Standing confessed

[wayfaringwordhack]

First you must read pjthompson's blog entry and then this will make sense. 

I think that as you pointed out, PJ, this is a sweeping statement, and yet, I do see truth in it. For me, confessing oneself in one's work is almost inevitable unless you work very consciously to create believable characters that think differently than you do. All strawmen and shallow villains aside, I think that even in the creation of characters who in no way resemble you personality- or action-wise, you still put your prejudices, your dislikes, et al, into them to the point where they do, in fact, reflect you. Your bad guy is a racist because you don’t condone racism. That is a reflection of you; not *you* but your views. If you didn’t want to say that racism was bad, you probably wouldn’t have given your antagonist that attribute. And being the good writers that we are, we don’t want one-dimensional characters, so we throw some strengths into the bad-guy mix. If it is supposed to be a strength that will make them good, according to you, then it has to be a strength you buy into. Am I making sense? My achy head says, Eh, maybe.

I agree with what everyonesakitty said about acting, but I’ll add a caveat. If you want the performance to be believable, if you want people to be sitting on the edge of their seats and really agonizing about whether or not Betty Sue is going to wear the red dress or the blue on her date with Billy Bob, you better hope to high heaven the actress has some experience in difficult-decision-making to draw on.

In your response, PJ, you mentioned that style can reflect the person, and I agree and disagree--though I realize you weren’t setting your comment in stone. :-) I think that a person has certain words, certain flavors and rhythms that come through in their writing, but change a simple thing like tone, narrator, and subject matter, and I think you could be surprised at things that were written by the same writer. The more marked the difference and the more profound the changes perhaps the greater the writer--on a skill and awareness level, I mean. So I think I’m in the same camp as kmkibble on that one. And upon rereading Kev’s post, I don’t know that I just said anything original. I’ll also toss in my agreement on the subconscious level additions and, by the same token, omissions that we make to our writing.

And this post would not be complete without a quote of merebrillante’s stunning comment: “Teh suck arrives when the writer ignores all real experience, and starts writing from vicarious experience.”
Wow. Let us all be silent and contemplate that gem of wisdom.

As you and I have discussed in our emails, PJ, I have certain issues with of a familial nature that are pretty hard to lay to rest. Today, I say I’m okay with that past, but upon discussing my fiction with friends and looking at several of my ideas objectively, one could argue that I still have strong feelings about one member of said deranged family. I *never* set out to write about these things. I don’t ask these ideas to come bubbling to the surface. I don’t seek to cast this person in a negative light, and yet the archetype pops up again and again. If I felt like being perfectly honest and open with myself--and it turns out I do--I would have to say that it is obvious that *some* part of me is still angry, hurt, confused.

And I guess that brings me around to my final point and the reason I’ve been thinking about this question myself. I believe that truly touching fiction is most often written by the people who have the guts to be honest with themselves, by those who, no matter that it hurts and is ugly, can poke around the cesspool of their emotional past and dredge up an experience from which they can write a character or situation that rings with veracity for the reader. Yes, I realize I’m using “truly,” “honest,” and “veracity” all together in the same sentence, but I do it with purpose. I think that in order to tell the truth in a way that makes people live emotions with your characters you have to draw on your own well of memories, the good and the bad. And when you do that, even if the situation goes from being sexually harassed in your real life to your character’s fictional rape, you are indeed putting part of yourself into your characters. You are standing confessed.

I don’t know about you, but that kind of scares me. Scares me so much I’ve tried writing from vicarious experiences, only scratching the surface of the safe stuff, and well, as Kim said, it rather resembles teh suck. However, I’m ready to start stripping--thank God I don’t mean literally--for my fiction. Let people judge me if they will. But when those, “Oh my,” thoughts start flowing, I hope there is some thread of, “She is *so* brave,” in there followed by a satisfied sigh of, “Wow. Now that was a story.”

Comments

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

As you and I have discussed in our emails, PJ, I have certain issues with of a familial nature that are pretty hard to lay to rest.

In the year following my divorce, every piece of fiction I wrote was about relationships gone bad. What's worse, I didn't realize it until I sat down months later and read through every one of them to try and pick something to send to a local short story chapbook contest. It never even occurred to me while I was writing that I was working out my issues in my fiction. Some of the stories were good, some of them were not so good, but all of them were about real emotions. At least I got that part right.

I'm not a believer in "naive fiction," which was described in an essay I remember reading in Tin House as something like, "If you're a cop, you must write about cops. If you're a salesclerk, you write about being a salesclerk." I think you can explore other realms of experience in your fiction, but we're all humans and we all have the same emotional core. We all experience heartbreak, lust, grief, humiliation, confusion, and awe. Different things inspire these emotions in different people, but the core emotion is the same. Even if you've never lost a parent, you know, way deep down, you have experienced some loss that shook you to your core. So I don't think you have to have been orphaned to write about the loss of an orphan in your story. You just need to dig down deep into your own emotional memory to pull that feeling up, to develop empathy for your characters. Your memory of loss will breathe life into your paper-and-ink orphan and give her flesh and blood for the reader. But it has to come from you. In this world of the page, you are God.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. I agree completely. And I did the same thing at university without realizing it. Looking back on those journal entries and bits of poetry I had to write for a Creative Writing class, I see the hurting girl that I was. Most of it, when I looked at it a few years later, looked rather self-pitying to me, even though I recognized the therapuetic value of it. The other night though, I was looking through some of it when the share-your-earliest-writings meme came around, and I didn't feel the same. I could acknowledge that the me at that time needed to write those things and it was probably good that she did.

That feeling of not wanting to indulge in self-pity kept me from writing from my deep emotions for a long while. But for years now, from almost as soon as I started writing in the fall of 2001, I've felt that I've been too *safe* in what I've shared, in what I've tried to evoke, and I come away with the feeling of having written novel-length platitudes. Not that my subjects are trite, but I haven't invested enough in them to make them something the reader can relate to viscerally.

I kept (and keep, actually) thinking, this is where I've come from; how can it help me write fiction that touches people? And my first instinct is to want to do something almost autobiographical. I cringe from that. I don't want to do it, and I probably shouldn't, truth be told. So the alternative becomes what you said: transforming those situations and the emotions they involve into something with which the reader can empathize.

Yeah, sounds easy enough. *grin*

[pjthompson]

And my first instinct is to want to do something almost autobiographical.

I would never tell you not to do that, but maybe going there directly isn't necessary. I think the tale has a chance of being better told if there are a couple of layers of other skin between it and your own skin. I don't think that's an evasion, because you're still telling an honest tale, I just think that's "art."

But see, only you can truly answer that question for yourself.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Oh, no. I didn't mean to imply that I wanted to do that. It was more like a first idea= cliché idea analogy. I think that when people want to write "what you know" fiction, it is one of the first ideas that comes to their minds: memoirs!

So the better idea would be, as you suggested, slap on a few layers and change the slant.

[pjthompson]

"If you're a cop, you must write about cops. If you're a salesclerk, you write about being a salesclerk."

I had a writing teacher who believed this as an article of faith. Fortunately, I'd been around the block a few times, knew she was full of crap, and dropped the class, but I worry about some of the newbies in that class who were lapping it upon like sugared milk.

Some of the stories were good, some of them were not so good, but all of them were about real emotions.

See my response below about honesty in fiction vs. character templates.

[pjthompson]

I believe that truly touching fiction is most often written by the people who have the guts to be honest with themselves, by those who, no matter that it hurts and is ugly, can poke around the cesspool of their emotional past and dredge up an experience from which they can write a character or situation that rings with veracity for the reader.

I believe we're sort of talking at cross purposes here. To me, honest in fiction is a different issue than making a character a template of oneself. *Of course,* if we are being honest, we are writing from some essential core of our experience. You cannot "make up" genuine experience and emotions without coming off as superficial. OTOH, and what I was saying, and what I believe Holly was saying, is that my characters are not a one-to-one correlation of myself. Caius is not me, though parts of Caius and his experience are. Niniane is not me, thought parts of her and her experience are. Moira is not me, etc. Medrawt, OTOH, is completely Me. :-)

though I realize you weren’t setting your comment in stone. :-)

Yes, especially since I was bouncing around agreeing with everyone. (I was just being a good hostess, really.) Here's the thing: I still believe that if a writer has found their true style, no matter how they disguise the voice, that style is still there riding beneath the surface. I like to write in the voice of the POV character--I consciously choose words to reflect their experience level, education, whatever. Even so, I think the essential Pammish nature of the narrative style remains. And I think that's true of every writer who has found their voice. So maybe I've been talking at cross-purposes with myself here. Maybe what I mean is voice rather than style. Voice is a much more essential part of the writing process--that's innate and always there. Style is more on the surface, the superficial parts of the narrative.

And there I go again, agreeing with everyone...

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, *honesty* is something different, but I don't think I was quite as "cross-purposes" as all that. I think I just didn't finish the jump I was trying to make in my fuddled mind, that being that if we are honest and open to the idea of always being represented in our stories, we can more fully take advantage of our experiences in creating meaningful fiction and characters. Oh, bother it. I'm still too sick to make myself clear.

In a nutshell, I'm not advocating or defending the "one-to-one correlation." *grin*

Now I'm off to the pharmacy. I've put it off too long. :-(

P.S. Good observations on style vs voice

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

I guess one of the tricks of the trade we all have to learn (at least to avoid Mary Sue-ness) is how to reveal ourselves without letting anyone know its us we're revealing. Those layers of hiding, wrapped around the nugget of ourselves, is what makes the characters different from us while being the same, as well as giving them their own lives and spirits. So even though you may feel very naked when revealing yourself, you might not be seen that way at all.

[pjthompson]

I think that's true. You may even be patterning a character after someone else, but the way you're going to access those genuine layers of feeling is always going to be through your own heart.