Thoughts on reading and writing
May. 30th, 2009 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieA piece of writing advice that I've taken:
I am a really, really wordy writer. One thing I am slowly learning is that the advice to "murder your darlings" is some of the best out there. Case in point: the last fic I posted was originally twice as long. There is another file full of the paragraphs I cut out, and there are about three hundred words in particular that I really liked, but which simply didn't fit with the story it turned into. (I may use them in something else later, though. I really like the dialogue in particular.) Every time I thought something didn't read right, the solution inevitably was to take out words or even entire sentences, and, like magic, everything I wanted to say was on the page, without being obscured by excess verbiage.
Now, if only this worked for papers. There, I find that for every word I cut (and I cut a lot), I add ten more. Sigh.
*
A piece of writing advice I need:
POV shifts. My GOD, POV shifts. I do not know why, but I am compelled to bounce through the head of every character in a given scene at some point during that scene unless I write in first-person. It's like, okay, I start out with seeing the action through one person's eyes, and it's all copacetic. But then I find that the next bit of action would be more interesting if seen through this other character's eyes, with the background of their thoughts and reactions, and I jump there, and I think I leave the reader going, "What just happened?" I try to fix it when it comes up--this is often where "murder your darlings" comes in--but sometimes I just leave it, because dammit, I want that private thought or reaction from the other character even if it doesn't flow.
So I don't know. Should I keep ruthlessly trying to write from one POV for the entirety of my (usually quite short) scenes or sections of a piece of prose, only switching at a logical break? Or do people even care about that sort of thing? I feel like I don't notice it as a reader, but maybe other people don't have this compulsion to flip through POVs like a damn gymnast.
*
In other news, I am re-reading Eavan Boland's memoir, Object Lessons. It is slower going than the first time I read it, perhaps because back then I was only writing a short reaction paper to it rather than a thesis on the author's poetry. Nevertheless, it is still interesting, and there are definitely sections that will be useful in my thesis. She has a very complex meditation on place, history, and myth in chapter six that I think will be one of the keys to my analysis of her poetry.
I also like the following passage from chapter seven:
"[O]ne part of the poem in every generation is ready to be communally written. To put it another way, there is a poem in each time that waits to be set down and is therefore instantly recognizable once it has been. It may contain sentiments of outrage or details of an occasion. It may invite a general reaction to some particular circumstance. It may appeal to anger or invite a common purpose.
"It hardly matters. The point is that to write in that cursive and approved script can seem, for the unwary poet, a blessed lifting of the solitude and skepticism of the poet's life. Images are easily set down; a music of argument is suddenly revealed. Then a difficult pursuit becomes a swift movement. And finally the poem takes on a glamour of meaning against a background of public interest....But in a country like Ireland, with a nationalist tradition, there are real dangers....it would be all to easy...to make a construct where the difficult 'I' of perception became the easier 'we' of a subtle claim. Where an unearned power would be allowed by a public engagement.
"In such a poem the poet would be the subject." (177-178)
I may just have fandom on the brain, but the first thing I thought of upon reading that was not my thesis, but fanfic, and specifically the gestalts that seem to run through fandom like waves--particular pairings, and particular ways of writing such pairings. Lyrical angst or snappy sarcasm or a multitude of other styles and tropes seem to go in and out of vogue with some regularity, waxing and waning in various fandoms at different times. I don't know that it's necessarily a bad thing (although applying the last sentence of the excerpt to it could certainly make it so), but it is, I think, an interesting one. I haven't drawn any kind of conclusions about it, but it was just something I noticed. (And which other people before me, I am sure, have noticed as well.)
I loaned my director my old copy of the book, with all of its marginalia from when I was twenty-one and reading it for Jesse's class. I didn't really vet it before handing it over, so I hope there's nothing terribly embarrassing. I seem to remember there was a lot of, "I am a woman poet from the American South where Scarlett O'Hara is kind of like our Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and I AGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT" in it. Only perhaps written in incomprehensible shorthand. I know there was a lot of emphatic underlining, anyway...
I am a really, really wordy writer. One thing I am slowly learning is that the advice to "murder your darlings" is some of the best out there. Case in point: the last fic I posted was originally twice as long. There is another file full of the paragraphs I cut out, and there are about three hundred words in particular that I really liked, but which simply didn't fit with the story it turned into. (I may use them in something else later, though. I really like the dialogue in particular.) Every time I thought something didn't read right, the solution inevitably was to take out words or even entire sentences, and, like magic, everything I wanted to say was on the page, without being obscured by excess verbiage.
Now, if only this worked for papers. There, I find that for every word I cut (and I cut a lot), I add ten more. Sigh.
*
A piece of writing advice I need:
POV shifts. My GOD, POV shifts. I do not know why, but I am compelled to bounce through the head of every character in a given scene at some point during that scene unless I write in first-person. It's like, okay, I start out with seeing the action through one person's eyes, and it's all copacetic. But then I find that the next bit of action would be more interesting if seen through this other character's eyes, with the background of their thoughts and reactions, and I jump there, and I think I leave the reader going, "What just happened?" I try to fix it when it comes up--this is often where "murder your darlings" comes in--but sometimes I just leave it, because dammit, I want that private thought or reaction from the other character even if it doesn't flow.
So I don't know. Should I keep ruthlessly trying to write from one POV for the entirety of my (usually quite short) scenes or sections of a piece of prose, only switching at a logical break? Or do people even care about that sort of thing? I feel like I don't notice it as a reader, but maybe other people don't have this compulsion to flip through POVs like a damn gymnast.
*
In other news, I am re-reading Eavan Boland's memoir, Object Lessons. It is slower going than the first time I read it, perhaps because back then I was only writing a short reaction paper to it rather than a thesis on the author's poetry. Nevertheless, it is still interesting, and there are definitely sections that will be useful in my thesis. She has a very complex meditation on place, history, and myth in chapter six that I think will be one of the keys to my analysis of her poetry.
I also like the following passage from chapter seven:
"[O]ne part of the poem in every generation is ready to be communally written. To put it another way, there is a poem in each time that waits to be set down and is therefore instantly recognizable once it has been. It may contain sentiments of outrage or details of an occasion. It may invite a general reaction to some particular circumstance. It may appeal to anger or invite a common purpose.
"It hardly matters. The point is that to write in that cursive and approved script can seem, for the unwary poet, a blessed lifting of the solitude and skepticism of the poet's life. Images are easily set down; a music of argument is suddenly revealed. Then a difficult pursuit becomes a swift movement. And finally the poem takes on a glamour of meaning against a background of public interest....But in a country like Ireland, with a nationalist tradition, there are real dangers....it would be all to easy...to make a construct where the difficult 'I' of perception became the easier 'we' of a subtle claim. Where an unearned power would be allowed by a public engagement.
"In such a poem the poet would be the subject." (177-178)
I may just have fandom on the brain, but the first thing I thought of upon reading that was not my thesis, but fanfic, and specifically the gestalts that seem to run through fandom like waves--particular pairings, and particular ways of writing such pairings. Lyrical angst or snappy sarcasm or a multitude of other styles and tropes seem to go in and out of vogue with some regularity, waxing and waning in various fandoms at different times. I don't know that it's necessarily a bad thing (although applying the last sentence of the excerpt to it could certainly make it so), but it is, I think, an interesting one. I haven't drawn any kind of conclusions about it, but it was just something I noticed. (And which other people before me, I am sure, have noticed as well.)
I loaned my director my old copy of the book, with all of its marginalia from when I was twenty-one and reading it for Jesse's class. I didn't really vet it before handing it over, so I hope there's nothing terribly embarrassing. I seem to remember there was a lot of, "I am a woman poet from the American South where Scarlett O'Hara is kind of like our Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and I AGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT" in it. Only perhaps written in incomprehensible shorthand. I know there was a lot of emphatic underlining, anyway...
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:02 am (UTC)And I've pretty much given up on being able to write third person without switching all over the place POV-wise. Surprisingly, I tend to be able to keep the POVs better in second person, which i used to not like so much.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 02:40 pm (UTC)And I've pretty much given up on being able to write third person without switching all over the place POV-wise.
Yay, I am not alone!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:16 am (UTC)I remember being baffled with all your gymnastics before. Sorry, I just like my POVs old-skool. : ( You can do it!
I may just have fandom on the brain, but the first thing I thought of upon reading that was not my thesis, but fanfic,
*facepalm* Only you... (And I say that with all the love in the world.)
"I am a woman poet from the American South where Scarlett O'Hara is kind of like our Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and I AGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT"
Wait, did the Irish want to strangle their Cathleen Ni Houlihan? Or is my Scarlett-rage not universal? D:
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 02:42 pm (UTC)Yes, I remember your bafflement. Sigh. I think what I need to do is either stick with one POV, or start out flipping between them immediately, because my habit of sticking with one person for a while before going to others is just misleading.
*facepalm* Only you... (And I say that with all the love in the world.)
*cheesy grin*
Wait, did the Irish want to strangle their Cathleen Ni Houlihan? Or is my Scarlett-rage not universal? D:
Well, I wouldn't put that past some of the modern poets...
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 06:54 pm (UTC)As for the POV switching... eeeeek. That is one thing that bugs me a lot in fic I read. It is possible to do it well, especially in longer stories, but the switching has to be consistent (you can't have 9 scenes from one person's POV and then suddenly switch to someone else for a scene), and the breaks need to be obvious (chapter breaks in a longer story, or something as obvious as "character 1 is not actually present in this scene, so you have then established character 2 as an alternate storyteller"). The worst is when people retell THE SAME SCENE from two different POV. Like, same dialogue and everything. That drives me up a wall because it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time reading something I already read!
That all being said, I looooved the chicklit "Come Together" books, where the author made an obvious point of switching from the man's POV to the woman's POV in each chapter (continuing the story, though -- not retracing the scenes). So I think if you switch one-to-one, it works really well. :)
In other news: you are so evil. After your last reply to my "OMGSQUEEE" comment on your fic, I am writing screwed-up season 5 B5 fic. AND IT'S AWFUL. AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. *mutters*
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 08:14 pm (UTC)See, I consider lazy writing to be writing more of them, and not doing the hard work of chopping their little heads off. :D
I feel like POV-shifting can be done within a scene, but it has to be consciously-done, and somehow not jarring. I know Terry Pratchett manages it, so I can too! Somehow! (Perhaps the trick lies in establishing narratorial omniscience from the very outset...I think maybe it's a bit easier in non-fanfic, because you're often spending time at the beginning establishing some kind of backstory for each character--who they are, why they're in the scene--and it's a gentler way into everyone's heads.)
I wonder if the urge to shift or not shift POVs comes from how the author sees the scene in her head. Myself, I see everything like a movie, and I'm kind of transcribing the action/dialogue/thoughts, and one thing movies can do is move the camera around so and cut between shots so that the perspective is always shifting. Maybe it comes from that.
The worst is when people retell THE SAME SCENE from two different POV. Like, same dialogue and everything.
OMG, if it's done well--by which I mean you get something totally different from the scene--I LOVE that.
In other news: you are so evil. After your last reply to my "OMGSQUEEE" comment on your fic, I am writing screwed-up season 5 B5 fic. AND IT'S AWFUL. AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. *mutters*
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Heeee. I can't wait to read it!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 01:06 am (UTC)