McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Mind control to further plot?
Quantus:
--- Quote from: (FM) on May 11, 2012, 11:26:19 AM ---It's a tone that can be used to create depths of fear or despair in the reader that are simply impossible otherwise. It limits in one direction, but very much expands in another, which is why it is a trope of the horror genre. I think SF and fantasy don't do enough of it by half, and the books that manage it are the ones I usually wind up enjoying the most.
--- End quote ---
Agreed, when used with . However that powerless, swept along feel is, for me at least, all build-up to at least one big action, big choice, that actually does matter. That moment when the coward butters jumps on the Denarians back and saves the big bad wizard. Without that moment of importance you end up with War of the Worlds, where everybody runs around for a while until the badguys fall over for no apparent reason. Interesting thought experiment, but not the book I like to curl up with on a rainy day.
Figging Mint:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 11, 2012, 12:46:45 PM --- Without that moment of importance you end up with War of the Worlds
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Or Helliconia Spring/Summer/Winter. Or Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco.
People differ; I find plots that conclude without moments of individual importance to be quite comforting. Because the existence of collective, group mechanisms and external factors significant enough to be game changers on their own is quite realistic and quite better framed on the same scale as we (individuals) perceive our own world. IOW and IMO, looking at real world history as a collection of moments of individual importance misses the boat and leaves me with a queasy feeling - why should fiction be different?
Quantus:
--- Quote from: (FM) on May 11, 2012, 01:21:39 PM ---Or Helliconia Spring/Summer/Winter. Or Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco.
People differ; I find plots that conclude without moments of individual importance to be quite comforting. Because the existence of collective, group mechanisms and external factors significant enough to be game changers on their own is quite realistic and quite better framed on the same scale as we (individuals) perceive our own world.
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Fair enough, i am certainly no the norm in my tastes, let alone the only thing out there. And Ill admit Ive never heard of either of those.
But to bring it back to the point that sparked this, In general, do you find Main Characters whose Choices are unimportant and don't matter to be "worth caring about and reading about"? I am just having a hard time figuring out how this would work. If he doesnt matter, then to my mind he would need to be close to a character that does, at which point he has become a Chronicler, not the MC himself (like a less useful Watson). If no character on stage matters, then why am I focusing on them instead of something that matters more. I am having a hard time imagining an interesting story with meaningful Conflict that is devoid of meaningful Choice.
To be clear, Im not saying that the MC has to be saving the world every time; maybe the story is just about surviving Bad Things. But in that story context their survival is what Matters, even if its a smaller stage.
Figging Mint:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 11, 2012, 01:39:46 PM ---But to bring it back to the point that sparked this, In general, do you find Main Characters whose Choices are unimportant and don't matter to be "worth caring about and reading about"? I am just having a hard time figuring out how this would work.
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Yes, certainly, on "a day in the life" type of level.
--- Quote --- I am having a hard time imagining an interesting story with meaningful Conflict that is devoid of meaningful Choice.
--- End quote ---
Pretty much every historical-immersion type reality show works this way, no? I mean none of the choices TV characters make while living in the Victorian house/Colonial village/Cod fishing shack are really meaningful Choice. Yet we're fascinated by their human-level interactions and the meanings they impose on those.
--- Quote ---To be clear, Im not saying that the MC has to be saving the world every time; maybe the story is just about surviving Bad Things. But in that story context their survival is what Matters, even if its a smaller stage.
--- End quote ---
I can make the case that in stories like Asimov's Nightfall (or in real world stories like Grapes of Wrath), there is no individual choice or moment that will significantly improve the characters' outlook. What's important is that the character is fully engaged in their world, and has feelings about it that we can relate to, and hopes that we can relate to. Individual hope sets tension far better than rigged externalisms, imo.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 11, 2012, 01:39:46 PM ---But to bring it back to the point that sparked this, In general, do you find Main Characters whose Choices are unimportant and don't matter to be "worth caring about and reading about"?
--- End quote ---
Yes. Absolutely. (And even your capitalising "choices" is making me a little uncomfortable.)
I may be coming from a slightly unusual perspective on this; my experience living with OCD is such that it is unarguably obvious to me that no amount of wish or desire (or "will" if you want to use that concept) suffices on its own to even make my own mind and body do what I want them to do, some unpredictable amount of the time, let alone affect the rest of the world. I don't, in other words, believe in free will, at least in the way it is formulated in the DV, and I find philosophical formalisations centring on and valorising free will and constructing responsibility accordingly to very easily fail in a direction equivalent to telling a paraplegic "Of course we'll get you a wheelchair but you just have to show you deserve it by running up these nine flights of stairs first."
--- Quote --- If no character on stage matters, then why am I focusing on them instead of something that matters more. I am having a hard time imagining an interesting story with meaningful Conflict that is devoid of meaningful Choice.
--- End quote ---
I think we're using different values of "meaningful"; I've never been particularly sold on conflict being an essential ingredient to a story worth reading, and I am sufficiently solidly convinced that significance is entirely subjective that if you show me a character happy that their day-to-day, unconflicted life is meaningful and worthwhile, sure I'll identify with that and find it emotionally congenial and reassuring.
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