Challenges and Lessons
I’m a pretty dedicated person; I jump into a project and keep going until I can’t go any more. I chase what inspires me until I totally run out of steam. For creative endeavors, this has served me well.
When I sat down in April to rewrite Admiral Arleigh’s Navy (working title!), I was chomping at the bit to get writing. I had a new and more elegantly developed plot-line than ever before. Earnest, my protagonist, was starting to feel like a real character to me, not simply a mouthpiece for my own experience, but something higher.
That had been my approach the previous year (in 2023), to write my book as essentially a memoir: to recall all the things that happened to me and my friends onboard USS Ross from 2016-2019, and fit all those things into a manuscript that ended up about 140,000 words long (around 360 pages). That was very satisfying for me; there was a lot I’d been trying to say for years that never escaped my brain until I wrote them down.
So last year, I took the manuscript to the VCFA Writing Retreat at Champlain College, a 7 day intensive course for writers to sharpen their skills and write, network, and critique around the clock. My mentor for this retreat was Adam McOmber, author of The White Forest among other modern gothic stories. And he taught me something I hadn’t thought about before: what actually makes a story.
That might seem obvious. You set out to write a book, you want to make it a story, right? Well, it hadn’t occurred to me. I simply wanted to write about some of the madder, stupefying, and often monotonous things I’d been through. I wanted to write a book about what it was like to be in the Navy; what my time was like.
This year, I began a new draft manuscript. And although it’s not done yet, I wanted to share some of the lessons I’ve learned over the course of this project. It boils into three categories:
(1)
Showing, not telling. The most basic aspect of storytelling. You want to create a world inside someone’s head, to make setting and events relevant parts of your story. Detailed and luscious description is critical here. Instead of telling the reader flatly: “As I walked up the gangway, I felt a lot of apprehension,” I would let the environment do the work, bringing the reader into the world without explicitly telling. “I struggled up the steep incline of the aluminum gangway, with was thirty feet long, my boots stomping clank-clank as I heaved myself up, shoulders hung with my seabag, not knowing what awaited me at the top.”
Much better, huh? It gets across the apprehension and adds a lot of atmosphere, without telling the reader what they should be seeing/feeling.
(2)
Scene writing. Another critical part of writing I didn’t understand! Like a movie, the novel should be composed of scenes, distinct moments that play out with actions by the characters, or interactions between them. We must have a firm knowledge of setting (place & time). The plot (the background planning of the book) will emerge and play out through carefully constructed scenes. This is the imaginative part— the thinking part. What fun and interesting events should comprise our scenes that will push our characters and plot along?
Example: the plot calls for Earnest Blair (the protagonist) to try to impress his friends by embracing the institution: he will become a supervisor.
So, make this into a scene:
In the Cafe Andalusia, hookah smoke hangs rich and fruity in the air, interrupted by spinning clouds of each new exhale. I leaned over to Packard and said, “I think I’d make a good workcenter sup. I’ll get qualified and we’ll run the workcenter together, huh? What do you think?”
Packard laughed like a hyena. I hadn’t been expecting a laugh. “C’mon, Blair. You? I don’t think you could hack it. You know there’s a lot of responsibilities, right? How are you gonna be a good workcenter sup when you spend every free moment reading that dogeared history book you’d carry around? I’m telling you, you’d hate it!”
I was disappointed that he didn’t think I could do it. I grumbled into my beer, but honestly felt a little relieved.
Over the course of the scene, the plot must be advanced, and the characters must come away affected in some way by what has happened.
(3)
Story Structure. This is the really important stuff I had to learn the hard way! Plot. Structure. Arc. These things can be challenging to put together, but once you know what your character(s) want, it becomes a lot easier.
I use the 3 Act structure, and the design of a character around something that they want, and why they have a misconception about that want that causes them problems, suffering, and drives the momentum of the story along. The misconception is caused in the story-before-the-story, a shard of glass caused by a bad lesson that left them with a wrong understanding of the world. This wrong understanding sets the events of the plot in motion, forces them to embark on their story in ACT I, enter a new world in ACT II, and in Act III is addressed, so the protagonist, unburdened by the misconception, can resolve the story. That’s a tight 3 Act structure!
In Admiral Arleigh’s Navy, Earnest Blair wants freedom, but doesn’t know what it means! Earnest thinks freedom is total escape from everything: apartness, separation, and individualism. During the events of the plot, Earnest tries repeatedly to escape the Navy through increasingly desperate schemes, including AWOL, drugs and alcohol, and defection to other countries. At the height of the plot, and Earnest facing self-destruction because of his own misconception of freedom, he realizes he’s been wrong all along, that real freedom is found together with others. Freedom is built, not escaped into. Freedom means obligations and limitations, community, and is dependent on the support of others.
With his new understanding, Earnest and his friends overcome the catastrophic challenges facing them (no spoilers!) and embark on a new, free life together as comrades-in-arms.
Okay, that’s all for today! thanks for reading and peace! Should have a couple travelogue articles from Ireland coming down the pipeline soon…
Liam CZA Noble
Burlington VT, 2024