Are we talking literary or literally? Well, I read an article on the importance of writing and storytelling, and the author recalled a time when he was a paramedic… so no, we cannot literally save lives, as in resuscitate a person with words (literally), but we can save lives in other ways. It may seem like a simple realization but it’s one we need to remind ourselves of every so often. Looking at news reports of plane crashes and the military assault on Gaza - what can writing do - those people are dead? But writing can communicate the truth and inform those still living. Educate the present so the future doesn't reflect the past. Then there is also the nobility and catharsis, of just telling their stories. I was talking to a friend of mine recently, and she was sharing her recent trials and quite frankly, life threatening ordeals working with (reforming) drug dealers and gangsters – and her blunt reply about writing when I mentioned to her that it can’t save lives, was simply: “but it can”. One day I will write her story… And I'm sure it will reach out to someone in a dire situation in need of motivation through their struggles, even if it’s just that one person. On a more basic level, how does education work, how do we learn – through books, through writing, communication – without these simple elements - like textbooks, how many lives would’ve been lost? How did the medical profession come about? Someone had to be the pioneer, to analyse the human body and record their findings. Corpses were involved, and would not have been pretty, or perhaps even legal, but in that, in some way, the dead served to preserve the living... hows that for a story? So, I encountered this issue because I am a true believer – a believer in stories, writing and storytelling, and because I’m tired of the mediocre and the dilution and saturation of art. To further put this in context, I’ve been wrestling with an article on story, and the essential organs of it as it applies to a very popular TV series – and thence the temptation to dismiss it all and banish it to the box of “it’s just a TV show/it’s just a movie” – because this is what modern films, especially, have taught us with their lack of quality storytelling.
And so, we’re meant to sift through the dregs, to locate the stories we’re allowed to make a fuss over because there’s a place for the serious stuff, and a place for things like superheroes. Because we’re allowed to take fantasy series’ or books seriously, but not cartoons… Where do you draw the line, because there IS a line? Believe it or not, words are life – language, communication – words feed souls. We are on this journey and yet do not understand how there is a link between health (physical, spiritual and mental) and the power of words. What we see, and hear affects the way we feel, how we act and perceive things. We shall all die one day, and there is plenty of depression, misery and depravity in this world – and you may find that often some will not offer any solutions to the problems we’re facing, but will merely explore the problems further, holding up mirrors to it. I feel that part of being a writer is to feed the soul and in some way provide a light or a way point in the journey of discovering the meaning of this thing called life – for those curios about it – and stories are one such medium of discovering those morsels of meaning, so that regardless of your existential beliefs, it is not all for naught. Stories. They’re the beating heart and simultaneous nerve-center of us writers. They’re in and apart of us just as much as they abound everywhere. The plain truth is, our brains crave stories... "Classical story design charts the vast interconnectedness of life from the obvious to the impenetrable, from the intimate to the epic, from individual identity to the international infosphere. It lays bare the network of chain-linked causalities that when understood, give life meaning.” "In storytelling, the stimulus of words brings about the production of inner images, an extraordinarily creative play involving the entire brain. Each new story requires a whole new set of neural connections and reorganizations of visual activity within - a major challenge for the brain. . . . So neural potential goes unrealized and development is impaired - unless storytelling and play are provided on a regular basis." [Images: via pinterest, unless otherwise stated] Related posts: Why I write What will Matter The Flaw in Game of Thrones Category: Writing "Human beings devised writing to explore why we are here..."
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Mark Twain, AKA Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 - 1910), as Publisher's Weekly once noted: "this manic, profound, daft and provocative mad genius of American culture." Author of the so-called, 'Great American novel': Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (and the one he wrote before that, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Hence, he's often called the 'great American novelist'. With that intro, plus the fact that his works and philosophies are enjoying a resurgence in modern literature and even political commentary, it's no stretch to think he'd have tips and relevant opinions on writing itself. Here then is his 18 tips on writing, followed by a short story which I thought appropriate for the sake of this blog - and my writing career. "To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence." - - Twain Mark Twain's Rules for Writing 1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. 2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it. 3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. 4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. 5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. 6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. 7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it. 8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale. 9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. 10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. 11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. An author should 12. _Say_ what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. 13. Use the right word, not its second cousin. 14. Eschew surplusage. 15. Not omit necessary details. 16. Avoid slovenliness of form. 17. Use good grammar. 18. Employ a simple, straightforward style. "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." My debut As a Literary Person Short Story by Mark Twain In those early days I had already published one little thing ('The Jumping Frog') in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise away above that; he must appear in a magazine. He would then be a Literary Person; also, he would be famous--right away. These two ambitions were strong upon me. This was in 1866. I prepared my contribution, and then looked around for the best magazine to go up to glory in. I selected the most important one in New York. The contribution was accepted. I signed it 'MARK TWAIN;' for that name had some currency on the Pacific coast, and it was my idea to spread it all over the world, now, at this one jump. The article appeared in the December number, and I sat up a month waiting for the January number; for that one would contain the year's list of contributors, my name would be in it, and I should be famous and could give the banquet I was meditating. I did not give the banquet. I had not written the 'MARK TWAIN' distinctly; it was a fresh name to Eastern printers, and they put it 'Mike Swain' or 'MacSwain,' I do not remember which. At any rate, I was not celebrated and I did not give the banquet. I was a Literary Person, but that was all--a buried one; buried alive. My article was about the burning of the clipper-ship 'Hornet' on the line, May 3, 1866. There were thirty-one men on board at the time, and I was in Honolulu when the fifteen lean and ghostly survivors arrived there after a voyage of forty-three days in an open boat, through the blazing tropics, on ten days' rations of food. A very remarkable trip; but it was conducted by a captain who was a remarkable man, otherwise there would have been no survivors. He was a New Englander of the best sea-going stock of the old capable times--Captain Josiah Mitchell. For the full story, click HERE "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." When he died, American newspapers declared (typically arrogant, though somewhat retrospectively prophetic) "The whole world is mourning", The following quote is perhaps his most famous... "Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." |
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