Friday, January 22, 2010

'(Says her unconscious)'.

The unconscious/subconscious is what's interesting. But how does one 'show, not tell' the unconscious? The standard writing form is (sigh) a slightly bizarre thing. I think of Hobb's trilogy where after 2000 pages she finally goes into the mind of the main bad guy. After 2000 pages we finally get to see what this guy is actually thinking, we finally get to understand why he acts like that. For two single pages we go into his mind.

And it wouldn't work any other way. It has to be held back, concealed, in order to work. And it's nice that finally we find out (That's it! That's all?) But that part isn't really that important. The concealing is what matters. Without it there's far less reason to bother reading 2000 pages. Without the concealing the whole thing just dissipates into nothing.

This is the form. This is writing. Is it actually a lie which brings us closer to the truth? Or is it just about making sure there will always be an unknown? An unknown which exists simply thanks to lying?

Perhaps it's just to mirror the real world where we generally don't know. There are always things we just don't know. There is always adversity. So you've a book full of people trying to persevere in the face of the unknown/adversity. Thing is perhaps to understand that the two go together. Without an unknown there possibly isn't really much adversity... And so we read of people trying to persevere in the face of adversity. And if we made the unknown known we're just destroying most/all of the feeling of adversity.