Which source should writers draw on most: Memory or Imagination?

[MDLP]

Clearly, it should be a fine blend of the two, but really, should an author acquire a vast reservoir of bizarre experiences, then salt them with the imagination, or does fiction belong exclusively to that amorphous nether-realm known as Imagination, and occasionally the Muse reaches down, like absconding aliens, to snatch up a bit of this or that from the real world? I suppose the question should really be: What genres, or under what circumstances, should memory rule over imagination, or vice-versa? I've always regarded the two as enjoying an ever-shifting symbiosis, Memory playing the plover bird one minute, the crocodile the next. So who should truly rule the roost? And when? And where?

Respectfully,
MDLP:welcome:

[aruna]

With me the two really are in symbiosis. I've had a rich life with many extraordinary experences, which in themselves would be worth a book; but I'm not the memoir-writing type so I let imagination play with those experiences and work them into stories. Both are equally important. I'd be bored by a memoir.

[rich]

You gotta watch out for both memory and imagination--both are scoundrels, and each one tries to dominate your writing. Somebody once sent me a Personal Experience piece to comment on. It was about a trip her and her three kids took. I told her to lose one of the kids. She said, "But I have three kids." I said, "Lose the youngest; he's not contributing to the story."

The boy was memory. Sometimes it's the reverse. As Will said, "The play's the thing."

[loquax]

Memory and experience aren't necessary, but they help. Very few novels are sprawling literary chronicles taking heavily from the author's personal adventures round the globe. If you're a good writer, you can make the most mundane experiences fantastic.

[SC Harrison]

Memory and experience aren't necessary, but they help. Very few novels are sprawling literary chronicles taking heavily from the author's personal adventures round the globe. If you're a good writer, you can make the most mundane experiences fantastic.

While I agree about the traveling not being necessary, I do believe that memory and experience are crucial to writing believable and engaging dialogue. Understanding people and the way they interact is an aquired knowledge; it is a collection of personal (real life) observations and those aquired from reading and other forms of media. It is also something that many authors get horribly wrong, because (imo) they are more interested in creating the world than they are breathing life into the people who are supposed to live there.

[loquax]

A teenager who's been writing and observing language since they were a kid will write much better dialogue than an old man who sits down one day and decides to write a novel.

[aruna]

A teenager who's been writing and observing language since they were a kid will write much better dialogue than an old man who sits down one day and decides to write a novel.

Agreed.. but wil that teenager have anything to SAY with that snappy dialogue????!!!! You do have to have lived a little in order to have content - and a bit of wisdom.

[maestrowork]

I'd vote for insight.

Everyone has memories and some sort of imagination. They're all good and dandy. But without insight, you're never going to be able to take your story to a different level. Memory makes it real. Imagination makes it interesting. But insight makes it mean something, something really worth reading.

[janetbellinger]

I agree totally, SC. I find I'm not sage enough to write believable characters without relying on my background knowledge of people I have known and what makes them tick.

[loquax]

Agreed.. but wil that teenager have anything to SAY with that snappy dialogue????!!!! You do have to have lived a little in order to have content - and a bit of wisdom.Here's the part I don't personally agree with. I would think even a thirteen year old experiencing love for the first time would have more than enough source material to write something good. I suppose it depends on what you're writing. A sprawling literary chronicle? Maybe not.

[reph]

loquax, are you assuming the old man who serves as a foil for this hypothetical teenager has never experienced love or anything else?

[Zolah]

Some people are born with 'writer's eye', I think - the ability to see the world around them in a different way, and a certain kind of imagination which allows them to take whatever experience they have and turn it into something universal. It's not being able to describe a feeling or emotion accurately, so much as it's getting into the heart of an experience to convey it in its essence.

Not all people with this gift become writers, and not all writers have this gift (they may have other gifts such as brilliant craftsmanship, which make up for it) but you can tell when a writer DOES have it, because when they describe something you really feel as if YOU had experienced that very same emotional/sensation. It's the difference between, say, Tamora Pierce, who writes brilliantly and does loads of research - but never quite gets inside the experience for me despite meticulous description - and Robin McKinley, who seems to write much more intuitively and provides far less concrete detail, but hits you BAM between the eyes with the sense of 'That's right! That's just how it WOULD feel!'.

You may have experience which allows you to describe something in accurate and vivid detail. You may have an amazing gift with words which will allow you to sketch in details with beauty and brevity. These things alone will not necessarily give your writing the visceral quality which it needs to really grab the reader's attention. You have to be able to isolate and emphasize the parts of the experience which are the most vital, and to present them to the reader in a way that makes them feel personal and REAL. Even though your description may not be perfectly accurate or incredibly skillful, if it has that REAL quality it is likely to linger in a reader's mind for far longer...

[DeniseK]

loquax, are you assuming the old man who serves as a foil for this hypothetical teenager has never experienced love or anything else?

That's what I was thinking, the old man probably has a whole lot more to say than a teenager, about love, life, loss. I would think memory trumps imagination any day.

[loquax]

The old man could have experienced love, death, war, peace, and space travel for all I care. My point is experience isn't necessary. It's good, but not necessary.

[Zolah]

The old man could have experienced love, death, war, peace, and space travel for all I care. My point is experience isn't necessary. It's good, but not necessary.

I agree completely. I know a lot of people who've had amazing experiences like African Safaris and running their own businesses and yet have nothing interesting or worthwhile to say about them. I've met young children who've seen nothing of life and yet could enthrall me with a description of the pattern raindrops made on their classroom window. Experience is great, but on its own it is worthless. It's the ability to observe life and talk about it - to breath new life into it - that makes a writer.

[DeniseK]

I assumed we were talking about writers.

[aruna]

I assumed we were talking about writers.

Same here!

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the teenager and the old man both have the SAME quality of observation, of insight, of linguistic ability; in fact, let's assume that the teenager and the old man are the same person. I believe the old man would write a better book - better, in the sense that it would have more depth, more dimension.

[DeniseK]

Bingo.

[SC Harrison]

Same here!

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the teenager and the old man both have the SAME quality of observation, of insight, of linguistic ability; in fact, let's assume that the teenager and the old man are the same person. I believe the old man would write a better book - better, in the sense that it would have more depth, more dimension.

I agree Aruna, with only a few caveats—he must be able to think from the point of view of an old man, a middle-aged woman, a teenage boy, etc. He also needs to be able to avoid anachronizing (I don't even know if that's a word) his characters, lest they seem out of time.

There may also be an issue with the years taking their toll—"magic lost", if you will, where imagination has taken a backseat to reality for too long. I sincerely hope this is rare, since I am somewhere north of halfway done with this life. Luckily, I am also very immature so, you know, I've got that going for me.

[loquax]

Nothing I don't agree with. Of course the term "better" is subjective. Here's where imagination comes in. Would an old man with an amazing life and good writing skills write a better book than a young creative genius with equal writing skills?

[reph]

Would an old man with an amazing life and good writing skills write a better book than a young creative genius with equal writing skills?
He'd write a different book. Don't observation and imagination qualify as writing skills? What's a creative genius, anyway? Maybe it's one who observes and imagines.

[loquax]

There's the question answered then. They produce different books. I assume you're implying better or worse doesn't come into it, and I can see where you're coming from.

[SC Harrison]

Nothing I don't agree with. Of course the term "better" is subjective. Here's where imagination comes in. Would an old man with an amazing life and good writing skills write a better book than a young creative genius with equal writing skills?

I think the old man is more likely to do so, because he's had more interaction with people. Then somebody like Michael Chrichton comes along and screws up the stats. He was only what, 17 when he wrote The Great Train Robbery? Or was that when he got his Bachelor's degree? Something crazy like that.

[aruna]

I agree Aruna, with only a few caveats—he must be able to think from the point of view of an old man, a middle-aged woman, a teenage boy, etc. He also needs to be able to avoid anachronizing (I don't even know if that's a word) his characters, lest they seem out of time.

Yes, but this applies to BOTH - not just the old man. The thing is, an old man has ecperienced teenagerdom, but a teenager has not, cannot, experience old age and how it feels to be over 20, a parent, etc.


There may also be an issue with the years taking their toll—"magic lost", if you will, where imagination has taken a backseat to reality for too long. I sincerely hope this is rare, since I am somewhere north of halfway done with this life. Luckily, I am also very immature so, you know, I've got that going for me.

I absolutely believe that we have the choice. At 54 I am mentally younger and fresher and more flexible than I was at 20. There is far more magic in my life than back then. Nobody is forcing us to go to seed.

[janetbellinger]

I don't think age has anything to do with.

[DeniseK]

I don't think age has anything to do with.

How old are you?

[Zolah]

Same here!

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the teenager and the old man both have the SAME quality of observation, of insight, of linguistic ability; in fact, let's assume that the teenager and the old man are the same person. I believe the old man would write a better book - better, in the sense that it would have more depth, more dimension.

See, that's where I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. Why? Because I've just turned twenty-four years old. What you're saying is that, given I have the same basic gifts as another writer, but he or she happens to be fifty-four instead of twenty-four, that other writer cannot help but write a better book than me because he or she is older. To that, I say: Bunkum. Age ain't nuthin' but a number...

[DeniseK]

I think the word was "different" not "better." I am 50, you and I would not write the same book about romantic relationships, for instance, or maybe even death, grief, loss, serenity.

[ChaosTitan]

I believe the old man would write a better book - better, in the sense that it would have more depth, more dimension.

Nope, the word was better.

[DeniseK]

There's the question answered then. They produce different books. I assume you're implying better or worse doesn't come into it, and I can see where you're coming from.

It's according to how you are interpreting this thread, or if you are actually reading it, as the case may be.

Maybe you are just having a crappy Saturday and want to argue. I'm not the one.

[Zolah]

I think the word was "different" not "better." I am 50, you and I would not write the same book about romantic relationships, for instance, or maybe even death, grief, loss, serenity.

If you're saying that the book would be different, then you are right - aside from anything else, we're completely different people. But the comments earlier on this thread used words such as 'deeper' and 'better' and I'm afraid I cannot agree with that. Your work would not necessarily reveal any deeper insight into relationships of any kind than mine would. Aside from anything, to think that is to make an assumption that because a person is younger they must have had less personal experience of death, tragedy, suffering and loss etc. which sadly, in many cases may not be true at all...And for an example of that, let's remember the Diary of Anne Frank.

[ChaosTitan]

I hate doing a drive-by posting, so let me add this as well.

I believe that imagination is more important than memory in telling a good story. Why? Without imagination no one would write about dragons or zombies, space ships or Vulcans, distant planets or unexplored African caves. The large majority of fiction writers will never experience these things. We have to make it all up. That's why women can write believable male characters, and vice versa.

Memory and life experience add to the story, certainly. It all depends on what you are writing, and for whom. I think that SE Hinton's The Outsiders is a perfectly wonderful book, and don't believe it could have been better if she had written it when she was forty, rather than sixteen.

It's true that our writing matures with age. As we experience new things, we take the memory of it with us. The joys of marriage or children, the sorrows of loss, the trials of living. New experiences will enrich our emotional spectrum, surely. The book I write at age fifty may be twenty times better than anything I will write while in my twenties. But no amount of life experience in those intervening twenty-odd years will make up for my imagination.

After all, I will never be male, I will always be Caucasian, and I will never travel to distant galaxies. But in my imagination I can be all of these things.

And now I have to go to work. :cry: Retail sucks. This is more fun....ah well... paychecks are nice.

[DeniseK]

If there were more writers with imagination, there would be some fantasy novels that didn't contain dragons or zombies, space ships or Vulcans, distant planets or unexplored African caves.

[loquax]

If there were more writers with imagination, there would be some fantasy novels that didn't contain dragons or zombies, space ships or Vulcans, distant planets or unexplored African caves.There are hundreds of fantasy novels that have none of these.

[aruna]

I believe the old man would write a better book - better, in the sense that it would have more depth, more dimension.

Nope, the word was better.

I am saying the SAME person. The SAME. I am sure that you, at 24, can write a better book than many 50 year old writers. But I am also sure that you at 54 - as long as you maintain your writer's eye, your powers of observartion, your language skills - will write a better book at 50 that you can now.

Just as I know that any book I had written in my 20's would have been utter crap. I know at least one young man in his 20's who is a brilliant writer. I am hoping he keeps at it, because if he grows and matures in synch with his writing talent he will be awesome when he is 50. Some people grow rusty, don't learn from life, grow dull, all kinds of things can happen between 20 and 50. I was assuming for the sake of argument that this hypothetical writer kept on growing.

[janetbellinger]

How old are you?
55.

[janetbellinger]

I have read at least a few mature and brilliant novels by 20 year olds.

[aruna]

If you're saying that the book would be different, then you are right - aside from anything else, we're completely different people. But the comments earlier on this thread used words such as 'deeper' and 'better' and I'm afraid I cannot agree with that. Your work would not necessarily reveal any deeper insight into relationships of any kind than mine would. Aside from anything, to think that is to make an assumption that because a person is younger they must have had less personal experience of death, tragedy, suffering and loss etc. which sadly, in many cases may not be true at all...And for an example of that, let's remember the Diary of Anne Frank.

And Harper Lee was also in her 20's when she wrote TKAM. By no means am I trying to insult the talents of 20 year olds! But let's not compare apples with oranges. I specificaly said that all abilities being otherwise equal, the older person would write a better book.

As for imagination and memory: memory, if it is only a recollection of thinsg past, wil not help me much as a writer other than delivering factual information. The main thing for me is not what I remember, but how I processed my experiences, how I grew through life, the people I have known, what I learned through the various phases, disappointments, joys etc.

[janetbellinger]

I just think there are at least a few young novelists who, for whatever reason, are wise beyond their years

[loquax]

I disagree that the older person would write a better book. Different, not better. If they wrote the same book, maybe. But we all follow the rule - write what you know. The young person may well write what they know better than the old person, and in turn they would have a better book. It all comes down to skill.

[aruna]

Of course there are! And that's actually what matters to me most: not linguistic pyrotechnics, but wisdom, or as Maestrowork put it, insight.

[Zolah]

I am saying the SAME person. The SAME. I am sure that you, at 24, can write a better book than many 50 year old writers. But I am also sure that you at 54 - as long as you maintain your writer's eye, your powers of observartion, your language skills - will write a better book at 50 that you can now.

Just as I know that any book I had written in my 20's would have been utter crap. I know at least one young man in his 20's who is a brilliant writer. I am hoping he keeps at it, because if he grows and matures in synch with his writing talent he will be awesome when he is 50. Some people grow rusty, don't learn from life, grow dull, all kinds of things can happen between 20 and 50. I was assuming for the sake of argument that this hypothetical writer kept on growing.

Well, here's where we have to agree to disagree, I suppose. I don't think that just because a person is older it will enable them to be a better writer (or a better person). Nope. And nothing will convince me of that, especially as I've seen many writers whose work had raw power and beauty when they were first published (though that may have been when they were in their thirties or forties for all I know) and which has steadily decreased in quality as they went on. But I don't want this to de-generate into an argument, so (barring any inflammatory posts) I shall bow out at this point.

[rich]

I'm sixty-five. I challenge anybody on this board to out-imagine me, to prevail in the battle of cutting edge prose or poetry, to interpret the tragedy and comedy of this orb.





(Hey, that was good. I gotta write that down. Hmmm, what did I do with that pad...)

[aruna]

I disagree that the older person would write a better book. Different, not better. If they wrote the same book, maybe. But we all follow the rule - write what you know. The young person may well write what they know better than the old person, and in turn they would have a better book. It all comes down to skill.

Don't I still know now what I knew at 20? And don't skills improve with practice? Remember we are discussing the SAME person, or a person of equal skill.

I can write 5 year olds, ten year olds, fifteen year olds, and do.
At 20 I could not have written a 50 year old, not even with a fertile imagination. I know what it;s like now, an dno way could I have possibly imagined and written about it.


I only have myself to go on, but I know with 100% certainty that I could not have written a better book at 20 than I can now. ANything I wrote at that age would have been deeply embarassing to me now.

I dare say that there are people who regress with age, in which case their books would not improve. But I am being deliberately optimistic. In the natural order of things we are like wine - we (should) improve with age. Books are a just an expression of who we are. If we are better, wiser, deeper, so are the things we create.

Shucks, my books are better now that they were 5 years ago.

[aruna]

Well, here's where we have to agree to disagree, I suppose. I don't think that just because a person is older it will enable them to be a better writer (or a better person). Nope. And nothing will convince me of that, especially as I've seen many writers whose work had raw power and beauty when they were first published (though that may have been when they were in their thirties or forties for all I know) and which has steadily decreased in quality as they went on. But I don't want this to de-generate into an argument, so (barring any inflammatory posts) I shall bow out at this point.

(my emphasis)

Hey, Zolah, what's up! I don't feel in the least argumentaitve; nothing could be further to my mind than inflammatory posts. This is just a pleasant discussion on a Saturady afternoon, nothing to get upset about!

I highlighted the words which are the crux of the matter. It's not just because you grow older that you get better. I tried to make it clear that I assumed that we grow as we get older, we learn from life and experience; this includes that we learn to be better writers, and hone our skills.

Of course some writers decrease in quality. But that's because they did not stay alert. They have only themselves to blame. I was not talking of such. If we stay alert to our skills we do improve.

[janetbellinger]

Also, the younger person might have more wisdom than the older one. Age does not always mean wisdom

[DeniseK]

There probably are situations where this is true, but I think we're talking overall.

A young person does not usually have more wisdom than an older one. Where would they get it?

[Nicholas S.H.J.M Woodhouse]

sorry for getting in this action so late, my point has probably already been made...

memory and imagination, i think, go together. they are mixed, naturally so.
what we remember from situations changes over time and i think that has to do with imagination. say the first time you polished a shoe. you never get to do it again. it grows to mean something special to you. you look back and imagine what it was like, you romanticise the memory due to the importance the situation has derived from the later stages of your life.

the mix in almost certainly inescapable i think, and so in conclusion, i think writers draw from both at the same time, no matter which they try to draw from.

[SC Harrison]

Okay. I think we can all agree that the craft of writing usually improves with practice. So even if we discount the advantages inherent in a writer with many years of life experiences, there are still the years of perfecting the art of writing which cannot be discounted.

Now we are in the realm of relativity, which may (I hope) keep this thread from turning into another one of those. At the age of 45, I really only have a few years under my belt actively pursuing a writing career, so I'm sure there are many young writers here that could (and I hope will) teach me a few things.

I have read excerpts posted here (SYW) by young to very young writers that had me questioning the age they posted on their profiles, because their prose was fluid and engaging. I have also read works by more mature writers that I found flat and seemingly misinformed. Granted, this observation does little to forward either side of this argument, except to say:

It takes a very special mind to create a written work that can cast a spell on a reader. There are some identifiable traits which can be observed and remarked upon, saying "this element is present, which is necessary", but, that only takes you so far. There is that other thing; that sometimes very elusive thing, which I can only describe as total immersion of the writer into the story, which gives it life.

Whatever your age, if you can achieve this state, you are at a place that most people will never experience.

[Zolah]

The reference to inflammatory posts was actually a joke...

[MDLP]

Wow! That's some admirable chatter y'all got going there. You'd make a formidable ball team:)

Thank you very much for answering my question...in spades. Fortunately, I was able to seek shelter before I was too badly brained by these cataracts of manna from heaven.

Wow, 50 posts (counting my own) on my first thread. Is that some kind of a record:Hail:

[aruna]

Wow! That's some admirable chatter y'all got going there. You'd make a formidable ball team:)

Thank you very much for answering my question...in spades. Fortunately, I was able to seek shelter before I was too badly brained by these cataracts of manna from heaven.

Wow, 50 posts (counting my own) on my first thread. Is that some kind of a record:Hail:

At your service! Our pleasure, and ask away! ;)

[rich]

Nope, the biggest draw by far was a thread that was suppose to read "Vowels in action," but the thread-starter had a typo and wrote "Bowels."

We older folks were over there like flies on turds.

[Jamesaritchie]

A teenager who's been writing and observing language since they were a kid will write much better dialogue than an old man who sits down one day and decides to write a novel.



It depends on who the teenager is, and on who the old man is. All things being equal, you may be right, but I'd bet on the old man more often than not. I've seen a lot more old men sit down and write a great novel with great dialogue than I have teenagers.

[Jamesaritchie]

See, that's where I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. Why? Because I've just turned twenty-four years old. What you're saying is that, given I have the same basic gifts as another writer, but he or she happens to be fifty-four instead of twenty-four, that other writer cannot help but write a better book than me because he or she is older. To that, I say: Bunkum. Age ain't nuthin' but a number...
Age is also experience, with most people, and experience counts for a lot. The older person may not write a better book, but he'll probably write a much more realistic book, and one that has more depth. Compare the number of older writers who succeed with the number of young writers who succeed. The difference isn't one of talent, but of experience.

[cwfgal]

Some people are born with 'writer's eye', I think - the ability to see the world around them in a different way, and a certain kind of imagination which allows them to take whatever experience they have and turn it into something universal. It's not being able to describe a feeling or emotion accurately, so much as it's getting into the heart of an experience to convey it in its essence.

I think this statement is brilliant and true.

However, the word "experience" in there does tend to imply that any writer with this gift would produce a "better" work (however better is defined) at 50 than at 20 simply because he or she would have so much more experience to process.

Beth

[cwfgal]

Age is also experience, with most people, and experience counts for a lot. The older person may not write a better book, but he'll probably write a much more realistic book, and one that has more depth. Compare the number of older writers who succeed with the number of young writers who succeed. The difference isn't one of talent, but of experience.

Well, now I'm curious. Is there any study or data that tells how old a writer was when he/she first achieved "success?" (And how are we defining success exactly???) And what is considered "young" versus "old?"

Beth

[rchastain]

Jeff Cohen, via The Murderati blog, addresses the question of memory vs. imagination:

http://murderati.typepad.com/murderati/

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the not-so-secret reason some of us write. It’s the same reason we read—escape from the limitations of our daily lives into something “rich and strange.” For us (and I’m including a lot more than SF and Fantasy authors), memory is only the servant of imagination.

[rich]

No, I don't escape when I write. If I did I wouldn't write. Memory is what serves me. and my imagination is a lesser servant who merely adds the icing to the cake. Think of the muse as a pain in the *** who needs recognition more than you do.

[loquax]

At 20 I could not have written a 50 year old, not even with a fertile imagination. I know what it;s like now, an dno way could I have possibly imagined and written about it.So... you'll never be able to write a male lead? IMO being an author is about imagining things you shouldn't be able to, and making it convincing. It's all about making your readers believe lies. IMO.

[Bufty]

When I was younger, I thought older folks were young folks who had somehow changed and were 'different'. Now I know they're simply young folks who've been around a lot longer and usually experienced a lot more.

I think I tend to draw on imagination more than memory. Presume it depends what one writes, but I've no doubt the imaginings are influenced by memory.

Loquax - not sure I've added too much here, huh?

[Thekherham]

Speaking personally, it's imagination. I write in the science fiction, fantasy field, and unless my memories take me back to some alien world, I will have to rely on my imagination to write about aliens, and dragons, and such.

[Chickenchargrill]

Both. That's the short answer anyway ;)

Just to expand, I wrote a flash piece for a challenge. Yes, that was the train journey I took, yes, I was scribbling in my notepad when I was sat there. But no, in reality there was no little gremlin. :D

[rich]

I'm currently editing (a relative) a proficient, well published writer of tech-nonfiction with too much imagination. I've yet to get him out of the heavy stage managing, nor his propensity to describe such minute, imaginative detail that the reader would need heavy doses of methamphetamine to stay conscious.