The final spring session of Dusty Owl workshop for 09 was the end of June with Ian Roy talking about drawing the short story.
Roy had his first collaborative collection a decade ago and works in various genres: short story, novel, play, short film and poetry. The essential matter is the story not the shape. “Let the story tell itself in the best form for the story — whether film, poetry, short story or novel.”
His workshop was mostly hands on with a series of exercises. For example, think of particular place then write about it for a set amount of time from the perspective of someone in love. Then swing it around and write about that same place from the perspective of that person who has just lost a loved one. It’s a good way to key into the particular perceptual shifts based on frame of mind.
He asked us each to draw an electric guitar. This is like writing a first draft. You get the general shapes in place. You get the general guitarness essence down. You add more details with each pass of the edit. Seeing what others did showed how much even the generic concept of a very particular thing can vary. Authorship of words is the same.
As the next stage he brought out an electric guitar. He asked us to draw this particular guitar. At this stage I realize I have only the foggiest idea of what an electric guitar looks like. When you’re refining a piece of fiction even though it is made up you want it to have the particularness of something particular, so it looks credible, plausible, authentic, believable.
When you understand someone well, when you know something intimately, you describe it differently. When you research none of it may make it into your story but by doing the research and the careful observation, visualizing it in detail, even if it becomes only one line in the story, it’s going to be a very different line than if you pulled a generic out of your head. You can then add another layer of depth to describe it with feeling to take it beyond the usual description.
Language can be used instrumentally to get a general concept across, stepping stones of verbal symbols, such as washroom door signs, or it can be made more exact. It was useful to have us demonstrate this object lesson to ourselves.
Until Wed, July 15th, send coordinators Sean Zio & Sharon Deng your ideas on what you’d like in next season’s workshop to dustyowlworkshops[at]ymail.com and they’ll enter your name into a draw for the chance to win free season’s ticket to either the fall or spring workshop series.