What Are the Rules?
By Donald Maass | June 7, 2017 |
There are unwritten rules. We all know them. Be nice. Chew with your mouth closed. Let others off the elevator first. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. Keep your voice down. Replace toilet paper when the roll runs out. Put things back where you found them, especially if they are refrigerated items in a grocery store.
There are unwritten rules for various situations. At work, don’t leave before the boss. Don’t check your e-mail at midnight (unless everyone else does). In New York City, no eye contact on the subway. Don’t fumble for your Metrocard at the turnstile. If you see rats, be cool. Leave celebrities alone. Do not disturb cats in delis, even if they are lying on the item you want to buy.
Bro code: Never take the last beer. Shotgun means co-pilot, which means map reading and lookout. When greeting another guy, if you know him already nod up; if you don’t know him already nod down. Women and dating: Your happiness isn’t men’s responsibility. Give him space. It’s okay to keep dating other guys longer than you think. (See prior two rules.)
Specific social situations have specific rules. Church: If you’re new, you are expected to join a committee. If you’re a longtime member, you become a deacon. Tattoos are an ungodly topic. Whether or not your hands go in the air depends. Law firms: No cufflinks until you make partner. Military: If you want to be First Sergeant, don’t part your hair in the middle. Southern Belles: Pearls and silver must be real, no cleavage until evening, dance the Shag, join the Junior League.
You get the idea. Unwritten rules pervade our lives. Why, then, do I so rarely encounter them in fiction? They are a lost opportunity for drama.
The most powerful unwritten rules, in story terms, are the rules governing social classes. Many classic novels been built around social struggle and conflict: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby, Rebecca, Cry the Beloved Country, The Notebook, The Help. Of course, those stories portray bygone times. In contemporary America, our society is fluid and class conflict is no longer much of an issue, right?
I disagree. We humans sort ourselves. We associate, live, eat, celebrate, think, believe and talk according to the customs of our tribe. If nothing else, as long as there are economic strata, there will be class distinctions. In her ground-breaking book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, Dr. Ruby K. Payne revealed the hidden rules of economic class, which help explain in part what impairs social mobility. If you are a low-wage worker, middle class or wealthy, you will be different in your lifestyle, values, and relationships to many things.
People with concrete poverty knowledge know that cars are not dependable. They live in isolated urban or rural areas, live in crowded homes, sleep on couches, repair things themselves. They work multiple jobs. If they have money, they spend it. Their main concern about food is quantity—is there enough? They tend their own sick. Laws don’t protect them. Families are matriarchal. Men are often absent. Their dearest possessions are friends. They relax with music, cable TV, drugs, bars. They joke about sex. Their world is local. They live in the present. Their time is taken up with survival. They believe in fate.
Middle class people value education, invest in homes, pursue hobbies, manage their money, buy insurance, vacation at Disneyworld, join the PTA, plan for the future. Their concern about food is quality—did you like it? They listen to doctors. They respect the law. Their possessions are things. Friends can take a bake seat to work. They joke about situations. Their world is notional. They have choices, and believe that ambition will get them ahead. They have goals.
The wealthy believe that money should be conserved and invested. Friendship is knowing the right people. Education is about making and maintaining connections. The wealthy marry their own kind and exclude others. Their possessions are one-of-a-kind, objects with pedigrees. They judge food by its presentation. They have better health. They don’t obey laws; they make laws. They joke about social faux pas. Their world is international. They value the past more than the future, maintaining traditions and decorum. They feel a sense of noblesse oblige.
The differences in social classes are opportunities for us. For instance, there are three ways of exerting power: with muscle, by asserting principle, by wielding authority. Can you guess which economic strata favors each? What, then, happens when a prep school boy beats someone bloody, or an undocumented field hand takes a landowner to court? The social order is disturbed. That is good story.
Love and marriage above or below one’s class is an age-old source of story conflict. Nicholas Sparks and Charles Martin still exploit that, as do others. There are many ways, big and small, to cross lines and violate unwritten rules.
Some questions:
- In your unique story world, what are the social strata? Name them.
- What separates the strata? What boundaries? What customs? What history? What values?
- Who are the leaders of each strata? Why is each committed to preserving and defending the tribe?
- In the past, what injustice has one strata visited upon on another? What still simmers? What crime can never be forgotten? How is hatred kept alive?
- What are the unwritten rules that everyone knows? What are the hidden rules that only the leaders know?
- In the present, who breaks a hidden rule? How does conflict between the strata erupt? Embody the conflict in characters in your story.
- Who crosses class lines? Who rises or falls? Who is hiding his or her origins? Who pays the price—or is made to?
- Which two characters reach across class lines in understanding, or love? What unites everyone?
Class conflict is a durable basis for story because it raises questions of destiny versus free will. To what degree are our lives ordained by birth, where we grew up, how we were raised, the patterns imprinted in us? To what degree do we truly have freedom? We all wonder such things. Why not play out the questions in your fiction?
Meanwhile, be nice…just not in your novel.
What are the unique social strata in your WIP? How do they come into conflict?
[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).
Good Morning Don
My story world has hit the proverbial iceberg and all the lifeboats are being bought to store the high-valued trinkets of the wealthy offshore. I had the calamity hit the rich first, so they could be in motion before everyone else, i.e. before money loses its value. Panic hits the population, they see the wealthy rowing away in lifeboats and decide to go after them. I put a constraint on the story by making escape impossible for most.
We are looking forward to your class this weekend. See you there.
“Escape impossible for most.” Awesome. Love that. We’ve all felt trapped. I relate to that immediately.
Me too.
Thanks
Don–In my never humble opinion, this is as important as any of the many must-read posts you’ve published here. It underscores a view I subscribe to (not I hope the reason I think so well of what you say): class, not color is at the heart of racial division in the U.S. I would add that personal style, in particular the way we use language is at the heart of those class distinctions in our country.
I rely on this perspective in my latest novel: the antagonist is an illegal alien from Mexico who’s obsessed with American English. He has rigorously mastered it, and still keeps track of unfamiliar idioms and catch phrases in a pocket notebook. He dresses like the customers of the company he runs with his legal cousin, All Hands on Deck, a personal assistance service for the elderly. His senior citizen “clients” love him, because he doesn’t sound to them like any of the Mexican “help” they know. He sounds like themselves, and he dresses white. Thus, he makes it possible for his often racist customers to feel high-minded and generous, because they like him.
Great post. Important for any writer who writes about this world, past or present. Although I would think anyone writing science fiction or fantasy would need to be sensitive to the very issues you speak of here.
Henry Higgins would be proud of your protagonist. (Question is, are we proud of Henry Higgins, that snob?)
Seriously, I love that premise. Makes me want to keep a notebook of fresh idioms, vernacular, slang, jargon and street talk that I hear. On my shelf are slang dictionaries, a book on Appalachian dialect, and an actor’s textbook on accents.
We are who we speak. Class as defined by language. You and Mr. Shaw are on to something there.
Wow, Don, I gotta tell ya, this is one hell of a post. Packed with detailed tips on the value of writing about social class, I’m going to use every bit for my work in progress.
I am currently writing No Apology For Being, a story about a young woman struggling with finding her identity, and how her past and the history of those around her, affect the way she sees herself and her place in the world. Loaded with external and internal conflict, it’s a coming of age story with a twist (she falls for her dead step sister), and social class is a big part of how the characters discover the core of their being.
You’ve just given me more to work with, Don. Much appreciated.
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT (Gift of Travel)
Love that title, Dee! And the premise. Can’t wait!
Don, this post is excellent. Truly succinct and spot-on. It’s absolutely perfect for what I’m working on at this very moment. I’m digging into social class as well as nationality and how they wrap around themselves, dictate customs, and forge future paths for my characters. In fact, I had made a list of the differences in societal norms by class to help guide me while I draft, but your post here goes deeper. Thanks for sharing! I just printed this out, and now I’m anxious to tweak my outlines. :)
Terrific, Heather. I am complimented by your word “succinct”.
Blogging here on WU has tightened my writing, but more than that I have come to believe that brevity is not only the soul of wit, but a signal of intelligence and strength.
Right. Notice that compound sentence I just wrote? Did your eyes glaze over a bit? Mine did. Punchy. That’s the ticket. Punch the ticket. Now we’re rolling. You’ve got me thinking, too.
Happy writing!
Brevity is key these days, but I really love the way you put it:
“Brevity is not only the soul of wit, but a signal of intelligence and strength.”
I agree. Ten years of teaching high school was a good start for me in this department. If you don’t get to the point–and fast!–you lose your audience. It takes a lot of skill to assimilate a load of information, boil it down to its most poignant points, and deliver it succinctly. It has definitely affected my writing. Twitter and Facebook have helped as well.
I teach a workshop on pacing, actually, and we go into various things including sentence length, but also how punctuation, even in long sentences, can not only heighten tension but make a passage move swiftly. Robert Goolrick is a master at this.
I see a blog post forming…
I fall squarely in that middle class bucket but in the last week, our family took in two adults who tumbled into the poverty hole through a series of interlocking events (loss of job, beat up at homeless shelter, identity theft, wreck of car); it truly gave me a glimpse into another way of living that, as you say, has a very short view of time, a very narrow focus of what comes next. (how many of us have lived for a week in our car?) It’s appalling how little social services is doing to help people between the cracks. I hadn’t made the connection to how characters in my work might be affected by such circumstances. Thanks for the reminder that life in novels should reflect what happens to real people and certainly can provide a wealthy of conflict to explore.
God bless you for helping out. Your reward is insight. May it bring you riches in your fiction..
I’m always excited when you post, Don, knowing I’ll be pushed each time.
My MG WIP is all about rules–the written and unwritten rules that existed for girls in 1965. The MC has a dream and rebels against the rules, able to overcome some, but needing to accept others. Her determination is rewarded and she gets to see the Beatles in concert! Yeah, yeah, yeah!
But could she hear them sing over all the screaming?
Rules restricting girls in 1965. I wonder which have changed, and which have not. I’ll have to read your novel to find out!
No she couldn’t. Not at all. Neither could I!
Where we were:
https://www.pinterest.com/maryzisk/the-sexist-sixties/
Where we’ve come and are going:
https://www.pinterest.com/maryzisk/girl-power/
Rad boards, thanks for sharing!
I hadn’t even thought of the world of my vampire kitty-cat as having social strata. But, now that you mention it, in his world even vampires divide into classes. As with many class distinctions, it boils down to money. Hmm. Now you have me wondering if this can or will affect the story. Thanks (I think), Don.
And what are table manners among vampires? Much to discover there.
Another thought-provoking post, Don. Thanks.
First, “with all due respect” (meaning: uh-oh, here it comes), Ruby Payne’s analysis of the poor has been challenged on numerous fronts. One such study, titled “Miseducating Teachers About the Poor: A Critical Analysis of Ruby Payne’s Claims About Poverty,” the authors, four professors of education, conclude:
“Our critical analysis of Payne’s characterizations of people living in poverty indicates that her work represents a classic example of what has been identified as deficit thinking. We found that her truth claims, offered without any supporting evidence, are contradicted by anthropological, sociological and other research on poverty. We have demonstrated through our analysis that teachers may be misinformed by Payne’s claims. As a consequence of low teacher expectations, poor students are more likely to be in lower tracks or lower ability groups and their educational experience more often dominated by rote drill and practice.”
I have to admit, I find the class pigeonholes provided above too easily susceptible to cliched interpretation: and execution.
Although class is certainly one of the primary definitional lines drawn in our society, I generally put the question like this: What is your character’s tribe?
As you say, tribes have rules, conventions, expectations. So the key questions to ask are: How clear and sharply defined are those rules? Does the character understand them — or is s/he even aware of them? If so, how wholeheartedly does the character embrace those rules? How steadfastly does s/he defend them if challenged (i.e., if another member of the tribe, right or wrong, is threatened by an outsider)? What would it take for the character to be expelled from the tribe? How can I make that happen in the story?
In a way, this provides context for the old saw: Isolate the hero.
It also underscores the notion of stories as transgression. All stories are about a disturbance of the status quo. Rooting that disturbance in a transgression of tribal boundaries automatically sends a chill wind through the entire character web. Once the tribe is challenged, who are the character’s allies? Enemies? How to tell? How quickly does the “fog of war” descend?
Cop stories that focus on law and order can easily miss the core truth about cop culture: It’s “a pack of lone wolves,” and that creates instant tension between the loyalist and independent elements at work in every cop’s mindset. I’ve never met a cop who didn’t distrust other cops. They just know civilians can’t be trusted, either.
Soldiers in combat quickly shed any identification with national glory and idealistic principle and fight for the grunts beside them.
My detective hero in the current WIP gets nicknamed the “St. Jude of the Justice System” because he’s willing to take on the forsaken and lost, clients the larger world despises — like an African American vet who kills a kind, selfless, and widely admired white cop, seemingly in cold blood. It drives his wife and partner nuts. But it solidifies his role as outsider (essential for detectives), even as it confirms his essential middle-class identity: Who else but a bourgeois would so willingly betray his own class?
Okay, my mind is sufficiently activated. Thanks for that. Now — to work.
David–If you’re willing to accept that a person’s class has many working parts, I would think that “tribe” refers to some of those parts. A CPA is probably upper middle class. Certain behaviors and assumptions apply. But s/he will belong to a variety of tribes: schooling, religion, employer, etc. I think military forms of tribe including police are especially powerful for reasons of shared risk, discipline, etc. I have a cousin, retired army (West Point) who seems to organize his life in retirement around what is for me as a civilian an amazing number of reunions, They celebrate the tribes he’s been a part of within the Army, and nothing quite like that seems to apply in civilian life
P.S. We just got around to watching the film “Dancing at Lughnasa.” I think its portrayal of poverty is far more convincing — and devastating — than the one advanced by Ruby Payne.
I somewhat agree with the critique of Payne’s work as (perhaps) harmfully fatalistic, though on the other hand I think it is useful to consider that poverty isn’t just a lack of money. Nor is its remedy as simple as throwing money at it.
Alleviating suffering is one thing; changing society is another. But we are speaking of fiction and layers of conflict often left unused.
“Stories as transgressions.” Isolate the hero. Solid story principles. And easier to apply in a wold of class boundaries, ask me.
How’re things, David? Haven’t seen you in a while. Will you be at Thrillerfest again?
No Thrillerfest for me this year. Taking a year off to work on a few projects.
I stand by my preference for tribe over class, which I see as just one element in drawing tribal lines — family, work, education, geography, religion, politics also apply — and tribal allegiance is every bit as useful in developing layers of conflict, imho.
Shoot, will miss seeing you but glad it’s for a good cause.
P.P.S. From the cover copy for “The Evolution of Deficit Thinking” edited by Richard R. Valencia (Psychology Press):
“Deficit thinking refers to the notion that students (particularly low income, minority students) fail in school because such students and their families experience deficiencies that obstruct the learning process (e.g. limited intelligence, lack of motivation and inadequate home socialization). The authors of this text argue that deficit thinking is a pseudo-science founded on racial and class bias. They trace the evolution of deficit thinking from the American colonial period to the present, critiquing the model and offering more plausible explanations of why students fail.”
Oh yes, ask me there’s no question that class/racial bias is built into education. Witness the SAT. Never mind the unrecognized effect of trauma (ACTS score), and so on. All kids can learn. All can excel. Instead, they are tracked. Your early test scores are your destiny. That was true in my day and remains true in the present.
Here in NYC, private schools are using tests to measure the academic readiness of four-year-olds. Are rich toddlers inherently more ready? No, their parents pay for test prep courses. I kid you not. How can parents of lesser means compete with that?
Meanwhile, in public schools nationwide “problem” kids are being expelled as early as kindergarten. True! When trauma-awareness is put in place, though, expulsion rates drop to zero.
It’s encouraging that many colleges are working to close the gap, though its also interesting that the problems minority students have can be social and financial more than academic. Much needs to change.
But we digress. Tribes are as good as class for our purposes, in my opinion. Plenty of conflict either way you look at it.
I used to say my curse in life was having as my greatest gift the fact that I came out of the womb with an ingrained love for the phrase: “You may break the seal and begin.”
Smartest thing I ever did: Leave the ivory tower of academe and go out into the world to “Get my nose bloodied and my heart broken.”
Interesting, Thank you!
I think class boundaries are even more evident here in England, though there are differences – e.g. because of the National Health Service there is less health difference between classes, and speech/accent is very important still. My second novel (called “Makeover”) is set in Oxford, where I live, and its main theme is the barriers set by class and education.
Two agents who called it in pronounced the class theme “old fashioned” – I don’t think so!
Old-fashioned? Oh? Class barriers have fallen in the U.K.? Really? London sophisticates may want to believe so, but they should look up from their £20 craft cocktails and Mother Genie Pushchairs and take a look around. Or, as you say, just listen.
Class conflict may not fit prevailing market fashions, but they aren’t going away any more than the human condition is.
Excellent food for thought, Donald. Thank you.
But thank you even more for this, which belongs on a Post-it stuck onto every writer’s computer:
Be nice…just not in your novel.
Ha! So right. Glad you agree.
I started reading this article and thought that it was one of the best articles I’d ever seen here. Then I saw who wrote it. My next thought was “duh.”
My series of novels about a new pastor dealing with an old church deals extensively with class and class destinations. My beta readers were uncomfortable with a church elder stating that the church was his church, his family had helped found it and he was determined to see his daughters married in that church.
This was a fantastic article.
There is hardly an organization anywhere without internal power struggles. I marvel at the discomfort of your beta readers!
I like the idea of exploiting fissures in both tribe and social class relationships to deepen my stories. Fortunately, this is relatively easy for me as I write a mystery series set in Regency England and am planning a second in Victorian England (amazingly different, by the way). The unwritten and written rules of conduct in daily life seem to function like monolithic control in these cultures–and maybe they do in ours too even when we don’t see.
Don’s set of challenge questions comes at the perfect time for me. Thank you for another helpful post!
I sometimes wonder whether the rigidity of 19th Century English society was a result of anxiety about social change, the rise of the middle class, industrialization, etc. What do you think?
Complicated question…Early in the century I suppose people reacted to the excesses of the French Revolution and feared that such bloody conflict could break out in England. Later there were the intensification of Evangelical sentiment, rapid social changes, and scientific theories, such as Darwinian evolution, that threatened established belief. And so on. I also remember reading something about increasing anxiety at the fast pace of modern life. Sounds like us, doesn’t it?
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, non?
Indeed–and so much fun to dig out those parallels! But I’m never sure if that should make us despair or give us hope.
Oui, tu as raison.
I’ve taken a few workshops with you. IMO, today’s post is worthy of an entire 2 1/2 day . class. Important information. Thanks for giving me another layer for my novel construction.
Thanks for being part of the 2-1/2 days of Emotional Craft in Houston last weekend. An elite group of workshop participants, wouldn’t you say?
Indeed, I am always amazed at how many students are willing to repeat your classes. There are also many published writers who still look to you for inspiration. The students get better because the teacher keeps getting better.
Great post and I’ll be saving that list of questions. In my WIP – an epic fantasy –
social strata is fundamental, affecting the tier they live on in their walled castle, clothing, job of course, and future. My main character faces the need to change all the preconceptions she’s formed about her place in society and who her country’s real enemy is – the family in power or the previous overlords.
Fighting against this system is great. Fighting against oneself is even better.
“Fighting against this system is great. Fighting against oneself is even better.”
THIS is going on a framed post-it!
Great post, Don, as always. I look forward to the first Wednesday in a new month. Your analysis is spot on and more evident in the current political mess we are in. Society has its strata and often those divisions make life difficult for many. My MC is middle class, an RN in a community hospital in Chicago where she works with and wants to help those who often struggle because of their economic status which then determines so much of their social abilities. A pivotal character is Dan the Weatherman, an autistic savant who roams the neighborhood she loves and becomes an important part of the search to find her missing child. This post encourages me to flesh out societal differences–especially among the people at the hospital. In my opinion doing that highlights tension and drama, brings the reader into a story that flashes with realism. Thanks.
I love characters who do not fit into any social structure. Your character the Weatherman makes me want to read your novel all by himself.
I was the Safety Coordinator for a non-profit serving the chronically homeless (the least able to help themselves) prior to El Nino last year. As I worked on preparations, one of the staff ideas was to get wooden pallets for people to put under their tents, so that in rainy weather and mild flooding, the tents would stay dry. We had someone who would donate them, and as we operated in the middle of a several block area that had hundreds of people living in tents, it seemed a great idea.
Then I asked a formerly homeless person in our transitional housing program what he thought. His response was that the pallets would be broken up and used for firewood for heat and cooking. They’d never last until they were needed. Folks on the street weren’t interested in what might happen in the future. Survival meant dealing with getting through this day, this night.
We are always told to ask what a character really wants – and that can change significantly if that character is homeless, or dirt poor, or living in a mansion, or a student at a university.
Class, power, wealth, all factor into it, and I will look even more deeply at those questions after reading your post. One situation immediately comes to mind for me in my WIP, so thank you for a great wake-up call – in work and in life.
We who are not homeless think we know it all. Clearly not.
I was part of the “elite group” this past weekend. There was a question I should have asked, but time was precious.
My story is my own true experience. I waffle between NNF, Memoir (and is that NNF?) and “making it fiction.” I am unclear about how to proceed. I was planning to just change names and locations since there is a risk involved, and previously understood NNF was the best fit. Any comments?
Hard to say. Generally, stories that need to follow true events are best treated as memoir. Stories that spring from true events are, obviously, best as fiction. But that’s a generalization. I’d ask, how does it write naturally? The answer is probably your answer.
Thank you, Don. I appreciate your response, and most of all the generosity of your spirit. They way you give of your self…the real you. The not holding back is what I am beginning to see is the place where good writing must come from. I treasure the past weekend, and have two new “writing buddies” as a result as well as the top notch presentations you gave. As a “presenter” in former jobs, I know the energy required just to stand “and deliver”. Then there is all the research, study, and planning besides. What a value you provide. I hope we students can live up to what you give.
As others have noted, this post could be a workshop on its own!
I have the same concerns as David Corbett that class is too simplistic a framework. I’m fascinated by hierarchies, which I guess are similar to David’s thoughts on tribes. First there are rules for who’s in the tribe and who’s out, then there are more rules for the pecking order within a tribe. What’s interesting to me is that people outside the tribe may not even notice the hierarchy, and people who make it into the tribe may be dismayed to discover the tribes within the tribe or the unwritten rules on who’s “really” part of the tribe and who’s considered a poseur.
Great food for thought!
By all means, enlarge the framework! More story potential is a good thing.
Lots of food for thought here. Even fodder for backstories of manmade reasons for class rules and how they evolved and twisted…
I’m with Keith on loving the “Be nice but not in your novel…” In fact I want a tee shirt with that.
Thanks for your insights.
We used to sell tee shirts at my Breakout Novel workshops. They said things like, “Make it worse!” and “Tension on Every Page!”
I’m thinking buttons now, or fridge magnets, or sticky-note pads. How about, “If you see rats, be cool”?
It’s a common occurrence to see rats in the USA today. All you have to do is turn on the news… or read their twitter rants.
My 11 year old son has Asperger’s Syndrome which affects social communication, perspective-taking and many other things. It’s been eye-opening for me over the years as I’ve had to explain these unwritten social rules to my son. He regularly points out how often what people “preach” is at odds with what they “practice.” He understood the concept of hypocrisy at a very young age. : )
Amazing that after so many conferences, consultations and blog columns you can still come up with new ways to help writers think about their stories. Great post.
Looking forward to your master class at SIWC and three days to focus solely on writing! Registration kicks off shortly…fingers crossed.
Hypocrisy! Man, I should have added that to my list of prompts: “Who in your story is the greatest hypocrite? How?”
Maybe add to that: “Who has shakable integrity? How is that tested?”
Thanks to your son! He’s a genius.
Thank you for exploring this topic in such an engaging way. It’s one that’s been on my mind both in writing and my place in the world. We know how those two often parallel each other. My husband and I both live in a working class background and live in a rural town. Neither one of us finished our college education, not just yet, but we’re firm believers in learning every day and goal-setting.
For the record, we both still feel like odd ducks out in light of recent political events. Our views are fairly different from those of the community.
What I found with working on The Education of Sugar Girl, a story about a girl who chooses the drug dealing business after her father goes to prison, is that the class theme often comes up. The questions you dare us to ask of our stories are all ready in my notebook. Thank you- once again you’ve given me another kind of compass to navigate my story world.
Love that title!
Perhaps one of the reasons that North American fiction doesn’t explore class is that we don’t like to think that classism exists here–but we’re kidding ourselves.
Thank you for this helpful articles.
Thanks for yet another insightful tool for the notebook! I’m 375 words in on my first draft and already I see and feel the changes in the story from reading your books and your posts. Looking forward to finally getting to experience your class this weekend!
I don’t want to read what I call shallow characters; I don’t want to write them. Knowing, however, doesn’t make the writing easier. I’ve garnered from your material, Don, the phrase “go deeper.” As I make final revisions to my work in progress, I wonder if I’ve left the class issue unbalanced. I know the middle class protagonist because I am a writer from the middle class. Have I written my lesser-economic class character, the protag’s best friend, with less depth? Your questions will be a good guide to that answer.
Thank you.
Interesting and useful information as always, Don! Having heard you over the years in New Orleans, Tucson, and Dallas, I am qualified to say that. Thank you.
My WIP has marriage, mentoring, and murder across class and racial lines in the South in the ’60s. I’m having a lot of fun with it. You’ve given me more to think about in deepening my characters in their interactions and conflicts.
I especially enjoyed a term you used in your Rules, about men greeting each other–nod up and nod down. I was wondering how to describe that concisely and you have given me the answer.
An amusing sidebar– a guy will also nod up at a girl and it can be sexy or sassy or cute or annoying, all depending…. And the funny thing is, and this has nothing to do with writing, but so did my late, great, little, white Westie. Every time he saw me, he would nod up so cute, and I’d call him Sassy Dog and grab him in a big hug.
Thanks for the memory and all the good information.
Thank you for this article, Donald. It’s fantastic, and something I admittedly haven’t really put a lot of thought into. The questions you pose are excellent food for thought.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience with us!
I’ve been writing class conflict in my WIP high fantasy/romance and didn’t realise all the delicious complications I could use. Thanks for the post.