Friday, December 4, 2009

The Fictional Dream

Writer and teacher John Gardner had a concept he called the fictional dream, which was the idea that fiction does its job by creating a dream state for the reader, and as long as the writer is doing a good job of maintaining that dream state, the reader won't "wake up" from it and will continue to read and believe in the fictional world the writer has created. Gardner argues that this fictional dream first happens in the writer's head, and the writer's job is to write it down for the reader:

“In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols. The dream is as alive and compelling as one’s dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he’s written and find the dream starting up again. This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer’s process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things—sees them clearly—and in the act of wondering what they will do next he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid, until reality, by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead.”

For me, at least, this is a pretty accurate description of what writing is like, at least some of the time. As I work my way through the second act of "Cocke & Bull" I am finding that even though I've got a couple of outlines written for the book and I'm accumulating notes to myself about what the second act is all about, the tool upon which I am leaning the most to get the writing done is my imagination. Last night I was trying to write a simple scene in which three people camp out for the night in a pine forest, and when I imagined the scene I found myself imagining all sorts of surprising action and then I found myself describing this action in all sorts of surprising ways. I read back over what I wrote and at one point had to ask myself where a certain symbolic image came from; I didn't remember writing it at all but there it was on the page and it was perfect.

All of which should give me confidence as I move forward through the middle section of the book, but still I feel like I'm taking a white-knuckle ride through the story, because even though I know certain things that have to happen by the end of the second act, in some ways I have no idea at all what's going to happen during the course of this act and I'm still feeling my way blindly through the story even with my pages of notes and outlines and maps and charts (yes, charts). I breathe a sigh of relief at the completion of each chapter, as if I've survived some harrowing experience. Which, you know, I have.

26 comments:

  1. What a poetic description--the fictional dream. I suddenly feel a lot less crazy! Many years ago, while I was out taking a walk, my MC fell in step with me and starting telling me her story. She's been bugging me ever since. It sounds like this phenomenon happens to lots of writers, because that's the nature of imgination.

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  2. Interesting post. And it is very accurate. I see my characters as real people. I even found myself wondering if Anna and Claire (my two main characters from my Mg novel) would be at a certain place I was going to.

    Surreal? Uhhuh.

    Are Anna and Claire real to me? You bet they are. And that makes it all the more fun. And easier to write. Congrats on everything coming together for you. :)

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  3. What a wonderful description. Fiction dream. Huh. I like that.

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  4. I love the idea of the fiction dream. It is what happens with me when I read. I had a hard time getting fully "under" in the last book I read. The author kept raising her head and stripping the fantasy away--sometimes with tense changes, sometimes with leaps in logic that didn't make sense. This post reminds me to stay invisible and let the words work seamlessly to keep the reader dreaming. (but hopefully not sleeping--the book put me to sleep a couple times too.)

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  5. I like Gardner's idea of the fictional dream because it's a good way to gauge our work as we write. For example, while I was trying to work on a chapter of my new book yesterday, I could not get lost in the story while writing (for the first time since I started the book), which tells me that I'm going down the wrong path with this chapter. If I as the author can't get lost in the fictional dream of my own story, how can I expect the reader to?

    Lois: The non-fiction sleep is a bad thing to do to our readers!

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  6. I think this idea also supports the case of why we should show more often than tell. Showing is much better at building the fictive dream because it fills our imagination with actual things: images, sounds, smells. Telling relies on the abstract, which will be different for everyone, and thus more difficult to imagine.

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  7. Davin: When we show, we engage the reader more than when we tell. Telling is sitting someone down in a chair and lecturing them. Showing is asking them to imagine a scene with us.

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  8. This must be why I keep trying to read my favorite books like a writer, yet I keep getting too sucked into the story to do so.

    My characters feel more real in my head to me than on the page, so maybe I can analyze why that is.

    What an informative post, and something I'll have to think had about. Thanks!

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  9. Scott, I like your follow-up comment on how you can tell when you are writing if you're not lost in the story and therefore not on track. I think that is good gauge we all could use.
    I've learned that when I'm in that waking-dream state I don't even need to take notes, I can remember the scene I'm envisioning because I see it like a movie unfolding in my head--full of action, setting and dialogue.

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  10. I do like John Gardner's treatises on writing, though they trend toward obscure and difficult to parse at times. The work for me is in taking the images in my head and translating them to the page. I can't tell how many times I've sat with my laptop on my knees, head resting against the back of the chair, eyes closed as I envision the scene and my fingers hover over the keys, begging my brain to create words from image. The fictive dream is there, but making it live on the page sometimes hangs up on my need to make it as real as I can.

    I don't measure immersion by how I write, but by how I read once I'm done. Sometimes the words I struggle over most painfully are the most appropriate.

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  11. I'm with Laurel. I feel a heck of a lot less crazy after reading that. Great post! I hear you on the work ahead.

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  12. Scott, I love your description of how you came up with your scene; not knowing how you did it and finding it perfect. And the whole bit about a harrowing ride: perfect. I've had small moments like these, never planned, never intended, but what a magnificent reminder that we are part of something bigger, something hugely magical!

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  13. I love that idea and the description of a fictional dream. When I was younger and hadn't written as long, I would lose myself in the dream of a story but never seem to be able to translate that to paper. The same image wasn't quite there, nor the same emotion.

    I think it has some to do with what Davin said about showing not telling. I am still learning. But clearly one of the best ways to make a reader feel what you feel is to show them the story you see, not tell them.

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  14. One thing I wonder about is this: even if, when I read what I've written and the words on the page evoke for me the same fictional dream I had when I was writing the story, how do I know a reader will have that same dream? I know, of course, that they won't. Every reader experiences a story in a different way. I wish I could sort of "ride along" with a reader and experience my stories the way they do. I think it would be most informative.

    In other news, I was able to find my current story's fictional dream during lunch and I worked a bit further into the chapter. Yesterday it was all false starts and incomplete sentences, but today it works, with red coats glowing like hot iron and the sun reflecting off brass buttons like sparks in a furnace and stuff. Not to mention whiskey and oysters in quantity.

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  15. I'm glad you found your story's dream, Scott. What I've done in the past is been on chat with someone as they're reading my work, and they'll give me their thoughts as they're reading along. That's the closest I've gotten to seeing what goes through a reader's mind as they read my work. It was actually quite fun!

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  16. Michelle: I think I'm really going to seize onto this idea that if I'm not able to immerse myself into the fictive dream while writing, I'm doing something wrong. It's nice to have a name for what writing feels like.

    The funny thing is, achieving the fictional dreaming state doesn't make the actual writing any easier. Sometimes it's still a real struggle to find the words.

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  17. Scott, it's very rare that I find writing easy - that it just pours out. When it does it's usually always brilliant. That's when I know it was building up somewhere for a very long time. Writing is definitely work for me, every time.

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  18. Scott, I personally believe there is a universality to the fictive dream. I don't think it's perfect, but I think there are instances when you just know that what you've written will work for others. Maybe that's just faith, though.

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  20. Trying again:

    Those have to be two of the longest sentences in the history of writing. I resisted an urge to copy them and get a word count.

    I have had very good writing sessions where I just wrote what came to me, and when I read the scenes later, thought some elf must have been hacking into my computer during the night because I could never have consciously wrote something so appropriate to plot and character.

    And then my chosen readers will say something like: Who is that character really. I'd like to meet that person

    And I think: this must be what Stephen King feels like when he gets a character so right they practically write themselves.

    Aw, gotta love the fictional dream.

    Thanks Scott.

    ...........dhole

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  21. I worry what my main character thinks of me. I cheer up about the state of the British Health Service when I think of him wandering around it, until I remember he's not real.

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  22. Exactly right. It is a mysterious process we can't explain, this "vivid continuous dream"....or as John Gardner also said, "all writing requires at least some measure of trancelike state." That sounds like what happened to you. It is exhilirating and addictive is it not?

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  23. Yvonne: It is addictive. I wonder if achieving that fictional dream while writing causes endorphines to be released? I know that when I try to write and don't get that trance state, I get cranky. Just like when I don't go for my run. Hmm. Interesting. Does anyone know if there have been studies done about this, the active brain state (or whatever it's called) of artists during the creative act?

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  24. I don't know about studies but I know from experience that when the writing is good it's an exquisite shot of adrenaline. I need less sleep (why waste time sleeping?) and I'm more awake to my sexual and intellectual self. On the flipside, when the writing is bad, or I can’t find the time, or there’re too many people around, I, too, get very cranky. When my computer went berserk and my floppies went south (before flash drives) I understood the attraction of becoming a drunk. Endorphins? Maybe that's it. The brain is a mysterious organ.

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  25. I'm going to remember the fictive dream as I continue revising. I do often feel like I'm in a dream as I write, but I don't want anything on that page to rip the reader from that world. You can tell some authors pay a lot of attention to that, but others don't.

    One thing I learned that trips people up are all those ten dollar words. If someone has to stop reading to pick up a dictionary they've definitely awoken from their fictive dream.

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  26. Really right on. I'm in the process of being very interested in the characters of a short piece I will now finish (hopefully) tonight.They definitely take on a "real" life of their own, and that's the whole idea, right?

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