aamcnamara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aamcnamara) wrote2009-02-01 09:11 pm
aamcnamara) wrote2009-02-01 09:11 pm
then we wouldn't have to wait so long
Lately I've been thinking about context in writing. My writing teachers from a while ago would do a context exercise with the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice"; first they played the song, and then they played a clip where it was used in a documentary, with clips of a town dying because the auto plant that had kept it alive was closing.
The story that I'm working on right now depends on context. The trick, of course, is creating that context within what the readers get of the story. The first scene is one that has happened to the main character before: he is where he was before, seeing the same things and smelling the same things, but you can't step in the same river twice, and he is not who he was before. That context, that contrast, creates the tension between who he was, who he is, and who he's trying to be.
In some sense, all stories depend on context, certainly inside the story's action (we expect characters to be the same person the whole way through, bar revelations). Many stories also depend on exterior context--from actions taken just before the story starts, to backstory of characters, to the entirety of the genre. How much they depend on context, and how many layers of it exist to be unraveled, depends on the story and the writer.
---
Another observation about stories: usually, they leave out the waiting. (Waiting For Godot being the exception which proves the rule.)
In an unscientific study of two anthologies of short YA fiction about GLBT people (from the '80s and today), there are a lot of stories about "main character encounters gay parent/other relative/teacher/neighbor, has perceptions changed", and a lot of stories about "main character discovers he/she is gay through mutual falling in love with someone of the same sex".
The second kind irks me more than the first. Self-discovery is not always like that; in fact, probably it rarely is. (And the circumstance in those stories is not required by self-discovery, hence the 'self-'.)
This connects to waiting, I swear--due to proportions, if you're gay, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting. Even if you're straight, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting.
Waiting is boring.
We want to read the glorious moment, the moment when everything changes. But it isn't that 'nothing happens' when you're waiting. It's that other things happen. Still, the waiting goes on, underneath.
(I would feel bad about the relative teen-angst quality of this section of my post, but, after all, everyone who's here signed up for it. Hi. I'm Alena. I'm a teenager, as much as I like to deny the fact.)
(ETA: Okay, so waiting is what builds the context for stories. Still, everyone is always waiting for something; it doesn't go away just because the current story is taking place in some other aspect of life.)
---
School is, as always, school. As my last posts indicated, my big papers are in, but that doesn't mean that they're done with me. Oh, no. Never that. So we have projects to do, and presentations to prepare, but I am writing a story--well, I am writing this post, but I've written five hundred words tonight, which is more words of new fiction than I've written on any story for quite a while, and I'm not sure how the next scene starts.
I had an overnight at a college this weekend. It brought college crashing through "well, in September; that's a while away" right up to now. I wish that it were now; I wish all my hard choices were over and done with. But it's not, and it won't be for a while, and I have to take it one day at a time and move on.
The story that I'm working on right now depends on context. The trick, of course, is creating that context within what the readers get of the story. The first scene is one that has happened to the main character before: he is where he was before, seeing the same things and smelling the same things, but you can't step in the same river twice, and he is not who he was before. That context, that contrast, creates the tension between who he was, who he is, and who he's trying to be.
In some sense, all stories depend on context, certainly inside the story's action (we expect characters to be the same person the whole way through, bar revelations). Many stories also depend on exterior context--from actions taken just before the story starts, to backstory of characters, to the entirety of the genre. How much they depend on context, and how many layers of it exist to be unraveled, depends on the story and the writer.
---
Another observation about stories: usually, they leave out the waiting. (Waiting For Godot being the exception which proves the rule.)
In an unscientific study of two anthologies of short YA fiction about GLBT people (from the '80s and today), there are a lot of stories about "main character encounters gay parent/other relative/teacher/neighbor, has perceptions changed", and a lot of stories about "main character discovers he/she is gay through mutual falling in love with someone of the same sex".
The second kind irks me more than the first. Self-discovery is not always like that; in fact, probably it rarely is. (And the circumstance in those stories is not required by self-discovery, hence the 'self-'.)
This connects to waiting, I swear--due to proportions, if you're gay, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting. Even if you're straight, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting.
Waiting is boring.
We want to read the glorious moment, the moment when everything changes. But it isn't that 'nothing happens' when you're waiting. It's that other things happen. Still, the waiting goes on, underneath.
(I would feel bad about the relative teen-angst quality of this section of my post, but, after all, everyone who's here signed up for it. Hi. I'm Alena. I'm a teenager, as much as I like to deny the fact.)
(ETA: Okay, so waiting is what builds the context for stories. Still, everyone is always waiting for something; it doesn't go away just because the current story is taking place in some other aspect of life.)
---
School is, as always, school. As my last posts indicated, my big papers are in, but that doesn't mean that they're done with me. Oh, no. Never that. So we have projects to do, and presentations to prepare, but I am writing a story--well, I am writing this post, but I've written five hundred words tonight, which is more words of new fiction than I've written on any story for quite a while, and I'm not sure how the next scene starts.
I had an overnight at a college this weekend. It brought college crashing through "well, in September; that's a while away" right up to now. I wish that it were now; I wish all my hard choices were over and done with. But it's not, and it won't be for a while, and I have to take it one day at a time and move on.
no subject
yes. yes. yes.
and you know that I am waiting too.
Story!
mm. Being at a college for a weekend takes you out of context (um. your entry influenced my trains of thought.) of your life and then you just slam back into "Oh that's right. /Highschool/."
But. Story. and this entry was amazing for giving me new trains of thought.
no subject
New trains of thought are good. So are stories.
How best to answer this but with a number of pretentious quotes?
Or here's another one, this one from good ol' Thomas Eliot: "But the essential advantage for a poet is not, to have a beautiful world with which to deal: it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory."
Point being: waiting is essential when it comes to personal change, self-discovery, and all that, but as you say, people want the revelatory moment. Stories that are interesting are about stuff happening. And I would say that even if the accretion of discrete change particles happens during the waiting, it is some compulsion to change--often an external crisis--that forces those particles to conglomerate into action. If you want to change, if you feel you've changed, but that change hasn't created an external change, have you really changed? Is internal change significant?
There's lots of good literature saying, "Yes," but by sheer numbers, most of it seems to lie in the other camp. Of course, fiction is mythology, amirite?
Side note: it's the stories about the waiting, about the quiet change, that are responsible for the worst excesses of mimetic fiction, and the most terrifically boring stories. It's also got some terrifically terrifying literature, too, from simple horror to our good friend Woolf. Sadly, the crappy kitchen table, "And then she understood," stories vastly outnumber the Woolfs. But, then, stories about giant space-wangs cutting through the birth canal of dark matter vastly outnumber the M. John Harrisons, too. The fact that most art is derivative crap regardless of artistic goals is often forgotten when it comes to pissing on that brand you dislike.
Side side note: what a roundabout way of telling me you didn't care for one of my stories we workshopped. Okay, I apologize for inflicting it on you, then. ~_^
In what balance and at what point should we compromise the truth of everyday existence for the Truth of the story we're telling? Are there stories where such compromise is superfluous? If there are, I'm not convinced that it can be maintained for every story you write if you want to be a fully-developed writer, but I do think it's a struggle that has to be redefined with every piece you attempt.
Re: How best to answer this but with a number of pretentious quotes?
Isn't there a someone or other's law that ninety percent of everything is crap? I try to keep that in mind when considering this kind of thing. For some people, of course, even Woolf is part of that ninety percent. I like Woolf, but I don't like James Joyce's DUBLINERS, which, according to a lot of people, is just as good. (Admittedly, maybe I would like different James Joyce better. I've never tried.)
The balance is definitely delicate between truth and Truth, and yes, I'd agree that it changes with every story. Quote from somebody, somewhere: "You don't learn to write a novel, you learn to write this novel." It's probably just as true for short stories.
I think I have a story inside of me in which one plot is in the foreground, but in the background, a lot of other things are gradually accumulating, as you say, discrete change particles. (I love that phrase.) At some point, that story will emerge.
RE: side side note: It needed more monster trucks. On the other hand, everything needs more monster trucks.
(You vanish for six months and then reappear with a page-and-a-half long comment on my LJ. How am I not surprised?)
Re: How best to answer this but with a number of pretentious quotes?
I'm finally emerging from my shell. I think post-Odyssey combined with having to deal with the real world completely on my own for the first time kind of shocked me into nothingness. If I can keep this up, you'll find me much more prolific.
Re: How best to answer this but with a number of pretentious quotes?
If page-and-a-half comments aren't prolific, I don't know if I want to see what you think prolific is.
I can definitely understand, though. Post-Odyssey on its own was bad enough for me. I've kept up with the Internet, but I'm not sure if I should have. It sucks away the time like a time... sucky... thing.
(By the way, depending on which of my colleges accepts me, I might be out in Massachusetts in early April. If, you know, you want to help me get from one place to another. Or just hang out.)
Re: How best to answer this but with a number of pretentious quotes?
If page-and-a-half comments aren't prolific, I don't know if I want to see what you think prolific is.
Quantity, not quality.