I have talked about Meat by Terry Bisson a lot this week, and who could blame me? It's a fabulous piece of writing!
You can find it here if you missed it: http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/
This website is great because you can also find some of his other stories here too.
It was first published in 1990 and has been floating around the internet in various forms since then, so you may have come across this particular piece before.
Bisson wastes no time setting the scene, giving us the names of the characters or any description of them. Instead, he uses nothing but dialogue to give us all the information we need.
But does it tell us everything we need to know? Well, no. But the best stories don't. Generally the stories we remember are the ones that leave us guessing, the ones that force us to use our imagination and don't just lead us down one path.
Bisson also uses the conversation to inject humour into this surreal piece, such as the "shy but sweet hydrogen cluster". This is a great example of how conversations meander and change in tone.
There is also a great conversational style to this piece. The to and fro style somehow never gets boring despite its somewhat repetitive subject.
The ending also works really well in engaging the reader. This is when the story really comes together. The speaker says "Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe would be if one were all alone...".
The story is written from the perspective of aliens visiting Earth, if you didn't get that on first read (I didn't either). One of the main reasons Bisson uses only direct speech is to hide the true identity of the speakers. The message Bisson leaves us with is so poignant that it leaves us to ponder our own sense of aloneness in the world and beyond.
What to take away from this week's reading:
1. Really consider how you use dialogue, and experiment writing stories with different amounts. It is clear that you can write an entire story out of dialogue successfully if you want to!
2. Keep that conversational style, but make sure it isn't boring. The subject matter in this story really helps: it's interesting, it's new, and it leaves us wanting more.
3. Think carefully about how we talk to each other. Obviously not every conversation is full of humour, but as humans we tend to use it as a defence mechanism and often it appears even in the hardest conversations.
Related exercises:
Try writing a story, or some ideas for a story, based entirely on conversation in your notebook. It is only by practicing writing dialogue that you get a sense of what works well and what you can cut.
Keep listening to conversations, both in real life and on t.v.. Compare how these conversations differ. Don't forget that the vast majority of television is scripted and written in the same way you are doing now. Listen to what other people think is important and attention grabbing to help you write your own things.
Happy writing!
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