VanderMeer's Wonderbook, Chapter 2: The Ecosystem Of Story (continued)
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 style within a story. The voice may be consistent between works, and will certainly carry qualities that are essential to the writer's style, but the specific qualities of the voice are uniquely connected to the narrator of the piece. It is that narrator, of course, who is speaking, so what other voice could it be? Of course, the narrator speaks for the writer, and so anything within that voice comes from the writer, but it is still grounded in the specifics of the story being told.
Now, it may be, of course, that I am just using terms backwards here, in comparison to how they are being used by Wonderbook, as it would seem likely that terms like voice and style might have slightly different meanings to different writers. My understanding of style, as presented in the book, was derived from a definition about the way a writer assembles language, and that is the quality that I see as essential to the writer, as the thing that underlies the work. In the end, though, it seems to me that the two concepts are so closely connected that attempting to extricate them in any one story would be impossible, but over a career, qualities emerge and repeat. I think the bigger question for me is where on the hierarchy those elements actually belong. I think, perhaps, my perspective is one that gives more import to that aspect of a writer's work, whereas the viewpoint expressed in this chapter is that the element that exists at that higher level is the quality of the story, not of the author.
Now, I do understand that perspective, because it reinforces the notion that the stories own needs must be primary, and that a writer should set aside the need to include those personal touches. In other words, when starting to write a story, the decisions can't be made from personal ego. They must be about the story, not the writer, and so it is understandable that the stories needs would exist on that higher level, the one that must be considered first.
By contrast, my own thought would be that everything in the story is a manifestation of the writer in one way or another. I think of those personal aspects, as I said last night, as coming first because they are me. I do not need to think of them, they are already present, and are present in the story on a level that exists before anything else, even if I were not to consider it consciously. Thus, it is not that I believe one should consider, when starting a piece of writing, the question of what will make this truly "mine", but rather it is the realization that it cannot be otherwise.
Moving on, the book next introduces tone, another quality that is somewhat nebulous and intertwined with style and voice. Tone, though, is clearly not on the same level. It is best thought of, I believe, as the emotion that is in the words. Tone evokes the overall atmosphere of what is occurring on the page. It is also one of the most flexible aspects discussed thus far. Tone needs to vary, I mean, when it doesn't that's called monotone, and I have not heard that term used as a positive descriptor. The changes may be subtle, but the aspects of the world that tone brings into the story are things that, in real life, do change. Emotional states are not stagnant. While we may talk about feeling sad or happy or angry as if these are firm states of existence, the truth is that we bounce through emotions, end even when we are stuck in a certain mood, their are still bound to be subtle changes in mental state. Even a single feeling, joy, desperation, longing, is not a monolithic experience, and even if one remained stuck in such a state for days at a time, at any point in that, the specifics of that emotional reality will alter with ongoing experience.
Tone has to reflect these shifts, so that even a writer who is telling a story with a very focused emotional reality, where the character is within a certain mental state throughout, the tone still has to vary, in order to reflect the more subtle aspects of the emotional reality being depicted. Even more, it is worth recognizing that moving the tone of a story in a way that contradicts the emotional core can be a very effective tool, if done well. Using a flat, distant and clinical tone to describe a heartbreak can make us feel the character's emotional loss, let us sense a closing off from pain. David Foster Wallace's essays often did this well, describing things that are meant to be pleasurable or entertaining in a tone that made the author's lack of joy palpable, for example.
It is also worth noting that tone exists at the intersection between the technical aspects of the language and the content of the story. Tone is about controlling not the word choice, or even the construction, but the underlying feelings those carry, and as such it is about both how the language is being used, and also about what the content is doing at this point. It must be capable of moving the overall voice of the story, so that it reflects this moment within the piece, and must do so in a way that is seamless to the whole of the narration. The shifting of tone allows the writer to adjust the implied qualities of the language, the emotional resonance and other intangible aspects that create a mood, to do the work needed at this moment in the story.
The introduction of structure occurs next, though it is really only mentioned, as later sections will deal more directly with how a story is engineered, but I did want to point out where structure lies in the overall scheme.
Theme comes next, and is described in terms of the story's subtext and meaning. Theme is, again, a bit nebulous, but for different reasons, I think. A theme should be something the reader discovers, but it must be placed their with care. The reader shouldn't be handed the theme for most stories, they should have to do a bit of work to understand the meaning of the piece, or else why make them read a story? I mean, if you just want to tell someone a lesson, the story is not the way to do it. A story is useful because it requires that the words be converted into an imagined experience, and that experience is then interpreted into a meaning. To properly execute a story, the writer has to think about what work the reader will be doing, and what they should take away. Theme is one of the major tools for this, and is one that needs to be applied subtly. A theme is something that the reader discovers through the accruing of the story as it is read. It may even seem to be one thing for most of the story, until it becomes clear at the end, or there may be more than one theme.
But, how does one put theme into a story? It is difficult to point to at any one spot, because, as I mentioned, it something that builds up over the course of the narrative. The way images work together, the sound of the words and the musical mood created, even the visual appearance of the text on the page can all be tools for building thematic resonance. Also, it is well worth remembering that theme may not be obvious in a first draft, but once the overall shape of the story has been uncovered, it becomes possible to look at the theme or themes of the story, to ask questions about what meaning the story is building towards, and then to develop ways of enhancing those themes. As a rather cliche example, in writing a story where the theme of freedom is significant, an author might find ways to work in images related to birds and flight. It is a matter of building up associations for the reader that will connect to the ideas they should be extracting from the work.
The final mystery presented is form, a term that the book acknowledges as ambiguous, referencing either the litrary form (novel, story, flash fiction, novelette), or it can reference the structural form of a piece. It can even, the book says, reference ideas that are closer to concepts presented here as voice. In all honesty, for me, form is something that I mostly think of in terms of poetry, and not so much fiction. While I acknowledge that a story must take a form, I can't say I have ever considered that form in a serious way during the writing. Of course, I can think of stories by other writers where form was incredibly central, it just never has been so for me. Indeed, I think I should really just acknowledge that I am not even sure what exactly this book intends to mean by form, so I will return to the subject later, if it reemerges later on with greater clarity.
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 style within a story. The voice may be consistent between works, and will certainly carry qualities that are essential to the writer's style, but the specific qualities of the voice are uniquely connected to the narrator of the piece. It is that narrator, of course, who is speaking, so what other voice could it be? Of course, the narrator speaks for the writer, and so anything within that voice comes from the writer, but it is still grounded in the specifics of the story being told.
Now, it may be, of course, that I am just using terms backwards here, in comparison to how they are being used by Wonderbook, as it would seem likely that terms like voice and style might have slightly different meanings to different writers. My understanding of style, as presented in the book, was derived from a definition about the way a writer assembles language, and that is the quality that I see as essential to the writer, as the thing that underlies the work. In the end, though, it seems to me that the two concepts are so closely connected that attempting to extricate them in any one story would be impossible, but over a career, qualities emerge and repeat. I think the bigger question for me is where on the hierarchy those elements actually belong. I think, perhaps, my perspective is one that gives more import to that aspect of a writer's work, whereas the viewpoint expressed in this chapter is that the element that exists at that higher level is the quality of the story, not of the author.
Now, I do understand that perspective, because it reinforces the notion that the stories own needs must be primary, and that a writer should set aside the need to include those personal touches. In other words, when starting to write a story, the decisions can't be made from personal ego. They must be about the story, not the writer, and so it is understandable that the stories needs would exist on that higher level, the one that must be considered first.
By contrast, my own thought would be that everything in the story is a manifestation of the writer in one way or another. I think of those personal aspects, as I said last night, as coming first because they are me. I do not need to think of them, they are already present, and are present in the story on a level that exists before anything else, even if I were not to consider it consciously. Thus, it is not that I believe one should consider, when starting a piece of writing, the question of what will make this truly "mine", but rather it is the realization that it cannot be otherwise.
Moving on, the book next introduces tone, another quality that is somewhat nebulous and intertwined with style and voice. Tone, though, is clearly not on the same level. It is best thought of, I believe, as the emotion that is in the words. Tone evokes the overall atmosphere of what is occurring on the page. It is also one of the most flexible aspects discussed thus far. Tone needs to vary, I mean, when it doesn't that's called monotone, and I have not heard that term used as a positive descriptor. The changes may be subtle, but the aspects of the world that tone brings into the story are things that, in real life, do change. Emotional states are not stagnant. While we may talk about feeling sad or happy or angry as if these are firm states of existence, the truth is that we bounce through emotions, end even when we are stuck in a certain mood, their are still bound to be subtle changes in mental state. Even a single feeling, joy, desperation, longing, is not a monolithic experience, and even if one remained stuck in such a state for days at a time, at any point in that, the specifics of that emotional reality will alter with ongoing experience.
Tone has to reflect these shifts, so that even a writer who is telling a story with a very focused emotional reality, where the character is within a certain mental state throughout, the tone still has to vary, in order to reflect the more subtle aspects of the emotional reality being depicted. Even more, it is worth recognizing that moving the tone of a story in a way that contradicts the emotional core can be a very effective tool, if done well. Using a flat, distant and clinical tone to describe a heartbreak can make us feel the character's emotional loss, let us sense a closing off from pain. David Foster Wallace's essays often did this well, describing things that are meant to be pleasurable or entertaining in a tone that made the author's lack of joy palpable, for example.
It is also worth noting that tone exists at the intersection between the technical aspects of the language and the content of the story. Tone is about controlling not the word choice, or even the construction, but the underlying feelings those carry, and as such it is about both how the language is being used, and also about what the content is doing at this point. It must be capable of moving the overall voice of the story, so that it reflects this moment within the piece, and must do so in a way that is seamless to the whole of the narration. The shifting of tone allows the writer to adjust the implied qualities of the language, the emotional resonance and other intangible aspects that create a mood, to do the work needed at this moment in the story.
The introduction of structure occurs next, though it is really only mentioned, as later sections will deal more directly with how a story is engineered, but I did want to point out where structure lies in the overall scheme.
Theme comes next, and is described in terms of the story's subtext and meaning. Theme is, again, a bit nebulous, but for different reasons, I think. A theme should be something the reader discovers, but it must be placed their with care. The reader shouldn't be handed the theme for most stories, they should have to do a bit of work to understand the meaning of the piece, or else why make them read a story? I mean, if you just want to tell someone a lesson, the story is not the way to do it. A story is useful because it requires that the words be converted into an imagined experience, and that experience is then interpreted into a meaning. To properly execute a story, the writer has to think about what work the reader will be doing, and what they should take away. Theme is one of the major tools for this, and is one that needs to be applied subtly. A theme is something that the reader discovers through the accruing of the story as it is read. It may even seem to be one thing for most of the story, until it becomes clear at the end, or there may be more than one theme.
But, how does one put theme into a story? It is difficult to point to at any one spot, because, as I mentioned, it something that builds up over the course of the narrative. The way images work together, the sound of the words and the musical mood created, even the visual appearance of the text on the page can all be tools for building thematic resonance. Also, it is well worth remembering that theme may not be obvious in a first draft, but once the overall shape of the story has been uncovered, it becomes possible to look at the theme or themes of the story, to ask questions about what meaning the story is building towards, and then to develop ways of enhancing those themes. As a rather cliche example, in writing a story where the theme of freedom is significant, an author might find ways to work in images related to birds and flight. It is a matter of building up associations for the reader that will connect to the ideas they should be extracting from the work.
The final mystery presented is form, a term that the book acknowledges as ambiguous, referencing either the litrary form (novel, story, flash fiction, novelette), or it can reference the structural form of a piece. It can even, the book says, reference ideas that are closer to concepts presented here as voice. In all honesty, for me, form is something that I mostly think of in terms of poetry, and not so much fiction. While I acknowledge that a story must take a form, I can't say I have ever considered that form in a serious way during the writing. Of course, I can think of stories by other writers where form was incredibly central, it just never has been so for me. Indeed, I think I should really just acknowledge that I am not even sure what exactly this book intends to mean by form, so I will return to the subject later, if it reemerges later on with greater clarity.
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