A Short Story (in the style of Hugo)

I'm reading Les Misérables right now, and it's unlike anything I've ever read before. As the introduction by the translator says, Victor Hugo wasn't well-versed in the practice of novel writing, because he couldn't simply omit things that he had to say. Anything that came out of his and was worth describing was written down, which is why the final product is a book several inches thick, with nearly 70 pages discussing an irrelevant battle and far too many paragraphs about a character's daily lifestyle, or perhaps a rocking chair. If you've seen the musical or the movie, you know that they're long, too, and incredibly emotional. Just try to imagine how much content had to be removed from the original story to fit the script and the stage, though, and how much poetry was lost in the process of changing the words into lyrics. If you appreciate the musical, read the book. It's a decision you won't regret.

Yesterday, when I was supposed to be doing homework, this came to mind, based off of a scenario I encountered while walking to dance a few hours earlier (as a disclaimer, I didn't really witness a car accident. I just watched another car back up alarmingly close to another. I also have no idea who the people were the in the car.) You could say that this girl is a fictionalized version of me, and you could also say that the only difference is our appearance. Whatever you make of it, though, my intention was basically to just try to write like Victor Hugo, because his style is so unique. So this is me, pretending that I'm him. There might be more to come, but I won't know it until I see it, so this is all I wrote yesterday.

    October came swiftly, and it found Melena sitting in a courtroom.

    It was no matter of chance for her being there, yet she had committed no crime. It’s unclear at the present, but as the story progresses we’ll see that there is no way for our protagonist to be found on a trial of her own, at least not in any logical setting. She was far too conventional, the quiet and law abiding student in a class of crowd pleasers, whom one usually finds in a corner, reading a book. There may have been a place in her heart for romanticized rebellion, but her brain was much too dominant to let it get too out of hand. To tell the truth, in her hometown, it wouldn’t be terribly uncommon for child of sixteen to be on trial, but Melena simply wasn’t that type of person. So what was she doing in a courtroom?

    The case was simple and trifling: it had been a few weeks earlier, when fall was just starting to sneak its way into the air. Melena was walking her daily route on the side of the road after school let out one afternoon when she came across a crosswalk, blocked almost entirely by a car. Upon seeing her, the vehicle began to back up out of the crosswalk, without gauging the distance between itself and the car behind it, committing the mistake we all dread and cross our fingers against. Horns blasted, metal scraped and small bits of glass fell to the ground, while Melena stood wide-eyed on the sidewalk. Despite herself, she laughed a little, thinking of herself and how the anxiety that filled with car when she drove, because of situations like this. Then she hurried into the street to help, because there was no way she could simply walk away after witnessing that.

    Nobody was hurt in the accident, but insurance companies were disgruntled. The front car had been driven by a woman by the name of Elizabeth Fox, who worked for a bank in town and was known for always being in a rush. Being an economically savvy woman, Ms. Fox jumped to find ways to fix the back of her car that didn’t involve spending a fortune. The other driver, on the other hand, was a young mother named Lucy Button, whose toddler son had been riding with her, and whose vehicle suffered considerable damage. It was the classic case of unnecessary lawsuits: if Ms. Fox had simply agreed to pay the sum needed to fix Mrs. Button’s car, the problem would be solved and everybody would go on living happily. But she was adamantly against it, and thus a trial was born. Lucy Button, intimidated by Elizabeth Fox’s overbearing and confident demeanor, raced to find the girl who had been at the crosswalk at the time. Melena had mentioned her first name in passing as she helped the little boy out of the car, and after that it wasn’t too difficult to track her down at the school. She agreed to be a witness, if nothing else because she could see the worry in Mrs. Button’s eyes, and understood how important it was. She was the only one who had been on the street at the time, and Elizabeth Fox was a prominent figure in the community, whereas Lucy Button was young and new to the area. Also, it goes without saying that Melena was an overall well-meaning girl.

    In order for the rest of the story to go on, one must understand Melena, especially since she was commonly misunderstood. She was fair-skinned and blue-eyed with light brown hair, an average character in an average storybook. The question of her beauty was what kept her up at night staring into the mirror, what made her shy away from mirrors and duck from cameras. Her parents loved her, without a question, and were constantly telling her that she was gorgeous, but any person knows that that is simply the job of a loved one. Despite her doubts, though, the girl seldom let it get to her. She was far too preoccupied with the rest of her life, and the opportunities to glance into a mirror became less and less frequent. Vanity, after all, is a quality of the bored.

    She was in her eleventh year of schooling, and working harder than she ever had before. If she had time, she would pause occasionally and remark, “it’s as if I never stop doing everything!” Indeed, she didn’t. Her days were filled from the moment she got up to the seconds before she turned out the light for the night, and only then did she relax in the stillness of the night, praying to drift off to sleep and not be plagued with insomnia. At school, the teachers gave out more work than they ever had before, and she would spend hours throughout the day filling in the gaps of time between events to make sure everything was completed. From the moment she got up, her eyelids would feel heavy, and the sensation would last until she laid down to sleep an eternity later. In the monotonous hours of school, particularly in the afternoon, the room might begin to feel almost too peaceful, and she would lay her cheek down on her desk for a while, before jolting herself back up in order to copy down something from the board or go on the next activity.

    As only the most dedicated will know, along with the gain of discipline comes with loss of freedom. It didn’t take long for her to find that shamelessness was quickly slipping out of her fingers. When one spends all of her time working, the concept of being idle becomes more and more abstract. If she finished her work and still had time to enjoy, she would stare at her notes and exclaim, “Can it really be?” Most often, she didn’t believe herself. Even the simple act of reading a book or jotting down a story came with guilt. The clock became her constant companion, always keeping track of the seconds for her. There was never enough time in the day, she realized.

    In her allotted spare time, she might seek solitude in her bedroom, where she struggled with the concept of musicality, disagreeing with her violin over and over as she tried to coax the right sound out of it. Metronomes would tick, pencil marks would be made, notes would slide out of tune and she would eventually get so frustrated that her fingers would begin playing old pieces rather than the task at hand, just because they were more pleasing to the ear. Yet it was during this time that she was able to slip into a different sort of dimension, where the music was simply background noise for her thoughts. She encountered the same feeling during ballet class, where she would stand at the barre contemplating her life’s decisions, while raising her leg in a grand battement, the ballet mistress clapping her hands to the rhythm of the music behind her. She stumbled across it while she was cleaning the house or washing the dishes, when the job becomes mere busywork and the thoughts of the doer are the most important thing in the world right then.

    Paused, with a dripping plate in her hand, she would stare ahead and say to herself, “Is it all worth it? Is it really?”

    But the most important thing to know about Melena is that, to her, it absolutely was. More accurately, she loved it with a passion. Boredom had always been her most terrible enemy, and she could never stand the feeling of not learning anything. “I feel like I’m losing brain cells,” she would complain during the summer months, where the sunlight constantly shone in through the window and the days were completely up to her. Business was what preserved her sanity, what made her more grateful for times of quiet and peacefulness, and what she felt defined her. “I wouldn’t be happy without all of these things that make me what I am,” she told herself. “If I were to give one of them up, I would be giving up a piece of myself.”

    And behind all of that, there was so much more to the girl. She was a lover of stories, and was never without one in hand, whether it was something she was reading or something she had created herself. She sang when she thought nobody was listening (unless she was in the company of her family, to whom she subjected countless songs). She read the tales of fellow people around the world and imagined what the rest of the planet must look like. Her walls were papered with maps. She listened to politics and discussed current matters with those who would listen. Suppertime in  her family was always a lively event, with some sort of debate going on about something somehow relevant. Logic was her good friend, except for the cases where she would throw it out into the cold and completely turn her back on it. She was polite to adults, comical with the right sort of people, lively with her friends and sweet with younger children. If she were to come across herself described in a book, she wouldn’t recognize herself. Yet this was undeniably how she was.

    That is all we will say about the life of Melena, for the time being. It’s inevitable that she will become more and more apparent as the story goes on, but that is for her to show us when she feels it necessary.

How to Write Good

It's a sad day when you realize that creative writing just isn't part of your life like it used to be. Gone are the days when you would wake up early and balance cereal on your lap while you wrote out everything that you thought up after you went to bed the night before. There's no more staying up late, furiously typing by the glowing light of your superawesome PC, or randomly thinking up new ideas while in the shower and dashing upstairs with wet hair to get it all out on paper. No, those days are gone. Now you use your writing magic for essays about World War II justifications and controversial editorials for the school newspaper. You stress about deadlines for contests, and then get all nostalgic when you remember that story you wrote that one time in sixth grade about the magic attic. But what can I say, it's inevitable. Also, television has become a great way to spend your free time. 

But you still read, and you still think about writing all the time, because you hope that someday you'll be one of those people who does it for a living. You hope that someday you'll be memorable enough to write a memoir and give people a reason to read it. But for now, here's a guide on how to write, in case you forget sometime within the next two years of high school. Feel free to ignore it, or frame it and put it on your wall. (And this is coming from someone who has a spot on her wall dedicated to particularly funny Weekend Update jokes, but not the 10 Qualities of an IB Student or something else important.) Huzzah!

Sophie's Expert* Guide on How to Write

1.) Write about what you know.

There's no point in trying to use your ethos and make a claim about something if you don't understand or care about it. It usually just makes you very confused and frustrated, and vulnerability is easy to spot. Personal experience is always the best source, because it's limitless and you're the only person who understands it enough to put it into words. When you insert some truth into your fiction, it becomes so much more real and alive. Plus, it's like having an inside joke with yourself, that only you (and anyone else you want to tell) will ever know is there. However, you should also remember to...

2.) Write about what you don't know.

Ha! It's pretty trippy, I know. Basically, I've found that it's always great to take something that you're clueless about and figure it out. Learning is so incredibly important and sticks in your mind forever. If you want to write about 15th century Africa, then research it until you're an expert. It's good to know what you're talking about so that you have more freedom and courage in your writing, but there's no rule saying that you need to have known about it your whole life. Do whatever you need to do visualize it: look at a picture, read accounts, talk to people, whatever it takes. It's so much fun to write from other points of view that you don't often hear from, and try to put yourself in shoes from the other side of the world or deep in history. 

3.) Follow your insticts

This is especially important when you do things like name characters. If the name Mildred pops into your head for no reason at all, USE IT. It was probably meant to be. I've learned that overthinking character names just makes them less interesting to me, because I'm not letting them develop themselves. Last names can be trickier, but I guess you can always pull a J.K. Rowling and use names that have Latin roots corresponding to their character traits, like Draco Malfoy or Remus Lupin. It makes you look and feel really smart (rightfully so, probably), and it looks great when you do it subtly. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever done this, but it seems like a really good idea, and I love it when other people do it. Overall, listen to your brain if it tells you something, and try it out whether or not you like it. You might end up loving it, or you might change it later. Just give yourself a chance. 

4.) Don't be afraid to abandon what you have and start over. 

 I've been known to do this a lot. Face it, sometimes what you write is going to suck, and you're going to know it. There's nothing worse than hating your own writing, or dreading coming back to it. That feeling should probably be just reserved for the 10 page math IA you have to write for school (honestly, what the heck?! Sorry, Dan), because I think it's really important to want to be working on your piece. Today in English class, my teacher told us all that we need to change our topic for our upcoming paper if we're not enjoying it right now, because we're just wasting our time. I wholeheartedly agree; words should just be pouring out of your brain, like a stream of consciousness. If you think something will work better than what you're doing right now, then go for it. And never delete or recycle your first attempt, because it's worth saving and smiling at (or adding to and reviving!) later. 

5.) Let your characters explain themselves to you. 

It can be fun to profile your characters like you're doing a roleplay or something, but sometimes it just makes things worse. Characters are born and raised on paper, and sometimes they develop differently than you'd expect, with minds of their own. It's not like you'd plan our your children before they arrive, and even though you obviously have a little more control in writing, it's not as much as you'd think. One of these days, your beloved Roseanne might just decide that she's brunette rather than blonde, and (this could be completely unrelated, just so you know I don't think that personalities have to do with hair color) say something that shocks all of the other characters, and you're just going to have to go with it. This goes for writing in general; if you don't know how you stand on something, write about it until you figure it out. That's what diaries are for. Be open to changing things, even if you're completely attached and think it will ruin everything. Again, don't delete, just try it. You don't want to be left with regrets. 

6.) Write what you read. 

Emulation is both a great exercise and one of the highest forms of flattery. You might be reading funny memoirs by successful and funny people and want to know if you can sound the same. Great. Do it. It's what I'm doing right now (thank you Tina, Amy, Ellen and Rachel. Look at me, calling them by only their first names). Or maybe you're in the middle of a poetic novel thing and want to try your hand at the artful run-on sentences and no quotation marks. Excellent. I've done that, too. You're not copying them because it's still your own words and work, and it's fun to have a large range of styles under your belt. 

7.) Think about how it will look on paper. 

Words look and sound different on paper than they do when you say them out loud. You have to convey your emotion and meaning without having the built-in help of your voice, expressions and actions (reason number one why it's harder to be a writer than an actor. My apologies to all my actor friends). And, with all due respect to the English vocabulary, some words are just prettier than others. You would describe a garden with words like blooming and charming, not porous* or something like that. However, if you WANT to convey an ugly and icky feeling, then go ahead! Just remember the social hierarchy of adjectives. If you're trying to be sarcastic, remember that things sound different on paper than in real life, so you should be consistent with it, or use the sarcmark (Google it). Actually, this could probably prevent 60% of conflicts on the Internet or other forms of social media. Overall, just try to define yourself. Which leads me to...

8.) Find your voice. 

This goes along with the last one, but only sort of. Just remember who the narrator is, and who the audience is. You should probably also establish how the narrator feels about certain things, so you can find your tone. How old are you? Are you writing, speaking or just seeing? Do you know what the characters are thinking? Harry Potter is an example of a third-person narrative with insider information on only one character; it's unbiased in general, but only has Harry's perspective. Mink River (the aforementioned poetic book with the run-ons) is an example of a pair of eyes just seeing and describing every single character equally, which is cool but also kind of unsettling. An example of a young, naive child would be almost every story I've ever written. Whatever your voice is, keep it consistent, and if you want to switch narrators, make it very, very clear. That's always really cool. 

I'd like to stop writing for a second and just mention that it is 11:22 pm and it's hailing so hard outside that I think my roof is going to break. Gotta love Oregon. I really hope my bedroom window isn't open. Instead of going up to check, I'm just going to finish writing this. Priorities!

 9.) Keep everything simple.

Simple writing is better than verbose writing, in my opinion.  I hate it when I get lost in a whirlwind of words I don't understand. The meaning gets lost somewhere along the way, and it's like you're trying to walk in sinking mud. Beautiful words are wonderful, and I've been known to actually write down quotes and sentences that I particularly love. I think I used to the line "their greatest asset is their greatest curse" (from Doctor Who, of course!) approximately fourteen times in eighth grade, in various pieces of writing. Some metaphors are just gorgeous and powerful, and having a large vocabulary is important. It's what separates good writing from second grade writing assignments. But I also think that less is more, and I'd much rather read something that's simple but powerful. You don't want to be drowning in big words so much that you lose the story's purpose. 

10.) Edit what you do. 

I'm going to go ahead and ignore this one, because it's 11:30 now and it's Monday night and I really don't feel like reading this whole thing again. That's actually the problem, and why I think that this tip is important. We spend so much time in Journalism editing and rereading our paper before it goes to press, and there are always typos that get through. It's especially horrible to find a mistake on the page that you designed or the piece that you wrote, because it shows that you personally let it get through. A lot of errors are just dumb mistakes, but they still could be avoided with just simple editing. You don't want to say something you didn't mean by complete accident.

One last tip: Listen to music. This obviously doesn't work for everyone, but being a musician, I love it, especially when I'm writing something creative. If you want inspiration, my Pandora channels include Sibelius, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Broadway Showstoppers, Wicked, The Sound of Music, Lord of the Rings, Today's Hits, Glee Cast, Taylor Swift, 80's Pop and High School Musical. I'm not at all ashamed.

And there you have it. Thank you very much.

*I am not an expert on writing.

* Never use the word "porous" for describing a garden. Not only is it an ugly word, but it doesn't even make sense. Gardens are not porous. You get the point, though (I hope).