Wednesday, March 5, 2014

IWSG March 2014

It's time to support your local Insecure Writers Support Group, once again without the benefit of James Garner or Harry Morgan.  (We writers live dangerous lives.  That's why we're so insecure.)

This post is not really about my recent release, Pale Moonlight, but it was directly inspired by the book's first review.  It was a terrible review.  Made me wonder all over again if I'm crazy.

Except I started thinking, remembering why I write the way I write, and maybe it's not so crazy after all.  There is, after all, a method to the madness.  And if there's a method, maybe it's not madness after all...

The thing about Pale Moonlight is that it's a vampire story that's not really like any other vampire story you've read.  I like to say that if you're not writing like you, you're not really writing at all.  You're just filling a page with words.  My style, my intent, is necessarily uniquely my own, but it isn't without precedent, or perhaps what they call inspiration.

I call my style, when I call it anything, deep map fiction.  I borrow the term "deep map" from William Least Heat-Moon, one of the better-known travel writers, responsible for Blue Highways and various other books.  The one I take the phrase from is PrairyErth, in which he explores an entire Kansas county on foot, or in other words taking a "deep map" of the territory.  What he does is learn as much as possible about something, and then reports his findings.

That's what I try to do with my stories.  I can't write a story simply connecting events to events.  I take a deep map of character motivation and whatever resonance seems to be relevant at the time, whether in history or in thought, to try and explore the story the way readers are subsequently asked to interpret it.  I'm a reader who believes a story isn't just a sequence of events, either, but something that's only worth anything if I take something positive from it.  I don't read just to read.  And so I don't write just to write, either.  I want to present a challenge to the reader, not a puzzle but something to think about.  And the way mystery writers leave clues all over the place, I try and start the thought process by beginning it within the story itself.

And I like to have a little fun.  I love to make associations.  Hopefully, anyone who's read my blogging knows that much.  I got the idea to do this in fiction by Neil Gaiman's Sandman, one of the most mythology-rich comics ever written, and subsequently one of those classic hard-to-translate challenges filmmakers have been attempting to solve for years.  (Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the most recent brave soul to tackle it.  Wish him luck!)

But the thing is, I hadn't read Sandman by the time I wrote Pale Moonlight, except for a few random issues.  It was a challenge I knew I wanted to take, but needed time to prepare for it.  I'm still only about twenty issues in, and can see how challenging Gaiman really made it.  His lead character most often appears as a supporting character.  Of any work of fiction I've encountered to date, it's Gaiman's opus that comes closest to the kind of work I hope to accomplish as a writer.

(I am not saying I am Gaiman's equal.  That is for others to decide!)

Other experiences helped lead the way.  Douglas Adams packed his Hitchhiker's books with asides from the title fictional cosmic encyclopedia, for instance, and although they don't really have anything to do with Arthur Dent's adventures, they are an essential element to their enjoyment.  Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes presented every facet of childhood exactly the way a child experiences it, which meant reading the comic strip was itself a master class of wildly different approaches week to week.

I also drew a lot of formatting ideas from television.  TV is a uniquely modern form of storytelling, more often than not episodic, in that the story from week to week may not be directly related but taken as a whole there is clearly a common thread throughout a series.  Some of the more ambitious shows I've enjoyed, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Boomtown being completed by the time I started writing novel manuscripts, were particularly influential.  I have the feeling that drawing such inspiration from TV will become more and more apparent as future generations of writers emerge.

Lost was another major source of inspiration.  When I began writing The Cloak of Shrouded Men, the show had only just begun, but when I finished the story that became my first book, the series had by then reached its third season, with more than ample demonstration of its unique approach to TV storytelling.  I consider it an honor to admit that I took writing advice from Lost.

The idea of writing not so much a straight narrative but looking around the corners, I saw this as a natural fit for my interests, and by the time I tackled the manuscript for Pale Moonlight, I found it more and more impossible to do anything but what interested me as a writer, putting aside preconceived notions on what storytelling is supposed to do.  The funny part is, as esoteric as Pale Moonlight is, it's still easier to understand, I think, than where I took the ending of Shrouded Men.  In that sense, I'm following in the speculative footsteps of Christopher Nolan, another creative source who had wowed me with Memento and its less-known predecessor Following before I began my writing career in earnest.

But that review got me questioning this approach all over again.  Did I write it like that because I was incapable of writing something more traditional?  If I took out a given set of material, would that make it better, or simply easier to read?  As writers, we're often told to edit our material, or completely rewrite.  I consider a certain amount of that to be artistic compromise.  In a collaborative medium like movies or TV, that can and probably should happen all the time.  But writing a book?  Particularly a story that plays by its own rules?  It would be one thing if the author realizes it doesn't work.  But is it okay for someone else to say it doesn't?  Who's right?

Some of that has to do with the business of commercial value.  I personally don't look at indy publishing as a commercial business.  I'd love to make money from it, but that's not really why I do it.

So I guess what I'm saying this month is, my insecurity is also my greatest strength.  I risk everything in hopes of gaining everything.  And maybe some money, too.

22 comments:

  1. No, that's your writing style, and you should stick with it. A unique voice is rare. Don't lose yours.
    And there is a lot to learn from television series as far as character arc and weaving a lot of themes together.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Douglas Adams comparison is way off the mark. His asides were funny; yours were tedious.

    It's all well and good to have a "voice" and a "style" but your voice and style also need to fit the genre you're writing in. One of the reasons they say to read a lot in your intended genre is so you can understand the rules before you try to break them. Which is why I told you to either A) get an editor or B) write in a more suitable genre.

    Something you should consider is that your hero Melville A) has been dead for well over a century B) wasn't even popular when he was alive and C) Still isn't popular except among academics who force him upon schoolkids.

    At least my literary hero is A) alive (for the moment) and B) sold lots of books.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All I can say to you, once again, is that you still don't get it. I was not writing a vampire romance. It was not a genre book.

      Delete
    2. Well see YOU know that. Unfortunately other people will not know that and thus they will be harsh with you. Amazon readers are not the brightest about reading descriptions.

      Delete
    3. It certainly doesn't help if you keep hammering a misconception that you should already be clear about. I just don't know about you, Mr. Dilloway.

      Delete
  3. Breaking the rules always has consequences, good and bad. Those who go against convention always get smacked in the head. But that's what makes it so cool. Your voice is your voice. That's it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Getting smacked in the head is sometimes fun! Sometimes.

      Delete
  4. I dread a negative review. I'm pretty sure I'll curl up in a corner and cry. But, once that passes, I'll do some soul searching and see if maybe it wasn't that person's cup o' tea. If you have a particular style, there's no reason to compromise it. We can't please everyone.

    Elsie
    AJ's wHooligan in the A-Z Challenge
    co-host IWSG

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's especially frustrating coming from someone who obsesses over positive reviews.

      Delete
  5. Take what you can from every experience you can. It is your voice, but who is to say you can't take it like a buffet. A little of this, a little of that, and add your own flare.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Does the buffet have chicken? Because it has to have chicken.

      Delete
    2. You want fried chicken in the buffet? No chicken for you!

      Delete
  6. I must say I also believe your voice is unique. You shouldn't change it to accommodate the trends. It's like the personality. We are who we are and we won't change. We can improve, yes, but nothing good comes from trying to be something you're definitively not. It won't make you happy and in the long run, you're gonna drop it anyway.

    I could start a philosophic dissertation out of your post but I'll spare you the speech. I will only say that whatever change you make in your style, you have very clear WHY are you doing it and WHAT do YOU expect from it. It might save you plenty of confusion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Does the dissertation include comic strips?

      Delete
    2. Hahaha, not at the moment. I'm trying to set up a duel. But in the near future it might.

      Delete
  7. Having read your description of your writing process makes me want to read your books. I may not be your intended audience, but that's okay. I admire your determination to write the way you want to write, not just the way other people want you to write. One of my favorite quotes (which I'll paraphrase because I don't want to Google it) is if the book you want to read isn't there, write it yourself. Write the books you want to read. To also quote Jim Carrey from Kick-A** 2 (never saw it, just the trailer, "if you're not having fun, what's the point?" If writing this way makes you happy, that's pretty all you can ask for. So keep doing it.

    Now, having said that, the truth is that you may face opposition or negative responses from readers. I'm reminded of "Zone One" by Colson Whitehead. He took a literary approach to the zombie genre. Some of his readers loved it. Others hated it. So it's going to happen. But as a literary author who wanted to write a zombie novel, that's the book he wanted to write. If he'd tried to write a zombie novel the way he thought readers would like, he would have a) hated writing it, and b) probably written a crappy novel.

    Bottom line, write what you want to write. The challenge will be trying to connect to readers who get your style. Maybe there won't be many of them, maybe they'll be hard to find, but once you do, they will love you for it. And you wrote a book you're happy with. That's what's important.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In related news, you made me very interested in Zone One!

      Delete
    2. It's not my cup of tea, but it looks interesting. He uses the zombie as a metaphor for our lives today. He introduced a new kind of zombie, which returns to its old familiar place and takes on a pose its familiar with, so you have zombies sitting at the breakfast table or standing in an imaginary line at the grocery store, frozen forever.

      Delete
    3. I stuck it in my Amazon wish list queue. But it's a long list.

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...