From Imagination to Story
Guest blog
By
Nancy Cathers Demme
To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. Kurt Vonnegut
Creative writing is a challenge. Words can come slowly or like quicksilver, or not come at all. It’s an athletic event requiring skill, agility, and concentration. Writing is like facing a closed door. Sometimes the door is ajar, other times it is locked. When locked, the writer must either pick the lock, or if lucky find the key. Once opened the room behind the door is full of words, spinning, tumbling, crashing about. The room contains all the words you remember. Words you have spoken in your sleep. Words you have whispered to a lover. Words you have crooned to a child. It also contains words you think you have forgotten. They race about in a fecund tumult. The writer must reach out and grab them one by one in some sort of sensible sequence and immortalize them with pen and paper.
When I enter this room I grab a word, then another, and another until I have a sentence.
Words are slippery, they slide out of sight, out of reach, and, at times, they disappear altogether through an open window into the black night sky. But I am vigilant. I continue reaching for words and have a string of sentences until I have a paragraph. To write like water is the goal. This process is repeated over and over until I have the beginnings of a short story or novel, or until I am satisfied and exhausted with the hunt and have access to this dreamlike trance almost whenever I want.
All writers have a method for writing. Some wake at 3 a.m. and write until dawn. Some write on their lunch breaks. Others treat writing as a job and write 9 to 5. I usually have a character who is teasing me, creeping about my everyday thoughts while walking, or reading, eating, or invading my sleep. Writing is a visceral thing, and I take these characters seriously, jotting down notes about the way the character moves, smiles, laughs, or frowns. I watch the character engage in conversation or note how they don’t. I become immersed in the character, so that I can feel them breathe, cough, cry. I can feel them on my skin, their density, their height, their weight. I make a judgement about whether he or she will become my protagonist. Sometimes they follow me wondering what I will make of them, sly, secretive, elusive. So I write when I can, when the character’s spirit is upon me. I don’t stop until their presence is gone. I am a character driven novelist.
A character driven novelist depends on instinct, while plot driven novelists depend on intellect. A combination of these qualities makes for the perfect scenario., as in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. To be character driven simply means that the overall theme I want to create comes primarily from the characters I dream up. Both primary and secondary characters derive from an inner voice, from a fugue state of mind, a daydream state, a quiet state. If I like a character in this setting, I will probably give this state its head and hold onto it. I can then let a character become a part of me. To love a character is best portrayed within the confines of plot, what happens in a novel. Does the character steal? Is it naïve? Is it willful.? Is it generous? Adding characters, secondary characters, which play off the protagonist, I don’t love as well. I’m only obsessed with the protagonist. The antagonist will be portrayed as the protagonist’s foil that create conflict and tension. These two characters must be known inside out which is done through dialogue, narrative and plot. Where is the protagonist going? How is the antagonist providing stumbling blocks for the protagonist. Sometimes I need to corral them back in. Secondary characters must also be corralled in from time to time to make the narrative cohesive. Without some constraint a secondary character can derail the story if adherence to character and plot go wrong. Endings become harder to make concise and entertaining and knowable.
There are writers who are plot driven like Tom Clancy, the actions and conflicts less driven by character supersedes at times the protagonist. These novels depend on actions, settings and history, all of which history provides conflict. I envy these writers their ability to come up with scenarios that work. My process for creating plot is quite different. I follow my character around until I know what he might do in a given situation, and then I provide a feasible plot point for him, thus it is the character who decides what will happen. This only succeeds if you know your characters inside and out, and they are willing to lead you there. There are times when I have to lead them away from their decided purpose.
Other writers are driven by setting, a mountain, a valley, a city. Others are driven by time, the world wars, the plague, the moonshot. Both setting and time are extremely important. A good writer will merge and bend setting and time. They will spend elaborate amounts of time researching to provide simply a word or sentence to the manuscript, while others will devote much of what is written from research.
I see writing as a great puzzle. One piece leads to another, and another, and another. In great novels the last piece, the one you finally find on the floor and which has been gnawed on by the dog, that doesn’t quite fit, reveals something the reader takes home and chews upon.
My own novel, “The Ride,” (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, February, 2019) followed the same path from imagination to story. It is a crossover young adult novel meaning it is suitable for adults and teenagers. The inspiration came from the word room described above. ‘Anonymous’ was the word I clutched from midair, and it described the protagonist Diego Ramirez. Throughout the novel I kept this characterization of Diego in mind while writing. How would I make him knowable? How much did I want him knowable?
Diego is 15, anonymous, illiterate, and an arsonist. He is also abused by his stepfather. Diego lives with his mother and two sisters on a ranch in 1952 El Paso. One evening, after being brutally beaten by his stepfather, Diego sets fire to the barn where his stepfather is working. He believes he has killed him, steals his mother’s life savings, dimes and nickels, and flees the ranch. He hitchhikes through Texas accepting rides from anyone who will pick him up, a bigoted truck driver, a woman who only picks up children of crippled spirit, a ball bearing
salesman and others who help Diego come to terms with his crime and the crimes committed against him.
I spent many dark days with Diego trying to come to terms with his arson. Profiling arsonists led me to understand that abused children often grow up to be arsonists. I made the stepfather the abuser. Initially, Diego’s fire settings are benign, built on a platform
of family time with his biological father, who disappears from his life one day. It was a time he cherished before the stepfather arrived on his doorstep. Diego and his biological father would burn garbage in the drum behind the house, and his father, a carpenter, would straighten coffin nails in a fire, and they would talk. His love for his real father, his devotion to his mother even though she was no protection from abuse, and his protectiveness toward his sisters, served to provide Diego with reader empathy. The reader knows he is not evil, but deeply troubled. The reader must, like, or if not like, identify with the protagonist.
Once all these elements were in place, it was easy to follow Diego through Texas to his last ride. The story seemed to write itself. I was always glad when there was a new ride, a new character, perhaps friendly, perhaps dangerous, for Diego to weather. I only worked on the story when I was in the word room, and made good use of my own vocabulary to express the story.
Being sensitive to your own intuitions, whims, and diversions is what gets novels written. It is not a tortuous path as myth would have it. It is a luxurious stroll through a landscape of your own making. It is one in which readers dwell for a time then move on. The novel is a temporary space for mortals to inhabit. A good novel offers an array of human emotions, foibles, and experiences that make the relationship between the page and the reader priceless. To share a microcosm of life, a panorama of characters, and perhaps lingering in the minds of readers, is the ultimate endpoint of writing.
I take my inspiration and style of writing from many novelists. I would say John Steinbeck, his simple prose and wonderfully rich characters, influenced me most.. I have many favorites and would suggest to young writers that the key to writing good fiction is to read as much as you can.
Nancy Cathers Demme
Author of “The Ride”, Stephen F. Austin State University Press, February 2019
1. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country. New York: Random House, 2007.
Note: Published in The Torch, Spring 2022, Vol. 95. Issue 3
