The Oldest Trick In The Book

Exile on James Street

Show, don’t tell.

Here’s how Lauren’s piece opened in the first draft:

Cambodia was a dark place in my mind.

A shadow fell over that part of the map—but whose shadow? A shadow of what? I couldn’t be sure. We didn’t learn about Cambodia in school; I didn’t hear about it on TV or in books. I knew it only as the place my best friend’s parents were from: a bearer of accents and strange anecdotes—of insomnia, maybe, of voices in the hall at night. Cambodia was a dream you couldn’t remember, woke up with only a lingering feeling you couldn’t quite name. Or rather, it was someone else’s dream, someone else’s darkness, and all you knew of it was the sound of their gasp—sweat dampening sheets in the bed beside you.

Something had happened there. I didn’t understand what, and I didn’t dare ask. (“A war,” my parents told me.) Even as a child, you sensed “Cambodia” was a wound you didn’t want to reopen—that had maybe never healed in the first place, that bloomed at night, the way the flowers that grew along the fence in the schoolyard did—so that when you arrived in the morning, they looked tired, about to close, dewy and wilted and mysterious, so delicate you wouldn’t dare touch them.

These flowers grew along the fence I placed Cambodia in—a corner of my mind I didn’t dare touch.

And its ending:

I came to Cambodia, I realized, to make it real. I came to see the life here, the life that has regrown, and I came to see it living. I came to come face-to-face with my own biases, buried so deep in the unaskability that I didn’t for a long time even know they were there. I came to mourn the past, both the things I lived through and the things I didn’t. I came to mourn the woman who was like another mother to me, who survived a genocide but not what came after. I came to mourn the thing inside me I carried, that I didn’t know I carried until I came here. I came to penetrate my own darkness, to finally see the flowers that bloom along the fence only at night; I came to smell them and know them, and then tear that fence down.

I came to let the ghosts go, and to let the light come back.

*

My initial comments focused on the abstract language, the way Lauren was trying to get inside this story with metaphors and descriptions of abstract concepts, sort of swirling in an emotional whirlpool around the story instead of getting into the thick of it.

There are a few big issues with this piece as it stands. The first is that it is far too ethereal and abstract, and the language tends towards the sentimental and the overly dear. I think both of these issues stem from your trying, perhaps, to make this story really poignant: trying to drive that poignancy home, constantly. Trying too hard to do this can sometimes drain the concrete narrative out of the story and force so much contemplative philosophical emotion on it that it actually loses the reader, becomes so opaque and romanticized that it’s difficult to grasp onto.

The goal is for the reader to grasp the stakes of the piece, to get into the emotional tone of it and to understand what’s happening, without the writer having to make these dramatic emotional overtures. In other words, for the writer to show us what’s happening here through details and through an unfolding narrative instead of telling us regularly, and through dramatic weighty language, that this situation is poignant.

I think Lauren had to get that out of her system to then start getting into Cambodia in a tangible, immediate way. Oftentimes I find when I write that I have to write out the initial anger, or fear, or melancholy so that then the piece can breathe with real details and the reader can feel for him or herself, without me constantly reinforcing it, the emotions of the piece.

Here’s the intro of the third draft:

I watched the boy move. Thin, dark, in tattered pants and flip-flops, he walked slowly along the river’s steep embankment. He carried a wooden spear, his eyes hunting the small black birds that flitted from crevices in the cement.

It was dusk on my first day in Phnom Penh, exercise hour along the gleaming new riverside. Men in running shoes swung their arms in circles; couples played badmitten; elderly women in sun visors lifted their arms in unison, mimicking the aerobic dancing instructor’s movements. People smiled.

It didn’t feel like a city that’d been deserted.

That’s all I’d been able to think that first day, walking through streets exploded with the yellows and purples of flowering trees. I tried to imagine it the way the parents of my childhood best friend had left it, as the Khmer Rouge marched into the city and evacuated its two million residents: burned-out carcasses of cars, buildings crumbled, rubbish strewn across empty streets. I couldn’t do it.

I sat drinking a papaya shake when I spied the boy along the embankment. I watched as he approached a bird, his movements smooth and still as water. A swift stab, a flurry of wings. He brought the stick towards his face, plucked the creature from its spear. He pressed his thumb against its throat and pushed in slow, hard strokes.

He placed the small black body in his pocket—a ragged strip of cloth—and continued walking, repeating, repeating. Was he killing them? Gathering them to sell? Were they food?

It wasn’t so much the action of it that unsettled me; it was the slowness with which he did it—the calm.

He continued off, along the steep slope beneath the riverside’s bustle, stabbing and gathering.

I didn’t understand any of it.

And the ending:

Sylvio clutched a can of Angkor beer with dust-stained hands. He’d arrived in Phnom Penh that morning, on a motorbike with another Italian friend. Their backpacks and film equipment sat in a dirty pile in my friend Tim’s flat. They were making a documentary, they told me, on Indochina. They were in Phnom Penh for three days and wanted to interview people about the Khmer Rouge. Did I have any contacts?

“Well,” I began slowly. “Not really.”

“But you were researching this topic, no?”

“Yeah, but as an outsider,” I glanced around our table of Westerners, “it’s hard to have access, you know? To ask people to talk about something no one really talks about.”

I’d been in Phnom Penh six weeks. I’d learned a lot about Khmer Rouge history—read histories and memoirs, researched the state of mental health and trauma services in Cambodia, attended documentary screenings, become a regular fixture at Bophana, an audiovisual historical archive center. But, I had to admit to Sylvio, that was as far as I’d gotten. I’d only sat down face-to-face with a handful of people, and even then only discussed subjects tangentially connected to the war history.

“It’s a lot to ask,” I told Sylvio as gently as I could, “for people to open up. Especially in such a short time frame.” I was vaguely aware that, more than him, I was talking to myself.

“Yes, but it wasn’t so long ago; there are still many people that lived through it. I think it shouldn’t be so hard to find a person who wants to talk.”

I nodded slowly. “But you know, there’s a huge culture of silence in Cambodia. People don’t really talk about the war. I mean, they do, in a sense—it’s referenced a lot, and it’s always kind of there, but it’s not talked about in any real or meaningful way. There’s not really an open discourse.” I paused. I realized I could have been describing Lynn’s family or her parents’ death, Pol Pot or her father Seng. I could have been describing myself.

“Yes, but they should,” conviction flashes through Sylvio’s brown eyes. “This is how you move forward. It’s not good to keep quiet.”

They know that, I felt like telling him. They’re not stupid; they’re just not ready.

“Yeah, but it takes time,” I told him instead.

Again, I sensed I was talking to myself.

*

What a massive difference! And yet there are still places where she feels compelled to remind the reader what the story is about, to reinforce a deeper emotional point: “Was he killing them? Gathering them to sell? Were they food?” “I didn’t understand any of it.” “Again, I sensed I was talking to myself.” In the next several drafts, working on the story, fleshing it out, cutting down scenes that weren’t quite working, and finally, fine-tuning the language, Lauren pared the piece down so that the emotion and the themes are ringing out not from interpretive language but from the details, from the overall vibe she creates by focusing so precisely on particular moments.

Here’s the opening scene of the final draft:

I watched the boy move. Thin, dark, in tattered pants and flip-flops, he walked slowly along the river’s steep embankment. He carried a wooden spear, his eyes hunting the small black birds that flitted from crevices in the cement.

It was dusk on my first day in Phnom Penh, exercise hour along the gleaming new riverside. Men in running shoes swung their arms in circles; couples played badminton; elderly women in sun visors lifted their arms in unison, mimicking the aerobic instructor’s movements. Behind them the orange sky struck the Royal Palace into silhouette. Its decorative roofing rose from the spires like snakes, or the twist of incense smoke. Around me, people smiled.

It didn’t feel like a city that had been deserted.

That’s all I’d been able to think that first day, walking through streets exploded with the yellows and purples of flowering trees. I tried to imagine it the way the parents of my childhood best friend had left it, as the Khmer Rouge marched into the city and evacuated its two million residents: burned-out carcasses of cars, buildings crumbled, rubbish strewn across empty streets. I couldn’t.

I sat drinking a papaya shake when I spied the boy along the embankment. I watched as he approached a bird. A swift stab, a flurry of wings. He brought the stick towards his face, plucked the creature from its spear. He pressed his thumb against its throat and pushed in slow, hard strokes.

He placed the small black body in his pocket—a ragged strip of cloth—and continued walking, repeating, repeating.

It wasn’t so much the action of it that unsettled me; it was the slowness with which he did it—the calm.

He continued along the steep slope beneath the riverside’s bustle, stabbing and gathering.

And the phenomenal ending:
Silvio clutched a can of Angkor beer with dust-stained hands. He’d arrived in Phnom Penh that morning, on a motorbike with another Italian friend. Their backpacks and film equipment sat in a dirty pile in my friend Tim’s flat, where people had gathered for dinner.

Silvio and his friend were making a documentary, they told me, on Indochina. They were in Phnom Penh for three days and wanted to interview people about the Khmer Rouge. Did I have any contacts?

“Well,” I began slowly. “Not really.”

“But you were researching this topic, no?”

“Yeah, but as an outsider,” I glanced around our table of Westerners, Styrofoam boxes of take-out and cigarette smoke. “It’s hard to have access, you know?”

I’d been in Phnom Penh six weeks. I’d learned a lot about Khmer Rouge history—read histories and memoirs, researched the state of mental health and trauma services in Cambodia, attended documentary screenings, become a regular fixture at Bophana, an audiovisual historical archive center. But, I had to admit to Silvio, that was as far as I’d gotten. I’d only sat down face-to-face with a handful of people, and even then only discussed subjects tangentially connected to the war history.

“It’s a lot to ask,” I told Silvio, “for people to talk about it, open up.” I was vaguely aware that I was talking mostly to myself.

“Yes, but it wasn’t so long ago. There are still many people that lived through it, I think it shouldn’t be so hard to find a person who wants to talk.”

I nodded slowly. I tried to explain how people didn’t really talk about the war. Sure, it was referenced a lot, was always kind of there, but there wasn’t any open discourse, any real or meaningful discussion.

I paused. I realized I could have been describing Lynn’s family or her parents’ death, Pol Pot or her father Seng. I could have been describing myself.

“Yes, but they should,” conviction flashes through Silvio’s dark brown eyes. “This is how you move forward. It’s not good to keep quiet.”

I know that, I felt like telling him. We know that.

“Yeah, but it takes time,” I told him instead.

He gave a nod, the kind that could mean anything at all, and lifted the can to his arched Roman lips. I watched the smoke twist from his cigarette; it looked, I thought, like incense.

*

I was madly impressed. This was an intensely emotional and personal piece for Lauren and she rocked it out moving beyond the abstract reaching language of the initial drafts into the painful, razor-sharp, nitty gritty details that tell the deeper story.