“But it really happened.”

I was in an adult-ed writer’s group when I first heard this. I’d watched the woman speaking become tenser and grimmer as members of the group—gently and with compassion—suggested that the gruesome events on the page could be presented in a manner more conducive to engaging the reader.

She listened for only a few moments—sadly, this group did not have a ‘be silent while being critiqued’ policy—before unleashing, accusing the group of everything from indifference about sexual assault on children, to ignorance about how children really thought (this in response to our collective idea that 4-year-olds did not speak like 30-year-olds.) She shook as she lectured us on the horror of incest.

True that. Everything she said about her pain and suffering was true—but it still didn’t work on the page. My social services hat went on and I reacted to (more…)

A Guest Post By Kathy Crowley

It’s another gray morning for you, the long-suffering Writer-Querier.  As usual, you take a moment to steel yourself, then open your email for the daily parade of rejections.

The Flatterer: “Mr. J — Although you deftly draw us into this dark world of addiction, and I was moved by the protagonist’s struggles, I am going to pass on this one…” [DELETE]

The Economist: “I was certainly intrigued when I began reading your novel, however, in this challenging market…” [DELETE]

The All-Purpose Generic Not-That-Into-You: “I’m afraid I just don’t feel strongly enough about this….” [DELETE] [DELETE] [DELETE]

And then this one:

(more…)

A Guest Post

By Nicole Bernier

(Muse Post Below!)

You’re writing a tense scene, really in the thick of it: An aging actress is holding a handful of pills. She’s been offered the role of the star’s mother, rather than that of the star.

She lifts glass of water toward her mascara-streaked face, pills cupped in her other hand. She will miss the feel of crystal. The reader is with you, waiting for that actress to throw back her head, give a final cry of hopelessness and say goodbye to all that.

But suddenly, you’re off.

You, the writer, cut away to backstory. And the reader, instead of getting the big gulp, gets an overdose of the actress’s memories of her grandfather’s pharmacy. The tactile joy of powders and jars, the unyielding grind of mortar and pestle. The social stress of classmates seeking free candy. Even a short rant on the demise of the neighborhood mom-and-pop pharmacies. By the end of the four-page digression, your reader has had a lovely romp through the economic rise of CVS, but can barely remember the actress and her pills.

Of course I’m not speaking from experience. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve had “Stay in the moment!” or “TOO MUCH DESCRIPTION” ever written in the margins by my agent or editors.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, you do have a digression problem. I see you chafing at the word “problem,” so let’s call it a gift, instead. The first step, then, is admitting you have a gift.

In skilled hands, a digression can be an effective thing, lovely and looping and brilliant. It can reinforce a theme by juxtaposing a related event, and add depth to a scene by linking to an episode in a character’s past. It can offer poetic observations, scholarly extras, and sometimes just a nice break in the action. Moby Dick is chock full of them; whether or not you’re a fan of those leviathan asides, without them, Melville’s masterpiece would be just another fish tale (and probably half the length).

The best writers layer scene upon scene so well we’re not even aware that we’ve been diverted to another path. Less well done, and you need a truckload of breadcrumbs to lead you back into the flow of the story.

But know this: No matter how lyrical your prose or how insightful that jewelbox of an anecdote, when you cut away from the forward pace of the story, you do break the narrative tension.

So what’s the difference between a digression that’s effective, and one that isn’t?

Start by asking yourself some tough questions.

1)    What does this really add to the story, and is it necessary HERE?

2)    Do you use too much digression throughout the book? The last thing you want is the reader ticked off by yet another lengthy plot interruption. (“Oh, great. Just when it was getting good.”)

3)    Is it appropriate in this situation to cut away from the action? If a character stumbles upon something disturbing, he probably isn’t going to pause to provide a lengthy mental riff on the pictures on the wall. Unless, of course, you intend to make a statement about the character’s dissociative state.

4)    Be honest: As a reader, would you be tempted to skip ahead through this “boring part” and find out what happens next? Or, worse…

5)    By the time the digression comes in for a landing, were you so distracted by mortars and pestles that you forgot the actress was even about to do herself in? If so, goodbye, narrative tension.

So many authors make great use of digression, but in the end, I suspect it comes down to a matter of taste; some readers are just more willing than others to be led through the maze as a part of the story experience.

Nichole Bernier is a freelance writer based in Boston, and has been a contributing editor with Condé Nast Traveler magazine for 12 years. Before moving to Boston she was on staff writing features on golf, skiing and current events. She also served as the magazine’s Ombudsman, writing a Dear Abby-style column that mediates travel disasters, and as a television spokesperson. She received her master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was a Senior Editor at Boston Magazine, and written for magazines including Elle, Self, Health, Men’s Journal, Child, and This Old House. She has participated in fiction workshops at The Writing Center in Washington, D.C. and at Grub Street in Boston, and is working with her agent on revisions to her first novel. She lives west of Boston with her husband and five children. Nichole can be found on Twitter at @nicholebernier.

A Guest Post By Kathy Crowley

A few evenings ago, I finished reading Anne Enright’s Booker Prize winning novel, The Gathering – a brutal, beautiful story built around a suicide, a wake, a large Irish family and a narrator who is angry and honest to the point of discomfort.  It left me breathless — not in a euphoric way, but instead in that sense of needing to breathe and not, somehow, being able to do so.  Although I am happy to report my breathing resumed, I still found myself inarticulate about the book and did what any person with a laptop and wifi does: I googled and read what other (more articulate) people thought.

Which brings me to Mighty Dog.

Once upon a time I was in a writer’s workshop with a young woman named we’ll call Lisa.  In addition to the novel which was her major project at the time, Lisa had a lot going on —  a day job, a mother who wanted her to hurry up and get married, an ability to keep the rest of us laughing, and a short story named “Mighty Dog”.  This was more than a decade ago, so many details are lost, but I do remember the closing scene of this story.  The protagonist — a wife whose husband is leaving her for another woman — looms over the couple’s tiny emaciated dog.  In tears, alone in her kitchen, she opens can after can of Mighty Dog, scooping and slopping the contents into the dog’s bowl. “Eat!” she screams at the dog. “Eat!”

Great scene, right?  You haven’t even read the rest of the story and I’ve already got you.  Not surprisingly, everyone in the workshop loved it.  Also not surprisingly, the story had flaws, and everyone had ideas about how to tweak this or fix that.  It is telling that I remember none of the flaws, just the power of the story and especially of that closing scene.

So Lisa worked on it.  She brought it back, and it was still good, but not quite right.  She revised again.  And again.  But by the last time I read it, I could feel the power of it waning.  Everyone could feel it, including Lisa, though none of us could put a finger on how or why. Somehow all these minor fixes had resulted in the narrative equivalent of a slow leak, and we could hear the coming rumble of a flat.

At some point, Lisa’s boyfriend (now husband, I think) whisked her away from us, first to Connecticut, then to Ohio (or someplace like that). The spirit of “Mighty Dog” remained, though.  We all felt complicit in the damage done to this  innocent story, and eventually, “Mighty Dog” became our workshop’s shorthand for killing the spirit of a story.  “I think I mighty-dogged it,” someone might say, or “I’m just afraid of mighty-dogging it.” (more…)