One, of course, is to just let yourself be carried (no pun intended) along by a story.
Now that I have a few years under my belt, I also really enjoy reading novels because of the clues they reveal about authors’ minds.
I’ve written, before, about the similarities between writing fiction and dreaming. (My longish essay on that topic, Writing, Dreams, and Consciousness, is available for Kindle here although, full confession, I haven’t looked at it for years. Probably should pull it up and rewrite it!)
I’ve also touched a bit on philosophical idealism, which I think is the most plausible metaphysical framework for describing reality. At some point I’ll post more about that topic (I have a post in draft that riffs off the works of Bernardo Kastrup, who has made the case to my satisfaction for idealism) but the short version is that we humans are participating in an interconnected dream or mental simulation. The seeming “solidity” of reality is a function of how it is generated; even though our interaction with reality is entirely subjective, none of us as individuals “owns” it or controls it. It is generated collectively and that mass attention to “what is real” stabilizes it.
What is fascinating about this, to me, is that “other people” are known to us via an interface between their minds and our own. If I encounter another person, talk to that person, form a relationship with that person, everything I experience is a mix of perception and projection — and probably a lot more projection than most of us realize.
If ever there was a book that the world needs right now, this is it
Let me start by saying that I’m not fully on board with the title of this book: Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess(subtitle, 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking), by Dr. Caroline Leaf.
The title suggests that the book is only for people who are struggling. That, IMO, is a mistake.
Back up a couple steps to how I learned about the book. It was a Dave Asprey podcast. Leaf was a guest, and during the interview she mentioned that she’s helped people with traumatic brain injury — people who other medical professionals had written off as permanently disabled — to not only recover from their injuries, but excel (in areas like academics, where highly functioning brain power is a prerequisite).
I thought, whoa. If her techniques are that powerful, imagine what people who aren’t recovering from physical injury could accomplish.
So I didn’t buy this book to deal with anxiety, stress, and toxic thinking. I mean, I’m not perfect and my life doesn’t always run smoothly, but I’ve been around for a while, I’ve done the work, I’ve cultivated coping skills that do the job for me.
In fact, that is kind of the point. I’m not trying to fix huge problems. I’m looking for ways to set and reach stretch goals.
What, exactly, can I accomplish in whatever time I have left on this planet? What seeming limits can I break?
You can grow brain cells — intentionally
What grabbed my attention in the Asprey interview is that Leaf (a neuroscientist and speech pathologist) was an early believer in neuroplasticity. “Early” as in back in the 1980s.
If you’re old enough, you probably know that there was a time when Science told us that the adult brain could not grow new cells. Once we hit a certain age (mid twenties, I guess, or maybe they thought it was late teens) we would supposedly hit our peak number of brain cells. From there, it was all downhill. Over time, our brain cells would start to die off, and since they could never be replaced, we’d lose cognitive function.
We were fated by nature, the Experts intoned, to a sad, lifelong slide toward mental and physical enfeeblement.
Leaf was a practicing neuroscientist during this period. She disagreed with the consensus.
She was right. She proved she was right in her practice.
Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess explains, in detail, the techniques Leaf teaches to help people stimulate their brains to grow new cells and form new neural connections.
How cool is that?
Now let me also say that, if you suffer from anxiety, stress, or similar issues (and if you do, you are far from alone) just go buy the book. (That’s an Amazon affiliate link but you can order it from any bookstore.)
But there is also a lot of material in the book people simply looking to enrich their personal development by integrating the principles of neuroplasticity.
There is some great lay material, for example, on neuroplasticity itself — how it works, what stimulates it, and how it can be detected via changes in brain waves, brain activity, and neurotransmitter levels.
First mind, then brain
There is some terrific insight into the relationship between the mind and the brain. The brain, Leaf explains, arises from the mind — not in any magical sense, but because our thoughts, feelings, and choices literally stimulate neurons to either emerge, grow, and branch or to prune, fade, and disappear.
And the book details the steps that Leaf has developed to help people use neuroplasticity to address a variety of challenges, including: replacing unwanted habits with desirable ones; something she calls “brain building,” which relates to what I referenced earlier about enhancing one’s cognitive abilities; and improving relationships and communications skills.
Writing, it turns out, plays a huge part in her approach. Leaf’s protocol is based on bringing existing thoughts, feelings, and choices into full conscious awareness, and then “re-conceptualizing” those thoughts/feelings/choices as a way to re-shape or replace associated neurons. Writing is useful during each step of the process by encouraging us to unlock suppressed thoughts, consider them, and find new ways to contextualize them. Interestingly, she states that “writing can even improve immune system function,” citing research she’s conducted that showed patients’ cortisol and homocysteine levels drop when they perform her Reflect step, which involves writing.
It makes me wonder what impact journaling has had on my life. I’ve kept a journal since I was a teenager, and while I instinctively turn to it during periods when I feel confused or stressed, or need to make some sort of major life decision. On the other hand, I’ve also thought of journaling as something of a writerly indulgence — a variety of navel-gazing. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so self-deprecating? Perhaps my lifelong habit of journaling has had a major benefit to my overall well-being …?
One thing is for sure: I’ll be applying Leaf’s program to some of my life goals, and as part of that, I’ll be more deliberate in how I use my journal.
Bottom line? Great book. Highly recommend to anyone who is curious about tackling life’s challenges, whether that means healing from trauma or pushing personal limits.
* * * * *
Pssst. You know who really needs to clean up her mental mess?
This is a peculiar book, in some ways. I loved it. But I am weird.
I picked it up because I’ve turned back to a novel I’m writing (Scratch) that is a retelling of Goethe’s Faust.*
And as I’ve chipped away at Scratch over the past several years, I’ve read the Goethe a couple times, of course, and Marlowe, and I’ve poked around the Interwebs. And then I found this book by Ruickbie, and bought it, and stuck it on my shelf (my real shelf, not my Goodreads shelf, there’s only so many hours in the day).
And then a month or so ago I started to read it. And I loved every page.
Start with a historical figure, Doctor Faustus, who is with us, today, almost entirely as a myth. He existed. He was a flesh and blood man. But there is scarcely any record of the historical Faust. There are scattered mentions in letters and such, but they are typically little more than a sentence or two. There are published accounts of Faust’s life and deeds, but they appeared decades or centuries after his death; they were typically passed off as authentic, but upon close examination can be confidently dismissed as fabrications. We aren’t even sure what the guy’s real name was.
Enter Ruickbie, who is a historian. And he sets out to write a historical biography of this historical figure, Doctor Faustus. He digs into the correspondence of Faust contemporaries, he digs into legal documents. And he chases down a bunch of “local traditions” that Faust was involved in such-and-such shenanigans in such-and-such a town or inn or house, but when he looks into them, almost all of them appear to have no basis in historical fact.
So now what?
Ruickbie does something that I think is pretty cool: he builds a historical account around what is often an educated guess about where Faust was, what he was up to, and how his contemporaries were reacting (or in some cases would have reacted) to him.
So you don’t really get Faust, with this book (I told you it is peculiar!). What you get is tantalizing wisps of Faust — and then, what you really get is Faust’s milieu. And it’s very granular and vivid, because Ruickbie knows his stuff and has put in the time to build it out in a very granular but vivid way.
And it was a crazy time, the late 1400s, early 1500s.
And yes, I love history, but I haven’t been exposed to a ton of European history from that time period, so for me it was a delight. I didn’t know, before I read this book, about the Peasant’s War (spoiler: the peasants lost). I didn’t know that in 1524 there was a conjunction of seven planets in Pisces (my sign!) and the astrologers of the time predicted massive floods (water sign!) and people panicked. Widespread panic. Half of the population of London at the time fled the city, convinced that if they didn’t the Thames was going to rise up and drown them. I didn’t know that in 1532, Anabaptists took over the fortified German town, Munster, and were besieged and then Munster fell and the Anabaptist prophets were captured and tortured, yick.
I love history. I love how everything is different and yet everything is the same. It makes my head spin — in a good way, like when you look up at the stars and realize how big space really is.
Ruickbie is a good writer. It’s hard to write history because history is about people and personalities; to write history, you have to introduce the reader to piles of strangers; if you don’t make them come alive, your reader won’t be able to keep track of them, and the history dissolves into a mash of meaningless and forgettable faces.
L’ombre de Marguerite apparaissant Faust (Marguerite’s shadow appearing to Faust), Faust, Lithograph print made by Eugne Delacroix, printed by F Villain, 1827
But Ruickbie pulls it off. I suppose it is because, in the end, he has a point of view about everything that was going on, during Faust’s life–about Faust, his contemporaries, the religious and political leaders who were alive at the time. So Ruickbie isn’t reciting dates and names. He’s pulling the covers back, revealing what all those people were probably like, what probably motivated them to do the things they did. A big example, and pivotal to Ruickbies point of view: did the historical Doctor Faustus really make a deal with the Devil? Or was that a slanderous fiction promulgated by Faust’s contemporaries who, it turns out, were probably competing amongst themselves for lucrative gigs doing astrology and such for kings and princelings?
And if it was a slanderous fiction, where does that leave us? For Ruickbie, the real story is about the religious tensions of the day. Faust lived at a time when the Renaissance was giving way to the Reformation. Faust, like every other person alive at the time, was caught in the current of history. As are we, today.
Highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys history.
*Sidebar: as I’ve mentioned that’s not to say I have the chops to pull off a retelling of Goethe’s Faust. I’m sure I am not up to it. But it so happens that after this awful year, losing both parents blah blah blah I needed to take a break from the lighter romancy stuff I usually write and do something that, to me at least, passes for Art. So I set aside the Marion Flarey project for now and went back to Scratch for a bit.
Some two decades after its original publication, this how-to by an industry insider is still well worth a read.
While my 2001 edition has bits about the industry that are somewhat dated, there is a lot to be learned from this book.
I met Donald Maass, once. It was at a writer’s conference, a few years after he published Breakout — which gives you a clue about how long I’ve been at this crazy business. Amazon had not yet released the first Kindle. You had only two choices, if you wanted to become a working novelist. You could land an agent. Or you could send your manuscript to a publisher and hope it didn’t get lost in the slush pile.
I was at the conference in the hopes that I’d find an agent for Loose Dogs, and I managed to schedule a pitch meeting with Maass, which felt like a huge deal at the time.
He didn’t take me on. Therefore no, I’m not typing this on a solid gold keyboard. But I also attended a talk he gave that was based on Writing the Breakout Novel, and after I got home I ordered a copy.
And then recently, I picked it up again and realized (cliche alert!) that the book has stood the test of time.
Break-out success = word of mouth
My edition of Breakout was released in 2001; there are industry bits at the front of the book that are definitely dated. But there’s also plenty of material, even in the introductory chapters, that’s as true today as ever. For example, at the time two-thirds of all book sales were going to “name-brand authors” — but even unknown novelists could potentially achieve best-seller status, because, Maass writes,
The next biggest reason folks buy fiction is that it has been personally recommended to them by a friend, family member, or bookstore employee.
“Savvy publishers,” he adds, try to seed this process via ARCs, sending out sample chapters via email, websites, etc. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And uncanny. It’s exactly what self-published writers do, today, to prime the word-of-mouth pump.
Premise and Stakes
Once the book moves from “why write a break-out novel” to the how’s, Maass tackles what he calls premise, which he presents as more of a process than anything else — a process, by the way, that you should start before you begin writing your actual novel. Maass advises that you consider a number of elements that are key to the break-out novel, like originality and gut emotional appeal. It makes for a useful checklist that, in my opinion, can help us novelists become more clear-eyed about our work (and potentially help us avoid creating problems in our novels that will be a lot more challenging to fix 80,000 words in).
The next chapter is about stakes, another thing we need to understand because it’s so fundamental to conflict. Our characters need to care about what happens to them, and they care what happens to them because there is a price to be paid if they don’t get what they want.
Time and Place
Maass then does a chapter on what he calls “time and place.” And you might be tempted to think he’s just found a new way to say “setting” but it’s more nuanced than that. There’s a section on the psychology of place, for example–a concept that fascinates me and that I try to consider in all of my fiction; I think of it in terms of places being characters that impact my human (or humanoid!) characters.
The next chapter, Characters, covers another handful of concepts that you’ll find in other craft books. For example, “dark protagonists” should not be two-dimensional, but have sympathetic qualities, and all stories are ultimately character-driven.
But there are some unique nuggets here, too. For example, one tip (which I’ve internalized since I first read Breakout) is to look for places to combine characters’ roles. In When Libby Met the Fairies(which I’ve revised and am re-releasing next month, now on sale for pre-order! $4 off!) I made Libby’s boyfriend her employer as well. That let me simplify the book in terms of cast of characters (I didn’t have to create a separate character to be her boss and work him into the plot) while also enabling me to add interesting conflict to the dynamic of Libby and Paul’s relationship. She was dependent on him for income as well as intangibles like emotional support. More better stakes!
Plot
The last third or so of Breakout mostly digs into plot. There’s a chapter on plot basics, one titled Contemporary Plot Techniques, one on elements like viewpoints and subplots, and one titled Advanced Plot Techniques.
In a way, I suppose plot is the real heart of the book, because one thing that is probably true about all break-out novels is that they are plot-driven. They are stories that grip readers from the first page and then keep them interested until The End.
And to my reading, this is where Maass’ background as a long-time industry insider pays off. For example, there’s some excellent material about types of plots (fable, frame story, facade story, visitation plots) that I’ve not encountered elsewhere. Depending on what kind of novel you’re writing, there’s some rich veins in the sections on subplots and advanced plots as well.
Theme
Which brings us to the closing chapter, which is on Theme.
“Have something to say,” Maass writes. “Allow yourself to become deeply impassioned about something you believe to be true.”
Which is interesting advice, considering that Writing the Breakout Novel is a book about crafting commercial fiction, and when we think “commercial fiction” we think about money, don’t we? We think about sales and bestseller lists and the sound of corks popping out of expensive bottles of champagne.
But it’s possible that we writers (with a lot of work and a bit of luck) can have it both ways: we can be commercially successful while also exploring Big Ideas that potentially enrich readers’ lives or even change hearts and minds.
Do you agree?
And have you read Maass’ book? What did you think?
This is one of the more recent additions to my library. I bought it last year as I began work on my current WIP, Once Upon a Flarey Tale.
As you can see from the pic, I use sticky tabs to mark parts that I expect I’ll want to review again–and there are a lot of sticky tabs in this book :)
What You Need to Know About Story (In No Particular Order!)
McKee is a screenwriter, not a novelist. But the building blocks of movies and contemporary novels are so similar that you shouldn’t let that put you off–you’ll find a lot of terrific information here that will help you tell better stories, regardless of the medium you use to tell them.
McKee is a teacher, lecturer, and consultant. Reading this book is a lot like attending an upper-level class on story-telling.
It’s hefty. 418 pages — there is a LOT here. Which is a good thing, IMO, because the more I learn about this craft, the better. Just don’t plan to finish this one in a single sitting ;)
It’s comprehensive. You’ll find everything in this book from the basics of the classic 3-Act story structure to how to develop character motivations to what makes a good title.
Story includes a lot of highly conceptual models for understanding how to make stories work. If you’re the sort of person who benefits by seeing concepts modeled visually, you’ll find a lot of tools to your liking in this book.
The Notes I Jotted Down / Passages I Flagged
In no particular order:
“Story values” are universal qualities of human experience — and they always have polar opposites. Examples are “wise” and “stupid” or “alive” and “dead.” Every scene will have at its heart some value; in ever scene, that value should change. And if the value doesn’t change, it isn’t a scene, it’s exposition — and it needs to be cut.
To avoid cliche, master the world of your story. This was a cool insight, I thought, because when you are completely immersed in that world and relating what you see, you won’t use other peoples’ commonly repeated words — you’ll use your own, the words you invent as you look around.
Research your stories in three ways: by unleashing your powers of memory; by unleasing your powers of imagination; and by what we usually think of as research — chasing down facts.
Create a finite, knowable world. “The world of a story must be small enough that the mind of a single artist can surround the fictional universe it creates and come to know it in the same depth and detail that God knows the one He created.” McKee comes back to this same idea later in this way: “design relatively simple but complex stories.” He then explains that by “simple” he doesn’t mean simplistic, but that we should avoid the temptation to proliferate characters or locations in an undisciplined way. Instead, constrain yourself to a “contained cast and world” and focus on building complexity within that world.
(Pssst … looking for a fast, free, fun read? My romcom caper novella, The French Emerald, is free on Amazon. Click the pic to get your copy!)
But at the same time, you need to create much more material than you will ever use–five times what you use, or even 10-20 times. An example from my current WIP: I’ve written fairly details timelines of each of my character’s lives, matching them to world events as well as personal milestones. Most of this will never make it into my books, but it gives me a wonderful send of fully knowing my characters.
Don’t be afraid to abandon your original premise if you discover, as you build your story, that it doesn’t work any more. (Phew!!! Because yes, this seems to happen to me a lot!)
Related: a story “tells you its meaning.” You don’t dictate the meaning to the story …
Inciting incidents should arouse unconscious as well as conscious desires in our protagonists.
“The most compelling dilemmas often combine the choice of irreconcilable goods with the lesser of two evils.” Related: “True character can only be expressed through choice in dilemma.”
Effective scenes operate at the levels of both text and subtext.
Progression in the story is built from cycles of rising action.
“When a story is weak, the inevitable cause is that the forces of antagonism are weak.”
Character dimension springs from that character’s internal contradictions. But those contradictions must be consistent. “It doesn’t add dimension to portray a guy as nice throughout a film, then in one scene have him kick a cat.”
“To title is to name. An effective title points to something solid that is actually in the story.”
What I Liked About Story
This book is so obviously the culmination of many, many years of McKee’s work, teaching the craft of story-telling. There are countless nuggets in here that writers can grab and put to use to improve the quality of our novels.
What I Didn’t Like So Much
So much of what McKee conveys, he does so using conceptual models. The danger for me is that if I get caught up in understanding the model, I lose track of my most effective compass as a writer, which is based on feel: on how I react to something I’ve put down on the page.
How about you? Have you read Story? Do you have a favorite writer’s craft book that you would recommend?
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle featured my romantic suspense novel Dark Chemistry in its author spotlight.
Brighton resident Kirsten Mortensen has published a romantic suspense novel about a twentysomething California woman who must move back to upstate New York and run the chemical* manufacturing company that her recently deceased father founded if she wants to inherit his fortune. What she doesn’t know about is a sinister force within the company who is up to no good, and she finds herself fighting for her identity and her life.
Portrait of a Lady. One of the great things about my Kindle is that there are so many free classics. This book, considered by some to be Henry James’ masterpiece, is definitely “slow hand lit.” James takes his time; the book’s pleasures are subtle ones meant to be lingered over, not swallowed in chunks. Definitely worth reading if you’re inclined to literary fare.
An Indie
As an indie author myself, I’m meeting other indies on a daily basis. There’s no way I could read all of the new books I’m finding out about as a result, but I am trying to at least sample and if something grabs me, read on. The Movie by Bosley Gravel is one that did. Said it before and will say it again, Bos is a writer to watch.
Where have you been all my life
This one sort of falls into the indie author category as well. Julie Harris is a midlister who has started bringing titles out as ebooks. I read An Absence of Angels and really enjoyed it. It’s historical fiction, great story telling, memorable characters.
And one print book
My dad lent me this one. Gregory Orr spent part of his childhood in Germantown, New York, where my father also grew up. The Blessing is his memoir. It opens on the day that Orr accidentally shot and killed his younger brother, but this is not a maudlin book. It’s a beautifully realized meditation on pain, grace, and art.
I have my dad to thank for this one. He grew up in the same town as the author (Germantown, NY), bought the book, and lent it to me.
The Blessing is a memoir about a tragic family that opens on begins at the bottom: on the first day of deer hunting season in 1959, Orr accidentally shot and killed his little brother.
Today Orr is a poet, so no surprise: The Blessing is not only beautifully written, but also richly felt — Orr has lived a life examined and as dreadful as it has been, at times, he’s somehow found a way to bear it.
Bordewich quotes from the book that in the first year after its release, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
sold 310,000 copies in the United States, triple the number of its nearest rivals.
It would eventually sell a million copies in Great Britain alone.
The book “opened the way for a widespread acceptance in the North of antislavery arguments that had long been ignored or dismissed.”
It helped pave the way for Lincoln’s efforts to “convert countless apathetic Yankees into men willing to fight for the emancipation of slaves.”
I read the book many many years ago, as a pre-teen — it was one of the novels I found as I worked my way through my hometown’s little library. Even then I recognized it was not only dated but propaganda; I recognized that the writing was in service of a Cause rather than an esthetic.
But what a cause, and what an accomplishment for a writer to almost single-handedly turn an entire country away from its acceptance of slavery . . .
