CRW3930 - Writer's Choice

I ended up dropping the Poetics class. The reading load was more than I could handle (about equal to all three classes last semester). I tried. I valiantly read through Aristotle until the drop deadline, but not fast enough.

So I chose to drop the class.

How often do we as writers make choices? How often do we realize we're making choices? Do we recognize the consequences of our choices?

I decided to refamiliarize myself with some of the ideas Orson Scott Card presented in his book, Characters & Viewpoint. My collection of writing "how-to" books numbers six, including the three Ari recommended for this course. I bought Card's book (long ago) because it was about a subject I wanted to explore and because Card is one of the best modern SF/F authors I've ever read. (Ender's Game and the short story version of "Lost Boys" from Maps in a Mirror. Read them.)

I've read the book a couple of times before, so I dove into deep end, looking at voice and first person because those are elements that are important to the story I'm currently writing. What struck me was, Card constantly talks about pros and cons and making choices.

For example, Card discusses choosing person for the narrator and suggests first and third as the most common. Then he tells about a story one of his students wrote in third person plural that was "very effective." Writer's choice.

He discusses the dreaded "showing vs. telling" and gives an example of a professor's spewing a litany of complaints about another professor, ending with, "But I didn't kill him." Then Card presents a scene where the annoying professor appears in the complaining professor's office, which also ends with "But I didn't kill him." One is showing. One is telling. One lets the reader know that the complaining professor's antipathy is (in his mind, at least) well founded. The other gives the reader only one example of the annoying professor's offenses, but makes him more memorable as a person. Card notes other factors like pacing, tone, where this fits in the story, etc that may affect which makes more sense. Writer's choice.

Card also gives an example of a choice he made in a particular novel that he chose to unmake because the resulting novel was too subtle. Still writer's choice.

Basically Card says that anything goes as long as the writer realizes he is making a choice and the consequences of that choice and uses or compensates for those consequences. Of course, if no one anywhere wants to read a writer's work because his choices make it inaccessible... Well, hopefully he likes reading his own writing.

He often focuses on audience. Does this choice narrow your audience? Does it shift the audience from one group to another? If the audience composition changes, you may need to revise other parts of your story to cater to the new audience. Do you know which parts? If you want to keep your old audience (or lose less of it), you may need to take specific steps to keep them. Do you know what techniques might work? This sounds a lot like marketing demographics, which makes sense if you're writing to be rich and famous.

Card's discussion of choices seems to tie in well with things I hear Ari saying about choosing what we take out of the workshop into our writing and his refusal to insist on specific writing topics.

Next time maybe I'll discuss some of the actual mechanics Card presents, like the "one name per character" rule (my favorite soapbox).