A Challenge For Myself
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 one that is more related to the idea of being a true professional and a crafts person than it is with the central questions of artistry.
The point is, by taking a simple story of only a page or so and retelling it again and again, in different voices and narrative persons, was something that I find challenging and rewarding, as well as it being something that provided me practical and noticeable benefits in terms of my own work. These benefits are not only in that I felt they challenged my awareness of the specific formats, but also in that I was required to demonstrate a type of stamina that is rarely called upon for a writer.
While, yes, writing a longer piece does require stamina and endurance, the difference here is that in a novel, one has far more variety. Yes, it is the same characters, but they are changing, perhaps travelling. The book demands that it be different as it moves forwards. Here, however, one is telling the same set of events again and again. Le Guin even forgave writers who did not wish to use only one scenario all the way through, in a few cases.
So, one thing that I am considering doing, and which I am currently considering as a possible follow-up project to the Wonderbook write-through ( a term I just now made up, but which I think describes what I am doing on this blog at the moment), is creating a list of many possible ways that a story can be told, in terms of narrative perspectives, reliability of narration, voice, and various other aspects, and writing one flash fiction piece over and over again in the various combinations of these possibilities. This would be, for me, obviously, a sort of meditation, and an exercise that I think I would likely return to, adding new versions of the story, as I thought up ways it had not yet been told. I would have to stretch myself in terms of the stamina, and in terms of my creative ability to identify and utilize new approaches. As well, it would, I hope, serve as a demonstration of these techniques, allowing a comparison between writing styles and choices between pieces that share the same general content (obviously, a story changes in the telling).
At the moment, I am considering the possible ways to tell such a story, and how they can be combined to create new ones. Specifically, there are the traditional narrative persons: first, second, and third; but one also has to consider that within each of these are many other possibilities. First person can be told by the main character, it can be told by a secondary (involved but not primary) or tertiary (a witness or bystander) character, it can even be told first person by a character who only heard the story second-hand(I tend to think of stories being told by people who only heard about them as fourth-person, but that is probably just my own weird thing). And, of course, their are numerous third person perspectives, from the single character, close perspective (which has all the same possible narrative choices as a straight first person narration), to the multiple close perspective that moves between characters, to the authorial voice. Even in second person, their are numerous possibilities. Not only can the text make the POV "You" any of the characters, it is also possible to make the "you" the reader, and, while I cannot think of an example, I would imagine it is possible for a clever enough writer to make a you that can rove between characters. If I were attempting such a thing, my approach would be to see the voice as an implied first person character observing the events and directly addressing characters directly. This, of course, points at a deeper truth, that all of these voices are interconnected and overlapping. Merely because a narrator never says "I" does not mean they are not a character in the world of the story, and they are almost certainly, whether the author thinks of this or not, a character in the book, even if they are only the voice telling the story.
Anyhow, this is not even getting into some of the deeper distinctions that can be observed, things like he question of whether a story is intended to be read as something that the speaker is saying aloud, something they are thinking, or something they have written down. These are each a different flavor, and can each apply to any of the voices, though authorial almost invariably has the written quality (one can argue that much of Twain's writing has a more spoken quality). I do not think that their is any rule against the narrator being authorial with that quality of thought, but I can't recall it being done, and it seems a rather odd and convoluted choice to me, but that does not mean that it can't be effective. In some ways, that is the point of this project: to see all of these possibilities and try my hand at them at least a bit.
That, obviously, is not something I plan to start immediately, but my goal is that I can begin to compile some of the ideas for it in advance. I still do not really have an idea for the story that I will use, but I know it will have to be a fairly simple concept, though it will obviously need a fair number of characters present. As I build a list of potential forms that the story can take, I will, I think, gain more insight into the necessities for the content. I suspect that, as I write, the story will gain complexity through the development of detail, and from the fact that so many characters will need to be fleshed out as narrative voices for the story. Clearly, this project is not something that will be starting up immediately, as I am only just starting Wonderbook, and I suspect that it may be something that I wind up doing as an ongoing thing, not all at once, but I really think it will be a challenge, and I am excited to figure out more of the specifics.
I expect I will finish chapter two today, so expect that I will begin discussing some of that this afternoon or evening. The writing exercise is a bit more involved, and the process is such that I am not sure how much I can show of that, so that probably won't be out today, but I think I might be able to have it done by tomorrow evening.
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 one that is more related to the idea of being a true professional and a crafts person than it is with the central questions of artistry.
The point is, by taking a simple story of only a page or so and retelling it again and again, in different voices and narrative persons, was something that I find challenging and rewarding, as well as it being something that provided me practical and noticeable benefits in terms of my own work. These benefits are not only in that I felt they challenged my awareness of the specific formats, but also in that I was required to demonstrate a type of stamina that is rarely called upon for a writer.
While, yes, writing a longer piece does require stamina and endurance, the difference here is that in a novel, one has far more variety. Yes, it is the same characters, but they are changing, perhaps travelling. The book demands that it be different as it moves forwards. Here, however, one is telling the same set of events again and again. Le Guin even forgave writers who did not wish to use only one scenario all the way through, in a few cases.
So, one thing that I am considering doing, and which I am currently considering as a possible follow-up project to the Wonderbook write-through ( a term I just now made up, but which I think describes what I am doing on this blog at the moment), is creating a list of many possible ways that a story can be told, in terms of narrative perspectives, reliability of narration, voice, and various other aspects, and writing one flash fiction piece over and over again in the various combinations of these possibilities. This would be, for me, obviously, a sort of meditation, and an exercise that I think I would likely return to, adding new versions of the story, as I thought up ways it had not yet been told. I would have to stretch myself in terms of the stamina, and in terms of my creative ability to identify and utilize new approaches. As well, it would, I hope, serve as a demonstration of these techniques, allowing a comparison between writing styles and choices between pieces that share the same general content (obviously, a story changes in the telling).
At the moment, I am considering the possible ways to tell such a story, and how they can be combined to create new ones. Specifically, there are the traditional narrative persons: first, second, and third; but one also has to consider that within each of these are many other possibilities. First person can be told by the main character, it can be told by a secondary (involved but not primary) or tertiary (a witness or bystander) character, it can even be told first person by a character who only heard the story second-hand(I tend to think of stories being told by people who only heard about them as fourth-person, but that is probably just my own weird thing). And, of course, their are numerous third person perspectives, from the single character, close perspective (which has all the same possible narrative choices as a straight first person narration), to the multiple close perspective that moves between characters, to the authorial voice. Even in second person, their are numerous possibilities. Not only can the text make the POV "You" any of the characters, it is also possible to make the "you" the reader, and, while I cannot think of an example, I would imagine it is possible for a clever enough writer to make a you that can rove between characters. If I were attempting such a thing, my approach would be to see the voice as an implied first person character observing the events and directly addressing characters directly. This, of course, points at a deeper truth, that all of these voices are interconnected and overlapping. Merely because a narrator never says "I" does not mean they are not a character in the world of the story, and they are almost certainly, whether the author thinks of this or not, a character in the book, even if they are only the voice telling the story.
Anyhow, this is not even getting into some of the deeper distinctions that can be observed, things like he question of whether a story is intended to be read as something that the speaker is saying aloud, something they are thinking, or something they have written down. These are each a different flavor, and can each apply to any of the voices, though authorial almost invariably has the written quality (one can argue that much of Twain's writing has a more spoken quality). I do not think that their is any rule against the narrator being authorial with that quality of thought, but I can't recall it being done, and it seems a rather odd and convoluted choice to me, but that does not mean that it can't be effective. In some ways, that is the point of this project: to see all of these possibilities and try my hand at them at least a bit.
That, obviously, is not something I plan to start immediately, but my goal is that I can begin to compile some of the ideas for it in advance. I still do not really have an idea for the story that I will use, but I know it will have to be a fairly simple concept, though it will obviously need a fair number of characters present. As I build a list of potential forms that the story can take, I will, I think, gain more insight into the necessities for the content. I suspect that, as I write, the story will gain complexity through the development of detail, and from the fact that so many characters will need to be fleshed out as narrative voices for the story. Clearly, this project is not something that will be starting up immediately, as I am only just starting Wonderbook, and I suspect that it may be something that I wind up doing as an ongoing thing, not all at once, but I really think it will be a challenge, and I am excited to figure out more of the specifics.
I expect I will finish chapter two today, so expect that I will begin discussing some of that this afternoon or evening. The writing exercise is a bit more involved, and the process is such that I am not sure how much I can show of that, so that probably won't be out today, but I think I might be able to have it done by tomorrow evening.
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