Pulitzer Prize-Winner Explains His Writing Process — Richard Powers

character is complex and I I would

always challenge my students I would say

push them to the wall push them to the

wall yeah and that's where the drama of

being alive is can you live with

yourself if you have to do something

that you ordinarily would hate to do but

the circumstance makes it necessary for

you so you got person against themselves

person against person is that it no

there's a third level of drama tell me

about these relationships with

characters so if character drives drama

and voice drives character what drives

voice H and this might be lesson number

one of craft so when you're writing what

are you doing to make it feel alive read

the first sentence again cuz you'll see

a little registral trick there okay tell

me when to stop each child's tree has

its own Excellence

stop Richard Powers won the Pulitzer

Prize for the over story in 2019 and and

I had some friends who recommended it to

me they said wow the writing is so alive

so I walk into a bookstore one day I

pick it up and I start reading the

sentences and the paragraphs and I was

in awe of the descriptiveness The Wonder

of his writing so that's a major part of

what we talked about in this interview

but also we spoke about the three

different kinds of stories there's

people against people people against

themselves and people against the

environment and he walked us through all

three and then he said but we also need

to talk about characters I want to show

you how drama conflict voice and

dialogue can bring a character to life

so if you're somebody who's trying to

write better stories and write with more

life in your own work well you're going

to love this conversation with Richard

Powers character is complex and we all

do this in course of Our Lives you know

we our brains have adapted to try to

understand understand the hidden

motivations of other people in fact

there when when you talk to evolutionary

biologists there will be some who say we

needed the big brain because we were

social you know we had I mean mammals

have by and large solved a lot of the

problems of predation avoiding prey you

know um you know responding flexibly to

change you know you can get by on a lot

less Hardware but what you need a lot of

hardware for is keeping track of who's

up and who's down who's in and who's out

who that's right that's right so we're

all novelists in our own lives we're all

saying I this guy is

remembering what happened between us 20

years ago right and he's holding a

grudge or I haven't seen her in a long

time I wonder if she's also a little bit

in the nostalgic about the road that we

did not take you know all those kinds of

things that we do with each other all

the time those are the underlying skills

that we use to assemble character when

we're creating

stories who's a character in a recent

novel that you still feel like you have

a really intimate relationship with well

I'm very close to the to the people in

playground still um and

one of the great joys of being a

novelist is you get up in the morning

and you

say how are they going to surprise me

today one of the great sadnesses of a

novelist is you have to come to an end

and you have to surrender the manuscript

at some point and it becomes this fixed

thing and yet your heart is still saying

did I do right by

them uh was there something else that

they wanted or needed that I didn't get

to you know so you know there's an odd

way in which the character lives on in

in your sense of of potential or

Prospect as you're telling stories but

you know the the two Central

protagonists in this book uh Todd

Keane who is a a Norths side chicagoan

white privileged

wealthy and Rafi young black guy from

the South Side who's coming from a very

different socioeconomic straum and whose

personal history is very different than

Todd's in weird ways I I used them both

as alter OS you know I used them almost

psychoanalytically to get to various

things in my personal past that I wanted

still to work through here at the age of

67 I put them I put them in collision

with each

other um character leads naturally into

drama in a way that we can talk about

but I let them Collide I you know they

formed a friendship that was

tight dedicated but also highly

competitive and with a certain degree of

weariness and

distrust a certain degree of

um ribbing and uh

Relentless Uh crap shoveling as males do

to each other um

and the drama that arose out of that was

naturally a kind of extension of all the

unfinished drama of my young life you

know from the age of 10 to the age of 30

uh and Beyond character leads into drama

I think that's true I mean when we think

of character you I used to teach

character using something like the

stanislowski method I don't know if

you've had writers who have approached

it that way but he was a great

theoretician of

acting and how how to uh an actor

prepares is one of one of his works and

you know how how to inhabit a role of

someone on stage who isn't you and how

to locate in the

role something in the core inner values

of that

character that you yourself can identify

with knowing full well that you don't

you are not that person you do not

belong to that world but

somehow abstracting it enough so that

you can use your own inner experiences

and core inner values to inhabit and

participate in that other characters uh

and and of course what an actor does to

inhabit a role is not that different

than what a novelist has to do to create

a character so

make this concrete for me I don't know

why I was thinking of Nemo and Nemo is

you know this little kidf fish and Nemo

wants to get out right and go do things

go explore the ocean and then you have

what's his name Marlin the dad Marlin I

think is his name Marlin is this super

overprotective dad and Marlin says to

him very early in the movie he's like

are you sure you want to go to school

today because it's the first day of

school he's trying to say stay home stay

home because he is this just

gripping on the life of his young son so

if we take that tell me about what

you're saying through the Prisma of

those character so I I used to do this

uh I and and this also derives from the

stanowski method but I used to teach

characterization as an onion so you you

have on the outside of a person I don't

necessarily mean the outside in the way

that they perform themselves in the

world because that's always a delicate

and elaborate dance hiding a lot of

things uh displaying a lot of things you

know uh negotiating a lot of things but

in in terms of the the psychic economy

of that

character in the outer shell are the

traits H and he he's he's got a green

shirt on it's got a little Insignia uh

nice haircut you know he he holds one

you know all the things that you can use

to make a character Visual and visible

to the reader yeah but those traits come

from somewhere H right they derive from

things that are farther on the in the

interior of the onion and uh the beneath

that level of surface you know physical

traits or or behavioral

traits you might have

mannerisms like he likes

to uh unnerve people

right whenever somebody says something

instead of saying all right he'll say

what do you mean by that and and that

mannerism of of uh uh challenging or

subverting or undercutting somebody man

there's a sensitivity of awareness that

you must really have to have and is that

something that you're cultivating I

think it can be cultivated because I

don't think I ever came by any of this

naturally you know I if if you're

talking about you know various uh

distribution curves of people some of

whom have very high emotional

intelligence are immediately aligned

with uh reading other people and then

other people you know the cliche is the

other end of the spectrum are people who

do better with machines or or

mathematical Concepts or I'm probably on

that side of that Spectrum but I I I do

think we can all we are all conversent

you know to some degree with finding you

know equivalence and and analoges across

the ways of knowing the world so the

next level inside of mannerisms would be

what What I Call Core inner values and

what I I get this again from people who

have done a lot of thinking uh about the

creation and inhabiting of characters so

but by a value has to be something like

honesty or

Fidelity or

perseverance right so so so we're now

seeing Oh the

reason he holds his hand like that is he

he has a manner where he wants to set

other people at

ease um and underneath that manner of

wanting to set people at ease is the

value

of complicity or or attentiveness or you

know whatever it is but you see how

multiple values can drive the same

mannerism multiple mannerisms can be can

lie behind the same trait so you have to

find you have to find ways of making

coherence so that the outward behavior

of the person is both hiding and

revealing things that they need things

that they want to preserve in the world

and and I I would always challenge my

stud I would say push him to the wall

push him to the wall yeah so I'd say you

know this guy is a good guy you know he

he values honesty but you know he also

values

Fidelity

now put him in a place where he cannot

have both so now you got to make a

choice yeah what is what is your core in

value and what one will fall by the

wayside when push comes to shove because

you got to choose and the the scenarios

are obvious you know your friend has

just done something

wrong do you go to him and say look man

you got to pay for that you have to own

up to that or do you say I'm a good

faithful friend I I you know I'm just

going to support this guy I'll be with

you no matter what yeah that's a story

in fact that's 10,000 Stories right so

what I'm hearing you say is you take

these two values and you take them to

the extreme you almost make somebody

fight those two values internally yeah

what would it take what situation or

challenge would it

take to force that person to have to

jump ship from one and embrace the other

now that's drama and that's a very

specific kind of drama it's interior

drama um and in the hierarchy of drama

that I learned way back in grade school

yeah back in the day very sexist

language that would be called a man

versus

himself okay and that that fundamental

kind of interior

instability you know when I when I go

out into the tum of the world my sense

of self has to readjust my sense of what

I think was most important to me has to

change mhm that's the classic

psychological novel how do we cope with

the differences and the dramas inside

our own head because look you know I

don't want to have to choose between

honesty and Fidelity I want to have both

well life doesn't always let you have

both right and that's where the drama of

being alive is can you live with

yourself if you have to do something

that you ordinarily would hate to do but

the circumstance makes it necessary for

you yes

now I'm doing that and David's doing

that too and here we are sitting in the

same room right and you need something

from me and I need something from you

right you have core interv value that's

very different than my core interv value

so November's coming up let's say for

point of argument that my core inner

value is

equality and your core inner value is

freedom and now we have to go to the

election box and we have to vote for one

candidate I can't believe who you're

voting for you see what I'm saying now

we have interpersonal drama now we have

the sociological novel or the political

novel where I can make you completely

sympathetic to the

reader and I can make myself completely

sympathetic to the reader but now the

reader is watching two people Collide in

a way

where they the reader has to say who's

right the author doesn't necessarily

have to say who's right but but the

reader has to

say if that were me which would I do

well how would I jump I got to jump got

to jump got to put a vote in The Ballot

Box so you got person against themselves

person against person right is that it

no there's a third level of drama which

is that human

beings want to have a certain story in

the world they want to have a project

they want to have they they have a

conception

of what a good life

is and how we can best go about doing

that on this

Earth the rest of the

world and it is a very large rest of the

world a very

big comprehensive and interconnected

living planet might be hostile to that

idea of what it is that we want most it

might be at best indifferent to it or it

might be very sympathetic to it but

there is

battle between humans in the Aggregate

and a world of which humans are only a

very tiny part

M and that level you would call man

against the elements or man

against life so you have the the the

psychological component of all

stories you have the sociological or

political element of all stories but you

also have this environmental or

metaphysical iCal element to all stories

MH now if I you know when I was reading

everything I could get my hands on and

deciding that I was going to give my

life to this craft and this this

work and I was reading especially

contemporary

novels in the 8S and then the '90s

and even into the early 2000s there were

a lot

a lot of novels that were exceptionally

good at

Psychology and very very good at

sociology and and

politics but almost never ventured

beyond the human

world almost never introduced the idea

that what we want out of our lives on

this planet might not be commensurate

with what the planet

wants so the whole third kind of drama

was disappearing from literary

fiction we were getting

extremely able and capable in our

ability to tell stories about humans but

only as if humans were autonomous and

Inter independent from everything else

right and it seemed to me that can't be

right and and I started to look at the

history of of liter fiction and then the

history of world literature even before

the

novel and I was looking for that third

kind of

story and I saw I mean you can think of

great examples of it right I mean if I

said tell me a book about man versus

nature or Man versus you know the gods

or Man versus the elements Greek

mythology a bunch all of it almost all

mythological Traditions now now bring it

up to the present what do you think you

know what's what's the latest kind of

great book in the American Canon that

you think really concerned took

seriously the idea of man versus

nature I have no idea you got to go back

away yeah and you got to go back to Mobi

dick where you got to go back to the

frontier American frontier no it's been

that long huh well I mean there are

always exceptions sure right but it

there's a dip there's a real dip where

you know from you know from 1851 when M

dicks published to you know

1914 at start of the first world war you

you see a trend for sure where that

novel starts to seem quaint like the

battle against

nature you know it's like Jack London

you know is well you know why why

doesn't it seem literary to us because I

think the practitioners of

Storytelling were under the mistaken

impression

that man had defeated nature that human

beings had won that

drama and now we could invoke that drama

kind of nostalgically but it wasn't a

real issue in our lives anymore our

Technologies had gotten so

powerful that it didn't seem like

questions that we had to ask

anymore now what happens in the last

couple decades is there's a growing

awareness that we didn't win that in

fact we're losing in that war and we're

in bad shape not just on the climate

front but on the species Extinction

front and now that drama comes flooding

back into the literary novel it never

left the novel of Science Fiction it

never left fantasy I mean fantasy is man

against nature right it's telling that

those things became second class those

genres became subordinate genres genres

in the eyes of the people who wanted to

to be practitioners of literary fiction

right but now now it where where it

would have been strange for me in 1980

to pick pick up a a a new literary

fiction that had a lot of non-human

elements in it non-human agents or

non-human concerns or taking place

seriously or taking other kinds of

creatures

seriously now it's rare to pick one up

that it isn't addressing this question

of how are we going to stay here much

longer as you were thinking about the

overstory and learning about trees

and developing a kind of empathy for

trees right I think of how big is the

distance between you as the person and

the dare I say consciousness of a tree

it almost felt like your mind and the

consciousness of trees fused together

and I know that in your research process

you just spent a lot of time in the

woods and I would to hear about that

research but even more fundamentally how

you developed that kind of empathy for

trees and turning up the dial of just

how real they were to

you I found that in Old

literature I you mentioned

mythology um indigenous

stories and of course I found it also by

recovering

my own

earliest sense of narrative so you know

I I've often said that young

children are are animists you know or or

uh you know they they have they they

take

seriously these magical creatures around

us you know I was just looked at at some

crows flying past I'm looking at these

marvelous locusts out of the window you

you know and a child will could look at

that and know that that creature is

alive in really profound ways that

adults now stop taking seriously no it's

just wood it's just wood right so to go

back to my own childhood of pantheism

and to go back to the stories that

underwrite world literature that know

that you can't talk about human beings

you can't understand human beings except

in conversation with the neighbors you

know with understanding them in the full

context of who we're not you know and

our our fascination with the non-human

world is that somehow we can see

qualities in these other ways of being

in the world that resonate with our own

values so to look at the non-human world

is also to understand interior drama so

it's not just a question of giving trees

voice it's a question of remembering

those voices inside human beings that

were suppressed by this cultural

colonialism that said no no no don't you

know pay no attention to the world

behind the curtain it's just us so to

recover to recover that

amazement wasn't a separate thing than

you know to than to go deep into

character for me for the creation of

that book they they became the same

Enterprise well what's wild about the

overstory is how articulate you are

about trees let me just read

this we we found that trees could

communicate over the air and through

their Roots Common Sense hooted us down

we found that trees take care of each

other Collective science dismissed the

ideas Outsiders discovered how seeds

remember the seasons of their childhood

and set buds accordingly Outsiders

discovered that trees sense the presence

of other nearby life that a tree learns

to save water that trees feed their

young and synchronize their masts and

Bank resources and warm kin and send out

signals to wasps to come and save them

from Attack

I mean Richard for somebody who didn't

know a lot about trees before he started

writing this book to then getting to a

place where you could see that feel that

put that into language and then do it

lyrically and poetically it's just

astonishing and I just need to

understand how you did that well my

whole project from the

beginning has been driven forward by

these these ways of knowing the world

that we think are incompatible or in

inimical you know opposite uh uh or in

opposition to each other the the way of

knowing the world through empiricism and

Science and the way of knowing the world

through intuition and the

spirit I think the greatest science

writers know that these aren't

really

combating programs

that that that they actually are

commensal that they actually depend on

one another so the in the passage that

you read this character Patricia

westerford she's an outsider and she's

not afraid to anthropomorphize which

drives a lot of scientists nuts even now

although there are interesting ways in

which that attitude is changing because

it has prevented us from seeing certain

things about the world Beyond us but she

uses a vocabulary that's very lyrical

and very poetic

very spiritual but every claim that she

makes in that catalog that you read has

some kind of empirical backing in

peer-reviewed journal articles that I

researched when I was reading the book

so to me that's going to be our

Salvation we have to know the world the

way a scientist knows the world and we

have to know the world the way an

animist or pantheist child knows the

world and if we can get those both going

in our individual selves and in our

culture as a whole we might have a shot

of sticking around for a

while and I think that this is so I I

didn't grow up liking novels very much

it was not I didn't read novels it just

it wasn't super compelling to me and

reading this now it's something about

reading out reading it out loud is

really showing me what the novel can

uniquely do I'll read a little bit more

a forest knows things they wire

themselves up underground there are

brains down there ones our own brains

aren't shaped to see root plasticity

solving problems and making decisions

fungal synapses what else do you want to

call it link enough trees together and a

forest grows

aware and I mean it almost brings tears

to my eyes and what it's doing is that

language

is giving life to something that I've

seen 10,000 times and like you were

saying earlier you just become an adult

you're like ah it's just a chunk of wood

and some leaves they fall every every

Autumn whatever and you're giving them

life and vitality again through the

language and that's that's the great

grace of of the form the novel form you

could have come across those facts in a

very well done popularization of the new

forestry and and uh you know all the

discoveries about U symbiotic

relationships in in a forest that have

come out the last several decades

and you could have grasped them

intellectually but I think as

psychologists

know the apprehension of

fact

and a shift in

values are not the same thing and that

we can be

seduced much

more by emotion and AFF effect and

feeling than we can stand by statistics

and graphs and

arguments uh in fact the word emotion is

interesting

atomically so it means to to to move to

to to to move someone you know a m a

right the to to move through something

or uh and there this has been verified

again in so many Laboratories using so

many

experiments but the smallest appeal

to affect and to

identification can make people do

things you know that argument cannot and

there's odd experiments that you know

that make you wonder how how fragile and

La labile mankind is you know like uh

they'll have they'll have subjects

reading two different texts or three

different texts you know with with

control text and a text about you know a

story about someone who does something

good for someone else and and the

ostensibly the experiment is about

comprehension so someone reads some data

and someone reads a control neutral

narrative that has no bearing on you

know the question of emotion and someone

reads a fictional

passage that you know has the potential

to to move you m um to break your heart

and make you cry a little bit and the

the a sensible experiment is we want to

test your reading comprehension please

answer the following questions so all

three groups answer the following

questions and when you're done answering

the questions you know please take your

exams down the hall and deposit them at

this at this

door and meanwhile a Confederate is

walking down the hall in the other

direction and they dump their pencils on

the ground as if by accident you know

they've got a a bunch of uh they're

carrying a bunch of goods and they make

a mess

the the group that has read the

story is far more likely to stop and

help the person who just dumped their

goods all over the

hallway and it doesn't really have that

much to do with you know with the

temperaments of the individuals in that

group they've all been Baseline shifted

to for a moment anyway to be more

empathetic to to to identify more with

this person who's now in a moment of

suffering right

um and that's what fiction does it

invites

identification it invites you to say who

would I be if I weren't myself but that

guy and simply the act of doing

that increases your

desire to to to be connected to to to to

be empathetic to be helpful to another

person hey I want to tell you about a

new site that I built called writing

exam exles we take writers like

Steinbeck Orwell Seinfeld and break down

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we'll go to writing examples.com and if

you go there you enter email I'll send

you my three favorite editions right

away all right back to the

episode as I was reading that I started

I really felt how attentive you are to

Rhythm and pacing and language and the

different Hues of a paragraph and I'm

curious how you think about sentences

and in order to create that effect in

the reader yeah so so when you think

about a good book a good

novel um there are a lot of dogs pulling

the sled you know there there are a lot

of horses in harness and and some are

you some of the concerns of of crafting

a novel are what I would call lowlevel

very very granular

um addiction register syntax uh and then

you know you work up to the kinds of

things that you're talking about

sentence level pace and Cadence and then

the scene grows out of that and how long

is should should the scene be and what

is the flow in the shape of the scene

what's the tempo of the scene and those

emerge out of the the layers underneath

so so you have language as one way of

you know as one of the the dogs in the

in in the the the pulling sled and you

have uh drama and you have character and

you have form and you have structure and

and different readers attach themselves

more happily or more easily to different

elements of fiction right you know like

you know people can come right out and

say I'm a I'm a character guy you know I

just want to see if these people feel

robust and vital and threedimensional

you know

and the the story yeah I'll read for lot

but it's

basically do I know this person you know

can I recognize myself in this person um

and there there were other people and

for a long time I was in this category I

I didn't care about characterization I

didn't care about plot I didn't care I

just wanted beautiful language that's

how I am isn't that funny you know

because because identification with

character is the dominant way of

consuming a novel now in this culture at

this

moment people can look at us and and

cite that fact as if it's a little

freakish or a little offbeat I like that

and descriptiveness yeah because setting

a scene you know uh even before there

are human agents or non-human agents in

that scene for me can be you know some

of the most glorious kinds of fictional

experiences you can have whereas if you

go to an MFA program you're likely to

hear people say things like show don't

tell which means don't spend a lot of

time setting the scene just get people

in there doing things right yeah so

something is lost when you privilege one

aspect of a fictional experience overall

the others I think the the the the ideal

strategy is getting all those elements

pulling in the same direction and

feeding on one another so the question

is we talked about how drama grows out

of character well character grows out of

voice to to a large extent we come to

know the people on the

Page by how they're explaining

themselves sure and how they're

performing themselves for other people

and what they're asking from other

people

so the moment you hear somebody you

start to hear somebody you can also

start to see that person Forest Gump

from a movie is a great example yeah of

just the way he speaks and the

Simplicity of his of his language is a

place where voice

really then leads to character yeah so

if

if character drives

drama and voice drives character what

drives voice H and the answer is you're

starting to get down to the nuts and

bolts of your tool chest which is the

the words the individual words and the

way they they are aligned in a sentence

huh right so I'll do the first one first

although typically I would I would try

you know with with the my students I I

did it different ways in different years

but I would show the inseparability of

these things I'd show the the questions

of register and diction are also the

questions of syntax and and Cadence and

pacing but the easy ones the lowest

level is what is the register of that

word and you know what does that word

mean and to answer those questions is

far from trivial when you say the

register of a word what do you mean by

that so linguists will talk about the

levels of speech that people

use and sometimes you'll see

three uh casual in the middle formal

above it and you know down and dirty you

know uh slangy at the bot sure yeah and

uh sometimes you'll see four you know

you'll see different approaches to

answering this question of you know how

register works but when you think of the

various ways that you can say uh hand me

that right give me that yeah hey will

you please pass that yeah completely

different yeah and there there are a

dozen more I mean there's no end

actually to the ways that you can say

that yeah I mean you can literally just

say yo and then point out it that's

that's great and you are you are

performing a submit you're you're

requesting something specific that can

be identified but you're also sending

signals Beyond signals about who you are

about who you think the other person is

about the kinds of values that you want

to manifest to the other person about

the kinds of values that you want to

encourage or suppress in the other

person all of those come out of voice

and and voice again is what words what

what how formal or informal are you uh

are you going for in terms of your word

choice it would often be eye openening

to my students when I would come into

class and I'd say you know you're

because you're speakers of

English you have a kind of

builtin

bilingualism they say what do you mean

by that they

say for historical

reasons you have the

possibility of drawing on two completely

different

histories and Origins of words in order

to create registral and color effects

are you talking about Latin and

Anglo-Saxon yeah absolutely

so if if if you say I live in a mansion

right or if you say I live in a house

why does one sound more expensive than

the other right I mean back all the way

at the beginning they were the same

thing Mao and you know our English house

were the same things but you know be

because the Normans came came over to

England and conquered the local English

people and set themselves up in

court the the the latinate through

French uh words got a higher

socioeconomic

register right and and so immediately

the words you use talk about your class

yeah

and when my students would make this

realization it was like wow I've got

some power that I didn't have before I

maybe I could hear it in my ear when

somebody's being snoody or somebody's

trying to establish their street cred

but now that I know the actual rules for

making that work my ear becomes better

right and uh the difference between

freedom and

liberty becomes more audible right right

um so that's the word level

considerations for voice the other

consideration is the sentence level so

and I I would try to teach this it's a

very complicated question because

English grammar is not trivial and but

it's immensely flexible and you can

create all kinds of different pallet

effects and color effects uh by uh by

using the flexible syntax and grammar of

English

but I I would say how can I how can I

teach to my students where they don't

have to go back to this subject that

they hated when they were in sixth grade

but they could get the meat and potatoes

of it and and I was thinking can I do

80% of the work with 80% of the effect

with 20% of the grammar you know sure

and so I boiled it down to

saying think about sentences as

belonging basically to one of three

classes

so the the heart and soul of sentence

call it a predication is the it's the

main subject and the main verb every

sentence has these now you might have an

implied main subject and maybe an

imperative verb where you know give me

that would be an example right give the

the predication is you give me that so

the subject drops away and you just have

the the

command uh but every sentence is built

around that

kernel if you can find on the page or in

your ear that

kernel then you can build the sentence

in the way that allows the sentence to

recreate

emotionally

pratically the mental state that the

speaker is in or that the narrator wants

you to be in in that that the sentence

starts to

participate in the AFF of the thing that

it's describing right so if I start with

my

predication and I put in a lot of other

modifiers that creates a certain kind of

syntax M he pointed the gun at his

friend right there's a there's a kind of

front-loaded shock to that right y you

know or the gun

exploded and uh a whiff of smoke uh

exited the barrel you know these are

clauses that have the action up front

you know the the main subject main verb

get delivered like that and then we see

the consequences of those things now

that's a very different thing than

delaying the

predication after a lot of modifiers so

if you if if you want to put the reader

into entirely opposite mental state you

could

say way back uh across the yard uh near

the fence where a tiny Brook ran along a

a an old hedge

R she hid right M and of course by

having these modifiers first the reader

is in this suspenseful State yeah I was

like what are you going to say what are

you going to say what are you going to

say and the she doesn't appear until the

very end so she is hidden from the

reader in the sentence oh wow I did not

catch that right yeah in the same way

that she's she's hidden in the physical

space I did not catch that you have to

wait for it wait for oh there she is

right now the Third Way would be to

split that predication down the middle

and basically start with your subject

and put a bunch of stuff in the middle

and then a verb you

know and and you can do this for all

kinds of reasons too you can create

suspense with that you can create comedy

with it right uh it's probably the

rarest form if you count the sentences

in an average number

most of them are going to be in the

first uh species you know where the

where the subject and verb are pretty

upfront um a smaller number are going to

be this delayed predication and maybe

the smallest I I don't know I'd like to

do that experiment sometime and actually

get the data but my my intuition is that

splitting the predication is the rarest

but it has a very powerful and you know

not only it the effect in itself can

create these different forms of delay or

suspense or or Intrigue but using it

inside a paragraph when you've just had

three

sentences of you know a a trailing

sentence in a row suddenly stopping and

changing that changing it up it's like a

a key change in music or going to

different cord right tell me about

writing descriptively because it's the

kind of thing that people try to do and

then all of a sudden they sound like

they're trying too hard and I want to

read this sentence cuz I think it's a

good examp example of how you write

descriptively and I want to hear how you

think about doing this you write each

child's tree has its own Excellence the

ash diamond shaped bark the walnuts long

compound leaves the maples shower of

helicopters the vasik spread of elm the

ironwoods fluted muscle what's cool

about that is I can see it I can see it

I can see it I can see it you're

almost cutting between different scenes

but I find that whenever I try to do

that the writing just sounds overdone

it's like David why are you trying so

hard well it's okay it's okay to try

hard because you always have an edit

where you can make it look more

effortless and you know to to push

yourself in composition and say let me

make a note to myself about the kinds of

effects that

I'm going

after maybe they're too obvious maybe

you know maybe they're too blocked out

but at least you know now what effects

it is that you after so think about that

first draft as a note to yourself about

you know about the psychic state that

you want your senten your descriptions

to participate in now when you go back

you can hide your footwork and you can

you can make it more elegant you can

take out the ones the notes that are a

bit too loud or that that announce too

clearly what your intentions are but in

that passage you know one of the tricks

is that the idea in that passage is to

make each species of tree Vivid and

distinct to give them characteristics

that are different from all the other

trees but to do it I'm I'm I'm

introducing it's almost like going back

to to to Patricia westerford and saying

there's subtle little elements of

anthropomorphism in that sentence or or

pantheism or animism in those

description the ironwood's fluted muscle

yeah and and now now it's like that that

trunk that's so visually distinct in

that in that tree now becomes like a

like a weightlifter you see it flexing

and you can see the Senus um so it's a

it's a subtle invitation to elicit the

animism in the reader oh yeah I've

looked at a tree and I've

thought that tree is evil or that tree

is uh shy or that you know all these

projected emotions Majestic right yeah

yeah but read the first sentence again

cuz you'll see a little registral trick

there too okay tell me when to stop each

child's tree has its own Excellence

stop were you expecting that word as the

final word of that Clause no it's it's

it's like a a great song where you you

hear the phrase and you think you know

the way the chords are going and then

all of a

sudden at the the end of that phrase you

hear sudden an interesting change of

color or change of instrumentation or

change of pitch the the last thing you

would think to apply to a tree would be

some degree of

excellent now I always think you

know the the beginning of a sentence and

the end of a sentence are very powerful

places to set a reader's expectation and

then to surprise the reader's

expectation that each child's tree has

its own degree of

Excellence right and the reader

unconscious they just reading along for

the music of it and and the color of it

and the the images being

created but the

composer is

saying that word raises the tension a

little bit at the end of that sentence

and it's not the one that the as we read

along we're constant saying what's

coming next what's coming next we're you

know we're we're like an AI what's the

next most likely word we're like a large

language model we have a model of the

world and as I add each new word to this

sentence you are deciding which way I'm

going to go spin

right exactly you got it you can play

off that expectation you can you can set

it in motion and then say NOP this way

that way so how is it different say when

you're describing a person so that one

was about trees but then you right the

farm was where Nick first started

sketching the pencil dreams of boys

Rockets outlandish cars masted armies

imaginary cities more Baroque with

detail each year then Wilder textures

directly observed The Forest of hairs on

a caterpillar's back and the stormy

weather maps in the grain of floorboards

yeah and you know it's interesting to

read

something that I wrote

now seven or 8 years ago I'm I'm in a

different place the world is in a

different place uh that book exists and

you know it's trajectory I could never

have foreseen when I was working on it

and I'm listening to those phrases on

the one hand the way a brand new readers

is listening to him because enough time

has passed for me to forget what that

passage how that passage worked

so I hear that pencil the pencil dreams

of

boys and I don't know it's an odd

metaphor for a second and then you get

the catalog of things that boys might

sketch and oh the pencil dreams of boys

well what's so cool about this is I put

it put me back to being a kid I used to

design airports in my room when I was a

kid so this is about rockets and

outlandish cars it has nothing to with

airplanes but something about the

similarity put me back to being an

8-year-old kid kind of messing around

and sketching around and designing

baseball this and football that and that

is now that I'm rereading it so much of

what makes this resonate with me yeah

now you can look at the the individual

words in the syntax and say what is he

doing to put me in that mental state

beyond the simple uh literal conveyance

of the sentence I have to say in all

honesty and this might be lesson number

one of

craft I'm also listening and saying

saying no I would do that differently

Now give me a red pen you know because

that's writing you are never done with

it because you're a moving Target your

reader is a moving Target the world is a

moving Target you look at that sentence

and you

say give me another shot at that so you

know when you say you look at your first

draft and it's frustrating for you I say

that's not a bug that's a feature let

that frustration be another form of

seeing your desire so how many times you

rewrite those sentences oh

gosh now see now with with word

processing it's hard to say 12 right or

14 it's just continuous it just keeps

happening never ends you know you wake

up the next day and you're reworking the

previous day's material and then you get

to the end of the weekend you've got a

chapter and you read the and you rework

the chapter again and then the whole

book is finished and now you say it's

time to go do a second draft well that

second draft is actually now you know

depending on the various passages could

might have been drafted a dozen times or

more you know and and then you send it

off to your first readers and they say

it got a little it got a little slow for

me from 140 to 200 you know and now you

say well how do I pick the pace up and

you go back and you draft it again and

but the what all I'm saying is accept

that as part of the glory and of of of

the process of writing don't fight it as

something you you know you wish you

could finally make it right because

there's no final right you know I I take

this book that was published yesterday I

go behind the podium tonight I start

reading from it I want to change

it

wow when you get

frustrated when you're writing and

you're agitated

or tense because you're not getting

something right what is the nature of

the things that aren't quite right for

you oh they could be anything it could

be deafness you know or deafness yeah

like like I I I don't know what this

person's trying to say or how they

should be trying to say it it could be

it could be uh a dramatic problem oh my

God I just realized that I've been you

know I've been counting on these two

characters to be uh disagreeing about

this matter but now that I see them both

in context I'm not sure they would be so

you could you you you you're constantly

having to to course correct you're

constantly having to to discover the

things that you're unconscious knew

sometimes you can't Discover it um so

the ways of going wrong are infinite uh

and the the the ways of going right are

not final so ride it you know it's it's

so definitely like

surfing for me the the the craft tip

here is relax forgive

yourself you know know because it always

comes around to something more

satisfying that all you need to do is

let it breathe a little bit go out take

a hike you know uh stand in front of a

tree you know breathe the breathe the

air you know drink the drink um relax

the perfectionism that says I need to

get this in a Perfect final State let it

let it be

process I want to talk about

introductions just how you think about

where these books begin for over story

you write first there was nothing then

there was everything for playground

before the Earth before the moon before

the Stars before the sun before the sky

even before the sea

there was only time and taroa why do you

choose those how do you think about that

you're revealing something that I

probably had never consciously

articulated about what I like in

Beginnings um but I see it clearly in

both of these I want to situate my

stories in a mythological framework yes

you know but I also you know I'm

imitating a certain kind of

cinematography too like

uh great films that start with a really

distant wide establishing shot yep know

and then you know go to a mid shot and

then go to close that in my ear I want

to say here is the the size of the

canvas now we're going to explore this

but don't forget that the canvas is all

the way out here so if if that opening

can be kind of

cosmic then you earn the right to tell a

local story and let it let it germinate

and and grow

into into the the the larger frame that

you've set for the story but I'll tell

you I I I love opening

lines I I love looking at the books that

I love and seeing how sometimes the

entire book is contained in the

microcosm of the first sentence or

paragraph all the conflicts all the

dramas all the characterization you know

are hinted at in a way that the reader

can't possibly uh see or anticipate I

mean Romeo and Juliet two houses both

alike in dignity in fair Verona where we

lay our scene you get I mean just right

at the beginning of that yeah two people

they're very similar but uhoh stuff's

about to happen right it was the best of

times it was the worst of

all these lines that have become so

classic because after the fact

retrospectively we realize that's the

story in a nutshell but you know I

search and search and search and I throw

them out I start again I start somewhere

else and it's all good you know it's all

it's all discovery the the over story

line first there was nothing then there

was

everything I mean if if you're not

sympathetic you could say

it's that's kind of philosophical mumble

jumble and you know so the Gospel of

John Works a little bit like that it

could be a little bit of a mystification

you know what in the beginning was the

word and the Word was with God and the

Word was God yeah and in these sort of

you know linguistic play with the the

the metaphysics of what's being

expressed well that line actually

comes from one of the last sentences

that a dear friend of mine and a

brilliant American poet sat on her

deathbed and as she was drifting in and

out of

Consciousness and you know her loved

ones were standing by and she would talk

and they would lean in and what is she

saying you know she said something she

they couldn't hear her and they leaned

in she said first there was

nothing then there was everything you

know and I thought you know what a

better way to memorialize the life and

work of this friendman to to take that

and promote it to the start of this

book if I remember correctly you you

wanted to be a poet or you were very

interested in poet want be a poet you

still want to be a poet when I grow up

yeah I may end up that way I don't know

yeah but

that's that's the place where those of

us who love language first

can focus on that as the primary Pursuit

and there's also drama in poetry there's

voice and there's characterization

there's structure for sure and form we

didn't even get to how uh drama

generates form and structure but in

poetry you

see most of your job is to create

visceral sensation through the

musicality of of your

words I mean there's there are a lot of

other jobs that poets do and of course

of course poetry itself is a moving

Target and historically has been

interested in different things at

different times and you know what what

what's considered the central

preoccupation of poetry has changed so

much even in the course of my

lifetime but how does how does drama

create form yeah so we we've seen these

three kinds of

collisions and in any Collision what

you're talking about the the primary

variable is

tension in a collision you go from a low

tension state to a high tension state

right and and

then you can relax that tension as the

drama is resolved and then it starts up

again somewhere else and tension goes so

you are dialing in and out of something

that most of us can can read intuitively

as the stakes right and uh what we call

tension is the realization on the part

of the protagonists that the stakes are

going up

now when you think of

form as trying to address the potentials

and the problems of tension now you're

thinking what does a a writer want to do

from page one to page

400 to manipulate the tension in the

reader and of course it's going up and

down all the time depending on the drama

of individual

scenes but we have the the ability to

tell stories you know this weird

adaptation that the human brain has for

imagining creating imaginary spaces and

saying you know what if know what if

this guy said this to this guy right um

we know that when we tell even the

simplest stories there's a kind of

structure that makes sense with regard

to tension and there's a kind of

structure that doesn't make sense if I

said once upon time there was a prince

and the prince rode out on his his Steed

and he killed the most challenging

dragon in the

country and then the next year the

prince rode out on his horse and he

killed a dragon that was somewhat

challenging right that wouldn't make any

sense you know and the you know the the

the finale being and then he killed the

easiest dragon in the country it would

never sense at all so we have an

intrinsic which would actually it would

Merit some investigation as to why that

makes absolute sense to us to stack

tension as a rising thing you know to

think about that as a as a physiological

thing as a as part of uh this you know

um adaptive power that we have to

Intrigue other people with story

but a simple rising action isn't really

the most satisfying kind of story anyway

especially for long form right so you

know you you have to

sculpt that tension

graph in a way that does Justice to your

characters does Justice to your readers

expectations and keeps your readers

intrigued because you know there there's

a certain kind of tension in just

wanting to know what happens next

there's a certain kind of tension in

knowing that there are Mysteries early

on in a story that you can't explain and

so there's that reverse anticipation of

of knowing that eventually you're going

to get an explanation that of something

that right now is completely mysterious

to you right so I would teach the

tension graph as having four

parts uh a hook

where at the beginning tension is just a

little bit higher artificially higher

right in order to say here's what's here

this is going to draw you into this

world there's some Stakes early on that

you're going to immediately be

viscerally interested in y and once you

get the reader hooked with with that

higher level of of tension you can relax

the tension a little bit as you move

into what's what I would call the

exposition who's who who are they uh

where you know what what is the the the

crisis what is the the stakes you know

where where are these people coming from

getting everybody on

stage you you've earned the ability to

relax the tension and getting it get

everybody on stage because you've had

that little bit of a of a bait and

switch once the reader is oriented in

this world once a certain amount of

things have been exposed

shown to be then you can start to

explore the instabilities of those

people in that situation now we go back

to drama and and every every value

creates an unstable counter value and

every contact with another human being

creates an instability in what those

people want and

need now you go through the great middle

part of the book which is the rising

action the stakes get higher

every time something gets solved it

produces a larger instability because

the

ramifications of solving that first

little episode are larger than the ep

the first episode itself so you go up

this letter and you you eventually reach

you can't you hit the wall you can't

raise the stakes any farther you've

reached the ultimate dramatic

conflict that's the climax of the book

now typically we don't save that for the

last page of the book we have

this followon that says okay now that

you've seen the final jumps that

everybody's made now that you've seen

what everybody has chosen as their core

in value and seeing the way that they

have to now live with the consequences

of their choices MH you release that

back into the world we use a French word

for this in in nitology the

dumal which we think of as the

Revelation or the you know the the the

consequences but it literally means the

untying so you've been wrenching the

knot Tighter and Tighter and Tighter you

get to the climax it blows apart and now

what happens in the world suggests

anyway the trajectory of these people

who have gone through fire and now are

different than they were before in what

ways are they different and what ways

will the world that they live in be

different we need enough of that to know

what the final consequences of that

climax would be have you picked up any

similar tools for writing dialogue

because dialogue is a representation of

how people actually speak but it isn't

it's far more efficient dare I say than

actual human conversation it's highly

stylized I mean if you were to sit on

the the back of a bus here in the city

and and just transcribe the way that

people talk to each other and try to

pass that off on the page you could make

the claim this is the most realistic

dialogue you'll ever hear it'd be

terrible would be chaotic and incoherent

and you know uh that we depend on

certain

conventions and and by when we say real

or Vivid we're not actually talking

about empirically accurate we're talking

about the recognition of certain

narrative expectations that we've

learned from the kinds of fiction that

are viable in our culture right now

conventional dialogue realistic dialogue

is the dialogue that knows how to

manipulate the expect the conventional

expectations that have been established

for dialogue at this moment and you

don't have to go back very

far to to to start leaving your comfort

zone in dialogue you know at if you're

if you're every day if you're cutting

your it and you're just living on

fiction that's been written in the last

10 years and you're shaping your ear on

those conventions and you go back 20

years or 40 years or 100 years you might

say people don't talk talk like that you

know but all you're saying is I've I've

lost my context my my my decoder ring

for you know for understanding how how

these dialogues work so when you're

writing what are you doing to make it

feel alive without it feeling

like you said empirically accurate to

how people speak I think you have to

hear it out loud because I think that's

the way that most readers are actually

going to consume the The Narrative when

when we read we

subvocalize you're hearing it

subvocally and that's why sometimes for

authors it's tough to listen to their

own audio

books because they've just spent a

couple of years subvocalizing all these

characters and now they have to hear

those these characters literalized by

some other voice actor and they're going

no no no that's not what I'm hearing in

my head you know um but to to create

dialogue that can elicit different kinds

of emotions from

people is always furthered I think by

actually saying it out loud and you know

it testing it in the in The Crucible of

your ear right so that when your readers

do the same thing you at least have a

little sense of the the register the the

tone the color the Cadence the the

realism the the

socioeconomic accuracy of that dialogue

I have no sense for this so who is

someone who you really admire with

dialogue and what is it that you admire

about the way that they write it that

you're trying to chase or cultivate

yourself there's they're practitioners

that are amazingly

varied like you can get a writer like

Anne patchet who whose characters you

even forget that their characters you

know because because she somehow can

participate in the way that they

speak

so uh vividly and so

virtuosic that the performance

disappears entirely and you just say oh

oh yeah that's that's my neighbor that's

that's you know that the the woman that

I lived with for 11 years or you know

you're doing all those things just

through her ability to to let them speak

themselves to each other but then you

can also get a writer who's

aesthetically completely different like

Don deil and you could look at a book

like white noise and you could look at

the dialogue in that book which is crazy

you know and and highly artificial in

one sense of the word

artifice and yet you can say this man

has the best ear of any living writer

because he somehow can get to the

absurdity of the way that we talk

through each other you know or uh

uh away from each other yeah you know

and it's it's not realism it's in some

ways it's kind of surreal what he does

with with dialogic but it's so

real in in terms of

recognizing the the the the crazy way

that we play this language game with one

another okay so what I want to do is I

want to pop between some different

quotes we'll we'll kind of do a fire

round quote parkour first one the best

arguments in the world won't change a

single person's mind the only thing that

can do that is a good story I mean in

order to move somebody you have to use

emotions right um and we we we talked a

great deal about those two different

appeals uh the the appeal to logic and

reason and rationality and the appeal to

the

guts

yeah if you would learn the secrets of

nature you must practice more

Humanity the secrets of nature are where

the secrets of humanity arise

we can see one another we can understand

ourselves as

individuals through the difference that

we have looking at another person but to

understand what a human being is we have

to look at the more than

human the loneliness of writing is that

you baffle your friends and change the

lives of

strangers I I find this true to the

present day

you know I C I can give the

manuscript to my

brother and he can return it a couple of

weeks later and

say

interesting and and and yet I can turn

my phone on this morning and get an

email saying you don't know

me but I'm studying forestry now because

of

you you know what sense is does that me

that's just crazy yeah when you're sure

of what you're looking at look harder

yeah yeah because when you're sure

you're not

moving and reality is always moving

right if if you've arrived at a

definitive irrefutable point of view

it's because your point of view is

stationary and that's not going to help

you survive in a world where all points

of view are constantly moving

interesting when I read that what I was

thinking about was I was just thinking

of the over story and I was thinking

of

the infinite number of things that

nature will reveal to you if you sit and

you stop and you look and look and look

yeah attention is the most profound

source of meaning that we can

have

and before I I wrote over

story I had a a path that I would walk

from my house to my office and it looked

something like this tree tree tree tree

and as I started to write a war

story that path started to look like

this red oak

Maple uh

hornbeam uh and then as I got deeper

into into over story it was oh

this

guy you know it's not a red oak it's

this guy and he's doing something that

I've not seen in the other Red Oaks in

the neighborhood right so the the

granularity the particularity the

pleasure of the world depends on slowing

down and looking harder

yeah we have the sense that structure is

inimical to emotion or that systems are

inimical to individuals you know that a

book can either be a heart book or a

head book and my desire of course is to

write something that's like us namely an

Allin one and I like this I this idea

that you're getting at which is that

there can be novels of thinking novels

of feeling novels of character novels of

ideas and this is one of the major

themes of this conversation is the

fusion of maybe even the right side and

the left side of the brain in the work

that you're trying to do

the sled is only going to move when all

the dogs are in harness and they're all

pulling in the same direction but that's

that's the craft of writing to find a

way in which all those different

approaches and it's far more than just

head and heart I mean there are 300

regions of the brain right

so what you want to do is get all all

the the elements in your

repertoire chosen in such a way that

they're supporting one another other

right that the levels are emerging from

the decisions that you've made at the

levels lower down and they're all in

harness and in

harmony I want to end by hearing about

some of the time that you've spent

writing in solitude you know when you

wrote plowing in the dark you said I

even wish that I could have gone into a

sensory deprivation tank and it seems

that Solitude has been a major asset and

strategy over your

career I agree with that but I I

think I have to expand the formulation

just a little bit moving in and out of

solitude has been the strategy huh right

my composition

process and certain amount of my

revision

needs to remove the overwhelming

stimulus of the world in order to be

able to create a richness in my own

imagination so I write lying in bed I'll

pull the covers up I'll I'll dictate or

I'll use a pen you know I'll turn the

light out and do it in the dark I'll

I'll look up at the bare

ceiling as a way

of

repurposing all my sensory apparatus

that would ordinarily be taken up with

you know the the the

amazing stimulus of the world and and

now just going back in tranquility and

recollecting places that I've been

things that I've

known uh crisis that I've survived so

that requires solitude but if you stay

solitary you're going to spin out of

orbit

eventually both literally and

artistically because you won't have the

world to test the products of your

Solitude

against so you start to make a character

you start to create a

scene and and you you you need that

sensory deprivation to get going and to

get traction but now it's it's gained

enough complexity and momentum on its

own what you want to know now is is it

true does it resonate and to do that you

got to give up your Solitude you got to

go back down into the melstrom and I

think so many creators talk about that

that boundary condition you know where

you can

control both the degree to which you can

isolate and organize the complexities in

the chaos of the world and the degree to

which you can plunge back into the

bracing rejuvenating corrective of a

story that you didn't tell

yeah and you have to play the one off

the other well it seems like you've

really experimented with different forms

of composition cuz you were just talking

about

speech the typewriter or the keyboard

there's handwriting right how do you mix

those and how

does your language show up differently

in different input

formats it's kind of scene

dependent and book dependent to some

extent the ratio and and what are go to

uh at each moment it's also depending on

my state of mind uh but I mean think of

it the way that a musician would use

different instruments you know you know

if you're writing a song you might reach

for a guitar for a certain kind of song

you might sit down at the piano for a

different kind of song go out in the in

the woods and sing a capella for in a

different a new a third kind of song or

or you might you might rotate you know

you might try you know different

combinations in sequence or um in

parallel I I think the samees for

writing I think the tools that we use to

write we reach for them when we need

them when we

detect through our intuition or through

our intellect that we need to slow down

or be more quiet or or speed up be more

lively you know and and each each tool

has its affordances and allows you to

get to different

places last question be as concrete as

possible with how do you actually think

about your day-to-day structure when

you're writing in solitude I mean you

were talking about I have this image of

you just pulling the covers over your

head and being there and letting your

imagination wander and do set deadlines

for yourself how does that work it's

changed enormously over my 40 years and

and 14

books I have always been a person who's

most Alert in the

morning and uh I I always uh for the

maybe the first 25 30 years of my life

knew that I was going to get best

results if I had breakfast if I

minimized my interaction with the world

resisted the attempt to you know the the

the uh uh desire to read yesterday's

news or you know um to check my feeds

um and simply get to work while my brain

was

freshest and to to stay there until I

had a thousand words that was the

discipline that was what shaped the day

I thought my job was getting a thousand

words out every

day it worked well for a long long time

um something happened I became a

different kind of

writer I can point to the moment where

it started and I can point to the moment

where it started to accelerate but

basically I now no longer see my day my

primary job as get is as getting

thousand

words I see my primary job as being in

the world the Living World so the first

thing I will do in the morning is check

the weather

report and and the calendar

and ask myself what's going on out there

at what elevation and where's the show

and where can I learn

something and that's my primary

accountability now uh to see myself

through the nonhuman world to remember

all of my experiences of my life through

having this extended final chapter of

meditation and

presence

and usually it means that if after a

short time of being quickened and

revived by uh all these amazements

happening all around

me without too much deliberation

something that might have taken me a lot

of forced effort earlier in my

career sentences will start to come and

and scenes will start to come and a lot

of times you know I'll be four miles

down a trail and realize I got to get

home as quickly as I can because I can't

hold it all in my memory anymore uh so

the the the the the writing now is a

supporting

process for trying to keep me growing as

a person in the world that keeps

growing that was such a fun interview

thank you so much for doing this

pleasure it was great to meet you thanks

daavid do yeah yeah