Robert Butler - From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction

Sandra: Kind of like a dull little whack against the leather strap.

ROB: Good. What else? What else is coming out of you as you're inside.

Sandra: Coughing. Talking.

ROB: OK, you're generalizing those. Let's hear a specific cough, and tell me about that cough. And a fragment of talk. Tell me those things in narrative.

Sandra: A man's coughing.

ROB: Not too much removed from a cough. Tell me about that cough?

Sandra: It's a dry cough.

ROB: From where is it coming?

Sandra: It's coming from his throat.

ROB: All right. Hear a fragment of something that's spoken.

Sandra: I actually hear my grandfather's voice.

ROB: You've just summarized that for me, OK? What is he saying?

Sandra: He's talking about dogs.

ROB: You've summarized what he's talking about. Absolutely drop into the center of the conversation and let me hear a fragment of what he's saying.

Sandra: "Sheila's a beautiful bitch."

ROB: Good, very nice.

Sandra: "Sheila."

ROB: All right. Let your grandfather look in your direction. Tell me what you see and how you see him and what you see him do.

Sandra: He has the razor in his hand.

ROB: That's generalized for me. If that's the sentence, how is he holding it? Give me all the details.

Sandra: He has it pointed out. He's holding his forefinger to the back of the blade, balancing it, holding it very delicately. He's such a big man, he has such a big hand. He's holding the razor very gently and delicately.

ROB: OK, now those are abstractions — gentleness and delicacy. Tell me in the moment through the senses what you are seeing there that you have abstracted as delicate.

Sandra: Lightly. It's a kind of a shape of the hand.

ROB: What shape? How are the fingers arranged?

Sandra: The forefinger's out in front of the blade.

ROB: Where's the pinkie?

Sandra: It's balancing the very end of the razor.

ROB: Let his face turn to you. Let me see his face in the moment.

Sandra: He is not surprised to see me.

ROB: OK, you have just analyzed his face. He's not surprised to see you. We're not seeing a not-there; what are we seeing?

Sandra: He's looking as though he was expecting me to walk in.

ROB: You just analyzed it again. What do you read in the face? Because the little girl standing there perhaps rightly analyzes the look on his face, but what is it that's on the face she sees that leads her to that analysis? That's what we're after.

Sandra: That's abstraction?

ROB: That's abstraction. The thwack of that razor on the strop tells me that you have a very fine sense memory and also that you should drop into "She was a beautiful bitch" as the first words out of his mouth. Those are fine, striking moments, Sandra. Now what you need to do is turn that same faculty to this face.

Sandra: He seems to gaze at me with a very level expression. His expression hardly seems to change.

ROB: OK. From what?

Sandra: From what I would have expected him to.

ROB: OK, now you're begging the question. What feature on his face are you looking at? Focus on one feature.

Sandra: His eyes.

ROB: Tell me about his eyes.

Sandra: He's gazing.

ROB: Gazing is a kind of generalized thing, isn't it? There is an infinite variety of gazes. What are those eyes? Look at those eyes and let me see precisely what they are.

Sandra: They're blue.

ROB: Blue like what?

Sandra: Actually like a steely kind of blue-gray.

ROB: What do you smell?

Sandra: Tobacco.

ROB: What's that like? There are a lot of different kinds of tobacco. How do you experience that smell?

Sandra: I associate that with men.

ROB: Yeah, that's kind of generalizing for me now. There's a lot of different modulations of tobacco smell and they come to you in various ways. So let me smell that specific tobacco smell.

Sandra: It's sweet. And dark.

ROB: Sweet and dark. That's good. What part of your body does it make you conscious of? Where does it impact your body?

Sandra: In the stomach. It seems to go straight down into me when I smell it.

ROB: Good! OK, thank you Sandra. [Applause and much laughter.] It's very difficult. But so is writing literary fiction. And, you know, you must place these demands on yourself to be in the moment and through the senses. All the time, in everything you write in your fiction, this must be the standard mode of discourse unless and until the organic object not only allows but demands, from deep, resonant, dream-driven places, that the mode of discourse in a particular passage vary into other modes. What I'm trying to get you to do — though the details will be organically driven, as they are not now; and though the details will have yearning as their center of gravity or engine, as they do not now — nevertheless, that moment-to-moment sensual flow is your normal mode of speaking in literary fiction. As hard as it is. If you think this is hard, where you're free to make up anything, what if your choices are circumscribed by all the other detailed choices you've already made? See, this is what you're buying into, folks, coming to this university and wanting to be an artist.

ROB: Mary Jane is going to do hers now. OK, Mary Jane and everyone else, get into your space. I think I'd like to take you into the corridor approaching the room where you must identify your father. So take a moment and get yourself there; and pick me up in the corridor, in the moment and through the senses, very close to coming into his presence. [She does not respond.] All right, let's put you just inside the door. You have just opened the door to the room where he's been held. Place yourself in the room.

Mary Jane: I'm standing in a door frame looking into a room that is completely black.

ROB: You've summarized that to a fair degree. Let's put you in that door frame and I want you literally to be the camera's eye. Look off to your extreme left, because there's a little sound. Something draws your attention. Or a bit of light to the left. You focus on that, and then swing your eye moment-to-moment back to wherever your father is.

Mary Jane: It's like looking into a cave.

ROB: OK, you understand the problem with that? Yeah. Let's see something. And if you've got to put a little more light in this room, do so. Let's just take that last step into the room; give me that motion and then stop yourself and then your eyes fall on one thing.

Mary Jane: I step into the room. I can feel my brother right behind me.

ROB: How? Let's do this: let's put you in that door frame again. I want you to take a moment and be in your body there. Now, tell me about how you know your brother is behind you. How do you feel him? Where do you feel him?

Mary Jane: I have a sense of his presence over my shoulder. [She laughs.]

ROB: What is that sense?

Mary Jane: Maybe it's a smell.

ROB: Maybe it is. Let's go back into your body there, OK? And just wait upon it. You don't have to rush answers.

Just get into your body and stay in that doorway and if that room in front of you is dark, tell me where on your body you feel the darkness.

Mary Jane: In the center of my chest.

ROB: Tell me where in your body you sense your brother. Wait for it.

Mary Jane: Behind my shoulders.

ROB: Yes, but what part of your shoulders and what is the feeling on your shoulders?

Mary Jane: A sensation of warmth.

ROB: Is there really? Are your shoulders bare?

Mary Jane: It's March.

ROB: Don't try to remember, OK? In this moment that you're inventing now, imagine it.

Mary Jane: Yes, because I'm wearing a sundress. In front, it's very cold. There's a patch of warmth.

ROB: That's good. See where your father is now.

Mary Jane: There's a spot of light in the room, almost like it's been…