Beneath the Surface

Something magical happens each time we open a book and begin to read, doesn't it?

Words on the page melt away, and we find ourselves pulled beneath the surface, swimming into a rich new world of colors and emotions--the vibrant, imaginative world of a story.

This illusion occurs each time we open a book because of the magical nature of language itself.

Language is something that we hear and speak every day. Yet the same words that we use in our daily lives, once transferred to the page, help us to see in a way that we might never have seen before.

How do writers take us beneath the surface of the page into the spellbinding world of the imagination?

Most often, they draw words and images together in a way that creates a new and sparkling vision in the reader's mind. In other words, they rely on metaphors and similes.

What are metaphors and similes, and how do they work?

Here are definitions that you'll find in Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language (College Edition):

Metaphor - a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different thing by being spoken of as if it were that other; implied comparison, in which a word of phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another (e.g., screaming headlines, "all the world's a stage); distinguised from simile.

Simile - a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, dissimilar thing by the use of like, as, etc. (e.g., a heart as big as a whale, her tears flowed like wine); distinguised from metaphor in that the comparison is made explicit.

These definitions may help us understand how metaphors and similes work. But to better understand why they work, it may help to look at some examples from an author who has a gift for crafting the perfect simile and finding just the right metaphor.

If you haven't found Carolyn Marsden's books yet, you have a treat waiting for you. Each of her books, written with the careful precision of a fine jeweler carving a precious stone, is a small gem.

Whether you read The Gold Threaded Dress, Silk Umbrellas, or Moon Runner, or her newest book, The Quail Club, you'll find an abundance of well-crafted metaphors and similes meant to surprise and lure readers beneath the surface, into the hearts of her characters.

Here are a few examples from The Quail Club, a novel about Oy, a young girl from Thailand, who is trying her best to be true to herself and her family's traditions while hoping her girlfriends--especially Liliandra, their leader--will accept her into their club.

Early on Marsden introduces us to the main conflict, showing Oy's response to Liliandra's expectation that Oy join her in performing an American dance for the school's talent show:

Lilandra made up the dance as she went along, singing the tune to "You Got Me Down and It Ain't No Use" very loudly and with no melody. Imitating her, Oy twirled her wrists, turned around, and dropped quickly into deep lunges. At the very end, they both lifted their arms high and swiveled their hips in unison.

Oy wasn't used to so much bouncing and turning. Liliandra's dance made her feel like a bottle of bubbly soda when the top is unscrewed.

How does Marsden take the reader beneath the surface here and into the heart of her character? Look at the last sentence of the passage. "Liliandra's dance made her feel like a bottle of bubbly soda when the top is unscrewed."

What happens in your mind's eye as you read that sentence? Suddenly you're lifted outside the world of dance and given a contrary image--one far removed from the dancing itself--to convey a feeling, and that feeling is made all the stronger because of the unexpected image that Marsden uses to move you deeper into Oy's emotional state.

Here's another example: Oy has invited Liliandra to her house in order to practice the American dance that Oy is still unsure about performing:

As Oy danced, she saw Kun Mere's face at the window. She didn't look happy. Would Kun Mere come out and take her by the hand, too? Then Liliandra wouldn't be happy. Oy's stomach quivered again.

Still debating within herself whether to tell Liliandra that she'd prefer not to dance with her, but afraid saying no will cost her membership in the club, Oy dances with Liliandra anyway. But she is faced with a dilemma. How can she make everyone happy, yet remain true to what she wants?

Look at the last sentence of the passage above: "Oy's stomach quivered again." By using the word "quiver," Marsden has shot an arrow into the reader's heart, enabling us to feel the same way Oy feels. Like jello. Unsteady, uncertain, wobbly.

Another example. This passage occurs shortly after Oy has stood up to Liliandra and told her that she would prefer to dance her Thai dance instead of Liliandra's American dance:

Below her, under the ramada, she saw Liliandra sitting on the ground with her knees pulled up, her forehead pressed against them. She didn't move, even though Frankie and his soccer team ran close to her. She looked different from the girl who'd danced so crazy, snapping her fingers. All Liliandra's energy--spicy hot like Kun Mere's chilies--had disappeared.

Look again at the last sentence in the passage: "All Liliandra's energy--spicy hot like Kun Mere's chilies--had disappeared."

What if Marsden had omitted the phrase--"spicy hot like Kun Mere's chilies"--and simply let the sentence read: "All Liliandra's energy had disappeared." How does the simile help you better understand Liliandra... and, more importantly, Oy's perspective of her?

Sometimes a metaphor or simile works because it succeeds in drawing the reader deeper into a character's emotional state. And sometimes it succeeds because it lets the reader see (and feel) more deeply into the way the character perceives the world, such as in this example:

She pretended she was about to dance at Songkran, the white petal of the spotlight following her.

A spotlight like a white petal following her. By bringing together two unique images--flowers and a spot light--Marsden has given us a fresh, new way to see the spotlight. More importantly, she lets us feel the way that Oy perceives that spotlight.

As for deepening our understanding of a character's emotional world, here's how Marsden lets us know of Oy's happiness after Liliandra agrees to dance the Thai dance with her:

"Oh, good," Oy said happily. She'd done it. Liliandra had said yes. Oy could taste the sweetness of each fruit she'd named. The sunlight on her desk was as yellow as the gold of Thai jewelry.

Marsden uses the word "happily" to describe Oy's feeling. But then she deepens our understanding of the emotion by adding, first, the sensation of tasting sweet fruit, then this: "The sunlight on her desk was as yellow as the gold of Thai jewelery."

By the end of the passage, Marsden has polished the language so it gleams. It's as if we can see the glow of happiness emanating from Oy, as if she herself had become the bright gold of Thai jewelery, her Thai identity as valuable as a precious jewel.

Here's how Marsden brings her story to a close:

The music for the Quail Dance started, filling the auditorium with a cascade of xylophone notes.

Oy stepped out, moving gracefully into the overlapping pools of pink light. When the clui flute joined the xylophone, she lifted her arms and let them float down, a bird flying in slow motion.

It's the perfect metaphor, given Oy's longing through the book to become a member of the Quail Club. At last, Oy can dance her own Thai dance, renaming it after the quail that have become such an important part of her life.

By the end of the story, Oy has managed to resolve the questions about her identity. And so it's appropriate, as well as enormously gratifying, for the culmination of her efforts to end in the image of flight... and for her to actually feel like a bird as she dances.

As with any successful metaphor, language helps us feel that sensation of flight... as if we ourselves have joined Oy in lifting her arms and becoming birds, too.

You can find many more examples of such metaphors and similes in Marsden's work. But these are sufficient, I think, to help us better understand how a writer might use language to probe beneath the surface, deepening a reader's understanding of a character or a situation.

For more information about Carolyn Marsden and her work, visit her website: http://www.carolynmarsden.com/

And for more on metaphors and similes, check out these resources:

An interview with Annie Proulx in the Missouri Review, which includes some thoughts on using metaphor in her fiction:
http://www.missourireview.com/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=Interview+with+Annie+Proulx

Robert Fulford, a Canadian author, on metaphors:
http://www.robertfulford.com/Metaphors.html

"Using Metaphors" from Writers.com: http://www.writers.com/tips_metaphors.html

Cinematic Storytelling: Dynamic Metaphors by Jennifer van Sijll:
http://www.writersstore.com/article.php?articles_id=707

For a more academic treatment of metaphors, there's this link to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By": http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html

PS - Comments posted to "Beneath the Surface" won't appear until September 26th. Look for Wordswimmer's next column on October 1st.

Fragile Currents

When you step into one of the many deeply moving, heart-achingly beautiful novels that Jacqueline Woodson has given the world--If You Come Softly, Hush, Miracle's Boys, I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun, Locomotion, and others--you enter the fragile currents of adolescence... that special time of becoming.

It's a time of searching for truth, exploring painful new emotions, and learning how to relate to the world and others, as well as to one's self and one's own emerging sexuality... unpredictable and mysterious currents which Woodson explores in honest, soul-searching, and sometimes controversial ways.

In Lena, the sequel to I Hadn't Meant To Tell You This, Woodson tells the story of two sisters, Elena Cecilia Bright, 13, and Edion Kay Bright, 8, who flee from a sexually abusive father in Ohio.

The story opens as Lena and Dion hitch-hike from Chauncey, OH, fleeing the only home they can remember. Chauncey is where Lena's best friend still lives, a sensitive black girl named Marie who had befriended them despite their differences in color.

But Chauncey is where their father lives, and the girls are running away to escape his abusive advances, carrying nothing more than backpacks filled with blankets, some old clothes, and the dream that they'll find a home with their mother and her family somewhere in Kentucky.

Lena's determination keeps the two girls moving, searching for a place where they can feel safe each night. As the older sister, Lena wants to protect Dion from the emotional ravages that she's been forced to endure. She wants to find a home, a real home.

So the girls take to the road, lying to the police and well-meaning waitresses and truck drivers about who they are and where they're going, even though Lena knows "every single lie you tell just makes you remember the truth harder."

On the road the girls can't risk telling anyone that they cut their hair short or that Lena binds her small breasts with an Ace bandage each night so the men who give them rides from one town to another won't get any ideas.

In Chauncey, they trusted Marie. But Marie is only a memory, someone who read poetry with Dion and believed in Lena's ability to become an artist. Sometimes Lena and Dion hope to see her again. Maybe even call her when they stop moving from place to place long enough to pick up a phone.

Each day takes them further from Chauncey and from their best friend, and it isn't long before Lena finds her strength wearing out, her toughness eroding. Each day, as her strength ebbs, it gets harder and harder for her to tell another lie.

The closer the girls come to Kentucky, the clearer the truth becomes: after their mother's death from cancer, they received no letters of condolence, no phone calls of sympathy or help from that side of the family. Eventually it dawns on Lena that no one will welcome them into a home of their own.

The plot intensifies as the weather grows colder, sleeping outside becomes harder, and Lena becomes even more acutely aware of the risks that hope for a decent home has led her to take. Without friends or family, lacking reliable sources of income or food, facing the coming winter, and worried about her younger sister, Lena knows she must do something soon.

It's not until the girls are picked up by kind-hearted Miz Lily that their luck changes. Warmed by Miz Lily's kindness and food, a warm bath and a soft bed, Lena and Dion find what it is they want most in the world. Yet because of their inability to trust anyone--even someone as kind as Miz Lily--what they want (and need) most in the world remains just beyond their grasp.

Safe in Miz Lily's house for the night, Lena risks calling Marie to say they're ok, and learns from Marie what's happened in Chauncey. Their father has disappeared, and Marie's father (after Marie tells him their story), has had a change of heart and suggests the girls return to Chauncey to live with them.

But these changes are too much for Lena to grasp. Even though she goes to bed hopeful after giving Miz Lily's phone number to Marie, and even though she wants to believe Marie's father will agree to accept them, by morning hope seems "like just another lie." She leaves Miz Lily's with Dion, continuing to believe in the fantasy that has sustained them for so long--that they'll find their Mama, alive, in a local hospital.

Miz Lily, who raised eleven kids herself, knows something isn't right. After dropping the girls off at the hospital, she returns home (but not before asking a friend at the hospital to keep an eye on them). When Marie calls Miz Lily's house later that morning to tell Lena that they can stay with her and her father, Miz Lily is there to take the call. And she returns to the hospital to tell the girls the news, then drives them to the airport so they can fly back to Chauncey.

On the plane home, Lena recalls "Mama told me once that if you remember all the places you been in your life, you'll have a better sense of where you're going."

It's the same with each of Woodson's books.

As she probes the fragile currents of the adolescent heart, she offers readers the kind of stories that help us discover a better sense of where we're going, and reminds us of the hard, honest struggle that we must make as writers to get there.

For more information about Jacqueline Woodson, check out these resources:

Jacqueline Woodson's website: http://www.jacquelinewoodson.com/

An interview at SLJ.com: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6338688.html

Author Chat at the NYPL: http://summerreading.nypl.org/read2003/chats/woodson.cfm

One Writer's Process: Paul Acampora

Paul Acampora's first novel, Defining Dulcie, which earned starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, School Library Journal, and Booklist, has been described as quirky, heart-warming, hilarious, and well-crafted. It’s all of that... and more.

My own admiration for Acampora's work began when I found his story, "No More Birds Will Die Today," in the short story collection, Every Man For Himself. It’s a story that he has described as the "runt of the litter" because it makes its appearance with stories written by winners of the kind of prestigious awards (Newbury, Michael L. Printz, Coretta Scott King, etc.) that no doubt Acampora's work will be nominated for one day.

Not only is Paul a remarkable writer, but he's a thoughtful and generous person who was kind enough to take the time to share some of his insights into the mystery of the writing process with Wordswimmer.

My writing process probably looks terribly disjointed looking from the outside in. With work, family, etc, I’m rarely able to follow the same regimen two days in a row. For that reason, I set a lot of small goals. I always try to produce 2 pages of something every day. This week I hope to spend at least 4 hours working on my current manuscript. During that time, I need to complete one new chapter and also smooth out transitions between a couple scenes that are bugging me. I think my writing process looks like the work plan of someone who is very quietly trying to build a house at night without a flashlight.

In between the times that I actually sit in a chair with a manuscript in front of me, I take a lot of notes on index cards and scraps as well as in my trusty composition book. In this way, I’m sort of writing all the time. Also, when I have time to actually focus on story writing, I don’t have to come to the page empty-headed. That said, a sense of empty-headedness is not necessarily a bad thing. From there, in a sort of beginner’s mind – which is a very easy place for me to be at this stage of my writing career – there’s freedom to do almost anything.

My favorite thing to write is dialogue. The rhythm of language – especially during the telling of a good story – tells so much about a person and about a situation. Later I go back and fill in physical details. I try to follow the “show, don’t tell rule.” For me, that means writing scenes of characters talking and acting in some interesting way. I’d much rather write scenes like those than write long passages describing thoughts and emotions. Later, I’ll string these rough scenes together in different patterns and arrangements, sort of like beads on a string. Once again, I go back later and try to build natural transitions between scenes.

I used to think that I was supposed to write stories according to a chart I recall from high school. In the correct order, I thought I should write exposition, then introduce an inciting incident, define some conflict, bring in complications and obstacles, throw in some discoveries & reversals, have a nice big epiphany/climax, ride down the slope of falling action and land inside a believable resolution and satisfying denouement. Also, I thought I was supposed to write page 1, then page 2, then page 3, etc… finally I’d type THE END in all caps. But that’s not what I do at all. Instead, I think I write all the fun stuff first and then go back and try to make it look like a story later. It’s not until the final rewrites and revisions that I want to really think hard about that chart.

I really enjoy revisions. It gives me a chance to discover what’s at the heart of things. In my early drafts, I think that all I’m really trying to do is create a certain quantity of worthwhile material so that I can get to the real, more rewarding work of rewriting, revising and reshaping things into some sensible order. While writing the first draft of Defining Dulcie, I discovered that 100 pages is about the minimum acceptable length for a YA novel. One hundred pages became my goal. (Since it takes up more room on a page than long prose, I realized that I could get to 100 pages even more quickly if I wrote a lot of dialogue. So I did that.) I actually told myself that I was not trying to write a good novel. All I wanted to do was write a very bad novel that was exactly 100 pages long. And that is exactly – and I mean exactly – what I did. When I got to the bottom of page 100, I simply put a period at the end of the last line, wrote THE END just below, and then patted myself on the back for writing my first novel. A few minutes later, I turned back to the beginning and started rewriting.

In a lot of ways, I think of stories as big balls of energy created by the relationships between
characters. Inside a story, I want to turn all that energy inward, back toward the characters and the small world defined by the story. Even the longest novel is a pretty small world compared to real life. In any case, I’m always looking to simplify things, to eliminate possibilities and choices for my characters so that all the energy they’re generating sort of propels them down an almost inevitable path. At the end of that path, I think my job is to give them some way out or maybe crush them. Typing this, I just realized that I’ve pretty much described how I figure out plot. I don’t follow a formal outline. For me, the best-ever advice about plotting comes from my editor, Nancy Mercado at Dial, who tells me to “pretend there’s a plot and just keep going.” Another friend, Leann Heywood, who worked as an editor at HarperCollins (before moving to Michigan and opening her own editorial service, Heywood Editorial) , told me once that good editors know how to fix plots but only writers can create a great character and a great voice. So I work especially hard at making lively characters with voices that are as loud and clear and true as possible.

An important part of my writing process is my reading process. I read all the time, and I read pretty voraciously. When I teach creative writing I tell students to “read like writers” and “write like readers.” To me, reading like a writer means keeping an eye on the mechanics of a story. Of course it’s almost impossible to stay focused on setting, dialogue, transitions, etc. when a story is really good. I always get carried away. For that reason, I tend to read books that I like 3 or 4 times. I listen to them on tape too. I want to see how talented people do this job. I guarantee that reading Because of Winn Dixie a dozen or more times won’t enable you to write like Kate DiCamillo, but you’ll sure be a lot better writer than you were the first time you read it.

As far as writing like a reader… reading is such a magical thing to me. In my own work, I want to have the same sensation of being “carried away” in writing that I get from reading. Like reading, I find that if I try too hard, I just won’t get into it. So I try to relax, get into the flow of things, look around a bit inside my head so I might see stuff I wouldn’t notice otherwise, and generally enjoy the ride. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes I do need to just slog forward. But if writing becomes more struggle than anything else, I’ll usually put the work aside for awhile and then go spend time with a good book.

For more information about Paul Acampora and his work, check out his website at
http://www.paulacampora.com/.

Wading Through Time

Looking for Alaska, John Green’s ambitious first novel, is a lyrical and moving homage to youth and time's inevitable passage, a stunning reminder that no one--no matter how young, smart, or beautiful--can escape the end waiting for us all

Green has perfect pitch, and it's his remarkable ability to craft the interior voice of the story's fifteen-year-old narrator, Miles “Pudge” Halter, that draws the reader deeply into this novel.

Mile's voice contains many of the conflicting emotions of a young boy on his own for the first time as he begins a new school year at the Culver Creek Preparatory School, on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama.

Unsure of where life will take him as he leaves Florida for Alabama, Miles sets off in search of the Great Perhaps (Franciois Rebelais’ last words: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”), hoping to find answers to the mysteries of the universe and his place in it

Miles is a collector of last words, statements that famous and not-so-famous figures utter before passing into the darkness of death. And it’s a quote made by Simon Bolivar on his death-bed that becomes a compelling metaphor and guide for how Miles looks at life after arriving at school.

Here’s the quote, which Miles discovers when his new friend, Alaska Young, shares a passage from her favorite book, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s The General in His Labyrinth :

“He [Simon Bolivar] was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortune and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. 'Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?'”

Even on their first meeting, it’s clear that Miles and Alaska--the mysterious, impulsive, and vastly alluring girl who lives on campus, too--share a common desire to explore and understand the labyrinth, to unravel its mysteries as if the universe and life were some grand puzzle.

“That’s the mystery, isn’t it?” Alaska asks him after reading the passage about Bolivar. “Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape–the world or the end of it?”

These are the kind of deep, soulful questions that haunt Miles. And though Miles discusses the questions with his new friends at Culver Creek as they settle into their routine of classes and late-night discussions and the occasional prank or sexual hook-up, the questions are ones that he must answer for himself by the end of the story.

An astute reader may sense early on, given Miles’ fascination with such utterings and the moment of finality that follows them, that Looking For Alaska might very well involve a death at some point in the plot's development.

To heighten the mystery--not that someone will die but who it might be--Green divides the novel into two parts: “Before” and “After.”

Chapter divisions are identified as the number of days before the tragic event and afterward. And as the reader turns the pages, he or she can't help feeling the plot ticking toward its apex, toward that culminating moment, wondering whose death will set off the alarm.

It’s a device that succeeds, I suspect, because Green has written not merely a compelling mystery but an intensely introspective tale of a young boy’s search for meaning and love in a world where love and meaning seem to reside just beyond his grasp.

But a good deal of the book’s success relies on Miles’ voice. The questioning, doubting, probing, searching, self-mocking voice of a boy on the cusp of adulthood. Like most fifteen-year-olds, Miles is no longer a child, but not yet a man.

It’s in the tone of his voice, as well as in his unsteady passage toward adulthood, that Miles most resembles the classic male adolescent characters in whose footsteps he follows: Jerry Renault in Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and Phineas in John Knowles’ A Separate Peace.

As you might expect, Looking for Alaska contains its share of adolescent pranks and humor, a contemporary sensibility regarding sex, and rivalries between the rich kids (the Weekday Warriors) and those from poorer families, like Miles’ roommate, Chip Martin, aka the Colonel, whose mother lives in a trailer park, and Alaska, who lost her mother when she was only eight years old (and whose father left shortly afterward).

What comes as a surprise is how Alaska’s despair over that loss, and the memories of her inability to save her mother, ultimately shape the dramatic core of this story.

During a night of drinking, Alaska shares her memories in a game of Best Day/Worst Day. After she finishes describing her childhood’s Worst Day, Miles observes:

“There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow--that, in short, we are all going.”

It’s not only Miles who becomes aware that we are all “going,” but the other characters in the story, too, from the Colonel and Alaska, to their friends Takumi and Lara, and, eventually, the entire school, including the Headmaster, whose nickname is, appropriately enough, The Eagle, because he's always casting an eagle-eye on the activities of his students.

Ultimately, it’s Alaska--"impulsive as a result of her inaction years ago," Green writes, "forced into a life of perpetual motion"--who sets the plot in motion toward its inevitable conclusion. By the end, everyone must confront the truth of the labyrinth. There is no escape. Everyone “wading through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow.”

The question that Miles must answer for himself is how to face the labyrinth--and what, if anything, may exist beyond it. What must he do in order to give life meaning? This is the basic question of all religions, the essential question of human existence.

Eventually, Miles begins to shape an answer for himself on his take-home final in Religion:

“Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied only by the last words of the already-dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life...”

He writes more, of course, and arrives at a solution that helps him come to terms, if only temporarily, with the recent, tragic event that is part of his first year at Culver Creek.

It’s his unflagging effort to make sense of the universe, to wrest meaning out of the labyrinth, that serves readers as a life-line.

Writer and reader alike, we struggle daily against the undertow dragging us out to sea.

And like Miles, we hope against hope to understand some small part of the mystery “before we go.”

For more about John Green’s Looking for Alaska, as well as his new book, An Abundance of Katherines, check out his website and blog at http://www.sparksflyup.com/

For an interview on Booklist: http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=show_product&pid=1535293

And for an interview on Publisher’s Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA610527.html