Quentin's Weeknotes 1/18/20-1/24/20
This Week:
- M. John Harrison’s writing advice, worth quoting in full:
Start with images, not ideas. Themes, not concepts. Having an idea isn’t having something to write about: having something to write about is having something to write about. People & settings aren’t something to flesh out a story; a story is something you use to flesh out people & settings. Never favour plot. Story & narrative can be ok, but plot is like chemical farming. Closure is wrong. It is toxic. Work into a genre if you like, but from as far outside it as possible. Read as much about Hollywood formalism as you can bear, so you know what not to do. Break the structures–don’t look for new & sly twists on them. Never do clever tricks with reader expectation. Instead be honest, open and direct in your intention not to deliver the things they expect. You won’t always be successful in that, because it’s harder than it looks—after all, you used to be a reader too. Oh, & that’s the last thing. You aren’t a reader any more. You’re a writer, so don’t try to get reader kicks from the act of writing. Never tell yourself a story. That romantic relationship is over for you. From now on the satisfactions will be elsewhere.
- I finished reading Volume 2 of Scott Westerfeld’s “Spill Zone” and Jeff Vandermeer’s “Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction” The former was an excellent conclusion to the delightfully weird story, which I can best describe as if Tarkovsky’s Stalker were a young adult graphic novel. The latter I am currently taking notes on, some of which I may post here. Suffice it to say that it’s a rich and useful writing guide with lots of good advice that is enlivened by fantastical artwork, and imaginatively rendered charts and figures.
