Gasp, the writer said

Looking for the surprise in writing

Photo by Nathan Bingle on Unsplash

There’s an adage that goes something like “no emotion in the writer, no emotion in the reader.” I agree with it, though it’s not like I catch myself getting weepy over a scene (well, maybe sometimes). It goes back to my thoughts around a story being true. Yes, yes, writers are the best liars ever… that’s what they do. But the truth that can be captured is something that we share together: being human.

Case in point: George Saunders title story in The Tenth of December is about a man with terminal cancer that has decided to end his life so that he won’t be a burden to his family. He is interrupted, and I believe, saved by a strange young man who bumbles into the same snow-covered wilderness as the man… and almost dies himself. Saunders is a master of interior dialogue, and when the cancer-stricken man thinks about what his wife and children has meant to him, as he contemplates taking his own life… well, I’ve never been able to read this part of the story without crying. It’s even worse when I read it aloud to my wife.

Now, I don’t know if George got wet around the eyes while writing, or revising, this story—but I’m guessing he felt something. This is a bumpy segue to what I really want to talk about. My new adage,

“No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

One of my favourite reads from the last decade or so is Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. The structure is inventive, the writing beautiful, but most of all the stories are exquisite in their character, construction, and well, truth. I recall many times gasping out loud as I read the book. Sometimes it was like, “How does she know that about people?!” Similar to another favourite writer, Richard Ford, Egan has an ability to go deep inside her characters and show real and raw emotions. In her stories things are brought up from the depth and brought into the light, in ways that made me marvel, cringe, get weepy, and gasp. My other question for her is, “How in the hell do you do that?”

“Okay, Jennifer… just how in the hell did you do that?”

An example (that I’m going on strictly from memory) is a story from Goon Squad about a couple who’s had a very bumpy marriage because of the husband’s infidelity. As the story moves along, I am convinced that the two of them finally have sorted things out. Confessions have happened, and promises been made. I had a genuine sense of hope for their future. So when the wife finds a copper-coloured bobby pin on their bedroom floor (something she never wears, but she knows belongs to a woman who plays tennis with her husband), she, and I, know the marriage is over. I held the book out from me and gasped, “Oh no!” I was reading this book on a road trip, and my shouting made my wife jump. All I could tell her was that I couldn’t believe it. It’s over for them.

…let the story flow out and try to stay out of the way.

So yes, I do wonder how a writer like Egan surprises her readers (and I’m guessing, herself.) Part of if is giving yourself over to your subconscious mind, let the story flow out and try to stay out of the way. If you write, and you’re honest about it, you know what I mean. In my own writing lately, I’ve needed to remind myself, give permission to let things happen, boring shitty things even. I’m such a fan, okay, disciple, of George Saunders, and he has taught me to recognize that these surprises may only come in revision. When I ask my self deeper questions in the story, more questions emerge. That’s when I can get ready to be surprised. I can’t do this on my own. I very much rely on a couple of readers who point things out to me—not in a way that says, “oh this should happen in the story”, but rather asking me questions that boil down to “why?”

The above quote from Egan is probably the best advice I have for writers. Sure, I’ll read some shitty books to see what’s being published, or what’s the big deal (looking at you, Dan Brown.) But to really push myself into the kind of writing I want to do, I need to read writers like Egan, Ford, Saunders, Alice Munro—and it occurs to me, as I list those particular writers, they are all masters of the short story, which is the form that taught me how to write.

I’ll leave it there for now. Thanks for reading. Drop me a comment on books or stories that have surprised you—or how you tackle this as a writer.