As ever, timely , focussing my fluctuating brain towards deciding which of my characters can best provide, by best chosen arrival, "a dramatisation of how these energies might be controlled and given shape"
Brilliant article, Emma. It's something you so often want to do, or I should say, something I so often want to do, especially to avoid a soggy middle of the story. You've articulated here, more clearly than I've ever seen, what can make the disruptive event work in a story. I'm going right away to study the occasions I've called on a tooled-up auntie in my present manuscript and check that all of your success points are covered.
Thank you, Julian. I confess I'd never really thought about it all that much, till I met the aunt comment, and connected it with Chandler, and then Wodehouse. Here's to tooled-up aunties!
I saw your question the other day about aunts and did wonder where it was going. It rang a bell with me too that I'd seen that recently but I couldn't remember where either.
I love the way a thread can come together from disparate things in our heads. What you just described, going from reading about the auntie factor to thinking of Chandler to trying to work out where aunts came in and coming up with Wodehouse, it feels like this is how creativity always takes shape, to me anyway. Maybe there are not so much new ideas as new connections. (I should get my coat now before somebody accuses me of smoking one of those funny cigarettes).
Well, the very definition of creative work is taking two (or more) existing things or ideas, and creating something from them which didn't exist before - and now it does. It's certainly where most forms of intellectual as well as creative excitement come from in my case. And it's one of the reason interdisciplinary studies are such fun: seeing connections between things which are usually siloed separately from each other..
As ever, timely , focussing my fluctuating brain towards deciding which of my characters can best provide, by best chosen arrival, "a dramatisation of how these energies might be controlled and given shape"
So glad it's useful, Sandra. That essay by Colm Toibin is so thought-provoking. He IS a good critic!
Brilliant article, Emma. It's something you so often want to do, or I should say, something I so often want to do, especially to avoid a soggy middle of the story. You've articulated here, more clearly than I've ever seen, what can make the disruptive event work in a story. I'm going right away to study the occasions I've called on a tooled-up auntie in my present manuscript and check that all of your success points are covered.
Thank you, Julian. I confess I'd never really thought about it all that much, till I met the aunt comment, and connected it with Chandler, and then Wodehouse. Here's to tooled-up aunties!
I saw your question the other day about aunts and did wonder where it was going. It rang a bell with me too that I'd seen that recently but I couldn't remember where either.
I love the way a thread can come together from disparate things in our heads. What you just described, going from reading about the auntie factor to thinking of Chandler to trying to work out where aunts came in and coming up with Wodehouse, it feels like this is how creativity always takes shape, to me anyway. Maybe there are not so much new ideas as new connections. (I should get my coat now before somebody accuses me of smoking one of those funny cigarettes).
Well, the very definition of creative work is taking two (or more) existing things or ideas, and creating something from them which didn't exist before - and now it does. It's certainly where most forms of intellectual as well as creative excitement come from in my case. And it's one of the reason interdisciplinary studies are such fun: seeing connections between things which are usually siloed separately from each other..