The Conversation While Writing
Posted: September 22, 2011 Filed under: Art, Story | Tags: Architect of Experience, Art, Essay, Humor, Humour, Narrative, Script, Story, Theatre, Thinking, Worth, Writing Leave a commentA man puts down his pen. A man picks up his pen. Indeterminable moments pass and his pen is back down. Perhaps, Man thinks, he needs a drink. Man picks up pen, gets up, and goes to get drink, realizes he cannot pour drink with pen in hand. Man sets down pen. Man realizes, via his behavior and the large number of empty tumblers on his desk, that he may have had enough to drink. Man sits down.
Maybe this isn’t how I want this story to start. Maybe I need to learn to shut up and let myself talk.
The Man, of course, isn’t just a Man, his name is…
Indetermineable moments pass and a name is still not found
Well his name isn’t important. What is important is that he is trying to write a book
How very self referential
And he is having trouble…
Not making it any better for yourself, are-
The man is in a room
Aren’t we all
Sitting at his desk
Who else would be sitting there
And he-
I think we know it’s a guy
And he very much hates his writer.
Hey, be careful there, I made you
Yes, I don’t think he cares very much about that
But I Created him
Was that capital C really necessary?
Well is is something of importance, isn’t it
No, it isn’t. you are just trying to grant what you do some false importance. As if creating a world and creating people in it makes you a God (capital G intended)
Well… Doesn’t it?
Oh don’t go down that road. They don’t exist. All this is, just so happens to be you sitting in a comfy armchair with a glass of watered brandy trying to escape into a world of your own making
But it has importance!
What, the Importance of the Artist? All False, I assure you. An artist creates things that people merely like or despise with all their hearts. Do they make foreign policy? Do they lobby for new laws concerning corporate regulation? No, they sit and whine and bitch and do nothing. How does that matter a whit?
It doesn’t
Exactly
Not to you, at least
Not to anyone.
Not true. Someone’s acting once inspired a man to try and kill Ronald Reagan.
A lunatic
A Human
A Crazy one
How does that matter? Every single one of us is at least a bit crazy, and we can sit and not be able to do anything about foreign policy, but every one of us can create. Every one of us can show someone something beautiful or interesting or horrifying.
But that doesn’t mean that what you create means anything to the world
The World? Screw the world. It doesn’t have to mean shit-all to the world. For all we know, the world isn’t sentient. You know who is? Us. We experience, we create, and we feel. We are the only reason we know we exist. Because like it or not, there is more than one of us. And I don’t know about the world, but if I can influence one person, if I can change then, then I have changed a world. Theirs at the very least. What you don’t realize is that this world isn’t one coherent mass, it is just a landmass inhabited by billions of people who see things differently, and billions of people who have their own worlds. So I’ll tell you this, you don’t have the dominion over worlds that I do. By just going on stage and speaking I can change a hundred, by writing I can change a thousand. That’s the thing. I don’t control or create reality, I add to it.
The Story in the Story
Posted: August 16, 2011 Filed under: Art, Story | Tags: Architect of Experience, Art, Audience, Essay, Experience, Humor, Narrative, Story, Theatre, Writing 2 CommentsEvery story humanity has ever told, and ever will tell, all come from the same myths, the same basic narratives. Boy finds friend, they find trouble; boy meets girl, they fall in love, they die or live happily ever after. Every that is going to be told has already been told. So how do you tell a story that is worth being heard again?
It is tempting for me at this point to write a list of what makes a story memorable; but the truth is, there are no specific methods. The key, however, seems to be resonance. A story, as should be obvious, needs to have some sort of relation to the person reading it. This can come in the form of an Active Relation, something someone wants to get out of the story, and a Passive Relation, something in a story that, for one reason or another, evokes an emotional reaction.
As always, the line between an Active and a Passive relation is larger and more blurred than “The Greatest CENSORED Hits of Ron Jeremy”. This is also true for how much of each element any one story may contain. Novels that are usually focused more on an Active than a Passive relation are what we have come to refer to as Crime or Detective novels. These are books that we read to try and figure out a mystery, and are actively involved in trying to decipher the plot. A Passive Relation can best be found in almost any comedic novel, where the entire point of which is to create the humorous and unexpected, and therefore inspire a passive relation (i.e. trying to make the reader laugh)
As always, the best road seems to lie in the middle. Well, at least according to my limited world-view. To illustrate why, you need only take the one piece of literature we have probably almost all heard read in monotone by an English teacher; Hamlet. This is a story that creates both an active relation, forcing the audience to determine if Claudio really did kill Hamlet sr., but also is a story, in its most basic form, about a boy losing his father, creating a Passive relation.
But Hamlet is a story we have all heard before, isn’t it, along with most of the stories we are so fond of telling. So how do we get an audience to listen to them? First, you give them something new, a new take on it, and a new perspective. Anything to pique their interest. But failing that, every good story, every story worth listening to, has to be both felt by the audience, and interpreted by them. The perfect moment is when the audience is halfway between slight confusion and emotional devastation when the plot finally resolves. If done right, its enough to leave most people speechless
Recent Comments