The Wednesday workshop wisdom continues! This week…

Poetry workshop take-aways // or, why this novelist kept taking so many darned poetry workshops.

I think in novels. As a kid, I thought, Oh, I think in stories. No. I learned later: I think in novels. In my first workshop at 15, I told my advisor that I couldn’t write a short story. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. “I write long things. Um. Novels. I think in novels. I can’t make it short. I can do chapters, if that’s okay.” That wasn’t okay. I was coaxed into writing stories that… read like chapters. My advisor finally coaxed me into making my final project a “novella.” But it still read like half a novel. By the time I got to college and realized that short fiction was the name of the workshopping game, I sighed and got to work learning what this short story thing was all about. In the meanwhile, I signed up for poetry classes. Poetry. Verse. Shakespeare. I knew what a sonnet was, thus, I could write poetry. WRONG. But those workshops taught me so much. This advice is hardly a substitute for what I learned, and may seem obvious, but it absolutely changed the way I thought about writing fiction — and about poetry. By learning to write it, I learned to read it, to appreciate a poem written well (like those of a former classmate, whose work I adore). Admittedly, the poetry I wrote for workshop reads like a novelist wrote it. (It’s also terrible.) Which is [yet another reason why] I write novels.

Besides the fact that poetry is (1) beautiful and (2) absolutely worth reading, you novel-reading people you! these were some of my biggest poetry workshop take-aways.

1. Words are beautiful.

So is the way a set of words can be strung together, the sounds they make when they smack and rub and brush against each other. Words are alive, alive on the page and in the mind of the reader. So many writers seem to use words as a means to an end. Yes — words are the vehicle by which you tell your story. But paying attention to diction, to image, to the particular words you use and how you string them together is an often overlooked part of novel writing. (And yes, paying attention to words is also a pursuit better left to revisions, not first drafts.) Most novelists are so focused on plot, on character, that they forget novels are built with words. We have more room to waste words than a poem in our 80,000 novel, technically speaking, but why should we waste a single word? Why? There’s no good reason. None. Words are beautiful and they deserve to be used well.

2. Image, image, image.

String together images as well as actions. Build images as well as dialogue. When we read we build an imaginary landscape in our minds, we populate it with the writer’s words and the images they draw with those words. Too much exposition and not enough grounded image loses my attention. Too much dialogue without rooting me firmly in the scene distracts me.

Showing versus telling, to me, is that difference between rooting me with image and giving me exposition. Telling me, “Anna’s father beat her when she was young” is very, very different from giving me the visceral recollection of a slap. But — images come with intensity, with meaning and depth. Images are immediate, are sensory, tangible things. Sometimes an image is too strong and exposition may be the better choice. But I hate to be told a crucial bit of information in a casual, throwaway bit of exposition when it can be relayed with an effective image or even a strong bit of dialogue (and “voice” is related to image, because I feel voice).

Images don’t need to be paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs of scene-setting detail. Too much image, too many adjectives and clunky nouns can overload an image. Too much image without enough meaning, depth underneath it. Images can be brief and still have strength. They can be slices of a life, picked out by a discerning eye, weighted with the promise of story.

Novels, as a medium, are not built around images as directly as a screenplay is built around image. Not even poetry needs image the way film needs it. But to ignore the effectiveness of well-placed images is to deflate the potential power in a scene.

3. Space is a tool.

Physical distance on the page can allow for emphasis. Where you choose to break sentences, add commas or semicolons or emdashes–these breaks influence the way your words are viewed, are digested by your reader. Judicious use of space is a subtle tool in any writer’s arsenal, regardless of how long their work. This goes for chapter breaks and section breaks as well. Those breaks can and should be regarded as tools, not just “breaks.” Space is a tool! Use it.

But don’t abuse that space.

With lots of dramatic paragraph breaks.

Because after a few instances, it looks silly and loses the emphasis you’re going for. Like the ellipsis, or the exclamation point, paragraph breaks for the sake of drama should be used sparingly, or at the very least, pay off for the reader.

4. Repetition. Repetition is a tool.

But it’s also one of the easiest tools to use too often, too much, becoming annoying rather than effective. There’s a difference between repetition and redundancy. You can use repetition to be effective. You can never use redundancy for anything.

How many times does your character’s name appear in a given passage? How frequently are the same words in close proximity? When you read aloud, do the same words pop up over and over? There are a plethora of action verbs and adjectives at your beck and call to describe similar actions and behaviors without being redundant. Decide which is effective repetition and which is redundant blah and eliminate.

5. Unnecessary words are clutter. Cut them out. Efficient images are effective images.

This is the simple reason why you see blogs and advice to writers repeating over and over to eliminate adverbs. The truth is this: adverbs are not inherently evil. But when you say she was grinning widely or shouting loudly — you are being redundant.

Redundancy, as we’ve agreed, is not effective writing. When the reader is pulled out of your image by its clunky phrasing, it is not an effective image. And we’re going for effective images, yes? And I know, as we agreed, words are beautiful things. But too many of them leads to clutter. Clean them up and really be honest when you’re doing it; this cleaning up may take multiple readers and a loving editor but you’ll have stronger prose.

6. One of the quickest ways to establish voice is careful diction.

Diction: the choice of words and the way in which they are used. Establishing voice is not simply a matter of throwing in key vernacular or vocabulary (like “y’all” or “dahling,” say). It’s not about short sentences. Or about long, flowing, elegant sentences replete with word upon word, flowery adjective piled upon adverbs of glorified density. No. Diction is all of that. Establishing a voice is about finding consistency, about finding a style and a flow that reads naturally. (I do enjoy well-used vernacular, but please: simply tagging sentences with vocabulary does not count as adding it naturally!)

Poems can establish voice effortlessly in single lines. Some of the shortest poetry can still feel as if it has a character behind it despite its few words. Getting into a character in a short poem was one of the hardest and most effective lessons for me in establishing voice, in getting into a character’s head and speaking their words. When I am having trouble finding a consistent voice, I fall back on my poetry workshop tricks. I look at my word choice, the consistency, the tone my words evoke. I ask for feedback. I read it aloud. It helps.

7. Your reader has five senses. Do you take advantage of them?

Not only within the imagery of the page, but with the very words on the page. When I say I love “evocative” writing, I mean to say I love writing that seems to lift from the page, that has undeniable depth. I measure that depth by the sensory experience I have when I read it. When someone needs to shake me out of a world — that’s a world written well. Every one of those worlds draws me in through smell, through sight and sound, through the occasional stirring of a memory through an image that brings my own sensory experiences to bear on my reading experience. The reason This Is Just To Say hits me so hard every time I read it is because I know what it feels like to bite into that cold, sweet plum, the juice dripping down my chin. I feel that. But some of my favorite books evoke that same visceral experience for an image or a scene I’ve never personally experienced because they use the same tricks of making reading a personal, sensory experience. I’ve never faced down a dragon. I’ve never been in a war, a battle. But the best scenes bring me there and keep me grounded through those little details, and through sense.

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Do you read or write poetry? (Or both?) Has any poem or verse influenced you or your writing (be it the “greats” of the past centuries or someone more modern)?

What tricks do you think writers of prose can learn from poetry?