Story Endings and the Language of your dreams
I am venturing into something quite controversial today. I found in the past while marking English essays completed by my students that there is a great divide between pupils who come from Chinese-speaking backgrounds and English-speaking backgrounds. Remember my earlier posting on how your language bias is defined by what language you dream in? So allow me to refer to the two groups as Chinese Dreamers and English Dreamers. If you dream in another language, just hop on and come along this ride with me – it might make you think about how you picture literary endings in your own writing.
Here’s the thing: the great divide is in the ending.
Chinese Dreamers end like this:
There must be closure. Any conflicts must be resolved. Any difficulties must be surmounted, any villains punished. Younger Chinese Dreamers especially like to pen some moralistic saying that is clearly validated by the story. The more sophisticated Chinese Dreamers who can even appreciate Chinese poetry can conjure up more complex resolutions but they are limited by their ability and confidence to capture the sentiments in English. While they can wax lyrical and touch on subtleties in Chinese, they find that when they have to paint it in English, their brush strokes suddenly become coarse, broad and loud. It tends to be then that their endings are sadly perceived as simplistic. For the Chinese Dreamer, it is quite frustrating to articulate your thoughts in Chinese but to have to pen them in English.
English Dreamers end differently:
They too start off preferring closure but most of them once exposed to a childhood diet that includes the likes of Roald Dahl, become comfortable with the ending I call the “nasty aftertaste”. The whole story-writing process becomes an opportunity to really work out some negative energy. I have seen very many pupils who are completely thrilled to include as many words as they can pertaining to functions excretory and activities sanitary or otherwise. I mean in which Maths problem will you ever get the chance to use the word “flatulence”? (“Fart” scores too highly on the objectionable scale so it is out). Sometimes they are so inspired the whole exercise becomes a numbers game. “How many times can I refer to the lavatory”? When it comes to the ending then, it is all very deflating for them.(Sorry for the fully intended pun) Sometimes they can’t find the right note on which to end or the right port to dock.
For me as the marker, if it wasn’t too funny in the first place, it was just a lot of hot air. (I know! The pun’s awful but this is payback time!)
So where are you?
Chinese Dreamers have got to invest a little bit of time dreaming in English. Once they are able to curse, dream and analyse exclusively in English, they will be able to return to their Chinese inspired sentiments and convey them beautifully in English and when you can do that , it is a real treat for the marker. Adeline Yen Mah’s work is a fine example of that kind of writing. Chinese thoughts, English words.
What about young English Dreamers still trawling through the thesaurus for synonyms for “lavatory”? I say, “get over it and grow up!”
Here’s the thing: the great divide is in the ending.
Chinese Dreamers end like this:
There must be closure. Any conflicts must be resolved. Any difficulties must be surmounted, any villains punished. Younger Chinese Dreamers especially like to pen some moralistic saying that is clearly validated by the story. The more sophisticated Chinese Dreamers who can even appreciate Chinese poetry can conjure up more complex resolutions but they are limited by their ability and confidence to capture the sentiments in English. While they can wax lyrical and touch on subtleties in Chinese, they find that when they have to paint it in English, their brush strokes suddenly become coarse, broad and loud. It tends to be then that their endings are sadly perceived as simplistic. For the Chinese Dreamer, it is quite frustrating to articulate your thoughts in Chinese but to have to pen them in English.
English Dreamers end differently:
They too start off preferring closure but most of them once exposed to a childhood diet that includes the likes of Roald Dahl, become comfortable with the ending I call the “nasty aftertaste”. The whole story-writing process becomes an opportunity to really work out some negative energy. I have seen very many pupils who are completely thrilled to include as many words as they can pertaining to functions excretory and activities sanitary or otherwise. I mean in which Maths problem will you ever get the chance to use the word “flatulence”? (“Fart” scores too highly on the objectionable scale so it is out). Sometimes they are so inspired the whole exercise becomes a numbers game. “How many times can I refer to the lavatory”? When it comes to the ending then, it is all very deflating for them.(Sorry for the fully intended pun) Sometimes they can’t find the right note on which to end or the right port to dock.
For me as the marker, if it wasn’t too funny in the first place, it was just a lot of hot air. (I know! The pun’s awful but this is payback time!)
So where are you?
Chinese Dreamers have got to invest a little bit of time dreaming in English. Once they are able to curse, dream and analyse exclusively in English, they will be able to return to their Chinese inspired sentiments and convey them beautifully in English and when you can do that , it is a real treat for the marker. Adeline Yen Mah’s work is a fine example of that kind of writing. Chinese thoughts, English words.
What about young English Dreamers still trawling through the thesaurus for synonyms for “lavatory”? I say, “get over it and grow up!”
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