On Monday, the very day my story "Love, Anger, and Pity; or Fuck Everyone in the Entire History of Humanity" was published, the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling that made a plot point in the story an anachronism ("Supreme Court rules: Offensive trademarks must be allowed").
(Well, not perfectly. The ruling [pdf] invalidated the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure §1203.03(b)(i), and my story refers to §1203.01. But close enough.)
This is not the first time that U.S. Supreme Court affected that story, although the first time didn't cause an anachronism. My first version of this story was written in 2012. Originally Eddie called Tom his partner, and in 2015 after the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage to be legal, I changed the story to have Eddie call Tom his husband.
(And gay marriage has changed what used to be non-ambiguous phrases into ambiguous phrases. Ten years ago, "Before Tom and Peter got married..." would be interpreted as two separate weddings where Tom and Peter married their wives. Now you need to make it non-ambiguous by writing something like, "Before Tom and Peter married each other..." or "Before Tom and Peter married their wives...")
There are a number of unpublished or unfinished stories sitting on my computer's drive. I can think of two of them that now have anachronisms since I first started them:
1) Some characters get to the International Space Station on the Space Shuttle. And since the last Shuttle flight was in 2011, when I get around to finishing that story, I'll have to choose another means of getting them to the ISS. With luck, I'll be able to get it published before 2024 when the ISS is scheduled to be retired.
2) A woman is checking her calendar to determine the best date to break up with her boyfriend. Original story: the calendar is a Day-Timer, a small notebook. Updated story: She uses the calendar app on her phone.
Of course, the you can avoid the future causing anachronisms in your stories if they take place at a certain time in the past. But then, you have to worry about inadvertently putting anachronisms in stories from the start. (I imagine in a hundred years there will be stories written where 1970s punk rockers use email).
You can take this post as a plea to writers (and myself!) to finish their stories and get them published. Don't let your unfinished stories remain unfinished, and your finished stories unpublished.
(#SFWApro)
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Your Own Words May Unexpectedly Surprise You
Nine years ago, I took a playwriting class called "Unreal Theatre" at Seattle's Richard Hugo House. In that class, I adapted a short story I had written, "The Circumstances Around Steve Wickland not Receiving The Silver Star", into a play.
After the class ended, the instructor, Bret Fetzer, asked if he could produce a single performance of it a late-night cabaret put on by Annex Theatre. Here's a video of the 10 minute production:
Previously in this blog, I wrote of the unexpected emotional resonance that my college band's song had on someone.
But that can happen to the author as well. The last day of the class, four actors came to do readings of the students' plays (not the actors in the above video). These were cold readings; they had not seen the plays before. I provided four copies on my script with lines highlighted for the actors.
As the story unfolded for the actors, they were able to become the characters as they read their dialog for the first time. It's an impressive skill. But what amazed me was that they took my words and brought out an emotional depth to the story whose existence I was completely unaware of, and they did it on the fly.
The actors took my words and made them their own, resulting in an enhancement of my work.
I imagine authors whose work is published as an audio book discover this as well.
I would say this is an extension of my words in my previously mentioned post:
How a piece of art is interpreted is completely out of the hands of the creators. Things can have meaning beyond their creators' intentions.
A play is, of course different from prose. A reader's interpretation of prose is internal, while plays are meant to be interpreted publicly by actors and directors, and the writer may have little say in that interpretation (I was happy enough that Bret wanted to direct my play that I told him to do it anyway he wanted).
(This can go wrong, as shown by any number of bad film adaptations of novels.)
The point of this post is that if you ever hear your work read out loud, don't be surprised if an aspect of your work is revealed that you didn't expect to be there.
(#SFWApro)
After the class ended, the instructor, Bret Fetzer, asked if he could produce a single performance of it a late-night cabaret put on by Annex Theatre. Here's a video of the 10 minute production:
Previously in this blog, I wrote of the unexpected emotional resonance that my college band's song had on someone.
But that can happen to the author as well. The last day of the class, four actors came to do readings of the students' plays (not the actors in the above video). These were cold readings; they had not seen the plays before. I provided four copies on my script with lines highlighted for the actors.
As the story unfolded for the actors, they were able to become the characters as they read their dialog for the first time. It's an impressive skill. But what amazed me was that they took my words and brought out an emotional depth to the story whose existence I was completely unaware of, and they did it on the fly.
The actors took my words and made them their own, resulting in an enhancement of my work.
I imagine authors whose work is published as an audio book discover this as well.
How a piece of art is interpreted is completely out of the hands of the creators. Things can have meaning beyond their creators' intentions.
A play is, of course different from prose. A reader's interpretation of prose is internal, while plays are meant to be interpreted publicly by actors and directors, and the writer may have little say in that interpretation (I was happy enough that Bret wanted to direct my play that I told him to do it anyway he wanted).
(This can go wrong, as shown by any number of bad film adaptations of novels.)
The point of this post is that if you ever hear your work read out loud, don't be surprised if an aspect of your work is revealed that you didn't expect to be there.
(#SFWApro)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)