tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post2401012285287971871..comments2023-10-24T11:43:18.859-04:00Comments on The Chaw Shop: Degree of Difficulty, pt. 2The Chawmongerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08817936739545420642noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post-35455470807848232142010-11-11T10:09:47.069-05:002010-11-11T10:09:47.069-05:00Thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking co...Thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking comments, Scott, bemyanaleptic, and John. <br /><br />@Scott: obviously I totally agree with your statement, "Langauge is more important in short fiction and that shape is at least as important as language in long fiction. I might say it's more important, because a coherent story will forgive lapses in language, but it doesn't work the other way." Well said. I'll have to read TINKERS to see if I agree about that one...<br /><br />@bemyanaleptic: I think you're onto something when you say, "I think that momentum can be developed chapter by chapter, or in excerpted parts at least, so perhaps it also involves selecting parts you have questions with to show the class." Maybe the problem with workshopping novels isn't that it can't duplicate the experience of reading novels in "real life," but that we try to make it duplicate that experience -- that we want workshop readers to be surprised by character development and plot twists, for example. When workshopping an excerpt, it might make sense for the author to say clearly, "This is a chapter that comes 1/3 of the way into the book, and introduces a character who will play X role later. Does it work?" It wouldn't allow readers some of the pleasure of discovery they'd normally feel with a book, but at least it would focus the discussion.<br /><br />@John: first, I love, love, love WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE. One of my favorite books ever. I hope you blog about it when you're done.<br /><br />Second, I've already outed myself as the real Philistine several times here on this blog, because, as you know, there is fiction I find difficult. But I want to be clear that I'm not using that term perjoratively. I guess I'm using it to mean "fiction that takes work" -- fiction where I can't race through the pages and still understand what's going on. I don't mean bad writing, although I do think it's possible for something to be both difficult and bad.<br /><br />Anyway, thank you all for reading, and I'll post again soon...The Chawmongerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08817936739545420642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post-16220145346434838462010-11-11T08:22:01.294-05:002010-11-11T08:22:01.294-05:00I don't think has almost anything to do with w...I don't think has almost anything to do with why readers go for long fiction over short. The bulk of fiction sales are to people who want entertainment. And most of these folks want the thing they enjoy to last. Even if that short story is amazing, it ends sooner. The characters they liked, the plot that was interesting, maybe even the themes touched upon, cease. An anthology or collection of short stories don't function the same as a novel; all the little ones don't add up to a sustained long one. That the short story was harder to pull together succinctly for the writer, or that it may demand more concentration, are distant seconds.<br /><br />I love the short story. Not what The New Yorker does with it, but what many have done with it. I have cravings - for a novel, for an antho, for a short story, for a science article, for a history book. <br /><br /><br />My most recent encounter with difficulty this weekend, in Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It's the dialogue gymnastics, with four or five people going on at once, no dialects and frequently not marking who is speaking, and yet you seldom need to be told who, because you get it. Rather than just being impressive on that level, she uses it to seed depth, suggestions, and build character when you aren't looking for it. That's difficult for the writer - often getting the training wheels off and still making it easy for the reader is difficult on us. I tend to respect this more than fiction that is purposefully left difficult to the reader. The difference, perhaps, between the guy who can bench five hundred pounds, and the guy who will try to force you to. I go to the other side, analyzing how they did it, projecting and empathizing on technique, feeling how hard this must have been.<br /><br />I really can't recall the last fiction I found legitimately difficult. That's part of my problem. I vary up my reading, and after neuroscience and quantum physics theories, somebody's stream of consciousness just doesn't seem hard. It either seems worthwhile or badly written. If it's clunky, if the prose is rough to the point where I'm editing it in the margins, if it's trite or redundant, if there's nothing pulling me in or making this feel worthwhile - I guess those are all challenges and degrees of difficulty. I'm not willing to ascribe any positive quality to them, though. That would make Peter Benchley's Jaws the most challenging novel I read all year, because holy crap was it terrible.<br /><br />One big exemption, though. Poetry is insanely challenging to me. No matter how much I read, I can't scan or read rhythms worth a damn. It is a talent I entirely lack. Let me tell you, without the implied music, most poetry reads like badly paragraphed prose. That's a challenge. One that has left me breathless when a poet actually does draw me into the flow.<br /><br />Guess I've exposed my Philistine nature enough for this morning. Cheers, Chandler!John Wiswellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07416044628686736927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post-85039289758364644312010-11-10T13:26:36.504-05:002010-11-10T13:26:36.504-05:00I agree that it's difficult to workshop a nove...I agree that it's difficult to workshop a novel, when it's only considered in fragments. Because the reader must judge the section based on their idea of the whole, which may or may not be accurate, or they must make guesses or grant leeway. Still, I think that momentum can be developed chapter by chapter, or in excerpted parts at least, so perhaps it also involves selecting parts you have questions with to show the class. I think many novel readers who don't read short stories read for a certain level of entertainment and escape, something to return to. Stories require a certain level of promiscuity in reading, a curiosity and a desire for variety. <br /><br />Perhaps the equivalent of reading Franzen or another popular novel is going to a slightly highbrow but still mainstream film that you feel compelled to have an opinion on. Like The Social Network, perhaps. I haven't read Franzen though, so I don't want to make judgements. I found The Corrections utterly readable--I was compelled to keep turning pages. But it didn't crawl under my skin or hijack my mind or shake up my understanding of the world, as I find the best literature does....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post-48857303459661779532010-11-09T02:09:39.510-05:002010-11-09T02:09:39.510-05:00I like that you draw this distinction between the ...I like that you draw this distinction between the language and the form (you say "shape") of the work, and I do agree that langauge is more important in short fiction and that shape is at least as important as language in long fiction. I might say it's more important, because a coherant story will forgive lapses in language, but it doesn't work the other way. That's one of my difficulties with Harding's book Tinkers; the language is beautiful, startling and new, but the shape of the narrative doesn't support all that gorgeous prose.<br /><br />Alternately, the language in a short story <i>is</i> the form. Somehow. I haven't worked that out; it just came to me.<br /><br />Invisibility. Of course.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post-36492432876842144862010-11-08T19:05:54.129-05:002010-11-08T19:05:54.129-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post-73283483329620096132010-11-01T10:43:53.831-04:002010-11-01T10:43:53.831-04:00I'd say that the difference between reading su...I'd say that the difference between reading submission-length chunks of a novel for workshop and reading a novel (as most people do) in multiple sittings is twofold. <br /><br />First, reading a novel in pieces for workshop creates an artificial pace of consumption. Very few people would naturally pick up a novel, read 20 pages, stop in the middle of a chapter, wait two weeks, and then go on to read the next 20. It's not just that this pace breaks up the work itself, but perhaps more importantly, it breaks up the reader's perception of the book as a continuous whole. Generally (when I read, at least), I find myself flipping back to earlier sections to find out when a character was first introduced, paging forward to see where the chapter ends, progressing faster when my curiosity is piqued and slowing down or even stopping when the story seems to drag. When the book is split into discrete sections and no reader has all of them at one time, those habits of reading all become impossible. And the book can then feel episodic, fragmented, as a result.<br /><br />Second, and following from this, the tendency for workshop is to evaluate each shard of narrative as it's read by the class. If readers can't get a strong grasp on the driving engines of the story's macro-plot (based on the above perception of the narrative as fragmented or episodic), they'll often try to impose some sort of arc on the pages they've been given. Or they'll start obsessing over questions of diction, POV, etc. Neither of these best serves the novel as a whole.<br /><br />I do think language and detail are more important in short stories than in novels, or at least that they matter in a different way. It took me a long time to realize this, but I've come to believe that the success or failure of a novel is at least 50% dependent on the book's *shape.* By this, I don't strictly mean the plot (which doesn't need to be prominent or even extant), but -- to speak metaphorically -- the vessel into which the language and details are poured. Obviously, short stories also have a shape. But a short story's shape can be fairly loose without the work becoming totally incomprehensible to readers. The same can't be said about novels.<br /><br />Now that you've got me thinking about all this stuff, I'm probably going to have to write another post on the subject. Thanks a lot, dude >:-(The Chawmongerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08817936739545420642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089597213803140907.post-64098288253530762872010-10-29T18:16:21.133-04:002010-10-29T18:16:21.133-04:00I've never been in one of these workshops befo...I've never been in one of these workshops before, but I'm completely sympathetic with your point about the difficulty such an environment places on novels. I don't quite get what you mean about short stories, though. I'm the first to claim that there's something telling about a culture where so many people carry around pills to Aide Concentration and Moderate the Fickle Modern Minde, but is it really true that language and detail are that much more important in short stories than in novels? And even if it were really the case (though I'm not yet convinced), why then can't novels withstand being broken up into chunks? People do just that all the time when reading longer books, so there must be something else that makes novels so much more "difficult" in workshops -- the <i> way</i> people read, for instance...?Eric Thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06094837793704960441noreply@blogger.com