What Am I Actually Saying?
I’m currently writing a novel which has a search for meaning at its core. The central character is looking for something meaningful to do with his life and this leads him into writing tiny stories about adages and sayings. He is writing these stories. And I am also writing them. In a process that’s perhaps akin to method acting, I’m mimicking my character with the aim of (a) getting firmly inside his head and (b) curating a collection of prose poetry and flash fiction which will mirror the novel and connect with it in (hopefully) interesting ways. There’s also a third strand to my ridiculous project which is a sort of online museum to showcase pieces of art, music, sculpture and interactive storytelling. The end product will (hopefully) act like a triangle. Novel. Collection. Online museum. A triumvirate of creative strands that help my central character in his search for meaning.
By extension, of course, it also helps me in my own search for meaning. When I contemplate what I want from my writing, it has that search for meaning at its core. Stories for the sake of entertainment are wonderful things. They’re a distraction, they’re an excitement, they’re an explosion of shock or humour or joy. But my purpose as a writer lies elsewhere. My writing is mostly literary. Sometimes I lean into the speculative or the historical or the straight-up weird, but it all has that literary label firmly attached. My writing is literary, and literary writing, for me, is wrapped up with meaning. It’s writing that seeks to say something interesting about the world. It’s infused with message. It’s infused with truth.
This is what I’m contemplating in this month’s craft article. Here is my story. Here are my characters. This is the emotional journey. These are the thematic threads. But what is it, at the end of the day, that I’m actually saying? What is that hidden nugget of wisdom or truth?
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Layers
In many ways, I’m writing my stories the “wrong” way around. Or not the “wrong” way, but certainly in a “different” way to how most stories come into being. If we picture a story like the cross-section of a piece of land then meaning and truth are generally buried beneath multiple layers of limestone, granite, chalk and sand. At the top, we have the surface narrative. Then we have those stratified layers of context, character, emotions, things unsaid, things implied. And only when we’ve dug down through all of that, do we come to meaning and truth. We read from top to bottom, and most stories are written in the same way – top down from narrative to meaning, not bottom up from meaning to story.
In the more usual way of writing stories, we might start off with a scenario or a glint of tension. We then stretch this into a narrative, looking to create a satisfying sense of movement. That narrative forms our surface layer. It will hopefully entertain, but without anything underneath, it won’t perhaps resonate or stay with its reader for very long. So, we look to embed some layers. Each layer adds to that sense of resonance. This is hard work. It takes more effort the further we dig. And reaching that layer of meaning, deep down in the story’s inner core, often takes the most effort of all. However, if you want a story that truly resonates, in my opinion, you need to keep going until you’re all the way there.
What constitutes meaning?
Meaning could be anything which is important to you. It might be a contemplation on wealth disparity. It might be asking a reader to consider the importance (or not) of physical possessions. Or it might, like in my stories, come back to a proverb or a saying. If you want to go down that route, there are plenty to go around. I’ve got a big list on my website and if you’re looking at a story and pondering “What’s the truth I’m getting at here?”, maybe have a scan through that list and see if you can find a saying that fits.
Editing for message
When you’ve picked a message or nugget of truth, there’s often the need to massage the story around it. This can be a frustration especially when the surface narrative was working perfectly well before you went in search of meaning. But now you’ve gone digging. And all that digging has caused a mini earthquake so that the beautiful garden of narrative you’ve planted on the surface has become slightly ruckled and bowed. No one said writing was easy! No one said that getting to the truth of what you want to say is the easiest thing in the world.
How obvious should it be?
You’ve spent all that energy on finding your meaning and you want it to be there in your story loud and clear like an expensive Rolls Royce honking its horn. Your story is about how clothes don’t make the man and by God you’re going to make sure your reader knows this. But making the message too obvious generally comes across as heavy-handed. Rather than adding to the story in terms of resonance, it puts a reader off. Remember what you’re aiming for here. You want layers. The only thing that should be initially obvious (in my opinion) is that surface layer – the narrative, the rich description of what’s actually happening. Everything else should be buried under the earth, asking your reader to pick up their spade or their metal detector and go in search of treasure. You’ve put a lot of effort into writing the story. So, it feels only fair that your reader might also put in some effort.
How do we achieve this?
In my story Yellow is the colour of make-believe (Ghost Parachute), my starting-point saying was “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I was, of course, working the other way around to the normal way of things – but, let’s imagine I wasn’t. Let’s imagine I’d drafted a story about a little boy who is picked on by the other kids for being from the “bad estate” only to come good in the end. Then let’s imagine that I went digging for meaning and it was only at this point that I came up with my saying. I would therefore need to look back at the narrative to see how I might plant the glints of truth from beginning to end. Does the arc lead me from a point of the little boy being judged to a point of realisation from the others (and the reader) that he isn’t what he first appears? Have I threaded the theme of appearance and judgment all the way through?
Some of the elements I’ve used are hopefully quite obvious. There’s a literal book. The book I’ve chosen (“The Very Hungry Caterpillar”) hopefully connects quite cohesively with the narrative. Other elements are more buried. On first pass, I wanted my reader to read the story pretty much as the truth, to think that the estate really is the “bad estate”, that Bobby’s mum really is a “heroin addict”, that his dad really did “make a bargain with [an] image of Jesus.” But at the same time, I wanted to create a tension between that supposed truth and the possibility that the narration isn’t entirely reliable. That’s something I wanted to flag with my title. I hoped that an astute reader might question the description of the estate because it includes the adjective “flaxen”, that they might do similar with Bobby’s food being “yellow food” and with the walls being painted “half Caramel Latte, half Banana Dream.” Then I explored how I might extend the saying outwards. It isn’t just Bobby who is different to what he first appears, it’s hopefully all the characters – Bobby’s parents, the narrators, and most crucially, the narrators’ mothers. In another version of the story, perhaps I might have explored the book-related costumes the narrators might have worn?
Or perhaps I might have unearthed a different meaning entirely. Reading this now, it occurs to me that the story could very easily have been an exploration of “The grass is greener on the other side”, honing in on the supposed differences between where the narrators live and the “bad estate” where Bobby spends his childhood.
What if my reader comes to the wrong conclusion?
That saying (“the Grass is always greener on the other side”) is something I see in Chicago (Kathy Fish | Wigleaf) but that isn’t necessarily what Kathy Fish wanted to say. We can’t account for our readers. In giving them hints and clues, we are asking them to engage with our writing, and sometimes they will come away with exactly the message we want them to reach. Other times, they will reach a different conclusion entirely. This depends on how astute they are and how deep you’ve buried your truth. I’ve been lucky enough to have several stories published in the last year and I’m sure that the message in some of them is much easier to discern than in others. Maybe there is (Flash Fiction Magazine) is literally about crying (or not crying) over spilt milk. But I’m guessing that the starting-point saying I used for The lick (MoonPark Review) is far less obvious. That story began with a contemplation of “The devil makes work for idle hands”, but then I started thinking instead about “idle minds”, and rather than accepting the saying’s wisdom, I started to question it. For me, I feel like moments of idleness are important in life just as I feel it’s often okay to cry over spilt milk.
This leads me back to where I started this essay. What we are saying is personal to us. Message, meaning, truth can be universal, but our message, our meaning, our truth can only be told by us.
Taking things further
When thinking about the “nugget of truth” buried within a story, I often think back to this great article written by
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Great piece, Matt! My own experience concurs with yours, that I have to tell a good story first. Maybe halfway in, I'll perceive a deeper thread and steer the story to weave it into the narrative, but I've also found that in workshopping a piece, readers find new and unexpected meanings. Truth is, I often don't know what a story is about until someone else tells me. It can often be an 'A-ha!' moment for me when that happens, and I wonder how I didn't see it before. I think every reader brings a little of themselves to a story, and reads it through the lens of their own life experiences, hence we can take away very different messages from a tale.
Loved this piece, Matt. Thank you.