Progressive Complications: "Sweet Blue Flowers" by Takako Shimura (Part 2)
The second part of my dive into Progressive Complications and the manga “Sweet Blue Flowers".”
Part Two: Chapter 2 - “Stand By Me”
Today I will continue the story breakdown (with a focus on progressive complications) of Sweet Blue Flowers by Takako Shimura. If you have not read the first part, you can find it here.
From last time:
At the end of Chapter 1 we are left with the following complications unresolved:
Complication #1: Why is Fumi prone to crying?
Complication #2: Will they join the same club? Will Fumi manage to avoid being in a club forever?
Complication #3: What’s up with this weird intimacy with Fumi and her cousin?
And, of course, the series Crisis question: Will Fumi and Akira end up together!?
In Chapter Two, we return again to Fumi and Akira - two childhood friends who were separated and went to different schools until! they both ended up at Matsuoka Girl's High School in year 1. Reunited, we join Akira and Fumi at a cafe after school. Akira insists, now that they have a connection again, they meet before and after school to travel together. Fumi’s mom invites Akira over for dinner and asks Fumi what her friend likes, which serves as a small aside for a childhood memory: Akira eats the food Fumi doesn’t want to. At school, it’s time for the Club push again and Fumi somehow manages to sidestep the drama club for the second time. Realizing she will eventually have to submit to joining, she notices a sign for Literature Club and realizes that might be the best escape. But as she opens the door, a tall and handsome Third Year student is on the other side! She compliments Fumi on her height and asks, “Do you want to join my club?” Swooned by this mysterious older student, and in a haze of attraction, Fumi immediately agrees (which both closes the loop on Complication #2, and begins Complication #4 and #5 in a brilliant meet-cute shift).
Later, at Fumi’s house for dinner, Fumi’s cousin and new fiance suddenly arrive. Fumi’s mom is surprised they made it, but happy to see them. But Fumi’s tone shifts from casually chatting about her chance encounter and joining Literature Club, to all the attention being showered on her cousin. This pushes Fumi to tears again saying: “Chizu (Fumi’s cousin)’s so mean!”
After dinner, Akira and Fumi are getting ready for bed. Fumi asks if Akira can sleep in the bigger bed with her and continue to comfort her after the emotional dinner (which we didn’t see). This is not played romantically, but as a friend needing someone close. But as Akira climbs into bed with Fumi, Fumi has a memory of a shadowed figure (implied to be Chizu, her cousin) asking “Is this alright?” and “Are you scared?” as she puts naked Fumi’s fingers in her mouth. “Fumi, you’re so cute,” the shadowed figure says. In current time again, Fumi begins to cry. This feeds into Complication #1 (why does Fumi cry?), but that may not be the whole answer yet. It also answers part of Complication #3 (What’s up with the intimacy between Fumi and her cousin?). Akira teases Fumi for crying in a way that makes her laugh and the scene ends with a voiceover from Fumi that says: “Night is for sleeping. But I won’t sleep tonight because I have so much to talk about,” which implies she will tell Akira about her cousin’s advances (but this is not clear by the end of Volume 1, from what I could tell).
Back at school the next day, Fumi goes to the Literature Club for the first time, but discovers the girl she is looking for isn’t there! What gives? Well, as it turns out, the girl is the leader of the Basketball Club, which Fumi is now a member of! (ending Complication #4 - she joined the wrong club! - and seeding Complication #5 - will she follow through to meet the girl?).
This ends Chapter 2, “Stand By Me.”
Let’s run through the story elements:
Chapter 1:
Inciting incident: Fumi and Akira reunite, but Akira doesn’t remember their childhood connection.
Complication #1: Fumi is prone to crying
Complication #2: Fumi is avoiding joining a club, but has to at some point
Complication #3: There’s something weird happening with Fumi and her Cousin
Turning Point Complication / Crisis: Will Akira remember Fumi, and when she does, will their connection be reignited?
Climax: Yes, she does remember her (with some help from her mom)
Resolution: The connection is back! Instant friends. Akira shows consideration for Fumi.
Chapter 2:
Inciting incident: Fumi gives in and joins the literature club! Akira visits Fumi at home.
Complication #4: Fumi joins the basketball club by mistake
Complication #5: Fumi meets a dashing Third Year lady while joining the club, who she is swooned by immediately, which she admits to Akira at dinner and askes “is it okay to admire a girl like that?” and Akira responds: “Why not! Girls are the only ones here.”
Complication #6: Is Akira open to a lesbian relationship at all?
Turning Point Complication / Crisis: While Akira is over for a dinner/sleep-over at Fumi’s house, Chizu (Fumi’s cousin) shows up with her new fiance and Fumi breaks down. Why is Fumi crying (Complication #1) and why now?
Climax: Fumi tells the audience (and maybe Akira) that she was taken advantage of by her cousin Chizu (implied not explicit) when she was younger - which was also possibly her first lesbian experience and has a lot of baggage.
Resolution: Akira and Fumi become closer.
The complications in this story feel earned and progressive. At every turn there is an escalation of emotional and character development that feels exactly right for the characters you are slowly getting inside the heads of. Takako manages to slowly seed these moments in chapters throughout Volume 1 by pushing characters together in natural, realistic encounters that feel pulled from the everyday experience of young friendships and romances. Hidden feelings and histories drive the characters towards each other and away again in the waves of casual life. Reading through Chapter One and Two a second time brought out more subtle shifts in character depiction. During my third reading, I found myself focused on the scenic panels without dialogue or characters and how they set the mood and break up actions.
Volume 1 of Sweet Blue Flowers is the first seven chapters (165 pages), and a really solid read. This set of articles was specifically about the story beats and the progressive complications and not a review of the wonderful style and emotional depiction of the characters. It was a real pleasure to read Takako’s work this week and I am eager to start volume 2 next week. Even Though We’re Adults Volume 2 will be out in June.
For more information about Story Grid, check out their official website.
Progressive Complications: "Sweet Blue Flowers" by Takako Shimura (Part 1)
Part 1 (of 2), looking at the manga “Sweet Blue Flowers” and story complications.
Manga seems to be the only thing I can read these days. Being extremely new to manga, I found it a little difficult to dive into long, complicated series, which tend to hinge on large metaphorical (often fantastical) environments and characters to deliver emotional and gut wrenching blows. Having been spoiled by Neon Genesis Evangelian, like seemingly everyone else in the last few years, I had big, deeply cruel sad-boy expectations for what I wanted to read. Elfen Lied, written and illustrated by Lynn Okamoto, filled the immediate cavern of sad shit that tends to be my MO, but was missing the realism and honesty I was seeking from manga. While I think a lot of the emotional core in Elfen Lied is based around abandonment and familial damage, the perverse, for-shock nature and violence distracted me from the swooning attention I later found in things like Boy’s Abyss by Ryō Minenami. (As a side note: the second omnibus volume of Elfen Lied has hooked me and I’m back in now.)
What I was really looking for was the sad romanticism of Takako Shimura’s yuri manga. Yuri manga, if you are not familiar, are lesbian romance and relationship stories. Even Though We’re Adults, which is the first work of Takako I read, is a story about two women in their 30s who meet at a bar one night and discover they have a strong romantic connection, despite one of them forgetting to mention they have a husband. Unlike most manga I’d read up to that point (again, I am very new to the medium), Even Though We’re Adults was steeped in realism and seemed to cut to the core of adult emotion in a way that was subtle and didn’t require the shoved-into-bushes nature of younger protagonists.
Manga reads fast. With a few notable exceptions, there often isn’t a lot of dialogue on the page and, even when there is, it tends to be casual - even when depicting interior monologues filled with backstory. But this speed and format can sometimes be a way to slip the emotional hooks of the story under the pages as you flip them, much like the conversations in popular American comics about what is said between the panels. Even Though We’re Adults does this well, but not quite as well (yet) as Takako’s earlier work Sweet Blue Flowers.
Featuring high school protagonists, Sweet Blue Flowers is another yuri manga from Takako that I read through a few times this week. Serialized between 2004 and 2013, Sweet Blue Flowers is a masterclass in setting up progressive complications in the many stages of a long romance story, while still maintaining that realist charm of later works like Even Though We’re Adults. Takako seeds in dramatic moments in stages throughout the chapters, which utilizes the serialized form to effectively provide both cliffhangers between episodes, and long, compelling arcs between characters.
In Story Grid, there are five essential elements to a story: The Inciting Incident, Progressive Complications, Crisis, Climax, and Resolution. The Progressive Complications are the wrenches in the system that push the story forward, ultimately to the Turning Point Complication (a subset of progressive complications), then to Crisis. It’s the small things in a story that turn characters back and forth through the gauntlet of human experience and challenge them in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways. One element I find complicated, and am probably going to get wrong here to be honest, is the difference between the inciting incident (the thing that sets the story in motion) in a scene versus a sequence, versus an act, which I believe can also be a progressive complications… But I’ll try to be as clear as I can.
For this example, I will be breaking down the story beats (and spoiling fully) for Chapter One, “Flower Story,” and Chapter Two, “Stand By Me,” of Sweet Blue Flowers by Takako Shimura, which are collected in Volume 1.
Part One: Chapter One - “Flower Story”
Sweet Blue Flowers is the story of Fumi Manjōme and Akira Okudaira, who are first year students at Matsuoka Girl's High School. When Fumi returns to her hometown to start at Matsuoka, she runs into an old childhood friend, Akira, on the train, who is also headed to school. But Akira doesn’t recognize her (this is the Inciting Incident). Akira, who is afraid of being groped on the train, stands close to Fumi and starts to talk to her. By the end of the train ride, she notices that Fumi is quietly crying into her book (Complication #1), but thinks that, like herself, Fumi is just stressed about taking the train for the first time to high school. At school, the students are pressured into joining a club, because everyone’s in a club in high school. Fumi manages to sidestep the clubs, but Akira is swept into Drama Club (Complication #2). After returning home from school, Fumi calls Akira’s home and her mom answers the phone. Akira’s mom recognizes Fumi immediately, setting off Akira’s own memory of her childhood friend (which acts as the chapter’s Crisis - will they return to our childhood connection?).
Akira visits Fumi for tea, reconnecting over childhood pictures with her mom before awkwardly staring at Fumi. When she asks, Akira says she’s surprised by how huge (meaning tall) she is but how “teeny” her boobs are. This cuts to Fumi recounting the comment to her cousin, who teases her about it and then, after a rather intimate hand touch, reveals that she is engaged to be married to a man (complication #3), which Fumi is shocked by.
The next day on the train, Akira asks Fumi if she got groped (because she looks sad), and Fumi admits that her cousin is getting married. Akira gives her a handkerchief and says, “because you always cry,” which for Fumi bridges the gap between the ten years they’ve been apart. The thoughtful gesture, the attention, and the connection between them is a door suddenly opened again (which then resolves the chapter’s story arc - yes, Akira and Fumi are reunited again.).
At the end of Chapter 1 we are left with the following complications unresolved:
Complication #1: Why is Fumi prone to crying?
Complication #2: Will they join the same club? Or will Fumi manage to avoid being in a club forever?
Complication #3: What’s up with this weird intimacy with Fumi and her cousin?
And, of course, the series crisis question: Will Fumi and Akira end up together!?
Next week I’ll continue on with Part Two of this article, which will dive into Chapter Two “Stand By Me.” If you want to read along, please check out Sweet Blue Flowers by Takako Shimura, which was published in English by Viz Media.
For more information about Story Grid, check out their official website.
How to Introduce an Ensemble Cast in Six Minutes (non-fiction, review)
(This is Us, Season 1, Episode 1)
This is Us is the first show I’ve seen pull off a multi-generational story and still keep its characters fresh. The expansive nature of the show makes it difficult to break down, but I believe we can look at the first six minutes of the pilot episode to get an idea of how the creator makes this work. There are five main characters, who we are introduced to in a series of scenes split between them. We see them in their lives, all at age 36. In future seasons, the character total doubles as the families develop and age into the different phases of adulthood. Mothers become grandmothers, children become parents, and parents die.
What happens in the first six minutes:
In an older, 70s-style house, we meet Jack and Rebecca. Rebecca is very pregnant and is hesitant to fulfill her birthday-dance tradition for Jack (who is turning 36). She asks if he’s in his birthday suit before sauntering out with lingerie over her maternity clothes. She makes a joke about how fat she is, and he reassures her. Their relationship is good and they have chemistry. Jack jokingly tells his unborn triplets to look away because he’s about to do something naughty to their mother, to which Rebecca responds: “I bet I can make that go away… my water just broke.”
Kate is one of Jack and Rebecca’s triplets. It’s her 36th birthday. She stands, staring into the refrigerator at all the notes she’s left for herself on the food. The birthday cake says: “Do not dare eat this before your party, Kate. Love, Kate.” She rips the post-it note off and another one underneath is revealed: “Seriously, what is wrong with you?” At the scale in the bathroom, she’s taken off all of her clothes. The enemy stands before her, but she’s strong. She takes off her earrings and slowly puts the smallest amount of her foot on the scale, then the other foot. Unbalanced, she upends herself and falls off the scale, hurting her ankle.
Randall, who was adopted into the family as one of the triplets, is Black. He sits in his fancy New York office, looking at a computer screen filled with graphs and stock market projections. An e-mail comes in: “Good News.” But at the door are his coworkers, wanting to wish him a happy birthday. He laughs in a fake, I-want-to-jump-out-of-the-window way, but blows out the candles anyway. After they’ve left, he finally can open the e-mail. The agency he’s hired has found his biological father! There’s a rundown of his stats under the message: “him,” and a picture of his father, William.
Kevin, the final triplet, is introduced in a fancy L.A. actor-house with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. There’s a party, it’s his 36th birthday. We cross a bedroom: a statue of the comedy/tragedy masks, a poster of Richard III, and then The Man-ny. A poster of Kevin, shirtless, holding a baby and smiling. It’s very clearly a daytime comedy show. He’s an actor. There are two girls in his room, wanting to dance with him. But he’s preoccupied about his age. “It’s my birthday today. 36,” he says. One of the girls reassures him he doesn’t look it. He responds, a little sad, “Yeah… I do.” He gets up to dance with the girls, putting away the laptop he was using as a distraction, but can’t get into it. “You know where it all went wrong?” He says, before launching into a story about watching The Challenger disaster as a kid. “Maybe that’s when I realized trying to change the world just leads to being blown up in little pieces all over Florida… Maybe that’s how I wound up as The Man-ny.” A call from Kate saves him from digging a bigger hole. She’s fallen down and hurt herself. He leaves immediately to go to her house, where we learn that she works for him as his assistant. She says: “You’re the only good thing in my life, Kev.”
It’s important to note a few things here. The scenes above all happen in the span of 6 minutes and are intercut with one another at about 45 second intervals. We stay for a minute in the 1980s, with Rebecca and Jack, before moving forward to the 2010s to meet the kids, who are now adults. This breaks up the tension of the stories and creates a picture of a family, all independent, all within their own stories, building one larger narrative.
What This Six Minutes Tell Us About the Characters:
In the first scene, we get a sense of Rebecca and Jack’s relationship. Right away, we can feel there is chemistry between them. The pregnancy is truly a beginning, a shift in their relationship and a shift in their lives. Jack re-assures his wife that she’s still beautiful and that she still arouses him. We learn there are triplets in her giant belly. We’re introduced to their nickname throughout the series: The Big Three. It is Jack’s birthday and Rebecca gave him a small football towel, which he loves. All around the house things are in boxes, being packed. “Family Photos ’74 - ’79.” They have a birthday tradition, which Jack expects to be fulfilled even though Rebecca is very, very pregnant. It’s playful: “tradition is tradition.”
NBC’s “This is Us” shot of the post-it note from Kate to Kate
Transitioning to Kate, we are immediately aware that she has an eating problem and is working on it. It’s not said, it’s shown. In the refrigerator are many post-in notes: “throw this crap out”, “250-calories per spoonful.” There’s a sheet cake that says, “36 is just a number…,” in frosting. She looks at it wantingly, knowing she absolutely cannot eat it before her birthday party (implying it wouldn’t be the first time). Sadly, she goes to the bathroom. To the scale. She wanted fucking cake. But instead she’s determined to weigh herself. She strips off all her clothes, her necklaces, her earrings. She’s taken everything she can possibly take off before even trying to get on the scale. She wants a win today, but she’s scared. So she puts a toe on the scale, and then the very front of her foot. Then the other. But she’s unstable and falls backwards. She calls her brother, who comes over immediately. “You didn’t have ice,” he says, putting a tub of ice cream on her swollen and bruised ankle. They have a codependent relationship. She works for him, but he needs her too. Again, it’s not said, but it’s all there.
NBC’s “This is Us” Kevin in “The Man-ny” poster
Kevin, while we’re here, is so clearly described in the first few shots of his story. He’s wealthy, he’s an actor. As we pan through the room: The comedy/tragedy mask statue, which seems more like a decorator’s choice than his own, then the Richard III play poster. He’s a serious actor. He knows Shakespeare. He has aspirations to be something great. And then The Man-ny, which is what he’s actually known for. It’s his breakout role. A daytime comedy about a buff, good-looking male nanny. There are models in his room, for his birthday, but he doesn’t really care. He’s not mean about it, just pre-occupied with himself. His age. The potential for real success is slipping further away every year. But when his sister calls, he’s out of there. Girls, party, friends, a nice house - none of that matters at all. Family is first.
NBC’s “This is Us” In Randall’s office
Randall, who is an outsider immediately by the color of his skin, sits alone in his office. It’s a big office in a big city. He’s an important person who has worked hard for his position. But he’s missing something. His biological father. We don’t know how he ended up in the family yet, but it doesn’t need to be explained. All of the other characters are white, and he’s hired an agency to find his biological dad, and they have! “Do you have a second, boss?” his assistant interrupts. They want to sing him happy birthday. The look he gives here is very telling. There’s weight to that day and that word. He’s the boss and they’re doing something nice for him, so he has to accept and play along; he’s a professional. But the second they leave, he’s back to the e-mail. Here, finally, is his father! We see a picture of William, who will play a prominent role in the show as both an old and young man.
Caution: Spoilers for the rest of the series:
In six minutes we, as the audience, have a wealth of knowledge about five new characters. This utility, masked in a subtle, charming episode opener, speaks volumes to what will come in the long run of the show (and the episode). After watching the Season 5 opener, I was curious how well the first episode held up and if the seeds that were planted then payed off in current episodes. After five seasons, characters change a lot - especially in such a sprawling, epic family story - so I was surprised to find a lot of the characteristics and motivations still applied.
Randall is still discovering himself as an adult. He’s still looking for family. After finding his father, a larger part of him opened up. His identity was shifted. His life changed, and is still changing.
After Kevin quit The Man-ny to pursue more serious roles, he had to confront his alcoholism and find himself again, older, wanting to settle down.
Kate, who found a husband (and best friend) in a food addiction group, must confront the fact that he has changed and she hasn’t. He’s succeeded, despite his own crippling depression, and in a way she is still the person from the first episode - older, but not better.
Jack, who died during the Big Three’s teenage years, stands over all of them. A turning point in their lives. A good father, a bad father, a lost person, speaking to everyone from the grave. Not literally, but through the habits and the memories of his children, and his wife.
Rebecca, who struggled to find herself after the loss of her husband, is strong. She had to be. She had three kids and a family to hold together. But she’s moved on. Made new traditions, which the entire family struggles with. She has a new life.
What’s fascinating to me, with This is Us, is the care each story takes, even when it’s a pretty stereotypical family drama. There’s a depth to the writing and the attention to character that doesn’t veer too far from its original intention. It goes to heavy places, it explores depression and obsession and addiction. But at the heart the show is honest. It feels authentic because the drama is earned. The story is huge, but it feels intimate. And that’s what is great about this show. That’s what sets it apart from other multi-generational family dramas on right now.
This is Us is currently running its fifth season on NBC (or available in full on Hulu).
Story Framing: "The End of the F***ing World" Season 2, Ep 1 (non-fiction, writing craft)
The Framed Story: The End of the F***ing World, Season 2, Episode One
Title Card: “The End of the F***ing World”
Framed stories are popular in modern prestige dramas because, as a narrative device, they act as a pre-show cliffhanger to compel the viewer, or reader, into the story. A popular example of this would be Titanic: Rose, as an old woman, tells us about the voyage her younger self took. The viewer starts in her current day and moves back to 1912, where the journey begins, only to return at the end of the story for context. The action, the romance, Jack on the bow behind her, are all framed within the device of her older self’s narration. This kind of embedded story can happen in multiple levels of nested story - but in TV and movies (unless you’re watching This is Us), there’s usually only one frame. The outer time, which exists at the beginning and end of the episode, and the inner story, which is set in an earlier period to give context to the frame.
In the second season of Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World, we are introduced to a brand new character in present time. Immediately questions arise: “Who is this? Did I forget they were already in season one? How does this relate to what I already know?” The audience is engaged and primed to take in new information. Bonnie is at a gas station and the guy behind the counter recognizes her from high school.
“So what have you been doing?” he asks.
She answers: “Prison.”
Suddenly the pocket knife he just rang up looks suspicious on the counter. “Oh, right… Why were you, uh…” he says, shaking his head awkwardly. “What did you do?”
“I killed someone,” she answers blankly.
Damn! Okay. So now we’re into a new story. Bonnie’s someone we have not met, but in a show about a pair of young runaways who (spoiler) happen to become murderers, we’re well prepared for a rather wild ride.
“Right…” the gas station clerk mutters.
She adds, “On purpose.”
But he cracks and starts laughing at her. He’s taking it as a joke. It has to be.
She smiles.
“You properly got me there.” He’s relieved, the tension changes.
And she laughs along. She grabs the pocket knife from the counter. “I’m gonna kill someone else now.”
Suddenly, the joke is less funny and the tension’s back. She pays and leaves the gas station. In her car, she throws the knife into the glove box where we see there’s a revolver and a book. Inside the book’s jacket is a newspaper clipping of season one’s female protagonist Alyssa!
The story frame has three parts: The beginning (the future), a flashback (the past) in context, which leads to: The End (back in the future).
A quick breakdown of the episode’s summary in these three parts.
Netflix’s “The End of the F***ing World” Season 2, Episode 1 - “I Killed Someone”
The Beginning (the future): As I’ve described in the setup, we start in the future. Bonnie in her late twenties at the gas station admits to being released from prison for murder and (not a joke) on the way to kill someone else. At this point we don’t know who.
Netflix’s “The End of the F***ing World” Season 2, Episode 1 - “I Learnt about punishment from a young age.”
The Past (flashback): Starting from childhood, we learn about Bonnie’s tragic upbringing. A strict and abusive mother, a father who left. Failing out of high school, then going to college to work instead. Meeting the professor from season one (who was the villain in a pivotal episode), then falling in love with his cruelty. Being betrayed by the professor, then believing his manipulation, which ultimately leads Bonnie to murder his new lover/victim with her car. In prison, the professor finally tells her he’s in love with her, which is what she’s always wanted. When she sends her response, it is returned. He has been killed (something that happened in season one) by our main protagonists - Alyssa and James.
Netflix’s “The End of the F***ing World” Season 2, Episode 1 - “Is Alyssa In?”
The End (back to the future): Out of prison, away from the gas station, in the daylight now, we see Bonnie exit her car and tuck the revolver into her waistband. She walks up to a nice house and rings the bell. Someone we don’t see answers.
“Hi,” Bonnie says with a smile. “Is Alyssa in?”
End Credits.
As you can see in the summary, the middle section is the meat-and-potatoes of the episode. In 25 minutes, we go from “who the hell is this?” to a full character with a motivation, all inside the frame of a few minutes’ worth of real-time. In a novel, this could be an entire book. The narrator in present day reflects on her past self, then goes on to justify her future action. But in a TV show, especially a short one, it acts as a quick and highly effective way to connect a new character to the audience. It takes the existing context and shifts it.
In season one, The Professor is happened upon by accident. While running away, Alyssa and James - through a series of misfortunes and bad deeds - end up at The Professor’s house because it appears to be empty. There’s mail stacked up in the box, no car in the driveway, etc. They find his stash of pedophilic video tapes and then he comes home. He tries to rape and possibly kill Alyssa, but James is hiding under the bed and kills him (something that James has been wanting to do since we met him in the first episode of the series. Kill.). Then the characters go inevitably towards a conclusion, which we can explore another day. But here, in season one, The Professor dies and impacts the main characters by the actions they took. In season two, the context shifts and now it has impacted someone else. A new villain arose from their action, unbeknownst to them! It’s a great way to build context and depth into not only a new character, but a new season.
In the second episode of season two, we’re treated to a very familiar frame, but in a shorter context. In the first act of the episode, the story is framed in the same way: a future Alyssa narrates where she is and how she got there after the end of season one. But it’s only the first act. The same principle applies. Catch the audience up quickly to move on to the main story, but now with context. Who is this? Alyssa, we know her. Great. How the hell did she get where she is now?
When used effectively, a framed story is a great tool to bring the audience in and get them asking questions. It’s one of many ways to build character, backstory, and context for whatever story you’re trying to tell.
The End of the F***ing World is available to stream on Netflix. Season One was pretty good. Season Two was really great. The comic the show was based on, by Charles Forsman, was pretty good too.
PEN15 - “Vendy Wiccany” (Season 2, Episode 3) (Non-Fiction, Review)
In the greenhouse with Maya and Anna (Hulu’s PEN15, S2E3)
PEN15 is a show that fits neatly into the box of “things Michael will definitely watch.” Two middle school friends struggle with the coming reality of high school, relationships, family drama, and the internet. In the first season, Maya and Anna go through a series of first desires (first kiss, first period, first time talking to an older boy online, etc.), making a pact to experience everything together, as best friends. Created by, written by, and starring comedians Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, the show pulls hard on what it was to be a teenager in the 90s.
To set up this episode, you need to know a few things:
- In season 1, Maya is hopelessly in love with the cutest boy in school, Brandt, who she ultimately gets felt up by in the janitor’s closet at the school dance (along with Anna, because they do everything together, awkwardly). At the end of this scene, Brandt tells Maya that he loves her. Season 2 reckons with this admission and whether it was really about getting the chance to feel her up (telling her whatever she wants to hear) or a real heartfelt admission (of which he is now embarrassed to have).
- Anna’s family is breaking apart. In season 1, her parents go on a retreat to save their marriage, which ultimately dissolves anyway. Season 2 deals with this reality. Her parents are separated but living together in their family house, trying to make co-parenting work while also trying to decide if they should fully separate through a divorce and live in different houses.
- Maya and Anna are not popular. They are nerdy and awkward and basically only have each other. Often, in school, they are ostracized, trying desperately to fit into many groups - trying to find a path to “cool.” In the previous episode, to great comedic effect, they join the wrestling team (Maya, to have time and physical contact with Brandt, and Anna to help Maya but also to fit in with the boys on the team and find that inevitable “coolness” that comes from being a part of sports.) Their efforts often fail them, due to their true nature as best friends and weirdos. This creates conflict between them, but also between them and the rest of the school. It’s a great way to build inciting incidents into the plot, allowing an entire season to remain intact while also feeling a bit random (like school as a younger person can often feel).
In this episode
Maya is at Anna's house, watching “Are You Afraid of the Dark?,” when they hear Anna’s parents fighting in the kitchen. They sneak over to find that this fight is actually quite violent (things are broken and thrown). They run from the house and enter a semi-real world filled with coincidence, absurdity, and childish play from this point, which on the second viewing highlights the question “how much of this is happening?”
In a clearing, far from Anna’s house, Maya tries to lighten the mood - to distract Anna from her reality - by pretending there’s a little green man who steals sticks when she’s not looking. They find a business card in a tree they are climbing on, for Wendy Viccany. Maya quickly transposes the name to create WICCANy. Wendy is the Witch Mother that now guides them and gives them power.
What follows is a great scene of character-revealing dialogue. They voice wishes to their new Witch Mother aloud, yelling to no one:
Maya (who is Asian American and struggles with her appearance and body hair): “I wish for blond hair!”
Anna: “I wish for more money!”
Maya: “I wish for my dad to be home!”
Anna: “I wish I wasn’t a problem!”
Maya: “I wish for a bigger house and no body hair!”
Anna: “Only one at a time. I wish for white jeans and that the closet never happened with Brandt!”
Maya: “You just said one at a time. For Omikochan to smell better!”
Anna: “I wish I had my period!”
Maya: “I wish for a group of friends that love us!”
Anna: “I wish for peace everywhere!”
Anna (Hulu’s PEN15, S2E3)
In this moment, again, reality seeps through. Maya, who is insecure about her body and appearance, focuses on herself but also the root of what she believes are her family issues. Her father, who is a traveling musician, is away. He only visits every few months. Her parents are together, but her dad is away. Maya believes if her dad were home, and they had a bigger house, things would be better. Blond hair and no body hair describe her ideal appearance. What she sees in magazines and at school (even in middle school). What she perceives as normal. A group of friends that love us admits that even though they have each other, always, they want to be popular (at least with a group of friends).
Anna, understandably (and central to the episode plot), focuses on her parents’ impending divorce. If there were only more money, her parents wouldn’t be stressed and maybe they wouldn’t divorce. She sees herself as a problem, getting in trouble at school, or in life, creating more stress for them through her teenage ways. If only she wasn’t so much of a problem, they would stay together. Anna wishes for white jeans (to be popular in fashion), and that she hadn’t been felt up by Brandt at the end of season one because it caused problems between Maya and her. She wishes for her period, something hanging over from last season that she never got. A first. Something, although she doesn’t know it for a few more episodes, that Maya has already gotten without her. I wish for peace everywhere. An end to problems.
As a quick aside before we get back to the plot of this episode. There is a great interruption in this set of wishes that breaks up the monotony of the format. Instead of “I wish...” ten times in a row, the dialogue is interrupted by the brief exchange about doing two in a row. This causes a very small disruption in the format, which makes it more authentic but also less monotonous.
After wishing, things start to happen. The real gets further away for a moment. Maya’s dad does come home, fulfilling her wish and solidifying that she does indeed have powers. She calls Anna and asks if any of her wishes have come true. The truth is, not really at that moment, but she stretches to look anyway. Later that night, Anna hears her parents have sex through the wall of her bedroom - hope. This hope drives Anna to create a book of spells.
In a greenhouse at school, which we learn they’re not supposed to be in, they set out to perform the ultimate spell casting - a crazed prayer to Mother Witch filled with the kind of wonderful gibberish teenagers make up and assign meaning to. They are discovered by some kids playing soccer nearby, who can see through a small opening in the greenhouse wall. One of the kids gets the principal and after a truly absurd and great speak-in-tongues/manic episode, they are both in trouble. Their parents are called. (This, in story structure terms, leads us into the Turning Point complication for Anna - her parents, who are already on thin ice with each other, fight more about how it is unclear to Anna what they are doing. They decide to fully divorce and live separately.)
While waiting for their parents to pick them up, Maya and Anna sit on the curb. Anna notices her crush from last season, who she performed a fall-out-of-love-with spell on, sitting on a bench. It worked! The lovey music that plays when he is around isn’t present and she doesn’t love him (as much). A girl sits next to him on a bench and she is forced to admit that she was wrong, it still kind of stings to see him with someone else.
For Maya though, who wished for Brandt to love her back (solidified by the spell in the greenhouse), the outcome is much more devastating. Anna notices him on his bike, behind them. Maya goes up to him and tries to find a way to tell if the spell worked. He calls her a freak and very loudly, very publicly, tells her he doesn’t love her and that Maya needs to leave him alone. The knife is plunged deep. (This is one half of Maya’s Turning Point complication. The other comes a few moments later when, after slamming her bedroom door in a fight with her parents about her weird school behavior, her brother comes in to tell her that she should just leave and that she sucks.)
Anna calls Maya at this moment, when things are the lowest for both of them, and says she found a spell to disappear forever. Anna is scary serious about this and tells Maya to meet her at their spot (the clearing, by the tree where the Wendy Viccany card was found).
When Maya arrives, Anna is already starting the ritual. She’s cut her hand, adding blood to the spell, and tells Maya to cut hers too. She’s found a way to disappear forever.
Here is the crisis: Should Maya go along with Anna, embracing the lowest point in their teenage lives, and “disappear forever”?
Anna’s ritual to disappear (Hulu’s PEN15, S2E3)
The climax: Maya stops the ritual with Anna and says that she can’t disappear because she needs Anna. She is her family. They are each other's family. Anna breaks down and reality, once again, sets in. Maya holds her crying friend, comforting her.
Resolution: The shot cuts to the same position in Anna’s yard - the same ritual items, the same crying friend in Maya’s arms, etc. - implying lightly that there was no clearing with the tree. There was no magical adventure. When they escaped the house in the beginning, they were/may-have-been always in the front yard of Anna’s house. Anna’s mom calls for her, it’s early morning, barely dawn, and Anna goes back home. Back to reality, stronger with the support of her friend.
While only a half hour, this episode feels like such a dense and complete look at these two characters - so much so that I would recommend it as a standalone view. I believe someone could watch this episode, having never seen the show, and enjoy it fully. The moments where reality seeps into play and surrealism are packed with authentic worry and devastation. The writer, Anna Konkle (the actress and character Anna), was very aware of when there needed to be truth and the real. While it’s not explicit, the moments when Anna is determined to “disappear” are heart wrenching and so accurately speak to those moments in early life when you don’t quite know if someone is serious or if they are being dramatic without serious consequence. Would Anna have really taken her own life and implied that Maya should too? Maybe! I believe maybe that could have been a real alternative to this climactic scene. The moments of Real support this. I wish I wasn’t a problem. The ritual to disappear isn’t playful or absurd or heightened in any way. It’s deathly serious.
The beauty of this show is in its authentic self. Anna took moments from what was either her own personal emotional journey, or that of many people she knew, and made it into the deep feeling of wanting to disappear forever. Seriously. Not as a joke, not as a dramatic reaction to something mundane - but in a way that reinforced the negative. The lowest of the low. Something has to change - either I die or I accept that this is life and seek to make a positive happen somewhere else. It’s the root of Being couched in a middle school girl’s spellbook. Anna casts the spell as “Presence is too much for those around…or those around too much... surely pretend we are gone… and never did exist.”
PEN15 sits on the razor sharp balance of awkward pre-teen emotions and the surreality of trying to become “adult”. There are moments of hormonal outburst (“stay out of my room, mom!”) paired with the effects of divorce on children - the breaking up of a family, the self-blame that follows, etc. There are moments of stark social truth; the insecurity of young girls, romance, and the bad behavior taught to young boys in culture. For a show set in the 1990s, it accurately highlights what is still very much a problem in our young people’s education and social capital. Divorce isn’t any easier now than it was twenty years ago, it’s just different. This separation of time, though, allows PEN15 to thrive in the authenticity of its author’s experience. Divorce and the end of family are not new to plot (or life), but the way it affects Anna’s relationships with young boys, and her best friend, are distinct. As an audience member, these moments feel like memory and not fabrication, which is hard to do - especially in a show that also has middle school sexual innuendo and a name like PEN15.
The first half of PEN15’s second season is out now on Hulu (along with the first season). The second half of the season was put on hold due to the outbreak of the COVI-19 pandemic, but is still planned to be finished in 2021. Please watch this show. I would love for it to continue.
Books on Writing 101: Derrick Jensen's "Walking on Water" (Non-fiction, Writing craft)
Books on writing 101 is a collection of book recommendations to get you started on writing. Inspirational, insightful, and entertaining books I’ve enjoyed that will help you find your own way. Everyone learns differently, but this is how I started:
Derrick Jensen’s Walking on Water
If Steering the Craft is a workshop in a book, Walking on Water is a reflection on having taught. Derrick Jensen is a rather radical (and sometimes brash) person/teacher/writer, so to say take this book with a grain of salt will be, for some, an understatement. It will not be for everyone. But sometimes these are the kinds of books you learn from the most.
I read Derrick Jensen’s The Culture of Make Believe, and then Walking on Water, at a time in my life when I desperately needed something to change. I was looking for activism, I was looking to have my mind blown, and above all I was looking for some goddamn answers. There are a lot of areas in life that seem like endless voids of that’s just the way it is. School, for a long time, felt this way. In Hawaii, where I finished middle school and about half of high school, education felt needlessly stale (hopeless, to put it nicely). Due to generations of defunding and devaluing education, not to mention extremely fresh colonialism, the schools fell into a pattern of group learning and the very basics of education. There wasn’t time to individualize. There wasn’t space to ensure that every child got at least the minimum of what they needed to believe there was a purpose to education. A lot of my friends left school before their junior year, to get a GED, to attend “online school,” to start working, which is no surprise when I think back to the many hours spent in special school counseling sessions, art classes rooms, and hiding behind the tennis court to smoke cigarettes. Maybe this isn’t unique, but it was certainly very discouraging.
“We hear, more or less constantly, that schools are failing in their mandate. Nothing could be more wrong. Schools are succeeding all too well, accomplishing precisely their purpose… the truth is that our society values money above all else, in part because it represents power, and in part because, as is also true of power, it gives the illusion that we can get what we want. But one of the costs of following money is that in order to acquire it, we so often have to give ourselves away to whomever has money to give in return. Bosses, corporations, men with nice cars, women in power suits. Teachers. Not that teachers have money, but in the classroom they have what money elsewhere represents: power.” (p. 5-6)
I see you rolling your eyes, Yes, it is that kind of book. And if you’re 30-something, hopefully you’ve come to this conclusion already. But I first read this when I was 22 years old and on the cusp of losing my mind with work and life. Community College was an extension of high school and money came from working longer hours more often. Quitting college to become an assistant manager at Hot Topic at the mall, to get my own place, to live away from school and parents and start “life.” These are the kinds of books that can take you in one of two paths: radicalized, learned, curious or nihilistic and helpless. In a way I hope you’ve experienced both. I am a deeply cynical person. In my mind, before anything else, there is the negative and a book like this encourages that sometimes. But it also is enlightening and provides the framework for answering things about yourself. What happened to you. These lessons come much later, of course, if at all.
I think writing is about exploring that even deeper. In Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, she says to start with the earliest memory you have and try to write from there - to explore your early life, to explore yourself. It forces you to think deeply about painful things, and happy things, and weird things that happened to you, so you can use those experiences to develop a character. A living thing outside of yourself to which other people can relate.
“My main problem was that my storytelling was false. I didn’t yet understand that in order to write something good, or to tell a good story, I didn’t have to invent something fantastic. I simply had to be as much of myself as possible.” (p. 27)
Whether you are a writer, a teacher, or someone just starting to think about being creative. I recommend reading Walking on Water, if only to start to understand how to see teaching and learning differently. You may know all this already, it might be late enough in your life and learning that this is all galaxy-brain-meme-worthy text. But just in case it isn’t, check this book out from your library. Read it with some awareness of the author, but read it nonetheless.
Keep your eyes out for more Books on Writing 101 next week! The 101 series are books that I think are a great place to start if you know nothing about writing and want to get started. Nothing too wild, but still packed with wonderful tips and insight.
Previous post in this series:
Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”
Books on Writing 101: Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" (Non-fiction, Writing Craft)
As in Ursula K. Le Guin's *Steering the Craft*, the idea of hypnotizing yourself into creating with confidence is something you don't hear often in writing lessons - or at least, you don't hear said quite this way. It gives a sense of play and freedom. Just trick yourself for a while into doing this thing, then, when you're ready, put on a different hat.
Books on writing 101 is a collection of book recommendations to get you started on writing. Inspirational, insightful, and entertaining books I’ve enjoyed that will help you find your own way. Everyone learns differently, but this is how I started:
Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird
“Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.” (p.26) From a chapter called: Broccoli
As you learn more about story structure, and the traps of lazy or bad writing, it becomes increasingly hard to hypnotize yourself into just creating something. Bird by Bird is a book that sets out to emphasize: you will be bad, probably forever. Even if you get good, you will think you're still bad. I find this sentiment comforting because for a long time it feels like a skill you get good at and then... professionalism happens. You get published, you get work, it become effortless and nice and even joyful to write. But Anne goes back to this thought in many chapters to give you a dose of reality (along with, thankfully, a cure).
"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first drafts. You need to start somewhere... A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft - you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft - you fix it up [...] And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy." (p.26) Shitty First Drafts
In a culture that has becoming increasingly open about creative process and the freedom of knowledge, it can be tempting to give away the first draft (or the second or third draft, for that matter) before it's time. I've been thinking a lot about open culture and how much better creating is now than it might have been 30 years ago. YouTube and Blog Culture have opened up the creative process to ensure that people who want to create, can create - they have the resources to at least see how someone else does it. I really like that. But it can definitely be tempting to document all of the gross first-thought kind of work that goes into something like writing, or music, or illustration. I feel like with illustration, or other visual art crafts, it's much easier to explain: "I'm working on faces this year, I feel really bad about these, but look... there's improvement here. Here's what I learned." But with writing I find it much harder to feel open enough to say: "I'm working on dialogue right now. Please watch me skim through a library of books to see how the masters do it. Fail to do it myself. Watch Netflix like a psychopath - stopping, writing down character interactions, backing up again, starting again, writing more things down... and hope I get better.”
Along with this, it is very tempting to show people your early work for the sense of validation it brings. "Look, I know this is an early draft, but I wanted to share something." The real trap here is that *it's too early* to get feedback. You know the story doesn't work yet. You know you're still hypnotized into feeling like you did a fantastic job and that you are a fucking genius. But if you wait a week, and read it again like you're supposed to, (to unhypnotize yourself), you'll see it isn't ready. The kind of feedback you may get at this point could be devastating to the process. It often sends me down a rabbit hole of self-doubt or, worse, egoistic betrayal. "They just don't get it, those fools! What do they know about story!?"
As in Ursula K. Le Guin's *Steering the Craft*, the idea of hypnotizing yourself into creating with confidence is something you don't hear often in writing lessons - or at least, you don't hear it said quite this way. It gives a sense of play and freedom. Just trick yourself for a while into doing this thing, then, when you're ready, put on a different hat.
This is still difficult for me. Putting on the metaphorical Creator Hat, which ignores all spelling errors, and story structure mistakes, and character voice, and how a brother in one scene became a sister later in the piece... It's hard to just plow forward, knowing later that you'll come back with the Editor Hat and fix it.
When we interviewed Cory Doctorow for the Talking to Ghosts podcast, he told us about "TK"-ing a detail and then moving on to whatever you were writing. I think this is pretty common knowledge among folks who write regularly, but I didn't know about it at the time. The idea of "TK"-ing something is this: You are writing, you're speeding through, you're in the moment, but you can't remember the eye color of your main love interest, which was set 20 pages ago... Instead of stopping and going back through all the files to find that note, or that eye color, or whatever, you just put "[tk: eye color]" and keep on writing. When the draft is done, during editing, you can search "tk" and get all of the things you need to add back in. "Tk" stands for To Come, but they use "t" and "k" because "tk" doesn't appear in other words, so it's easier to find. If you were to use "tc" you'd get search results for words like "ouTCome" as well. It saves time.
I don't do this enough. I should, but I don't. Because my writing times are so sporadic, I don't really have the time to go back through all the documents anyway. But if you're a good writing student, who actually sets time aside to write in a nice, quiet environment, I definitely recommend getting in the habit. Do whatever you can to not break focus and flow.
Parting words from Anne:
"Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems. Publication will not make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer... Let's discuss some other reasons to write that may surprise a writer, even a writer who hasn't given up on getting published." (p.185)
What follows is a motivational chapter on why you should write for yourself and, if you write for others, why it should be special. Definitely check out this book. If you are in Multnomah County, check it out from the library!
Keep your eyes out for more Books on Writing 101 next week! The 101 series are books that I think are a great place to start if you know nothing about writing and want to get started. Nothing too wild, but still packed with wonderful tips and insight.
Previous post in this series:
Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”
Books on Writing 101: Ursula K. Le Guin’s "Steering the Craft" (Non-Fiction, Writing Craft)
Originally released in 1998, Steering the Craft is a workshop in book form. Filled to the brim with amazing exploratory writing exercises, examples, and tips, this book will get you unstuck from almost any problem you’ll have when starting to write narrative for the first time.
Books on writing 101 is a collection of book recommendations to get you started on writing. Inspirational, insightful, and entertaining books I’ve enjoyed that will help you find your own way. Everyone learns differently, but this is how I started:
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story
Originally released in 1998, Steering the Craft is a workshop in book form. Filled to the brim with amazing exploratory writing exercises, examples, and tips, this book will get you unstuck from almost any problem you’ll have when starting to write narrative for the first time.
“The exercises are consciousness-raisers: their aim is to clarify and intensify your awareness of certain elements of prose writing.” (p. xii)
In the first chapter, The Sound of Your Writing, Le Guin compels her audience to be gorgeous, just for the pleasure of it. She says:
“Being Gorgeous is a highly repeatable exercise… and can serve as a warm-up to writing. Try to set a mood by using verbal sound effects. Look at the view out the window or the mess on the desk, or remember something that happened yesterday or something weird that somebody said, and make a gorgeous sentence or two or three out of it. It might get you into the swing.” (p. 10)
While this advice might seem simple for some writers, it sets the book outside of most writing craft books pretty early. Ask any author when they were last given permission to just be playful with their writing in school, or at a workshop, and I would be willing to bet you’ll get a series of blank looks. So much of learning the craft of writing is intense focus and technical structure - over and over again it amounts to the feeling of never having read, or tried hard, enough. So to be given permission to just play and be gorgeous is something special.
To give a related example: Chapter 4 is on repetition:
“…to make a rule never to use the same word twice in one paragraph, or to state flatly that repetition is to be avoided, is to go against the nature of narrative prose.” (p. 37)
Le Guin speaks plainly about the flaws in a piece of writing that uses repetition in a way that makes the text distracting, but is careful to say it is also a way to develop voice and wonderful prose. In the end, like all things, it comes down to practice and learning from examples (of which she gives: “The Thunder Badger” from W. L. Marsden’s Northern Paiute Language of Oregon, and “Little Dorrit” by Charles Dickens).
The exercise for this chapter, to give you an example, is:
“Write a paragraph of narrative (150 words) that includes at least 3 repetitions of a noun, verb, or adjective (a noticeable word, not an invisible one like was, said, did.)” (p. 41)
“…In critiquing, you might concentrate on the effectiveness of the repetitions and their obviousness or subtlety.” (p.42)
When I purchased this book, I have to admit, I was not ready for it. It took me a few years to truly understand the pleasure of these exercises and examples. At the time, I was full of ego and drive, but not ready to learn the things I wasn’t immediately interested in (like how to use POV, or what she calls “crowding and leaping,” which is a way to edit and compress structure during revisions). It wasn’t until I decided to re-read it for this series that I was truly open to what Ursula, wisely, was trying to say.
So if you are leading a workshop, or stuck in a spiral of blocked writing (hoping to get out), I would definitely encourage you to pick up Steering the Craft.
Keep your eyes out for more Books on Writing 101 next week! The 101 series are books that I think are a great place to start if you know nothing about writing and want to get started. Nothing too wild, but still packed with wonderful tips and insight.
Previous post in this series:
Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”
Books on Writing 101: Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" (Non-fiction, Writing Craft)
If On Writing was a collection of anecdotes centered around a writer’s life and craft, Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a travel journal told in the structure of The Hero’s Journey. It would be almost impossible, I believe, for a novelist to write a memoir - even one centered around the need to complete triathlons and ultra-marathons - and not talk about their writing life.
Books on writing 101 is a collection of book recommendations to get you started on writing. Inspirational, insightful, and entertaining books I’ve enjoyed that will help you find your own way. Everyone learns differently, but this is how I started:
Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Hardcover edition of “What I Talk About…”
If On Writing was a collection of anecdotes centered around a writer’s life and craft, Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a travel journal told in the structure of The Hero’s Journey. It would be almost impossible, I believe, for a novelist to write a memoir - even one centered around the need to complete triathlons and ultra-marathons - and not talk about their writing life.
Perhaps best known for his magical realist fiction, Murakami dives deep into why he runs - at one point saying “I run in order to acquire a void” (p. 17) - and how it has helped him write novels. He believes great stamina and endurance is needed to complete a good novel, then start again with another. It’s hard work. He says:
“I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity. To write a novel I have to drive myself hard physically and use a lot of time and effort.” (p. 43)
While he had pretty immediate success with his first novel, which was hand written and sent into a contest (which he won), Murakami is clear that some people have a natural wellspring of talent, and others have to work hard to get there. One thing that stood out to me about his early career, hidden behind some ridiculous luck and missing information, is that he started to translate things like Raymond Carver into Japanese. This kind of deep focus on a masterwork builds skill and awareness, especially when you are having to think creatively about how to make the meaning work in a different language and culture. Often I hear advice, which basically amounts to: retype your favorite book, just to get the physical feeling of making the words appear. I haven’t tried this myself (mostly because it seems like a lot of time spent not creating new work), but if you’re struggling with structure or sentence construction, I hear it helps!
“I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society. If something interested me, and I could study it at my own pace and approach it the way I liked, I was pretty efficient at acquiring knowledge and skills.” (p. 35)
I never finished college. There are some credits, somewhere, aging on a community college registry. I liked a lot of classes, especially after I stopped following the general degree path and dove into philosophy and sociology classes. But through staying curious and reading, I learn a lot. I try to let myself be interested in many different subjects, mostly creative and writing subjects these days, but I also try to listen. Writing is about following ideas into dark places, learning about things (whether they are emotional things or physical things) you might never have thought about. This is a new realization for me. I’m sure you came to it much sooner than I did, but I never understood the amount of deep thought work that went into writing. Not only is there intentionality in creating fiction, but there’s also a need to get deeply into the whys of the world.
“…the next most important quality [after talent] is for a novelist [to have] focus - the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value… Even a novelist who has a lot of talent and a mind full of great ideas probably can’t write a thing if, for instance, he’s suffering a lot of pain from a cavity.” (p. 77)
Open Book with flagged pages
The Hero’s Journey of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, surrounds Murakami’s failure to complete a triathlon he’d been training for for a long time. He’s completed marathons and ultra-marathons and even some triathlons, but at some point everyone fails. His road of trials begins when he has to re-learn how to swim (having been self-taught originally) and wait for the next triathlon season to come around. In the end, of course, he finishes the race and is happy with his time - then he competes again, how could he resist? And while this may seem like the kind of memoir you wouldn’t be too interested in if you weren’t a runner, you’d be wrong. It’s interesting and personal, it’s compelling in the same ways his novels are compelling. It’s good writing that no one was really asking for (he says), but that was personal to his experience. In the end, upon re-reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I came away with a lot of writing advice, but also the idea that even personal travel journals can have good structure.
“…I didn’t start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn’t become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run - simply because I wanted to. I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.” (p. 150)
Keep your eyes out for more Books on Writing 101 next week! The 101 series are books that I think are a great place to start if you know nothing about writing and want to get started. Nothing too wild, but still packed with wonderful tips and insight.
Previous post in this series:
Books on Writing 101: Stephen King's "On Writing" (Non-Fiction, Writing Craft)
On Writing is, like many great writing craft books, mostly memoir. King is the master of funny and strange stories, and this book is filled with all kinds of anecdotes about a writer’s life, rejection, and what it’s like, on a day-to-day level, to have a job, and a family, while trying to learn how to write.
Books on writing 101 is a collection of recommendations to get you started on writing. Inspirational, insightful, and entertaining books I’ve enjoyed that will help you find your own way. Everyone learns differently, but this is how I started:
Stephen King’s On Writing
On Writing, like many great writing craft books, is mostly memoir. King is the master of funny and strange stories, and this book is filled with all kinds of anecdotes about a writer’s life, rejection, and what it’s like, on a day-to-day level, to have a job, and a family, while trying to learn how to write.
While discussing how much he writes, King gives the writing habits of the English author Anthony Trollope as an example:
“His day job was as a clerk in the British Postal Department; he wrote for two and a half hours each morning before leaving for work. This schedule was ironclad. If he was in mid-sentence when the two and a half hours expired, he left that sentence unfinished until the next morning. And if he happened to finish one of his six-hundred-page heavyweights with fifteen minutes remaining, he wrote “the end,” set the manuscript aside, and began work on the next book.” (p.147)
Like most beginning writers in their thirties, I have a day job and I work a lot. There isn’t always time for writing (or, more honestly, there isn’t always the mental space that writing needs). I get up at five-thirty and get home around six in the evening. On weekends, I try to fit writing in where I can – mostly in the morning or afternoon, when the ideas are fresh, and the coffee is still working. But since the pandemic hit, I’ve been trying to make time in the evenings. At a particularly busy and stressful period of work, I realized the few hours I was able to get writing done on the weekends weren’t enough. So, I made a plan: most weeknights, after dinner and a little TV, I’d sit down at the kitchen table for at least an hour and try to work on something. It wasn’t always writing, but it was something. When I didn’t feel like I could write, I tried to read or study different craft books.
On reading, King says:
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write – simple as that.” (p. 142)
On Writing is an inspirational and hugely entertaining book, even if you aren’t looking to learn how to become a better writer, which is something I think is very important. So many people have picked this book up and thought, Wow, I think I want to try that, which is the success of any good writing book.
There’s an aside I hear repeated a lot in writing conversations, which comes from a part of On Writing about ideas and subjects – basically: if you’re a plumber who enjoys science fiction, writing about a plumber on a spaceship… etc. But I find what comes right before this quote more enlightening:
“Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work.” (p. 157)
It isn’t always easy to sit down and write about what you know - or come up with new ideas - especially when you’ve spent all day building spreadsheets. Mindless, endless, spreadsheets. But this advice still holds. Instead of work, you could write a cautionary tale about mindlessness or perhaps about an action scene that takes place in the tight cubicle corridor you know so well. (“How would I get off the roof?” you have to ask yourself.) Even in those experimental moments, when you don’t know what to write - keep writing, see if you can make it into something.
“When I’m writing,” King says, “it’s all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damned good.” (p. 149)
Keep your eyes out for more Books on Writing 101 next week! The 101 series are books that I think are a great place to start if you know nothing about writing and want to get started. Nothing too wild, but still packed with wonderful tips and insight.
Also, please let me in the comments what your favorite books on writing are!