This guy’s writing is out of this world

Last night, the Columbia MFA Program hosted its final creative writing lecture of the semester, in which novelist Mat Johnson (CU School of the Arts ‘99) discussed story structure – what to do, what not to do, and what’s necessary to understand before you start. Betsy Ladyzhets, Bwog writer, creative writer, and drawer of many imperfect circles, attended the lecture and attempted to learn something.

An author walks into a room full of MFA students and tells them to draw a circle.

The audience has been prepared for this; they were given sharpened pencils and pieces of blank white paper upon arrival. (They were also given sandwiches, beverages, and cookies, although whether or not this was at all related to the circle-drawing process is up for debate.) But the audience has also not prepared for this; although not every single audience member was a Columbia MFA student, the vast majority were writers who likely hadn’t been required to draw circles since their high school geometry classes. And none of them are Giotto, a thirteenth-century artist who drew a perfect circle as his resume when he was up for a commission from the Pope.

Prepared or not, each audience member at Mat Johnson’s lecture last night attempted to draw a circle. Johnson also picked one volunteer to draw a circle on the whiteboard that stood at the front of the room. Of course, none of the writers were able to complete the task. Johnson spent a minute critiquing various circles, describing them as lopsided, misshapen, or just plain unfortunate.

But why all this preoccupation with circles? They’re just shapes, right? Wrong – in writing, a shape is never just a shape. And in a lecture on writing, a circle is a metaphor for structure. This circle-drawing became an extended analogy Johnson used throughout his talk to discuss story structure.

Johnson explained that he chose to focus on structure in his talk because, as a graduate of Columbia’s MFA program himself, he knew that such programs usually didn’t spend much time on structure, placing more value on beautiful language and literary techniques. The MFA system is set up to teach short stories, so you don’t learn how to structure a novel, he explained. As an example of the disadvantage of such a system, Johnson cited his own first novel: “There was no fucking story in the whole book,” he said.

A novel, according to Johnson, starts out as a “collection of scenes.” If these scenes aren’t given purpose, they stay scenes – but if the writer finds a driving force behind them, they can be molded into a story. Johnson compared this process to an Olympic gymnast he saw on TV once: because the gymnast made a misstep fifty yards back from the pommel horse, she didn’t place her hands correctly, and landed flat on her back instead of on her feet. It’s the same way with writing a story – you have to know where you’re going.

But that knowledge doesn’t happen immediately. And this is where the circle analogy comes in: although we all know, intellectually, what a perfect circle looks like, very few people can draw one. Similarly, very few people can write a perfect story on their first go. “You intend for your story to be one thing, and something else comes out,” Johnson said.

Johnson believes that, instead of forcing their stories to adhere to their original purposes, writers should roll with the changes – because what comes naturally is more interesting. To (literally) illustrate this, he took a circle the volunteer audience member had drawn on the board and shaped it, not into a perfect circle, but into a doodle he called “little chubby face, pointing to the sky.” (Or, a guy with a beanie who looked sad.)

The secret to writing a good story, Johnson said, is “accepting that you’re not in charge of your work.”

However, a story can’t be entirely chaotic. Some semblance of order has to be introduced, or nobody will be able to tell it’s a story. Because we know what a circle is supposed to look like, we can still see a circle on a whiteboard when half of it has been erased. Similarly, if we know what a story is supposed to look like, we can fool around with it. “You can do whatever you want after you know what it is you’re supposed to do,” Johnson said.

So, what is a story supposed to look like, then? This question brought Johnson back to the idea of a collection of scenes. A story, according to his definition, is a sequence of scenes that leads to an epiphany. When he writes, he writes a bunch of scenes, reaches an epiphany of meaning (usually a meaning different from his original purpose), then edits to change the original scenes to better suit the epiphany. This leads to a new epiphany, which leads to new editing, which in turn leads to a new epiphany, and so on. After several rounds of editing, story emerges – and it’s a story that both author and readers can understand.

Johnson then spent a few minutes discussing the specific structure of a typical novel. He mapped out the typical novel as analogous to a typical mystery story: just as a mystery starts with a crime, then leads to a buildup of understanding, which leads to a solution, a novel starts with character, setting, and character that leads to personal growth, which leads to understanding. Most modern novels, he claimed, have this structure, or some (at least vaguely) recognizable variation upon it. Johnson illustrated his point by mapping out the movie “Amadeus” (suggested by the audience) according to his structure.

“Now that you know the basic structure,” Johnson said, “you can go nuts. Mr. Asshole Critic at the Times won’t understand what you’re doing, but you’ll be doing something interesting.”

He also mentioned that his lecture might seem confusing, but that’s because it was “like two terms of information” packed into an hour. “It’s not that it’s hard to understand, it’s hard to accept.”

Less hard to accept is the fact that Johnson, a writer who can explain structure so succinctly, is an accomplished novelist himself: his books have won him numerous awards. The student who introduced him yesterday night described his writing as “funny, poignant, and brutally honest.” His most recent novel, Loving Day, the story of a man discovering a lost daughter, confronting ghosts, and discovering the possibility of utopia, is a New York Times Notable Book. And his 68,000 followers on Twitter think he’s pretty great, too.

After his lecture, Johnson took a few questions from the audience. The last question asked him to discuss how storywriting and structure have changed in the past century, and where writers might go from here. Johnson said that today’s novels are getting tighter and tighter, because good authors know that, if they want to be read, they really need to engage with their audiences. “When I write a novel, I’m competing with HBO and internet porn,” he said.

And as for where storywriting might go from here, Johnson has no idea, but he’s excited to find out. He concluded: “It will be interesting to see what you guys come up with.” Who can say where our imperfect circles might take us?

Astronaut man via Columbia Arts website