Bryce Courtenay in conversation

Melbourne Writers' Festival - Session 3

I had a gap between two sessions and decided to go and listen to Bryce Courtenay. I haven't read one of his books for years, but I admire his hard work and tenacity, and he usually has something entertaining or thought-provoking to say. This session was certainly both, and included Bryce lying and crouching on the floor, and acting out some of his stories. He is a great storyteller, and believes that without stories we have nothing - stories of the past are what we're all about.

But he also feels we have become self-indulgent - that too many authors turn inward and write about themselves instead of going out and writing about the world around them. He believes there are many stories still to be told about Australia and who we are. When asked about the children of today, he said "everything I was taught at school has proven to be wrong". Yes, there is too much information around - for adults. Kids are the new generation and are able to take it all in. This generation is the brightest there's ever been. A further question on reading, and he said he thought kids shouldn't be given reading lists, but needed to be guided to lost treasures and special books they might otherwise miss.

He takes research for his books very seriously, and spends $100,000 a year on it (last I heard, he had four researchers working for him). He believes in writing stories that stick to the facts, and never changes history to suit his story. There is always someone who knows, and will tell you if you have even the smallest fact wrong. He loves language, and had read all of Dickens by the age of eleven, and loved the words he used.

He feels descriptive narrative is dead because of the visual world we live in. You don't need to spend pages on description because readers now imagine so much. You should only describe the things in your setting or story that are unique. The writer writes two thirds of the book, the other third is written by the reader when they pick it up and read it. He has never written for money (after being in advertising, he didn't need to) - he writes because he wants to know for himself. He likes to write chapters of about 28-30 pages, just long enough for someone to read one in half an hour before they go to sleep!

Two pieces of advice he had to offer:
1. Never leave the spoon in the sink when you're going to turn on the tap (in other words, think ahead).
2. Listen with your eyes.
I didn't leave this session wanting to read any more of Bryce's books, but I did take away a strong sense of a man who is passionate still about his writing, and cares very much about stories and language and readers.

Mentors and Monsters

This week I've been reading a very interesting book of essays, lent to me by my friend, T. There are some great experiences between these covers - yesterday I read about a woman whose mentor/monster was Susan Sontag. It can be a crucial turning point in a writer's life, to have the kind of mentor who changes your writing, your way of regarding the life of writing, and how you put words down on the page. Mentorships have been gaining in popularity here over the past few years. First the Australian Society of Authors offered them, then the Victorian Writers' Centre. I read some of the early reports from the ASA scheme, and those being mentored talked of having someone experienced to simply engage with and bounce off. No manuscript editing was involved (a common perception of a mentorship - like having a personal editor).

One of my favourite essays was by Alexander Chee, whose 'mentor' was Annie Dillard. He uses the term loosely, as she was a teacher who had a great influence on him. What I found interesting was that, like many others writing for this collection, he didn't really understand her influence until later. I loved the line: "In that first class, she wore the pearls and a tab collar peeped over her sweater, but she looked as if she would punch you if you didn't behave." When told they had to hand in their drafts triple-spaced and questioned it, she replied, "I need the room to scribble notes in between your sentences."

Other contributors talk about famous writers as mentors who barely talked to them about their writing but nevertheless inspired them in some way. Joyce Carol Oates, as I imagine many writers would, talks about several different people who influenced her - The Rival, The Friend, and the early influences of particular books. Julia Glass talks of finding an editor who becomes a lifelong friend, mentor, muse and confidant, as well as editor of her novels. Elizabeth Benedict describes her relationship with Elizabeth Hardwick, as do several other writers in the book. Hardwick was a teacher at Columbia and seemed to have had an effect on many of her students, both positive and negative.

As well as finding this collection quite inspiring, it's also making me curious about the novels the various contributors have written. Alexander Chee appears to only have one novel published so far that is still in print; Mary Gordon has four or five. Without spending lots of dollars, I'd like to track down their work and read it. On the other hand, Jonathan Safran Foer's insistence on calling his early romances with girls attempts to "mate" sounded so weird that it coloured the whole essay for me! And set me thinking about another blog I'd read recently where a writer's performance at an event had put that person off his books forever.

This writing life can be so tenuous at times. And it's clear from this book that new writers can be so easily influenced by the literary and/or famous. While the ASA mentorships sounded helpful, I've heard of others where a new writer has been influenced by their mentor to change and rewrite crucial parts of their novels, damaging both plot and an original, vital voice. Is this the mentor's role? To me, this is the danger. One writing teacher here in Melbourne is notorious for creating whole classes of students who come out at the end of the year sounding just like him. How can this be a good thing?

Yes, it's easy to be influenced. What female poet (including me!) hasn't gone through a stage of sounding like Sylvia Plath? But if you read widely, and read as a writer, you move through it and past it, and your writing and your own voice grows and strengthens. What it takes is practice, weeks and months and years of reading and writing LOTS. Not just one piece, or one style, or even one genre. We have so much to draw on these days - it's like an incredible banquet. If all you do is stick with the chicken wings, you won't get far.

Opening Lines

As I pack for Hong Kong, I'm preparing lots of class materials and updating ones I've used before. It's interesting to see what I've used that worked, and think about how to present information in a better way. One new class I am teaching this time will be based on students answering a series of questions - I hope they're ready for lots of talking. In the classroom during the year, discussion is a strange bird that sometimes takes flight and sometimes stays huddled down, wings stubbornly folded. It can be a challenge to find a way of drawing students out - the confident ones will always have a go.

So finding a new book that tackles a familiar subject in a way that is useful to me is a great discovery. Today I was reading Writing Picture Books: A Hands-On Guide from Story Creation to Publication by Ann Whitford Paul, and in particular the chapter on opening lines. You would think a picture book was so short that the opening line wasn't that important, but she gives excellent examples of how an opening line can change the whole tone of the story.

She uses The Three Little Pigs as an example - whose point of view is the story being told from? The wolf's? (My day got better as soon as I saw those three plump little pigs being thrown out of their house by mean old Mum.) Do you start with pathos (Mum Pig crying over her boys leaving) or anger (the little pigs thinking Mum is being horrible to them)? She gives a wide range of possibilities for how to start this very familiar tale, and each one changes the story into something new.

Every story is the same. I see people start with dialogue that has no identification for several lines, thinking they are being mysterious. Or they start with character description, so you'll know up front who this person is. The art of a stunning first line is a challenge to every writer, no matter what you write. David Sedaris starts one of his essays with: "Well, that little experiment is over," my mother said. Stuart MacBride starts Blind Eye with: Waiting was the worst bit: hunkered back against the wall, eyes squinting in the setting sun, waiting for the nod.

What do great first lines have? A sense of place and character, even if not spelled out. A sense of tone, a smidgin of description. But very often they have a story question - a real one, not one that is trying to trick the reader. Joe Abercrombie starts Before They Are Hanged with: Damn mist. It gets in your eyes so you can't see no more than a few strides ahead. (OK, so it's a fragment and a sentence.) It's setting and tone and character altogether - what kind of character says 'no more' and 'strides' rather than 'any further' and 'feet' or 'metres'?

I always feel like that first paragraph is a promise. It's no wonder people stand in bookshops and read first paragraphs and first pages. But they start with the first line that draws them in, and the next lines keep them reading. What's the best first line you've read recently?

Turning Points in a Scene

I have a fairly extensive library of writing how-to books, and some of them are ones I recommend, some are not (one or two I actively de-recommend!). I always say to students that they should have a good look at a writing book before they buy it. Each book speaks differently to us. One that is perfect for me may leave you cold. Sometimes it's the style, but often it happens that I come across a book that tells me what I want to know at just the right time.

Last semester I co-taught a great subject we call Story Structure. I teach it with a scriptwriter who has a huge amount of experience in both scriptwriting and script editing (and as a dramaturg). We'll each talk about something to do with structure, such as scenes, and I approach it from a fiction writer's perspective, and she does the same from a scriptwriter's perspective. No matter how many times we tell students to listen to everything, that the principles apply to both, there are still those that declare themselves confused. "What does that script stuff have to do with my novel?"

So it was with a cry of "Aha!" that I read a chapter last night in The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great by Donald Maass. This is the guy who wrote Writing the Breakout Novel and the workbook that goes with it. In the bit I was reading, he talks about turning points in scenes, something that we covered in class. We'd talked about the two turning points in Syd Field's classic movie structure, and then later we'd moved on to the beats and turning points in a scene.

Still, there were those in the class who couldn't make the connection. A scene is just a scene, isn't it? Stuff happens? Er no, not unless that stuff is interesting and involving and moves the story forward. Maass is talking about scenes in the middle of the novel - the sagging point - and how the turning points should be both external and internal for the viewpoint character. I wish I'd had his book in class - but there's plenty more in there for me to read and think about.