Posing a question · 3:01am Aug 25th, 2015
I don't write stories. I do not have the discipline or time I wish to invest in it. I have some ideas for stories, who doesn't? But I would be surprised if any of them ever see a beginning, much less an end.
I do write some poetry, most of it not very good, but some of it surprises me. That is the thing I want to throw out to every one, the idea of being surprised by your own work, when it takes on a life of its own. Does this happen when writing stories as well? Do the things sometimes take off and write bits of themselves, leaving you wondering where you were during the process?
In college I roomed with an artist. He was a very good artist and a very lazy one. He was the most fascinating man I ever met. If I had not been heterosexual I might have fallen in love with him. Hell maybe I did. I am not exactly certain what are the manifestations of love without sexual attraction. I could probably fall in love with a sapient horse.
But we would sit up till dawn smoking cigarettes and chatting about the universe (which both of us knew very little about but when has that ever stopped anyone?) He would always crawl out of bed 5 minutes before his first class and rush off, somehow making it on time (whatever that means in an art class. I never took one). He liked to talk and drink and smoke and do anything but paint or draw for which he had immense talent and very little time.
He was always half-finished with 2 dozen or more paintings, many of which hung on the walls of our apartment and would be taken down and amended from time to time. I do not think he ever finished a one of them really. There was always something more which COULD be done to them.
Poems are more like paintings than stories, I think. They do share some elements with stories, imagery, structure, ideas, narratives to some extent, internal chronologies. But they are foremost to me instruments of impression. They can lead you to water, encourage you to drink, but only the reader (or listener) knows the flavour of the water.
I usually know exactly what I intend to say when I begin a poem but that, while never quite changing, is amended a great deal generally by the end of the piece. And by "end" I mean the end of the process which creates it because for me that is rarely a continuous thing. My friend had his never completed art on walls, I have many many uncompleted poems and the ones I let see others' eyes often require years of completion. It is not that they are so good that they require years of mastery, far from it, the process simply takes a while (for me). Even short Zen things can take years. I might get an idea, but need life's experience to flesh it out.
It starts like this usually: I get one of two things. I might get a fully formed sentence tossed out by some Gestalt sum of an ego-id equation I was not aware that I had been party to. Or I might have an idea for which I need to find a few words to express. The latter would not be something I wish to tell, natually, but something I wish to infer. If it pleases me I might write it down, I might keep it in my head. Or it goes in a notebook on a shelf or these days into a digital file.
The impotant thing is to drag this stuff out every once in a while. You may have had a revelation or the damned thing may have decided to come alive and write itself, they do that.
And this is what I am getting at here, do stories do this? Do they come alive, suddenly turning half thoughts into whole ones?
After a few years I just turn the things out into the world, hoping like the parents of timid children that the kid will be able to make something of himself. But you never know. Sometimes even the AUTHOR has no idea if the poem really has anything to say until he turns it lose. Same goes for the painting or the story I guess. Let me know, especially you story writers. I am always curious to see how much of the human condition is shared.
The writing process is a little different for all writers. Some really do have the entire story plotted out in their minds with no surprises. They write and everything fits according to plan.
But for me personally, yes. Half thoughts turn around into whole ones, which branch and grow thoughts of their own.
I find that there's a thrill when I sit down to write and something entirely unexpected happens. The story "gets away from me" so to speak and I'm left wondering how that even happened. No matter how much I plan or think about what might happen on long walks by myself, I will still sit down and write and the characters will say the most unexpected things, the story will take turns I never anticipated and at the end of it I will wonder where it all came from and what it says about me as a person that I created something such as this.
I think quite possibly most mediums of art have cases where both examples can be found. It really depends on the artist or creator's motivation and purpose, in my opinion.
In storywriting, scriptwriting, film and stage, there are many cases where improvisation is quite the norm and in fact encouraged (for example, on sitcoms such as Parks & Recreation). The script, drafts, or original pieces are there to act as a backbone of sorts; a guide to how the story should pan out. One must, of course, respect the storyline, because the traditional 'beats' of what makes a story a story is what makes it good in the first place, but everything else is soft and malleable, ready to have extra jokes or encounters thrown on.
The key, I believe, is flexibility. In order to write a story, and how I find myself writing, is to know and understand first and foremost what it is you want to communicate to the audience. Is it an idea? An emotion? A concept? A feeling? Is your piece a character study or a commentary on society? Is it something 'fun' or is the entire point of it just for a single joke at the end? Is it discard-able or formative? Understanding this about what you want to write will allow you to know which direction to travel, and along the way, the story tends to pick up things here and there.
For example, in the writing of a single piece, I will know where it starts and where it ends. This is the first and only thing I consider during the planning phase. Along the way, however, everything can change depending on what the story requires. This, too, affects what follows, since information changes information, and ripples of what you do will affect what is to come. It is during these points when you have to consider how your 'improv' will affect the ultimate story, and how much of the main storyline will have to bend in order to cater to these elements. If it's too much, then you have to do something else. If it can carry the weight, then do it.
Writing organically like this, I feel, gives a much more 'natural' feel to the story, but it HAS to be tempered by this ability to control what you are writing. You MUST allow your story to breathe and grow organically. But you MUST also know how to rein it in when necessary. A garden overgrown can be pretty if overgrown in just the right places. Too orderly and perfect and it looks fake. Too wild and it's basically just a patch of jungle, hard to traverse or appreciate. In the same way, a story that is written too by-the-books is a simple traversal from A to B that offers no surprises and no life, and a story that ONLY relies on improv will end up hard to understand or appreciate (and be total nonsense, too).
A great real-life example of the latter is the show LOST, which, for 6 years, strung viewers along by focusing on the mystery, by writing things on the spot (as admitted by the showrunners), catering to merely 'what is exciting'. Eventually, the whole story fell apart at the ending when it was realised that no one knew what the heck was going on, even J J Abrams himself. Other shows with writing of such nature is Gotham, where the showrunner also admitted to writing the story on the spur of the moment. Sure, it's exciting, but things start to add up and things start to not make sense. This is what happens when you have no control over your main story.
As for the former, it's easy to find plenty more examples when a story is too straightforward. Any movie, any book, any fanfiction whereby things just happen BECAUSE they have to happen and no other reason is bad storytelling. For example, Man of Steel, or really, anything by Zack Snyder. It's easy to tell when someone shoehorns the 'romance subplot' into a movie for no reason other than 'it sells and people like that', while keeping it completely foreign to the actual plot or characters. That's when you write with too much focus on the general structure of a story, forgoing the elements that make characters or plots relate-able and real.
So to answer your question, yes. Stories DO do this. In fact, I argue that it's NECESSARY. Again, the key word is FLEXIBILITY. Know where to change, what to change, know that stories ALWAYS change, and know when to rein it in because it's getting too ridiculous. In the end, you end up with a neat package that works.
P.S.
Here's a personal example -- you read one of my stories, The Incandescent Brilliance. Originally that story used to be this one. It's incredibly different. Why? Because when I was writing it, originally the story I linked was going to be about Trixie dying and reflecting on her life. But given the outlines and word limits required (it was for a contest) I was unable to tell the story that needed telling within those restrictions. So I changed it all, kept the concept and the message that I was trying to send (my goal and motivation was to write on a message) and it became that story. I then took the original ideas, beats, and certain lines from the original draft and grew The Incandescent Brilliance OUT of it, allowing a new story structure to form from within the 'improved' parts. So yes, stories can actually grow both ways. Both stories ended up well accepted, and two of my best (in my humble opinion). But if I had merely thought only about the needs of one over the other - story VS organic growth - they would have been the one single story and it would have been terrible.
The thing with most art, well any art is...The artist's intent and the reader's interpretation can vary wildly. I pose my own question:
"If you release a creative wrok that you hope sends a message that resonates with people and it does, but it's not the message you intended to convey, would you consider it a success or failure?"
My writing process, or at least my manifestation of ideas comes largely in random spurts, and of course inconveniently. Not when I'm all sitting pretty, ready to type it out, but usually when I'm trying to sleep, or in the middle of work. So I end up interrupting what I'm supposed to be doing by writing myself a note since I tend to forget ideas otherwise and knowing I've forgotten an idea bothers me (as it would).
Sometimes when I go to write down my idea for a scene I end up writing a chunk of actual story, expanding on it. I haven't done much actual writing so far as stories go (a half-finished Fanfic, and a few short stories in school being the only examples of story writing I've done), and I've only done a handful or so examples of poetry. The fanfic I partially wrote, I didn't really plan for. I just sat down and wrote until I was done for a while. The lack of a plan ultimately lead to the death of the fanfic, at least it's a big reason for that happening, I think.
I get more emotionally wrapped up in stories than I do in real world events. It's a bit screwed up really, but I can't help it. A family of 4 murdered in some city or other? Meh, happens all the time unfortunately. Someone is mean to a nice character in a story I'm reading? Kill them with fire. For me, I just have to be hooked on one element to get me to continue reading, be it an interesting premise that draws me in, a character or several that I like, or living vicariously through the main character. I find myself wishing I was involved at times, able to help, to guide, to fight the antagonists, or even just offer some comfort to someone that's hurting.
So yeah, stories can draw people in, get them involved (or wishing they were), or even doing their own work (See fanart, fanfics, music, animation, and yes...audiobook production XD).
3346063 "If you release a creative wrok that you hope sends a message that resonates with people and it does, but it's not the message you intended to convey, would you consider it a success or failure?" I consider that an absolute success, for a couple of reasons. First, it means my work has a life of its own, capable of inspiring in ways I did not even imagine. If I get feedback from such a person I even end up learning something from my own work that I never intended for it. That is partly what I mean about taking so long to do a piece. You change, you are not the same person later in time that you were when you began the piece.
Second, no two people are exactly alike, our experiences, and the way we process them, insure that we live in slightly different worlds. For my work to cross over, touch another life, this is wonderful! It would be hubris of me to suppose my model of the world is the standard one. We meet on common ground. That is the best we can hope for and it's not bad.
I've done both ends. When I was learning to write, I found that each chapter of the extensive Shades of Grey was as much a surprise to me as anyone else. I knew what the keynotes were, but that didn't mean I knew how the characters were going to get there. This, to me, is the advantage of knowing your conflicts as intimately as your characters: they'll end up in the same place, but the specifics are interchangeable.
On the other end, Eclipsed was something I knew intimately the very moment I conceived of it – which is a lot easier for 1,000 words, of course! But I hammered it out and smoothed it in under two hours before throwing it up in a blogpost to see what people thought. I still surprise myself with exactly how precise a piece of work it is – no doubt it transcended the time and effort put into it. What I found really surprising was that, after Scribbler took what I thought was very good and made it truly epic, Soge came along and mentioned about how reading the text form of the story actually heightened his experience of it. A reminder that we don't own the results of our work, no matter how much we might want to.
I always feel like there's something I can go back and fix with my stories, and often I'll tweak or make changes until the last moment, when I push the "publish" button. But once they're out there, in the wild, I usually only change them if someone points out an error. I won't make wholesale changes.
To do so feels like I'm shortchanging my readers. If I have a story that 500 people have already read, and I change it, and then another 500 people read it, who has read the real story? The first half, the second half, or only those who read both? I haven't puzzled out an answer yet, and it doesn't feel fair to my readers either way.
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"once they're out there, in the wild, I usually only change them if someone points out an error. I won't make wholesale changes"
I feel the same way about poetry. You have to take a stand and say "this is it." But that is as much for me as anyone else. This may sound a bit odd, but I cannot understand completely all that the poem means to me until I set it free. That is true with just about anything you own or love.