The struggling author IV

Currently, I am stuck at three overlapping complications, which have brought me to a temporary standstill. If I forge ahead before I have come to a conclusion and then discover that I was heading in the wrong direction, I could end up with an enormous amount of re-writes. On the other hand, a conclusion can be hard to reach without further practical experimentation. It might be time to write a few short stories.

1. How close to stick to the bare-bones of the events and how much to flesh it out, be it in terms of side-events or details of the events:

   My writing so far has been fairly bare-bones, which makes for a good tempo, a lack of a waste, and results in something that I find enjoyable to read. However, looking at the writings of others, there is often a great amount of fleshing out, and the result is often still enjoyable. There is a loss of tempo and sometimes too much irrelevancy is added, but this is also a source of atmosphere (or e.g. suspense), it can make an important scene longer and thereby more memorable, it allows more opportunities for character exposition, etc.

   Currently, I am considering to start with a bare-bones version of a scene and then to add material until I find a decent compromise. This has the obvious advantage that it is usable on what I already have written. (But note the contrast to the common advice of removing material over time.)

2. How much to (explicitly) divulge of the inner workings of the characters:

   Early on, I tended to be extremely low on such information, but I have since tended to include more and more. The former might appeal to the more intellectual reader, give more room for interpretation by the reader, and leave me with more options in terms of later choices, because I have not nailed myself down. However, there is also fair chance that most readers will fail to connect the dots and/or will arrive at the wrong conclusions (in those cases where I do have a specific intention). I also have a suspicion that diverting too much of (even the intellectual) reader’s attention to deciphering the characters’ words and actions could be a misprioritization, and that this attention might be better spent on other aspects of the text.*

   *This might be a special case of the author wanting to achieve too many things in one go, which I suspect is a current weakness of mine.

3. How much information to provide about how something is said:

   If we look at a line from a movie, how something is said is often as important as what is said. This includes indications about mood, emotions, intended irony or sarcasm,* urgency or stress, etc. Writing a book, such information has to be foregone, communicated by explaining text, or communicated (alone) by the words spoken by the characters. (Or some combination of the three.)

   *As a note to the U.S. reader, if the twerps on “The Big Bang Theory” considers something sarcasm, it is almost always irony. Sometimes, it is also sarcasm, but probably in less than half the cases.

   The last seems to be a common ideal,* but few actually try it—and I am honestly uncertain how this could work: it would leave so much up to the reader that (a) readers will disagree as much about the contents of the book as they might about how the characters look, (b) readers might stroll down a path of interpretation that is incompatible** with later parts of the book.

   *Up to the point that I have seen the recommendation to only ever use “said”, as in e.g. “[…] said Tom.”, “[…] said Dick.”, “[…] said Harry.”, irrespective of the circumstances. Variations like “[…] scoffed Tom.” and “[…] said Dick sarcastically.” would then be ruled out.

   **E.g. in that a strongly verbalizing reader has “heard” one of the characters say something in anger, while later events make clear that he said it in jest, without even pretend anger. Note the difference to the previous item, where later information might force a re-interpretation of events, but where a revision of what the reader “heard” is not needed. (Just like we might need to re-interpret experiences from our own lives without having a need to re-imagine how the experiences actually played out.)

   For now, I tend towards including as much information as needed to make the rough intent of (at least) the surface action shine through. In particular, I doubt that even a true master always can manage this using only words spoken by the characters. (Often nothing will be needed, because there is nothing particular going on, e.g. when two characters calmly discuss a topic. Often words will be enough in context, e.g. because a “Fuck!” will usually be interpreted correctly. Always? That is a different matter.)

   As an aside, theatrical plays are not a counter-argument, because they are usually intended to be consumed through the interpretations of actors, who provide the missing clues. The interpretations might be different from run to run, or even performance to performance, but they are not left to the fantasy of the reader. This is perfectly legitimate, and might well be the reason for the enduring success of e.g. Shakespeare, but it is a different situation.

To revisit some issues from the previous update:

I am still in discussions with the Künstlersozialkasse. Highly disturbingly, a recent letter from it tried to exemplify why the rejection was justified by pointing to an earlier court case. I looked into this case (superficially), and it actually appears to support my stance. If in doubt, the Künstlersozialkasse lost the case … This falls in line with prior observations of Germany governmental agencies, who tend to just throw out names of various court cases alleged to support their points of view—without bothering to check whether the respective case applies to the issue at hand.* In this case, it might go even further—just throw out the name of a court case, at all, and hope that the counter-part does not check up on the details …

*A fundamental observation about court cases and precedence is that there has to be substantial similarities between cases for precedence to apply. Without such similarities, the reasoning behind the prior court decision(s) need not apply, and when the reasoning does not apply, the conclusion is left in the air.

The construction work appears to be ended, but it is far from silent. At least one party (yet to be identified) in the building engages in truly excessive noise making, including stomping or jumping on the floor for hours per week, and often at unfortunate times at that. Note: Not “walks”, even be it clumsily or in shoes. Not “runs in the stairs”. Not “has a brief fit after a lost game”. We are talking about outright, prolonged stomping, someone deliberately driving his feet into the floor with force—on a daily basis and for hours per week. Notably, this is loud enough that it is impossible to sleep through even when using ear-plugs; notably, it often happens in the late evening or early morning.

Moreover, the source of the construction work has (accidentally) identified herself: To my great surprise, this was another person in the building, who had bought a second apartment for her daughter. She waylaid me and another neighbor when we were about to enter the building, blocked the way, and started a long speech about “problems in building”. I thought that she was rightly concerned about the noise levels, but no: she alleged that there had been repeated break-ins in the cellar, affecting all the storage units. (I found no trace of a break-in for my unit. Only one of the other units, at the time, showed damages in the lock area.) She also blamed the broken glass in the front-door on these burglars. Interesting: I had hitherto assumed that her construction workers were to blame … As a further oddity: if any reasonable person were aware of burglaries and wanted to bring them to the attention of the neighbors, the obvious measure is to write a letter and post it in the hall-way, so that everyone can see it immediately. She appears to have chosen to pick off individual neighbors person by person, with a considerably induced delay. (To boot, my personal suspicion is that she was more interested in gossiping and trying to turn the neighbors against each other. She struck me as that type of trouble-maker from her behavior and she seems to fit the profile of an angry and bitter aging woman with nothing better to do. During our one prior meeting, she was boiling with fury because someone allegedly had misused the paper recycling. In all fairness, speculations based on two meetings should be taken with a grain of salt.)

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