minimalism, ornamentalism, and humor

[myself_i_must_remake]

i emulate other writers regularly. i think it's part of growing up as a writer. it accounts for the seemingly different voices some of my readers might notice that i have from one story to another.

 

and lately i ran into a problem.

 

i took a class on morrison and a class on coetzee this semester, and they're radically different writers.

 

not to mention i read a bunch of vonnegut's novels.

 

so, before i begin, let me give you all the last lines of some of their novels because i think we can fairly safely assume that writers give a good deal of consideration to their last lines.

 

"I am eager to confront life a second time, but I am not impatient to get out. There is still my entire childhood to work through before I can expect to get to the bottom of my story. My mother (whom I have not hitherto mentioned) is spreading her vampire wings for the night. My father is away being a soldier. In my cell in the heart of America, with my private toilet in the corner, I ponder and ponder. I have high hopes of finding whose fault I am."

 

-Coetzee, "The Vietnam Project" from Dusklands

 

"Milkman stopped waving and narrowed his eyes. He could just make out Guitar's head and shoulders in the dark. 'You want my life?' Milkman was not shouting now. 'You need it? Here.' Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees - he leaped. As fleet and bright as a lodestar he whelled toward Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it."

 

-Morrison, Song of Solomon

 

"If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

 

-Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

 

 

ok so your high school teacher would have probably encouraged you to do something like Morrison's work. if you had written that paragraph, s/he would've said, "oh what an eloquent writer you are. such exquisite vocabulary," and a sticker would find its way onto your page. but is that best?

 

we are taught, growing up, to inject every adjective and adverb we can into our writing. ah yes, the more flashy the better. and there is something redemptive in writing that is a pleasure in itself, exercising the limits of language. it is tempting, when writing, to slap every obscure vocabulary word possible into a paragraph, romance-novel style.

 

now what is the flip side of that? minimalist writing. writing that uses adjectives and adverbs sparringly with the notion that, like most things, the fewer, the more valuable. likewise, minimalist writing is likely to use a standardized dialogue tag like "says" instead of trading in different tags practically every time a character speaks: shout, mumble, rejoin, inquire. shit like that. it lets the writer make certain things really stand out, especially form-wise. that's what coetzee's all about - form.

 

and then humor. in what writing does humor belong? humor largely affects tone. should certain novels be without humor? an answer might be, "it is pleasant and rewarding for the reader," but that's a commercialized view of writing. the desire to please the reader should not get in the way of telling the story the best way possible.

 

so... i'm torn between all of these because they all have their merits, and unfortunately the "take what you like from each and incorporate it into your own writing" doesn't work so well because between morrison and coetzee there's kind of a dichotomy, and then as with humor, it's kind of a yes or a no.

 

oh well. views are appreciated.

[corvus]

Great topic! It'll be impossible to give an even remotely complete answer.

 

i emulate other writers regularly. i think it's part of growing up as a writer. it accounts for the seemingly different voices some of my readers might notice that i have from one story to another.

 

I completely agree with you there. I don't know how true this is, but it seems that a lot of writers are encouraged to develop their "own voice," which implies trying to sound as different as possible from everyone else. That's silly and counterproductive. I know that it used to be, in certain cultures, that education was centered entirely on imitating past masters. The downside is traditions get entrenched and you become hyper-conservative, but there is a point in that practice.

 

ok so your high school teacher would have probably encouraged you to do something like Morrison's work. if you had written that paragraph, s/he would've said, "oh what an eloquent writer you are. such exquisite vocabulary," and a sticker would find its way onto your page. but is that best?

 

we are taught, growing up, to inject every adjective and adverb we can into our writing. ah yes, the more flashy the better. and there is something redemptive in writing that is a pleasure in itself, exercising the limits of language. it is tempting, when writing, to slap every obscure vocabulary word possible into a paragraph, romance-novel style.

 

I don't really agree with you there. Maybe that's what I learned in elementary school, but even in high school, a couple of teachers I had encouraged me to follow what was taught in Elements of Style: simplicity is elegance. Or, efficiency is good, haha. That is the prevailing school of thought with journalistic writing, isn't it?

 

I think most writers go through a purple prose stage, usually at the beginning. Then they realize it's all sound and fury and they tone it down. How much probably depends on the writer's temperament.

 

now what is the flip side of that? minimalist writing. writing that uses adjectives and adverbs sparringly with the notion that, like most things, the fewer, the more valuable. likewise, minimalist writing is likely to use a standardized dialogue tag like "says" instead of trading in different tags practically every time a character speaks: shout, mumble, rejoin, inquire. shit like that. it lets the writer make certain things really stand out, especially form-wise. that's what coetzee's all about - form.

 

Hemingway! You can't get more laconic than that.

 

and then humor. in what writing does humor belong? humor largely affects tone. should certain novels be without humor? an answer might be, "it is pleasant and rewarding for the reader," but that's a commercialized view of writing. the desire to please the reader should not get in the way of telling the story the best way possible.

 

Humor is much more than making the reader laugh. It's making the unpalatable palatable. I mean, that's the core of Vonnegut's power -- he turns the fire bombing of Dresden into a circus. It's so absurd you can't help laughing, but at the same time it's awful. I think the reason this effect is so powerful is because it's what happens in real life. Some things are so unimaginably horrible that it's impossible to truly understand. The only paradigm left is humor.

 

so... i'm torn between all of these because they all have their merits, and unfortunately the "take what you like from each and incorporate it into your own writing" doesn't work so well because between morrison and coetzee there's kind of a dichotomy, and then as with humor, it's kind of a yes or a no.

 

oh well. views are appreciated.

 

I'm reminded of a quote in Lord of the Rings, where Frodo tells Sam: "My dear Sam, you can not always be torn in two: you will have to be one and whole for many years." (Yes, my adolescence is showing itself.) If your intention is to emulate an author, then do so without thinking of putting in any other stylistic elements. That can come later. It's better to do a job well than to do it half arsed.

 

That said, I think the form/style you choose must depend entirely on how the story should be told. As you said yourself, the writer's prerogative is to tell a story the best way possible. If you want to tell a story that gives a sense of detachment, it's probably a good idea to be laconic and use humor. If you want the story to kind of... lyrical, use lyrical prose. Heh, my descriptions suck, but you get the idea. Don't incorporate a whole bunch of different styles because you can, or because it may seem cool. Just do whatever coincides with what's important in the story.

 

[Lugh]

sighs..

you are over thinking it.

 

forget all that crap you are learning in college -- and most of that crap you learned in high school...

go back to first grade or second or third --

 

where you were learning the rules for spelling and for commas... and think about the pure joy you felt when a sentence "read right" or you spelled a big word that didn't follow all the rules, yet it made perfect sense to you... grasp that moment and put it into your writing -- the rest will come -- and you won't even have to think about it.

 

 

ps..

 

I'll bet that 90% of the authors DID NOT give as much consideration to their final sentences as you think they did... I'll go on to say that MOST of them had one thing on their minds either "gads it's done" or "holy f*ck now I got to edit this b*tch"... meh... they might have considered both come to think of it.

[kitten]

Great topic! It'll be impossible to give an even remotely complete answer.

 

That said, I think the form/style you choose must depend entirely on how the story should be told. As you said yourself, the writer's prerogative is to tell a story the best way possible. If you want to tell a story that gives a sense of detachment, it's probably a good idea to be laconic and use humor. If you want the story to kind of... lyrical, use lyrical prose. Heh, my descriptions suck, but you get the idea. Don't incorporate a whole bunch of different styles because you can, or because it may seem cool. Just do whatever coincides with what's important in the story.

 

 

I agree with Corvus here.

Use the style that feels natural to you for the particular piece you're writing.

 

It's interesting that Tolkein is quoted here. My impression is that in LotR the style changes depending on the race (hobbit, dwarf, elf, man, etc) that is being talked about or quoted. So the style changes within the same novel to become something that feels appropriate for that particular race or topic.

 

Being an agreeable kind of guy, I also agree with Lugh...

Overthinking things like style can be very counter-productive.

 

if it feels right and is natural for you then it's your voice. Some people may love that voice and others may hate it, just just as some love Jane Austen and hate Dickens and vice-versa.

 

Your writer's voice is not just style of writing (e.g. minimalistic or florid) but attitude to life, the universe and everything. Optimistic, cynical, amused, concerned... these are part of your identity as a writer as well as part of you as a person.

 

When you emulate other authors it should be because you've absorbed their style and maybe aspects of their style suit your 'voice'. Trying to emulate by copying a style will not be helpful in finding your own 'voice'.

 

Kit

[JamesSavik]

Anyone who writes a substantial amount will come to a point to where they find their voice. That "voice" is a rather mad mixture of style, vocabulary, mood and 100 other attributes that makes an author's work unique. It is that ineffable quality that having read a paragraph tells the reader that this sounds like old-whats-iz-name.

 

There are some author's whose voice is so unique that many readers would recognize passages of their text without ever having read them. Conrad you could easily tell a mile away and Faulkner more like twenty.

 

There is no BEST voice for an author other than their own developed with time and experience.

 

You can be anyone that you want to be but you will always be best at being yourself.

[Procyon]

sighs..

you are over thinking it.

 

forget all that crap you are learning in college -- and most of that crap you learned in high school...

go back to first grade or second or third --

 

where you were learning the rules for spelling and for commas... and think about the pure joy you felt when a sentence "read right" or you spelled a big word that didn't follow all the rules, yet it made perfect sense to you... grasp that moment and put it into your writing -- the rest will come -- and you won't even have to think about it.

 

I agree, and I think those who posted in this thread got past the stage of high-schoolism, at least to a certain degree. Though it can be a bit hard to free yourself of what you're told at school. (Strangely, since one also tends to despise one's teachers at one level. But one respects them too, I guess.)

 

But the urge to be 'literary' is always there, and if you admire a writer it's natural to want to write like that person. I certainly have problems with that myself, and sadly the stories where I try to write -- well, not *like* someone else, but maybe in the spirit of a writer or writers I admire? -- those stories tend not to get finished, or else they're just not good. There are exceptions though.

 

An interesting thing though, when I look at writers here at GA, is that you can spot almost at a single look who has it and who doesn't. Some people are born writers and should definitely do something about it, i.e. try to publish something eventually, but above all, write, write, write. Then there are some (rather many) where you can see the potential, but it could go either way (in reality it could go either way for those who 'have it', too, of course, but it's more likely that they'll succeed at producing good writing.) Then there are some who are pretty far from producing great literary works, though one should never say never.

 

But even writers who have a great natural voice can feel lost or insecure or just be influenced by others and, as a result, deviate from their original voice -- and although that usually leads to a dip in quality, I think it furthers their writing in the long run; once they look back and see what and how they wrote, they'll learn from it, and one's natural voice does change over the years, and it should change. It doesn't mean that it goes from bad to good or vice versa -- it just changes, and possibly it becomes richer. And some authors' voice/literary quality/enjoyability fluctuates a great deal, and I like that in an author, because it gives me hope since that is how my own writing is. I can write (reasonably) well but also very badly -- ups and downs.

 

I'll bet that 90% of the authors DID NOT give as much consideration to their final sentences as you think they did... I'll go on to say that MOST of them had one thing on their minds either "gads it's done" or "holy f*ck now I got to edit this b*tch"... meh... they might have considered both come to think of it.

 

Sure, that's what they said when they'd just finished it, but you forget that what we get is from after their editing session. When they've had time to Think about It.

 

P.S. I agree with Jamessavik btw, if you write you'll find your voice. Good points there.

[S.L. Lewis]

sighs..

you are over thinking it.

 

ps..

 

I'll bet that 90% of the authors DID NOT give as much consideration to their final sentences as you think they did... I'll go on to say that MOST of them had one thing on their minds either "gads it's done" or "holy f*ck now I got to edit this b*tch"... meh... they might have considered both come to think of it.

 

I'm going to agree with Lugh here. Most of the time after I'm done with writing something, I don't think about how it's ending, but rather how the heck I'm going to edit the story in three hours. It all depends on the writer and the story. Most often then not, the story itself works it's self out as you write it.

 

Anyone who writes a substantial amount will come to a point to where they find their voice. That "voice" is a rather mad mixture of style, vocabulary, mood and 100 other attributes that makes an author's work unique. It is that ineffable quality that having read a paragraph tells the reader that this sounds like old-whats-iz-name.

 

There are some author's whose voice is so unique that many readers would recognize passages of their text without ever having read them. Conrad you could easily tell a mile away and Faulkner more like twenty.

 

There is no BEST voice for an author other than their own developed with time and experience.

 

You can be anyone that you want to be but you will always be best at being yourself.

 

 

Again, I'm going to agree with someone. The authors voice is a mixture of voices. Humor, sadness, anger, happiness, ect. You get the idea right? Once more, it's all about the story that it being written. I've read horror tales with blood, gore and death all over the place with parts that made me laugh so hard I got stared at.

It depends on what you feel fits. Stop over thinking about it and just let go. The rest will work it self out as time goes along. As it is with the english world, to many people are trying to control what is being written and nothing is getting done. It makes everything confusing.

Like Lugh said, forget what you learned in college and most of what you learned in high school and keep the pure joy of writing from the lower grades, before rules got in your way.

[AFriendlyFace]

I think the style should fit the purpose.

 

Sometimes minimalism is best. Yet there are a plethora of other instances in the literary world in which nothing short of shameless and all out ostentatious ornamentalism would competently accomplish the task at hand. As a general rule of thumb I think that humour should serve a particular point of some kind when it is present in literature.

 

Personally speaking I tend to rely a bit too heavily on humour in my writing. I've often written something and thought, "this is rather clever, but do I really want my reader smirking at this point in the narrative?"

 

I very much believe in bending, and outright breaking the rules to suit your style and purpose. For example just the evening I purposely included a comma splice in one of my chapters because I felt that using a semicolon in such a purposely informal, simple bit of dialogue would have been too showy and distracting. I also didn't want it to be as choppy as it would have become had I simply divided it into two sentences. Yet it needed something, and I didn't want to re-word it, so I went with an incorrectly used comma and considered it a job well done.

 

Anyway, my point is that you should write with your purpose in mind and bend style and voice to serve that purpose.

 

Also, just because I never pass up a chance to get in a jab at him, I have to say that without a doubt Hemingway is the most mind-numblingly boring, least enjoyable, renowned author that I've ever had the misfortune of reading. Indeed, if someone really wants to write a scathing critique of my work all they have to do is compare it to Hemingway.

 

 

Just my thoughts and opinions,

Kevin

Edited May 27, 2008 by AFriendlyFace

[old bob]

Anyone who writes a substantial amount will come to a point to where they find their voice. That "voice" is a rather mad mixture of style, vocabulary, mood and 100 other attributes that makes an author's work unique. It is that ineffable quality that having read a paragraph tells the reader that this sounds like old-whats-iz-name.....

There is no BEST voice for an author other than their own developed with time and experience.( edit, the is from me)You can be anyone that you want to be but you will always be best at being yourself.

I can't give my opinion as an author, but as reader I fully agree with James. When you read the first words of a story, you are very quickly able to distinguish if the author has or not his own "voice".

An interesting thing though, when I look at writers here at GA, is that you can spot almost at a single look who has it and who doesn't. Some people are born writers and should definitely do something about it, but above all, write, write, write..... Then there are some (rather many) where you can see the potential, but it could go either way.... Then there are some who are pretty far from producing great literary works, though one should never say never.

I also fully agree with Procyon White, but I made also the experience to see an author of the second category suddenly "find" his/her voice and reach the first category.

Summarizing my opinion, to find his own "voice" for an author is an hard way, with two paths to follow: on one side, bring a gift from his/her unconscious part of the soul to the surface of the conscience (intuition) and recognize it, and one another side, work hard to find the style and vocabulary which express the best his/her style.

BTW, emulate another author is just an schoolar exercise ! They are other better ways to improve your writing's skills !

Old bob

[myself_i_must_remake]

eh. i'll do some calling out i think.

 

the idea of writers not thinking out their endings before they write them: this is a little silly.

 

i look at my bookshelf. there are over a hundred read novels. i cannot recall every detail from every one of them. i can't recall entire events. i sometimes have trouble even remembering the main character's name.

 

but let me tell you: i remember how each begins and ends.

 

are you going to tell me that these published writers, the best of their craft out of hundreds of thousands of intelligent men and women who fall under that umbrella term, "writer," just wing it and see where it goes? you doubt that these endings are thought out?

 

maybe if the writer is danielle steele or dan brown.

 

i don't doubt that sometimes they don't know their endings when they begin, or that the ending is hazy, but i am definite that once they get there, it is well thought out and not a result of this kind of thinking:

 

I'll bet that 90% of the authors DID NOT give as much consideration to their final sentences as you think they did... I'll go on to say that MOST of them had one thing on their minds either "gads it's done" or "holy f*ck now I got to edit this b*tch"... meh... they might have considered both come to think of it.

 

anticipation to finish is the childish cause of, i can speak for myself, at least some of my sloppier stories.

 

the best of, again, hundreds of thousands, have overcome this and revised heavily. look. i even have a quote from toni morrison, one of the ones i quoted initially, the one who allegedly didn't think it out:

 

"I love that part; that's the best part, revision. I do it even after the books are bound! Thinking about it before you write is delicious. Writing it out for the first time is painful because so much of the writing isn't very good. I didn't know in the beginning that I could go back and make it better; so I minded very much writing badly. But now I don't mind at all because there is that wonderful time in the future when I will make it better, when I can see better what I should have said and how to change it. I love that part."

 

and someone's going to tell me the woman who said that doesn't give great consideration to her endings.

 

not to pick further on Lugh, but i'm going to comment on something else:

 

forget all that crap you are learning in college -- and most of that crap you learned in high school...

go back to first grade or second or third --

 

where you were learning the rules for spelling and for commas... and think about the pure joy you felt when a sentence "read right" or you spelled a big word that didn't follow all the rules, yet it made perfect sense to you... grasp that moment and put it into your writing -- the rest will come -- and you won't even have to think about it.

 

ok so. that's a nice image. one thinks of happier days. no worries. no sex drive. only desire for friendship, thinking not of deadlines but how one will spend this lovely summer's day of their youth, running outside, losing a game of tug-a-war to the friendly german shepard.

 

ah yes, well. no.

 

those were not the days when i loved writing. i didn't love writing until it began complex, until it became a craft. i only love writing more and more the more i realize what one can do with words: the power that can be unleashed from a concise, coiled sentence. the more dense, the better. to pack as much meaning into the fewest number of words - this is something to be desired.

 

so let's not criticize that "crap i'm learning in college." this is the crap i wake up for in the morning. this is the crap i drew diagrams of the effects of framing for just THIS morning. this is the crap i want to dedicate my life to. when i have passed on without child, i will leave behind this crap as the only evidence of my ever having been. how can i overthink the closest thing i will have to a child?

 

i'm thankful for those who had advice about finding my voice, but i have little patience for such an idea as overthinking writing. as far as i'm concerned it can't be done. you can think wrongly, but you cannot overthink. why? because writing is never perfect, and i think that's why i enjoy it so much more than math. with math, there is an answer, and a best way to get to that answer. once you do it perfectly, you can improve no further. with writing, something can always be improved upon. how can you overthink the imperfect? that would imply having made it perfect, and then making it unperfect again, when it can't become perfect in the first place.

 

in my survey courses at college, where non-majors are allowed in, and i remember especially in high school, there was always the crowd that said, "no, the writer does not mean that. you're looking into it too much."

 

i was one of that crowd, but i have since read an obscene amount of stories, and i have seen the way things line up too perfectly to be a coincidence. "water is associated with death in this novel," a teacher says, and the student thinks no, this is overthinking. but the novel progresses, and a light rain falls, and surely enough, something dies.

 

is the struggle more obvious now? if it could be quelled with a desire to return to a simpler, idealistic time, don't you think i would have discovered that by now? what i'm struggling with is the ability to pack such power in a few pages, or to tickle the reader, satisfy them. it's practically sexual.

 

i used to feel bad because i'm turning away from humor in some of my stories. but very recently i feel that i am finally over that. humor does not belong in situations which are not funny, and i refuse to make laughter from a situation that i want taken seriously just to encourage the reader to keep reading. if the reader wants funny, he can youtube a comedian.

 

thoughts?

Edited May 27, 2008 by lesfeuxdemoncoeur

[kitten]

This post of lesfeuxdemoncoeur is very interesting and also very complex, so I hope that he and others will forgive me if any par of my response is due to a misunderstanding of what he meant.

 

eh. i'll do some calling out i think.

 

the idea of writers not thinking out their endings before they write them: this is a little silly.

 

i look at my bookshelf. there are over a hundred read novels. i cannot recall every detail from every one of them. i can't recall entire events. i sometimes have trouble even remembering the main character's name.

 

but let me tell you: i remember how each begins and ends.

 

My opinion is that the ending is in many ways more important than the beginning. The ending is the last thing you read and leaves you with a sense of satisfaction (or disatisfaction!). I can't say how others write and I certainly won't say how they should write, but with one exception I knew exactly what the ending was going to be in my stories before I even wrote the first word. In some stories the ending was the first thing I wrote down. With the one exception, TQ, I knew what sort of ending I wanted but until I'd developed the characters in the first 6-7 chapters I didn't specifically how that ending with be expressed by the characters.

 

so let's not criticize that "crap i'm learning in college." this is the crap i wake up for in the morning. this is the crap i drew diagrams of the effects of framing for just THIS morning. this is the crap i want to dedicate my life to. when i have passed on without child, i will leave behind this crap as the only evidence of my ever having been. how can i overthink the closest thing i will have to a child?

 

I think 'child' is an excellent analogy, but it can be argued both ways.

 

Perhaps first I should say that in my mind there is a subtle difference between 'over thinking' and 'over intellectualisation'. For example (at least for me) if I say that I'll think about some idea or that I'll consider some option I don't mean I'll just rationalise and go through steps of logic. I also mean that as well as logic I will also let that option or idea 'digest' in my mind until I come to a conclusion that feels right as well as (hopefully) being logical.

 

Of course I've no idea if you define difference between 'over thinking' and 'over intellectualisation' in the same way that I do, so again I apologise if I misunderstand the above quote.

 

With that in mind, I have to ask: Would you bring up a child based soley on logic and rationality or would you also base your decisions with the child on non-intellectual feelings? Similarly, if your writing is your child then if you allow style, logic, rationalisation, to outweigh what you FEEL is right then it is possible that you are over thinking it.

 

Being a good author of a story is not the same as being a good technical writer. A good journalist, reporter, scientific writer, writer of manuals, etc. needs to be both skilled and as precise as the language allows. The author of a story must also be good technically but in addition needs to generate believable characters and plots, create moods, maybe use deliberately imprecise language... With all of those things feelings matter more than logic so it is possible to over intellectualise.

 

i'm thankful for those who had advice about finding my voice, but i have little patience for such an idea as overthinking writing. as far as i'm concerned it can't be done. you can think wrongly, but you cannot overthink. why? because writing is never perfect, and i think that's why i enjoy it so much more than math. with math, there is an answer, and a best way to get to that answer. once you do it perfectly, you can improve no further. with writing, something can always be improved upon. how can you overthink the imperfect? that would imply having made it perfect, and then making it unperfect again, when it can't become perfect in the first place.

 

Again, using your child analogy, you will never produce a perfect child, even if we could all agree what a perfect child is. You can do the best you can with a story, maybe go back and fix things that are obviously wrong, but it will never be perfect and you will quickly run up against the law of diminishing returns. At that stage, if you are still unhappy with it then maybe you should ask yourself what was the idea behind the story and could that idea be realised better by writing different story from scratch.

 

Also ask yourself why you are writing at all. We all have different combinations of motives. In my personal case the joy of creating is by far the predominant motive, though of course getting praise is nice icing on the cake. And getting rich would also be desirable, though I think I have more chance of winning the lottery! Anyway, for me, once a story has reached the point of diminishing returns on improvements then I either put it out in public or set it aside completely.

 

A story will never be perfect so I'd rather get on with what for me is the joyful part of writing - creating something new. That is one reason why, despite many requests, I have never done sequels. With very little time for writing and with a mind bursting with new ideas I'd rather devote my time to brand new stuff.

 

in my survey courses at college, where non-majors are allowed in, and i remember especially in high school, there was always the crowd that said, "no, the writer does not mean that. you're looking into it too much."

 

i was one of that crowd, but i have since read an obscene amount of stories, and i have seen the way things line up too perfectly to be a coincidence. "water is associated with death in this novel," a teacher says, and the student thinks no, this is overthinking. but the novel progresses, and a light rain falls, and surely enough, something dies.

 

There are certain novels in which such links and such themes are obviously premeditated and planned by the author. There are other novels in which such themes and links exist but were not put there consciously by the author. They may be there because the came out of the authors subconscious, either a personal part of his individual mind and personality or a generic part shared as part of his culture. Of course, those themes and links are just as valid and true whether they are deliberate or subconscious.

 

After the age of 16 I never had any classes in literature (my degree is in science) so my knowledge of the study of literature is very limited. However, it seems to me that it is essentially a creative process which expresses that creativity using many technical devices. No matter how well you understand the technical devices it won't enable you to be creative. No matter how well a scientist understands the physiology of a cell he won't be able to create from scratch a brand new organism which is as marvelous as a monkey.

 

The study of literature is obviously not 'crap', just as the study of biology is not 'crap'. You can be a great expert on literature, or you can be a great author, or you may even be both. However, they are different things. Being a great expert on literature will not make you into a great author and vice-versa. Thus perhaps studying literature, though it might provide you with useful tools, might be considered a 'crap' way of becoming a great author.

 

No doubt you already know all this and I'm just stating the obvious, if so I apologise for any misunderstanding.

 

Kit

[AFriendlyFace]

but let me tell you: i remember how each begins and ends.

 

are you going to tell me that these published writers, the best of their craft out of hundreds of thousands of intelligent men and women who fall under that umbrella term, "writer," just wing it and see where it goes? you doubt that these endings are thought out?

 

....

 

and someone's going to tell me the woman who said that doesn't give great consideration to her endings.

I agree with you, indeed that was the part of Lugh's post - which by the way mostly resonated with me - to which I least agreed and most objected.

 

As a writer I expend a lot more effort on creating a sharp last paragraph, and the general tone and feeling of the end is really quite paramount to me. As a reader the ending is often how I evaluate the book as a whole and as you indicated, definitely what sticks with me the most (typically).

 

in my survey courses at college, where non-majors are allowed in, and i remember especially in high school, there was always the crowd that said, "no, the writer does not mean that. you're looking into it too much."

 

i was one of that crowd, but i have since read an obscene amount of stories, and i have seen the way things line up too perfectly to be a coincidence. "water is associated with death in this novel," a teacher says, and the student thinks no, this is overthinking. but the novel progresses, and a light rain falls, and surely enough, something dies.

I would agree with you as well. Personally, I try very hard to inject such subtleties and symbolism into my own work.

 

For one of my stories the etymology and meaning of several of my characters' names revealed clues to their general personalities as well as the hints about the plot. Do I really expect anyone to look these things up or spend that much time analyzing the story? Of course not, but I still somehow feel better knowing they're there. Similarly I was reviewing and editing a chapter of one my stories last night and several hours later as I was lying in bed I suddenly 'remembered' the deeper significance and parallelism of one of the scenes. The scene worked fine without this added level, and obviously it's easy to miss if I had forgotten about it myself, but again, I'm happy just knowing it's there.

 

 

Anyway, I will agree with Lugh and Kit and the others on one essential point that they seem to be making: at some point you've got to leave it alone and move on.

 

It definitely IS possible to over-edit or make something seem too technically correct. I agree that first and foremost a good storyteller has a responsibility to focus on tone, emotions, language, etc. For example sometimes people use extraneous, redundant words (see) in their conversations with each other; they also use them in their internal thought. Pretending this doesn't happen and religiously slashing unnecessary adverbs from every sentence does the story a disservice in my opinion. It's the perfect way to write an essay, a thesis, a scientific paper, or even a literary review, but it fails to capture the 'slice of life' that many narratives are about.

 

That's what I mean about writing to serve your purpose. If my character is disjointed and confused perhaps my sentences relating to him should be a bit awkward and imprecise as well.

 

Of course all that really goes back to what you said about wrongly thinking something, and also goes back to Kit's points about over thinking and over intellectualisation.

 

Anyway, take care and have a nice day,

Kevin

Edited May 27, 2008 by AFriendlyFace

[Tiger]

I happen to agree with Kit. There is no such thing as a perfect story. I could rewrite everything 10 times and have it re-edited 20 times and still not reach perfection. If someone actually wanted to find it, I'm sure someone could find something wrong with Harry Potter books and problems in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. All we can do is write the best we can. I struggled for a while, because I wanted the perfect word. Is it a good idea to use a thesaurus when writing? Of course it is, but do not let it destroy your creative flow or over use it to the point in which you cannot even recognize any of yourself in your writing.

[Graeme]

...I'm sure someone could find something wrong with Harry Potter books...

And just to prove his point, one annoying thing I found in the stories was how STUPID the characters were. In the previous generation, you have the Half-Blood Prince inventing spells, and other students making powerful items like Marauders Map (think about it -- it was an incredibly powerful item that identified and tracked people, even when they were under magical enchantments). What did Harry's generation of students do that was comparable? They only learnt what already existed. The ONLY ones who made something new were George and Fred. Was Hermoine really that stupid that she couldn't invent new spells?

 

Okay, I know.

[Tiger]

It may be but it in a good way Graeme. I don't know why, but I had not really thought about it. All they had to do was string words in Latin together to create the desired spells. That does not seem difficult. Now, if you have not read the final book, you should. What they do in that one is nothing short of amazing. They have to solve a puzzle that is quite complex, and that takes intelligence. Then again, bravery is not necessarily smart. It often leads to death, especially in the Harry Potter world. :wacko:

[corvus]

I quoted like everyone before I hit reply, we'll see how this goes...

 

forget all that crap you are learning in college -- and most of that crap you learned in high school...

go back to first grade or second or third --

...

I'll bet that 90% of the authors DID NOT give as much consideration to their final sentences as you think they did... I'll go on to say that MOST of them had one thing on their minds either "gads it's done" or "holy f*ck now I got to edit this b*tch"... meh... they might have considered both come to think of it.

 

The stuff we learn in first, second and third grade is arguably more important than the stuff we learn in college -- obviously one has to learn to string sentences together before sounding for a voice. Writing well gets you 80% of the way, but that last 20% can be excruciatingly hard to attain, and that's, IMO, what college etc. is for.

 

The only sentences authors care about are the first and last sentences. The first because that's what everyone else reads, and the last because it's what they read.

 

But the urge to be 'literary' is always there, and if you admire a writer it's natural to want to write like that person. I certainly have problems with that myself, and sadly the stories where I try to write -- well, not *like* someone else, but maybe in the spirit of a writer or writers I admire? -- those stories tend not to get finished, or else they're just not good. There are exceptions though.

 

Yeah, yeah... stories that start out for the sole purpose of being literary tend to fall flat. But if you start out with an infusion of literary and personal motivations, i.e. you've managed to wed an attention to form with a highly emotional core..... Then the result can be magnificent! For me, at least, it's not enough to tell a rollicking good read; it's equally not enough to write something of High Literary Value that will only be read by 2 people each decade. You need to somehow get both!

 

But even writers who have a great natural voice can feel lost or insecure or just be influenced by others and, as a result, deviate from their original voice -- and although that usually leads to a dip in quality, I think it furthers their writing in the long run; once they look back and see what and how they wrote, they'll learn from it, and one's natural voice does change over the years, and it should change. It doesn't mean that it goes from bad to good or vice versa -- it just changes, and possibly it becomes richer. And some authors' voice/literary quality/enjoyability fluctuates a great deal, and I like that in an author, because it gives me hope since that is how my own writing is. I can write (reasonably) well but also very badly -- ups and downs.

 

Authors and poets with a long history -- such as Yeats and Doris Lessing -- are particularly interesting because they break their own style. I wonder if Yeats looked back at "Crossways" and thought, 'Holy sh*t, I wrote this crap??' While we can say he undeniably improved from "Crossways" to, say, "The Wild Swans at Coole," from that to "Last Poems" I don't think there was any vertical change. As in, he'd gotten so good that he couldn't get any better, harhar... The breakings of style became horizontal.

 

 

I think the style should fit the purpose.

 

Great minds think alike, dude.

 

Also, just because I never pass up a chance to get in a jab at him, I have to say that without a doubt Hemingway is the most mind-numblingly boring, least enjoyable, renowned author that I've ever had the misfortune of reading. Indeed, if someone really wants to write a scathing critique of my work all they have to do is compare it to Hemingway.

 

Lol! Actually Hemingway *is* boring... I think you need very specific circumstances to read him. Like being trapped on a very long, very boring cruise, full of war veterans with erectile dysfunctions. Anyway, I've read only "Old Man and the Sea" and "The Sun Also Rises," and I only appreciated the later because I was forced to discuss it. I enjoyed it more on rereads and figured out what they meant by 'muscular' prose, but yeah... he's a tough nut to crack.

 

are you going to tell me that these published writers, the best of their craft out of hundreds of thousands of intelligent men and women who fall under that umbrella term, "writer," just wing it and see where it goes? you doubt that these endings are thought out?

 

I do think, with short stories and many novels, that the ending tends to be extremely important -- but I have read works where a middle chapter was completely amazing and made the rest of the work worthwhile. Like a love affair, maybe. You can have a crash-and-burn, but there are often parts before that that made you think, 'Man, I actually don't regret that...'

 

i'm thankful for those who had advice about finding my voice, but i have little patience for such an idea as overthinking writing. as far as i'm concerned it can't be done. you can think wrongly, but you cannot overthink. why? because writing is never perfect, and i think that's why i enjoy it so much more than math. with math, there is an answer, and a best way to get to that answer. once you do it perfectly, you can improve no further. with writing, something can always be improved upon. how can you overthink the imperfect? that would imply having made it perfect, and then making it unperfect again, when it can't become perfect in the first place.

 

My take on the overthinking argument is that intellectualism must be balanced by passion. Music provides a good analogy. You can be a flawless singer, observing all the dynamics, ornamentations, stacciti, tempos, etc., etc. -- but if you don't have passion, the whole thing falls flat. This is why I so idolize Maria Callas, and also why I think the act of writing is a performance. Callas understood -- i.e. I played my role of flaming queer and consumed every interview with Callas I could get my hands on -- that you *must* study the scores beforehand, practice intensely, plan ahead, etc., but when you're on stage, you have to leave half your brain empty for your natural instincts to guide you. (That's why Sutherland, who is a phenomenal vocalist, is such a boring singer. She had the passion of dishwater.)

 

So anyway, no you can't ever overthink writing, but the danger lies in crowding out the passion and visceral responses with too much intellectualism. There's that Einstein quote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." So passion without thought is vacuous, and thought without passion is empty.

 

in my survey courses at college, where non-majors are allowed in, and i remember especially in high school, there was always the crowd that said, "no, the writer does not mean that. you're looking into it too much."

 

i was one of that crowd, but i have since read an obscene amount of stories, and i have seen the way things line up too perfectly to be a coincidence. "water is associated with death in this novel," a teacher says, and the student thinks no, this is overthinking. but the novel progresses, and a light rain falls, and surely enough, something dies.

 

I'm from a science background. So I will say that that is not sufficient evidence to prove that the author had the water-death association in mind. You need to count up all the instances of water, compare them with the instances of death, add a control of the instances of fire (for example), run a student t-test... But that's okay. I don't think it matters if the author had it mind. It's pointless to go back and try to plumb the author's intentions. Water can be associated with death in this novel whether the author wanted it or not. Art is supposed to transcend its pitifully human origins. How can literature do that if it's tethered by the author's intentions?

 

is the struggle more obvious now? if it could be quelled with a desire to return to a simpler, idealistic time, don't you think i would have discovered that by now? what i'm struggling with is the ability to pack such power in a few pages, or to tickle the reader, satisfy them. it's practically sexual.

 

i used to feel bad because i'm turning away from humor in some of my stories. but very recently i feel that i am finally over that. humor does not belong in situations which are not funny, and i refuse to make laughter from a situation that i want taken seriously just to encourage the reader to keep reading. if the reader wants funny, he can youtube a comedian.

 

I think you're selling humor short. Humor is much more than a way to keep the reader reading. Vonnegut and Pynchon used it to great effect. Catch-22 was powerful b/c of its humor. And it's always good to make sure you're not taking yourself too seriously. At the same time, you shouldn't feel at all bad for not using it in your stories. If it doesn't fit there, it doesn't fit there.

 

And just to prove his point, one annoying thing I found in the stories was how STUPID the characters were. In the previous generation, you have the Half-Blood Prince inventing spells, and other students making powerful items like Marauders Map (think about it -- it was an incredibly powerful item that identified and tracked people, even when they were under magical enchantments). What did Harry's generation of students do that was comparable? They only learnt what already existed. The ONLY ones who made something new were George and Fred. Was Hermoine really that stupid that she couldn't invent new spells?

 

Okay, I know.

 

Dooon't even let me start on the problems with the Harry Potter series. Harhar. Apart from the fact that Rowling was extraordinarily self indulgent in book 5, boring in book 6, idiotic in book 7... It got to the point that the humor wasn't even humorous anymore. Sigh. There was such potential too! Anyway, this is redeemably on topic because I mentioned humor, and that was part of the thread subject.

[myself_i_must_remake]

what's funny is that i've noticed responses coupling the perfection i'm striving toward with grammatical perfection, when i made no such claim. if an atypical sentence structure does the job, then so be it, put it in. nowhere did i object to those.

 

as for humor. yes it belongs in some stories, but i don't want to be forced to put it in where i don't feel it belongs. according to you guys, you agree:

QUOTE (AFriendlyFace @ May 27 2008, 04:24 AM)

I think the style should fit the purpose.

 

 

Great minds think alike, dude.

 

style... purpose... humor's a style.

Edited May 28, 2008 by lesfeuxdemoncoeur