Driving Need - Structure and Characterization

[NoJo]

Don't confuse literary criticism with a literary instruction either

That's a good point, well worth remembering. Like quite a few writers here, I've read the screenwriting gurus (Syd Field, William Goldman et al). I can't help thinking that their "prescriptions" are actually "descriptions": That they've analysed the structure of screenplays, found a set of patterns, and then made the mistake of turning those patterns into a set of templates for creating stories.

BUT: Having said that, I find the structural analysis of stories gives me quite a bit of help when trying to write, particulary with the thriller genre which I'm currently into.

Just yesterday I was trying to clarify a convoluted plot of mine, and I found myself resorting to a basic Syd Field technique (locating Plot Point 1 and Plot Point 2).

One of my favorite American Authors, John Barth, is also a professor of literature. He deliberately crafts his stories according to his own theory of narrative, which to some people gives his stories a rather affected and stylized feel.

John Barth uses the sexual act as a template for his narratives -- yannow, foreplay, climax, denoument (literally, "un-knotting"). As a lot of his books are over 800 pages long, he must have a very different approach to sex than me.

 

[CharleyH]

I've been slowly absorbing Adam Sexton's excellent "Master Course in Writing Fiction," and it came to me today that he'd incidentally shown what precisely is the problem with many erotic stories. He begins the book by discussing structure and suggests that the central structure of a good story is a definable, dramatically achievable (meaning you could see it being achieved or definitely failed) driving need of a central character. In "Finding Nemo," Nemo needs to get home and dad needs to find him; in "Hamlet" Hamlet needs to avenge his father's murder; in "The Hobbit" Bilbo needs to get to the dragon and succeed in stealing its treasure. You can have emotional/psychological needs too, but Sexton argues that to make something that is recognizably a story, you need that central physically enactable need.

There's a lot to his theory and it has really helped me to see how I keep running into problems with characters hanging about artistically being themselves and not going anywhere or accomplishing anything. It's also, I realized today, shown me what turns me off about many erotic stories, and what really, to me, differentiates "stroke" from "stories." In stroke, the characters all have the same driving need: they need to have sex. It's a basic human need, but it gets repetitive if that's all the characters need, and it doesn't generally develop their characters much because the other characters in the story have the same central need. That takes us into the idea of conflict shaping characterization, which is valid, but I think just the basic "what is my character's driving need?" goes quite far.

Thoughts? I looked through my own things and felt that the more clearly I had a non-sex need for the central character, the better I did indeed like the work. I also realized that the one story I took down had, indeed, no real central need other than "characters need to have sex and indulge their fetishes."

Shanglan

I tend to agree with you. However, one story I do really like in my own plethora of work, both of my characters are driven to have sex and, in a one off or one night stand, this is their only motivation - to have sex with eachother. It works suspensefully in this one case, but such motivation does not really carry most stories.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Well, I don't know. Either I already know all this stuff, or I don't understand a word of it.

He's saying a story has to have something happen in it and someone's got to do it. Upon that, we get to hang all this other stuff.

I know you, Shang. There's more to it than that.

Oh yes. Chapters more. But - possibly because I didn't already know Sexton's chief point, or hadn't realized it consciously - it struck me as quite a helpful place to start. I did have a bad habit of starting with interesting characters and letting them wander about the text without knowing, myself, what they needed or where they were going. In some of my stories they would have a clear need that was physically performable, but in others the need would be something nebulous like "needs to accept his sexuality" or "needs to overcome her resistence to her own identity." Because I had no concrete, performable needs attached to those internal desires, I had no idea where the story was going or when it might be finished. I would get lost in a morass of undirected psychological development in which events occurred because they shaped the characters the way I wanted them to, but not because they were leading to any identifiable external goal.

What was valuable to me in Sexton's approach was that it showed me a way to get those issues working together. It seems to me essentially a sort of reverse criticism/analysis - that is, instead of learning to examine images and symbols in the text and figure out what they might mean, it's showing me how to create them by finding the connection between internal needs and devleopment and external actions that can spur and demonstrate them. It's still holding to the old "show, don't tell" model, but helped me see how to put that into practice without placing internal and external development in conflict with each other. Instead, they become harmonious.

You're right - it's not anything hugely different to what most good writers would be doing without sticking labels on it or describing it. It's just been helpful to me because I, ah, wasn't always doing it. I'm finding the same thing with his chapters on character, plot, etc. He's generally describing things that I've already done in stories that worked well - but I didn't realize that that was part of why they worked well. Now, when I look at some notable failures, I can see what the problem is. I think that that is where criticism and practice have a good deal to say to each other - when I'm trying to critique my own work and figure out what works and what doesn't.

Shanglan

(Oh, and I must add that I'm awfully obliged for your kind opinion of me, Dr. M.)

 

[BlackShanglan]

John Barth uses the sexual act as a template for his narratives -- yannow, foreplay, climax, denoument (literally, "un-knotting"). As a lot of his books are over 800 pages long, he must have a very different approach to sex than me.

Nothing wrong with a good collection of short stories, so long as there are plenty of them in good quality.

Shanglan

 

[duddle146]

Comments are like literary roadmaps.

Well, I'm in over my head here - but, what a way to go! I have found many threads in the Author's Hangout that I really liked and enjoyed; but this one must be placed at the top, or near the top of any list.

Mr Shanglan and Company has hit us with a flash of Literary Lightning that has served to illuminate a lot of the less than clear areas of story writing. I'm off to try to figure out how to use all this wonderful advice! All I can say in conclusion is - What a Find!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

T
John Barth uses the sexual act as a template for his narratives -- yannow, foreplay, climax, denoument (literally, "un-knotting"). As a lot of his books are over 800 pages long, he must have a very different approach to sex than me.

That's great to know. That's what I've been saying all along, every since I discovered porn-writing. Seduction and sex have ALL the elements required of any plot - character, conflict, tension, emotion, struggle, drama, climax, resolution. That's exactly why I don't think plot is such a big deal in erotica - if done well, it's already there, built into it. You don't need people running around shooting at each other or looking for lost cities or throwing magic rings in Mt Doom.

In fact, I gave up writing for like 20 years because I could never come up with good plots, which is probably why the very word still makes me shudder. I really thought I had to have everything figured out before I sat down to write - all these twists and surprises and neat endings - and I could never do it. I wanted to write like John LeCarre. It wasn't till I discovered porn that I said the hell with plot and just started writing about people fucking and lo and behold, stories started appearing on their own.

Now I don't think about plots. I think about situations. I create characters and put them in situations and stories just kind of grow from there. (Or not.)

I also greatly admire the works of people like David Sedaris and old Kerouac an Paul Theroux who don't write stories at all, but just observations, but observations that are so delightful and enlightening that it's a pleasure to be with these guys. It just goes to show that if the prose is good enough, you don't need dramatic structure at all.

 

[Oblimo]

That doesn't mean that the obverse works though - that by reversing the process and following his dicta we're guaranteed to write a great story. Criticism is an tool of analysis, not a blueprint for construction.

If only more people would treat the story formula from Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces that way, the world would be a much better place.

 

[Oblimo]

That's a good point, well worth remembering. Like quite a few writers here, I've read the screenwriting gurus (Syd Field, William Goldman et al). I can't help thinking that their "prescriptions" are actually "descriptions": That they've analysed the structure of screenplays, found a set of patterns, and then made the mistake of turning those patterns into a set of templates for creating stories.

It may be a mistake, but the script readers are paid to look for those exact things. Books such Write Screenplays that Sell are like standardized test prep workbooks; they teach the test, not the subject. Since Hollywood and genre fiction publishing houses sell a market-tested, engineered product, it's possible to reverse engineer their output and give 'em what they want. Artistic merit is another matter.

Following the How-To's won't produce the next Citizen Kane, but the How-To's were never meant to help you write the next Citizen Kane in the first place, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Wells new the formulae and industry inside and out before he went his own way.

 

[past_perfect]

It may be a mistake, but the script readers are paid to look for those exact things. Books such Write Screenplays that Sell are like standardized test prep workbooks; they teach the test, not the subject. Since Hollywood and genre fiction publishing houses sell a market-tested, engineered product, it's possible to reverse engineer their output and give 'em what they want. Artistic merit is another matter.

Following the How-To's won't produce the next Citizen Kane, but the How-To's were never meant to help you write the next Citizen Kane in the first place, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Wells new the formulae and industry inside and out before he went his own way.

Well, you might be able to write another Citizen Kane ignoring all current formulae for success - however, you will find it exceedingly difficult to sell it. CK is a perfect example actually - you can easily find a bunch of people who would readily agree that it is a masterpiece, but confess that they have trouble sitting through the whole thing. If Wells submitted his script today, there's a good chance he'd be shot down.

However, in literature you can get away with much more and still be reasonably successful - at least for the time being.

 

[NoJo]

It may be a mistake, but the script readers are paid to look for those exact things. Books such Write Screenplays that Sell are like standardized test prep workbooks; they teach the test, not the subject. Since Hollywood and genre fiction publishing houses sell a market-tested, engineered product, it's possible to reverse engineer their output and give 'em what they want. Artistic merit is another matter.

Following the How-To's won't produce the next Citizen Kane, but the How-To's were never meant to help you write the next Citizen Kane in the first place, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Wells new the formulae and industry inside and out before he went his own way.

That's true enough. And script readers are a certainly one of the hurdles.

 

[CharleyH]

That's true enough. And script readers are a certainly one of the hurdles.

How so SJ?

 

[BlackShanglan]

Script readers have no power to get a script made, but they do have the power to reject it. They're generally heavily worked people at the thin end of the industry and they've got a set of general guidelines of what they are looking for. If they pass along things that meet those guidelines, they can't really be blamed for doing their jobs. If they pass along something that doesn't meet those guidelines, even if it's a work of searing artistic insight, they can be blamed for not doing their jobs, so they're going to be fairly cautious about violating their guidelines. They're aware that they are in a money-driven business for the most part, and that in most studios they're not going to be praised for passing along the year's most stunningly artistic script if it has no real prospects of earning a strong return on the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars it will take to make it.

They're basically the butlers of the movie-making world. They're there to turn away the riff-raff and ensure that the masters aren't badgered by every man passing in the street. If a script's going to get past them, it needs to look like a tradesman with genuine business in the place - and that may mean adopting some conventions to fit in.

Shanglan

 

[NoJo]

Script readers have no power to get a script made, but they do have the power to reject it. They're generally heavily worked people at the thin end of the industry and they've got a set of general guidelines of what they are looking for. If they pass along things that meet those guidelines, they can't really be blamed for doing their jobs. If they pass along something that doesn't meet those guidelines, even if it's a work of searing artistic insight, they can be blamed for not doing their jobs, so they're going to be fairly cautious about violating their guidelines. They're aware that they are in a money-driven business for the most part, and that in most studios they're not going to be praised for passing along the year's most stunningly artistic script if it has no real prospects of earning a strong return on the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars it will take to make it.

They're basically the butlers of the movie-making world. They're there to turn away the riff-raff and ensure that the masters aren't badgered by every man passing in the street. If a script's going to get past them, it needs to look like a tradesman with genuine business in the place - and that may mean adopting some conventions to fit in.

Shanglan

Charley, theres your answer from the horse's eloquent mouth