Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The Short Story
It was quite a hiatus. The writing of a short story had been responsible for the literary coma. It was for the Golden Point Award. It was my first attempt on writing a short story piece. No sooner had I begun a hopeful endeavour to tread the emptiness of each page with a plenitude of words, I discovered that the task was no push over.
The free-writing stage of it was relatively an open and shut process. Free-writing is the embryo of almost any kind of writing. Thinking is an infanticide to the process of free-writing. In free-writing, you just write. You do not think; not a lot, at least. You write down every single trace of idea you have, even those worthy of being labelled nonsensical. You only start putting your writing under the lexical microscope when you have got the skeleton down. Only then should you grope for that dictionary, thesaurus or whatever literary weapons you might have. Then you put your writing under the knife.
One of the most difficult parts of writing a short story is probably the dialogue. You have to manufacture something that has to look anything but manufactured. You have to keep your dialogues in line with things like the time, place and situation which make up the setting of your story so that the conversations between the characters will seem believable to the readers. Your characters will only be believable if they talk like an actual human being rather than a prude Victorian-age alien from some undiscovered planet from some undiscovered solar system. One more thing, forget about the use of onomatopoeia. All the bags of "clank", "swoosh", "vroom" should be left behind back in your primary school days.
The infamy of the War on Terror had inspired me to write a short story about the last moments in the life of a terrorist. It was set in Singapore, an idea sparked by Dr. Tony Tan's rather sombre reminder to us that terrorism is fast docking onto the shores of our island and that this threat is not merely a far fetched case of paranoia, but a very real danger.
I plunged into the writing of this short story with a framework as frail as our understanding of terrorism itself. Some might beg to differ with me on this - that their comprehension of the subject of terrorism is not as miniscule as I think because they read the newspapers and watch the news on TV everyday. But news is the product of other people's interpretation of real life situations. Somewhere along the chain of information, facts can get distorted, although impurposely. I am not saying that we should not trust the media. I am saying that while we can and should trust the media, we must also provide an allowance of common sense to know that although the media, more often than not, provide truthful and accurate news, sometimes they leave out 'other' truths, which, if combined with those truths that they do report, might reveal absolutely different forms of truth! Here is an illustration: We hear about terrorist attacks almost everyday in the news. But we hardly ever, if at all, hear about the oppression that these people face from western nations. I do not condone any act of terrorism, but I do feel that if all the cards are laid on the table, then we would not merely be blindly fed with an overload of information, but we might actually start to 'comprehend' those information and evaluate their credibility for ourselves rather than simply relying on the words of the media.
Like the overzealous novice writer that I was (and still am), I showed the drafts of my short story to some friends and asked for their constructive criticism. One which stood out was that my choice of words was not rudimentary enough for the common reader to grasp without having to strain his vocabulary muscle.
I understand where they were coming from. The short story was written in a rather semi-poetic fashion, mainly because I felt that with a subject as obscure as terrorism, the dimness that fanciful writing lent to the story was my way of declaring that my knowledge of the subject matter, regardless of the plethora of information it had been based on, was basically that – as obscure and dim as poetry itself. It is something like a dream; our dreams do not come in vivid photo quality prints, but rather, in ambiguous and abstract charcoal paintings. Hence, for my sake, I hope that my critics were wrong.
All entries had to be submitted by the 23rd of May 2005, which was four days ago. I went down to the MICA building, a rather colonial structure with psychedelic windows, which satirically seemed to offset everything that was colonial about it. I found the manuscript-collection office and as I waited in line to submit my stuff, a pint-sized girl came in, draped in nothing more than a skirt that could be mistaken for a slightly oversized handkerchief and a cardigan buttoned only at its midway point, right on the hollow between her you-know-what(s). She had this pouting look on her face, which I was not sure, what it was supposed to signify – whether it was her disgust by the sudden increase in the testosterone level in the room, or her attempt to look somewhat bohemian, a sought-after image of the arty-farty, or those who aspire to be, at least. Then another girl came in, wearing the same constipated look on her face but with more cloth on her body. Is there a code for facial expression and dressing for the creative world that I am not aware of? I have to admit I felt very left-brained momentarily after that. It was a culture shock, perhaps.
Anyway, I hope I win something. If not, then it just means that while I am good enough, my story is not.
Lovefoolosopher
¶ 12:36 PM The free-writing stage of it was relatively an open and shut process. Free-writing is the embryo of almost any kind of writing. Thinking is an infanticide to the process of free-writing. In free-writing, you just write. You do not think; not a lot, at least. You write down every single trace of idea you have, even those worthy of being labelled nonsensical. You only start putting your writing under the lexical microscope when you have got the skeleton down. Only then should you grope for that dictionary, thesaurus or whatever literary weapons you might have. Then you put your writing under the knife.
One of the most difficult parts of writing a short story is probably the dialogue. You have to manufacture something that has to look anything but manufactured. You have to keep your dialogues in line with things like the time, place and situation which make up the setting of your story so that the conversations between the characters will seem believable to the readers. Your characters will only be believable if they talk like an actual human being rather than a prude Victorian-age alien from some undiscovered planet from some undiscovered solar system. One more thing, forget about the use of onomatopoeia. All the bags of "clank", "swoosh", "vroom" should be left behind back in your primary school days.
The infamy of the War on Terror had inspired me to write a short story about the last moments in the life of a terrorist. It was set in Singapore, an idea sparked by Dr. Tony Tan's rather sombre reminder to us that terrorism is fast docking onto the shores of our island and that this threat is not merely a far fetched case of paranoia, but a very real danger.
I plunged into the writing of this short story with a framework as frail as our understanding of terrorism itself. Some might beg to differ with me on this - that their comprehension of the subject of terrorism is not as miniscule as I think because they read the newspapers and watch the news on TV everyday. But news is the product of other people's interpretation of real life situations. Somewhere along the chain of information, facts can get distorted, although impurposely. I am not saying that we should not trust the media. I am saying that while we can and should trust the media, we must also provide an allowance of common sense to know that although the media, more often than not, provide truthful and accurate news, sometimes they leave out 'other' truths, which, if combined with those truths that they do report, might reveal absolutely different forms of truth! Here is an illustration: We hear about terrorist attacks almost everyday in the news. But we hardly ever, if at all, hear about the oppression that these people face from western nations. I do not condone any act of terrorism, but I do feel that if all the cards are laid on the table, then we would not merely be blindly fed with an overload of information, but we might actually start to 'comprehend' those information and evaluate their credibility for ourselves rather than simply relying on the words of the media.
Like the overzealous novice writer that I was (and still am), I showed the drafts of my short story to some friends and asked for their constructive criticism. One which stood out was that my choice of words was not rudimentary enough for the common reader to grasp without having to strain his vocabulary muscle.
I understand where they were coming from. The short story was written in a rather semi-poetic fashion, mainly because I felt that with a subject as obscure as terrorism, the dimness that fanciful writing lent to the story was my way of declaring that my knowledge of the subject matter, regardless of the plethora of information it had been based on, was basically that – as obscure and dim as poetry itself. It is something like a dream; our dreams do not come in vivid photo quality prints, but rather, in ambiguous and abstract charcoal paintings. Hence, for my sake, I hope that my critics were wrong.
All entries had to be submitted by the 23rd of May 2005, which was four days ago. I went down to the MICA building, a rather colonial structure with psychedelic windows, which satirically seemed to offset everything that was colonial about it. I found the manuscript-collection office and as I waited in line to submit my stuff, a pint-sized girl came in, draped in nothing more than a skirt that could be mistaken for a slightly oversized handkerchief and a cardigan buttoned only at its midway point, right on the hollow between her you-know-what(s). She had this pouting look on her face, which I was not sure, what it was supposed to signify – whether it was her disgust by the sudden increase in the testosterone level in the room, or her attempt to look somewhat bohemian, a sought-after image of the arty-farty, or those who aspire to be, at least. Then another girl came in, wearing the same constipated look on her face but with more cloth on her body. Is there a code for facial expression and dressing for the creative world that I am not aware of? I have to admit I felt very left-brained momentarily after that. It was a culture shock, perhaps.
Anyway, I hope I win something. If not, then it just means that while I am good enough, my story is not.
Lovefoolosopher
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you should post the story here. if it is allowed in the rules, that is. then, i can dissect it using a mosquito surgical knife.
angelsoul
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angelsoul
# posted by 
: 9:43 PM
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