Day 231: Long Term Intentionality

So quick recap, in my last post I started looking for a better way to integrate the smaller pieces of my story into the bigger picture. I landed on music as an intriguing source for inspiration. Musicians often improvise solos, songs, even full albums, or as this guy on YouTube did with his band, entire tours.

The question I'm trying to answer is this: how can someone construct a complete musical arc on the fly without the need for any editing? Second, how can I use those same techniques to improve my writing? There are a bunch of tips and tricks I picked up while researching this, so I'll just jump right in.

There are many formulas one can use when improving music. Some people spend their whole lives mastering just a single set of notes. BB King comes to mind when thinking of those musicians that take a few scales and turn those notes into a career. In the same way that a writer can take a well worn path through a story (a plot archetype), a musician can fall back onto standards, or even something as simple as a chord progression to frame their improv. You may not even realize it, but you've probably heard a thousand or more songs with the same four chords. Ed Sheeran used this fact in his defense against a flagrant copyright case that tried to accuse him of plagiarism for using this chord progression in his music. For context, that's kind of like trying to copyright the concept of a twist, and claiming that anybody else who uses a twist in their story owes you money.

But those are all composed songs, not improvised. Thankfully, improv is actually even simpler in many cases. When first learning to improvise, one can start with just two chords, back and forth, or better yet why not just one? One chord and its accompanying scale is enough to have some fun with. Like taking a topic sentence and forming a paragraph around it. I can't call it easy exactly, but I can call it striaghtforward. Simple, even.

So far it seems like what I'm saying is to just use an established archetype. Put off all the heavy lifting on a tried and true formula and let the details flow naturally. Well, it might just work. It takes practice to fit into the formula consistently though, just like how those musicians practice the same standards over and over, or practice over the same chord for hours and hours. Some writers do this more than others. If you've read more than a single Dan Brown novel you probably recognized certain trends. He even reuses the same character, Robert Langdon, creating a 6+ book series that all read about the same. Like a musician who practices the same song with different solo every time, the basic licks are all there. Langdon lands in a heap of quasi-supernatural trouble, but through the use of his vast knowledge of secret societies and the occult, he's able to muddle through and outsmart even the most diabolical entrapments. Rinse and repeat.

The only problem with this solution is I don't want to write a formula over and over. I have a new plot in mind, and I want to write that. More often than not, the details I write lead me astray, like a musician getting lost during a solo. We've all probably heard improv gone bad before. The notes and chords they're playing suddenly seem to diverge from the established expectation much, much too far afield. Panic sets in. They try to return, usually in jarring fashion, or worse, they turn into the skid and the music coming out of their instrument turns into complete nonsense. Bad for the ears, but not too terrible, all things considered. It'll all be over in a few minutes at worst. An author who loses the thread of their story on the other hand might spend years on an extended screw up that tanks their entire writing career into the ground. George R.R. Martin could tell everyone a thing or two about that.

So, new plan. What if I studied someone else getting lost and tried to avoid doing that? This solo for example, which is widely regarded as one of, if not the absolute worst jazz solo of all time, could give some clues. Fair warning, it is bad.

For those of you not brave enough, or if you clicked away immediately, this is a one-note saxophone solo over a reinterpretation of 'The Jones Girl' recorded by The Five Satins. Many people have analyzed this in great depth on YouTube, so I'll spare you a complete rehash. I'm sure you can find a video of someone breaking down exactly where and how this poor dude went wrong. The part I want to focus on is just how visceral the sense of unpreparedness is here. You can feel the panic set in. Jim Freeman of the band actually confirmed this in an interview, where he mentions that the saxophonist, Vinny Mazzetta, had just ten minutes to prepare. There is a massive lack of any intentionality in the notes. Or should I say note. Yep, just one note, played with no kind of pattern, quite a bit out of tune to our modern ears to boot. This being a bebop band, apparently that wasn't too weird, since the musicians would just adjust to the vocals, but still. It's pretty glaring.

There's a lesson I'm leading up to with all of this, and that's that a good improvisation builds on itself. Though some parts might be creative expression, a kind of pseudorandom output from the brain, a good musician remembers what was played, recalls that creativity, and either expands upon, or plays something counter to what just came out. There's a sort of question and answer going on, like a one-sided conversation. The only requirement is that whatever you say now has to relate to what was said before. A writer can do the same thing. Set up a Chekhov's gun, and then fire it a few chapters later. Instigate a conflict, then resolve it by the end of the chapter, the page, or the sentence. Pose a thematic question to the reader, and answer it throughout the course of the book.

There's an essential takeaway I want to carry into my writing from all this. Above everything else, I want to keep much better track of what I'm writing. Seems trivial I guess, but taking intentionality for granted in a work as long as a novel is something I've been doing for too long. Hemingway said in an interview once that a writer ought to read the book he's working on every day. Once it's too long to do that, go ahead and read the last few chapters every day. That's something I didn't do while writing Oneiromancer, and I got lost pretty bad somewhere along the way. It took a long time to finish and I don't think it'll be pretty when I go back to edit it either. In the same way a good improviser recalls exactly what was played, either by sticking to a well-rehearsed formula, or by having a great memory tempered by experience, I think I need to cultivate a great sense of where I am in the story. Beyond just reading the story, I've been taking much better notes, following up on my character sheets, and making sure to review the todo list every day. Maintaining a good flow across days and weeks is what sets the writer apart from the improviser. I question if it really is all that different though. To finish up, I'd like to quote another influential Jazz composer that I think sums up all these thoughts quite well.

"Composition is just improvisation slowed down, and improvisation is just composition sped up."

From Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley