Taking Risks

I want you all to think a minute about Brad Pitt as Achilles in the movie Troy. Not his acting—just get a nice visual. There.
All righty then, that has very little to do with anything, but I wanted to get you in a good mood. I am going to refer to the ancient Greeks pretty soon so we’ll consider it a segue way.
When our esteemed workshop leaders gave me this topic because, Cynthia said “You take such big risks with your work,,” I put down the phone and dithered the rest of the day. You see, I don’t like risks. I don’t like taking them. I thought, I know my books are considering risky, certainly if you knew some of my decisions with publishers and Shattering Glass, you would consider me a risk taker, but to me, those were never risks. There was never a fork in the road that I had to agonize over. It wasn’t a choice. It was a path.
Let me back up with a little story. When I was an undergrad, I was a theater major. We were studying the Greek tragedies. (Ah back to Brad Pitt.) The play under discussion was Antigone. For those who don’t remember and for those who could care less, the Greeks were fighting as they endlessly did, Creon was the king, he had a son that was engaged to Antigone. Antigone’s brother for some reason was fighting against Creon and died in battle. Creon, while victorious was still in a major snit that he had been attacked and had declared that the enemy dead must stay on the field of battle to be befouled by scavengers. Anyone who offered burial to an enemy would be put to death. If you saw Troy, or know Greek mythology, you know that this is the worst indignity that could happen. Unless a Greek is given a proper burial, he cannot cross the river Styxx. He has no rest eternally. A relative that does not bury his dead will suffer the wrath of the gods as well.
And here’s Antigone. Does she bury her brother as her gods command and lose her physical life? Or obey her father-in-law-to-be who is flying in the face of the gods with his command and probably lose her chance for eternal happiness? She buries her brother. There’s lots of breast beating but Creon buries Antigone alive. Several suicides follow. It’s a Greek play.
The professor mentioned that some scholars felt that the play was more Creon’s dilemma that Antigone’s. That Antigone had no real choice. I was all over that. Of course Antigone had no choice. She was raised with the infallibility of the gods. She was hard wired to believe the afterlife as more important than the present one. The only person in the play that could change the outcome was Creon. The dilemma was his. No question. The professor turned to the class and said, “And that’s how you cast Antigone. Unless an actress believes it, she’ll never play it believably.”
I tell this long story to make a small point. To take risks, you have to be Antigone. For Antigone, there was no risk. Risk involves choice and she had none. She believed in her path too completely.
Oh fine, you say, forget the Greeks. I’m not burying a warrior, I’m writing a book, what has one to do with the other. IMHO: Everything.
Let’s look at how you can take risks in writing. My first favorite is character. Now all of us write a character that shares a lot of characteristics with our self. It’s what we do. But I think we need to be careful about not doing it over and again. Let’s look at Adult fiction, so I don’t get in trouble here. John Grisham. I used to really like him. That morally straight, southern lawyer that stands against the corporate blood sucker lawyers and dashes through the pages in righteous indignation against the corruption of noble jurisprudence. Okay, the MC was obviously John Grisham in thin disguise. He doesn’t even swear as JG is purported not to, as per his sainted Grandmother’s strict Baptist teachings. But, by golly in book two, even though the MC was female, she was a carbon copy of the MC in book one. And book three and four and ad nauseum. After that, I got really bored. I mean, I already knew half the book, the characterization and the motivation before I picked it up. Nothing was left but the plot. That’s all fine if you’ll just be honest and give him the same name and call it a series.
Now, John Grisham doesn’t care what I think. He’s too rich. But deep in his heart he’ll have to know that a risk taker he’s not. And to me it’s like never taking a good, deep breath.
So after you’ve written a supporting character that shares a few characteristics and maybe a MC that plumbs your depths—go crazy. Pick a character that is not only NOT you, but someone you probably would never pick as a friend. Let loose, let that character do things you wouldn’t do, make choices you don’t make. It doesn’t have to be a polar opposite but definitely different. How will I know how someone like that behaves? You ask? Maybe you won’t. But I’ll bet you will. You’ve met lots of people. And taking a risk jump starts the creative juices. Tickles a new section of the brain. Go eavesdrop on people. Taking risks means not knowing the outcome in advance. See where it leads you.
Take a risk with format. Now that’s really risky and I don’t advise you do it often or without reason. But sometimes if you start breaking a rule with format it gives you a great idea. It may end up being a conventionally formatted book, but it didn’t start that way. But, think about the first YA novel in verse. How risky was that? Now, I don’t love them all. It needs the right story, but when it’s right, It can be stunning.
Sometimes you can use an old format a new way. In Shattering Glass, I used what can be best called the flash forward as chapter headings. Been used before, will be used again. But think about how this sounds if I’m trying to pitch it. “Okay see, I open the book by telling everyone the first paragraph that the kids kill the main character. That’s what the whole book is about see and I tell them that right off. Then I start each chapter with a quote from a character the reader hasn’t met yet and he talks about something that hasn’t happened and he’s talking from a reference point 5 years in the future, but the reader doesn’t know that.” Oh sure, that’s going to work,
But I didn’t do it to be tricky or risky. I didn’t do it until late, late, late in revisions. I had rewritten this book a gazillion times. And while the book had really good, strong stuff, something just didn’t pull together. Young was unreliable on the subject of Rob. But he was my narrator. I needed balance. I also had a few characters that didn’t get the depth I wanted because they weren’t seen as real people by the characters that were dealing with them. Dallas Alice, Debbie the slut, Brook the prom Queen, even Lance. And the flash forwards were born. To mimic the giving the murder away, I give away future info by introducing a future character with his or her own words, giving them some depth. It made the risky format not a risk for me but a necessity. An editor, not to be named, begged me to get rid of them. I couldn’t. It wasn’t a wouldn’t. It really was a couldn’t. The book was rejected by that editor and sold to the next editor. I think and some reviewers seem to agree that the flash forwards are a great part of the novel’s success.
I play with format again in Playing in Traffic. There are no chapters per se. Matt the MC is very compartmentalized. His food doesn’t touch on his plate. He does’t multi-task, etc. He is the first person narrator, but when he is talking about his sister that section is titled KATY. When he makes a transition to something that happened with his friends the section is separated with the title KEN and JEREMY. It’s not a big thing, it’s not that unusual, but it fits Matt.
I’m not a big fan of changing tenses, but the then and now thing can be used well. Second person is hard to do, but if it’s for you—try it. Break a few grammar rules by all means. See if it works for you.
Take a risk emotionally. Oh, that’s hard. You might open yourself up too much. It might make someone angry (your mother?) When are you being self indulgent and whining instead of emotionally open? Well, now that’s where the risk is.
Let me list some movies here and maybe you will see what I mean. Jaws. Raiders of the Lost Ark and it’s sequels, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E. T. and then, Schindler’s List. Speilberg was begged by advisors and money men NOT to make this movie. Stick with his big budget summer fare. Kid friendly action movies. Do not open yourself up this way. But for Speilberg—he was Antigone now. It wasn’t a risk. It wasn’t a choice. It was a path he had to walk. And it finally won him his Oscar.
There are more small risks that help your creativity flourish, coin new words, break capitalization or punctuation rules, defy the reader’s expectations—I’m definitely going to do this in my new book, more later—or just say something unexpectedly honest.
Now, why take risks? Why not just follow the path and do what’s tried and true? Because the people that are good at that are already published and writing something new. Do you hear that? Something new. That means you have to BRING something new to the table. The maddening thing is—the powers that be are only attracted to someone new and different, but once they get it they try to turn in into something more mainstream to be easily marketable. That’s when you become Antigone. That’s when you believe in your work so strongly and so completely that you take the big risk. You take the edits that make sense and you stand firm on the things that made your book a stand out in the first place. The thing that pleased the gods. Again, for me it was a no brainer. My characters WOULD NOT DO what that editor was asking me to make them do. If you don’t believe your character that much, you need to go make it work until you do. Until your character is the brother and you are Antigone ready support to him against all odds—the book isn’t ready.
My last risk is to take risks with yourself. This is a personal thing. If you want to write MG historicals all of your career. Great. This is your path. Do it. But what if you don’t want to write the same kind of book? I’ve written three psychological thrillers in a row. I want to do other things. Do I risk it? Before I do I have to make sure the book I write is good enough, that I’m good enough to risk alienating my established audience. But sometimes it can be a more limited risk. My three novels end with open endings. I need to risk a novel that doesn’t have an ending like that. I need to defy audience expectation and even in a thriller give a novel closure. At least I’m pretty sure I do. See, I can’t risk that yet, because I’m not all Antigone about it. But when I get there, there’s no an editor or agent that will talk me out of it.
But there’s something that I know. An audience will clamor for the same thing over and over, but it you give it to them—they lose interest and you fade from sight. But if you are the Beatles or Speilberg and you keep changing—there’s grumbling at first, there’s I don’t like this NEW stuff, but you don’t get dated, you don’t fade away. But you don’t take a risk just to take it. You take a risk that you believe in. At least that’s the way I see it. I work on it until I know it’s good enough to believe in.
Now there’s this little thing I’m sure a few of you are thinking. Gail—Antigone ended up dead.
Yes, she did. But in my opinion, she died knowing she achieved immortality and stands with the gods. And more people know Antigone’s name than Creon’s.
That’s why you have to decide if there’s an Antigone in you.