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Had a good crit group the other day and it got me thinking...at what point in writing your story do you decide whether its for an external effect (i want to represent ppl like me!) or an internal one (I want to explore this for myself)? Because that informs how and what you write
Because sometimes you want both those effects but they can be at odds with each other. Or you want one effect so bad that it begins to hurt the truth of the story, which relies on indulging the other effect. How do you differentiate and then choose?
What’s more important to you, the personal driving force and the desired impact of the story? I think usually its the former but our ego makes us think its the latter and makes us work from a place of...not falsity but artifice? Through a layer, or several layers, of pretension
On one hand you have to consider who you want your implied reader to be and write with those expectations in mind but writing with an implied effect I think isnt helpful unless the implied effect is the ONLY purpose of your story. Otherwise itll only muddy the waters of your work
Lets take my book A Map to the Sun for example. My implied reader is young WoC. My driving force for making this book was to ruminate on my and my family/friends experiences growing up with particular cultural & socioeconomic challenges, the joys and trauma associated with them
The external effect or impact i wanted the book to have was for young WoC to feel represented and connect with the characters, to feel less alone in their experiences around romance, friendship, family, economic status and cultural divides. So which place do i make the work from?
If I worked from a place of wanting to achieve a certain impact, maybe i would have had a broader cast. A character who was homeless or a storyline that involved higher stakes. Maybe i wouldve left out the violence & cruelty so my implied reader would feel represented righteously
But instead, i wrote from my own experiences which meant my representation of characters or situations might seem unfair. It might be too specific to me and unrelatable. The actions the characters take might be ugly and wrong or maybe my politics might seem odd or offensive
