It’s All in the Framing
It’s all in the framing.
I love fiction. Although I’m trying to branch out into nonfiction a bit more, fiction is the mainstay of my reading life. There are lots of reasons people enjoy reading something “made up”: escapism, stepping into someone else’s life, pushing the boundaries of reality. Fiction is also a safe place, for a reader, to redeem a topic that we think unredeemable — or on the flip side, to air some grievances we might not let slip in public.
But what I love the most is how so much fiction subtly takes something and turns it on its side just a bit. I don’t mean in a crazy, sci-fi kind of way (although that certainly happens). But you know how in real life we’ve got people shouting to see things their way? There can be value in that, but rarely is the intended audience poised to listen and ponder. But it works in fiction…because stories are stories and they can go wherever the author wants. (And the best ones aren’t heavy-handed and obvious.) If someone’s willing to sit (or stand on a subway or listen via their earbuds or however else you engage with books) and read something subtle, maybe they can see something differently. Even just an inch or a smidge or a touch differently. It’s like musical chairs and the reader maybe only ends up one seat away from where they started. But it’s a different view, isn’t it?
{Quickie 24-hour jaunt to NYC. Pic taken by my husband; hands and phone belong to my daughter, and my son and I had a different view of the iconic tree altogether. I mean, it’s all in the framing, right?}
originally published on instagram