Career « Geoff Herbach

Archive for the 'Career' Category

36 questions to ask about your characters

Published March 10, 2011 Agenda , Career , Fiction , Good Work , New Book , Writing , Young Adult 5 Comments

As I sit here in my kitchen on a very hard wooden bench writing (struggling to write) the sequel to Stupid Fast, I’m reminded of how helpful seemingly mechanical exercises can be to the creative act. Every time I write a story, I get stuck. Every time I write, I lose hold of characters and they start making choices and saying things that feel artificial. Every time this happens, I remember a list of questions I started back in grad school (thanks to an exercise the awesome Sheila O’Connor put us through) that helps me get a handle on who my characters are (it really, really grounds me). I’m just about to put this sucker to use for myself, so I thought I’d copy and paste it here for whomever.

These questions aren’t the only ones, of course. But, they’re generally all I need to really understand the character I’m working with (they uncover back story, obsession, identifying quirks, ways of being, world view, etc.). Write as much or as little as you want. Create characters you’re not yet writing about. Make up more questions (and send to me if you’d like). This is a good time (and I need to have a good time writing, because I’m stuck).

How old, exactly?
Who do they live with?
Where do they live? Describe the physical place, home, neighborhood (not people, yet).
Describe the kind of people who live where character does (not in the house, but in the neighborhood).
What day is their birthday? Birthday important to them?
What is their level of education? Where did (do) they go to school? If college, what did they study?
What is their parents’ socio-economic level (education, wealth, cultural background)?
Parents religious? If yes, what religion? A big deal to them?
Religion important to character? Explain.
What is ethnicity? Is ethnic background important? Describe.
Parent relationships important to the character? One parent more important than other? Who? Why? If bad, describe.
Do they have brothers or sisters? Describe relationships.
Are they married? Good marriage? Bad marriage? Middle? Describe what you know.
Boyfriend/Girlfriend (even if they’re married)?
Describe general history of romantic relationships. Any bad/good history that informs how they live now?
If they have children, describe relationships with each.
What is their job? Do they like the tasks? Do they like co-workers? Customers? Describe.
If possible, name and describe three closest friends in order of importance. History is important.
Who, if anyone, do they go to if they have a problem? Do they go to different people for material problems (money, mechanical issues, etc.) and emotional problems?
Where are they on a typical Sunday at 10 a.m.?
Where are they on a typical Friday at 9 p.m.?
Do they do their own laundry?
What is their favorite food? Why?
What is their favorite possession? Why?
Do they keep a clean house? Do they make their own bed?
Describe the state of their bedroom. What does it say about them?
Do they know how to cook?
Would they dance at a wedding?
Do they like music? What kind of music? Can they play music? Can they sing?
Do they read? What?
Early riser or late nighter?
Would they rather be good than rich?
Would they rather be powerful than good?
What do they want most? Describe concrete goal. Describe emotional need.
What’s stopping them? Describe.
Do they think the universe is good, bad, or indifferent? Or, do they not know (implies questioning)?

Student drawing of me teaching (exhausted students in background--how you must feel)

AWP

Published February 2, 2011 Anxiety , Career 4 Comments

I’m on my way to DC for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference. This conference is a giant clusternut of writerly fear and loathing. There, outside the center, will stand 2000 MFA students, mostly wearing dorky glasses, many smoking to hide behind smoke, mostly staring at other MFA students who are wondering if the other MFA students are people worth knowing for professional reasons.

By Friday, after some good panel discussions, and some quite amazingly not good, there will be a pent up, cougar tweak in the thigh muscles of many conference attendees. They will look at one another and get dry eyes and get headaches and they will head to Dupont Circle and they will drink too much and then take embarrassing photos of themselves.

I go back to this conference every year.

Playing Tales from the Poor House

Published November 20, 2010 Career , Fiction , Good Work Leave a Comment

Last night, for the fourth time, I gave a group of ten or so MFAs a prompt. We wrote for an hour. Revised for half an hour. Then recorded stories (or poems) live. Because this is for a radio show that is intended to be both an experiment and entertaining, I instructed the writers to go for funny over good (whatever that means). There were tales of Keebler Elves lodged in human belly buttons, Britney Spears in biker bars, double-meat sandwich stalkers, and bagged cats dropped in deep holes. Good stuff. I’m not sure any of the work merits serious consideration beyond a laugh. But, that’s totally fine. It was a joyful several hours. I have all kinds of more serious notions this morning, too. There are things I want to do, ideas bubbling. And I remembered something I promise to remember but most often forget: play for writers is hugely important. We were all giggling like school kids last night.

An hour later we were laughing

English Majors

Published November 9, 2010 Career , Fiction , Good Work 4 Comments

Tonight, I’m giving a little address to the new members of Minnesota State’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English Honor Society. It’s caused me to pause for a moment and consider the value of studying English. Back when I was in school, the degree, if I remember correctly, did serve as sort of a catch for kids who weren’t sure what to do with themselves. Early on, I attended giant Shakespeare lectures half full of dudes in backwards baseball caps who breathed alcohol poisoning. To their credit, they did attend class. We English people were always a little bashful about claiming the major. Why? The responses we’d get from peers, parents, distant cousins… “Oh, yeah, that’s marketable… what are you going to do, write books? Hahahahaha… Smoke some opium?” Hm. I guess so.

Former English major sits in coffee shop during work week writing books, mother effers.

But, in thinking about the bee hive of lit and philosophy majors I knew and loved back in college, I have been seriously struck not by how much they’ve struggled with their “unmarketable” degrees, but rather how they’ve seriously succeeded in a thousand different ways. Among my English pals there are not only writers and professors and editors, but lawyers, politicians, corporate managers, school principals and the like. I don’t know a single lit major who has been put out of work by the bad economy. From this crew (all in or approaching our forties), I don’t know a single one who works at a video store and spends free time smoking weed in his or her mother’s basement. Even if they’re working in a field far away from writing or literary analysis, they tend to have full lives that include an appreciation for the arts, that include lots of travel, that include tons of smart friends, that include a commitment to loving and raising great kids. We learn from analyzing stories. These pals of mine, most of whom were angsty hipsters with marginal attitudes back in college, live lives that to me define what a good life should look like.

What is it about studying lit that contributes to the lives of good people? What do we learn to do?

First, we learn to deal with complexity: Literature presents us with multivariate worlds where human psychology comes into contact with history, economics, geography, technology, etc. Causal relationships are often subtle. Absurdity often reigns, where there is no causality, at least at the individual level — large scale forces impact lives for no seeming reason. We get good at deciphering intention and meaning in wild circumstances (reality is wild, by the way).

Second, because we read about the psychology of human suffering from many perspectives, we learn to feel empathy for people who are not even remotely like us. Do I cry for young, rich-boy, tennis playing, Hal Incandenza in Infinite Jest? Yes, I do. Do I cry for old, smelly, delusional Leo Gursky in The History of Love? Uh huh. Do I fear for powerful but vulnerable little Lyra in The Golden Compass? Enough to make me almost sick. The English majors I know have read a thousand lives, both the domestically real and the fantastical, and they are prone to understanding rather than deriding other people.

Third, novels are long. There are few constructed to be read and understood non-sequentially. To understand, we have to stick with them from start to finish, often over days or weeks. This trains us to concentrate. Feeling anxious from the constant surf between CNN, ESPN, Facebook, Huffington Post, New York Times, gmail, The damned Rumpus, The Local Paper, etc.? Get into a novel an hour or two each night. You’ll find yourself thinking straighter. We lit majors are trained to pay attention over long periods.

Four, we’re open to being moved by deep beauty. Yes, I am a jack ass. I am easy. I can see a nice little story in a Thomas Kinkade Mall Hall cottage painting, little lights in snowy windows. But what really kills me is Leopold Bloom at the end of the dark night coming home to that cheating Molly and having her say yes a thousand times. Real lives are filled with contradiction and sadness and also lovely moments that are not disconnected from contradiction and sadness. We learn to see those moments again and again. And, we become open to them in our own lives. We experience that connectedness with our friends, our parents, our children. This is rich stuff.

And, five, we learn to interact with multivariable texts by analysis and communication. We make arguments based on complex evidence. Mathematics is abstract. It provides a way of simplifying the complex world. It is one way to analyze. The kinds of math most people need in the real world is pretty simple (not scientists or engineers, of course — but business people, lawyers, leaders of organizations who have number crunchers to provide that limited means of analysis). In real life, the kinds of decisions we have to make and the kinds of communicating we have to do after making decisions is dependent on subtler understandings of human psychology and how it interacts with history, economics, geography, technology, etc. We English majors practice doing this kind of analysis and communication for years. Think of all human behavior as a text. We can deal with it.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means.

So, I look across the wide swath of pals I had back in the day. I see their ability to function in dozens of different domestic and occupational configurations. And, I think, yeah, I write books, I profess my love for the written arts, but we English majors are set-up to do a helluva lot more. I am seriously looking forward to talking about our powers with Sigma Tau Delta tonight.

Uncertainty

Published November 3, 2010 Anxiety , Career , Fiction 1 Comment

I have lots of students who want to be published writers. Publishing, if you’re a writer, is a reasonable goal. It’s the only way to make money doing it (not, generally, a lot of money, however). I don’t know any writers who don’t want to publish (there may well be great journal writers that I know who don’t tell me about their writing, who are really writers, but have no desire to publish — I just don’t know what they do).

I have a lot of students who want to be published writers who actually don’t care about writing. They don’t like reading stories for class, because the stories don’t entertain them enough. They don’t like experimenting or revising. They have a notion of what a writer’s life looks like: isolation, free time, pipes, beards, either vintage dresses or hiking boots, but they don’t enjoy the act of writing much and aren’t interested in what others write (not even so that they can learn). That’s okay. There are better ways to make enough money to purchase a lifestyle.

I happen to be growing a beard for winter

The reason so many published writers teach is because teaching provides income, which writing, by itself, often doesn’t. The reason some published writers teach is because they so love the act of writing, they want to talk about it all day long with other people who are also in love with it. Most of the time, I fall into this category (as well as the first, of course). Sometimes I’m surprised that students aren’t interested, because I find it so interesting. Sometimes I remember that I was really interested in love and alcohol when I was in my twenties, and love and alcohol made me want to be a writer: I pictured myself with a smart woman in a vintage dress, with me in my study for a pipe and some scotch. Later, we’d make love on the floor, because our love was passionate and also true. I did not picture working hard.

I was almost thirty and working a corporate job when I realized that I love writing fiction and had to type at a computer everyday to feel okay. I was finished with a novel and in an MFA program when I realized that publishing is hard. I was thirty-eight and a published novelist when I realized I was broke and I had lost a marriage, every semblance of a traditional career, and any clear path to a middle class lifestyle. I was forty, and teaching, when I realized that I love writing enough to talk about it all day long and do it all day long, and any other path simply will not do. I was forty, during that same week, when I realized I was committing to a life of uncertainty, where hard work would not necessarily lead to success. It would lead to lots of written pages, the vast majority of which would never be read by anyone. I was forty, six months later, when I was lucky enough to land a tenure track job.

This job limits some uncertainty, but state budgets are tight and I try not to kid myself into believing the question has been answered. I try to enjoy talking about what I love and doing what I love. Learning story helps students have empathy for others, consider the consequences of choices, think critically and systemically. These are excellent qualities to develop as a human being. I believe in what I do, seriously.

Some of my students really want to write. Many of them are really good at it. I have anxiety about encouraging them to really pursue the act (although I do). Thankfully, my colleague, Diana Joseph, just forwarded this excellent article by Sonya Chung. Full disclosure for a writing teacher should be a requirement of the profession.

Students: To really be a writer, you must love the work. Write a lot (even when you don’t feel like it). Read a lot (not just to be entertained but to learn what other writers do). To be a writer, you must be prepared to live with uncertainty and you must be flexible enough to make do with that which is and isn’t delivered unto you (often very scary, often not fun). If you’re not down with this situation, it is okay. There is no failure in understanding yourself and your emotional requirements. There is no shame in sipping scotch in a study earned with day job income.

Thank you Sonya Chung for good thinking and a message I can use when I meet students one-to-one.

« Previous Page — Next Page »