Karen E. Bender's Advice to a Young Writer: Thoughts on the Structures That Hold up the House of the Story

In the 26th in a series of posts from authors of 2018 books entered for The Story Prize, Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order (Counterpoint), shares her thinking.

You start with honesty.

There is the truth that you want to hide, that you think others will turn away from. Combating shame is your currency, your work. It doesn’t have to be a dark truth, though it can be—you can describe a joyful truth, a crooked truth, a funny truth, something that hasn’t been said about the world and that you want to hear. Everything that hasn’t been said—you can say it. Writers reinvent the world, create ways of seeing, through their precise way of depicting what is around them. All you need is your own insight and bravery. You are combating the lies in our culture—all the clichés, all the ads, all the statements people say to explain their world but not yours, not exactly. And lies are so grating because you secretly know that your experience is valid, and that it is right, too.

Woke

The world feels different when you describe it with that specificity, that correctness. It feels brighter, lighter—mostly, it feels real. When you describe the truth about the world, the world snaps awake.

So tell a truth in whatever way you want to. You can tell it through fiction, in which honesty is not literal but is emotional, and needs to feel true. You can tell it through nonfiction, which is literal truth created by you.

Your truth may not be other people’s, and that is fine. It’s not supposed to be. But others may hear your version and say, yes. That is how I move through the world as well. That moment, that connection, is what bonds writers and readers, what nourishes you as a writer, more than anything—it’s the closest we get to knowing what it is to be another person.

You shape the world with your truth. It’s waiting to be shaped by you; this is your opportunity.

You say it.

Then craft.

This is the funnel for your honesty. The way you shape it into a precise container. For art isn’t unshaped life, it is life that feels more vibrant than life. What is the question you want to answer, how are you going to shape your story to answer it? How are you going to use all of the tools at your disposal—sensory detail, dialogue, scene, plot? Play with these craft elements, use them. Don’t feel that you can only be good at one element of craft. If you are a sensory detail person, you can also become a dialogue person. You may hate thinking about plot but it can become your friend. Read many different authors and see how they use these tools. Also, read sentences out loud and see how the words feel as you say them, how the rhythm of the sentences resonate in you.

Then patience.

Being a writer means that much is out of your control. Magazines may accept or turn down your work. Readers may connect with your work or dismiss it. You can’t control how others respond to your manuscript. But you can control your process of revision, how you nurture your work. Take the time to write a story once, twice, as many times as you need to reshape it. Do it again. Be resolute. Be ambitious. Be fearless. As a writer, your power is in your patience. That’s what you can control—the process, your vision, your words.

Karen E. Bender's Ten Ideas For Revision

In the first in a series of posts on 2015 books entered for The Story Prize, Karen E. Bender, author of Refund (Counterpoint Press) offers advice on polishing prose.

1. Remember that it’s better to have a few pages of something rather than no pages of fear. Revising a story is just playing, seeing where your characters, your voice takes you. The story already exists and is waiting for you, the writer, to find it.
   
2. Read over your draft, looking for the emotions that are most alive, the characters who are most interesting to you. Begin playing with these emotions/characters, seeing where they take you.
   
3. Try to write a beginning or end scene to your story. This may not be the final version, but may help you see that the story can have a shape.
   
4. Try to find a clear line of desire in the story. What does the main character want? What do the other characters want? Try to simplify the characters’ main urges. Find a spine that you can develop complex reactions/experiences around.
   
5. Think about compression. How can one scene do the work of many scenes? Which scene seems most interesting to you? Can you layer some of the interactions/episodes of other scenes into this scene? Are all of the characters necessary? Can you compress characters?
   
6. Think about point of view. Are you interested in the protagonist’s point of view? Are you interested in writing from the point of view of one of the other characters?  If so, try writing some scenes from that character’s point of view. If you enjoy it, you may want to switch; if not, you will learn more about that character.
   
7. Think about specificity. Specific details will act as “tips of the iceberg” in a story—find the ones that will imply a life for the characters outside the world of the story. If you can’t figure out how to specify part of your story, leave abstract language as a place marker and come back to it later.
   
8. Think about what is in the story because you want it to be included, and what is in the story because you think it should be included. Does some of the writing feel dutiful, unnecessary? Think about what you need in the story, and what you can let go.
   
9. Remember that taking a break from a story can be a great way of getting perspective on it. Take a day, a week off from your story. Read something new or something you love; look at paintings or sculpture or dance or theater or film that inspires you.
   
10. Remember that revision is a process and happens in stages. The first stage, you may be trying to find out what the story is about. Then you may develop scenes, layer characters. Later, you may compress scenes/characters. Then you may work on pacing. A late revision focuses on clarity and language. You may work on any of these issues during the process, but try not to get too focused on honing the language too early, as you may not know what will remain in the story. As one writer I know says, “Writing a story is like building a boat. I don’t want to spend too much time intricately painting a hatch when I don’t know if the boat even has a rudder.”