Man, this is really a complicated set of questions. I could probably go on for several comment screens anwering them.
RE: the Writer is God.
I've often used this analogy myself. Like God, I can step back and know everything that has happened/is happening/will happen to my characters. I exist outside of their time line. I can look down on it and see everything from beginning to end and beyond. I know stuff they don't know.
That said, I don't believe that God or a god is all powerful. Acc to Scripture, remember, God endowed us with free will. He didn't want puppets (what fun is that?)
So, my characters have free will too. Sometimes, they don't necessarily do what's good for them. I know this because I know the consequences of their actions when they don't. Sometimes, they surprise me. Sometimes, I let them do what they will. Sometimes, I intervene to serve the story.
Do I know everything about them? No. I would imagine if you know every single thing about a character, then they would bore you. I might know the parameters of a scene, chapter or plotline, but what happens within those parameters often surprise me. I don't know everything that will be done or said. And while I may know how things are likely to transpire, it doesn't mean they always do as I expect. I may know a destination but not precisely how we all will get there.
There is even far more serendipity or chance involved when I write interactively, which I have done with four separate individuals. Then, I am a collaborative deity, not an all-powerful one. I do not/cannot control everything and this process, while less certain and controlled, is far more addicting.
RE: readers and writer's interpretations. I am a constructionist philosophically, and in writing I don't believe in ultimate truth, only many truths. What something 'means' is up to debate and I'm not willing to take as solid and strident a position as you do. I don't always know everything that's going on in a story although I am very good with plot.
Case in point: there's a drug-induced dream sequence in The Sleeping Beauty Affair in which Solo sees Allyson as a little girl but then she begins to bleed and her dress is eventually saturated with blood. When I wrote it, I assumed this was symbolic of Solo's fear that he had put his daughter in danger. However, others have pointed out that it might be symbolic of menstuation and that he may also fear her growing up.
That interpretation did not occur to me at the time but I think it's certainly valid and very possibly something Solo *may* fear even though I didn't see it myself. So, I'm not going to say the reader was wrong. Indeed, they are probably right. But I'm not 'wrong' either. What the absolute truth is, I don't know. Probably a combination with multiple answers. Someday, someone else may come along with yet another interpretation and that may be just as valid.
Sometimes, folks have asked me questions about why a character did something or if he knew something or whether something was deliberate and I often respond, "I don't know." Because I don't. It's up to interpretation and sometimes, the truth is multiple.
On the other hand, I have heard interpretations of other stories and situations I've written that I think are way off base, but it may be that both the reader and I are interpreting within our own cultural and psychological frameworks.
I do agree that it's annoying and even bullying to be told what you as the writer were thinking when you wrote something. What *you* meant ---no, thank you, I know what I meant.
But that's different from interpretation which, I believe, is something that is negotiated and exists outside of the individual writer and readers ---it's not something embedded within a text but something that occurs in the encounter between writer, reader and text.
no subject
RE: the Writer is God.
I've often used this analogy myself. Like God, I can step back and know everything that has happened/is happening/will happen to my characters. I exist outside of their time line. I can look down on it and see everything from beginning to end and beyond. I know stuff they don't know.
That said, I don't believe that God or a god is all powerful. Acc to Scripture, remember, God endowed us with free will. He didn't want puppets (what fun is that?)
So, my characters have free will too. Sometimes, they don't necessarily do what's good for them. I know this because I know the consequences of their actions when they don't. Sometimes, they surprise me. Sometimes, I let them do what they will. Sometimes, I intervene to serve the story.
Do I know everything about them? No. I would imagine if you know every single thing about a character, then they would bore you. I might know the parameters of a scene, chapter or plotline, but what happens within those parameters often surprise me. I don't know everything that will be done or said. And while I may know how things are likely to transpire, it doesn't mean they always do as I expect. I may know a destination but not precisely how we all will get there.
There is even far more serendipity or chance involved when I write interactively, which I have done with four separate individuals. Then, I am a collaborative deity, not an all-powerful one. I do not/cannot control everything and this process, while less certain and controlled, is far more addicting.
RE: readers and writer's interpretations. I am a constructionist philosophically, and in writing I don't believe in ultimate truth, only many truths. What something 'means' is up to debate and I'm not willing to take as solid and strident a position as you do. I don't always know everything that's going on in a story although I am very good with plot.
Case in point: there's a drug-induced dream sequence in The Sleeping Beauty Affair in which Solo sees Allyson as a little girl but then she begins to bleed and her dress is eventually saturated with blood. When I wrote it, I assumed this was symbolic of Solo's fear that he had put his daughter in danger. However, others have pointed out that it might be symbolic of menstuation and that he may also fear her growing up.
That interpretation did not occur to me at the time but I think it's certainly valid and very possibly something Solo *may* fear even though I didn't see it myself. So, I'm not going to say the reader was wrong. Indeed, they are probably right. But I'm not 'wrong' either. What the absolute truth is, I don't know. Probably a combination with multiple answers. Someday, someone else may come along with yet another interpretation and that may be just as valid.
Sometimes, folks have asked me questions about why a character did something or if he knew something or whether something was deliberate and I often respond, "I don't know." Because I don't. It's up to interpretation and sometimes, the truth is multiple.
On the other hand, I have heard interpretations of other stories and situations I've written that I think are way off base, but it may be that both the reader and I are interpreting within our own cultural and psychological frameworks.
I do agree that it's annoying and even bullying to be told what you as the writer were thinking when you wrote something. What *you* meant ---no, thank you, I know what I meant.
But that's different from interpretation which, I believe, is something that is negotiated and exists outside of the individual writer and readers ---it's not something embedded within a text but something that occurs in the encounter between writer, reader and text.