Blog 9-10-08
So, I was doing the reading for today in “The Practice of Creative Writing” when I realized something; Sellers approach to putting energy in writing really annoys me at times.
Now, don’t misunderstand, I really think that a lot of what she says is interesting and possesses merit: her section about avoiding generalized terms/themes I found especially helpful. But in today’s reading, I got the distinct impression that she was only focused on writing ‘modern-day’ fiction. Her heavy emphasis on writing about your own, personal experiences was something that I found rather tiring after a while, especially as, in her emphasis on ‘writing what you know’, she seemed to be discounting the writing of things that you cannot know in the personal way she describes; things like historical fiction, fantasy, or science-fiction. I do concede the point that when one writes about another time and/or place research into that time is incredibly important. I believe that good writing is not so much a matter of writing something that you are an expert in, but is rather a matter of making the reader believe in what you are writing, whether it is normal or totally far-fetched. As long as you can make the reader believe in, and associate with, your story and characters, than you have succeeded.
Also, beg to differ on some of her points about writing about a character’s thoughts. Though I whole-heartedly agree with her points about filter words, I think that her discounting any method of examining a character’s thoughts was rather odd. There are plenty of instances where the examination of a character’s thoughts or feelings (without using such words as thoughts, wondered, or felt), can actually add a great deal to the energy and pace of a story. Thought she kind of indicates this in her student-teacher story example, I really think that she didn’t make this point well. Characters don’t need to be around other characters all the time; energy can be kept up perfectly fine when they are not through careful word choice and scene and/or plot construction.
Finally, on the matter of description, I totally agree with the idea that leaps and gaps in your text add energy, and that one shouldn’t spell things out, but I feel that sometimes a large amount of description can really help a story, especially one that isn’t occurring in the here-and-now. Description needs to be balanced with gaps in text, but it also is what can really allow, if used right, for a reader to become totally immersed in at tale.
What I am trying to say is that, thought I don’t totally disagree with everything Sellers writes about in regards to creating energy, I also don’t totally agree with it. The best writing needs to have a balance in the level of energy, and that is something that Sellers has not (so far at least) really explained well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Dear Leah--
I'm very pleased with your approach to Sellers' advice: like every teacher you will encounter (and as a serious student of writing, I hope you will encounter as many teachers as you possibly can), Sellers has some advice that will be exactly what you, Leah, need to learn at this moment, and some advice that won't be helpful to you at all. That's kind of the way teaching and learning in the arts roll.
I wonder if there are a couple of interventions I can make that will make Sellers's advice more useful. One is this: when Sellers suggests that some approach or other lowers a piece's energy, you shouldn't take that as a prohibition: "Never ever write about the inner thoughts of a lone character." Take it instead as a challenge. Sellers is pointing to something that is very difficult to do well, which isn't the same thing at all as something that can't be done well. My advice for you on this point is this: look for and collect passages of excellent writing that observe a character alone and thinking. A famous example is the "lapful of roses" passage in Vol I, Chap VI of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (http://www.bartleby.com/311/6.html). Here Isabel is all alone with her thoughts, but the passage is fascinating and beautiful. How does James manage that? Take some notes for yourself on how James and your favorite authors manage to keep you excited and interested during passages that violate Sellers's "rules" about energy.
About writing what you know: as I read that passage, I, too, thought: What about sci fi? Fantasy? Speculative fiction? Historical fiction? Hell, how can I possibly know what's in anyone's head other than mine? But--here's the thing. There's a ton that I do know about what it is to be a human being observing and functioning in the world, and I can import that knowledge into any piece I write, even if it's set in the Horsehead Nebula sometime in the 37th century. By practicing describing the inside of my bedroom, which I can see, I learn how to describe the inside of my character's bunk on a space freighter as if I could see it. Even if my story is happening in the Horsehead Nebula, its emotional impact will come from my including what I do know in it--which is stuff like how the captain feels humiliated when the brand-new recruit's response to an emergency is better than his own, or how the traveler who's far, far away from home gets a weird feeling in his gut when he smells that alien plant that smells so much like his grandmother's bath powder. Joss Whedon's television show Firefly, for example, is chock-full of little jolts of familiarity even though it's set in space in the far future, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is incredibly emotionally realistic even though it's documenting the feelings of the lone man who has survived an apocalyptic catastrophe.
Is that helpful?
Cheers,
Theo
Post a Comment