Whiff of Death, Meet Moment of Clarity
By David Corbett | June 14, 2018 |
On May 28, Sharon Bially posted a wonderful piece here on Writer Unboxed on linking motive to purpose. She defined purpose as:
[T]he unique gift we each bring to the world and always have. Our purpose has been leading us through our whole lives, in every aspect of our lives, and never changes. It is the solid, internal ground that each of us can stand on while the world is spinning out of control.
I liked this post so much I read its opening out loud to my students at the recent Wake Up And Write retreat in Boise, Idaho (where I was joined on faculty by fellow Unboxer Grace Wynter). I explained to the class that Sharon’s concept of Purpose dovetailed with what I refer to as the Yearning.
At the risk of being annoyingly repetitive, let me once again lay out briefly what I mean by the Yearning: It is the deep need shaping the character’s “dream of life”—the kind of person she wants to be, the way of life she hopes to live.
And yet most people (and characters) stumble through life barely aware of their Yearning—or, worse, they expend a great deal of effort trying to deny or escape it. (This is what Christopher Vogler in The Hero’s Journey refers to as the Resistance to the Call.)
The Yearning can be a harsh mistress. It demands of us a level of honesty, integrity, courage, and commitment that can feel overwhelming, and the shame of not living up to its dictates can be crippling.
Failing to live up to the Yearning’s demands, once they’re clearly recognized, can feel like a living death. Better to let the fog of distraction or denial obscure the Yearning a little longer. And so we head for the beach, hang out with friends, focus on our families, bury our faces in work, attend to the never-ending list of chores, get loaded, etc.
What good will it do to fulfill my Yearning? Chances are I’ll fail, and what would I honestly accomplish in this big, bad, dangerous world if I happened to succeed? Why would it matter? What difference could my fulfillment possibly make in the grand scheme of things?
This may explain why many writers, in order to raise the stakes, short-arm the Yearning and instead invest in an exterior goal that clearly registers as life-and death: rescue the miners, catch the killer, discover the cure. Here the character’s motivation is clear-cut, and the consequences of failure are obvious and dire. No need to delve into the sticky, gooey, vague, mysterious muck of the character’s Yearning or Purpose.
And yet, as Sharon rightly noted, this often leaves readers wanting. Motivations driven solely by exterior causes and consequences seldom provide a deeply meaningful experience for the reader. It’s not enough for the protagonist merely to get the job done—even when the job is saving the world. We will admire such a character’s capabilities but the emotional range of our engagement with the story won’t extend much beyond what we’d feel on a roller-coaster. To feel something deeper, engage more meaningfully, we need some inkling of why success at achieving the goal matters—not just in general, but specifically to the character herself.
This is where (again, as Sharon pointed out) linking motive to Yearning—or Purpose—proves most fruitful. When the character understands how accomplishing some exterior task or pursuing a goal speaks not just to external success but inner integrity, authenticity, validity, or worth, when it resonates with an internal sense of identity and morality that defines who the character is in fundamental terms, we recognize why and how the stakes are truly a matter of life and death. Failure won’t just have external consequences. It will mean the character has in some way betrayed herself by failing to live up to her own promise, her dream of life, her understanding of who she is and how she should live.
By now, some of you have already felt a slight scratching at the back of your mind. You’re wondering: All well and good, but where does this Yearning or Purpose come from? How does one recognize it when it appears—and at what stage of life (or the story) does that take place?
Sharon noted that her post was too brief to address such issues, so I thought I’d pick them up here.
To me, it’s a bit facile to simply say we are all born with this deep inner sense of identity and purpose. That’s proof by assertion, which is no proof at all.
As I noted in a previous post (“Motivating the Reluctant Protagonist”), some individuals at a very young age become aware of this core sense of identity, ambition, or purpose: Judy Garland, Eleanor Roosevelt, R.C. Collingwood, and Josephine Baker were examples I provided.
But not everyone experiences such a life-defining moment early in life. Sometimes it comes later.
Rite of passage ceremonies for both girls and boys often involve not just a step into maturity but a transformation of identity. Among many Plains Indian tribes this often required going off into the wilderness alone, fasting and suffering other privations with the purpose of eliciting a vision. That vision would serve to provide the initiate a new name, and failure to live up to the challenge embodied in that name was considered profoundly shameful.
Occupations that suggest a personal vocation—artist, soldier, lawman, doctor, nurse, teacher, priest, nun—often involve a deep personal identification with the occupation’s professional obligations. The person chooses that career not just because of the intriguing challenges and attractive benefits, but because in a very fundamental way the job speaks to them. They feel “born to it.” (Interesting note: observe how all of the occupations I listed involve service to others.)
And yet some people seemingly stumble into their professions only to realize afterward how suitable the work is to who they are. It’s as though their unconscious minds were at the helm, guiding them despite the oblivion or even opposition of their conscious minds. (Not everyone is so lucky, of course.)
For some people, the experience of parenting can awaken a deep sense of purpose, but that purpose is so intimately wrapped up with the child’s well-being it is sometimes difficult to know if it is truly a calling to one’s unique destiny or simply a recognition of the overwhelming duty of parenthood—which may in fact prove to be a profound digression or distraction from fulfillment of one’s own Yearning. This accounts for why so many people with hopes of pursuing a meaningful career struggle to be truly aware and attentive parents.
Last, no doubt there are people who feel no such deep need, purpose, or core identity at all. They may have been pounded into cynicism by failure—or fear. They may adhere to the belief that life is essentially meaningless and must be lived for the sake of the moment. They may believe “one must be many things to many people,” and assume a role as circumstances dictate. If they feel the call of a deep-seated need to fulfil a unique individual purpose, they have either found a way to stifle or silence it or have established a serviceable means to distract themselves from it, override its demands, or deny it altogether.
The point from a narrative perspective isn’t so much when the Yearning is formed—whether in childhood, adolescence, or maturity. Rather, the issue is how and when in the course of the story the character not only becomes aware of the Yearning, but comes to understand and feel the full extent of its demands.
This is often when the “death” element of life-and-death comes in. It is often only in the face of death or failure so profound it approximates a kind of death—personal, emotional, professional, even physical—that the Yearning clarifies most intensely. (This is what Blake Snyder, in Save the Cat!, refers to as “the whiff of death.”) That’s when we have to ask ourselves—why go on? Why keep trying? Why not compromise or turn back or surrender?
We die alone, and in that inescapable isolation lies the truth of any unique purpose or calling we might have.
Put differently, I come to understand most profoundly how and why I might possess a unique reason for living only once I truly grasp the fact that I cannot escape my ultimate annihilation. My Yearning is a reflection of my need to make my life mean something in the face of my inevitable death.
I’m not saying that our awareness of our mortality creates the Yearning, i.e., only once I realize my life will end do I feel a need to make it matter. What I’m saying is that such an experience clarifies the Yearning in a way nothing else does.
For a self-help take on the matter, consider this post, “Thinking About Death Clarifies Your Life,” by Vancouver Life Coach Pamela Dale.
For a fictional example, consider the exchange between Vincent and Jules (John Travolta and Samuel Jackson) in the diner at the end of Pulp Fiction. (Here’s a video clip if you need to refresh your recollection.) Jules has just experienced what he believes is a miracle—he should have died in a hail of close-range gunfire, but none of the bullets hit home. He has felt the touch of God in this, but has no notion of why God would involve Himself in his life. That question haunts him. But what is undeniable is he has experienced “what alcoholics call a moment of clarity” (see the 4:10 mark of the video), and he knows he must change his life.
Incidentally, Tarantino is rightly praised for his creative use of time in plotting and other technical innovations, just as he is often condemned for seeming to cater to mere shock value. It’s precisely this moment and others like it in this film, however, that provide something deeper and richer. This entrée into Jules’s inner life, his reflection on his mortality and his need to pursue a new direction, provide the emotional resonance the action scenes cannot. Note also how this is accomplished by allowing Jules to reveal through conflict—i.e., Vincent doesn’t buy what Jules is saying, and makes him defend his position at every step of the process.
Go to your current WIP. For your protagonist, identify the point in the story where they realize their Purpose or Yearning. What prompted that “moment of clarity?” Is there only one, or several? If several, how do they build to the deepest, most affecting moment of awareness in the story?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
David –
Valuable post. Very well written.
Thank you!
PS – had never come across the term “proof by assertion” before. Hate the phenomenon – love the phrase. :-)
Thanks, Tom. I studied mathematics, and “proof by assertion” was sometimes more humorously referred to as “hand-waving.” One sees it a lot on news programs. Punditry is rife with it.
“Motivations driven solely by exterior causes and consequences seldom provide a deeply meaningful experience for the reader.”
Yes, I teach that too. Protagonists acting to save others is never as strong as protagonists acting to save themselves.
The misapprehension, I think, derives from the old fashioned word that we used to use: motive. Motive implies wanting something. It points to externals. Goals. Those are fine but what a character wants to get or do doesn’t have the same emotional grip as what a character needs inside. Yearning.
Now on the other hand, goals propel us into action. To get something we have to do something. Yearning doesn’t work like that. Yearning is a lump of feelings squatting in our hearts. What to do to fulfill that yearning is murky.
Thus, I think of story as happening two primary levels: 1) What a character does to get what he or she wants; 2) How he or she finds meaning-especially the meaning for oneself–in story events in order to discover and fulfill what he or she deeply, inwardly, needs. Outer journey. Inner journey.
There are other levels too, but that’s for another day. Always love your erudite posts, David, and good to see that while you and I and others like Sharon may speak of story in different terms we ultimately mean the same thing.
Be seeing you soon in NYC. Looking forward to that.
Hi, Don:
My math professors always encouraged us to read texts in different languages or texts that used different terminology to discuss the same thing. This forces you to see what’s being represented free from a particular way of phrasing it and in a purer, deeper, more fundamental way.
I saw another example of this at the writing retreat where I got to meet Grace. What she refers to as the “misapprehension,” i.e., the “wrong approach” the character has conceived to solve his core problem, is what I (borrowing a term from Elizabeth George) refer to as the Pathological Maneuver(s).
I know we both have great respect for Steven James, and he notes that characters face three distinct but interrelated levels of struggle: Interior, Exterior, and Interpersonal. I find that clarity extremely useful, as long as the writer remembers that these “struggle threads” must be interwoven to create story unity. Solving the interior problem is intrinsically linked to solving the exterior problem and the interpersonal one, as you point out in your comment.
And although I agree that “Protagonists acting to save others is never as strong as protagonists acting to save themselves,” I also believe that we care most deeply about those who care about others. I think coming to grips with one’s Yearning or Purpose seldom exists in a vacuum, and it’s often how that inner epiphany resonates outward that permits the reader to feel it more profoundly.
The image that came to mind as I was writing that was the concluding image of Hitchcok’s Vertigo. Scotty (Jimmy Stewart) has realized what has been driving him, the false Yearning that has betrayed him. But that awareness has come at a terrible, tragic cost, which we feel deeply not just because of his isolation atop that tower, but because of Madeleine/Judy’s plunge to her death below.
Yes, very much looking forward to seeing you in NYC–though I see on the schedule that my workshop and yours are in the same time slot. If no one shows up for mine, I’ll slip into the back row for yours.
Good post, David, and I remember Sharon’s too. My MC gets her whiff of death in Jim’s mirror moment (and she is literally looking in the mirror).
Hi, Vijaya:
I often think of the mirror moment as the character’s first inkling that what they are trying to do poses fundamental questions of identity, authenticity, integrity, purpose, etc. But it’s only that first inkling. Usually things have to get much worse before that epiphany crystallizes into not just an awareness but a decision.
In Robert McKee’s STORY, he notes that most of a story concerns the character’s struggling to understand his problem, which often entails resisting the terrible or daunting truth he has been avoiding for some time. It is only when the confrontation with death is inescapable, the “change-or-die” moment so to speak, that the will to actually do something finally emerges.
He likens this to the way people change in real life. It takes more than a recognition of what one is doing wrong or who one has become. People only change when the foreseeable consequences of not doing so become so clearly worse than what change represents that a failure to act amounts to suicide. Or worse.
Good luck!
Yes, David, that mirror moment is exactly that, the first inkling, and just like in real life, even after an epiphany, it can take time to act upon it because it is hard changing directions. Inertia and all.
I’ve not read Robert McKee but I think I probably should. The fact it’s a tome has always been my main resistance.
Vijaya–like you, I have decided to thumb my nose at all those who tell writers not to use mirrors. Again like you, the main character in my current project encounters mortality, in his case by inspecting himself for signs of skin cancer.
Barry, I wasn’t trying to thumb my nose at the rules. When Jim first spoke about the mirror moment I took a look at my ms and was tickled that it did happen at the halfway point and in a mirror, no less.
The examen is so important, both in writing and life.
David–your discussion reveals the serious limitations of a forum that demands off-the-cuff responses. I will read and think about what you’ve written, and hope to speak with you about it one day. I believe your post owes a lot to your being a disciple of Carl Jung. It can also be understood in terms of the Aristotelian idea of essences.
But here’s a thought: the great appeal of good stories has to do with how they differ from life. They organize experience, and make it coherent. They provide what’s missing from most lives. Aufklarund!, Eureka! Epiphany! are some of the words we use for it. Clarity and coherence are others.
We respond to such moments in literature and film precisely because they are for the most part missing from life. IMO, when they do occur in life, more often than not they result from a desperate need to choose, not from a sudden burst of clarity.
But the yearning (to use your term) is there for what’s missing. That makes us all the more grateful when this thirst is believably quenched in fictions.
Hi, Barry:
Some of my thinking on this has been shaped by my teaching prison inmates and my talks with friends who had to overcome serious substance abuse problems. What I’ve learned is that “a sudden burst of clarity” often precedes or accompanies a “desperate need to choose.” When it doesn’t, then the moment of clarity often comes later as the choice is dissected and justified. The choice often reveals unconscious or previously resisted forms of self-awareness that burst to the surface precisely because the need to choose prevented the usual rationalizations, denials, and resistance that had previously prevented the person from acting. Here the moment of clarity is post-hoc, and that assuredly presents problems — i.e., how much of this after-the-fact reasoning is simply an attempt to gin up an answer to the unanswerable question, “Why?” But sometimes we only get it right once we cheat ourselves — or life denies us — the chance to back down.
And yeah, I’ll cop to the Aristotle and Jung. But also Camus, just to keep me honest.
Thanks for chiming in.
The notion of death or the death element clarifying Yearning resonates on so many levels. In my own life, it wasn’t until I faced the threat of death as a result of my own poor judgment that I stopped playing games and clarified my own Yearning. From that day forward, I never forgot how that felt, and that awareness, that urgency continue to inform my life every day.
I hadn’t realized that was also true in my WIP. The main character suffers an early loss, and it affects her, but it isn’t until she suffers another, later loss which involves a death, that the Yearning is clarified. She does spend a lot of time and energy trying to deny and/or escape her Yearning, but of course, that’s impossible (or there would be no story!).
Thanks for the great post, David, and for your great teaching at the workshop. Can’t wait for Doc Holliday to come out!
Thanks for inviting me to teach, Carol. It was a great experience. (And I love your reasoning on both your own life and translating that to your fiction.)
This is beautiful, David, and so helpful. I always love that your posts clarify and solidify the otherwise-nebulous elements of story.
I am going to study my WIP to make sure that moment when the narrator experiences the realization of her yearning is clear … I have been so focused on setting up her yearning (and showing how she is oblivious to the real yearning–she’s only 13 years old) that I may be neglecting the importance of that epiphany moment.
Thank you!
Thanks, Sarah. Sometimes the Yearning is only discerned as a sense of Lack — something important is missing. It’s through the struggle to slake that Lack — and the many missteps and failures thereof — that the character comes to sense what it is they really, truly, deeply want.
It’s tricky with young characters, because they still have sop much to learn about themselves and the world. But they do have a conscience, and that often reflects the bigger questions of: What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of life do I want? It’s often only when faced with the need to make a profound decision — as Barry suggests above — that characters come to grips with these things.
Thanks for chiming in.
Hey David – Just wanted to let you know that this post has had me thinking all morning (as your posts always seem to).
You’ve informed a part of what I was already noodling for my own upcoming post here (starting with Sharon, through you, to me and… likely a dead end, lol). I told a friend that I’m trying to weave something, but all I have is a basket of tangled yarn. You’ve helped to de-tangle it a bit. Thank you!
Hi, Vaughn. Nothing makes me happier than the words, “You’ve helped …”
Hallo David! your post gives definition to what my writing does (or what my brain does in my writing… ) “You;ve helped… ” define what it is i do #winkwink – the Great Yearning is present in all of us. i do believe, however, that our “deep inner sense of identity and purpose” are, in fact, instilled in us at birth by God, and our greatest struggle is discovering / defining it and living and fulfilling it. my fight was being forced into a box in which i neither fit nor belonged, and now i’m writing i pour all my previous angst (aka yearning) into my fictional peeps.
I’m late to read, but taking notes, David, and ever grateful for your delineation of the writing process. I am excited, thinking that I know where the yearning is truly addressed in my WIP, but now will go back with a wider and more educated view. For me, writing is intuitive–yet so plastic that I can rethink my character’s position or highlight aspects of it. Your guidance helps me to do that.
For whatever reason, the site won’t let me “like” your comments, Robin and Beth, but I wanted you both to know I’ve read them and appreciate them. Glad to know the post has proved useful.
I wrote to WU and asked why I can no longer “like”. But I haven’t heard back, David. Thanks so much, Beth
Sorry guys! I know Therese is aware, and has been trying various ways of resolving it. We’ve had a lengthy thread on the WU Facebook page about the issue for several days. It’s been a bummer. (Though I remain unaffected, for whatever reason.)
Beth, I’m so sorry, but I never received your email. Gah. That’s frustrating.
That’s okay, Therese. I thought it was ME. My paranoid reaction, but it might be browsers we are using or something. I could LIKE before and then it just stopped.
vewwy intewesting… ya, i tried to “like” your comment reporting that you tried to “like” mine and Beth’s and I cannot “like” either your comment or Beth’s.
i do not… *like* this situation…. #facepalm #groan…
David, I just changed a setting. Does that help? As Vaughn mentioned, we’ve been working on this glitch for a good number of days now. Not sure what’s going on. I may need to try another plugin…
Hmm. Still unable to “like.” Sigh…
ah ha! and now i likes it!!! seems to be unglitched now
Fabulous post, and great discussion in the comment stream. Thank you. I’m struggling with this at the moment for my current characters, and I think there might now be a chink of light between the clouds.
And David, I don’t think the repetition of good insights is ever a problem for me. Even when it’s on a topic I think I know pretty well, the way another person expresses it, and my considering those words in the context of my current wip and characters — it always loosens up some knot. So repeat away. :)
Thanks, Anne.