writing meme
Sep. 15th, 2008 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyHah, no posts all weekend and now two from me in one day. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caudelac picked up a meme that is not the Other Meme that is going around and that I keep promising people I'll post.
Anyway, this meme is to describe the sorts of stories one keeps telling*. Which is intriguing, so I'll play:
The stories I tell are always love stories of a sort. When I was much younger, a much older friend of mine told me that all songs are really love songs; all of my stories are really love stories. Not necessarily love stories between two people (I think that Elephant on a String, which I'm increasingly unlikely to finish, is mostly a love story between the characters and their city.)
Speaking of which, I do a lot of the city as a character. It's something I love to read about.
The human romances I write are nearly always dysfunctional. I have an unfortunate tendency to write about women trying to love men who don't really deserve them; it's a habit that I've tried to break as of late. But beyond that, I'm incapable of writing a straightforward sex scene—when I do write them, they are always awkward or violent or both. I think I have a better sex life than any of the characters I write about so it's largely not from personal experience; it's more that I find awesome sex scenes boring and embarrassing to write, so I'd rather make something go wrong.
Father-daughter relationships (sabotabby has daddy issues, don't ya know?). In stories where family doesn't play a big role (like Elephant, where no one has a family for some reason) there's still usually some strange tension between a younger woman and an older father-substitute. The YA steampunk thing I'm writing is really bad for that. It's also the opposite of my sex scene thing—the father-daughter relationships tend to turn out better than my actual one did.
Apocalypses. I think this is actually a big fascist streak in me. But I like to write stories about massive disasters and people picking up the pieces afterward. It's fun to explode the world.
Hidden agendas and double-crossing. I noticed that both Elephant and Anesthesia, (co-written withannaotto) had as major plot points characters who had, at some point, appeared to betray their own ideals. It's not a coincidence how much both of us love books like Vonnegut's Mother Night.
Conscious use of clichés. Elephant is a Western. The YA steampunk story is a fantasy-quest-bildungsroman. The play I wrote when I was 17 featured stock characters from various movie genres, and it has a hilariously melodramatic romance to boot. I've always liked dicking with people's expectations.
In the last decade or so, I've been incapable of writing anything that doesn't make some sort of political reference. Both of the big things I'm (supposed to be) working on now are explicit; Elephant is about a revolution, the YA thing is about a clash of two engineered utopian cultures. That's also something I'm trying to get more subtle about.
Hmm. I'm sure there's more. Unless there's a really good reason (like it's a story primarily about gay men), my stories always pass the Bechdel Rule. It's not even something I do consciously anymore.
Conversely, my favourite sort of story to read is essentially "bookish girl falls into a whole, winds up in magical world."
* I do write a fair bit but I've barely shared any of it since I was a teenager. I think with so many amazing writers on my friends list, I'm slightly intimidated to blog about my unlikely-to-ever-get-published blather. This from someone who journals rather personal things almost every day.
caudelac picked up a meme that is not the Other Meme that is going around and that I keep promising people I'll post.Anyway, this meme is to describe the sorts of stories one keeps telling*. Which is intriguing, so I'll play:
The stories I tell are always love stories of a sort. When I was much younger, a much older friend of mine told me that all songs are really love songs; all of my stories are really love stories. Not necessarily love stories between two people (I think that Elephant on a String, which I'm increasingly unlikely to finish, is mostly a love story between the characters and their city.)
Speaking of which, I do a lot of the city as a character. It's something I love to read about.
The human romances I write are nearly always dysfunctional. I have an unfortunate tendency to write about women trying to love men who don't really deserve them; it's a habit that I've tried to break as of late. But beyond that, I'm incapable of writing a straightforward sex scene—when I do write them, they are always awkward or violent or both. I think I have a better sex life than any of the characters I write about so it's largely not from personal experience; it's more that I find awesome sex scenes boring and embarrassing to write, so I'd rather make something go wrong.
Father-daughter relationships (
sabotabby has daddy issues, don't ya know?). In stories where family doesn't play a big role (like Elephant, where no one has a family for some reason) there's still usually some strange tension between a younger woman and an older father-substitute. The YA steampunk thing I'm writing is really bad for that. It's also the opposite of my sex scene thing—the father-daughter relationships tend to turn out better than my actual one did.Apocalypses. I think this is actually a big fascist streak in me. But I like to write stories about massive disasters and people picking up the pieces afterward. It's fun to explode the world.
Hidden agendas and double-crossing. I noticed that both Elephant and Anesthesia, (co-written with
annaotto) had as major plot points characters who had, at some point, appeared to betray their own ideals. It's not a coincidence how much both of us love books like Vonnegut's Mother Night.Conscious use of clichés. Elephant is a Western. The YA steampunk story is a fantasy-quest-bildungsroman. The play I wrote when I was 17 featured stock characters from various movie genres, and it has a hilariously melodramatic romance to boot. I've always liked dicking with people's expectations.
In the last decade or so, I've been incapable of writing anything that doesn't make some sort of political reference. Both of the big things I'm (supposed to be) working on now are explicit; Elephant is about a revolution, the YA thing is about a clash of two engineered utopian cultures. That's also something I'm trying to get more subtle about.
Hmm. I'm sure there's more. Unless there's a really good reason (like it's a story primarily about gay men), my stories always pass the Bechdel Rule. It's not even something I do consciously anymore.
Conversely, my favourite sort of story to read is essentially "bookish girl falls into a whole, winds up in magical world."
* I do write a fair bit but I've barely shared any of it since I was a teenager. I think with so many amazing writers on my friends list, I'm slightly intimidated to blog about my unlikely-to-ever-get-published blather. This from someone who journals rather personal things almost every day.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 01:10 am (UTC)But there's also the issue of what I, personally, think blogs are for. I gear what I write here to what I think will generate interesting discussion. If I thought that I could post bits and have people dissect the characters and motivations and symbolism, I probably would. But since my writing is pretty personal and largely just plays to my own kinks, I don't think that would really happen. Whereas if I post about subjects that at least some people will have an opinion on or some experience with, then I'll get everyone talking. Fiction is one-way, unless one is a critic or an English major or writing fanfic.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 01:32 am (UTC)I'm very shy/anxious to act out or speak personally significant material to people in real life, but when narrating them in a blog I can entirely disregard the possibility of not being understood or reciprocated (somehow getting no comments is much easier than getting blank faces :). That's one of the reasons I blog.
I also wanted to add as an irresponsible critic that "a sudden absence of bees" is outdated, but turns out last winter was even worse than the one before.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 01:34 am (UTC)What's a winding story? Anyway, that excerpt was basically me being excited that I'd made a character (and a villainous character, no less!) who seemed realistic. I started writing that story pre-Bush, I think, so no real parallels were intended. (I hate it when writers make their evil fascists be Bush; that was one of the most annoying things about the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta.)
The other thing is that all of my protagonists are either antiheroes or deeply flawed (surprise, surprise, I know), so it's always a challenge to make my villains more evil but still believable.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 02:19 am (UTC)I was reading a different excerpt. With a woman riding an old mule. Talk about kink ;).
no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 10:44 am (UTC)