Tag Archives: Johnnie Mazzocco writer

Getting to Know Your People’s Histories: Using Backstory to Inform Character Development

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In my last post, I wrote about the importance—necessity, even—of knowing your people… that is, your characters (for fiction and memoir) and your Ideal Reader, and yourself, (for non-fiction how-to self-help books).

Backstories

After we delve into who our characters and Ideal Readers are, we can get to know them even more deeply through their backstories—or histories. These histories are what shaped their beliefs and identities. (This is true also for those wanting to write the self-help or how-to non-fiction book and will apply to you, personally, as well because your personal story—the life events that brought you to write your book in the first place—will likely be woven throughout your book.) Through these beliefs and identities shaped from our characters’ backstories come their desires.

When we understand, on a deep level, our people’s heart-felt desires, we can develop compassion for those desires, and embrace the motivations behind them and the behaviors that prevent our people from attaining them. This will not only inform our story trajectories in fiction, it will also inform a deeper understanding of ourselves in memoir and the true pain points of our clients and potential customers and readers in non-fiction books.

Another facet of a character’s backstory we want to think about is setting. Setting is both temporal and spatial.

Temporal Setting

The temporal setting of a book or story is the era in which it takes place. The temporal setting of your characters’ backstories is important because it will inform much about your characters’ beliefs, social mores, and behaviors. Think about a teenage girl born in the 1950s and one born in the 2000s. They will be two very different people simply because of the time in which they were born. Now, place one of those girls in the U.S. and one in the UK or Africa or Asia during each of those times periods. You’ll have five distinctly different people.

When we can get clear on the temporal setting of our characters’ backstories, we can start to think more deeply about the WHYs behind their desires, motivations, and behaviors, and we can not only have a deeper understanding of them as people, but we can also represent them with more integrity and compassion on the page.

Spatial Setting

Spatial setting includes spaces and locations that figured into the shaping of the character’s identity because spaces shape who we are. Think about your own significant spaces and locations: your childhood home, your bedroom, your family’s kitchen, your school, your backyard, your school bus, your family’s car(s)… Now, think about how those spaces shaped your identity, what you care about, what you want, and what you don’t want. The same is true of our characters.

A young man raised on a farm will come to his college experience with a far different set of beliefs and desires than one raised in Manhattan. Think about how each of these characters might show up to an accounting class or a writing class and what their expectations, intentions, and fears might be. When we put together our characters’ pasts with their present-day fears, we’re writing from a place that will generate stories of universal appeal because we can get to the emotional experience of life. And no matter where we were raised or when, we all experience emotions the same. This is the bridge between us and our readers.

Characters’ backstories may not show up in the stories we write about them, but knowing and understanding them will inform us and influence the stories we write about them.

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Write 2-3 pages for one of your characters, your Ideal Reader, or yourself giving deep thought to their backstories and settings, and leave a comment below. I’d love to hear about what you discover.

Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Best,

Johnnie
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Your Life as Fodder – Or How to Grow a Story

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So often I hear people say they want to write but they struggle coming up with ideas. That they feel compelled to write at all tells me they already have ideas. It could be that they just don’t know how to get them outside themselves (remember the jar full of frenzied bees?). Or maybe they don’t know how to transform their ideas into a story and execute it. Or maybe they don’t believe anyone would care to read what they have to say. To all of that, I say this…

First of all, believe in yourself. (You can do it!) Second of all, you’d be surprised at the difference sharing your story can make for another person. (Really.) And third of all, if you really believe you’re out of ideas, simply look to your own life and go from there. (Your life is magical, mystical source of fodder.)

I’m not saying that you ought to write personal essay (unless that’s what you want to do) but that you can take snippets from your life and turn them into fictional stories. Treat those snippets like seeds that you can plant (put them on the page – just get them out of your head – and see what starts to sprout), water (stay with it, tend it, and add what’s needed – trust yourself to know), and prune (edit, cut, and relocate). When you commit to the growth of a story, it will grow.

Here are a few examples of events, phases, facets of my life that I can use to create fictional stories…

  • I had always wanted to experience living in an apartment building and managing it for the benefit of free rent. My personal story didn’t quite go that way – I managed SEVEN buildings (while working two other jobs), and I got a measly $250/month credit on my rent. My romantic fantasy became a horrible reality – the worst job I’ve ever had. (And that’s saying something.)

    Upper management was difficult to work with due to systemic dysfunction and a total lack of awareness that change was needed. One person, in particular – the Assistant General Manager with a bull-in-a-china-shop presence who perpetually, even angrily, chomped on a big wad of gum – was consistently rude and dismissive – even cruel. To me. I worked non-stop with no one to give me a break (even though they “sold” the job as one with TONS of flexibility – they lied). Some residents were demanding and rude. Some were lovely. The building was a “charming” old one in downtown and fraught with problems. I also got up close and personal with the homeless problem in ways I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I saw the underbelly of humanity.

    I moved into the apartment of the previous, beloved maintenance man who had died just a few months before. Management neglected to tell me he died in the apartment (until I asked). But it all worked out because he left a calming presence in the space. And the maintenance and painting crews were fun guys and treated me well. They were, by far, the best part of the job. Think a Raymond Carver-esque short story.

  • Just before taking the manager job at the apartments, I lived in an artists’ community. Sounds cool, right? It wasn’t. Rampant disregard for authority by residents who were underdeveloped emotionally and mentally, partially due to the enabling of the manager who was a lovely person as a person I’d want to know outside that context. You can bet that, someday, the people I met there will wind up in a screenplay, as will the four sane people I also met there. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with art and lots of weed and alcohol.

  • When I was 11, I came home from school one day. My grandma was there, as usual, and I could tell she had been crying. When I asked her why, she stalled, but I eventually learned that when she arrived at our house that day, she found a note on the kitchen table – It was a narrow sliver of torn, lined paper, just wide enough to accommodate two sentences – from my dad saying he was leaving us. I remember immediately going to my parents’ bedroom closet to find his half of the closet empty except for the several naked dangling hangers. The image of that emptiness was seared into my brain and serves as a metaphor for the emptiness his decision made in my life. While I long ago came to terms with that period of my life, it’s an image I can use to tell a story about family, selfishness, grief, infidelity, insanity, growing up too soon, strength, and more. Think a Joyce Carol Oates-esque short story.

So, if you’re compelled to write a story but can’t think of what to write, take some time to scan through your life and all the experiences you’ve had. You’ll find more ideas than you can handle. To start, make three lists:

  • Events/phases – like my working as a manager or living in an artists’ community
  • People – like the brutal Assistant General Manager or the uplifting maintenance crew and painters at the management company, or the enabling but very likeable Manager and “crazy” residents at the artists’ community
  • Images/objects – like the image of my parents’ half-empty closet and all those meager empty hangers

If you’d rather not write about yourself and your life, spin off from one small thing from your life and see what happens. The truth is… we can tell more truths about humanity through fiction than we can through writing from our life experience, anyway. So free yourself up. Draw from your life, then let your imagination take over. Not only will it free you up, but you also won’t have to concern yourself with being called out on “the facts.”

Give it a try and let me know what you come up with in the comments below.

Sending you mad writing mojo…

The reason you aren’t writing #4

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image from honeybeehaven.com

Imagine a bunch of bumble bees in a jar. The lid’s closed tight, and they want OUT. Frenzied, ricocheting, banging off the sides of the glass, slamming into each other. Getting more and more agitated.

This is your brain when you have TOO MANY ideas and thoughts. This is what happens when you hang on to those thoughts and ideas, thinking you can write it out in your mind, thinking you can figure it all out and have it all in order when you “have time” to get it all on the page.

The truth is, you won’t figure it out UNTIL you get what’s in there onto the page. So set the angry bees free, and do a word dump.

This may very well be my favorite phase of writing. It’s when I get to take all those crazy, frenzied, non-stop, LOUD thoughts in my head and purge them. Word dumping is similar to freewriting, but word dumping is more conscious.

Unload onto the page or screen (keyboard is a-okay for this process) every thought that comes to you about your character, story, scene, or plot without worrying that it makes sense, connects in any meaningful way, or has anything to do with your current plot or character trajectory.

Just get it all out. You can shape it later, much like a potter or a sculptor would. (I know, I’m mixing my metaphors… But you get what I’m getting at. Set the bees free, then throw the clay. All right?!) When a potter sits down at her wheel to start a new piece, she knows that a bowl or a vase or a cup won’t magically appear. She must first throw the clay to have something to work with.

Likewise, Taoists believe that a sculpture already exists in a block of marble and it’s the sculptor’s job to remove what isn’t needed. Get your thoughts outside yourself; then and only then will you be able to know what you’re working with and what you don’t need.

Set the timer for 10 minutes, and go.

Begin your writing exercise with the following phrase.

The thing I love most about my main character is _________________.

Let me know how it goes in the comments!

Sending you mad writing mojo…

Amalgamation – or How to respond when someone asks, “Is this about you?”

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According to Merriam-Webster, amalgamation is “the action or process of uniting or merging two or more things.” This can show up in the merging of businesses, the fusion of two different music styles, and the blending of two cultures.

In the world of writing, amalgamation happens consciously and unconsciously. Some writers intentionally draw from their personal lives, use real situations but change names to protect the innocent (and themselves from being sued), use their home town or state as the milieu for a story, and much more.

For other writers, like me, amalgamation happens unconsciously. It wasn’t until I was partway through the second draft of my in-progress novel, Miranda’s Garden, that I realized Crystal, Miranda’s (my main character’s) neighbor, is an amalgamation of both of my grandmothers. And I realized Miranda’s husband, Len, was an amalgamation of my first and second husbands and my cousin, Keith. I also consciously use Illinois and Colorado as settings for the story because I’ve lived in both areas long enough to be able to write about the terrain and because cornfields and mountains play an important part in the story, as metaphor.

An excellent example of a current author who uses amalgamation – and acknowledges it (although I’ve never read that he’s used this word to describe it) – is James Frey. Frey was in Portland recently talking about his newest book, Katerina. While at Powell’s City of Books, he indicated that he did, in fact, go to Paris in his early 20s to write and he did, in fact, date a model named Katerina, just like the character in the book. He said he also made up stuff.

You may recall Frey from the 2006 debacle when he and his book, A Million Little Pieces, rose to fame as a beacon of recovery after landing on Oprah’s Book Club list and was then knocked off her pedestal after it was discovered parts of the book were fictionalized. This unfortunate turn of events came about for a few reasons: Frey had used real-life events and embellished, Frey’s publisher thought it best to position the book as a memoir, and Oprah – to spare her precious ego and because she was clueless about how literary genres function – came out like God on the Day of Reckoning to publicly castigate and shame Frey.

This cluelessness is common, and I’ve seen it a lot after sharing my work and while attending public readings and exhibitions of others. Some readers/listeners/viewers feel the need to pry into the “truthfulness” of a story – even when that story is deemed fictional. Many will assume that the use of the first person “I” indicates a story about the writer. Or if the story is presented in third person point of view, there’s often the sly, “This is really about you, isn’t it?”

When I screened my feature film, Found Objects, some people commented on the similarities between the main character in the story and me. Yes, she was a creative soul who had lost herself in the domestic sphere of the nuclear family consisting of a husband and three kids. Yes, I drew from a couple of incidents – like the day my son, Spencer, came home from school and said he’d learned that physical touch can help us live longer (which from then on, for a long, long time, led to him saying, “Hey, mom, I wanna live longer” whenever he wanted a hug). And yes, the husband had wanted to be an architect, just like mine had, which I chose to use only because it aligned well with my use of houses and spaces as metaphors for our Selves. The rest was a story about a character that grew in my mind, became her own person, and had her own story to tell.

One of my professors from grad school had the perfect comeback for the is-this-about-you question: “Will knowing this allow you to take in the work differently?” In my experience, the answer has always been ‘no’.

Those who understand how the creative process works understand that whether we’re writing about ourselves or not is immaterial. It’s the story – the work – and its emotional impact that matter. In a world so fraught with accusations about what’s fake and what’s real, we must remember that, in many (most?) cases, truthfulness is subjective. If you and I live an event, we’ll both have different truths about it and what it means. As Albert Camus said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

Whether we’re writing fiction or memoir, you can bet there’s a complex blend of “lies” and truths. Memoirists often condense events and timelines, and they conflate characters. These decisions are usually done for the sake of economy of language among other reasons. Does it matter if a memoir isn’t completely factual? I don’t think so. Of course, there are ways to let readers know when we’ve made adjustments to “reality” (a note at the front of the book will suffice) if that’s important to you. But this is for every writer to decide.

When deciding whether or not I deem a book “good,” I don’t care much about the conventions of formatting or doing things “by the book,” and I won’t take the time to sleuth about to find out if the author did her/his research (for fiction) or lived through an event in the book (for memoir).  For me, what matters most is the emotional truthfulness of a story. If I read a book – fiction or memoir – and it touches me, resonates with me, and stays with me for days, I’m satisfied.

So… put the heart of your story first. Tell it with all the emotional truthfulness you and your main character can gather. Then decide how much you want or need to stick to the “facts.” It’s yours to tell.

Author Interview – Jemiah Jefferson

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What compelled you to tell the story/stories in your most recent book?
I’ve been secretly wanting to write a long-form work of erotica for many years – I always sort of mixed it in with a lot of genre elements because I love to also make up my own fictional reality, but I had these characters so firmly in mind I just wanted to tell their story uncomplicated by the supernatural. I had really been living with and developing those characters for years and I just had to determine a framework for them to exist inside, and the story would tell itself.

What obstacles did you encounter while writing the book?
Lots and lots. The major obstacle is one of the most major in life – I have multiple sclerosis, and though I am doing extremely well compared to others managing the syndrome, my daily life is generally exhausting and painful, and it takes up a lot of time that I’d prefer to spend in other ways. I injured my arm about six months and ten chapters into the writing process and was unable to sit and type for hours as I had been used to doing. Then I found that my usual position, posture, and location for writing was having a very painful negative effect on my left hip! Having to change my physical position for writing was a thousand times harder than I’d ever imagined – I’d been doing it that way for a couple of years at that point, and writing as much as 50 hours a week (for years!). And then my former publisher went under and I had a months-long, drawn-out battle to secure the rights to the material I’d had published with them. Then I had a major surgery and was too wasted on pain meds to be able to write (or think clearly) for several months. Then my self-esteem as a writer, as a producer of content for the world of publishing, took a terrible hit and I didn’t just give up on this particular novel – I gave up as a writer altogether. So I self-published a novel I’d had sitting around for more than ten years just to learn the world of self-publishing. It was great! But it wasn’t the same as actual WRITING. Somehow I managed to write something totally else – once again fan fiction saved the day – and I realized that I’d written at least a novel’s worth of content since “giving up.” So I went back to this story… and then was unable to get feedback on the material. So I gave up again. And THEN, once again, wrote some fanfic, which was very satisfying, and realized that I had a novel ALMOST entirely finished – I thought I might as well finish it, and self-publish it, and just get on with it – determining its quality, or its relevance, was not something that was up to me to determine.

How has writing your most recent book changed or added value to your life?
I honestly don’t know. It changed my life in some ways, in that I haven’t felt so discouraged as a writer for decades. I’ve taken some nasty hits of self-esteem and belief in the years, but this one was pretty major. Fundamentally I’m a writer – I have a certain core identity in addition to that, but writing is what I do – it’s what I love and where I feel my greatest talents lie. It’s not the healthiest perspective, but there it is. I guess the only real answer is “I’m glad I’m finally done with it!” I started writing it more than nine years ago. I’ve never taken nine years to do ANYTHING. I gave up multiple times. But I realized that my self-esteem would be even more destroyed if I just dropped it and conceded defeat.

Did you self-publish or did you go the traditional route? What was that process like?
I self-published Before and After Michael. I don’t have a publisher or an agent or any “official” formal entry into the world of traditional publishing anymore, and to be totally honest I don’t even know how to go about securing any of those things. The fact that it happened in the first place, I tend to regard as a fluke. I was very unprepared for the only agent I’ve ever had to just drop me and vanish off the face of the earth, or for my publisher to literally go out of business. So basically, I don’t understand the process of traditional publishing – but I now have all of the necessary skills to not just write a book, but to edit, proofread, format, obtain visual talent to produce cover images, obtain an ISBN, and publish using online resources. And I love to do it. I always wanted to have some kind of input over book cover images, and also book jacket copy, and things like the interior design of the book – its typeface, its margins, its title treatment, and all that stuff. And now I do. However I have no publicity apparatus, and not very much money for marketing, so my sales will probably not be very good. That, more than anything, is the difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing – companies have publicity and marketing departments with skilled staffers, as well as a budget to make those things happen. It makes a huge difference in terms of visibility and potential sales.

Are you friends with other writers? If so, how do they influence your writing?
I am friends with tons of other writers of all types. I wouldn’t say they really influence my writing very much, actually – I am the only one doing the thing I do, and I do it because nobody else does it – so there’s not really much chance of influence. I do want their feedback to my work, though, but it doesn’t happen very often. It’s interesting to see other people’s paths and how they approach the work, and the subsequent promotion or discussion of the work. It’s always very different from mine.

Do you maintain a regular writing practice? If so, what does it look like?
I used to write hours and hours every day – I’d come home from work and write until I went to sleep, and repeat again the next day. One day – about 6 or 7 years ago, now – I sort of hit a wall, and I haven’t been able to do that anymore since then. Now, I don’t write regularly at all. I only write when I’m not just inspired, but I’m physically comfortable, I’m liable not to be disturbed for a while, and I have enough energy to get the ideas done coherently. That doesn’t happen super often these days. I’ve managed to write three novel-length works of fiction in those six or seven years, which seems pretty great except compared to how I was before, when I wrote a novel every six months to a year – for almost 20 straight years. Writing has become increasingly difficult, though I have no shortage of ideas. I’m just exhausted (and admittedly discouraged) more than anything else.

How many other books or stories do you have in progress right now?
No actual novels have been started in the last ten years, unless you count fan fiction, and I don’t, because despite their finished lengths being in the 90,000 word range, they are written and constructed as linked long short stories or novellas that average about 10-12,000 words each. A whole novel seems really intimidating to me now. But I’ve got a few vague ideas that I’ve been kicking around for years that, if the right spark happens, I will be noveling again! In the meantime, I have two fan fiction series that need a final installment, so I’m mostly trying to get my head in the game to finish those. One of them’s been waiting for four years for me to get back to it!

Do you view writing as a spiritual practice?
Only in the sense that it’s what I feel I truly do, and it’s what makes my life matter. I mean, sure, I have a job and all that, and I have a pet, but that’s pretty much it. When I am writing I feel amazing. It’s the best fun ever and I love it and it makes me feel like a genius. It’s a drag that I’m too tired and/or depressed, most of the time, to actually feel like doing it. I have to keep my job and that’s all I have the energy to do.

What would your life look like if you didn’t write?
It’s bleak. I’ve been there. I haven’t got almost anything else to live for – just being a good person is worthy, but I really want and need more out of life. But I also have to do without those things I need and want (because there are plenty of other things I need and want, but I can’t just have them for the asking – or even the working towards it), and that’s just reality. Yeah, I’m a grim soul.

Why do you write?
I don’t know, but I have to. I have been doing it all my life – when I was a little kid I called it “stories” and I’d just make up narratives for play. Once in a while I’d have a friend and they would share in the narrative and it was great, but most of the time I didn’t have even one friend I could share that with – and that’s when I started writing the narratives down so that I could re-read them myself. It’s a literal compulsion. I have to do it or I lose my mind, quite literally – I have too many ideas and I have to delineate and narrate at least some of them so I can get to sleep at night, and have a reason to get up in the morning. Also, I completely live on praise, and when I have to do without that for too long, I really fall apart.

Jemiah Jefferson is the author of the vampire novels Voice of the Blood, Wounds, Fiend, and A Drop of Scarlet, as well as the dark comedy, Mixtape for the Apocalypse and erotic literary fiction, Before and After Michael, her latest novel. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with a tuxedo cat, blackout curtains, and a collection of books and graphic novels that has grown completely out of control.