one monster after another

[truepenny]

Sometimes writing, as a vocation, seems like a string of unwelcome epiphanies--one monster after another, as in the Mercer Mayer book.

I've been having trouble with short stories for some months now, maybe even as much as a year. It's as if I go to carve something, a statue of a horse or the like, and the knife--this knife that I've been using for years--twists in my grip, so that the statue comes out neither acceptable as a horse nor salvageable into a centaur. If you see what I mean.

WisCon is always good for getting the gears moving again, and this time it offered me an epiphany I didn't particularly want, namely that the trouble with my short stories these days is that they want to come at me the wrong way round. It used to be that short stories began with a situation, or a character--something, in any event, relatively concrete as airy nothings go. But now my short stories come pattering up to me and drop theme on my foot and then look up at me with bright expectant eyes, waiting for me to tell them what to do with it.

Theme is hard. I can get to theme from a story because if you just keep writing long enough, the cunning pattern-seeking human brain will kick in and show you what you're talking about. But I don't know how to get to story from a theme. I'm not interested in writing allegory or infomercials or transparent moral fables. Which leaves me floundering.

I keep telling myself that being able to articulate the problem is half the battle. Now if only I could articulate a solution.

Comments

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Puppies! You have puppies instead of short stories.

(no, I have no idea how to fix it)

Theme

[(Anonymous)]

It seems to me that theme leads to conflict. That is, the theme is usually the thing over which two or more forces clash. I bet you can put together one or more characters if you can identify the conflict - and a theme, conflict, and at least one character is very close to what's needed for a story. I don't think that using this approach will lead to an allegory, unless the writer makes his characters embody specific beliefs regarding the theme.

Benjamin

[sovay]

If it helps, I just finished "The Séance at Chisholm End" and I love it: so not only do I trust your short-story skills, I want to read more.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

As Elise would say, "Just so."

Eventually, you learn--or, I learned--to twist the story around the theme in a kind of helix.

Which is Not Easy.

[alleypat.livejournal.com]

one monster after another is the perfect description :)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should just let them simmer on the back burner until they accrete some characters and situations.

As I can't write unless I have mode, I often have to do this with things that come to me that aren't mode. I have learned over time that all I can make of the fragments without mode is frankenbeings, which are no use at all, and it's better to wait than push even if I lose some of them. Always more ideas coming along.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

would it be alright if i add you? would you consider adding me? please.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You don't have to ask permission to add me.

I'm unlikely to add you back because I don't have the time, but you're perfectly welcome in this blog.