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Gene-Mapping Your Work

By John on August 31, 2008 | 8 Responses

'train' c2008 by RAWKU5 at sxc.hu (click for original)Everybody, writers included, likes a list. (As soon as someone starts a sentence with the words, “There are N kinds of [people, whatever] in this world…,” he’s started to construct a list — even if N is only 2.) It’s one of the signs that among other things we are, humans are mathematical creatures. Even writers and other artists, who often profess ignorance about such things, just love to put one thing… after another thing… after another thing… And more, once they’re listed, to ascribe relative value to each item in the list.

Consider a recent post at Shelly Lowenkopf’s Blog, in which he explores the notion of a “dramatic genome.”

You’ve probably heard the term “genome” before. From the Genome News Network:

A genome is all of a living thing’s genetic material. It is the entire set of hereditary instructions for building, running, and maintaining an organism, and passing life on to the next generation. The whole shebang.

In most living things, the genome is made of a chemical called DNA. The genome contains genes, which are packaged in chromosomes and affect specific characteristics of the organism.

…Each one of earth’s species has its own distinctive genome: the dog genome, the wheat genome, the genomes of the cow, cold virus, bok choy, Escherichia coli (a bacterium that lives in the human gut and in animal intestines), and so on.

So genomes belong to species, but they also belong to individuals. Every giraffe on the African savanna has a unique genome, as does every elephant, acacia tree, and ostrich. Unless you are an identical twin, your genome is different from that of every other person on earth—in fact, it is different from that of every other person who has ever lived.

Most often, a genome is represented by a sequence (yeah: a list) of letters indicating the order in which various components of DNA exist in a particular species or individual: A (for adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine),  or T (thymine). If you’re a molecular biologist, a sequence like ACCGTAG means something different than TGGACTA — even though the components (A, C, T, and G) are identical. If you can learn enough to understand what each component represents, then you (presumably) can know how the sequence “AC” will differ, in practice, from the sequence “TG.”

Similarly, Lowenkopf proposes that writers interested in understanding their own work construct a “genome” of those units of drama (meaning fiction in general, not just stage works) which are most important to them. This job is a little harder, though, because Lowenkopf lists not just four components but twenty-nine. In alphabetical order, these are the ones he came up with — plus some others I might add:

These, again — plus any others you want to add — are the components, the genes which might go into your work’s personality, “look,” and “feel.”

Not all of them would go into a given work. (I’m not sure all of them ever have, in any writer’s single work.) That’s not the challenge Lowenkopf sets for us. Rather, he says, take the list and rank-order it. #1 would be the element to which you assign highest importance in your writing; #31 (or whatever the final tally) would be at the bottom. He goes on:

After you sort it out, date it, then file it away. A year hence, take the test again. And a year after that. It is neither right nor wrong for you to change your order of things; it is right for you to evaluate and consider. If you do not change your preferences, you are not being presented with a sign that your writing vision is on a stagnation curve, nor does it imply positive change if you shift your regard for one or more traits.

This is a picture of you, with your best side turned to the camera; this is you aware of your strengths and your weaknesses. It is a hint of what to pay attention to, what to look for in your work and the work of others. This is the door opening wide on your discovery of what kind of writer you are and want to be, why certain writers appeal to you and why others do not arouse your interest.

Books about writing are filled with advice, of course, dealing with the whole micro- to macroscopic range from punctuation on up to theme, and don’t forget the relatively mundane stuff like marketing it all, getting feedback, and so on.

All that advice is prescriptive in nature. Lowenkopf is expressly not telling you what to “fix,” let alone how to fix it. He’s not saying any particular rank-ordering is better or worse than any other (which is why he says to re-evaluate it in a year, and then in another year…). What he’s suggesting is the importance of descriptive, self-motivated advice: take a good look at yourself as a writer, not to change anything but simply, well, to know thyself.

(By the way, if anyone out there wants to add to the list, feel free to let me know what you come up with — I’ll tack it on, and of course attribute it to you.)

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8 responses to “Gene-Mapping Your Work”

  1. Sarah
    August 31, 2008 at 8:36 pm | | Reply

    sex, transformation, connection

  2. marta
    August 31, 2008 at 9:05 pm | | Reply

    mood

    atmosphere

    There you go. I’m working on my list.

  3. John
    September 1, 2008 at 10:18 am | | Reply

    @Sarah – Thanks, Sarah (and welcome to RAMH!). Those are powerful additions to the list; if I could make my work represent only those three, but convincingly… well (a) I’d have an enormous, satisfied audience and (b) I’d never run out of things to write about!

    @marta – Whoa — although for some reason, I’m not greatly surprised that those values might be found in your writing… you’d think I might have read some of it or something. :)

    This exercise — actually rank-ordering the list, as opposed to just announcing the intention — is actually a lot harder than I thought it would be.

  4. The Querulous Squirrel
    September 2, 2008 at 9:15 am | | Reply

    I have been addicted to Shelly’s blog for the last year and love Marta’s as well and have therefore been busy at work on the same list and have posted riffs on many of his posts. So far, my growing list of additions are:
    metaphor
    simile
    symbolism
    images (recurrent)
    contrast
    balance of humor with tragedy
    layering
    nesting of time
    repetition
    theme
    questions
    emotions (variation in type and intensity)
    surprise
    irony
    memory and its distortions
    references (to literature, books, culture)

    I like the way you alphabetized this. When I post it, along with my individual hierarchy, I’ll credit not only Shelly, who seems to just rattle these off a zillion a second, but you for the ordering and adding of various others’ with credit.

    Thanks!
    sound (as in poetry)
    sentences (as in varied length)

  5. John
    September 2, 2008 at 10:47 am | | Reply

    @The Querulous Squirrel – Whoa — major additions to the list! Thanks so much for them; will fold them in after I post this comment.

    Thanks too for stopping by. I’ve really liked your contributions to the multi-level dialogues at Marta’s and Shelly’s sites.

  6. John
    September 2, 2008 at 10:52 am | | Reply

    @The Querulous Squirrel – P.S. I also thought of sentence (and paragraph) length. It’s probably become something of an OCD habit of mine, to squint at the printed page and be bothered by too many blocks of text roughly the same size.

  7. Sarah
    September 7, 2008 at 7:25 pm | | Reply

    I hear you about ranking the list- I havne’t even tried :)

  8. John
    September 9, 2008 at 4:42 pm | | Reply

    @Sarah – Eeek. I’d completely allowed myself to forget this until receiving your comment.

    Thanks so much for flipping my Laze-o-Meter switch! :)

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