Ok an obsession with pointing out that everyone has a worldview is so 2000s evangelical fundamentalist coded but thank you for redeeming this concept for me! This is so productive for helping me think about why I like or dislike a work of fiction, going beyond instincts. Your class sounds great. I'd love to read that list of authors with your perspective here.
I was just thinking last night about how one of the easiest ways to give a novel an "engine" is to fracture some concept or idea into a bunch of perspectives and then let your characters embody them while bumping around and pissing each other off. You sort of don't need to worry about theme beyond that because duh, the theme is the thing everyone narratively circles. And as long as you're honestly representing the lived perspectives of your characters, you don't need to worry about being jerimiadic or hamfisted, either. That's basically the formula all the modernist masters used.
That's what Lukács says in the essay, lol. He also says it in the long essay on historical drama in The Historical Novel. Turns out, it's a very effective strategy!
I call it giving characters beliefs, and stress that I don’t just mean religious beliefs (though we shouldn’t shy away from those). A focus on ideology is what makes both Pachinko and Andor brilliant. You know from the start what ideas the author/writers are pitting against each other and what different characters believe or come to believe, and as we read/watch we grapple with our own ideologies too.
I've been catching up on Handmaid's Tale after finishing Andor and it's remarkable how disingenuous and ideologically avoid the former feels comparatively. It's entirely because Andor makes the ideologies of its characters into a narrative centrifuge. Its characters not only grapple with each other's ideologies but struggle internally to reconcile their ideologies with their desires. Meanwhile THT is all like, "Damn, misogyny sure does suck, huh? How about liberal democracy, though! Pretty great!"
Ah, thank you for unfucking my novel. Time to shift from "how do I make these characters illustrate my ideology" to "how do I give them space to express their own ideologies in their conflict with each other". I thought, because I was writing my first work of genre fiction, that I could be a bit more directive, but that was just me being a control freak again.
No need to recite everything that is problematic about Ayn Rand, obvs, but I owe her a lot in that when I read "The Fountainhead" at 13, it was my first exposure to the idea that everyone has an ideology (a "sense of life," in her words) and that the good life requires becoming conscious of your ideology and making sure it really fits your ideals and your reality. Wow that was a long sentence. Sorry. No time to edit because I'm on my way to Drag Brunch while it's still legal.
thank you for sharing your big, beautiful brain on these topics - I never formally took creative writing courses as an English major and you’re always fusing theory with fire craft questions that are helpful to my writing journey 🙏🏽 💕
This was a really interesting read, thank you! I'm currently reading about Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and, from a modern perspective, it's almost disconcerting how often they seemed to sit down and say "I want to write a great work that proves XXX political/social point" - but we're lucky they did! I wonder if we're caught between an obsession with the objective and the sub-conscious, both of which are 'ruined' by a coherent and purposeful subjective ideology.
This was a fascinating read (like Susan, above, I was propelled through it), and I agree with you. We all have an outlook, whether we realize it or not, and realistic characters ought to, too.
Your workshop idea sounds great. Who can take it? Do you ever post a full syllabus here?
I agree that it doesn't come naturally and I wish I had been taught this sooner. All my favorite stories feel like they're being propelled by a force that never fully makes it onto the page, and I'm starting to think that "energy" comes from whatever worldview actually is, that matrix of reasons why we think and do what we think and do. Thanks for helping me process this!
Thanks for that Sunday morning wake up. World views differ based on experience, which is why Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Xers frame our world so differently. A challenge for young writers is to place yourself outside your frame and regard the subjects of your writing with a passionate detachment.
Hey! This is a really interesting article and as a teacher it's so much fun to see kids having this exact convo! I just wanted to make one small point: for someone who seems to have a passing familiarity with Marxism it's very interesting to me that you characterize "socialism" and "communism" as ideologies, but they're not - they come from studying material conditions in history. If you'll let me try and be funny for a sec: Goku vs. Mao is very easy to resolve because one is real. Thanks for the essay!
I enjoyed reading your post! Unfortunately, I'm not a gamer, but conceptually, I get it. You raise an interesting question: "What would happen if you considered what your characters believe about the world and their place in it? What do they believe, period?" Hmm. Is that a statement or a question? It's provocative regardless. Can a story written by an atheist irrevocably conclude that God exists and feel genuine to the reader? A rhetorical question.
Ok an obsession with pointing out that everyone has a worldview is so 2000s evangelical fundamentalist coded but thank you for redeeming this concept for me! This is so productive for helping me think about why I like or dislike a work of fiction, going beyond instincts. Your class sounds great. I'd love to read that list of authors with your perspective here.
Would your students be less nervous if you called it Weltanschauung to begin with and gradually worked up to ideology?
That’s brilliant idea, and I will steal it and implement it. Ty.
I was just thinking last night about how one of the easiest ways to give a novel an "engine" is to fracture some concept or idea into a bunch of perspectives and then let your characters embody them while bumping around and pissing each other off. You sort of don't need to worry about theme beyond that because duh, the theme is the thing everyone narratively circles. And as long as you're honestly representing the lived perspectives of your characters, you don't need to worry about being jerimiadic or hamfisted, either. That's basically the formula all the modernist masters used.
That's what Lukács says in the essay, lol. He also says it in the long essay on historical drama in The Historical Novel. Turns out, it's a very effective strategy!
This is exactly what Kuang does in Babel. And obvious though it was, I still enjoyed the novel a great deal and pretty much forgave it its flaws.
I call it giving characters beliefs, and stress that I don’t just mean religious beliefs (though we shouldn’t shy away from those). A focus on ideology is what makes both Pachinko and Andor brilliant. You know from the start what ideas the author/writers are pitting against each other and what different characters believe or come to believe, and as we read/watch we grapple with our own ideologies too.
I've been catching up on Handmaid's Tale after finishing Andor and it's remarkable how disingenuous and ideologically avoid the former feels comparatively. It's entirely because Andor makes the ideologies of its characters into a narrative centrifuge. Its characters not only grapple with each other's ideologies but struggle internally to reconcile their ideologies with their desires. Meanwhile THT is all like, "Damn, misogyny sure does suck, huh? How about liberal democracy, though! Pretty great!"
Ah, thank you for unfucking my novel. Time to shift from "how do I make these characters illustrate my ideology" to "how do I give them space to express their own ideologies in their conflict with each other". I thought, because I was writing my first work of genre fiction, that I could be a bit more directive, but that was just me being a control freak again.
No need to recite everything that is problematic about Ayn Rand, obvs, but I owe her a lot in that when I read "The Fountainhead" at 13, it was my first exposure to the idea that everyone has an ideology (a "sense of life," in her words) and that the good life requires becoming conscious of your ideology and making sure it really fits your ideals and your reality. Wow that was a long sentence. Sorry. No time to edit because I'm on my way to Drag Brunch while it's still legal.
thank you for sharing your big, beautiful brain on these topics - I never formally took creative writing courses as an English major and you’re always fusing theory with fire craft questions that are helpful to my writing journey 🙏🏽 💕
This was a really interesting read, thank you! I'm currently reading about Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and, from a modern perspective, it's almost disconcerting how often they seemed to sit down and say "I want to write a great work that proves XXX political/social point" - but we're lucky they did! I wonder if we're caught between an obsession with the objective and the sub-conscious, both of which are 'ruined' by a coherent and purposeful subjective ideology.
This was a fascinating read (like Susan, above, I was propelled through it), and I agree with you. We all have an outlook, whether we realize it or not, and realistic characters ought to, too.
Your workshop idea sounds great. Who can take it? Do you ever post a full syllabus here?
Who is sweater weather and why is he/she inviting everyone to an investment opportunity? Sounds phishy/phony to me. Call Mr. Silva? Oh right! 🤑🤑
Great read. I agree millennial fiction is depressing and nihilistic AF.
I never expected this morning that my childhood interests and my adult ones were going to intersect in this way.
Read and Meditating 📎
I agree that it doesn't come naturally and I wish I had been taught this sooner. All my favorite stories feel like they're being propelled by a force that never fully makes it onto the page, and I'm starting to think that "energy" comes from whatever worldview actually is, that matrix of reasons why we think and do what we think and do. Thanks for helping me process this!
Thanks for that Sunday morning wake up. World views differ based on experience, which is why Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Xers frame our world so differently. A challenge for young writers is to place yourself outside your frame and regard the subjects of your writing with a passionate detachment.
Hey! This is a really interesting article and as a teacher it's so much fun to see kids having this exact convo! I just wanted to make one small point: for someone who seems to have a passing familiarity with Marxism it's very interesting to me that you characterize "socialism" and "communism" as ideologies, but they're not - they come from studying material conditions in history. If you'll let me try and be funny for a sec: Goku vs. Mao is very easy to resolve because one is real. Thanks for the essay!
Goku vs Mao lmfaoooooooooooooo
TY for the clarification.
I enjoyed reading your post! Unfortunately, I'm not a gamer, but conceptually, I get it. You raise an interesting question: "What would happen if you considered what your characters believe about the world and their place in it? What do they believe, period?" Hmm. Is that a statement or a question? It's provocative regardless. Can a story written by an atheist irrevocably conclude that God exists and feel genuine to the reader? A rhetorical question.