April 11, 2010

• eleven

  Earlier today I had a conversation with two friends about stories and understanding. Basically they were observing that there were certain people who seem to miss what is to them the most obvious things in stories. Of course I was one of the people who was "missing" stuff.  As a result it seems that they and I have rather completely different tastes in stories. Stories that they say "makes perfect sense" really leave me feeling frustrated and annoyed because too much is left out. I end up feeling like raging at the author or writers and shouting at them "Why don't you just explain it already!!!"

  My friends theorized that it's different ways of thinking. Different brain compositions of a sort. Some people, that is, experience things more emotionally through their senses. So musical and visual clues, clues in tone and style, and clues in symbolism and imagery speak more directly to them and their brains are able to process the information in order to fill in the gaps that the author obviously intended the reader to fill in themselves.

  In contrast, other people have a more concrete logical mindset. Things need to be related through cause and effect. When given the pieces of a puzzle they can fit them together very well to make a whole, they can even do it rapidly, but without all the pieces they can't imagine what might fit in those missing spots even if the author obviously intends the readers to bring their own experiences to bear in order to fill in those gaps. And the lack of the pieces will just annoy the hell out of them.

  My friends observed that it tends to though not always be the kinds of people who end up in Math majors and engineering type programs that tend to think in the second category. In contrast it tends to be artsy types who think more along the lines of the first category.

  Yeah that second group is definitely me. I'm much more comfortable in the world of things I can experience directly and understand fully and completely than a world of guessing and wondering. That kind of abstraction process is forever uncomfortable to me because it just feels like there's no right answer to me. So I can come up with a million guesses and they all seem equal to me. I see no reason to believe one explanation for how to fill in the gaps over another. None of them  "just feels right" to me.  Though of course my friends it's the opposite. If I propose a possible explanation they'll give me a flat look and just say "No." In their minds there's a right answer and the reasons my answers don't work are wholly obvious. 

  What's weird of course is that they agree. They come to their explanations independently but it's always the same explanation. That suggests that they are really seeing something I don't rather than just making things up out of thin air. Though for all the sense it makes to me they might as well be doing some kind of mysticism or magic in their interpretive process.

  Me, I'll just read the explanation online and think the writer is an idiot for not explicitly explaining the things I read in the piece of work itself. I can't help but part of me always thinking that that whole abstract reasoning thing is a load of make belief bull. My mind just doesn't work that way.

  Of course the sad thing is, I really WANT my brain to work more that way. As I think it would make me a better writer. Hence I try at times to read poetry and more poetic short stories just for the practice. GEnerally I end up reading these dozens of times over without having a clue what they are talking about until it is explained. And yes I know poems can have lots of interpretations and there's no real "right answer" as the writers say, but trust me, my my random guess interpretations tend to be so far off the mark that nobody else in the world sees them the way I do.

  Then again there are some very excellent writers who do live more in the world of the concrete and I'm not just talking about Journalists and historians. Fiction writers like Brandon Sanderson are definitely more concrete than others like say Jacqueline Carey or Robin Hobb or even Robert Jordan for example. But even Sanderson the more he writes the more he seems to excel at this kind of poetic abstraction process and emotional invocation.

  Me, I only ever can do it when I at the height of my depression. Everything else I write feels very stale and flat to me. I don't give the reader an opportunity to misunderstand me because I explain things is extreme detail. Ironically though the level of detail seems to lead to more misinterpretations of nearly everything I write than I would have ever thought imaginable. It's amazing how much people can manage to not read especially if something is long.

  Anyways, styles of writing and how they relate to different ways of thinking are definitely subjects worth thinking about especially for those aspiring to write regularly either for fun or for profit or to scratch that ever unscratchable itch.

  • 11:36 pm
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