That’s So Sad—Now Write It Better

There are some truly terrible writing teachers. People who mock their students’ efforts, or discourage them from writing after rough, early work, or ridicule their ideas. Worst of all? The ones who draw out a student’s personal tragedy or trauma, using therapist-type questioning to display the teacher’s “deep insight,” drawing out uncomfortable details while the teacher showboats on the platform of the writer’s misery.

I was reminded of this when I read Andromeda Romano-Lax’s gripping mystery, The Deepest Lake, about a writing teacher who ticks all the boxes—remote location, telling students their writing isn’t ready (you mu$t come back to the work$hop!), and an in-class journal exercise so horrifying I gasped aloud while reading on the plane (sorry, nervous flyer in 2B!). In one scene, the teacher quizzes a student about a childhood molestation, the details of the setting, the writer’s emotional experience then and now, encouraging her to relive the memory verbally in front of the class without actually addressing the pages the student submitted for her memoir about biking cross-country.

And yet, writing is one way to process our lived experience. The act of putting deeply affecting events into words can lighten the emotional load while helping us determine what to do next.

How, as teachers or as writing group colleagues, can we help each other write powerful emotions and traumatic experiences in a healthy way?

Focus on the writing.

In my early years as an editor, I met with a writer to discuss her first fifty pages, dealing with her father’s early death in an unusual, terrifying accident. We moved around some text, focused on details that worked, restricted the point of view to what she knew at the time and moved some authorial reflection to the end of the chapter instead of interrupting the past scene of the child finding out the bad news.

At the end of our meeting, she said, “Thank you—this is the first feedback I’ve received where we didn’t just talk about how sad it was.”

I was genuinely astonished. Why would we talk about that? Wasn’t it more important to look at the dramatic structure of the scene and how the prose worked to deliver the drama?

It may seem unfeeling to ignore the personal tragedy of the person in front of you in favor of analyzing how they’re sharing that incident on the page, but that’s how to respect the writer. Trust that they’re ready to share the experience as an author, not as a person with a bad thing that happened. Set aside your desire to fix their feelings and focus on fixing their writing.

Focus on the reader.

Actors learn, “Don’t cry for the audience; make them cry for you.” For readers, looking through a character’s eyes as they move forward, take action or try for hope in the face of yet another obstacle is far more engaging than watching from a distance as someone else wallows in misery.

Finding that power to evoke emotion in the reader means polishing our craft. Removing filtering language like “I saw” “I heard” “I felt” and replacing summaries with concrete details brings the reader closer.

I saw Kiki on the floor, and could smell the urine she lay in. I realized my beloved cousin was dead. I could see on her hand she still had the ring I gave her, and felt bad I hadn’t called.

vs.

Kiki lay on the floor in the sharp odor of urine, her half of our friendship ring still on her cold finger, despite my six weeks’ silence.

I’ve said in class more than once: “That’s a crappy thing to have happened. Now let’s see what details make it feel worse for the reader.”

Seek out good.

Trauma and tragedy have their own power, and it’s tempting to gloss over the happy parts. But those scenes need work, too! Just as we deepen and enhance negative events, apply writing craft to positive events. Why did it feel so great? What visual motifs or dialogue or elements of setting contribute to the joy or pride or wellbeing, and bring those feelings to the reader?

In class, teachers can determine the order of pages worked on, throw in an extra exercise for a palate cleanse, or even announce, “Wow, those were some powerful pages. Let’s take a moment to stand up and stretch.” As a writing colleague, we can end our feedback by focusing on writing growth or the next steps to move forward.

Keep checking in.

Our students and our fellow writers want to show up for us, and may be reluctant to say “enough.” Don’t make stopping a weakness or a sign of emotional overwhelm—ask directly, “Is that enough feedback for you to tackle the next draft?” Empower the writer as the controller of their own experience: “It looks like you’ve got enough input. Is there anything else you want to ask us?”

*

Writing memoir means analyzing the drama, treating people as characters and events as scenes. The process of revisiting relationships in the larger context of personal history, analyzing the actions of those who wounded us, and eyeing our own behavior as flawed heroes can still powerfully impact a writer’s life. But writing teachers are not therapists or spiritual guides. Focusing on the words on the page instead of the emotions in the human is what gives our students power to reckon with the past—and finish publishable books.

*Originally published on the Brevity Blog.