So were I your teacher, I’d tell you to write in the first person, but to weed out almost all of your pesky “I”s.

  Authority: A Character’s Body of Knowledge

  If you went out drinking with me I’d tell you how I used to measure money. When I’d first started writing, Writer’s Digest reported that Playgirl magazine paid three thousand dollars for short fiction. That magazine seemed like the best market for a story I’d written called “Negative Reinforcement.” At the same time a new building had been completed in downtown Portland, Oregon, the KOIN Tower, the new home of KOIN television and the many floors of luxury condominiums that rose above the broadcast studios. They were the swankiest address in town and each cost three hundred thousand dollars, so I did the math.

  If Playgirl bought my story and ninety-nine more, I could afford a ritzy condo.

  My point is that people measure stuff—money, strength, time, weight—in very personal ways. A city isn’t so many miles from another city, it’s so many songs on the radio. Two hundred pounds isn’t two hundred pounds, it’s that dumbbell at the gym that no one touched and that seemed like a sword-in-the-stone joke until the day a stranger took it off the rack and started doing single-arm rows with it.

  As Katherine Dunn put it, “No two people ever walk into the same room.”

  Katherine Dunn

  We’ve already touched on this. While discussing ways to write from within a character’s point of view, we considered that a painter walks into a very different room than a plumber enters. Some years back I was interviewed over the telephone by a Scottish journalist. Our conversation strayed to the music we’d liked as children, and he mentioned a Hall and Oates song that had always haunted him. The song described a girlfriend who was stealing food from her hungry boyfriend as he gradually starved to death.

  A Hall and Oates song? It didn’t ring a bell so I asked him to sing a line.

  Over the phone he sang, “Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you…”

  Another example from real life. A friend’s daughter had her first menstruation, a trauma because to the girl it represented an end to her carefree childhood, not to mention the physical pain and the bother. My friend, the girl’s mother, said that when the process was resolved, her daughter heaved a sigh of resignation and relief and said, “I’m glad that’s only once a year!”

  Such moments are funny and heartbreaking. There’s a joy in correcting some mistakes, but a tragedy in negating such a creative interpretation, especially one held since childhood.

  My point is that our past distorts and colors how we perceive the world. If I hadn’t said something, this man would’ve heard “meat” instead of “me” for the rest of his life. And how your character describes the world doesn’t have to be based on anything factual. Actually, it’s more interesting if a character views the world through a mistake.

  Was it Kierkegaard? Was it Heidegger? Some egghead pointed out how people decide the nature of their world at a very young age. And they craft a way of behaving that will lead to success. You’re praised for being a strong little kid so you invest in your strength. Or you become the smart girl. Or the funny boy. Or the pretty girl. And this works until you’re about thirty years old.

  After your schooling is over, you recognize your chosen way of winning has become a trap. And a trap with diminishing rewards. You’re a clown no one will take seriously. Or you’re a beauty queen who sees her looks fading. You’re forced to realize your identity was a choice, and then to choose another. But you know this next strategy will never have the same passion as the one you’d chosen as a child. Now you’re especially aware that it’s a choice. And you know it, too, will likely fade. So many successful books are about a character leveraging youth and beauty for a good marriage, then leveraging that union for education, and leveraging that for wealth. A book like Vanity Fair or Gone with the Wind or The Great Gatsby depicts a social climber who navigates upward in the world by trading each asset for a greater asset.

  The other choice the funny boy or the pretty girl can make is to deny the choice. To continue living according to the pattern for success he or she has established. But now that the trap is recognized, the funny boy becomes the bitter, snarky guy. He’s the clever, hard-drinking put-down artist who lives to inflict pain. The pretty girl becomes the evil queen in Snow White, ready to destroy anyone who might be prettier.

  Most of my own books are about characters who’ve reached the limits of one, early form of power. They’ve been the good, obedient boy (Fight Club) or the stunningly attractive girl (Invisible Monsters) and they’ve reached the point where they must find a new form of power. Or to continue, in bad faith, to live according to the old, failing pattern.

  Think of Jay Gatsby, rejected by Daisy but already plotting to chase after her, to launch a fresh campaign to win her hand. Even once he knows in his heart that she’s not such a great prize, he’s too threatened by the idea of choosing a new dream.

  Holly Golightly can’t give up her strategy of always evading commitment, so she’s doomed to roaming the world without emotional attachment.

  Sally Bowles wants the love of the whole world so she rejects her suitor and is consumed by the chaos of Nazi Germany.

  For perhaps the best example of this bad-faith choice, read Dorothy Parker’s story “The Standard of Living.”

  So choosing a character’s body of knowledge isn’t merely about how their past and their priorities color their view of everything. It’s also about the pattern for success that they’ve chosen as children. The funny boy walks into a room looking for details to poke fun at, and listening for good setup lines he can riff off for laughs. The pretty girl walks in looking for potential competitors with clearer skin, better figures, brighter teeth.

  If you were my student I’d tell you that Playgirl ultimately rejected “Negative Reinforcement.” And instead of a luxury high-rise condo all I could afford was a three-hundred-square-foot shack in a neighborhood without clear television or radio reception. Cable television wasn’t available, and the internet was decades away. The roof leaked, but in that tiny house with no distractions I wrote my first four books—five if you count the disastrous attempt If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Already.

  I’d ask you: What strategy has your character chosen for success in life? What education or experiences does he or she bring? What priorities? Will they be able to adopt a new dream and a new strategy?

  Every detail they notice in the world will depend on your answers to the above questions.

  A Postcard from the Tour

  Did you see my Super Bowl commercial?

  No, I’m not joking. It was a television commercial for a bank, slotted to air during the 2016 game, not nationwide, not like, say, a Budweiser beer commercial. An advertising agency pitched me on behalf of a bank, explaining that it would produce the commercial for a “regional” audience, meaning only a few million eyeballs instead of a billion, but the concept was simple. An actor would stand in the center of a bare stage and deliver a monologue lifted from my book Fight Club. The “We’re a generation raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock gods…” Yes, that speech, which Brad Pitt gives in the film. Short and sweet, followed by the bank’s slogan, in voice-over, “Own your life or someone else will.”

  On the page, it sounded good. Okay, what sounded good was the money—they were talking six figures, a sum ten times what I made annually in my last day job. And the million eyeballs, those eyeballs would feel great. The only downside was the idea of selling out. My books aren’t like cherished children to me, but I stand behind certain ideas. My counter-proposal was that, in lieu of an actor, I should be the one to deliver the speech. On television. During the Super Bowl. I should sell out in person.

  Not to boast, but I’d been rejecting suitors for years. First was Volvo, poor Volvo, who asked me to write a series of enticing stories. This was in the age of “viral” internet advertising, and the stories would all center on an obscure hamlet in Sweden where an enormous number of Volvos were being sold. The concept could go anywhere, they assured me, but my impression was that an element of vampires would be welcomed. Each fragment of the story would be planted online, and the advertiser hoped the audience would coalesce around assembling the bits and discovering the ultimate reveal. They were offering, as I recall, tens of thousands of dollars.

  I said, “No.” In truth, you never say no. You say some polite version of “Thank you for thinking of me. This sounds like a terrifically exciting project; however, I’m overcommitted. Please keep me in mind for any future work…” Because you never know. This year’s advertising designer is next year’s movie director.

  After Volvo came BMW with the proposal that I should write a collection of short stories. These would be recorded as an audiobook and provided on compact disc as a perk with the purchase of any new BMW. Once again, the money was enticing. Money always is. But I told them, “This sounds like a terrifically exciting project…”

  Mind you, I’d read the castigating piece David Foster Wallace had written in response to Frank Conroy writing the copy for a glossy cruise ship brochure. Conroy had gotten his large family a fancy ocean cruise as payment, but later regretted writing the love letter used to sell similar vacations to his readers. But…but I’d also cracked my share of old National Geographic magazines and found full-page advertisements wherein Ernest Hemingway endorsed some brand of Scotch, William Faulkner flogged a certain cigar, and Tennessee Williams raved about—what else?—an ocean cruise.

  Check for yourself. The ads are there. The greatest writers of the twentieth century weren’t above hawking products. Why should I be?

  It’s not like I live in a cave. When Anthony Bourdain’s people emailed my people and suggested I escort Tony—insiders called him Tony—on a tour of Portland, Oregon, sights, I agreed. Trouble is, to be on location with Tony was to find yourself a small float-y bubble in the surging sea of energy that rushed and broke around Mr. Bourdain. As we walked past restaurants, the wait staff would rush out and grab him, dragging him bodily in, settling him into a seat and delivering every item on the menu.

  If you watch the reruns you might notice me hovering in the edge of some frame. If you look closer you can tell I’ve taken two 600-milligram Vicodins, and I’m high as a kite to deal with the stress. I stumble and mumble, and when we visit Voodoo Doughnut and they present me with a huge penis-shaped doughnut that spurts goopy custard all over my face, well, I’m unfazed.

  In my defense, the next time Tony’s people called and asked if I’d do an encore on his new show I sidestepped. Vicodin was in short supply so I suggested they contact the thriller writer Chelsea Cain, a friend of mine who knows Portland much better. Chelsea is smart and funny and telegenic, and they Googled her, and they opted not to book her for the show. Their reason? Chelsea didn’t deliver a male demographic, aged eighteen to thirty-five. Something like that. As it turns out I do deliver those eyeballs. It wasn’t me they wanted, not me, it was my readers.

  And it’s not as if I hadn’t made a huge effort to whore myself already. One lunch in Chicago, my publisher set me beside Terry Gross with the specific instructions to captivate her and earn myself a slot on her popular National Public Radio show. All through that lunch I feigned interest in her cats, yes, cats, while psychically begging her to love me and interview me. Now, my guess is that show will never happen. Big sigh.

  And it’s not like I didn’t accept some money along the way. In the year 2000 or 2001, Chevrolet offered me five thousand dollars for the right to mention Fight Club in a television commercial for the Ram pickup truck. Small potatoes since once my agent’s commission was subtracted, as well as taxes, the payday amounted to less than I’d forked over for my first used car in 1978. A Chevy Bobcat (look it up). It seemed karmic, like Chevy paying me back.

  Then Jaguar/Land Rover came calling. They offered me a half million dollars to write a story that could be made into a film that would feature a Land Rover in some crucial, high-profile way. A half million dollars. I thought of throwing myself at Terry Gross over lunch. I’d done worse things for money. And maybe I was stupid, but I still said no.

  Not a year after that, the Super Bowl came calling.

  It was flattering. Had Cheever ever gotten a Super Bowl spot? For that matter, had Shakespeare?

  The advertising agency considered my idea for all of two minutes. It would mean paying me a licensing fee for the book excerpt. And it would mean paying me an additional fee to perform. And without batting an eye, they withdrew the proposal.

  That’s why you did not see me midway through the 2016 Super Bowl. It’s not that I was too dignified or my principles were too high. It’s that I asked for too much money, I don’t deliver enough eyeballs.

  But I still sit here. I’m not young, not anymore, but my phone is turned on. Just in case Volvo or Jaguar or Terry Gross calls. I’m begging: Please tell me, again, about your cats.

  Authority: Using Physical Sensation

  to Create Reality

  Consider that your body has a memory of its own. And your body can tell stories. We love forensic science programs, where an expert walks into a crime scene and “reads” the clues. Under the scrutiny of Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple, details that seemed innocuous take on importance. In the same way, a doctor can read a mole or a twitch and diagnose something ominous.

  Most stories engage the reader’s mind or heart, his intellect or emotions, but few also pull in the reader’s entire body. Stories that do elicit a physical reaction—horror, pornography—are seen as low culture. But if you were my student I’d ask, Why can’t a high-culture story engage the mind, the heart, and the body?

  Years back, a reporter for USA Today was interviewing me at The Ivy in Los Angeles. We sat on the patio screened by latticework and bougainvillea, drinking iced tea. She was friends with Tom Hayden, the political radical and second husband of Jane Fonda, and said Tom wanted me to come up after lunch and talk anarchy. He was fascinated by Fight Club and wanted to discuss it over a game of croquet. Yes, croquet. And the entire time the reporter pitched me on radical political lawn games she continually used the fingers of one hand to circle the slender wrist of her opposite hand. She’d pinch the wrist, making her fingers like a tight bracelet around it.

  At a lull in the conversation, I called her attention to the mannerism. She looked down, surprised, as if her hands belonged to a stranger. She hadn’t been aware of the behavior. As a teenager, she explained, she’d been anorexic. And as her body’s percentage of fat decreased she’d determined little tests to measure it. At 2 percent body fat, she’d been able to feel the hollows between the ligaments in her wrist. This is what her hand had been doing: gauging her body fat. It had become such an automatic behavior that she still caught herself doing it. Or in this case, I had.

  This is the kind of physical “tell” that, if you depict it effectively, you can prompt your reader to adopt. We are natural mimics. In high school I worked at a movie theater with another kid named Chuck. We weren’t friends and seldom talked, but he had this nervous tic. The corner of his mouth would spasm slightly, pulling sideways. It was seldom still. Just that one corner jerking toward his ear.

  Experts talk about “neural mirroring” or the tendency for a person to echo back the expressions and energy of another. Zombies, they say, are so frightening because they always display a flattened emotional affect. They show no emotion despite the circumstances. And the fact that they don’t mirror the emotions of people makes them appear all the more hostile and alien.

  Whatever the case, I hadn’t worked with the other Chuck a week before I’d adopted his twitch. This wasn’t deliberate. Not like when young people pick and choose from the mannerisms and traits they find appealing, assembling their own presentation. No, the mouth twitch was contagious.

  That, that’s the kind of physicality I’d tell you to develop in your work.

  To heighten that physical element of a story, it helps to depict characters using drugs, or suffering illness. Depict sex and violence, or medical procedures.

  These are all ways to exaggerate a character’s physical awareness, and to prompt the reader to have a sympathetic physical reaction. Whether it’s drugs or sex or illness, it also allows you to distort the normal world so that regular settings and events appear warped and menacing. The rose and the oak tree become the grotesque alien realities Jean-Paul Sartre saw them to be. In my story “Loser” a college student tripping on LSD participates in a television game show, and in struggling through he realizes that the competition to amass huge amounts of consumer goods is insane.

  In E. B. White’s story “Dusk in Fierce Pajamas” the onset of pink eye drives the narrator progressively mad with fever as he pores over the pictures in fashion magazines.

  Tom Spanbauer would call this “going on the body.” By this he meant focusing on physical sensation within a character. As in, “This would be a good place to go on the body…” It’s a reliable way to unpack a dramatic moment. Just shift from describing the exterior scene to depicting the interior of a character. As the writer Matthew Stadler advises, “When you don’t know what comes next, describe the interior of the narrator’s mouth.” He was joking, but he wasn’t.

  If done well, this prompts a similar reaction in the reader’s body. With that complete, you can shift back to describing the scene, or intercut with a big-voice observation, or add a new stressor, or whatever you think will best keep up the tension of the moment.

  By going “on the body” you enroll the reader’s body as well as her heart and mind. You usurp his entire reality.

  If you were my student I’d tell you to watch what people do unconsciously. Collect the stories they tell to explain their behavior.