Metaphysical bullshit

Recently I got word that one of my Writing professors from undergrad had retired. Actually, I was poking around on Facebook and saw that my honors advisor found a copy of her own honors project while cleaning out his office, and had gotten all misty-eyed about the time he was her advisor (our English department was a mite academically incestuous; they kept it in the family) and I at first guessed that he'd kicked it. I only used 'kicked it' there because he didn't; he'd finally retired and, I assume, taken off to revisit the peyote fields of his misspent youth. Yes, he was that kind of professor.

He cultivated the reputation of an 'asshole;' with the ' 's because that's what he called himself in relation to his students, rather than what we called him. We loved him, and we hated him, and we loved to hate him and hated that we loved him. His main line of intellectual inquiry was what we called 'metaphysical bullshit,' which included the subtexts that never worked when they were consciously included but always seemed to pop up when we least expected them. It was the kind of thing that lead to trippy notes - his were the classes I always brought vodka to, and not only because they were three hours long.

So, statute of limitations be blown, here's some of the stuff I got from him. In installments. If I couldn't take three hours of it sober, I have no business inflicting great chunks on anyone.

“The imagination is a force of nature.” Trust in what comes to you, take a line of thought and run with it. Don’t cripple a narrative by imposing on it the limits you think it should have or that other writers would give it. Follow the narrative to the very end; let it go where it wants to go rather than where you want it to go. Allow the story to have its own integrity. It doesn’t matter if the story you write doesn’t turn out to be the story you thought you were going to write, the story you have written should have its own integrity, and you are free to return to the initial idea, the trigger, and write again. Observe. Remember. Steal other peoples’ gossip. Gather in the details that surround you and pack them into your narrative. The way a person walks, the flavor of sunlight or the smell of purple. Look at the world sideways. Give your readers descriptions that make them say “I’ve never seen it that way” and “that’s exactly how it is” all at once.

           Voice can take you far, no matter what person you write in. It lets you get deep down, put on the skin of the character, sink inside her head and take on her motivation. It needs to be authentic, it needs to ring true. Every line should be examined with the question, “is this what this character would say, the way this character would say it?” It’s too easy to have all our characters sound the same, or sound like us, or sound like our best friend. They don’t need to be completely at odds, just distinct. Work the voice, use it to convey something about the character, use it as a tool for character development, plot exposition, a means of adding complexity.