Writerly and readerly post
Aug. 11th, 2009 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amerginaFirst things: I'm 166/596 on my thesis revision. I've hacked off about 5000 words. It feels great. I'm really liking the process of uncovering the story nearly as much as I liked discovering it.
Second: Been thinking of a sequel or sequels. Need to ponder more.
Third: Desperately need to work on my 12 and 25 word pitches. People at Pennsic kept asking me what my book was about and I could not tell them. Because Lo! I am Lame. And not gold and glittery.
Fourth: Read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. As part of the Genre Reading course I'm taking, I had to write up two journal essays about it. I'm going to stick them here under cuts.
Without a doubt, spoilers.
Story framing: Seducing the reader via two narrative angles
In Perdido Street Station, China Mieville uses two separate narrative techniques to bring us into the world of New Crobuzon. Each has a purpose--one allows us to explore the city with a non-native and to identify with him, and the other forces us to figure this strange world out on our own.
Perdido Street Station begins as a very close first person narration from Yagharek's point of view as he enters the city. It is part travelogue, part the start of a quest and it is very personal. But as the script of the text is italics, we know right away that this is not the form the whole novel will take. It allows us a glimpse of this new place from the eyes of someone--just like us--who has never been there before.
The narrative then shifts to third person. While Mieville does drop into a close third person at times, he also does not limit his viewpoint to just the main characters--which seems to buck the recent genre trend of following only a handful of the cast. Mieville employs multiple points of view as a way of immersing us into the city, often without any other explanation than what the character is thinking at the moment. We are forced to decipher much of the city ourselves. Information is kept away, hints given, but not fully explained. Some things, like the Ribs, remain a mystery, even to the characters.
The use of viewpoint from many angles, and from the strange angle of "non-human" things such as the slake-moths, reminds me of more literary works that also lead the reader straight into a world without much explanation--such as "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk. In Pamuk's case, the alien world is the culture of Ottoman miniaturists at the end of the 16th century in Istanbul Turkey, just as perspective painting from Western Europe enters their lives.
Mieville's world is just as bizarre to the reader. It's not real in the same sense that Pamuk's world is (as 1591 Istanbul existed), but it is just as unfamiliar. And he uses the same technique to show his world--a variety of points of view, from the main characters to minor, to beings that do not share the same consciousness as us. (In Pamuk's case, his narration includes the perspective, of among other thing, a dog and a coin.)
By showing New Crobuzon from multiple angles, we see the totality of the city, just as we see the totality of a different world and culture in literary fiction set in a place other than our own.
Mieville, however, does not leave us completely submerged in New Crobuzon. He frames each section of the novel with Yagharek's first person narration. These sections serve two purposes. They give the reader a very close insight into Yagharek, his impressions, his hopes and fears. It is one of the only times we are allowed this close of an insight. While we see him often in the main part of the novel, we are more often told of him from the impressions other characters have of him than from his own point of view. Much of what we learn of him is from his first person narrative.
The other purpose Yagharek's first person narration serves is to provide a guide for the reader into the city. I do not that that it is without thought that these sections are written from the point of view of the only main character who is not a native of New Crobuzon.
After being immersed in the world of New Crobuzon for chapters and chapters with all its color and diversity and strangeness, these--almost quiet--sections of narrative allow us to come up for air. They provide the outsider's view: something akin to our own perspective. It allows us, from time to time, to have a tour guide, a fellow traveler. We're drawn in, again and again, to his story.
By employing both close first person and multiple limited third person narratives, Mieville seduces the reader into his book, first by drawing us in, and then by repeatedly immersing us into the city.
Of MICE and Moths
In both "How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction" and "Characters & Viewpoint," Orson Scott Card delves into a classification system for types stories that he called the MICE quotient. Bare bones, it is this:
Milieu--Stories that focus on the world. In a pure milieu story, the author gets the character to the place the story is about, and then devises reasons for the character to move about in that world, showing all the physical and social details of the world, then brings the character home. Often the character is someone "like" the reader--so that the reader can identify with the character.
Idea--A problem or question is posed at the beginning and solved or answered at the end. This is the classic mystery story. The story revolves around the character attempting to solve the problem/question they encounter at the beginning, and the story ends when the mystery is solved.
Character--The character story is about a character trying to change his life. It begins at a point where the character finds the present situation intolerable and sets about to change it. It ends when the character succeeds in changing, willingly returns to the old life, or falls into despair.
Event--Something has happened that has pulled the world out of order--imbalance, injustice, decay, etc. The story revolved around an attempt to restore the old order or establish a new one.
Now, Mr. Card does explain that most stories carry facets of all four types, but generally you can narrow a story down to one that is the majority of the story. The story types affect the structure of the tale. An idea story has a different arc than a character story. Characters in milieu stories can be more stereotypes of characters in that world than in character stories, where the character must be fully fleshed out in order to go through change.
I think one of the issues, from a reader standpoint, with PSS is that it attempts to equally use several of these story types. When the novel opens, we are introduced to Yagharek, who has reached that intolerable moment and has set about to change his life--that is, we are handed a character story.
Except that it is in italics. This is kind of writer short-hand for "Hi! I'm going to pull the rug out from under you and this isn't the real set up for the story!"
We are then dropped head first into New Crobuzon and start to get a tour of the city from its strange inhabitants--we are handed a milieu story.
When Yag re-enters the story, we see his problem from Isaac's point of view and it becomes something of an idea story--how to give flight back to Yag.
Then we end up with the slake-moths tearing apart the fabric of the world--pulling the world out of imbalance--and we have an event story. (And this is the story we see portrayed on the back cover of the paperback.)
It's no wonder the reader is confused. It's not that the writer breaks the contract with the reader, it's that the writer, like a con-man, continually redefines the contract. And perhaps it is this constant redefinition that some readers find new and innovative. We're kept on our toes. The book demands our attention, our focus.
Mieville does wrap up a few of these story types:
The character story of Yagharek does have an end. He willingly decided to pluck his feathers and live as a man. He did have a choice in the matter--he could have gone after Isaac or found another to try to give him flight, but in the end, he decided that was no longer his goal. It perhaps is not the hope-filled ending we'd like, but it is an ending that fulfills the contract of the character story
The event story of the slake-moths is completed. The moths are vanquished, and the city returns to normal. We might not like the normal it returned to, but that part of the contract was fulfilled.
Even the idea story is fulfilled to some extent--Isaac manages his crisis energy generator. Granted, it's not for the original purpose--to give Yag flight--but still, that question is answered.
Even in the milieu story, the character goes home. The oddity is that Yag does not return to his own world, but to the world that has become his own--the very milieu that the story is about.
But this overwhelming amount of types of storytelling is very much like Mr. Motley in PSS. It's ugly and hard, and yet also fascinating. I think that's why so many people have a strong opinion of the novel. It either is a thing of horrifying beauty, so different and fresh or it's just a incomprehensible thing, cobbled together.
My "did I like it or not" review of PSS is over here at Goodreads.
Fifth: I had had had to read Cast in Silence by Michelle Sagara before I started the next genre read book. Swallowed it whole in two days. Loved it. Except for the grimaces. My fangirl review is here at Goodreads, too. I CANNOT wait for the next book. Well, I can, because I know (now) how hard it is to churn one out.
Sixth: Started reading Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Great book so far. But I'm way behind on posting about it. I need to do that tomorrow.
Second: Been thinking of a sequel or sequels. Need to ponder more.
Third: Desperately need to work on my 12 and 25 word pitches. People at Pennsic kept asking me what my book was about and I could not tell them. Because Lo! I am Lame. And not gold and glittery.
Fourth: Read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. As part of the Genre Reading course I'm taking, I had to write up two journal essays about it. I'm going to stick them here under cuts.
Without a doubt, spoilers.
Story framing: Seducing the reader via two narrative angles
In Perdido Street Station, China Mieville uses two separate narrative techniques to bring us into the world of New Crobuzon. Each has a purpose--one allows us to explore the city with a non-native and to identify with him, and the other forces us to figure this strange world out on our own.
Perdido Street Station begins as a very close first person narration from Yagharek's point of view as he enters the city. It is part travelogue, part the start of a quest and it is very personal. But as the script of the text is italics, we know right away that this is not the form the whole novel will take. It allows us a glimpse of this new place from the eyes of someone--just like us--who has never been there before.
The narrative then shifts to third person. While Mieville does drop into a close third person at times, he also does not limit his viewpoint to just the main characters--which seems to buck the recent genre trend of following only a handful of the cast. Mieville employs multiple points of view as a way of immersing us into the city, often without any other explanation than what the character is thinking at the moment. We are forced to decipher much of the city ourselves. Information is kept away, hints given, but not fully explained. Some things, like the Ribs, remain a mystery, even to the characters.
The use of viewpoint from many angles, and from the strange angle of "non-human" things such as the slake-moths, reminds me of more literary works that also lead the reader straight into a world without much explanation--such as "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk. In Pamuk's case, the alien world is the culture of Ottoman miniaturists at the end of the 16th century in Istanbul Turkey, just as perspective painting from Western Europe enters their lives.
Mieville's world is just as bizarre to the reader. It's not real in the same sense that Pamuk's world is (as 1591 Istanbul existed), but it is just as unfamiliar. And he uses the same technique to show his world--a variety of points of view, from the main characters to minor, to beings that do not share the same consciousness as us. (In Pamuk's case, his narration includes the perspective, of among other thing, a dog and a coin.)
By showing New Crobuzon from multiple angles, we see the totality of the city, just as we see the totality of a different world and culture in literary fiction set in a place other than our own.
Mieville, however, does not leave us completely submerged in New Crobuzon. He frames each section of the novel with Yagharek's first person narration. These sections serve two purposes. They give the reader a very close insight into Yagharek, his impressions, his hopes and fears. It is one of the only times we are allowed this close of an insight. While we see him often in the main part of the novel, we are more often told of him from the impressions other characters have of him than from his own point of view. Much of what we learn of him is from his first person narrative.
The other purpose Yagharek's first person narration serves is to provide a guide for the reader into the city. I do not that that it is without thought that these sections are written from the point of view of the only main character who is not a native of New Crobuzon.
After being immersed in the world of New Crobuzon for chapters and chapters with all its color and diversity and strangeness, these--almost quiet--sections of narrative allow us to come up for air. They provide the outsider's view: something akin to our own perspective. It allows us, from time to time, to have a tour guide, a fellow traveler. We're drawn in, again and again, to his story.
By employing both close first person and multiple limited third person narratives, Mieville seduces the reader into his book, first by drawing us in, and then by repeatedly immersing us into the city.
Of MICE and Moths
In both "How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction" and "Characters & Viewpoint," Orson Scott Card delves into a classification system for types stories that he called the MICE quotient. Bare bones, it is this:
Milieu--Stories that focus on the world. In a pure milieu story, the author gets the character to the place the story is about, and then devises reasons for the character to move about in that world, showing all the physical and social details of the world, then brings the character home. Often the character is someone "like" the reader--so that the reader can identify with the character.
Idea--A problem or question is posed at the beginning and solved or answered at the end. This is the classic mystery story. The story revolves around the character attempting to solve the problem/question they encounter at the beginning, and the story ends when the mystery is solved.
Character--The character story is about a character trying to change his life. It begins at a point where the character finds the present situation intolerable and sets about to change it. It ends when the character succeeds in changing, willingly returns to the old life, or falls into despair.
Event--Something has happened that has pulled the world out of order--imbalance, injustice, decay, etc. The story revolved around an attempt to restore the old order or establish a new one.
Now, Mr. Card does explain that most stories carry facets of all four types, but generally you can narrow a story down to one that is the majority of the story. The story types affect the structure of the tale. An idea story has a different arc than a character story. Characters in milieu stories can be more stereotypes of characters in that world than in character stories, where the character must be fully fleshed out in order to go through change.
I think one of the issues, from a reader standpoint, with PSS is that it attempts to equally use several of these story types. When the novel opens, we are introduced to Yagharek, who has reached that intolerable moment and has set about to change his life--that is, we are handed a character story.
Except that it is in italics. This is kind of writer short-hand for "Hi! I'm going to pull the rug out from under you and this isn't the real set up for the story!"
We are then dropped head first into New Crobuzon and start to get a tour of the city from its strange inhabitants--we are handed a milieu story.
When Yag re-enters the story, we see his problem from Isaac's point of view and it becomes something of an idea story--how to give flight back to Yag.
Then we end up with the slake-moths tearing apart the fabric of the world--pulling the world out of imbalance--and we have an event story. (And this is the story we see portrayed on the back cover of the paperback.)
It's no wonder the reader is confused. It's not that the writer breaks the contract with the reader, it's that the writer, like a con-man, continually redefines the contract. And perhaps it is this constant redefinition that some readers find new and innovative. We're kept on our toes. The book demands our attention, our focus.
Mieville does wrap up a few of these story types:
The character story of Yagharek does have an end. He willingly decided to pluck his feathers and live as a man. He did have a choice in the matter--he could have gone after Isaac or found another to try to give him flight, but in the end, he decided that was no longer his goal. It perhaps is not the hope-filled ending we'd like, but it is an ending that fulfills the contract of the character story
The event story of the slake-moths is completed. The moths are vanquished, and the city returns to normal. We might not like the normal it returned to, but that part of the contract was fulfilled.
Even the idea story is fulfilled to some extent--Isaac manages his crisis energy generator. Granted, it's not for the original purpose--to give Yag flight--but still, that question is answered.
Even in the milieu story, the character goes home. The oddity is that Yag does not return to his own world, but to the world that has become his own--the very milieu that the story is about.
But this overwhelming amount of types of storytelling is very much like Mr. Motley in PSS. It's ugly and hard, and yet also fascinating. I think that's why so many people have a strong opinion of the novel. It either is a thing of horrifying beauty, so different and fresh or it's just a incomprehensible thing, cobbled together.
My "did I like it or not" review of PSS is over here at Goodreads.
Fifth: I had had had to read Cast in Silence by Michelle Sagara before I started the next genre read book. Swallowed it whole in two days. Loved it. Except for the grimaces. My fangirl review is here at Goodreads, too. I CANNOT wait for the next book. Well, I can, because I know (now) how hard it is to churn one out.
Sixth: Started reading Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Great book so far. But I'm way behind on posting about it. I need to do that tomorrow.
