Week 4 Reading Response

Jon Franklin rubbed me the wrong way. Like if I ever encounter this guy in the real world, I’m going to go up to him, stand inches away from his face, and shake my head.

It’s not that he doesn’t give valid writing advice (he is a two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner after all). It was his delivery of the advice that irritated the shit out of me. For example, on p. 147, he cites the tension he created in “The Ballad of Old Man Peters” between Wilk and the marauding teenagers: “See the pretty bauble in my right hand...and I’ll pick your pocket with my left.”

...Seriously?

First off, who uses the word “bauble”? I’m pretty sure I’ve only heard that word maybe once, and it was in relation to a Christmas tree ornament.

But other than that, no one says that word.

Second, I’m not even quite sure what voice to use when I read this sentence—was this intended to be serious or was Franklin chuckling while he wrote it? Is this a thing you say to people? Is there a generational gap going on here?

But, I knew I needed to slow down the Franklin Hate Train when I realized he was actually giving good advice.

Here are some of my favorite Franklisms:

1.) Check complication-resolution pairs: Because I never outline, this is a big problem in my writing. I always seem to end up with two different stories because my complication-resolution pairs are only sorta related. His advice is simple but useful: Write the complication on one 3x5 card and the resolution on another. Use three words, such as “Cancer strikes Joe” (p.84) so you’re forced to reduce your story to its backbone.

2.) In the best stories, the odyssey from complication to resolution changes the character profoundly: I don’t know if it’s because I’m boring or if it’s because I’m creepy, but I find most things people do to be fascinating. I would probably find the way a lady eats her toast interesting enough to write about (but then again, I love watching people eat—creepy, right?). So, I think this piece of advice is a reality check that not everyone is as boring or as creepy as me, and that readers respond to change in characters.

3.) At the conceptual levels, the cliché becomes an eternal truth: I once had a professor who was like the Cliché Gestapo, so I developed a pretty real fear of them. Sometimes I feel like I circumnavigate my point in order to avoid clichés. But, as Franklin explains, it is structure that we want most in a story. He later says, “Eternal truths, being eternal, have all (or almost all) been spoken before by other writers in other times.” (p.131). That point hit me in the face because it’s one of those obvious things you already know but don’t understand until someone else says it.

4.) The simpler an outline is, the more it focuses your thoughts on the important relationships in your story: In addition to clichés, I have a fear of outlines. I hate outlines. Which, as I previously mentioned, is why my complication-resolution pairs don’t always match up. I think Franklin’s emphasis on the use of action verbs in outlines is critical to his point...I fear outlines because I get overwhelmed and think I have to plot out my whole story. But, Franklin recasts the outline as a tool to use to show the progression of action.  

5.) Unless you remember to include the cues that will allow the reader to orient himself, he won’t become absorbed at all: This is another big problem in my writing. I tell stories like a little kid. I’m so anxious to spit the story out that I assume everyone knows the context. But, the best stories are the ones where the reader feels like he/she is there, experiencing the action alongside the protagonist. Like Harry Potter—everyone totally feels like they’re picking their wand out and being sorted into Gryffindor and that they can talk to snakes. And the only way that effect is achieved is by the consistent presence of cues.