Week 2 Quotes

“I visualize a story as a beaded necklace – a pearl necklace- coiled up in the muck at the bottom of the sludge collected at the bottom of your subconscious. When you start yanking on the string, an old string that’s been rotting in the muck for years, the string breaks. But you’ve got one gorgeous pearl left in your hands, and you’re motivated to roll up your sleeves and stick your hand down into the muck to find the rest of the pearls you just barely glimpsed. And one by one you fetch them up. But without their string (the plot; the because-sequence is the string) they come up in a random order. In fact, some of the pearls may not even belong to this necklace.Eventually, when you’ve got them all, you can sit down and make the “outline” of the story. You look at the pearls and your sense of ART tells you which ones go with which – by color and shape and texture and size –and you arrange a set of pearls so the big one is in the middle and the small ones on the end (or however your Art says to do it). At that point, you know which pearls don’t belong on this necklace and set them aside.
-C.J. Cherryh

First of all I have to say this is a very GOOD quote. It makes you look at stories in a visual way. You then connect the visuals the quote introduces and add it to the critical thinking that happens when you read it. Basically it is saying that sometimes when you start writing or coming up with ideas to stories that you may also come up with other ideas for stories later on. You may take some of the ideas and use them or you may take some of them and use them later, even if it is used for a whole other story/concept. Writing and telling stories can be a process with many creative opportunities as an artist to tell your story in many ways. You can arrange (as the quote states) your “pearls” or ideas/concepts however you feel fit because you are the artist. I really enjoyed this quote!
-Rachel Austin

“The method I use now is to present ideas through impressions. Readers immersed in the gradually unfolding impressions will form their own ideas, which might or might not be in agreement with the author’s; that is fine either way. Ideas are like the string that turns the pearls into a necklace. The string is invisible, but it is not dispensable and cannot be broken.”
-A dialogue with MuXin

I agree, when you start to have a story that is being told where the plot or idea/concept is unfolding, the reader will then start creating their own ideas in their head. Many of the readers ideas may be based on their own life experiences or similar stories they have heard or seen through the media or other people. Interesting quote!

-Rachel Austin