Carly's Ramblings Blog - Style

Making the Past Right

Blog City - Day 1344

Marge Piercy said: "“I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past and make it come out right.”
Have you ever thought about this? Do you use the idea in your writing?

I don't know if I would say I want it to come out right... but I want to change the details to my liking. To create a story from the drama and make it come out a bit more focused and black and white. The real thing can always seem so hazy. Each side has a story to tell; I just want to focus on one side or the other. There is also something to be said for giving a real event time... say, ten years... so that it can settle and you can get some new perspective and distance - particularly if the event was emotionally charged. Delving in, you can still touch the emotional impact, but you have space to move without the pain being fresh. Fresh pain distorts. Fresh pain leads to an idealized vision... that can also paint the characters into polarizing places - victim and angel. Characters can become caricatures of what they really are... and that is not good story telling.