Story Systems, Part 5/5

In this series of posts, I’ve invited the
reader to see a story as a “meaning-generating system”, and story-writing akin
to a simulation that requires good initial conditions to run properly. Now I have
some more thoughts on this analogy, on reading other people’s writing, and some
final messages.

Sometimes simulations are chains of smaller
simulations. Simulations within simulations!

Example: Franzen said “The Corrections” is
“five linked novellas.” So then we can break it down into five components, the
input of novella 1 sent to novella 2 and so on. Those novellas have chapters,
and those chapters have sections, each sub-systems running different
sub-routines for some greater whole, generating meaning and passing it from one
simulation to the next.

Dostoyevsky’s tomes are usually split into
“Book the First”, “Book the Second” etc, and the same principle applies.

Short story writers attempting novels for
the first time often refer to them as a series of short stories. And fair
enough.

The analogy holds up no matter how big or
small the system is! At one end, the story ideas you don’t pursue are the inert
components that don’t do anything in the reactor. At the other end, 1000-page
novels are factories, with systems and sub-systems that can be scrutinised and
re-run to test the effect on the whole machine. Book series are like systems of
factories in a production line.

So we’ve covered that most of writing is
re-writing. Similarly, reading is re-reading.

Once you can see other people’s writing as a
mixture of different components, you can “uncook the ingredients.” My first
dumb analogy, but you get what I mean.

Very few stories don’t reveal their
mechanisms on repeat readings. And, much like you read through your own story
drafts collecting different errors, you can read through other people’s stories
and focus on different aspects of storytelling: plot, setting, characterisation,
structure etc.

Once you have the components, in your own
writing you can say to yourself, “I think what we need here is to run program(Cormac
McCarthy).” In William
Gibson’s Paris Review interview, he referred to other authors as “pedals”:
“revving Ballard” for example.

This may seem cynical—but applying an
author’s style is just choosing a sub-system. The overall system will still be
unique if the combination is different. And this combination is just one level
on which you are making the decisions. It still represents your style.

When I read my stories back, I can feel in
different paragraphs which real-life event, thing someone said, person I was
thinking of, film I saw, story I read, thing that was happening to me at the
time. All these are just a unique set of launching pads.

Okay, one final thought on the re-iteration
process of redrafting: remember that whatever flaws are there are going to be
most apparent to you, and that it’s impossible to read your own writing with
the freshness of its first reader. You may get this way in the future, but it’s
not worth considering. I’d advise focusing on the secondary joy of watching the
thing get better, better, better—but never perfect.

Even if you’re less aware of the errors
than an objective reader, only so much rigor can be expected of you. If you’ve
seen the film “Annihilation”, check out this review of
it, replete with error messages!

The complaints are valid, but the film
suspended my disbelief enough to sweep me away. I loved it! And yet in many
ways it is quite imperfect. Could do better. Who couldn’t?!

I think this is interesting: these errors
meant that the film “didn’t work for that viewer.” But it still worked for me, either
because I’m denser or more forgiving. I prefer the latter.

With more writing rigor, the film could’ve
won over a larger audience. Those errors that I didn’t notice would’ve been
corrected. That would hardly have impacted my viewing experience, but would’ve
satisfied those more nitpicky folk.

There’s too much emphasis on subjectivity.
It’s offered to easily appease people who didn’t do as good a job as they could
have, and that review is a good example of what it means when a story “doesn’t
work” for someone. Failure to resonate may be a question of rigor.

This also reveals how to interpret
rejections. It’s rare that a story is a complete outright failure—but the more
prestigious the publisher, the more rigor will be expected. And rigor can be
approached systematically, using the method of these blog posts.

Writing is a skill you can learn like any
other, and improving at it is tangible.

Finally:

·        
You decide what works for you.

·        
Rigor is not the same as
bullying yourself.

·        
Writing is always a light and
inviting thing filled with the reward of meaning, requiring trust and
curiosity.

·        
The easiest way to scare away
trust and curiosity is to bully yourself and give up hope.

So believe in yourself, dirtbag!!