Just add angel?
When is an angel helpful to a piece of writing? It’s a question that crossed my mind a few times as I helped judge a fiction contest recently. Two of the stories had angels in them. In the first story, the angel appeared at the beginning. In the second, it appeared at the end. One appearance annoyed me. The other intrigued me. Can you guess which was which?
What does an angel do to a story? Functionally, it seems to me that angels represent the absolute value that drives the story. They embody that which lies at the heart of the story’s value system. The question, then, is where is that value best placed for maximum dramatic value?
Depends on how you look at the function of a protagonist. Is a protagonist supposed to change through his or her own volition, or should that change be foisted upon the character from without? I personally think it is much more interesting to see what arises from the choices of a volitional protagonist, because then we see a character creating him or herself, rather than as a ball of clay changed only from without. Maybe it’s the Mormon in me, chanting, “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.”
Angels who show up at the end of a story, then, annoy me. They arrive to set everything in order, or reap vengeance, or deliver the moral. They overshadow the volition of the protagonist. They make the protagonist’s volition seem small and inconsequential, which leads me to ask, “Why have we been following a dramatically insignificant protagonist all this time?”
The angels at the beginning of a story intrigue me. They set a goal before the protagonist; often a veiled goal whose true identity and importance are revealed later through the actions of the protagonist. Angels at the beginning hold out promises. Of course, they aren’t always inviting people into adventure; sometimes they’re forcing them into it: think of the angel that kept Adam and Even away from the tree of life, setting the entire human race into a gigantic story.
I tested my ideas out on some scripture stories, and found that, for the most part, they seem to uphold me.
The three angels sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah set Abraham out on perilous quest. (Not to mention the angel who saves Abraham from the sacrificial altar in the Pearl of Great Price – not as the climax of the story, but as the event that sends Abraham into a lifetime of troubles and adventure.)
The angels who put the coal on Isaiah’s lips. (Off you go, little prophet!)
The angel Jacob wrestles with.
The angel who announces Mary’s pregnancy.
The angel who warns Joseph to move his family to Egypt.
The angel who fortifies Nephi’s resolve through a vision of the tree of life. (Thinking on this further, another angel shows up in Nephi’s story to rip into his brothers, but this angel isn’t nearly as interesting dramatically, since all the angel does is level the playing field and give us a little revenge thrill
The angel who sends Alma the Younger into a new life.
And finally, a set of angels that has sent a world of Christians on a two-thousand year quest to see the second coming of Jesus.
Yeah. I say, if you’re going to use an angel, put it at the beginning. Use the angel as the fuse instead of as the explosion. An angel explosion just isn’t very interesting.
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August 26th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
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Well, when to start and end is an artistic choice, isn’t it? What would you have thought of the angel-at-the-end story if that scene had been the story’s first?
August 27th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Lets start with “artistic choice.” Every word a writer leaves on a page is an artistic choice. Obviously. But some choices are effective and others are not. I may be reading something into this rhetorical question that Th. didn’t intend, but I get the feeling that underlying it is a reminder that art (I’ll presume to be speaking of literary art) is a self-expression, a vehicle for the artist to let out what is inside him/her, a way to release what burns and churns internally. Since the story is his, he’s the only one who can know what should go in it. Its his call.
Fine. But I’ve come to believe writers err when “artistic choice” is self-motivated. Or when writing art is viewed as a form of self-expression.
Self. One person. An individual.
Where’s the communication? Where is the reader in artistic choices that are self-motivated, that focus on what the writer wants to say? Such artistic choices leave a writer unpublished. Writers who want publication make artistic choices based on what the reader will experience when they read, not on what the writer experiences either in life or in the writing process, but on what the reader experiences. Writers who publish consistently manipulate their readers with very careful artistic choices, choices that are made specifically because of their impact on audience.
In this case (I served as a judge alongside Stephen and others), I felt both writers believe people should listen to angels. One made the artistic choice to use the angel as the problem stopper, the solution, and the other used the angel as the problem maker. In the problem-maker-angel story, I was invested, just like the protagonist, in discovery. As a reader, that’s what I want to feel.
As Irreantum’s fiction editor, I’ve now read plenty of stories. I realize that there are those who read RBS who would like to be published in Irreantum, so hear this. When I finish reading a submitted story, I never ask myself, “Did the writer give his/her soul to this story? Did he/she get it all out? Did the writer grow?”
Au contraire. I finish reading a submission and evaluate whether or not *I* feel purged, whether or not *I* am emotionally involved, whether or not *I’ve* grown by reading it. You should question every word you leave on a page in order to determine if it helps to move, or manipulate, the reader, not if its the best choice to reveal what you want to say. Focus on the reader and only the reader. Lose yourself.
Its fascinating that Stephen thought to support his claim with the scripture stories we’re familiar with. If ever there was an “author” whose sole concern was in how stories moved the people who consumed them, it would be God.
August 27th, 2009 at 6:51 am
(Is there a way to take back a post when it has a horrific sentence? I need a fairy proofreader to nest in my hair.)
August 27th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Note to self 1: rewrite the story where the angel Raphael (who turns out to be Shakespeare) appears on the Glenn Beck program and calls Bro. Beck and all his listeners to repentance.
Note to self 2: Stop manipulating the readers. That means no more dying mothers, mysterious but hot chicks who just happen to find sensitive indie rock/lit major types fascinating, glittery brooding celibate boys, recent widowers with young children and a puppy, super sauve international spies who just happen to be Mormon, genius children who save the world, super courageous and pious pioneers and brave missionaries with physical handicaps or serious illnesses*.
* [any resemblances to any previously published works are wholly accidental]
——-
To be honest, I would be real wary of using an angel in any Mormon fiction story these days. I’m not saying that there’s nothing more that could be done with the trope, but I think it’s a theological shortcut, a (likely/possibly) lazy way to inject mystery and conflict (or resolution). Which isn’t to say that I’m against Mormon folk realism, and it all depends on what type of angel we’re talking about, but it’s hard to avoid a certain artificiality in such stories.
August 27th, 2009 at 7:56 am
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Lisa —
I agree that writing is communication and that if that doesn’t happen, the story has failed.
What I mostly meant by my question was based in curiosity: The angel-at-the-end story? Was the writer otherwise competent? I’m just wondering.
(And no, that wasn’t my story. No angels in my submitted tales. I’m with William on this — at least for now.)
August 27th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Hmmmm. I can see what you’re saying, Stephen, but without getting into particulars on the stories (since winners won’t be announced until Aug. 31) I’ll simply say that the angel-at-the-end story I think you’re referring to was a very successful story, a resonant story, one of the committee’s favorites. Although the angel appeared at the end of the story as it was told (meaning an angel wasn’t mentioned until near the end of the piece), the angel’s appearance was at the core of the existential conflict that drove the main character. So the angel wasn’t acting as a period at the end of the sentence. The angel instigated all sorts of questions and problems and anguish for the protagonist–the angel was the rich question at the heart of the story. It absolutely belonged there.
So, yes, I agree that angels shouldn’t be used to overwhelm a main character’s volition. But the story I think you’re citing isn’t an example of this.
Also, I’d personally like to see MORE angels in Mormon fiction. Between the fiction contest and the Zarahemla short fiction anthology I’m editing, I’ve read over 200 Mormon short stories in the last year. That’s a lot of Mormon fiction. And the vast (vast, vast) majority of it is realistic fiction. I’m not knocking realistic fiction (heck, it’s what I write, mostly) but there’s plenty of room for angels and demons and miracles and visions and all that jazz. I will agree, though, that it can be tricky to do well, as William mentioned.
And one last thing: as much as I agree that writes have GOT to get a handle on how to structure a narrative, and as much as I agree that writers absolutely must have the reader in mind constantly, there IS such a thing as artistic license. While an editor might think a piece would be better done one way, a talented and experienced writer has a right to disagree with an editor. After all, the writer knows the piece best of all. As much as writers can get caught up in thinking they “know it all” . . . so can editors. In the end, the story belongs to the writer.
August 27th, 2009 at 9:08 am
And William, no more glittery brooding celibate boys?
Crap. Now I have to start my new novel over from scratch.
August 27th, 2009 at 10:04 am
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Angela—
I would love to collaborate on a glittery-brooding-celibate-boys novel with you sometime. I’m thinking they can be charming . . . zombies. Or angels. Or maybe — yes! — three glittery brooding celibate boys with Mesoamerican accents!
August 27th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Wm, manipulation is one of those words that has gotten a bad rap. Manipulation is exactly what a story teller does. Man goes into a movie feeling bored, or angry, or unhappy. Sees a storyteller’s comedic version of “man takes on mother-in-law.” Man leaves happy. Nothing Man did–short of choosing to consume the story–changed his mood. He was manipulated–and happily so. What you mentioned was writers falling back on sentimentality to manipulate. Some eat that up. But not either of us. I guess we use the word differently
Angela, I agree, of course, that there is artistic license. Form is not formula. The artist makes the choices, but if the artist forgets that the ultimate goal is to have his product consumed, to effect something in his reader, the problem may be that the artistic license has become self-serving. I’ll die on this hill: Writers have to write for other people, not themselves.
I began writing that yes, writers know their work best, but then I deleted it. In truth, my experience has taught me otherwise. I certainly wish it was always true that a writer knows his piece best. It certainly should be true. But at least in terms of some of the fiction that we see at Irreantum, this is not always the case.
Even very good writers often don’t really understand what they have put on the paper. I testify to this because, when I begin the editing process with a writer, I give a very close reading, demonstrating how the words connect throughout, the images, etc. Sure, sometimes there are physical things going on in a scene that can’t be: Eg, a man sitting on a couch removes his socks and throws them out a closed door. Little mistakes. But there are larger issues that may be mistakes. For instance, a writer uses a particular image like, oh say, shape shifting (speaking of folk art) in a positive way, then describes some evil character as shifty, or uses the word “shift” in ways that undermine the positive associations he wants attached to that word/image of shapeshifting. Could be fine–if its a controlled contradiction,if it has a purpose, but sometimes stories end up with unintentional contradictions that writers didn’t notice.
I point these things out in my close readings and sometimes find a surprised writer on the other end. I’m not saying all the time. My close readings are there to reassure writers who want the abrasion between connotative meanings and to realign the thinking of those who don’t. Writers do make the final choices, but few of us (I’ve been busted–hi Stephen–many times on this myself) can clearly see the art we are making by the time we think we’re done–simply because we become too familiar with it. We wind up thinking something is there that isn’t, or that something isn’t there that is. After all, we know what we cut, we know what we meant. This is why everyone needs a writing group or a great, critical reader.
No, an editor isn’t there to drive the story, but he/she should be there to drive the writer to better familiarity with his work,to better understand the effect his artistic choices make on readers, to better the art. This is acheived, according to my philosophy anyway, when the story editor behaves like a reader.
Ah, let me take that back. I really think an editor should only be there to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Unfortuntately, most (not all) of the stories we receive need more than that. In truth, if we only accepted for publication stories that could compete in a national market the way they came in, there would be very little LDS fiction in our own Mormon journals. Don’t get me wrong. I think our best stuff is competitive nationally. In fact, I’m pushing for editors of Mormon publications to remember to submit stories to competitions like the Pushcart Prize. But we really don’t get enough of them.
I’m so afraid to hit “submit.” But here goes.
August 27th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Lisa:
I was just attempting the funny. I fully agree with you. And since writers manipulate, there needs to be an earned trust, a controlled use of powers, and a large measure of craftsmanship (rather than showoffedness).
And I especially like this:
“No, an editor isn’t there to drive the story, but he/she should be there to drive the writer to better familiarity with his work,to better understand the effect his artistic choices make on readers, to better the art. This is acheived, according to my philosophy anyway, when the story editor behaves like a reader.”
August 27th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Angela:
Good point on the realistic fiction. I’m still leery that the next thing we tend to reach for is pseudo-magic realism (or what I call Mormon folk realism). What we really need is more humor and more parable (the Kafka kind — not the schmaltzy kind) and more epic — but I only say that because that’s what I tend to write (although Theric will probably agree with me — and has accomplished it well with the FOB Bible).
August 27th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
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Thanks, William. I’m still quite full of myself for how well that turned out. And now that we’re in paperback (read: cheaper), I’m hoping TFB can compete head-to-head with Angela’s upcoming anthology for Best Collection of the Year. I’m gunning for you, Ms Hallstrom.
My view on editing is this:
1) Only bother with stories that are close enough to perfect to smell the greatness.
2) Ask insightful questions that force the writer to delve deeper and bring up that greatness that’s so nearly there.
In other words, pretty much was Lisa said.
My wife and I have been planning to start a Mormon fiction rag for a long time, but Irreantum’s bringing out such good stuff now that I’m happy to leave that on the backburner. (Not that I was on the cusp of getting started anyway. Hahaha! That’s a lot of work, starting a magazine! Maybe when the youngest is starting kindergarten….)
)
August 27th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Point of clarification: I am epic, but I don’t write epic.
August 27th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Lisa, why are you afraid? I agree with you in many ways.
I suppose what I was trying to say is that yes, a good editor is absolutely necessary almost always. I say almost always because there are rare writers out there who understand their work so well that they don’t need more than a little tweaking here or there–but those writers are rare.
Have there been times a good editor has seen mistakes in my work or helped me tease out metaphors or themes that I didn’t realize were there? Heavens, yes. I owe a ton to my editors and close readers. But I’ve also had experiences where editors or close friends have said, “Hey, what if you do THIS” or “Why don’t you do THAT,” and after mulling over their suggestions I decide that I know my story best and keep heading down the road I’m on. It’s one thing to make mistakes blindly. But it’s another thing to knowingly bend the rules for a particular, well-thought-out reason. Is bending the rules risky? Yes. But it can also have fantastic results. It’s this freedom to experiment that is at the root of innovative art.
Sometimes do writers stubbornly head down their “artistically innovative” road and would have had a better piece if only they’d gotten over themselves and listened to an editor? Oh, definitely. I’m sure I’ve done it. However, there have also been times that, in my insecurity, I’ve taken an editorial suggestion that didn’t sit right with me in the first place and ended up with a story I never intended and don’t believe in anymore. Because it ended up being the story the EDITOR intended.
To put it bluntly, sometimes editors need to get over themselves, too. As an editor, at times I’ve become too invested in “helping” a piece turn out the way I want it to turn out. If we as editors offer a suggestion to a writer who knows his or her stuff and they don’t take it, we need to trust the person who actually wrote the dang thing to know what he or she is doing. The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding: whether or not the story gets published or ends up with a positive response.
Ultimately, fiction writing is not, say, ballroom dancing, where you get a point shaved off for holding your foot in the wrong position. To me, fiction is more like singing. Singers move us and please us for so many different reasons, and fiction is much the same way. Once a writer has reached a certain level of proficiency, who can say what the “right” thing is to do for a story anyway? I’ve been involved in five short fiction contests in my life, and I think I can count on one hand the number of stories that everybody on the contest committee uniformly loved. And this isn’t just because the stories are less than professional quality. (One of these contests was with the lit mag Water-Stone where hundreds of submissions were received, some of them by accomplished writers.) Every year there are stories in Best American Short Stories that leave me completely cold . . . but obviously somebody loved them, because there they are in Best American Short Stories.
There is craft, yes. Craft is so important. But so is artistry and innovation and personal taste.
Okay, I’ve gone on enough. Now should *I* be afraid to press submit?
August 27th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Okay. I pressed submit but have to clarify one thing.
When I said, “who can say what’s the *right* thing to do for a story anyway” I misspoke a little. Obviously, a good editor can have a LOT of things to say about what can be done with a story and can improve it tremendously.
I’ll explain what I meant by this little anecdote: I just saw the movie “Julie and Julia.” Before seeing it, I’d read a number of reviews that didn’t like the “Julie” part of the story, so I was prepared not to like it either. But guess what? I liked it. A lot! And obviously so did Nora Ephron, the writer who’s reached a certain level of proficiency who wrote the dang screenplay.
I also recently saw “(500) Days of Summer,” a lovely little movie that takes a lot of risks with narrative structure . . . but risks that WORK. There were two names on that screenplay–two friends who got together and wrote this quirky, cool movie. I can’t imagine that a screenplay like that would have ever been written had a big-budget studio with a cadre of professional writers tried to write it. Too many cooks in the kitchen, etc. Too many opinions about what a movie “ought to be.” Whenever I see movies like Sandra Bullock’s “The Proposal” I think, “Now there’s a movie that COULD have been good if a dozen writers hadn’t been tinkering with the script for a year and a half.” (Not that I know that’s now “The Proposal” was written. But I betcha five bucks it was.)
On the other hand, I ALSO recently saw Dave Eggers’ “Away We Go,” and personally felt it was a narrative mess. It needed more cooks in the kitchen, or something. But a reviewer at the New Yorker seemed to like it. So there you go.
Don’t know if I clarified anything. Anybody still reading after all this blathering?
Are we supposed to be talking about angels??
August 28th, 2009 at 5:09 am
I like to think editors are someone’s angels.
I’m glad Angela brought up the fact that what leaves one consumer cold may warm another’s soul. I’m reading my way thru a national anthology that is bringing both hot and cold reactions out in me. But I still can see that those stories that don’t move me are, generally, strongly crafted. Its the meaning of the story that leaves me cold. Not the craft. I wasn’t the right audience for that story.
Certainly editors and the journals they work through will have philosophical and ideaological leanings. This is why writers need to research the publication they submit to. This may be why some Mormon writers have trouble breaking into the national market.
But in the final analysis, I think that point supports my argument. The editor is reader first and is looking for stuff that moves him/her. I know I write the stuff I want to read, but when I write it, I think about how to move the reader. I didn’t used to do that. I may not always succeed–and certainly not with everyone, but that’s the effort.
BTW, I had the same reaction to _The Proposal_. When Sandra Bullock fell off the boat so that the handsome man could save her…? I wanted to shoot the writers. Think that’s been done before… The scene, not shooting the writers. (Please don’t shoot writers.)Still, I saw the movie twice. (Don’t tell.)so they win.
August 28th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Lisa, you’re my Irreantum fiction angel. Seriously, you are an excellent editor.
One last point and then I’ll shut my trap: “Craft” is a tricky term in that there’s no cut-and-dried, you-must-write-this-way handbook that all writers must adhere to. Like I said before, writing’s more like singing than ballroom dancing.
So an editor might look at _(500) Days of Summer_ and say: hey, love the heart in this movie, love the characters, love the feel, but the narrative structure jumps around in time and it’s way too confusing. Gotta fix that or you’ll lose your audience. Or this imaginary editor might say to Nora Ephron: hey, this is a great movie, so much fun, but the “Julie” parts drag it down. If you cut the “Julie” parts you’ve got yourself a great movie.
Those are both craft questions that I bet the writers of both movies had people bring to their attention, at that they both mindfully ignored. Could Julie & Julia had been better without the Julie parts? Who knows? Perhaps. But it would have been a completely different movie.
As would the angel story, without the angel. At the end.
August 28th, 2009 at 8:39 am
To take things further of track:
“Certainly editors and the journals they work through will have philosophical and ideological leanings. This is why writers need to research the publication they submit to.”
Absolutely. And this is also why, imo, more and more writers are going to go the whole do it yourself (or do it with a group of like-minded people) route. This is a mixed blessing in that it will allow for more diversity of voices and ideological points of view and more experimentation with narrative, but it will also most likely lead to even more of a fragmentation of the audience and the danger of writers who get caught in their own feedback loop.
I’m lucky in that for the most part I resonate fairly well with Irreantum and Dialogue (and some of the fiction that Sunstone publishes) as well as most of the books being published by Zarahemla (which except for a few titles from Parables is the only game in town right now for long-form Mormon fiction). But I imagine that there are other Mormon writers out there who don’t resonate as well. At some point they will start their own game. Which will be great — but further fragment the field.
And related to that: we still have the problem that there are not enough story slots for the number of short story writers (and that may depress the market as well). For example, my output seems to be limited to 1-2 short stories per year. It probably should be closer to 4-5. But since at the moment I am only interested in the Mormon market, there’s no real pressure for me to do those 4-5. Obviously motivation has to come from the writer etc. etc. But there’s no doubt that opportunity for publication (and even a bit of money!) helps drive output. For example, I would argue that the two best things to happen to Mormon literature since 2000 are the Irreantum Fiction Contest and the creation of Zarahemla Books because all of sudden there are some realistic goals to shoot for.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:53 am
From where I sit, there aren’t enough publication-ready stories coming in. We have slots we can’t fill. Each of the editors from the three main publication venues for lit fic (Irreantum, Sunstone, Dialogue) complain that they aren’t getting submissions of high enough quality to accept outright. So please, all of you who want to publish, write more, write harder. Or rather, rewrite more. Become your own best and most realistic critic, iron the wrinkles, and send it in! Trust me, you aren’t being rejected because there isn’t enough room for you. There’s room. I wish there wasn’t.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Ah, that didn’t sound right. I wish we had a huge backlog of look-out world stories. But we don’t.
August 28th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I think one thing that gets in the way is slow response time from editors. I mention this not to create guilt in any of you all, but just to say that when stories get sat on for 4, 5, 6 or more months, submitters don’t always know how to respond, especially if we’ve written something else in the meantime. It’s like we don’t want to ruin our chances for the one you are sitting on. On the other hand, since there’s just been silence maybe that means you are really lukewarm about the work, and we should hit you up with something new. It can also be a bit nervewracking to figure out who to submit to first and whether to shop a reject to another editor and how much of a rewrite to do before shopping it somehwere else (although I think that a rejection should always be a cue to revise).
Note that I only have one work that I’m waiting to hear on (that’s not counting one contest entry, but I don’t count that because contests are a different ball of wax), and I have nothing yet publication ready and won’t for several months (if then) so this isn’t some coded plea on my part. My goal for the next year is to have an entry each for the Irreantum and Sunstone fiction contests and one piece of lit crit ready (and maybe produce one more story or essay on top of that).