TheWritingGroup
Writing Group
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2024
- Posts
- 577
Did this ever happen to you? You pants your way through a story. You go on and write other stuff. Then one day while driving, you realize: you just found a new interpretation of that first story that makes you brilliant!
I don't know if I'm brilliant, but it suddenly felt like it.
In "Pranked", I had a heroic protagonist and a very villainous villain who were physically similar. (In fact, the story depends on the villain impersonating the hero.)
On my drive, it suddenly occurred to me: Rick and Esau have the same drives, really. They have many of the same interests, same sexual predilections, hang out with the same people. You can see them (in lit crit terms) as two sides of the same person. In fact, I had written a 21st Century science-informed erotic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!
See, Esau's problem is that he lacks what neurologists call "executive function". He can't resist impulses very well. He makes his living by petty crime, he is abusive to his girlfriend and freely lies to other friends. None of these are a long-term strategy. The story's main conflict comes when he impulsively kidnaps one of his few friend's mother, just for a quick thrill. There's no real way this can work out long-term, but executive function is precisely the person's ability to trade short-term lack of reward for longer-term greater reward. This actually applies to Mr. Hyde himself, although Stevenson couldn't use modern terminology and thought of it as a moral failure.
Rick, the Dr. Jekyll of the pair, holds down a crappy job for a long enough time to have a credit rating and work history, because he understands and appreciates the long-term benefit of those things. He endures his annoying stepsister long enough to build a good, loving relationship with her, and forces himself to tolerate his disliked stepfather for his mom's sake. Esau cut his family off as soon as he could.
If you read the story:
a)I hope you like it, but for this purpose,
b)Tell me if you think Rick and Esau are plausibly halves of the same person (again, in litcrit terms, they aren't clones or something in the story).
-Annie
I don't know if I'm brilliant, but it suddenly felt like it.
In "Pranked", I had a heroic protagonist and a very villainous villain who were physically similar. (In fact, the story depends on the villain impersonating the hero.)
On my drive, it suddenly occurred to me: Rick and Esau have the same drives, really. They have many of the same interests, same sexual predilections, hang out with the same people. You can see them (in lit crit terms) as two sides of the same person. In fact, I had written a 21st Century science-informed erotic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!
See, Esau's problem is that he lacks what neurologists call "executive function". He can't resist impulses very well. He makes his living by petty crime, he is abusive to his girlfriend and freely lies to other friends. None of these are a long-term strategy. The story's main conflict comes when he impulsively kidnaps one of his few friend's mother, just for a quick thrill. There's no real way this can work out long-term, but executive function is precisely the person's ability to trade short-term lack of reward for longer-term greater reward. This actually applies to Mr. Hyde himself, although Stevenson couldn't use modern terminology and thought of it as a moral failure.
Rick, the Dr. Jekyll of the pair, holds down a crappy job for a long enough time to have a credit rating and work history, because he understands and appreciates the long-term benefit of those things. He endures his annoying stepsister long enough to build a good, loving relationship with her, and forces himself to tolerate his disliked stepfather for his mom's sake. Esau cut his family off as soon as he could.
If you read the story:
a)I hope you like it, but for this purpose,
b)Tell me if you think Rick and Esau are plausibly halves of the same person (again, in litcrit terms, they aren't clones or something in the story).
-Annie
