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| The Story Lizard, by Jeremy Zerfoss |
Saiu na FastCo. O recém lançado livro Wonderbook:
The Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, traz Story
Lizards e Prologue Fishes (fotos) que nos guiam pelos rebuscados caminhos do
storytelling. Mas além destes infographic
buddies, o livro traz também dicas
do vencedor do Pulitzer Junot Diaz e dos mestres Neil Gaiman e George
R.R. Martin.
Abaixo uma amostra
do livro. Não tive tempo de traduzir, mas fica a
dica.
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TELL DON’T SHOW
Hugo Award-winner Kim Stanley
Robinson, author of the Mars trilogy, believes "exposition"
deserves more respect. He says, "The advice 'show don’t tell' is a zombie
idea, killed 40 years ago by the publication in English of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, yet still sadly wandering the
literary landscape ... what is boring in fiction tends to be the hackneyed
plots with all their tired old stage business, while the interesting stuff
usually lies in what is called the exposition, meaning the writing about
whatever is not us."
NAME WISELY
Fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman
stresses the importance of a good name in describing the genesis of his American
Gods protagonist. "There’s a magic to names, after all," he says.
"I knew his name [needed to be] descriptive. I tried calling him Lazy, but
he didn’t seem to like that, and I called him Jack, and he didn’t like that any
better. I took to trying every name I ran into on him for size, and he looked
back at me from somewhere in my head unimpressed every time. It was like trying
to name Rumpelstiltskin. He finally got his name from an Elvis Costello song
... on Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs, Detours and Rendezvous. It’s performed
by Was (Not Was) and is the story of two men named Shadow and Jimmy. I ... tried
it on for size ...
'... Shadow stretched uncomfortably on his prison cot, and
glanced across at the Wild Birds of North America wall calendar, with the days
he’d been inside crossed off, and he counted the days until he got out.' And
once I had a name, I was ready to begin."
BUILD A BETTER BACKSTORY
Stant Litore, author of the Zombie
Bible series, asks himself three questions when creating characters.
"I take a very pragmatic approach to backstory," he says. "I
want to know what moment defined the character’s relationship to their parents,
what moment defined their greatest desire, and what moment defined their
greatest fear. Those three moments are most of what I need, because those three
tell me where the character comes from, what they want, and what holds them
back."
TAKE YOUR LUMPS
How to Live Safely in a Science
Fictional Universe author Charles Yu,
winner of the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award, advises "Leave
things lumpy." He elaborates, "People want to know how the
protagonist’s father’s dress socks looked against his pale white shins. People
want to know the titles of the strange and eclectic books lining the walls of
his study. People want to know the sounds he made while snoring, how he looked
while concentrating, the way his glasses pinched the bridge of his nose,
leaving what appeared to be uncomfortable-looking ovals of purple and red
discolored skin when he took those glasses off at the end of a long day. Even
if those lumps make the mixture less smooth, less pretty, even if you don’t
quite know what to do with them, even if they don’t figure into your
chemistry--they don’t have a place in the reaction equations--leave them there.
Leave the impurities in there.
LET IT BLOOM
George R.R. Martin, author of the
Song of Ice and Fire series divides storytellers into pre-planning
Architects and Gardeners. "The Gardener just sort of digs a hole and
plants a seed, and then he waters it with his blood and sweat before waiting to
see what will come up. It’s not totally random, because obviously the Gardener
knows what he’s planted; he knows whether it’s an oak tree or a pumpkin. If
he’s not taken totally by surprise by further inspiration he has a general idea
of what he’s doing ... I lean very much to the side of the Gardener."
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| The Prologue Fish, by Jeremy Zerfoss |
FINISH THE THING
Early in his career Martin
produced reams of unfinished story fragments. He learned to appreciate Robert
Heinlein's Four Rules for Writing. Martin says "The first one was 'you
must write, but the second one was 'you must finish what you write. A lot of
young writers somehow get stuck, or it goes awry and they don’t finish those
stories. Heinlein was right: You have to overcome that."
DEFORM THE FAMILIAR
Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz
says his first-person narratives demand that he push past personal
autobiography. “I’ve never been able to write directly about things that happen
to me," he says. "I need to deform them in ways to make them strange
to me ... if I’m playing the court stenographer, then there isn’t going to be
room for play, and if there is no room for play the work sits on the page
lifeless. It’s during the play that I come up with all the weird connections,
when my subtle structures come to life, when what’s best about the book starts
to unfold.”
TALK TO STRANGERS
Arthur C. Clarke Award winner
Lauren Beukes, a white South African, created a black Ugandan ex-junkie as the
hero of her critically lauded sci-fi noir novel Zoo City. Beukes says
"I don’t have a lot of patience for [authors who are] too lazy to do any
research ... culture and race and sexuality and even language are all lenses
that shape our experiences of the world and who we are in it. The only way to
climb into that experience is to research it, through books or blogs or
documentaries or journalism or, most important and obvious, through talking to
people."
By Hugh Hart.
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