March 2018 – Emily Penrose

When is a Project “Done”?

Emily PenroseMarch 27, 2018

When I was in high school, I drew a portrait for an art assignment. I worked on that portrait for weeks. When I received the graded drawing, I was disappointed to see that I did not receive full points (gasp!) and should have increased the contrast for full effect. “A simple fix,” I thought. “I can do that this summer and proudly display it on my wall.” The project stayed in my to-do list for years. Thirteen years later, my wall is blank, the face is still missing an eye, and the contrast remains lacking.

This trend is nothing new for me. I’m currently re-sewing a kimono I made in 2008. I’ve even gone back and done slight edits in elementary school diary entries. For being obsessed with history and preserving documents in time, I rarely take my own advice. I like to think that I’m able to learn something from my past mistakes and am better creatively for trying to produce a product I can stand behind. Generally, if I was pleased with the product at the time it was created I let it be. But if I have regret about the outcome, nothing is sacred.

In college, I wrote a dreadful historical fiction short story for my senior thesis project. The story suffered from confused characters, non-existent themes, and shoddy research — among a host of other problems. When I thought back on every element of that short story that I wrote for my history degree, I was ashamed. I knew I could do better than that. My story deserved better than that. So after a few years I dragged it out, dusted it off and got to work again. Six years after the fact, that project became my debut novel, Cacophony.

As writers, we must look forward to the next project at some point. Progress demands new ideas, and staying mired in the same topic for decades is no way to develop your skills; however, I do find there is merit in taking things slowly and using your acquired knowledge to revive worthwhile ideas. Old projects should not be something you’re ashamed of–rather, they can be an opportunity to prove to everyone, including yourself, that you are capable of something better. If the idea is sound enough, it deserves to be presented in the best way.

In the end, if the idea moves me, I never let it truly die. It stays with me until I have the skills and ambition to do justice to the project. Sometimes, it stays a regret where I only learn from the experience… but if it needles at me long enough, I may pick it up and try to improve it. Either way, I learn from my not-quite-successes.

Spoiler Alert!

Emily PenroseMarch 20, 2018

Last week I went to the Utah Opera’s production of Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi. I’m an avid opera-goer, having seen around 35 live operas. This was just another music and drama-filled Wednesday for me.

Before the curtain came up and the lights came down I found myself, along with much of the audience, pouring over the libretto. Inside the libretto were essays on the two compositions, their authors, and a synopsis of both shows. While reading over the cast list I was struck by how unusual it is in our culture for the audience to want to know the entire plot of a story before beginning. Spoilers are so expected that the libretto is there to facilitate last-minute research!

Spoilers, of course, serve their purpose. There’s nothing quite like a well executed plot reveal. I’m reminded of my first viewing of Fight Club, which was dramatic, unexpected, and thoroughly enjoyable. Yet I also remember my first opera, Don Giovanni, where my lack of foreknowledge of the plot hindered my enjoyment of other elements of the production. I couldn’t appreciate the singing, orchestration, and composition. I was too busy watching the supertitles, pouring over every line of recitative for fear of missing vital information. I couldn’t even appreciate costumes, lighting, and the set!

What a unique form of storytelling opera is! In the end, the plot is only another element in the whole experience, not overpowering the music or the mise en scene, but working together in beautiful harmony. Each element bolsters the others to make a deeply beautiful experience people will see over and over, even hundreds of years after the premiere.

In modern media, spoilers are held sacred for consumers. No one wants to walk into a Marvel movie knowing every twist and turn–that’s the fun part! But as media producers, this idea is pivotal. We can learn by example how to create interesting, emotional experiences for the viewer, reader, or what have you. How does the author create tension and drama for future plot points? How enjoyable is the work as a whole? Is it fun to read or do you only care about what is explicitly shown? Do the words sound clunky or fluid?

When you step back and view the work as a whole you can balance elements of plot, prose, characterization and other writing tools. Try thinking about the work as a harmonious synthesis of all elements, each of equal importance, rather than unequally emphasizing one part. Your plot may be impeccable, but imagine if it were supporting and harmonizing with your imagery.

And hey, maybe spoilers are important. But they don’t have to be make-or-break for enjoyment purposes. As a kid, I had the main plot twist of Shrek 2 ruined for me. When I saw the movie, it ended up not effecting my enjoyment of the movie. Is knowing the ending of the coming-of-age fantasy novel you’re reading really that important? Unless there’s some major genre subversion, the reader knows what to expect. So make the journey enjoyable!

Why I “Write What I Know”

Emily PenroseMarch 13, 2018

Think back on your life. Go ahead, I’ll wait. First loose tooth, first day of school, first kiss… done? Welcome back. Now what do you think about the ubiquitous writing advice “write what you know”? I’ve been poking around the internet for a while now and this one is a popular adage for writers to refute.

“That’s ridiculous! Where’s the fun in that?”

“I’m so boring, how can I just write what’s happened to me? Isn’t that an autobiography?”

“Tolkien never met a hobbit, why can he get away with it?”

Aside from the horror stories of creative writing teachers reading this rule as strictly literal (seriously, someone’s teacher only allowed the class to write what they had personal experience with), I shake my head at these writers and editors for their lack of imagination. Writing what you know is not a literal prescription for how to write. It’s a shortcut to finding your passion project.

The ideas that call to me are the ideas that I have some experience with–ideas that I “know”. That “knowing” is what gets me so excited about them. Even though writing is hard and life gets in the way, I need to return to these ideas and express them. They needle at me until writing is the only salve. The need spreads and eventually works its way into my writing.

In my high school drama class, there was a quote from Johnny Depp on the wall.

“With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it’s just not acting. It’s lying.”

I loathed this quote. The words bothered me. “I want to use my imagination and get outside of myself”, I thought. “I’m not lying when I act!” But over the years I’ve thought more about it. I finally figured out what Mr. Depp meant. Actors need to have an emotional core for a character or the performance will ring hollow. It will be a lie to the audience. It doesn’t have to be a big piece, just enough for you to build from.

Writers, likewise, ought to find an emotional core in their work. If your character does not act like an actual person, you aren’t writing what you know. Writers do meet people between their coffee-fueled writing binges, they know how people behave. If you’re not inspired by your project, you’re not writing what you know. And what a sad state to be in! I can’t imagine writing something only because it was marketable and I couldn’t care less for it. If a writer forces any facet of their work by not writing what they know, the reader will notice and disengage–hobbits or no.

Of course, no one ever truly “knows”. Not really. This is why we research, learn, and enhance our understanding. We read and we write and we talk to as many people as we can. Writing what you know, in this way, is only as useful as you make it. You could hear “write what you know” and start keeping an immaculate diary or you could think about the human experience, how you fit into it, and how your characters fit into it. What do you have in common? What is different? What makes this story different from your own? Is the situation similar to someone else’s that you have heard of? How can you change it to make it unique and interesting for your reader? Does it feel real to you? Does it spark passion that echos in your work?

And I bet if you thought about your favorite projects, you would find part of yourself in it–something that you “know”. You may find out you “know” a lot more than you thought you did.