Frustration.
That is a word I see being used more and more today by audiences, whether they are reading a book, watching a movie or binging on a web and/or tv series.
They are frustrated--with the story, the characters, the writing style, the special effects--you name it, they have a frustration about it. Funny thing is, growing up as a kid, a teenager and then as a young adult, I found very little frustrations in stories myself. Even as a budding writer, I had few issues with whatever entertainment caught my interest.
So what's changed?
Is it us? Is it them? Is it all of the above?
I don't know.
I've previously talked about the changes I have seen in storytelling on my tunblr and how the Dorothy Implicit Characterization has been affected by it.
But now, sitting here as I've done more writing in the last year than I have since my childhood, I'm wondering about the responsibility of the writer in making sure our character's construct is clear and precise. Or at the very least, that they are consistent and that it is tangible and easily understood by the audience.
Take for instance a character pining for change--either in them self or the world around them.
As the writer it is our job to decide if this character deserves the change they are wanting and, in the end, what rippling effects this will have on the other characters in their world. It is also our job to keep in mind the flaws or fissures in the construct of the character that makes them real.
You can have layers, you can manipulate perceptions and adjust the other characters rotating around this particular one and its particular need, but you must always--ALWAYS remain linear.
That is what I believed.
But how exactly do you produce a linear path of change with everything in mind? Do you pay special attention to the words your characters are using even if your characters actions are contradictory to those words? And then vice versa?
Audiences would automatically see the conflict, but would they perceive it as intentional misdirection? Or would they just call it shitty plot-lines, poor acting, inconsistency in part to multiple writers and so forth?
How do you, as the writer, as a magician of storytelling, perform the magic trick without losing the audience or giving away the ending?
How do you tell them to have patience, that it is worth the ride to distrust and possibly not like us, because eventually they will get what they are hoping for, without feeling insecure about our delivery? We will never see the story like they will, that is the beauty of writing. It's just like any other action with two parties involved--there is one truth and two perceptions and in the end, really the writer wields the ability to change it all. But that is all for not if the audience no longer cares about what you are writing in the first place.
Multiply that by thousands to possibly millions of viewers with their own perceptions and you wonder how you could possibly satisfy and keep everyone.
The automatic response to this--for me at least--is that you don't.
You write your story. You work on your characters and your world and you find a way to deliver, to the best of your ability, a linear story. Granted, you cannot allow yourself to get lost in your own perception. You must keep into account how things you put down will look to your audience at the end of the day. But still, you have to write on and hope that they are willing to hold out to see how it all unfolds.
And you must remain linear.
Spiderwebs are beautiful to look at once the pattern is complete, but until that time, they are just loose strings being woven in madness that makes no sense to anyone but the weaver.
So perhaps, in telling a story today, we need to be spiders who keep in mind to weave small, what look like simple complete webs, and then continue building on to them other additional complete webs until one day you and the audience can both step back and appreciate how each tiny intricate web is now apart of a larger more spectacular one.
Perhaps then, on the path of being linear, our stories must be Fractal.
And that, maybe, is a revelation in writing we could all explore.
That is a word I see being used more and more today by audiences, whether they are reading a book, watching a movie or binging on a web and/or tv series.
They are frustrated--with the story, the characters, the writing style, the special effects--you name it, they have a frustration about it. Funny thing is, growing up as a kid, a teenager and then as a young adult, I found very little frustrations in stories myself. Even as a budding writer, I had few issues with whatever entertainment caught my interest.
So what's changed?
Is it us? Is it them? Is it all of the above?
I don't know.
I've previously talked about the changes I have seen in storytelling on my tunblr and how the Dorothy Implicit Characterization has been affected by it.
But now, sitting here as I've done more writing in the last year than I have since my childhood, I'm wondering about the responsibility of the writer in making sure our character's construct is clear and precise. Or at the very least, that they are consistent and that it is tangible and easily understood by the audience.
Take for instance a character pining for change--either in them self or the world around them.
As the writer it is our job to decide if this character deserves the change they are wanting and, in the end, what rippling effects this will have on the other characters in their world. It is also our job to keep in mind the flaws or fissures in the construct of the character that makes them real.
You can have layers, you can manipulate perceptions and adjust the other characters rotating around this particular one and its particular need, but you must always--ALWAYS remain linear.
That is what I believed.
But how exactly do you produce a linear path of change with everything in mind? Do you pay special attention to the words your characters are using even if your characters actions are contradictory to those words? And then vice versa?
Audiences would automatically see the conflict, but would they perceive it as intentional misdirection? Or would they just call it shitty plot-lines, poor acting, inconsistency in part to multiple writers and so forth?
How do you, as the writer, as a magician of storytelling, perform the magic trick without losing the audience or giving away the ending?
How do you tell them to have patience, that it is worth the ride to distrust and possibly not like us, because eventually they will get what they are hoping for, without feeling insecure about our delivery? We will never see the story like they will, that is the beauty of writing. It's just like any other action with two parties involved--there is one truth and two perceptions and in the end, really the writer wields the ability to change it all. But that is all for not if the audience no longer cares about what you are writing in the first place.
Multiply that by thousands to possibly millions of viewers with their own perceptions and you wonder how you could possibly satisfy and keep everyone.
The automatic response to this--for me at least--is that you don't.
You write your story. You work on your characters and your world and you find a way to deliver, to the best of your ability, a linear story. Granted, you cannot allow yourself to get lost in your own perception. You must keep into account how things you put down will look to your audience at the end of the day. But still, you have to write on and hope that they are willing to hold out to see how it all unfolds.
And you must remain linear.
Spiderwebs are beautiful to look at once the pattern is complete, but until that time, they are just loose strings being woven in madness that makes no sense to anyone but the weaver.
So perhaps, in telling a story today, we need to be spiders who keep in mind to weave small, what look like simple complete webs, and then continue building on to them other additional complete webs until one day you and the audience can both step back and appreciate how each tiny intricate web is now apart of a larger more spectacular one.
Perhaps then, on the path of being linear, our stories must be Fractal.
And that, maybe, is a revelation in writing we could all explore.
Comments
Post a Comment