As readers of SF/F we like to think that we're at the forefront of the unusual, the different, the strange. I sometimes think that, comfortable in our endless stream of colorful and weird imaginings, we miss the truly strange and the truly different in the world that exists around us. Two things that made me think of this recently:
Hulu now offers "The Farm: Life Inside Angola", a film about life inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary, free for streaming. I watched it the other night, and it was a disturbing, haunting, bizarre experience. So many people living lives so totally, radically removed from mine, practically next door. In a structure created by the same society I live in. Many of them with no hope of ever knowing a different life. Talk about imagining the alien - yet the same could happen to literally any of us.
On Twitter, @persiankiwi is microblogging about what's going on in Tehran right now. Iran is a reality far removed from mine on the best of days; today is not the best of days. In the words of Neil Gaiman @persiankiwi's stream is "like an apocalyptic novel played out in tweets". Sobering to think that every day somewhere in the world things like this are happening, while I enjoy the afternoon sun and agonize over whether I should get some Cold Stone.
Just a little perspective to round out a lovely Sunday here in the city.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Books for writers: Michael Shurtleff's "Audition"
Some of you may have noticed that the blog schedule has been disrupted recently, in part because my dad was visiting from Europe (two words - Six Flags!) and in part because winning WOTF sent me into a frenzy of activity related to my fiction writing that's just now abating. I hope to restart my usual programming in the next week or two, but here's something different for today: a thank-you note to Michael Shurtleff's book "Audition", which gave me a huge impetus to get back into writing a couple of years ago. I'm still stumbling around in the dark, but to the extent that I've started to see the light, "Audition" has been instrumental.
I've gone through a number of tomes on writing both before and since reading "Audition" -- standouts are Bradbury's "Zen in the Art of Writing", King's "On Writing", McKee's "Story", Knight's "Creating Short Fiction" -- but Shurtleff's little volume did more to change the way I approach a story than all the others combined. The best part - it's actually not a book intended for writers at all.
"Audition" is a manual meant to help actors cope with the daunting task of auditioning for a role. There is a fair amount of theater-specific advice, such as to make sure you're standing in the light when reading, while the bulk of the book is devoted to the analysis of scenes in theatrical plays.
Anyone who has acted in or directed a play knows that much of theater's magic lies in one simple fact: in a play, all you get is dialogue. The prose writer conveys the inner world of the characters through narrative, through description, through inner monologue. Depending on your sophistication and preferences, you may choose not to read between the lines, and in most cases you're fine. The playwright, on the other hand, only gives you the outer world. It's the task of the actor and the director -- and it's an absolutely delightful, exhilarating task -- to construct what goes between the lines.
Naturally, the task of the prose writer is similar - s/he must create both the outer world and the inner world of the characters (and often also an "inner inner world" that's not revealed even in internal monologue). I'd never had a structured approach to this - I didn't even realize I needed one until Shurtleff showed me the way. He uses a framework he calls the Twelve Guideposts to break down the key elements of creating a powerful scene and then discusses each one in detail with highly insightful illustrations from popular plays. Just to give you a sense of it, here are the Guideposts:
Relationships, Conflict, The Moment Before, Humor, Opposites, Discoveries, Communication and Competition, Importance, Find the Events, Place, Game Playing and Role Playing, Mystery and Secret
I could go on at length about each and every of these, but for brevity's sake I'll highlight the one that I learned from the most: Opposites. I've only ever read one author who could write one-dimensional characters and still hold my attention (Ayn Rand), but for some reason I was perfectly happy to write one cardboard character after another in my early attempts at fiction writing. Shurtleff's book blew my eyes wide open.
Shurtleff exhorts the actor not just to act the surface level meaning of her dialogue, but to find the opposites and contradictions in her character -- to find the kernel of attraction in bitter hatred, or to find the seeds of repulsion in passionate love; to long for escape yet delight in the comforts of your little box, to preach righteousness while trying to suppress thoughts of vice. He made me recognize what I'd seen in my favorite stories over and over again, yet had never really thought about from a writer's perspective. It's not what the characters say that makes them interesting, but what they leave unsaid. It's not their great passion that moves us, but the crack or flaw that threatens to bring it down.
This is Character 101, of course, no doubt obvious from day one to my more sophisticated peers, but somehow I'd trundled along all through my teenage years, with my workshops and books on writing and everything, without realizing these simple things. I'd done them instinctively now and again, but I'd never really understood what I was doing. "Audition" changed that.
All this talk of frameworks and guideposts may sound a bit too rigid, too mechanical. Well, on a certain level, that's so. If you plot every story out Guidepost by Guidepost religiously, you're going to get something pretty fake. Like any other such framework, though, Shurtleff's is a learning tool. Once you train your mind to recognize the techniques he talks about, you stop thinking about them consciously and just use them naturally as you write. These days I only rarely revisit the Guideposts explicitly, but my stories rely on the principles I learned from "Audition" extensively.
I can't recommend the book enough to anyone looking to write, act or direct.
---
If you have one or two books on writing that you feel as strongly about, please post in the comments - I'm always looking for recommendations!
In other good news, I've had a story accepted by Dunesteef Audio Fiction, where it should be appearing in a few months. First time I'll have had a story of mine recorded!
I've gone through a number of tomes on writing both before and since reading "Audition" -- standouts are Bradbury's "Zen in the Art of Writing", King's "On Writing", McKee's "Story", Knight's "Creating Short Fiction" -- but Shurtleff's little volume did more to change the way I approach a story than all the others combined. The best part - it's actually not a book intended for writers at all.
"Audition" is a manual meant to help actors cope with the daunting task of auditioning for a role. There is a fair amount of theater-specific advice, such as to make sure you're standing in the light when reading, while the bulk of the book is devoted to the analysis of scenes in theatrical plays.Anyone who has acted in or directed a play knows that much of theater's magic lies in one simple fact: in a play, all you get is dialogue. The prose writer conveys the inner world of the characters through narrative, through description, through inner monologue. Depending on your sophistication and preferences, you may choose not to read between the lines, and in most cases you're fine. The playwright, on the other hand, only gives you the outer world. It's the task of the actor and the director -- and it's an absolutely delightful, exhilarating task -- to construct what goes between the lines.
Naturally, the task of the prose writer is similar - s/he must create both the outer world and the inner world of the characters (and often also an "inner inner world" that's not revealed even in internal monologue). I'd never had a structured approach to this - I didn't even realize I needed one until Shurtleff showed me the way. He uses a framework he calls the Twelve Guideposts to break down the key elements of creating a powerful scene and then discusses each one in detail with highly insightful illustrations from popular plays. Just to give you a sense of it, here are the Guideposts:
Relationships, Conflict, The Moment Before, Humor, Opposites, Discoveries, Communication and Competition, Importance, Find the Events, Place, Game Playing and Role Playing, Mystery and Secret
I could go on at length about each and every of these, but for brevity's sake I'll highlight the one that I learned from the most: Opposites. I've only ever read one author who could write one-dimensional characters and still hold my attention (Ayn Rand), but for some reason I was perfectly happy to write one cardboard character after another in my early attempts at fiction writing. Shurtleff's book blew my eyes wide open.
Shurtleff exhorts the actor not just to act the surface level meaning of her dialogue, but to find the opposites and contradictions in her character -- to find the kernel of attraction in bitter hatred, or to find the seeds of repulsion in passionate love; to long for escape yet delight in the comforts of your little box, to preach righteousness while trying to suppress thoughts of vice. He made me recognize what I'd seen in my favorite stories over and over again, yet had never really thought about from a writer's perspective. It's not what the characters say that makes them interesting, but what they leave unsaid. It's not their great passion that moves us, but the crack or flaw that threatens to bring it down.
This is Character 101, of course, no doubt obvious from day one to my more sophisticated peers, but somehow I'd trundled along all through my teenage years, with my workshops and books on writing and everything, without realizing these simple things. I'd done them instinctively now and again, but I'd never really understood what I was doing. "Audition" changed that.
All this talk of frameworks and guideposts may sound a bit too rigid, too mechanical. Well, on a certain level, that's so. If you plot every story out Guidepost by Guidepost religiously, you're going to get something pretty fake. Like any other such framework, though, Shurtleff's is a learning tool. Once you train your mind to recognize the techniques he talks about, you stop thinking about them consciously and just use them naturally as you write. These days I only rarely revisit the Guideposts explicitly, but my stories rely on the principles I learned from "Audition" extensively.
I can't recommend the book enough to anyone looking to write, act or direct.
---
If you have one or two books on writing that you feel as strongly about, please post in the comments - I'm always looking for recommendations!
In other good news, I've had a story accepted by Dunesteef Audio Fiction, where it should be appearing in a few months. First time I'll have had a story of mine recorded!
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