I would like to make it very clear that I'm very young (just graduated to a teen) and only an amateur writer. I have recently become seriously involved in writing in preparation for my IGCSE English Language exam. Part of the exam is to be able to whip up a sufficiently creative and unique piece (on a given topic/title) in under a hour. They are not grading us as teens; they are looking for actual writing quality at a level akin to that of a professional writer.
What I'm just doing is practicing writing short stories on many different topics and themes. This way I keep my creative writing skills fresh and in good use. Also, I get to experiment with a variety of ideas/themes, effectively preparing me for tackling whatever topic the exam board might throw.
Now the examiners are looking for something fresh and mature—pieces that deal with inherently deep issues (the likes of slavery and gender inequality) in a similarly sophisticated manner. But when it comes to sensitive topics like drug addiction or prostitution, how do I write about the theme convincingly and accurately enough without coming across as the naive kid that I am?
These are things which I don't have personal experience in and cannot connect with on an intimate level, and I'm afraid no amount of literary techniques or inspired writing can mask that. Yes, I could read up on writings by people who do have that experience, but I don't believe it would help make my writing any more genuine. It simply won't be the same as writing from personal experience.
Take the theme of a teen high on drugs for example. While I do have somewhat of an idea on the effects of drugs and how they could make you feel, I do not have any real experience with anything of that sort.
Any attempts at coming up with anything decent about drug use have resulted in something like this:
I sighed when I plunged the syringe in. Bliss and bliss. And yet more bliss as the honey liquid trickled into me. I sighed once more as I let my arms ease onto the steel-cold handles. A warm, fuzzy feeling enveloped my insides.
And then it hit me, an urge that refused to let me off its crazed hold. I needed to spin, spin, and spin. My skin was prickled all over with lust as I gripped the handles and positioned my feet. So I did. I spinned around in the chair.
Once. Twice. Thrice until I lost count. It was all a blur. The whole of my office: socks all over the desk, the battered laptop on the couch, soggy chips strewn all over the rug.
My eyes fell on the curtains. A deep, clear blue against the deep, clear black of the starry sky beyond. Even the dull grey couch had worked up a texture.
It was all so much more warm and wonderful this way. So I thought, jumping down from the chair which had been quite entertaining. I dropped with a thump onto the woolly, scruffy rug, the impact crushing quite a few of the chips that had been lying about.
And that is ridiculous prose.
How do I get around my lack of knowledge on certain points and not let that affect the quality of my writing? I'm asking in general, not specifically about drug use.
Answer
Authors have to write about things they haven't experienced all the time. Just look at crime authors writing for TV or Movies: They must show characters being raped, murdered, burned alive, mugged and shot. They must show characters committing those crimes against others. They must show children being kidnapped and forced into child sex and porn rings, they must show criminals, male and female, perpetrating those crimes.
They must write about characters caught in floods and tornadoes. Abducted by aliens. Fighting a war in space. Being a master criminal. Being a ruthless hitman with a soft spot for a kid.
The authors doing this have no such experience, most have never committed a crime more serious than shoplifting a candy bar.
Heck, as an author, to be convincing, I must write from the POV of both males and females. Also, gay and straight. Also young and old. Also very evil and very good, devoutly religious to devoutly atheistic, conservative to liberal, risk takers to very cautious. If I restricted all my characters to just versions of my own self and what I have actually done I will have a very boring story, because those characters won't get into very many arguments with each other, and will always make sense to each other.
The same argument applies to actors, that must portray all these things. An actress of your own age, with no more experience than you, might have to portray a teen that, by chance, witnessed a brutal murder, and is being hunted by the killers. I doubt Julia Roberts was ever really a prostitute, I doubt the script writer of "Pretty Woman" was either. I doubt Denzel Washington has ever killed any mobsters, and I doubt the writer of "The Equalizer" has either.
A minor point: Reorient yourself. This isn't about you.
Try writing a story with characters that aren't you. Or, if that is difficult, write from the pov of a main character that is definitely not you, and reduce the character that is you to a friend, a neighbor, an observer of some kind, and don't write about her experiences.
The Major point: Describe vicarious experience.
Your solution is to watch TV and movies analytically.
Don't read (not yet), just watch and listen. The music is designed to evoke your emotions (they are good at that in most movies with 3+ stars out of 5), so is the imagery. This is the closest you can come to personal experience without getting wet. I say "analytically" because I don't want you to get immersed in the story. First, find scenes of things you have NOT experienced that seem realistic to you. Drunk scenes, consensual sex scenes, romance scenes, crime scenes, rape scenes, murder scenes, etc.
Pause the movie, note the time, rewind and watch it again. NOW describe what that character is feeling; step by step throughout the scene. Write it out, or type it out. How does the scene progress, and how does the character feel, and what is the character thinking?
This is why I say don't read, a book will be too specific in conveying these things. A film cannot be, it won't have subtitles that say "lust overwhelmed her". You have to figure that out by carefully watching the scene and coming up with your own written description of what is happening, what they are thinking, and what they are feeling. That description will be your own in your own voice. You can write that whole scene, and save it.
I can see you are an obsessive editor of your own work; take these scenes, and try to tweak them until you think your written scene is a faithful match to what you saw on the screen.
You can do that with romance, fear, grief, rage, intoxication by alcohol or drugs, being old or feeble, being mean or hateful. You can be a wife driven to plan and commit the murder of her abusive cop husband.
That is the exercise. By analyzing a film scene that strikes you as reasonably realistic, and doing the work of writing that scene, you learn the emotions that go into it, and how those emotions progress, and how they change or intensify to drive the characters through the scene, to each action that advances the scene.
There is no cheat sheet by cribbing from the book. There is no book! And this exercise, after you have done enough scenes, will also force you to write characters that are not yourself, and will teach you to write all sorts of characters doing things you would never do.
If you get stuck on a scene, then you can hit the Internet, searching for the psychology of some things (love, grief) or what exactly intoxicants like alcohol or other drugs do, and then see how those apply to the scene you are trying to duplicate. Perhaps the writers of the scene did something unrealistic for the sake of the scene; or perhaps they know more about it than you did. Not necessarily because they experienced it, but because they have done more research. For example, most writers have not experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from being in horrific war situations, but professional writers distill the public reports of many soldiers that have, and the clinical reports of psychologists describing the characteristics of PTSD, and can turn that into a "model" for how to write about PTSD realistically.
You can teach yourself, and learn vicariously. You can also, on sites like this or actual books on writing, get advice on portraying emotions, or writing various kinds scenes, like sex scenes or fight scenes. You can also get good advice from books on acting, how actors are taught to convey various emotions or states of mind.
P.S. Of course, for any underage readers of this answer, I am specifically recommending you only view content you know is fictional and acted in the form of TV and movies that you are legally permitted to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment