DANNY-ISMS

In my high school drama class, the teacher used to watch our scenes and monologues and comment on what she called our "-isms," which were our subconscious behaviors that we were completely unaware that we were doing while on stage. These actions, tics, quirks, and nervous behaviors identified us as individuals and interfered with our total transformation into whatever character we were trying to portray. To emphasize the point, she attached our first name to the "-ism." Consquently, my subconscious behaviors became "Dannyisms."

In writing, we also have our "-isms." These would be expressions, themes, patterns, fall back beats and character actions that identify our style. Recently, I marked up a manuscript for a writer friend of mine and noted how often her characters swallowed. During scenes of dialogue, the character were always swallowing. In that novel, that was her "-ism." I'm not picking on that writer; we all have our "-isms" and we do not realize we are doing them. In a 200-plus page manuscript, it's hard to keep track of every last little action we give our characters, especially in the heat of composition. That's what peer readers are for.

In reading the second draft of School Spirit, I noticed many of my Dannyisms. Namely, that people were always "exhaling." "He looked at her and exhaled." "I exhaled to release my tension." "She exhaled in relief." People were also always having "lights go on" when they realized something. "A light went on in his head." "The light went on in her head and then he realized what happened." And a variation: "A light came up in her eyes and then she knew." Or the like. It's okay to put these in a rough draft to keep the story moving. But eventually, we must go back and fix them. As a result, during a quick polish, after the second draft of SS, I tried to locate and surgically alter most or all of my "-isms."

The point here is that during at least one draft, it's important that we search for our "-isms," and kill them. Well, not all of them. There's nothing inherently wrong with swallowing, exhaling, or having lights go on. We don't need to kill them all. But if they appear as a noticeable pattern in an entire manuscript, we must hope that some compassionate reader will point them out (with an eye to helping us improve our novel) and then we must have the courage to make a pass through the book and exhange some of them with new, fresher, and more original actions and behaviors for our characters.

That care and attention to detail will not only improve our overall writing skill and make our novel better, but cannot help but increase our chances of getting an agent or finding our onto the shelves of the local Barnes and Noble.

At least that's the plan.

KNIT ONE, PEARL TWO

Two days ago, I sat down to write the fifth and final visitation of the ghost girl, as she attempts to guide her earthly boyfriend toward her killers. The good news is that it went very well: it was engaging (at least to me), deepened the relationship between the characters, and employed a fairly creative and artistic use of language (syntax, vocab, tone, etc.).

On the other hand, the scene went in a slightly different direction than I was planning and it ended much sooner than I was anticipating. But I didn't really want to change it because I liked it. The problem, however, was that I knew what was coming next and what this scene needed to do to connect me to the next section, but what I had written hadn't done that. So I looked at my outline (which was no help) and I thought and thought: how, I wondered, am I going to get from what I wrote that I didn't want to change to where I needed to go? After much thought, I realized I did need another short scene to follow in that chapter. At first, I was only able to generate a few scene ideas that might be covered in a way that could make that connection. I was concerned though that, being so close to the climax and the end of the book, that I might be sacrificing pace.

I went home for the day and, as usual, percolated subconsciously on what I would be writing the next morning. I had a few more ideas before arriving at school the next morning at my usual time, but still hadn't come up with any solid answers. I still wasn't completely sure what direction to go in as I walked across the campus.

Then, as if by magic, right as I was arriving at my classroom door, the entire structure of the scene knitting together several issues, popped in my head completely spontaneously. Usually I don't like scenes that designed to be entirely utilitarian, but this one seemed fully formed and virtually seamless. I sat down and wrote that bad boy during my thirty minute writing time that morning and it turned out pretty well.

The moral?

You never where or when inspiration will (or won't) strike and sometimes writing answers come--if they come at all--at the last possible moment.

COLORS, REVISITED. . .

As I said once in another forum, teaching Lord of the Flies to ninth graders is a bit redundant. That said, I've learned something new about the book during my most recent trip--probably my 15th or 16th journey into Golding's abyss with the English schoolboys run amok.

I had no idea that Golding used so many colors in his writing. This time through I noticed that, on almost every page, Golding uses color to create a more vivid experience for the reader.

Here are some examples:

Describing the conch shell: "In color the shell was deep cream, touched here and there with fading pink " (16)

Describing Jack: "Power lay in the brown swell of his forearms " (150).

Describing the destruction of the conch: ". . .the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist" (181). And in the same paragraph:

Describing the death of Piggy; "His head opened and stuff came out and turned red" (181).

There are a thousand other examples I could cull from, as I said, most every page. I have been sensitive lately to the use of color in writing since heeding my colleague's advice to add more color to my own writing, especially in School Spirit. In subsequent drafts, I plan to write the word "colors" at the top of the chapter I'm revising and look for strategic places just to add a color or two to make the scene more visual, vivid, and, well, colorful.

"You need more colors," my colleague said.

He was right.

Golding novel proves it.