There's Subtle, and There's Obscure

The more sophisticated the writing and plotting, the less obvious the exposition. But that doesn't mean there's no exposition, only that it's done subtly and carefully through the characters in a way that is consistent with the way they think, speak, and interact.


An example of subtle exposition is in the movie Lincoln, which by narrowing the focus to a couple weeks before Lincoln's second inauguration, presents an unfamiliar take on a very familiar subject. That means that there has to be exposition (there's a lot we don't know), but it has to be rendered carefully (we think we know a lot, and we'll notice any "lecturing" or "As you know, Alphonse" explanations). So what the writer and director did was to portray Lincoln as someone who likes to hear and tell stories. (This happened to be true to the historical character, but is universal enough a trait that it could have been invented without penalty.) From the start, Lincoln is shown telling stories about people he knew, people he represented in court cases. So when in the middle of a folksy story, there's a nugget of actual information, it goes down easy. It "sounds" in character.

Oppositional characters-- the opposite of attentive listeners-- are used to evoke-- paradoxically, through their opposition to the telling-- more information. At one point, a fellow Republican exclaims, "Not another story! I can't stand to hear another of your stories!" which just provokes Lincoln to grin and tell another.

At one point, Lincoln provides his own opposition. There's a particularly knotty bit of explanation needed, because we all know about the Emancipation Proclamation, and I'm sure I'm not the only viewer who was thinking, "Why wasn't that enough?" Whenever readers are going to have questions, then it's a good idea to consider giving them an answer-- but subtly. So Lincoln asks this himself, and plays devil's advocate-- it might have been unconstitutional. Or maybe it was all right during the war, but the war is ending. Maybe he did the wrong thing. He argues with himself (to an audience of younger aides), and through this conflict, we get all the information we need to answer our question, why do we need an amendment?

So: Subtle.In character. In conflict. Use opposition. Use interaction.

But there's subtle exposition, and then there's obscure. I'm reading a book now which has a fairly complex set of events leading to the characters' having to make big serious decisions. I'm at the point where one major character is going to take some major action. So two of his aides are talking. A says to B, "I hope that C will do the right thing." B gets angry, and replies, "C always does the right thing." A comes back, "Well, just tell him, we're counting on him to do the right thing."

So I read that scene, and I went back and skimmed the previous chapter, and I still had no idea what "the right thing" is. I mean, it's not just that I don't know precisely what they meant. I don't even know the basic area of what they meant. Did they mean morally? Did they mean about the staff? Did they mean legally? Did they mean about themselves?

That's too subtle. I'm a good reader, and I was paying attention. And while I'm okay with not knowing everything, I'd like to know a little. (There are about 12 major characters in this book, so, alas, I don't know enough about C even to know what -he'd- think this was.) But really, this is just a dialogue problem. A few more words here and there, and there would be enough to satisfy-- maybe not enough to make it all clear, but enough to keep me aware so that when (I hope) there's a resolution I'll know it's happening.

For example:
A says to B, "I hope that C will do the right thing about (one word, maybe? us? about the evaluation? about the account?)."
B gets angry, and replies, "C always does the right thing. He's no (deadbeat? traitor? idiot?)."

 A comes back, "Well, just tell him, we're counting on him to (what? keep us safe? tell the truth? solve the problem?)."

That is, with just a few words-- completely in character, because we don't actually speak that cryptically unless we're being overheard, and that wasn't happening here--  we could get a sense of whether this is the staffer scared they're going to be used as a scapegoat, or if this is about some payment, or if it's a problem only he can solve. We don't need to know everything-- but we do need to know a little.

And it only takes a little. How would these two converse if they weren't being forced by their author to be obscure? They'd still be subtle. But they wouldn't be cryptic.

The reader has only what we put in there. Now exposition can be handled many ways. But if there's exposition needed, decide how much the reader needs to know, and find a way to tell it.

Alicia

Don't piss off the Harvard students!

I've been reading a few reviews of that The Social Network, just because it's hard to believe that a film about a computer thingy can be that good. (I still remember The Recruit, with a thrilling scene of Colin Farrell trying to carry his open laptop as he runs away from Al Pacino.) So disclaimer here, I haven't seen the film and am not going to comment on its quality. I'm just going to use this as an opportunity to ask: Authenticity or story excitement-- if you can have only one, which is better? (And I'm sure that's sometimes a false dichotomy, but really, no college is likely to be authentically an interesting film opportunity.)

Anyway, the reviews all seem good except for those written by Harvard people, like a law school professor who points out that Harvard undergraduates do not, in fact, talk in witty GB Shaw patter. And then there's this article (with a truly clever headline) by a fellow who actually knew the Facebook founder and lived down the hall from him.

So the article writer points out that the Harvard of this film owes a lot more to old movies and TV shows about Harvard than the reality, that dining clubs are not in fact the only places to meet future important people, that the WASPs don't really rule, that no one wears madras.

And I'm sure he's correct. There have been films made about one of my alma maters (U of Chicago), and they never get it remotely right, not the culture, not the ethos, not the ethnic mix, not even the weather. They're always presenting the school as one filled with rich upper-class kids, you know, like a Midwestern Brown, and in fact, probably the #1 parental occupation there is the low-paid college professor. It is an expensive but not rich place. :)

So I'm willing to accept the writer's assertion that the Harvard of the film isn't much like the Harvard he and Zuckerberg (the FB founder) attended. But what if Sorkin (the filmmaker) has the more filmable version of Harvard? What if his "striving Jewish kid up against an entrenched
WASP establishment" scenario provides more conflict than the real story would?

What do you all think? If you're writing a historical novel, how authentic does it have to be? Okay with no B-52s at the Battle of Waterloo, but what about inventing an argument among Napoleon's generals that distracts him so that he can't focus on the battle plan?

I remember reading that the Apollo 13 astronauts (no, that wasn't just a movie :) said that the disputes the film shows them having never happened, that they were unified in their decisions and didn't argue at all. Well, that's great, but three guys agreeing doesn't make for a great dark moment in a film.

But is there a point where you'd draw the line? Let's talk about the issues here. Is it okay if the Harvard of Sorkin's film isn't the real Harvard? What do you do when you're writing about real places and times?

Oh, and something most of us don't worry about because we make up our people. But Zuckerberg actually exists, and his friend down the hall says that the "Z" in the film is not like the real guy. Is that a problem? Do we have an ethical responsibility here?

Over to you! I don't know the answer, but as I was reading the review, I found myself thinking, "Yeah, but Sorkin's vision is probably more interesting than reality!"
Alicia

Guest post-- Steampunk, by Alison McMahan

Alicia says: I met Alison at the U S Maine MFA program last month (this month?), and she agreed to do a guest post about a fascinating sub-genre, Steampunk. Here goes- thanks, Alison! This is so intriguing.

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND STEAMPUNK

GUEST BLOG BY ALISON MCMAHAN

I’ve been a Steampunk fan for years, ever since I first read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea as a kid. A few months ago I decided to write a steampunk novella and found that it wasn’t enough to be a fan, I had to give some thought to the nature of the genre itself.

What is Steampunk? It’s generally defined as http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58009

as “Victorian science fiction,” that is, science fiction in an industrialized 19^th century setting. I’ve also seen it defined as “a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used.”

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2009/07/12/12-steampunk-gadgets-and-designs/

There’s a whole list of serious and tongue-in-cheek definitions here. http://www.steampunk.republika.pl/defin02.html


Steampunk is a genre set a world that is still in a nearly artisanal/barely industrial and completely analog age, as compared to a digitally enabled industrial military complex. Its heroes, though good at action when action is required, focus on strategy and using their intellectual resources; trickster and detective figures abound. Like the 19^th century, it’s a very misogynistic world. As a result the few women characters tend to be superwomen, women who can hold their own in spite of the extra obstacles in their paths.

Steampunk is a hybrid form; there is steampunk with an emphasis on sci-fi elements, in the shape of alternative history and alternative technological developments. There is also steampunk with an emphasis on fantasy elements, and variants such as steamgoth. The tone can be comic or dramatic or romantic.

There hasn’t been much steampunk romance written yet, but it’s a genre that’s in demand http://ciaralira.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/its-coming-steampunk-romance/#comment-2460

and clearly on its way.

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/09/01/guest-op-the-case-for-steampunk-romance/

And watch for Katie MacAlister’s Steamed: A Steampunk Romance, due out February 2, 2010.

Where did steampunk come from? Victorian authors who imagined the future from a 19^th century perspective, like H.G.Wells and Jules Verne, are considered proto-steampunkers. Authors like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley are precursors who showed the way to put fantasy and the paranormal into the genre, and Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle gave us some of the quintessential steampunk character archetypes, commonly used props (from brass goggles to gears to dirigibles of all kinds) and events. Proto-steampunk novels include Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Time Machine, and Sherlock Holmes stories.

By the early 1960s works that are now considered steampunk were being published as novels and comic books. Steampunk movies, TV Shows and games also appeared; see a complete chronology here. http://www.steampunk.republika.pl/chrono02pl.html

When asked where the term Steampunk came from, Cherie Priest, the author of Boneshaker, responded as follows:

http://theclockworkcentury.com/?p=302

It is generally-agreed-upon that “steampunk” first appeared in a letter written to Locus magazine in 1987. Author K. W. Jeter was looking for a general term to describe his material (as well as the material of some of his contemporaries [Tim Powers and James Blaylock]) set in the 19th century or 19th-century-like worlds, with strange tech and wondrous marvels.

He said: “Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like ’steampunks’, perhaps…”

His usage here was a riff on the label “cyberpunks,” a then-newish and very popular genre that was very science-fiction-forward, loaded with bad-ass hackers, virtual reality tech, and (frequently) predictions of a dystopian future.

Many steampunk fans credit William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's novel "The Difference Engine, " originally published in 1990, with popularizing the genre. “The Difference Engine” or “analytical engine” was, of course, the computer. They were followed by the likes of Michael Moorcock, Phillip Pullman, and China Miéville, then Cherie Priest, Jonathan Barnes, and K.J. Parker.

Steampunk has always existed cross-media, from the novels already listed to comic book series like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Gotham by Gaslight, and the web comic Girl Genius, http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php. Films got started early by adapting the seminal works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and television hopped on board with shows in the 1960s like Wild Wild West, later resurrected as a Steampunk movie. The steampunk aesthetic is present in video games like Syberia and Arcanum.

Because I am a filmmaker I have been approaching my research from a filmic angle first. I've assembled my own list of films I’ve classified as steampunk: (http://www.alisonmcmahan.com/blog/2010/jan/steampunk-media-list)

Some of these, like Dark City and City of Ember are also romances. I would count The Prestige and The Illusionist as steampunk; The Illusionist is a romance too. There is some debate about Sleepy Hollow (www.filmsofTimBurton.com) -- because there is disagreement on how much fantasy can go into steampunk and still have it be steampunk. As far as I am concerned, the minute we see all the torture devices in an industrial 19^th century New York City jail, and then Ichabod Crane (played by Johnny Depp) put on his brass magnifying goggles, the issue is clear.

But it seems to be a trend to have Hollywood filmmakers deny that their films are steampunk. For example, Joel Silver, the producer of Sherlock Holmes said: http://movieblog.ugo.com/movies/joel-silver-says-sherlock-holmes-isnt-steampunk-but-industrial-revolution#comments

Silver said:

[It's steampunk] to an extent. I wouldn't go that far. It's not Wild Wild West, where there's lots of [crazy gadgets]. It really is 1891, but it is as if we shot it then. There's no real artifice, it feels like it's shot in 1891, but with incredible camera work and dollies. And yes, there is a part of the industrial revolution that's happening then, but it's not so much what's going on. The details aren't that deliberate.

http://io9.com/5322440/joel-silver-crushes-our-dreams-of-a-steampunk-sherlock-holmes

But does genre live by props alone? Yes, Wild Wild West had some “crazy gadgets” but it also had a plot that brought an industrial mogul who was interested in producing weapons in a primitive environment. That’s a cross between alternative history and sci-fi. In Sherlock Holmes they might have gone short on the steampunk style props, but they started with a steampunk plot, just like Wild Wild West: a self-styled cult leader is using propaganda and mass hysteria to propel himself into power and, he hopes, into a position as dictator of not just England but the United States. All of that, and without television!

But who can look at the scenes of London in this trailer and deny its steampunk feel?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITU27Sxzi9w

What Joel Silver and other deniers forget is that Sherlock Holmes is a quintessentially steampunk character, derived from a quintessentially steampunk proto-text. He might not need magnifying goggles or a quick rescue from a dirigible when a steam-powered ferry will do, but he embodies the trickster nature, strategic mind and archival memory of many steampunk heroes; and like them he is both light and dark, his keen intelligence keeping his emotional disarray from completely undoing him.

Like Wild Wild West, Sherlock Holmes is a “bromance,” a romance between two men. When the women love interests do appear, their screen time is limited, their opportunities for action severely restricted. This is probably the source of failure for both films. Steampunk, especially sci-fi steampunk, screams for believable romance, like the love story in Hellboy. Otherwise that grimy industrial world is just too dark, and the dark night of the hero’s soul even darker. Hybridizing the action/detective tropes with romance genre elements better would have saved the movie. Making Rachel MacAdam’s character a real match for Downey’s Holmes, in action as well as in name, would have been more honest and more dramatic.

The challenge to such a hybridization lies in the detective genre itself. Whenever the filmmakers showed Holmes looking at something it was usually an open point of view sequence – we see that Holmes is looking at something and we see his reaction to it, but not what he sees. At the end of the film, the missing point of view shots are replayed, and the mysteries explained. But Holmes rarely looks at the woman he is supposed to be so in love with, and in the few brief moments that he does the editors have cut the moments so short that many viewers will miss them altogether.

There has been much internet chatter about a sequel to this movie, with hopes for a new love interest for Holmes and an enlarged part for Mary (Kelly Reilly), the woman Watson wants to marry. Let’s hope the filmmakers take it in that direction. Holmes's head might be full of gears, but what we want to hear is the whirring of his heart.

Point of no return

Been thinking about dramatic moments, and here's one-- it can be deceptively low-key, actually, and might be revealed as essential only when the events of the last act play out. I find it a fascinating turning point because, unlike most turning points, it often doesn't seem like a turning point-- and that "sneaking up on" aspect adds to the fun.

The point of no return is another Act 2 turning point, and usually comes pretty hard on the heels of the reversal. This is an action taken by the protagonist or an event that happens that means there’s no turning back, that the story is going to hurtle towards the climax, that the crisis can’t be avoided, that the protagonist has taken a fatal step into the inevitable.

This can be a clearly dramatic event (in a fast-paced story) or a seemingly trivial one, but no matter what, it’s important, essential, as it forces the protagonist and the plot into the final act (and actions).

I actually like to end Act 2 on the point of no return or have a scene or two of reaction/response/further action after that, more down-peltering to the crisis (when the worst that can happen happens). But I notice that in longer works

Hmm. Let’s speculate about why you would have an event happening to the protagonist or a protagonist taking an action, and which would be better for which kind of story. Why?

In Casablanca, as I said, the point of no return is when Rick nods—that’s all— to tell the band to play La Marseillaise, and thus he incurs the wrath of Major Strasser. But he’s also choosing a side, the side of the Resistance (as the US chose to join the Allies), while he’s spent the first part of the story avoiding just that. “I stick my neck out for no man,” remember. That nod seems trivial, but it brings on the closing of his café, the fury of Strasser, and leads to Ilsa re-committing to Laslo and the cause, and also makes it imperative for Laslo to leave Casablanca (and Rick eventually to help).

In The Godfather, the point of no return for Michael is when he chooses to shoot the police captain, thereby making himself an outlaw, choosing to join the family business, and estranging himself from “the straight world” embodied in Kay, the WASP fiancée who he leaves behind. (Notice how this happens nearer the middle than the end. The final act in this film --- and book—have always seemed very long to me, and for some reason, this really heightens the excitement.)

What’s the point of no return for Scarlett? Is it marrying Frank (her sister’s beau) or marrying Rhett? And why—in this most active and purposeful of heroines—do I think marriage is her important action? Maybe it’s definitely an action—she’s never swept away and marries due to love or impetuosity. She always has a reason.

Can you think of PNRs which happen to the protagonist, rather than actions of the protagonist? What about Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?

I wonder if there’s usually (or always, if only in retrospect?) some moral or values component in this moment. Rick, whether he understands it or not, has chosen his side. Michael has chosen family loyalty over conventional morality. Is this a redefining of what’s important to the New Person? In light of the New Reality revealed in the reversal?


Alicia

The Reversal

The Reversal is a turning point that appears in many stories (and is particularly important, I think, in film). This is an event usually quite close to the midpoint of a story, that is, in Chapter 10 of 20 or 1 hour into a 2-hour film. It’s where something reverses, where what seemed true or important or self-evident in the first half of the story is shown to be false or trivial or mysterious.

What that does is force the protagonist to stop, regroup, assemble perhaps a new set of skills or apply a new strength. It creates conflicts because what might seem to be feasible in the first half no longer works. For example:

Someone the protagonist trusted is proved untrustworthy.

Someone the pro believed to be an enemy becomes an ally.

Something the pro believed is proved false (like his parentage or his cause’s moral rightness).

The protagonist’s role is reversed: The detective becomes the suspect, the hunter becomes the hunted, the insider becomes the outsider.

(Remind me to think about this—this is usually an event that happens to the protagonist, rather than an action the pro takes, though it can happen in response to an action… why—because the character has to be blindsided, which is hard to do when the pro is dictating the action.)

This is the event that often turns the protagonist from a character into a hero—because merely reacting no longer will work. She can’t go on being merely what she was before—because that doesn’t work. She has to become something else also, something that can solve the problem, whatever it is.

Let’s generate some examples.

In The Godfather, the reversal comes (I think) when Vito is shot, because he is revealed to Michael not as the all-powerful father, but as a victim in need of protection (and Michael, in protecting him, is drawn into the family business).

In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford jumps and thus frees himself from being hunted, and becomes the hunter himself (calling Tommy Lee Jones to tell him, “I’m going to find the one-armed man”). Notice that the protagonist role shifts here— is Tommy Lee or Harrison the protagonist of the second half?

In Gone With the Wind, the reversal happens when Scarlett is seeking shelter from the war and goes home to Tara, only to discover that there is no surcease, that Tara has been damaged by the war, that the mother she longed for is dead and the father she needed has gone mad.

In Pride and Prejudice, it comes when Lizzie gets the letter from Darcy and realizes he had his reasons both for loving her and resisting it. Notice that the proposal (however unexpected) isn’t the reversal—that merely hardens her existing prejudice against him.

Okay, your suggestions here. Take some famous movie or novel and tell us what you think is the reversal, and where it happens, and what it changes.

Hamlet?

Oedipus the King?

West Side Story?

Wuthering Heights?

Your choice?

Alicia

Quick turning points schema

I thought maybe I'd post this-- because I want to later talk about the Point of No Return, so thought it might be helpful to see how I envision the three-act structure and positioning of turning points (those scenes/events where the plot changes in some important way).

This is by no means the only way to plot a book, etc., etc., and we might discuss different turning point designations and positions. This is just to start up a discussion of structure-- and Theresa's way better at this than I am, so ask her how she would suggest a typical plot structure. And Aristotle thought up most of this a few years before I did. But enough disclaimers! This is simply one structural schema, and I elaborate on each turning point in my article The Three Acts, archived on my website.

So without further ado:
Turning points are *---
Act 1 (The Beginning)
Set up (establishment of character, setting, situation, whatever)
* Initiating Event (what starts off the new storyline, the interruption of the routine, etc. This often comes at the very end of the Set up Scene)

Act 2 (The Middle)
* Emergence of External Conflict (and following that, the protagonist's response)
(rising conflict in between)
* The Reversal (when something reverses -- the hunter becomes the hunted, someone trusted proves untrustworthy, something surprising is revealed)
(rising conflict in between, but usually these two scenes are pretty close together)
* The Point of No Return (of which more later-- some action or event that once embarked on by the protagonist, inevitably leads to the crisis/disaster/dark moment)

Act 3 (The Ending)
*Crisis/Dark Moment (when the worst that can happen happens, and then the protagonist faces despair- usually some major step towards resolving the internal conflict happens here, and that gives the protagonist the courage, skills, ability, whatever, to tackle the external conflict again)

* Climax (when the protagonist resolves the external conflict)

* Resolution (when the protagonist resolves the remaining internal and/or interactional conflict)

I think that in Act 1 and Act 3, there's more pounding drama-- less between the turning points. In the middle act, there are scenes of rising conflict between the turning points.


A good film example for this schema is Casablanca. Well, that's a good film for about everything. :)

Let's see:

Act 1
The Casablanca set up is fairly long (because, I think, there are a lot of supporting subplots to set up).
Initiating event:
Ugarte gives Rick the letters of transit.
(Notice that the interactional plot-- the romance-- has its own set of turning points, and the initiating event for that is, of course, Ilsa coming into the cafe.)


Act 2
External conflict emerges:
Major Strasser comes into the cafe and recognizes Rick as a potential troublemaker, and Rick can't help but respond by being defiant. Same scene-- Ugarte is shot and killed, and Rick wants to but doesn't help him.
(Romance-- Rick sits with Ilsa and starts competing with Laslo.)

Reversal:
(The romantic reversal comes first-- at the market, Rick pretty much calls Ilsa a whore, and she reveals that she is married to Laslo and was even when she and Rick were lovers in Paris.)

Laslo reveals that he needs the letters and knows Rick has them, and Rick refuses to sell them and tells him to ask his wife for the reason. The reversal is that Laslo (as her patron) has had the upperhand with Ilsa, and now Rick does-- knows more about his wife than Laslo does.

Point of No Return:
The two plots kind of converge here, with the romantic and the external PNR in the same scene, where Rick throws his lot in with Ilsa and Laslo when he gives his band permission to play La Marseillaise. (More about this in next post.)

Act 3:
Crisis:
Ilsa arrives with a gun and demands the letters of transit, sure that her husband will be killed if he doesn't get out of Casablanca.
Dark Moment:
(same scene) Rick is willing to commit suicide-by-Ilsa rather than give into his love for her.
(Action that comes out of this-- She professes her love, and he surprises himself by agreeing to protect "all of them"-- taking responsibility for Laslo too.)
(This is an AMAZING scene-- one of the greatest ever in film.)

Climax:
Rick gets everything organized to get himself and Ilsa out of Casablanca... but of course, at the airport he reveals that the letters of transit are to be used by Laslo and Ilsa. They get away, but Rick stays.
(Romantic climax-- he and Ilsa "get Paris back" because of his unconditionally loving act of sacrifice to save her and her husband.)

Resolution:
He kills Strasser (how cool that this is a resolution, not a climax!), and he and Capt. Renault decide to join the Resistance and fight the Nazis together.

Thoughts? Any one of those turning points stand out as especially important in your story?

Alicia

Need film/tv scene help

Help! For an article about romantic conflict, I want to use a scene I thought I remembered from a TV show or film. (Most of the details have fallen into a hole in my Swiss-cheese mind.)

Young woman. Young man. They're connected in some way, like they have to work together. They don't get along well.

So at some point, he indicates in some way-- you think I'd remember this-- that he's fallen in love with her, and it's a total surprise to her.

She says, and this is the only thing I remember precisely, "But you don't even like me!"

And he kind of turns away, embarrassed. And then something happens and it all works out.

Anyway, anyone recognize that? I know it's not much. And it occurs to me, because I can't think of how they looked, that this was in a book, but I'm pretty sure it was in a movie or TV show.

This is going to plague me and make me utterly useless until someone puts me out of my misery by telling me what I mean.
Alicia the Clueless

Your turn!

What are your favorite films that no one else ever notices?

For me:
Groundhog Day
Frequency

I just realized both have non-traditional timelines. (GD is one day over and over, and boy, that is really an achievement, that every minute feels new; Frequency takes place in both 1969 and 1999-- hey, come on, the aurora borealis causes time travel, don't you know that? Or maybe it's the Mets winning the pennant, though they only did that in 69.)


I love It's a Wonderful Life, but everyone knows that one.

What are yours? Hmm. I love Lion in Winter too, but that might be everyone's favorite. Kate Hepburn! Plantagenets! Peter O'Toole! Castles! Dialogue!

Come on-- favorite films no one else will mention. You cannot say:
Godfather 1 or 2 (you can say 3, but I bet you won't)
Citizen Kane
Gone with the Wind
Anything French or Japanese that none of us have seen
Lawrence of Arabia

I remember one of my kids (now a film student) saw Independence Day probably 200 times, and I'm not kidding. I can probably recite most of it. Judd Hirsch was great in it. :) I wonder now that he's been watching Bunuel and Godard if he will admit to loving that movie.

If you're a woman, you can't say Princess Bride.
If you're a man, you can't say Cool Hand Luke. :)

Alicia

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.)

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—18^th 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)

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

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

(Part 2 here)

Emotional exposition

Film-going adventures... Saw Australia, which was created, conceived, cast, portrayed, written, etc., all by Aussies, and so why does it seem so utterly like a not-great but very expensive 60s-era Western? I mean, really, if it weren't for the accents and the Japanese bombers arriving at the end, I would have thought I was not in the Outback in 1941, but rather in the desert sets of outer Hollywood pretending to be 1890 Arizona. :) Every cliche we love in Westerns is right there, including a totally Eastwoodlike intro of the hero by narrowed eyes (though Hugh Jackman shows far more beefcake than Clint ever did, but then, whoa, seriously better beefcake—is that a body double, or has Wolverine been working out?) devolving into a barroom brawl that spills out into the unpaved street. (Now to be fair, some of these scenes are fun, and there's a beautiful child in a major role, and Bryan Brown! Back again! He was the most fun actor in Thorn Birds, pace all Richard Chamberlain fans. And so cool here! But it was in a Lee Marvin role—just can't get away from the Western influences. :)

Oh, yeah, the "noble savage" in this film is Aboriginal, not Native American, but he still imparts the nobly (not savage) wise Big Emotional Revelation to the clueless (but very buff) hero. What's the revelation? Oh, I forget. It was something about how Hugh was a coward, because he'd been hurt before and was now afraid to love. I think we've heard that before. In fact, we probably SAID that before. The Aboriginal friend pronounces this wisdom in a nobly pontifical way, and Hugh immediately accepts the wisdom and runs off back to his true love (abandoning, apparently, the wise best friend).

This "emotional exposition" scene shows a lack of confidence in the story! And this is something to watch out for in our own books. If we've done our job setting up and developing the character journey, and if we've created scenes that show the emotion, no one should ever have to state out loud the emotional revelation. The character should figure it out for himself because of the events of the story, and especially the event right before realization. (Realization... not revelation, see!) If you're near the end of the book, and you have so little confidence in your emotional arc and character journey and character that you think you need to bring in someone else to lecture out the big truth, then instead of writing that scene, you should be revising your macro-structure. Something's gone wrong in the big story elements, and it can't be fixed by a lecture, however wise. (Australia didn't need this, btw. All it needed was some catalytic event to make Hugh choose to go back to Nicole and the adorable child. That's why I said that it shows a lack of confidence.)

In fact, I tell romance writers—if in the last scene, the romantic couple have to SAY "I love you," you've failed. The reader should know this from how they've changed, how they've grown, and how they've sacrificed for each other. (The characters of course can speak their love – people do, after all—but I'd say first write the scene without those words, as if those words aren't in the language, as if love can only be shown and described without love words. THEN you'll have a great emotionally resonant resolution scene, and you can put in the Three Little Words afterwards. :)

So... no emotional exposition lectures, okay? Make your story do the work. And then if you want the words spoken out, well... try something more fun than a Noble Oppressed Minority wiseguy intoning the wisdom. For example:

1) Put the revelation in the mouth of a discredited character. Hey, if it's the truth, it's the truth, right? Play with that by using the least credible character as the transmitter of wisdom. (I'm envisioning Steve Buschemi or Rob Schneider here.) It will be unexpected, and also force the main character to evaluate the merits of the revelation rather than just to accept Received Wisdom from a beloved and all-knowing thus perfectly credible character.

2) Try a character who is saying this not from some benevolent motive but to further her own agenda. Again, this will add a layer of uncertainty and conflict, making the protagonist have to work at it. Think of Ilsa in Casablanca: "You're a coward, Rick!" She's trying to get the letters of transit from him, not further his emotional journey. Her own motive is suspect—and both of them know it.

3) Something else the World's Greatest Script (Casablanca, I mean) does right is that Ilsa says this but immediately takes it back. This accomplishes a lot—it gets the Revelation spoken, it shows that Ilsa is scared of her own insight, it shows that she's not so stupid that she continues alienating the guy with the letters of transit, and most importantly, it forces Rick to act not with anger but with compassion... where if what she said stood, he'd be defensive and unmoving. Oh, it also shows something about her character, that she really does still love him.

But see, all of the above are making the Revelation not a resolution but a conflict. Should I believe Rob Schneider? Is Ilsa just trying to shame me into giving her what she wants? Do I love her more than my pride? Can I risk loving her especially now I know how far she'll go to protect her husband? All these will lead not to a static scene where something is imparted from on high, but an active scene where the character has to do more than accept the obvious—he has to create his own realization, take his own next step on the journey.

You know, it always comes down to Show, Don't Tell, doesn't it?

That is, if you've got a message to impart, write a bumper sticker. If you're going to create a story, make something happen and cause something else to happen, and let your characters' changes play out in the scenes.

Alicia

Stacking events

Watching The Godfather, always a pleasure, and such a healthy family activity for the holiday! :) Something I notice is how action is stacked so that there's not a lot of letup in tension. That's something we can do in fiction too. You don't need to have a separate scene for every event-- you can put two related events in the same scene, especially if you end the scene with one of the events.

The point of no return for this film is actually a sequence of events that cumulatively make it impossible for Michael to go back to his former neutral position. First, as he's marrying the Sicilian girl he has met in exile, his little sister is having her own marital drama-- her husband is beating her, and she calls her big brother Sonny to help. As he is impetuously driving to help her, he is mowed down by gunmen (the abusive husband set this up to get Sonny killed).
Then, in exile, Michael hears about his brother's murder, and is told he must leave the area. As he is preparing to leave, someone puts a bomb in his car, but his new wife has decided to surprise him by driving the car up to meet him. She is killed in the explosion.

All this happens in about 10 minutes of film time, and the power is intensified by the compression. This isn't for every part of the story-- it's more effective when we've already gotten to know the characters and understand the situation, so we aren't confused by the rapid-fire of events... and we can keep up emotionally and anticipate how the events will affect the characters.

So if you have a string of events that feels too attenuated, consider having one lead to the next... but in the same scene for greater force.
Alicia

More antiheroes

Okay, much discussion here about anti-heroes. I wrote it all up, and before I saved it (stupid me— I really do know better), the power went out in a storm, and there went all my brilliant thoughts. So you're going to get my UNbrilliant but at least saved thoughts.

First, Andy told me that I got it wrong. (He's been saying that most of his life.) Here's how he parses Michael Corleone:

Godfather I: Anti-hero.
Godfather II (this is interesting): Villain/antagonist.
Godfather III: Tragic hero. (I pointed out that GIII has definite allusions to King Lear, btw, particularly in the daughter-death scene, but also the king giving up his kingdom.)

I thought about that Godfather II idea, and thought, yes— because young Vito, the Robert de Niro character in the 20s, is the hero. Why? He's doing heroic things (in his way): protecting his family, strengthening his community, eliminating a bully, establishing a code of honor.
Now Michael, half a century later, undoes all that. He puts his family in danger, kills his own brother, alienates his foster brother/best friend, weakens his community by starting a mob war, becomes a bully (and allies with dictators), and violates most of the elaborate code Vito and his generation created.
So if Vito is the hero, and his goals are paramount, then Michael who ruins those goals becomes the antagonist. (Back to this later— can the villain be the protagonist? Cf. Macbeth.)

He also said he didn't think Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven was an anti-hero because he did what he did for his family. He said motivation determines whether you're a hero or an anti-hero. (I somewhat disagree. Later.) Outlaw Josey Wales is a more "anti" Eastwood hero, he says.

He brought up King's Dark Tower series (just so you'd know he does know how to read ), and said if you calibrate by book, Roland is definitely an anti-hero in The Gunslinger, but gradually becomes more heroic and is a full-fledged hero by The Wolves of Calla.

Second, my husband remembered that Benjamin in The Graduate (Dustin Hoffman, that is) was called an "anti-hero" when that film came out. What do you all think? The reasoning then was that he was NOT a hero— not strong or brave or powerful. Things happen to him, and the major praxis of the plot is his growing self-awareness and wisdom. Well, as that spawned a whole genre of similar films about nebbishy but intelligent young men encountering adulthood, I gave that some thought. I think those young men (like Zach Braff in Garden State— a real update of The Graduate) are not ANTI-heroes, but non-heroes. That is, they don't have the usually heroic qualities of courage, ambition, potency. But they are protagonists, and we're supposed to identify with them. (Not me… the angst of post-adolescent young men has about as much interest for me as the dietary habits of fruit flies.)

So… some questions, anyway, that arise from these discussions:

1) Does heroism/anti-heroism depend on the motivation? That is, is the hero the one who does the right thing (by whatever standards) for the right reason, and the anti-hero the one who does the right thing for the wrong reason? (That is, he saves the old lady because he wants a reward.)
2) Or— this is my thought— that the difference has to do with the end, not the beginning. That is, if the character is redeemed in the end, he's a dark and dangerous hero. But if he's not redeemed, he's an anti-hero. So Dirty Harry is an anti-hero, but Paul Newman in The Verdict is redeemed, so he's more the hero. What do you think? The one who triumphs but is not morally redeemed= anti-hero? Theresa mentioned Scarlett O'Hara— she ends up rich, but not redeemed — she's still thinking at the end that she can block out the past and just look ahead. Or think of the "Seven Samurai" type stories where an outlaw helps a town out, but leaves in the end because he can't conform to community standards. Anti-hero? You know, say the John Wayne character maybe in Liberty Valance— he never really gives into the redemption?
3) Does the anti-hero have to triumph? Can there be a tragic anti-hero, who fails or is defeated?
4) I keep thinking that the relationship to the plot is important— the anti-hero is EFFECTIVE. This is why the notion of Benjamin Graduate and all his ineffectual descendants as anti-heroes annoys me. They are reactors, not actors. Things happen to them… they seldom make things happen. The major change is just that they learn… they don't really have much effect on the world. Hero, anti-hero, seems to me, they have to be the "proto-agonist"… they have to act, and have an effect on their world.
5) Comic anti-heroes? Paul Newman? Butch Cassidy and Cool Hand Luke?
6) What's the difference between an anti-hero and a villain?
7) The Macbeth issue… what is Macbeth? Definitely a protagonist. Is he a villain because he does evil, or a tragic hero because he is brought low by his own attributes, or an anti-hero because he has heroic attributes— courage, ambition, power— but unheroic motivation?
8) Tragic anti-hero?
9) Women anti-heroes? Scarlett, yes, plenty of heroic qualities there, but also huge negatives.
10) What makes a hero anyway? What makes an anti-hero? What do you see as the connection between the two?

How about some examples of heroes vs. anti-heroes? Can you think of female anti-heroes beyond Scarlett?

I think Buffy wished she could be an anti-hero, but she was too tied to the need for moral behavior. Are we actually open to that gradation in women? (Scarlett really is special!)

Let's look at Shakespeare characters, because we'll know them. Hamlet, the precursor to all those nebbish guys? Lear. Othello. I think Macbeth is a particularly interesting example.