Read To Build Memories; Write To Evoke Them

 The books we read build layers of memories, like sedimentary rocks, offering us new vantages from which to view the world and share our unique perspectives via our own grains of truth. Choose your literary foundations carefully.

          According to Samuel Johnson, "The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new." In other words, authors have the power to evoke déjà vu and to rejuvenate memories. I have never been in combat or survived horrific traumas, yet I feel empathy for such survivors partly because of the vivid words of authors (and screenwriters) who have brought me, safely, into battle zones as a fly on the wall. I have never lived a life of crime and drug abuse, except for when I lived in worlds that rose around me as I turned the pages of a novel set in that world. I did not lose my parents as a child, but I can now almost feel the pain of an orphan after reading a number of books narrated by endearing kids who are braving life on their own. The list of emotional memories I have compiled in my mind owes almost as much to books as it does to life experiences. (Movies do the same for me.) By making the unfamiliar familiar and pulling me into scenes, these authors evoke empathy, not just sympathy, via carefully chosen, multi-sensory details and characters who seem to have walked out, in 3-D clarity, from the author's private mental world. 

          Ask yourself what new "things" are now familiar because of your reading about them. Which books made them familiar? Then reread, or at least review, those books to see HOW they added experiences to your memories--experiences you never actually had, except through the lens of another writer's prose. 

          Also ask yourself what familiar "things" or experiences, as presented via an author's perspective, enlighten your own memories of things familiar. Was it your own first love, a powerful school memory, a trip to another state or country?  Again, reread or review the books that made you nod and say, "Oh I can relate to this--but I'd almost forgotten how it felt!" Do it before you forget those books and those feelings. Do it to add layers to your memory banks and enrich your writing.

     Coming-of-age books are a perfect example of how authors make "familiar things new." I love reading them because they reawaken my own memories and often make me forgive myself for my foibles of the past, for my immaturity as a teenager, and for my failure to apply those lessons today. In fact, they sometimes help me to see myself in a broader way that benefits me as a parent. Pick up one of your old favorite coming-of-age books and read it today for a very eye-opening experience. I have reread, for example, The Catcher in the Rye at various stages of life, and each rereading offers me a broader view of young adulthood and how I've become who I am today. I always advocate rereading those books you deemed "life-changing" in your late teens or early 20's as a method of self-examination. It also does wonders for your own writing. 

          Introspection elicited by the words of others will help you create words that elicit the same in your readers. Take the time to read, reread, and ponder in between typing. Your words, and your readers, will thank you. 

          I need to go read now.

THE GLINT ON BROKEN GLASS

     Anton Chekhov (not the guy from "Star Trek," but the renowned doctor-author-playwright) deeply enriched the old adage "Show, don't tell" with these awesome words:

 "Don't tell me the moon is shining, 

show me the glint of light on broken glass."

I reserve the adjective "awesome" to describe things that take my breath away, and that description of "showing" writing certainly awes me with its poetic prose. An image instantly appears like a photograph in my mind. A memorable image.

     This got me thinking about other memorable images that form a Pinterest-page-like collage in my mind, images that also color the way I write my own prose. I started looking through books I've read recently on my Kindle, specifically at the notes I appended with each reading. Here are a few indelible images I'd like to share with you now, to inspire your emulation in poetic prose. A heightened awareness of poetry leads to a deepened development of imagery.

• "It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys." --from Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell; these lines show the depth of her appreciation, joy, and love through her desire to return his kindness by literally giving him a piece of herself.
• "…they were all experts in the blank-face department. They should find some family poker tournament…." --also from Eleanor and Park; this line makes me laugh and envision this disinterested-looking family around a game table, giving away nothing that they are thinking.
• "The shelves were so very much taller than he could even dream of being, and Oscar firmly believed people shouldn't go any higher than they already were."--from The Real Boy, by Anne Ursu; what a visual way to show Oscar's sense of smallness, literally and figuratively, and his sense of the inevitable hierarchy of his world.
• "He didn't say that with a sneer. Edilio didn't own a sneer." --from Gone, by Michael Grant; a character description that sums up the innate kindness of Edilio, who has no sneer in his wardrobe of expressions. 
• "It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail." --from The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt; I can see this image and imagine that nail on a number of significant dates in my own life. 
• "The streets were ruptured veins. Blood streamed till it was dried on the road, and the bodies were stuck there, like driftwood after the flood."--from The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak; the city becomes one with the bodies, and the people, as driftwood, blend with the destruction. The filmmakers had images to work with when they designed the sets from Zusak's descriptions.
• "I try to smile, but my lips seem to snap back down like tight rubber bands. They do that a lot lately."--from Just Act Normal, by S. L. Lipson (yes, I'm sneaking in my own work now); this is my depiction of depression's weight upon a teenager.

I added that last example from my own work to show that I find inspiration in the poetic prose of other authors--rather than to tell you that. This blog is meant to show.

Authenticity & Memorability

     

          Editors and agents at writers' conferences always say that teen protagonists should sound like teens in YA literature, not like adults speaking through teenage characters. I have edited a few YA fiction manuscripts for fellow authors, and have written notes in the margins such as: "Adult sensibility--revise," "Heavy-handed--kids don't talk this way," "Intrusive narrator!," and "How old is she supposed to be?" I sometimes wonder, when YA characters speak like adults, with hindsight-colored voices, whether the author has actually listened to any recent conversations between teens--as opposed to simply talking TO teens.  (NOTE: Teens talk differently to adults than they do to other teens.)

          Leading my writing workshops for teens and hanging out (as invisibly as possible) with my teenage kids and their friends have done more to hone the authenticity of my teenage characters' voices than reading books like _____ (fill in your own title), by authors who think they know teens because they were teens and have strong memories. That's not to say that I don't "mis-hear" my own teenage characters at times, and have to revise their dialogues or narrative voices. I do, often. All YA writers have to know that they don't necessarily get the voices right in the early drafts.

          But that knowledge frustrates me when I read a YA book that obviously needed revision for the sake of authenticity, and somehow managed to get published with passages of dialogue that sound like actors, playing teenagers, while doing a table-read of a script before production. I read such books as if I were a director, at that same table read, redirecting the players to deliver their lines more like teenagers--with more pauses between their instantly delivered, perfect analogies and literary allusions; with fewer polysyllabic words that betray the author's word-crafting behind the scenes, like the Great and Powerful Oz behind the curtain; and with more uncertainty, since teenagers rarely feel sure of themselves and their reactions to others. I love beautiful dialogue as much as any reader; however, I have to believe that I'm hearing it through the mouth of its alleged speakers.

          Recently, one of my teenage students gushed to me about a book she adored, one which I didn't adore, because the allegedly adolescent characters seemed to have incredibly sophisticated, unnaturally poetic, college-lit-major kinds of voices--in short, they sounded to me like puppets for the author more than real teenagers. Even their literary and art-related allusions gave them away as impostors, in my mind. The student concluded her speech by asking me, "Have you read it yet?"

          I nodded. "And I liked it, but not as much as you did, apparently."

          "Whaaat? Really? Why not?" She looked like a deflating balloon.

          "Well, don't get me wrong. I appreciated the story and the characters were interesting. They just didn't sound like teenagers to me, and that's why I didn't love it. I would have loved the book if they were college students in their 20's; then they would have seemed real to me. Their dialogue didn't sound like any teenagers I know. And I know some pretty smart teenagers!" I winked, indicating that she was one of those smart teenagers.

          "Aw, seriously? I LOVED the dialogue!" She frowned. "Gosh, me and my friends talk like that!" 

          I smiled, but politely repressed my laugh. No, you don't.  I let a shrug be my reply. I wondered whether I, as an adult and a writer, not only speak differently than a teenager, but also read differently.

          Maybe teens are willing to overlook realism because they like characters who talk the way they wish they could talk--or the way they think they do talk?

          Maybe the adult readers who adored the same book simply have no recent experience with teens to contradict the discussions they read in this same book, and just assume, "Well, they're really smart kids, I guess." Or: "That's how we talked as teens." Or maybe they just wish that all teens were that brilliant and quick-witted!

         Maybe the publishers and reviewers who rave about the book follow the TV model of shows like "Glee" and "Pretty Little Liars," in which clearly adult actors play high schoolers and the viewers just accept the incongruity as "artistic license?" Or maybe the book was actually written with 20-something-year-old characters, but then the marketing department pointed out that the audience would be much larger if the characters' ages fit the YA model? (I would find that explanation most soothing to my confused author self, albeit still frustrating.)

          I ASK YOU, MY DEAR READERS: Does authenticity in characters' voices matter to you? Do the identities of the ones uttering poetic prose matter less than the memorability of their lines?