While I sucked up every little hint of writing advice offered at the UCF Book Festival a few weeks ago, one session threw a wrench in my WIP.
I’ve already blogged about sitting utterly enamored in the audience, scribbling away in my old spiral notebook during Writing Place: New Fiction form the South: with Nicole Louise Reid, Joshilyn Jackson, and Karen White.
Joshilyn Jackson described writing her most ominous novel, Backseat Saints, as a journey into the depths of hell and back. After she rose from that dark place, she pleaded with her agent and publisher to let her write a nice, funny book. Since she is such an amazing writer who they didn’t want to go completely off the deep end, they said of course dear, whatever you want.
So she wrote a light, funny book. And the readers she trusted with her newborn words said it was good, but it just wasn’t her.
Don’t be afraid to let your characters go to dark places.
She had to go deeper, let her characters crawl into a dank, tight grave reeking in desperation and heartbreak. And she rewrote the whole damn book. And that book, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, ended up being the perfect blend of laughter and drama, at times leaving you gasping, at others snorting sweet tea out your nose. It worked. Well.
Her words seemed to glow across the room like firefly had spelled them out in a country dark night sky. (Didn’t you ever read Sam and the Firefly?)
My
most “popular” writing piece of late came not just from my heart, but from a time when that fickle organ had shriveled into a dull husk cowering on the bathroom floor. It was a dark piece, but it was transformative as well: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. (That should be my new writer’s mantra.)
I thought about a piece Joshilyn posted on her
blog back in February, an utterly devastating, fearsome, and transparent piece. I could see her heartbreak scrawling across the screen with each word. Though the damn post made me cry, it was a thing of beauty just dripping with an overwhelmingly distinctive
voice. I actually made my Hubby read it, as ingesting the words seemed to be the only way to explain just how powerful a
voice in writing can be — he cried too. (Okay, I didn’t get wife of the year that night, and we spent our pre-dinner wine time reminiscing about our lost furry babies, but I needed to prove a point.) Go read it, you’ll understand:
Faster Than Kudzu: No Pictures.
We all have our own dark places, pieces of our lives we’ve buried deep within — areas riddled with cobwebs, weighed down with concrete blocks of guilt, and permeated with the lingering coppery stench of blood. Our characters should as well.
Don’t be afraid to let your characters go to dark places.
You see, at the time I’d heard those words, I’d been about chest deep in my second draft, working in plot changes and character developments. I’d been plagued with this niggling feeling that something was still missing, my main character need just a bit more motivation for her actions.
Evie needed to go to her dark place.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of death, deception, and all that other nasty stuff already in there. (And believe it or not, it still kind of funny. At least I hope it is.) My Evie’s life had basically turned into a twangy country song: she’d lost her husband, lost her house, lost her money, lost her sanity, and she’s pretty sure that if she had a dog, it would’ve been hit by the garbage truck, too. But she had to lose something else, something not superficial, to keep propelling her through the plot.
So, I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to work that extra element in, weaving it into my story like raven’s wing black streaks into a braid.
And I think it’s working.
Thanks Joshilyn.
The editing process fascinates me. Can't wait to be actually reading your book and spotting those bits of darkness. Interesting post!
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I'm glad you're strong enough to go back through. That's the hardest part – ditching something you created.
Very good advice. And yes- isn't the worst to 'start over' when you think you've got something? Oh what a painful passion we have as writers! 🙂