Tad Williams

WRITING LESSONS – something I have learned from Tad is to watch TV and films specifically to think about, and absorb, the writing at work. For example: in the wee small hours, I just watched Slumdog Millionaire. (Yeah, I know I’m late, but we’re parents.) The writerly things I came away with include this:

Clever use of a three-part narrative, namely: the events of the game show on which the hero wins money (which isn’t what he’s there for or cares about – ooh, mystery); torture and interrogation over the questions he’s being asked; and flashback narrative telling the early years.

And the questions on the game-show are woven into the events of Jamal’s life – they feed into each other. The tale is a fairy tale, but it justifies itself just as well as possibly can.

I could see the writerly challenge in the last stages of the game show: how do I make this surprising and unexpected? First of all, the hero has to DO, and he does do, magnificently, when he refuses the game-show host’s horrid trickery. He outwits the man.

That kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering what would happen – even though I and most people who ever see that movie, know that Jamal is going to win. It’s a masterly piece of characterization too, because it reinforces Jamal’s heroism, AND it’s a world-class moment of suspense.

Here’s a truism: it’s hard to put the fiction-making process into words. The actions (in one’s head) that create a story are a bit like real life in that they slop all over the place and are subject to uncertainties and changing meanings. But somewhere during this act of faith, a story emerges. Thinking about story forms (their actual structure) is a crucial part of the education of a writer.

I thought I’d run a little experiment for a while – see what it is to write a daily blog piece. Partially I’m motivated to do this because Tad and I have been remiss lately. Stuff of Life came roaring up and claimed me for a while. And Tad’s just working very hard, finishing his draft of A Witch At Ordinary Farm, followed swiftly by the fourth Shadowmarch.

Anyway, I’m sort mulling text on a cellular level right now, so here’s a snippet from my mind:

It was a mob of children shrieking by that made her say: “Quickly!”
And she all but carried the wicker man in the wake of the boys and girls.
“No,” cried the old passenger. “The noise!”
“It’s special!” The nurse hustled him through a door. “A medicine! Here!”
The old man stared.
“Why,” he murmured. “This is --- a playroom.”
She steered him into the midst of all the screams.
“Children! Storytelling time!”
They were about to run again when she added, “Ghost-story-telling time!”
She pointed casually to the ghastly passenger, whose pale moth fingers grasped the scarf about his icy throat.
“All fall down!” said the nurse.

It’s a little bonne-bouche from Ray Bradbury’s From The Dust Returned. I like all the contrasts in it – life and death, and the threat that the nurture here might in fact be something from a nightmare.