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Masterwork Experiment
23/3/20 09:49I'm writing a new story.
It began as an experiment. Shawn Coyne, my editing mentor, wanted to find out whether an accomplished writer (me) could create a fresh story by borrowing the deep structure of a masterwork, but changing the setting.
If I could, he would publish it.
The masterwork he chose was Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," and my task was to transpose it to Regency England.
The experiment was a success in that it did inspire me to start a new story, something I haven't been able to do for more than three years.
It was a failure, however, in that all Shawn's rules blocked me for almost nine months, and I wasn't able to break the blockage till I broke most of the rules.
Once I finally let my story diverge--from "Brokeback," from Shawn's idea of its meaning, from the scenes I'd written in the first days of the experiment, and at last, from the experiment itself--it was no longer the thing Shawn wanted. Which means Story Grid probably won't publish it.
It is the story of two lower-class men (servants) who meet on the job and fall in love. But that's where the "Brokeback" scaffolding ends. I'm changing everything else. Above all, I am not going to kill one of them. I don't think we need any more buried gays.
Instead I borrowed other stories' scaffolding: the devoted but deluded servant in The Remains of the Day. The relationship dynamic from The Untamed. Part of the ending of The Song of Achilles.
And the true-life history of Matthew Tomlinson whose 1810 diaries were recently uncovered.
I'm submitting the first act of this no-longer-anything-like-Brokeback story to a writing partner in a couple of days, and we'll see how it goes.
It began as an experiment. Shawn Coyne, my editing mentor, wanted to find out whether an accomplished writer (me) could create a fresh story by borrowing the deep structure of a masterwork, but changing the setting.
If I could, he would publish it.
The masterwork he chose was Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," and my task was to transpose it to Regency England.
The experiment was a success in that it did inspire me to start a new story, something I haven't been able to do for more than three years.
It was a failure, however, in that all Shawn's rules blocked me for almost nine months, and I wasn't able to break the blockage till I broke most of the rules.
Once I finally let my story diverge--from "Brokeback," from Shawn's idea of its meaning, from the scenes I'd written in the first days of the experiment, and at last, from the experiment itself--it was no longer the thing Shawn wanted. Which means Story Grid probably won't publish it.
It is the story of two lower-class men (servants) who meet on the job and fall in love. But that's where the "Brokeback" scaffolding ends. I'm changing everything else. Above all, I am not going to kill one of them. I don't think we need any more buried gays.
Instead I borrowed other stories' scaffolding: the devoted but deluded servant in The Remains of the Day. The relationship dynamic from The Untamed. Part of the ending of The Song of Achilles.
And the true-life history of Matthew Tomlinson whose 1810 diaries were recently uncovered.
I'm submitting the first act of this no-longer-anything-like-Brokeback story to a writing partner in a couple of days, and we'll see how it goes.