Note: I originally posted this at Unicus Agency's Blog. I thought it would be of value to repost it over here. I've been doing editing work over there, and if you find yourself in need of an editor, feel free to contact me, dear reader.
“Seem," "apparently," "appeared." Words that express doubt in the information they are conveying. I see these words pop up frequently in the works I read. The question is: what purpose are these words serving, and do they need to remain in your manuscript?
While you may feel like you need to indicate that your narrative voice is infallible, most of the time you do not need these words. They indicate doubt in your narrative: you are both telling your reader information and informing your reader that this information is in doubt. Does the character have the traits described, or does she only seem to have those traits, but is a completely different person underneath? In a place that is described as “apparently safe,” are we as readers supposed to suspect that it is not?
With most narratives, that can be a very complicated position to put the reader in: their only avenue of knowing the narrative world doubts its own veracity. And to describe something in the language of doubt is to insert that its total opposite as also a vague, but not ruled out possibility. If a character “seems pleasant,” it does not rule out that that character contains Lovecraftean horror underneath. In fact, it’s a little bit more possible than if they “are pleasant.”
If you are playing with this, I applaud you, by all means, go forth and conquer, but I would wager most of you doubt your narrative voice without being aware of it. You are used to working in a world (this one in which we all operate) where others can test the veracity of our perceptions. Such doubting language may be a good defense against someone who will butt in and say “but that isn't right.” It’s easy to back off of. You weren't invested.
But guess what? This is your world. Your creation. You are the genesis of this world, unless your narration is grounded within a very unsure character, write with certainty. If your “seems” are there because of your own fear, then they really need to go.
“But what about unreliable narrators?” I hear some of you ask. Wouldn’t these words be great for them? While you could use this for an unreliable narrator, even there I would say resist. There are ways to communicate doubt without using "seem," and the some best unreliable narrators are the ones who think they are reliable, but that give away clues that they are not. Those are the ones that don’t even know doubt if it was pointed out to them in the dictionary.
I’m not saying never use these words, but become aware of when you use them. Use them too much and they undercut you as author. You tread lightly with your words, in a world that you have created. Go boldly into that world. No one is going to say you have observed your own world wrong.
Go forth; revel in your writer-god status. Strike down those “seems” and those “appears.” Be definitive.
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Friday, July 26, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Redshirts and Writing
Warning: In discussing this book, this post has to talk about the book as a whole. It therefore contains spoilers. Just go read the book first. You’ll thank me for it.
What would happen if you were on a spaceship that is actually the set for a TV show in another and you didn't know it? Worse yet, not only are you a part of this TV show in another reality, it is a poorly written TV show meant to capitalize on the commercial success of Star Trek, and you aren't one of the bridge crew, you are staff on the lower levels—an extra.
Yes, that is right, you are a redshirt. This is the premise of the book by the same name by John Scalzi, but, at the same time, it is so much more than this. A book that seems to be a humorous examination of what it would be like to be a redshirt trapped on a show (Chronicles of Intrepid) with no concern for that character’s fate or back story actually becomes a very thoughtful, and sometimes incredibly poignant meditation about the writer’s role as god of his or her universe, and the responsibilities the writer has to his characters.
The book’s main characters (different from the ship’s bridge crew and therefore the “main characters” of the show for which the redshirts are being sacrificed for) begin to piece together the pattern of deaths not long after they arrive on the ship. Mysterious disappearances of mid-level officers when the senior officers arrive looking for people to staff away missions, strange and very flamboyant deaths with those same senior officers are involved. Members of the senior staff possess miraculous healing abilities (a convenience for a character wounded in one “episode” to be completely fit by next week’s adventure). All of these new recruits to the Intrepid were replacing people who had died.
But it wasn't until a yeti of a man appears out of the ductwork and tells our main character, Dahl, to avoid the Narrative that pieces start to fall into place. This book is hilarious.
In this book, what is one person’s reality is another person’s narrative, and is shaped by a writer and a writer’s whims. The senseless deaths turn out to be the dramatic gasp needed before the cut to a commercial break, to try to make the danger real without affecting the main “cast” of characters. As far as Chronicles of Intrepid is concerned, the character has no back story, and very little value beyond a little drama. However, from the vantage point we are given through our cast of “redshirts”, we as readers see each one of these deaths as fully felt and realized, and yet they are controlled by a force that has less than the normal cosmic disregard for human life.
In order to gain control of their destinies, these characters travel back to our time (by way of capturing one of the main characters, in order to bend the laws of physics to their favor), in order to meet their writer-god and plead for their lives and dignity. In a plot twist consistent with the twists that had littered the characters’ time on the Intrepid, a solution presents itself that allows the redshirts to put the producers of the show in their favor. They return to their own timeline having saved the day, and hopefully earned the right to die deaths worth dying.
But when you, dear reader, have gotten to the page when you read, “They all lived happily ever after. Seriously,” there are about 100 pages left in the book. This is where the book changes tones, and gets intensely interesting. There are three codas, labeled “First Person,” “Second Person,” and “Third Person,” all dealing with the fall out of the redshirts' visit on individuals in 2012.
The first coda is the one I really want to focus on. It’s written as the personal, anonymous blog of the head writer for the TV show, Chronicles of Intrepid, from the moment right after he’s found out that when he writes a death scene for a character, someone really dies. It is an interesting meditation on writing, writer’s block, and feeling responsible to your characters to provide them a death (and a life) of worth. And underneath it all, the fact that maybe the universe itself may be a chaotic, essentially meaningless world, but that is all the more reason not to let the written universe be. Let me share with you a scene from the “blog,” which Nick, the writer, recounts a dream he had which all of his dead characters came back to talk to him:
As I was transposing this quote, there is something about that last moment (“but you don't have anyone writing you, as far as you know” [emphasis added]) which makes this coda, and perhaps this book, strike a chord with me. Don't those two themes often go hand in hand: the power of the author within the universe he or she has created, and the larger analogue of a controlling power in our own universe? These characters are rising up and doing what we ourselves cannot, questioning their creator (finding out for sure they have one and that he is a flawed senior script writer that may drink too much) and demanding that their deaths have meaning.
Since want to keep this blog away from the blatantly religious, I will open up the floor to you, dear reader. How much responsibility do you feel the writer has to his or her characters? If you are a writer, do you characters act in unexpected ways? When you kill them off, do you feel like you are actually killing them off? Do you feel like the writer-god of your universe, or do you feel more like you are the conduit for the narrative and your characters are talking to you?
What would happen if you were on a spaceship that is actually the set for a TV show in another and you didn't know it? Worse yet, not only are you a part of this TV show in another reality, it is a poorly written TV show meant to capitalize on the commercial success of Star Trek, and you aren't one of the bridge crew, you are staff on the lower levels—an extra.
Yes, that is right, you are a redshirt. This is the premise of the book by the same name by John Scalzi, but, at the same time, it is so much more than this. A book that seems to be a humorous examination of what it would be like to be a redshirt trapped on a show (Chronicles of Intrepid) with no concern for that character’s fate or back story actually becomes a very thoughtful, and sometimes incredibly poignant meditation about the writer’s role as god of his or her universe, and the responsibilities the writer has to his characters.
The book’s main characters (different from the ship’s bridge crew and therefore the “main characters” of the show for which the redshirts are being sacrificed for) begin to piece together the pattern of deaths not long after they arrive on the ship. Mysterious disappearances of mid-level officers when the senior officers arrive looking for people to staff away missions, strange and very flamboyant deaths with those same senior officers are involved. Members of the senior staff possess miraculous healing abilities (a convenience for a character wounded in one “episode” to be completely fit by next week’s adventure). All of these new recruits to the Intrepid were replacing people who had died.
But it wasn't until a yeti of a man appears out of the ductwork and tells our main character, Dahl, to avoid the Narrative that pieces start to fall into place. This book is hilarious.
In this book, what is one person’s reality is another person’s narrative, and is shaped by a writer and a writer’s whims. The senseless deaths turn out to be the dramatic gasp needed before the cut to a commercial break, to try to make the danger real without affecting the main “cast” of characters. As far as Chronicles of Intrepid is concerned, the character has no back story, and very little value beyond a little drama. However, from the vantage point we are given through our cast of “redshirts”, we as readers see each one of these deaths as fully felt and realized, and yet they are controlled by a force that has less than the normal cosmic disregard for human life.
In order to gain control of their destinies, these characters travel back to our time (by way of capturing one of the main characters, in order to bend the laws of physics to their favor), in order to meet their writer-god and plead for their lives and dignity. In a plot twist consistent with the twists that had littered the characters’ time on the Intrepid, a solution presents itself that allows the redshirts to put the producers of the show in their favor. They return to their own timeline having saved the day, and hopefully earned the right to die deaths worth dying.
But when you, dear reader, have gotten to the page when you read, “They all lived happily ever after. Seriously,” there are about 100 pages left in the book. This is where the book changes tones, and gets intensely interesting. There are three codas, labeled “First Person,” “Second Person,” and “Third Person,” all dealing with the fall out of the redshirts' visit on individuals in 2012.
The first coda is the one I really want to focus on. It’s written as the personal, anonymous blog of the head writer for the TV show, Chronicles of Intrepid, from the moment right after he’s found out that when he writes a death scene for a character, someone really dies. It is an interesting meditation on writing, writer’s block, and feeling responsible to your characters to provide them a death (and a life) of worth. And underneath it all, the fact that maybe the universe itself may be a chaotic, essentially meaningless world, but that is all the more reason not to let the written universe be. Let me share with you a scene from the “blog,” which Nick, the writer, recounts a dream he had which all of his dead characters came back to talk to him:
NICK
Look, I get it, Finn. You’re unhappy with being dead. So am I. That’s why I am blocked!
FINN
You don’t get it. None of us are pissed off at being dead.
REDSHIRT #4
I am!
FINN
(to REDSHIRT #4)
Not now, Davis!
(back to Nick)
None of us except for Davis are pissed off at being dead. Death happens. It happens to everyone. It’s going to happen to you. What we’re pissed about is that our deaths are so completely pointless. When you killed us off, Nick, it doesn't do anything for the story. It’s just a little jolt you give the viewers before the commercial break, and they've forgotten about it before the first Doritos ad fades off the screen. Our lives had meaning, Nick, if only to us. And you gave us really shitty deaths. Pointless, shitty deaths.
NICK
Shitty deaths happen all the time, Finn. People accidentally step in front of buses, or slip and crack their head on the toilet, or go jogging and get attacked by mountain lions. That’s life.
FINN
That’s your life, Nick. But you don't have anyone writing you, as far as you know. We do. It’s you. And when we die on the show, it’s because you've killed us off. Everyone dies. But we died how you decided we were going to die. And so far, you've decided we'd die because it’s easier than writing a dramatic moment whose response is earned in the writing. And you know it, Nick. (p. 266-67)
As I was transposing this quote, there is something about that last moment (“but you don't have anyone writing you, as far as you know” [emphasis added]) which makes this coda, and perhaps this book, strike a chord with me. Don't those two themes often go hand in hand: the power of the author within the universe he or she has created, and the larger analogue of a controlling power in our own universe? These characters are rising up and doing what we ourselves cannot, questioning their creator (finding out for sure they have one and that he is a flawed senior script writer that may drink too much) and demanding that their deaths have meaning.
Since want to keep this blog away from the blatantly religious, I will open up the floor to you, dear reader. How much responsibility do you feel the writer has to his or her characters? If you are a writer, do you characters act in unexpected ways? When you kill them off, do you feel like you are actually killing them off? Do you feel like the writer-god of your universe, or do you feel more like you are the conduit for the narrative and your characters are talking to you?
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Narrative Voice and Voyeurism in Palimpsest
The stalks stand like a portcullis against the desert, and no man may say where they end. Certainly not I. Certainly not you. But we may come here and look out on the waste, for it is a singular pleasure to be warm and safe while one watches horrors unfold, is it not?The more I move through this book, the more the glimpses of the narrator fascinate me. This narrator does not behave in the normal manner. It is not the normal contract between the narrator and audience, even when discussed explicitly (even the "dear reader" I reference found most memorably in Jane Austen's novels but very common in novels at the time, and imitated by silly bloggers who read too much).
-Valente, Catherynne, Palimpsest (p. 153).
This narration, however, has a completely different quality than the more conversational tone that we might be used to:
There are four of them there now. Shall we peer in? Shall we disrupt their private sacraments? Are you and I such unrepentant voyeurs? I think we must be, else why have we come so close to the door of cassia, the windows of cracked glass? Let us peer; let us disrupt. It is our nature.The narrating voice (who, for need of a pronoun, I shall refer to as a "she," when grammar demands it, know that this narrator is a construction of Valente and not Valente herself) has established something essential about both the narrator and the reader in this moment early on, just as we meet our four protagonists. Before we even realize the nature of how those four got to Palimpsest, before we may have a chance to judge and look down on their actions, we ourselves are as labeled as "unrepentant voyeurs," slightly sordid.
-Valente, Catherynne, Palimpsest (p. 5).
And considering how many times I have seen the phrase "It is [x] nature," I'm sensing something something of importance there, though as yet have not come up with anything witty to share with you. By the way, I enjoy the fact that I was able to just throw that out there as an observation rater than having to have a completely constructed argument ready.
It seems, (and I'm still very much grappling with this book so bear with me) that in a book that is invested in taking what may appear to be debasement (the necessity of sleeping with many strangers to get to this desired city of Palimpsest) and turning it not only into a series of understandable decisions, but moments of interpersonal connection as well, that catching the reader up in a label of sexual debasement right from the beginning -- unrepentant voyeur--is a good way to include them in that. Just as, in my last post, the reader is infected and marked (in this case labeled) by her encounter with this book.
And we are voyeurs in this books, as in all books. Are we not? We peep, often uninvited, into the deep, innermost workings of the characters lives, sneak into their bedrooms, watch them cry. What does it matter if we end up crying with them to, that may just make us even more voyeuristic. And in this book, we are not only following the four main characters through their struggles with the entry price of Palimpsest, but we get there for free. There are no street maps scarring our skin.
Unless someone falls in love with the book enough to go out and get a tattoo of the map. If anyone has, please, let me know. I'd love to see a picture.
There is one more thing I want to ponder with you, dear reader, before I bid you adieu for the moment. While this narrator sees deeply into the characters of the novel, and also claims to know our nature as readers (a claim I'm willing to buy into her), at the point to which I've read in the novel, there are hints that the narrator is not just a blank narrator narrating from beyond the scope of the events. Though, even her early revelations about shared nature, her position from outside the events is unlikely given her own nature. She reveals that she is somehow intimately bound up in Palimpsest:
I taught them how to do this, when all of us were young. I do hope you enjoy our little local customs.
-Valente, Catherynne, Palimpsest (p. 240).
I have two possible guesses for the identity of this narrator, if its revealed to us. I won't reveal my first one because it might be spoiler-ish if you happen to be reading along with me, but I'm kind of rooting for a meta revelation of narrator as writer-god within this text. Given the nature of this book, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But given the nature of the book, I'm likely wrong. I've been kept guessing the entire time.
***
Interested, want to see if I'm making all this stuff up or if it really is all in this book? Pick up a copy and read along with me.
Palimpsest via Amazon
My own progress: On page 293, on the corner of Kausia and Ossification.
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