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the X is the Y
Oct. 25th, 2007 08:58 am"The work shapes the method. That is an insight I would put in the Common Book of Prayer right below what the very wise Gerald F. Reidenbaugh, Drama Department Chairman at Syracuse, said to the Shubert Fellow in September 1964 on the heart of playwriting: 'The structure is the vision.'"
(Barry Malzberg, "The Resnick/Malzberg Dialogues, XXXIV: Collaborations - Practice", The Bulletin of the SFWA)
Someone asked me just recently how I structure my novels. I struggled as always to give him a coherent answer. I wish now I'd had this quote to hand. While it usually takes me a while to feel that I have an idea (or vision) of the novel as a single piece, as opposed to a bunch of disconnected fragments, once I have that vision the structure is automatically there. It doesn't need to be imposed. Tweaked, maybe, sometimes, but never built from scratch.
I am a structure freak. If anyone has any good quotes on this subject, I'd love to hear them.
(Barry Malzberg, "The Resnick/Malzberg Dialogues, XXXIV: Collaborations - Practice", The Bulletin of the SFWA)
Someone asked me just recently how I structure my novels. I struggled as always to give him a coherent answer. I wish now I'd had this quote to hand. While it usually takes me a while to feel that I have an idea (or vision) of the novel as a single piece, as opposed to a bunch of disconnected fragments, once I have that vision the structure is automatically there. It doesn't need to be imposed. Tweaked, maybe, sometimes, but never built from scratch.
I am a structure freak. If anyone has any good quotes on this subject, I'd love to hear them.
