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brigdhGiven the number of times I mentioned it, I'm sure most of you are aware that I was in a fiction writing class last quarter. You may also have noticed that I never posted the story I wrote for it.
I had been planning to, actually. But the class was organized to require two rewrites of our stories based on the criticism we received, and every rewrite I did ended with me hating the story more and more. That's not the way I usually work. That's not at all the way I usually work and it bothered me because I couldn't figure out why things were getting worse; I'm used to rewritings making me happier. I may eventually get sick or tired of messing with the same idea over and over again, but I'm always aware on some level that the time and effort I've put in has had discernible results. I didn't get that sense at all this time.
And I think I've finally managed to articulate to myself why that was, so now I'll babble at you all about it.
First off, I had a revelation about the way I think about stories. In my opinion (and, you know, feel free to disagree with me), they should either attempt to answer a question or make a statement. I've probably believed this for a long time, but I wasn't consciously aware of it, because fanfiction provides so many questions and theories without even needing to look for them. "What would happen if Tsuzuki flirted with Hisoka just a little too obviously?" is a perfectly valid question for a story to answer. Theories that I would be interested in reading about range from "Perhaps Gojyo and Sanzo are secretly long-lost brothers" to "Jeep is secretly a mack daddy, and he gets all the hos" to more serious ones.
But these kinds of questions don't quite translate to original fiction. You cannot write a story about "This is what it's like when Bob and Sue have sex" and expect anyone to care, because no one outside of my head knows who Bob and Sue are (and actually, no one inside my head knows them either, because I just made those names up). There's no reason to be interested in it, there's no emotional investment. A slight change to the phrasing of the plot-idea could give it a more universal concern, though; maybe "This is what it's like when two people divorcing have sex for the last time".
I thought all of this out while I was trying to come up with what to write for my class, and it did prompt a story I wanted to tell. Being me, of course I ended up finishing the first draft at 3am the night before it was due, so the story likely did not express coherently anything of the things I was trying to say, but I had the same sort of good-starting-point feeling that I get from most first drafts. Sure, there were problems, and I desperately wanted just a little more time to rework, but it was a story, and it said things I wanted to say about loneliness, and about how the choices we make affect who we become.
I turned it in, and people read it, and mostly liked it, and I got lots of helpful concrit. What I was told most consistently, by nearly everyone in class, was that the main character needed to change. There had to be a reason for why I told the story of "this day", and not the day before or the day after.
And that sounded good to me. I liked stories where things happened and people changed. So twice I tried to rewrite the story with that idea in mind, and just came to hate it more each time. Now- helpfully a month after the class ended- I think the problem is just that: it was never meant to be a story about someone who changed.
Part of it was the stubbornness of the main character; if she changes at all, it should take months or years, and a novella to tell it, not a 10-20 page short story. Trying to convince her to evolve in that short of a space kept feeling too easy to me, like cheating, and anyway I wasn't nearly as interested in the new version of her as I was in the old version. I liked it when she was bitchy.
But more importantly, that just wasn't what I had been trying to tell. I wanted to say things about a static situation, about something entirely different from a character arc. The common wisdom is probably right that things shouldn't be the exact same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning, but the change in this story should probably have been something more along the lines of a new self-awareness than turning a new leaf. I wish I had realized that sooner.
What do you all think? What's the essential nature of storytelling? Do characters need to change? Have you ever done rewrites that just kept getting you farther and farther away from what you were trying to do?
I had been planning to, actually. But the class was organized to require two rewrites of our stories based on the criticism we received, and every rewrite I did ended with me hating the story more and more. That's not the way I usually work. That's not at all the way I usually work and it bothered me because I couldn't figure out why things were getting worse; I'm used to rewritings making me happier. I may eventually get sick or tired of messing with the same idea over and over again, but I'm always aware on some level that the time and effort I've put in has had discernible results. I didn't get that sense at all this time.
And I think I've finally managed to articulate to myself why that was, so now I'll babble at you all about it.
First off, I had a revelation about the way I think about stories. In my opinion (and, you know, feel free to disagree with me), they should either attempt to answer a question or make a statement. I've probably believed this for a long time, but I wasn't consciously aware of it, because fanfiction provides so many questions and theories without even needing to look for them. "What would happen if Tsuzuki flirted with Hisoka just a little too obviously?" is a perfectly valid question for a story to answer. Theories that I would be interested in reading about range from "Perhaps Gojyo and Sanzo are secretly long-lost brothers" to "Jeep is secretly a mack daddy, and he gets all the hos" to more serious ones.
But these kinds of questions don't quite translate to original fiction. You cannot write a story about "This is what it's like when Bob and Sue have sex" and expect anyone to care, because no one outside of my head knows who Bob and Sue are (and actually, no one inside my head knows them either, because I just made those names up). There's no reason to be interested in it, there's no emotional investment. A slight change to the phrasing of the plot-idea could give it a more universal concern, though; maybe "This is what it's like when two people divorcing have sex for the last time".
I thought all of this out while I was trying to come up with what to write for my class, and it did prompt a story I wanted to tell. Being me, of course I ended up finishing the first draft at 3am the night before it was due, so the story likely did not express coherently anything of the things I was trying to say, but I had the same sort of good-starting-point feeling that I get from most first drafts. Sure, there were problems, and I desperately wanted just a little more time to rework, but it was a story, and it said things I wanted to say about loneliness, and about how the choices we make affect who we become.
I turned it in, and people read it, and mostly liked it, and I got lots of helpful concrit. What I was told most consistently, by nearly everyone in class, was that the main character needed to change. There had to be a reason for why I told the story of "this day", and not the day before or the day after.
And that sounded good to me. I liked stories where things happened and people changed. So twice I tried to rewrite the story with that idea in mind, and just came to hate it more each time. Now- helpfully a month after the class ended- I think the problem is just that: it was never meant to be a story about someone who changed.
Part of it was the stubbornness of the main character; if she changes at all, it should take months or years, and a novella to tell it, not a 10-20 page short story. Trying to convince her to evolve in that short of a space kept feeling too easy to me, like cheating, and anyway I wasn't nearly as interested in the new version of her as I was in the old version. I liked it when she was bitchy.
But more importantly, that just wasn't what I had been trying to tell. I wanted to say things about a static situation, about something entirely different from a character arc. The common wisdom is probably right that things shouldn't be the exact same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning, but the change in this story should probably have been something more along the lines of a new self-awareness than turning a new leaf. I wish I had realized that sooner.
What do you all think? What's the essential nature of storytelling? Do characters need to change? Have you ever done rewrites that just kept getting you farther and farther away from what you were trying to do?
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Date: 2006-01-12 06:49 am (UTC)Seriously, though, you're probably far more right than any of my theories.
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Date: 2006-01-12 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 04:56 am (UTC)If you had the sense that your story was losing life as you reworked it to add arc-iness, rather than gaining power and precision, Occam's Razor suggests to me that it is very likely that it really was the wrong framework for that particular story. You're an extremely gifted writer; your intuition is more likely to be accurate than a bunch of formulaic rules handed down by -- if I may be a little unkind here? -- the sort of people who find it difficult to operate without having some rules.
And here I should stop, lest I begin foaming at the mouth over Faramir and the movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, and thereby wander far, far from the immediate topic.
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Date: 2006-01-12 07:12 am (UTC)I don't usually mind the idea of a character arc, particularly since I'm more likely to be interested in the characters than the plot (and character/plot is an unrealistic division, yes, but I'm sure you know what I mean), but it really was just not this story. And it isn't a lot of other stories, either. I heard the idea of a story being "the day that changes" repeated so often in the class, in varying phrases and concepts, when I'd never heard it before- at least not that I remembered- that it seemed like some secret writing rule that would help tremendously. But I'm thinking not so much.
Heh. The revamping of Faramir for the movies annoyed me too, much as I did love the films.
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Date: 2006-01-12 05:08 am (UTC)I am so glad I wrote that, if only that it has apparently brought joy to others, or at least mild discomfort.
As for the larger question... damn, man, if part of what you're writing about is a character who's not likely to change, then having them change just to get some kind of point across almost always comes across as gimmicky and lame and cheap. Unless there's a good reason... well, for the most part, real genuine people do not change significantly, and personally I tend to find it much more interesting to read about a character not changing -- or changing, and then backsliding -- then having a Magical Revelatory Super Shoujo Sparkle Life Altering Experience!!1 or even something way less sarcastic than that. But then I enjoy being depressed.
As far as the purpose of storytelling goes, well, as many things as I may sometimes get cross at him about, I have to side with Stephen King's once-stated position on the subject: it's to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end that a person can get into and care about. If I may paraphrase the interview with him I'm thinking of, a story that's really well-written or even makes a profound point but has no real meat to the story is like a really beautiful car with no engine. Well, it's nice to look at, but how the hell am I going to get to the grocery?
There was a point to all this, but it has temporarily escaped the commenter's mind.
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Date: 2006-01-12 07:18 am (UTC)then having a Magical Revelatory Super Shoujo Sparkle Life Altering Experience!!1
Heh. And that is so what it was. "She had sex and now she WANTS TO LOVE OTHERS! SHE IS PART OF THE CIRCLE OF LIFE, CUE DRAMATIC MUSIC." And I couldn't figure out what I kept hating the rewrites.
a story that's really well-written or even makes a profound point but has no real meat to the story is like a really beautiful car with no engine
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. It's totally right, and I think I just didn't describe it in the original post because it's one of those things that you agree with so much you forget to point them out. I mean, if you're not going to put any story in the story, it'd be a lot easier to just write an essay or something.
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Date: 2006-01-12 05:13 am (UTC)As for rewrites, yes, I've had that happen, but only in situations like classes or on staff in a TV show, when other people are giving input that's unhelpful but which you have to use anyway, or when you simply have to do a rewrite whether you have any ideas for it or not.
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Date: 2006-01-12 05:47 am (UTC)Okaaay.
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Date: 2006-01-12 07:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 10:06 pm (UTC)probably because I'm such a slob.no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:22 am (UTC)Be sure to read down far enough to see the icons.
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Date: 2006-01-12 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 05:28 am (UTC)However, rules are made to be broken, and plenty of writers have penned classics in which not one damned thing happens, and the one thing I've learned from 'how to write' manuals is that sometimes the only thing they're good for is resting your teacup.
You're right about fics-- they have the story arcs built into them. We all know perfectly well who Tsuzuki is and why he acts the way he does; we don't need to put that structure into fics, especially vignette fics, which by definition can worry about describing a moment instead of telling a story.
But I think original pieces can be vignettish, too. You need to put a little more structure into it than you would a fic, but I don't think they all have to be rigorously plotted and intricately structures, full of sound and fury, either.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is this-- if you want your character to be a bitch, go ahead. Don't make her change if that would turn her into toothless cardboard. She's yours-- and you know how to treat her right.
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Date: 2006-01-12 07:37 am (UTC)Which is to say, thank you. It's nice to say that other people see things similarly.
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Date: 2006-01-12 06:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 07:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 04:50 pm (UTC)I suppose if it's just a story with characters in it and the story is driven more by the plot (say there's a volcanic eruption or something), then people can like the story without liking the characters. But if it's a story that is driven by the characters (say they meet somewhere and it goes from there, or they have a long-standing rivalry that exists prior to the story but drives events in the story), people will like the characters.
Good examples of this are stories that have been turned into films or plays, where huge fanbases have developed around the main and/or supporting characters, such as Secret Window or even Brokeback Mountain.
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Date: 2006-01-12 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 05:16 pm (UTC)A conversation/discussion, when polite, usually revolves around, "I think that," and "in my opinion," not "you're wrong."
I guess the biologist should stick to biology and quit trying to write, huh? In the future I won't bother offering
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Date: 2006-01-12 10:47 pm (UTC)Similarly I read Dracula even though I thought it was boring because I wanted to know what happened to the people... and because Frankenstein didn't hook me with someone interesting from the onset, I quit reading it.
I've read fantasy novels that were very poorly put together plot-wise and sci-fi novels I couldn't really understand just because I liked such and such character. I could give less than a shit about the storyline, other than how it affected those involved in it.
Your opinion is just that -- an opinion. You aren't the absolute authority on what is good writing and what is bad writing, so you really shouldn't go around telling people that their opinions are wrong, especially when it comes to books. After all, you might think that bodice-ripper romance novels are the worst crap ever to be shat out by a typewriter but they are wildly popular.
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Date: 2006-01-12 09:13 am (UTC)As to to essential nature of storytelling -- I think there are lots of reasons people tell stories: they connect with the Muse, and just have to get it out; they have a political purpose; they need to make a statement or answer a question in themselves, and writing a story helps that process...many different reasons.
Secondly, I don't know...maybe characters don't need to change, but I usually find it more interesting if they do. If they go about discovering something about their world or themselves, and that changes them. Maybe that's why I like fantasy stories so much, with all their adventure.
As for your last question, yes, though usually it's more in the realm of poetry, which isn't just masterful storytelling, but being able to find the right balance of cliche and profundity. I've been musing on the Muse, and these lyrics seem to explain my position well: http://www.lionslair.com/Lyrics/Chickasaw_Mountain.html. Bob Dylan's career seems to intimate the narritive of going from oracle to craftsman of storytelling. But, yeah, unless I just "spit out" a poem or story from the Muse, and craft one instead, I have that issue at times.
(p.s. it's really late, I'm nearly wits-end-ed from taking care of my very very ill friend with whom I live, so forgive me if that was nonsensical)
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Date: 2006-01-12 10:05 pm (UTC)I think it's interesting that you seem to put connecting with the Muse on such a high level, because I really hadn't thought of that. Do you think that affects the nature of the finished story, as opposed to someone writing to, say, make a political statement? Very nice set of lyrics, by the way. Do you happen to have a mp3 of the song? I'd like to hear it.
(No worries, I understood. My sympathy for you and your friend's troubles, though.)
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Date: 2006-01-20 06:45 am (UTC)Anyway, I do think writing a story or poem by connecting with the Muse affects the nature of a story, because usually that type of story writing/telling gives much more, in a word, "archetypal" potency. It seems to be, maybe, something to do with "collective consciousness," or related phenomena, appealing to the deeper parts of ourselves, below that place where identity rears its complicated and strife-causing head; it goes beyond the ego, in a Buddhistic sense. Kind of like really good art (cf. Dali).
Bob Dylan, one of the great storytellers of our time, was said to almost "channel" a song/lyrics with the voice of his entire generation. And then, after his accident, he sort of lost that gift, and had to become a craftsman of the art of songwriting. (cf. Chickasaw Mountain. Oh, no I don't have an mp3 of it, but I might soon if I can score a copy of the album with the song on it. I'll happily share it then.)
But I think that compartementalizing all this can be a problem if you're looking for answers about causes and effects. I certainly think you can connect to the Muse and make a political statement with the story at a same time. Sometimes you can't even help it, re: Bob Dylan.
But however you do it, you can't help but share a small part of yourself when you tell a story -- even if it's your own story or not; if it's a good story, it has to pass through you, becoming a part of you along the way, for you to tell it, I think. You put in something of your own, whether it's the stuff of the story, its structure, or the wonder in which you tell it. Storytelling is the oldest of magics, methinks, and all storytelling, at the heart, is a search for, on the microcosmic level, the nature of the individual self/the writer, and on a macrocosmic level, the nature of humanity and the world we find ourselves in.
I'll leave you with this idea: shamans are storytellers.
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Date: 2006-01-24 06:34 am (UTC)I certainly think you can connect to the Muse and make a political statement with the story at a same time.
Oh, yes, that's very true. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
But however you do it, you can't help but share a small part of yourself when you tell a story
Interesting. I wonder if this is related to the idea that there's only so many stories in the world, and we just keep telling them over and over, with slight changes. Perhaps we're just taking the stories we know and making them our own, using the plots and characters to, in a way, create ourselves, or portray the world as we see it. Interesting, too, the connection between shamans and storytellers, especially if you try to correlate it to modern society. After all, there seems to be a real focus these days on faith being proven as an "absolute truth"- the instance on teaching intelligent design as a science, for example- and to separate from imaginative storytelling. While on the other hand, our storytellers are almost worshiped: at least ones who are the actors and actresses of celebrity Hollywood.
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Date: 2006-01-12 09:14 am (UTC)I tend to write a novel-length, so my characters _do_ tend to change, but I don't think I've ever written a short story where the character changed in the process. Like you said, it's _too_ short. It's too sudden, it requires an epiphany like a lightning flash. And I've consciously tried to stop myself taking the planning approach of "Character A starts here and ends there" for characterisation. Partly because you never know what's going to happen en route... Most of all, I think change shouldn't be so overwhelming that you've got a new person at the end of it. If Character A relies on no-one and trusts no-one, I think it's conceivable that Character B could win her trust, reliance and love by the end of the story. I don't think Character A should suddenly decide to trust everyone in the world because B has OPENED HER EYES OMG. And anyway, what if other events in the story serve to reinforce her isolation as whole?
I am rambling... ^_^ To summarise: I think a long story should contain change of some kind, although it doesn't _have_ to be the characters. I think a short story should "capture" something, pin it to the page - a scene, a place, a person, an emotion. I severely dislike reading published short stories, because their writers always try to a) come to some sort of "moral" realisation where the characters change or b) put in a "twist" to surprise you. Both bore me and annoy me. And now I shall cease rambling.
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Date: 2006-01-12 10:00 pm (UTC)And I totally agree that all of those questions would make great stories (especially the one about the butch, capable princess. I really want to read that, now).
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Date: 2006-01-12 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-12 05:31 pm (UTC)That's all I'm saying.
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Date: 2006-01-12 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 04:04 am (UTC)I agree with what was taught in your class -- day that's different, change = teh big important -- but I also agree with you. "What if" statements are always important in the telling of a story and I think that original fiction is the same as fanfiction in that respect. To reword what you said, "What would it be like if divorced people had sex for the last time?" You've essentially said it yourself. ^^
I think I want the characters in stories (even my own) to change b/c, fundamentally, I want to change. I don't want to be stagnant, and I expect my characters to reflect that. In a work I'm writing currently, one character doesn't /want/ to change, and this ultimately leads to his downfall, or at least the downfall of his relationship, which affects the course of his whole (fictional ^^) life. On a different note, I don't really want to read stories that don't involve some kind of change b/c, well, they're kinda... stagnant (not my word o' the day, I swear). If I say, "Who cares?" after reading, I feel like I've wasted time.
I have a love/hate relationship with rewrites. When I rewrote the twin story for class, I adulterated the simplicity of it, and didn't realize until later that that was the essence of what I'd written. Of course, I've done rewrites before that made the story flow *beautifully* as well.
Just my 2 c.
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Date: 2006-01-24 06:42 am (UTC)On a different note, I don't really want to read stories that don't involve some kind of change b/c, well, they're kinda... stagnant
Hmmm, that's interesting. I don't know if I always feel the same. Granted, the longer a work is, the more I'll need to see some change- I don't know if it's even possible to write an epic, say, and not have your character change at all (Though it is definitely possible to write a short novel and do so, unless "coming to realize that you can never control fate and therefore should not even try and all life is suffering" counts as a change, and never read 'Shipwrecked' by the way, arggh the time I wasted on that when the back claimed it was a 'murder mystery'). But I don't think it really bothers me in a short story, as long as something interesting happens, or some point is made. I almost like the opposite, in fact- it starts to seem repetitive to me every story is some variation on "he was like this, he learned a lesson, and now he's much more well-adjusted!".
Which is being kind of facetious, because of course there's other kinds of change too, but that's what it started to feel like, to me.
I have a love/hate relationship with rewrites.
I usually love rewrites, and they tend to work very well for me, which is why I was having such an issue when I couldn't figure out why the same wasn't happening with the story for this class. But I get that they're not everyone's thing.