| Reflective Journey – Writing philosophies/methodologies |
derrida and deconstruction: language and culture
References
Voice? |
What steps can I take to clarify ‘voice’ adequately for my audience? Could writing in Jodi Picoult’s style be helpful? I emailed her…
Hi Jodi,
Firstly, I have read all your books and I’m nearly finished House Rules. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.
I have started my PhD in writing. I have chosen to write on teenage issues. My artefact is a teenage realistic fiction dealing with cyberbullying and self mutilation. I have several characters and I need to make a decision:
1. Write in a similar style to you – character per chapter, present tense
2. Write several books in past tense, third person
3. Write as a blog but for true bibliotherapy the problem needs to develop and the character needs to be seen working through it to a sound solution to be effective therapy.
As I enjoy your books and style of writing, I’m researching your style.
What do you call your style? Sometimes I think it is very similar to rhizomatic methodology.
What or who influenced your style?
Did you begin writing your books with bibliotherapy in mind or to inform your audience of the social concerns you investigate?
Do you know of other authors who write in your style?
Once again thanks for your books
Cheers Shirley Pitcher
Her response…
there are not many other authors who write like me - I've seen different authors attempt multiple first person narration. I'd call my style moral and ethical fiction, but I don't know if that's a formal construct! WHO influenced my style isn't as relevant and WHAT does: the type of story I write, where I feel like one character alone doesn't have all the answers to the issue at hand. I hope this is in some way helpful!
Jodi Picoult
The hidden voice of circumstances/resolutions need to be sound and accurate for the audience to relate to promote healing/guidance/information for victims, parents, family members, teachers, and friends. The hidden voice could range from passive to active, silent to aggressive, consciousness to subconsciousness, the emotional highs and lows of joy to sorrow and a stabilising voice gluing the story together.
� character alone doesn't have all the answers to the issue at hand – I feel this is an extremely important aspect to keep in mind… if the story is going to help my readers then a variety of perspectives and direction needs to be interwoven throughout the text.
cyberspace creativity? |
Can cyberspace creativity work for me? How?
A blog? The online activity through the blog provides authentic resources. Perhaps including a www.talktome link throughout the book could
� make my teenage realistic fiction more interactive,
� more authentic
� a place for my audience to converse with each other and me.
� be used for use professional links.
o Having further links available to help regarding teenage issues raised throughout the text could help a victim gain help, confidence in overcoming the problem and provide a means of healing.
Ø The legalities of creating fictional characters on blogs need to be investigated. Blume’s (1997) findings come from a rich study warns of the complexities of Cyberspace:
· MUDs (Multi-User Domains), on-line sites that allow users to log on under assumed identities.
· No one checks for a picture ID or a voice print.
· A man can log on as a woman, a woman as a man.
· Older people can adopt the persona of the young.
· Racial barriers fall way.
The Internet, as Turkle sees it, encourages multiplicity. Life on-line causes the individual to blossom -- or is it metastasize? -- into many.
However, at this stage I consider Technology can help my creativity more
· as a tool in scaffolding plots, characters, subplots
· help with structuring
· help with organization, editing, continuity
· keep everything I need at my fingertips
· researching: easier, better access to information and differing points of view
· could be used to self-publish and promote my writing
· help to engage with readers
The computer culture is extremely complicated. Is there a link between Multiple Personality Disorder and MUDs (Multi-User Domains)?
Do hyperlinks spark creativity by associative thinking where user’s thinking is visual and concrete, as opposed to verbal and conceptual (Blume 1997 and Grandin)? Or has technology encouraged multiplicity, as life on-line causes the individual to blossom -- or is it metastasize -- into many, multiple fictional personalities (Turkle)?
What footprints and shadows can cause stress now and in the future? Are teenagers informed about consequences of cyber activity?
Dramaturgy or frame theory? |
Dramaturgy or frame theory? How can this help my writing?
Is life a dramatic play? Do we, as human beings, participate, and write as we go along? Do we as writers write stories that imitate life and present it in bite-sized chunks? According to Kenneth Burke (in Young & Massey 1971) life and politics is drama and it is writers, like us (students, academics, authors), work hard to reproduce a dramaturgical impression of community.
How can dramaturgical analysis be applied to my writing in Conversations Talk to Me, my realistic teenage fiction? Poston-Anderson’s (2007) states that the importance of dramaturgical analysis … is … as a diagnostic tool in clarifying what is working and what is not could be beneficial.
Will it empower my audience as writerly readers?
In pursuit for an answer, in the following table I intend to investigate how dramaturgical analysis could improve Talk to Me as a diagnostic tool and as a creative tool that will ultimately empower my audience as writerly readers. Dr Arnold (n.d.) emphasizes this thought by stating [dramaturgical analysis] can be a critical tool that enables lively understandings, which adds to analytical ‘readings’, which uncovers and/or delivers ideological messages and which enables coherence and consistency in communication in a specified ‘stage’.
| Poston-Anderson dramaturgical analysis - 2007 | Adapting for Talk to Me |
| The Structural Frame - relating to the organisation of ideas into a plot sequence
| Audience could become disorientated over the number of main characters and their different problems and stages of emotional, spiritual and psychological growth.
|
| The ideological Frame - relating to underlying themes and their presentation
| Main theme – cyberbullying and self-mutilation Underlying themes – dysfunctional family Childhood survival strategies School Sport Music and teenage culture Religion – hypocrisy Eating disorders homosexuality |
| The visual frame - relating to the images presented to the audience during the playing out of these ideas
| significances of bibliotherapy; Cultural; Geographical; Religious; ethical/moral; Educational Socio-economic and socio-historic context. All these areas need further developing: so far this framework has been neglected and I need to explore ways I can provide my audience with the visual relevance in these areas. |
| The transactional Frame - relating to the implicit agreement between actors and audience and how this was made explicit during the theatrical performance.
| Relationships: teen/parent; teen /sibling(s); teen /teacher and students; teen /church The relationships need further developing for the audience to become writerly readers Voice |
| External Realism/ Internal Realism (Savage 2002) | "fused realism" ensuring the elements people can relate to (External Realism) and the elements I devise (Internal Realism) fuse perfectly |
I have been challenged this week that in writing Talk to Me that I need to jump out of my comfort zone and write about the dramatics of life and politics, the dramatised politics of religion and education, and the perceived ethical and moral beliefs that affect our socio-historic past, shaping the characters and their families.
By observing the interaction that I have with characters in real life I may well hit on the missing pieces to personalities in my novel, Talk to Me. Young and Massey (1971) states that a dramaturgical society relies on communication …to manage attitudes, behaviours, and feelings of the population in a modern mass society.
In conclusion, I believe that Dramaturgical analysis can improve my writing:
· as a critical tool in developing or critiquing my creative writing
· as a diagnostic/editing tool
· audience consideration
· clarifying underlying ideological messages
· revealing inconsistencies within the text
· creating a secure interwoven plot
· placing myself as the audience to gauge their reaction
· unblocking and opening up the blank page
Derrida and Deconstruction: Language andCulture |
How aware of my audience am I?
I felt the urge to ensure my story is placed on paper rather than just floating around in my head. So I started the process of mind mapping:
How aware of my audience am I?
When writing just for myself, I was basically creating a mirror for my thoughts, like when Lechte wrote Human beings require the mediation of consciousness, or the mirror of language, in order to know themselves and the world. Therefore, language was an expression of my consciousness and my soul as I allowed words to fall on the page.
In Talk to Me, my awareness of audience is paramount. However, while I am conscious of who might read my work I think my interaction with readers also occurs on a subconscious level. While writing with a teenage audience in mind, I am always conscious of the fact that my work will be read for a specific reason. Therefore, I am aware that I am writing with intent in mind: bibliotherapy.
Can the reader only read within the boundaries set by the author? If readers are reading different meanings are the words ambiguous or has the author deliberately allowed the reader to interpret?
This week I became aware that adults, male and female, self mutilate even in their 40’s. Therefore, my audience is wider than I had anticipated. Although initially writing for teenage audience, I need to utilise language to appeal and be understood by adults.
� Text language may need a glossary
� Appendix interpretation
� Less cyber language by a character reading the text
The rhizomatic system? |
Can I bring the rhizomatic theory into my writing? Can this theory work with other theories? Although, every writer has his/her distinct voice, method of working and ways of developing their fictional worlds, I believe there is a lot to be gained in freeing myself from constraints of any kind and to approach creative writing from as many different angles as possible until I develop the ‘right fit’.
Talk to Me
The rhizomatic system could prove extremely valuable as I develop the life of six girls and their families who are interconnected through school and their joint project, the blog. As each girl faces and experiences their particular demon and every issue, although separate, becomes intertwined through their interactions I feel that the arboreal system– beginning, middle and end, despite it's nice and tidy and controlled traditional form of writing is more constraining to my creativity than the rhizomatic system. In addition, combining Savage’s (2002) concept of the External Realism, the elements people can relate to, with the Internal Realism, the elements I devise appears to be a viable option to adopt. Therefore, combining Poston-Anderson (2007) dramaturgical analysis with the rhizomatic system and Savage’s (2002) External Realism/ Internal Realism, I feel I could make my story more realistic and helpful to my audience by:
Consistency is a key ingredient.
Prioritizing - Morality |
Prioritizing; audience, audience, audience.
In writing for a Catholic audience, I would write within the confines of Catholicism. Similarity, Buddhism! In writing for young adults, the question of morality is my responsible.
Looking a bit muddy? Yes! My view of right or wrong will not necessarily be the same as other people. Matthew Anger’s (2004) article Faith and Fiction takes a very narrow focus, his Christian perspective.
As a creative writer, I can push the boundaries and paradigms of the ‘givens’ of society and culture (Arnold n.d.). Consequently, I must accept that the readerly-writer comes after me and through their mediated experience they will place their own perceptions and understandings upon my story (Arnold n.d.). It is therefore my responsibility to ensure their journey is a worthy one. As a writer I must accept responsibility for the words in my text, just as I am responsible for the words I speak, especially as print lasts longer than the voice.
However, I am accountable for what I write, even if the readerly writer interprets the text differently.
Dramaturgical analysis; Rhizomatic system; External Realism/ Internal Realism.
In analysing and adopting some of these concepts while planning my work I am confident they will assist in unblocking and opening up the blank page. In addition, dramaturgical analysis, paying particular attention to whose voice the audience can hear, the transaction between mind and culture and cyberlanguage will improve Talk to Me.
The Snowflake Method |
� my design
| References |
Anger, M 2004 Faith and fiction: The moral responsibility of the catholic novelist. Viewed 2 April 2010, http://www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20041018.html
Arnold, J n.d. LPW700: The writerly self. Lecture 1: Life as Theatre: The Dramaturge and Dramaturgical Analysis. [CDRom]: Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale.
Arnold, J n.d. Creativity and Communications Theories (1) LPW 700: Lecture 3: The Writerly Self. [CDRom]: Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale.
Arnold, J n.d. Creativity and Communications Theories (2). Lecture 4: LPW700 The Writerly Self. [CDRom]: Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale.
Arnold, J n.d. Creativity and Communications Theories(3) Lecture 5: LPW700 The Writerly Self. [CDRom]: Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale.
Arnold, J n.d. Textuality, Discourse and the Writerly Self, Lecture 7 : LPW700The Writerly Self. [CDRom]: Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale.
Arnold, J n.d. Derrida and Differance – Language and Culture, Lecture 6: LPW700 The Writerly Self. [CDRom]: Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale.
Eco, U 1983 The Name of the Rose, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Viewed 13 April 2010, http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_works_fiction.html
Ingermanson, R 2005 How to Write a Novel: The Snowflake Method Viewed 17 April 2010, http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
Lechte, J 1994 Derrida, Jacques. Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers, Routledge. Viewed 13 April 2008, http://web.archive.org/web/19981206230122/http://acnet.pratt.edu/%7Earch543p/help/Derrida.html
Poston-Anderson, B 2007 Dramaturgical Analysis. Viewed 7 March 2010, http://www.aare.edu.au/00pap/pos00016.htm
Rawlings, J 1999 Jacques Derrida. Viewed 13 April 13 2008, http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/index.html
Rhizomatic. Viewed 22nd April, 2008 http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/anondigcoal.html
Young, T & Massey, G 1971 The Dramaturgical Society: Macro Analysis in Dramaturgy. Viewed 7 March 2008, http://web.archive.org/web/20000816224537/http://www.tryoung.com/archives/033dramaturgicalsociety.html
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