The Author Bunny Exposed!
Jeanette Atwood
This is an edited version of a previous post. It will be appearing on page 3 of the Sunstone arriving in your mailbox very soon. I just wanted to show you what a good bout of editing and an illustrator can do for a piece. Note, for example, the streamlining of the prose and the unification of the controlling metaphor (as contrasted with the earlier version). And, by the way, one of the perks of publishing in Sunstone is that you get an illustration or two specifically created for your piece.
Do you believe in Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny? The Tooth Fairy? How about the Author Bunny?
I believed in the Author Bunny for many years. Amazing novels and short stories conceived themselves inside her like eggs, perfect and smooth. Then she would find a worthy worshipper upon whom to bestow those stories (usually after midnight).
Oh, sure, the writer had to work to peel those stories and expose their beauty, but the story was already in there. All the writer had to do was find the words to embody it.
How many days did I sit at my computer certain that the Author Bunny had left a little gift for me? How many drafts did I pump out? How many perfect stories did I present to how many critics who said, “Umm, yeah. Fine.”
Fine? Obviously you don’t grasp what I’m doing here. Don’t you see the nuances? Can’t you catch the symbolism? Isn’t the story’s soul blindingly apparent?
I spent many years trying to attract the Author Bunny. But it finally became depressingly evident that I had been tried and found unworthy.
No stories for you, you naughty boy.
But I’m a stubborn cuss. I wanted to be a writer anyway, so I enrolled in a creative writing MFA program where I learned something that made it possible for me to be a writer without the Author Bunny (sounds heretical, I know). That something is a single principle. I’m giving it to you free of charge—just because you’re you.
Just as there is a craft to engine design, architecture, and artificial sweetener formulation, there is a craft to storytelling.
I spent five years studying story craft, my main text being Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. Focusing on a screenwriting book when one wants to learn story craft may seem odd, but, as I have found, screenplays are story skeletons. They’re the bones that the cast and crew hang flesh upon. You don’t have to cut through flowery language, extended metaphors, or languorous passages of description. Rather, the beams and bones of the story lie exposed before you. And there are ways to know if they can stand, or if the art direction, costumes, actors, soundtrack, and cinematography are simply makeup and an evening gown applied to a corpse.
Though I was obsessed with understanding the components of story, it took a while to learn and apply them. Looking back on my MFA thesis, I cringe. Why in the world did they let me graduate?
Eventually, my work started to pay off. I could tell because the first time I submitted a screenplay to a film festival, they took my twenty-dollar entrance fee and never spoke to me again. The next time around, I revised that screenplay and won third place. I could identify the screenplay’s problems and repair them. It was like fixing a toaster.
After that, I won writing contests and was published regularly. But it wasn’t because the Author Bunny had put me on his “nice” list, it was because I learned how stories work, just like an architect learns how buildings work, or an engine designer learns how engines work.
Learning the craft of storytelling has been great for my career. I can actually make a living with words, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.
Reflecting on the Mormon fiction I have read, much of it has one thing in common. A lack of story craft. Yes, many of those stories may have lovely language, sympathetic characters, and interesting ideas, but they don’t go anywhere.
I’ve written a lot of critiques to fiction writers focusing on their story’s structure, and with almost no exception I receive this response, “What in the world are you talking about? This is how the story goes!”
That, gentle reader, is the voice of one who is in the thrall of the Author Bunny. It’s the voice of someone who believes that stories conceive themselves ex nihilo.
As Robert McKee writes,
The novice plunges ahead, counting solely on experience, thinking that that life he’s lived and the films he’s seen give him something to say and the way to say it [. . .] What the novice mistakes for craft is simply his unconscious absorption of story elements from every novel, film, or play he’s ever encountered. As he writes, he matches his work by trial and error against a model built up from accumulated reading and watching. The unschooled writer calls this “instinct,” but it’s merely habit and it’s rigidly limiting. He either imitates his mental prototype or imagines himself in the avant-garde and rebels against it. But the haphazard groping toward or revolt against the sum of unconsciously ingrained repetitions is not, in any sense, technique, and leads to screenplays clogged with clichés of either the commercial or the art house variety.1
Lack of story craft is the bane of Mormon fiction. In fact, I believe it is the main barrier that keeps Mormon writing from gaining the strength to compete in the national and international markets. Too many potential Mormon writers still believe in the Author Bunny. They put no work into story craft, convinced that it will be delivered to them by a furry anthropomorph. They spend their lives waiting for an egg that never arrives.
NOTES
1. Robert McKee, Story, Substance, Structure, Style and the Craft of Screenwriting. (New York: Regan Books, 1996) 15-16.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I’m a big proponent of craft in artistic production and generally agree with the notion that Mormon fiction could do with more story craft.
But at the same time, most of the authors I love never read McKee. And: the MFA-craft approach brings with it it’s own set of preferences, discourse boundaries, tastes, holy grails, blind spots, etc.
Or in other words, too much fiction these days reads like it was meant to be a screenplay.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Shakespeare did fine without McKee, so can the rest of the world. However, I think his book is the best explanation of how story structure works, and that any writer could benefit from reading it.
I have to agree with you about the blind-spots an MFA can burn into a writer’s eyes. Elitism is often the name of the game. I was kind of a crank in my program, continually trying to talk about craft while everyone else wanted to revel in reader response criticism of each other’s work. But of my cohort, I think I’m the only one who actually has a job that uses my degree.
I’d like to hear about the fiction (especially Mormon fiction) you’ve encountered that reads too much like screenplay. I haven’t encountered it myself.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:39 am
I very much enjoyed reading _The Conversion of Jeff Williams_ and _The Marketing of Sister B_, but both of those felt like screenplays to me. _Brother Brigham_ and _Hunting Gideon_ both did as well. And, you know, for all it’s lyrical-ness, some scenes in _Salvador_ seemed like they’re there more for their filmic qualities. In particular, the one near the end with the old man and the waterfall and (I believe) butterflies (it’s been awhile since I read it).
I’m probably stretching the use of the word screenplay too far. And certainly I have nothing against plot. And I don’t mind less-dense writing styles. But it is nice to sometimes have something that sprawls and ruminates rather than skips along at a good pace.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:42 am
By the way, Stephen. I want you to continue to talk about craft. In fact, at some point could you write something about endings. It’s a bit of crusade of mine. I really should write up what I mean, though, and post it at AMV.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I see what you mean. Very good observation. Sister B kinda fell flat for me for the same reason. It felt like a sitcom for me, though, you’re right, it was still an enjoyable read. Martindale has said many times that he is a big fan of Orson Scott Card’s teflon prose, so I assume that’s why BB reads the way it does. I actually haven’t read Hunting Gideon yet.
I get most pleasure from a piece that can use its ruminations and sprawl to forward the story. The Things They Carried and The Hours both come to mind as examples of such.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I’m reading _Angle of Repose_ right now (it’s odd that I haven’t read it yet considering that I took classes in Western regionalism) and it does the same thing quite well, imo.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Oh, and it looks like I’m repeating myself. Should have read through the comments to the first version before rambling on.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
[...] The Author Bunny Exposed! | The Red Brick Store By Stephen Carter I wanted to be a writer anyway, so I enrolled in a creative writing MFA program where I learned something that made it possible for me to be a writer without the Author Bunny (sounds heretical, I know). That something is a single … The Red Brick Store – http://theredbrickstore.com/ [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
By the way, Stephen, let me thank you emphatically for your previous post recommending Robert McKee’s book, Story. I have written extensively in non-fiction over the past 30 years, but have always struggled with writing fiction — not with actual wordsmithing, but with figuring out how to put together a compelling story. McKee’s book is truly remarkable; reading it, I feel as I did a few decades back when I was learning the ‘bones’ of software architecture. Thanks again. ..bruce..