confusion versus curiosity

a deconstruction

For the past two months I’ve been leading an online workshop with nine exceptional writers. They are hungry, invested and fully willing to wrestle with language and story. In their own work, and in the work of the other participants.

One of the topics that comes up is how to honor the leaps and surprises that are a natural part of story creation without derailing the composition, and thus confusing the reader. These surprises often arrive via deconstruction. What, in these parts, is known as Burnt Tongue—a hallmark of minimalism. The way we burn language in a story can amplify voice, create a unique image, and reach a part of the reader’s nervous system that has yet to be sanded down with expectation (read, cliché). The way Tom Spanbauer describes this purposeful departure from conventional syntax is, “make writing sound spoken,” instead of “writing to the page.”

“Character lies in the deconstruction of the sentence,” Tom says. “And in that deconstruction you actually tear apart the butterfly. And it’s no longer a butterfly, it’s just parts. And in the way you put it back together, is so different than the way I put it back together.”

So, we all have a different way of rebuilding the butterfly, and that is what we call “voice.”

But herein lies the dilemma.