Dancing Word Writers Workshop

with Patricia Hickman

 June 9, 2006

 

Hosted by Ellie Schroder

Dancing Word Publisher/Editor

*This chat has been edited for clarity.

Ellie Schroder: I'll open up in prayer, go over protocol, then introduce our guest.

Lord, thank you once again for a wonderful day, and a wonderful week spent living in the world you've given us. Thank you for the talents you have given us; let us use them for Your glory. May we learn to improve on the gifts we have by learning from others.

Be with Patricia and she teaches us tonight

Patricia Hickman:  Yes, Savior.

Ellie Schroder: May we all benefit from the wisdom she shares. In Jesus name, Amen.

Protocol reminder: when the floor is open to questions, please type ? for questions, ! for comments and ga when you are finished typing. For those new to the chat room, "ga" means "go ahead" and keeps us from stepping on each others' toes. Please wait to be called on in turn. Tonight I'm delighted to introduce Patricia Hickman as our guest. Patricia will be teaching a workshop about “Developing the Spiritual Elements of Fiction.” She will speak first then open the floor to questions.

Patricia is the author of the novels Sandpebbles, Katrina’s Wings, the Millwood Hollow series and Land of the Far Horizons series. Welcome, Patricia, thank you for joining us tonight.

Patricia Hickman:  I’m  amazed so many people would spend a perfectly good Friday night in a writer’s  chat room. Must not be a good movie release weekend. Or else you all just love writerly talk. Still, thank you for inviting me. I’m  truly honored.

I write fiction from a personal aesthetic, typically a southern setting. With that in mind and in case someone remembered the grits, I brought expository crab cakes. They’re an excellent addition to fried green tomatoes ala narration.

* AZAnnie hands out plates

Patricia Hickman:  I’ve written full time as a novelist for thirteen years. I’m  also developing two non-fiction book proposals, one writer’s  craft book, three works of upcoming fiction, and I speak as often as possible on writing, women’s themes, church growth, and surmounting times of testing.

Tonight, I’ll share a few nuggets from a workshop, ‘Developing the Spiritual Elements of Fiction.’ I shared with Annie today that there are numerous books with deep spiritual threads that don’t fall under the heading ‘Christian fiction.’ I’m  going to use a couple of them, time permitting, as examples.

I like to think of my story in terms of what themes are telegraphed outside the sheep pen of the faith-based fiction market. If my gay neighbor reads it, what good story elements can I fold into the layers that will compel her to keep reading?

When a story lingers in the reader’s mind, elements can become embedded in the psyche. Fiction facts can take residence in the form of psychic truth.

Case in point, a certain percentage of the population that read The DaVinci Code actually believed parts of it even though it was a complete work of fiction.

Remade Gold: Can you define psychic truth a little?

Patricia Hickman:  Not in the sense of TV psychics, of course. BWG (big wide grin). But a truth that can become a part of your belief system, without fully intending for that to happen.

* Remade Gold nods

Patricia Hickman:  A strong case for writing faith-based fiction is that we need our stories read by those outside the church walls so that the Christ message is ingested as truth.

Some writers teach you to write out a scene summary and that’s good early practice for the writer just starting out. I do seam my story together through scene links. Not to be confused with pasted in elements. I’m still talking a layering process.

But when I started thinking of my story as a layered art form, using human elements that transcend, I was able to break away from what I felt were didactic ‘lessons’ or preaching that permeated the fiction on our side of the sheep pen. I repent of those days.

I’ll start with a quote by Ann Hood: ‘When we copy a writerly voice, we put up a barrier between us and the emotions of our characters.’

That’s a warning from Ann: Don’t study other writers for the sake of copying style. Study to raise the bar for your writing, yes, yes, but not to copy writerly voice. But there’s another parallel for us. As we develop faith as a thread in our fiction, we can fall into the same trap, only instead of copying a writerly voice, we might copy a ‘spiritual voice.’ By that I mean that we might harbor ideals about what a spiritual person is ‘supposed’ to act like.

The writer reaching for an easy faith element is tempted to fall into device and hook, pasting in an ideal Christian value. This type of device serves only to flatten your story and eliminate any sense of expansion you were trying to create.

With me so far? You want the reader grounded in your story world, and in the fact that there is faith in the world. But to yank them to that point creates lumps in the story. And who wants to swallow lumps?

But even worse, what that practice creates for the reader is a barrier to understanding the authentic faith journey.  Jesus wasn’t afraid to tell the truth, so let’s follow his lead.

Some Christian writers know exactly where the faith element is going to fit into their plot. Every Christian writer has a different method for developing the faith thread.

My development schemes change with every new story because each book is as different as each of my children. I can’t rear them all through some formula. Besides, knowing my story’s faith elements in advance is like trying to figure out when God is going to cause my life to change lanes. I plan for the big picture, but I’m  always aware that conflict or good news or deals falling flat will place a new fold in my plans.

And so it is with our story characters. Cultivating the spiritual fold naturally comes with a lot of practice. But I am going to offer some rather organic exercises to help you speed the process. I personally crave the organic, the part of the writing process that feels real to me. These are exercises you can put to use today. If I use a term that needs explanation, please let me know you need an explanation.

Assuming you have a character laid out on a railroad track somewhere on your hard drive, you can try a tool that is already a part of your natural design-memory. And so we begin:

Ex. 1: Faith does not fix every detail of our lives, so it shouldn’t fix everything for the character. Using memory, write a time in your life when you prayed and things seemed to get worse. What emotions did you feel? What conclusions did you draw—honest?

As you write down these feelings, what subtext rises from the expository thread? Now ‘show’ in immediate scene either disappointment or anger juxtaposed against what should be a ‘spiritual’ or ‘saintly’ tone

This is a good exercise for eliminating the temptation to write easy sentimentality.

Ellie Schroder: Anyone have any questions?

Anne McDonald: nope makes sense to me.

Patricia Hickman:  These exercises, of course, are for you to take and apply to your WIP.

Ex. 2: Think of a conflict that happened recently. Did you handle it perfectly? Write out how you responded. If you are perfectly happy with your response, then try and consider how it may have churned up an inner unexpressed feeling. Write out the unexpressed feeling as interior monologue.

Ex. 3: Imagine an object that has spiritual or perhaps even sacred significance to you, something very personal. It may not even have a practical use, but that doesn’t take away its significance to you. If you died, would anyone else notice that object or would it get thrown out? What feelings bubble up when you think of that object either getting salvaged or thrown out? Now try writing that scene you just imagined into finely specified exposition in your story.

Anne McDonald: Exercise 3 fits right in with my current WIP. woo hoo!

Patricia Hickman:  Good! In my jewelry box is a sort of rusted little barrette. No one knows the significance of that barrette. But when I see my sweet daughter, Jessi, in heaven, I'll tell her of all the things she left behind for me. Those are the things we hold sacred.

Ex. 4:  If you have come to live a life of faith, you might have had an immediate conversion, leaping and excitedly telling everyone you met about your conversion. I’m  happy for you. But assuming that, like most people, faith came into your life more like little plots of real estate slowly being surrendered, write out a timeline of those memory stones. Create those little dots that show either progress or delay in spiritual growth.

You are the only one that’s going to see it, so also include the times you took one step forward only to take three jumps backward. Now put one of those backward-jump times into immediate scene. What sort of subtext will that provide for the reader?

Anne McDonald: Could you explain subtexting for those new to the term?

Patricia Hickman:  Sure. Subtext is what is telegraphed to us through scene, through showing rather than telling. More explanation needed?

Anne McDonald: a little more, please

fusionfire15:  pls

Patricia Hickman:  If you have a scene that shows through action, dialogue, exposition, that a person is standing over an urn, eyes cast down, a tear rolling down their cheek, what is telegraphed to you?

Ellie Schroder: Grief

Anne McDonald: grief over the death of a loved one.

Patricia Hickman:  Yes, grief, or sadness. And that was a simplistic explanation. A more textured piece of exposition will reveal more subtext.

Remade Gold: It's the old "show don't tell" rule, correct? Showing grief or joy instead of just saying "he was grief-stricken" or something.

Patricia Hickman:  Yes, Remade.

Anne McDonald: like someone having a heart attack at a funeral?

Patricia Hickman:  Yes, or the opposite. Laughing uncontrollably. Emotion juxtaposed against grief.

Ellie Schroder: I did that after we almost rolled our car... couldn't stop laughing. Was freaked out at the time, then reacted the opposite later.

Patricia Hickman:  In John Irving’s book A Prayer For Owen Meany, Owen is a faith-professing Christian, and a disabled dwarf of a boy, whose theology is juxtaposed against a didactic religious community. Following a vision where he sees his own gravestone, he believes he’s God’s instrument. The community’s religious leaders believe he is delusional because his faith doesn’t fit into their didacticism.

Owen doesn’t ‘perform’ as a good little Christian boy. Portrayed as an archetypal Christ character, little Owen’s journey as seen through the eyes of his best friend, John Wheelwright, the book’s narrator, has a strong sense of movement toward the big reveal at the book’s end.

But the movement arises from struggle. Owen overcomes his handicap to become a scholarly success, but continues to know rejection. Since the narrator is the only one that sees Owen as ‘special’, Owen becomes real to us, the persecuted and misunderstood outcast standing between the world and the church. The Other.

Although our theology may not line up with Owen’s patchwork of beliefs, the transcendent elements of his spiritual struggle speak clearly—surrender your life to Christ and miracles will happen, God is sovereign, God is love, God is not found in didactic tradition but in the working out of our faith.

This is never said, but clearly shown because the character is shown as flawed like us, struggling, overcoming, and then struggling some more. John Irving is not a believer but I’ve heard many believers see Jesus all over this story.

In the opening paragraph, John Wheelwright says, ‘I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.’

Story is a powerful force. Add to story elements of faith, and you have built a scaffolding for the reader to climb onto and examine. A period of reflection and examination is exactly what is needed for God to work.

Ex. 5: Have you ever imagined yourself courageously standing up against a foe, your faith as your scabbard, God’s Word as your sword? Then have you walked into a public setting only to come face-to-face with a disruptive stranger who made you feel threatened? Did you respond as you imagined? Write out how you responded in narration, in other words, a scene that shows action, and then develop a scene of interior monologue juxtaposed against an opposite reaction.

Do you remember your crisis of faith? Every believer has one. That awful moment when even the cultural elements of church and Christian friends doesn’t protect you from lurking doubt?

One scene I often return to study is found in John Updike’s novel In the Beauty of the Lilies. The minister Clarence has an awful epiphany that he no longer believes in God. His realization is one of sheer terror. Updike orchestrates scene so well you can sense the setting eroding as Clarence’s entire life is wrapped up in the material security of the church parsonage.

A similar exercise would be to write a scene that shows your character attached to material things, believing God has provided them with a happy material life. Then allow a shockwave to challenge the character’s resolve. What is the continuum that will follow? What discoveries will the character make and what elements of life will the character now have to hold onto?

Questions, so far?

Anne McDonald: (sounds good...just what I needed)

Patricia Hickman:  Ex. 6: Avoiding Christian clichés: I once read a scene that really stung. The writer had never lost a child, but she wrote a scene with a couple standing over the grave of their child. The wife said, ‘Oh, well. We have God now to make it all right for us. I guess we’ll grow through this process, just as we always have in the past.’

Remade Gold: I have to say ugh. My youth pastor lost a baby. He looked us all in the face and said, "You know, I'm mad at God. That was my baby."

Patricia Hickman:  Of course. And doesn't that connect even more closely to that person, because he is willing to be authentic? I felt the writer should have written ‘The End’, at the point, but the narrative continued and I closed up the book, disappointed. As a grieving mom, I needed a good story, but this one wasn’t true.

Anne McDonald: It's very easy to tell whether someone has experienced something or not in their writing. I am careful not to write about things I don't know.

Ellie Schroder: So if someone is writing about something they haven't experienced persoanlly, how best should they go about it to make it authentic?

Patricia Hickman:  You can interview people, and come up with fresh authentic experiences for your character. Where would we be without literature like The Remains of the Day. Kazuo Ishiguro is obviously not an English butler.

But as the faith-based novelist, we want to take the time to "know" that we are telling the truth in our scenes.And in the words of Walt Wangerin, ‘If it isn’t true, then isn’t it just, after all, propaganda?’ Eliminating clichés is difficult for writers that practice them in their daily lives. And we’ve all been guilty of them. ‘Just pray and God will see you through.’ ‘What would Jesus do?’ ‘With God in their lives, their marriage will be perfect.’ All those happy affirmations that fall into soggy sentiment and bad bumper stickers.

So here’s a positive for finding the true side of life’s momentous occasions in fiction writing. Make a list of as many Christian clichés as you can think of.  Next make a fresh list to describe those moments in scene, in dialogue, in exposition, description, and narration. Describe the anticipation before the moment. The moment before the funeral, the moment before the wedding, the first kiss, the termination of a career, the rappelling jump, entering the giant curl on your surf board—detailing the emotion of the ‘moment before.’ Write in a free form style, let the words flow, don’t edit. Let the words spill out stream-of-consciousness style. Now compare your writing to the clichés.

I do another workshop on milling down those expository lumps. That is what clichés create in story.

Anne McDonald: Is it important to try to reduce clichés of any type in one's work?

Patricia Hickman:  Eliminate, blow out of the sky, yes. She was as light as a feather. . .He was walking on air . . .

Anne McDonald: There is a resource online for finding cliches: http://www.westegg.com/cliche/  It gives tons of cliches so one can be sure to terminate them in his/her work. Another site is: http://www.clichesite.com/index.asp

Patricia Hickman:  I guess there's a website for everything.

Anne McDonald: lol

Patricia Hickman:  What you are seeing on the fiction page are five streams--exposition, narration, description, dialogue, and interior monologue. Overlapping those layers with fresh words, not like any you've heard, but that tell the truth about the reality you are trying to create, is the difference between formula and art form.

fusionfire15:  This may be off topic or you may be getting to it later, but I was wondering about the layering you were talking about earlier.  Could you explain?

Patricia Hickman:  The layering is laying down what I just described—Narration: the action. Exposition—what is exposed to the reader a little at a time. Description--the word pictures, dialogue and interior monologue.

Patricia Hickman:  Those five elements create scene.

Jane:  Do all the previous examples work for any kind of writing?

Patricia Hickman:  Yes, for genre writing and even for creative non-fiction. These are the sorts of writerly games Christian novelists play to develop faith in their character’s lives. The organic exercise is an excellent way to get away from the computer when your brain is no longer coughing up the story elements you need to build realistic texturing.

Anne McDonald: So basically writers need to create scenes that are true to life, not idealistic, right?

Patricia Hickman:  That is the subtext, girlfriend!

Remade Gold: Just out of curiosity, how do you deal with characters that have belief systems completely counter to truth?

Patricia Hickman:  The same way I approach those people in daily life. With grace. Time. . . patience . . . believing God is going to give me the right words when I need them.  Faith.

This has been a lot of fun and you are all so gracious.

Ellie Schroder: Thanks, Patty, your teaching has been VERY helpful. Any other questions for Patty before doing the book drawing?

Jason: What is the one thing a young writer should remember when writing mystery/suspense?

Patricia Hickman:  That's a rather broad subject to broach. But as with any genre writing, remember to fold reality gently into your plotting and make your readers believe.

Jason: Ohhh, thank you!

Patricia Hickman:  What are his WIP problems?

* Annie watches Jason prepare the names and the hat for the drawing

Anne McDonald: He is writing a tweener's series and he wants to make sure that the mystery/suspense elements are realistic and compelling without scaring anyone too much.

Patricia Hickman:  Congratulations! Celebrate every milestone. Every chapter finished, every revision. Celebrate lavishly!

Remade Gold: How do you handle people coming to Christ? I know some people think all the characters have to become Christians by the end. Sorry my questions are a little random tonight. And Jason, thanks for the question on suspense.

* Jane puffs up proudly, "That's my nephew"

Patricia Hickman:  The publishers aren't buying those plots any more.

Ellie Schroder: (yay!)

Patricia Hickman:  They are looking for a sense of expansion, believability, not everyone is converted, as in life.

* Remade Gold nods

Patricia Hickman:  Remember that as God grows the writers, he grows the editors too. We're all studying frantically to stay ahead of our smart readers. Does everyone understand "expansion"?

Jane:  can you explain a bit about that please, Patricia?

Anne McDonald: for the sake of those who will read the transcript, could you "expand?"

Jane:  lol

Ellie Schroder: personal development, perhaps? (heh, Annie, too much!)

Anne McDonald: (I can't help myself. I live with punsters)

Jane:  lol

Patricia Hickman:  Expansion simply means that when the reader closes up the book, it seems the characters lives will go on living. When that happens, your reader will likely think, "I don't want the book to end."

Ellie Schroder: Karen Kingsbury's Redemption series is just like that!!

Jason: Yeah, yeah, that's good...about readers not wanting the books to end.

Patricia Hickman:  IOW, the characters have stood up and casted long shadows, seem real to the reader, and their life travels beyond the last page.

Ellie Schroder: (IOW=In Other Words)

Jane:  thanks Ellie, was just about to ask

Anne McDonald: lol

Ellie Schroder: Well, time for the drawing...

* Annie has Jason shake the hat and draw a name

* Ellie Schroder does a drum roll

Patricia Hickman:  I can't stand the suspense!

Noelle:  ditto

Anne McDonald: Jane!! Jane is tonight's winner

Jane:  what?

Ellie Schroder: Woohoo!

Jane:  really?

Anne McDonald: yes!! Jason opened the paper and your name was on it

Jane:  LOL, right on Nephew, thank you

Ellie Schroder: Congrats, Jane!

Patricia Hickman:  TADA!

Jane:  kewellll thank you very much

Noelle:  congrats

Bat: Congrattys

Ellie Schroder: Jane, you can select a novel of your choice from Patricia's website

Jane:  really?  That's excellent

Ellie Schroder: Go to www.patriciahickman.com and choose the books page.

Thank you so much for donating one of your books, Patricia, and for being such a wonderful guest tonight. We have all learned so much from you.

Jane:  thank you again Patricia. I'll look forward to picking a book out and reading it.

Anne McDonald: yes, thanks so much Patty. We sure appreciate you

Patricia Hickman:  You're welcome. You're all invited to visit my website, if ya want. I'll have the list of workshops I'll be teaching at this year, up soon!

Anne McDonald: woo hoo!!

Patricia Hickman:  Well, good night, friends. It's been great connecting with friends from all over the planet.

Jane:  thank you so much for a very imformative chat Patricia

fusionfire15:  ty for your insight

Ellie Schroder: Patty, thank you so much, we must have you back again another time

Patricia Hickman:  Night!, Ellie, Remmi, Bat, Fusion, and dear Annie!

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