Relationships are Everything

Looking at life through the eyes of fictional characters

Photo by Wade Lambert on Unsplash

This year, I want to work on the clarity of my writing. As I reread passages in my work-in-progress, I try to run them through a mental sieve, keeping what is most immediate and closest to the truth, letting the extraneous words fall through the holes and down the drain.

One of the writers who brings immediacy to words, sentences, and stories is Ann Patchett. I love the following passage from The Patron Saint of Liars . The character Rose is describing her mother’s antipathy to driving. But the passage gives so much more information about her family and her relationship with her mother.

MY MOTHER knew how to drive but didn’t. She said she’d forgotten. She’d forgotten how to ride in a car as well. She would walk everyplace she possibly could. If it was raining, she would wear jeans and a sweatshirt, wrap her work dress in a dry cleaner’s bag, and put it in with her shoes and purse in one of the large, plastic I. Magnin’s bags we kept stacked beneath the kitchen sink. If she had to go someplace far from home she took the bus, but she didn’t like to. She said it was dirty and crowded and she didn’t like to sit next to strangers. If there was an emergency, a terrible emergency, she would call a cab or Mr. Lipton, the superintendent of the building, to come and drive her. She did the night I was five years old and my eardrum burst. She did when I was fourteen and ran a fever so high I couldn’t tell her who she was, even though she asked me over and over again. They took my appendix out, and when I was well Mr. Lipton drove me home, but Mother walked, because going home was not an emergency.

It’s no great mystery. It was because my father had died in a car. But he didn’t die in a car. He died later, in the hospital, which is the thing that makes the story tragic instead of just very sad. The car got away from him somehow, forgot gravity despite its weight, and flipped three times before digging itself into a sidewalk where no one was walking. His spine was nothing but dust. “Bone dust,” my cousin told me secretly in the back yard of my uncle’s house when I was seven. He was the one who gave me the details. I never got them from my mother, I never asked. It took him five weeks in intensive care to finish what had been started. It was there my father died of pneumonia, which, from what I understand, is like drowning.

Patchett, Ann. The Patron Saint Of Liars (pp. 28-29). Harper Perennial. Paperback edition.

If I can bring an iota of what Patchett reveals about her characters to the page, I’ll be quite pleased. Writers, how do you frame the inner lives of your characters? What helps you decide what to keep in and what to leave out when describing a scene? Do you have specific writing exercises or prompts that help you get to the essential truths? I’d love to know your secrets and tricks!

Podcast Interview

Terry Shepherd recently interviewed me on his podcast. We discussed my background, writing process, and key elements in my novel. I hope you take a few minutes to listen. I had a blast!

Thank you so much for reading my Substack post. I welcome questions, comments, and suggestions from readers.

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