Getting Started in Writing: Ask No Questions, Follow the Mystery
May 19th 2008 07:50
When he delivered his Nobel Lecture in 2005, entitled Art, Truth and Politics, the playwright Harold Pinter said the following:
‘I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.
Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word, or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.
The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’
In each case I had no further information.
In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn’t give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either for that matter.’
He went on to say that he begins by calling his characters A, B and C – with no idea who they are until he begins writing and they ‘reveal’ themselves to him.
This aspect of writing – the magical, the unplanned, the inspired part, is a relationship writers develop with a hidden part of themselves we learn to trust. Some of us like to know upfront how things will plan out, who is who, what is what, where the story is going, to have the structure all mapped out. I have met writers like this and they intimidate the crap out of me. Like they have a roadmap they’re following and simply have to fill in the narrative. I for one don’t like the game so tame. I have no idea where my story is going when I start. I just have a feeling. I like not to know where my story is going and to discover my characters as I write.
If there is any equivalent, it is a bit like growing a baby in your tummy. You know it is a person, you may even know its sex. Once it is born, you get to discover its features. When it smiles, you learn its laughter. When it begins to speak, you discover its loves, likes, dislikes, talents, the sound of its laughter, its sense of humour. For me, writing is like that. It starts somewhere small, and grows and as it grows, I learn what it is I am growing.
My book Things Without A Name began with a single very clear sentence (which has morphed a little into the final first sentence of the book). I spent a couple of years in my early twenties as a counselor for raped and battered women. One day a woman came to see me. Her sister had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend with a pair of scissors. It was one of the worst stories I ever heard. Fourteen years later, I came across a letter from a client I had kept thanking me for all I had done for her (which really amounted to nothing more than referring her for a domestic violence apprehension orders and finding her a place in a woman’s shelter).
Some days later I sat at my computer and I wrote the sentence, ‘There are not many useful things you can say to someone whose sister has been stabbed to death with a pair of scissors.’ That anchored me to my main character. I knew nothing more about her than that she was weary of her work. That she had run out things to say. She was losing faith. So of course, I called her Faith.
It took me eighteen months of writing to understand her – why she had started doing this work, the history that had shaped her, the family relationships that had wounded her, the terrible secrets that had scarred her and the hopes she carried buried somewhere low down inside her. Towards the end of the book I wrote a sentence that scared me. My publisher told me when she read it, she went cold. The truth is I went cold when I wrote it. You can't plan that kind of terror. I always amaze myself when I can jump out and give myself a fright.
I know so many writers who are ‘waiting’ to know where their story is taking them before they will commit pen to paper. To these, I say, stop waiting. Start writing. The act of writing engenders the story, it tweaks open the valves and gets the juices flowing.
Start with a sentence. Any sentence. And pursue it quietly like a creature you’re following to its hidden lair.
www.joannefedler.com
Book trailer for Things Without A Name
Harold Pinter
‘I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.
Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word, or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.
The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’
In each case I had no further information.
In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn’t give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either for that matter.’
He went on to say that he begins by calling his characters A, B and C – with no idea who they are until he begins writing and they ‘reveal’ themselves to him.
This aspect of writing – the magical, the unplanned, the inspired part, is a relationship writers develop with a hidden part of themselves we learn to trust. Some of us like to know upfront how things will plan out, who is who, what is what, where the story is going, to have the structure all mapped out. I have met writers like this and they intimidate the crap out of me. Like they have a roadmap they’re following and simply have to fill in the narrative. I for one don’t like the game so tame. I have no idea where my story is going when I start. I just have a feeling. I like not to know where my story is going and to discover my characters as I write.
If there is any equivalent, it is a bit like growing a baby in your tummy. You know it is a person, you may even know its sex. Once it is born, you get to discover its features. When it smiles, you learn its laughter. When it begins to speak, you discover its loves, likes, dislikes, talents, the sound of its laughter, its sense of humour. For me, writing is like that. It starts somewhere small, and grows and as it grows, I learn what it is I am growing.
My book Things Without A Name began with a single very clear sentence (which has morphed a little into the final first sentence of the book). I spent a couple of years in my early twenties as a counselor for raped and battered women. One day a woman came to see me. Her sister had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend with a pair of scissors. It was one of the worst stories I ever heard. Fourteen years later, I came across a letter from a client I had kept thanking me for all I had done for her (which really amounted to nothing more than referring her for a domestic violence apprehension orders and finding her a place in a woman’s shelter).
Some days later I sat at my computer and I wrote the sentence, ‘There are not many useful things you can say to someone whose sister has been stabbed to death with a pair of scissors.’ That anchored me to my main character. I knew nothing more about her than that she was weary of her work. That she had run out things to say. She was losing faith. So of course, I called her Faith.
It took me eighteen months of writing to understand her – why she had started doing this work, the history that had shaped her, the family relationships that had wounded her, the terrible secrets that had scarred her and the hopes she carried buried somewhere low down inside her. Towards the end of the book I wrote a sentence that scared me. My publisher told me when she read it, she went cold. The truth is I went cold when I wrote it. You can't plan that kind of terror. I always amaze myself when I can jump out and give myself a fright.
I know so many writers who are ‘waiting’ to know where their story is taking them before they will commit pen to paper. To these, I say, stop waiting. Start writing. The act of writing engenders the story, it tweaks open the valves and gets the juices flowing.
Start with a sentence. Any sentence. And pursue it quietly like a creature you’re following to its hidden lair.
www.joannefedler.com
Book trailer for Things Without A Name
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