Neufeld on Books
by Rob Neufeld
David Madden, master writer, shares fiction secrets
This past Tuesday, author David Madden laid out the secrets of good writing to an audience at Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville. It was a program version of his book, “Revising Fiction,” and a look ahead to the novel-writing workshop he’ll be inaugurating at the Black Mountain Inn, Feb. 20-25.
Many faces of words
“I met myself coming and going,” Madden recited, giving an example of a cliché that one might throw out, or transform into something good.
“A character could be truly thinking, ‘I met myself coming and going,’” he said, “and it could have profound implications.”
In Madden’s latest novel, “Abducted by Circumstance,” the phrase provides a shock of recognition to Carol Seaborg, who leads parallel lives. In one, she’s a housewife; and in the other, someone who has entered, through fantasy, the life of a woman whose abduction she witnessed.
“Abducted by Circumstance” is Madden’s tenth novel. He has also published dozens of other works, including plays and non-fiction. For 25 years, he served as writer-in-residence at Louisiana State University. Since moving to Black Mountain with his wife, Robbie, he has taught within the Appalachian State University and UNCA Great Smoky Mountains MFA programs.
For the sake of a comma
“Joseph Conrad,” Madden relates, “once came out of his study for lunch,” and answered his wife’s question about his morning accomplishments by exulting, “I put in a comma!”
After lunch, he went back to work and, when he came out for supper, his wife asked, “What did you achieve this afternoon, Joseph?” He proudly said, “I took the comma out.”
“That is what writing is all about,” Madden commented. “If I didn’t have anything else to say, that would say it. That’s what I mean by attention to everything.”
Sometimes, cutting words out in a revision process makes sentences truer, more powerful, and more mysterious.
Some of Madden’s favorite words and phrases to cut are: “It was,” “he said,” and “with.”
“She entered the room with a cape over her shoulders,” he narrated. “Why not: She entered the room, a cape over her shoulders. Take out the ‘with.’”
Regarding the sentence, “It was raining outside,” why is the word “outside” necessary? And what is “it”? Why not describe the way rain fell as an action?
Cutting out false and unnecessary words is a good goal for a first edit. It involves imagination, as does Madden’s other methods, including the uses of syntax.
Snap to it
“Impingement” is Madden’s term for stirring the imagination by having one statement lead suddenly to something quite different. The two ideas fuse, as in a molecular reaction.
For instance, there’s this line from Wright Morris’ novel, “Man and Boy”: “When he heard Mother’s feet on the stairs, Mr. Ormsby cracked her soft-boiled eggs and spooned them carefully into the heated cup.”
In this case, the impingement comes about because one thing causes the other. The sudden crack marks the place where the spark happens.
There are other ways to create the effect, such as when, in the same novel, cigarette smoke clears and the pigeons Mother saw through a window are replaced by a policeman. Pure magicianship— waving a cloak.
With the first example, the condensing of sentences creates the impression that Mother’s step actually cracks the eggs. There’s more kinetic energy in such a telling. It’s not only plots that have suspense; sentences do, too.
Energy is also the metaphor when Madden writes about the “charged image” in “Revising Fiction.” That book presents “185 practical techniques,” which not only include matters of style, but also: point of view; characters; narrative; dialogue; description; devices; and general considerations.
“A charged image,” Madden writes, is the “dominant image-nucleus in a story. As the reader moves from part to part, the charged image discharges its potency gradually. After the reader has fully experienced the story, fully perceived it in a picture, that focal image continues to discharge its electrical power.”
Pleasure is the rule of writing. One of Madden’s novels is called “Pleasure-Dome.”
For an example of the charged image in a novel, Madden points to “Don Quixote” by Cervantes. The scene in which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza approach the windmills is “only a page and a half in a book of about a thousand pages,” Madden notes; yet “it is probably the best-known image from fiction worldwide.”
In his workshops, Madden teaches through direct work with writers, rather than by circulating copies of drafts and having other students critique. “The art of writing,” Madden says, quoting Sean O’Faolain, “is rewriting.”
Rob Neufeld writes the weekly book feature for the Sunday Citizen-Times. He is the author and editor of five books, and the publisher of the website, “The Read on WNC.” He can be reached at [email protected] and 505-1973.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
The Black Mountain Inn inaugurates David Madden’s “Black Mountain Novel Workshop,” February 20-25. Admission is limited to five serious writers who have finished a novel that Madden considers publishable, but that needs revision. Sessions last three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. Members of the workshop stay in the five rooms of the Black Mountain Inn, which will provide all meals. Submit a complete novel, minimum length 250 double-spaced pages, unbound, to David Madden, 118 Church St., Black Mountain. Manuscripts will not be returned. Submission deadline is February 1. Participants will be chosen February10. For further information call 669-2757, or visit davidmadden.net.
MORE
The book:
“Revising Fiction: A Handbook for Writers” by David Madden (New American Library, 1988).
Madden’s new novel:
“London Bridge in Plague and Fire,” due out this summer. Visit davidmadden.net.
See videos of Madden on style; and about a favorite book on “The Read on WNC,” www.thereadonwnc.ning.com.
ART
David Madden