Writing experiment (1)
No, it’s not that time of the year again – NaNoWriMo is still a couple of months away. You have not lost time, don’t worry.
But nevertheless, as countless generations before us have already realized: practice makes perfect. And that goes for writing as well. In addition I have multiple story ideas running wild in my head and I need to get them straightened out.
Right now, I am experimenting with some rather unusual (for me) writing techniques. One of the stories that wants to be brought to (virtual) paper is somewhat hard to grasp: it revolves around two main characters, one male and one female, who have come to know each other through the internet for a long time and decide to meet 1. The rub lies in the fact that one party forgot to mention to the other the completely uninteresting fact of being famous. Like, major famous. And that makes the situation somewhat awkward and things turn out differently than expected. With a surprising end (and that’s all I am saying).
Now, in my opinion the charm of the story lies in how both characters deal with the situation and the resulting consequences. For that it is necessary to go deep into them, to look upon their most intimate thoughts and emotions. That rules out telling the story from one character’s POV because it would leave the other character a blackbox. Doing the ‘god-perspective’ thing doesn’t feel right. I tried and it feels superficial. And jumping POV’s … nah. Tried that before and I haven’t got the hang of it yet.
So, late at night two weeks ago, it suddenly came to me: online communication + fame = new media! While that may not sound too smart at first, I think that was a brilliant thought (yes, I am patting myself on the back). I’ll just tell the story by writing chapters as e-mails, chat transcripts, interview transcripts and news reports. The potential is incredible: I can go into each character’s mind, I can have other people talk about them (and at the same time I introduce more characters, making it more interesting) and I can look at the same event from multiple POV’s.
Of course, one has to be careful to make it not too segmented and keep it interesting for the reader. But I am really excited about trying out this technique and see how far it gets me. I’ve never before tried writing in the first person and it is fun. Furthermore, the e-mail format allows for more creative freedom than traditional writing styles because it has no strict formal rules.
The only thing missing now is the pressure of the daily word count NNWM put on me. :)
- I know, this might not be the most original idea, at least not since ‘I got mail’, but hey – it’s to some extend the story of my life, so there. ↩
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No no no. It is a great idea. “You’ve Got mail” was okay but the techno world has changed so much with the advent of twitter and facebook. And I think that the idea of the guy being famous, BIG famous, is a great hook. I’ve been toying with both those ideas but in two different projects with neither the fame nor the tech meeting.
If you get yourself on twitter I’m @glyphgeek. And the twitterverse is really what gave me the idea. Actually it was wishing that we could see the whole exchange between those we follow and those that follow them that gave me the idea. But I think the way you are planning to go is going to work much better than the tweetdeck view i was thinking. I’ll stick with my idea to see if I’m right about that. But I fear disappointment looming. :D
Good luck. can’t wait to see what you come up with.
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Starstuff Reply:
April 18th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Hello there again! And thanks for stopping by :)
Strangely enough, I have only registered myself with Twitter about a months ago because of a MacHeist Promo. Up to that point, I had no idea what that service does and to be honest, I still don’t see the value of it. Same with Facebook … no clue what that is good for. In my mind, it compares to MySpace and that is confusing to me as well.
As the technology develops and broadband internet becomes more common, these social networking things seem to spring up like crazy. Truth be told, I am busy enough already with the few Skype and AIM contacts I have. Not to mention multiple message boards I am active on. I always wonder how people can actually manage all their activities on Twitter and the like. At some point, I really need to find out what is so special about it. Not to use it (like I said, too little time) but just out of curiosity.
I am relieved tough that my story idea at the very least appears to be interesting. I’ve been toying with that scheme for about four years now and I have decided to split the basic idea into two stories, one of them the one mentioned above.
Another reason for taking that approach is that it allows me to drive the story forward without the necessity of covering everything that happens between points in time. I can just have a character refer to the past and drop a sentence or two about what happened previously; I don’t need long exposition. Well, at least that is the theory ;)
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