MAKE IT WORK

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Last week I talked about how the thinnest idea, or fleeting image, can stir the writer’s creative juices into the reality of a short story. Obviously that alone won’t get a writer to her denouement, but it does open the imagination to all kinds of possibilities. I believe that precariously teetering on the edge of possibilities is where a writer creates. If you’re not a writer your idea disappears into the ether of your life and is lost forever. But if you are a writer you grab on to it. I think of Nabokov chasing after butterflies with his net. What did this great writer do when he caught them? He literally pinned them down. He made them stop fluttering. He made them stationary. He turned them into something to be observed and figured out and marveled at. Isn’t that what all writers do to their own fluttering ideas?

However a writer cannot exist on idea alone. So I thought it might be interesting to follow the creation of a short story. I’ll use my story, “Another Tented Evening”, as I did in my previous blog, as an example. Once the idea of a tented evening – meaning a Hollywood party – began to stir in me, I remembered another party I attended years before. An older Danny Kaye, the star of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, had said, sitting next to me, “God, I hope Corinne [not her real name—MJH] isn’t going to sing tonight.” The woman he mentioned was our hostess, and at the time was married to a very powerful show biz agent. Sure enough, surrounded by extraordinarily talented people, she began to sing show tunes. In an uncontrollable vibrato she trilled her way through “Younger than Springtime”. I have yet to uncurl my toes from that long ago self-absorbed performance. As I watched Danny Kaye dutifully applaud her, I knew I would someday use that moment in a story.

Now I had a tented evening and an ominous plea by a guest. I changed Corinne to Robin. And the party was her fortieth birthday. The agent became a big time movie producer. I was working my way into a story, but there was still no plot. All I knew was that I would use my continuing character Diana Poole. She’d be at the party and guests would tell her that they hoped Robin wouldn’t sing.

But where was the mystery? The crime? The conflict? I had a sense of place, the tent, but not much else. I needed action. Something had to happen. My characters needed to react to something. Idea! Robin won’t come down to her own party. Her husband is angry and sends Diana to get her. Diana knocks at her bedroom door. But what is going on behind that closed door?

As a writer I knew that plot must be on the other side of that door. But I didn’t have one. Idea. I’ll do a reverse of Chandler’s “when in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” I’ll have a naked Robin, holding a candelabra, open the door. My inner critic said, “Melodie, you can’t do this. It sounds like a game of Clue gone horribly wrong. A naked Mrs. Partridge in the bedroom with a candlestick.” But the writer in me said, “Make it work, Melodie. The candlestick is a weapon. So there must be a victim.” A dead man. A screenwriter! A young successful hack named DeLane. I was feeling very devilish. Two women. And a man with his head bashed in sprawled on the bed. But what do the two women do? What do women do? They sit down and talk it over. It was then I realized my story was a confession to murder, while a party goes on outside under a tent. I had it.

But what about the guests not wanting Robin to sing? They were turning into a Greek chorus. How do they connect to the murder? A Greek chorus foreshadows. This observation forces me to ask a basic question: why does Robin kill DeLane? It couldn’t be anything so banal as his wanting to stop the affair, which DeLane did. What if he asked her not to sing? “Melodie,” the critic in my head said, “it will never work. Who will believe it? You don’t kill someone because they don’t want you to sing.” The writer said, “Screw the critic and make it work.” Okay. A hack tells a no-talent that she has no talent, and that her power is borrowed from her successful husband. If she weren’t married to him nobody would listen to her sing. So she’ll pick up the candelabra and whack him. The Greek chorus, in the form of the party guests, moans its own fears. I have my connection.

And what does Diana Poole do after hearing Robin’s confession? Call the police. “Now that’s dramatic,” my annoying critic snarled. “Characterization, Melodie,” my writer reminded. Diana would let Robin go down to her party and sing. Diana understands irony and how it is lost on Hollywood. So here is the last section of the story:

And soon Robin’s voice wafted up through the tent into the night sky. I didn’t know the song. Some rock ballad. She hit all the right notes, but she had a thin, wavering, unfeeling voice. DeLane was right. She was relentlessly untalented. But not any worse that some others who have made it on just sheer guts and ego. Not any worse than DeLane.

The tent reminded me of an evangelist’s tent. A place where people come to be told there is another world. A better world. Where people can believe that Hollywood will save them no matter what they do or how they do it. Her pathetic voice, unintentionally, questioned that belief.

No tricks. Only layers upon layers. Answering my own questions until a story forms, and the journey of discovery is completed. Sometimes I wish I could plot out my stories. I am told it would make me write faster. Today speed seems to be more important than content. But my mind and my imagination don’t work that way. We all have to find our own method of writing, of putting our words down on that blank piece of a paper, of making it work. Oh, hell, I forgot to discuss the importance of voice. It is Diana Poole’s tone that holds this story together. But I will leave that for another day.