O, the yearning.

i've been reading "from where you dream" (http://www.robertolenbutler.com/writings/non-fiction/from-where-you-dream/)
by robert olen butler--a dude i admire and respect, and kinda wish i could stand next to sometimes in case that mojo rubs off on people in the vicinity. it's a book about the process of writing fiction, and while i've read several of these books and parts of several more, what's different about this one so far is the approach. most of these writing instruction manuals work from the outside in. butler's book works from the inside out.

he talks about how to access the creative zone, that untamed nether region of unreason somewhere between dreaming and not, and how to get there on a regular basis and channel that frame of mind into the writing. it's exciting and relatable stuff.

of the three sections in the book (lectures, workshop, analysis) i'm still working on the first, so i'll let you know if he gets weird later on. his third lecture is on the subject of yearning, from the character's perspective. we're all familiar with the question we ask while building our characters: what does this character want? yearning is about that, but even more it's about the intensity of that wanting. butler links the idea also to that of epiphany, or "shining forth."

from p. 40: "James Joyce appropriated from the Catholic church the term epiphany. An epiphany literally means 'a shining forth.' He brought that concept to bear on the moment in a work of art when something shines forth in its essence. That, he said, is the epiphany in a story or novel."

the idea sounds kind of vague in this tiny excerpt, but he goes on to clarify so the reader's heart is all atwitter. i won't quote more of his book here, but i'll hint at one of the reasons i like him so much: he acknowledges that genre writers never forget about the importance of yearning in their characters, while the literary writer's most common mistake is doing just that. they leave out the intensity in their exploration of the human condition--that's why so many people read genre, and why literature gathers dust on the shelf.

people want to feel like the world's at stake in their stories; too often, in literature the only risk involved is whether the main character finds happiness. or matching socks. either way, the reader needs more than that.

i want to find (and write) more stories that combine aspects of both: exciting plot and depth of character. why is it so hard to excel at one and not the other? they can't be mutually exclusive, can they?