Craft Issue: Expositions

Last week, during one of my “moments” (I suck at life; I’m not good at anything; I’m a failure and will be so for the rest of my life; etc.) I began to wonder what I really learned from all the books I’ve read. I read a lot of fiction--novels, plays, short stories--and convince myself that all this reading isn’t just for fun but absolutely essential to my learning as a scholar of literature and a fiction writer. However, I feel that most of the time I’m just trying to finish whatever it is I’m reading as quickly as possible and don’t really absorb much of what I’m reading. Once in a while I would spend some time doing close-reading or discussing different literary elements in the work, but that is very rare because I am such a slow reader and taking the time to do that just makes the reading take even longer. Well, on that day I felt that all the reading I had done had amounted to nothing, that it was all a waste of time because I had gained nothing in the process. (I told you I was having one of those moments.) In an attempt to not ever feel like that again, I have decided to spend more time paying attention to the things I read.

One of the problems that I’m constantly dealing with is the fact that I feel like I’m worse of a writer than I used to be when I was younger and knew less. It didn’t make any sense and it pissed me off. I studied hard because I thought it would help me, but instead it made me feel completely clueless about my craft. In an attempt to keep myself from just ending this life once and for all, I decided to deny the fact and change it. This is my philosophy: if you don’t like anything the way it is, deny it and make it good. That is, I refuse to accept the fact that all my hard work is worthless, and will now make something out of it--something grand. So, yesterday I decided to learn--or, rather, relearn--about one of the craft issue in fiction writing, which was how to write an exposition. I must have spent some time in college pondering over this issue in class or in my own private studies, but it had been a while so it wasn’t a bad idea to return to it once again. I went over a few short stories I had recently read in my new anthology of short stories and paid attention to how the authors started their stories. All I did was observe, and I spent very little time doing it.

Gaitskill’s “Romantic Weekend”
Began by introducing one of the protagonists (there are two) and her problem: she was having an affair with a married man and she had self-esteem issue. The story is about these two people and their S/M relationship, which isn’t introduced here just yet.

Ford’s “Rock Springs”
Began with introducing the narrator and another main character in the story, as well as the journey they are on together. Then it tells us the troubles each of them is in so that we get to know them and their situations right away. In one paragraph, Ford tells us the who, what, and where of the story, which I find pretty neat.

Dybek’s “Chopin in Winter”
The first paragraph is rather short in comparison to those of the other stories I’m discussing here. It introduces two main characters in the story, neither of whom is the narrator/protagonist. The paragraph didn’t tell us much about the story, but it was probably the best way to begin the story, since the story is about the narrator’s relationships with these two characters.

Braverman’s “Tall Tale from the Mekong Delta”
The first paragraph of this storIssuey gives us one piece of information after another. It introduced the narrator, where she is in life, and the time in which the story takes place. We learn more and more about her, then about another main character. It tells us a lot about the narrator and refrains from telling us what the story is about.

Just by observing these works I feel more confident in my ability to write expositions. I think I will be spending more time paying attention to these craft issues and see how it helps me. At the least it should make me feel more secure in my knowledge of fiction writing.

"Cinnamon Skin" by Edmund White

This is my first Edmund White, and a tragically beautiful short story. It is written to seem autobiographical, but as always we should never make that assumption. Besides, there is always some degree of fabrication in all autobiographies.

The story begins with the narrator introducing himself and the people in his life. Many characters are introduced, and it seems at first like a great opening chapter of a novel. The characters are developed through small events, told in flashbacks. Later, the story turn to its main event, which is the narrator's trip to Acapulco with his father and stepmother, and turns into a story about sexual discovery.

The way the narrator sees the world helps us to see who he is. There are moments when nothing monumental happens, but so much about the character is realized through his commentary about gender roles and stems from his interactions with other characters, and sometimes through his sexual arousal caused by the sights of men he sees throughout the story. How often do writers ask themselves what important event they can come up with so that they can have a great story and develop a great character? Sometimes, when the character already exists vividly in our mind, all we have to do is to let him live and so much will be revealed. The way he sees things can show us who he is, and the things he believes in can affect the way he lives his life and the relationships he has with others.

White uses very few dialogues, yet the story moves quickly and is captivating throughout. Nobody would think to ask if there are too many or too few dialogues if there are the right amount of them. I don't think there is one amount that is appropriate for every story; these things need to come naturally. White seems to let the dialogues emerge naturally, and the voices of the main characters sound clearly to me even though they are heard so rarely.

As is clearly demonstrated in this story, White is a superb writer. Aside from being a great craftsman, he also has a poetic voice and a shameless honesty that is required in order to fill his fiction with truth. I highly recommend "Cinnamon Skin."

Keeping The Balance!

If you, like me, have a lot of interests, you probably understand how incredibly difficult it can be sometimes to keep up with all the things you have to do, and to manage your time so that you can do all those things. Currently my top priority is to study classical literature, which includes reading the titles on my GRE study list and reading one Shakespeare play every month. But it is also important for me to continue studying theories, drama, French, and sociology, as well as to keep up with my creative writing. As I have only twenty-four hours a day, and a part-time job, AND a serious addiction to television, I often find myself freaking out about all the tasks I have created for myself. Sometimes I do envy people who don't have nearly as many ambitions as I do, as their lives much be much easier. It is important to note that the things that mean the most to me are the things for which I do not get paid.

Oftentimes I discontinue some of these things so that I can finish something else. If I'm trying really hard to finish reading the novel I'm working on, it is more likely that I would simply forget to study French. But most of the times the thing I tend to sacrifice is my creative writing, possibly because I find it less important. The truth is that if I really want my writing career to take off, I need to really keep at it! Another side effect from not writing is that it throws off my balance. There are days when I find that I just cannot concentrate on my reading. When that happens, I find that if I take a few hours to work on my writing, I can go back to the reading and be able to focus on it for hours. There is a certain balance I have to keep between reading and writing, and by doing both I can really do them both well.

Another thing that really helps me to balance things out is my improvisation class. I have been taking improv for ten weeks now, and it is brilliant. I love getting up on stage and making things up, gaining confidence, challenging my mind, and hanging out with these cool people. In many ways we all find that improvisation benefits a lot of aspects of our lives. I don't know if I will ever be an improv artist and perform in front on an audience, or whether or not I want to, but I know that by working on my craft, it really helps me in the other areas in life. So far it has helped me to get ideas for my writing, to enjoy whatever play I'm reading by offering me the ability to interpret the lines in many ways, and to be more comfortable and confident in my social life.

I always find myself forgetting how important it is to keep this balance. Maybe after writing this entry, I will be able to remember.

Edgar Allan Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher"

Because I spend most of my time reading novel or play, sometimes I find it difficult to write a short story. I constantly need to read short stories in order to be able to write them. The reason, I assume, is because different formats of writing work your brain in different ways; if I only use my brain to work with the novel and play formats, I will then have no ability to write in other format. So, whenever I run into problems while writing a story, such as not being able to structure it properly, or find a way to start or execute it, it always helps to find a few short stories to read.

A friend of mine suggested that I be Edgar Allan Poe for Halloween. I don't know why, but it did make me want to read Poe's work. Long ago I bought his complete tales and poems, but had spent very little time with it. I decided to read one of his short stories. I read "The Fall of the House of Usher", which is a story about a man reuniting with his dying friend in a house where creepy things happen. I'm not really a fan of gothic stories and wasn't quite taken by the plot. But what is really marvelous about Poe's writing is his descriptions. He is a beautiful prose writer, and he writes such lush descriptions that it is sometimes easy to get lost in his writing, but if you pay close attention, it's pretty much a big plate of assorted desserts made of words. Let's take a look at a passage from it:

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

The physical descriptions help us to see the place and the objects inside it vividly. At the same time they also convey the feelings that they spark in the narrator. The vastness of the room is repeatedly emphasized to the point that we feel small and lost in the room. The dark colors that he use ("black oaken floor", "gleam of encrimsoned light") emphasize the mystery and a sense of danger. The disorderly of the place conveys its state of abandonment and sadness. I just love the way he describes the furniture: "profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered"--four adjectives that bring the picture and the emotion to life.

Sometimes you find the answers to all your problems in one story; most of the time, however, you need to read more than one. I feel like I gain a lot from reading this story, but not enough, so I will go on and read more stories. You do the same.

Reading

There are things you learn or should have learned in high school Comp. Lit. class that, instead of becoming a part of you or the reader than you are, you tend to forget. Or maybe I'm just talking about myself. Anyway, sometimes paying attention to the most "basic" things is what makes a reader a good reader. These things, which are basic because they are taught in high school, concern the construction of a work of literature. Since I'm on fire today I'm gonna talk about them now.

First of all, you know how in like every novel you read there are scenes or chapters that make you think, "Oh my god this is so boring! Get to the main story line already!" Well, that always happens to me. But when I was reading "Mockingbird" I found myself questioning, "OK, why does the family have to spend their Christmas holiday out of town with their extended family?" "Why are we introduced to Uncle Jim if he's not going to appear again through the rest of the novel?" "What's the significance of the chapter with the mad dog?" It's true, sometimes these chapters mean nothing; the authors perhaps came up with them and love them so much that they can't possibly take these chapters out. But when you read a work by somebody as brilliant as Harper Lee, these chapters do mean something. So when you consider them in relations to the character development, or the theme of the story, you find the significance, and you realize how intelligently the work is constructed. The very thing you see is, in sum, the craft.

You know how in high school or middle school we do things like mapping out the story? That's when we point out the rising action of the story, the climax, the falling action, etcetera. Well, who does that outside of class? I don't, and in most works you simply can't; it's not that straightforward. Nonetheless, it is still important to pay attention to the themes and how they are explored, the characters and what they represent, and how the message(s) of the book are conveyed. These are all craft issues; as a reader you gain a deeper understanding of the story when you pay attention to them; as a writer there is no other way to learn to write better than to pay attention to these things. At least that's what I think.


This morning I read Raymond Carver's short story called "Nobody Said Anything." Already I should be asking, "What does the title mean?" I don't want to spoil the story because I think everybody should read it, but here are some of the crafty things I find while reading the story:

-The age of the narrator is never mentioned directly. But you can guess that he's a boy who has recently reached puberty by the constant reference to his sexuality, masturbation and sexual fantasies.
-It's not perfectly clear whether his brother is older or younger than him. I thought the scene in the beginning made him seem older than the narrator. However later on the narrator encounters a boy who is supposed to be about the same age as his brother, but the narrator refers to him as a "kid."
-The themes of the story, I find, is family in relations to the follow: safety, sex, shame, fishing, and pride. I can write essay on each of these things, but I won't. At least not on here.
-The story is "a day in a life" sort of story, and it goes around in circle; the narrator starts off at home, goes out, meets a woman, goes fishing, meets a boy, fishes, and comes back home; he also deals with a fight between his mom and dad in the beginning, and comes home in the end to the same thing.

So, that's kind of like something I do every once in a while when I'm reading.

This and That

I have spent the past couple of months being completely obsessed with the theater. I wanted to start writing for the stage, so I read a lot of plays and studied everything I could about playwriting and the theater. The downside of that is that I have become unable to accomplish anything. While struggling to write my first play, it had been impossible for me to write anything else. In an attempt to fix that, I decided to get back into writing short stories again.

In order to do so, I have to start reading short stories, so I go and check out a collection of short stories from the library. After browsing through the collection and reading some of them, I become rather disappointed. There is nothing about the stories that I find innovative. They are well written, don't get me wrong, but the stories are just not interesting. It seems to me that these writers have great ability but nothing of importance to tell. It's a wonder that they have won the notable prizes that got them into the collection. One of them, for example, is about a college student who sleeps with her professor to get a better grade and to steal his money. The main character is well developed, but there just isn't much in the story. I even find some of its elements cliche, like the professor character, for example. Many writers mention that it is important to get to know what is being published these days, what is currently considered good, but I find that most of the things that I have read that are on the market has nothing to compare to the classics, which are mostly what I read. I'm not sure what is going on in the literary world today, but I do not like it.

Putting that away, I return to my collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury, who I think is one of the best writers that ever lived, especially in America. His stories always give me inspiration; they have helped me through many writer's blocks over the years. But reading and learning from the same writer after a while can also become a bit of a bore. So I decide to pick up some new collections--ones that I have heard mentioned and recommended for so long but haven't gotten a chance to get to. These are Raymond Carver's "Where I'm Calling From," Tim O'Brien's "Things They Carried," and Lorrie Moore's "Self-Help." I have read some stories from these collections, and it is time to read all of them.

I started with Carver's story entitled "Nobody Said Anything," which is marvelous and exactly what I need. There will be some sort of an analysis on the story in a later entry.

Writing and Sex

(The following is a paper I wrote for a class in response to Barbara Kingsolver's essay about writing.)

In high school I was introduced to many authors, some of whom became my favorites, and some found their way on my blacklist. Among the second category was Barbara Kingsolver, whose collection of short stories entitled Homeland is one of those books my colleagues and I still refer to from time to time as one of the most miserable material we had had to deal with in our high school years. This was why I was so surprised that Kingsolver’s article about writing entitled “A Forbidden Territory Familiar to All” turned out to be my most favorite piece in Writers on Writing.

What disappoint me about most of the articles featured in this book is that they are hardly about writing at all. Some of my favorite writers, like William Saroyan and Annie Proulx, go on and on about things I find insubstantial. When I got around to read Kingsolver’s article, I felt that I had finally found what I was hoping for. Not only is the article about writing, it is also about writing about sex, which is something with which I constantly struggle. In it Kingsolver talks about the embarrassment she feels as she tries to write about sex, thinking about her mother and friends who will be reading the work. This is something that often crosses my mind as I write my raunchy, steamy, slightly if not totally pornographic stories featuring daring themes as infidelity and promiscuity. Having been studying queer theory for several years, my limitation as far as sex (the writing of it) goes is hardly inexistent. However far I go, somebody else probably has gone much further. But what about my readers? One of these days if I could publish some of these stories I have been slaving myself over, it would be an occasion to celebrate. But what would I say when my parents ask to read the work? And what about my friends and future lovers? Will they be reading my stories and think that these all come from my experience? Will my work be taken as serious work of literature or as oversexed gay-lit targeted toward closeted teenagers looking for horny figures to identify with? Some of these questions occupy Kingsolver’s mind. The only thing that stops them from bothering me is the thought that the possibility of getting published is still very far from me, and there is no guarantee that any of my work will ever see the light of any printing press. Kingsolver’s situation, however, is different; as a famous writer, whatever she is working on is on its way to the public, and that raises the stake even higher.

Kingsolver writes the essay with a lot of humor. She describes her struggle with using thesauruses to find a way to write a good sex scene. This I find to be honorable of her; I am certain that most writers use thesauruses but only few would admit to it. Describing action is probably more difficult than mentality, and to describe something that is so ridden with cultural shame as sex is even harder. It seems that the difficulty with writing about sex lies in the way society perceive it. As Kingsolver says, “sex takes place in private, and that’s surely part of the problem” (133). That explains the embarrassing part of it. But Kingsolver’s other challenge is making it beautiful. She says, “Making it beautiful is no small trick. The language of coition has been stolen, or rather, I think, it has been divvied up like chips in a poker game among pornography, consumerism, and the medical profession” (133). But why does it have to be beautiful? The fact that there is pressure to make it beautiful shows Kingsolver’s belief that sex is more than just another daily activity like brushing one’s teeth or tying one’s shoes, when in real life sex can really be unglamorous, boring and routine. The emphasis on the grandness of sex is put on us by society, and, being products of society ourselves, writers like Kingsolver and I simply cannot help it. We want to write a beautiful sex scene that describes good sex, but doing so is difficult, not to mention the embarrassment we set ourselves up to face.

Kingsolver’s conclusion is that we—writers—have to face the beast and “find a way to tell of its terror and beauty” (135). The conditions are that we “accept an uncomfortable intimacy with our readers in the admission that, yes, we’ve both done this. We must warn our mothers before the book comes out. We must accept the economic reality that this one won’t make the core English Lit Curriculum” (135). Having had Kingsolver’s work in my curriculum, it makes me wish that this ambitiously sexy work she is writing had ended up in my curriculum. In high school Comp Lit class many of the materials dealt with rape. I recall how uncomfortable we all felt with the rapes in Michael Dorris’s Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits. Looking back, it seems that our curriculum served to make us even more ashamed and scared of sex instead of see it as a beautiful thing. The act of writing about beautiful sex itself, then, is in some way revolutionary. Many queer theorists deal with the issue of un-shaming sex, but what if sex is never seen as shameful? If our high school curriculum did not manipulate us into being ashamed of our sexuality, writers like Kingsolver and I would probably not have such a hard time writing about it. We, writers and readers, would all be able to deal with sexuality maturely at the age of eighteen or younger. Instead we live in a world full of sexual shame where writers come up with hundreds of other questions while trying to figure out one: how to write about sex?

(Kingsolver, Barbara. “A Forbidden Territory Familiar to All.” Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times. Ed. John Darnton. New York: Times Books, 2001. 130-135.)