Who, What, Where, Why, When - the five pillars of journalism. The necessary abstracts-cum-realities that a story (whether fictional or factual) requires. I've been doing revisions of this short story collection, thanks to my friend Surya's invaluable notes and criticisms. Not only do I respect his unfailingly honest critiques, but he comes from a more traditional-minded part of the literary tradition whereas I find myself, often, in its more bizarre outer reaches. He is finding the holes, the broken slats covering the boarded-up windows on my little rundown house made of fiction, and shining sunlight through where it's badly needed.
Throughout most of his critiques, there is a unifying theme: lack of specificity. In my haste to create the moments of my characters, to get to the heart of their immediate emotions and struggles, I have neglected to place them, to cement them, in the world that I envision in my head but has yet to be fully translated to the page.
Some omissions are intentional, like that of time/date as I wanted to keep things vague but in a fully-realized area called "post-event/post-destruction" (which makes more sense when reading the stories together). But he's not wrong on this point either, despite my personal inclinations. Other omissions, like that of place (setting, names of cities, locales, etc.) are unintentional and require a deeper mining of these places as setting can often influence character development. I talk a little about Setting and my rationality for keeping it vague HERE. Less a philosophy now, my lack of detail in setting seems to be something more of a default rather than any intentional technique on my part. Sometimes I simply write too fast or focus too intently on what I want to say as opposed to wallowing in the build-up to the message. This is to my own detriment. And, ultimately, to the reader's.
While in my last semester at USF, my professor told me (I'm paraphrasing here) that those of us who write on the margins can and should do so, but it also means that our knowledge of the basic foundations of fiction writing have to be so perfect, so ingrained, that they are intuitive. Once they have become a second-nature to us, only then are we truly able to play with function and form. You cannot paint like Dali if you have not first learned the techniques of the Impressionists, the Realists, the Still-Lifers. Once you've come to harness the techniques of reality, it becomes easier to dip your toe into the pools of surreality, which themselves are built of strange foundations.
I have never tried to write towards a specific audience, only that I've tried to write the stories that I felt would interest me if I were the reader flipping through the pages for the first time. I'd like to think that most authors do this, but I've known a few who were more interested in chasing after awards or acclaim rather than simply telling a good story. But if I cannot give a reader who has never read my work a firm foundation upon which to stand while reading my work, I have already lost them. A thorough density of the who, a firm cementation of the where and the why, an unblocked view of the clock of when...it is important that these all work in perfect tandem with each other. When they remain imbalanced or out of sync, it can leave a reader asking the exact questions the writer should have answered in the first place. Rather than gaining a new reader, you may have turned one off of your work permanently and it will be unbelievably difficult to bring them back into the fold.
You cannot build a house on shifting sands or muddy waters. Firm earth will keep your house of fiction standing upright for centuries if you've built your foundation strong enough to hold a reader's attention.
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