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unjapanologistHello, world. I've been in China for the past couple of weeks, bothering jin_fenghuang and cadesama and doing a great deal of writing, reading, and eating. It was awesome.
I still need to finish that Comiket post I didn't have time to write before hopping on the plane to Changchun, so I'm not going to link to or blab about every interesting thing that was waiting for me on the internet when I got back to Kyoto. This piece by writer Aliette de Bodard struck a chord with me, though. On the prevalence of US tropes in storytelling is a bit ranty, as the author herself indicates, but several of the points she makes about the non-universality of US narrative tropes are things that I really needed a reminder of. Favourite bits:
Personally, I'm far from tired of US tropes in stories. I've never really felt that my chosen entertainment was shoving more US tropes at me than I wanted to deal with. The media I grew up with were over half US-made, so I've probably been conditioned to like US stuff, but there was also a very generous helping of local (Belgian), European, and Japanese material. Stories from all of those regions appealed and still appeal to me. Also, I realize that not all fiction originating in the US follows US tropes all the time. Plenty of fic written by authors I know to be USians aren't overflowing with the things de Bodard would prefer to see less of. There are plenty of tropes used in US fiction that aren't at all like the ones she describes.
However. Fairly recently, I started writing my own fiction again. It's been nearly a decade since I last spent a lot of time not just watching and talking about stories, but actively building my own, and writing in 2011 turned out to be very different from writing in 1999. Designing appealing characters and interesting plots has been giving me huge headaches. The one long story that I've been devoting the most time to (those of you reading my locked entries know which one that is) has a main character who's a jaded middle-aged man, not a bad sort, but he does some extremely morally questionable things and makes some intensely stupid and painful mistakes. I've plotted out most of the upcoming chapters, and I've been worrying myself in circles about the story arc I ended up designing. It seems to lack... resolution. Or a message. Or things that go boom and make sparkles and are very meaningful. There's character development, but it doesn't seem very drastic. Especially the main character doesn't seem to learn quite as much as he should. It feels like my plans for the characters and the story just aren't grand enough to justify devoting at least a hundred and fifty thousand words to them.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly that at least some of my plans just aren't very good, and I should keep revising them as I go along. But it wasn't until reading de Bodard's piece that I realized I've been wanting to write a 'European' character novel like the ones I used to read as a teenager, but I've been judging my story as if it were an 'American' tale of character growth and triumph over adversity and all that. Which it just isn't. I've been looking at it wrong for half a year. (No, I can't put into words exactly how a 'European' and an 'American' character novel are different. I know them when I see them? Sometimes? I wish I'd paid more attention in literature class, but it wasn't so exciting back then, or so personal. What I mean to say is, there are differences between US and European (?) tropes, although I don't think they're as stark as de Bodard suggests. I don't have the literature chops or vocabulary to articulate this properly, though.)
To summarize: well-worn US tropes all over the place are just fine, I love consuming them. But I really wish that my own head hadn't tricked me into thinking that I should write those tropes as well. I suppose I need to re-watch that video about the dangers of a single story a couple of times and remind myself that the warnings in that one apply to me, too.
/end of navel-gazing
jin_fenghuang and cadesama and doing a great deal of writing, reading, and eating. It was awesome.I still need to finish that Comiket post I didn't have time to write before hopping on the plane to Changchun, so I'm not going to link to or blab about every interesting thing that was waiting for me on the internet when I got back to Kyoto. This piece by writer Aliette de Bodard struck a chord with me, though. On the prevalence of US tropes in storytelling is a bit ranty, as the author herself indicates, but several of the points she makes about the non-universality of US narrative tropes are things that I really needed a reminder of. Favourite bits:
I’m tired of the way US culture and tropes have so pervaded popular culture that we no longer even question them, or even recognise them–and, worse, that people outside the US are actively aping them in search of the so-called “universal stories”.
I’m tired of plots that value individualism and egotism above all else; of heroes that always have to be the masters of their own fates, to be active and not take anything that life deals at them lying down (whereas most of the time, we lie down, we accept, we deal with what we have been given) (...).
I don’t want stories in which the main character has to be sympathetic and with the moral high ground [2] in order to be worthwhile; in which people have to change in order for the plot to be significant; in which women exist only to be sidelined or as surrogate men.
Personally, I'm far from tired of US tropes in stories. I've never really felt that my chosen entertainment was shoving more US tropes at me than I wanted to deal with. The media I grew up with were over half US-made, so I've probably been conditioned to like US stuff, but there was also a very generous helping of local (Belgian), European, and Japanese material. Stories from all of those regions appealed and still appeal to me. Also, I realize that not all fiction originating in the US follows US tropes all the time. Plenty of fic written by authors I know to be USians aren't overflowing with the things de Bodard would prefer to see less of. There are plenty of tropes used in US fiction that aren't at all like the ones she describes.
However. Fairly recently, I started writing my own fiction again. It's been nearly a decade since I last spent a lot of time not just watching and talking about stories, but actively building my own, and writing in 2011 turned out to be very different from writing in 1999. Designing appealing characters and interesting plots has been giving me huge headaches. The one long story that I've been devoting the most time to (those of you reading my locked entries know which one that is) has a main character who's a jaded middle-aged man, not a bad sort, but he does some extremely morally questionable things and makes some intensely stupid and painful mistakes. I've plotted out most of the upcoming chapters, and I've been worrying myself in circles about the story arc I ended up designing. It seems to lack... resolution. Or a message. Or things that go boom and make sparkles and are very meaningful. There's character development, but it doesn't seem very drastic. Especially the main character doesn't seem to learn quite as much as he should. It feels like my plans for the characters and the story just aren't grand enough to justify devoting at least a hundred and fifty thousand words to them.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly that at least some of my plans just aren't very good, and I should keep revising them as I go along. But it wasn't until reading de Bodard's piece that I realized I've been wanting to write a 'European' character novel like the ones I used to read as a teenager, but I've been judging my story as if it were an 'American' tale of character growth and triumph over adversity and all that. Which it just isn't. I've been looking at it wrong for half a year. (No, I can't put into words exactly how a 'European' and an 'American' character novel are different. I know them when I see them? Sometimes? I wish I'd paid more attention in literature class, but it wasn't so exciting back then, or so personal. What I mean to say is, there are differences between US and European (?) tropes, although I don't think they're as stark as de Bodard suggests. I don't have the literature chops or vocabulary to articulate this properly, though.)
To summarize: well-worn US tropes all over the place are just fine, I love consuming them. But I really wish that my own head hadn't tricked me into thinking that I should write those tropes as well. I suppose I need to re-watch that video about the dangers of a single story a couple of times and remind myself that the warnings in that one apply to me, too.
/end of navel-gazing
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