|
|
Currently no members online:)
You are an anonymous user. You can register for free by clicking here |
We have 34 guests online !
|
|
|
 |
 |
| Mistress Manners: Expose Your Story, Not Yourself |
Posted by
callei on Saturday, May 08, 2004 - 12:09 AM PST
I want to say a few words to our jr. authors today. I am prone to this sort of thing, so bare with me for a few paragraphs.
We get a lot of submissions from people who think that their daydreams and psychological self-explorations are fiction. While these submissions do have elements of fiction, they are not actually Fiction. Long-standing authors here (and probably in their day to day lives) try to be kind and tell them to read some other authors and see what fiction can be. Hemingway is almost always recommended. So are Ayn Rand and Moliere.
There is one problem with that. Hemingway is good and fun, but if all you have read is Anne Rice, then venturing into Hemingway is the same as heading off to the part of the literary map labeled "here be dragons". Any author that does something other than the flowery descriptive self-exploration narrative would be good. We could suggest Asimov or Cherryh with the same effect, since interactive life, stripped bare of explanation and excuse is radically different from Rice. The setting, be it bus stop or space station, present or past, doesn’t matter as much as the FACT of human interaction displayed in their works.
I would also like to say something about the “internal journalist” style of writing (this happened and this happened and I/she/he/they feel this one way about all of it) that so many authors start out using. When you try to blend this many styles of writing, journalism, diary writing, memoir writing, fiction, romance, fantasy, psychology, and both ideological and marketing rhetoric, you are taking on too much and trying to get too much “story” into to few words. One of the hallmarks of this style of writing is using, to over simplify, the wrong voice for the wrong mood; cold, logical voice to talk about emotions, a emotional, judgmental voice to talk about statements of fact, and using baby talk or slang to talk about ideology. The internal journalist will do this, use a different mood for every part of the story and they will almost always juxtapose the words with the meaning. By shifting the mood and method of the writing all over the place, it makes it less personal and less “real” for both the reader and the writer.
We, the readers, are lost, storm tossed between the words and what they mean and can only guess what the story was “about”. And we always end up wondering what the story was about since we feel that it wasn’t about the words that we read. You the author knows what the story was about, what all the little symbols and mood shifts meant. You wrote it for you, then made us read it because you thought you hid “you” well enough, when in fact what you hid was the story itself and exposed you. You aren’t fiction, you are real so the “fiction” you wrote isn’t fiction (since it was about you, the real thing) and, like the language you used to write it, you do the opposite of what you meant.
You may think it is easier to write about yourself in some other circumstances, but in reality, it is harder. It limits your characters responses. It limits the believability of the plot, actions, and resolution of your story. It almost always becomes both preachy and inconsistent. If you think that your “real” life is that dull, try really looking at what is going on around you, all those people with all those things happening all the time all around you. Instead of trying to justify your real life though a make-believe character that you place in strange circumstances, try writing about someone totally different. Step outside your own head and look around you (what Hemingway is really known for) and try to report on those lives as they really are.
Try reporting on how those lives touch your own without trying to explain away who you are and who they are. Apologetic writing is good to write, but bad to read. It purges the social guilt from the mind, focuses the angst onto paper and away from important things, and allows the mind time to think it through. This is, as I said, a good thing. But it is also isn’t fiction.
Reading other authors is a good way to start to see the world from other eyes, but it is only a start; try writing like one of them. Take one of your stories and try to write it like Hemingway, Rice, Poe, Kerouac, Asimov, and the bibble. Yes I do mean that. Not because it will flatter some dead people (how goth is that) but rather to see that you can write in different ways and tell the same elements of the story through many voices and moods. It will help you move away from trying to hide your nightmares and self-love/hate under a thin layer of “fiction” and help you start to tell a story.
|
| |
| |
|
|
Average Rating : 4.3
Total ratings : 6
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Expose Your Story, Not Yourself | Login/Create an account | 4 Comments |
|
| | Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
Re: Expose Your Story, Not Yourself
by Shade (Shade@Gothcult.com)
on May 08, 2004 - 11:07 AM
(User info | Send a Message)
http://www.hotelshade.com
|
This brings to mind the idea of second person writing, not in the generic sense of writing from just any second person, but the excercise of taking someone you meet today and writing the story of their day. This allows the expression of the writer's inherent need to glorify themselves through their writing as the subject of the story will meet the writer at some point. It also keeps the writer out of the story for the most part and makes them think about cirumstances that may be foreign or unnatural to them.
How about that crusty punk who tried to bum your spare change this morning on your way to work? What time did they wake up and where were they? What did they think about when they woke up and can they even smell the stink coming off their unwashed bodies or have their nostrils become so saturated with the scent that it does not exist for their mind?
How about the secretary with whom you had to deal in the afternoon? Is she hot, does she know it? Did the pizza boy try to hit on her when he dropped off the pizza for her boss? Are there aliens secretly feeding her signals while she sleeps? Did she seem a little distracted while dealing with you because she was remembering how the boy she met at the club last night tied her to the lamp post on the way home and had his way with her until she begged him to let her come?
Use your imagination, but as callei has so eloquently said, not your life.
|
|
|
