then we wouldn't have to wait so long
Feb. 1st, 2009 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraLately 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.
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Re: How best to answer this but with a number of pretentious quotes?
Date: 2009-02-04 02:46 am (UTC)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?
Date: 2009-02-05 04:24 am (UTC)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?
Date: 2009-02-05 04:35 am (UTC)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?
Date: 2009-02-05 04:39 am (UTC)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.