Controlling Characters, Help!

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AUNT SHABBY

Stevie is all over the map with his opinions about writing, but he does have a low opinion of plots...though he uses them in his stellar creations. He confuses plotting with 'painting by the numbers' art, popular in the 50s, but uses plots in disguise to fool himself.

 

[jomar]

Very true. You truly need situational and circumstantial and experiential diversity to craft stories from.

I thought of this today in association with the news story about the guy in a coma for 23 years (but conscious! the whole time). It will make a great story but a terrible book cuz the guy did the same shit for 23 straight years in a row.

It's already been done and made into a movie as well: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Just because you might start without a detailed plot doesn't mean you'll end up with a plotless story. That's the point that both Vonnegut and King are making in their separate ways. King, who comes out in that quote as being against plotting, produces books that are extremely structured and seem carefully planned, while Vonnegut--who advocates plot--writes novels that seem very haphazard and dramatically diffuse. But they both end up with great stories.

In a general sense, the purpose of most literature is the extraction of meaning from experience. Even if we're just writing the most simple fuck stories, we inject meaning into it by our attitudes toward the sex: it was wonderful, it was horrible, it was shocking, whatever. I think the same process happens when we write. We have an idea for a plot but very often we don't really know what it means till we start writing it. Emma started writing a story she thought was just about sex, but then found out it was also about a girl's spirit or character, so she had to change it to accommodate this new dimension.

That's the difference between plot and story, I guess. Plot has no intrinsic meaning, story does. Given the same plot, two different writers will come up with two totally different stories. The difference is in the meaning they give the acts.

When you write, you've got to allow for latitude in both plot and story development.

King says something else in his book that made me overcome my own resentment of his success and love the man. He says that to him, writing a story is like digging up a fossil. At first you just see a glimmer of bone lying on the ground. You don't know what it is, so you start digging and brushing away the dirt and uncovering more of it, but you still probably don't know what you have. You follow the bones and dig and scrape and eventually you get a complete story. Don't be surprised if it turns out to be not what you thought it was at first.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ELLIOTT

Like I alluded to, when Stevie King's brain is organized and sputtering along he cranks out some marvelous wonders, and when he wings it his stuff sux awful. Plus he steals from everyone worth a shit, and admits it....he fessed up in an interview.

But when your story sinks into the mud you just gotta get down in the mire and put your shoulder to the wheel with some plotting and outlining. I mean, your character drove your story into the ditch, so you gotta do something.

MY CHARACTERS TOOT THE WHISTLE, MY CHARACTERS RING THE BELL
BUT LET THE TRAIN RUN OFF THE TRACK, AND SEE WHO CATCHES HELL.

 

[3113]

"I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless...."

Just because you might start without a detailed plot doesn't mean you'll end up with a plotless story.

The movie Adaptation I think, handles this subject brilliantly. It's not a movie that most audiences enjoyed (even I didn't like it that much)--but then you really need to be a writer to understand what Charlie Kaufman (the screenwriter) is going on about and why this story starts to get weirder and weirder.

Kaufman self-referentially tells what seems to be his own autobiographical story of how he wrote this movie. Yet he adds in a fictional twin brother. He's given a plotless (because it's true life) book written by a New Yorker writer on a man who stole Orchids. He is told to adapt it as a screenplay.

The strange and winding road of the movie is his battle between his writer self who wants to stay true to the book and plotless life, and his fictional twin who wants to be a screenwriter and write a contrived and stupid story that's plotted in a conventional fashion. The movie shows how the story "adapts" and evolves from King's observation of life being "plotless" to that need of all stories to survive by having a plot, even if it's not true to life.

I don't always like Kaufman's movies, but I do love the fact that he always makes me think. And he's never so simplistic as most writers who only go so far but not far enough. Yes, life is plotless. But fiction is not. Which is why it's read.

 

[NoJo]

The most important question I have to answer before I know whether I have a story rather than say, a vignette or character portrait or an episodic fantasy is: "What happens?"

Now, in a lot of my favourite works of fiction, the answer is to that question is "not much, really". But in my own stories, I have to have it pretty clear. Even though I love reading (and writing) detailed observation, set-pieces, powerful or unusual imagery, I start to get a vague feeling of dissatisfaction when I begin to detect that underneath all the crackling prose the story's basically leading nowhere.

 

[NoJo]

The movie Adaptation I think, handles this subject brilliantly. It's not a movie that most audiences enjoyed (even I didn't like it that much)--but then you really need to be a writer to understand what Charlie Kaufman (the screenwriter) is going on about and why this story starts to get weirder and weirder.

Kaufman self-referentially tells what seems to be his own autobiographical story of how he wrote this movie. Yet he adds in a fictional twin brother. He's given a plotless (because it's true life) book written by a New Yorker writer on a man who stole Orchids. He is told to adapt it as a screenplay.

The strange and winding road of the movie is his battle between his writer self who wants to stay true to the book and plotless life, and his fictional twin who wants to be a screenwriter and write a contrived and stupid story that's plotted in a conventional fashion. The movie shows how the story "adapts" and evolves from King's observation of life being "plotless" to that need of all stories to survive by having a plot, even if it's not true to life.

I don't always like Kaufman's movies, but I do love the fact that he always makes me think. And he's never so simplistic as most writers who only go so far but not far enough. Yes, life is plotless. But fiction is not. Which is why it's read.

I thought it was the worst self-indulgent self-satisfied shallow, trite wank-fest I've ever seen. Watch Fellini's 8 1/2, made forty years ago to see how feebly pretentious it is compared with a really incisive and witty self-referential movie.

Grrr

 

[sr71plt]

The most important question I have to answer before I know whether I have a story rather than say, a vignette or character portrait or an episodic fantasy is: "What happens?"

My first question usually is "what's the twist?"

 

[DearEmma]

Update!

Thank you for all the advice and words of wisdom. I took all your advice *wink* (as though that were possible) and wrote Chap. 3 of Secret Life of an Invisible Girl and a damn good chapter it is, too.

She gets the gun, she gets naked and she gets even. What more could you want? It posted today and the jury is still out. I got favorited, a glowing review (and no, it was not me), and was well on my way to H until some a . . . hole, ahem, I mean discerning reader, must have given me a 1. (It posted in the afternoon, too, what's with that?)

Anyway, just wanted to let you know how it all turned out. And no, I will never, ever submit another story until I have finished it first. Lesson learned. Thank you very much. Now on to Chapter 4.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=452230

 

[lance gt]

Thank you for all the advice and words of wisdom. I took all your advice *wink* (as though that were possible) and wrote Chap. 3 of Secret Life of an Invisible Girl and a damn good chapter it is, too.

She gets the gun, she gets naked and she gets even. What more could you want? It posted today and the jury is still out. I got favorited, a glowing review (and no, it was not me), and was well on my way to H until some a . . . hole, ahem, I mean discerning reader, must have given me a 1. (It posted in the afternoon, too, what's with that?)

Anyway, just wanted to let you know how it all turned out. And no, I will never, ever submit another story until I have finished it first. Lesson learned. Thank you very much. Now on to Chapter 4.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=452230

One more quick tip on multi-chaptered stories. If you know your story is going to be two or more chapters, make sure you have the second chapter finished or almost done before posting the first. This keeps your readers interested in it and not lose them in the long wait between them. If I know it's three or more, I'll have the first two ready and be working on the third, so I have a buffer time to finish and keep the story fresh for the readers.

 

[driphoney]

One more quick tip on multi-chaptered stories. If you know your story is going to be two or more chapters, make sure you have the second chapter finished or almost done before posting the first. This keeps your readers interested in it and not lose them in the long wait between them. If I know it's three or more, I'll have the first two ready and be working on the third, so I have a buffer time to finish and keep the story fresh for the readers.

Or if you're like me, better have the whole freakin' thing done and do not allow yourself to make a change, 'cause it might be months before you get the next chapter spewed out.

Talk about losing momentum.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LANCE

The more I contemplate it the more I think writers should complete the whole shooting match before posting the first installment. Like I'm at 8700 words on my latest story, and it just occurred to me how to make the first part of it better.