Hello Gentle Reader
It is early Sunday morning, and I can't seem to get back to sleep, so I decided I would give a blog even though its Sunday and not the usual Thursday but oh well, I had a fascinating idea, for a blog entry and therefore decided to give it a shot. Well I was lying in bed trying my best to get to sleep, I was thinking over some ideas for novels and stories. I started to see that there were common elements in some of them. I started to wonder. Do all authors write the same story with slight variations and different plot lines? I started to think of some great authors. Like Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, and John Irving and others. Each one repeats themselves in slight different ways. Each one tackles the same themes, in their work, but also their work differs greatly from another novel or a previous story. But what about small slight details, that appear to become common motifs, that they soon start to become dull or something that is to be expected. For example:
One would suspect that in a Haruki Murakami novel that a woman will go missing. Or that in a Margaret Atwood novel, the female protagonist and characters are usually more complexly drawn then that of their male counterparts. In a John Irving novel one would only be shocked not to see old women taking advantage of younger men. (Alright I admit I stole the last example from a blog I read but I'll leave a link at the end of this blog to give credit)
So as I laid in bed thinking about this, I wondered to myself, if others have noticed this common trait. Soon I found a blog that discussed the same observation but in my opinion criticized and made sarcastic remarks rather than actually try to understand why this happens to an author.
This has me thinking. I want to be a published writer/author whatever. But sometimes I start to think that I am much better at reading novels then writing stories and novels. But now is not the place for that discussion. So upon noticing a slight variation of my work is repeating itself at times, I wondered if this is a common practice that authors find certain themes, and stories so enjoyable that they keep presenting them in different situations and areas.
In some aspects it is human nature. If the process or the formula for success has worked so far, why change it? Lets face it. Where would Margret Atwood be without her strong willed female protagonists and flashback like prose revealing the nature of the characters, and what has shaped them? Where would Haruki Murakami be without talking cats, and magical abilities, and other bizzare events as being mundane, and just accepted. Where would David Mitchell be without his stylistic firework like prose, grand story-telling capabilities, and works that sometimes over-lap or come into contact with each other. Where would any of them be indeed? And where would I be without my certain traits that keep popping into my head.
Though as a reader, after reading three novels by the same author and one can pick out a farting dog, or a repair man that loses his wrench and later finds it has been used as a murder weapon, or speech that is so unique and original it’s hard to make the words out, or female characters discovering themselves and their sexuality and gender identity; don't you feel slightly . . . cheated? I mean yes i would feel slightly cheated. In some aspect or another, it would appear that one was reading the same story with a variation or so. At the same time, do these common motifs, become a certain trademark of the author that they are expected to use these traits here and there simply because if they don't they wouldn't be the same?
But my constant thinking of this, still refuses to answer my question. How does an author fight this? How does an author stay original and fresh? There does not appear to be an answer to this question. At least not a sole easy answer to this question. However i do notice something’s do appear of interest to me sometimes. In David Mitchell's novels (at least two anyway) "Ghostwritten," and "Cloud Atlas," the novel is split up into stories, that connect to each other. Sometimes they are globally connected and sometimes they are connected through time. But then David Mitchell changed his way of writing once again with the historical novel of "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," and in his autobiographical novel "Black Swan Green," David Mitchell miniaturizes his sense of time through the ages to simply thirteen months. Perhaps the re-use of motifs and symbolize, is something that we all do. Musicians do it. How many times does Britney Spears need to sing about sex and how she wants to be someone’s sex slave? How often does what his face need to sing about the countless girls that have broken his heart before he decides to sing of something else. These traits -- be it a bicycle re-used, or cannibalism, or a female character discovering themself, or a tale of a character escaping a foreign city that makes no sense to them. It all becomes a trademark or a certain theme to the author.
Perhaps the best way to combat the sense of being a broken record or repeating oneself to many times, is to simply write the story in a different manner or a different style and it soon becomes a newer fresher story and therefore not the same old same old, piece of work that is simply expected to appear on the list of work the author has done.
Thank-You For Reading Gentle Reader. I am not sure if I will blog this Thursday depends if I have any fresh and new ideas to share with you.
Take Care for Now
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M.Mary
P.S. The Promise Link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jan/11/fiction-johnirving
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