In a mirror, dimly

How could I not blog this?

Loss of e-mail ‘worse than divorce’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3104889.stm

Electronic mail is playing such a key role in companies that most people start to get annoyed after just 30 minutes without e-mail access, a study found. And when something goes wrong with e-mail for a week, the experience can be more traumatic that moving home, getting married or divorce, at least for a third of those taking part in the survey.

It reminds me of the “purity test” (or was it the “geek test”). There was a question “if you wake up at 3am and go to the bathroom, do you check your email on the way back?”

I just found this, via Paul_B =:o}’s Journal

One Word
simple. you’ll see one word at the top of the following page.

you have sixty seconds to write about it.

as soon as you click ‘go’ the page will load with the cursor in place.

don’t think. just write.

Fun!

There are many books available that claim to give the “magic” formula for creating a successful novel. I didnt get the impression that “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing” made any wild claims to get you into the best seller lists. It’s been sat on our shelves for far too long now without me having read it, so, I just took a fit in my head and lo-and-behold a series of blog posts were born. What I liked most about the Marshall plan is that it breaks up the monolithic multi-thousand word document into slices of about 1200 words. I can write that. I can handle writing about a couple of characters, in a given situation, to the tune of 1200 words. At the end of the process these sections string together and you have your manuscript.

In “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing” there is a really useful table that gives guidelines on how many main (viewpoint) characters you ought to have, the number of sections (total) and the number of sections that belong to which viewpoint character. Being the software engineer that I am, I turned the table into an interactive Java applet.

Structure in a novel (part 5)

Paul B wrote some great feedback to part 2 of this series:

Over the last year, DWM has run various articles about “how to write Doctor Who properly”, or analysing the best and worst bits of storytelling in the show. One point made was that the shows preferrence for 4-part stories clashed with the natural/Greek 3 act structure. The result is usually a “flabby” episode 3, where everyone runs around achieving nothing, because all the groundwork has already been laid for part 4 but it can’t happen yet!

This even shows up when just listening to the musical score of, say, “The Leisure Hive”: The music spends the whole of episode 3 just re-stating people’s themes as they appear, interspersed with lots of “creeping around corridors” music… but nothing actually happens ’til the last couple of minutes, building to the cliffhanger, and bang we’re into episode 4, where all the action is.

The four part format of Doctor Who and the classic Greek 3 act structure seem to be at odds with one another. Part 4 of this series reproduced a diagram found in Philip Gerard’s book (”Writing a book that makes a difference”) and noted that it hides a major element of good novel structure. All three of the books referenced so far - Gerard, Marshall and Vogler - all agree on the relative size of the 3 acts of the story. First and third acts combined should be the same length as the middle act. That is, the story should be broken into 4 parts with the middle act twice the size of parts 1 and 3. For example, Gerard says

Most long works conform to an implicit three-act template (as with any general principle, there are plenty of variations and exceptions to this structure)

• Act one, the setup - one quarter of the book
• Act two, the main action - one half of the book
• Act three, the finale - one quarter of the book

Each act ends with a climax; the climax escalate toward the act three climax, which is the climax of the book. In principle, act three tends to be the shortest - sometimes very short - the fastest paced, the most extreme action at the highest emotional and dramatic pitch.

The payoff points (1 and 2) that occur in acts 2 and 3 are for minor crisis points in the plot. There is a major crisis at the very middle of act 2 that should only be resolved through the concerted efforts of our hero in act 3. If we divide up the overall story by where the crisis points come we end up with 4 equally sized segments, one of which remains unresolved until the very end; each of the first three parts end with a cliffhanger ending.

So, what of the noted weak episode 3? Well, surely the characters have a plan by that point in the story and are beginning to implement it? Act 2 should have an endpoint that leads into act 3, a crisis - possibly the failure of the plan or the big-bad-nasty thwarting the safe attempt to clear problems up. This would force the hero to take the dangerous road to save the day.

A close examination of the crafting of story structure reveals quite a strong compatibility between the classical 3 act structure and the 4 part story with cliffhanger endings we see in Doctor Who. That in part probably contributes to the amazing longevity of the show and its stories, with the fault for weak 3rd episodes laying at the door of poor storytelling by a subset of the writers.

Paul B pointed out the use of the word “Apothesis” in the recent post that I made about the hero’s journey. The list of steps was taken directly from page 16 of Christopher Vogler’s book “the writer’s journey: mythic structures for storytellers and screenwriters”. When I searched online for the word the Dictionary of Difficult Words told me

apothesis
n. Medicine, setting of broken limb.

Which is strange, because Dictionary.com says

apothesis

\A*poth”e*sis\, n. [Gr. ? a putting back or away, fr. ?. See Apothecary.] (Arch.) (a) A place on the south side of the chancel in the primitive churches, furnished with shelves, for books, vestments, etc. –Weale. (b) A dressing room connected with a public bath.

Paul B pointed out and I agree with him because I was originally confused by the choise of words, that he might have meant “Apotheosis“. I just dont know. Can anyone that is more familiar with Vogler, Campell and the hero’s journey clear things up?

Quick site update - Ive fixed the small bug in the comment script that stopped the comment counts fro showing up on posts. Basically, since Blogger.com started sending XXL sized post IDs the comment script has only shown “0 comments”. All better now.

Structure in a novel (part 4)

Aristotle may have given the overall blueprint for writing, as noted by Gerard, Marshall and Vogler but he doesn’t break it down much below the level of a philosophy. For the detailed breakdown we need to turn to more modern thinkers. Although the three books that have been referenced so far agree on the three act structure for a novel they also go beyond that level of agreement.

Gerard introduces a very helpful diagram of the 3 act structure, showing visually how acts 1 and 2 dovetail into the act that follow, keeping the reader hooked and preserving a unified flow. Without such dovetailing the work would devolve into three standalone pieces without a pressing need to move on to the next.

His choice of diagram also communicates something at a purely visual level: the inexorable pull of gravity in a downward direction correlates with the steady drive forward, the even pace of our hero’s journey and the inevitability of trials arriving as part of that journey. The triangles point the way. There are no loops, no going back and no dawdling on the roadside for our hero. While the even sized triangles tell us to keep an even and measured pace through our story they hide a major element of story structure, namely the universal agreement over the relative sizes of acts 1, 2 and 3…

Structure in a novel (part 3)

“The Writer’s Journey: mythic structures for storytellers & screenwriters” by Christopher Vogler draws from “The hero with a thousand faces” by Joseph Campbell. Vogler applies the earlier work by Campbell showing how it has influenced film makers such as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. In fact Lucas seems to have swallowed the concept of the hero’s journey whole and is regurgitating it verbatim onto our screens with each of the Star Wars movies that come and go in the cinemas.

Vogler writes

At heart, despite its infinite variety, the hero’s story is always a journey. A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar world. It may be an outward journey to an actual place: a labyrinth, forest or cave, a strange city or country, a new locale that becomes the arena for her conflict with the antagonistic, challenging forces.

But there are many stories that take the hero on an inward journey, one of the mind, the heart, the spirit. In any good story the hero grows and changes, making the journey from one way of being to the next: from despair to hope, weakness to strength, folly to wisdom, love to hate, and back again. It’s these emotional journeys that hook an audience and make a story worth watching.

There is a concept in the science fiction genre of “world building” - the creation of a universe, characters and science, The book is a vehicle that merely explores the world created by the author; “world building” stories are deep on backstory but light on actual plot and over the years have been found to be less popular than other works. One obvious reason for the failure of world building to capture the hearts & minds of readers is their lack of journey: the focus on exposition of the mechanics of the universe eclipses the more important journey that individuals make through the world the author has created.

Similarly there are very character heavy books which spend too much time on the soap opera of multiple character interactions that they forget to propell the reader on through the journey until it is almost too late. One notable example weighs in at about 290,000 words and waits until 90% of the way through to get to the real point of the book; interactions between a favourite cast of far too many characters that had built up across the course of several books caused the author to neglect the main viewpoint characters and their own journey until it was almost too late. The action was crushed into the final pages of the book and it finished in what felt like a headlong rush to get the manuscript to print.

“The hero with a thousand faces” takes the characters through their mythic quest through a number of steps:

What is interesting is that Campell also structures the hero’s journey into three acts, once again drawing on the observation of Aristotle. Vogler summarizes the hero’s journey by saying

Heroes are introduced in the ordinary world, where they receive the call to adventure. They are reluctant at first or refuse the call, but are encouraged by a mentor to cross the first threshold and enter the special world where they encounter tests, allies and enemies. They approach the inmost cave, crossing a second threshold where they endure the supreme ordeal. They take posession of their reward and are pursued on the road back to the ordinary world. They cross the third threshold, experience a resurrection, and are transformed by the experience. They return with the elixir, a boon or treasure to benefit the ordinary world.

A well known radio preacher, and some would say well respected one at that, said something the other evening that set my teeth on edge. Summing up at the end of the radio show he said that some people see the war inside them as being between their “old nature” and their “new nature”. That, he claimed, denied the transforming power of God - when you become a Christian you are totally transformed, and all you have is a new nature. The reason there is a war is because “the new nature is incarcerated in unredeemed, sinful flesh”.

This particular radio preacher has a characteristic style of verse-by-verse teaching from the bible. A good thing, if taken in an of itself. Problem is that everyone has a worldview - something deeper - the lens that we see the world through. Our worldview is a filter for what we read & experience and helps us to make sense of it all. It is therefore the means by which a verse-by-verse teaching would vary from one pulpit to another. Everyone has a worldview. Everyone. The bible is facts, words on a page, stories, poetry, history, truth. It is the absolute, the measuring stick, and its our interpretation that brings variances in meaning.

Take, for example, one of the founding fathers of the United States. His worldview didnt allow for a belief in the miraculous and that carried over to his reading of the bible. In fact it resulted in him editing out all the miraculous evens from the new testament leaving just the wisdom and teaching that fitted with his viewpoint.

Or, consider those with a gnostic worldview. Their view of the divine is that “there is a true, ultimate and transcendent God, who is beyond all created universes”. However that God is entirely removed from the created, physical universe. Gnosticism teaches that

Human nature mirrors the duality found in the world: in part it was made by the false creator God and in part it consists of the light of the True God. Humankind contains a perishable physical and psychic component, as well as a spiritual component which is a fragment of the divine essence. This latter part is often symbolically referred to as the “divine spark”. The recognition of this dual nature of the world and of the human being has earned the Gnostic tradition the epithet of “dualist”.

Gnosticism views salvation differently to the mainstream Christian also

Humans are caught in a predicament consisting of physical existence combined with ignorance of their true origins, their essential nature and their ultimate destiny. To be liberated from this predicament, human beings require help, although they must also contribute their own efforts.

Gnostics do not look to salvation from sin (original or other), but rather from the ignorance of which sin is a consequence. Ignorance — whereby is meant ignorance of spiritual realities — is dispelled only by Gnosis, and the decisive revelation of Gnosis is brought by the Messengers of Light, especially by Christ, the Logos of the True God.

So if you boil things down to a gross over-simplification, the worldview is one reveolving around the human intellect and its aquisition of knowledge of the divine. Nothing supernatural since the God of this belief system is “totall transcendent” and “beyond all created universes”.

Radio preacher hails from a tradition with a very “high” view of God. Transcendent. Sovereign. Irresistable. That tradition differs in its viewpoint on quite how detached God is from creation, how involved He gets in the day to day events. The majority viewpoint seems to be one of cool detachment, anti-supernatural, without getting as strident as the founding father and editing the new testament. In doing so they reduce much of the faith to an intellectual exercise, gaining knowledge of God, learning good doctrine, knowing the right things.

So is it any wonder I said Gnostic when he said “the new nature is incarcerated in unredeemed, sinful flesh”?

Structure in a novel (part 2)

“Writing a book that makes a difference” by Philip Gerard talks about structuring a novel in a chapter entitled “Discovering themes as you write.” He says

Formerlly, we’ve inherited the three-act structure from classical Greek tragedy. Informally, storytelling just seems naturally to favor it.

So, that brings the count to two for modern day writing instructors pulling from Aristotle’s work. Gerard goes on to say

In the early stages of telling a stroy - act one - we must introduce our charactersm assign them their roles in the drama, and reveal something of their makeup; we must set them down in a particular time and place, then develop a dramatic situation around them; we must teach the reader how to read our book. And we must open up a promise, an expectation, a reason for suspense that will compel the reader to read on.

Aristotle said it well when he wrote

Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order.

In other words, start the story with a correct sense of scope. If things are too huge to begin with (or for that matter at any point in the narrative) then the reader will get lost. To compel the reader to read on, they need to be caught by the story, not confused by it!