Everything You Do As a Writer Should Be in Service of Your Vision

"These Brief Exchanges" by Suzanne Grove | Plus what's on deck in the mag and upcoming Write or Die events

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Our magazine update is a little different today. We know you have been missing Suzanne’s monthly craft tips, so we decided to give her the whole damn issue. And believe me, dear reader, when I say it was worth the wait. Enjoy this encouraging piece, and please feel free to comment with your thoughts or responses to her prompt below. Keep scrolling for Write or Die news on upcoming events and what’s on deck for the mag in February <3

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These Brief Exchanges by Suzanne Grove

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One of my very best friends likes a man, and the people around her are demanding a plot.

But, you two have known each other for over a decade, right? You've been orbiting in the same circles for years? (Backstory) Aren't you both in competition for the same job, and didn't he recently leave his wife? (Hook) But, you've never technically had a boyfriend. Aren't you tired of casual? Honestly, I don't think you've ever been in love. Don't you want to be in love? (Motivation + Goal) If you actually allow yourself to open up for once, your entire life will change. (Character Arc) I think you're in denial. You have to be practical. You're only going to get older, and lonelier. (Stakes) (Also, evil.) Ohhhhhh. Wait. Isn't he an instructor for that course you're facilitating next month? And he literally saved you that night you got lost for hours out in [REDACTED]?? (Inciting Incident)

At three or four AM, my phone throws a white heat against the shadowed walls of my bedroom. Outside, cloudless and starless, the moon hanging high like a prop against a black scrim. Inside, a claustrophobic damp, the humidifier exhaling its cool breath over my body while my friend sends me screenshots of their messages. It feels illicit to hold these intimacies in my hands, to read the words at the surface of their communications. The writer inside me can't help but want to dive deep. I wonder, What does he mean? What is she really trying to say here? Signifier and signified. I fall back to sleep thinking of my sophomore linguistics professor. His endless corduroy pants, even in spring. The slippers he wore as shoes.

In the morning, my friend and I leave each other long voice notes.

"I am tired of everyone having an opinion," she says. "I'm going in a million different directions right now with work. I just enjoy chatting with him all day, checking in with each other."

She is busy.

Sometimes her face is on the television.

"They want it to become something," she continues. "Why can't it just be? I'm happy with these brief exchanges."

Still listening, I open my notes app: These Brief Exchanges. Title?

"This is your life," I respond. "Let it be whatever you need it to be. You have to resist the narrative they're trying to impose."

Reader, I want to say the same thing to you.

*

The discourse (god, I hate the word discourse) around plot and plotlessness is tired. Because I cannot help but devour every craft essay and every writer's newsletter, I have read all the takes. I know all the opinions. You, too, know all the takes and all the opinions. But, on a recent literary podcast, I heard one host argue he is tired of the modern, episodic novel with no larger, cohesive narrative structure while another argued that he is tired of plot-driven literary fiction. I figure if these men can keep rambling on about it, I would like to ramble, too.

(And I do, as you will see, ramble.)

While I am, in fact, sharing some thoughts here, I have zero desire to make an argument. I would have floundered horrifically at any level of collegiate debate. (Although I do believe the audience would have found some squirming yet pleasurable discomfort in watching me falter and implode, which is a kind of successful performance in itself, so—.) But, I do have a goal: I want to go on record as saying, GIVE ME ALL THE "PLOTLESS" NOVELS AND STORIES and JUST DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.

Also, depending upon how you define "plot," I think even the girl-wanders-around-NYC-borough-while-thinking-about-her-life-plus-lots-of-parties-plus-lots-of-booze-plus-lots-of-literary-and-pop-culture-references-plus-surreal-genre-element-plus-exhaustive-descriptions-of-food-novel contains a shit-ton of plot.

Okay, maybe I do have a small argument to make.

The most basic definition of plot I can conjure is this: a sequence of actions dependent on causality and driven by the protagonist results in both external and internal changes.

Here's where we get hung up: the whole causality thing and the whole driven by the protagonist thing and the whole external and internal changes thing. We're told in creative writing workshops that scenes should fall like dominos, one after the next, action and reaction informing the forward momentum of the story. And we're told that things must not happen to our characters but must be instigated by our characters. And we're told that the sum of these events, by their conclusion, must create an alteration in the way in which our characters exist in the world of the story.

Okay, so we get hung up on all of it.

What was my point again?

Oh, this: Who cares? How about we redefine plot? Can we do that?

PLOT = INTERACTION (in the body or in the mind or in dreaming).

We (as people in real life) and our characters (as people in fiction) are constantly interacting with ourselves or with the world around us, whether we like it or not. The forces of existence are always acting upon us and we, in turn, are always acting upon them just by that mere fact of our own existence. So, the cry of Nothing happens in these literary novels! is simply, categorically, false. And the stories we tell do not have to be traditionally sequential and your characters do not have to initiate action but can be acted upon and by the end they might just end up right back at the start, as confused and lost as ever. Because, why not. Because, physics. Because, entropy. Because disorder is the natural state of the universe. Because both real life and the artifice we create out of art do not have to adhere to anyone's rules. Because, how absurd. And boring.

Actually, I too am tired. Tired of rambling on about plot, so let's shift to another question entirely.

What is your vision?

Take a look at the most recent draft you've written. Novel or short story. When you first began, what did you want to do? Not in some grand artistic sense, but what small thing initially got you excited? I don't want a philosophical artist's statement, but I want to know what you looked forward to in that piece of writing. What sounded like it would be fun? In my most recent novel manuscript, I really wanted to write a simulated sex scene between two actors in the early morning hours, in a parking lot, on the Florida coast. That's it. I wanted to describe their bodies and the tension between them and the steam of the landscape. I wanted to create claustrophobia, but also vulnerability. When the first sentence came to me out of nowhere, writing that opening scene sounded like the most fun I could possibly have. Later, I desperately wanted to do a handful of things with that manuscript: I wanted to get inside the moments during which grief first occurs—not looking back on it with some distance and perspective, but go deep into the mind and body in a stream-of-consciousness way; I wanted to write about longing, both romantic and artistic; I wanted to write good sex scenes; I wanted to write about writing; and hallucinations; and jealousy; and desperation; and acting, because I sometimes miss being on the theatrical stage. I did not, at any point, get excited by or concern myself with causality or agency or arc. Those elements came later, as a result of, and not because of, my vision.

Everything, everything, everything (every damn thing) should be in service of your vision. The form, the tense, the POV, the syntax, the voice, the style, the process—whether you type the whole story or novel with your thumbs on your phone in bed for 20 minutes every day over the course of two years or sit for five hours upright handwriting on a legal pad for a decade—should all flow out of your vision.

DO NOT PUT THE RULES FIRST. PUT YOUR VISION FIRST.

If you have interaction (and, trust me, you do), you have plot. Period. So, here, perhaps, finally, is the point of this craft tip: Let's put this idea of plot aside for a while and just focus on your vision. Focus on that question I asked above. What are you excited about? In every chapter, on every page, in every paragraph, on every line. I want you to define it. Seriously. Print out your story and on every page, I want you to identify what is causing you to have fun as you write. Because I bet the answer will end up being one or more of all the other elements we like to talk about in craft essays such as this. A sharp little piece of dialogue that shatters you. A stunning and unique description you'll remember twenty years from now. A shift or revelation from a character that seems shocking but inevitable. A raising of the stakes. The introduction of a mystery. The consequences of an action set in motion one-hundred pages earlier.

And, remember, when you're the writer, "fun" can be dark, can be devious, can be emotionally gutting, can make you sob. It seems almost inappropriate to say that perhaps the most fun I had drafting the aforementioned manuscript occurred when I wrote the stream-of-consciousness scenes of my protagonist first processing the death of her lover. They were fun because they allowed me to access every intricate fucking detail of an experience soaked in emotional truth, the sharing of which felt divine. You do not need to make sure you're showing instead of telling or telling instead of showing or moving at some pace someone somewhere decided was fast enough. You just need to make sure the telling of the thing feels divine. Because it's fun, it's so much fun.

If you don't feel like taking any of this advice from me, let me give it to you from someone else.

In a 1990 feature on David Lynch in The New York Times titled "A Dark Lens on America," Richard B. Woodward raises a question about film technique as the two men sit at Jerry's, a now-shuttered restaurant in SoHo.

Lynch finishes his BLT, takes sips of his coffee.

“I don't think about technique,” he says. “The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that, or you're dead.”

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Magazine Updates and Upcoming Events

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Sharpen Your Copyediting Skills – Copyediting 201 with Jordan Koluch

If you’re comfortable with The Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster but want to take your copyediting to the next level, Copyediting 201: Beyond the Basics is for you.

This three-week deep dive (starting March 5) goes beyond grammar and punctuation to tackle style sheets, bibliographies, tricky notes, and real-world editing challenges. Plus, you’ll get hands-on practice and personalized feedback from an expert.

📅 Dates: March 5, 12, & 19
🕖 Time: 7–9 PM (EST)
💰 Cost: $175

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On Deck in the Mag

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This month, you can expect:

A new fiction piece we’re thrilled for you to read, crafted through the collaboration of two talented writers.

The drop of our second themed issue, in collaboration with guest editor Ashleah Gonzales! You will be able to read five fantastic essays responding to the Elliptical Love call.

Our first fiction contest! (details forthcoming!)

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We are open for submissions for…

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Fiction

Send us your short stories! We also have an expedited submission option where you can hear back within two weeks! Bonus: all fees go directly to pay our editors, who volunteer their time generously to make this magazine what it is <3

Creative Nonfiction

We are interested in essays that focus on the writing life and especially love work where the personal intersects with the critical.

Author Interviews

We accept pitches from interviewers interested in covering authors with a forthcoming or recently published book. We are especially interested in featuring books by debut authors and/or books published by indie presses.

↓ Click the button below for additional details about what we are looking for and how to submit it! ↓

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