thoughts on chaos and a new order
Before I get started, RIP, little red journal:
I bought that journal to replace the one that was stolen when I was mugged back in March of last year. I wrote a lot of the Hollywood AU and Imagine Me and You in that notebook, as well as assorted ST, AI and HP shorts and the Glee fic I haven't finished quite yet. It was a good journal, but I've filled every page and the spiral is much the worse for wear (I was glad toward the end that it had that red elastic to hold it shut).
This week I was reading an article on the NPR website about the Larry Kramer play The Normal Heart, a revival of which is playing on Broadway right now, in which Mark Blankenship talks about narrative structure:
In the broadest terms, comic narratives begin with society in disorder and end happily when order returns. Often, the new stability is represented by a marriage and by the ejection of something that embodies chaos
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, for instance, begins with disorder in Illyria, since no one in the ruling class can choose whom to marry. But everyone does get married eventually, just moments after Malvolio, a character who brazenly strives beyond his class, gets run out of town. With everyone settled in a comfortable role, order returns.
He then goes on to say that while the structure of The Normal Heart is essentially comic, and there is a wedding, the chaos that AIDS brought into the gay community in the 80s cannot be ejected, and so the structure collapses-on purpose, that is; that's what Kramer was trying to do.
Anyway where any of that applies to me is, well, of course I use a comic structure, or really, somewhere between the comedies of Shakespeare and the romances, which are sort of like tragedies with happy endings. In the romances, like The Tempest or A Winter's Tale, people fuck up pretty badly just as they do in tragedies, but they don't keep spiraling downwards to an inevitable conclusion; they right themselves, they pull out of the dive. They don't always manage to make everything okay again, but there's an upswing, and they do often make enough things better that they can get by.
As I've said before, I'm very influenced by Stanely Cavell and his ideas about classic romantic comedies and how they portray a kind of Emersonian ideal of the ability to make yourself into a better person, and that you always have that ability, should you choose to do so. Generally in the structure of the classic romantic comedy-and I'm not talking about the stuff you can see with Kate Hudson nowadays, but the films from the 30s/40s/50s/60s and even the Ephron 80s/90s stuff like When Harry Met Sally-the couple meet, and they have sparks. But they're actually not quite ready for each other, so that initial coupling is doomed. And yet, that other person pushes them to be a better person, because they say to them, "hey, you know, you have some problems." They go away, and they work on themselves, and when they come back together they're better for it, and can be together, honestly. And the point isn't that they won't have problems, but that they will be able to face those problems together.
I was thinking about this idea of chaos and the end of chaos and how it fits into SF/F genre fiction, particularly high fantasy stuff where mostly, we're trying to get the right king back. It's easier to think about in terms of Robin Hood: King John is a bad king because he's the wrong king, because he's a usurper; the solution is to bring back King Richard, who's the correct king. But the idea is never "wait, why do we have kings in the first place, then?"
I want to make change that's a little more revolutionary, in the small-r, Kuhnian sense. The chaos comes not from an agent of chaos messing up the natural order, but from the current order breaking down. Maybe it was good for a while, but times and people change, and nothing lasts forever, etc. The resolution to the chaos is the bringing in of a new order, or in other words, a revolution. King John is a bad king because maybe kings are bad ideas; maybe we need to rule ourselves and not have a king, or maybe the king can cut ribbons and have public weddings but not actually make any decisions.
So the idea is, the couple meet and have sparks, but realize that they don't have room in their lives for each other and hey, on closer inspection, don't even have room in their lives for themselves. While the romantic interest is the catalyst, they really change to make their own lives better. And then they can be with the romantic interest, who has also changed. They don't come together in some simulacrum of the order they had before; they create an entirely new order, apart and together. (Which may be why I like established relationship fics so much; I want to see that new order that is generally only hinted at with a first-time fic.)
This is what Harry and Hermione and Seamus and Dean and Ginny and Draco and even Ron and Padma to a certain extent do in EWFS, and then readjust in the sequel, along with Pansy and Parvati; it's what Ryan and Simon are doing in tiny steps all the time before they finally take the big step; it's what Kimberley and Anwar and Carly and Amanda do in 1939; it's what Jim and Bones do in the Hollywood fic (and Spock and Uhura, and Carol though that's a little different); it's what Janice and Christine are figuring out how to do in my head right now in 1922.
And then the plot ends up being, well, if the character starts in this situation, what kinds of things have to happen to push them to change? Change is really hard, and we don't do it until the thing we've already been doing completely doesn't work. Sometimes I start with the character already at the bottom and having to fight their way back up; sometimes you see them fall apart in the course of the story. I'm only now able to say, after years of being around that certain sort of genre fan who thinks only an action or adventure plot "counts", to say that this is how I plot. These encounters with other people and events that go well and sometimes not so well, these can be plots just as much as saving the world, I think. I hope so, anyway.
At least Shakespeare would agree!
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
comments | comment at Dreamwidth
I bought that journal to replace the one that was stolen when I was mugged back in March of last year. I wrote a lot of the Hollywood AU and Imagine Me and You in that notebook, as well as assorted ST, AI and HP shorts and the Glee fic I haven't finished quite yet. It was a good journal, but I've filled every page and the spiral is much the worse for wear (I was glad toward the end that it had that red elastic to hold it shut).
This week I was reading an article on the NPR website about the Larry Kramer play The Normal Heart, a revival of which is playing on Broadway right now, in which Mark Blankenship talks about narrative structure:
In the broadest terms, comic narratives begin with society in disorder and end happily when order returns. Often, the new stability is represented by a marriage and by the ejection of something that embodies chaos
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, for instance, begins with disorder in Illyria, since no one in the ruling class can choose whom to marry. But everyone does get married eventually, just moments after Malvolio, a character who brazenly strives beyond his class, gets run out of town. With everyone settled in a comfortable role, order returns.
He then goes on to say that while the structure of The Normal Heart is essentially comic, and there is a wedding, the chaos that AIDS brought into the gay community in the 80s cannot be ejected, and so the structure collapses-on purpose, that is; that's what Kramer was trying to do.
Anyway where any of that applies to me is, well, of course I use a comic structure, or really, somewhere between the comedies of Shakespeare and the romances, which are sort of like tragedies with happy endings. In the romances, like The Tempest or A Winter's Tale, people fuck up pretty badly just as they do in tragedies, but they don't keep spiraling downwards to an inevitable conclusion; they right themselves, they pull out of the dive. They don't always manage to make everything okay again, but there's an upswing, and they do often make enough things better that they can get by.
As I've said before, I'm very influenced by Stanely Cavell and his ideas about classic romantic comedies and how they portray a kind of Emersonian ideal of the ability to make yourself into a better person, and that you always have that ability, should you choose to do so. Generally in the structure of the classic romantic comedy-and I'm not talking about the stuff you can see with Kate Hudson nowadays, but the films from the 30s/40s/50s/60s and even the Ephron 80s/90s stuff like When Harry Met Sally-the couple meet, and they have sparks. But they're actually not quite ready for each other, so that initial coupling is doomed. And yet, that other person pushes them to be a better person, because they say to them, "hey, you know, you have some problems." They go away, and they work on themselves, and when they come back together they're better for it, and can be together, honestly. And the point isn't that they won't have problems, but that they will be able to face those problems together.
I was thinking about this idea of chaos and the end of chaos and how it fits into SF/F genre fiction, particularly high fantasy stuff where mostly, we're trying to get the right king back. It's easier to think about in terms of Robin Hood: King John is a bad king because he's the wrong king, because he's a usurper; the solution is to bring back King Richard, who's the correct king. But the idea is never "wait, why do we have kings in the first place, then?"
I want to make change that's a little more revolutionary, in the small-r, Kuhnian sense. The chaos comes not from an agent of chaos messing up the natural order, but from the current order breaking down. Maybe it was good for a while, but times and people change, and nothing lasts forever, etc. The resolution to the chaos is the bringing in of a new order, or in other words, a revolution. King John is a bad king because maybe kings are bad ideas; maybe we need to rule ourselves and not have a king, or maybe the king can cut ribbons and have public weddings but not actually make any decisions.
So the idea is, the couple meet and have sparks, but realize that they don't have room in their lives for each other and hey, on closer inspection, don't even have room in their lives for themselves. While the romantic interest is the catalyst, they really change to make their own lives better. And then they can be with the romantic interest, who has also changed. They don't come together in some simulacrum of the order they had before; they create an entirely new order, apart and together. (Which may be why I like established relationship fics so much; I want to see that new order that is generally only hinted at with a first-time fic.)
This is what Harry and Hermione and Seamus and Dean and Ginny and Draco and even Ron and Padma to a certain extent do in EWFS, and then readjust in the sequel, along with Pansy and Parvati; it's what Ryan and Simon are doing in tiny steps all the time before they finally take the big step; it's what Kimberley and Anwar and Carly and Amanda do in 1939; it's what Jim and Bones do in the Hollywood fic (and Spock and Uhura, and Carol though that's a little different); it's what Janice and Christine are figuring out how to do in my head right now in 1922.
And then the plot ends up being, well, if the character starts in this situation, what kinds of things have to happen to push them to change? Change is really hard, and we don't do it until the thing we've already been doing completely doesn't work. Sometimes I start with the character already at the bottom and having to fight their way back up; sometimes you see them fall apart in the course of the story. I'm only now able to say, after years of being around that certain sort of genre fan who thinks only an action or adventure plot "counts", to say that this is how I plot. These encounters with other people and events that go well and sometimes not so well, these can be plots just as much as saving the world, I think. I hope so, anyway.
At least Shakespeare would agree!
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
comments | comment at Dreamwidth