existentialist postmodernism

[SeaCat]

When i sit down to write a story, the plot is vague in my mind. It is the characters who are alive and fully formed. They are what drive my stories.

When i sit down to write I don't sit down alone, I sit down with my characters when I come to a situation I ask them what they would do, how they would deal with that problem or that person. (Yeah sometimes it does get crowded and rowdy around the computer.) My characters help me to write the story, they read it over my shoulder and tell me when I make them do something they wouldn't do. They drive the story, I just write it.

Cat

 

[amicus]

I'm too tired to apply to the rest of the post, but on this last bit, yes and no, in that order.

Animals have free will because they think. It may not be very in-depth thought, but there is still thought and therefore they have free will. Computers don't think. Computers make choices, but only based upon what they have been programmed with. Even with intuitive and learning AI, a computer does not think (as yet. We'll wait for Daneel). Therefore it cannot have free will.

The Earl

Tangent: Lord, that name R Daneel Olivaw brought up some memories. I haven't read those books in years! Thanks for the nudge Gauche, I feel a reread coming on.

Tangent also...yes indeed many, many years ago, the name and the Foundation Trilogy...I think...if memory serves...thanks for the memories...

amicus...

 

[Huckleman2000]

[snip]A few have said, with regard to the corollary, 'character writing' is as near to free will as we can get. When our characters decide what they will do rather than what we want them to do.
But as Earl pointed out, if there is nothing that makes our realistic characters behave uncharacteristically then we don't have a story but a dull tale.
As Liar said, it's unusual situations that make a story.
I'm close to agreeing with Boota and Colleen that our characters will do as they will (and should) when we throw them a curve ball. ...

I still think an actor's point of view illuminates this discussion. Theater is the artform where writers actually see their characters alive, in the situations they've devised. The actor's craft relies heavily on discerning the character's motivation, separate from the playwright's. I daresay more than one playwright has been surprised by the choices made by the 'characters' they thought they created, even though the characters are confined to the plot as written.

Having said that, a general rule that has served me well as an actor, is this: The stranger the situation the character finds himself in, the straighter it has to be played. Or, when you're being abducted by aliens is usually not the time to be chewing the scenery (William Shatner notwithstanding). The unbelievable nature of the circumstance requires the most believable performance style, or that suspension of disbelief that lil'Elvis described will never take place. As writers, take from that what you will.

 

[shereads]

How can we realistically give our characters free will?

Corollary: Is a character driven story more realistic than a plot driven one?

How can there be a yes-or-no answer to that question in fiction when there isn't one in real life, Gauche?

"Man Bites Dog" is plot-motivated to everyone except the man with the mouthful of dog fur. If an author of fiction wrote a story about it, I'd expect that by the time we got to the biting I'd be right there in the protagonist's head thinking, "There's nothing else for it except to bite the dog." In real life, we rarely have the luxury of knowing what motivates someone to do something unexpected.

That's part of fiction's appeal. An author creates a character and gives us clues about certain kinds of behavior. We're usually denied the clues in real life, so we draw our own conclusions. As readers, we bring those ideas to your stories. ("I would never do that." "No mother would do that.")

Every aspect of human behavior that's newsworthy or makes a good story is unbelievable from someone's perspective. Parents send kids to sleepovers at Michael Jackson's house: unbelievable. People hate strangers enough to die killing hundreds of them: I don't buy it.

If you were writing a story about any one of these people, how would you make their behavior believable:

The husband and father and working man who lived a secret life as a serial rapist/murderer; the wife who insists she never suspected a thing. The murder victim and her killer who seem so much in love in their wedding photos. My friend's cheerful, confident young daughter, described by everyone close to her as "happy" and "a joy to be around," right up to the day she killed herself - brutally, in the presence of people she supposedly loved. She didn't leave a clue about her motive; if you wrote her story, you'd either invent one to satisfy your readers or you'd leave us wondering.

In her case, if you described the character exactly as I knew her, and her suicide exactly as it happened, I wouldn't believe it.

Did she have free will?

As an author of fiction, can you expect to make people more believable than people really are?


Edited to add: What I find hard to believe in story scenarios like the one you describe - the mom who walks in on her kid masturbating and decides to seduce him - is that typically, in stories meant to be titillating, there are no emotional or social repercussions. It's the same with fantasy rape stories where the victim climaxes like crazy. But I accept in those instances that the writer wasn't trying to create character portraits.

In a serious story of parent-child incest or rape, I'd expect something else.

 

[CharleyH]

I don't presume to characterize all of his work that way, but "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" can surely be described as such. Here's the Wikipedia article Are any existential works not post-modern?

Since Dada, Absurd and the existential existed before Post Modern? Yes. Post- modern is very different - its all three and more. Its all old and nothing new. Wikipedia? Now thats a reliable resource. LOL

 

[CharleyH]

I had to look up both words.

I was sitting in on a writing class last week and the instructor mentioned the two main methods of story writing: plot driven and character driven. He explained how both options were equally valid and that most of the time neither can be successfull without some element of the other.

And then a rather mind-bending thought occurred.

In many discussions here at Lit. we give our thoughts and opinions about realism in stories (like a parent walking in on you masturbating and instead of walking out or givng a lecture has sex with you. Real life. It's all about suspension. No, not a solid distributed through a liquid, I mean disbelief)


In other threads we give our favoured method of writing. Plotting. Characterisation. Stream of consciousness. Unruly characters.

Here is my quandary:

We want our characters to be life-like but we have a plot to follow.

We often see PCs or receive feedback that says our main character would never had done that because...

So the question is:

How can we realistically give our characters free will?

Corollary: Is a character driven story more realistic than a plot driven one?

Gauche? I am really confused. Why can't a character be real in an existential or post-modern narrative discourse? I will wait for you before I give more.

 

[Guest]

Gauchie, Gauchie, Gauchie, what hast thou wrought? Only cos you’re my favourite twat I’ve given this whole thread more thought.

Rereading most (ha ha) of the posts I wondered about all the emphasis on plot and character. Yeah, it’s relevant or whatever, but you of all authors here know how much Language is at the core of it (writing, not to mention being human, or achieving an inkling as to wtf “free will” is, or isn’t). I’ll come back to this later.

Anyroad, I must repeat my plaint that I can’t quite get what you’re getting at. Your questions, even the most specific, don’t connect for me. It’s as if you drew them all out of a hat and just wrote them down without a plan. Stream of consciousness in dialogue isn’t the best way to communicate (unless you’re really really having a good fuck with someone who speaks your language, and I don’t mean Yorkshire, ah ha ha!) Your second post hardly helped. But enough about you .

I liked this immediately:

I think the most interresting thing to write about is how regular, realistic people react in extreme situations. Situations that have not been brought upon them by their own personality, but something beyond their control.

Control I daresay is the operative word for many of the posters here, but aside from the obvious, as Liar points out, what’s the big deal? Losing control is always more interesting (or scary, exciting, what-have-you) than being in control. Control—pah! You can have it .

You characters do have free will, in as much as a ficticious construct of your mind can. the plot isn't a static barrier to character growth, it's a form that directs that growth.

Brilliant as glass, doll. And getting back to my mention of “language”, uh, construct, duh.

(At this point, Gaucho, ya know I’m having fun; maybe throwing the piss in too.)

There is of course no realism in a story, it is just a story…

I love that you said this, W. Chekhov would have loved it. George Balanchine would have loved it. Godard would love it. (Nyet, I won’t explain.)

Hucklehombre: I love your posts, would love to talk lots with you about acting, drama, etc. But for all your finesse expressed above, a play isn’t a novel. I’ve said this before— (yawn, yawn) —I can’t bear how Shakespeare is ‘novelized’ when taught or made into films. I don’t read or attend performances of his plays for the stories (nor Beckett’s, nor operas). As much as I’ve grown to love so many of his characters (even dopey Antony) I know they’re only “words, words, words”.

Gauchie, hunnybunn, when I read, “For those of us that believe in fate”, I thought, WTfF (what the fucking fuck)? Believe in fate?! In this context, maybe any, I equate Fate to Time, Reality, God, Happiness, etc. And then you say, “Fate denies us free will.” Another WTfF?! Really, luv, I’m just saying I don’t know what you’re really saying/asking.

So the questions still remain, can realistic characters have free will inside a plot?

Da, da. Of course, but ‘free will’ as a construct within a construct. Play it again, Hamlet: Words, words, words… (Despite sweet The’s comments, I can’t believe you asked the bit about animals .)

We change the story.

Love it, love it. Profundity in simplicity, yes!

My apologies to anyone who thinks this is all blather.

Perdita

 

[Huckleman2000]

Perdita, mi querida!
[off-topic] I'm so glad to see your posts! Despite your blather ( ), you have a knack for cutting to the essential points. In this thread, no small feat. [back on...]

It's true, Shakespeare and the other dramatic greats are noteworthy, from an actor's point of view, because their words stand up to a prodigious amount of scenery-chewing. Speaking poetry of that quality within a dramatic plotline, you can almost roll on the floor and froth at the mouth, and your audience will buy it. Because the words are so evocative, or require such broad gesture to convey the layers of meaning, maybe I'm confusing dramatic license with the 'free will' that is a central question of this thread.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Free will means nothing in a story because our characters are never free. They're defined by the plot (the decisions they make) just like a black shape is defined by the white space around it.

How do you give the black shape "free will"?

"John fucked Martha" or "John didn't fuck Martha" aren't stories. If Martha is John's high school biology teacher or his aunt--now you've got the start of a story. Now there's a context about John's decision that gives it meaning, but John's never free to make his own decision. If I'm writing a story about incest, he's got to fuck her.

By the way, just to make sure we're using the same definitions, I understand a "plot-driven" story to be something where the characters don't really matter. "The Da Vinci Code" or a Stephen King novel would have pretty much the same story no matter who the characters were ("Carrie" excepted). Most adventure stuff is plot-driven.

In a character-driven story, the events are dependent on and revalatory of the character's character. "Catcher in the Rye" wouldn't exist if it weren't for Holden Caulfield. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is all about what's his name--the Jack Nicholson character (McMurphy? it's been a while.)

But in neither case are the characters free. In the plot-diven story, they're prisoners of the plot. In the character-driven story, they're prisoners of their own character.

What we look for in good fiction (in my opinion) (and even in plot-driven fiction) is character as revealed by plot. In fact, to go academic on you, "Literature" can be roughly defined as "character revealed by circumstance," (which is why the academics usually look down on adventure stories.)

If that's true, then who's free to do anything?

I've had characters rise up and refuse to do things, or suggest other things than what I'd really considered for them, but really, this is my own artistic imagination and not any free-will on the part of my character. I put my characters in situations and then imagine all sorts of responses they might make and I choose the one that satisfies my sense of story. Sometimes a totally unexpected alternative presents itself that really pleases me, and I say that my "characters took over", but it's really just my imagination and esthetic sense that's made the move.

I remember seeing a "plot generator" gag on the web, which was a game spinner that had things like "gets married," "fights bad guys," "gets amnesia," on it. I guess you could write a story using something like this, but I don't think of that as writing. It's more like running after the story with a shovel and trying to clean up after your characters' random actions. A good story won't stand for that kind of gimmickry.

 

[Pure]

A propos of some of shereads' and mabeuse points.

What may we expect of a character-- a person?

The Murderer Next Door
http://www.utexas.edu/features/2005/murder/


When Dennis L. Rader was arrested as the B.T.K. (bind, torture, kill) serial killer suspect—and eventually charged with 10 killings—his Wichita, Kan. community reacted with shock and contradiction. After all, he was a leader in his church, a husband and father of two, living among the very neighbors whom he secretly terrorized.

It left people to wonder what would drive a man who appeared so normal to his neighbors to commit murder. According to new research, the answers may lie in evolutionary psychology.

Dr. David Buss, evolutionary psychologist, studies motives for murder.

Dr. David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at The University of Texas at Austin and author of the just-published “The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill” has conducted an unprecedented set of studies investigating the underlying motives and circumstances of murders, from those of serial killers to the perfectly friendly next-door neighbor who one day commits murder. He examined FBI files of more than 400,000 murders, conducted a highly detailed study of nearly 400 murders, and led, with his collaborator Joshua Duntley, the largest homicidal fantasy study ever conducted.

“Killing is fundamentally in our nature because over the eons of human evolution murder was so surprisingly beneficial in the intense game of reproductive competition,” Buss said. “Our minds have developed adaptations to kill, which is contrary to previous theories that murder is something outside of human nature—a pathology imposed from the distorting influences of culture, media images, poverty or child abuse.

“Though we may like to think that murderers are either pathological misfits or hardened criminals,” he added, “the vast majority of murders are committed by people who, until the day they kill, seem perfectly normal.”

To determine what would drive people over the edge and cause them to kill, participants in one of the studies were presented with more than a hundred different scenarios in which they recorded the probability they would kill.

[….]


Buss led the largest homicidal fantasy study ever conducted, using 5,000 people, 375 who were actual murderers. The study looked into why people have homicidal fantasies and the specific circumstances in which they contemplate killing. The research team discovered how homicidal fantasies are used to build and work through scenarios of killing, how they help channel murderous intentions into other means of seeking redress, how they can also be used to simulate and rehearse carrying out murder and how particular passions come into play in evaluating whether or not to turn fantasy into reality.

Buss’s homicidal fantasy research revealed that 91 percent of men and 84 percent of women have had at least one vivid fantasy—often intense and astonishingly detailed—of committing murder.

“As with most instances of homicidal fantasies, few thoughts are translated into deeds,” Buss said. “Most people work through cost-benefit calculations, figure out alternative means of solving the problem and decide that the costs of killing are too high.”

One indication of how infuriated both sexes feel when romantically rejected comes from an analysis of whether torture was part of the fantasy. The response to getting rejected and discovering a partner’s sexual infidelity proved to be about equal for women and men, with 57 percent of the victims of each experiencing torture fantasies.

 

[Guest]

Perdita, mi querida!
[off-topic] I'm so glad to see your posts![back on...]

Huck! You're too sweet. Love the AV.

Now where's that old shire horse got to? Getting a bit moist thinking on his next riposte .

Perdita

 

[shereads]

But in neither case are the characters free. In the plot-diven story, they're prisoners of the plot. In the character-driven story, they're prisoners of their own character.

Some stories are a little of each.

"The Unconsoled" by Kuzio Ishiguro is an example of a story that appears to be plot-driven, until clues about the main character turn it into something else. The narrator, Ryder, seems to be trapped in a maze of conflicting obligations.

As the story progresses and patterns of behavior emerge, it becomes evident that Ryder isn't a victim of circumstance after all; he's what Dr. M calls a prisoner of his own character...Unless Ryder is dreaming, or unable to experience life as other than a dream.

The sensation of being trapped feels both real and self-imposed, the way it does in a troubling dream. You need to run or react in some way, but can't. Are you the victim of some paralysing affliction or of your own fear and indecisiveness?

Are dreams plot-driven or character-driven?

Mine usually start out plot-driven but end up feeling like tests of character. (Failed tests, as a rule; maybe there's no need to dream about what doesn't need changing.)