I can't even remember how many times I have read Hills Like White Elephants for my classes, whether in high school or college. It is one of those stories that I go on loving more and more each time I read. Sure, I see it in a whole different light, knowing the ending and knowing the meaning, but never once have I found myself not thoroughly enjoying it. The Great Gatsby is like that for me, too. The two are among the very few things I've been 'forced' to read for classes and actually loved. Every single time. And the reason why I love them changes every single time.
If I was asked what my biggest weakness is in my writing, my answer would be dialogue. Somedays it is better than others. Other days it is an absolute nightmare and I can't even fathom why nothing will work together. I wrote a story last year about a person I used to talk to all the time, for hours on end. I never saw his face, but his voice was a constant in my life. It was a beautiful, but disturbing experience. Writing the piece, I couldn't figure out how to make it work, even though the words I wrote were the same words we said to each other. Even though it was a real conversation, the dialogue didn't feel right. Something about it didn't fit. But now, I am proud of that story, nearly entirely dialogue but still, I think, a cohesive representation of a time in my life that matters. It was my story, so I am happy with how I represented it, but my dialogue always needs more work. Always.
Reading this story is also a reminder of how to improve my own writing. The dialogue is smooth, and easy to follow, but nothing is expressly stated. It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to self-explain in dialogue, to use it as a source of information or as something that needs to mediate between the story and the reader's understanding of it. But no real conversation does that. Real conversations are vague and confusing to a passerby. They are reliant upon previous discussions and are a reference to those conversations. Real conversations don't exist in a vacuum and they don't grab random passersby listening in by the hand and say 'This is what we are talking about in case it wasn't clear'. That would be ridiculous.
I'm not inclined to be writing ridiculous things. I'd like my work to be a reflection of life.
It's just another thing I'll have to work on, but it's okay.
If I was asked what my biggest weakness is in my writing, my answer would be dialogue. Somedays it is better than others. Other days it is an absolute nightmare and I can't even fathom why nothing will work together. I wrote a story last year about a person I used to talk to all the time, for hours on end. I never saw his face, but his voice was a constant in my life. It was a beautiful, but disturbing experience. Writing the piece, I couldn't figure out how to make it work, even though the words I wrote were the same words we said to each other. Even though it was a real conversation, the dialogue didn't feel right. Something about it didn't fit. But now, I am proud of that story, nearly entirely dialogue but still, I think, a cohesive representation of a time in my life that matters. It was my story, so I am happy with how I represented it, but my dialogue always needs more work. Always.
Reading this story is also a reminder of how to improve my own writing. The dialogue is smooth, and easy to follow, but nothing is expressly stated. It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to self-explain in dialogue, to use it as a source of information or as something that needs to mediate between the story and the reader's understanding of it. But no real conversation does that. Real conversations are vague and confusing to a passerby. They are reliant upon previous discussions and are a reference to those conversations. Real conversations don't exist in a vacuum and they don't grab random passersby listening in by the hand and say 'This is what we are talking about in case it wasn't clear'. That would be ridiculous.
I'm not inclined to be writing ridiculous things. I'd like my work to be a reflection of life.
It's just another thing I'll have to work on, but it's okay.
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