Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote some of my favorite books, also wrote essays I’ve found very useful, especially her writing on the doctrine of the Trinity and its relation to creative writing and the kinds of problems that result from what she called “Scalene Trinities.”\u00a0 For the non-Christians (which I wasn’t when I first read this) it’s not necessary to accede to any Christian theology to grasp that it makes sense of certain problems in books you’ve read (or quit reading) and plays & movies that don’t work.\u00a0\u00a0 Sayers felt that all creators have to have three different abilities in order to create something that works:\u00a0 an Idea, some Energy, and a connection between the person and the Idea that in some sense is spiritual…it means something to you.\u00a0 You can’t just look at reviews of last year’s books, and decide to write a book sure to grab the market by combining column A and column B, when you don’t care, at any depth about A or B.<\/p>\n
So the Idea is the creative urge that crystallizes into something definite (but not always immediately definite, in full, to the writer.)\u00a0 For me, the Idea starts with a character, usually visualized in my head already definite in age, appearance, and “feel.”\u00a0 Paks was nothing like Ofelia; neither was like Heris or Lou or Ky Vatta.\u00a0\u00a0 Immediately the character tells me\/shows me that they’re in some kind of mess.\u00a0 The general setting is there too.\u00a0 Character in setting both physical and personal.\u00a0 It may not be the start of the book (Paks wasn’t in Three Firs when she first showed up; Lou wasn’t in that psychiatrist’s office, but in his apartment.)\u00a0 But they’re a character that wakes my interest…a character I want to know more about.\u00a0 The characters–all of them–have multiple layers already, motivations of all sorts growing out of their basic selves combined with their individual histories, and where they are already has a feel, both physical and social.\u00a0 Books have been written without a strong Idea, and they show it…by starting and out continuing as scattered bits of action, characters that don’t do anything because they don’t have any purpose.\u00a0 I’ve started a few books that I thought had an Idea (but didn’t) and they’ve all died before 50 pages.<\/p>\n
Waking my interest pulls up the writing skillset and my own history–my experience of people, places, things, from the basic sensory (smells, tastes, textures) to memories more concrete or more abstract to conflicts won, lost, unresolved.\u00a0 Soon after the character\/setting\/situation show up, I’m starting to write a little, feeling my way to see if this Idea is really connecting for me.\u00a0 I’m now actively pushing it around like a kid with a pile of blocks, or a musician messing around on a piano.<\/p>\n
And that’s what Sayers called the Energy of creation…the actual acts it’s going to take to bring the Idea into existence.\u00a0 It’s more than just sitting here and typing–it’s thinking, making the connections, bringing the perception of what the story should be into the reality of what it is on paper, how it works with a reader, doing research, looking back and ahead at the same time.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s looking at a chapter and being able to see that this paragraph *here* doesn’t belong here but five paragraphs earlier, so it makes clearer the motivation of a tertiary character with a walk-on part…but a walk-on part that can connect in another character’s mind to get that character to challenge the protagonist exactly as the protagonist needs at this point…so the protag walks off the necessary cliff and has to climb up the other side.\u00a0 It’s knowing that you need a particular sound you’ve never heard that the characters are seeing…and then there it is, in a weird looking little Twitter video clip…and because you were open to noticing it, there it is, and. It’s all the work it takes…and in that work are physical and mental energy, memory, learning, reasoning, intuition, and everything else that plays into it.<\/p>\n
A writer who’s sick long enough to lose energy, who’s had injuries that require long recovery, who can no longer (or not for a time) concentrate, think clearly, keep attention focused on the ‘pull’ of the plot, the shape of the story…will not make good progress.\u00a0 Both physical and mental limitations limit the energy available for the task and can make it impossible.\u00a0 (It’s a bigger task the longer the work because there’s more “stuff” in there to remember and make use of.)\u00a0 The deep logic of the setting (what kind of place it is) and characters (what kind of people they are–how they’ve acted before and why) begins to fray and thus–since these are both foundational to the story–the story thins.\u00a0 Stuff happens–it’s not clear why.\u00a0 People say and do things without reference to their real character.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Worst case,\u00a0 injury or illness or some other catastrophe can cut the connection between the writer and the original Idea.<\/p>\n
The third side of the triangle (which should be more equilateral than scalene (those leaning triangles, unbalanced) is\u00a0 the Spirit…the connection of the writer to the Idea through the work.\u00a0 When someone’s in the first stages of a project, before they’re really committed, what they’re feeling around for is the internal CLUNK that comes when the Idea and writer\/composer\/artist fully connect, when something deep inside the creator and the work have been shown, through messing about with the materials, to be part of each other.\u00a0\u00a0 If you don’t have, or lose,\u00a0 that connection, the original Idea is not manifested in the work and in worst cases it’s flat, blah, without flavor, without any sense of purpose or even connection to the writer…it’s like throwing words into a computer that knows some basic grammar and has a very simple plotline program.\u00a0\u00a0 The best example I can think of offhand is the later books in the Black Stallion<\/em> series, written by hirelings in the syndicate who clearly had no connection to horses, but were mining details from other horse books.\u00a0 The spirit of The Black, strong in the first book and still there for a couple more, disappeared when all that mattered was getting that name in the title.\u00a0\u00a0 They were full of action (horse races, bad guys doing this, good guys doing that) and certainly the writers had energy enough to put that many words on that many pages, but…it was busywork.<\/p>\n Series books and multi-volume books can<\/strong> be written where the writer’s connection to the Idea remains strong.\u00a0 In my own field I’d say C.J. Cherryh’s “Foreigner” series is fully alive throughout.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Her several-book groups are the same: she always has a firm connection with whichever Idea she had up front.\u00a0 Tanya Huff’s Confederation novels about Torin Kerr and her three additional “Peace” books with Kerr are absolutely alive and connected to their Idea.\u00a0 The stronger the writer–in skills, in energy, in conceptual ability, in concentration–the larger the work that can hold together.\u00a0 But we are all mortal, and we all age (which eventually lowers energy levels) and we are all subject to random events, from COVID-19 to concussions.<\/p>\n And it’s almost midnight and my energy for this day has run out completely.\u00a0 And I have the awful feeling I left my camera in the barn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote some of my favorite books, also wrote essays I’ve found very useful, especially her writing on the doctrine of the Trinity and its relation to creative writing and the kinds of problems that result from what she called “Scalene Trinities.”\u00a0 For the non-Christians (which I wasn’t when I first read Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,25],"tags":[7,26],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","category-writers-toolkit","tag-the-writing-life","tag-tools-for-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}