![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
sartorias has written about how what you think you're conveying with your words isn't necessarily what the reader's apprehending. That's the whole reason for giving your story to some beta readers before you send it out into the wide world--they test it out for you, and you can tell from their reaction whether your words did what you wanted them to do.It struck me that putting the story into words, one word after the other, one scene after the other, is an act of translation--from your own personal you-language into a language that more folks (not necessarily everyone, but more folks) can understand. And like with translation, you don't necessarily go for word-for-word direct correspondence. You try to find ways to tell the story that will inspire in readers the same feelings that you have when you think of the story, when you live it in your mind--or however you experience it.
When you're not successful, then reading your story may end up being a little bit like hearing someone talk about a dream they had. Readers can see that the dream was meaningful to you, but for them it may be a succession of random details, of images and figures whose significance they don't understand, and lurching, veering action that is just bewildering. When you are successful, on the other hand, then readers will come away feeling like they've just had this awesome dream and they have to tell someone.
How does one accomplish that? Hey, you tell me--I bet there are as many methods out there as there are writers.
- Music:Cloud Cult: The Will of a Volcano
Page Summary
- sixteenbynine : (no subject) [+1]
- marshallpayne1 : (no subject) [+1]
- sartorias : (no subject) [+7]
- therinth : (no subject) [+2]
- salyey_marya : (no subject) [+5]
- faerie_writer : (no subject) [+1]
- b_oki : (no subject) [+4]
- j_cheney : (no subject) [+2]
- cucumberseed : (no subject) [+1]
- whiskeredsadie : (no subject) [+5]
- judo100 : (no subject) [+3]
- suzan_s : (no subject) [+5]
- behindpyramids : (no subject) [+1]
Comments
Short answer: assuming you've mastered (or are at least pretty good at) all the elements of craft and technique—dialogue, story structure, worldbuilding, characterization, etc.—I think voice is where you sway the reader. How does one achieve voice? While you can develop it to a degree, it's really more of a gift, I think. It comes from finding a way to let one's innate personality shine on the page, though I think it helps to have an innate personality that shines itself in the first place. You can't fake voice, and if you do, not for long. Voice can often carry you through weaknesses of the above elements. A story with all the above elements may technically work, but without voice it won't move the reader like a story with voice will. My two cents.
I have to think about what you say about voice... I can't decide whether I agree or not. Partially yes?
--that's like the raw ingredient of the dream... but if you want someone to experience the weirdness of going to a mall that has a feel like an office, you have to make them live it. I guess it's what everyone says about show, not tell. You could do it with lots of florid language, or with sentence fragments, and you could do it with first person, second person, third person... I feel like there's a million routes you could take--but it only works if they feel what you wanted them to feel.
And yeah about LJ posts--and yours *always* are effective. That one you wrote about Mr. Shit? That was incredible. I was thinking about that all day, on and off. And I didn't leave a comment so you couldn't have known :-( ---which goes to show you that sometimes silence doesn't mean disapproval or lack of interest....
this brings to mind, that feeling i get alot, that we really are alone in this world, alone in our own minds, unable to communicate 100%, the exact feelings or thoughts we have. even a very highly successful creation of words/art can hardly be totally perfect, can it?
...Then again, though, sometimes it *can* be lonely in the isolation of our own minds....
And yes too about the difference between what's in our minds and what we express in art--especially if we feel not very confident in the medium. I have that often with drawing :-[
In Linguistics we learned this:
Filter-Speaker--Medium--Hearer-Filter
Notice there's a filter on each end of communication...which suggests that only if your filters are very similar will the hearer hear what's actually intended.
Interspersing illustrations from the Simpsons helps everything.
"Hello everybody!"
"Hello Dr. NIck!"
I believe, I hope, one of the things I am learning from my excursion into visual art is how to better communicate... Right now, I don't feel I really have the lesson down, or even well enough in my grasp to explain better than that, but I hope it works.
I was interested in all the different things people had to say about those two sketches
That's a funny sort of magic. You release a sparrow, and people say, "hey, look at the goldfinch/starling/nuthatch/wren!"
And there is this thing that happens to me, where part of me feels like putting stuff on the page, whether or not the reader will quite get it?
I am an amateur with a bad attitude - maybe I jsut need to get over this if I really wanna make better stories... which I do...
I think whatever you write at least has to please **you.** How much broader you want to go after that is totally up to you.
--but your writing is so, so good. People find your blog and just want to read it for the writing--like me.
I have no idea how it's done. I'd guess it has to do with how clear the picture is in your own head, but that's only part of it.
What say you?
But then, I don't want to just *imitate* those folks--and anyway, if I did, I'd just be ... an imitator. So then I try to see how I can take what I've loved in their stuff and metamorphose it into something of my own. But I still feel pretty beginner-ish. Or maybe that's not the right word. Maybe what I mean is amateur-ish.
When I'm in the middle of writing something, it's impossible for me to see it as other people see it, but sometimes--like now, for instance--I have periods in which workaday stuff interrupts writing, and then, when I finally get back to looking at the writing, I can often see lots of stuff wrong with it. It's funny that you say "Make it live," because that's precisely what I find missing when I come back to something. I'm like, "What *is* this flaccid, wordy thing I was writing?" And then I try again.