Whom Does The Metaphor Serve?
This week, I picked up Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, and reading it has been both a breath of fresh air and a sobering experience. As a new and self-taught writer, most of my instruction comes from craft books, and most of them don’t frame writing craft as contextual, and cultural.
Craft “rules” are not so rigid, I’ve learned that much, but Mr. Salesses goes further to frame craft as a set of expectations, one that has a particular audience and context. There can thus be no “pure craft”, and what is viewed as pure craft (and what is taught as such) is mostly based on the expectations of a white, cis, patriarchal audience in a white, cis, patriarchal world:
Writers of color in a workshop where the craft values are implicityly white, or LGBT writers in a workshop where the craft values are straight and cis, or women writers in a workshop where the craft values are patriarchal, and so on, are regularly told to “know the rules before they can break them.” They are rarely told that these rules are more than “just craft” or “pure craft,” that rules are always cultural. The spread of craft starts to feel and work like colonization.
That passage, and indeed the entire book, really resonated with me as someone who comes from a former colony, and as someone who is not white or straight, but someone who has been raised and is still immersed in that dominant culture. This book shows me that what I’ve been viewing as writing “best practices” do not necessarily produce the best way of conveying an idea or emotion, but produce the best form of what’s expected by that culture.
Mr. Salesses spends some time interrogating audience and theme, and how these interrelate to what is called writing craft. He also redefines some terms that I’ve come to believe as widely understood, such as “tone” or “relatability”, always with the view of putting our understanding of it in the context of expectations—who gets to set them, and who doesn’t.
A lot of my writing involve characters who are not white, cis, and straight, yet a lot of the rules I’ve learned are geared for an audience who is mostly that. That disconnect is something I’ve always grappled with—are people going to want to read this? Are people going to understand and relate? Mr. Salesses has given me a new and more helpful question to raise, and one that really get to the heart of my writing: who am I writing for?
Where I’m from we didn’t grow apples or oranges.
I was also pleased to discover that the final section of the book is devoted to exercises that I can use to better my writing. One of them is of particular usefulness as I draft my work in progress:
A metaphor is where a character meets the world—a specific character and a specific world—and translates the experience for the audience. An Asian American character comparing chopsticks to two snakes in her hand, for example, is not for an Asian American audience. Whom does the metaphor serve? What exactly is it translating? Go through your manuscript and interrogate each metaphor for whether it is relevant to the character, world, and audience. What shared context is necessary for the metaphor to work? Does it do the job better than a concrete description would?
For example, one of my scenes involves a story about an aging film star, and an early draft contained this simile:
The director orders everyone to a break. Beatriz leaves the set, turning to her assistant to ask for some ice water. The director, ears like a fox, vetoes the request. "You're supposed to be protecting your vocal chords," he says.
“Ears like a fox” requires a shared context between me and the reader/audience, of knowing what a fox is and how they are known for their keen sense of hearing. That audience however is limited, and much of the word would not have the necessary context for the comparison. Indeed, in the Philippines, where this story is set, there are no foxes; and these Filipino characters, though they may know what a fox is, are not likely to attribute good hearing to a fox, but rather some other native animal, like a deer. A fox is simply not relevant to this world and these characters, and is only relevant to an audience familiar with the fox (and that overused comparison).
Just goes to show how I do have some habits to break. More than thoughtfully picking similes and metaphors that aren’t cliches, I need to be more aware of what cultural contexts I’ve unconsciously absorbed, and more aware of whose cultural contexts my writing affirms and negates.