Sunday 21 November 2010

Creative Ambiguity

As a reader, the kind of writing I like best  travels in two directions at the same time: in a linear way, moving along, telling a story, but at the same time travelling down, going deeper, revealing the mysteries of somebody's personality too.

To incorporate this in your own writing, it might be helpful to write two accounts of the same event, told from the points of view of two different participants.  In this way you can throw light on the differences between your characters and at the same time it might help you to increase tension in the tale you are telling.  It may present you with a number of useful plot knots to untie: who notices what, and why?  Did one person feel pleased with what took place while the other one felt unhappy?  Is one person deceiving himself (or someone else)? You can set up minor misunderstandings which later snowball into something significant, even catastrophic.

This kind of ambiguity and inconsistency can provide rich material in terms of observing and commenting on the relationship between your characters and will add subtlety to your narrative.  It's also a way of making your reader work a little harder if they have to retrieve clues for themselves, rather than being spoonfed everything in a superficial way.

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