(038)
Two unnamed characters walk in tandem down the path we know so well.
“I’m writing this story at the moment.” One says, in a way that seems like he’d been waiting for you before he began.
“Oh yeah? What’s it about?” Says the other with a voice not dissimilar to the first.
“Honestly I’m not sure, I just started it with the idea of writing about a writer, and playing about with the…what’s the word–”
“Gimmick?”
“No, it’s like…trope! Playing about with the trope of breaking the fourth wall and that.”
“But do you not think it’s a bit gimmicky?”
“Sometimes, yeah but–”
“It just feels really transparent when I see people use it, it’s clearly the writer trying to insert themselves into the story and pointing a big arrow to the reader saying “look! This character is me!””
“Yeah, but I also feel like it can be a fun dialogue between the writer and the reader, and so long as it remains self aware then I think it makes it okay– like in mine the writer is writing about a writer–”
A heavy sigh. “But that’s just an extra layer of the same gimmick–”
“Yes but I have a character in my story that the writer is telling his story to, and that character is giving all of the valid criticisms to the trope of a writer writing about a writer–”
“So it’s acting as your way of escaping the vulnerability of you being considered hacky, by highlighting that you know that what you’re doing is hacky, so therefore it can’t be hacky…right?”
“Listen, I know it’s looked down upon nowadays but I like it, I always feel a little prickle of engagement when I see someone using it.”
“But what is the story actually about?”
“I don’t know! I don’t even know if it matters…pulling apart storytelling I suppose?”
“Kind of just seems like lazy writing…”
“Well what’s the point of any story? They don’t all have to have some deeper meaning. Can’t it just be for the sake of itself?”
“It can be, but how is that a story? Or how is it ‘pulling apart storytelling’?”
“Fine! What if the writer my character is writing about–”
“Why not make them write about a writer too?”
Ignoring him, voice raised: “– has picked a random object or location, like that burnt tree for example–” he gestures at it “and has imagined it as the main character in a story. He writes about all the stuff that’s happened underneath it, tying together all the individual randomness throughout time to find links and patterns, because that’s what’s engaging to us…right? But through my character we can shine a light on the fact that, while there are these patterns if you look for them, and that the storyline of the tree – or of any spot, or thing – is full of twists and turns, highs and low and beginnings and ends, that it’s also just a big circle of random stuff happening endlessly, totally independently of one another. That the four seasons: birth, growth, death, renewal – it’s completely ordinary and mundane but it’s also…I don’t know, it’s life…”
They exchange a look before he adds:
“I just think it can be interesting to try and pull away from a set story arc that tries to give it all meaning, to instead highlight the utter meaninglessness of it, and yet within that highlight the beauty of the meaninglessness of it…you know what I mean? Having a totally meaningless story nestled within all the other ‘meaningful’ stories, and realising that in the end…they all have the same value.”
“And would this…tree-writer be writing the story from the tree’s perspective all the time?”
“No, I’m thinking more like individual stories that just happened to be underneath, or nearby it.”
“So why don’t you just write those stories instead of having the two layers of writers above it?”
“Because I want to do the writer who’s writing about a writer trope.”
“Okay, but if they’re individual stories, can’t you just have one where you do it, instead of the whole thing?”
He mulls on this.
“I could, but what would I be saying with it?”
“I don’t know, maybe you could just do it to get it out of your system?”
He mulls on this some more.
“And if I write about the writer who writes about the tree, wouldn’t it be weird to suddenly move away from the story being in that location?”
“Why does it have to?”
“Hmm, yeah…maybe my character and the friend he’s talking to can come across the tree in real life while they’re talking, and they can talk about their feelings on it – on the image of the burnt out tree.”
“And what would they say?”
“Well it could start with the friend who says something like:
“I don’t know why they haven’t cut it down, it’s damaging the image of everything around it.”
And then the writer says:
“I don’t know…I kind of like it – it feels like it symbolises something…like it stands in stark contrast to the continuing life that surrounds it, like despite the suffering and pain, life just keeps going right alongside death.”
And then they could discuss their perspectives on death, and the idea and image of death as something ugly, rather than the beautiful role it has in the cycle of everything, or something…maybe something like that could work?”
A pause as they consider the image of the charred skeleton before them, and of how it represents their own mortality, and the futile beauty of the short time they spend on this earth.
“Yeah maybe…”
“Or maybe it can just be for the sake of the trope?”
“Yeah, maybe just leave it at that.”
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