Step 10: A lesson from Dune and the value of frustration
If something is not working, it's time to figure out why.
I did not work as hard as I wanted to yesterday (whatever the hell that means). To be more specific, I was getting frustrated.
Why? It's not the actual writing project as a whole that left me drained, it was the specific part I was up to- namely, a lot of dialogue. Extended conversation is not my strong suit.
So I thought about it, and I realised that I had put up certain roadblocks to my writing because I was taking some generalised advice way too far. In an earlier post, I mentioned Chuck Pahlaniuk's advice to stop writing 'thought' verbs. For the last few years (yes, years) I took this advice very seriously. I was limited to showing thoughts, feelings, and internal reactions via physical responses and actions. Like most advice, if you take it too seriously all the time, you're going to end up restricting yourself when the advice isn't applicable.
Thought verbs: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires
So I decided to go to my favorite novel to figure out how he did it.
Dune, by Frank Herbert. I love the way he writes, I love the world and the strange, idiosyncratic philosophies embedded in it. And I love the characters. So I got out the book and started finding sections of dialogue which I enjoyed.
He uses thought verbs all the time. His characters "sensed", or "thought", or "felt."
Between lines of dialogue, the characters move around, do habitual acts, like opening a curtain or flicking lint from a jacket. Not every damn action is an attempt to indirectly convey an internal thought process. Some of it just adds life and weight to the characters.
After a character speaks- especially for the first time, Herbert describes exactly what their voice sounded like, "A contralto." A "deep basso." He does not always use "[Character name] said" or, "He/she said.", he appends a moniker to them, "Old woman." Maybe this sounds stupidly elementary, but it's not just that Dune's form of dialogue uses these conventions, it's that a book I absolutely adore, and would love to emulate, uses these conventions.
The characters 'thoughts' are rather in depth. A paragraph's worth of the character's internal process, their questions, confusion, risks, calculations. It's one of my favorite things about Dune- that the character's internal worlds are so rich, and the methods of deception, manipulation, or diplomacy that constantly come up.
So what does this all mean?
It means I can take off the handcuffs. I can experiment. I can play. I've spent years almost entirely avoiding thought verbs unless absolutely necessary. There are almost none in my short stories.
As I wrote a few lines, the fact that I didn't have to pound my head against a wall thinking of gesture/facial expression etc. To describe a reaction was so freeing. I enjoyed writing. I could write a few lines about why a character reacted the way they did, or how they processed the moment. This may sound silly to a lot of writers I know, as well as there being a lot more useful advice out there, but the real progress here is the reaction to frustration.
Frustration is an indication of a problem. Use it as a compass to direct you to an obstacle you inherently react to. Removing such an obstacle is incredibly freeing. If you can't break through the wall, climb, dig, go around, or fucking fly.
Every writing problem I will encounter has been solved by someone else in another novel. It's just a question of finding the right page. The necessity of invention, because of the pressure of time will force me to learn from the works of others, so that even if my novels are POS, I'll have improved.
Also, here's a short story, which a few people have already read, but nonetheless https://www.wattpad.com/475348096-afterwards (1200 words 4-6 mins read)
Tomorrow the blog goes up so I'll stop spamming people's FB feeds.