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

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.

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.

loquax said:

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.

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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.

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.

loquax said:

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.

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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.

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.

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.

aruna said:

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.

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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.

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

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...

reph said:

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

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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.

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.

loquax said:

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.

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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.

I assumed we were talking about writers.

DeniseK said:

I assumed we were talking about writers.

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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.

Bingo.

aruna said:

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.

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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.

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?

loquax said:

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?

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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.

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.

loquax said:

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?

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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.

SC Harrison said:

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.

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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.

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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.

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