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Fonda Lee

@FondaJLee

24 Feb

I've been thinking about how much Western storytelling trains us to expect that writers show the audience where they're going right up front. Main characters have to be introduced right away. Twists have to be foreshadowed. Inciting incident in the first 10% etc. BUT 1/

Many of my favorite stories, especially Asian ones, don't adhere to these "rules." In My Neighbor Totoro, Totoro doesn't appear until 30 mins into a 90 min film. The slow sense of discovery makes the film enchanting. Can you imagine any American film waiting until the 33% mark?

If the film Parasite had been an American movie, there would all sorts of clues, hints, bumps in the night. Or maybe the movie would've ended with the rich and poor families having a showdown and then reconciling. As it is, when the twist comes, it's truly a shock. 3/

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Fonda Lee

@FondaJLee

1 Jan 20

Dear Hollywood,

Asian-American stories matter. They can and do succeed domestically on their own merit. Stop misguidedly expecting them to be a ticket to mainland Chinese $$$

Signed,
A loyal but frustrated Asian-American filmgoer

goldthread2.com/identity/can-a…

Disney's Mulan. Crazy Rich Asians. The Farewell.

Every time a film resonates with Asian Americans, film industry execs and pundits do a lot of hand-wringing over why it's failing to catch on in China.

ARRRGNNNGGHHH *shakes fists at sky*

It's shatteringly obvious they are two different audiences but...I dunno, I can only assume there's still a lot of "but all Asians are the same / must like the same things" going on?

Here's yet another example, with The Farewell:

goldthread2.com/culture/farewe…

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Fonda Lee

@FondaJLee

24 May 19

This is the sort of linguistic dilemma fantasy writers run into: Can you refer to something as a manila envelope if it exists in a secondary world where there is no such place as Manila?

FWIW, my personal rule in this sort of situation: make up as few words as possible and don't ever allow the reader to stop to think about or question your word choice. So yes, I will use "manila envelope" and "champagne" but not "Xerox" or "tupperware."

You could argue it either way, and it's a case-by-base thing; I might revisit this later and decide differently. Writing fantasy is a great exploration of how much we take linguistic context for granted.

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Fonda Lee

@FondaJLee

20 Mar 19

The one consistently reliable way to overcome "writer's block" is to lower your standards. I mean really lower them. Already low, you say? GO LOWER. E.g: what I'm writing now can't even be called First Draft. It's a Zero Draft. You know what, let's call it Negative Draft. (1/?)

I don't regularly do a Zero/Negative Draft. Some books seem to come easier and you get a solid first draft the first go round. As my books have gotten bigger, bolder, more complicated, I find I more often have to be okay w/ gaining critical momentum by writing complete drivel.

Sometimes I go back to an old Zero Draft and am gobsmacked by how unrecognizable it is. See, a Zero Draft takes away the idea that this is even a thing. It's not a thing. It's not even a clay shape. It's just dirt that might become clay. See, no pressure, just making dirt here.

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Fonda Lee

@FondaJLee

3 Oct 18

https://twitter.com/sfsignal/status/1047502770637557766

Sweet mother of mercy, my book is on sale today for $1.99 and this is a good opportunity to talk about art vs. commerce and how the way you feel about that intersection has bearing on your publishing path (a writing career thread)

https://twitter.com/sfsignal/status/1047502770637557766

No matter how long you spend writing a book, how much of your soul you pour into it, the amount of sweat and tears you shed, how deeply and fiercely you love the story and characters, at the end of the day it becomes a product to be sold. Like socks, griddle irons, wallpaper.

After the words are on the page and the book is produced, you're no longer wrestling with it as an artist. You have to step away from it as an author and approach it as businessperson. How to position it, market it, price it, distribute it, make it stand out in a crowded market.

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Fonda Lee

@FondaJLee

26 Sep 18

I'm deeply fond of Harry Potter (putting me in company w/ ~2 billion other ppl). But JKR and HP have become the prime example of approaching representation in fantasy fiction completely ass-backwards: awkwardly shoehorning it in after the fact. (An irritated thread about writing)

As a writer, I know ALL about the mental gymnastics of introducing new plot twists and story elements by mining breadcrumbs in your own work and going, "YES, I MEANT THAT ALL ALONG. I'M A GENIUS." We all do it, trust me. And maybe our intuitive creative selves *did* mean it, BUT

we have to make sure it WORKS THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE STORYLINE. That means going back and reworking EVERYTHING that came before so you're not pulling something out of your ass on page 324. If you're on book 4 and books 1-3 are already published? TOUGH BALLS. They're canon now.

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