Where’s Your Edge?
By James Scott Bell | May 30, 2017 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Mark Freeth
A couple of weeks ago I was in Toronto with my friends Christopher Vogler and a fellow you may have heard of, Don Maass. We were there teaching the Story Masters conference, a four-day immersion in the craft of fiction.
For this conference, each of us takes a full day to teach our stuff, and then get together for a final day taking the students through a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the classic Harper Lee novel, To Kill A Mockingbird.
I began my session by showing a clip from the amusing Albert Brooks film, The Muse. It’s the story of a middle-aged screenwriter facing a career crisis (which, in Hollywood, is almost redundant). Early on, Brooks is having lunch with a studio honcho who is about fifteen years his junior. Brooks has submitted an action script and wants feedback.
The honcho says, “Let me put this in a form that’s not insulting, because I tend to be too direct. All my friends tell me that. The script’s no good.”
Brooks says, “That’s the form that’s not insulting? What would the insulting form be?”
When Brooks asks what’s wrong with the script, the honcho replies, “What’s wrong with the script … is you.”
Brooks presses for more specifics. The honcho finally says, “You’ve lost your edge.”
Brooks looks at him with that Albert Brooks existential-angst expression he has practically trademarked. The honcho further states that the studio needs Brooks to vacate his office so Brian De Palma can have it. “You can’t give Brian De Palma my office!” Brooks says.
“It’s not really your office,” the honcho replies. “We’re all just using space here. I’m where Lucille Ball used to be.”
“Too bad you’re not where she is now.”
In short, the lunch does not go well.
After the clip, I told the class part of the reason they were at Story Masters was to avoid ever being subjected to a conversation like that. How? By finding and keeping their edge.
Which every writer has, by the way. The challenge is to dig it out and give if form on the page.
Just what is the edge? It’s you. It’s what sets you apart from every other writer. You are a unique human being, a package of singular experiences, passions, joys … not to mention DNA. The trick to this edge business is marrying your distinctiveness with craft mastery and an overall strategy for your novel.
Yeah, that’s all.
I then showed the students a quote from a former acquisitions editor at Penguin, Marian Lizzi. She was writing about the things that cause a house to say no to a manuscript. One of these is that the book is not “remarkable/surprising/unputdownable enough”:
This one is the most difficult to articulate – and yet in many ways it’s the most important hurdle to clear. Does the proposal get people excited? Will sales reps and buyers be eager to read it – and then eager to talk it up themselves? As my first boss used to warn us green editorial assistants two decades ago the type of submission that’s the toughest to spot – and the most essential to avoid — is the one that is “skillful, competent, literate, and ultimately forgettable.”
These words are more important now than ever. We all know about the “tsunami of content” competing for attention and repeat business, even though so much of it is (how do I put this in a form that’s not insulting?) no good.
However, a lot of it is good. Over the last nearly quarter-century of teaching the craft, I’ve seen the level of competent fiction rise significantly. With all of the teaching and critique-grouping and editor/agent-paneling and craft books and blogs out there, anyone with a minimal amount of talent—and a whole lot of grit—can learn to write competent fiction.
Which means we have to be more than good to stand out from the morass. The edge is critical to getting us there.
An old preacher once told his ministerial students that a sermon is no good unless it makes the congregation sad, mad, or glad. There is much truth in that. So try this exercise:
Write down three things that make you sad, three that make you mad, and three that make you glad. (Note: just for variety, try skipping anything political this time around!)
Next, take each of these nine items and write one page about why you feel this way. Go deep. Use your life experiences, how you were raised, what you’ve observed, specific scenes from your past. You never have to show these pages to anyone, so rant and rave and cry all you want. Hot tears forge sharp edges.
You now have nine pages of emotional response, unique to you.
When you develop your main characters, give them a sad, mad, and glad set. They don’t have to overlap yours, but certainly may.
Now create backstory to justify each feeling, keeping at it until you feel it too.
Your edge will emerge. Follow it, put it in the sinew of your characters and the tension of your scenes. If you do that, there will be no need for an uncomfortable lunch.
You can finish your book instead.
What are some of the things you do to push your writing past the merely competent?
[coffee]
JAMES SCOTT BELL writes thrillers and books on the craft of fiction. A winner of the International Thriller Writers Award, he previously served as fiction columnist for Writer’s Digest magazine. He lives and writes in Los Angeles. Learn more about him on his website, and follow him on Twitter.
What I like about this, Mr. Bell, is that you are asking us to take a battering ram to the barrier between ourselves and the page. The battering ram is our feelings.
When fiction is personal, it pierces through. I have struggled with this. It’s not an unhealthy devotion to words, exactly, but I do find–with openings in particular–that while I feel that I’m opening my heart, what I’m setting down owes more to style.
I’m wrestling with an opening right now. I know exactly what I want. I’ve studied others who’ve handled similar openings brilliantly. I’ve broken down the elements and made sure to include them all: looking backward with adult eyes, urgency, death.
However I try it, though, the opening remains poetic and distant. It’s well-written but flat. I know that genuine feeling is the key. Without it, readers won’t care about the narrator, no matter how mellifluous the voice. I’m just not sure how to get there.
I’ll try your suggestion. The feeling I want to get across is gratitude–the gratitude of a broken heart for the breaking, if that makes sense. Anyway, I’ve got to try something. Thanks, Mr. Bell, for a post that’s timely, as they so often seem to be here on WU.
Go for it, Benjamin. If I’d had twice the space here I would have mentioned “sense memory” from my acting days. A practice wherein actors can begin to experience the role, no matter what the situation and emotion. You’ll know it when it happens, and the edge will be in it.
Mr. Bell–Assuming they know what’s good for them, any writer familiar with your work is going to pay close attention to what you have to say. Based on wide and deep experience, you are trying to help writers float above the “tsunami of content.”
Like Don Maass and others, you rightly give emphasis to tapping into readers’ emotions. Sad, mad and glad–locate three of each, and drill down deep into personal experience to find the emotional taproots.
But isn’t there something potentially wrong here? Doesn’t this rhymed catch phrase/list of three method (and others like it) encourage a formulaic approach? Give each character these three, then a backstory, etc. Doesn’t this risk leading to the kinds of “merely competent” manuscripts your first boss described as the most difficult to spot–carefully made stories that are ultimately forgettable?
In my view, stories that actually rise unbidden out of the writer’s passion–for anything at all–are the ones most likely to succeed with readers. I don’t see sitting down with a legal pad and making lists as a path in that direction. I see a more romantic path: writers seized by some image, event or moment that compels them to follow where it leads. And THEN it’s time to seek out the wise guidance of experts like yourself.
But that’s just me. If lists and formulas work for others, it’s all good.
Barry, it’s interesting, but I see it exactly the opposite way. The exercise suggested here is one of many that can break through the formulaic with the sharp edge of the writer’s own emotions which, BY DEFINITION, are non-formulaic.
You are quite right to emphasize the writer’s “passion,” which is part of what I’m talking about here. But making lists is not hindrance, it’s a help. It’s like panning for gold. There’s a technique to panning, as any Desert Pete would tell you.
Yes, Barry, my current WIP comes from a passion I’ve had for thirty-five years. But until I started analyzing (list making, if you will), I was stymied as to how to get down what I felt about the characters and what the characters felt about the events of the plot.
As I’ve made the lists, dug into my feelings and the feelings of my characters, I’ve been able to flesh out what was a competent writing exercise to text that creates emotion with my critique partners.
Mr. Bell is right on when he tells you to dig into the sad, mad, glad trio. They are the basic elements of our emotions. Until I knew what made my characters sad, mad, or glad, I had cardboard caricatures, not real characters.
Thank you, James Scott Bell, for articulating this so beautifully.
I appreciate the good word, Judith. I love hearing how cardboard becomes real. That’s the glorious alchemy of our profession!
Great to see you here again so soon, James! I always love your essays and advice. Dare we hope you’ll become a regular contributor here at WU? I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
This post reminds me of a critique I received before my last rewrite of a recent manuscript. I received it from a fellow writer. She’s a dear friend, and – most importantly to me – someone who reads and loves my genre. She called out the developing romantic relationship between my two protagonists. I’m going to have to paraphrase her, because I can’t find the email: “I know you want us (the readers) to feel something powerful brewing between them, but it’s not happening. I think you’re trying to avoid being obvious here, but there’s no room for subtlety when it comes to feelings like this.”
I know on the version she read that I was too worried about what others would think (it’s cheesy, overdone, what-have-you). I needed to stop worrying about that and focus on the feelings that brought the characters to the page in the first place. Her words rang in my head through the rewrite, and was an important part of it what took the manuscript to another level.
Thanks for another great post!
Vaughn, thanks for the good word. I think romantic intensity is one of the most challenging aspects of fiction. Easy to underplay it, or overplay it. What the heck’s the answer?
Another acting trick I learned was this: in rehearsal, go all out with the emotions. But when it comes to performance, pull back 25%. It worked. So I advise overwriting, really feeling it, on the first draft and then you can always pull it back a bit if need be. But you can’t work with what isn’t there.
And I echo Vaughn’s hope that we will see you as a regular contributor here, James Scott Bell.
This is interesting, James. I’ve not thought of this practical approach. So it’s kind of like brainstorming? Might it be a bit manipulative though? Barry has a good point about ‘stories that actually rise unbidden out of the writer’s passion’ as being most successful if not most authentic. When looking at my own stories, the emotions often arise out of the characters as they emerge on the page in their actions and thinking. I find this part to be the most fun and surprising, when a character suddenly produces an emotional event or communication in the thrust of the writing. I suppose it’s the act of writing—discoveries outside of my own conscious identity—that is the thrill and the motivation of the story.
Paula, some writers are “suspicious” of technique, because they think it leads to formulaic writing every time. As I said to Barry, that’s not so. The technique i describe here, if done with abandon, leads to those happy discoveries we all love as writers.
I’ll tell you what’s never worked for me: those lists of dossier questions that you are supposed to fill out, like a job application. That approach may be what leads to the “suspicions.”
I love the “Sad, mad, glad” formula. Simple enough to stick in my brain that gets crowded with so much craft info!
That’s the ticket. The “real stuff” will emerge. It will feel organic, too.
James, This is an idea I’ve been trying to work out for a while. I had the good fortune to hear John Green speak at length during a library conference (so his content might have been more writerly). “The Fault in Our Stars” could only have been written by him because it was inspired by his unique experiences and thought processes. Just listening to him illuminated how he could come up with “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities,” and all the rest. That would sound manufactured coming from most of us. Figuring out our uniqueness and bringing it to the page seems easy. Write what only you can write. It’s challenging to answer that for ourselves, though. Without that knowledge, I don’t think there is much chance to rise above the noise. Thanks for this exercise. I’ll be trying it out.
Figuring out our uniqueness and bringing it to the page seems easy.
Indeed, it SOUNDS easy, doesn’t it? Like, come on, how hard can it be to pour out our own uniqueness?
And yet, I’ve found it needs to be coaxed out, sometimes driven out. We hold back so much in our social lives (rightly so, lest we become boorish) that we need to get at our deeper stuff through the side doors of writing exercises. You’ll get there, Cathy.
Jim, what a great exercise and it’s something I will remember because it’s so easy. Sad, mad, glad elicit strong emotions and I remember the exercise Don made us do (writing about a joyous moment and then giving it to a character — I suppose we do a lot of this unconsciously but it’s such a great tool when the writing feels distant). So I’m reporting back on your exercise: sad was all about regrets, mad was all about injustice, and glad was all about gratefulness. Thank you for this.
sad was all about regrets, mad was all about injustice, and glad was all about gratefulness.
Just that bit of summary hums with power! I can feel it.
Thanks for the report, Vijaya.
I am struggling with character development right now, so this will help. Thank you again for all of your tips and the time you take to help us become the writers that we want to be.
It’s entirely my pleasure, Rebecca. I love lending a hand to fellow writers.
And I’m not really sure there has ever been a writer who has not struggled with character development. You are not alone.
You ask, “What are some of the things you do to push your writing past the merely competent?”
First, I write non fiction and not fiction, aside from an inspirational fable that is my latest book.
To push my writing past the “merely competent” I am inspired by these words of wisdom:
“Books work as an art form (and an economic one) because they are primarily the work of an individual.”
— Seth Godin
“It’s better to do a sub-par job on the right project than an excellent job on the wrong project.”
— Robert J. Ringer
“If you’re not offending a significant
number of readers, your writing is
probably not very original.”
— John Locke
“The good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups.”
— Charles Bower
“The thing is, you see, that the strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone.”
— Henrik Ibsen
“In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.”
— Aristotle
“A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.”
— Henry Ford
“Good isn’t good enough.”
— Mark Coker (owner of Smashwords)
“Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don’t want to read.”
— Michael Korda, former Editor-in-Chief at Simon & Schuster
“The amount of money you make will always be in direct proportion to the demand for what you do, your ability to do it, and the difficulty of replacing you.”
— Earl Nightingale
Following these words of wisdom have resulted in my books (mainly self-published) having sold over 975,000 copies worldwide.
I’m struggling with a character who is not human but who has fallen in love with a mortal. Perhaps if I use your sad, mad, glad approach, I can better express his concerns about the relationship. Thank you for the wonderful article, James.