Opening Thoughts #2

Ever wondered what it would be like to walk through a cow? You haven't? Really?

Toasting marshmallows in the flames of toil! Oh, I like that Maria! Grab your toasting forks everyone!

Well, I think I burned my marshmallows last week, absorbing everything I could about openings - literary openings and the induction, which is like the opening to a trance-like state. Figured I'd discover more interesting parallels! I found a few. Here are my bestest observations:

I've been reading through lists of favourite openings and also lists of things not to do in the opening. Good to tackle a topic from different perspectives! Turns out that agents receive an awful lot of manuscripts that open with the protag on a journey, often a plane.

I can see the logic in this. It's rather like the classic bridge scene in a movie - the symbol of moving from one state to another, from an old way of life to a new way of life. (Forward momentum!) For examples of the bridge scene, check out Mona Lisa, Shrek, Rain Man, and also Jagged Edge (in which the Golden Gate bridge is both symbolic and establishing).

I was inspired by ricardo to read Iris Murdoch's debut novel Under the Net (good call ricardo!). She opens with the protag post transitional journey. He has just stepped off the train, having returned home to England, '...the smell of France still fresh in my nostrils.'

I've never found cause to dispute the old 'go in late' chestnut. When you consider how late to go in, the advice muddies a little, but there's nothing wrong with opening at the first point of change, occasionally referred to as the inciting incident, although, like Satan and George Eliot, it has many names, which is why I like to break things into consistent, neat, easy-to-digest chunklets and call them change. My smazy brain likes easy things.

The bridge scene is, I feel, a visual cue and not best suited to written narrative. When Bob Hoskins crosses the bridge with bag in hand, the bridge visually symbolises his transition from his years in prison to his new life (Mona Lisa [from memory]).

In a novel, the author might elect to go in later, at the point where Bob Hoskins has crossed the bridge and begins to interact with the components of his new life - on the precipice of change.

I wonder how Iris Murdoch chooses to open her debut novel ...

When I saw Finn waiting for me at the corner of the street I knew at once that something had gone wrong.

Other commonly submitted openings begin with protag looking in mirror, protag eating breakfast, and descriptions of sunrises.

If Jack Bickham were dead, his ghost would be sat beside me right now, his little eyebrows wiggling. Hope he's not dead. I have no idea. He's ace!*

Yes, Jack refers to this as warming up the engines. He says not to do that. I must point out here that agents appear to be cool with all these hackneyed openings, so don't fret if your protag is eating breakfast on a plane whilst looking at himself in a mirror with one eye and watching the sun rise with his other eye. Whilst I imagine the alarm bells will be hopping excitedly in the agent's mind, nodding their heads as if to say 'Now? Can we ring now?', agents understand that pieces of dead cow can make millions in the hands of Damien Hirst.

Prologues don't seem to be very popular. Rather, they are somewhat derided. One commenter suggested that prologues are the artifice of the writer who is unable to write a captivating opening chapter. I think this observation is misleading, because it's largely semantic: if you replaced the title 'Prologue' with the title 'Chapter One', the argument is somewhat moot.

However, I think the idea stems from the concept of the backwards-looking opening - the big info dump - the introductory back-story.

Jack opens his book The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes with a Forward (sic) which begins:

The preliminary section of a book is often labeled a 'Foreword.' But in a book involving fiction technique, the word ought to be 'Forward.'

Why? ... To emphasize two vital points: All good fiction moves forward; all good fiction writers look ahead.

Chuck Wadey.

Several things struck me as I scoured webpage after webpage, youtube clip after youtube clip, scrutinizing the art of the hypnotic induction. Primarily:

The induction works best on groups of blonde girls.

I know - sounds spurious. But the reality is that not all subjects are good subjects. A good subject is suggestible, which is to say that she is willing - she wants to be induced. The two waitresses from the Hooters bar are pretty safe bets when it comes to seeking subjects who want to make a spectacle of themselves, right? The hypnotist does not force a person into a trance. The hypnotist finds a subject who wants to believe.

Why groups (say, more than one person)? Because of the human need to conform (pressure to conform), and because of the human desire to avoid embarrassment. Once the first few girls have had their index fingers 'magnetised' and are completely unable to keep them apart, the others follow. (No, I'm not going to use the word sheep.) Or, when that girl is up on the stage in front of an audience of friends and baying men, she would feel foolish if she 'failed'. Or, when some guy comes up to you in the street and asks if he can hypnotise you and you agree and he stares you in the eyes and pushes your head into his hands, how foolish are you going to look if, having already agreed to participate, you lift your head and say 'Wtf!'?

Another thing that truly struck me about professional inductions was the speed with which the subject can be placed 'into a trance'. We're talking instantaneous! Notably, there is a handshake induction which never fails to amaze me! (This uses the technique of pattern interrupts which I'll look at another time.)

The reader wants to believe. Gosh, even the agent wants to believe! And they really don't need any prevarication, noodling, back-story, descriptive prose or motivation at the outset. That stuff can wait, at least a little while, really it can. They need a reason - a reason to care!

Here are some things that Rachelle Gardner has found to care about:

Today I looked at some of my favorite first lines from novels, and asked myself why I liked them. I found each one appealed to me for a different reason. It might have:

-been clever
-been thought-provoking
-brought an immediate smile (or stab) of recognition
-struck me as poignant
-painted a really cool word picture
-set up an intriguing mystery
-introduced a character I want to know better
-made me laugh

-drawn me into an unfamiliar world
-used words in a beautiful way

The one thing they all have in common is they make me want to read more. They immediately draw me into the universe of the novel by the unique voice that first line begins to establish.

More soon.

(Note to self: Patterns, pattern interrupts, confusion and N4oo as they relate to the creation of a suggestible state; benefits of suggestible state; more on caring.)

* Turns out that Jack died after battling lymphoma. He died two years ago on this very day! One of those strange coincidences, like posting a picture of the 2001 star baby and thinking 'I haven't seen 2001: A Space Odyssey for years!' and then discovering that it's on tv at the weekend. RIP Jack and thanks for your guidance. X

Truth from NVC

The Poet Takes a Walk: Valerie Armstrong.

On the topics of truth, body language (Non-Verbal Communication), representational systems, and Norwich, I've been meaning to present a marvellous piece of narrative, again from Ali Smith's The Accidental.

It struck me because, of the many rhythms I engaged with when writing my final act, one of the most notable was my attitude towards character responses, employing 'shows' of body language. You might have noticed the body language link which I added recently.

Check out the apportioning of dominant and submissive behaviour, both in summarised dialogue and through a mix of body language cues, delivered as shows and tells. And see if you can guess which side of the 'Said is dead!' debate Smith champions.

Amber smiled at the man.

I'm afraid, I imagine, you'll need to get written permission from the proprietors of each station for something like that, the man said to Amber, ignoring Astrid.

You're afraid or you imagine? Amber said.

What? the man said.

He looked bewildered.

Afraid or imagine? Amber said.

The man glanced again at the camera and wiped the back of his neck with his hand.

And are you congenitally unable to talk to her, so you have to refer everything to me, like I'm your secretary or a special sign-language interpreter for her, like she's deaf or dumb? Amber said. She can speak. She can hear.

Eh? the man said. Look, he said.

We are looking, Amber said.

Listen, the man said.

Make up your mind, Amber said.

You can't film here, the man said. That's final.

He folded his arms at Amber and kept them folded. Amber looked right back at the man. She took a step forward. The man took two steps back. Amber started to laugh.

Then she linked her arm into Astrid's arm and they went out of the entrance hall into the town bit of Norwich.

Invent or Remember?

Strange Japanese invention #1: Hair noodle protector.

I made something of a momentous discovery yesterday.

I have been mulling over a letter that Gertrude Stein wrote to Hemingway. In the letter, she told Hem that she thought the things he invented were superior to the things he remembered.

Worth taking a moment to think about this.

I'm sure that, in part, my mood board was designed to put this idea to the test.
Anyhoo, the mood board was surprisingly unsuccessful.
Lying in bed last night, I was thinking of the descriptions I had made, of the things I had found in the images, and of the things I had remembered. After a little thought, I found the one description that transformed the scene, and it was something that did not exist in the mood board.
I had inadvertantly hit upon the very reason why my mood board was, largely, a failure, there in the post, an afterthought in brackets!

Under the regulations of the narrator's knowledge and make-up!

It's not enough to find those essential details. The essence of those details needs to be the essence that the narrator (in this case, the protag [first-person]) would find.

But that's not quite right either.

Allow me to refer you, gentle reader, to my previous thoughts on the benefits of a Primary Representational System:
In considering the cases for and against, I gave myself this argument:

Because we each have a PRS, by giving one to our characters, they become more like real people, and we can use their PRS to characterise. However, by choosing to prioritise one RS over the others, we jeapordise our chances of forming any rapport with those readers whose PRSs are different to any given character's.

The argument is a bit messy, because I should have distinguished between narrator and character.
I still contend that characters are better defined through a PRIMARY RS.

However, the narrator is not simply a character. The narrator is the umbilical cord between fiction and the reader's reality. Or, less pragmatically, the narrator is part character and part reader.
As such, to imbue the narrator with a Primary RS is to cut away huge chunks of the reader.

Therefore, I now contend that the narrator should not absorb and regurgitate the world through the sieve of a PRIMARY RS. The narrator should, in reasonably equal measures, see, hear, smell, taste and touch the world. In this way, every permutation of reader RS's is satisfied.

Strange Japanese invention #2: Portable office tie.

So back to Gertude.

I think, what she was telling Hem, was that his employment of a PRIMARY RS (taste) went some way towards the criticisms that were often hurled at Hem: That his writing was sterile. (Not to be confused with clinical!)
This might be because:
When Hem remembered, he did so through the filter of his own Representational Systems.
When Hem invented, he did so with a thought for the reader (and, possibly subconsciously, broke from his filter).
Certainly, it's interesting to see how Hem's band of RS's widened as he matured.

N.B. Piaget once said that people learn most when they have to invent. Particularly interesting if you consider that the reader and narrator learn simultaneously.

Still some way to go with these thoughts. But for now, I have enough to understand why some of my descriptions work well, while others feel wrong. PRIMARY for characters, GENERAL for narrator.

Strange Japanese invention #3: Ten-in-one gardening tool.

Here's a thought to leave you with:
What would happen if you took two of your characters and made them into one?

A Greater POV

The neighbours didn't take kindly to Edward's new shed.

So we're in first-person and we're limited to what this character knows and to how this character experiences the world about him right ..?

Hokay, take a look at this simile used by my first-person narrator/protagonist to describe the sound of the rain on his umbrella:

... like a bonfire of tuneless glockenpiels.

Given that his quest is a musical one, I chose for him an auditory PRS. Note that this is a Primary RS and not an exclusive one. (By choosing a Primary RS, I am siding with the likes of Hemingway. The argument here might go something like: Because we each have a PRS, by giving one to our characters, they become more like real people, and we can use their PRS to characterise. However, by choosing to prioritise one RS over the others, we jeapordise our chances of forming any rapport with those readers whose PRSs are different to any given character's.)
So my protag hears the world about him - his map of the world is defined primarily through an absorption of sounds.
The associated word palette would reveal itself like this:
I hear you; that rings a bell; sounds like a good idea, etc.
His love of music - his PRS - would influence every observation.

In NLP, Representational Systems are referred to as modalities. Modalities are our means of experiencing the world.
The building blocks of such senses are called submodalities. Here are some examples:

Visual: colour (or b&w), brightness, contrast, movement, speed, size.

Auditory: words/sounds, volume, tone, timbre, duration, speed.

Kinesthetic: intensity, pressure, texture, weight, temperature, duration, shape.

In expressing our thoughts, each of us works up from a Deep Structure - the abstract stuff prancing about in our minds. As this stuff makes its way out, it is pruned and jumbled (generalised), and the resulting expression is revealed.
For a simple example, imagine a forest and then describe it. Note the things that you choose to mention and those things that you choose to omit. Note too how accurately (or not) your description reflects what is in your head. And, if you can't imagine how different your description of a forest would be to everyone else's, get some pals to join in. We can see how varied multiple interpretations are of the same word: forest.

We do just this with our chosen style: we mention some stuff and not other stuff.
But a first-person narrator dictates the style.
In order to control the style, we would need to understand this narrator - his RSs and his psychology - the way he maps the world and the influences born from his experiences.

This works to our advantage in plotting.
At any one moment in our plot, we mention some stuff and we suggest some stuff and save some other stuff for later.

So let's imagine that my protag is already making some destructive plans in his head. It's just this kind of internal conflict that seeks to reveal itself, through words and body language and so forth. Rather like those police training videos in which the audience is invited to spot the tell-tale signs of guilt. (I remember the drug search in which the villain simultaneously professed his innocence whilst backing towards a cabinet. Can you guess where he kept his stash? :-)

Our first-person narrator isn't necessarily going to confess his guilty thoughts (or any other of his private and clandestine thoughts). Indeed, they may not be fully formed in his head. But, they are likely to edge out of his consciousness.
This could be regarded as a first-person form of Chekhov's gun - a subtle bit of foreshadowing.

The point of a palette is that an entire scene or, more probably, chapter is painted with it.
Therefore, the theme would be repeated. In this way, Chekhov's gun is dismantled into many parts and spread across the prose such that the foreshadowing is ingested subconsciously.

In these ways, we can link the reader not just to the first-person narrator's conscious musings, but to something much deeper within him: just as we impart knowledge at strategic moments in order to give a plot momentum and changes in direction, we can connect the reader to the narrator in the past, the present, or the future - we can allow the reader to consciously understand things beyond the narrator's understanding, just as we can allow the narrator to withhold information from the reader.
There are things even within a first-person narrator that he himself is unaware of.

So we're in first-person and we're limited to what this character knows and to how this character experiences the world about him right ..?

Anchors

Guess where this thumb's been.

I finally found time to put a powerful NLP technique into practise recently.

We've discussed triggers at length (although I would like to study them a little deeper shortly). I've set up a number of them already in The Commuters.
Here's how they work: I might have one character perform some terribly violent act upon another character whilst eating a ham salad sandwich. (I'm currently eating a ham salad sandwich. Yum. Er, but no violent act. Unless you're empathising with the ham salad sandwich.)
Thereafter, I can use the merest mention of a ham salad sandwich to trigger the memory of this act, and the associated emotional response. This gives the author instant access to any prepared emotional state; this gives the author the ability to change the emotional topography without breaking a sweat.
When the shooting stars begin, eight-year-old Ellie calls to her father to join her at the telescope (Contact [1997]). She hears a clatter, hurries downstairs, and finds him dying. Years later, standing on a faraway shore, she speaks with an alien who has taken her father's form. The shooting stars kick in and we are instantly reminded of her heartbreak when her father died. Our associated emotion is thrown into the mix and the scene is transformed.
(I wanted to find an example of a shooting star as anchor so that I could apologize for writing 'Pleiades' in my previous post when I meant 'Perseids'. Forgive me.)

A stimulus which is linked to and triggers a physiological state is called an anchor in NLP.
[Source: Introducing NLP, Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour.]

Given that there are always warnings surrounding the following technique, please do not attempt to use it until you have read up on it; what follows is an abbreviated version.

I rather fancied developing an anchor that would grant me instant access to a specific resource - confidence!
I began by specifying the anchor. This anchor is built from three elements: a kinaesthetic trigger, an aural trigger and a visual trigger. I picked the standard default kinaesthetic trigger - tapping my forefinger with my thumb. For my aural trigger, which is related to the resource, I chose Brian Blessed booming out the word 'Confidence!'; and for my visual trigger, I chose a glass of champagne (which has relevance to the resource in my world model!).

With my anchor prepared, I searched through my memories looking for a time when I felt supremely confident. It took a little time to find something appropriate - something almost iconic, which I could recreate vividly. I spent a good thirty minutes replaying this scene in my mind, building that sense of confidence, burning the scene into clarity, reliving the moment and the emotions of the resource.

The next step is to connect the anchor to the resource. This must occur as the resource peaks.
I replayed the scene once again, now fresh in my mind, building that sense of confidence, and then I instigated my anchor (tap thumb, 'Confidence!', champagne).
Having done this several times, assigning the anchor to the resource, I was ready to test my new technique. Would it really work? Could I really imbue myself with confidence so readily? Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could ... if I could change my state at will ..?

Sure it worked. I walked into the fish and chip shop and found myself in Brian Blessed mode. I joked and laughed with the girl serving me, and we found out more about each other in those fifteen minutes than we have done in years. (NB I'm more of an occasional than a regular.)
Could it be so easy?
Well, that was a week ago.
I tried triggering the state again at the weekend and it wasn't so forthcoming: I hadn't spent thirty minutes recreating that specific time when I felt supremely confident.
All a state of mind?
Well yes! That's precisely what many of these techniques are. Hypnosis comes from suggestion and from the subject willingly entering a different state. Much of Derren Brown's 'magic' comes from within his subjects themselves ... he simply invites these people to enter a certain state.

I daresay, with practise, I could strengthen the bond between my anchor and my resource. But will it ever be enough to bring me out of a negative, self-abasing state?
Either way, I have no doubt of the power of such techniques, and of their rightful places in our writing.

As an aside, and on my current theme of dialogue, check out this portion of conversation I had with the fish and chip girl:

GIRL: So what do you do then?
ME: I make computer games.

In my experience, the conversation here tends to move in one of three ways:
1) Oh, computer games are really bad.
2) Really, that's cool (feigning interest).
3) Really, that's cool (a bit interested).

However ...

GIRL: I guess you have a security guard don't you?

Can you work out where she was leading the conversation ..?

ME: Yes. We have lots of expensive equipment on site!
GIRL: My friend's looking for security guard work. Could you find out if there are any jobs going?

Being Other People

Doesn't every man want a pair? At least for a day?

Still observing communications.

I don't see the woman next door much, but when we do bump into each other we always have a mighty fine chinwag.
This evening, she was telling me how she feeds the fox.
We actually have several foxes; they pop by every evening, indulging in noisy saturnalias (ooh, a tautological homage to Zadie Smith. Btw, get yourselves out of the light pollution and onto a nice hill for we're in the heart of Pleiades season!).

Yes, several foxes, but I saw no point in correcting my neighbour and we chatted some more and then I mentioned the fox. At that point, she saw fit to correct me: 'There are more than one you know!'
So what had I done? I had adapted - I had matched her words to create, what NLPers refer to as, a rapport. We know how essential body language is in creating a rapport, and, again, that mirroring creates a bond of trust. The same is true of the things we say.

Ooh, at this point I'd like to quote from O'Connor and Seymour's Introducing NLP:

Great literature always has a rich and varied mix of predicates, using all the representational systems equally, hence its universal appeal.

It's an interesting and valuable notion, although I'd wonder at the definition of 'great literature' in terms of 'universal appeal'. Certainly, Hemingway was somewhat biased in his choice of predicate, as are/were many other super authors, many of whom you'll find scattered upon this blog (probably under some PRS-esque heading).
Btw, predicates are sensory-based words.

One more thought before I go to bed, not that I sleep too well these days anyhoo ...

My son and I were killing some time on a train journey with the latest Doctor Who Top Trumps. However, rather than pitting our cards against each other, we played 'guess the character': one person looks at his top card and has to do an impersonation of that character and the other person has to guess correctly. Just for fun, you understand.
What occurred to me was that the dull characters were very hard to impersonate, and the cool characters were much easier to impersonate.
I'll leave that with you. Nite. x

Word Palettes in Dialogue

Never test your sleeping potion standing up.

Ooh look! Just been mooching around my favourites, catching up on submission guidelines, and the lovely Broo Doherty (of Wade and Doherty Literary Agency) has posted some top advice on writing your first novel!
Do go and have a read! You won't regret it! (Ricardo - what do you make of number 6?)

Several of her comments caught my eye. In particular, however, her thoughts on dialogue touch on something that's been gambolling upon the fallow fields of my brain.

5. Dialogue.

Do not shy away from allowing your characters to talk. But it is worth remembering that typically people are not allowed to talk for longer than two sentences before someone interrupts them. The other thing that may be useful if you are trying to characterise someone through their speech is to give them a catch phrase or a word that is unique to them. This gives them an individuality which is important.

Since reading Introducing NLP (by Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour), or maybe that had nothing to do with it, I've been picking up on themes in people's speech.

NLP suggests that everyone has a Primary Representational System for receiving information, and a second PRS for processing that information. So, I might typically draw the sounds from around me and display these in my head as images. What is important to remember is that everyone has their own unique model of the world. And everything we say, the words we use and the subjects we choose, our leads and our responses in dialogue, will patch into this model. Yep, Joseph and John are quick to point out that words form only about 7% of communication, with voice tonality coming in at around 38%, and body language hogging 55%. But, given that we have an awful lot of dialogue in our work, I'd agree with Broo that we would do well to consider how these words reflect their speaker's model - how they reveal the speaker's experience and background, education and beliefs and hopes and attitudes ...

The simplest demonstration might be the half glass. Your character remarks on the contents of her glass. Will she explain that it is half full, or half empty? Either way, you're saying something about her.

Maybe she thanks the Lord for the drink, or worries about drinking it too fast because it's expensive, or comments on the beautiful shape of the glass, or pays no heed and guzzles the contents, or shares it with someone else, or drinks even though she's not thirsty, or needs a straw, or needs three blue straws, or sticks out her little finger as she drinks ... all of these attitudes tell the reader something about her character - about her make-up.

Then consider that a theme is established. She will thank the Lord for a sunny day too; she will wish that she had the money to spend on an ice-cream on that sunny day; she will be amazed by the blueness of the sky on that sunny day; she will not even notice that it is a sunny day; etc.

Word palettes are more subtle and can be employed in every and any circumstance. Our protag may make the following remarks:

'That salmon is drowning in sauce.'

'That battery is dead.'

'It's so hot, I can barely breathe!'

Or pump up the superlatives:

'What an amazing meal!'

Or push into exaggeration mode:

'That's gotta be the best meal anyone has ever eaten!'

(This is a staple of my son's dialogue: in his world, things take forever or they are impossible or they are the best thing ever or there are infinity of them!)

In my life, I can think of people who always have something positive to say, people who will find the negatives and who expect the worst, people who will listen attentively and people who would rather talk about themselves, people who talk obssessively of their hobby, people who would rather not talk to anyone, people who ramble tangentially from one topic to the next, people who live in the past, people who speak apologetically, people who speak with authority ...

But, beneath the surface, I am fascinated by the word palettes - the themes - by the repetition of groups of words - by the nuances in dialogue which, when considered as part of a set, offer interesting insights into that person's model of the world. Go and have a chat with someone and look for their palette!