Category: Writing

WHEN TITLES REVERBERATE

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“Nothing I force myself to write about ever turns out well, and so I’ve learned to wait for the voice, the incident, the image that reverberates.” Louise Erdrich

Erdrich is writing about more than titles, but that’s what I jumped to when I read her words. Have you noticed that some titles just reach out, make you want to explore the book, set off a little reverberating bell? Titles are so important. They’re meant to let us know a little about what’s in the book. That can be a person or place name. But they also have to have what Hemingway called magic. For me that means the words have to connote something, make us associate a word with implications and associations, for example, ‘Easter’ with spring and rebirth.

I’ve read that Hemingway searched the poetic King James Bible when he sought the right title for what became The Sun also Rises.  Besides the Biblical source, the word ‘sun’ has strong connotations of light and warmth.

And, have you noticed that titles seem to have trends like fashion? That word ‘light’ has appeared in lots of titles lately. I think Anthony Doerr started with his wonderful, All the Light We cannot See. And ‘girl’. So many titles have that word. I think words float around and all at once catch us in our hearts, or intellects, or we associate them with other books. They work like magnets.

A friend who read a draft of my novel, Remarkable Silence, said the title was right there in the contents when a narrator commented that God remained “remarkably silent” on key matters.Remarkable Silence Karen Wills I wanted the word ‘river’ in the title of my novel, River with no Bridge that will be out this summer. river with no bridgeIt’s another word with connotations of nature and crossings. The sequel I’m working on will be Garden in the Sky. That was the name of a popular campfire during the time of construction of the Going-to-the-Sun or Transcontinental Highway in Glacier National Park. The road figures in the story. I also think ‘Garden’ and ‘Sky’ have strong connotations.

But I’m struggling for a title for a historical mystery I’ve just finished. Maybe I’ll just have to wait for something to reverberate. Luckily, Hemingway rejected both The World’s Room and They who get Shot before settling on the inspired, A Farewell to Arms. That must have resounded like a gong when the words finally appeared.

I’M TOO SEXY FOR MY SCENES

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the kiss

Sex scenes. When, why, and where do they belong in novels? Sex is as important in fiction as in real life. And fiction incorporates particular reasons involving plot and structure for characters to engage in passion. The engaging, its reason for being, its character revelations, and its aftermath, even those details shown and not shown, should enhance the story

I’ve written scenes of passion into River with no Bridge (out June 21). As my protagonist, Irish-Catholic Nora, moves through life, she experiences love, or in one case lust, with three men. I hope readers will sense that the totality of these relationships, and her very different partners, move her from virginity to becoming a sensual lover. Sexual attitudes reveal so much about our characters and their changes.

Sex scenes can also be ugly precursors to damaging consequences for characters victimized by coercion. I’ve just read City of Light, a historical novel set in Buffalo, New York, at the time of the Pan American Expo. Author Lauren Belfer incorporates in one episode a depiction of women’s lack of empowerment at the turn of the century. The protagonist is coerced into having sex with Grover Cleveland. She uses details (“Your stomach like a rubbery cushion”) to show how frightening and disorienting forced sex is and how it determines so much of the story that follows.

After City of Light, I turned to Montana Women Writers own Deborah Epperson’s latest novel, Shadows of Home. Two former teenage lovers reclaim that status in several detailed scenes of passion renewed. Lovemaking is shown as their key to rediscovery and joyful reunion. It’s also a means of healing rifts, stress, and misunderstanding.

river with no bridgeA sex scene should only be used as needed to move the story forward. The introduction of lovemaking changes characters’ relationships. A sex scene just to have a sex scene will never work. Authors often struggle with the verbal details of the sex scene. The words used can vary depending on the characters. Crude characters tend to use crude words. More refined lovers, and seducers, use a refined vocabulary. Writers also vary in our own ideas of propriety. Modern readers are quite sophisticated and unlikely to be as easily offended as their historical counterparts.

Remember the language of a sex scene belongs to the character, not the author. If the story needs the scene then use it. There are many ways to write sex scenes. Every sentence should move the story forward and show us what our characters desire or fear.

Show an Affirming Flame

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What is the role of an artist in turbulent times? Human history is an almost unbroken line of wars, both civil and international, and coping with natural and man-made disasters. Yet in all these struggles artists come forth to acknowledge our common “error bred in the bone” as well as the capacity to “love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.” My title and these phrases are all from the works of W.H. Auden, a homosexual poet who lived through World War II and never let its fearful horrors quench his spirit or ability to care about other people.

I’ve also just read a lovely and thoughtful novel by Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow. It begins after the Russian Revolution. Count Alexander Rostov is declared a “former person” and put under house arrest in a luxury hotel after being judged guilty of writing a poem critical of the Bolsheviks. Established in a small garret room, but with freedom to move about in the hotel, his credo is that we “master our circumstances or our circumstances will master us.” The author goes on to show how his protagonist creates a life of humane purpose and grace under a regime that crushed the lives of so many others.

And so I believe that not only poetry, but stories and novels can be a wonderful way to show Auden’s affirming flame.  My novel, River with No Bridge, will be published in 2017. My protagonist experiences an Irish immigrant’s loneliness, losses, and gains while never giving in to America’s racial and class prejudices at the turn of the century. She is capable of empathy and that in itself shows one of the crucial forms Auden’s “affirming flame” may take.

As artists and readers, let us keep it burning.

Originally published in Montana Women Writers blog