Context

I’ve had some writing that is really important to me accepted by two of my bucket-list publications in the last few weeks (!). One essay in particular I struggled with for months on the page and for years in my head. I’d written multiple versions that I didn’t feel great about–the logic wasn’t clear; there was this sort of unnecessary muddling of my core ideas, this noise I was making–maybe to shield myself from judgment, maybe to provide context to the reader. But once I saw that I was making three separate points rather than one, I could cut the things that related to two and focus on the one. So often in writing, we need much less in the way of context than we think we do. Remember Phil Klay’s OIF in the book Redeployment? You’d think it would make no sense to someone outside of the military. It’s so heavy in acronyms–even people from other conflicts or non-Marines didn’t understand all the acronyms. But the story is powerful even if you don’t understand every bit of it–is made more so, in fact, by the speed and intensity. Often we feel compelled to explain everything, to translate our non-English words, to explain to our readers why certain nuances are important. We are trying to make our writing universally appealing or completely clear, and in doing so we slow down the movement, muddle the point, and bore our readers to tears.

Long ago, I had a telephone interview for a graduate program at Oxford (I didn’t get in, it’s very, very, sad, but I was thrilled to even have a phone interview and hear one of the interviewers read a poem of mine back to me in her crisp accent). It was a multi-genre writing program, and I had (still have) very little experience with play-writing or even reading plays. I hate Shakespeare. I did Julius Caesar for my English Literature O levels, passed, and that was pretty much the end of it. Sorry, Ma. I love you, I really do, but whyyyyy?

A delightful book has taken my house by storm this week: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. You had to know I was going to write a Harry Potter post. It arrived on Monday afternoon, my younger son read it on the way to and from his dance class and was done with it before bedtime. He ate dinner and did his chores in a total rushed fog and got right back to reading. You couldn’t talk to him at all. This book is different than the others–it’s a play, written with very little description. It doesn’t need much exposition because it relies on the foundation Rowling lay in all of those thick volumes before. She knows she just has to say, “Hogwarts” and we are all getting a particular image in our heads. This book is not written to hold the hands of people who don’t get it (for Muggles, if you will). The more you know about the Wizarding world, the closer the images in your head will be to another Harry Potter fan’s. But if you know nothing, you’ll still get a story about the complexity of father-son dynamics, about loss and the desire to be something bigger than you are.

In an interview with Terri Gross, Shonda Rhimes said she has an understanding with the actors on her shows that they are to read the lines as they are written–no ad-libbing, no omitting words. Intonation, emphasis, body language is all up to them, but the dialogue is read as it’s written. I thought that was really interesting, and something to consider for our prompt today, which is to script a conversation you’ve had and are turning over in your head (or imagined, as Simon Rich does below). Don’t overdo the setting or details of the gestures. Just write a line or two on setting and then jump into dialogue. See how that goes.

Him:

Waiter:

Me:

Her:

They:

Weird Person at Nearby Table:

The Wisdom of Children by Simon Rich