Instructor Response

Dear Maddy,

Don’t be discouraged. There is nothing wrong about anyone’s writing. You’ve learned well, and this is a very impressive performance. Your distress seems related to not achieving what you, the author, want to do, and many times not knowing what you, the author, really wants to do. Your writing is so effective. You create a mood, and the imagery is well chosen and presented for your meaning. In first person you’ve delivered a definite sense of hopelessness and unfairness in life, and discoveries about self. Your protagonist, stimulated by the visit to the abandoned building, understands more about who he or she really is—nicely done. You’ve said a lot about the inexplicable tribulations of life, and your excellent writing allows you to affect the reader by first-person reflection on encountering a desolate abandoned room where humans suffered. Don’t consider this piece a failure in any way; be assured it moved me . . . and I think it will move many readers.

Now let’s explore your writer’s funk. Try to decide what you want to do as a writer. Most of us want to be authors and want the recognition of being good writers. Many times we see publication as the proof we are writers. We sit at our computers and let things flow as they come to mind, send out manuscripts and wait for confirmation that we’ve arrived in the literary consciousness of English readers. Once we got something under way, there is a tendency to compare ourselves to historical (and contemporary) writers and try to find the secret of what made them successful. Well, they were successful in a different time, and usually they were successful to a small percentage of total readers who responded to their individual talents. There is no reason to try to write like Edgar Allan Poe or John Grisham to please readers. No writer can succeed by copying another writer’s success and trying to divert focus away from a writer’s strengths and potential. This idea of getting off track also applies to getting people to comment on your work. Only a minor portion of readers are going to like any specific writer’s work. So writers need to find their audience through developing their fiction targeted to what they want to do and then listen to how these sympathetic readers respond to their work. Ignore opinions and advice of those not prone to like your writing. And don’t expect universal acclaim for your writing. Write to your own standards of excellence. Writers improve by better craft and storytelling, and most of all being clear in what they want to achieve.

So what do you want to achieve? Is it to be an author? (We all want this.) Do you want fame and fortune even in some small way? (We all want this.) But can you be more successful by divorcing yourself from your desire for fame and acclaim? Can you honestly progress toward wanting to affect readers through learning skills of writing and storytelling, regardless of fame and fortune? How do you want to change a reader? Entertain with mysteries? Inform with histories? Amuse with comedies? These are the essentials fiction can bring through story and characterization. But overall, it’s the audience reaction that is important, not your claim to fame or recognition by as many readers as possible for your skills . . . or financial reward. You want to change a reader, not demand through language manipulation praise that will ironically come more readily if you’ve told a good story and written well. You have the talent at your present stage to do this, there is no doubt, but you will also be successful if you write what you determine you want to be—be it fiction, memoir, or essay, even journalistic prose. But again, it’s best to know what you want to do for your target audience. Then determine what you want to do with your writing to change your reader.

Ask: Do you want to engage the reader, enlighten the reader, engender an emotional or intellectual response in the reader, entertain the reader, stimulate new discoveries about what it means to be human, create memorable characters that can direct people in their lives? This is what fiction can provide. But if you want 1) admiration for prose construction, 2) admiration for your intellect through intricacies of description, 3) reader perception of the greatness of your talent through random ideas and images on the page, or 4) readers’ association of your writing with some great author, you could be off the mark. It hints of being self-centered and selfish because all the things about admiration of “me” are achieved through the traditional techniques of mastering craft, learning how to create a story, and learning the complexities of character development.

If you decide you want to be literary, I recommend finding those stories that have moved you the most. For many serious writers those are writers in the past—Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Melville,  Conrad, Flaubert, Zola, the Brontes, Austen, Forster, Hawthorne, and the like. Storytellers who create great characters and write with zing for their generation. You can look to contemporary writers if that’s what you want, but I believe most contemporary writers labeled as literary are writing about “me the author” in memoir first-person styles, and I think they almost always miss any chance at greatness because of inability to create characters, excessive focus on themselves, lack of imagination, and failure to structure prose in favor of loose, often disconnected or overwritten ideation. (But it’s in vogue and making a lot of authors prominent with a declining of number of readers.)

So if you choose to go the more traditional route to achieve what you desire, here’s what I suggest you do:

1. Learn the elements of a great story and incorporate them in your creating through imagination: beginning, middle, and end; conflict and action; concrete rather than abstract; and a purpose for writing.

2. Study narration techniques toward clarifying roles of characters, narrators, and authors so your stories are effective and enjoyable.

3. Improve throughout your career your effectiveness in using narrative, dialogue, internalization, metaphor, imagery, description. Train yourself to use techniques proportional to the effectiveness of story you’re writing.

4. Have a defined purpose for everything you write. Don’t abandon yourself to the whimsy of writing down random ideas and descriptions and then revising. Work with determination to sculpt your story, including every essential for excellence, and deleting everything unrelated to story momentum, meaning, and characterization.

5. Learn to dramatize. Use conflict, action, and resolution at every layer and phase of your writing.

6. Hone your craft. Metaphor, description, setting, timeline, word choice, concrete over abstract, appropriate syntax, rhythm, and pacing.

7. Learn to work desire, motivation, and emotional arcs into all your writing.

8. Workshops. Avoid academic workshops until you’re confident in what you’re doing. When you feel deficient and down, a workshop can be very destructive for your psyche and your writing/storytelling improvement. Group commentary is ineffective and often wrong. The quality of teachers available is distressingly inadequate. (I’ve attended more than 110.)  Find a mentor who is capable of improving you as a writer, not teaching from rote recipes that stifle creativity. And focus on learning on your own, as you are.

Now, if you think you see some advantage in this approach, let me suggest how you might incorporate ideas in the piece you submitted. (This is not to suggest change is needed and that you didn’t do well. You were great. But it will give alternatives that might be helpful as your writing develops.)

You could consider establishing the feelings, emotions, desires, and motivations of the protagonist. Let the story deliver the message that life is tough and short and riddled with mistakes. Why did the protagonist come to the hospital? Was he or she looking for something? Was a family member or a lover incarcerated, and there is something important to be found about the person or his or her stay that will affect protagonist’s life? Could this unknown protagonist be thinking about the immediate things that trigger the reflections that are so beautifully presented (you’ve done this very well at times). Is there some danger or obstacle (conflict) upon entering the hospital–for instance weak construction, fear of contagious diseases still around (unlikely but common fear—i.e. emotions are useful to writer)? Is something going to happen (story element) such as demolition that will destroy something the protagonist doesn’t want destroyed? Is there a danger of fire that might destroy something or someone the protagonists loves or cherishes? Is there a way through action (discovery, overcoming barriers, recovering memory, etc.) that will allow you to present the beautiful metaphorical ideas that support the theme without seeming to be told by the author/narrator? Showing is often more effective than telling, and it takes all writers much practice to know what that means and how to do it.

The idea is to get the theme and meaning across by building on a solid character-based story and through characterization. And the essential of characterization in literary fiction is letting the reader discover the character through action, emotional arcs, enlightenment, and change. I believe you are learning the skills and have the talent to become a very good fiction writer. And you have a degree of imagination and empathy that not many writers today possess.

And don’t think you don’t have the room to do it in your existing manuscript. Much of the above is possible with only a minor increase in word count.

I’ll make a few observations in the manuscript to give you some thoughts about craft improvement. Stick with your writing—improvement is practice—no matter what. With time, I know you’ll soon be over the hump and find yourself satisfied and proud of what you’re creating. And keep seeking help, as you have. Good writing comes through learning—a process that for great writers is a lifelong endeavor. (Be sure to see comments below.)

All the best,

William H. Coles

Signs blow in the wind as I walk the pathway that leads to the abandoned hospital. Seek an alternative to “blow.” This has to do with accurate word choice. “Blow” is an act of creation dealing with air and wind currents. It’s not possible for a sign to do, even in fantasy. Be sure of using the right word and you’ll add a new level to your writing. Live with a thesaurus. One of the signs bangs, hangs from a fine wire, and swings back and forth. Bread Moore Psychiatric Center. Branches latch together and make an arch overhead. The path is long and narrow. Love your use of sensual detail, particularly sight and sound. You might mention cold here, to augment the reader experiencing the scene with an additional sensory detail.

The steps are steep as I walk up the moss covered stairway. Snow covers the windowsill of at least a hundred windows. Bars block the cracked, broken glass. Brick by brick, the abandoned psychiatric hospital stretches across the landscape.

Snow crunches with every step. My footsteps leave a path in the five inch blanket of snow. Bare branches snap back at me the closer I arrive to the entrance. I have to admit I am a little scared. Of what? An opportunity for significant characterization with a word or two. I look back over the grounds. Bent street lamps no longer light the way.

At some point in time, someone has trespassed before me. The chains hang from the door and have been cut loose. Three blue wheelchairs sit alone in the empty room. I sit in one and roll around the room.

Now vacant the haunted history of the place pulls me back. Who sat in these chairs? A broken hearted child, maybe an aged crinkled faced woman gone mad, or maybe a deserted young man depressed and left behind by his wife? Is the protagonist searching for someone specific? Opportunity to enhance story and characterization.

Lemon paint peels from the wall. Lemonade was my favorite drink at a young age. I remember squeezing the lemons every summer. My tiny hands at the age of four or five would squeeze and twist the lemon and watch the juice squirt all over the place. Funny how peeling paint can trigger such a memory. This little bit of backstory halts the progression of front story (in hospital) and seems a little strained in its delivery. Is there a way to just tie the color of the paint to a lemon yellow and maybe ditch the remembering the past (because it doesn’t seem to relate directly to story theme and seems insignificant in characterization)? If you had to keep it, tie the memory to something more significant than squeezing and squirting. This is an example of almost purposeless writing that deadens interest and degrades style for many. Still, perfectly okay if that’s what you want.

Light gleams through the right window and hits the floor.  There’s nothing left but broken windows, a water heater, and a table turned upside down. Light exposes the reality of day. This just means daylight is in the room in some way. The next few words tell the reader light is present. And what is said is repeated in the next sentence more effectively. As expressed, it tends toward overwriting. Poetic description is effective, but requires taste and control. Day light opens your eyes to see the beauty or ugliness of it all. Don’t we all have a light or dark side to us? We seem to be broken in places. Broken in our hearts. Broken in our souls. Broken in our thoughts. This is a bordering on second-person confrontational delivery. It might be more effective staying in first person, a change that might increase impact of the idea.

A swarm of Blue Morphs scatter across the ceiling of the next room. The empty space resembles my dead heart. How odd the experience. Butterflies are frozen solid, they’ve clung to their death. My head leans back as I study their final pose. There must be a million. Credibility. Butterflies swarm in numbers around fifty. That would mean twenty thousand swarms. I know it seems picky, but credibility and logic are important in all writing, especially fiction. And to argue poetic license does not cover laziness in thinking and writing that is implied when credibility and logic are compromised. Their silence leaves a somber breath. Is “breath” the right word here? I’m not sure what a somber breath is, and silence seems unrelated to breathing. The idea is well placed, just needs better expression maybe. Use your imagination and seek accurate metaphors.

Death comes with time. Naturally, they have two weeks to live. Fate has cut their life short. Every Blue Morph has fragile wings. Wings that once fluttered.  Fluttered and spread out in the open space of the mountain side. If I could just allow myself to come alive and spread my wings. Good. And important, too.

I never quite learned how to spread my wings. Wings are for birds and butterflies, and I would give anything if I could hear the stories of this place from a winged creature such as a butterfly. I’ve been an introvert all my life. The significant change in the protagonist. Great.

And don’t you know people in this world never want you to fly. They clip your wings. And what happens when a butterfly’s wings are clipped? The butterfly can only crawl on its thread like legs and hope to survive. And if we’re not careful, the damaged wings become a disability. We’re so used to damaging our wings, and other people’s wings. We pretend it’s all we know.

Introverts always observe everything. Isn’t that what I’m doing now? Observing these frozen wings that are now delicate and fragile. Delicate enough to fall and shatter like glass in an instant. In one second they can fall from the ceiling on to the floor and shatter into a million pieces. The cruelty of my intention if I do such a thing.

Snow has invaded the interior walls of the building through the windows. The drips of water have destroyed everything in sight. A poor reflection of what the psychiatric center must have once looked like before the abandoned rooms were taken over by Mother Nature. Wind and rain, snow and ice, and even the warmth of the sun can be abusive to these walls that shelter the many parts and pieces of history.

Beds, chairs, photographs, case files, medicine bottles, and the left overs become a significance of humanities carelessness of even cleaning up after themselves. A discovery. Good work.

What is neglect, but allowing someone or something to rot away in isolation, and to be forgotten?

In the middle of the room three metal beds line up in a row. Row by row there was a face that filled one of these beds. Each one had a name. A name and a label. A label to diagnose them with a certain problem. A problem that probably never received a solution. The only solution to stay hidden from society.

The springs bounce when I sit on this bed. The springs pinch my fingers. Water and rust blend together on the tips of my fingers. I rub it off on the side of my navy pea coat.

Consider strengthening the story line and the characterization. Inserting desire and motivation.  And, whenever possible, insert action and resolution related to core desire. You are a poet well suited to making great prose literary fictional stories!