So, this has been on my mind some today. The current project is going to be complex. It involves some sections of more ‘traditional’ story telling, and some sections of abstractness that make no sense individually, yet find their footing when blended together.
Today, for example, I wrote a more traditionally structured chapter, yet blended some of the abstractness into the structure. The chapter begins discussing tattoos from a third person perspective. A somewhat lengthy diatribe on tattoos and their evolution. No, not the change in the artwork, or equipment, but the change in the acceptability and tolerance of tattoos. The scene then zooms in to a couple on a first date, they are talking about tattoos and then their conversation becomes a discussion of their values, etc. I liked the segue way of the tattoo conversation because it created a sense of the scene; the time; the place; without having to go into a discussion about when this was taking place, where it was etc.
Later, after getting home (and I had stupidly forgotten to send myself the chapter I had written called “The days of tattoo dreams”), and I wrote a different chapter. Very abstract. It focuses on two other people in an unnamed place at some undetermined future time also ona date; their twentieth wedding anniversary.
Rather than make this scene traditional, I made it stilted. And I also interfused responses. You see, they are on their date, but the first thing they do upon arrival at a restaurant is ‘post” it to Facebook… and then there are a series of “responses” to their post, followed by more of their discussion, then a text from her mother, her response, their decision to tweet about the topic, take a selfie at the restaurant and post that, their decision to post about taking a walk instead of going straight home.
At the end of their discussion, they talk about how lucky they are to have such great friends and family.
And, of course, the point is that they are not interacting with anyone in person, just through posts and responses… but that is the trick with being abstract. That chapter, on its own, does not really tell the whole point of why it exists. A million people have made commentary about how social media is taking the ‘social” aspect out of our lives. The real point of the chapter is a series of events which are about an isolation bigger than just two people living some sort of isolated life. It is about the isolation of humanity and its destruction.
To break down the concept of this book, it is dystopian, it is somewhat science fiction. String theory postulates the concept of a ‘many worlds’ theory where every possible outcome of every decision has happened in an alternate universe; the book I am working on takes a look at several worlds with different outcomes through the eyes of two primary characters (Livvy and Cuddyback). It begins with Cuddyback in regular USA, not knowing who he is, he has retrograde amnesia. But it jumps to a pre-dystopian USA where Cuddyback meets and falls in love with a girl named Livvy, a dystopian world where everything is crumbling around, but Livvy and Cuddyback still meet and fall in love, a world where Cuddyback is the actual last man on earth and then introduces several minor characters for reference – like a physicist working with string theory and Artificial Intelligence…
But on their face, each chapter would make little sense… and that is the trick with attempting to be abstract. sometimes an opinion about a singular chapter will be bad… because there is no context and the chapter looks awful on its face.