Last month I came across a session 2017 Nobel winner Kazuo
Ishiguro held in Japan for budding writers titled “My secrets of writing”. It
is available on YouTube in two parts: part-1 and part-2 (embedded below).
I had read four of Ishiguro novels (some of them twice) when I watched part-1.
Then I read his latest novel, The Buried Giant. And then I watched part-2 which
refers to the novel. I am a fan of Ishiguro and I really enjoyed listening to the
session. I thought the quality of questions was very good and that brought out interesting
process Ishiguro follows for his writing. I am not a fiction writer (yet).
However, I thought some of the elements Ishiguro mentioned could be relevant
for anyone involved in a creative endeavour. Here are 3 of my takeaways from
the session:
1.
2-3-4
sentence ideas: This is what Ishiguro said – “I try to make sure that the
idea can be expressed very simply in 2 or 3 sentences. If it can’t then the
idea isn’t very strong or it’s not yet mature.” And what criteria does he use
for picking an idea? He said, “When I look at the idea on a page, I want to be
able to feel a real potential, real emotion that comes from these sentences. I
want to think that there is a whole world in there. I want those few sentences
to trouble me and stimulate me. Then I feel I could build a whole novel on it.”
He gave an example of his most famous novel – Remains of the day. The
idea can be expressed as: This is a story about a man who wants to be the
perfect servant. And he is willing to sacrifice his personal life and many
things to be an absolutely perfect servant.
The point is, the essence of an idea can be expressed in a simple way in
a few sentences. And yet it may carry the potential to excite you, trouble you
etc.
2.
Ideas can
be re-located in time & space: Ishiguro says, “I made this discovery…
The setting isn’t an essential part of the story. You can move stories to
different settings, different places in history. And also I suppose different
genres: sci-fi, gothic world, thriller world etc.” In fact, for his third
novel, Remains of the day, he re-used his idea from his second novel - “The
artist of the floating world” (location: Japan, time: 1950s, 60s) and relocated
it in a different time and place (location: England, time: 1920s, 30s). This
creates a huge canvas for his stories and also it creates a problem of
“location hunting”. His last novel “The buried giant” is placed in 5th
century Britain and belongs to a fantasy genre. It contains ogres, pixies and
dragons.
3.
Metaphor
as a criterion: One criterion
Ishiguro applies in selecting an idea for further development is by looking at
its power as a metaphor. Ishiguro said, “As a writer, I am drawn to big
metaphors that dominate the entire story. One of the ways I decide if an idea
is powerful or not, is I ask - Is this a powerful metaphor for something
important or something very big?” For example, he mentions his latest novel The
buried giant presents a story where people lose memories very fast – in a day
or so – because of the breath of a giant dragon living in the mountains. Some
people want to kill the dragon to bring the buried memories alive, some others
want to protect the giant because they feel it is keeping the society from
going into a civil war. What is the right thing to do? Ishiguro feels that a
story like this can be a metaphor for something all individuals and all
societies face all the time. The metaphor is certainly relevant for the centuries
old memories related to the communal conflicts and the caste conflicts in India
which keep getting resurrected from time to time.
image source: part-1 of the session - My secrets of writing
