I recently found Harmony doing something similar with his poetry. I've been making a point to try it out each week. I put myself on a 3 minute timer. I just love his technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqvAmlnJTfU&t=34s
My grandfather had a satellite dish twice his height across, so he could watch American college football games from Ontario when I was a kid. He clutched that remote control in a chokehold, flick flicking his way from game to game every ad break.
Would you consider Bret Easton Ellis’ work pointillist? Thinking of that quote attributing him as being “the voice of the MTV generation” and how MTV seems quintessentially pointillist with its non-stop cycle of music videos and quick, choppy editing and such to keep the viewer’s attention.
I know you’ve talked about pointillism before, but for some reason this post really made it click for me. I haven’t been writing because I feel like I need the whole story in my head so I can start from the beginning. But that’s stupid, and impossible. I just need to write the scenes I know. Chuck, you goddamn genius!! I’m excited!
Chuck, I'm fascinated with this Pointillism idea. But I'm confused. You said that a Pointillism story is created by piecing together specific details and anecdotes. Does the details and anecdotes have to fall under the umbrella of a central idea? Like the premise of a story? Because your channel surfing point made me think the details/anecdotes can be disjointed and totally random.
This is a terrific lesson series, Chuck! Hate to veer way off topic, but I figured you’d be interested to know that Alien is getting a 45th anniversary re-release in theaters April 26th.
Channel surfing was still a thing in my country in the early 2000s before the internet became global. I remember turning the satelite dishe to Hotbird and flick through 500 hundred European channels. All sorts of wild art house movies. And porn. Loads of porn. That's when I was 7 or 8 years old.
Beautiful indeed. I also like to compare this literary Pointillism to Trencadís, a technique revived and widely used by Catalan Modernist architects and, particularly, Gaudí. I love the concept of creating texture, theme, and beauty, from broken or discarded fragments of disparate materials in a way that transcends structure. (Have you ever noticed the fragment of a doll embedded in the ceiling of the Park Güell Hypostyle Room, amongst shards of porcelain, pieces of crystal, and colored sandpaper?) Thus, they let patterns emerge in ways that couldn't have been predicted beforehand.
It took me many years to find out this is one of the best methods to tap into my innermost well and discover what I really want to talk about.
I'm happy to see that my intuition matches the vision of one of my literary heroes.
Read an anthology of Amy Hempel’s work a couple months ago (The Collected Stories) and was floored by the way simple language could have such an impact. Really great stuff, and different from how I’ve typically written. But, might I have a pointillism-ish story out there now? It’s a character I’ve always loved but didn’t know what to DO with. Wrote a scene 6 years ago…and another scene 4 years ago…and wrote 15 more scenes in the last year, all of which are now lumped into a serial novella where the character is sharing his thoughts with the reader via his personal journal. Maybe that’s a stretch on the pointillism concept, but it’s loads of fun to write. (it’s free on amazon/kindle if anyone wants to let me know what they think of it; just search for my name)
This concept definitely has an appeal to it, I just wonder if the flicker of resistance caused by jumping between scenes may hold back a reader from experiencing the desired effect. Among my circle of friends--albeit casual fiction readers for the most part-- I have noticed people prefer novels over short stories for this reason. They like the story once they're in it, but don't like the upfront investment of getting to know new characters/settings.
I like the potato chip metaphor, but there's something in the mental reset required when a reader is introduced to a new character that I suspect may keep this type of story from achieving that Tik-Tok effect. This probably doesn't apply to more schooled readers, but we're talking about the masses here so I just thought it was an interesting point to raise.
I recently found Harmony doing something similar with his poetry. I've been making a point to try it out each week. I put myself on a 3 minute timer. I just love his technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqvAmlnJTfU&t=34s
“People who have eyes sometimes act foolishly.”
What a brilliant way of making that point.
My grandfather had a satellite dish twice his height across, so he could watch American college football games from Ontario when I was a kid. He clutched that remote control in a chokehold, flick flicking his way from game to game every ad break.
Who knew he was teaching me about pointillism?
Don't forget Kentucky Fried Movie and Groove Tube. Channel surfing in movie form.
P.S. I met David Sedaris tonight! He is so kind! It was wonderful!
I adore Koyaanisqatsi! I often write to Philip Glass.
What a gem this post. Thank you.
Would you consider Bret Easton Ellis’ work pointillist? Thinking of that quote attributing him as being “the voice of the MTV generation” and how MTV seems quintessentially pointillist with its non-stop cycle of music videos and quick, choppy editing and such to keep the viewer’s attention.
I know you’ve talked about pointillism before, but for some reason this post really made it click for me. I haven’t been writing because I feel like I need the whole story in my head so I can start from the beginning. But that’s stupid, and impossible. I just need to write the scenes I know. Chuck, you goddamn genius!! I’m excited!
Chuck, I'm fascinated with this Pointillism idea. But I'm confused. You said that a Pointillism story is created by piecing together specific details and anecdotes. Does the details and anecdotes have to fall under the umbrella of a central idea? Like the premise of a story? Because your channel surfing point made me think the details/anecdotes can be disjointed and totally random.
Its divergent thinking, but for plot.
This is a terrific lesson series, Chuck! Hate to veer way off topic, but I figured you’d be interested to know that Alien is getting a 45th anniversary re-release in theaters April 26th.
As a ✍🏻📝 with a 🎨 🖼️background, your ⚖️ of minimalism to 🖼️🖌️🖌️🖌️ 🖼️ sure did 🧹🧹🧹☁️☁️☁️ and 🔐🔓my 🧠!
🙏🙏🙏
Channel surfing was still a thing in my country in the early 2000s before the internet became global. I remember turning the satelite dishe to Hotbird and flick through 500 hundred European channels. All sorts of wild art house movies. And porn. Loads of porn. That's when I was 7 or 8 years old.
Beautiful indeed. I also like to compare this literary Pointillism to Trencadís, a technique revived and widely used by Catalan Modernist architects and, particularly, Gaudí. I love the concept of creating texture, theme, and beauty, from broken or discarded fragments of disparate materials in a way that transcends structure. (Have you ever noticed the fragment of a doll embedded in the ceiling of the Park Güell Hypostyle Room, amongst shards of porcelain, pieces of crystal, and colored sandpaper?) Thus, they let patterns emerge in ways that couldn't have been predicted beforehand.
It took me many years to find out this is one of the best methods to tap into my innermost well and discover what I really want to talk about.
I'm happy to see that my intuition matches the vision of one of my literary heroes.
Read an anthology of Amy Hempel’s work a couple months ago (The Collected Stories) and was floored by the way simple language could have such an impact. Really great stuff, and different from how I’ve typically written. But, might I have a pointillism-ish story out there now? It’s a character I’ve always loved but didn’t know what to DO with. Wrote a scene 6 years ago…and another scene 4 years ago…and wrote 15 more scenes in the last year, all of which are now lumped into a serial novella where the character is sharing his thoughts with the reader via his personal journal. Maybe that’s a stretch on the pointillism concept, but it’s loads of fun to write. (it’s free on amazon/kindle if anyone wants to let me know what they think of it; just search for my name)
This concept definitely has an appeal to it, I just wonder if the flicker of resistance caused by jumping between scenes may hold back a reader from experiencing the desired effect. Among my circle of friends--albeit casual fiction readers for the most part-- I have noticed people prefer novels over short stories for this reason. They like the story once they're in it, but don't like the upfront investment of getting to know new characters/settings.
I like the potato chip metaphor, but there's something in the mental reset required when a reader is introduced to a new character that I suspect may keep this type of story from achieving that Tik-Tok effect. This probably doesn't apply to more schooled readers, but we're talking about the masses here so I just thought it was an interesting point to raise.