July 6, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
Depending who you talk to, you’ll either here one of two things when it comes to setting: “It’s not important” or “OMG! It’s TEH most important thing EVER!!!!111! It’s like a character!” I like to think it’s somewhere in the middle. More like, “It’s alright.” Alone, it doesn’t really matter all that much. Just think about some sci-fi or fantasy stories that begin with a whole bunch of world-building. Do you read it and enjoy it? Or do you toss that book away and find another that doesn’t waste your time? Most likely, you choose the latter. A wonderful sci-fi novel like Starship Troopers starts with the character and his/her problems and slowly introduces that vast universe. We need someone whose eyes we can see the world from, regardless of how similar or how different that setting is.
You see, setting is merely an extension of character and vice versa. It’s all human psychology. There are those wealthy people in the world who know little of the struggles of everyday people, who may suffer the stress of running a business, of raising their kids, of hosting a great dinner party, of having the nicest home on the block, of being able to afford the latest toy, but they don’t know hunger or homelessness, what it’s like to go to school and feel unsafe or wondering if this month’s check will clear in time to starve off eviction. We are all products of our environment, but we also help to shape them too. The world we are born into represents who we are as much we represent it. The wealthy man might not know what happens in other spheres, but he knows firmly what the people are like in his own. However, if you take him out of his bubble and subject him to another’s, suddenly, there’s the germ of change–for good or for bad. That experience causes him to look at his life and home differently. The clashing of cultures, people from different places interacting, is what helps us move forward as human beings. We recognize the threat of the other, the unknown, and either adapt or resist. The wealthy man, after his encounter with the working poor, might come back to his life with a renewed appreciation. He might return and wonder how such inequality exists. He might come back and decide that he’s entitled to what he has. He might walk in through the doors of his mansion and realize that those people he just saw are nothing more than scum who need to be eradicated. It’s all a matter of perspective and experience.
As I’ve said before, there are really only two kinds of stories that exist: Someone goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. When we look at plot this way, it demonstrates the value of setting. It is a harbinger of change. All it depends on is how small your bubble is. In the novel Norwegian Wood, the protagonist’s sphere of influence is his small town of Kobe–or maybe even smaller. It may be his close group of friends: him (Toru), Naoko, and Kizuki (Naoko’s boyfriend). But the novel takes place in bustling Toyko during the 1960s, when Toru finds himself a student in college and must struggle to fit into this new world. Toyko is vastly different, and with it come all kinds of strange characters, like Storm Trooper, Toru’s roommate who keeps their dorm spotless and wakes up at six AM to exercise. Toru finds this new place strange along with it’s inhabitants, but he also learns to adapt. Naoko, who also moved to Toyko, can’t and finds herself in a mental institution outside Kyoto in the mountains. This, coincidentally, is what drives the plot of the novel.
The beginning of Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is an excellent example. Just look at the first paragraph.
Her doctor had told Julian’s mother that she must lose twenty pounds on account of her blood pressure, so on Wednesday nights Julian had to take her downtown on the bus for a reducing class at the Y. The reducing class was designed for working girls over fifty, who weighed from 165 to 200 pounds. His mother was one of the slimmer ones, but she said ladies did not tell their age or weight. She would not ride the buses by herself at night since they had been integrated, and because the reducing class was one of her few pleasures, necessary for her health, and free, she said Julian could at least put himself out to take her, considering all she did for him. Julian did not like to consider all she did for him, but every Wednesday night he braced himself and took her.
Julian and his mother come from a more suburban region in the south, but in order to get to the Y, they have to go into the city, where black people and white people have to interact. Travelling itself is a problem and is an extension of the greater conflict of the story: Julian’s mother’s racism. She is a product of the Old South, who sees the world in simpler terms. Julian is much more experienced and has seen other parts of life besides the plantation, but he’s no saint either. He uses his progressiveness as a dagger, something to twist in his mother’s side. He doesn’t want to make friends with black people because he values them as individuals, but because he hates his mother and what she stands for. The question, of course, is whether this story could take place anywhere else? The short answer is yes and no.
Yes, because racism and integration are not unique to America or the 1960s. This story could have easily taken place in South Africa at the end of apartheid. It could be reimagined with aliens–like a District 9. Those points of view would be the same regardless: They are not special in the realm of human experience. However, I also say no, because the American south of the 1960s has a different flavor than any other place in history. It is unique, and it shows in those characters. The things they say, the places they go, the things they think, the conflicts they encounter, are unique to that setting and that setting alone.
Themes are universal. How you demonstrate them is specific.
June 14, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
When I was young and stupid and frivolous, I thought following a form was the most limiting thing you could do as a writer. I liked pushing boundaries, discovering new horizons, creating something truly new and unique. And even though I had a way with words, I had difficulty turning in a well-composed essay. Don’t get me wrong now. My papers were never awful, but invariably, I would get it back with comments critiquing the organization and the buried argument. Of course, it wasn’t until I started teaching that I really learned how to fix those problems. I did, of course, get better over time, but teaching really put things in perspective for me and I was able to find a common thread between the academic essay and storytelling.
The academic essay is probably one of the easiest forms to understand but one of the hardest to master. It’s simplicity is its greatest strength, and the part that trips up most budding writers. It’s essentially three parts: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The introduction presents the topic and what others have said about the subject, which leads logically to your thesis, the heart of your paper, the main argument which you intend to prove. The body offers evidence and interpretation of that evidence which supports the paper’s thesis. The conclusion provides an interpretation of the argument you’ve presented and explains its significance to your field/subject/audience. And the short story or novel or poem can follow those same rules.
A story’s theme is its thesis, the answer to question that drives the writer to keep writing to the end, to discover what possibilities exist. A great story aims to prove something the same way an academic essay does. And typically, if the writer is any good, he or she plants those seeds in the very first paragraph–if not lines.
Let’s look at Joyce’s “Araby” as an example. The story itself is a simple one: Boy meets girl, falls in love, learns she wants to go to the festival but can’t, decides to buy her a present, but ends up leaving empty handed. This is not what I would call exciting. I’ve done that on a weekend (and for most of my adolesent life). So what? But that’s the thing: It’s not just the events that are important, but how they are told and experienced by the narrator which determines the genius of the story. The work dwells heavily on the theme of love vs. lust and learning the difference in the soul-crushing wasteland of Irish-Catholic Dublin.
The story begins:
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The first paragraph alone sets up the narrator’s problem. His street in Dublin is “blind.” And even though he’s saying that it’s a dead end, that diction choice parallels the final image of the story as the boy stumbles in the darkness and his eyes burn with anguish. Joyce is implictly showing us the problem of the story, using his theme and symbol to do so. The street is a stand in for our narrator. He too finds a dead end in his “love” for Madgen’s sister, but also, the choice of blind alludes to his own blindness, his inability to differentiate between love and lust. And notice the end of the first sentence, the reversal that occurs. The only time the street is happy is when the school “sets the boys free.” Again, this is no mistake on the part of the author. Joyce is saying that casting off the fetters of religion is the only way to achieve happiness and enlightenment. Lust is OK–as long as you’re OK with it too. It’s a human emotion that we all feel. Why should we surpress it? Why should we be embarassed by it? Why should we bow down to the mores of the Church?
Of course, the next paragraph elaborates on that idea further, with a description of the narrator’s house, and it is this theme the story keeps coming back to.
Later on, Joyce writes:
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house…. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring:
–O love! O love! many times.
This is the thesis of the story, the theme, the part where the author most obviously addresses the question. Here we have the conflict of religion and instinct, of love and lust. The boy is praying, but the diction choices betray his innocence. It doesn’t sound like a typical prayer but, instead, more like masturbation or Onanism, which is forbidden. But the boy cries out in “love” because he doesn’t know what to do with those feelings. He doesn’t know what that twitching in his pants means, and he mistakes them for love. And his dialogue with Madgen’s sister only furthers that point:
She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said; she would love to go.
–And why can’t you? I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
–It’s well for you, she said.
–If I go, I said, I will bring you something.
This exchange highlights her absolute lack of interest in the narrator, and his failure to recognize it. Here is a girl who’s just being nice, talking to this slightly younger, immature boy, and when he says he will go, she says, “It’s well for you.” That might be one of the most backhanded things she could have said. She really doesn’t care if he goes. She’s only humoring him with the conversation. But the narrator is too blinded by “love” to notice.
It’s only in the darkness of the bazaar, when the narrator witnesses the bawdy talk of a young English woman and some boys (not at all Arabian or exotic as he was led to believe) that he has his ephipany:
At the door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their conversation.
–O, I never said such a thing!
–O, but you did!
–O, but I didn’t!
–Didn’t she say that?
–Yes. I heard her.
–O, there’s a… fib!
Observing me the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:
–No, thank you.
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.
This is the moment when things become clear for him. We aren’t privvy to the entire conversation, but we can assume by her denial that it’s something “bad,” something which she feels the need to deny three times (and look over her shoulder at the boy). (It was improper to write about sex in the early 1900s, after all.) The narrator is coming to grips with his own blindness, learning that the emotion he feels is not love: He wants Madgen’s sister sexually, not romantically. He now sees himself “as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and [his] eyes burned with anguish and anger,” which completes the cycle.
We begin with an introduction of the subject (religion and instinct/love and lust), then we get our thesis (confusing one for the other), then our body (the boy’s story goal, his journey to the bazaar, and not buying a present), and finally our conclusion (recognizing the difference, the “so what?” moment of the story).
Every great story should aim to let its theme inform it the same way. It must the infect the work entirely. It may not lead to an ephiphany like Joyce’s work, but regardless of its techinque, it still follows the story form and addresses its story question. It must be there from the start and seen through to the end. Bad or unsuccessful stories make the mistake of ignoring theme or misusing it or undermining what they are trying to say, but great stories dwell on it, return it time and time again. Without it, all you have is a series of events that aren’t worth reading in the first place.
June 11, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
When it comes to plot, structure, and form, people too often confuse one for the other and discussing all three doesn’t exactly help. However, all three are an extension of the same source and must be viewed as blocks which build one on top of the other, originating from the story’s theme.
I like to think of it this way:
Theme determines form: form determines structure: structure determines plot.
With that said, we’ll start at the macro level and work our way down.
Plot
Plot, in its most basic description, is nothing more than a series of events which happen over the course of a story. E. M. Forster, in Aspects of the Novel, gives the following definition: “A plot is…a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. ‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.” Unlike Forster, I don’t see much of a distinction between plot and story; however, his emphasis on causality is of great importance.
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Rob DiCristino, of the Ugly Club Podcast, introduced me to a wonderful exercise for plot, which he learned from Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park. Apparently, the writers gave a lecture on narrative at some film school or another. (I am ignorant to most of the details.) And they said when they first started working on the show, they would write out the events of the story and link them together with the phrase “and then.” In other words, they plot it like so: “Cartman ate chicken wings, and then he went to the bathroom.” It wasn’t long before the writers recognized the flaw in this model. It didn’t emphasize causation–what good stories are all about. And they modified the template accordingly. Instead of writing “and then,” they wrote “therefore.” So “Cartman ate chicken wings, and then he went to the bathroom” became “Cartman ate chicken wings, and therefore he went to the bathroom.” Of course, what if the first event was undermined in some way? This too did they plan for. In those instances, they wrote “but.” So now we have “Cartman ate chicken wings and needed to go to the bathroom, but he was stopped by Mr. Garrison.”
This, I think, is one of the finest and simplest ways to look at a narrative.
Each event is not seperate or disparate, unrelated and cut off, but a larger part in a causal chain.
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My writing mentor, Bob Mooney, was a student of the late, great John Gardner and his advice to me was often verbatim from one of Gardner’s books. While he oversaw my thesis, Bob would write out little aphorisms on the manuscript. When I had too much summary, he would write, like Henry James used to, “Dramatize! Dramatize!” But there was one that really stuck with me: “There are only two kinds of plots: Someone goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” This is one of those old apochraphals that Gardner supposedly said, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bob had heard from the man himself. But when I thought about it, I realized, as much as I didn’t want to admit that such a binary could exist in art, it’s pretty damn true. Just think about all the great works in literature. The Odyssey: Someone goes on a journey. Beowulf: A stranger comes to town. Hamlet: Someone goes on a journey. The Tempest: A stranger comes to town.
And if you think about it, it’s really the expression of the same thing: It’s all a matter of perspective. The Dark Knight is a story of a stranger (The Joker) coming to town–a threat to the status quo–but if you flip it on it’s head and look at it not from Batman’s perspective but The Joker’s, it’s his journey.
Plot is a disruption of the ordinary and the effort to restore it but slightly improved. Of course, a good plot is not so simple. The master’s show us that these events don’t just exist to further the plot but to demonstrate something larger.
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In Paul Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, The Wife, and Her Lover, the titular wife is trapped in a marriage to a loud-mouth gangster who spends his time in an opulent restaurant, pontificating about shit and sex, and she finds love in a bookish professor who eats alone (a stranger comes to town). Every action of the film relates to its themes of high vs. low pleasures–shitting, eating, and fucking vs. culture and love. Our heros consummate their relationship in the restaurant’s bathroom, then move to the kitchen, and finally his study. It is a literal movement towards those higher pleasures. Of course, the thief of the title tries to drag them back, using those lower pleasures: He mashes peas in the the professor’s book, insults his wife about her regularity, and force feeds the professor the pages of his own books. These events are not arbitrary. They are ripe for analysis. They communicate the grandness of this work of art. Plot, ultimately, is a reflection of theme.
Structure
Structure isn’t as complicated as most people make it out to be. It’s just like a good academic essay. There’s an introduction which explains the subject and sets out a point that it will prove, a body which proves the thesis, and a conclusion that wraps it up and answers that question of “So What?” It can vary here and there. It can be linear or non-linear. It can be logical or illogical. But at the end of the day, it’s all, more or less, the same thing: a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Of course, we can break that down a little further.
(The following breakdown is a bastardization of a variety of sources, most notably, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.)
Beginning/Act One
- Status Quo/Something’s Missing: This is world before the disruption. Things are mostly copacetic. It’s Luke living on the farm with his aunt and uncle in Star Wars. Of course, even though people are happy and there are no threats, there’s still something missing from our main character’s life. In Star Wars, Luke is looking for a life of adventure, but on the farm, he’s not getting it.
- Inciting Incident: This is the moment that changes everything. This is when the bad guy shows up or the telegram in the mail. To return to the Star Wars example, it is finding the message from Princess Leia.
- Debate/Theme Stated: Of course, change is scary, and no one will do so willingly. Luke wants to join Obi-Wan on his adventure, but he must attend to his duties on the farm…
- Can’t Go Home Again/Choose Act Two: This is when the choice becomes clear for the protagonist. He or she is no longer questioning themselves. Whatever was holding them back is gone. Luke returns home to find his aunt and uncle have been murdered, tying together his quest for adventure and revenge: He can leave with Obi-Wan and take on the Empire.
Middle/Act Two
- The First Obstacle/Shit Just Got Real: This is the first roadblock in our hero’s path. They have a clear goal now, but there’s a hurdle they have to clear first. Even though Luke knows he has to rescue the princess, he doesn’t know how he will get there; therefore, he must find himself a pilot, which he does in the form of Han Solo.
- B Story: This is the nugget of the story, the subplot that emphasizes the theme. It is a nice little distraction to the events. Typically, this comes in the form of a love story, but of course, there are other possibilities as well. Luke and company have to board the Death Star (and evade Jabba), but they won’t be get there for a while, so, in that time, Obi-Wan can give him a little sage advice and training: Use the force; trust your instincts.
- Midpoint: Depending on whether the story is a tragedy or success, this is the point where everything is great or terrible. It is, at this point, our hero’s greatest success or failure. The hero has finally reached his goal. Luke boards the Death Star and saves the princess. However, things quickly go downhill from here.
- Bad Guys Close In/You’re Surrounded: The hero is surrounded and his success is short lived. He has to find a way out, which he does–only to find himself in an even worse situation. Luke has saved Leia, but they end up in the trash disposal with some kind of killer trash snake. And the walls are closing in. They’re all going to die!
- All is Lost/Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire: The hero has escaped one certain and found himself in another. The mentor dies. The odds are stacked against them. They’ve been going the wrong way. Obi-Wan sacrifies himself for Luke, and our heroes must battle their way out of the Death Star.
End/Act Three
- Third Act Twist: This is the ultimate change in direction. Our hero is done licking his wounds and being a bitch. He realizes what he must do to save the day. He puts on his big boy boots and flies straight towards the enemy. The Rebels decide to launch an assault on the Death Star, and they know just where to shoot.
- The Showdown: The villain and hero come face-to-face in a climatic battle. Things here will either go one way or the other: The hero wins or the villain does. Luke leads the Rebels to the Death Star, trusts his instincts (which calls back to our B Story), and takes it down with his torpedoes with Han’s help.
- Resolution: Everything returns back to normal. Our hero has accomplished his story goal and his character goal. He has changed for the better. This is the result of his happy (or unhappy) ending. Luke and company are given their commendations and everyone smiles for the camera.
Form
This is the most interesting and overlooked piece of the puzzle. Of course, it’s also the most difficult. But done right, this is a sign of absolute genius. It is an atom bomb that change an either genre in one drop. Form is the greatest expression of theme an author has. It is a question of how best to reflect the considerations at the heart of a work and often leads to innovation. It is a reconsideration of what that modality has to offer.
Works like As I Lay Dying, The Sound and The Fury, Naked Lunch, Watchmen, Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, and Ulysses demonstrate this better than most. In Watchmen, Moore creates a post-modern masterpiece which deconstructs the limitations of both comic books and their heroes. Each chapter borrows from a multitude of styles and genres. Chapter one concludes with a memoir excerpt. Chapter four has bits of a textbook. Chapter seven includes part of the psychological file on Rorschach. Moore, like Joyce, imagined new possibilities for his form. And both authors did so in order to emphasize their particular theme. Joyce wanted to expose the intricacies of the mind, the modes of consciousness, and the typical realist novel failed to prove capable: He combined elements of Greek myth and plundered every work of literature, creating a polyphonic cacophony of styles. Moore, on the other hand, wanted to expose the flaws of the super hero, but the typical comic book wouldn’t do. He needed to put them in the “real world” and rewrote the rules of the form in the process.
Form is as much a matter of technique as it is appearance. And no writer should ignore it.
So concludes our discussion of plot, structure, and form. Stay tuned as next time we will move into the heart of all stories, the very reason we write: theme.