When we come to the end of the book and want to wrap things up and resolve the conflict and finish the theme, a technique that can help "coherence" is making use of the tools-- motifs, objects, and patterns-- that we've set up earlier in the book. This can help connect the ending to the rest of the book and make the climax feel more 'fitting," more like it really finishes this book and not just, oh, a generic mystery.
For example, that play I just saw by August Wilson, Golf Radio, has two "connectors" in the end. Earlier, a secondary character had used paint to mark himself (the paint was itself an important prop, as the character was painting with it a house set for demolition, and so the paint symbolized sort of a futile action). The character marks his face like a Hollywood Indian going into battle, to the amusement and horror of the main character Harmond (who is set to demolish the building). Later, in the last scene, Harmond also paints his face as he leaves his office to join the forces protesting the demolition. The face-paint shows that he has chosen to fight for the right, and not just the legal, but also connects back to the earlier character and shows how far Harmond has come from despising that man and his quest.
Second is the "radio." Each scene in the play starts with the local radio station coming on with the traffic and weather and what's going on in the Black community that day. The radio station is bought during the fourth act, by a predatory businessman who is trying to exploit Harmond's partner by putting him as the "local face" of the new ownership. The implication is that the radio station is going to stop covering the community and become some sort of generic Clear Channel clone. I was wondering how the ending would deal with this, as the play had set up that each morning of the story starts with the radio coming on. (Groundhog Day uses the same effective technique.) The playwright understood, however, how to make use of the tools at hand, and has the radio announcer announce the "paint party" at the protest site, showing (I think) that the community radio is still tuned in to the community, and also that Harmond's old partner might actually be undermining his new boss.
Anyway, whenever we make use of the tools we've used earlier, we're adding to the coherence of the story. More than that, even without consciously trying, we're showing the change in character and the development of the theme since the last time in the story that the tool was used. The reader understands that all scenes using this tool are linked, and that the differences between how the tool is used or the effect it has will manifest a new meaning.
Give it a try. The parellelity of the scenes using the tools actually creates meaning and subtext, whether we're conscious of it or not.
Alicia
Showing posts with label motif. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motif. Show all posts
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Friday, June 4, 2010
Motif in Query Letters
Let's start this post the same way we started our post on theme in queries, by asking a question. What is a motif?
There are a number of ways to answer that, depending on how narrowly or broadly you wish to make the definition. In the broadest sense, a motif is any recurring element. If your lovers always part at dawn (But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?), you might be using a motif. If you use a commonly recognizable character, such as the hardboiled detective, you might be drawing on a motif built up across multiple literary works.
But for our purposes, we're going to use a narrower definition of motif. Let's agree that just for now, a motif will be any recurring concrete object, circumstance, or convention that takes on symbolic or thematic meanings within the text.
Example of a recurring concrete object:
-- Carriages in Pride and Prejudice are always tied to transformative changes in relations between the main characters. If you see a carriage, you know a relationship is getting ready to flip itself inside out. Jane travels to London to see Bingley, and he changes from doting cavalier to the man who abandoned her. Lizzy travels by carriage to visit Charlotte, and Darcy changes from icy and withdrawn to his own special brand of tormented pursuit. And so on.
Example of a recurring circumstance:
-- Harry Potter flies an awful lot -- broomsticks, hippogriffs, those skeletal dragon things, the flying car, etc., etc., and those flights are usually connected to moments at which he is making a decision to fight, to escape, or otherwise to gain independence and strength.
Example of a recurring convention:
-- In Bridget Jones' Diary (the novel, not the movie), Bridget started every diary entry with her weight, number of drinks consumed, and number of cigarettes smoked, Something like:
February 2. Weight 132. Alcohol units 9. Smokes 4,327.
These entries are directly tied to Bridget's romantic happiness. Unhappy? Numbers go up. Happy? They go down.
Where a symbol can be established in a single occurrence, a motif is built in layers. They crop up again and again at key moments. It's the very repetitive nature of motifs that can make them a useful organizational tool for a query or synopsis.
Mind you, we're not talking about anything other than how to organize your condensed plot summaries. Writers have a hard time writing clear, focused summaries because, let's face it, it's not an easy task. If you can use the motif to create a roadmap, you might make your plot summary more lucid, more condensed, and even more entertaining.
Let's say, for example, that your serial killer villain always places a personal ad describing his victim before he strikes. How many victims are there? How many ads? Write down the ads for those victims, and then write a bullet list of the key events that occur between the ads. You now have a skeletal plot outline, and have only to flesh it out, and might end up with something like:
----
Detective Sandra Cornelius is called to a grisly murder scene in which a young woman was skinned alive. A personal ad is taped to the wall above the body.
SWF, 23, brunette, rides bike to work, that skin will be my trophy.
The newspaper office provides the original order for the ad, and Sandra begins following the trail of clues. The false address leads her to an abandoned farm miles from town, inhabited only by mice and spiders. But in the mailbox, she finds another ad:
SWF, 27, long blonde hair, loves to dance, those legs will be mine forever.
Sandra returns to the newspaper office, but they have no record of this ad. She begins calling dance studios and making the rounds to see if anyone has noticed suspicious behavior. Again and again, she's frustrated by a lack of evidence, but then the call comes. Another body has been found, and this time the corpse's legs have been removed.
She identifies the source of the second ad as a consumer weekly, and begins scouring all the area papers for more ads in between following other clues. No more ads appear for a week, but then in the Sunday paper, she sees an ad that chills her blood.
SWF, 32, cap of golden curls, wears a star and frequents newspaper offices and dance clubs, you will have no eyes to see me, no mouth to speak my name, and no ears to hear your own screams.
She hears footsteps on the second floor. Her weapons are up there, safely stowed in a drawer. Can she get to them before the killer gets to her? Or should she use a weapon from the first floor -- a fireplace poker, a kitchen knife? As she's deciding, a hood drops over her head from behind, and strong hands twist the fabric until she cannot breathe. The fight is on. But she knows her home better than the killer does, and she is able to back him toward a basement door with a weak latch. She counts the steps until they are right at the threshold, and then she launches them both backward just as she's about to lose consciousness. The fall breaks his grip, and she uses a hammer to knock him out and a clothesline to tie him up.
---
Now, this is far from a good plot summary. It's too long for a query, and not developed enough for a synopsis -- and it's a shaky plot with no motive, etc. -- but for our purposes, it will serve as a decent illustration. You see how the personal ads are used to act as transitions between the pieces of plot? And you see how they illustrate something meaningful about the story? Using the motif elements as touchstones like this can create a sense of unity and coherence in the plot summary.
It doesn't have to be something that would be offset and italicized like the personal ads. Above we mentioned that carriages are a recurring motif in Pride and Prejudice, and are associated with major change. For those of you familiar with the story, try this exercise:
This isn't a cookie cutter method and it won't work for all stories, not even for all stories with strong motifs. But perhaps it will work on one of yours. Give it a try and see how it goes.
Theresa
There are a number of ways to answer that, depending on how narrowly or broadly you wish to make the definition. In the broadest sense, a motif is any recurring element. If your lovers always part at dawn (But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?), you might be using a motif. If you use a commonly recognizable character, such as the hardboiled detective, you might be drawing on a motif built up across multiple literary works.
But for our purposes, we're going to use a narrower definition of motif. Let's agree that just for now, a motif will be any recurring concrete object, circumstance, or convention that takes on symbolic or thematic meanings within the text.
Example of a recurring concrete object:
-- Carriages in Pride and Prejudice are always tied to transformative changes in relations between the main characters. If you see a carriage, you know a relationship is getting ready to flip itself inside out. Jane travels to London to see Bingley, and he changes from doting cavalier to the man who abandoned her. Lizzy travels by carriage to visit Charlotte, and Darcy changes from icy and withdrawn to his own special brand of tormented pursuit. And so on.
Example of a recurring circumstance:
-- Harry Potter flies an awful lot -- broomsticks, hippogriffs, those skeletal dragon things, the flying car, etc., etc., and those flights are usually connected to moments at which he is making a decision to fight, to escape, or otherwise to gain independence and strength.
Example of a recurring convention:
-- In Bridget Jones' Diary (the novel, not the movie), Bridget started every diary entry with her weight, number of drinks consumed, and number of cigarettes smoked, Something like:
February 2. Weight 132. Alcohol units 9. Smokes 4,327.
These entries are directly tied to Bridget's romantic happiness. Unhappy? Numbers go up. Happy? They go down.
Where a symbol can be established in a single occurrence, a motif is built in layers. They crop up again and again at key moments. It's the very repetitive nature of motifs that can make them a useful organizational tool for a query or synopsis.
Mind you, we're not talking about anything other than how to organize your condensed plot summaries. Writers have a hard time writing clear, focused summaries because, let's face it, it's not an easy task. If you can use the motif to create a roadmap, you might make your plot summary more lucid, more condensed, and even more entertaining.
Let's say, for example, that your serial killer villain always places a personal ad describing his victim before he strikes. How many victims are there? How many ads? Write down the ads for those victims, and then write a bullet list of the key events that occur between the ads. You now have a skeletal plot outline, and have only to flesh it out, and might end up with something like:
----
Detective Sandra Cornelius is called to a grisly murder scene in which a young woman was skinned alive. A personal ad is taped to the wall above the body.
SWF, 23, brunette, rides bike to work, that skin will be my trophy.
The newspaper office provides the original order for the ad, and Sandra begins following the trail of clues. The false address leads her to an abandoned farm miles from town, inhabited only by mice and spiders. But in the mailbox, she finds another ad:
SWF, 27, long blonde hair, loves to dance, those legs will be mine forever.
Sandra returns to the newspaper office, but they have no record of this ad. She begins calling dance studios and making the rounds to see if anyone has noticed suspicious behavior. Again and again, she's frustrated by a lack of evidence, but then the call comes. Another body has been found, and this time the corpse's legs have been removed.
She identifies the source of the second ad as a consumer weekly, and begins scouring all the area papers for more ads in between following other clues. No more ads appear for a week, but then in the Sunday paper, she sees an ad that chills her blood.
SWF, 32, cap of golden curls, wears a star and frequents newspaper offices and dance clubs, you will have no eyes to see me, no mouth to speak my name, and no ears to hear your own screams.
She hears footsteps on the second floor. Her weapons are up there, safely stowed in a drawer. Can she get to them before the killer gets to her? Or should she use a weapon from the first floor -- a fireplace poker, a kitchen knife? As she's deciding, a hood drops over her head from behind, and strong hands twist the fabric until she cannot breathe. The fight is on. But she knows her home better than the killer does, and she is able to back him toward a basement door with a weak latch. She counts the steps until they are right at the threshold, and then she launches them both backward just as she's about to lose consciousness. The fall breaks his grip, and she uses a hammer to knock him out and a clothesline to tie him up.
---
Now, this is far from a good plot summary. It's too long for a query, and not developed enough for a synopsis -- and it's a shaky plot with no motive, etc. -- but for our purposes, it will serve as a decent illustration. You see how the personal ads are used to act as transitions between the pieces of plot? And you see how they illustrate something meaningful about the story? Using the motif elements as touchstones like this can create a sense of unity and coherence in the plot summary.
It doesn't have to be something that would be offset and italicized like the personal ads. Above we mentioned that carriages are a recurring motif in Pride and Prejudice, and are associated with major change. For those of you familiar with the story, try this exercise:
- List the carriage trips that occur in the book
- Between the carriage trips, list the major events that occur in each location.
- String the ideas together in paragraph form. Whenever you get to a carriage trip, start a new paragraph. (You might have other new paragraphs besides these, but to highlight the motif and let it do its organizing job in the plot summary, make sure it always appears at the start of new paragraphs.)
This isn't a cookie cutter method and it won't work for all stories, not even for all stories with strong motifs. But perhaps it will work on one of yours. Give it a try and see how it goes.
Theresa
Monday, September 21, 2009
Foreshadowing with Recurrent Images
Last night on Mad Men, we saw a great example of foreshadowing by repeating images.* I want to briefly look at how they did it.
First, Lane (the miserly, uptight Brit currently running Sterling Cooper's offices) is given a stuffed snake in a basket. His bosses mean it to represent his promotion to head of an office in India. But because Lane knows he's being shunted aside, it's symbolic of power and failure all in one glance. This dangerous snake can't bite anymore.
Next, in the context of a private meeting to discuss business, Conrad Hilton shows Don a pair of cartoon ads featuring a mouse. When Don points out that nobody wants to think about a mouse in a hotel room, Conrad admits the mouse is his idea. We're meant to conclude that Don is better at this than the guy on the cover of next week's Time magazine, but the cartoon character mouse is also symbolic of something else, I think, something juvenile, something to do with immature -- as in not fully grown -- concepts.
Finally, Don attempts to explain his lack of greed by telling a story: Some snakes can go months without eating, and then when they finally catch a mouse, they are so starved that they can eat too quickly and suffocate to death on their meal.
That's it. That's his story. Snake eats mouse and dies.
We don't need next week's preview to let us know that the Hilton account will go badly because of Lane's poor stewardship, do we?
But here's the question I haven't been able to answer yet. When you have paired symbolic objects like this -- two snakes, two mice -- those pairings are not accidental. So. We also have two Genes. Grandpa Gene and baby Gene. This was a big issue in last night's episode. Young Sally is all freaked out because she thinks baby Gene is actually Grandpa Gene. Wakes up screaming, ditches her gift-from-Gene Barbie in the bushes, all sorts of troubled-child behavior.
And there's already a suggestion of immaturity with the mouse, and of death with the snake.
How do the two Genes fit in with the two snakes and two mice? Do they?
Theresa
*This isn't quite the same as motif (recurrent images or statements used to develop theme), leitmotif (pairing two unique items so that the presence of one always indicates the presence of the other -- think dun-dun music and the shark in Jaws) , ordinary symbolism (an object used to indicate an abstract idea), or "Chekhov's gun" type foreshadowing (which allows for no unnecessary objects, such as stuffed snakes in baskets). But those are posts for different days. :)
First, Lane (the miserly, uptight Brit currently running Sterling Cooper's offices) is given a stuffed snake in a basket. His bosses mean it to represent his promotion to head of an office in India. But because Lane knows he's being shunted aside, it's symbolic of power and failure all in one glance. This dangerous snake can't bite anymore.
Next, in the context of a private meeting to discuss business, Conrad Hilton shows Don a pair of cartoon ads featuring a mouse. When Don points out that nobody wants to think about a mouse in a hotel room, Conrad admits the mouse is his idea. We're meant to conclude that Don is better at this than the guy on the cover of next week's Time magazine, but the cartoon character mouse is also symbolic of something else, I think, something juvenile, something to do with immature -- as in not fully grown -- concepts.
Finally, Don attempts to explain his lack of greed by telling a story: Some snakes can go months without eating, and then when they finally catch a mouse, they are so starved that they can eat too quickly and suffocate to death on their meal.
That's it. That's his story. Snake eats mouse and dies.
We don't need next week's preview to let us know that the Hilton account will go badly because of Lane's poor stewardship, do we?
But here's the question I haven't been able to answer yet. When you have paired symbolic objects like this -- two snakes, two mice -- those pairings are not accidental. So. We also have two Genes. Grandpa Gene and baby Gene. This was a big issue in last night's episode. Young Sally is all freaked out because she thinks baby Gene is actually Grandpa Gene. Wakes up screaming, ditches her gift-from-Gene Barbie in the bushes, all sorts of troubled-child behavior.
And there's already a suggestion of immaturity with the mouse, and of death with the snake.
How do the two Genes fit in with the two snakes and two mice? Do they?
Theresa
*This isn't quite the same as motif (recurrent images or statements used to develop theme), leitmotif (pairing two unique items so that the presence of one always indicates the presence of the other -- think dun-dun music and the shark in Jaws) , ordinary symbolism (an object used to indicate an abstract idea), or "Chekhov's gun" type foreshadowing (which allows for no unnecessary objects, such as stuffed snakes in baskets). But those are posts for different days. :)
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Mirrors and time and stuff
My poetry study group's theme last night was "mirrors", and we had some interesting poems that examined that motif. Does a mirror give an exact replica (as Plath says) or a distorted view? What does the mirror's reversal mean to how we interpret its information? What are some mirrors that aren't glass (like Hamlet's use of the play to "catch a king," mirroring Claudius's crime, or a photograph in "the day's mirror" -- the newspaper-- of a lynching forcing the viewer into the "shoes" of the hanged man)?
Anyway, it's a fascinating motif. Dottie brought a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, who many might remember as a creator of puzzles in prose, always examining paradoxes and presenting conundrums (and the one who said, memorably, "Every story benefits from a mystery"). Dottie translated it herself (she is a Spanish teacher), and we discussed how the long poem explored most of the thematic issues presented by mirrors. Dottie had this to say about Borges' fascination with "contingency" and its connection to time, and the refutation of that by story (and image, I think):
"The real world is one of contingency in which everything depends on space and time existing in a logical order, but within books, space and time are not contingent. So we see a lot of contemporary authors playing with time and space. The reader has to supply the logic in order to understand what's going on, so you have a reader who participates in the re-creation of the story. In Borges' story El Aleph, he describes a device that the narrator witnesses which allows him to perceive the universe all at once --all of time and space in one global concept, but then you realize that the narrator is outside of the universe looking at it from a separate point of view and describing it from a different point in time, so it can't be everything in the universe."
Not sure what it means, but "Aleph" is, of course, the first letter in the Semitic alphabets. So the device for seeing beyond time and space is language?
Alicia
Anyway, it's a fascinating motif. Dottie brought a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, who many might remember as a creator of puzzles in prose, always examining paradoxes and presenting conundrums (and the one who said, memorably, "Every story benefits from a mystery"). Dottie translated it herself (she is a Spanish teacher), and we discussed how the long poem explored most of the thematic issues presented by mirrors. Dottie had this to say about Borges' fascination with "contingency" and its connection to time, and the refutation of that by story (and image, I think):
"The real world is one of contingency in which everything depends on space and time existing in a logical order, but within books, space and time are not contingent. So we see a lot of contemporary authors playing with time and space. The reader has to supply the logic in order to understand what's going on, so you have a reader who participates in the re-creation of the story. In Borges' story El Aleph, he describes a device that the narrator witnesses which allows him to perceive the universe all at once --all of time and space in one global concept, but then you realize that the narrator is outside of the universe looking at it from a separate point of view and describing it from a different point in time, so it can't be everything in the universe."
Not sure what it means, but "Aleph" is, of course, the first letter in the Semitic alphabets. So the device for seeing beyond time and space is language?
Alicia
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Theme setups, commenter examples
I'm just going to take some themes offered by the commenters and suggest stuff, but just as an example-- could be entirely wrong for the story, etc. Standard disclaimers apply. No hard feelings, okay? :)
And throughout the story, there are all sorts of contributors to the process of this theme. There's the main story (as someone says, "About a man who changes his manners, and a woman who changes her mind"), but there are other subplots and revelations that add to our growing understanding of first impressions. For example, the Jane-Bingley romance starts off shockingly well-- both of these pleasant people seem to fall in love quickly and readily. But as Jane learns, Bingley is too willing to believe that he was deceived by his first impression of her, and she herself must face the reality that this perfect young man has a terrible flaw-- in his eagerness not to be too gullible to her, he is too easily persuaded against her.
Even the reader might have a first impression that proves faulty. Mr. Bennett, Lizzie's father, at first seems charmingly wry, and her mother a monster of materialism. But (and not every reader will come to this conclusion!) through longer acquaintance, the Bennetts reveal themselves as more than their first impressions-- Mr. Bennett is a rather awful father, and Mrs. Bennett, for all her many faults, at least does care about providing for her many daughters.
And the theme which sounds so simple becomes increasingly complex as more complicated examples and developments emerge in the story. For example, Lizzie and Darcy actually benefit from their rash and negative opinion-formation, because they have nowhere to go but up in their mutual esteem. Jane, however, starts out adoring her Bingley, and can never quite again achieve that level of respect once he has proven himself less than worthy. BUT... he actually becomes more worthy when he starts to think for himself-- and what does he think? That his first, admiring impression was correct.
So-- I use that example because it seems that you're also working with initial impressions or attitudes. I hate to be reductive, but think about boiling your maybe too-individualized observation into something a little more general and universal. Not that you shouldn't individualize the STORY... but the theme is usually more open, more universal.
And throughout the story, there are all sorts of contributors to the process of this theme. There's the main story (as someone says, "About a man who changes his manners, and a woman who changes her mind"), but there are other subplots and revelations that add to our growing understanding of first impressions. For example, the Jane-Bingley romance starts off shockingly well-- both of these pleasant people seem to fall in love quickly and readily. But as Jane learns, Bingley is too willing to believe that he was deceived by his first impression of her, and she herself must face the reality that this perfect young man has a terrible flaw-- in his eagerness not to be too gullible to her, he is too easily persuaded against her.
Even the reader might have a first impression that proves faulty. Mr. Bennett, Lizzie's father, at first seems charmingly wry, and her mother a monster of materialism. But (and not every reader will come to this conclusion!) through longer acquaintance, the Bennetts reveal themselves as more than their first impressions-- Mr. Bennett is a rather awful father, and Mrs. Bennett, for all her many faults, at least does care about providing for her many daughters.
And the theme which sounds so simple becomes increasingly complex as more complicated examples and developments emerge in the story. For example, Lizzie and Darcy actually benefit from their rash and negative opinion-formation, because they have nowhere to go but up in their mutual esteem. Jane, however, starts out adoring her Bingley, and can never quite again achieve that level of respect once he has proven himself less than worthy. BUT... he actually becomes more worthy when he starts to think for himself-- and what does he think? That his first, admiring impression was correct.
So-- I use that example because it seems that you're also working with initial impressions or attitudes. I hate to be reductive, but think about boiling your maybe too-individualized observation into something a little more general and universal. Not that you shouldn't individualize the STORY... but the theme is usually more open, more universal.
Breaking it down, I would say that the heroine has to redefine what she wants because she has changed whereas, the hero has to change to redefine what he wants. I see the events that are introduced at the beginning - more in way of being plot driven with an undercurrent of change - maybe time for change...and the main inciting event is the catalyst for this change. That one character is forced to change due to circumstances and the other is making a conscious change because of circumstances. How would you set this up in an opening?
-
- Anonymous said...
How about: being true to your dream(s)?
A Dash of Tension
If you haven't read Alicia's last post about happy families at amusement parks, you might want to read it before you read this post. And then read the comments, particularly the one from Green Knight. In fact, let's just move that comment to the front page:
The happy family is an interesting problem. (As a reader, I'd hate a book with that theme, but that's another matter. But it offers interesting possibilities for setting up an undercurrent. The 'frantically happy' would not have occurred to me, but I would take it a step further and add an element of pressure. Both the theme park and the waterskiing will fit into that, and I'd sharpen that - a family trying to fit as much happyness into a short vacation as they can. Getting up at the crack of dawn, rushing the kids into the car (with laughter and jokes, but still pressure), a drive through rush-hour traffic, trying to get to all the rides (rather than enjoying the ones you love over and over again, no you have to pack all the experiences into it. Fast food, because there is no time to stop - they still haven't done all the rides, the kids chivvying each other along, leaving at the last minute, everyone on a high.
I like the idea of showing them happy - *but* they're working hard at it and nobody could keep that up for long.
And I'd go for background details that play with that picture -one of the kids gets a toy catapult, but the elastic snaps. Daddy fixes it, but still. The high speed train that could be seen from the road, sleek and powerful - but they come to the train crossing and have to wait for it.
Green Knight, I like the way you think. Adding pressure adds tension. This shows how tension is different from conflict, actually. A marvelous day, memories in the making, can still have tension. The people are getting along and enjoying themselves. How boring! A dash of tension is just what the reader wants to keep turning the pages. Alicia describes one very subtle way to add tension, that is, by ramping up the joy until it appears fragile and unreal. The reader absorbs all these cues and learns not to trust the bare facts. This creates tension because on the one hand, the reader is absorbing all this surface happiness, and on the other, they know it's false.
So I'd either ramp up the sense of impermanence and frailty in the happy day (show the ice cream melting, show the flowers wilting), or I'd cut the opening in the theme park and just show the family trudging through the parking lot, exhausted and blissed out. Show the effects of the perfect day without making us read the blow-by-blow. Your novel isn't a travel piece or a sales brochure. It's a novel, and the engine that drives a novel is tension. If you can't load enough tension into the happy day to make it interesting, then cut it.
Alicia and I debate this point pretty regularly -- and, as with most of our debates, the point will never be resolved because the real answers are case-specific. Theme is important. Theme needs to be set up early. Is setting up theme, by itself, enough to carry a scene, or any part of a scene?
I lean toward wanting more than just set-up. This is true regardless of what you're setting up, be it theme or setting or character. I don't prefer a slow buildup to the initiation of the conflict. Some set-up is required, of course, but the sooner the conflict is initiated, the sooner the reader becomes engaged.
Conflict is tension on steroids. You might not initiate the conflict until page ten, but pages one through nine will still need tension. Start with the happy family having the perfect day, if you like, if you think this is an effective way to lay the foundation for what follows. Just don't bore me while you're doing it.
Theresa
The happy family is an interesting problem. (As a reader, I'd hate a book with that theme, but that's another matter. But it offers interesting possibilities for setting up an undercurrent. The 'frantically happy' would not have occurred to me, but I would take it a step further and add an element of pressure. Both the theme park and the waterskiing will fit into that, and I'd sharpen that - a family trying to fit as much happyness into a short vacation as they can. Getting up at the crack of dawn, rushing the kids into the car (with laughter and jokes, but still pressure), a drive through rush-hour traffic, trying to get to all the rides (rather than enjoying the ones you love over and over again, no you have to pack all the experiences into it. Fast food, because there is no time to stop - they still haven't done all the rides, the kids chivvying each other along, leaving at the last minute, everyone on a high.
I like the idea of showing them happy - *but* they're working hard at it and nobody could keep that up for long.
And I'd go for background details that play with that picture -one of the kids gets a toy catapult, but the elastic snaps. Daddy fixes it, but still. The high speed train that could be seen from the road, sleek and powerful - but they come to the train crossing and have to wait for it.
Green Knight, I like the way you think. Adding pressure adds tension. This shows how tension is different from conflict, actually. A marvelous day, memories in the making, can still have tension. The people are getting along and enjoying themselves. How boring! A dash of tension is just what the reader wants to keep turning the pages. Alicia describes one very subtle way to add tension, that is, by ramping up the joy until it appears fragile and unreal. The reader absorbs all these cues and learns not to trust the bare facts. This creates tension because on the one hand, the reader is absorbing all this surface happiness, and on the other, they know it's false.
So I'd either ramp up the sense of impermanence and frailty in the happy day (show the ice cream melting, show the flowers wilting), or I'd cut the opening in the theme park and just show the family trudging through the parking lot, exhausted and blissed out. Show the effects of the perfect day without making us read the blow-by-blow. Your novel isn't a travel piece or a sales brochure. It's a novel, and the engine that drives a novel is tension. If you can't load enough tension into the happy day to make it interesting, then cut it.
Alicia and I debate this point pretty regularly -- and, as with most of our debates, the point will never be resolved because the real answers are case-specific. Theme is important. Theme needs to be set up early. Is setting up theme, by itself, enough to carry a scene, or any part of a scene?
I lean toward wanting more than just set-up. This is true regardless of what you're setting up, be it theme or setting or character. I don't prefer a slow buildup to the initiation of the conflict. Some set-up is required, of course, but the sooner the conflict is initiated, the sooner the reader becomes engaged.
Conflict is tension on steroids. You might not initiate the conflict until page ten, but pages one through nine will still need tension. Start with the happy family having the perfect day, if you like, if you think this is an effective way to lay the foundation for what follows. Just don't bore me while you're doing it.
Theresa
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Setting up story themes and motifs in the opening
Annie mentioned in comments using a prologue to set up themes, and that made me think of how character and story themes are set up in the opening of a story. I happen to be working with someone on a story opening, and so it's on my mind.
This is, btw, a good reason to go back, after you've written a draft, to the opening. Sometimes the chapter 1 you first wrote is exactly right (maybe your subconscious "saw" the whole story, even if your conscious had to work at plotting it) and nothing needs to be changed. More often, the story didn't develop exactly as promised in the opening, or the opening isn't adequate to introduce the wonderful rest-of-story.
But one task of the opening is to set up themes and motifs that will be amplified in the story. This doesn't mean stating a theme outright (how boring and non-fictional), but rather setting it up to be explored through the whole book-- giving the reader a preview, an entree, into this issue.
I'm not going to define theme here (I explore it in some depth on my website, I think-- here's a q/a session on theme). But let's say that theme and motif are the way most writers convey subtextual messages or connections: "more than mere words can say." Theme usually is revealed to the reader by the process of reading the story (which is why it probably shouldn't ever be stated out straight-- it should take the whole book cumulatively to create it), while a motif is a recurrent pattern or image or something that links important scenes, characters, events, emotions, whenever it is reused.
So if you read over your draft and think, "Aha! I realize that I'm developing a theme that happiness is precarious, as Oedipus's chorus says: Count no man happy until he dies!", well, good for you! But then you go back to that opening chapter and realize it's just a generic opening, a family having a fun time at a lake. That opening doesn't really do all that much to set up the theme, other than presenting the family as pretty happy.
The danger isn't just that the opening is generic (a HUGE problem, of course), but that the tone of the opening might not fit the rest of the book. If the opening is really lighthearted, it might not fit a grimmer story. And that sort of disconnect between the opening and the rest of the story is hazardous, as the reader might think there's false advertising going on. But really, you want to show the family as happy before you strip it all away from them, right? I mean, your theme is about how we can't trust happiness, so you do probably have to show them being happy in the "before" picture so that the "after" picture can be even more poignant.
What can you do in revision of the opening to make this happen?
Well, one thing is to make it a teensy bit extreme. I know that sounds oxymoronic (teensy bit and extreme? Can extreme be only a teensy bit?) but that is actually exactly right. It's not just a routinely happy family occasion-- it's almost frenetically happy. The parents keep touching each other because they're still/again so in love. The kids are not annoying as they typically are on such occasions (maybe it's only MY kids who were typically so :), but almost heartbreakingly adorable. There are none of those minor hassles that always happen on such outings-- Dad immediately finds a great parking place, the cooler hasn't dripped melted ice all over the trunk. Everything's going frighteningly well.
That's the key. Can you somehow manage to make this incredible good fortune seem a little too much? Like a gold chain glittering in the sun but stretched, stretched, stretched... and the reader feels anticipation and dread, sure it's going to break? And maybe it never does, but it's still stretched too far, still promising disaster, even if it doesn't occur then?
How-- well, I'd be looking at slightly intense modifiers, maybe a bit too powerful verbs. You have to be careful to do this well, because you don't want the reader to think you're just overwriting. Take the diction up one notch, not ten. The sun is brilliant, not just bright. The children shriek with laughter, they don't just laugh. Dad grips Mom's hand, he doesn't just hold it.
Also see if the setting/situation can up the stakes and also provide the opportunity to start up a couple motifs that can recur later (like when the happiness explodes). Maybe the lake isn't exciting enough to build this subtle sort of tension. How about a theme park? Think of how expensive it is to take a family to Cedar Point (I can tell you-- I'm on Cedar Point's mailing list, believe it or not-- for a family of four, not counting hotel and transportation, count on $300, just for entrance fees and food for a day). So maybe they've had to save up and anticipate it for months. Dad probably has bragged to the kids about the FOURTEEN ROLLER COASTERS and they've worked their little souls into a frenzy of desire. (I swear, Cedar Point ought to hire me as a spokesperson. :) And it's really, really a wonderful day. See, schools in Ohio don't let out for summer until June, so in late May the weather is great AND there are no crowds on schooldays, and that is what our lucky family finds. No lines! All rides up and going! A blue sky and yellow sun!
Whatever your setting, try taking it up a notch for more and more and more joy! Lots of joy! Amazing joy! It's not just a day at the lake, it's the day the kids actually get up on their water skis! They're not just going to the first night of a blockbuster movie, but one of the stars happens to be there and signing autographs! They're not just going to a baseball game-- Dad catches a home run!
(And notice that the motifs just tumble out. Roller coaster (up and down). Sports (victory and defeat). Lake (water). Find one of these and see if you can reuse them later in the book in a different form, like Dad and the kids play catch in the backyard while Mom waits for the results of the biopsy.)
The point here is not to make the characters feel dread that the happiness will end. No, the characters are too busy being happy. It's to make the reader worry, "This is too good to last." Suspense is disaster postponed, but the suspense comes from sensing disaster ahead-- but it's the reader feeling the suspense, not the characters. (I think the doubling effect of reading is fascinating-- the reader simultaneusly identifies with the characters and feels/knows more than the character does.)
So that's just an example of setting up a theme. Ask me in comments maybe about other themes, and I'll suggest ways to set it up in the opening. The opening ISN'T the theme, but starts the process of making the theme.
Alicia
This is, btw, a good reason to go back, after you've written a draft, to the opening. Sometimes the chapter 1 you first wrote is exactly right (maybe your subconscious "saw" the whole story, even if your conscious had to work at plotting it) and nothing needs to be changed. More often, the story didn't develop exactly as promised in the opening, or the opening isn't adequate to introduce the wonderful rest-of-story.
But one task of the opening is to set up themes and motifs that will be amplified in the story. This doesn't mean stating a theme outright (how boring and non-fictional), but rather setting it up to be explored through the whole book-- giving the reader a preview, an entree, into this issue.
I'm not going to define theme here (I explore it in some depth on my website, I think-- here's a q/a session on theme). But let's say that theme and motif are the way most writers convey subtextual messages or connections: "more than mere words can say." Theme usually is revealed to the reader by the process of reading the story (which is why it probably shouldn't ever be stated out straight-- it should take the whole book cumulatively to create it), while a motif is a recurrent pattern or image or something that links important scenes, characters, events, emotions, whenever it is reused.
So if you read over your draft and think, "Aha! I realize that I'm developing a theme that happiness is precarious, as Oedipus's chorus says: Count no man happy until he dies!", well, good for you! But then you go back to that opening chapter and realize it's just a generic opening, a family having a fun time at a lake. That opening doesn't really do all that much to set up the theme, other than presenting the family as pretty happy.
The danger isn't just that the opening is generic (a HUGE problem, of course), but that the tone of the opening might not fit the rest of the book. If the opening is really lighthearted, it might not fit a grimmer story. And that sort of disconnect between the opening and the rest of the story is hazardous, as the reader might think there's false advertising going on. But really, you want to show the family as happy before you strip it all away from them, right? I mean, your theme is about how we can't trust happiness, so you do probably have to show them being happy in the "before" picture so that the "after" picture can be even more poignant.
What can you do in revision of the opening to make this happen?
Well, one thing is to make it a teensy bit extreme. I know that sounds oxymoronic (teensy bit and extreme? Can extreme be only a teensy bit?) but that is actually exactly right. It's not just a routinely happy family occasion-- it's almost frenetically happy. The parents keep touching each other because they're still/again so in love. The kids are not annoying as they typically are on such occasions (maybe it's only MY kids who were typically so :), but almost heartbreakingly adorable. There are none of those minor hassles that always happen on such outings-- Dad immediately finds a great parking place, the cooler hasn't dripped melted ice all over the trunk. Everything's going frighteningly well.
That's the key. Can you somehow manage to make this incredible good fortune seem a little too much? Like a gold chain glittering in the sun but stretched, stretched, stretched... and the reader feels anticipation and dread, sure it's going to break? And maybe it never does, but it's still stretched too far, still promising disaster, even if it doesn't occur then?
How-- well, I'd be looking at slightly intense modifiers, maybe a bit too powerful verbs. You have to be careful to do this well, because you don't want the reader to think you're just overwriting. Take the diction up one notch, not ten. The sun is brilliant, not just bright. The children shriek with laughter, they don't just laugh. Dad grips Mom's hand, he doesn't just hold it.
Also see if the setting/situation can up the stakes and also provide the opportunity to start up a couple motifs that can recur later (like when the happiness explodes). Maybe the lake isn't exciting enough to build this subtle sort of tension. How about a theme park? Think of how expensive it is to take a family to Cedar Point (I can tell you-- I'm on Cedar Point's mailing list, believe it or not-- for a family of four, not counting hotel and transportation, count on $300, just for entrance fees and food for a day). So maybe they've had to save up and anticipate it for months. Dad probably has bragged to the kids about the FOURTEEN ROLLER COASTERS and they've worked their little souls into a frenzy of desire. (I swear, Cedar Point ought to hire me as a spokesperson. :) And it's really, really a wonderful day. See, schools in Ohio don't let out for summer until June, so in late May the weather is great AND there are no crowds on schooldays, and that is what our lucky family finds. No lines! All rides up and going! A blue sky and yellow sun!
Whatever your setting, try taking it up a notch for more and more and more joy! Lots of joy! Amazing joy! It's not just a day at the lake, it's the day the kids actually get up on their water skis! They're not just going to the first night of a blockbuster movie, but one of the stars happens to be there and signing autographs! They're not just going to a baseball game-- Dad catches a home run!
(And notice that the motifs just tumble out. Roller coaster (up and down). Sports (victory and defeat). Lake (water). Find one of these and see if you can reuse them later in the book in a different form, like Dad and the kids play catch in the backyard while Mom waits for the results of the biopsy.)
The point here is not to make the characters feel dread that the happiness will end. No, the characters are too busy being happy. It's to make the reader worry, "This is too good to last." Suspense is disaster postponed, but the suspense comes from sensing disaster ahead-- but it's the reader feeling the suspense, not the characters. (I think the doubling effect of reading is fascinating-- the reader simultaneusly identifies with the characters and feels/knows more than the character does.)
So that's just an example of setting up a theme. Ask me in comments maybe about other themes, and I'll suggest ways to set it up in the opening. The opening ISN'T the theme, but starts the process of making the theme.
Alicia
Monday, December 8, 2008
Synecdoche thoughts part 2
(Part 1 here)
Now this willingness of Kaufman (the filmmaker) to bore and annoy audiences to get the point across reminded me, as so much does, of Edgar Allan Poe's unreliable narrators. (I wrote my MA thesis on this, so once I did understand it! No longer, alas.) Poe deliberately (I think) sacrificed his own credibility as an author – and as a man-- to create a creepy experience for the reader, that of identifying with murderers and maniacs. (You know, now that I think of it, Nabokov does the same thing in Lolita, only it's a child molester we're supposed to identify with—and Nabokov explicitly uses Poe as an inspiration, most notably his poem Annabel Lee.)
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Alicia
Now this willingness of Kaufman (the filmmaker) to bore and annoy audiences to get the point across reminded me, as so much does, of Edgar Allan Poe's unreliable narrators. (I wrote my MA thesis on this, so once I did understand it! No longer, alas.) Poe deliberately (I think) sacrificed his own credibility as an author – and as a man-- to create a creepy experience for the reader, that of identifying with murderers and maniacs. (You know, now that I think of it, Nabokov does the same thing in Lolita, only it's a child molester we're supposed to identify with—and Nabokov explicitly uses Poe as an inspiration, most notably his poem Annabel Lee.)
Poe supposedly chose (it's not entirely clear that he made this appointment or if Griswold just took charge after Poe's death) as a literary executor and biographer the notoriously nasty Rufus Griswold, who had been something of a rival for magazine editor jobs. You probably didn't realize what a vicious business editing can be. :) Anyway, Griswold created a portrait of Poe as a drunk, an incompetent writer and an abusive husband, a misconception that Poe's friends tried in vain to remedy. But they found it difficult to restore the reputation of the man who had pretty much invented the horror genre, not to mention written so many stories about horrible husbands. So Poe destroyed his own credibility by first writing stories with first-person narration by murderous men, and second, by choosing a biographer who took such glee in trashing him. But in a way, this caused the stories to be that much more experientially horrific.
(By the way, I see in Griswold's bio something that I should have put in my thesis, which was about some of the stories where Poe's narrator buries his wife/fiancee alive—Berenice, Ligeia, Morella. Talk about life imitating art. Griswold had left his first wife and children behind while he went to make his fortune in magazine editing— no wonder he was so bitter!—and so talk about projection... he was something of a negligent husband himself, sounds like. Anyway, his wife died in childbirth soon after that, and he wasn't there, but returned to "kiss her dead lips". A month after the death, he entered her tomb—really, this is SO like a Poe story!—and stayed by her presumably decaying body until his friends found him there—30 hours later. Poe's stories were written in the decade previous, so he wasn't basing them on Griswold's guilty grief. But as if previewing Griswold, Berenice starts with a Latin epigraph that translates to: "My companion said I might find some alleviation of my misery in visiting the grave of my beloved." Cue Twilight Zone music.)
So... well, there's a concept (devised by literary critic Stanley Fish) called the Self-consuming artifact, which has become well-known enough to have its own abbreviation: SCA. Fish uses this term to refer to artwork (mostly books) which transfer the reader's attention from the text, from what is on the page, to the effect it actually provokes, and that the work succeeds most "when it fails, when it points away from itself to something its form cannot capture." That is, the effect on the reader is paramount. In reading this work, the reader experiences something that is beyond the simple form of the story, some combination, I think, of author intent, reader response, and... magic.
The "self-consuming" part doesn't exactly mean what I want it to mean—that the author willingly sacrifices his/her own credibility or authority as the reader reads the story. True to the New Critics dictum of the "text is the text" (which I do agree with, I just don't think it's sufficient), the SCA theory seems to focus more on the "artifact" (the story) than the artist (the author), that is, the story consumes itself in the telling or reading. (William Gibson actually created a book that was supposed to consume itself —the ink was supposed to burn away when exposed to sunlight, and the electronic version was supposed to eat itself as it was read – and only on a Mac, talk about a self-consuming artifact... that's always been my experience with anything connected with Steve Jobs. No, no, Mac fans, I don't mean it's a bad machine that eats itself, but rather that Jobs's and Apple's focus on design and trendiness has doomed the products to mere cult status, which is, of course, exactly the experience they want, I guess!)
Fish, anyway, said that the reader learns of the futility of looking for truth in art by experiencing the art. But as in the liar's paradox ("I am telling you a lie now"), of course the very act of that realization means that you have indeed found truth in art, the truth that you can't find truth in art... and stop thinking of that right now, or you'll give yourself a headache! (He also sort of suggested that self-consuming ended with the Age of Reason began—18th C—because reason depends on the assumption that you can, in fact, determine the truth.) (BTW, I was talking to the husband about this, and he said, "Well, then there's quantum mechanics—" and I ran out of the room. Talk about headaches....)
Well, I do think you can find truth in art, and not just the truth of the futility thereof. So I find myself appreciating the technique (self-consumption), but not the conclusion. I'm sure it's fashionable and ironic to proclaim there is no truth, but anyone who writes or paints or sculpts believes there is some truth, and it can be captured (and is) in art. Else why bother? That "there is no truth" is what got us into this economic mess, a maze of mirrors called "derivatives," which bears an intriguing resemblance to Synecdoche's mirror structure (the actor playing the author and another actor playing that actor, etc.). If there is no anchor in some reality, well, everything's just a Vegas-style roulette game, right? I guess we saw that this last couple months on Wall Street, anyway. And there's no need for the rest of us to be so jaded—it's would be a good way to work ourselves into a creative block. (Why try, if there's no truth?)
But, as I said, the notion of self-consumption is quite useful. So I'm going to invent my own term, Authorial Negation (or Negation of Author—maybe we should vote on that :), meaning that the author of the work willingly and deliberately subverts his/her own authority by doing something that is destructive (of the author in some way) but helps to create for the reader an experience that is deeper, richer, fuller, something-er, than the story events alone would create. That is, the process of reading this particular work leads to an experience which is, to use a much-used phrase, greater than the sum of the work's parts. And the additional ingredient, whatever it is, is added by the author... and in adding that whatever, the author is sacrificing some essential element of authorship, whether it's reputation, credit ("Anonymous"), acclaim, control, pride of prose quality, voice, control of character, efficiency, orderliness, permanence, narrative logic, whatever the author would ordinarily take pride in and claim authority for. (See how I sacrificed my pride of prose by ending those both on a preposition?)
Let's look back at Poe—he subverted his own credibility by giving authority for the story over to these unreliable narrators, who lied and told bald untruths and didn't even try to make sense of what was happening, and often hiding the coolest and most thrilling events (like Morella's husband strangling her without ever admitting it).
Or Gibson, with his self-consuming book—what does he sacrifice? Permanence, surely. Maybe royalties—I mean, if I paid good money for a book that self-destructed, I'd take the fragments back to the bookstore and demand a refund. (Come to think of it, I have bought some paperbacks that have fallen to pieces, the spine breaking after one reading... I bet the author didn't actually choose that self-consumption.)
And what do they achieve, or allow the reader to achieve?
Poe's sacrifice lets the reader have the vicarious experience of getting away with murder, and maybe also the interactivity of solving the mystery of what's going on (because Poe doesn't solve it for us).
Gibson's sacrifice gives the reader an experience of the ephemerality of life (this poem is about his father's death) and of art, too, and also of the inability (cf. Synecdoche) of making a life into a poem.
And Charlie Kaufman, by sacrificing his skill at pacing and his knowledge of how film works, has created an experience that leads viewers to know something in their bones—life is not art, cannot be art, shouldn't be art. The risk is, of course, that the viewer will (as did everyone in the theater when I saw it!) walk on grumbling about how boring the film was, and maybe he should have cast Jim Carrey in this film too.
A big gamble, no doubt about it. The author is giving up some essential aspect of authorship in order to give over to the reader an opportunity to experience something new, even take ownership by creating her own meaning while perhaps scorning the author's ability.
Now about how this relates to fiction....
Just a few thoughts here. Readers now expect a more interactive experience, and to create it, fictionwriters are changing traditional approaches to narrative and prose. The element with most interest to me is, of course, is point of view. The tighter, closer the point of view, the more the author cedes of control over voice. That is, the author voice gives way to the character voice, which takes over the narration of the scene. What this does is give the reader not just a sense of what happens but an experience of what it's like to be this person—but at the cost of the perfectly grammatical sentences, the lush poetic prose, the omniscient panoramic viewpoint. Sometimes the narrator has an ugly voice; sometimes he sounds sullen and unpleasant and does a pretty lousy job of telling the story. Sometimes he even disses your favorite Dickens book:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They are nice and all -- I'm not saying that -- but they are also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddamn autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.
(That's JD Salinger channeling Holden Caulfield.)
Letting the character voice dominate is a great surrender for authors who have spent years honing their voice. Yes, characters can have their own rough poetry, but if it's their voice, it's not yours, is it? You are giving something of yourself up, aren't you? And why? Because you think the reader will get more out of the story.
That's an authorial negation, I think, letting the reader hear and feel the character's narration rather than yours.
What's another "authorial negation" for the sake of greater truth-in-fiction?
Sequencing and selection of event are certainly part of the authorial arsenal. The author can coax all sorts of response from the reader that way—suspense, amusement, emotion. You know all that. You carefully assemble your scenes into just the right sequence to propel the character journey, to arc the emotion, to build the suspense.... But sometimes the traditional mode of transit isn't going to get the reader to the destination, maybe because it's too predictable, or because you want to highlight ambiguity, or--
For example, Synecdoche's emotion climax (which would usually happen near the end) is out of the traditional sequence. After years of searching, Caden finds his daughter, but she is dying. (Oh, in another amplication of the "life as art" dynamic, she has become a work of art herself, and is dying from it—the tattoos all over her body are killing her.) She has been deceived about him by her mother, and believes that he abandoned her in order to go with his lover "Eric". She says she can't forgive him unless he confesses, and, weeping, he "confesses" to this false story (again, notice the echo of the life as art dynamic). She weeps too, but says that she can't forgive him after all, and then dies. It's a very powerful moment (in fact, the only true emotion, I thought, in the whole film—by design, probably), but instead of happening at the end, so we could stumble to the exit, disquieted and sorrowful, it comes near midpoint, and we endure almost another hour of the tedium of all those actors "acting" out much lesser moments in Caden's life.
So Kaufman used a less traditional and actually less effective sequence. Why? Not because he doesn't know how to pace his film. (In his earlier film Adaptation, Nic Cage having to call his mother to tell her about his brother's death was similarly emotional, and happened just as you'd expect at the end.) He was subverting his own ability there. Why?
I'm not sure, but I know there's a reason. I think it might be to provide a contrast between Caden's real real life—what he doesn't want to turn into art—and his supposed "memoir play". He has to strain for emotion in the play—he doesn't actually seem much more interested than we are—but as his daughter dies, we see the difference between sorrow and depression, between, I guess, life and art (only maybe it's art and life... mirror, mirror).
I've seen this before in Patrick O'Brian's great sea-adventure stories. He's a much more charming writer than Kaufman, well, than anyone, and so I never quarreled with his odd narrative choices, like setting a battle scene not up on the deck with the Marines but down in the sick bay with the ship's surgeon. But now I suspect that the experience created was an approximation of war—that is, the unpredictability of it, the "they also serve who stand and wait" aspect of it. Waiting anxiously belowdecks with the ship's surgeon, unable to know how the battle was going, who among my favorite characters was in trouble, deprived me of the adrenaline rush of a battle scene... and the pleasure of vicarious war. It was, perhaps, a more honest portrayal of war—the fear, the dread, the impending loss—than a battle scene might have been.
Another authorial imperative that you might forgo is the satisfactory ending. How pleasurable it is to wrap it all up, to make everything fit, to answer all the questions the plot has posed—to give your characters the ending they deserve. But closure might not be the experience you want the reader to have. Maybe (replicating life :), the ending is unsettled, uncertain, unpredicted—not because you as the author don't know what you're doing, don't know what organic or holistic ending is called for here, but –
Of course, you and I know that, just as Charlie Kaufman had control over how Synecdoche developed, the author has some control over the reader's experience—yes, even while surrendering control. The act of surrendering control, after all, is in itself showing a certain control—and I suspect, just as Kaufman knew what experience he wanted the reader to have, we have some control in choosing what authorial prerogative we'll forego and what we'll surrender, and what we'll keep to ourselves.
Maybe that's all part of the mirror-mirror effect, an infinity of images, of possibilities, of replications.
But... but there is truth in art. Whenever we're surprised, whenever we are settled, whenever we are moved by a work of art, there is some truth there that perhaps can't be captured any other way. Take that, Stanley Fish.
Oh, must quote Keats here—he was talking, I'm sure, about that Romantic inspiration, that creative frenzy, that mystic connection. But I've always thought (since I have never imagined Shakespeare as a romantic :) that in fact, negative capability (at least as regards S) has more to do with the ability to let go of this authorial imperative and let the story unfold and the characters change. Shakespeare was the one, after all, who kept turning villains into compelling characters, so they were never just evil, and heroes were never just good.
Anyway, here is Keats, and then a snatch of one of his odes:
I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. (John Keats, 1817)
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Alicia
Synecdoche thoughts part 1
I saw Synecdoche (film by Charlie Kaufman) this weekend, and want to talk about something it brought up in my head. So spoiler alert, only this is not like a murder mystery—it's not likely I'll say anything that will actually spoil the film, as it's not all that comprehensible anyway. :) However, if you don't want to know what little I understood of the movie, stop now.
Okay, so this film with a title no one can pronounce (sin-neck-duck-key) or define (the device of using a part of a thing to represent the whole thing, like "wheels" to represent "a car"). It's about a writer, so hey! Yay! After all those films about cops and strippers, finally! Films about REAL people like us! Anyway, Caden Cotard is a playwright. (The Cotard Syndrome is worth reading about—the delusion that you don't actually exist.) When the film opens, he is directing to great acclaim a performance of Death of a Salesman, and I think that is significant, as it bookends the "play" trope—that is, here it is, fifty years after the play was written, and audiences are still loving it. (Keep that thought, as his own play lasts for fifty years... that is, it takes fifty years to "write", and it never gets performed.)
So then his wife leaves him and he gets a Genius Grant (a fair trade, given his wife is not really all that appealing :), and he decides to use the money to fund a new project, a play that replicates life. And then it gets sort of weird as Caden starts hiring actors to BE him and the others in his life, and that lasts a REEEEEEALLLL long time. But it's sort of interesting, in a tedious way. I mean, the idea is interesting, even if the actual scenes are pretty boring. (The film is worth seeing... just don't feel bad if there are long stretches you have to concentrate to follow).
What does it all mean? Well, I don't pretend to understand film, but at least it sparked a few thoughts for me.
1) Art isn't life. Art can imitate life (and vice versa), but art can't be life, or even replicate life. Caden spends decades trying to make a play that is like life, and guess what? It's boring and interminable. Life is about living. Art is about selection, conflict, focus. Life is diffuse. Art is concise. This is shown with the contrast of Death of a Salesman (two concentrated hours) and Caden's unnamed masterpiece-manque. Death of a Salesman focuses on a few significant moments, and has lived for 50 years. Caden's M-M has no focus, and outlives most of its actors.
2) Audience makes meaning. Death of a Salesman is performed in the first few minutes of the film, to great reviews and audience rapture. And it's been performed thousands of time, but everytime is new. Caden's version has very young actors performing the older parts, and as he comments, the contrast makes the audience think about mortality—that is, the audience is a maker of meaning, a part of the process.
In Caden's own play, there is no audience, just the creator and the performers... and there is no meaning. At one point, one of the actors points out they've been rehearsing for 17 years and never performed, but Caden's narcissism is such that he doesn't need an audience. The meaning for him is just that... well, I think that he's important and his life is important. This is ratified by all these people who are spending their lives replicating his life. But they are not the audience. There is no audience. So there is no meaning.
3) Art is about selection. Generally it's created in retrospect, in reflection (there are some poetry and rap jams, not to mention jazz and comedy improvs, of course, but usually the improvisers have been preparing all their lives). Revision means you can shift events and words for greater effect. Effect—effect on the audience, of course. In fact, the initial creation might be all about the artist, but revision is all about the audience, about making this make sense for the audience. Caden's M-M never gets to the revision stage, the "audience-effect" stage-- it's all created on the fly, and revised only as life requires (like a character dies or an actor quits).
4) Art is also about permanence. In drama and music, which rely so much on the performer, that means repetition. That is, part of the power of Death of a Salesman is that certain elements cannot be changed without it ceasing to be Death of a Salesman. Caden can cast it with young actors; Arthur Miller can present it in China in Chinese. The setting can be, I don't know, a space station in 2090. But something essential must remain, Willy's salesman persona, the line about attention, the theme of family disappointment. Caden's life-art has no permanence, because it has no ending—it's constantly changing as he changes his understanding of what's going on in his life.
Ars longus, vita brevis. Arthur Miller is gone, but Death of a Salesman remains with us. But when Syndecdoche ends, Caden is still alive, wandering in the derelict precincts of his set, deserted by all his actors and presumably his muse too. His life lasted longer than his art, which I guess suggests it wasn't really art at all... just his narcissism?
Well, okay, I'll think of other "art is" items. But now I'm going to just free-associate rather than try to be organize, or I'll never finish this!
The film is intriguing to me because, like the actor who gets drunk to play the drunk, Kaufman is willing to be boring in order to show how life isn't art.
Theatrical Bookends (motif here):
Death of a Salesman and Caden's Masterpiece-manque (MM)—
Hmm. Well, as I've said, Death is very contained, though actually non-linear—that is, there are those flashbacks that break the chronology. MM is tediously linear, moving only forward in time, though there are sudden jumps forward—suddenly the play has been in progress (or at least rehearsal) for 17 years, for example.
The most famous line in Death is "Attention must be paid!" That is, Willy's important, and someone should notice. His wife speaks this.
In Synecdoche (that is, Kaufman's film, not Caden's play), the actor/stalker who has been playing Caden jumps off a roof to his death (replicating more successfully Caden's suicide attempt). At the actor's funeral, Caden suddenly says, "No one is an extra. They're all leads in their own story." Then, when this event is subsumed into the play, instead of Caden, the minister says this as part of a (nutso) funeral eulogy. Not sure why it's changed from Caden. But I notice that in Death, the corresponding line is spoken by Willy's wife, that is, not by the protagonist Willy. Maybe Caden understood that distance was needed for that sort of pronouncement, but since he's so much lesser a playwright than Arthur Miller, he gives the central realization not to a major character, but to a walk-on, never seen before or again. That weakens the importance of the realization by making it extraneous to plot events—that is, the minister just announces this, and since we don't know him, we don't know what has led to this understanding. (With Willy's wife, we know all that has led to this, her love of Willy, her disillusionment, her identification with him, her vicarious humiliation....)
So by assigning it to a walk-on, Caden is diminishing the power of this, and this is deliberate, at least on Kaufman's part. With Caden, I think it's interesting—this wilderness of mirrors. The actor playing him committed suicide. He is both playwright and character. Both he and Kaufman decide to take his own understanding and give it to the minister.
Well, I think with Caden it could be a desire to distance himself from his own guilt—that is, if he hadn't unsuccessfully attempted suicide, the actor wouldn't have been led to replicate that. And Kaufman certainly wants to pose that question. But he could also be doing what I suggested in a recent post—put the Big Realization in the mouth of a non-credible character, and since the minister has a breakdown during the eulogy and starts cussing, he's pretty non-credible. :)
Funeral too—that is, Willy commits suicide, like the actor/stalker. Willy has been thinking of his own funeral for a long time, hoping it will be well-attended. In fact, one of the saddest moments in Death is when Willy predicts that many will pay their respects when he dies—he's looking forward to his funeral because death will provide the validation life hasn't. (And of course, no one comes to his funeral.) The actor's funeral is actually fairly well-attended, but the truth is, he is important to no one (I can't even remember his name :). He is, no matter what Caden says, an extra, a marginalized character whose importance is just in his role, and who is quickly replaced. He isn't the lead in his own life, because he has chosen to be an extra in someone else's play. So Willy actually has more of a life, more of a reality. He is living his own life, however sad, and his funeral is his own.
So, anyway, Death of a Salesman and Caden's MM are bookends of this film and are meant to thematically resonate and echo, and I'm sure the rest of you can find more resonances!
Off to bed—more thoughts later, including how this all connects to fiction-writing.
Alicia
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Okay, the main theme is: redefining ‘preconceived’ ideas about a romantic relationship and dealing honestly with the subsequent needs that drive the desire for a meaningful partnership.