Last year’s A to Z Challenge became a year long focus that changed how I approach art, poetry, and writing fiction. I like to combine the A to Z Challenge with the daily poetry prompts from NaPoWriMo and Poem-a-Day, so last year I picked the simple topic of “Abstract Nouns.” Abstract nouns are nouns that denote an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object. In other words, they are things that cannot be measured or perceived with the five main senses. They represent intangible ideas.
Studying abstract nouns led to reading lots of philosophy. Trying to capture photographs of abstract nouns led to a deep dive into abstract art and creating many new photography techniques. And the challenge led to some interesting poems about how we each have a different definition, sometimes contradictory definitions of the same abstract noun.
After the April Challenges were over, I continued my study with a new daily challenge of abstract nouns, and by the end of the summer, I had discovered a new passion: Contradictory Abstract Nouns. Inspired by a piece of writing advice, “Find the despair in hope, and the hope in despair,” I started trying to capture images of these contradictory abstractions, and this led to a continuing study of what I call the Big Five: Truth/ Deceit; Beauty/ Ugliness; Love/ Apathy; Happiness/ Despair; Wisdom/ Naivete. I even used the Big Five as inspiration for the main characters in my NaNoWriMo novel.
For this year’s A to Z Challenge I will be looking at contradictory abstract nouns that both start with the same letter. This will make for less obvious combinations, and more creative contrasts. Since A to Z subtracts Sundays, I’m going to leave this year’s Sundays open to collage my images and thoughts from the week.
Here is a calendar of the ideas I have so far. Like last year, X needs some leeway. These are tentative and may change as April progresses.
Who they are (whether that’s occupation, nationality, etc.)
What they want most in life
What hurdles are in their way
What is at stake if they don’t get what they want
Include anything else that you think is super important about your character
Davenna Dale Byron is an obsessively-fit upper-middle-class housewife and mother who just turned forty. Her husband is a workaholic who travels often. Her only daughter has left for college, and she is facing an empty nest. Davenna wants the romance she reads about in bodice-torn, flowing-mane paperbacks. She wants excitement, adventure, something new and dangerous. Her real problem is that she doesn’t feel happy. She doesn’t feel much of anything but a stagnant emptiness. She’s not content. She thinks there’s more out there and she wants it. She feels dead inside, like no matter what she does, she isn’t good enough. What’s standing in her way? Her marriage to Roger. Her standing in her community. Her fear of what people think of her. Her need to be seen as the perfect wife and mother. She feels caged within social norms. If she doesn’t find some romance in her life, her life as she knows it is at stake. She’s already shopping beyond her means, putting her and her family’s financial situation in danger, and she’s thinking about having an affair. She could lose her marriage, her home, and her relationships. And if she does get what she wants, she could lose all these things too. Davenna is so afraid of not being desirable, that she’s becoming undesirable. She’s so obsessed with being the perfect wife, mother, neighbor, and friend, that she sets impossible expectations not only upon herself, but those around her, setting everyone up for failure and disappointment. She turns to romance novels for escape, but she has blurred the lines between fantasy and reality, and now feels that the only thing that will make her happy is to live out those romantic fantasies and leave her real life behind.
This week I enjoyed a fun read: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I brought this popular mystery home from the library and read the whole thing in one sitting, reading into the night. I laughed out loud and almost cried. So I thought this would be a good week to start re-reading The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass, and learn how novels evoke emotion.
Maass says, ” . . . none of readers’ emotional experience of a story actually comes from the emotional lives of characters. It comes from readers themselves.” So how are we supposed to get a reader to feel from our writing?
He says, “There are three primary paths to producing an emotional response in readers. The first is to report what characters are feeling so effectively that readers feel something too. This is inner mode, . . .The second is to provoke in readers what characters may be feeling by implying their inner state through external action. This is outer mode, . . .The third method is to cause readers to feel something that a story’s characters do not themselves feel. This is other mode,”
Let’s start with what made me laugh:
1. The first example is when we first meet the four members of the Thursday Murder Club as a group for the first time.
A question has been nagging at Donna throughout lunch. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, I know you all live at Coopers Chase, but how did the four of you become friends?”
“Friends?” Elizabeth seems amused. “Oh, we’re not friends, dear.”
Ron is chuckling. “Christ, love, no, we’re not friends. Do you need a top-up, Liz?”
Elizabeth nods and Ron pours. They are on a second bottle. It is twelve fifteen.
Ibrahim agrees. “I don’t think friends is the word. We wouldn’t choose to socialize; we have very different interests. I like Ron, I suppose, but he can be very difficult.”
Ron nods. “I’m very difficult.”
“And Elizabeth’s manner is off-putting.”
Elizabeth nods as well. “There it is, I’m afraid. I’ve always been an acquired taste. Since school.”
*A note about Character Description: At the end of that first funny insult fest, Osman gives a little physical description: “Elizabeth is going glassy-eyed with red wine, Ron is scratching at a West Ham tattoo on his neck, and Ibrahim is polishing an already-polished cuff-link.” These little descriptions say so much.
2. “So we were all witnesses to a murder,” says Elizabeth. “Which, needless to say, is wonderful.”
3. Then, this contradiction not of behavior, but of the common understanding of the challenge of chess.
“Chess is easy,” says Bogdan, continuing the walk between the lines of graves and now flicking on a torch. “Just always make the best move.”
“Well, I suppose,” says Elizabeth. “I’ve never quite thought about it like that. But what if you don’t know what the best move is?”
“Then you lose.”
All three of these places where I laughed while reading, were mostly dialogue and had to do with contradictions. In the first example, the people talking all seem to get along and be fun and interesting pensioners in an old folks home. But they are quick to say they are not friends, and insult each other. What made me laugh was the insulted person agreeing with the insult. In the second example, was the unexpected reaction to the horror of murder, that it’s wonderful and somehow needless to say, as if murder is always wonderful. In the third example, it’s the idea that a difficult strategy game is easy, simplified to making the best move. Of course it’s that simple, if you don’t make the best moves you lose. Every game comes down to that, life comes down to that. But it’s not that simple, and that’s what makes it funny.
Which of the three primary paths made me laugh? I think it’s other mode, the third method is to cause readers to feel something that a story’s characters do not themselves feel. I think Osman set up an expectation of these pensioners being friends and hanging out because they like each other, but has them contradict expectations: saying they are not friends, not being upset when insulted, saying murder is obviously wonderful, and chess is easy. Each of these contradictions made me laugh.
Now let’s look at what made me weepy:
Joyce is reading the suicide note from the widower she was romantically interested in.
“And that was that, I suppose, so silly when you look at it, but I had no easy way of digging the tea caddy back up. So would continue to walk up the hill, and continue to talk to Asima when no one was listening, telling her my news, telling her how much I loved her, and telling her I was sorry. And honestly, Joyce, for your eyes only, I realize that I have run out of whatever it s that we need to carry on. So that’s me, I’m afraid.
Joyce finishes and stares down at the letter for another moment, running a finger across the ink. She looks up at her friends and attempts a smile, which turns in an instant to tears. The tears turn to shaking sobs and Ron leaves his chair, kneels in front of her, and takes her in his arms.”
Which of the three primary paths made me weepy? I think it’s outer mode, to provoke in readers what characters may be feeling by implying their inner state through external action. Maass says, “An important part of this method is the lengthy discourse . . . Why delve so deeply? One reason is to create a longer passage for the reader. That in turn creates a period of time, perhaps fifteen seconds, for the reader’s brain to process. That interval is necessary. It gives readers the opportunity to arrive at their own emotional response, a response that we cannot know.”
The section that made me weepy started long before this example section when I got weepy.
Applying What I Learned
How can I apply these techniques to my novel? Maybe my first step is to read through and find all of the places where I named an emotion. Then label which emotions I think the reader might feel. Then find which of the three primary paths will best evoke the story emotion.
This is a quick first step into the study of the reader’s emotional journey. I think this study will continue for many novels to come.
For the eve of the end of the first Writer’s Digest Character-Building Challenge the prompt is “pick a character and share either their best or worst moment ever.”
Since I looked at Davenna yesterday, let’s take a look at the best moment of Merle’s life so far in his own words:
I think the very best moment was that day I was sick at home in middle school. Mom and Dad were both at work and I went into Dad’s study and opened the center fold down desk in the center of his bookshelf. There was a secret compartment at the back, and in the secret compartment I found a stack of old paperbacks. I found Jaws, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Hawaii by Michener, among other surprises. Just one glimpse of the shark’s open mouth coming out of the depths under the bikini-clad swimmer, and my father crashed from his pedestal. I suddenly realized he wasn’t the god of wisdom he pretended to be, locked away here in his own room of higher contemplation. He was an ordinary man who liked to hide away from us. I never told him I found his secret. I took one of the paperbacks at a time and as I read I found a special pleasure in knowing his disappointment in me had no power. He wasn’t anything special. The pain of his disapproval disappeared in an instant. I didn’t care anymore.
For the eighth day of the first Writer’s Digest Character-Building Challenge the prompt is “pick a character and reveal their greatest want and the main hurdle standing in their way.”
What does Davenna want and what’s standing in her way? Davenna wants the romance she reads about in her books. She wants excitement, adventure, something new and dangerous. Her real problem is that she doesn’t feel happy. She’s not content. She thinks there’s more out there and she wants it. She feels dead inside, like no matter what she does, she isn’t good enough. What’s standing in her way? Her marriage to Roger. Her standing in her community. Her fear of what people think of her. Her need to be seen as the perfect wife and mother. She feels caged within social norms.
For the seventh day of the first Writer’s Digest Character-Building Challenge the prompt is “pick a place and have two or more of your characters meet and interact with each other.”
Merle smelled spiced wild flowers and felt a vibration on the make-shift bar. He smiled then looked up at her wondering if she would know him.
She was alone, and she wasn’t smiling. “You can’t be here,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” Merle said. “Did you want something to drink?”
She looked flustered, confused. “A vodka tonic, but this isn’t right. What are you doing here? It’s not supposed to be like this.”
Merle scooped ice, measured the vodka. “What isn’t? Like what?” He put the drink in front of her.
She gulped down the drink and put the glass on the bar. “You can’t be here.”
He pointed at the empty glass. She nodded. He measured vodka for another drink. “I don’t understand why you keep saying that, but I’m here as a favor for my sister. She’s doing the catering and needed an extra bartender for tonight. She did a lot of begging and pleading and here I am.”
This time he handed her the glass. Their fingers touched and neither one flinched. Nor did they pull their fingers apart too quickly.
“What were you reading?” she asked sipping her drink more slowly.
He lifted up his book showing her the cover.
“Storm in a Teacup? If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re reading a sordid romance.”
He looked at the cover, then at her. “It’s about physics.”
Her face fell. She took another sip. “Physics? You mean like the laws of attraction?”
“Among other things.”
“I had imagined us meeting at the bookstore cafe. I was building up my courage to come sit with you. I never expected to see you here.”
“Oh, I get it now. I can’t be here because I’m the guy in the bookstore. Sometimes you connect a person with a place so much that when you see them somewhere else, you don’t even recognize them.”
“I don’t think I ever imagined seeing you in a tux, either.”
“Yeah, right. I think my sister rented it.”
“I’m Davenna Byron.” She put down her drink and held out her hand.
“Oh, yeah.” Merle wiped his fingers on the white bar towel. “Sorry about the damp fingers,” he said gently taking her fingers. “I’m Merle. Merle Tremble.” He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them gently. “Enchante.”
Their hands lingered. He stared into her glistening emerald eyes, wondering what she wanted, and if her dress zipped down the back, or down the side.
The Poetics prompt at dVerse today is play. I was inspired to play with motion in the mirror world with my new filters which was fun. And for my poem I played with the answer ball I created over a year ago.
The answer ball is a ball of photographs of specific nouns. The idea is to ask it a yes or no question, throw the ball, and interpret the noun that comes up as either yes or no.
Playing with the Answer Ball in a Thunderstorm
I feel the plush wine carpet between my toes, run my fingers along the couch while watching the thunder roll in over the lake and ask, Is this real? I roll the ball which bounces along the carpet and lands on scissors. Scissors slice through doubt, cut through the crap, and carve out a truth. But is there truth?, I wonder as I toss my oracle down the hall. It wobbles then stops on afternoon. So the morning is a deceit, and evening is a lie, but the slightly slanted sun overhead, casting a shadow on the grass has my trust, but can I trust? I ask my oracle as it rolls across my shadow, Are you lying? It lands on poison. Every lie a bit of hemlock, a death cap stealing meaning from interpretation, clouding doubt over perception, leaving so many questions unanswered.
Roger Byron knew that Davenna was a romantic. At first he liked it, how she made everything about love and sex and fantasy. It was hot when they were young, but now it’s pathetic. She’s never satisfied. Everything needs to be more romantic. Going to work to pay her bills is not romantic. And it has gotten so much worse since Montana went to college. He had heard people have empty nest syndrome, but Davenna’s feathering her nest with name-brand purses and shoes. That Sonia lady only makes everything worse. Maybe he and Davenna could have worked things out if she wasn’t so obsessed with Sonia Havanna Cashion. It’s not just that she likes spending time with her—Calls her her shopping buddy—but she wants to be her.
It makes Roger feel like he can’t live up to her dreams and fantasies even more than before. At least when Montana was growing up, Davenna could fantasize about Montana’s future, and her prince charming. But now that Davenna’s got no one to shove her romances onto, she’s swirling out of control. She gets these strange secretive smiles, her eyes sparkling in the sunlight, and he just know that she’s planning some fairytale escape from their life and he hates her for it. He despises that look of far off happiness. The way she always makes him feel inadequate. He had to build myself back up somehow. Prove he was still desirable. The business trips he takes? They’re not business trips. His job doesn’t send him anywhere. He mostly telecommutes for work. He can work from anywhere. No. Those business trips are affairs. Different mistresses all over the world. Talk about romantic. He flies in; wines them dines them. They have some fun, and he’s off again. Davenna will never know what it’s like. Her damp paperbacks with shirtless man covers will never satisfy like he do. And she’ll never know.
Sonia Havana Cashion is Davenna Dale Byron’s best friend, or at least Davenna likes to think so. Sonia lives in the big house at the top of the hill. She has a daughter the same age as Davenna’s and though the girls did not get along, Davenna and Sonia bonded at school parent functions, gossiping about the other parents. Davenna knew all the dirt and Sonia loved to hear it. Now that their girls are grown, Sonia is Davenna’s shopping buddy. Sonia’s a bit of a shop-aholic but she can afford it, which gets Davenna into trouble because she wants to be able to afford it, but Roger keeps her on a budget. She ends up secretly returning most of what she buys which is becoming embarrassing, but shopping with Sonia is important to her and her standing in the community, and she throws the best parties.
My Novel
I’ve been thinking of making Satya more of a friend and ally for my main character, Verity. In the draft she only becomes an ally at the end. But now I think I want their friendship to grow from the beginning. So how would that look?
I need to introduce Satya differently. In the draft she is only along as the new partner for the police interview. However, I could have her take Verity aside as they’re leaving and say she needs to speak to her privately.
For the fourth day of the first Writer’s Digest Character-Building Challenge the prompt is “sit both the characters you interrogated down and have them share what and how they think about each other.”
What Davenna thinks of Merle:
He is intriguing. I see him at the cafe in the bookstore. I like to sit and have a coffee and read the first chapter or two of my new romance before I leave the store. We seem to have that in common, though he’s always reading non-fiction, or some old classic. I think he’s much younger than me, but that’s okay for a fling, right? Nothing serious. I like his long slim fingers the way he caresses the pages as he reads. He always looks very serious, never smiles. But I could change that. I think he’s a possible. Maybe I’ll ask him what he’s reading next time.
What Merle thinks of Davenna:
The fit older woman I see at the bookstore? I don’t really think of her. I mean I’ve seen her, and she takes care of herself, that’s for sure. Always smartly dressed, I mean her clothes fit her just right. And she always looks like a professional did her hair and make-up. I could imagine getting to know her would be an experience worth having. And of course she’s a reader. She always has her nose in a book. But she reads romance, so that slams that door. And the diamonds and gold on her finger make it clear to the world that she believes in such backward rites as marriage and human ownership which only a vapid romantic would. So though I don’t mind looking at her back while she orders her coffee, that’s about all I think of her.
And for my Novel
What Cassius thinks of Felix:
That kid is weird. But I think there’s something more to him than just some peeper staring in peoples windows at night. He would just stand there, not smiling or leering. He looked calm, thoughtful. He just stood there in the dark. The only way you really knew he was there was he played those eerie notes on that cigar-box guitar of his. Such a weird kid. But I got a good look at him once when I was on the porch having a smoke, and he’s older than he looks. You can see it in his eyes, and he slouches, tucks into himself and wears kids clothes, but I think it’s a disguise. He’d be one of those great kid actors that can play the precocious kid into his thirties.
What Felix thinks of Cassius:
I don’t trust that guy. He has this glow about him like he loves the whole world and everyone in it, but when people aren’t looking he sneers and this shadow comes over his shiny eyes. He’s always touching people, but not like consoling or reassuring, it’s more like he’s petting them, taking pleasure from them. He always seems to be up to something, but I don’t think people see it because they’re too close to him, blinded in his glow. I see it though because I watch from a distance. He doesn’t fool me. Once, he looked right at me. He was out under the porch light smoking a cigarette and he looked at me, I didn’t think they could see my in the shed’s shadow, but I swear he looked in my eyes, took a big suck on his cigarette so it glowed bright orange in the dark, then he flicked it right at me. It almost hit my nose, but landed in the grass. I had to stomp it out. When I looked up, his thick lips had thinned into a wide toothy grin, then he turned and went inside. I do not trust that guy.
Experience Writing 