Breaking Writing Rules and a Climate Apocalypse

 By Thomas Kies

I teach creative writing and mentor a writing critique group.  At the beginning of the first class, I tell the attendees that I’ll outline what the rules of writing are.  And then I’ll let them know, there really aren’t any rules.

For example, Cormac McCarthy and his strange use, or nonuse, of punctuation. He didn’t use quotation marks, used commas sparingly, and rarely included apostrophes.  His dialogue and narration flow forced the reader to pay close attention to his writing. His sentence structure was often unusual with strange cadences.  He was difficult to read but my God, what a writer. 

I’m currently reading a book by Stephen Markley called The Deluge that also breaks a lot of rules.  For example, a few months ago, I wrote a blog about head hopping.  That is writing in the third person and then abruptly shifting gears and writing in the first person point of view. 

Changing a POV in the same paragraph is still verboten.  I don’t like it if a writer shifts POV within the same chapter. And I’m iffy when it comes to using it at all within the same book. 

But Stephen Markley changes his POV from chapter to chapter depending on the multitude of characters he’s written.  First person, third person….even writing about a character who is an opioid addict in the second person.  

And it works.  

I picked up this book because it takes a damning view of what happens to the world when we allow climate change to continue unabated.  Which we’re doing.  If you’ve read my fourth book, Shadow Hill, you’ll know that I’m deeply concerned about what we’re doing to our planet.  I have four grandchildren, and I’m worried that they’re going to inherit an apocalypse that we helped create.

Next rule broken.  There is a wide range of characters to follow.  

Are there too many characters in this book?  In a story written for the LA Review of Books, Markley said, “The climate crisis is such an enormous problem [that] you can’t, to me, tell it through the one-character point of view—the I, I, I would be a little navel-gazey or overwhelming in a way,” he said. “I knew it needed to be a range of characters, and obviously they had to be different and come at the issue from different angles and different parts of society, from different races, classes, genders, etc. It always had to be like this to me, and it was a matter of finding what voices fit into this world.”

I’m about a third of the way through the book.  It’s nearly 900 pages long.

He breaks another rule I wrote about last month.  How long should a novel be? 

Let me go back to Cormac McCarthy who said, “The indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you’re going to write something like The Brothers Karamazov or Moby Dick, go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don’t care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.” 

Is the book too long? It’s a big topic and he’s covering a lot of ground. The novel begins in 2013 and ends in 2039.  Right now, I’m reading what happens, politically, in 2027, and if we continue on the trajectory we’re on now, I think the author is going to be dead on. 

Yes, Mr. Markley broke a bunch of rules when he wrote the Deluge, but as I say at the beginning of my class, rules are meant to be broken 

Rules, Breaking Rules, and Quotation Marks

 by Thomas Kies

When I begin a Creative Writing class, I write two things on the whiteboard.  The first thing I write is the word “Rules”

I tell the class that I’ll talk to them about what I know about the rules of writing, such as they are.  For example, when you’re submitting work to an agent or to a publisher, your manuscript should be double spaced and in twelve-point Times New Roman type font. 

I’ll talk to them about using adverbs judiciously…or not at all. 

I’ll show them that to be a good writer you need to be a good reader.  Read everything you can get your hands on.  Read critically.  What was it about that last book you read that you like and what didn’t you like?  Could it have been made stronger? Was there something the writer could have left out?

We discuss how to create engaging characters complete with good traits, flaws, physical descriptions, and backstories.  We talk about how even the villains have some redeeming characteristics. 

We experiment with dialogue, showing what characters are doing while they’re speaking and not using dialogue tags like “He said” and “She Said”.  

So, after I write the word “Rules” on the whiteboard, I immediately follow it up by writing the words “No Rules”.  Because in the end, most writers break the rules.  Although, it’s often at our own peril. 

I’m reading a writer right now who breaks a boatload of rules.  I’m wading through Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger, his first book since releasing The Road back in 2006. 

One rule he breaks?  Quotation marks.  He simply doesn’t use them.  In his Oprah Winfrey interview, he says MacKinlay Kantor was the first writer he read who left them out. McCarthy stresses that this way of writing dialogue requires particular deliberation. You really have to be aware that there are no quotation marks and write in such a way as to guide people as to who’s speaking.

Other writers who refused to use quotation marks were E.L.Doctorow and James Joyce.

Apostrophes…doesn’t use those either.  In his New York Times Book Review piece, John Jeremiah Sullivan said, “McCarthy does that, he takes out the apostrophes. He told Oprah in a 2008 interview that he doesn’t like semicolons and quotation marks either. They clutter. Too many “weird little marks.” But the problem with clutter is distraction. And what is distracting are words that lack punctuation where ordinarily there would be some.”

I’m about two-thirds through The Passenger. Am I loving it?  Yes and no. McCarthy is a remarkable writer and I find some of the passages in this book are sheer poetry.  The dialogue is crisp and snappy,
but I have to work at figuring out who is saying what and yes, I find it a distraction.  It’s still a hell of a well-written book. 

My lesson? If you’re going break the rules, you best be a really good storyteller. 

Unofficial Start

 

 

I had to explain my Christmas gifts to my three daughters. No one, and I mean no one, understands what a bed jacket is anymore. But they were pleased to see Mommy dust off the sewing machine. Thankfully, they understand reading in bed. In fact, they understand reading anywhere and everywhere.

 

Our family gives a lot of books for Christmas. I will admit I've started haunting book sales early in the year because it's gotten really expensive. They've added spouses or significant others. All of my grandchildren are readers, too.

 

It's the New Year and I'm off to a sluggish start. I've always loved this time of year and some of the changes I make have been lasting. This year I'm going to move away from involvement with community and church activities and focus on what I need to be doing with my writing. I faced up to the fact that the committees, volunteer work, etc. was due to a rather undesirable component of my personality: vanity! I believed that it was really important that I stick with a group. They needed me, really really needed me. It's so not true.

 

It's a brand new year all around. I have a new agent: Claudia Cross. Harold Ober Associates was purchased by Folio Literary Management and my previous agent, Phyllis Westberg, retired. Poisoned Pen Press has been sold to Sourcebooks. I'm finishing a new mystery and a new historical novel.

 

My biggest challenge in 2020 will be sorting through years of paperwork. I have letters from writers that belong in university archives. There's a treasured letter from Cormac McCarthy thanking WWA for the Spur award. I was chairman that year, so it came to me. My husband and Don Worcester were great friends and I'm sure the University of Texas would love to have Worcester's hand written letters.

 

There's no reason to save old insurance policies and detritus. At the beginning of 2020 I hope to be able to report that my files are clean and I have a clear conscience.

 

Happy New Year and good fortune to writers everywhere.