I Like Tea

So I was reading Nick Hornby’s The Complete Polysyllabic Spree over my holidays, a non-fiction collection of book reviews (ish, they’re less formal and more rambly than most reviews) which I adored because he reads books the way I do – buying loads and then not getting through them, putting things aside, picking up random things, etc – and at a couple of points he talks about literary biographies and being surprised at how much stuff turns out to be autobiographical in some way, so very clearly from the author’s life.

Which got me thinking (always dangerous, of course) about how much of yourself ever goes into a book. Authors are always asked what inspired them to write something, and often asked specifically about whether characters are based on themselves or their friends, or if a storyline is based on some personal experience, especially if they’re writing realistic, contemporary fiction. I guess it’s understandable – it’s what people are interested in, and a good story behind the story itself is great for marketing purposes. At the same time I do find it a bit annoying, especially when people push it – so how much of you, and your life is actually in the book then?

I guess because it’s beside the point, in some ways – it doesn’t matter if it really happened to the writer or didn’t, the important thing is that it works in the book. It’s also a bit insulting sometimes – assuming that you’re incapable of creating anything (insofar as anyone creates anything in art, I guess) and that you must be writing about your own life/family/friends/relationships/whatever. And it’s also such a simplistic approach to take – where can we see the writer in this book? Why, it must be the plotline, the characters! This must be what happened to him or her!

A book, I think, is not revealing about an author because of what happens in it, it’s not that simple. A book tells us what the author’s interested in, what they care about. The characters might not have the same opinions as the author does, might not have the same experiences, but the things that are happening to them – physically, geographically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, whatever – are the things that an author cares about. It doesn’t mean the author’s gone through them himself/herself. They probably have, in some shape or form, but in different circumstances – different experience, same emotional outcome. It just seems so ridiculous to boil it down to well, this happens and this happens and this happens – is this what happened to you? Because it probably did, but not like that – it’s like asking someone have you ever been sad? Have you ever been happy? Have you ever been angry? Disappointed? Hurt? Confused? Scared?

All writing is autobiographical to some extent, revealing about the author’s life to some extent, but to reduce it to ‘well, character X is based on my ex-boyfriend’ just seems so – unwriterish. How can you base a character on one person? How can you write about that one person as a fictional character and not end up changing things to suit the story or suit your interests so much that you end up with a completely new creation, even if you can remember its origins?

Or similarly, how can you write about what actually happened to you or a friend? Firstly, if it’s a friend, that’s – well – ick. Your friend probably does not want you sharing their specific pain with the public, even if it is fictionalised. And if it’s yours – how can you just write it down like it’s interesting? Amp up the drama. Throw in a love interest. Have a villain. Have better dialogue. Have a different setting. Turn it into something coherent, the kind of thing that works on the page, that works in a story. By the end of it you’re left with fragments – a theme, a character, a feeling, a line of dialogue – that actually happened. The rest is made up, and you’re left with something that’s not about you or your life at all, because you’re not writing a memoir. You’re writing fiction. And the only thing that the reader can tell for definite about the writer, when it comes down to it, is this: this story interested the writer enough to keep him or her working on it for the length of this book.

Well, either that or this story was what was in the writer’s head when he or she was struggling to finish this book before the deadline, I guess.

I think people who have just started writing, which sometimes means younger people and sometimes doesn't, have this obsession with plot and storyline and fail to grasp the whole there-are-only-seven-storylines-in-the-world idea (which is fairly accurate). There's been two things lately that have got me thinking about this - firstly, the whole Kaavya Viswanathan scandal (yeah yeah, I know) and secondly, Sarah Dessen's (writergrl) new book Just Listen.

( spoilers for Just Listen and Opal Mehta underneath )

And people who have just started writing - they obsess over people stealing their ideas. Sometimes this is more justified than other times (if you've combined a number of particularly nifty concepts together into something coherent) but almost always it's about what you do with your ideas, what you do with your plot, than the ideas and/or plot themselves. It's how you tell it. Give five people the same basic idea and they'll all handle it differently, and if you're lucky you'll get five good stories out of it. You could give five people a really great, 'original' idea and get five dreadful stories out of it. It's what you do with it, not what the 'it' is.

And of course all that stuff like structure and pacing and plot twists is important, but, y'know, there's a reason you can't copyright a concept. Everything is made up of little pieces, and most likely there are other things out there with some of the same little pieces, and that doesn't mean that they've stolen your precious idea or you've ripped them off - it means that like everything out there, there are a few similarities. Look close enough at any two works and you'll find several things in common. Not the end of the world. Not any indication that either of the two works is not worth reading. Just the way it is.

(Incidentally, this is pretty much what I will be saying next week in a creative writing class I'm teaching, where we will be covering Plot. Because clearly LJ is the place for outlining such things.)

(Incidentally #2, said class is the same afternoons-at-CTYI thing which Morning Ireland visited and are broadcasting a thing about sometime soon. Because clearly what every teacher - except I'm back TAing over the summer, so I'm not letting myself get too cosy in teacher-mode - wants is to have people recording her teaching. Oh yes. Life is fun.)

(Incidentally #3, I was just interviewed for pieces relating to teenage problems and exam stress. I am wise and mature now. Or something. Huh. College exams are slightly less stressful than the Leaving Cert, what with being slightly less life-determining, but one tends to have been spoon-fed information a little less throughout the year, unfortunately. Ah, higher education.)