~~ on the edge of the looking glass
Apr. 15th, 2004 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaIt seems to me that writing fantasy is a lot like doing magic. Even though the possibilities seem limitless, there is a sense of procedure to follow, a sense of -order- to the process. Like there are rules of how to do things and even what sorts of things you can do. It's like... no matter how much freedom you give yourself, in the end, if you don't limit the possibilities, what you get are mistakes or even disasters. Mix the wrong ingredients and they blow up, basically, right?
I guess it's obvious that anything that isn't pure chaos is going to contain some semblance of order, some set of reasons behind its existence. It's a self-defining property of almost anything one can think of as 'existing' that it has a limited set of properties; a limited number of possible behaviors that define it in time and space. I guess that's why it bothers me when people say "it's just fantasy" or "it's just kink" or whatever to explain why they write things that wouldn't happen in "real life" in a zillion years, in terms of pure common sense. Because fantasy it may be, but you can never actually escape reality and remain what you -are- (as a person or a character).
I didn't always have a very good grasp on this concept, myself, which is probably why it's so important to me. In fact, that used to be my number 1 problem in writing-- believability. Oh, I made sense on a personal symbolic level (that is to say, I made sense to myself), but most people had no clue what was going on. I used to go way beyond merely writing people "out of character"-- I'd just use my supposed "characters" as pure personal symbols that meant little outside of the context of my mind. I wasn't even -trying- to communicate my inner world to my supposed readers-- I was just writing pure fantasy in the sense that there -were- no rules. The only rules were those of my subconscious mind, so what I wrote read a lot like snatches from various random dreams.
I still do this, kinda. People tell me I don't often make a lot of sense in this journal. Well, I try, but it's hard. It's not that I'm so smart or anything-- I'm just... isolated. My mind has developed in isolation to a large degree, with my only real link to most people being through their writing. It's not natural for me to think of how people really act, talk and think. It takes conscious effort, which is why I'm so obsessed with the idea of keeping things "in character"; why I study human behavior so closely. I know through personal experience that being "out of character" makes for meaningless stories on one level.
There are degrees of fantasy, I think. Gradations between the (fictional) world we'd immediately recognize and a world with major shifts and mutations of logic. Too much mutation, and it becomes near meaningless. Too little, and it's static and there is no story.
Believing in Harry/Draco in any guise, for instance-- believing in romantic love itself, even, especially in it overcoming all obstacles-- is fantasy of the highest degree already.
What some people don't seem to understand is that fantasy isn't "anything goes" by nature, as a style of writing. It's not equivalent to -fantasizing-, per se. The fantasy of redemption isn't on the same level as the fantasy that people will somehow magically act like sex-crazed 2D dolls-- preprogrammed androids, almost-- which is how a lot of PWPs are written. Which, btw, sounds more like a nightmare than a dream to me.
True fantasy occurs within the boundaries of reality; in the twilight zone between "yes" and "maybe". It's a world on the edge of the looking glass, where the things that are -real- become wondrous and new. You get to suspend your disbelief but not lose your bearings in what you know as reality entirely, because if you do, what does anything signify anymore? Everything becomes under question if people stop making sense. Without semi-stable markers of what's possible and impossible in human behavior, everything becomes simply meaningless and there's chaos. (And yes, I'm sure most people who write OOC porn or whatever don't care about the metaphysical implications because they're just having fun, of course, but.)
What I'm trying to say is, a story where, for instance, Harry & Draco are very OOC and just conveniently "forget" their past and suddenly get along splendidly isn't "fantasy" at all-- it's a meaningless fascimile, a farce almost. There's no grain of truth there to anchor the reader, leaving them them adrift in a sea of almost entirely disconnected (sexual) imagery. It means nothing, really, if these barely recognizable constructs (penis = boy?) love or want each other, does it?
Without some basic truth about them remaining intact (and it's up for grabs what that "basic truth" is in each case, just to keep things interesting), you lose all cohesion. It's almost like the story becomes pure noise.
So why do people take this lightly? Even as I realize it's because they're just indulging themselves-- even as I remember doing it myself-- I'm still mystified as to why not go for the greater rewards of believable fantasy. It's probably just laziness, which I can understand. I just wish people didn't dismiss fantasy itself on the grounds of it being equivalent to this sort of fantasizing.
To me, fantasy involves carefully manipulating some assumption we have about the nature of what's "real" while having to leave quite a few others intact for reference, so that one doesn't get lost in the now-visible forest of possibilities. One manipulates these things as a way of highlighting the remaining aspects of reality, a way of showing things that had previously been hidden in the background. So anything can happen, yes, but without a good -reason-, it's as if it didn't happen at all, it seems to me. There's no weight to it if there aren't any believably realistic consequences, basically.
There is a pattern, a semi-constant logical progression to how things change, and that's why I've always thought one needed a good grasp on psychology and a grounding in philosophical & metaphysical thought, as well as a generous helping of common sense to write decent (fantasy) fiction, even porn. In writing, one is attempting to recreate reality to suit one's desires, even if one is writing fantasy, right? At least, that is my understanding of the matter. I could always be wrong :>
I guess it's obvious that anything that isn't pure chaos is going to contain some semblance of order, some set of reasons behind its existence. It's a self-defining property of almost anything one can think of as 'existing' that it has a limited set of properties; a limited number of possible behaviors that define it in time and space. I guess that's why it bothers me when people say "it's just fantasy" or "it's just kink" or whatever to explain why they write things that wouldn't happen in "real life" in a zillion years, in terms of pure common sense. Because fantasy it may be, but you can never actually escape reality and remain what you -are- (as a person or a character).
I didn't always have a very good grasp on this concept, myself, which is probably why it's so important to me. In fact, that used to be my number 1 problem in writing-- believability. Oh, I made sense on a personal symbolic level (that is to say, I made sense to myself), but most people had no clue what was going on. I used to go way beyond merely writing people "out of character"-- I'd just use my supposed "characters" as pure personal symbols that meant little outside of the context of my mind. I wasn't even -trying- to communicate my inner world to my supposed readers-- I was just writing pure fantasy in the sense that there -were- no rules. The only rules were those of my subconscious mind, so what I wrote read a lot like snatches from various random dreams.
I still do this, kinda. People tell me I don't often make a lot of sense in this journal. Well, I try, but it's hard. It's not that I'm so smart or anything-- I'm just... isolated. My mind has developed in isolation to a large degree, with my only real link to most people being through their writing. It's not natural for me to think of how people really act, talk and think. It takes conscious effort, which is why I'm so obsessed with the idea of keeping things "in character"; why I study human behavior so closely. I know through personal experience that being "out of character" makes for meaningless stories on one level.
There are degrees of fantasy, I think. Gradations between the (fictional) world we'd immediately recognize and a world with major shifts and mutations of logic. Too much mutation, and it becomes near meaningless. Too little, and it's static and there is no story.
Believing in Harry/Draco in any guise, for instance-- believing in romantic love itself, even, especially in it overcoming all obstacles-- is fantasy of the highest degree already.
What some people don't seem to understand is that fantasy isn't "anything goes" by nature, as a style of writing. It's not equivalent to -fantasizing-, per se. The fantasy of redemption isn't on the same level as the fantasy that people will somehow magically act like sex-crazed 2D dolls-- preprogrammed androids, almost-- which is how a lot of PWPs are written. Which, btw, sounds more like a nightmare than a dream to me.
True fantasy occurs within the boundaries of reality; in the twilight zone between "yes" and "maybe". It's a world on the edge of the looking glass, where the things that are -real- become wondrous and new. You get to suspend your disbelief but not lose your bearings in what you know as reality entirely, because if you do, what does anything signify anymore? Everything becomes under question if people stop making sense. Without semi-stable markers of what's possible and impossible in human behavior, everything becomes simply meaningless and there's chaos. (And yes, I'm sure most people who write OOC porn or whatever don't care about the metaphysical implications because they're just having fun, of course, but.)
What I'm trying to say is, a story where, for instance, Harry & Draco are very OOC and just conveniently "forget" their past and suddenly get along splendidly isn't "fantasy" at all-- it's a meaningless fascimile, a farce almost. There's no grain of truth there to anchor the reader, leaving them them adrift in a sea of almost entirely disconnected (sexual) imagery. It means nothing, really, if these barely recognizable constructs (penis = boy?) love or want each other, does it?
Without some basic truth about them remaining intact (and it's up for grabs what that "basic truth" is in each case, just to keep things interesting), you lose all cohesion. It's almost like the story becomes pure noise.
So why do people take this lightly? Even as I realize it's because they're just indulging themselves-- even as I remember doing it myself-- I'm still mystified as to why not go for the greater rewards of believable fantasy. It's probably just laziness, which I can understand. I just wish people didn't dismiss fantasy itself on the grounds of it being equivalent to this sort of fantasizing.
To me, fantasy involves carefully manipulating some assumption we have about the nature of what's "real" while having to leave quite a few others intact for reference, so that one doesn't get lost in the now-visible forest of possibilities. One manipulates these things as a way of highlighting the remaining aspects of reality, a way of showing things that had previously been hidden in the background. So anything can happen, yes, but without a good -reason-, it's as if it didn't happen at all, it seems to me. There's no weight to it if there aren't any believably realistic consequences, basically.
There is a pattern, a semi-constant logical progression to how things change, and that's why I've always thought one needed a good grasp on psychology and a grounding in philosophical & metaphysical thought, as well as a generous helping of common sense to write decent (fantasy) fiction, even porn. In writing, one is attempting to recreate reality to suit one's desires, even if one is writing fantasy, right? At least, that is my understanding of the matter. I could always be wrong :>
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-16 09:57 am (UTC)I do think in some ways with fantasy you almost have to know more about the rules and basis for everything than in regular fiction. Like in the book I've been re-reading I keep thinking how different magic is in so many different boy-wizard series, and that the boy wizard hero always has to be the perfect boy for this kind of magic to confront the kinds of dilemmas it brings up. The magic, in a way, is always a real reflection of the character's inner selves somehow, or the kinds of characters they are matches the kind of magic.
Hmmm...perhaps I shall write something more about that...
But anyway, yes, I feel like this is almost the biggest leap there is, trying to get what's inside your head on paper so that people can get it. I sometimes feel like it can't ever possibly work!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-16 12:10 pm (UTC)Metaphor is another thing which needs a solid grounding in "non-metaphor" to work, methinks.
And yes, yes, that's exactly it. I've always struggled with getting what's in my head -out- of my head, 'cause it's just kinda stuck there sometimes :> It's difficult... like a whole separate skill aside from the writing-- separating from yourself, or empathizing with others... connection and disconnection at the same time. Although, like... I think the best porn would be not the porn in your head, exactly... 'cause that's just be your kinks or whatever. It'd have to be even more "translated" into general terms or terms narrowly suited to this particular fantasy.
More trouble than it's worth, almost :>