Truth and Lying

Carol's Response to Steve's Previous Post

Some artists purposefully avoid analyzing the creative process that works for them. They’re afraid that they may change or destroy the process by thinking about it.

Some artists develop superstitions about what works and what doesn’t. If they ate poached chicken before a successful performance, then they will eat poached chicken before every performance. The riders attached to their contracts may specify what color of M&M’s will be provided, what material the eating utensils will be made of, and on and on for 10 pages.

Other artists attempt an analysis of the creative process without the self-analysis that is also necessary. Their conclusions become as irrelevant as green M&M’s. 

Mamet falls into the last category. I’m one of the relatively few people who have seen a production of “The Woods.” None of his statements about that play bear any resemblance to what I saw on stage. (Full disclosure: I left after the first act.) I was enrolled in a playwriting seminar based on Mamet’s tenets, with Glengarry Glen Ross the required text. Not only was the teacher unable to explain Mamet’s philosophy, but she didn’t use it in her own work. I later attended an acting workshop that used Mamet’s methods, but found them unusable in the classes I taught. And again, she didn’t apply those methods to her own work.

Without any trustworthy experience of Mamet, why would I trust such statements as  “everybody’s fascinated with cons” or that a con is “like magic?” Any fascination with cons ends when we become the “poor schmuck” who falls for one. Then we blame ourselves for being  idiots and become suspicious of anyone or any approach that has a whiff of “conness” attached.

The question that Steve raises, however, is about truth in writing. And, by extension, in all art. 

I’m going to separate here the business of art from the creation of art. If one is writing to formula, that’s business and may be, in some instances, a con. If one’s intent, however, is to create a meaningful experience, both for the writer - or the painter, the dancer, the singer - and for his or her audience, that effort involves a search for truth.

The apparent “vulnerability” of the next boy band is an imitation of what worked for the last boy band. But real vulnerability involves risk. And it is that willingness to risk that an audience recognizes and applauds.

Is manipulation of character and dialogue, plot and structure lying to our readers? 

I jot down funny or poignant exchanges I hear in the supermarket. When I read off those words to someone else, I act out what I heard and saw, imitate the voices, wave my arms, for the listener. When I try to share that experience with a reader, the exact, “true” words will fall flat without the accompanying body language and inflection. For a reader to laugh or sigh over that incident, I have to change the words. Have I lied? Or am I manipulating the words in order to convey the truth?  

-Carol Roan