The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 11 September 2009

Writer's Digest, October 2008, pages 67 and 68, have an article by Dorianne Laux on poetry with the title, "The Leap." There's an exercise at the end that I will quote, but let me summarize the article first.

Dorianne points out that Spanish poetry often uses a leap into apparently unrelated imaginary material (I was reminded of the magical realism genre, but let's ignore that for the moment). A number of Spanish poets have used this technique, and in the 1960s it was introduced to America by the deep image poets. So there are number of examples of "the imaginative leap" in contemporary poetry.

Next there is an example of such a poem by Ellen Bass. "If You Knew" starts with the simple question, "what if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone?" And then it goes into some examples of what you might do if you knew that someone would die soon after you touched them. The final verse then reads:

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

"If You Knew" by Ellen Bass, from The Human Line, Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

A simple if somewhat unusual question, some consideration of what you might do, and then the fantastic metaphor.

There's another example, a modern-day poetic fable by Joseph Millar, with the title, "Sole Custody." It seems to be a parent and child talking about life, and then swerves into a simile, of sailors and ships and oceans.

OK? So that's the leap, mixing a strong fantastic image or metaphor into ordinary life.

And here's the exercise...

Try a Leap

"Write an imaginative poem where you knew you ask a theoretical question and extend it for as many lines as you can. Choose your examples from different areas of life so that you look at the question from a variety of angles or viewpoints. You could also tell a brief story taken from everyday life wherein you describe many of the various physical particulars and touch on one or two emotional moments.

"From one of these two foundations, allow yourself to leap into metaphor; find an image or a series of images that can contain and expand your extended ruminations.

"This exercise can also be used to resolve and revise an existing poem you feel hasn't yet attained its fullness and power. It may not be easy to find your metaphor at first. Don't be afraid to try anything: a box, a wave, a leaf.... look at your own life and don't rule anything out.

"Another approach might be to begin with the metaphor and find the context for it later. ...

[Skip]

"You might begin by describing an extended action such as weeding the yard, sweeping the porch, or dressing for work. After you've described your actions in minute detail, take a look and see how this description could be a metaphor for something else. Make that the title of the poem"

All right? Three different formats, really, each focusing on using an imaginative metaphor. One poses the question, consider some mundane examples, and then turns fantastic. Another simply considers something about life, and adds the fantastic to it. And the third... what if our mundane life is the fantastic?

Go ahead. A heaping cup of ordinary, and a teaspoon of fantasy. Reminds me a little bit of Peter Pan sprinkling fairy dust. You can fly!

Write?

Original posting 7 April 2008

Keep It Real by Lynn Flewelling in Writers Digest Nov. 2004, pg. 56-57.

"Make your readers believe that the fantasy world you've created actually exists by researching your setting."

You might not think of realism as an ingredient in fantasy, or in general fiction, but Lynn argues that a good setting helps readers suspend their disbelief and dive in. So to engage and entrance readers with an alternate world of dazzling wonders, you start by convincing them with a plausible, lively, internally consistent backdrop.

"Setting is the bedrock of your story." So get the facts right. Now if you are making up a world from whole cloth, you need to have at least a nodding acquaintance with weather basics, towns, trade routes, cultures, etc. Or you could model it on the one world we know well, but then you're back to checking out details in reality.

In either case, "the real world is the fantasy writer's scrapbook." [and I venture to say for any fiction writer!] Real history, geography customs and religions are great sources for guidance and inspiration. Do your homework -- go places, use the internet and other tools to dig, or use your locale, since you know it well. Even there, take a good hard look, and you may surprise people with the raccoon that lives in the local park. And when you can, add to the sensory palate with some experience. Try a little bit here and there. Pick up and swing that maul that the plumber uses. Try out some foods. Scribble or jot notes about it, too, so you can remember what that red ant tasted like, or what looking in a lion's mouth makes you feel. (Did it really smell like that?)

Some cautions. Beware anachronisms and inaccuracies. The historical setting crumbles when dialogue uses modern slang, or horses, guns, and so forth just keep going and going. Also, while you as writer need to know all the background details, most of that should not show up on your page. No info dumps -- long dissertations on how something works. Think of details as the spice of the story, not the meat and potatoes. Watch for emphasis -- if you spend a total time describing something the reader expects it will be important to the story. Make sure to use the antique mallet that you lovingly described, or the reader will hit you with it

Finally, especially in fantasy, beware the "oh, wow" details. These glaringly unusual elements are usually added hoping to get readers to think that the setting is exotic. However, the usual response to pink trees or other oddities that aren't integral parts of the setting is to throw the reader out of the story because they're trying to figure out how that could work.

So, when you're working on your setting, you need to get the facts. Do the research. And watch for inconsistencies such as anachronisms and inaccuracies. Avoid dumping loads of information, strive for the finely selected detail rather than the raw quantity. Anything you spend time on needs to play an active role in the story. And don't tease the readers with exotic frills unless they are a legitimate part of the setting. Glued on scenery falls off too easily.

'saright?

When we write, we let others imagine.

Original posting: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 18:35:01 JST

Gwanda D. Newcomma took a hesitant step into the room. She shivered, looked at her feet, then whispered, "I.. I write non-fiction, and wondered if you could tell me about fic..fiction?"

John T. Wordschmitt grinned, hand stuck out firmly, and arm reaching for her shoulder.

"Why, sure! Call me Jaunty, everyone does! Fiction is real different from non-fiction, but hang around and try it, you'll like it."

Gwanda took a step back. For a moment, she quivered between the quiet safe world outside and the inane mumbling behind John. Then a weak smile touched her lips as she touched the tips of her fingers to the hand still sticking out in front of her.

"Do you blast every newcomer with a bold hello?"

John laughed.

"Only the ones who ask hard questions, like what's fiction. Look, why don't you try a romance to start, they're sweet and pretty easy. Then we could do a collection together, if you want?"

He dragged her further into the fantasy, the twirling shining milieu of fiction, slowly separating her from the facts that held her tied to reality until she began to dance the stately pavane that twisted madness into profits. He wondered if she would hate him when she realized he was that most despised creature, an agent, a bloated parasite sucking 15% from those he infected with the artistic bug...

[stop, stop... what was the question?]

A while ago, a newcomer to the list mentioned that they had written non-fiction. Someone welcomed them with a comment to the effect that non-fiction and fiction are very different.

I didn't say anything at the time, but I have been pondering that assertion, and wondered whether the rest of you find it as questionable as I do.

Let me go back to (roughly) Shannon's model of communication - one person has some notion, perception, etc. They encode this in language (skipping lightly past the difficulties of that process) and transmit the result. Another person hears, reads, whatever the transmitted result. They, in turn, decode the message, reconstructing something which they think corresponds to some extent with the original notion or perception.

There are stylistic and other techniques in the encoding process which are more often found in fiction or non-fiction writing. However, in thinking about those techniques, I really couldn't pinpoint any which could not be used in either field.

There is, of course, a difference in the topic or content - non-fiction, by convention, is supposed to stick rather closer to facts, while fiction to greater or lesser extents involves deliberate use of non-factual material. But, and I think this may be the critical point, only the writer (and on occasion some witnesses to the events being described) knows for sure whether or not something is factual or purely imaginary.

We may suspect that there is no Moriarty lurking in the criminal sewers of the world, but especially if the writer does a good job, we may be quite suspicious that this person might be real (not merely willing suspension of disbelief, but strenuous misleading of belief...). We may not want to believe that the President could mislead and deceive in a Watergate, but the descriptions and tales are simply too convincingly real to ignore, and the correspondence with facts overwhelming.

Take a newspaper story - a stylized format, and conventions that sometimes try to keep it "objective". Yet when we read the piece about an accident at 4th and Vine, is there anything beyond those conventions that assures us that this is non-fiction? There is the common assumption that if someone besides the author were to check, there would be marks on the pavement, people in the hospital, police reports, etc. to match the description - but what difference does that make to the writing?

Or take a fantasy story - "clearly" fiction, and again with certain conventions for presentation. Suppose that we were to check, and find that the author had suspicious dealings with rather ill-defined critters in the garden at midnight when the moon is dark? Suppose, indeed, that the events and scenes were no more than simple fact. Would this destroy the writing?

I will admit that the style of presentation - scenes, point of view, etc. usually used for fiction and non-fiction are widely different. But I don't see that they must inherently be different, and in some cases it may be quite effective to borrow the style of the other sort.

One nice aspect to fiction is that when the ending isn't what we wanted or the character doesn't say something well, we (as writers) can and should change it. Non-fiction, at least as a mirror for the "real world," is ordinarily not supposed to alter what is "out there." Selection, arrangement, and so forth can allow the non-fiction writer quite a bit of latitude in molding that mass of facts into a piece, but the non-fiction writer isn't supposed to catch the criminal or force the ending unless that is what "really" happened.

Of course, this is no more than saying that non-fiction is supposed to deal with facts, while fiction deals in part or whole with an imagined reality which can vary from the facts (although it can also match them as closely as you want...).

BUT - does this question of correspondence with "reality" change the writing? I think in either case (writing about "real" events or "imaginary" events), the problems of clearly showing the scene, characterizing participants, bringing out a problem and solution (conflict), keeping the reader's interest, and so forth are identical.

Where, then, is the difference in non-fiction and fiction? Anyone feel up to explaining?

[oh - Gwanda and John T. had a brief, but meaningful, romance. She taught him that love, not money, makes facts wobble and words spin, and they wrote happily ever after ... and that's the truth!]

original posting: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 16:58:49 JST

"I think we all loathe the expressions _serious novel_ and _serious writer_, with the loaded implications that the wordworker who stresses action, the sheerly imaginative, or the fully nonexistent is somehow playing at writing and decidedly less talented. Worse, _mainstream_ and _serious story_ are often meant to convey that fantasists, detective story writers, and so on are less concerned with the important things." (p. 26)

(from the essay "Plotting as Your Power Source" by J.N. Williamson)

How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction
Ed. J.N. Williamson
1987, Writer's Digest Books
ISBN 0-89879-270-3

original posting: Wed, 29 Dec 1993 13:43:58 JST

"Those women and men who write novels and short stories of fantasy - of whatever variety - take great pride in it, and so may you. We may feel especially proud that, for us, storytelling remains as significant as it was for any writer who preceded us. ... Although most ideas can be reshaped or modified to fit our individual, central truths, we have found writing to be the best education and culture-molding method available to humankind and our principle aspirations and concerns, hopes and dreads, sing from the core of all that we write just as affectingly and as effectively as any writers currently at work." (p. 26-27)

(from the essay "Plotting as Your Power Source" by J.N. Williamson)