Through the deep woods – finding a path to a novel

I knew Suzanne Frank, director of The Writer’s Path at Southern Methodist University, from my own time in her program. When I met her again at a meeting of Dallas Mystery Writers, she invited the group to an information session this week. The goal of the program, she told attendees at the information session in SMU’s Dallas Hall, is not to teach students how to write in a particular style, or tell a particular type of story, “but to help you find your best story and how to craft it.”

Starting with the premise that if a person gets what she wants, “there is no story,” she asked how attendees wanted to spend their days. “It’s perfectly OK to say, I like my job, I just want to have two hours a day to write a book, or organize my short stories, or validate my poems and songs.”

“We can – note, not will or must – take you from your first idea to a first draft.”  

image: pxabay

The Writer’s Path has changed format a good deal since I participated in it years ago. It’s currently structured as a five-step program: Creative Writing Foundation, Story, Plot, Heroic Chapters, and Chapters. Additional classes are required for writers interested in applying for SMU’s New York seminar. The courses mentioned here are for the Writer’s Path novel program, with a somewhat different course structure required for writers interested in memoir and narrative nonfiction. 

With some exceptions, classes are five weeks long. They are all taught by published authors and meet once a week for three hours, with variable amounts of homework. Again with some exceptions, the cost is $450 per class, plus a $5 fee for a campus parking permit.

Beginning with the first step, “Creative Writing Foundation,” the Path leads through “Story,” which introduces writers to the story form called the hero’s journey and should enable them to complete at least two key scenes, including the final scene. If the idea of knowing the ending sounds too scary, Frank assured us that the “final” scene at this early stage, “may not be the end that you end up with later.” 

During the third “Plot” stage, participants should expect to put “muscle and tendons to make the story move,” working on characterization, including characterization of the all-important villain (or antagonist), and ending with at least nine major scenes for their narratives. These first three steps consist of five weeks of classes, meeting once a week for three hours each. 

The fourth step, “Heroic Chapters” is what Frank terms, “our special sauce,” a digging-deeper  -- and longer – class that lasts six weeks instead of the usual five.

“When we first put this into rotation, the difference between people who took it and those that didn’t was about three drafts.”

“Heroic Chapters” is followed by the final (for non-NY seminar attendees) “Chapters” class. By the end of this class, writers are expected to have completed approximately five chapters of a novel. They can then proceed on their own or take Chapters multiple times at their own discretion. 

When I first signed up for the program, it seemed so even to me that a former career journalist would find herself baffled at the prospect of writing fiction. Especially long fiction. Workshops and critique groups that helped with short stories, which were as much as a group of people could cope with in one or two sittings. But who could be expected to keep an entire narrative of perhaps 100,000 words in mind over a period of months, if not years of writing?

I needed something more structured than a critique group, lengthier than a weekend-long workshop, more goal-oriented than a semester-long introduction to creative writing class. But I didn’t want another academic degree. Or anything that would bust my budget. Then another writer said that he’d been exploring the non-credit creative writing classes called “the Writer’s Path” at Southern Methodist University.

No degree given or required, but by starting with the basics and working through a year or two of structured classes, I could learn a fairly straightforward way to write a novel. I tried it, started a completely new novel as a way to work out what I was learning, and ended by being among a dozen or so alumni of the program invited to attend a seminar in New York, complete with pitching to real live literary agents.

Well, I didn’t get an offer of literary representation. And although a later agent agreed to represent that original novel, no more came of it. No matter. I kept writing, because now I knew how to.

Because of the cost and commitment of time, The Writer’s Path is not for anyone who isn’t already determined to become a writer. To anyone unsure whether to spend any spare time you can scrape up writing or, say, raising prize dahlias, consider taking any of the excellent shorter creative writing classes available in North Texas. WORD (Writing Organizations 'Round Dallas) includes a comprehensive list of writing organizations to choose from. Also note that since The Writer’s Path does not lead to an advanced academic degree it will not prepare you to teach (other than in its own classes). 

But if you are firmly committed to writing but feel you just need more structure and support than is otherwise available, give it a try. The Creative Writing Foundation classes are currently open for registration. 

The time of clocks & emotions & the space between

The title of Suzanne Frank’s talk at this month’s meeting of Dallas Mystery Writers was “Writing in 4D.” “Did you think that was a typo?” the head of SMU’s creative writing program asked her audience of writers. “I have written mystery, time travel and women’s fiction,” she said, declaring that she wanted to bring multidimensional lessons from those multiple genres to bear on any form of fiction writing.

And although Frank’s talk spanned second, third and fourth “dimensions” of writing, it was the 4D one that particularly resonated for me. In physics, the fourth dimension is usually considered to be time. In fiction, it’s also time, but not necessarily “chronos” time, the time of the ticking clock variety.

Instead, Frank prefers to concentrate on the emotional component of time, the “kairos” moments. It was a concept I’d heard years before, during a workshop the late Lisa Lenard-Cook presented, based on her book, The Mind of Your Story, (discussed here) in which she advocated harnessing the chronological time, the series of constant, measurable moments she termed the story’s “every-ticking present” and emotional time – the way the characters feel about those moments. 

It’s those life-defining kairos moments, interrupting the passage of the chronos moments of ordinary time, that Frank emphasized. The ones she calls, “Coca-Cola moments,” from her first recognition of this following the death of her grandfather.

image: pixabay

“My grandfather broke his leg, went into the hospital, and died. He and my grandmother had a lifetime romance.” 

A tragic but all-too-common end to a long relationship, a few moments out of trillions in chronological time. But in this case, marked by a moment that became family legend as the bereaved grandmother, exhausted and sweltering in her black mourning clothes in the heat of a Texas summer day exclaimed, “I’d give $100 to anyone who gets me a Coca-Cola.”

And for that moment, time shifted from the ever-ticking present to an eternal kairos in which the grandmother’s cry of grief and physical anguish would be suspended for generations. And then, as always in our human condition, melded seamlessly again into chronological time.

Every life has those defining moments. And so must every character if there’s any hope of readers care for her. 

Frank challenged her audience not just to recount their character’s progress through events, but to understand how those events define the character. 

“Everybody has 12 defining moments. If you ask a 6-year-old, they’ve got 12 defining moments. If they’re 60, they’ve also got 12,” although not necessarily the same 12, she said, urging us to remember those 12 moments for ourselves and notating them both in kairos and chronos time. 

“In a book, you are trying to stuff in as many kairos moments as you can, because you’re trying to stop time for your readers. We’re trying to consolidate a life into a book. This is the fourth dimension, because you’re moving through time. I think this is the thing that brings the most magic to fiction.”

And it occurred to me that the definitive, time-suspending nature of the kairos moments were also the essence of Benjamin Percy’s discussion of “Set Pieces: Staging the Iconic Scene,” in his book on fictional craft, Thrill Me, reviewed earlier at this site. 

“What do you remember when you think about the films splintered into your psyche?" Percy writes. "There are probably several pivotal scenes—scenes of spectacle, scenes of horror or joy or absurdity or shock or profound empathy—that you cannot forget.

“Riffle through the catalog of literature and something similar will occur…those moments that exist like dreams—or life, if only life could be so full.”

Find them, use them, and give them their due, without worrying about getting to the next plot point, Frank said. “Your readers don’t want to get to the next thing. They want to be there.”

 ***

Given that Frank is head of SMU’s creative writing program, she did dwell on a few moments of chronos time, including an upcoming information program at 7 p.m., May 22 on SMU’s programs, including an upcoming workshop in Taos, New Mexico, “The mystery of writing a mystery.”

Conveniently, this will give writers interested in writing mysteries time to prepare before the World Mystery Convention, Bouchercon arrives in Dallas Halloween weekend of next year!

The information program in SMU’s Dallas Hall, but Frank recommends registering for it, to get the perk of a parking pass on the university campus. For registration and additional information, see SMU’s creative writing site. 

Wordcraft -- A new path to follow

Attending J. Suzanne Frank’s reading and signing of her newly-released book, Laws of Migration, was the top item on my to-do list last Friday. After all, Frank is my former writing teacher. And I knew she was teacher and mentor to many other writers through her work with Southern Methodist University’s creative writing program. What I didn’t know was just how big a fan base she has in North Texas.

The balcony section the Lincoln Park Barnes & Noble bookstore uses for most author signings was packed with listeners. 

Her new novel is the story of Elize, a woman whose lifelong disappointments have taught her not to trust human beings. Instead, she turns to birds, especially the endangered white ibis whose migration patterns she hopes to study. She hopes to head the bird refuge she’s dedicated her life to, expecting to delegate others to “do all the stuff I hated, like dealing with people.”

Instead, the refuge’s trustees pass over Elize in favor of pass her over in favor of someone she despises -- “She has a wonderful way with the public,” a trustee explains. Humiliated, Elize flees to Morocco, the breeding ground of her beloved ibises, determined to do the research that will restore her professional credibility as an ornithologist. Little does she realize, to accomplish her goal, she must learn to rely on the species she despises most -- the human one.

Frank has already published seven novels -- a time travel series under her own name and a series of mystery novel under the pseudonym Chloe Green. But Laws of Migration is her first foray into non-genre writing.

“I had to learn how to write a book that didn’t have an overlay of form,” she told her audience. “I found myself learning how to write from a character base rather than a plot base.”

Fortunately, she had plenty of experience developing fictional characters. A former journalist, Frank became involved with SMU’s continuing education program, the Writer’s Path, while writing her earlier novels. She moved on to teaching in the program, which she now directs.

For those who know her writing, the character of Elize in Laws of Migration -- a scientist journeying in search of a rare bird -- triggers images of Frank’s time travel character Chloe. Frank, however, insists Elize was written to be the opposite of Chloe. “Part of writing Elize,” she said, “is that she’s different from me and from every other character I’ve written.”

The book is also a debut for Frank in the use of in-depth multiple points of view. It’s the first of three, each following a different member of the trio introduced in the prologue.

And if Frank could be a bird, which would it be, an audience member asked. “I would totally be an ibis,” she said, the bird her character Elize seeks. “The real question is, what kind of ibis?”

Frank’s Laws of Migration is available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com/.

Suzanne Frank

For more about SMU’s Writer’s Path program and where it leads, see www.smu.edu/Simmons/CommunityEnrichment/CreativeWriting/.

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Speaking of creative writing classes, the Dallas Writer’s Garret still has places available for its one-day intensive on short fiction and creative nonfiction this Saturday, January 26, taught by Michael Mortone and Robin Hemley. For details and registration, see www.eventbrite.com/event/5196492850/.

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And an oops -- in January 11’s Totally Texas post, I implied Dallas’ Bookmarks library branch is open on Monday holidays. In fact, like all Dallas Public libraries, it will be closed today, January 21, in honor of the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.