Meme Answers 2
Aug. 25th, 2019 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerMore meme answers! ancientreader asked:
4. What’s better (or the least bad): character over plot or plot over character?
I have been known to complain vociferously about the primacy of plot in modern Western thought about How Stories Work (and I mean modern in the most recent possible sense: the older Disney films don’t suffer from this relentless drive to advance the plot all the time. Sometimes they stop dead so you can admire the beautifully animated cuckoo clocks) and the tragic fact that this has trained readers to expect plot instead of an endless succession of picnics.
So definitely character over plot. There are a few books I really love where the plot goes completely off the rails near the end, but I love the character work so much that it’s just like, eh, it would be nice if the ending was better, but it doesn’t really matter. (This is assuming that the ending isn’t bad in a character-assassinating kind of way, of course, but that’s a different problem than “the plot fell apart.”)
5. Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours?
I do, although now that I’ve written it I can think of a time when a story qua story changed my life; rather, my life has been shaped by the friendships that I’ve made through stories, like the way Emma and I bonded in sixth grade over our loathing of Cleon-as-love-interest in Squire and it ended up leading indirectly to most of my high school friend group. Or the various fandom friends I’ve made over the years. Also the “we don’t share a specific fandom but we all love books” friends.
I did decide against studying English in college directly as a result of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light, in which one of the characters warns Vicky Austen to major in something else because focusing on another subject will give her a wider understanding of the world and thus enrich her writing. As it happens I feel that this was a good choice, but all the same it seems like a somewhat flimsy basis on which to make a decision of that magnitude.
21. Would you like to write an alternative ending for any of your favorite shows/books/etc?
If I had to pick one, it would probably be Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie. The first four hundred pages or so are a beautiful exploration of one high school girl’s loneliness and difficulty making friends (and I really liked the fact that this difficulty arises from genuine aspects of her personality; it’s not a “she’s perfect and no one appreciates her” story), and then suddenly as we close in on the end we take a sudden left turn into thriller territory as it turns out that Bindy is being slowly POISONED by a group of THIEVES.
I feel that Moriarty suddenly realized that she didn’t have nearly enough space left to solve Bindy’s problems, which in a way is fair: once you’ve spent 400 pages exploring the dimensions of Bindy’s loneliness, which has come about because her father has taught her to relate to other people as potential instruments rather than human beings and funnily enough this hasn’t made her popular with her classmates, and that lack of popularity has fed into fragile, prickly superiority complex (they don’t like her because she’s smarter than they are!) which only serves to push people farther away -
Once you’ve spent the bulk of the book exploring the many dimensions of this dilemma, any solution that you offer is either going to feel hastily tacked on (suddenly Bindy finds friends!) or painfully fragile and tentative (Bindy finds friends, but we’ve spent so much time establishing Bindy’s interpersonal problems that it’s not clear if she can keep them).
So I can see why Moriary tried to short circuit this dilemma through trauma-bonding. Bindy finds friends when they all realize she’s being POISONED! And SAVE HER LIFE! But in fact this just opens not so much a can of worms as entire worm-infested acres. Three separate adults whom Bindy trusted were secretly trying to poison her! That’s going to wreak merry havoc on her ability to trust anyone.
And it’s especially devastating given that adults tend to like Bindy more than her peers did, and Bindy certainly trusted them far more than she trusted her peers, so this is going to undermine her faith in the one group of people she trusted in the first place.
I don’t know precisely how I’d rewrite the ending, but it would definitely involve no conspiracy, less poisoning (we can keep the part where Bindy has some minor lead poisoning from the house she’s working on for her dad; that fits with her dad’s general effect on her life), and a lot more of Bindy and her classmates taking baby steps toward understanding each other. I don’t mind if the happiness at the ending feels fragile. As long as it’s hopeful!
ancientreader asked:4. What’s better (or the least bad): character over plot or plot over character?
I have been known to complain vociferously about the primacy of plot in modern Western thought about How Stories Work (and I mean modern in the most recent possible sense: the older Disney films don’t suffer from this relentless drive to advance the plot all the time. Sometimes they stop dead so you can admire the beautifully animated cuckoo clocks) and the tragic fact that this has trained readers to expect plot instead of an endless succession of picnics.
So definitely character over plot. There are a few books I really love where the plot goes completely off the rails near the end, but I love the character work so much that it’s just like, eh, it would be nice if the ending was better, but it doesn’t really matter. (This is assuming that the ending isn’t bad in a character-assassinating kind of way, of course, but that’s a different problem than “the plot fell apart.”)
5. Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours?
I do, although now that I’ve written it I can think of a time when a story qua story changed my life; rather, my life has been shaped by the friendships that I’ve made through stories, like the way Emma and I bonded in sixth grade over our loathing of Cleon-as-love-interest in Squire and it ended up leading indirectly to most of my high school friend group. Or the various fandom friends I’ve made over the years. Also the “we don’t share a specific fandom but we all love books” friends.
I did decide against studying English in college directly as a result of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light, in which one of the characters warns Vicky Austen to major in something else because focusing on another subject will give her a wider understanding of the world and thus enrich her writing. As it happens I feel that this was a good choice, but all the same it seems like a somewhat flimsy basis on which to make a decision of that magnitude.
21. Would you like to write an alternative ending for any of your favorite shows/books/etc?
If I had to pick one, it would probably be Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie. The first four hundred pages or so are a beautiful exploration of one high school girl’s loneliness and difficulty making friends (and I really liked the fact that this difficulty arises from genuine aspects of her personality; it’s not a “she’s perfect and no one appreciates her” story), and then suddenly as we close in on the end we take a sudden left turn into thriller territory as it turns out that Bindy is being slowly POISONED by a group of THIEVES.
I feel that Moriarty suddenly realized that she didn’t have nearly enough space left to solve Bindy’s problems, which in a way is fair: once you’ve spent 400 pages exploring the dimensions of Bindy’s loneliness, which has come about because her father has taught her to relate to other people as potential instruments rather than human beings and funnily enough this hasn’t made her popular with her classmates, and that lack of popularity has fed into fragile, prickly superiority complex (they don’t like her because she’s smarter than they are!) which only serves to push people farther away -
Once you’ve spent the bulk of the book exploring the many dimensions of this dilemma, any solution that you offer is either going to feel hastily tacked on (suddenly Bindy finds friends!) or painfully fragile and tentative (Bindy finds friends, but we’ve spent so much time establishing Bindy’s interpersonal problems that it’s not clear if she can keep them).
So I can see why Moriary tried to short circuit this dilemma through trauma-bonding. Bindy finds friends when they all realize she’s being POISONED! And SAVE HER LIFE! But in fact this just opens not so much a can of worms as entire worm-infested acres. Three separate adults whom Bindy trusted were secretly trying to poison her! That’s going to wreak merry havoc on her ability to trust anyone.
And it’s especially devastating given that adults tend to like Bindy more than her peers did, and Bindy certainly trusted them far more than she trusted her peers, so this is going to undermine her faith in the one group of people she trusted in the first place.
I don’t know precisely how I’d rewrite the ending, but it would definitely involve no conspiracy, less poisoning (we can keep the part where Bindy has some minor lead poisoning from the house she’s working on for her dad; that fits with her dad’s general effect on her life), and a lot more of Bindy and her classmates taking baby steps toward understanding each other. I don’t mind if the happiness at the ending feels fragile. As long as it’s hopeful!
no subject
Date: 2019-08-25 07:49 pm (UTC)That seems like a lot.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-25 08:40 pm (UTC)YESSSSSSSSS THANK YOU
I always think of Le Guin's essay taking off from Virginia Woolf's Mrs Brown. Especially in genre, so many books are so plot-driven and it feels very mechanical after a while. I'm there for the people.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 01:47 am (UTC)Or rather, how big is the market; there are clearly individual people who would enjoy it, but are there enough to support a subgenre?
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 01:49 am (UTC)And I don't think plot is confined just to stuff blowing up or even physical happenings, either -- some of the most intense stuff I've read turns on emotions and 'small' gestures a la Chekhov.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 04:03 am (UTC)Same. Several complaints I have about recent books and movies, in fact, boil down to ". . . and then the plot happened to them."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-27 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 05:38 pm (UTC)ETA: Also, to your remark about Disney movies stopping dead to admire clocks or whatever. I have not seen many Disney movies, old or new, but I do notice how impatient many readers are with so-called digressions in fiction. I am not sure I could enjoy Moby-Dick now as much as I did 45 years ago, before knowledge of cetacean sentience was widespread, but Melville's footnotes and branchings-off in that book are delicious, and often funny, too. I have the impression that the writers who do that sort of thing now are mostly dudebros taking themselves Seriously Because They Are Important, which is a shame.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-27 01:32 am (UTC)To be fair, I think the whale digressions in Moby-Dick were always controversial - it wasn't a popular book when it came out, after all, so this may not be matter of time period so much as some readers love digressions and other readers Do Not See the Point and ne'er the twain shall meet.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-31 03:31 am (UTC)It could still leave some, albeit much less dramatic, potential for friendships to be made through trying to save Bindy's life, too -- she's still being poisoned by her father's toxicity and her own unhealthy ideas about the world and also the wallpaper (or whatever it was in the house).
no subject
Date: 2019-09-01 06:56 pm (UTC)