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Oct. 18th, 2010 12:06 pmI'm keeping an eye on Helen Lowe's blog because the series of contributions by writers on why they love speculative fiction is exceptionally cool. It's making me think.
Today's a day for putting thoughts together. This morning I've been re-reading Mary Carruthers' The Book of Memory and watching All the Rivers Run. Both of them have aged gracefully. Every time I open the first I learn something about how writers translate their world through memory. All the Rivers Run is a surprise, though. I'm enjoying it thoroughly. I haven't seen it since it was first released and I didn't much like it way back then. The 1980s dreaming of the 1950s dreaming of the 1890s - it's an interesting narrative. Mind you, I keep on thinking that Sigrid Thornton got all the best leading men and that her hair was happier after the eighties.
All of this muddled together in my brain got me trying to work out how I translate the minutiae of times past into fiction.
My first response when I read something (eg how Plato thought of memory, or how the Church changed its taxation practises in the thirteenth century) is to ask myself "How can I include this in my fiction?" I want to include everything, initially. I suspect that I want to include everything because it's my way of thinking things through and finding out the patterns that evidence makes and sorting out an understanding of people in time and over time. Put this kind of thinking down on paper after marshalling and interpreting the collected information and you get a nice academic argument, with all the evidence neatly parcelled.
It's not a good technique for a novel. I keep thinking of novels that marshall information in precisely this way and I think of how I read past the marshalled data very quickly, skimming to get back to what really counts.
This doesn't mean that I don't collect data. I always collect information. My magpie-historianness is a deep part of myself and it would be daft to ignore it. What it means, however, is that I need to do something with the data other than collect it in serried ranks.
First, I have to ask what my novel needs. I need to think about the plot arcs and the character development and how the setting has to emerge as a character (I got into trouble the other day for saying that the setting is also a character and needs the right level of attention).
From there, I work to get that data under my skin, make it part of the fabric of the story's existence. This turns my vast piles of information into the stuff of story, if I do it properly.
There's a mediating question, though, that makes it all happen. Throughout these processes I ask myself over and over again, what will make my world work. What do I need to understand and then dump (because it's the understanding I need, not the information) and what needs to be understood then used?
Today's a day for putting thoughts together. This morning I've been re-reading Mary Carruthers' The Book of Memory and watching All the Rivers Run. Both of them have aged gracefully. Every time I open the first I learn something about how writers translate their world through memory. All the Rivers Run is a surprise, though. I'm enjoying it thoroughly. I haven't seen it since it was first released and I didn't much like it way back then. The 1980s dreaming of the 1950s dreaming of the 1890s - it's an interesting narrative. Mind you, I keep on thinking that Sigrid Thornton got all the best leading men and that her hair was happier after the eighties.
All of this muddled together in my brain got me trying to work out how I translate the minutiae of times past into fiction.
My first response when I read something (eg how Plato thought of memory, or how the Church changed its taxation practises in the thirteenth century) is to ask myself "How can I include this in my fiction?" I want to include everything, initially. I suspect that I want to include everything because it's my way of thinking things through and finding out the patterns that evidence makes and sorting out an understanding of people in time and over time. Put this kind of thinking down on paper after marshalling and interpreting the collected information and you get a nice academic argument, with all the evidence neatly parcelled.
It's not a good technique for a novel. I keep thinking of novels that marshall information in precisely this way and I think of how I read past the marshalled data very quickly, skimming to get back to what really counts.
This doesn't mean that I don't collect data. I always collect information. My magpie-historianness is a deep part of myself and it would be daft to ignore it. What it means, however, is that I need to do something with the data other than collect it in serried ranks.
First, I have to ask what my novel needs. I need to think about the plot arcs and the character development and how the setting has to emerge as a character (I got into trouble the other day for saying that the setting is also a character and needs the right level of attention).
From there, I work to get that data under my skin, make it part of the fabric of the story's existence. This turns my vast piles of information into the stuff of story, if I do it properly.
There's a mediating question, though, that makes it all happen. Throughout these processes I ask myself over and over again, what will make my world work. What do I need to understand and then dump (because it's the understanding I need, not the information) and what needs to be understood then used?