I Miss Fiction

I was reading scholarly article after lengthy dissertation after weighty thesis after abstract paper and then I paused and I realized something...

I miss sinking into a good book. Into a world, where yes, you are using your brain, but you aren't so painfully aware of it. Where you care about the characters and thus learn truths about the world through human interaction rather than carefully crafted theorizing in the abstract realm. Where the story is paramount, but not all there is to find, either. With lessons subtle, or as running threads, rather than the main idea. Real life, rather than a list of historical events; even if not all the particular events in the story happened in real life, they are nonetheless true in a certain way, because they resonate with what you know and how you think about the world.

I like my classes, I like learning how to think in academia, but it's been much too long since I read a good fictional novel. I have to find something soon- maybe I'll head over to the library next week...

Too much writing advice?

When I first started to realize that a lot of the authors I liked had web sites, I found myself reading a lot of writing advice. Every author seemed to have something to say- from Sherwood Smith to Shannon Hale and Diana Wynne Jones- and each one had their own distinct approach, often contradicting each other.

There were just so many of them! Covering all approaches- from the authors with a story arc that appears in their head and forces them to write it down, to the ones who make it up as they go along (Ellen Raskin of Westing Game fame said she got too bored to write unless the ending was a surprise to her, too), to the ones who outline and plan and brainstorm their way into an organized plot.

So does all this contradiction mean that reading about how to write is a waste of time? Maybe there is no right way. Maybe it's all a matter of personal style.

Maybe so. But I'd like to venture an idea that I've come to, after reading a lot of articles proffering knowledge about writing and the publishing industry. It is worth doing your research, and knowing all the rules, even if lots of authors do things differently. Sort of like grammar- you have to learn proper English, really know it well- and only then can you start playing around with it.

No one says ee cummings was an illiterate ignoramus, not if they know what they're talking about, despite the fact that he breaks all the rules of normative English. If a sixth grader tried handing in work following ee cummings's rules of grammar, he'd get an F, and that wouldn't be unfair, despite how it might seem to the sixth grader. It's because you have to understand what you're doing, and break the rules only when it means something different because you did it.

I'm not trying to say the difference is just in your intent and understanding of what you're doing, because I do also think there is a recognizable difference in the objective quality of your work. To readers - your target audience - who really do know the rules, see what you've accomplished as a work of art, instead of just a lazy attempt to get out of learning the rules, and cheat the system (and failing to actually produce anything worthwhile, in pretty much every case).

What does this mean in terms of writing style- what should you do?

You should learn all the rules. Understand their sources and the effect on your writing when you follow them. Explore all their highways and byways, good or bad or contradictory as may be.

Then: let all that advice wash over you and drift away. You're hopefully now a better writer, but once you've studied and practiced long enough, it's time to stop worrying about emulating the styles of others and figure out what works best for you.

Endings

A lot of my posts have been about politics, and I've decided I'd rather talk about something more fun- story.

I've been thinking about endings. It's very easy to talk about and analyze beginnings, but for endings you have to read the whole book first to really get them, so you'll end up with a lot of articles and discussion on opening sentences, the endings are a wee bit neglected. With exceptions, of course.

It just occured to me that this question is very fitting for the end of the calendar year. That wasn't why I was thinking about it, though.

So what is the purpose of an ending? Are you trying to satisfy readers or keep them wanting more? Tie up all the loose ends or introduce a surprise twist? There are many ways of writing a good ending, but what makes an ending good? And what should an ending be trying to accomplish?

When I used to write short stories in high school my teacher would ask me to fix the endings- she invariably would think that my ending was too abrupt and I left the reader hanging. I'd argue, but this is what the story needs! I wanted to leave some things ambiguous, let the reader be able to imagine variable endings. It's a fact that only established authors can get away with this, as in a tenth grader it looks like you just couldn't decide on the ending instead of an artistic choice, but I came to realize that a lot of times she was right and my ending did need something more, and there was usually a way to fill it out a bit without compromising my artistic deliberate ambiguity.

With novels it's harder, and the truth is, with all the novels I'm always trying to write, I have yet to reach an ending. I don't know what I will do when I get there- I have to think about what an ending is and what it should accomplish. It might depend on the book, true, but surely there's something all endings share. Does it vary so much between short stories and novels, do you think?

Now I just have to keep working long enough to write the middle...