From earlier this year - "No Breather in the World But Thee" by Jeff VanderMeer. Not sure why it came back to me this morning, but it did, and I had to revisit it. Apologies if you planned to sleep soundly tonight.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Showing posts with label voice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label voice. Show all posts
June 21, 2013
April 29, 2010
Website functioning again!
Posted by Megan Arkenberg with No comments
My freewebs site was sorely in need of an update, and a number of the links had completely ceased to function. Everything should be in working order again. (If you do find a bad link, please let me know!)
A few of my stories and poems had become inaccessible when they were removed from the internet or when the publications they appeared in shut down. For those of you who missed "Leanansidhe" (July 2007), "A Choice of Treason" (November 2007) and "The Shadow of Nemesis" (July/August 2008) the first time around, they are available now.
Don't thank me until you've read them, though. "A Choice of Treason" in particular was a very early work.
A few of my stories and poems had become inaccessible when they were removed from the internet or when the publications they appeared in shut down. For those of you who missed "Leanansidhe" (July 2007), "A Choice of Treason" (November 2007) and "The Shadow of Nemesis" (July/August 2008) the first time around, they are available now.
Don't thank me until you've read them, though. "A Choice of Treason" in particular was a very early work.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
January 30, 2010
That thing, the one I don't have a name for...
Posted by Megan Arkenberg with 4 comments
I have finally realized the nature of my WIP. It is a documentary about an age that never was, and a man who never lived in it. That makes it sound both more and less fantastically nerdy than it actually is.
(I have also described it as a story about Richard Wagner and Oscar Wilde getting drunk in a Viennese bar and merging personalities. Then I remembered that Wagner was a complete $*@%ing dick. I also remembered that I know absolutely nothing about opera. So Wagner = not so much.)
March 28, 2009
Palimpsest
Posted by Megan Arkenberg with No comments
This post is spoiler-free.
I've just finished reading Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente, and I honestly can't say just now what I think of it.
Did I enjoy it? Yes, immensely. The word "imaginative" fails to convey the richness of the city Valente has created. The utter strangeness of the creatures and events in Palimpsest makes the author's ability to make them real and concrete in the mind of the reader all the more impressive--and necessary. The four protagonists were interesting--much more so towards the end of the book than at the beginning--but nothing compared to the citizens (I hesitate to say "people") of Palimpsest themselves. The hints of a soon-to-be-revealed violent past behind the city kept me engaged when the plot lagged.
That said, I am a prose reader rather than a story reader--it's not the what that interests me, but the how. Valente has been frequently and deservedly praised for her rich prose. However, there are places where richness becomes unintelligable, or simply silly. An example from page nine:
"Balanced," "snuffling," and "many-ringed" can all be argued, but why on earth would a fox--a wild animal--be interested in cooked meat? This kind of slip is rare, and becomes rarer as the novel progresses, but when the prose is generally so effortless, it's all the more obvious when the author is trying too hard.
So what do I think of Palimpsest? I'm glad I read it, but it won't get a rereading from me. The protagonists, interesting as they were, didn't feel real enough for me to truly invest myself emotionally in their story (I hesitate to say "struggle"), and I don't feel as though there was any deep meaning to dig for the second time through. To be fair, I am also simultaneously rereading The Fountainhead and The Picture of Dorian Gray, so my literary expectations are high. I'd certainly recommend giving Palimpsest a try--at the very least, you'll have a new way of looking at honey bees.
I've just finished reading Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente, and I honestly can't say just now what I think of it.
Did I enjoy it? Yes, immensely. The word "imaginative" fails to convey the richness of the city Valente has created. The utter strangeness of the creatures and events in Palimpsest makes the author's ability to make them real and concrete in the mind of the reader all the more impressive--and necessary. The four protagonists were interesting--much more so towards the end of the book than at the beginning--but nothing compared to the citizens (I hesitate to say "people") of Palimpsest themselves. The hints of a soon-to-be-revealed violent past behind the city kept me engaged when the plot lagged.
That said, I am a prose reader rather than a story reader--it's not the what that interests me, but the how. Valente has been frequently and deservedly praised for her rich prose. However, there are places where richness becomes unintelligable, or simply silly. An example from page nine:
She balanced one hand--many-ringed--on her hip and jerked her head in the manner of a fox snuffling the air for roasting things.
"Balanced," "snuffling," and "many-ringed" can all be argued, but why on earth would a fox--a wild animal--be interested in cooked meat? This kind of slip is rare, and becomes rarer as the novel progresses, but when the prose is generally so effortless, it's all the more obvious when the author is trying too hard.
So what do I think of Palimpsest? I'm glad I read it, but it won't get a rereading from me. The protagonists, interesting as they were, didn't feel real enough for me to truly invest myself emotionally in their story (I hesitate to say "struggle"), and I don't feel as though there was any deep meaning to dig for the second time through. To be fair, I am also simultaneously rereading The Fountainhead and The Picture of Dorian Gray, so my literary expectations are high. I'd certainly recommend giving Palimpsest a try--at the very least, you'll have a new way of looking at honey bees.
March 11, 2009
Oldie but Goodie
Posted by Megan Arkenberg with No comments
"A Reader's Manifesto" appeared about eight years ago in The Atlantic, but it's a) taken me this long to discover it and b) still true. I most emphatically agree with the closing statements about blaming the reader for faults of the writer. Reading should not be about trying to translate florid and inaccurate prose into English!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
February 20, 2009
The State of the Writer Address
Posted by Megan Arkenberg with 1 comment
I’ve spent most of this month working on literary magazines; Mirror Dance, for which I’ve read, edited, formatted, accepted, rejected, solicited, and “illustrated” a decent number of quality stories, and my most recent brainchild, a historical fiction e-zine that I hope to begin taking submissions for in June. I’m making an effort to keep my resolution about shortening Mirror Dance’s response time, but there’s been an unusual influx of 7,000+ word submissions, which take a little longer to read and work through rewrites for than the 3,000 word variety. Not that I’m complaining; they all have much to recommend them, and I’m honored to be able to consider them for Mirror Dance.
I’ve taken a small break this week from formatting and art searching (though not, of course, from reading and editing) and worked on revising several tanka from my old notebook. I dislike revising fiction and narrative poetry, but I find it an enlightening and deeply relaxing process with tanka. Since nearly all of my tanka are written from life, I often need the revision time to flesh out the ideas that came spur-of-the-moment and half-formed during the original writing.
I’ve also taken a break from the swarm of meticulously planned-out short stories awaiting nascence on my word processer and begun writing a short novella by hand. It’s coming out with surprising coherence for not having an outline, and there’s something about hand-writing a story that makes the voice feel more organic. Which is a good thing, honest, even if it means I’m falling occasionally into the tone of a turn-of-the-century-esque city boss.
On Wednesday I finished reading Tanith Lee’s indescribably magnificent The Gods are Thirsty. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, particularly to my fellow French Revolution fanatics. I’m just surprised that I didn’t discover it sooner!
And finally, for those same fellow French Revolutionary fanatics, yesterday was the first day of Ventôse CCXVII in the French Republican Calendar. Vive la Révolution!
I’ve taken a small break this week from formatting and art searching (though not, of course, from reading and editing) and worked on revising several tanka from my old notebook. I dislike revising fiction and narrative poetry, but I find it an enlightening and deeply relaxing process with tanka. Since nearly all of my tanka are written from life, I often need the revision time to flesh out the ideas that came spur-of-the-moment and half-formed during the original writing.
I’ve also taken a break from the swarm of meticulously planned-out short stories awaiting nascence on my word processer and begun writing a short novella by hand. It’s coming out with surprising coherence for not having an outline, and there’s something about hand-writing a story that makes the voice feel more organic. Which is a good thing, honest, even if it means I’m falling occasionally into the tone of a turn-of-the-century-esque city boss.
On Wednesday I finished reading Tanith Lee’s indescribably magnificent The Gods are Thirsty. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, particularly to my fellow French Revolution fanatics. I’m just surprised that I didn’t discover it sooner!
And finally, for those same fellow French Revolutionary fanatics, yesterday was the first day of Ventôse CCXVII in the French Republican Calendar. Vive la Révolution!
Friday, February 20, 2009
January 12, 2009
First Person
Posted by Megan Arkenberg with No comments
I will defend the honor of three things above all else:
• My significant other
• First person POV
• My haircut
…and yes, I am being slightly facetious about that last.
The charges against first person point-of-view are basically two; that the reader may get sick of the first-person narrator, or that the writer may get sick of the first-person narrator. We stick a few different lampshades over these same old bulbs—"first person restricts the author's freedom to move between characters," or "first person denies the reader the ability to understand the other characters" (which is blatantly untrue for several other reasons)—but it all comes down to first-person narratives making everybody sick of a character.
But isn't that true of third person?
It's true, I've gotten sick of reading many first person narrators. But I've gotten just as sick of just as many characters seen through limited—and even omniscient—third person. If the character is well-written, three-dimensional and believable, it doesn't matter if I'm hearing about him through his own words or from his next-door neighbor or from the Mouth of God him/herself. And if a character is flat and boring, I'm going to hate her no matter whose POV I'm seeing her from.
Another comment—I won't call it a complaint, because I'm not complaining—about first person frequently mentions the difficulty of not having the narrator know everything. To which I answer—huh? How is that a problem? If it was possible for me to simply switch characters and give the reader all the information, where would the fun be? True, there may be some necessary information that is just isn't possible for my narrator to know through first hand experience; at that point, I either find a way for him/her to learn it or pick another narrator.
Having dealt (flippantly and superficially, it's true) with the criticisms of first person POV, I ask you to now turn your attention to its advantages.
1. Better developed characters. And I don't just mean the viewpoint character, though of course first person requires that s/he be as fully operating as possible. The way characters are perceived by a viewpoint character says just as much about them as…well, actually, it says more about them than anything you could get from third person POV. When the reader is intimately attuned to the viewpoint character's personality, s/he can learn more about non-POV characters from the way the POV character views them than from only their actions and dialogue.
2. Better developed voice. While third person narratives also demand a voice, it is, to a large extent, only a minor concern. But when your entire short story—or your entire novel—comes from inside one character's head, you sure as heck better make sure that character is thinking consistently.
On a similar note, first person voices simply feel more natural to me—probably because most of us go about our lives thinking in first person. That's not to say your viewpoint character must, or even should, share a thought pattern with you. It simply means that, if your characters were real people, they would be thinking about your story in their first person. Since you're probably plunging into their thoughts anyway, why not give the reader the full unadulterated package?
3. The ultimate problem with third person narratives is that it makes the characters sound juvenile. Truly. It's like sitting in a waiting room with a proud mother and her three children, when instead of letting the kids talk for themselves, mommy needs to narrate their entire weekend to you. Why can't your characters tell their own story? When you, the author, tell us that Character X is beautiful, or clever, or heck even ugly, it lacks the authority of Character X telling us that Character Y, whom they interact with on a daily basis, is beautiful as daylight or smart as cinnamon or ugly as a fish in drought.
...and there's the end of my rant, she typed.
• My significant other
• First person POV
• My haircut
…and yes, I am being slightly facetious about that last.
The charges against first person point-of-view are basically two; that the reader may get sick of the first-person narrator, or that the writer may get sick of the first-person narrator. We stick a few different lampshades over these same old bulbs—"first person restricts the author's freedom to move between characters," or "first person denies the reader the ability to understand the other characters" (which is blatantly untrue for several other reasons)—but it all comes down to first-person narratives making everybody sick of a character.
But isn't that true of third person?
It's true, I've gotten sick of reading many first person narrators. But I've gotten just as sick of just as many characters seen through limited—and even omniscient—third person. If the character is well-written, three-dimensional and believable, it doesn't matter if I'm hearing about him through his own words or from his next-door neighbor or from the Mouth of God him/herself. And if a character is flat and boring, I'm going to hate her no matter whose POV I'm seeing her from.
Another comment—I won't call it a complaint, because I'm not complaining—about first person frequently mentions the difficulty of not having the narrator know everything. To which I answer—huh? How is that a problem? If it was possible for me to simply switch characters and give the reader all the information, where would the fun be? True, there may be some necessary information that is just isn't possible for my narrator to know through first hand experience; at that point, I either find a way for him/her to learn it or pick another narrator.
Having dealt (flippantly and superficially, it's true) with the criticisms of first person POV, I ask you to now turn your attention to its advantages.
1. Better developed characters. And I don't just mean the viewpoint character, though of course first person requires that s/he be as fully operating as possible. The way characters are perceived by a viewpoint character says just as much about them as…well, actually, it says more about them than anything you could get from third person POV. When the reader is intimately attuned to the viewpoint character's personality, s/he can learn more about non-POV characters from the way the POV character views them than from only their actions and dialogue.
2. Better developed voice. While third person narratives also demand a voice, it is, to a large extent, only a minor concern. But when your entire short story—or your entire novel—comes from inside one character's head, you sure as heck better make sure that character is thinking consistently.
On a similar note, first person voices simply feel more natural to me—probably because most of us go about our lives thinking in first person. That's not to say your viewpoint character must, or even should, share a thought pattern with you. It simply means that, if your characters were real people, they would be thinking about your story in their first person. Since you're probably plunging into their thoughts anyway, why not give the reader the full unadulterated package?
3. The ultimate problem with third person narratives is that it makes the characters sound juvenile. Truly. It's like sitting in a waiting room with a proud mother and her three children, when instead of letting the kids talk for themselves, mommy needs to narrate their entire weekend to you. Why can't your characters tell their own story? When you, the author, tell us that Character X is beautiful, or clever, or heck even ugly, it lacks the authority of Character X telling us that Character Y, whom they interact with on a daily basis, is beautiful as daylight or smart as cinnamon or ugly as a fish in drought.
...and there's the end of my rant, she typed.
Monday, January 12, 2009
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About
Welcome my blog! I'm Megan Arkenberg, a graduate student in Northern California and an award-winning writer of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I also edit the online fantasy magazine Mirror Dance.
