"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth - it is the truth which conceals that there is none.

"The Simulacrum is true." - Ecclesiastes

Simulacrum:

1. An image or representation.
2. An unreal or vague semblance.

Take a look at a train station map: you have five, maybe six distinct train lines, the stops are labeled, sometimes a pretty blue river flows through the map to keep you grounded in geographical reality. In the case of most train station maps, there is some indication of direction, of North, of South, of an East and West.

On a normal map, too--say, an interstate road atlas--you'll find plenty of references, indications of reality. One-way roads, two-lane highways, bridges, rivers, oceans, directions--that sort of reality. A road map is fairly systematic. Map space corresponds to real space in a neat orderly fashion. Map space is an image or representation of real space.

This is also true, to a certain degree, with your train station map. Map space corresponds with real space, though not as systematically as your typical road atlas. Your typical train station map "North" corresponds, somewhat, with the North we think of as real. With a few imaginary leaps of your, er, imagination, the train station map might become an image, or representation of the real world.

But not really. In fact, these sorts of maps are more than representations of the real. They are hyperreal. They do not truly refer to the real world. They refer to themselves. They are images, or representations of that which has no original.

Here's a taste of Jean Baudrillard:

"Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: Pirates, the Frontier, Future World, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more the social microcosm, the miniaturized and religious reveling in real America [...]. You park outside, queue up inside, and are totally abandoned at the exit [...]. The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot - a veritable concentration camp - is total."

That's the trick. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether Disneyland is imaginary. What matters is that Disneyland is a representation of the imaginary! If Disneyland is imaginary, if Disneyland is for children, then the real world must be outside, adults must be outside. Disneyland represents the imaginary so we can pretend that our world is not.

Of course, it's not just train maps and Disneyland. A prison is a simulacrum. If the criminals are inside the prison, then the innocent must be outside. A school is a simulacrum. If learning takes place inside, then the ignorant must be outside.

And what about all the energy we put into creating, sustaining, and celebrating such simulacrum? How much juice does it take to light Atlantic City for a single night? Vegas? How much resource to keep Disneyland in the limelight? How much energy do we spend to make sure that we believe our world is real?

It's a creeping thing, the simulacrum, especially when it becomes more than real, when it becomes a representation of that which has no original. All the set rules of language, of time and space, become subjective, airy representations of ideas that have no "real" to back them. What drives the international community? Money, of course, which is clearly a representation of, of--

. . . a representation of something. It will come to me in a second.

Vaguely Related Posts:

1. The Power of the Mind (Even Yours)
2. The Angel of Progress
3. Waking and Dreaming, Thought and Sound
4. Fascination with Heavy Objects
5. Taboo's Meditation on Nostalgia and Exile

Copyright ©2004-2007 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Monkey Blue Blog

The original design of this particular woman problem found a home on a German postcard in 1888, author anonymous. In 1915, the British cartoonist, W.E. Hill, appropriated the idea and published the image's form that later trickled into science journals and cognitive psychology text books.

I first encountered this particular woman problem ten years ago, in a writing workshop. At the beginning of class, the professor wandered around the room, showing each student a picture. He then asked us to spend five minutes writing out a character sketch to match the image. When our time was up, the class reconvened, and found that the professor had taped a different drawing, the image on the right, to the board at the front of the room.

The professor suggested that we produce a character sketch based on this new image--the entire class would participate, share our ideas, and as a group develop a new character together.

At first, we thought the exercise was silly. Writers work best as individuals, after all, and we like to stash away our best ideas for our own private triumphs. Soon, however, the exercise seemed worse than silly: the exercise was a joke, a bad joke, at that. We couldn't agree on the tiniest of details. Some wanted to mark the woman's age at 20; others felt 70 was too young. Some people were certain she was a noble lady; others argued that you'd most likely find her on the corner, begging for booze money. She was beautiful and quite sophisticated; she was gracelessly deformed, and you could hardly bear to look at her. The exercise that seemed rather foolish at the beginning now devolved into frustration and disbelief.

One woman in my class became so frustrated, she finally said, "Perverts. You're always trying to turn women into objects. Leave her alone!"

There is nothing more powerful than the force of suggestion. And nothing shapes what you see more than your past experiences. You are conditioned to interpret the world in the most particular and sweeping ways--from the moment your first cry is answered with the taste of mother's milk. Each and every one of your earliest perceptions are tied to memories of your parents' responses, to the responses of your brothers and sisters, your neighbors, your babysitters, your televisions, your teachers, your preachers, your coaches, your friends and your lovers. The associations you make between your actions and these external responses are your experiences. Your experiences tell you how to see things.

You take your perspective with you everywhere. It is the rare savant, or genius, or saint who can leave behind her perceptions, and learn something new. Who can see outside his own box?

The point of the class exercise was not to demonstrate that there are, in fact, two sides of every coin; the point was to demonstrate that you can only see one side. When you realize that you can only see one side, that is the AHA! moment that grabs each of us fewer and fewer times as we grow older and older. Our conditioners are quite competent--they have been thoroughly conditioned themselves. This is why the AHA! must be seized and exalted. If you are able to realize that you can only see one side of the coin, then you can realize how the tunnel-vision of your perspective limits you--makes you only human.

Of course, once you accept the limits of your humanity, you should be more willing to celebrate difference. You should want--need--other people to explain the other side of the coin, right?

In that old workshop, ten years ago, my professor wandered around the class room, showing everyone a picture. But not everyone was shown the same picture. It was after the professor had prepped us with these very different images that he once again brought us together. Of course we couldn't see eye to eye.

Of course, right?

Distantly Related Posts:

1. The Power of the Mind (Even Yours)
2. The Angel of Progress
3. Waking and Dreaming, Thought and Sound
4. Fascination with Heavy Objects
5. Ecclesiastes, Simulacrum, Baudrillard, Disneyland
6. Sudoku Tips and Tricks

Copyright ©2004-2007 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Monkey Blue Blog

Part I: Care to Revise Your Story?
Part II: Care to Revise Your Story? Opening Windows  

I've written short stories aplenty: I have notebooks and hard drives packed with short fiction drafts that range across the quality spectrum from nearly decent all the way down to virulent sludge.  For the moment, let's say this résumé qualifies me to attempt the thesis project I have in mind: writing a novel.

I'm taking one of those MFA, graduate-level 101 courses the administration learns to offer to students who should--but do not--know how to approach the structure of a novel.  Our fearless leader is Professor Kim McLarin, ushering rookies into the big leagues.  We hope.  Now, here's a basic Plot Triangle, and a very simple way to think about what's supposed to happen in a novel.

At the start of your novel, you'll have a main character, the protagonist, living the sort of life that this protagonist, Bruce, let's say, has always lived.  If we leave Bruce alone, he'll plod ever-onward, content with his nightly, frozen Hungry Man suppers and his guilty obsession with the Olsen Twins, until he reaches the end of his story--until, that is, he dies.  However, writing is violence, as they say. We're not going to leave old Bruce to deal with reality on his own.  Instead, while Bruce is sopping up his poorly defrosted mashed potatoes and watching Full House re-runs, his favorite episode is interrupted by a news bulletin: one of the Olsen Twins has been murdered.

Thus begins Bruce's story, leading him on a very different path from the one he plods during the miasmic, cookie-cutter days of his normal life.

Professor Kim McLarin suggests looking at your beginning idea in this way:

1. Someone kills one of the Olsen Twins--Bruce's favorite of the two, by the way--ruining the flow of his life.

QUESTION: WHY DOES IT MATTER?
-- It doesn't matter and Bruce gets over it; or
-- Bruce mourns the world's new emptiness; or
-- Bruce's brother was the murderer; or
-- Bruce was the mastermind behind her murder, but both Twins were supposed to die.

Search your soul, and determine which "why it matters" matters the most to you.  Then:

2. Bruce's hired thug, Giuseppe, returns, looking for his pay.  In a fury over the botched double-kill, Bruce throws Giuseppe down the front stair and refuses to give him a nickel.

QUESTION: WHY DOES IT MATTER?
-- It doesn't matter; or
-- Bruce feels badly for Giuseppe and wants to make amends; or
-- Giuseppe is a well-connected Mason; or
-- Giuseppe is Bruce's brother; or
-- Giuseppe was Bruce's sister before she had an "operation."

So on, so forth.  Every step along the story's way, the reader will wonder why it matters.  If at any time, the reader feels that Bruce could simply slip back into his normal life without significant consequences, then you do not have a novel.  If at any time along the way, you find yourself not caring for Bruce's obsession, then you'll have to face the possibility that you're writing the wrong novel.  Every stage of your novel should raise the stakes yet again, box your character in a little tighter, until at last he snaps: he changes conclusively--or must confront the stagnation of his entire life up until this very moment.

It isn't easy to change, and that's why stories matter: they explain how people can, or cannot, change.  They explain why people, after years and years of couch-sitting, are moved in the end to act.

Part I: Care to Revise Your Story?
Part II: Care to Revise Your Story? Opening Windows 

Copyright ©2004-2007 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Monkey Blue Blog  

1. Part I: Care to Revise Your Story? Introduction
2. Novel Workshop: Testing Your Idea

Have you ever written a story with a couple of solid characters, maybe three but not four, a solid story premise and, maybe, a truly heartbreaker of an ending, only to find yourself holding on to sixteen stuffy pages? Maybe your story is too insulated against the outside world. Maybe you need to open up some windows and let in the street noise.

Writing a story is one of the most difficult things to do well. Revising your story--that's hard, too. But letting in the sunlight to a tightly wound narrative might be the hardest task of all.

In Part I: Care to Revise Your Story? I unpacked the barebones of a story revision strategy taught by my professor, Pam Painter. You've sliced, diced and reconstituted your first draft . You've let go of your little plot secrets and given your readers the information they need to know. You've admitted that your story was a little flabby and burned off the unsightly, distracting love handles. Finally, you reorganized the narrative and re-typed the whole shmeer.

Now you need to let your story breathe. It has the bones and tendon to hold the world together. Now it needs oxygen. It needs blood.

How many times in your story does your main character make use of his imagination? How many times, when driving to work, do YOU make use of your imagination? Why do you get to daydream but your characters do not?

How many times do your characters receive phone calls? How many times are those calls wrong numbers?

When your character crosses the street, does she ever have to wait for that guy in the Wrangler who decides to make a left turn at the last possible second? Are there cars in the streets at all?

Do your characters ever watch the news?

These are questions you should take directly to your characters. Ask your characters everything. During the first few drafts that you write, you'll start to feel like you know you characters fairly well. Now that you've been introduced to them, take them out for beers and grill them with every question under the sun. Get to know them better than they know themselves. Try asking them in a chilly voice, "Billy, why are you such a terrible son?" Does he get angry? Does he look confused? Or does he pour out his guts all over the bar? In your story, you might let him get away with a shrug--but when you're getting to know him, you can't cut him any slack.

All right, here's the tricky part: as you're getting to the true gristle of what it means to be one of your characters, you need to find ways of letting his quirks mix with the real world. My professor calls the following items by the name "inserts." Once you've completed one or two drafts of your story, let your third story revision focus on inserting new life into the narrative. This won't be easy. Your narrative will resist the outside world as if these inserts were infections. Every narrative wants to explains something, and every draft of a narrative strives to drive that explanation home. Therefore, when you try teach your story some new tricks, the old dog will bite. Don't forget that you're the writer. You have some say over what happens on these pages.

These are some inserts collected and designed by Pam Painter:

1. "As a child, I [main character] learned . . ."
2. "Last night I had a reoccurring dream about . . ."
3. "Five years from now, I'll probably . . ."
4. "They were probably saying ______ about me . . ."
5. "My to-do list, top 5 . . ."
6. "Secretly, I collected . . ."
7. "The telephone rang. It was a wrong number, but the caller refused to hang up . . ."
8. "The one thing I couldn't say was ______"
9. "As for God, I . . . "
10. "The smell of ______ brought back . . . "
11. "Suddenly, I remembered that I had forgotten . . . "
12. My mother never . . . "

Before writing another draft, plan on revising your story with at least five inserts. Yes. Five. Only, don't decide which inserts to add with your revision--not quite yet. Dust off a pad of paper, and use these questions to interview your characters. Write the answers in your trusty notebook, then review what you've written. You're looking for inserts that reveal startling depth, clear insight into the soul of your character. You're looking for the cause and effect, the interactions and relationships your character establishes with the outside world.

Choose at least five, then stick 'em in to your story revision. Don't just throw 'em in, you have to make them stick. If that means more revision, then you should feel good about yourself. You've given yourself the focus you need to revise, and revise again. A fellow MFA-er of mine likes to say, "These muffs couldn't write their way out of a paper bag." Can you?

1. Part I: Care to Revise Your Story? Introduction
2. Novel Workshop: Testing Your Idea

Copyright ©2004-2006, ©2007 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Monkey Blue Blog

Jump into:

1. Part II: Care to Revise Your Story? Opening Windows
2. Novel Workshop: Testing Your Idea

You have seven notebooks and two hard drives loaded with story beginnings. You write and write. You write some more. You have ideas galore, characters aplenty, and those first two paragraphs are positively brilliant--because you revise, revise, and revise them over and over again, always trying to forget that you need to finish the goldang story. It's easy to call these paragraph nitpickings by the name "revision." It makes you feel productive. Nearly.

And then you finish a draft. Hallelujah! Now what?

Snip, snip. Get those scissors ready.

Step One: Drink a bottle of wine.

Step Two: Take a walk.

Step Three: Think about something else for five days. Think about anything else. But DO NOT look at your story! Let it have some alone time.

All right, take some deep breaths and let's get back to work.

Of every ten stories Raymond Carver wrote, eight went to the garbage can, one took a slight detour by way of a draft or two before joining its fellows in the trash, and one story made the cut.

Literally.

STORY REVISION

I am lousy at revision. When I revise a story, my revision becomes an entirely different piece of fiction. That's not revision. That's laziness. Your story needs to change, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you're ready to move on to the next piece.

I'm taking a story revision course with Pam Painter. She has a book on the task I'm about to outline and I highly recommend sniffing out a copy for yourself. Meanwhile, get out your scissors, scotch tape and highlighter. Hold on to something. Here we go:

Story Revision: Slicing Your Story into Scenes

Every story can be cut into different scenes, sections of narrative summary, flashbacks and back story. Number each of your sliced sections and then tape them (be ready to pull them down--no super glue) on the wall near your computer, behind the couch where you write your madness into notebooks--wherever you like, just make sure you can pace back and forth with enough elbow room to pull out your hair. Do not fiddle with language. Don't get fussy about clichés right now. Save it for a later revision.

What you have in front of you is the plot, or the narrative. Between the both of you, you and your narrator have chosen to tell your story in this particular order, whether or not the order corresponds with the chronology of the story itself. Why does Jimmy have a flashback in section seven? Why does Lucy Lu decide to narrate some back story in section twelve--back story that takes place chronologically before the story begins? There's nothing necessarily wrong with narrating a chronologically diverse story, but you'd better have a nifty reason for doing it that way.

Story Revision: Mixing the Scenes

Okay. Look at each scene and note when crucial bits of information show up, when major characters are introduced and other relevant details. Make sure that readers are getting all the important parts of the story when they need them. You may understand your character well enough to know why he decides to stuff his sister's mouth with caterpillars, but readers won't understand unless you show them. It might seem obvious to you that eighteen year old Billy wets his pants, but unless you tell your reader that Billy is, in fact, eighteen years old, wears big boy pants, and drinks five liters of Gatorade before going to sleep, the reader will think Billy is a little toddler who wears those rubber pant-protectors. Share your information with your readers, people!

With your story cut up into sections, you'll have an easier time seeing your omissions. And more importantly, you'll have to face the hard truth that some of your precious scenes will need eliminating. What's your story about? What is your character trying to do? If your scene doesn't help your character get from one place to another, you've got to kiss that scene goodbye. There's just no other way. Don't believe me? Think about it this way: YOU may know what your story is about, and YOU may understand that the funny little jewel of a scene in section four is there because it's hilarious and deserves to be served to the public. But your reader trusts that everything in your story is essential. If they believe your scene is essential and then discover that it isn't, they're going to put your story down and go read something that makes sense.

To recap:

1. Cut your story into sections, number them and hang them on the wall to dry
2. Inspect each section for crucial details, and make a note to yourself that your reader will receive a bit of info in scene two or scene fifteen.
3. Does your reader know what you know? More importantly, do you know enough about your own story?
4. Make sure every scene counts. Does each scene lead relentlessly to the conclusion? If you were the reader instead of the writer, would you ask, "Why doesn't Billy simply put down the Gatorade?" If the reader would ask such as a question, you should replace that silly scene about the circus peanuts with a scene about Compulsive Electrolyte Disorder. Make your scenes count, or get rid of them.

Now, make a note of your revised section order, complete with added scenes and notes concerning your deleted scenes. TYPE YOUR REVISED STORY. Do not cut and paste. Do not cut and paste. Do not cut and paste.

Whoo-hoo. My professor says I have a second draft! (Pats self on back).

Jump into:

1. Part II: Care to Revise Your Story? Opening Windows
2. Novel Workshop: Testing Your Idea

Copyright ©2004-2006, ©2007 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Monkey Blue Blog