radfrac_archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
radfrac_archive) wrote2007-02-17 10:13 am
radfrac_archive) wrote2007-02-17 10:13 am
Entry tags:
the weight of emptiness
Long time since I could sit down to post properly.
I am reading H.P. Lovecraft criticism for fictional reasons. I hadn't before encountered Fritz Leiber's wonderfully lucid explication of the science-fictional aspects of Lovecraft's horror. These have puzzled me, since, as a product of my era's mythology, I grew up thinking of the vastness of space as a mostly benign Star-Trekkian frontier.
That reminds me.
Last night I dreamed that a large transport ship was breaking down and so all of the passengers were being evacuated by various means, from group pods to single suits. It was sort of the Enterprise, or anyway, Spock was there, and it may have been he who suggested that instead of evacuating everyone willy-nilly into space, they crash-land the transport on a nearby planet. Sober sense, Mr. Spock. So they beamed down a landing party -- one at a time, for plot reasons -- who were promptly immobilized by large spore-puffing Space Flowers. These had a genus name, but I can't remember what it was.
Anyway.
Can you think of other writers who did this particular thing, talked about the horror of space, rather than falling into what I will spontaneously dub the pseudo-western or pseudo-naval subgenres? Rather than the model of frontier / air/sea warfare / some combination of the two -- others who wrote about the weight of emptiness, so to speak?
So I'm writing, and talking about it doesn't seem to be ruining it. I'm writing with great joy and excitement, and I think this is the most whole story I have ever written. The story is connected, sort of, to Lovecraft, though not to the horror of space -- more to the corporeal horror of "The Thing on the Doorstep."
I recently read Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, which contains my favorite story of his in recent years, "A Study in Emerald". I think he writes best with a strong mythology to work against, and having both Cthulu and Holmes brings out his erudition, and his mastery of reference and inflection. I read through every story, in case I felt like counting it towards a 50-books sort of thing like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chromemagpie, and to give it a fair chance. I didn't think I'd like "Monarch of the Glen", because it seemed like too much of a stretch to bring that character to that place, but the archetypal struggle, the form of victory, and its aftermath pleased me. "Talking to Girls at Parties" was good fun. I liked "Coffee Grounds" right up to the ending, which I thought weak.
This and his other collections do convince me of the usefulness of one of those writing truisms I generally find so misleading and unhelpful.
You know, like, "never use the second person" or "never use the present tense" -- what they really mean is "it's hard to do right," but this sort of thing worries people, and worry, in my experience, is not conducive to writing.
Gaiman's collections repeatedly remind me that when editors say "Don't send me impressionistic mood pieces with no plot," they have a point. Neil Gaiman, possessing some excellence at creating impression and mood, writing such pieces, still leaves me wishing he had matched them up with an event of some kind.
A lesson for us all. Or anyway me, since I was more or less hoping to frequently get away with just that sort of thing. Which leads me back to my point, which was this:
I am not the plottiest of writers. I like to describe objects and situations, and to make old friends have amusing conversations. I often end up with about 2/3 of a piece written -- exposition, characters, setting all in place, even climax and denouement -- thinking "Yes, but what actually happens?"
This story has a wholeness of action that I haven't accomplished before. Still, the pivotal point seemed flat, like old ghost stories that can't frighten you because you know their tropes too well.
The excellent Z. came over the other night, and I screwed up my courage to ask for her opinion. I described my plot as it stood, and I said, "I just can't help feeling it should be more horrible. It's supposed to be uncanny, but the climax feels both correct and insufficient. It fits the genre and the action, but it's not awful enough. Does there need to be a tentacled creature appearing from the corpse or something? That seems like bringing in too many elements."
[N.B. I was somewhat drunk and not nearly this articulate.]
"Well, what if x?" she said.
"I thought of x," I said, "But it didn't seem quite... although... if x happened this way... Hey now."
She smiled. And that was all it took to solve my dilemma -- courage, and one extremely clever friend.
I think that's the first time I've ever asked for help thinking through a plot. Historically, I hoard the story to my chest, crooning over it, even watching it die for lack of nourishment, because I'm afraid it will wither if anyone sees it.
I'm hoping to finish it this weekend, at least to complete draft stage. And then...
{rf}
I am reading H.P. Lovecraft criticism for fictional reasons. I hadn't before encountered Fritz Leiber's wonderfully lucid explication of the science-fictional aspects of Lovecraft's horror. These have puzzled me, since, as a product of my era's mythology, I grew up thinking of the vastness of space as a mostly benign Star-Trekkian frontier.
That reminds me.
Last night I dreamed that a large transport ship was breaking down and so all of the passengers were being evacuated by various means, from group pods to single suits. It was sort of the Enterprise, or anyway, Spock was there, and it may have been he who suggested that instead of evacuating everyone willy-nilly into space, they crash-land the transport on a nearby planet. Sober sense, Mr. Spock. So they beamed down a landing party -- one at a time, for plot reasons -- who were promptly immobilized by large spore-puffing Space Flowers. These had a genus name, but I can't remember what it was.
Anyway.
He... firmly attached the emotion of spectral dread to such concepts as outer space, the rim of the cosmos, alien beings, unsuspected dimensons, and the conceivable universes lying outside our own space-time continuum. [Leiber, p.51]
Can you think of other writers who did this particular thing, talked about the horror of space, rather than falling into what I will spontaneously dub the pseudo-western or pseudo-naval subgenres? Rather than the model of frontier / air/sea warfare / some combination of the two -- others who wrote about the weight of emptiness, so to speak?
So I'm writing, and talking about it doesn't seem to be ruining it. I'm writing with great joy and excitement, and I think this is the most whole story I have ever written. The story is connected, sort of, to Lovecraft, though not to the horror of space -- more to the corporeal horror of "The Thing on the Doorstep."
I recently read Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, which contains my favorite story of his in recent years, "A Study in Emerald". I think he writes best with a strong mythology to work against, and having both Cthulu and Holmes brings out his erudition, and his mastery of reference and inflection. I read through every story, in case I felt like counting it towards a 50-books sort of thing like
chromemagpie, and to give it a fair chance. I didn't think I'd like "Monarch of the Glen", because it seemed like too much of a stretch to bring that character to that place, but the archetypal struggle, the form of victory, and its aftermath pleased me. "Talking to Girls at Parties" was good fun. I liked "Coffee Grounds" right up to the ending, which I thought weak.This and his other collections do convince me of the usefulness of one of those writing truisms I generally find so misleading and unhelpful.
You know, like, "never use the second person" or "never use the present tense" -- what they really mean is "it's hard to do right," but this sort of thing worries people, and worry, in my experience, is not conducive to writing.
Gaiman's collections repeatedly remind me that when editors say "Don't send me impressionistic mood pieces with no plot," they have a point. Neil Gaiman, possessing some excellence at creating impression and mood, writing such pieces, still leaves me wishing he had matched them up with an event of some kind.
A lesson for us all. Or anyway me, since I was more or less hoping to frequently get away with just that sort of thing. Which leads me back to my point, which was this:
I am not the plottiest of writers. I like to describe objects and situations, and to make old friends have amusing conversations. I often end up with about 2/3 of a piece written -- exposition, characters, setting all in place, even climax and denouement -- thinking "Yes, but what actually happens?"
This story has a wholeness of action that I haven't accomplished before. Still, the pivotal point seemed flat, like old ghost stories that can't frighten you because you know their tropes too well.
The excellent Z. came over the other night, and I screwed up my courage to ask for her opinion. I described my plot as it stood, and I said, "I just can't help feeling it should be more horrible. It's supposed to be uncanny, but the climax feels both correct and insufficient. It fits the genre and the action, but it's not awful enough. Does there need to be a tentacled creature appearing from the corpse or something? That seems like bringing in too many elements."
[N.B. I was somewhat drunk and not nearly this articulate.]
"Well, what if x?" she said.
"I thought of x," I said, "But it didn't seem quite... although... if x happened this way... Hey now."
She smiled. And that was all it took to solve my dilemma -- courage, and one extremely clever friend.
I think that's the first time I've ever asked for help thinking through a plot. Historically, I hoard the story to my chest, crooning over it, even watching it die for lack of nourishment, because I'm afraid it will wither if anyone sees it.
I'm hoping to finish it this weekend, at least to complete draft stage. And then...
{rf}
about holding and wondering if it will live...