By Ashley Duke
For the perfect cup, pour boiling water over the teabag and leave for 2 minutes, add milk, leave for a further 3 minutes. Remove the teabag, stir, and enjoy.
-Back of a single serve of English Breakfast.
After 5 years, I will soon graduate from part-time study with a major in Creative Writing. Approaching graduation is like coming to the end of a long and dense novel. Part-time study has forced me to linger over and think about topics carefully, and this ‘novel,’ which I have read deeply and taken my time with, has left its mark. Each year seems to have contained one key lesson, and, whilst the tea leaves have unfurled and steeped, these have become something like mantras for my writing. Although I am no authority on this topic, these are things that, I believe, would have helped my writing considerably 5 years ago.
No Wasted Words.
…I could not bring myself to do more than add a few commas, just to show I’d done something. It had its own tone-music-integrity. It did not invite tinkering.
-Tobias Wolff (Introduction to The Hemingway Stories)
Wolff recalls a teacher asking students to edit published work, to help the would-be writers identify and fix issues in their own composition. I was assigned a similar task in my first year, and, although there were no Hemingway examples, the exercise was just as fruitful—a critical eye, I have found, is more easily developed looking at another’s work before turning to your own. No wasted words means everything must work on some level. My early adoption of this mantra involved intense editing; every sentence came under intense scrutiny, each unnecessary word culled like paring fat, without losing meaning. My approach has been to write the piece with as many words as needed, then cut at least a third. The times that I have done this most effectively is when I had a clear idea of what was story and what was not. When you reach the point that no more can be omitted, and you are simply adding or removing commas, then you are done.
Appropriate Comparisons.
During a previous Hatch session our guest speaker, Craig Billingham, offered this gem. Shortly before returning to university, I decided to get serious about writing. I did what I think many aspiring writers do—I bought the best books I could find and read tirelessly. Although I would not recommend against this approach—reading widely is necessary for any writer—it is also important not to create the anxiety-inducing, unrealistic standard set by the world’s best writers. Craig advised grounding your expectations through reading works published by your contemporaries. I would add, join a writers’ group, or get onto the panel of editors or judges reviewing submissions from your peers, if you can, and see also what is not getting published. You will soon understand where your work sits.
Everything does more than one thing.
A great benefit to writing short stories is that it teaches you constraint. Writing must do twice as much when the available space on the page is halved. Learning to write simple stories well improves the odds that your work will be read and furthers an understanding of how the elements of story fit together; but superficial stories can only ever be unfulfilling. If everything is explicit, and there is nothing in the undertows, then you risk dissatisfying readers and making your story forgettable. What is your story about? This has been asked of me many times in the last five years. When my only answer has been a synopsis, I haven’t really had a story.
Handshake not a lecture.
This is a variation of show don’t tell. The idea is that story happens when reader and writer meet somewhere, hopefully halfway, between each other’s imaginations—a handshake. A writer cannot hope to convey the story world they have created; instead, writers find the parts that mean the most and the reader fills in the blanks. When Donna Tartt describes an extensive manhunt on a mountain range in The Secret History, she remains minimalist: “the black crowds sprinkled over Mount Cataract like ants in a sugar bowl” (2). Then the prose moves swiftly on. Tartt does not need to mention the size, scale, colour, or temperature; and is there not something repulsive and squeamish about ants climbing up your sugar bowl? Throughout her novel, the protagonist deals with his guilt over a friend’s death. The ant metaphor captures all that. Readers likewise want to make the leap, to connect the dots and interpret your story, but you must first extend a hand. I have heard this described as leaving breadcrumbs, a paper trail, or signposting, but the message is the same: writer and reader must collaborate, which requires trust from both parties. As Janet Burroway claims in Writing Fiction, “[m]uch of the pleasure of reading comes from the egotistical sense that we are clever enough to understand. When the author explains to us or interprets for us, we suspect that he or she doesn’t think us bright enough to do it for ourselves.” (25)
Pieces of you in it.
Tegan Daylight, at a recent Hatch session, articulated a sentiment I had felt for some time—the best pieces of writing, the bits that really sing, are the lines that have something of the writer in them. During the session, for those who grew up reading Harry Potter, this was explained as leaving horcruxes on the page—pieces of the writer’s soul. The piece I had submitted for feedback during this session was not very good, but there was one line I was happy with. This line captured a childhood memory of three brothers: “Adam marched through the fields with Charlie following behind him. They leaned sticks on their shoulders like rifles, and launched raids on Will, who rarely played, as he mucked out the coops or fished the creek.” If it were possible to highlight these moments in your favourite books, I’d bet that the parts that speak to you the most would be lit up. My goal since has been to fill my work with them, to have more lines highlighted than not.
After 5 minutes brewing, the tea will have reached sipping temperature. I am only now dipping my toe into submitting short stories—little anxious testing sips—in the hope that what I have been brewing is palatable, maybe enjoyable, perhaps even has meaning. I am still a while off big, noisy gulps. Part-time study has forced me to linger and think about these lessons, and the more lessons I have, the more I notice them in what I read. Although 5 years seems like forever, I can only encourage you not to rush; there are no shortcuts when making a good brew.
Works Cited
Tartt, Donna. The Secret History. Penguin Books, 2008.
Burroway, Janet, et al. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. 10th ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2019.