Hiya, writers and frenz. Good to see you back for another discussion and practice session.
Click Fiction Works-in-Progress, usually anchored by Toro Blanco, for the diary series by and for writers posting chapters and excerpts unrelated to WriteOn challenges, and for interested readers. Hopefully, one of their regulars will have posted! That new series is itself a work in progress, so folks with diary-publishing skills and those interests are encouraged to get together —e.g., by kosmail— to set up a shared schedule, and other arrangements as diary series authors routinely do here in DK.
<big><big>To approach tonight’s Write On! topic,</big>, a damn good fit for a holiday like July 4, history or myth as it represents, we first might ask, why does anyone write?
Flannery O’Connor famously responded, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
For Joan Didion, the answer was “I write to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means, what I want and what I fear.”
Junot Diaz doubled down, melding the universal and the particular: “Writing helps me answer my own questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case, a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey.”
— from the Preface to Shanda, by Letty Cottin Pogrebin.
Then, the moment ya start to tell a story, yr telling it to someone[s].
Even if to oneself initially, who next do we try to connect with? And that leads to why … why them and not some others else? Figuring that out can tell each of us, individually, what we’re writing for.
Get right down to it, all writing — not just fiction — basically comes in just two forms: what we show/discover happening/happened, or what we wish[d]/guess[ed] happens.[ed].
There’s a yuge spectrum in the middle, and that’s where most writing is, fiction and otherwise. Whether us keeping on doin’ it requires making an income from it or just making a connection with readers, it’s interpersonal from there onward.
So, we have to take into account the needs/expectations and levels and stuff of readers to whom we’re telling our story, not our own wants and drives alone.
Here are some ideas I recently read about storymaking and telling. Please note, all the blockquotes are edited for length and clarity:
A Greek Holocaust survivor — 87% of the Jewish population there was killed — who lives in Vermont, Albert Levis was 6 years old when his family went into hiding. After the war, his father and grandfather were killed by Communist rebels. He only avoided capture by disguising as a Christian. Eventually he became a psychiatrist, a US citizen, businessman, arts patron, student of philosophy, especially Maimonides and Spinoza …
...also a boardgame designer of a six-step process by which “the mind transforms conflict to resolutions.” — Stress, Response, Anxiety, Defense, Reversal, and Compromise…
...In high school, Albert had turned to fairy tales and other stories to anchor himself in grappling with his own traumatic dissociation, finding particular comfort in Pinocchio, who, like Jonah in the Bible, is hidden from the world after he’s swallowed by a giant whale.
Albert references the metaphor of Odysseus getting to Ithaca a lot, too.
And says his life experiences informed his view that all forms of religion and myth … are demonstrations of an innate human need to tell stories as a means of resolving conflict. But it gets worse instead of better if the nature of the given story — like Hitler’s Mein Kampf — is a self serving lie….
“Resolve” doesn’t necessarily mean SOLVE, though. So much that writers or readers feel or fret over, or that haunts us, can’t be solved. But maybe learned to live with less uncomfortably. And when it’s way worse, less sufferingly.
Realized or not, that may well be what readers of fiction in particular are reading “for”. Put another way, to make life more liveable, to experience it as larger and more rewarding than strict reality suggests. Finding even if temporarily, distraction, or simply relief. hope. new perspectives, vicarious triumph or pleasure — in taking any more or less parallel journey with characters who seize our imagination.
Let’s consult a bunch of expert pieces of material on realworld storytelling that shed additional light.
[1] Al Monitor Ramadan storyteller roams Syrian displaced camps to help children forget for a moment the daily bombardments and suffering.
In his traditional embroidered clothes and his red fez, a storyteller sits in his decorated tent as he leans on his stick to enchant children around him.
The words “once upon a time” transport them to a happier world far away from the war, the staccato of bullets and the scenes of killing and destruction in Syria.
During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Hussein Bertawi tours the camps for the displaced across Idlib in northwest Syria to meet the children and tell entertaining and eye-opening stories with the aim of spreading joy, offering wisdom and instilling values, as part of an initiative launched by the Ghiras Alnahda organization in the displaced camps….
[2] How fairy tales shape fighting spirit: Ukraine’s children hear bedtime stories of underdog heroes, while Russian children hear tales of magical success
by Sophia Moskalenko, an expert on the psychology of fairy tales, and Mia Bloom, who studies children’s mobilization into violent extremism – why and how children turn to violence.
At the outset of invasion, almost no one in the West thought Ukraine capable of offering Russia serious opposition to its unprovoked aggression.
Much has been written about how even allies underestimated the leadership abilities of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But beyond miscalculating how a comedian could transform into a Winston Churchill-like figure, nearly all views of Ukraine’s military were also way off [along with] overestimation of the Russian army’s will and capability to fight and the Ukrainian army’s will to resist an opponent superior in number, equipment and positioning.
What can explain the Ukraine war playing out in contradiction to expert predictions?
We believe one factor in the unexpected performance of each country’s military can be traced to the cultural differences between Russians and Ukrainians, represented in part in differing outlooks seen in the fairy tales of their childhoods.
We’re experts in recognizing the power of folklore to shape the worldview of children and, ultimately, of the adults they grow up to be.
Folklore is important for understanding people’s cultural narratives – story lines that describe something unique to the culture’s history and its people. They help to define a cultural identity and, in subtle ways, shape future choices...
[3] from Clio2 October 19, 2023: “Ken Burns has a new series out about the American bison and is working on his next, about the American Revolution.
“In an interview with The Guardian, he said:
The only thing that changes people is storytelling. If you tell a story then it’s either going to change somebody not at all, fundamentally or more often than not just at the edges and imperceptibly and maybe even enough so people will take it.
“The full interview is well worth the read.”
If you read or watch detective stories, you probably don’t think about them as an expression of economic principles.
But at their heart, that’s exactly what they are. And all other genres too...
[I recognized this during] research on Jane Austen’s Persuasion. One scholarly source … argued that the language of the novel drew from the terminology of economics for metaphors of financial/romantic negotiations underlying the story.
From Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress I learned TANSTAFL “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”, i.e., that everything you get costs something. This is Opportunity cost and it’s central in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, too: the protag descends into depression on realizing she cannot have everything.
...In the great American drama The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson, a brother and sister fight over the disposition of a piano – for her a precious family legacy, for him something to sell to buy the land on which their family was enslaved.
...The Mad Max movies enact concepts of scarcity, as does Linda Greenlaw’s The Hungry Ocean, practically a course in economics itself, covering issues such as supply and demand, property rights (and “the tragedy of the commons”), costs of labor and – that all-time favorite – margins: marginal costs of fuel, time, labor, vs the marginal reward of that last fish.
..., from the risks of lending in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, to the rise of the middle class as a background issue in The Canterbury Tales, to virtually everything in Charles Dickens….
BTW, economics in fiction is NOT only about finance AT ALL! It’s about how it can be possible for protags to get through what life throws at them … or not, because economics means all resources, not only the material kinds…
...but also intangibles like relationships among people/character, hope and skills, protags’ capacities for growth and for thinking creatively when old methods of goal-reaching fail, and other traits that as a group add up to why the protags ARE the protags and lesser characters ain’t. It’s how well they deploy what resources they’ve got.
.
[5] Medscape Weaving Words: Storytelling for Better Communication
...a communications workshop for “honoring” the patient as protagonist of his/her’ “story”. Oddly, it’s kind of weakly written, but this section interested me:
..."There's no doubt that there are time constraints with any caregiver and patient communication, but you can feel seen in a very short amount of time, or you can feel ignored in a very long period of time," Nixon said. "Someone can ask you questions for 15 or 20 minutes, and you can still feel like they don't hear you."
At this point, the instructors shared another communication insight: The PACE model of communication.
Purpose ■ Audience ■ Context ■ Emotions
When communicating with a patient, consider your patient's purpose. Why are they here? What are you trying to achieve in the conversation? ... How should you adjust your approach to reach them better? Then, context: Where and when are you having this conversation? Are there any circumstances that might make it harder for you to get the information across? And, finally, emotions. What might the person you are speaking with be feeling right now? Have you acknowledged those feelings?...
“Contrary to a common misperception that reading this genre is an unworthy practice, reading science fiction and fantasy may help young people cope, especially with the stress and anxiety of living through terrible times.”
...I am a professor with research interests in the social, ethical and political messages in science fiction. In my book, “Medicine and Ethics in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction”, I explore the ways science fiction promotes understanding of human differences and ethical thinking.
While many people may not consider science fiction, fantasy or speculative fiction to be “literary,” research shows that all fiction can generate critical thinking skills and emotional intelligence for young readers. Science fiction may have a power all its own…
...A 2016 article in Social and Personality Psychology Compass, a scholarly journal, argues that “connecting to story worlds involves a process of ‘dual empathy,‘ simultaneously engaging in intense personal processing of challenging issues, while ‘feeling through’ characters, both of which produce benefits.”...
And there’s an implicit statement here, about imagining the possibilities real life may offer:
Science fiction books can inspire more children to become scientists if authors and illustrators do a better job of depicting characters from diverse backgrounds.
Despite appearances...
romance fiction is also the most innovative and uncontrollable of all genres, the one least limited by established models of how the publishing industry works, or how readers and writers behave….
For Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and Twenty-First Century Book Culture, we interviewed nearly 100 contemporary authors and publishing professionals, research showing that fiction genres are not static. They do not constrain artistic originality; they provide a structure that sparks creativity and passion.
All genres have three dimensions. The textual dimension is what’s on the page. The industrial dimension is how books are produced. And the social dimension is the people who write, read and talk about genre fiction.
For each genre, the dimensions interact to create a realm distinct in how its dimensions combine.
People read romance fiction for [varied] reasons, including that the standard romance plot makes space for exploring an infinite range of other ideas, with emphasis on nuances of relationship between human beings.
They might read casually or intensely, with curiosity, skepticism or devotion. All of these are active modes; they can’t be reduced to passive consumerism….
...In the more than 50 years since Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch dismissed this genre as women “cherishing the chains of their bondage”, romance writers and readers have grown more and more concerned with inequality across gender, race and sexuality... pushing back against old conventions, almost regardless of cost.
In 2018, the managing editor of Harlequin’s Escape imprint, gave a speech that revealed romance’s internal debates … in the #MeToo era, arguing that
if we want to call ourselves a feminist genre, if we want to hold ourselves up as an example of women being centred, of representing the female gaze, of creating women heroes who not only survive but thrive, then we have to lead….
including by jettisoning tropes of behavior called out by feminism, such as coercion, helpless seduction of women, sexual innuendo, workplace “advances” that nothing more nor less than harassment, stolen kisses because the kisser couldn’t resist, and all the rest that originated in timeless, even classic literature, and went on reinforcing the worst in the shared emotional culture of our societies. None of it unique to romance fiction, and all entwined with the entire publishing industry’s structural hostility toward people of colour, LGBTQI readers, writers, and characters.
Romance authors say the reason why this rebellion is that more and more readers come to this genre all the time, in greater and greater diversity, demanding to see themselves reflected, a cause romance writers and readers rally behind to evolutionize this genre like no other, casualties and all: e.g., once the world’s largest and most powerful authors’ association, The Romance Writers of America on May 30 filed for bankruptcy, citing conflict over diversity, equity and inclusion reducing its membership eventually by 80%.
Let that be
a warning to universities, companies and other groups now abolishing and scaling back inclusion efforts….
...The Romance Writers of America was founded in 1980 by Vivian Stephens, at the time one of the industry’s only Black editors, in an era when romance writers desperately needed an organization. The exploding genre made millions for publishers, but the authors were mocked, maligned and mistreated.
The RWA ... provided a professional home where isolated, struggling writers banded together, mentored each other and learned about the industry. Over 4 decades, its triumphs included improved contracts, auditing and blacklisting of publishers who didn’t pay, copyright victories over plagiarism and to better define and limit fair use of copyrighted material — achievements benefiting all writers — and joining with other authors’ groups to stand up to Google (which had been scanning and making books available without authors’ permission) and Amazon, for audiobook return policies stealing from authors, and other profitable abuses.]
At its peak in the mid-2010s, the RWA comprised 10,000 members worldwide….
For more on the romance genre, see also To the mattresses: a defence of romance fiction and 5 myths about romance fiction, busted, which notes this salient point
<big>Just as we expect a crime novel to feature a crime and a resolution (we find out whodunnit), we expect a romance novel to feature a romance and a resolution (the protagonists in a committed romantic relationship)….</big>
<big>Challenge:</big> whichever you like:
[A] If you have particular genres you most read or write in, mention what’s the “feature” expected to be resolved, as distinct from other genres. There’s an implicit statement here, for example, about imagining the possibilities real life may offer:
Science fiction books can inspire more children to become scientists if authors and illustrators do a better job of depicting characters from diverse backgrounds.
[B] Are there some traditional folk or fairy tales that influenced your outlook on real issues you’ve had to deal with, or helped you get through struggles?
[C] Is Albert Levis’s six-step process by which “the mind transforms conflict to resolutions” — Stress, Response, Anxiety, Defense, Reversal, and Compromise… — an outline for staging protag change/growth, if it’s a plot in which that happens?
[D} How useful or not does The PACE model of communication look — P(urpose), A(udience), C(ontext), E(motions) — for the manuscript revision phase that concentrates on achieving sharper focus?
[E] Thoughts on whether Ken Burns is right or rong or both in saying “The only thing that changes people is storytelling. If you tell a story then it’s either going to change somebody not at all, fundamentally or more often than not just at the edges and imperceptibly and maybe even enough so people will take it.” and how hopeful/encouraging or not is it, whichever way you conclude??
[F] is for FICTION: if you’d like a fiction-writing CHALLENGE: how’s about a brief riff starting here:
At the end of an exhausting day, at the end of an exhausting month’s long tour of the country speaking to readers and signing books, the author stiffly gets up to head for the hotel as the place empties out … and realizes there’s still one person sitting waiting...
You’ll notice there’s no challenge demanding we all go public about why we write what we write, or who we hope to connect with, or what we HAVE to get out it, or even what we get from reading, ourselves. That’s mostly for thinking about individually. But If you’d like to comment about it, please do.
Write On! will be a regular Thursday night diary (8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific) until it isn’t.
Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors (at FB their last post seems to be in October 2023) Absolute Write, Critters.org, and/or Writer Beware.
Oh, and also, feel free to post in the comments your favorite music video the diary’s title references :) Yeah, I’m oooold! :D