Category: Distractions

I’m experimenting with a new poll plugin I’ve added to my blog, so I decided to start with a poll on issues facing the modern writing world. Please pardon me if anything is clunky or if there are any issues. The visual appeal of the poll is also not the best. I’m a writer, not a website designer, so this is all very new to me.

Anyway, please take the time to vote on this poll and feel free to discuss the results (civilly) in the comments section.

 

Let me know which you think are the most important issues for the writing world.

 

I’d like to welcome you to a new feature on The Writer’s Scrap Bin that is simply called “Book Reviews”. Here I’ll review a wide range of books, both well-established and little-known. I’m going to start this series with Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.

This collection is divided into three sections: “My Friend Lucy Who Smells Like Corn”, “One Holy Night”, and “There Was a Man, There Was a Woman”. Overall, Cisneros’s stories are gripping, fast-paced, and an engaging read. I worried at first that the heavy influence of the Latinx culture would cause me, being as ignorant as I can be, to become lost. However, I found that this influence made the stories even more intriguing and added a special flair which homogeneously white American stories can’t achieve.

The first section was not my favorite. The seven stories in this section focus on children, are very short–only a few pages long–and are very quick reads. Still, I had to re-read some of these stories multiple times in order to understand them, particularly “My Friend Lucy Who Smells Like Corn”. That fact in and of itself does not detract from their quality. I just didn’t feel as emotionally connected with these stories as I did with the others.

The three stories from the other sections which most piqued my interest are “One Holy Night”, “Never Marry a Mexican”, and “Woman Hollering Creek”.

Trigger Warning: The story I am about to discuss may contain triggers for victims of child molestation.

The collection caught my attention fully with the story “One Holy Night”. The content is rather sensitive and may be a trigger for some of my readers, and so I will not go into too many details about it. I will say that Cisneros takes an often uncomfortable topic and explores the psychological and emotional complexities experienced by the young girl at the center of the events. This character, rather than being a typical damsel-in-distress suffering from trauma, finds new wisdom inside her because of these experiences, wisdom which she is quick to point out that the other young girls don’t yet have. She is simultaneously an adult and a child–much like her love interest’s name, “Boy Baby”–living events and hardships that should be reserved for adults and yet showing that she’s so young that she thinks herself more of an adult than she truly is. I found myself sympathizing with her not only because of the loss of her innocence and the rough road ahead but also because she felt “love,” what she called “love,” with a man who deceived her and had her heart shattered long before she should have. She was young and naive but Cisneros still made me feel for her as a woman.

“Never Marry a Mexican” follows the story of a Mexican woman and her affair with a married white man. I usually dislike stories about cheating spouses, even when told from the “other woman’s” perspective. Cisneros, however, managed to shape Clemencia into a sympathetic, albeit somewhat crazy, character. Following strained relationships with her own parents, Clemencia finds ways to gain control in her relationship not just with Drew but with his wife (who seems oblivious to the affair) and their son. She’s certainly not your traditional woman nor the traditional “other woman,” which is what allows me to enjoy this story. It’s not about a woman falling in love with a married man; it’s about a woman trying to regain control of her life, to feel powerful for once.

Trigger Warning: The story I am about to discuss may contain triggers for victims of domestic violence.

The title story for this collection, “Woman Hollering Creek”, has stuck with me long after my Master’s program finished discussing Cisneros. One reason may be the topic. This story, once again, addresses a sensitive topic. Unfortunately, unlike “One Holy Night”, I don’t think I can review this story properly without mentioning the topic. The main character, Cleofilas, comes from Mexico to Seguin, Texas, as a new bride. Cisneros quickly picks apart the patriarchal fantasies of marriage which Cleofilas is exposed to in her telenovelas and reveals the gritty reality of living with an abusive husband. Cisneros paints a clear image of Cleofilas’s suffering but, at the same time, the violence itself does not hijack the narrative. Instead, Cleofilas’s struggle with her marriage and escaping it are the heart of this narrative.

The most interesting aspect of the story, surprisingly, is the woman who drives Cleofilas to the bus depot, Felice. Felice is crude, strong, and independent; some critics have argued that she’s a stereotypical butch lesbian, but I see her as an unconventional woman who knows what she wants and what will empower her. Her scream over the bridge, called “La Gritona”, leads to Cleofilas’s own empowering laugh, “a long ribbon of laughter, like water” (Cisneros 56). Felice shows Cleofilas a side of womanhood separate from what society has forced her into all her life. Felice’s brief appearance in this story gives it a real punch, turning a story about an abused wife running back to her father into one about female solidarity and regaining control from men who wish to oppress them.

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories contains a wide range of plots, narrative voices, narrative structures, and characters (although most are female). At the center of it all, though, is a Latinx pulse, a feeling of strength, and a complex understanding of human interactions. I was only able to thoroughly review three stories here but I highly recommend reading all of the stories to discover a new view of the world.

 

Happy Friday, everyone! I’m starting this weekend with a slightly different kind of announcement. I try and provide you with new publishing opportunities each week but this one is through me directly. Additionally, this opportunity is strictly for American minorities.

Here’s a basic description of the project:

I want to compile and edit a collection of short stories, personal essays, and poetry by American minorities (LGBTQIA, non-white Americans, non-Christians, immigrants, women, etc.) about their experiences with discrimination in America. After compiling and editing it, I will self-publish it through such outlets as Amazon and donate the proceeds to charities which support these minorities, including the ACLU.

I need people who have material that they wish to contribute, and it would be helpful if one of the writers volunteered to compose the second half of a two-part introduction (the first being written by me as the editor, but the second written by someone who has experienced more discrimination). If artists could also provide illustrations or photographs, they would enhance the quality of this publication greatly.

Submissions can be anonymous, under a pen name, or under your real name. My top priority is ensuring the comfort and safety of this publication’s contributors while still allowing their stories to be told, so anonymous pieces and pen names are no problem at all.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of this project, I cannot pay the contributors. However, I am willing to provide any support they need in return, including vouching for their writing talent. You should also keep in mind that you could point to this collection for your writing experience in queries, résumés, etc., if you choose to submit a piece.

If you wish to contribute, would like to be involved in another way, or just want more information on this project, feel free to contact me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com or through the project’s email, dontwebleed@gmail.com.

Thank you in advance for all those who contribute and/or support this publication!

Do you know of any charitable publications looking for submissions? Send me information on them at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com and I may dedicate a post to them.

 

One of my colleagues in the Master’s program brought my attention to an article about a group of researchers that used a computer to identify the six most common emotional arcs in storytelling. Even if you aren’t interested in computers or A.I., I highly recommend this piece. It proposes an interesting way in which to view our work and raises questions about the value of a human writer.

Here are the six most common emotional arcs in storytelling, according to this article:

1. Rags to Riches (rise)
2. Riches to Rags (fall)
3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise)
4. Icarus (rise then fall)
5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)
6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)

I’m not going to go into how they compiled this list; the article explains that well enough. I want to explore the implications for writers.

No doubt you’re familiar with Freytag’s Pyramid. Teachers drilled it into me in elementary and middle school. If you aren’t familiar with it, Freytag’s Pyramid is a visual representation of what is considered to be the typical plot arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement, in that order. (I have placed a generic example above.)

Needless to say, this structure is overly-simplified. Plots are made of mini-rises and falls, minor climaxes, sometimes an ending for a beginning. Plots are often more like mountain ranges than pyramids and some stories, particularly flash fiction and other short works, don’t have clearly-defined plots that match this model. That’s how I view the six emotional arcs.

On the one hand, it’s amusing and insightful to study the emotional arcs of your favorite stories in this light. If you determine that they fall under one or multiple of these arcs, you can try and apply that arc(s) to your own works. You can even turn this lens on your better-received works and try to pinpoint what made them successful emotionally.

Of course, such research would take the magic out of the process and play down the emotional arc of your work and the stories you love to read.

Emotional arcs are only this simple in things like fairy tales, which are purposefully simple in order to aid oral storytelling. In fact, Cinderella most caught the attention of Kurt Vonnegut, whose experiment inspired this computer-generated study. If you have anything more complicated and sophisticated than the original fairy tales, these “six most common emotional arcs” won’t fit your story exactly.

When discussing this issue with the longer and more-complicated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the researchers claim that “the emotional arc associated with each sub-narrative is clearly visible.” In that case, they separate the sub-narratives from the larger narrative, treating them as their own stories, and so one must wonder if these emotional arcs are truly the most common overall or just the most common for certain lengths of stories.

The opposite may also be true: very short fictional works don’t fit these arcs neatly, either. The study only concerns works between 10,000 and 200,000 words long. What, then, can we say about the relation between these common emotional arcs and flash fictions? Or even the traditional short story? Some may fit these arcs but the intricate weaving of narration, plot, character, structure, and form will make it harder to see which stories fit which arcs.

My personal issues with the results aside, the study raises an intriguing–and perhaps disturbing–topic for writers. Namely, can a machine/computer create original writings? The lead author of this study, Andy Reagan, Ph.D. candidate (as of the article’s July 2016 publication), indicates that there are still many problems to resolve before this idea can come to fruition. Nevertheless, many act as though this possibility is very strong. Competitions for writing bots have already started.

Should writers worry? Are we going to be replaced by writing bots that will produce more entertainment more quickly for less cost? No.

Reagan mentions that, among other obstacles, the computer would need to create compelling and meaningful characters and dialogue. This area, more than plot or emotional arc, is where human writers will always dominate writing bots. In fact, I would like to add one more aspect to that list: structure.

You can analyze all the stories in the English-speaking world–all the stories in any language–and compile a database of the most successful emotional arcs, plots, character types, etc. That doesn’t mean that you can then spin this data into a unique creation that people will want to read. Instead, the result will be cookie-cutter plots, stock characters, and predictable emotions. The structure will, more likely than not, be the run-of-the-mill linear structure as well.

How do human writers have the potential to avoid such problems? I phrase the question this way because even the best writers don’t avoid all of these faults in everything they write. To err is to human, after all. But how are we able to navigate these obstacles when we do?

The truth is, no one really knows. One story can keep readers’ attention while a similar story loses it. There’s something, however small and indistinguishable, that the writer puts into the story that helps it succeed. I think the advantage to human writers can be traced back to consciousness.

Consciousness makes us aware of the world around us. We’re able to think in ways that machines can’t, gain insights from seemingly nowhere, and feel a connection with fellow living beings that transcends animalistic instinct. It’s my belief that consciousness is also the result of the writer’s instinct. Whenever we have epiphanies, answers to problems with existing works or inspiration for new ones, whose source we cannot identify, we are experiencing something which machines cannot. We suddenly know what’s wrong with a story even though we can’t explain it. A plot, emotional arc, or scene appears fully-formed in our heads and even though we can’t rationalize it, we know it’s right. These instances demonstrate an awareness that far exceeds observation and analysis; it’s consciousness. Until someone can determine what consciousness is and bottle it, writing bots will never be able to do what human writers do.

In answering “why we write”, Robert Coover said that it is “because there is nothing new under the sun except its expression”. (Here’s a link to a video of his entire answer.) Coover’s words act as a double-edged sword: they support writing and other art because the only way to make things new is to express them in a new way but, at the same time, they imply that no idea is original. I agree with Coover in that every idea (for stories and poems) has already been said. What’s unique is our way of expressing these ideas. That is why no “writing bot” could ever truly replace a human writer. It’s not just what we say, it’s how we say it. And if a scientist does construct a computer which captures that inexplicable essence, the reproduction of consciousness won’t be far behind.