Sunday, October 2, 2016
Into Thin Air #4
While reading to the end of Into Thin Air I am thinking about the process of having to write about such an intense and emotional journey. I had trouble writing about one day and he had to write about many weeks with detail and emotion. The hardest thing I think it was for him was to express his feelings throughout the book. It gets slightly robotic at some points that are key to getting to know characters. Or other times he can almost give us too information. Something I think was lacking consistently was him writing in first person saying (for example) "I was terrified beyond anything I had every felt" something like that would have been nice to hear directly from him. Its like he was dancing around it but never said it. The process of writing a memoir and specifically this one is that you have to express your thoughts in so many different ways and for so long. Personally I would run out of things to write about that wouldn't sound like me rambling on. Something else I think would be hard for me to do is choose a meaningful point in my life that is really worth sharing. By sharing it I would want to have a moral, meaning, or just something more than just entertainment. I would want to really capture the audience and be emotionally invested in the writing. Some techniques would use is to express innocence. The more innocent a character seems, then when something tragic or unfortunate, you feel for that character more than an average person and vis versa. The best feeling is when a character gets what they deserve and it's so satisfying to frustrate a reader when a bad character gets away without getting hat they deserve. Jon Krakauer doesn't keep innocence, he tells about immense physical and mental damage to people that make you cringe it's so good.
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Hey Liana. It's great that you want to try a new technique of writing, by getting into your emotions and not just telling a story for a joke. I know personally that I don't talk about my feelings a lot, sometimes not at all. But when I do tell stories I tell for the amusement of others, as I'm sure you've experienced lol. Anyway, maybe this would be a good strategy for me as well, so I'm glad you decided to try something different.
ReplyDeleteI see what you mean by Jon not keeping his innocence after that trip no Everest nobody that lived was innocent any more. I think that writing the memoir is expressing your thoughts but this seemed like a first hand account of a disaster not a life story, maybe I read it wrong but thats how it felt to me.
ReplyDeleteWow! I never really thought about how I wanted to write my own memoir. So, hearing how someone else would write their memoir is quite nice. I also never thought about the "innocence" of a character and how that would affect the reader's view of that particular character,and the same goes for the unlikeability of a character. You're right! I always love to see those characters knocked down a peg or two.
ReplyDeleteI can defiantly defiantly relate to this as I am trying to come up with ideas for mine and I am now realizing how hard it is to find a specific story to entertain an audience even if its a small story.
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