{"id":5138,"date":"2019-06-07T06:52:35","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T04:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/?p=5138"},"modified":"2019-06-10T14:53:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T12:53:01","slug":"5138-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/5138-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Tokyo with ‘After Dark’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I recently read a Tweet that turned out to be quite polemical within the Twitter writing community (then again, when aren’t they)? The Tweet in question was the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">If there is any one thing I would say to anyone who wants to be a writer it is this: to be a writer, you only have to be good at ONE of the following: character, plot, setting.<\/p>— Amber Sparks (@ambernoelle) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ambernoelle\/status\/1136311868115607552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 5, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>People came back saying all sorts of things about mastering all three, and while I don’t purport to be an expert, I will say that I know, without even thinking, which of the three is my natural wheelhouse: setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I create stories based on a place. Well, scratch that, actually. I create stories based on a feeling within a place, based on a moment of ambiance, a combination of weather and emotion and history and choreography… and once I have all of those elements of ambiance down, I create characters who want to hang out there. And then \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and only then \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to I try to figure out what the hell they’re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plot is my Achilles heel. This is unsurprising to anyone who has ever read a draft of one of my novels, a good 50 to 100 pages usually end up being thrown out because they’re literally just characters wandering around in a setting I’ve created that I particularly like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oddly enough, when it comes to reading, I often choose novels that have, if not the fast-paced plot of a thriller, far more of a plot than what I write. By the same token, I also look for novels where character development is at their core. Perhaps I’m looking for things different from what I write because I want to learn from them… or maybe I just don’t like reading successful versions of things that I’m trying to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"5184\" height=\"3456\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/IMG_2717.jpg?fit=640%2C427\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5140\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/IMG_2717.jpg 5184w, https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/IMG_2717-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/IMG_2717-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/IMG_2717-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 5184px) 100vw, 5184px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>All this to say, by all accounts, I shouldn’t have enjoyed <em>After Dark<\/em> as much as I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This book is the last one in the pile I checked out of the library before my Japan trip, but due to a series of unfortunate events, I only got around to reading it a few weeks ago. I tore through it in a day, though now I want to read it once more, to linger over the beautiful sentences, the incredible setting of Tokyo at nighttime. I want to return to that city and carry it with me, to sit in Denny’s at night, like the main character, Mari (who bears an odd resemblance to one of my own now-tabled protagonists) and read it where it was meant to be read: in the city that inspired it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This book is firmly ensconced in its own particular brand of magical realism, a milieu I find fascinating. But at its core, it’s a story of two sisters who couldn’t be more different experiencing nighttime in Tokyo in equally divergent ways. No true plot; very little character development. But I soaked it right up: for its beauty, for its ambiance, for its setting that propels you elsewhere and allows you to soak it right up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read a Tweet that turned out to be quite polemical within the Twitter writing community (then again, when aren’t they)? The Tweet in question was the following: People came back…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1008],"tags":[683],"class_list":["post-5138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-friday-reads","tag-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5143,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138\/revisions\/5143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomatokumato.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}