Writing Commandment Number Six: Slow This Story Down

6. Slow This Story Down

I have a half-finished novel stored away in my desk drawer.  I was writing away, imagining all the awards I was going to win for my outstanding debut, when I heard an interview with Neil Gaiman in which he said he had an idea for a book twenty-five years ago, or something like that, but he only recently felt like he was a good enough writer to start writing it.  This concept was startling.  If you have the idea, shouldn't you be able to write it down?  Well, I guess not.  Who's going to argue with Mr Gaiman?  Not me.

Eventually, I slowed down on the novel, started getting frustrated, petered out completely and felt stuck, up against the dreaded wall.  I re-read it, and felt embarrassed at my previous feeling of gusto, and decided the novel was garbage.  I couldn't really tell what was wrong with it, but knew that it was lacking something.  My mentor at the time, Joseph Kertes, said that he liked the writing, that I had a good starting point (A), but felt as if I was rushing off to the end (Z), and was skipping B or F or W, and just landing on a few points here and there, not allowing time to get into the characters' heads.

Obviously, you're not going to write down every minute from when a story begins to when it ends.  No one wants to read what you're characters are thinking about while they're sitting on the can.  But you can't be so into the plot points that they feel like a series of photos, recounting your favorite bits of a family vacation.  Every one has flipped through the albums (tangible or digital) and had someone saying, "Oh this was the zoo. It was so great.  And this was the aquarium. You shoulda seen the sharks. This was the best food truck I've ever eaten at."

There's no story there.

So I decided to wait until I was a better writer to start my novel over.  I've been working on short stories since then (It's actually turned into a collection of linked stories that I'm nearly finished and really excited about).  My goal in the stories is to slow down, to really figure out what is going through my characters' minds as they stroll through their respective stories.  Sometimes I have a great ending in mind, and I find myself rushing off to it.  But I've learned.  No.  I'm learning that an ending will never be great, unless I've taken the proper time to get there.  You can't rush it.  You can't load the story with unnecessary details—that's worse than rushing through—but you have to have a logical sequence of events for an ending to feel inevitable, which—I believe—ought to be the goal.

This whole thing has made me think about Time in general.  It's terrifying to think that right now, this moment, is only ever happening this one time, and then it's gone.  You know all the mambo jumbo: Seize the day.  Time is Money.  You only live once.  But seriously, how many times have I sat in front of the TV for bloody 5 hours at a time, and then slumped of to bed having wasted my entire evening.

It's made me value my own time as much as my characters'.

It's also made me think about what we DO do with our time.  I have a wife, two kids. I spend time with them.  I go to school full time.  I work part time.  I read, watch TV.  I wake up early to write.  But there's also time in between all of these things, when I'm driving, or walking, or laying on the couch.  There isn't a minute of any day that I'm not doing something.  If I'm doing nothing, I'm thinking (therefore I am).

I seem to think my thoughts are interesting.  Why would I keep thinking them if I didn't?

Applying this to a character makes me think, "Why shouldn't we be interested in their thoughts from on the can?"  I am not saying every thought needs to be voiced.  I am saying there shouldn't be a time in a character's story in which the writer shouldn't be interested in their thoughts.

I've been married to my wife for almost seven years, been dating or interested in her for ten.  I have a pretty good idea of what she's thinking when I'm with her.  She has a flawless idea of what I'm thinking.  But every now and then she says, "I've been thinking about this..." and it blows my mind because I never would have thought she'd think about that.  This leads me to think about the fact that at every second of every day, she's been thinking about something.  There's no way I'll ever know all of her thoughts.

Think about the old guy who spills his coffee at the food court.  Or the six year old screaming at his mom.  Or the grumpy lady ringing your groceries through.  Whoever.  I tend to think of them of props, just there as fill-ins in the story of my life.  I couldn't live my life without them, but apart from the few minutes of interaction I have with them, they don't exist.  But if you think about it,  every single person you will ever see has lived their lives, one day at a time, one moment, one thought, up to the time in which you have seen them.  There is an entire person inside of them, as interesting—probably more interesting—than you are.  They've gotta be.  They keep thinking their thoughts.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a good writer will slow down, take the time to figure out what a character is thinking that takes them from A to Z, and take even more time to make those thoughts clear.  It may not mean every thought is out there on the page, but that the writer has been calculated enough that the reader is able to infer these thoughts.  In a writer's mind it might be totally logical for a character to do this or that to get to the end of a story, but we have to take the time to allow the reader to follow the character's journey there. 

This means, in my mind, that I can't rely on plot.  A worthwhile story, even if it's a mind altering thriller, must slow down, take the time to get into a character's inner self, and illustrate that to the reader.

Otherwise, the story will just be a story.  It's the characters that make it memorable.

At least that's what a young writer might think...