On the Collaborative Nature of Storytelling

So in addition to being an avid reader, I'm also a writer.  Obviously, right?  But in addition to blogging about books and reading, I also write fiction, some non-fiction, and poetry, which means that storytelling is something I think about a lot.  There's an art to putting words on paper that make readers feel for the characters they describe, but it goes beyond knowing what words to chose.  Stories are designed to capture the human experience; in essence, they're holding a mirror up to nature (to paraphrase the Bard).  They let us see on the page what we're too preoccupied to notice on the way to work or sitting around the dinner table. 

Do you know what I see in that mirror?  People.

See, storytelling cannot be completed in a vacuum.  The very act of "telling" requires an audience to hear.  Anyone who's ever told a story, of any kind, knows that audience matters.  It isn't just a matter of who hears what, but of how your audience responds to what you say.  This leads me to the thing that I love and hate most about stories. 

The story I tell you is not the story you hear. 

What you hear is a glorious product of your own imagining.  Yes, perhaps it was my prompts that conjured them, but the visions are all your own. 

Think of it like this.  Every day, we're bombarded with stimuli: things that make us happy, angry, frustrated, indignant, elated.  Each of these little reactions bubbles up within us only to fade away, replaced by the next response.  Now along comes a storyteller.  He presents you with characters and you find yourself able to envision them.  Do they look exactly the same in your head as in the storyteller's?  No.  But there they are, just the same.  The storyteller goes on to have these characters move and breathe and live and love before your very eyes and you feel for them, because, after all, that is the point.  Now all those little gems of feeling, instead of drifting away, are strung onto a cord of words that holds them tight.  You and he have created this together.

And he never gets to see it.

Our experience of the world is what we make of it.  We all have our lenses through which we see the world.  Thusly, no story, whether written, told, or viewed, can ever be experienced in quite the same way.  Our response is uniquely our own, each and every time.  This is one of the great joys and frustrations of being a writer.  I can create something and send it out into the world, but no one will ever quite see what I do.  For some, it will be infinitely better than anything I could have written, and for others, the resonance just won't be there.  I can't make them see what I do.  Nor would I want to.  I love to talk about stories, my own and others', because I love to see how differently the same words or pictures can come across to different people.  I love to pick them apart and see what makes them tick.  It's an interesting exercise that's taught me as much about people as it has about storytelling.  But perhaps that's less of a distinction than it seems.  I try to keep that in mind when I'm surfing book review sites and see some of the cruel things people say to one another when opinions clash.  The irony of the statement "Were you even reading the same book?!?!" seems lost on them.  Of course they weren't reading the same book.  No one ever is.  Yet without the author, there would have been no place for anyone to start.  In the end, it's a deeply personal thing, relating to a story.  The funny thing is, it can never be done alone.  We're all in this together. 

The Windup Girl

Title: The Windup Girl

Author: Paolo Bacigalupi

Publisher: Night Shade Books (2009)

Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Length: 359 pages

Synopsis:  Life is uncertain in Bangkok.  Everyone's got a secret to hide.  Anderson is working with the hated AgriGen company, out to steal the genetic biodiversity the company needs to keep its seed stocks one step ahead of mutating diseases.  Emiko is a wind-up girl, one of the New People genetically engineered for perfection and now discarded as last year's model.  Hock Seng is a refugee; once the master of a great trading empire, he was forced to the fringes of society when he fled.  As tensions in the city grow between the Environment Ministry's "white-shirts" and the powerful forces of Trade, whose secrets will be profitable?  And whose will lead to disaster?

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  I really, truly, desperately wanted to like this book.  With a great premise and so much potential (not to mention multiple awards and rave endorsements from great authors), I was really prepared to love this book.  I didn't.  I'm not certain what it was that didn't click.  Perhaps it's the jumble of characters, all with unclear motives and mixed loyalties, or maybe the slow, steady pacing that's less of a roller-coaster and more of a stroll in the park...albeit a grim, impoverished, dangerous, gritty park.  The characters seem realistic, the world Bacigalupi's created is so plausible it's terrifying, and yet I never really felt a part of it.  It honestly pains me to say that I didn't enjoy something so well written and thought out, as this clearly is, but I could not relate to the characters and could not find a flow to the story.  It took me ages to get through as I waited for the other shoe to drop, and now here I sit with the shoe still dangling.  I don't love books that wrap all the loose ends into a nice neat bow, but here I felt that the story never really got started.  The characters appear only at the fringes of one another's lives, with a few notable exceptions.  Their narratives feel disjointed, and while they permit the reader a bird's eye view of this Bangkok of the future, I found myself wanting to be more than impartial observer.  The world of the story is so deeply envisioned that I wanted to feel it myself.  Unfortunately, I never found my way through that fourth wall into the story, and though I watched until the very end, I walked away from it unmoved.

Dracula (Audiobook)

Title: Dracula

 

Author: Bram Stoker

 

Read by: Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance, Katherine Kellgren, Susan Duerden, John Lee, Graeme Malcolm, Steven Crossley, Simon Prebble, James Adams

Publisher: Audible Unabridged (2012)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Classics, Horror, Audiobook

Length: N/A

Synopsis: The mysterious happenings surrounding a group of friends and the enigmatic Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, are revealed through the personal papers of those involved.  From Jonathan Harker's perilous first visit to Castle Dracula to the Holmes-esque musings of Dr. Van Helsing, here is the whole story of this most famous of vampires performed by an all-star cast of voice actors.

 

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  I have not read the text version of Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Nor have I seen the movies, actually.  I know the story, of course (who doesn't?), but this was my first encounter with the original, and I must say I was absolutely delighted.  The structure of the story lends itself well to a full cast of performers, reading out "their" diary entries, letters, and newspaper clippings as the story of the Transylvanian count unfolds, and the horror in the voices of these skilled actors is more effective, I think, than any big-budget Hollywood film.  In fact, not being able to see, even just the text, adds to the nerve-wracking nature of this experience.  There's no looking back to double check that the door was locked and barred, and no peeking ahead to see if that dog in the street was really the count in disguise.  By the time the true nature of the count was revealed, I was completely hooked.  I listened to the vast majority of this book in one sitting (true, that one sitting was a twelve hour drive and there wasn't much else to do, but I think the point is still valid).  My one disappointment comes not from this performance, but from the text itself.  After so much build up, risk, and peril... the end of the book degenerates into repetition, followed by a quick, neat ending that doesn't feel nearly as satisfyingly emotional as the rest of the text.  There's not even a sense of shock that the whole ordeal is over.  Even with the brief, sentimental epilogue, it simply ends.  Though the text ends poorly, in my opinion, the legacy clearly lives on, and as Halloween gets closer, I'm sure we'll see still more the effects this classic work of literature had on our culture.  

Beauty (Audiobook)

Title: Beauty

 

Author: Robin McKinley

 

Read by: Charlotte Parry

Publisher: Audible Unabridged (2013)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Young Adult Fiction, Audiobook

Length: N/A

Synopsis: Beauty is a plain, bookish young woman, who feels the irony of her nickname quite keenly.  Always more comfortable with horses and books than people, she was always considered the tomboy of the family.  Her older sisters, Hope and Grace, are both lovely young society women, and all three are the darlings of their father's heart.  When a sudden change in fortune leaves the once-wealthy family impoverished and forced to leave their townhouse for a country cottage, Beauty begins to feel she's found her place at last.  She and her horse, Greatheart, are well known and liked in the little village that huddles at the edge of the great dark forest, a forest that is rumored to house a secret at its heart.  One winter, disaster strikes the family yet again, and Beauty is forced to make a decision that will take her from her family forever.  She's been set a challenge she can't begin to fathom, a challenge that will take all her wits, kindness, and perseverance to overcome: Beauty has been sent to the castle of the Beast.

 

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:  I love the print version of Beauty.  It's been a favorite for years, and when I had a chance to spend a few hours listening to the audio version, I jumped at it.  I wasn't...disappointed, per se, but the text didn't quite sparkle like it did in my own mind.  The descriptions were as vivid as I remembered them, and Parry reads well, but I found her variation in character voices distracting.  Obviously readers try to put as much of the character into their performances as possible, but I felt that she was, perhaps, trying too hard.  When only one person is presenting an entire cast of characters, the listener accepts that there are limitations to the variety of performances that the narrator can give.  We don't expect that Beauty's sisters sound completely distinct from one another, just as they probably don't in our own internalizations of the story.  It would be difficult to accept that the Beast sounds exactly like Beauty herself, but I believe that rather than overemphasizing the differences, a great deal can be accomplished by a subtle shift in cadence or inflection, a slight lowering of tone or particular emphasis on diction.  Less is more, in my opinion, and though I don't think this performance in any way devalues the text, I think that readers encountering only this audio version may not be able to fully appreciate the way the words can kindle fires all of their own accord.

The Fault in Our Stars

Title: The Fault in Our Stars

Author: John Green

Publisher: Penguin Books (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Length: 316 pages

Synopsis:  Hazel Lancaster has a unique outlook on life.  As a teenage terminal cancer patient, she can see what's left of her time laid out before her, filled with guilt, pain, and pity.  She's seen it all before, having sat through support group meetings for other "cancer kids," watching new arrivals and listening to the ever lengthening list of those who've already passed away.  She's seen it in her parents' eyes, the pain and worry of having to devote their time to a daughter whose fate has already been written.  Hazel thought she'd seen it all... until she met Augustus Waters.  Capable of turning her world upside down with his broad proclamations and simple acts of caring, Augustus has given something Hazel thought she'd needn't bother with: someone to live for.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  This was a truly remarkable book.  I knew of Green through the video blog "The Vlog Brothers" (Nerdfighters!  Woo!) and through a good friend who is a fan of his writing as well.  I was excited to finally get the chance to read this book, thought I knew nothing at all about it until page one.  That's all it took.  Green was woven a story that speaks to both cynicism and sentiment, capturing the voice of today's young people exquisitely.  Article after article proclaims that the current generation of young adults is entitled, lazy, and immature.  No wonder we're acrimonious and jaded!  But in the midst of all that harshness, we're still looking for tenderness, connection, even nostalgia in a world of digital distance.  This book lets its characters be both.  It lets them push people away and draw them close.  It lets them text and email and still be real, living, breathing, flesh-and-blood people.  They can be angry and change their minds.  They make mistakes and have poor judgement.  They are so very real, and yet... Green has written them a story.  It's not real life, it's a beautiful, poignant story.  Like the play from which the book's title is taken, Green sets these characters out before the audience and lets the drama unfold.  Half the beauty comes from the characters, and half from the language.  Seldom have I read a best-seller so easily quotable.  In fact, "as [I] read I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."  I loved this book.  Unabashedly enjoyed it, read through the night to finish it, and yes, cried.  Perhaps it won't speak to every reader, but I certainly think it's worth the time to find out.