As an avid reader and writer, I find myself thinking about stories more and more romantically, almost. Not to say that I enjoy the cut and dry Disney production that follows the exact same plot structure to the letter (but that's a different rant). No, I am more referring to comparing stories to women. I can list a few similarities: I don't understand either very well, both seem to do whatever they want, regardless of my advice and urging, and sometimes they don't make sense until we arrive at the end. And before you cue up the angry mob, I'm not bashing women in any way. I love stories, and I love women.
And because I love both, I almost look at reading a story the same way one would "court" a woman. Call me old fashioned, but I do favor a relatively casual and slow speed. There is a sort of peaked interest initially, given the first two or three chapters. Then we arrive at the act of pursuing, which requires much more effort. This process involves sacrificing a lot of personal time and energy, getting "acquainted" almost. As we approach around the middle of the book, I find myself thinking more and more about the book (assuming I still like it at this point), before I finally, after all this time, reach the climax and resolution, thus either solidifying my relationship with the book or completely ending it.
Short stories present a complex issue with my... interesting reading process. You see, some short stories have clear and developed thoughts that end up staying with me forever, which is the point. Stories are supposed to have developed thoughts; they're supposed to arrive somewhere at the end. When I first experienced the "Mystery Stories" (The quotes are meant to be sarcastic, not proper.), I felt like I had just experienced the reader's equivalent of a one night stand.
We didn't know each other too well, I was so disoriented I wasn't sure that I could make proper judgement calls about my actions, and arrived at the climax way too quickly without even a satisfying assurance that this would resolve itself well. (In case you're wondering, it didn't.) I woke up alone, wondering where the point had gone and why it had left without even saying hello or goodbye.
Here we arrive at the brash and fiery difference between stories and garbage that reflects the line between structured poetry and poetry-looking shit (you may know it as typical free verse). You can't chuck out a paragraph of words and call it "Literature." That's like painting a white line down a red canvas and calling it "Modern art." You didn't create a painting, you drew a ping-pong table. Poetry needs meaning (which can be achieved without structure, I do realize; it is simply immensely difficult), and stories need thought.
But I'm getting off topic. The point being that while poetry contains raw emotion, stories contain movement of thought. We start somewhere and arrive somewhere else. Nobody would ever read a story about a turtle that never moved, ate, shit, or died. Our thoughts need to go somewhere. "Internal" by Brian Evenson was a wonderful example of an actual story.
I found myself asking questions throughout the reading (much like my friend Maryia did when we watched Donnie Darko together just yesterday). I wanted to ascertain what was actually going on, it was a mystery (more so than the "Mystery Stories" were anyway). I was invested in the protagonist and what he/she was going through. I felt that I knew who he/she was as a person, and that essentially grounded my interest and made it flourish into an actual relationship. I was there with the protagonist as our sanity eroded into nothing. Together.
My advice to my fellow writers: slow down. Like essays and girls' skirts, they need to be long enough to cover everything and short enough to keep people interested. But, following today's latest fashion craze, we're practically removing the skirt completely. "Forget thinking about what's happening, LOOK AT WHAT'S HAPPENING!" I can appreciate wanting to leave a relatively open ending, to which the reader is free to interpret what is going on, but they shouldn't have to interpret the entire. Damn. Story. It's perfectly acceptable to end with a mind-fuck resolution, but when you take the mind out of a story then you're just left with... Fuck.
Ok, great response here. Consider though the variety of kinds of poetry that don't fall into certain *rules* of structure... if poetry is about feeling and emotion and ideas, then certainly that can't (or maybe shouldn't) always be captured within a limited amount of structural forms....
ReplyDeleteI do understand that, which is why I included the note about how I realize that poetry can have serious and very complex meaning without structure, but I allowed that it was very difficult. Without a basis for which readers can interpret said emotions, there is no amount of conveying that takes place. We could spend the better part of a lifetime arguing whether or not a pile of words that means nothing to everyone actually succeeded in telling its message, but I'm fine with skipping over that one.
DeleteI mentioned typical free verse in relation to this criticism. Note that I did not say all free verse. What I meant by typical was simply the amount produced en masse. When each line simply rhymes at the end of the last word, and there is no other similarities of structure in the lines, it counts as free verse. Hallmark is one such place to point fingers at here. We're not pinning up their cards in museums, or hailing the cheesy lines jotted on them as incredible, because they're simply garbage. I apologize for not making myself clearer in my post, but I do hope this cleared up any misunderstanding.