We walk the fine line, the tightrope between telling truth and necessary kindness for a writer willing to take this risk of exposure. I pray we got the balance right. And that we continue to get the balance right. It's a way for writers to grow, as valuable for those giving the feedback as for those who courageously allow scrutiny of their fiction. I know that I learned a great deal from listening to other viewpoints.
Nicest quote for the evening (as we brainsormed possible alternative endings to Norasiah's story): "Who wants to be subtle when you can be sick?" The story could go either way ... it's up to its author to choose - or better still, to play with alternatives and see which one fits best.
Wonder why it is thought that local writers feel the need to so often have the shock-horror twist in the end? (Or as in the case of another published local writer friend - a humourous punchline!) Where has this expectation come from?
I posted an article a month or two back by William Boyd in which he argues that what he called the "event-plot story" with it's surprise ending is somewhat ... passe.
The stereotype of the event-plot story is the "twist-in-the-tail" famously developed by O Henry but also used widely in genre stories - ghost stories (WW Jacobs, for example) and the detective story (Conan Doyle). I would say that today its contrivances make it look very dated, though Roald Dahl made something of a mark with a macabre variation on the theme, and it is also a staple of yarn-spinners such as Jeffrey Archer.Anyhow ... I found it an enjoyable and exhilarating evening. Chet and Norasiah were sporting. Leah thought she was being a grouch but I think her genuine honesty and well-formulated comments made her a real treasure. (As I say, I'm learning.) And we laughed a great deal too, of course.
17 comments:
hey, whats wrong with surprise endings? i like em! Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Agatha Christie, Stephen King (yes, yes, i do enjoy his work), Hitchcock, M. Night Shyamalan, even Pedro Almodovar.
I tend to agree with The Visitor, Sharon, about the shock-horror-twist and humorous punchlines for endings. Even this may form a writer's individual presence or style and may be developed into a fine distinctive art, that may eventually please a publisher and the right market. The writer should be able to discover newer journeys for their endings but their individuality should never be compromised.
In the hands of some writers yes ... the surprise endings work well. I love Roald Dahl for e.g. and he does this every time. But Malaysian writers (and I guess a lot of writers elsewhere) so often feel that they HAVE TO do this, it's what short story writing is about. (Saw this very clearly when I edited the collection of stories for Silverfish.)
Pehaps much of this has to do with the kinds of short stories students are exposed to in school and a lack of wider reading of short fiction.
Leah also made a good point the other night - maybe if this is what the local audience expects from a short story, you should go with it!
Truth is, there are many different ways to handle short fiction. I think the only criteria we need to follow is that it satisfies the reader ... I don't need a twist at the end to be satisfied. I want to learn something. I want a slice of someone else's life. I want vividly drawn characters and language that surprises and delights me. I've found these in some of the quietest stories. Love for example Katherine Mansfield, Raymond Carver, Bharati Mukerjee ... where got surprise endings??? My favourite story in the collection I edited, "Collateral Damage" was perhaps the quietest, "Wings" by Christine Gillespie ... I cried the first time I read it ... and the second ... . It needed no surprise ending to be entirely satisfying.
Thanks anyway for your comments ... and for stirring a little debate ...
>> maybe if this is what the local audience expects from a short story, you should go with it!
I suppose this is part of researching a market one wants to be published in. So if the Malaysian market likes shock endings, then give them shock endings, lah.
As I say, I think it quite possible that the Malaysian audience does, Chet. The story that was most popular in "Collateral Damage" was Eileen Lui's "Chewing Gum Boy" which packs quite a punch, for e.g. (won't give the ending away!). Even without that ending it would have been a great story though, because the relationship between the American journalist and the Vietnamese boy was beautifully drawn. The ending was icing on the cake.
But writers have alternatives ... there is no one right way to end a story.
Dear Sharon,
I do hope you don't mean Malaysian writers as a sweeping statement because I'm a Malaysian writer and I do my endings differently. In fact, I write a lot of things differently. But that doesn't mean I would shun the individuality or passions or idiocrynasies of my fellow writers back home. In that regard, that also doesn't make me less Malaysian.
I love twists especially when they're sharp, striking and clever. And even that counts for a certain talent. Obviously, not everyone is able to do this.
Sharon, I don't know that it's wise to lump people into categories such as 'local' or 'foreign'. You have always and always made it a point to justify yourself
when you say you are yourself a local foreigner, having lived here for 20 years. You say this all the time. Once I even read somewhere where you were talking about the English and Malaysia and you actually commented, "I'm not one of them, I'm one of you." If I can recall that reference, I'll be sure and draw your immdiate attention to it.
All these unnecessary labels that we give other writers just to make ourselves look smarter than they are. But have you written a successfully published book yourself, Sharon? Have you had anything published abroad thriving against the stiff, excruciating competition and suriving it? I'm not talking about a short story printed in a Malaysian paper or anthology where you have to buy copoies in return, to fill a sceptical publisher's pocket but something harder and more difficult, where to get something published, you don't have to take a sen out of your wallet.
The only time I hear of these kind of mismatched stereotypes, 'local' 'Malaysian but not Malaysian' or Not Malaysian but Malaysian' to judge someone's quality of work, is when I'm back home. I call it prejudice. I don't see this happening elsewhere not in such a multicultural place as Britain - perhaps they have simply become more tolerant and smarter than us. Over here, where a lot of good things start and matters for authors worldwide, everyone from different countries has their work treated as an individual piece of art and style. We are after all more alike than we think in this big universe rather than being dumped as different wholes acording to our location on a site map.
First of all, we have no local markets to speak of where fiction is concerned. I presume, you're talking about malaysia. So I hope that writers and teachers/advisers are aware that we have to write to a world class standard (unless you want your hard efforts to end up a white elephant on a musty bookshelf 100 miles radius near home) and I believe, in this area, many of us, (not all but many) have a long, long way to go.
What makes for such a success? It is constant hard work but a passionate one of reading good books and reading with a clever eyes- a proper purpose as well as for pleasure, so finely blended, the reader himself/herself cannot tell the 2 from apart. Also, colouring life with experiences, hobbies, pursuits, understanding the classics and its foundations, understanding a publisher and its very specific market; treating life as an entire enjoyable experience that would then be reflected in a writer's prose as articulate, colourful, sensual etc. And then treating the art of writing itself as it were a serious skill and career and not a daydream with little fragments now and then.
All this and tnat would eventually give a writer the real permanent results of what you were talking about -of that slice of life, cleverly drawn characters that makes for a whole entire story and the one after that and the one after that.
I've had a look at some of the webpages of one who wrote of your your critique group as if she was going to an exam. I could have told her straightaway that a little less of the mundane, a little less of the boring routine, a little more living, a living more excitement in a daily grind will itself straightaway make a difference to the writing. You can always tell when someone has lived a sheltered life from one ordinary day to the next for years and years. Another writer with a more heady lifestyle would be able to recognise this at once. Encouragement without the necessary constructive criticism would be useless and in the long run, the writer will not be thankful to you for it.
Unless you start to see Malaysian writers as having clever international possibilities and please do stop addressing us all as local, because it sounds so rude, I would continue to express a slight wariness over such critique groups no matter how 'kindly' your truths are milked out and how devoted and grateful, the 'bashful' participant. Because without a liberal tolerant attitude to the respect of a multitude of universal styles, your 'participants' will end up producing a piece of work which is what you and Leah want for yourselves and not what they could have developed individually to please an international publisher. I don't know there any any Malaysian publishers for fiction worth speaking off at this point of time so I hope that your 'local' friends know who they are learning to write for.
Susan Abraham, a Malaysian writer
Also, Sharon, I hope you're aware for your groups and classes, that the international publishing industries where they count, are hard, ruthless experts and in London, NY & Aust anyway, its agents/publishers & editors are definitely not the "namby-pamby" types.
They are steely in reaction and very hard to please. Maybe, a far cry from what you're so used to, here. Treating a student like they were little puppies, patting them on heads, saying "Good girl, " "Its going to be alright, girl", won't help. If someone is already in their 40s and cannot take a bit of necessary criticism or stills lack courage to send out a couple of paras for potential publlication, then all I will say of that person, is "Oh my God..." Because something is very wrong with that person's life.
Susan, your comment is too long!!! shorter is easier on the eyes. :)
anyway, the short story i tried unsuccessfully to send you, it has a shock ending. heh.
Dear Susan
Having attended this month's critiquing group and submitted my story for the group's scrutiny, I can tell you they were very critical of my story, but at the same time, offered suggestions on how to make it stronger. I can tell you, Sharon Bakar did not treat me like a little puppy, did not pat me on my head, and definitely did not say "Good girl" or "Its going to be alright, girl" to either Nora or me.
I hope to see you at one of our critiquing group's meetings and maybe to have a chance to read one of your stories, too.
BTW, you have a blog, right? Your comments might be better as an entry in your blog, with a link back to Sharon's post here.
Chet, you need to see things on a deeper or more dangerous level to understand what I am actually saying. You don't seem to have that intelligence to understand what I am saying? How can you even grow? Im sure you're a very nice person. I don't need to come to your group. Just reading your web pages, one can tell a lot - I did list some suggestions, on reading and filling your life with more exciting things just simple ones won't hurt. It's quite strange when someone finds a lot to say about nothing except for a common public holiday or about reading 2 books and not asking you why. Youw writing reflects to me the schoolgirlish autograph friendships like the way we wrote when we were 17 or 18. Like you, your writing needs to grow up a lot into adulthood.
OUCH!
hmm...
hey, how can i join this "critiquing group"? whats the criteria?
what kind of fiction do you guys write? are frivolous fright stories like mine allowed?
The Visitor would like to visit.
I'm so scared now, maybe I'm gonna stop writing for life.
chet: :D quit now while you can still escape with your life!!!
Sorry, I meant start writing for life.
Goodness! Could not believe how much had been going on in my little blog while I was snoozing away on a cusion downstairs with Lara Croft on the TV.
Susan ... Of course you are a Malaysian writer ... and I count myself in too. I was making a sweeping generalisation, but one supported by my reading and editing experience.
I stirred up controversy here and it's no bad thing .... BUT ... let's all be as nice and supportive to each other in my little corner of the world as possible because really, underneath, we all want the same things ... acceptance, friendship ... and bloody great writing that we can all be proud of as writers and readers.
Critiquing is "tough love" and we did good last night (just as we did the previous time and the time before that ...). Am very optimisitic that we have it within us to get there.
Where there will be am not so sure. For me the local market is my main target.
Visitor - if you are serious about writing for publication, then come along and see if we're what you want. We will meet again last Friday of Feb ... will confirm details later.
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