David Eddie, who writes a funny advice column in the Globe and Mail, sometimes uses the word "questionsult," which is an insult thinly disguised as a question. His example: "Oh, you finally got new curtains. Were those your first choice?" Following his lead, I invented my own word: the compliminsult, but I see that he has a version of that too. (He calls it the insultiment.)
I received a compliminsult recently from a fellow writer who said, "Your writing is so action-packed! It's always so plot-driven!" Maybe I'm too sensitive (how many times in my life have I started a sentence that way?), but I couldn't help but detect a note of dismissal in the comment -- that somehow plot is simplistic and elementary, not a complex enough way to tell a story. I disagree.
I think that action and events are a natural by-product of story-telling. People tell stories to help themselves piece together cause and effect. They recall events that led to things. They select certain events as significant and disregard others as irrelevant. They are trying to answer the question: how did this happen? Or, how did I end up here?
I don't think we re-hash the minutiae of our lives without a sense that we're seeking to shape it. It's a bit like star-gazing. On a slightly overcast July night, the patterns of the constellations seem obvious and timeless. It's almost like we can see the lines drawn between stars, the Big Dipper scooping, the Little Dipper pouring, and the big W of Cassiopeia. The clouds, or light from the moon, obscures the profusion of stars, and patterns clearly emerge. But if the night is very clear, and if you're out in the middle of nowhere under a black sky, the riot of stars can be overwhelming. On nights like that, I can be hard-pressed to identify even the Dippers. It's disorienting, and it makes me understand why early cultures looked not only for patterns, but stories in the stars.
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| Justin Ng photo |
I think that action and events are a natural by-product of story-telling. People tell stories to help themselves piece together cause and effect. They recall events that led to things. They select certain events as significant and disregard others as irrelevant. They are trying to answer the question: how did this happen? Or, how did I end up here?
I don't think we re-hash the minutiae of our lives without a sense that we're seeking to shape it. It's a bit like star-gazing. On a slightly overcast July night, the patterns of the constellations seem obvious and timeless. It's almost like we can see the lines drawn between stars, the Big Dipper scooping, the Little Dipper pouring, and the big W of Cassiopeia. The clouds, or light from the moon, obscures the profusion of stars, and patterns clearly emerge. But if the night is very clear, and if you're out in the middle of nowhere under a black sky, the riot of stars can be overwhelming. On nights like that, I can be hard-pressed to identify even the Dippers. It's disorienting, and it makes me understand why early cultures looked not only for patterns, but stories in the stars.
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