Deep Dives & Realism

A little while ago, I put down “The Guest Cat” by Takashi Hiraide, which I was reading, and asked myself: What does Hiraide do particularly well?

“The Guest Cat”, if you don’t know it, is a lovely, quiet book, originally written in Japanese, the cover of which was so bedazzled with reviewer’s flattery that I actually did my best not to read it. It’s like those youtube videoes that have in their title “you won’t be able to stop laughing”.

But I’d been wanting to read it for a long time, and once I was able to push away all the insisting voices shouting at me how wonderful it was, I did find that I liked it. But then, this isn’t a review. This is just me talking about something I think Hiraide does well in it.

The characters in “The Guest Cat” are few, and provided with hardly any backstory at all. They just are. A married couple. How they met was perhaps mentioned with five words. No description of their appearance. And the story is told from a vantage point sometime in the future, which makes the way memory works influence the way the story is told. Rather than giving an overload of detail, as one might when describing a character presently (or in the historical present) in a specific room, this story is told from memory. Several times, phrases such as “as I remember it” come up, and most of the story takes place in little episodes, where the things that haven’t stuck to the narrator’s memory,  have been omitted.

All the same, the book is rich with specific detail and at times, it dives deep into this or that topic. This struck me as especially significant to the overall impact of the story.

These little “deep dives” include passages on, to name three examples: the story of the building where most of the story takes place, the intricacies of the current housing market in Japan (where the story takes place), and in a particular, unusual form of painting. Now why is this important?

I think, with a subdued, minimalist writing style, it is easy to go too far, thus ending up with a story that is not so much “gentle strokes” as it is too brittle to fly .Mind you, the minimalism is brilliant, thanks in part to the specific details. In a way, I think it is a kind of minimalism that things are specific – because if they really happened, as is what you’re asking the reader to believe, why go through the trouble of generalizing? For the actual narrator, it would be just as easy to say that the cat ate dried mackerels, or whatever it was, than, vaguely, “food”.

Anyway, moving on to the deep dives. They provide, I think, necessary ballast and realism, providing counter-measures when the reader is at risk of becoming lost or distracted, either because the topic/situation/setting/place the narrator is discussing or finding himself in, is too unfamiliar and vague. After all, even a stylistically elegant, aloof reference can risk giving the impression that the writer doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.

Maybe the main reason why this occurs to me, is because I’ve done just that. Constantly delving into the exciting and unknown with my stories, I often found myself out of my depth when it came to my ability to pull it off convincingly. I could not convincingly write about the specifics (since they were unknown to me) nor about the generics (since it became obvious that I was just trying to avoid something I didn’t know anything about; this was especially evident in dialogue).

The crucial point is this: You have to be pretty amazing at this writing thing, to write a story well, which contains major plot elements which you know nothing about, have no personal experience with and/or have not researched. You may get away with it at times, but especially in story told in a minimalist writing style, you’ll occasionally have to do deep dives.

Some reasons why, that I can think of:

A, to create interest. A story which only contains elements I’m thoroughly familiar with, won’t interest me. There has to be something interesting. A place, a concept, an idea, a context. Preferably more. And to introduce something unfamiliar to the reader, you simply have to take a bit more than half a sentence.

B, to create realism. Rather than risk being lost of confused by the unfamiliar element, you are made to understand, and so you follow along further into the world of the story, more than before since you have now taken steps away from your own familiar world, and dived into the world of the story, which has other elements as well as those you’re familiar with.

C, to build trust. When the reader discovers that the writer has done his job thoroughly in specific, carefully chosen deep dives, he or she will, I suspect, be willing to suspend disbelief in a different way from that point onwers. The writer may then approach other topics and barely explain them at all, even if they too are confusing, because the reader now won’t think “oh, he’s trying to cover up that he doesn’t know too much about this” (like I would if reading a shortstory about a lawyer, written by a teenager), but rather might think “the narrator for some reason doesn’t find this worth explaining too much”, allowing that to inform his or her view of the narrator’s chracter, or something like that.

That’s all for now. Musings and thoughts about something I thought Takashi Hiraide, writer of “The Guest Cat”, does well.

If you haven’t read the book yet, then please do. And if you are passionate about the book industry, please pay actual money for it. If you, like me, wish the book industry was doing better – then put your money where your mouth is.

All the best,

Randi

Rats (behind the scenes)

I posted the short story Rats a little while back, and now I’d like to share some of the “behind the scenes” stuff behind it. My motivation for doing this is because I find it interesting, and so maybe you will too, and maybe we can inspire each other.

Rats is a short story responding to the prompt “you are the victim of injustice” on TheProse.com, where I originally posted the story. Not for the first time, I was inspired by the amazing Kazuo Ishiguro, and specifially, by the notion of approaching the concept an alternative world a little bit differently.

So that was the first impulse, or piece of inspiration, if you like.

The second was a video I’ve seen where the experience of a refugee child is portrayed using a white child actress, thereby brilliantly confronting the idea of “us” and “them”, forcing Westerners to take in a) that all humans are alike, and b) that it could so easily have been us. The world could have looked different. Indeed, the world might look different in the future.

This idea fascinated me. It may not surprise you to hear that I support the statement “Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.”

And so I decided to go with the idea that the East grows to become the new super power, whereas the West diminishes and becomes poor, factories now being built in the West just like right now, they are in the East, because that’s where cheap labour is.

There is also a historical reference within Rats, namely the factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh in 2013. I have visited Bangladesh once, and met the people there, and I have Bangla friends. They might as well have been Westerners, in some senses, but they live in a country which is extremely poor, which has an incredibly corrupt government, and which is exploited by international organizations. A large number of people lost their lives or were fatally wounded in that building collapse. But who talks about it now? And though “conscious fashion” is a growing trend I wholeheartedly support, it remains true that most people go shopping without it even crossing their minds who made these clothes, and whether they were exploited, or what we can do to better their working conditions and pay.

I am by no means a very structured writer who has a strict plan and writes from the beginning to the end making no detours. Indeed, I am a very messy writer who constantly shuffles things about and tweaks them, thinking of stories as pieces of clay that I can mould into whatever shape I like. What I’ve been talking about before, then, is not so much the short story itself, but the impulses behind the idea. In summary: they are these three:

• The idea of approaching an alternative world differently
• The refugee child video campaign challenging the “them/us” idea
• The factory collpase in Bangladesh i 2013

Now we get to the short story, about which I don’t have that much to say. I wrote it quickly – those of you who are writers will know that some stories seem to write themselves.

The factory collapse in Rats happen right by the Thames in London, which was my attempt at turning things on their head, enganging with the idea “them” and “us”, by actually swapping the geographical locations and cultures that provided the setting for the factory collapse. But I didn’t want to linger on this for too long. Inspired by Ishiguro, I wanted the world of the story to simply be, and to focus on what was happening with my characters and in their lives – as they experienced it, not as you or I would.

The protagonist is a regular woman, in most ways. A Londoner recognizable in some ways, but whose world is in many aspects strikingly different from the way we know it. When catastrophe happens, she becames the newspaper cover girl, the face of the disaster, who has to deal with exactly the same problems as we do, in the real world, except from an opposite point of view.

She wants and desires change, but history’s message is not encouraging, and she fears that the Westerner’s roles as “rats” will mean that the disaster will soon be forgotten in the East. But in the woman’s own life, the disaster will in all probability cripple the entire family, because the media and the wealthy people of the world, only care for as long as their attention span lasts.

I wonder if some people might accuse me of writing for the sake of a “moral message”. Actually, I don’t, certainly not on purpose. I think my inclination is to attempt to get people to think more, and to step out of their own shoes and into somebody else’s.

Movie of the Day

About ten years ago, I invented a creative writing exercise called “Movie of the Day”.

Well, I say “invented”. Really, I don’t remember quite how it started, and I dare say there are many variations of this exercise round and about. What I remember is why it started: with the fear of running out of ideas, or forgetting how to make up stories. Or, more precisely, fear of ever becoming intimidated at the prospect of starting a new story.

My creative writing exercise is not intended to produce great things. I think that’s important to stress, because the pressure we put on ourselves to create amazing things can become so much we don’t even start. This exercise, then, is simply intended to keep the imagination at work, making you actively engaging in creating a story.

I’m a picky movie-watcher known to walk out from family movie nights – for the simple reason that some idea had popped into my mind, that interested me much more than the movie. Numerous times I’d be scanning the shelves of DVD’s in my parents’ house (how sad to think the era of DVD’s might be fast approaching an end), finding nothing at all that I wanted to watch. And that, I think, is where this exercise really started – as I asked myself: What are the ingredients of a movie I would want to watch?

In periods, I’d do this once a day, minimum. I’d open my notebook, and write down any and all elements I’d like to see in a movie.

An example of a page like this would be:

Old china cutlery. Loft. Dusty caught in sunlight. Raspy voice. Maybe someone who’s lost their voice (why would that matter? why is her voice important.) No squeaky clean, unrealistic apartments – mess, life, the oddness of the ordinary. The real world-ish, but not quite. Something’s off. What could that be? Also: Drums. A really good, riveting beat, like enormous drums.

And then I’d work from there.

Another way I do it is I pick five interesting images with no obvious correlation, and force myself to somehow create a story using those elements.

Or I’d draw.

I’ve always drawn freehand. Before I ever fell in love with words, I loved storytelling through imagery. My gateway into loving stories was actually cartoons drawn by old masters, such as Hal Foster and André Franquin. I’ve always drawn people, wondering who they are and what their stories are, approaching it a bit like people-watching, really.

I might be writing into an empty void right now, but I hope that with time, more and more writers and story-lovers will happen upon my little corner of the internet. But anyway, I drew this drawing in order for others to participate in exactly what I have just described: to make up a new story.

Within this piece of art, there are numerous elements for you to explain, explore, and piece together. There is the three girls. Who are they? Where are they from and what is their background? Have they known each other for a long time? What has happened to them? Where are they? Are they far from home, or close? What’s going on outside the frames of this picture? What are they talking about? Do they agree or disagree with one another?

And please, please let me know in the comments what you come up with – I’d love to know.

On a final note: Personally, I don’t know what this drawing really portrays. I don’t know if it’s a beginning, middle or end, and there is no “right answer” here. But I definitely have a skeleton of a story that has started to take shape.

The Panther & the Almond Tree

About a year ago, I came across a fantastic podcast called “A Writer’s Life”. I would recommend it to any serious writer, especially if you have a sarcastic sense of humour and don’t mind being offended at times. This podcast is actually so good I’ve listened to several of the episodes twice, some even three times, and I’ve actually cried with laughter listening to podcast host Dan Black’s fantastic rants and ramblings.

One of the things I have to thank Dan Black for, was that he did something to rekindle my interest in the classics. I’ve struggled for a long time with overcoming the notion “old books are boring”, because for so many of them, that’s absolutely not the case. Besides, as I’ve matured and gotten a bit older, my own tastes have changed to, and I’ve grown used to styles that I found too dry when I was fourteen.

The list of classical authors I had never read, goes on for miles. Even the most famous ones I had barely touched, certainly not since reading simplified excerpts at school. Authors like Dickens, Tolstoy, Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway. A favourite of Dan Black’s was Gabriel García Márquez.

And so it was with great joy that I, a couple of months ago, discovered my parents actually owned a García Márquez novel, namely the famed “Love in the Time of Cholera” (“El amor en los tiempos del cólera”) from 1985.

Life got a bit busy after that, as life does, but now I’ve finished it, and oh my. What a wordsmith.

We’re all unique, of course, and we prefer different things. I have a distinct weakness for rich details and imagery, and striking metaphors, such as the quote in the post “wounded panther”, which uses exactly this as a most striking metaphor. It’s used nowhere else in the book, and yet it is so clear, so striking, exactly what is meant. I went around for days after reading that line, chewing on the words, tasting them.

Oh, the beauty. Oh, that I might learn to write like that. Oh, that more people would strive to write like that, employing precise and original imagery to convey their meaning – not getting caught up in cliches, nor in sugary “literary” language which is so caught up in being literary, that it becomes exhausting or even boring to read. (Will I be mauled by trolls for saying something like that? Oh, come on. We’re writers. We can we should we must do better!)

I did wonder for a while what to draw for this post. I realized that drawing a panther here would work against the very thing that I think the metaphor does so brilliantly – that that thing is something which really can’t be done with imagery. Metaphores are a treasure of writing and storytelling, communicating on a different level than lines drawn with a pencil. So I drew some blossoming almond tree branches; the almond tree being another, but much more concrete, image in the book.
PS: The last episode of “A Writer’s Life” was put up on November 11th, 2015, but nonetheless, the 34 that are up are amazing. You can find them here: http://awlshow.com/ or wherever you get your podcasts (probably).