Bret Anthony Johnston
I'M NOT NECESSARILY PROUD OF THIS, BUT A WHILE BACK I attended my ten-year high school reunion. (I know, I know.) It gets worse: In the weeks leading up to the reunion, I bought a suit, shined my shoes, got a haircut. I'd been looking forward to the event for at least a year. (Truth be told, I'd bought my ticket the first day they were available, maybe the first hour. I seriously considered— but finally chickened out of—enrolling in dance classes. It's all wildly embarrassing.) I shaved for the first time in weeks, and arrived at the bar/restaurant/weirdly small venue an hour before anyone else. When my former classmates began filing in, they said things like “You're alive!” and we all laughed. (Long story, but suffice it to say my high school career wasn't one that would lead anyone to believe that I'd be in a state—breathing, say, or free on bail—to attend said reunion.) I shook their grown-up hands and kissed their grown-up cheeks, and wondered when we'd all grown up. I lied and told them I'd only learned of the reunion that morning. I bought them drinks and we toasted to being in the right place at the right time.
Here's my excuse: it was a reconnaissance mission, a blatant and shameless and egregiously expensive ploy to cannibalize their stories. I'd known who these people were then and wanted to find out who they were now; what's more interesting than the passage of time, the trajectory of a life? I asked what they'd been doing for the last ten years, pressed them for juicy details about their jobs and marriages and children and vacations and houses; I paid explicit attention to what they were wearing and drinking, and asked them what they remembered about high school. After three hours, I'd gotten exactly zilch. Their lives and minds were boring, boring, and more boring. I thought the jig was up—hoped the jig was up—when people started asking why I was asking so many questions. I could've lied, but I decided to come clean for no other reason than that the stories I'd been hearing weren't worth the hassle. (“We got married after college, then once David became foreman, we had little Amber. She loves peas!” “I'm in insurance now. I sell peace of mind.” “Seriously, if you tell them I told you to stop by, you'll get ten percent off a tire rotation. Simple as cake.”) So I said I planned on putting their stories in a book, which plan everyone thought was a real hoot and probably delusional and maybe the result of certain substances that I may or may not have ingested en masse before graduation.
But which plan also, after a few minutes had passed, proved totally irresistible to the class of 1990. Once the deejay started spinning louder and more upbeat songs, which lured revelers to the laminated dance floor, people I'd never known—though I certainly knew of them, these former jocks and bullies and homecoming queens—began timidly approaching me to spill their stories. They detailed their every trespass and indiscretion. They surveyed the room behind me, checked over their shoulders, then leaned close and whispered, “Do you want to hear some gossip?”
Such as:
The former star athlete and all-around most popular guy in our school was in prison for distribution of heroin. He maintained—via visiting hours and mail, I assumed—that he never used the stuff and that this was the first time he'd ever trafficked in it. He was doing ten years at best.
At least three of the former cheerleaders and pep squad girls had married men who were forty to fifty years their senior. These men owned oil, lots of it. (This is in Texas, by the way.)
One of the young women I'd known since grade school had been working as a barista when a “director” asked her if she'd like to be in the movies. She'd since done some local muffler shop commercials and a couple of movies that didn't require much in terms of “wardrobe.”
Another pep squad girl (or maybe one of the newly married ones; I couldn't keep the story straight) had an honest-to-God flask in her honest-to-God garter belt. Her husband hadn't accompanied her.
One of our lowest-ranking classmates now worked for the government, most likely as an assassin. She wasn't able to attend the reunion, or she was there in disguise. (One of the oilmen?)
A very, very nice and cool guy was doing life for murder. No joke.
One of the most popular party girls had refused to attend the reunion unless another popular party girl sent her a substantive and handwritten apology for that thing that happened at the beach after the prom.
A former choir student was now the bassist for one of the biggest, darkest heavy metal bands in the world. He was richer than God and worshipped the devil.
See that woman in green? She slept with Mr. X while he was her teacher. See that bald man? He did, too.
Upon hearing each of these tidbits, I'd excuse myself and jaunt to the restroom to transcribe the information onto my little notepad. The frequency and urgency of my jaunts, it's entirely possible, created their own rumor mill: Johnston can't control his bladder! He's snorting coke off the toilet! He's bulimic! But the stories were worth it; they were worth all of it.
From a fiction writer's perspective, the glory of gossip is that it depends utterly on conflict, on a character acting unexpectedly. This doesn't necessarily mean acting “out of character” or acting like someone else; rather, it often means acting more “in character” than ever before. Gossip often results when people are caught being themselves. This is why it's so riveting, why we can't not pay attention. (I've never met a writer who could resist reading the tabloids in the supermarket checkout lines, nor can I recall a literary soiree—or any soiree—where intelligent, funny, well-adjusted, successful folks weren't huddled in a corner trading secrets, trading stories.) In an interview in The Paris Review, Updike said, “But no doubt, fiction is also a mode of spying; we read it as we look in windows or listen to gossip, to learn what other people do.”
If the glory of gossip is guaranteed conflict, the problem with it is the temptation of cruelty, of passing judgment. This danger carries over into fiction writing as well. Too often, emerging writers will stack the deck against their characters, specifically their antagonists; they'll write them in such a way that the reader finds it impossible not to judge them. That is, because the writers would never behave so badly, they can't help looking down on their characters who would, and that looking down corrupts the work for the reader. The problem very simply boils down to the writers' not trusting, or fully employing, their imaginations.
The judgment syndrome is a fast-moving, potentially terminal disease, but there is treatment. When my students start showing signs of infection, I tell them about my high school reunion. Then I paraphrase Goethe: I've never heard of a crime that I couldn't imagine committing myself. Then, just when they think I've completely lost it—You went to your high school reunion? You're that dorky?— I ask them to get out a piece of paper and a pen.
Think of a piece of gossip you've heard recently, or a piece you've never been able to forget. Without flair or embellishment, write down the concrete details as a list or an outline or a few plain declarative sentences. (Simply: He stole money from the till. He lied to his boss and said the thief was the night manager. The night manager was fired.) This should take only a few minutes.
Once you have the skeleton of the event, put it away for a day. Work on something else until you return to your desk tomorrow. Try not to stew on the subject.
The following day, now that the gossip has been simmering in the back of your thoughts, turn the event into a short story or a scene in a story. The only caveat is that the subject of the gossip (in the example above, the man who stole from the till) must be your POV character. Your goal is to experience the event(s) through the consciousness of the so-called wrongdoer and to make the reader understand how this character would justify or substantiate his actions. You're striving to snuff out any hint of judgment. The scene or story won't work if the character is a monster or acting out of sheer malice. Readers always require a depth in your characterization and a cogency in your plot, and working to create believable motives behind the character's actions will usually satisfy these issues. As the author, you know what happens; now, with this exercise, you're writing to find out why it happens.
FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION: If this exercise clicks with you— either as a way to generate new work or a technique for shoring up drafts and characters you've been writing—you might consider taking it one step further. In addition to experiencing the episode through the so-called wrongdoer's perspective, add in the perspectives of other major or minor characters within the narrative. (This is similar to what Amy Hassinger urges you to do in her exercise.) For instance, in the above example with the man stealing from the till, dramatize the same events through the eyes of the night manager, the boss, and the thief, then alternate the perspectives throughout the story. By allowing the reader to see more than one version of the same event, and by dispensing the information little by little as the story proceeds, you'll find that you can create a lot of tension and further cut down on your tendency to judge your characters.