(emphatically)bro....
Feb. 2nd, 2024 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fwcuso I signed up for a short story writing class, and it was errr, the trade off was between this class and something called 'the history of terrorism' ... anyway, so it turns out history of terrorism is taught oomp that i think is personally really good at his job... whereas... Perhaps, I, as the most pretentious person on this earth who writes a total of like 3000w per 2.5 years... perhaps this class was NOT FOR ME... i'm trying really hard to keep my heart open and LEARN from... what is tumblr writing advice 101. which imo, now that I've Read More and simply have analysed more narratives... whatever... I COULD BE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING WHO THE FUCK KNOWS I CERTAINLY DON'T AND I CERTAINLY VALUE MY OWN OPINIONS TOO MUCH FOR SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT EVEN PRODUCE!!! anyway. here's wonderwall.
we've covered, er, two more 'concrete' topics, insofar... and I'll discuss both.
characterisation
this was posed to the class, oomc very confidently said: "You need to know what your character's goals are, their likes and dislikes, their traits, etcka etcka... something something they need to be a fully realised person in some sort of way..." Which, I truly think my problem with the 'advice' presented in this class is a matter of diction, which really is a matter of connotation. My first bone to pick lies here:
1. WHO THE FUCK HAS A GOAL ANYWAY?
(...) I thought about my friends, I thought about my classmates, I thought about my roommate -- frankly, who is essentially the most driven person I know, and I was like, Okay, her goals are to graduate from her PhD and get married. THAT DOES NOT A PERSON NOR CHARACTER MAKE. Those two things are among the least interesting things about her. even more or less, or I don't know, more in conjunction with my argument, these are very ordinary wants! most people want very mundane or very distant things!!! i mean, personally, it is very hard for me to think in terms of 'goals' because I am a very aimless person, and also, to have a goal means to achieve or to work towards achieving it, and i just don't think you have the runtime in a short story to really spend that much time padding out such a narrative. or like, it's not a very interesting one if you do unless there is a lot of convulosion to it, i suppose anything and everything can be made interesting but this doesn't help you achieve anything else with the narrative
I think I'd just prefer the terminology change of 'goals' to 'wants'; because want is a much more nebulous, vague thing, that doesn't necessarily imply that you have to work towards anything, so much so as there is something working underneath the character's skin that pushes them towards a certain thing, known or unknown to them; and I think the second thing that's really important to 'want' is that it doesn't denote something that has to be fulfilled or worked towards ... it can be stagnant and unrealised and that, to me at least, indicates much more clearly the psychology of the character, and doesn't feel as though they're stuck in place because your narrative isn't moving them Towards Their Goal, but rather, is capable of doing other things with this want! like ignoring it! or preventing it! fulfilling it but not in the way they want! fulfilling it and maybe it is the way they want!
again, to me, this really does come down to a matter of diction, because I think goals and wants are synonymous, I just also think, 'goal' is a much more restrictive word, especially to a more unexperienced writer; and I think 'want' also immediately has a connection to the psychology of your character. like yeah, My Goal is to Graduate, but my want is To Graduate. and graduating is a very normal very typical goal to have, it's a checkmark, it's a societal norm... it frankly feels near pointless to say because of course my goal is to graduate. when I say I want to graduate, I think that immediately signals to everyone else that there is an urgency to it, a desperation behind that statement, it's not just something I'll do to because it's the expected course, but it's a desire that begets the question: Why. or, I mean to me it is. maybe both statements sound the same to everyone else in the world.
2. FULL DISCLOSURE
to me, my answer to 'how do you characterise in a short story' is through honesty. Whether the character is honest to themselves, to other people in the story, to the reader, what biases do they have, how do they think of things in their mind, their awareness of themselves, the world, other people...idk!!! chuckpalachuick_handwritingquote.jpeg!!! ... like the minute you figure out even some of these answers, you have an idea of how the character is going to orient themselves in the story, or how they'd narrate themselves, or how they conduct themselves or what they care about. I mean, if you're writing a short story -- and specifically, this is most useful in a short story where you don't have the bandwidth nor runtime to figure out the smoother details -- the honesty of a character immediately conveys to the reader the extent of their fallibility. and if you have an idea of what you want to write about, or talk about, you have an idea of how you want your character to react to that. or maybe that is pretentious as fuck of me. I think these things are important to me all the same, because of what I value in stories or what themes I like to read, and like one of the most compelling ideas to me is how a person grapples with want, and that entire struggle seems to come down to how honest they are about it, how honest they can be -- whether to themselves or the other person -- about that desire... AGAIN I DON'T KNOW. MAYBE I AM AN ABJECTLY STUPID AND UNIQUELY MISERABLE PERSON!!! not that that's possible but I keep thinking of what layer of hell do they put you in when you're nowhere as smart as you think you are but unable to be humble about your idiocy either...
PLOT & structure
this is again, I suppose, an error of diction. I think structure is like an extremely important aspect of the short story; but it can also be laughably simple, in terms of linearity or straightforwardness. PLOT. plot I think is something you have to abandon the traditional notion of, especially in a short story. the reason you are writing a short story is BECAUSE you don't have enough plot, or because whatever you're writing about does not warrant a plot!!! IN FACT. many longform novels also don't warrant or neccessitate a plot. and most of my favourite novels DON'T HAVE PLOT. again. in the traditional sense! the three act structure, the hero's journey [coincidentally someone's answer], exposition climax falling action, the marvel movie formula, the. i don't know bro anything. I mean, when I brought this up in class, my prof. treated [an event] as a full plot, as well as [a conflict] as plot, but I feel like we don't really understand the word 'plot' in those terms. like I acknowledge, that yes, those two things can be and are 'plot'. but we do think of plot as [someone does something], and or, [a series of events]...essentially, like a movement of the narrative from one point to another. i don't think that's relevant to the short story. my example, and this is by far the most famous example you could think of, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas..... nothing 'happens' so much so as le guin describes the conditions of a place. sure you could describe the act of choosing to walk away as [the event] and [the plot], but, and this is where guin is the revolutionary of her genre to me, she simply Explores. she doesn't make anything happen, she doesn't make her characters do anything, she explores the world. she meanders here, she meanders there, she writes about what she thinks is interesting, and that is enough to make it interesting. a lot of my mutuals really like fish rot, again not really so much a story of anything happening as much as an exploration of a condition. and a lot of my mutuals also liked STET, which, definitely has it's inciting incident as an [event where something happened], but is, like almost in it's entirety, a conversation between an author and editor.
or maybe I am thinking about this wrongly again. you can have plot, events are plot, conflict is plot, anything that 'happens' is plot. but the action and the money and the meat is never, or shouldn't be [or, even more passively, doesn't have to be] about What Happens, as much as it should explore the conditions around what happened. reactions or fallout or thoughts or build up or ... i mean this is run-of the mill advice, I just described the plot graph... i don't know. I think to me, short stories are so good and my favourite form because they don't describe enough of what happens. there's never enough time. or there's never any need to. it's the brief glimpse into a thought or idea or whatever it is, and as brief as it is, is still a complete thought. the only thing that Should happen is that you're left there going, dazedly: Ah.
i think, if I had an endnote, rather than plot you should think about 'theme' ... but it's also true that no amount of thinking about theme has allowed to me replace that with plot, and that's why everything in my gdocs is unfinished forever and always, and so I am most definitely doing it wrong and this is bad advice on every level. and still.
I don't know. again, there is definitely a circle of hell of people who are aware that yes, that they are definitely not as smart as they think, but no, this isn't a thought that's been internalised well-enough and has led to true Humbleness. i tend to feel like the most pretentious person in that room, in this class, but it's just... WELL I HAVE THOUGHTS. I think I've read a decent amount of story to know what I like, and what I value, and what makes a narrative good to me, and what makes something really, really good to me. i don't know. everything matters. nothing matters at all.
we've covered, er, two more 'concrete' topics, insofar... and I'll discuss both.
characterisation
this was posed to the class, oomc very confidently said: "You need to know what your character's goals are, their likes and dislikes, their traits, etcka etcka... something something they need to be a fully realised person in some sort of way..." Which, I truly think my problem with the 'advice' presented in this class is a matter of diction, which really is a matter of connotation. My first bone to pick lies here:
1. WHO THE FUCK HAS A GOAL ANYWAY?
(...) I thought about my friends, I thought about my classmates, I thought about my roommate -- frankly, who is essentially the most driven person I know, and I was like, Okay, her goals are to graduate from her PhD and get married. THAT DOES NOT A PERSON NOR CHARACTER MAKE. Those two things are among the least interesting things about her. even more or less, or I don't know, more in conjunction with my argument, these are very ordinary wants! most people want very mundane or very distant things!!! i mean, personally, it is very hard for me to think in terms of 'goals' because I am a very aimless person, and also, to have a goal means to achieve or to work towards achieving it, and i just don't think you have the runtime in a short story to really spend that much time padding out such a narrative. or like, it's not a very interesting one if you do unless there is a lot of convulosion to it, i suppose anything and everything can be made interesting but this doesn't help you achieve anything else with the narrative
I think I'd just prefer the terminology change of 'goals' to 'wants'; because want is a much more nebulous, vague thing, that doesn't necessarily imply that you have to work towards anything, so much so as there is something working underneath the character's skin that pushes them towards a certain thing, known or unknown to them; and I think the second thing that's really important to 'want' is that it doesn't denote something that has to be fulfilled or worked towards ... it can be stagnant and unrealised and that, to me at least, indicates much more clearly the psychology of the character, and doesn't feel as though they're stuck in place because your narrative isn't moving them Towards Their Goal, but rather, is capable of doing other things with this want! like ignoring it! or preventing it! fulfilling it but not in the way they want! fulfilling it and maybe it is the way they want!
again, to me, this really does come down to a matter of diction, because I think goals and wants are synonymous, I just also think, 'goal' is a much more restrictive word, especially to a more unexperienced writer; and I think 'want' also immediately has a connection to the psychology of your character. like yeah, My Goal is to Graduate, but my want is To Graduate. and graduating is a very normal very typical goal to have, it's a checkmark, it's a societal norm... it frankly feels near pointless to say because of course my goal is to graduate. when I say I want to graduate, I think that immediately signals to everyone else that there is an urgency to it, a desperation behind that statement, it's not just something I'll do to because it's the expected course, but it's a desire that begets the question: Why. or, I mean to me it is. maybe both statements sound the same to everyone else in the world.
2. FULL DISCLOSURE
to me, my answer to 'how do you characterise in a short story' is through honesty. Whether the character is honest to themselves, to other people in the story, to the reader, what biases do they have, how do they think of things in their mind, their awareness of themselves, the world, other people...idk!!! chuckpalachuick_handwritingquote.jpeg!!! ... like the minute you figure out even some of these answers, you have an idea of how the character is going to orient themselves in the story, or how they'd narrate themselves, or how they conduct themselves or what they care about. I mean, if you're writing a short story -- and specifically, this is most useful in a short story where you don't have the bandwidth nor runtime to figure out the smoother details -- the honesty of a character immediately conveys to the reader the extent of their fallibility. and if you have an idea of what you want to write about, or talk about, you have an idea of how you want your character to react to that. or maybe that is pretentious as fuck of me. I think these things are important to me all the same, because of what I value in stories or what themes I like to read, and like one of the most compelling ideas to me is how a person grapples with want, and that entire struggle seems to come down to how honest they are about it, how honest they can be -- whether to themselves or the other person -- about that desire... AGAIN I DON'T KNOW. MAYBE I AM AN ABJECTLY STUPID AND UNIQUELY MISERABLE PERSON!!! not that that's possible but I keep thinking of what layer of hell do they put you in when you're nowhere as smart as you think you are but unable to be humble about your idiocy either...
PLOT & structure
this is again, I suppose, an error of diction. I think structure is like an extremely important aspect of the short story; but it can also be laughably simple, in terms of linearity or straightforwardness. PLOT. plot I think is something you have to abandon the traditional notion of, especially in a short story. the reason you are writing a short story is BECAUSE you don't have enough plot, or because whatever you're writing about does not warrant a plot!!! IN FACT. many longform novels also don't warrant or neccessitate a plot. and most of my favourite novels DON'T HAVE PLOT. again. in the traditional sense! the three act structure, the hero's journey [coincidentally someone's answer], exposition climax falling action, the marvel movie formula, the. i don't know bro anything. I mean, when I brought this up in class, my prof. treated [an event] as a full plot, as well as [a conflict] as plot, but I feel like we don't really understand the word 'plot' in those terms. like I acknowledge, that yes, those two things can be and are 'plot'. but we do think of plot as [someone does something], and or, [a series of events]...essentially, like a movement of the narrative from one point to another. i don't think that's relevant to the short story. my example, and this is by far the most famous example you could think of, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas..... nothing 'happens' so much so as le guin describes the conditions of a place. sure you could describe the act of choosing to walk away as [the event] and [the plot], but, and this is where guin is the revolutionary of her genre to me, she simply Explores. she doesn't make anything happen, she doesn't make her characters do anything, she explores the world. she meanders here, she meanders there, she writes about what she thinks is interesting, and that is enough to make it interesting. a lot of my mutuals really like fish rot, again not really so much a story of anything happening as much as an exploration of a condition. and a lot of my mutuals also liked STET, which, definitely has it's inciting incident as an [event where something happened], but is, like almost in it's entirety, a conversation between an author and editor.
or maybe I am thinking about this wrongly again. you can have plot, events are plot, conflict is plot, anything that 'happens' is plot. but the action and the money and the meat is never, or shouldn't be [or, even more passively, doesn't have to be] about What Happens, as much as it should explore the conditions around what happened. reactions or fallout or thoughts or build up or ... i mean this is run-of the mill advice, I just described the plot graph... i don't know. I think to me, short stories are so good and my favourite form because they don't describe enough of what happens. there's never enough time. or there's never any need to. it's the brief glimpse into a thought or idea or whatever it is, and as brief as it is, is still a complete thought. the only thing that Should happen is that you're left there going, dazedly: Ah.
i think, if I had an endnote, rather than plot you should think about 'theme' ... but it's also true that no amount of thinking about theme has allowed to me replace that with plot, and that's why everything in my gdocs is unfinished forever and always, and so I am most definitely doing it wrong and this is bad advice on every level. and still.
I don't know. again, there is definitely a circle of hell of people who are aware that yes, that they are definitely not as smart as they think, but no, this isn't a thought that's been internalised well-enough and has led to true Humbleness. i tend to feel like the most pretentious person in that room, in this class, but it's just... WELL I HAVE THOUGHTS. I think I've read a decent amount of story to know what I like, and what I value, and what makes a narrative good to me, and what makes something really, really good to me. i don't know. everything matters. nothing matters at all.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-03 04:42 am (UTC)