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Watching arguments about what writing is and the writing process and all like that there rolling back and forth across my observational space. Not all of the resulting rambling about this is going to be directly about writing, because one of the relevant threads mutated off into a discussion of subjective morality which I attempted to respond to by making a comment about non-Euclidean geometry, but we'll get there eventually.
One of the topics of discussion is the notion of whether there's some objective goodness available to produced story. I have a hard time with this one, because I keep feeling like there's some broken logic circuits somewhere.
Consider Tolkien. I'm fond of Tolkien -- I've even read the Silmarillion and some of the Lost Tales. I'm not up to some folks' level of geekery on the subject, but it's a part of the stuff that's in my head. And I know quite a few people -- people whose story-tastes are pretty similar to mine, even -- who bounce off it, repeatedly and vigorously. (And who have the same problem that I developed with anime, which was that they kept getting told that they really had to like it, and bouncing off it, and finally went tooth-baringly insane about the entire subject.)
Clearly, for those people, these aren't good books -- they don't succeed at being readable just for starters, and "unreadable" is a pretty early disqualification for the perception of quality.
Popularity doesn't do it either; but I am from a subculture that tends to look on the mainstream with at least a little skepticism. And I've met people who evaluated quality in part by whether or not they'd heard of it, because if they'd heard of it, it has to be better than stuff they haven't heard of. Two sets of blinders, there.
Then of course there's the stuff that I think is complete dreck that I enjoy, and the stuff that I think is good that I can't stand. It's not easy; the entire thing is a mound of subjectivity.
Graydon keeps saying that writing a story is writing a set of assembly instructions for the story -- gotta run it on an actual brain to get story out of it. And the problems with running things on actual brains is that there's inescapable subjectivity, because of the differences in those selfsame individual brains.
The way I often approach story is from my feeling that the story is, I'm just writing it down; it's all out there, I just happen to be its window into this universe. I'm trying to write down the instructions that will get that story most accurately into the largest number of other individual brains. Which means that 'quality' takes on a cast that feels subjectively objective to me: Have I conveyed The Story effectively? Would some other phrasing, some other point of view, some other angle present it more clearly, to more brains?
Recently with The Devil's Due I wound up with a realisation about something that could happen to the characters -- that Bujold-style worst thing to do to them that they could survive. And as I thought about that worst thing, I realised that that is how the story goes, that is what happens, there isn't any way I could take it away and have something else happen to them. It's just there, and it's my job to write the bastard down.
Doing so led me to spending a lot of my stray brainwaves last night on trying to figure out roughly what's going on in an ambush combat scene that involves six separate groups, two of which contain turncoats (so eight groups). Agh. Agh! (I think I have it debugged. I had it from the POV of main character before I knew what was going on, which led me to occasionally shouting things like, "Right! I know what it looks like to you, but I need to know what's happening!")
From the lack of objectivity of writing, then people wandered off into wanting to know why, if there are no objective standards, anyone cares about meeting their objective standards. Why not just pick a set of malleable standards that minimises the work or something?
Narghle. One of these days I'll be able to formulate why this whole "You believe in subjectivity, that means you can do whatever the hell you want" thing drives me utterly bugfuck nuts.
I tried to explain it by pointing out purification requirements for Daily Rite, actually; this apparently completely missed my target. I don't expect anyone else to care about ritual purity; most everyone else doesn't do Daily Rite in the first place. But I care. I didn't care before I went Kemetic -- I didn't grok ritual purity stuff at all, actually, and thought it was a bit of a waste of time -- and if I ever leave, I don't know that I'll necessarily care afterwards. But here and now I'm in a place where this utterly subjective expression of religious devotion is a restriction on my actions, and I can't just chuck it when it's inconvenient without chucking a lot of other stuff that I'd really rather keep. Rar.
If you're going to change the axioms the geometry is built on, don't come sobbing to me about the sum of the angles in the resulting triangles afterwards, okay?
And then there's the fanfic flamewar over in #d_c. Ugh.
I quoted this into it:
I've watched fanfic writers (like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheshyre, I believe) have that same sense of this-is-story that I have and tell, and I've watched them work their way through their craft. And I just come all over ugh at the people who say that that's not real work or real creation because it's fanfic.
I don't get fanfic, really, anymore (I wrote a little when I was in my mid-teens), and there are times it leaves me uncomfortable, but there's decidedly craft in it, there's the creative spark, and there's the need to Tell Story. Some of those stories are derivative; some of those stories are blatant self-insertion; some of those stories are hackwork. So are the stories that people doing quote-unquote original work are doing -- I've been watchingannafdd talk about her slushpiles over on rasfc.
Somewhere I saw someone writing "Everyone starts with Mary Sue". And I think I did, a long time ago. Some ways I still do; Jaci's somewhere between Stormy and Stalker in a lot of ways, but also very much herself. I cannibalise myself. Mikel's appearance (and forename) is based on someone I knew in high school, thoughteinedreugan thinks his personality is a lot more teinedreugan -- but then there are the times that he's me. All my characters are me, mingled in with all the people I know, all the people I've read, all the people I've theorised, mixed together and stewed and fermented and composted into this weird sludge which brings forth new life.
We all come from the Nun, real and fictional alike.
One of the topics of discussion is the notion of whether there's some objective goodness available to produced story. I have a hard time with this one, because I keep feeling like there's some broken logic circuits somewhere.
Consider Tolkien. I'm fond of Tolkien -- I've even read the Silmarillion and some of the Lost Tales. I'm not up to some folks' level of geekery on the subject, but it's a part of the stuff that's in my head. And I know quite a few people -- people whose story-tastes are pretty similar to mine, even -- who bounce off it, repeatedly and vigorously. (And who have the same problem that I developed with anime, which was that they kept getting told that they really had to like it, and bouncing off it, and finally went tooth-baringly insane about the entire subject.)
Clearly, for those people, these aren't good books -- they don't succeed at being readable just for starters, and "unreadable" is a pretty early disqualification for the perception of quality.
Popularity doesn't do it either; but I am from a subculture that tends to look on the mainstream with at least a little skepticism. And I've met people who evaluated quality in part by whether or not they'd heard of it, because if they'd heard of it, it has to be better than stuff they haven't heard of. Two sets of blinders, there.
Then of course there's the stuff that I think is complete dreck that I enjoy, and the stuff that I think is good that I can't stand. It's not easy; the entire thing is a mound of subjectivity.
Graydon keeps saying that writing a story is writing a set of assembly instructions for the story -- gotta run it on an actual brain to get story out of it. And the problems with running things on actual brains is that there's inescapable subjectivity, because of the differences in those selfsame individual brains.
The way I often approach story is from my feeling that the story is, I'm just writing it down; it's all out there, I just happen to be its window into this universe. I'm trying to write down the instructions that will get that story most accurately into the largest number of other individual brains. Which means that 'quality' takes on a cast that feels subjectively objective to me: Have I conveyed The Story effectively? Would some other phrasing, some other point of view, some other angle present it more clearly, to more brains?
Recently with The Devil's Due I wound up with a realisation about something that could happen to the characters -- that Bujold-style worst thing to do to them that they could survive. And as I thought about that worst thing, I realised that that is how the story goes, that is what happens, there isn't any way I could take it away and have something else happen to them. It's just there, and it's my job to write the bastard down.
Doing so led me to spending a lot of my stray brainwaves last night on trying to figure out roughly what's going on in an ambush combat scene that involves six separate groups, two of which contain turncoats (so eight groups). Agh. Agh! (I think I have it debugged. I had it from the POV of main character before I knew what was going on, which led me to occasionally shouting things like, "Right! I know what it looks like to you, but I need to know what's happening!")
From the lack of objectivity of writing, then people wandered off into wanting to know why, if there are no objective standards, anyone cares about meeting their objective standards. Why not just pick a set of malleable standards that minimises the work or something?
Narghle. One of these days I'll be able to formulate why this whole "You believe in subjectivity, that means you can do whatever the hell you want" thing drives me utterly bugfuck nuts.
I tried to explain it by pointing out purification requirements for Daily Rite, actually; this apparently completely missed my target. I don't expect anyone else to care about ritual purity; most everyone else doesn't do Daily Rite in the first place. But I care. I didn't care before I went Kemetic -- I didn't grok ritual purity stuff at all, actually, and thought it was a bit of a waste of time -- and if I ever leave, I don't know that I'll necessarily care afterwards. But here and now I'm in a place where this utterly subjective expression of religious devotion is a restriction on my actions, and I can't just chuck it when it's inconvenient without chucking a lot of other stuff that I'd really rather keep. Rar.
If you're going to change the axioms the geometry is built on, don't come sobbing to me about the sum of the angles in the resulting triangles afterwards, okay?
And then there's the fanfic flamewar over in #d_c. Ugh.
I quoted this into it:
- At the same time, with the mind as scavenger and plunderer, one cannibalizes one's own life. But one's own life for the writer includes everything she can know, not just what happened to her in the ordinary sense. If I know about you--a gesture, an emotion, an event--I will use you if I need your gesture, your emotion, your event. What I take will seem to me to be mine, as if I know it from the inside, because my imagination will turn it over and tear it apart. Writers use themselves and they use other people. Empathy can be invasive. Friendship is sometimes a robbery-in-progress. This omniscient indifference takes a certain coldness, and a certain distance, which writers have and use. --Andrea Dworkin
I've watched fanfic writers (like
cheshyre, I believe) have that same sense of this-is-story that I have and tell, and I've watched them work their way through their craft. And I just come all over ugh at the people who say that that's not real work or real creation because it's fanfic.I don't get fanfic, really, anymore (I wrote a little when I was in my mid-teens), and there are times it leaves me uncomfortable, but there's decidedly craft in it, there's the creative spark, and there's the need to Tell Story. Some of those stories are derivative; some of those stories are blatant self-insertion; some of those stories are hackwork. So are the stories that people doing quote-unquote original work are doing -- I've been watching
annafdd talk about her slushpiles over on rasfc.Somewhere I saw someone writing "Everyone starts with Mary Sue". And I think I did, a long time ago. Some ways I still do; Jaci's somewhere between Stormy and Stalker in a lot of ways, but also very much herself. I cannibalise myself. Mikel's appearance (and forename) is based on someone I knew in high school, though
teinedreugan thinks his personality is a lot more teinedreugan -- but then there are the times that he's me. All my characters are me, mingled in with all the people I know, all the people I've read, all the people I've theorised, mixed together and stewed and fermented and composted into this weird sludge which brings forth new life.We all come from the Nun, real and fictional alike.
- The Doctor finds the amniotic fluid from which all life on Earth will spring in the inert soup of a low slurry. Amino acids form and fuse to make cells which develop into animal and vegetable life, "You Duggan," the Doctor says. The explosion which caused Scarlioni to splinter into time also caused the birth of the entire human race. --from the script of "City of Death", a Tom Baker Dr. Who episode
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Nicely put!
From:
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Well, it made complete sense to me, but I was not the target.
IMHO, nothing</> is going to hit that particular target. The neo-Platonism is just too deeply ingrained.
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Just because I know it's a brick wall doesn't seem to stop me from banging my head against it every so often, it seems . . .
From:
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. . . and no, I'm not going to try to paraphrase, because trying to paraphrase LeGuin isn't just futility, it's apostasy.
I wonder if I can find a transcript somewhere of that particular talk, as it was quite brilliant.
Yay living in Seattle where cool authors come give talks!
From:
no subject
(I'm fond of Le Guin, yes. Have some things of hers in my quotes file.)
From:
no subject
BTW, can totally relate to the ritual purity comment. I thought the idea was oppressive and silly, and then I joined a religion that had it. Now I respect it. And, like you said, if for some reason I left Kemet, I don't know as I'd keep to it either.
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From:
Re:
erm... yeah. Guilty as charged. *duck*
From:
no subject
Ooh, that's an interesting take on it. Must ponder. *nods*