Monday, May 08, 2006

Apres apropos posts: Fibbing

Nah, that post title means nothing special, but it's accurate and I think it has a great ring to it. This ties into something I quickly realized when I was first working on Fibs: the sound of a word not just the meaning of it was a key part of making a good word choice. Again, having started Fibbing as a writing exercise, I was more attuned to thinking about what I was doing, not just doing, so I was all about seeing what it could teach me. And the thing is... while I was dubious about whether writing such precise poems would have an impact beyond just writing them, I have realized that it actually has.

When you're dealing with the 17 syllables of a Haiku or the 20 syllables of a Fib, every choice counts. I think due to the 1/1/2/3/5/8 structure of the Fib, you end up with four lines (the first four, natch) were a single blah word can color the entire line (whic his the main reason I had my original no articles guideline for the first lines). I do think Fibs have helped "train" me to be even more cognizant of each word, in description and dialogue both.

I was thinking of this not because I'm Fib obsessed (well, perhaps I am, he says, as he notes that there are Fib links collected on the right of the blog), but in part because when I did my most recent visit to Harold Underdown's Purple Crayon site, I read Margot Finke's latest Musing's column... and it's all about finding good words. And also, I'm about to start a quick scripting job, and was, as always, thinking "OK, time to write some dialogue that really POPS." I figure as long as I don't accidentally make the characters speak in Fibs, I should be in good shape....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sun
Rise
Smile on
Property
And public alike
Be the psionic rays of me,
Having found another way to splash the world with self,
Learning to fib about the one and only truth that calls itself my friend but it lies --
It lies, it sleeps, it rests in void, and these games show naught but the shadow of its tail, its trunk, its argumentative ear, into which we scream.

[I love the Fib thing. You rock!]

-Puredoxyk