Would That I Might

The issue of what a story "means" is a complicated one, and here, our old friend Ursula LeGuin, presents her own frustrations about this topic.  She begins with her chagrin when she told the kinds of books that she should be writing for children, stating bluntly, "I am a writer, not a caterer" and points out that no one can predict what will fulfill the needs of children, but that writers are amongst those who can provide it.  Continuing, she points out how often she finds that her books, particularly those for younger audiences, are treated as having a direct meaning.  Their is often, it seems, a belief that these books have one specified message that they are intended to impart.  Of course, as I think I have said elsewhere, if that is the intent, the far easier path is to just state your message.  No one needs to read a story for that kind of communication, and it is a waste of time to write one if the only point is to impart information.   A ...

Robinson takes an interesting view on perspective, beginning by discussing advice encountered before, to break up the exposition into tiny pieces and put them all through the story, advice that is often summed in the cliche "show, don't tell."  Robinson points out that it is all telling.  The duality between exposition and other aspects of story is a false one.  Indeed, their are many genres where exposition can be an integral aspect of the book.  Is Victor Hugo's lush descriptions of the architecture and history of Notre Dame's cathedral expository?  When one considers that the preservation of the cathedral was the motivating factor for writing the book, and when one comes to understand that the cathedral is meant to be the main character of the entire work, it calls that into question, at least for me.  What is more, as Robinson points out, in some works, the exposition is fun.  I know that reading Tolkien, I have felt that way.  The history o...

There are three insert essays presented in the second chapter.  The first is by Nick Mamatas, a novelist with an interest in unusual narrative perspectives, and is entitled: "Point Of View: 'Subjective Versus Objective' And 'Roving'". Manatas begins by framing POV as connected to cultural context, discussing the historical development and shifts in the popularity of various narrative persons.  He connects the movement away from omniscience with the pluralization of society.  The omniscient narrator can stop and provide a context, discussing concepts or commenting on action, to guide and inform the reader.  Today, individual readers already have a concept of the social world and no longer want such guidance, leading towards fiction with different priorities.  I am not certain how much of this I truly agree with, but I have not done a serious study of this issue in the history of the novel, so I am not going to argue, except to say that I don't believe any...

Now, as the chapter turns from the individual elements towards their collective unity, the discussion also begins to emphasize that the descriptions are generalized and that within a specific story, the uses of each piece may vary.  It is pointed out, for example, that stories like Robertson Davies'  The Manticore , composed entirely of dialogue, completely subsumes other aspects of narrative into that single element.  So, too, do writer's like Borges use description and even summary in place of scene, yet the story can still captivate, by reassigning the necessary roles, sometimes in ways that would be otherwise unrecognizable.  As well, in even a story where the elements are more averaged out, their is bound to be such interplay, if not in the whole of the story, at least in parts of it. Dialogue must, for example, be grounded in character.  Setting, when described, is used to create tone, to emphasize meanings and thematic elements, to provide context for t...

The next section of the book moves from the elements to "the greater and lesser mysteries".  These are concepts that the book places on a different level of the hierarchy, but which are still significant.  VanderMeer speaks of them as qualities that are less "quantifiable", but it seems to me that the distinction could be one of personal viewpoint.  I am not entirely certain that this is a needed demarcation, but, again, I think it is probably worth indulging in this new way of seeing to discover what it can teach. The first element here is voice, and it is defined by VanderMeer in a way that I think makes it too close to my notion of style.  Indeed, he speaks of it as an element that carries between a writer's various works, a concept that I associate with style more.  I do recognize that a writer is often said to have "found their voice," when they reach a certain maturity in their work, but I think it worth thinking of voice as the embodiment of s...

The final element of story to be discussed is style, a nebulous concept that references the way a writer uses language.  It is not quite the same as voice, but it is connected, of course, though I tend to believe voice is more susceptible to the individual story, "the voice of the narrator"; while style is more consistent across a body of work, "the style of the author".  Wonderbook points out that a writer's style can be measured both in terms of the content and in terms of it's constancy across work, and I do not disagree.  While the style a writer employs is a part of their toolkit, and not unique to a story, that does not mean it has no range.  I would tend to see it more that an author is exploring how they can expand, not that they have abandoned a style, and I would look at those things that are essential to that writer, things that exist in even their most disparate works, as the core assets.  Of course, one must also acknowledge that style touches...

The next element that Wonderbook addresses is description.  Description, in a certain way, is anything that isn't dialogue.  In essence, anything happening in the story occurs through description, so to do we see setting and characters.  While we can speak of levels of detail as more or less descriptive, writing is an art built upon being able to describe accurately.  Indeed, if the former statement about description's domain hosts an error, it is in denying that dialogue is also descriptive.  A character is described, often, through what they choose to speak of, or the choice of words they utilize.  Saying "Hi," describes a different character than "how do," or "shalom" or "yo" or many other choices.  The dialogue has a function that is not entirely descriptive, certainly, and deserves to be considered in that arena, but the point is that everything in a story is, at least in part, description.  What else could it be? While the chapter...

Chapter two begins by introducing the idea of viewing a story as a living creature, a concept that I am certainly on-board for, though I am not certain that the book does a good job so far of getting towards what that means.  I want to set that aside, for now, though and go further on into the chapter.  The discussion continues by discussing how one can study stories, and recognizes that, while dissecting is necessary and instructive, so to is observing stories in the wild (by reading them, seems to be implied).  It is impossible to see the whole of how a story works by looking at any one piece, just as one cannot understand a bear as a whole creature merely by studying it's circulatory system.  One needs to be able to look at the living creature as well as to understand the constituent parts.  However, the book points out, it is impossible to begin without looking at those components, and acknowledges that, in order to provide a foundation, many of these conc...

Before beginning a discussion of the chapter itself, a discussion of story is important.  The concept of story is a complicated one and is often used in many different ways.  That these ideas are so conflated that many would disagree with that statement is well worth noting.  But that comment is not meant to bolster my point without my having to explain further.  The first thing to consider is that a story as a physical, written work is a different thing than the concept of a story in general.  This is not an arbitrary distinction, as one a story that is written has an actual form, a set nature, but a story as a wild thing in the mind has no form.  That the written work is intended, often, to invoke a mental story that can be free in the reader's imagination is one reason for bearing this in mind.  As well, written stories are reflections of those conceptual stories that exist in the writer's mind, though this variety may have more technical qualities ...

In looking back over the posts that I have been writing, both in response to Le Guin's Steering The Craft , and in terms of VanderMeer's Wonderbook , I noted that their are many places where my descriptions of the works in question are far from accurate.  Indeed, I would imagine that I am sometimes talking about ideas out of order, conflating them, or otherwise misrepresenting the content.  Likewise, I may, at times, make assumptions about the ideas the author is expressing, or otherwise misinterpret, misremember, or otherwise misrepresent things. This is all, to be honest, perfectly fine by me.  I am not writing this to be a thorough analysis or report on the materials in these books.  Rather, I am using those works as a point of departure.  My goal here is not, in reality, all that connected to the actual texts I reference.  They are, to be certain, an essential thing for this process, but that does not make them the focus of the process, but rather a s...

I have not yet finished reading the second chapter in Wonderbook , so I thought that I might take and discuss some ideas I have been considering for future projects on this blog, and which I think might be useful and fun, as well as providing me an opportunity to explore, play, and hopefully learn along the way.   This idea is one that came, largely, out of the work for Steering The Craft,  and is intended to achieve a number of different things. One of the parts of Le Guin's book that I enjoyed engaging with the most was the exercises that required retelling a story, or connecting to a previous exercise.  I particularly liked taking the same story and finding ways to put it into new voices, and I find that to be especially enlightening.  At the same time, the challenge of getting deeper into that one story, of finding out about it from all the angles, all without losing the impulse that made it worth telling, that was in some ways a different challenge, and o...