It Always Comes Back to Aristotle

Okay, so I think I've mentioned a time or ten that I've been reading these anthropology structuralist dudes from the mid-20th century, mainly because I wanted to expand my knowledge of superstructures beyond the basic Campbell mythic quest structure. And as part of that exploration, I've been reading Claude Levi-Strauss, a French academic who collected Pan-American myths and analyzed their structure until they cried uncle. Or oncle, actually, in deference to Levi-Strauss's nationality.

Anyway, he's taken a lot of heat for the way he tried to disconnect story structure from time. The basic idea here is that there are two kinds of structure. The first is what we describe as linear -- events unfold along a timeline, and generally have to occur in that specific sequence in order for the story to make sense. The girl can't fall in love with the boy before she meets the boy, right? Temporality is key to understanding most story structures. First this, then that.

Levi-Strauss, though, wanted to unhook structure from time. So he developed a theory of latent structures -- he called them paradigmatic structures, or, depending on the translation, structural paradigms. He said that structural paradigms are oppositional structural elements which can be uncoupled from the story's timeline and moved around. These can be reduced to single-word concepts which are the opposite of each other: love/hate, life/death, and so on. The order in which the concepts are presented isn't important (according to old Claude), as long as they both exist within the tale.

This can make your brain melt if you think about it too hard -- it nearly melted mine, until I realized he's basically talking about (wait for it) (and sing along if you know the words) one of Aristotle's ideas. Reversals. Yummy, delicious, drama-making reversals.

What's a reversal? It's when a story element becomes its opposite. Life/death, love/hate, and so on. Why did Aristotle care about it? Because reversals create drama: the essence of drama is change. And when we're talking about rising action on Ari's incline, we're talking about ways to pump up the drama. A reversal is a structural element with a big built-in dramatic oomph because the nature of the change is big.

The difference between a reversal and another kind of change is the oppositional nature of the elements. One is either alive or dead (excepting certain zombies and other paranormal creatures, of course *ggg*), and there aren't degrees of deadness or aliveness (again, excepting zombies, etc.). What are examples of non-oppositional changes? Anything that changes not in essential nature but rather in degree (mist to rain -- it's still precipitation, just more of it) or quality (green to blue -- color is still present, but it's a different color) is a non-oppositional change. These things might also have some dramatic value, but they don't pack quite the same pop as a reversal.

Why should writers care about this? Two words. Sagging. Middle. If your story slumps along through the middle, if reviewers described chapter eight as the perfect cure for insomnia, then think about the changes presented by the action in the middle of the book. What changes? Does it change in degree, or does it completely reverse itself? How can you magnify that change for more drama?

What are some other examples of oppositional pairs -- or, as our buddy Claude would have it, structural paradigms?

Theresa

The Romantic Hero's Purpose

This one goes out to the romance people reading this blog. I've been thinking over Alicia's post on Contrasts and Juxtapositions from earlier this week. It's been a while since I had to quibble with Alicia about one of her points, and as usual, it's sort of a side point and not really her main point. And as usual, I find myself wanting to start by noting where we think in tandem. It's so rare that we disagree that the urge to preface and even conciliate runs strong.

So here's a quick rundown of two places where I nodded in agreement while reading the post.

-- Genre fiction as folk art? Yes. Exactly. Love the point about innovation within a framework, "the same but different" so often referenced by agents and editors, or as Alicia puts it, something new balanced on the familiar and expected.

-- Victoria Dahl is an adept writer with a knack for surprising readers in a delightful way. No argument there. I haven't read Crazy for Love, the new release Alicia cites, but it's only a matter of time. (And nothing in this post should be construed as criticism of a book I haven't read or an author I respect.)


And then the wheels screeched as my ability to agree with Alicia ran off the side of the road.

You see, I don't think it should be at all unexpected for a hero to have the urge to protect the heroine. In fact, I think if he doesn't have that urge, at least by the end of the book, then he can't be a romantic hero. By definition.

In sociobiological terms, human males have two primary roles: to impregnate women and to fight off predators. There are other sub-roles, of course, and the way these roles manifest in modern men is surely different from how they manifested in our ancestors. Nevertheless, this is what the male body was designed to do, and it's what the deepest part of the instinctive brain will urge males to do.

The way these roles translate into romance hero archetypes is probably pretty obvious. The sexual urges, for example, form part of the tension in even the sweetest romances. Ever wonder why babies factor so prominently in sweets? It's because, in part, if we don't get to see the sexual behavior of the male during the course of the story, we need some other signal that he's capable of fathering a child. So we have an epilogue with the happy couple cuddling their infant a year later, and the reader is left to understand this is a coupling that works.

And as to the warrior/protector side of the male, this manifests in dozens of different ways. Some are obvious -- he's a SEAL or a Scottish chieftain or some other battle-hardened sort. Some are less direct -- he's a CEO (conquerer of the boardroom and enemy competitors), or an aristocrat (lord of all he surveys), or some other high-status male type. A big part of the emotional arc in romance is the journey this male must take from independent warrior to the man who will risk injury and even death to save his mate and children.

This is why so many successful romances have elements of danger to the heroines which allow the hero to intervene and prove his worth as a protector.

And this is why, when I read Alicia's description of the hero trying to save the heroine from imaginary sea monsters, I thought, "But that's what he should do."

It may be that this particular scene was set up so deftly as a sex scene that it was surprising to watch it morph into a protection scene. I don't know because I haven't read it. But that's a different kind of surprise from surprise that he's protective at all. And when Alicia describes the protective urge as more individual or more unique to this character, well, that's when I knew I had to write this post. That urge is not unique to any one romance hero. They should all have it. How they express it might be unique, but they should all have it, even if only by growing into it by the end of the book.

(So tempted now to shift into Darcy Discussion Mode now, a nearly perpetual condition for me these days. Instead will assert that it was his rescue of Lydia that allowed Elizabeth to ultimately love him, knowing he would not only protect her but her family as well, and even protect her from her family if need be. Heroic actions from a heroic character. Debate among yourselves if you like.)

As to Alicia's assertion that this could translate into some kind of 3-act structure, I think I will limit myself to this: what she describes is not so much a story structure as one method for creating a reversal, which is a structural device. I might not be parsing that part of the post correctly, but that's how I read it. There are many different ways to leverage the power of the reversal, and that sort of surprise behavior built upon a reader's assumptions or expectations is a good one.

Theresa

Foiled Again!

If there's any tv show better written than Mad Men, I sure don't know about it. The writing is so controlled and so deliberate that every line resonates with nuance. The characters are beautifully drawn, too. In that Vanity Fair article Alicia linked, they described the writing as novel-like, and I think that might be why we're so drawn to it. Everything is built in layers, and the use of reversals and contrasts is almost poetically deft.

Alicia talked about how they structured the first episode of season three. Now I would like to revisit the foil technique we discussed last year when we looked at season one, episode one. They use this technique so effectively and so consistently that it's worth examining. Mad Men is truly a show not just for watching, but for studying.

Ken and Pete

Ken Cosgrove and Pete Campbell are account managers. When a British firm acquires the Sterling Cooper agency, the existing head of accounts is fired. Instead of replacing him immediately, the British financial officer splits accounts into two pieces. Ken gets one piece, and Pete gets the other.

Pete and Ken have dramatically different characters, and those character differences are highlighted in paired scenes in which each is privately told that he will be "head of accounts." Neither is told that this title will now be shared. Each thinks he has won the big prize.

So let's look at the two scenes. They're set up as foils with their intros. Pete is told that Price wants to see him, and responds, "I'm at lunch." It's a stalling tactic because he's nervous. By contrast, when Ken enters Price's office later, he breezily announces, "I heard you wanted to see me, so I had a sandwich for lunch." Lunch is not a way to delay an unpleasant meeting, but something to be concluded quickly to the meeting could commence. This intro flagged the scenes and made me pay close attention.

Pete is very tense when he enters Price's office. He thinks he is about to be fired. Instead, Price says, "I can't speak for everyone here, but I like you." This sounds to me like a pregnant line. (Pun intended, har dee har.) "Liking" Pete doesn't usually end well. Peggy liked Pete, and she ended up hiding a pregnancy and almost went insane when she had to give the baby away. Pete's wife teeters between spoiled self-indulgence and a childish yearning to return to her primary family, perhaps because she's barren, and perhaps because she's the kind of woman who would marry a guy like Pete. And remember Duck Phillips? He liked Pete, turned into an alcoholic, and lost his job.

So now here is Mr. Price, claiming to like Pete. Why would he even say that? He never echoes this sentiment when he's talking to Ken about the same promotion. It's a slightly strange thing to say, as if liking Pete is so unusual that it needs to be announced. With Ken, a guy everyone likes, no such reassurance would be necessary. I'm sure Ken assumes he's liked wherever he goes, and his friends hardly ever end up pregnant, barren, insane, drunk, or fired.

Back to Pete. When Price invites him to take a seat, Pete refuses. He insists on standing and betrays his deep anxiety over this meeting:

Price: Have a seat.
Pete: Why?
Price: Is something the matter?
Pete: You just fired the head of my department and now you're offering me a seat.
Price: How cruel of me.

By contrast, when Ken enters the same office for the same meeting, he takes a seat without being invited and lights up a smoky treat. He's casual and confident, interested but not worried. He is the anti-Pete.

When Price tells both men they're being promoted to head of accounts, their reactions are telling.

Pete: Is this really happening? I need to know it's certain.

Pete has been disappointed before, and it has made him suspicious and tense. Compare that to Ken's cheerful response.

Ken: Really? That's spectacular. Thank you!

Pete's anxiety never really leaves him when he's with other people, and it cloaks him in awkwardness through this entire scene. Only after he has left Price's office and is alone, behind his closed office door, can he give in to some celebratory feelings. He does a strange little happy dance -- one of the best moments of the entire episode, I thought -- and calls his wife to tell her the news.

During that call, he admits that he never even asked if he would get a raise. Ken, by contrast, launched right into the money talk after his cheerful thanks. Ken also shook Price's hand -- gratitude, celebration, and cementing the deal. But Pete, despite his good news, is still tense and edges out of Price's office almost without letting Price get out the word splendid. (Note that Pete immediately echoes this word, though, when talking to his secretary.)


Sal and Don

Sal (the closeted homosexual) and Don (the antihero protagonist) go to Baltimore together to schmooze the London Fog account. While en route, they strike up a conversation with a stewardess and, after a dinner and drinks scene, Don ends up taking one of the stewardesses back to his room. (He's such a whore, and he obviously hasn't learned his lesson after last season, but that's another issue.)

Sal goes back to his room. There is some intercutting between Sal's room and Don's room. They're played off each other a little bit. Sal flops on the bed, alone, then calls the front desk to get his air conditioner repaired. Don sits on the edge of his bed, not alone, and eggs the stewardess on as she strips for him. Their rooms are stacked on top of each other, separated by a floor or two.

Both men are the seducees, rather than the seducers. When the bellhop (a young man) kisses Sal, Sal nearly comes apart with yearning and terror. Don, by contrast, is very easy with his role as passion's victim. But then, he should be. He's had a lot of practice.

The stewardess peels off her jacket and blouse. The bellhop removes his jacket. Both Don and Sal give in. We know they're not holding anything back.

But then, a fire alarm sounds. Don reacts instantly, throwing clothes at the stewardess and leading her out the window to the fire escape. Sal is confused, though. It takes him a moment to recognize the sound, and then, his disappointment in the lost opportunity is so palpable that we almost wish he would ignore the alarm and take his one opportunity now, before it evaporates.

Yes, this is Sal's only such opportunity for hanky-panky to date. Contrast that with Don't line to the stewardess after she has confessed she's engaged and this might be her last chance to dally: "Believe me, there are plenty of chances."

As Don and the stewardess are darting down the fire escape, Don pauses at Sal's window and knocks to warn him about the fire. He sees the bellhop with his jacket off. Sal also sees the half-clothed stewardess, but this somehow is never an issue. (Why? It's obvious, right?)

In the street, as the firemen are putting out the blaze, the stewardess clings to Don, and the bellhop abandons Sal. Also note that Don's bare feet get a good flash on the screen. We know Sal is still wearing his shoes, though.


Are there any other details that support these pairings? Let's talk about them! If you haven't already seen this episode, by the way, it's available on demand if you're with Comcast. And I'm pretty sure AMC will repeat it on Sunday before they air episode 2. That was their pattern last year, if I remember right.

Theresa

Dynamic Change: The Reversal's Kid Brother

We've looked at sentences that contain reversals -- concepts which are the opposite of each other -- as a way of building immediate interest.

There's another kind of sentence which can produce a similar effect without turning ideas in an about-face. Any sentence which contains action describing a change in circumstances -- dynamic change -- will also be very interesting to readers.

Let's start with an example.

At the intersection, the light was red.
At the intersection, the light turned red.

These sentences describe the exact same concept, a red light at an intersection. They are identical but for one word. We can probably all agree that the second sentence is the stronger of the two, but why should that be true?

I can't pretend to understand the medical science behind this, but our eyes and our brains are hardwired to be alert to change. It's physiological, and probably a survival mechanism, but whatever the scientific reasons, it's certain that our eyes and our brains work together to sense change.

This sensed change can be movement, as the blur of motion in your peripheral vision that triggers you to hit the brakes and swerve to avoid an accident.

This sensed change can be static, as when you enter a room and know that something has been moved from its rightful place, even if you can't immediately see what's different.

This sensed change can also be fictional, as when your eyes scan a page and your brain interprets the words to create a story picture in your imagination.

Eyes and brains working together to identify change. They're always alert for change.

So when we write
At the intersection, the light turned red.
what we're really doing is tapping into that almost primal alertness. The eyes are saying, "Yo! Brain! It was yellow, but now it's red! React if you need to!"

And the brain says, "Red light! Change! What do we need to do about this? Hey eyes, give us some more visual clues."

In other words, it's a motivation to keep reading.

Smart writers leverage this all over the place -- scene action and dialogue, of course, have dynamic elements built in -- but it's also useful in opening scenes and in description.

As to his face, whose rapid changes of expression bespoke him of a southern race, there were in it both tact and power of character. His eye, which could express every feeling, seemed to read the soul of any one on whom it rested. His complexion, naturally dark, had been rendered darker by exposure to a warmer sun than ours.
- Alexandre Dumas, Memoirs of a Physician

Dumas could have said, "He was tactful and powerful, observant, and suntanned." But instead he delivered those descriptive elements in the context of change -- changes of expression, eyes which express every feeling, skin that becomes darker. There's a feeling of movement and change in all of this.

I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.
- Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

The narrator's age changes, then changes back, wavering between two numbers, a much more dynamic way to give a character's age than the simple, "I am ninety." Worth noting: even though age itself is static, this description works on the same principle of dynamic change because the reader's eyes are still perceiving a change and communicating it to the brain. Age is not a thing in motion, but the change element makes it dynamic.

Theresa

Sentence Reversals in Contemporary Fiction

Regarding my last post about sentence-level reversals, Patricia comments:
I wonder how much this is used in commercial contemporary fiction. All of the examples are classic. I'm wracking my brains to think of a current example.

Patricia, I suspect what's throwing you is that the examples I cited used reversals to set out thematic elements. In commercial fiction (which tends to rely less on theme), this kind of sentence is more likely to be used in other ways, usually but not always to set scenes or describe characters. Also, in contemporary writing, we tend to use reversals as accents within a sentence rather than as the meat of the sentence -- but this is not universal. It's just a tendency.

In the previous post, I used those examples because the reversals are so obvious that it makes the concept very clear. Sometimes reversals are a little less blatant, though.

Just using the books within reach of my desk, these are some sentences I find in openings:

They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed anyone by magic -- nor ever done any one the slightest good.
~ third sentence, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (doing harm ---> doing good, used to introduce characters)

[Imagine a] place of white sparkling mountains and black forests and one high, ancient castle.
~ second sentence, The Smoke Thief by Shana Abe (white ---> black, used to set the scene)

The cabin was silent except for the chattering of a squirrel on the roof.
~ second paragraph, Natural Selection by Liz Wolfe (silent --->chattering, used to set the scene)

Trouble was, the bride wasn't Jeannette Rose Brantford. The bride was Jeannette's identical twin sister, Janette Violet Brantford....
~ sixth and seventh sentences, The Husband Trap by Tracy Anne Warren (Rose--->Violet, used to set the premise and describe the characters) (Worth noting: twins switching places is a reversal used as a plot element.)

Example one is genfic. Two is paranormal romance. Three is a mystery. Four is historical romance. The oldest of these titles has a 2004 copyright date.

We're going to explore this idea a bit further, but I want to make sure first that everyone is on the same page. (Haha, punny -- that page would be the first, yes?) (Ah, nothing like wordgeek humor on a Friday afternoon.) (I'll shut up now.)

Sentence-Level Tension and Reversals

Some of you may be familiar with the concept of reversals on the large-scale level. Reversals -- taking a plot element and literally reversing it -- enhance reader interest because in those moments, things change. If a sidekick is alive on one page and dead on the next, this is a reversal. If the romantic leads are in red-hot lust on one page, and seeing red on the next, this is a reversal. We could go on an on, examining plot twists and black moments for reversal elements which make the readers pay attention.

If you shrink this concept down to the sentence level by incorporating disparate or oppositional elements, you'll create instant tension. "Tension" in this case doesn't refer to stress or the kind of mood you endure when you want to slap someone but must smile instead. Instead, we're using the term to describe the intrigued but unsettled feeling that enhances the reading experience. Tension engages the reader.

You might be used to thinking of this concept as "raising story questions," but I think that's an only partly accurate way to describe the effect on the reader. Yes, the prose might very well raise story questions when it uses this kind of tension. But how often do you, as a reader, pause to articulate those questions? Probably, instead, you enter the mood of the sentence and keep reading. You become engaged, but you don't break the flow to figure out why.

Think of Dickens, who executed sentence level reversals all over the place. Who can forget the classic beginning to A Tale of Two Cities?

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

The reversal in that sentence is obvious. Best ---> worst. Do you, as a reader, literally stop to formulate a question after reading this? The question might be too obvious to make us pause. How can a time be both best and worst? We read on for an explanation.

Dickens ended A Tale of Two Cities with a similar tension statement:

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

The change here is Doing ---> Resting. He doesn't use this technique to raise story questions. The story is over at this point. Instead, he uses it because it's just darn good writing. He wants to keep the reader engaged in the text right to the last words, and he uses this sentence-level reversal to accomplish that.

Once you are aware of this sentence technique, you'll start to see it everywhere.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
--- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (single ---> married, or at least wanting to get married)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
--- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (happy ---> unhappy, but also alike ---> unique)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
--- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (hero ---> supporting role)

Look around you. Flip through some of your favorite stories. Do you see any reversals in sentences? Look in openings in particular, because clever writers tend to rely on this kind of tension to engage the readers very quickly.

Which is why we're talking about this technique now. We're looking at openings, at everything that precedes the inciting incident, and this is one technique guaranteed to drive the reader forward into the meat of your story.

Does anyone have any examples to share?

Theresa