a good father from you. It’s always the little things, no?
I like the way you make me think of specifics. In any given scene, the world of my story is so wide open I get a little lost in all that space (not sure what, exactly, to pull into it), but you remind me to think about specific memories, images, feelings (which pulls in multiple feelings–not just the one I thought the scene required). I had a scene in the ER of a hospital and, fortunately, I’d just come from one of your workshops, so I was able to find conflicting emotions in my heroine, images that she noticed that I wouldn’t have thought she would (the fish tank!), and it just made a mundane scene come to life. So, thank you for this!
Conflicting emotions! That makes me unequivocally happy. Thanks for being at that workshop! Glad it worked for you.
Hi Don
One of my favorite places is the world of Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s Dune. I keep coming back to it year after year, and I think it’s because of the authors’ passion for world building. There’s even a variation of pixie dust in the story (the spice melange).
The spice must flow! Oh yes, Dune. Not sure I’d want to live in that world but definitely a novel I’ve reread more than twice.
Thanks for dropping by this morning, Randy. How’s the manuscript coming?
I’m having a lot of fun writing it Don, thanks for asking. I should have a draft out to my growing list of beta readers towards the end of the month, and I’ll update you when that happens.
As they say, the spice must flow.
Have a good day and thanks for the post.
Don, what a beautiful post! I’m working on mostly picture books right now and they call for sensory details. Dancing with my father, my feet planted firmly on his feet, as he waltzes around the living room; eating hot samosas on the roadside with my sister, the potatoes and peas tumbling out, my sister wiping my chin; lighting the sandalwood stick and breathing the perfumed air. I can’t wait for these new stories to be published because the illustrator will bring so much to the story!
All my early magazine work has bits of our young family — sewing a quilt, doing the laundry, planting a garden — making those issues extra special. When my kids were little, they’d say, “that’s our story!”
Thank you for reminding us to always be specific and for the trip down memory lane.
I want to live your life! Wow, that’s the power of delightful imagery, eh?
But hey, I *will* get to live your life in those books, dancing on your father’s feet. Can’t wait.
Thanks Don. It *is* a beautiful life …
I’m jealous about the concert with Townsend and Clapton!! One of my favorite albums the world is ‘Who Came First’ by Pete Townsend, which contains certain riffs that I cannot listen to while driving. Another memorable must event was seeing Van Morrison live at the Fillmore East. Talk about getting taken to church… Your post is timely for me, not the least because you mention pixie dust, but because the notion of revisiting evocative and powerful memories has been very up for me lately, having just moved my Mom into a ‘residence’. She and I have been starting a lot of sentences with “do you remember…?”, which has enlightened me as to why certain themes run through my WIP. I came across a book at my sisters this weekend called ‘Handmade Houses of Woodstock’, which sent me hurtling back to my time living there, when the place was alive with art, music and a kind of glorious madness. The joy of reading, for me, comes from immersion into a great story, but also into a time and place that has deep meaning. Thanks for this, Don, and the wonderful prompts at the end.
Susan-
“Clapton’s Rainbow Concert”, remastered, is available but for me nothing will substitute for the experience.
There are times that transcend, paradoxically freezing us in a specific, special moment in time that will never come again. That concert was such a moment for me.
Clapton was on his way back from heroin hell, floating on music, holding on to the life preserver thrown to him by his friends. It was 1973, the apotheosis of blues-based rock. Hendrix and Joplin were dead, funk was ascending, but there was the young guitar god and his instrument, Blackie, at the beginning of a journey to heaven that they’re still on. I’m still high on it.
Don, your posts always challenge and inspire me, but rarely do they bring tears to my eyes. You’ve hit on exactly what we want to experience in life and books.
Last year I attended the first WFWA retreat in Albuquerque. I’d never been to the Southwest, and the hotel and the people and the weather and the food and the dry heat and one particularly sweet and attentive hotel employee…it all sunk its claws in. I have rarely left a place I’ve visited with, again, tears in my eyes, and then only when I was leaving somebody I’d known for a long time and would miss dearly. Here I knew no one, I had no previous memories or associations. But as I watched the mountains beneath me blur with the distance, I was so, so very sad to be leaving. The plane banked and I caught a glimpse of a hidden valley absolutely blanketed in yellow flowers flooded with sun. Transcendence. And now I can’t listen to the song I was listening to on my iPod at that moment without feeling it all over again. [“Wilder (We’re Chained)” by Brandi Carlile]
After I finish the manuscript I’m working on now (which is set in another of those life-changing places) I plan to write one set in that place, which I started thinking about and planning on my last day there. The best part? I’ll be back there this September, writing in the very place I’m setting my story.
Augh! I so hated to miss the WFWA retreat! We were on a trip to South Africa, adopting our daughter, though, so I guess it was a big time regardless.
We missed you, but of course understood. :)
My moment.
A concert that Yehudi Menhuin played in 1956 in Heidelberg Germany: it was the Beethoven violin concerto in the first half, the Tschaikowski in the second half; and at the end of that very long programme he stood for another two hours playing requests from the audience. We staggered back to our billet at the Youth Hostel sometime after midnight.
Menhuin was the first major Jewish musician to return to play concerts in Germany after the war.
Shivers down my spine when I pause to remember.
Wow.
Funny, I named my most recent main character PIXIE WOODS (in “Still A Virgin,” which is, yes, available for representation!).
Thanks for all the teaching you do! Some years ago, I queried you about a novel, and you politely declined but with the proviso, “You’ll do fine.” I read that note of yours aloud to my dying father, whose eyes filled with tears.
Your reach is long.
Oh! Clutched my heart when I read that. Thank you so much. And you are. Doing fine.
Wonderful post, Don. I was scrolling through my memories of magical concert experiences, and there are so many. For obvious reasons, I recently relived seeing Prince during the Purple Rain tour in 1985 at Joe Louis Arena. He was at the top of his game, an unbelievable showman. But, as close to the stage as we were, he was “apart” from us. It truly was “a show.” He knew it and we knew it. Unforgettable, but not as inclusive as some artists.
Then I popped on meeting my brother-in-law. My wife was still at MSU, and I’d gone to LA (to try to write ad copy, not so successfully). I’d never met her brother, who was in the navy but briefly stationed at El Toro. I went and picked him up. I was intimidated… And late (LA traffic on a Saturday – who knew, right?). He’s a big guy – 6’2”. I was house-sitting for one of my bosses for the summer, in the Hollywood Hills. My next door neighbor was Ringo Starr. Seeing the house, my B-I-L started warming up to me.
He wanted to go down and party on the strip. It was early and there was a line at the Whiskey, so we walked down to another club (can’t even recall the name). I just wanted to get a few beers in the guy. Then we’d move on. A long night ahead of us. A band had just finished, and we found the perfect spot, close to the small dais-type stage, across a small dance-floor. The next band came on. I’d never heard of them, but apparently they were Americans who’d made a name for themselves in the UK. They were called the Stray Cats, and WOW, did they Rock This Town that night. We never went anywhere else. I’d never been a big rockabilly fan, but their magic could not be resisted. We ran into a coworker and her girlfriend and danced till all of us were sweaty. And talk about inclusive. Setzer came right down and wailed away on that Gibson right on the dance floor among the dancers. My brother-in-law and I have often tried to describe the magic of it, but have never managed. Only we can know.
So that illustrates the trickiness of storytelling. I was grappling with this working on my WIP. My midpoint scene is a critical moment in my protagonist’s life. It’s a trial with swords, but it begins with a prayer from a priestess for the competitors. The touch of my protagonist’s hands incites a sort of a seizure/vision-quest for the priestess, who then and there recites a prophecy about him. I want it to be an epic moment. The combo of the trial and the crazy priestess needs to be one of those stories that those who were there have trouble adequately describing later. The scene is from the POV of one of the secondary characters, and during this rewrite I wondered if that was crazy. It should be from the MC’s POV, right? I tried it that way. Wasn’t working. I’ve gone back to having someone else witness it. I *think* its magic is better conveyed by someone watching it – like dancing sweaty next to Brian Setzer, in the zone as he wails. Then the witness can turn to his brother-in-law and say, “Can you freakin’ believe this is happening?!”
Great stuff, and wonderful prompts, as usual. Thanks, Don, for sprinkling your pixie dust on WU, today and most every other day. WU is a magical place in no small way due to you.
Wait, you lived next door to Ringo Starr? No way. Legendary. What that man has lived through…
Your trial with swords scene: I agree that a secondary POV is a good choice. To get that epic feel going maybe try making it a character who on that particular day has great need to be lifted by a prayer and a prophecy, to believe in something, to know that there are days magical and singular, a day of destiny and miracles that will never come again.
Maybe.
Yes, perfect. There is so much fragile hope packed into the moment for the secondary character. Bringing that to the fore, that it’s particularly needed in the moment, is wonderful advice. Thanks!
By the way, my bro-in-law was way more excited by the prospect of being a stone’s throw from Barbara Bach. It was a gated property, and I only rarely glimpsed them, through a vine covered lattice on their deck. Poor B-I-L, not even a glimpse that weekend. Although he’d never have been able to focus well enough to see them anyway.
I saw Clapton in concert some years ago. But his second encore when he sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow (my favorite song) a capella was transporting and gives me goosebumps to this day. Into my new novel it goes! Thanks, Don.
Goosebumps, yes. That is a man who lost a child to a fall from a high Manhattan apartment tower window. When he sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” it comes from somewhere deep.
I remember when that happened. He also sang Tears From Heaven which always makes me cry!
Thank you for explaining this magical component. Pixie dust. I love it! I dig deep when writing, but your list will be a huge help in making key moments more visceral. It’s what I imagine a shrink would ask to get to the essence of an experience.
*mind blown*
Cool.
Wonderful post, Don. These are precisely the types of questions I ask myself while “experiencing”, engaging, traveling, enjoying–and most of all, plotting! Often, I have readers say to me, “your descriptions of food are so delicious they make my mouth water”. I’m a foodie and adore cooking (my other creative pursuit), and it shows on the page. That’s just one example of a little pixie dust I sprinkle on my manuscripts. (One day I will write a chef!)
I think we can get caught up in the bigger elements of craft and miss these opportunities for weaving magic into our stories. Your post is a great reminder, so thank you. :)
Want another food read? The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. The descriptions of French cooking will harden your arteries and make you gain weight just by reading.
Brilliant. Totally transported. Thank you!
Welcome. Spent a nice hour with your son-in-law and an old friend of his, recently. We spoke of kids and their challenges, and it showed me that much as we may think men as absentee dads, fathers do care.
Pixie dust. Moments in our lives that transcend time and space, when other happy moments fade. Funny how instantly recognize them while in the moment.
Scientists say we remember events, especially scary ones, thanks to a jolt of adrenalin, but my guess about the chemical composition of pixie dust might be oxytocin, the bonding hormone.
So, maybe we fall in love with the moment. Of course, love already has to be there, as with the many family stories and concert events shared here.
Thank you for the questions to guide us. As I think about them and answer them later in essay form, I also wonder if my moments weren’t universal but a response to a particular moment by a particular individual in a precise moment in time. For me, it was pixie dust. Someone else may not feel the pixie dust in that particular moment. I’m not sure my characters would see and feel what I saw, heard, and felt.
I guess our job as writers is to make the moment universal by setting up a bond with the reader through character motivations and emotions. That it’s all in the setup.
Thanks again.
“I also wonder if my moments weren’t universal but a response to a particular moment by a particular individual in a precise moment in time.”
Yes, that’s it exactly. The moment is created and detailed, which is fine, but what makes it memorable is what it means to a POV character. It’s not the action itself but the experience.
Your posts are always the pixie dust I need to jump start my morning writing. Grateful!
Welcome.
Wow, this really speaks to me. I try to be good about enjoying the journey and smelling the flowers along the way, yadda yadda. And I’m VERY big on cherishing and commemorating the truly special moments I’ve witnessed or participated in. But where I often fall short is in capturing moments like these in my writing.
Thanks, Donald, for always reminding us to push through to our emotional core; to lay our souls bare on the page. That’s why you’re such a great teacher – and such a great writer.
High praise, thanks Keith, yadda, yadda.
You’re such an incredible encourager. Your books and this post always help me focus on why I began writing in the first place. Thank you!
Now that’s a nice thing to hear. We start writing because we are moved by what we’ve read, and want to move others. How does that simple intention get so lost?
Don, so often your counsel in your posts has the same effect as the context of its lesson: reading those electric moments of yours brought that heart-flush of connection in me that you suggest we try to bring to our writing and thus to our readers. We are bags of excitable biology, after all. (Oh, and poetry too.)
I’ve had many moments where emotion seemed to both capsize and catapult me. Your Clapton concert story reminded me of a Grateful Dead concert at the Hollywood Bowl the evening after my high school graduation, where the Dead were amping the crowd with a crescendo-building song which was thrilling, yet in the tiered aisle directly below some beefy security dudes were beating the stuffing out of a guy who had tried to move to the lower seating area. Transcendence and tribulation all at once! (And yeah, I suppose my dinner of windowpane acid help turn up the volume another notch.)
I’ve put a lot of pancake-pleasure scenes in my WIP, some for the sheer silly language picnic of it, though they have context too. Thanks so much for your wise words here. And your Boy Scout patch story is such a simple moment, but one for the ages.
Now Dead concerts are a whole different type of experience. Never attended one but I’m told you definitely knew where you were (even if you didn’t remember later) thanks to the aroma in the air.
Yes, I went to about 50 of them—maybe it was that aroma that pulled me. Could they have been burning bras? I understand that was going around in those days…
Don, thanks, as always, for a great post. I’d been gushing frequently in the last month over how frequently your WU posts and 21st C Fiction have triggered deeper thinking as I’ve wrestled to make a challenging novel narrative successful. For the last 6 weeks, I led live writing sprints for my writing group via Twitter, and frequently referred out sprinters to your book or posts.
This post is an interesting challenge for me. A third of my novel is set in Ireland — it’s not a sentimental story, so I’ve pushed myself to harness the ‘pixie dust’ effect of Ireland without falling to linen and castles and sheep-dotted hills, or tumbling directly into memes of gun-toting, noir former paramilitaries. I had to get to the heart of my dark character’s family history, and pixie dust-type details have gotten me there more authentically. Rather than expected details of school or the seaside village, I imagined how his life changed after his father’s death. I think one of your book-prompts mentioned routines, and I imagined his mom having had to get a job, and imagined the character’s new daily routine of going to pick up his little sister after school. As you’re saying, the scene ended up full of the magic of remembered setting (the sun-bleached building, sun angling through the front window where his sister made up stories with her toys; the walk through the village on the way home), but objects sparkle with the relationship. Not only did this add emotional magic, but it seeds important motivation for this character, as someone who is driven into adulthood to keep his orphaned siblings safe.
Thanks for another great post!
“Rather than expected details of school or the seaside village, I imagined how his life changed after his father’s death.”
Oh, you’re so right about Ireland! So easy to fall back on the easy images of the fairy isle. However, your approach will give us far more delight, odd as that may sound given your subject matter.
Nice work.
You made me think of the first time I had artichoke. Home for the summer after my first year of college, and one of my cousins was starring in a summer stock play in an outdoor amphitheatre outside of Toronto. My clan was planning to go together to one performance and have a picnic dinner on the grass, but my parents couldn’t go, so my gourmet uncle took me. And fed me a perfectly steamed whole artichoke. The ritual of eating it was as intoxicating as the vegetably sweetness of the flavor. And the lusciousness of the heart — a revelation. I felt so sophisticated and grown up. It was deeply delightful.
It also opened up an approach to feeding myself with style, with pleasure, with precision, with openness to new ingredients that I began to explore once I was cooking for myself every night.
Thanks for leading me to that great memory.
“You made me think of the first time I had artichoke.”
That’s a grabber line yet what makes your anecdote delightful for me is the overall experience: picnic, uncle, artichoke heart (get it?), and “I felt so grown up.”
Indeed. I had similar food experience with carrot soup. I was a starving student in London but saved up enough money for buy myself a solo dinner at a fine French restaurant–my first taste of French cooking after a lifetime of my Mom’s frozen vegetables and dry chops. I hardly recognized my own mouth.
Similarly mussels in Holland, salmon on a plank at a Northwest first nation reservation, dirty rice in dirty New Orleans, yadda yadda, as Keith would say.
Hi Don,
Thanks for the post. More great ideas for imbuing a story with emotional impact.
You suggest at the end that moments like these are best related in non-serious novels, but it occurs to me that in serious stories, memories related by a protagonist can hit even harder.
I think of the movie Saving Private Ryan, when Tom Hanks and Matt Damon (the fourth son Hanks and his men have been sent to save) are waiting for the Nazis to descend on a bridge they’re protecting. There’s that touching scene where Damon relates the story of his brothers fighting over a girl in their barn’s hayloft the night before his oldest brother enlists, a memory that has been seared into his mind for the hilarity of the situation, but also for the knowledge it was the last time they were all together. It hits particularly hard when juxtaposed with the realization his three siblings are now dead.
And of course, when Damon invites Hanks to share a special memory of his wife and the garden gloves he’d mentioned earlier, Hanks’ reply, “No, that one I keep just for myself” hits hard, too, even though we never learn what the memory is about.
Thanks again for the great post.
All the best,
Matt
Not what happened but what it meant. Yes.
This puts an entirely new and wonderful spin on write what you know. So often I push my characters around the stories but forget the enjoyment we can allow them to indulge in as well. We all have experiences that have touched us, grounded us, moved us. Thanks for reminding us to allow our characters to experience the same.
Exactly.
Very timely post, Don, as I write a first draft aiming to write slower and infuse it with moments like these! Thanks for the reminder to write not just from what we know – but what we emotionally know. The delightful and dark.
For each scene I write now, I try to connect what the main character is feeling based on a related event in my own life. It’s emotionally draining but enriches the words on the page!
Your Peter Pan quote “Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting,” shot me back to the moment I said goodbye to my mother, who then died the next day from cancer. I purposefully did not say goodbye to her- because goodbye would mean forever. And this emotion has spilled on the page. As well as delightful ones, like instantly falling in love with my son the day he was placed on my chest – completely conflicting with the feeling I had for 9 months of not liking him as I didn’t want to become a mother! I guess our own conflicting emotional events can lend itself to enrich our stories too. Thanks for a great post!
“Thanks for the reminder to write not just from what we know – but what we emotionally know. The delightful and dark.”
Write not just what you know, but what you emotionally know. I’m turning that into a fridge magnet.
And you know, someday your son will be by your bedside not wanting to say goodbye, either. I so hate that parenting time is finite!
Indeed – finite! The first decade went so slow and now that my son’s 13 it’s racing by and I am plotting ways to keep him young forever so we never have to say goodbye. Need some Pixie Dust for that. :) May you have many more elevator rides!
Your mention of Nancy Drew recalled for me a long ago summer. I must have been about nine. I read everything Nancy Drew I could get my hands on, and I’d run out of reading material. My mother suggested I put an ad in the local Penny Saver offering to buy old Nancy Drew books. The results were phenomenal. I had so many people call with Nancy Drew books to sell, and old ones too, with musty covers and yellowed pages that gave the mysteries Nancy Drew solved an air of deeper mystery. My Nancy Drew summer was spent in the back yard under a gnarled apple tree reading my heart out.
Pixie dust, it really does exist. I think it’s a state of mind.
I’m going to keep this post in mind as I rework my WIP. Thanks for the memory, Don, and the magic.
The original Nancy Drew series was revised in the late 1950’s to modernize them, for example removing the racist undertones (which astonishingly were sometimes overt in the Hardy Boys series); e.g., demeaning dialect.
However, those original editions captured a Midwestern way of life (“River Heights” is in Ohio) that is now lost. In the early volumes her investigating was interrupted by days “rushed from one thing to another”, like tennis, swimming and water polo, even summer camp. She was a detective but a girl too, worried about her widowed father and wanting nothing more than to help.
Nancy’s independence has influenced many women in public life, including (I read) Hillary Clinton. Do we still imagine that fiction doesn’t change anything?
Jamaica. When the trade winds caress, your lover kisses you with sweet rum drinks on his tongue, and the Doctor Birds fight over a lady love…I’d do it once, again, and always. And I’m starting a novel with a honeymoon in this paradise while utter disruption awaits at home. Mwahahaha!
Thanks for a wonderful post, Don!
You’re not speaking of Jamaica, Queens, I gather? That Jamaica certainly doesn’t especially delight me, except that it’s a jumping off point for JFK airport.
Ha! No, the Jamaica of the white sand beaches, palm trees, and warm hearts. ;-)
A squawking crow rising from a battered park bench; a child wanting to touch a painted sculpture of a cardinal; a nurse holding to her chest a new baby whose father has recently been shot and killed; the smell of almond cream that her mother always wore. Sights, smells and sounds scattered throughout our stories can be our pixie dust, especially if they reappear and hold even the slightest of power on the printed page. BIG THANKS, Don. Loved your post and every single comment. Beth
Delightful!
Your life experiences reminded me of one of my favorite quotes:
“Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.” ― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
Your books and your posts here have always spoken to me. You always find a way to show things simply, yet beautifully. And not a lot of teachers can do that, you truly get to the gut of things because you understand what great writing is.
You took me back to my grandfather’s farm when I was a child, and I saw him laughing for a moment as the neighbor boy stole a kiss from me as we were playing in the tall grasses my grandfather grew. His chuckle was loud, we were oh so young, and it was a magical kind of day.
Some of my best memories are of my great uncle Robert’s sheep farm in the Pennsylvania countryside near Reading.
Finding warm hen eggs in the barn. The smell of wood polish. The Revolutionary era fireplace with its swing arm pot hooks. The hooked rugs. My great uncle reading the newspaper on the glassed-in porch, lightning strikes across the valley crackling the radio broadcast of a Brahms symphony. Uncle Robert tolerantly letting us kids explore.
No kissing, though. That came later, in other places like a church basement.
Hi, Don:
Jim’s comment above about City Slickers reminded me of the game the Robert Redford character and his best friend play in The Way We Were: Best summer, best dessert, etc. (I actually turned this into a game I’d play on dates, which gave us a chance to talk about ourselves without “talking about ourselves.”)
Right now the pixie dust I’m using is a moment at our wedding. The moment convinced me I needed to use the person who created it as the basis for a character.
It concerned the dreaded bouquet toss, when all the “single ladies” are supposed to assemble.
Well, most of our friends are married or too old to fall for that one, so only one of Mette’s best friends, Linda, and the 4-year-old daughter of another friend, walked out on the dance floor.
Linda, of course, was just trying to be a trooper, but suddenly there she was, all but alone, being stared at by everyone there.
All of a sudden, this voice shouts out, “Who, whoa, hold the phone, wait a minute, don’t start without me.”
Another friend, Lisa, a beautiful, Philadelphia Italian with a smile and personality like a Super Nova, and wearing this killer red dress, swaggers out on the floor, pushes up her sleeves, crouches down like a shortstop, and says, “Okay, big fella, toss that baby on here, I’m ready.”
In a heartbeat, she turned an awkward, potentially embarrassing episode into one of the most memorable — and funny — moments of the weekend.
I thought: I need to give my heroine that kind of heart, that kind of humor, that kind of loyalty and flash.
So I did.
Lovely story about your son and the Boy Scout patch, btw.
Lisa’s are the best. I know. I married one.
“Whose grave can’t you bear to visit?” Oh man, did you hit me with that one, Don… I’ve never been to my dad’s grave since his funeral nearly eight years ago, but I feel him near me every spring in late April when the ice on the lake cracks and groans, breaking up, and when the flocks of sandhill cranes fly overhead, so far up, you can’t see them, you just hear the wavering chorus of fluting croaks.
For me it’s the crack of a sail filling with wind, the ratchet-grind of a winch, the rush of water past the hull. Why do we call them memories? They are life itself.
As a little girl, kneeling in a steamer trunk, imagining it was the Sea Devil and I, Windy, was about to be saved from the evil Hook, by the noble(ish) Peter, oh happy memories.
Odd to grow up saving myself. But then, that was childhood and imagination ran rampant. No, wait, that was today, LOL, and there’s more writing to be done!
Thank you, as always.
Perhaps as a prelude to my involvement with science fiction, as a boy I imagined I had a flying saucer all my own.
There was a map that showed you anywhere you wanted to go. It had a closet that would offer anything you wanted to wear. There was an oven that instantly served anything you wanted to eat. There was a book that magically became any book you wanted to read.
Today I have an e-reader, a microwave, Google maps on my phone and a pretty well stocked closet. I am living in my flying saucer. Who says childhood must end?
Yes, childhood must end one day when you learn the world doesn’t just revolve around you. There are degrees of unhappiness around the corner when you leave the magical years. While it lasts and later in memories, it is a beautiful time for many.
Wow, Don. Another great post!
I had the kind of mom who believed it was her job always to push us to do better. If we got an A, she’d say, “Why didn’t you get an A+?” If we got an A+, she’d say, “Wasn’t there extra credit?”
Instead of pushing, you pull us–me–to be my best self as a writer. Your questions make me dig the memory box from the back of the drawer and bring out those special memories I’d tucked away so carefully. I know they will add a special shimmer to my WIP. Thank you.
Pulling works better than pushing, for sure. On the page that means firing reader’s imaginations, leading them, suggesting, rather than force-feeding them what to see and what to feel.
Thanks for commenting.
It might sound weird but to get those experiences onto “paper” I close my eyes and type. I go there in every way I can, and only peek once in a while to make sure my fingers are on the right keys.
Thrilled to know there’s a new book coming, Don. Your books and workshops have helped me immeasurably–and what I’ve learned has helped me to help others, which is important to me.
I will be very thrilled to delivery this book to my publisher, too! Only a week and a half to go…
I was wondering where your column was going, but as usual, you don’t disappoint. Wonderful reminders of how we can draw from our own stories to inform our writing. Many thanks.
I have the luxury of knowing where my blog posts are going, which gives me some freedom to lead you on a ramble–but hopefully feeling there’s a destination as we wander, wonder and think.
What a wonderful post with great visuals that are brought to mind. Thanks to Jim Scott Bell I found this post.
This post was delicious. I didn’t even know I was hungry for it. Thanks…
Thanks, Don. I agree with the comments above regarding your elevator scene with your son. How beautiful is that! Something to treasure for the rest of your life.
As usual, you’ve sparked my thoughts about what and how I write.
I’ve recently published my second novel, which took forever to get out. It was one inspired by my work on a psychiatric ward in the ’70s. I think because it was such an emotional time for me, it took awhile to get my feelings on the page.
It’s been a fascinating journey. Not only did I invest in my protagonist, a psychiatric intern, but also in the patients, secondary characters. One reviewer called my novel “distressingly realistic” and left him thinking about it for quite awhile afterwards. I’ve had other similar comments.
Pixie dust? Yes, even in a story that delves into a dark subject.
I did this: “What are the most delightful things about your favorite novels? Make a list. Make sure to include some of those things in your current novel.” several years ago, and it was one of the best exercises I’ve ever done as a writer. The act of analyzing what all the things you love most have in common is incredibly powerful, because then you really know what speaks to you, and you can put that in your own work. Great advice, Don!
Listening to Stanley Turentine jam, New Orleans Jazz Fest 1994. 2 in the afternoon. Transported for 20 minutes.
Drinking a bottle of Le Montrachet 1992 in 2001 with two dear friends. The only perfect wine I have ever tasted.
Eating bouillabaisse with a new lover in Le Lavandou in the south of France.
The perfect Pain Killer (tropical rum cocktail) brought to me on the foredeck of a 42 foot sailboat. Just after a successful anchoring in the shallow harbor of Anegada, British Virgin Islands, just before sunset, while I was on a cell phone in the middle of a frustrating negotiation for the job I was supposed to be on vacation from by my amazing and thoughtful husband. Bliss.
Gosh I could do this all day. What a great exercise. Thanks!
Sprinkling pixie dust is a much more inspiring way to put it than my description: folding true life into my made-up worlds. I have fond childhood memories of when my mother would “press” my hair. I wrote a scene recently which uses that bit of pixie dust to reveal a few things about the characters. My mother died almost 20 years ago, but I delight in bringing her back to life through my stories.
Thanks for writing this! For me personally, this portion of your post resonated most:
“So here’s my question: What are you putting into your work in progress that will provide that kind of delight for your readers? Food, drink, friends and comfort are undeniably associated with our most delightful times, but what makes those times meaningful are not the places or what was there, but who was there and what those experiences meant to us; i.e., what we did and what we felt.”
When I sit in on first page readings at SCBWI conferences, or read chapters of other writers’ works in progress … everyone is very polished in their writing, but they don’t drill into that deeper level of WHY. Why is the character racing though a forest of crisp icicles and freshly fallen snow (as opposed to what is going on or what the character is feeling as they live in a series of choppy scenes that make no emotional sense)? When meeting and talking with other hard-working writers, it seems that we feel the pixie dust or magic of the moment in our own work, but anyone else reading it does not … because it’s not on the page. Like nowhere.
So I guess my question to you is: How does a writer concretely get these magical feelings on the page in a way that resonates with readers to mirror/experience those same feelings when they are reading, because as it is in the ‘slush-pile industry’ (those of us who work tirelessly and can write pretty sentences but they have absolutely no meaning to anyone else … and the panelist writers, agents, and editors are all quietly thinking these pages are terrible and can’t wait till it’s over and laugh at us at the bar… but in the moment not hurt our feelings by giving us the shit sandwich response to our work) wow that was a long ADHD digression… What I’m trying to ask is: At the end of the day, instead of general (not in a negative sounding way) examples, HOW do we give meaning to these moments and carry them throughout the novel (on the page) so we see growth, life and passion in our characters so the readers (especially agents and editors;) actually care as much as we slush-pile-writers want them to?
Great questions, Chris. I look forward to hearing Donald’s answer!
Wonderful post! I think we’re all aiming to sprinkle a bit of this pixie dust in our stories, whether consciously or just instinctively. Thanks for spelling it out and illustrating it this way!