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shalannaMore musings about the nature of fiction and how we can make our stories better, more timeless, more entertaining, whatever.
* * *
In fiction, "real" doesn't mean "realistic." It means something more like "the reality you can make the reader believe in while reading the story without snapping his suspenders of disbelief." Story reality, however, must be internally consistent, experienced in the same way by more than one person, or we begin to doubt the viewpoint character(s) and their sanity/reliability. It has to be reality that they've "experienced" or could have experienced if they existed in that story world. Maybe an event is impossible in Real Life, but the author makes us believe. We suspend our disbelief for the moment and let the story teach us.
Stories are patterns, and they contain only a subset of the possible. Some say they come out of the collective subconscious and are peopled by instantiations of the Jungian archetypes (the wise woman, the trickster, et al.)
Yet.
Fiction is not trying to pass for reality, and it shouldn't. Most authors know this; excluding SF/fantasy, most authors' "worlds" are close to our real one, but not quite. Whether it be liberties taken with towns (inventing new ones, moving the ones that exist, putting coffee shops on corners where there are none in real life) or poetic license taken with events, authors never really write fiction that's actually in the "real world."
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mrissa mentioned that various books present differing versions of Minnesota. My version of Dallas is not the "real" Dallas that you would see in a travelogue. And it's not really supposed to be.
All of this comes out of a discussion about using brand names for "verisimilitude." Okay, the author said the clothes were Prada and the shoes were Manolos and the cars were Hummers. Or you wrote that the designer was Chanel and the cars were Buick Roadmasters and the shoes were Thom McAn. Both sets of choices tied your book to a specific era. When a brand closes down and another takes its place, what then? Then your book is dated, the brand name is a clue that it's "outdated," and/or the brand name doesn't ring a bell with the reader and make her think of what she was meant to think of when that brand was on top. Maybe it makes her think "he likes that old stuff?" That's why I'd rather just make up my own brand names and let the readers get the idea from the context and what my characters think about the item(s). My books will still be products of their era--okay, MY era--but they'll be in that fictional world that is "like" today's world.
[EDIT: *This is all just MY take on it. We may need to agree to disagree.*]
Fake is trying to pass something off as what it's not. So that's not making a book "fake." Some will say that any unfamiliar word "pulls them out of the story." I'll bet there's not one non-writer *reader* who knows that phrase; that wording comes out of workshops and critique classes. And possibly out of literary analysis courses, such as English majors take in school. But I think that's a learned response after writers start going to groups and becoming aware of the structure underlying what they're reading. I don't think a "made-up word" bugs regular readers nearly as much as it does professionals, unless there's a specialized vocabulary that fills the book, such as in a textbook for a field unfamiliar to them. They might say, "Huh?" but I think it's the same as if they encounter an unfamiliar word--they pick that up from the context and read on. It's not as if I am so immersed in a story that I don't hear what's going on around me, anyway, in terms of if somebody shouts or if there's a sudden thunderclap. I've got to be aware of the background, the same as when I'm driving. That's how I see it, anyway.
Tom Wolfe, in _I Am Charlotte Simmons_, makes up brand names for stuff, and I love it. He calls a Japanese SUV something really funny--I'd have to go back and look that up. Meant to make a note of it. Anyway, he's another writer who does that.
[*EDIT*: As usual, I just spew out all this theory and so forth because that's what I'm thinking about. I always forget that several readers of my journal/blog have said they DO feel that made-up words or strange brand names toss them out of the vivid, continuous dream. I am not saying their responses are invalid. It's just that I'm an insensitive lout who just prattles on about whatever's on her mind. *sheepish grin* I did suggest it's a learned response from going to writers' groups, and that was supposed to be an observation, but if that's insulting or insensitive or hurts your feelings, I want to apologize up front. If you wonder whether I'm talking to you, I probably am--I don't want to hurt your feelings or upset you! But I think we can agree to disagree on a couple of points and still be compatible. I know that my obsession with identifying backstory or other "cheats" in published fiction comes directly out of participation in strict workshop and critique groups where this stuff was ferreted out and put on display to shame the author into deleting it and never doing it again. So I, too, have learned some responses from going to writers' groups.]
Of course, if you're writing category romance, you've got to take the audience into account and perhaps say, "They don't want this kind of milieu. They like to see today's brand names." But are the books being written for the ages? Or are they meant to last only a few months or years, and then pass into unreadability? I think there has to be a trade-off. You're spending parts of your life that you can't ever get back to write the book. It might as well be something that has a chance of surviving you. (If libraries were the way they used to be, I mean. Now, who can say what'll have a chance to survive in numbers?)
There's even a consideration about using registered trademarks. Some businesses don't want their products' names to go into the vocabulary to mean any similar product. "Kleenex" versus "facial tissue" comes to mind. If you avoid using real brand names, then you can forget about product positioning worries. A bonus!
We do want to make readers feel, though. Something other than anger at us for wasting their time, I mean. Arousing emotion is a legitimate and worthy purpose of writing. A scene moves readers if and when the emotions it generates in them are genuine.
We don't weep for Ophelia because we think she's a real person, but because the situation as presented is heartbreaking, or at least tugs at the heartstrings. There is manipulative writing--that's not what we want to have said about our work--but then there's writing that leads the reader to experience the emotions. Tricks usually are transparent. You have to feel the stuff as you're writing it, generally, for it to come across. You don't have the advantages of a screenwriter, who gets actors in whom the audience is invested, a bunch of pretty pictures of the set and scenery, and a soundtrack of exciting music in the background.
The story's true to itself, or not worth telling.
* * *
Books on the bedside table:
Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
Men of Mathematics (Bell) (yep, an old textbook from my college course in History of Math, but I'm just re-reading it in bits and pieces)
The Lost Pilot (James Tate) (poems)
The Hallelujah Factor (Jack Taylor) (inspirational/study)
Gift of a Letter (Alexandra Stoddard)
* * *
Reacently heard on KLUV (Oldies) 98.7 FM:
Monkees; Herman's Hermits; Rod Stewart; Beach Boys
Currently playing: the Fab Four at four!
In fiction, "real" doesn't mean "realistic." It means something more like "the reality you can make the reader believe in while reading the story without snapping his suspenders of disbelief." Story reality, however, must be internally consistent, experienced in the same way by more than one person, or we begin to doubt the viewpoint character(s) and their sanity/reliability. It has to be reality that they've "experienced" or could have experienced if they existed in that story world. Maybe an event is impossible in Real Life, but the author makes us believe. We suspend our disbelief for the moment and let the story teach us.
Stories are patterns, and they contain only a subset of the possible. Some say they come out of the collective subconscious and are peopled by instantiations of the Jungian archetypes (the wise woman, the trickster, et al.)
Yet.
Fiction is not trying to pass for reality, and it shouldn't. Most authors know this; excluding SF/fantasy, most authors' "worlds" are close to our real one, but not quite. Whether it be liberties taken with towns (inventing new ones, moving the ones that exist, putting coffee shops on corners where there are none in real life) or poetic license taken with events, authors never really write fiction that's actually in the "real world."
mrissa mentioned that various books present differing versions of Minnesota. My version of Dallas is not the "real" Dallas that you would see in a travelogue. And it's not really supposed to be.All of this comes out of a discussion about using brand names for "verisimilitude." Okay, the author said the clothes were Prada and the shoes were Manolos and the cars were Hummers. Or you wrote that the designer was Chanel and the cars were Buick Roadmasters and the shoes were Thom McAn. Both sets of choices tied your book to a specific era. When a brand closes down and another takes its place, what then? Then your book is dated, the brand name is a clue that it's "outdated," and/or the brand name doesn't ring a bell with the reader and make her think of what she was meant to think of when that brand was on top. Maybe it makes her think "he likes that old stuff?" That's why I'd rather just make up my own brand names and let the readers get the idea from the context and what my characters think about the item(s). My books will still be products of their era--okay, MY era--but they'll be in that fictional world that is "like" today's world.
[EDIT: *This is all just MY take on it. We may need to agree to disagree.*]
Fake is trying to pass something off as what it's not. So that's not making a book "fake." Some will say that any unfamiliar word "pulls them out of the story." I'll bet there's not one non-writer *reader* who knows that phrase; that wording comes out of workshops and critique classes. And possibly out of literary analysis courses, such as English majors take in school. But I think that's a learned response after writers start going to groups and becoming aware of the structure underlying what they're reading. I don't think a "made-up word" bugs regular readers nearly as much as it does professionals, unless there's a specialized vocabulary that fills the book, such as in a textbook for a field unfamiliar to them. They might say, "Huh?" but I think it's the same as if they encounter an unfamiliar word--they pick that up from the context and read on. It's not as if I am so immersed in a story that I don't hear what's going on around me, anyway, in terms of if somebody shouts or if there's a sudden thunderclap. I've got to be aware of the background, the same as when I'm driving. That's how I see it, anyway.
Tom Wolfe, in _I Am Charlotte Simmons_, makes up brand names for stuff, and I love it. He calls a Japanese SUV something really funny--I'd have to go back and look that up. Meant to make a note of it. Anyway, he's another writer who does that.
[*EDIT*: As usual, I just spew out all this theory and so forth because that's what I'm thinking about. I always forget that several readers of my journal/blog have said they DO feel that made-up words or strange brand names toss them out of the vivid, continuous dream. I am not saying their responses are invalid. It's just that I'm an insensitive lout who just prattles on about whatever's on her mind. *sheepish grin* I did suggest it's a learned response from going to writers' groups, and that was supposed to be an observation, but if that's insulting or insensitive or hurts your feelings, I want to apologize up front. If you wonder whether I'm talking to you, I probably am--I don't want to hurt your feelings or upset you! But I think we can agree to disagree on a couple of points and still be compatible. I know that my obsession with identifying backstory or other "cheats" in published fiction comes directly out of participation in strict workshop and critique groups where this stuff was ferreted out and put on display to shame the author into deleting it and never doing it again. So I, too, have learned some responses from going to writers' groups.]
Of course, if you're writing category romance, you've got to take the audience into account and perhaps say, "They don't want this kind of milieu. They like to see today's brand names." But are the books being written for the ages? Or are they meant to last only a few months or years, and then pass into unreadability? I think there has to be a trade-off. You're spending parts of your life that you can't ever get back to write the book. It might as well be something that has a chance of surviving you. (If libraries were the way they used to be, I mean. Now, who can say what'll have a chance to survive in numbers?)
There's even a consideration about using registered trademarks. Some businesses don't want their products' names to go into the vocabulary to mean any similar product. "Kleenex" versus "facial tissue" comes to mind. If you avoid using real brand names, then you can forget about product positioning worries. A bonus!
We do want to make readers feel, though. Something other than anger at us for wasting their time, I mean. Arousing emotion is a legitimate and worthy purpose of writing. A scene moves readers if and when the emotions it generates in them are genuine.
We don't weep for Ophelia because we think she's a real person, but because the situation as presented is heartbreaking, or at least tugs at the heartstrings. There is manipulative writing--that's not what we want to have said about our work--but then there's writing that leads the reader to experience the emotions. Tricks usually are transparent. You have to feel the stuff as you're writing it, generally, for it to come across. You don't have the advantages of a screenwriter, who gets actors in whom the audience is invested, a bunch of pretty pictures of the set and scenery, and a soundtrack of exciting music in the background.
The story's true to itself, or not worth telling.
Books on the bedside table:
Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
Men of Mathematics (Bell) (yep, an old textbook from my college course in History of Math, but I'm just re-reading it in bits and pieces)
The Lost Pilot (James Tate) (poems)
The Hallelujah Factor (Jack Taylor) (inspirational/study)
Gift of a Letter (Alexandra Stoddard)
Reacently heard on KLUV (Oldies) 98.7 FM:
Monkees; Herman's Hermits; Rod Stewart; Beach Boys
Currently playing: the Fab Four at four!
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 04:47 am (UTC)Mind you, I almost never use brand names in my stories because my characters really could care less. My protagonist drives a 1993 red Civic hatchback with a manual transmission. I know that, and I can see the car clearly--but I've never said so in a story, although I do refer to her stalling it out at one point so if you're paying attention you know it's a stick. But it's not important enough to make a big production over.
I can see making up a brand name if you really need one and know the eternal Prada or Jimmy Choo or whatever those words are will date your story--I imagine Chick Lit will eventually become of archeological importance! It seems to me that the point of brand names in this case is often to portray the character as well-off, and maybe pretentious, so I can see referring to her "brand new Cosmonaut handbag" or something like that. It's so fashion-forward the rest of us have never heard of the thing!! But in terms of the fridge or stove or most people's clothing... hey. I don't know what brand my own stuff is.
If a kid in a book is listening to a band, I figure you might as well make something up if you want--I have one book where the character refers to Toad The Wet Sprocket, which either dates the story or, if you missed the five minutes when TTWS was popular, sounds like a really funny made-up name. On the other hand, the mother in the story is devoted to Emmylou Harris--which dates the story to the extent there's about a thirty-year period during which it could have occurred. It's like having them listen to Neil Young or Blue Rodeo--there's a starting point but no real ending because that's the type of artist they are.
Likewise, Coke or Westinghouse anchors the story in reality but not time, at least not in any narrow way.
I'm picky as hell about names of registered animals. I've read a few books where the characters refer to show dogs or horses by handles that make it clear they think the whole registration process is for pretentious sissies, and if the dog or horse is important to the story that gets very annoying very quickly. Conversely, when someone has a cowhorse named "Gunner" or "Doc," I know the writer has an eye for details.
I would be very, very wary of assuming that only the overeducated and fussy get "pulled out of a story." Non-writers may not use that jargon, but they'll say things like, "I couldn't get into it," or "that's where it lost me," or "I just didn't get interested." Readers don't like being condescended to any more than writers do, you know? And writers in critique groups are readers as well--maybe slightly pickier readers, or maybe just readers who take the trouble to explain why they put your story down and reached for something else, which civilian readers don't.
So it's like anything else--if it works, lovely. If it doesn't work, better to figure out how to fix it than to defend and argue and explain. As the leaders of a workshop I attended over the weekend said, "If your reader doesn't get what you've written--that's not the reader's fault." So I always figure if enough people tell me something ain't a-workin', I may as well assume it really is a problem.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 04:48 am (UTC)Sorry, that shuold be "the author thinks".
no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 04:28 pm (UTC)But I knew what you meant.
Hey, that's another issue. Let's say that my character needs to think that because he/she is going to sabotage somebody's chances at the horse show or dog show or whatever . . . but I the author don't believe that. Some readers will STILL come away with the impression that I the author must believe that because my character believed it. Even though the story ends with justice being done and other characters having other opinions and viewpoints, there will still be someone saying, "I hated that book because the author says thus-and-so." Aack! It happens every time. So that's another difficulty for writers. Still, we need our villains to spout stuff like that so people can hate them (GRIN) and so that the other characters can bounce off of it.
Unreliable narrators really bug some readers, too. It's fun IF you realize that the narrator is unreliable before you get all invested in his beliefs as true. Phil Dick did it well in _Confessions of a Crap Artist_, and _Roger's Version_ works for me (I think that's John Updike). But I'm sure some novels that I have given up on and forgotten about just had unreliable narrators, and I didn't catch on in time and started hating the characters. Hmm. . . .
no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 04:28 am (UTC)Pearl #2 Is "Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper"--the addition of the kennel name in front makes the whole thing sound more authentic. And there really is a Robin Hood Kennel, right where he says it is.
There's a series of kids' books with racehorses in them--the auhtor has been writing about horses since I was a kid, but she still manages to sound like she knows nothing. The teenagers at the last barn I rode at found her hysterically funny. Part of it was the trying-too-hard names like "Ashley's Wonder," which sounds like a backyard horse with a ten-year-old owner, not a Breeder's Cup entrant. A mystery I read not long ago had an Arab stallion (black, of course) with the hilarious name of Midnight Massacre, which sounds bizarre on any horse but especially on an Arab because the vast majority of the show horses like him have Arabian names. And the names have family patterns.
It's not hard, especially nowadays, to look up kennels and stables and get a feel for what names sound like. That's where the disrespect comes in--can't be bothered to look it up, don't realize you're undermining the verisimilitude of that plot thread, irritate the core readership you want to attract by putting all those naimals in in the first place. I drop books like that and read something else.
Mind you, I spend much too much time thinking about this sort of thing because I am interested in horses to the point of mental illness. But when Gail Crum has a cowhorse named Gunner in her books, I assume he's relatd to Mr Gunsmoke, a famous quarter horse whose offspring are good at working cattle. And when she introduces another cowhorse registered as Plumb Smart, I assume a connection to Smart Little Lena or someone of that line. If you don't know quarter horses it doesn't matter--but if you do, and her readers may, it's another point of connection. "She's one of us!" (Gail Crumonce emailed me after I said all this on DorothyL and cheered, "Why yes! That's exactly what I meant!")
My own character has a quarter horse named Cody--Heza Cody Commander, related to both Topsail Cody and Cash Commander. "Heza" is common usage in QH names. Her coach has a Rugged Lark son named Whole Lotta Lark (I love that name!) whose barn name is Gabe. There's a Breezing Bandit-bred Appaloosa called Dallas (after my first horse, Houston!) but I know he's registered as Call Me The Breeze. And someone else has a Wap Spotted-bred App called Wap This Way.
The people who don't try to get animal names right are missing outon a whole world of entertainment--there's no such thing as a horse name that's "too clever," as long as it's grounded in real bloodlines. There's a QH in Ontario out of the Zippo Pat Bars line and her name is Tragically Zip--a pun on Canada's favourite rock band and an awesome name. A few years back a Zippo Pine Bar daughter sold for $100,000 at the World Championships. Her name was Zippopotamous. I'd have bid up an extra $10,000 (if I played in that league) for the name alone!
All the pretty horses!
Date: 2005-10-26 04:23 pm (UTC)That's funny about Toad the Wet Sprocket--I only know they exist because several of my co-worker's daughter's friends thought that I got the title of my novel _Dulcinea_ from the title of a TTWS CD! When I told them it comes out of Don Quixote, they thought that was the same as Don Juan. . . . *grin*
Our first Pomeranian was registered as "Kilduren of the Wolves," but always called "Wolfie," "Woofie," or "Wolfgang," such that everyone just thought he was Wolfgang after Mozart. (grin) Our current Pom, Teddybear, is actually Theodore J. Bear called Teddy. You have to pick three names and hope one of them is not already taken! I understand the reasons for registration and tracing back bloodlines, but some people think of that as "uppity" and don't understand the usefulness. *sigh* They're the same people who don't want any specialized clubs to exist . . . Mensa, the DAR, the DRT (Daughters of the Republic of Texas, which I can't be in because I am not descended from the Alamo heroes or their relatives!), the NAACP (for example, although you probably CAN join it if you are Irish and not African American--but it's MEANT for a certain group of people with special qualifications.) I think the clubs are meant to help people find others with the same interests and needs, while the objectors feel that it's elitist and not fair to have clubs that exclude people. It's a dodgy question. The people who feel hurt are feeling excluded. And they hate "elitist stuff" like registered dogs or horses. Yet there are valid aspects that they don't "get." It's difficult.
Which workshop did you go to? I need to go to one just for the inspiration. For some crazy reason, when I go to a seminar or workshop, I end up sitting and scribbling madly on some new idea sparked by something I've heard. It's great for idea gathering. I don't always even use the market info in the seminars, but I do get ideas, so they're good to go to.
Re: All the pretty horses!
Date: 2005-10-27 04:48 am (UTC)My first dog was a registered Siberian husky named Dunroamin's Amow ("wolf" in Inuktitut, at least according to Farley Mowat)--our other choices were "Atka" and "Arnuk" (which, as ten-year-old me pointed out to my parents, means "woman" according to Mowat!) (We didn't realize he was from the "O" litter!) He later became Champion Dunroamin's Amow, but the real point about him was the fact that, thanks to a breeder who was absolutely set on breeding Sibes with Real Sibe Temperament, he was an unneutered male who never ever dreamed of challenging the little girl (me!) who walked him, pulled dead things out of his mouth, and otherwise unknowingly courted disaster. His call name was Pike. That's the name on his tombstone and how he's remembered--which is another point about registered names in books: nobody keeps calling the animal by that mouhtful!
Lots of mixes are nice, nice dogs. My little mix is a nice, nice mare--and my plain old cat Coney is a sweetheart (his sister is a maniac, but you can't win 'em all.) But I've met a few who wer total boneheads, so I don't put up with any reverse snobbery anymore.
The fun, to me, of purebreds is the history, and while human genealogy has never interested me, I get a thrill when I track back a pedigree and realize Pike was related to Leonhard Seppala's Togo, or old Lukey the school horse of my dreams had Three Bars just off his papers. It makes me feel realted to these famous oldsters. I am also related to everyone whose animal is realted to mine. Truly.
I don't worry much about people who misunderstand the idea of purebreds--as you say, life's too short to fight every battle. When I run into that reverse snobbery I try to reply gently that my own experience has been that a good dog or horse is a good dog or horse. I also invoke Susan Conant's Transcendant Paradox of pet ownership: we all believe our beloved pet is the Best {name species here} Ever--and all of us are right!
About that workshop
Date: 2005-10-27 07:54 am (UTC)Sorry--forgot this bit. I went to one organized by the department of continuing education at Mount Saint Vincent University. It was a one-morning thing and was really for beginners. The leaders, published Canadian mystery writers, talked abuot plot structure, creating characters, using setting and stuff like that. A lot of the participants had never tried to write a mystery before and several were readers who wanted to see how real authors do what they do.
It was interesting, energizing, and not very expensive. I dunno that I leanred anything I hadn't already learned or intuited elsewhere, but an in-person writing group may well come out of it and that would be swell. Plus it really was cool to meet writers I admire and hear a bit about their processes.