I'm obsessed about setting because:
1. I like writing long descriptive scenes but don't know where they fit. I feel like I want to tell my reader everything about the scene, but don't know which is the most relevant
2. Setting encompasses so many things -- Back stories, interior life of the characters, social commentary, reasons for a character's actions. It affects dialogue that engages with or disengages with the setting. Looking at how other people have used setting will help my writing.
3. I want to write of a Singapore that does not sound like a tourist guidebook, but yet is not so esoteric that I need a glossary to explain what a HDB flat is.
4. I see things everyday and think -- is this unique to Singapore? How do I write about it in a way that does not make it weird. The white-man-in-Asia sort of writing?
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Setting in Singapore
I read Burroway today while trying to write Craft Essay 4. She talks about the weather affecting one's mood and even physiology. In Singapore, where the tropical weather is almost eternally the same tropical tone, waxing and waning in slight variations of hot and wet, is it any wonder that we constantly moan about ennui and boredom?
One could say, possibly, that there are nuances in the heat and humidity. The heat that causes rivulets of perspiration, making your office shirt stick to your back, is different from the heat just after a bout of rain, the kind that emanates from the pavements in waves of unseen steam. The slight morning heat on one's face, so gentle and comforting that one wants to bask in it for a bit, is juxtaposed with the searing fingers of the afternoon sun, that torch your scalp, and make you squint. The slow heat of nights that because of the urban lights, are never completely black, are dissimilar to the buzzing, bustling, heat of an overcrowded coffee shop, or the jostling in a night market.
The humidity of the aforesaid nights, when one's nightwear is soaked with perspiration in the day, differs from the blanket of wet that envelops tourists as they walk around the island. They in their polo t-shirts and Bermudas, clutching their preconceived perceptions and assumptions.
On Setting
On setting
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/why-every-good-story-needs-a-good-setting/361110/
This was a good article about the importance of having a sense of place in a story. The writer, obviously a huge fan of Alice Munro (who isn't, really), talks about the importance of saying that something happened here. Some lines that jumped out at me:
'..You can have all these novels in your head, all these characters and ideas, but if you don’t actually show up to your writing day—the physical place where you get the work done— you have nothing. The characters, too, need to “show up”—the story needs to happen somewhere. Again, Munro: “Something happened here.” That line could be the epigraph to everything I write. The “here” is every bit as important as the “something happened.” For me, the two cannot exist without each other; setting and character respond to and inform one another..'
Alistair MacLeod
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/books/alistair-macleod-author-of-no-great-mischief-dies-at-77.html?_r=0
This was a charming article I read about Alistair MacLeod, whose book I will read as soon as Portfolio 4 is done. I love the amount of attention to the craft, as well as the kookiness of this man. It made me feel (a little) comforted that the Cat Story (which in my mind, has become 'The bloody cat story') has taken a year to morph into a respectable form.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/why-every-good-story-needs-a-good-setting/361110/
This was a good article about the importance of having a sense of place in a story. The writer, obviously a huge fan of Alice Munro (who isn't, really), talks about the importance of saying that something happened here. Some lines that jumped out at me:
'..You can have all these novels in your head, all these characters and ideas, but if you don’t actually show up to your writing day—the physical place where you get the work done— you have nothing. The characters, too, need to “show up”—the story needs to happen somewhere. Again, Munro: “Something happened here.” That line could be the epigraph to everything I write. The “here” is every bit as important as the “something happened.” For me, the two cannot exist without each other; setting and character respond to and inform one another..'
Burroway makes a similar point in her book -- that setting is inextricably linked (hate this phrase, but I can't think of anything else at the moment) to tone and character. I'm beginning to see that the writer is really 'God', the all-seeing creator, and the writer chooses what to reveal or conceal and what to describe, how to describe. It's a strange kind of tension, really, because the writer is not really all-knowing. Characters change as the plots move. On some sort of semi-mystical level, you know when your characters are too far out -- like how I knew Kiat wasn't a pedophile. (It's probably not even close to mystical, really. It's probably that you based bits of the original character on someone you know, and you know he's this-and-this, but definitely not that-and-that).
It does seem quite obvious on one level. Fairytales have castles and meadows, places where evil people in cartoons live are dark and scary. But what is intriguing is how the familiar becomes the unfamiliar, and vice versa. How the same setting can look different to different characters, under different circumstances. It's as if one's emotions are projected on the landscape, so nothing is really an objective response to the built or the natural surrounding, but a response that is rooted in context, in what happened there earlier and what that means to the person. Again, not an unobvious line of thought -- the other day I read an article about Amy Bishop, a university professor who shot her boss and colleagues at a meeting, and who was found to have shot her brother as a teenager. Whether the shooting of her brother was an accident or not is still being investigated, but there were some lines in the article that made reference to the fact that she continued living in the same house, walking in and out of the kitchen where she shot her brother, and past his bedroom, which their parents still kept in the same way after he died. The author also mentions a few times that the parents still continue to live in the same house. Most people who live in or near places that trigger bad memories would move. What may look like a tacky country kitchen according to one's lens might be the scene of a murder to another. The thing about setting in fiction however, is the entering of the character's world, to reveal the inner state of the character through the setting -- not just the description, but the significance of the setting.
In all this, I wonder what it will look like for Singapore, with buildings that are in a constant state of flux. This is a blog entry I wrote 4 years ago, and I think I captured the essence of what makes a building or a space or a scenery different -- layers of memories. Our pleasures, our discomforts, our fears are mostly rooted in some sort of memory. I think about this blog post sometimes when I guide at the museum. When I tell people that the 126-year-old building that houses the National Museum of Singapore is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) buildings in Singapore, and add in a line about how buildings in Singapore don't last very long as they are constantly being torn down and rebuilt, I always read a look of regret in their eyes. Some people shake their heads, saying what a shame it is. Our memories are not just what people said or did, or what we felt or said or did, or how we interacted with each other, but also how we did all that in a particular space. Like teaching and learning, and perhaps, all things in life, nothing happens in a vacuum. Just as for the sake of lazy/efficient simplicity, I assume that a student has no prior knowledge or experiences related to a particular topic that we teach, I assume that my characters can come to life in a non-space.
The thing about setting though, is that it plays different roles in different types of stories which for the sake of rough generalisation are probably -- plot-driven, setting-driven, character-driven. Plot-driven stories are all about the action -- the setting invokes emotion, the descriptions of the setting/characters and the general sentence length (even in dialogue) sets the pace and tone. In setting-driven stories, the setting becomes the main point -- the story cannot exist anywhere else. I'm finding how to do this with the Cat story, to locate it such that the locale is the key. The idea of setting as character however, is still one that eludes me. What does it mean to have a character that is so all-encompassing and which does not speak? I suppose the answer would that the setting is the main point of reference for all or most of the characters -- in terms of memories, feelings, musings, arguments, points of tension. At the extreme of setting-driven stories would be the sort where whole other worlds are created, either of the fantastical nature (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Narnia) or real worlds with criss-crossed human ecosystems. The more I think about setting, the more I can't seem to grasp what it is. I suppose it's like a basket of sorts, with culture, worldview, beliefs, repeated motifs all mixed inside. 'Culture' itself is a loaded word, meaning so many things -- a way of life, food, practices, customs, familial history. I keep thinking about how friends my age, having grown up on a diet of Enid Blyton, go to London to look for treacle pudding, scones, crumpets and fresh blackberries. We talk fondly of the milkman who leaves milk in glass bottles at the door, and the friendly postman who comes with the mail in a sack. It's this whole world/setting/culture that Enid Blyton has in all her books that those of us who have read enough of her stories would be familiar with.
NOVEMBER 29, 2010
On old buildings
Yesterday we went to the old church together, "for old times' sake", just because it'll be two weeks before the entire building gets torn down. We weren't alone in this attachment to an otherwise soul-less concrete structure; around us were people taking photos of the stained glass, of rooms, of areas that held some sort of significance for them. Perhaps (and perhaps rightly so) a place of worship holds a deeper spiritual significance to people than an outright altar to consumerism like a shopping centre...although I would be very upset if they ever decide to tear Parkway down or to close Chatuchak. But I digress.
I had expected intellectually that saying goodbye to a building to which I went to weekly for the 1st 25 years of my life would be more significantly emotional but as I posed for pictures and tried to work myself into some sort of reminiscent state of mind, it felt at once forced and contrived. I could see my 4-year-old self singing in the kindergarten room with its white louvered folding doors and artwork, could see my primary-school aged friends in our basement hideout under the old stage, could see the teenaged me in various groups and meetings and weddings, but that failed to evoke any sense of nostalgia. Sure, I had some good memories about that place, but in Singapore, where our need for social upgrading and expansion is manifested to a large extent in our need to renovate and rebuild our buildings, I guess I have become numb to the almost-transient nature of the spaces we live, work and worship in, perhaps a cautionary reaction to the dangers of forming deep emotional ties to any particular physical structure, for fear that it too will be torn down in the name of development and upgrading. Down the years, I might find myself caught in a conversation that sought to validate a collective social memory-- to recall where the library was, or where the toilet cubicle on the 3rd floor was-- and I might even indulge the listener with a fond memory or two beginning with "Yes, I really loved XYZ place..." but really the present reaction to the demolition of this building is a distant, pragmatic one, one that is more concerned with the logistics of the move and the building; how long it will take, what it will involve.
Also, the building itself has gone through enough renovations over the years for me not to hold any real attachment to it. The old library and the basement hideout disappeared during one such extensive renovation years ago, as did the stage upon which I danced as a fairy during my kindergarten concert. The old playground with its creaky wooden bridge which we tirelessly reenacted The Three Billy Goats Gruff on week after week was replaced by a set of plastic blocks about 15 years back. The kindly lady who I went to for copious amounts of coffee and tea on Sunday mornings passed away some months ago. Bit by bit the building had already died for me, and what remains is just a shadow of what it had been, too new to mourn, still somewhat foreign and strange in comparison to what it had been in my childhood memories.
Maybe one's thoughts about a particular building is really tied in closely with the fore-mentioned collective social memory. I keenly feel the loss of my school's pre-war building, even before it is torn down in 2 years' time, because of all the stories I've heard and read about the various rooms. I look at pictures of the old National Theatre and the Van Cleef Aquarium with a sense of loss even though I have no distinct memories of either place. I look with fondness at Katong Shopping Centre and various Katong landmarks largely from stories my parents tell me.
Strangely enough though, a residual effect of living in an urban landscape that is in a constant state of flux is the sense of pride one seems to have in remembering where a building was and what used to be on a certain plot of land. It's a mark of authentic citizenship to a particular area if you can accurately recall where a certain shop was and what the area used to look like. Remember Jackies Bowl? Remember Seaview Hotel? Remember Rose Garden? Remember the old Siglap Market? Ah, you must have grown up in the East during the 1980s. One's memories of places and buildings (or food stalls) past serve as a social marker in urban landscapes; it wouldn't be the case if we lived amid 300- year- old stone castles and churches and old wooden barns that get abandoned, but never demolished and developed.
What social markers then, do people in rural areas use to validate their sense of place and belonging? Weather patterns perhaps? (e.g. Do you remember the drought of '63?) or human relations? (e.g. Remember when old Mrs H from down the street ran away with the milkman?) Perhaps our urban landscape city lifestyles have all but reduced weather to an inconvenience rather than a force of nature from which our harvest and livestock are dependant on and have so alienated us from each other that buildings, rather than people or nature, become our social reference points in our memories. But then again, what we feel toward buildings is really a hybrid of the memories of human relationships forged within its walls and of good food eaten, along with particular memories of the architecture itself because of the impossibility of divorcing the meaning attributed to an object or building from the thing itself.
I had expected intellectually that saying goodbye to a building to which I went to weekly for the 1st 25 years of my life would be more significantly emotional but as I posed for pictures and tried to work myself into some sort of reminiscent state of mind, it felt at once forced and contrived. I could see my 4-year-old self singing in the kindergarten room with its white louvered folding doors and artwork, could see my primary-school aged friends in our basement hideout under the old stage, could see the teenaged me in various groups and meetings and weddings, but that failed to evoke any sense of nostalgia. Sure, I had some good memories about that place, but in Singapore, where our need for social upgrading and expansion is manifested to a large extent in our need to renovate and rebuild our buildings, I guess I have become numb to the almost-transient nature of the spaces we live, work and worship in, perhaps a cautionary reaction to the dangers of forming deep emotional ties to any particular physical structure, for fear that it too will be torn down in the name of development and upgrading. Down the years, I might find myself caught in a conversation that sought to validate a collective social memory-- to recall where the library was, or where the toilet cubicle on the 3rd floor was-- and I might even indulge the listener with a fond memory or two beginning with "Yes, I really loved XYZ place..." but really the present reaction to the demolition of this building is a distant, pragmatic one, one that is more concerned with the logistics of the move and the building; how long it will take, what it will involve.
Also, the building itself has gone through enough renovations over the years for me not to hold any real attachment to it. The old library and the basement hideout disappeared during one such extensive renovation years ago, as did the stage upon which I danced as a fairy during my kindergarten concert. The old playground with its creaky wooden bridge which we tirelessly reenacted The Three Billy Goats Gruff on week after week was replaced by a set of plastic blocks about 15 years back. The kindly lady who I went to for copious amounts of coffee and tea on Sunday mornings passed away some months ago. Bit by bit the building had already died for me, and what remains is just a shadow of what it had been, too new to mourn, still somewhat foreign and strange in comparison to what it had been in my childhood memories.
Maybe one's thoughts about a particular building is really tied in closely with the fore-mentioned collective social memory. I keenly feel the loss of my school's pre-war building, even before it is torn down in 2 years' time, because of all the stories I've heard and read about the various rooms. I look at pictures of the old National Theatre and the Van Cleef Aquarium with a sense of loss even though I have no distinct memories of either place. I look with fondness at Katong Shopping Centre and various Katong landmarks largely from stories my parents tell me.
Strangely enough though, a residual effect of living in an urban landscape that is in a constant state of flux is the sense of pride one seems to have in remembering where a building was and what used to be on a certain plot of land. It's a mark of authentic citizenship to a particular area if you can accurately recall where a certain shop was and what the area used to look like. Remember Jackies Bowl? Remember Seaview Hotel? Remember Rose Garden? Remember the old Siglap Market? Ah, you must have grown up in the East during the 1980s. One's memories of places and buildings (or food stalls) past serve as a social marker in urban landscapes; it wouldn't be the case if we lived amid 300- year- old stone castles and churches and old wooden barns that get abandoned, but never demolished and developed.
What social markers then, do people in rural areas use to validate their sense of place and belonging? Weather patterns perhaps? (e.g. Do you remember the drought of '63?) or human relations? (e.g. Remember when old Mrs H from down the street ran away with the milkman?) Perhaps our urban landscape city lifestyles have all but reduced weather to an inconvenience rather than a force of nature from which our harvest and livestock are dependant on and have so alienated us from each other that buildings, rather than people or nature, become our social reference points in our memories. But then again, what we feel toward buildings is really a hybrid of the memories of human relationships forged within its walls and of good food eaten, along with particular memories of the architecture itself because of the impossibility of divorcing the meaning attributed to an object or building from the thing itself.
Alistair MacLeod
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/books/alistair-macleod-author-of-no-great-mischief-dies-at-77.html?_r=0
This was a charming article I read about Alistair MacLeod, whose book I will read as soon as Portfolio 4 is done. I love the amount of attention to the craft, as well as the kookiness of this man. It made me feel (a little) comforted that the Cat Story (which in my mind, has become 'The bloody cat story') has taken a year to morph into a respectable form.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Dialogue
Dialogue
I've been thinking about dialogue, and wrote the craft essay for Portfolio 3 on it, but I think the dialogue in The Cat Story can be pushed a bit further, especially for the last scene. I found that I wanted to put in stories about Siglap, but didn't want it to seem like Kiat was suddenly the authority on Siglap. Mavis Gallant's stories, with their large interior spaces, both in terms of getting into the minds of characters as well as in terms of the space of places, made me look at my writing in a deeper way. She write like Alice Munro (what is it with the Canadian education system that produces writers like these), creating rich worlds within short stories and characters who feel and sound real.
I had wanted to attempt to write a novel for this MFA, but I think now, I want to learn how to write stories like Munro and Gallant. They seem to break all the rules of storytelling though, jumping from one POV to another, having sub-plots that lead to nowhere, but which contribute to the reader's broader understanding of the narrative (Munro), using adverbs, using 'said'. I think on some level I am hampered by how I was taught writing, and how I taught writing to primary school students. Describe how the said it, we always tell students. Did he say it sadly, happily? Show, we tell them. Don't tell. And yet, there is a place for telling, as there is a place for summarising speech and thought.
I like what Stephen King said about writing good dialogue -- that the key is really listening to how people speak. I teach English, I work in an English Language Institute. We talk about speech patterns and language all the time, to the point of self-censorship -- my colleagues correct each other's grammar errors on a daily, no hourly, basis. Surely, I know what good dialogue sounds like, in terms of good grammatical dialogue. What I think I need to do for my characters and for people I observe though, is to think of the interior world, the psychology, the motivation behind what they are saying, and what they are not saying.
I've been thinking about dialogue, and wrote the craft essay for Portfolio 3 on it, but I think the dialogue in The Cat Story can be pushed a bit further, especially for the last scene. I found that I wanted to put in stories about Siglap, but didn't want it to seem like Kiat was suddenly the authority on Siglap. Mavis Gallant's stories, with their large interior spaces, both in terms of getting into the minds of characters as well as in terms of the space of places, made me look at my writing in a deeper way. She write like Alice Munro (what is it with the Canadian education system that produces writers like these), creating rich worlds within short stories and characters who feel and sound real.
I had wanted to attempt to write a novel for this MFA, but I think now, I want to learn how to write stories like Munro and Gallant. They seem to break all the rules of storytelling though, jumping from one POV to another, having sub-plots that lead to nowhere, but which contribute to the reader's broader understanding of the narrative (Munro), using adverbs, using 'said'. I think on some level I am hampered by how I was taught writing, and how I taught writing to primary school students. Describe how the said it, we always tell students. Did he say it sadly, happily? Show, we tell them. Don't tell. And yet, there is a place for telling, as there is a place for summarising speech and thought.
I like what Stephen King said about writing good dialogue -- that the key is really listening to how people speak. I teach English, I work in an English Language Institute. We talk about speech patterns and language all the time, to the point of self-censorship -- my colleagues correct each other's grammar errors on a daily, no hourly, basis. Surely, I know what good dialogue sounds like, in terms of good grammatical dialogue. What I think I need to do for my characters and for people I observe though, is to think of the interior world, the psychology, the motivation behind what they are saying, and what they are not saying.
Siglap and the Cat Story
I needed to write a story on Siglap for an anthology of place-based Singapore stories. My mother's family had spent a long time in Suglap. They had a wooden house in front of the sea, and my great-grandfather used to fish. Growing up, my mother had all sorts of stories about how it was like to live in a kampong.
Theirs was the biggest house in the kampong, with 2 garages (1 of which doubled up as a badminton court) and a billards room. They had a Malay driver, Mahmud, who drove the children to and from school and my grandfather to and from work. During the racial riots of the 1950s between the Malays and the Chinese, he told the children to duck at the back, so that they would not be seen by the rioters.
For Portfolio 3, I wanted to revise the cat story, which has been hanging in the air for a year. The last revision, for Portfolio 2, was easily the most thorough edit. Yet I felt (as did my writing group) that I had taken the characters too far. Kiat was just meant to be a socially awkward closet gay, not a pedophile. Alison, just a girl harbouring a long-time crush, not a divorcee.
So I decided, for Portfolio 3, that I would combine both aims, and relocate Kiat to my mother's Siglap house. What if the house remained stubbornly, instead of being demolished when land reclamation started? What if Kiat had inherited it and used it for his storeroom of cats and clutter? What if Kiat remained a nice person, just a bit kooky, and the (albeit one-sided) sexual tension was brought back?
The Cat Story V 11 April was my attempt at doing that. I struggled with description quite a bit --- how do you describe an old house that you have never seen? I asked my mother to draw a picture of the house, and took a video of her describing the house. I had imagined that it would be dark, but she said it was light and airy. I had difficulty imagining how the fence looked like --- she said it was see-through, and people could sit on it --- so she dug out photos to show me exactly.
Theirs was the biggest house in the kampong, with 2 garages (1 of which doubled up as a badminton court) and a billards room. They had a Malay driver, Mahmud, who drove the children to and from school and my grandfather to and from work. During the racial riots of the 1950s between the Malays and the Chinese, he told the children to duck at the back, so that they would not be seen by the rioters.
For Portfolio 3, I wanted to revise the cat story, which has been hanging in the air for a year. The last revision, for Portfolio 2, was easily the most thorough edit. Yet I felt (as did my writing group) that I had taken the characters too far. Kiat was just meant to be a socially awkward closet gay, not a pedophile. Alison, just a girl harbouring a long-time crush, not a divorcee.
So I decided, for Portfolio 3, that I would combine both aims, and relocate Kiat to my mother's Siglap house. What if the house remained stubbornly, instead of being demolished when land reclamation started? What if Kiat had inherited it and used it for his storeroom of cats and clutter? What if Kiat remained a nice person, just a bit kooky, and the (albeit one-sided) sexual tension was brought back?
The Cat Story V 11 April was my attempt at doing that. I struggled with description quite a bit --- how do you describe an old house that you have never seen? I asked my mother to draw a picture of the house, and took a video of her describing the house. I had imagined that it would be dark, but she said it was light and airy. I had difficulty imagining how the fence looked like --- she said it was see-through, and people could sit on it --- so she dug out photos to show me exactly.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Writing
POTMOTSP V 10 March
I wrote this story as a corporate parody, with the ultimate questions being --- How far can meaningless work be pushed to? When you push language to the furthest it can go, does it become meaningless?
What does a meaningless office look like on paper?
I played around with a few endings for this story, and finally settled on a fairly happy one. I feel that the story doesn't really stretch the satire/sci-fi-ness enough though, and that I can still push the whole dysfunctionality a bit further, without going over the top.
The Cat story V 10 March
In the latest iteration of the Cat Story, I rewrote the whole thing, and added a new ending, pushing the limits so that Kiat becomes outrightly weird. I had wanted to restrain the Kiat character as just a normal guy, with slight oddities, but experimented with going the extreme route in this revision. I am quite pleased with the beginning and middle rewrites, though. I think the prose is a lot tighter than it used to be, while retaining the original intent. The phrases are shorter too, and I've cut out the long explanations.
Next V 10 March
The previous version of Next was decidedly racist, and presented Mark as wholly bad, and Kim as almost wholly good. I almost chucked this story out, but thinking about it again, I think showing another side to both characters might add a bit more weight to the story. It's still not terribly PC -- not that I think all the stories I write should be -- but I think it's more balanced and more thoughtful than the previous version. I struggled with the ending, once again, but it seems to vaguely work.
In progress
Shades
I read this article and thought about the Shades story. On one hand, I do want it to be an 'I will survive' sort of story, but then again, not something cliched. The original 'brief' for the story was to have the woman stay in the marriage, to go against the grain of giving up when the going gets tough. Again, not PC, but something that I think happens still, whether women stay in abusive relationships out of fear, love, face, commitment, inertia. I think sometimes it takes more strength to stay than to leave.
Pole
This is a pole dancing story that I wanted to do just because I want to get into the mind of a pole dancer, which may be the world's most frivolous reason to start a story. The plot is in shambles at this point, possibly because of that very same reason.
Siglap
The Siglap story is also still pending, because I can't think of anything to write about the place. I think I need to read Robin Hemley's book soon on turning life into fiction.
I wrote this story as a corporate parody, with the ultimate questions being --- How far can meaningless work be pushed to? When you push language to the furthest it can go, does it become meaningless?
What does a meaningless office look like on paper?
I played around with a few endings for this story, and finally settled on a fairly happy one. I feel that the story doesn't really stretch the satire/sci-fi-ness enough though, and that I can still push the whole dysfunctionality a bit further, without going over the top.
The Cat story V 10 March
In the latest iteration of the Cat Story, I rewrote the whole thing, and added a new ending, pushing the limits so that Kiat becomes outrightly weird. I had wanted to restrain the Kiat character as just a normal guy, with slight oddities, but experimented with going the extreme route in this revision. I am quite pleased with the beginning and middle rewrites, though. I think the prose is a lot tighter than it used to be, while retaining the original intent. The phrases are shorter too, and I've cut out the long explanations.
Next V 10 March
The previous version of Next was decidedly racist, and presented Mark as wholly bad, and Kim as almost wholly good. I almost chucked this story out, but thinking about it again, I think showing another side to both characters might add a bit more weight to the story. It's still not terribly PC -- not that I think all the stories I write should be -- but I think it's more balanced and more thoughtful than the previous version. I struggled with the ending, once again, but it seems to vaguely work.
In progress
Shades
I read this article and thought about the Shades story. On one hand, I do want it to be an 'I will survive' sort of story, but then again, not something cliched. The original 'brief' for the story was to have the woman stay in the marriage, to go against the grain of giving up when the going gets tough. Again, not PC, but something that I think happens still, whether women stay in abusive relationships out of fear, love, face, commitment, inertia. I think sometimes it takes more strength to stay than to leave.
Pole
This is a pole dancing story that I wanted to do just because I want to get into the mind of a pole dancer, which may be the world's most frivolous reason to start a story. The plot is in shambles at this point, possibly because of that very same reason.
Siglap
The Siglap story is also still pending, because I can't think of anything to write about the place. I think I need to read Robin Hemley's book soon on turning life into fiction.
Reading
The Circle by Dave Eggers
I've been reading Dave Egger's The Circle recently. Last year I read an excerpt of it in the NYT, and thought it would be useful to read the entire book for the POTMOTSP story, which I intend to re-draft for Portfolio 2 or 3. POTMOTSP is story set in a corporate setting, and I wanted to read The Circle to see how Eggers deals with larger social issues within a seemingly sane, though at heart, very dystopian environment.
In the book, Mae is a a newbie to a company called The Circle, which is essentially Google/Facebook -- a huge all-encompassing organisation that wants to be a part of everyone's lives. When she enters 'the campus' -- as the office buildings of The Circle are called -- she is bright-eyed and awed by her surroundings, but as the novel progresses and she gets slowly sucked into the culture, she trades her privacy and her entire life for affirmation and recognition.
What worked
Characterisation -- The close third person POV stays with Mae throughout, and the reader sees The Circle through her eyes. It works because she is a new employee experiencing and adjusting to what is happening, so in a sense it's a bit of a bildungsroman. Mae as a person doesn't really change -- she is insecure, eager to please, wants to be nice to everyone -- and these characteristics are what bring about her 'downfall' as she gets more drawn into the circle. James Wood talked about characterisation as animating the static portrait. In The Circle, Eggers does this through a plot that is constantly moving. Things keep happening, and Mae has to keep reacting. I'm beginning to understand the logic of the toad in the magical garden, where the main character reacts to what is going on, which assumes that well, something has to go on. This brings me to plot.
Plot -- The amazing thing about the plot of The Circle is how fast it moves. Eggers' paragraphs typically start with an adverbial of time ('It was 10 o'clock.' 'Finally') or an action ('Mae nodded.) There is a lot of quick, snappy dialogue as well, which helps with characterisation, as well as with the overall pacing. For e.g.:
"Mae, i have to ask you to --"
"I know, you want me to stop reading you customer comments. Fine."
"No, that's not what I was --"
"You want me to read them to you?"
The dialogue goes on for about a page or so more, and by the end of this quarrel between Mae and her ex-boyfriend Mercer, we get a sense that we have stepped into their world for a bit. I think I want to explore this idea of inserting a long quarrel somewhere, possibly either in the expat story or the cat story.
For a novel on social media, I think the plot succeeds because it succinctly addresses privacy concerns, the possibility of being over-connected and over-networked. We are eased into the plot slowly as Mae undergoes her induction. Critics have panned the book's premise as being too current to feel like the future, which is a strange, yet valid criticism. I guess there is a sense that we want something like this to be 1984 or Brave New World, where the writer stretches the imagination (his and ours) and questions if different possibilities or alternate realities are possible.
Writing -- I've read two of Dave Egger's books and always find his writing easy to read. I think what he does well is push the plot forward, which is something that I find difficult to do. He does setting very well too, painting the background and having the character interact and look at the surrounding, instead of just having description there without purpose.
Reunion by John Cheever
'Reunion' by John Cheever is an extremely short story told from the POV of a son. In the story, the son recounts his last encounter with his father, which is a key point, because it adds poignancy to the story. Without this fact, the story would be rather frivolous --- a son (who we get no information about, except for the fact that while transiting between countries, he visits his father) goes with his father to various bars, and in each bar, his father is very loud, showy and pompous. The focus of the story is very much on the father, who comes across almost like a one-dimensional comic figure, which probably shows how much the son knows about him. I think I would have appreciated the story more if it explored the son's emotions and reactions a bit more. At present, he just follows his father from bar to bar, taking drinks when he can, but otherwise, letting his father take centrestage. In the rather excellent preface of the short story collection that I read this in (The Granta book of American Short Fiction, edited by Richard Ford. Extract found here), Ford says Cheever's story is a 'model of short-story virtue, focus and conciseness'. Discounting my scepticism that he is merely saying that because of the fame that John Cheever has achieved and the scandals in his life, I must say that the story stayed with me for weeks after I read it. It's the simple poignancy of it I guess, the fact that a father-son relationship could be so callous and superficial.
Wife-Wooing by John Updike
I liked this story because it flowed from one idea of a husband indulging in a bit of fantasy and fancying himself as a hunter-gather, while bringing burgers home for his family from the diner. He then spends the evening looking at his wife and thinking about sleeping with her. She however, is engrossed with her reading, and falls asleep right away. The story works well. It is a monologue, yet the plot moves quite quickly, something that isn't that easy to do, without being self-indulgent and bordering on navel-grazing.
Can we learn about privacy from porn stars? by Stoya
I read this NYT article as I was midway through the craft essay and thought how real life characters also want to be 'round'. Nobody would say they are one-dimensional, and no one truly is, anyhow, but the tricky thing about characterisation in fiction is presenting the characters as full people, but without revealing everything about them. I tried to do that in the revised Cat Story, but I think I still have some way to go.
I've been reading Dave Egger's The Circle recently. Last year I read an excerpt of it in the NYT, and thought it would be useful to read the entire book for the POTMOTSP story, which I intend to re-draft for Portfolio 2 or 3. POTMOTSP is story set in a corporate setting, and I wanted to read The Circle to see how Eggers deals with larger social issues within a seemingly sane, though at heart, very dystopian environment.
In the book, Mae is a a newbie to a company called The Circle, which is essentially Google/Facebook -- a huge all-encompassing organisation that wants to be a part of everyone's lives. When she enters 'the campus' -- as the office buildings of The Circle are called -- she is bright-eyed and awed by her surroundings, but as the novel progresses and she gets slowly sucked into the culture, she trades her privacy and her entire life for affirmation and recognition.
What worked
Characterisation -- The close third person POV stays with Mae throughout, and the reader sees The Circle through her eyes. It works because she is a new employee experiencing and adjusting to what is happening, so in a sense it's a bit of a bildungsroman. Mae as a person doesn't really change -- she is insecure, eager to please, wants to be nice to everyone -- and these characteristics are what bring about her 'downfall' as she gets more drawn into the circle. James Wood talked about characterisation as animating the static portrait. In The Circle, Eggers does this through a plot that is constantly moving. Things keep happening, and Mae has to keep reacting. I'm beginning to understand the logic of the toad in the magical garden, where the main character reacts to what is going on, which assumes that well, something has to go on. This brings me to plot.
Plot -- The amazing thing about the plot of The Circle is how fast it moves. Eggers' paragraphs typically start with an adverbial of time ('It was 10 o'clock.' 'Finally') or an action ('Mae nodded.) There is a lot of quick, snappy dialogue as well, which helps with characterisation, as well as with the overall pacing. For e.g.:
"Mae, i have to ask you to --"
"I know, you want me to stop reading you customer comments. Fine."
"No, that's not what I was --"
"You want me to read them to you?"
The dialogue goes on for about a page or so more, and by the end of this quarrel between Mae and her ex-boyfriend Mercer, we get a sense that we have stepped into their world for a bit. I think I want to explore this idea of inserting a long quarrel somewhere, possibly either in the expat story or the cat story.
For a novel on social media, I think the plot succeeds because it succinctly addresses privacy concerns, the possibility of being over-connected and over-networked. We are eased into the plot slowly as Mae undergoes her induction. Critics have panned the book's premise as being too current to feel like the future, which is a strange, yet valid criticism. I guess there is a sense that we want something like this to be 1984 or Brave New World, where the writer stretches the imagination (his and ours) and questions if different possibilities or alternate realities are possible.
Writing -- I've read two of Dave Egger's books and always find his writing easy to read. I think what he does well is push the plot forward, which is something that I find difficult to do. He does setting very well too, painting the background and having the character interact and look at the surrounding, instead of just having description there without purpose.
Reunion by John Cheever
'Reunion' by John Cheever is an extremely short story told from the POV of a son. In the story, the son recounts his last encounter with his father, which is a key point, because it adds poignancy to the story. Without this fact, the story would be rather frivolous --- a son (who we get no information about, except for the fact that while transiting between countries, he visits his father) goes with his father to various bars, and in each bar, his father is very loud, showy and pompous. The focus of the story is very much on the father, who comes across almost like a one-dimensional comic figure, which probably shows how much the son knows about him. I think I would have appreciated the story more if it explored the son's emotions and reactions a bit more. At present, he just follows his father from bar to bar, taking drinks when he can, but otherwise, letting his father take centrestage. In the rather excellent preface of the short story collection that I read this in (The Granta book of American Short Fiction, edited by Richard Ford. Extract found here), Ford says Cheever's story is a 'model of short-story virtue, focus and conciseness'. Discounting my scepticism that he is merely saying that because of the fame that John Cheever has achieved and the scandals in his life, I must say that the story stayed with me for weeks after I read it. It's the simple poignancy of it I guess, the fact that a father-son relationship could be so callous and superficial.
Wife-Wooing by John Updike
I liked this story because it flowed from one idea of a husband indulging in a bit of fantasy and fancying himself as a hunter-gather, while bringing burgers home for his family from the diner. He then spends the evening looking at his wife and thinking about sleeping with her. She however, is engrossed with her reading, and falls asleep right away. The story works well. It is a monologue, yet the plot moves quite quickly, something that isn't that easy to do, without being self-indulgent and bordering on navel-grazing.
Can we learn about privacy from porn stars? by Stoya
I read this NYT article as I was midway through the craft essay and thought how real life characters also want to be 'round'. Nobody would say they are one-dimensional, and no one truly is, anyhow, but the tricky thing about characterisation in fiction is presenting the characters as full people, but without revealing everything about them. I tried to do that in the revised Cat Story, but I think I still have some way to go.
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