Quantum Storytelling

Saw both of them this weekend and they were interesting enough that I thought I’d comment.

The Last Kiss

Great characterizations. All of the characters seemed genuine and real to me. Blythe Danner was exceptionally good, playing the emotional wreck of an aging, unhappy mother. I’m not sure if she was drawing on some of her own experiences to convey her, at times, irrational outbursts, but I bought it. The father in-law character to Zach Braff was also well done, by actor Tom Wilkinson. He nailed the all-too-logical father figure that never expresses his emotions.

Every scene was filled with conflict. Writers take note. I don’t think there was a dull scene among them… barely even any ‘breathing room.’ Great stuff.

Black Dahlia

I haven’t read any of Elroy’s novels although I have read Hammett and Chandler, and know that Elroy is very much a 2nd/3rd generation student of the hard-boiled detective genre.

I liked this one a lot, but then I’m a sucker for 1940s settings. I know in all honesty that I’m one of the few, at least in my generation. The theater was filled with an audience primarily in their fifties and sixties. I felt a little out of place. I was also a little sad to not see more of my ‘gaming generation.’ But alas, period games like Mafia haven’t done too well either. It seems an affinity for the 1940s setting is a very pet sentiment, subject to very individual tastes. So be it… and on to the story.

The story was classic boilerplate detective, somewhat enhanced by the fact the Black Dahlia murder was a real case. The hero gets involved trying to protect and help the age old prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold character, as well as getting mixed up with some rich folks who have many secrets to hide. Reminded me a lot of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and in a few spots Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest.

It was filled with action, violence, and plenty of tension… all the makings of good ‘pulp.’ If you’re into that sort of thing you might want to check it out. I’m sure it’ll be leaving theaters soon as it’s a box office flop so far. I chalk that up to the setting, mostly… and that there is almost nobody of the youngin’ mainstream crowd that would have any casual associations or knowledge with the Black Dahlia case or James Ellroy. How unfortunate, but… so it goes.

If you liked L.A. Confidential you will probably like The Black Dahlia.

I just finished Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. I know, I know… I was supposed to have read that in the 3rd grade, or the day I was born, for all the ravings about it and how it is a must-read ‘classic.’

I really enjoyed it. Which is a surprise to me and I’ll tell you why.

I normally enjoy stories with a cohesive story. I normally don’t enjoy stories where the author jumps around a lot, going into seemingly random moments according to whimsy. By all measures, Slaughterhouse Five shouldn’t be a book I enjoyed. There are a couple reasons why such a self-indulgent piece of work managed to hold up for me.

One of them is that Vonnegut chose interesting moments for his hero Billy Pilgrim to jump around within. Although the character is time traveling throughout the multitude of moments in his life, each of those moments seems to have a point, and if not a point, then at least a kind of poignance. In that sense it reads almost like a memoir, which it is more or less the fictive version of, as many of the events in Slaughterhouse come from Vonnegut’s own experiences in World War II and the bombing of Dresden. There are many interesting, amusing, wistful, and even touching moments.

These moments are also given a context. For fun, Vonnegut has the hero abducted by aliens who have no understanding of the human concept of time. When forced to explain their perception of time to the hero Billy Pilgrim, they do not see time as necessarily a linear sequence, one event following another. They see life as a large collection of events, each moment immortal in its own way. If a person dies, it is nothing to be sad about, because they are alive in a ‘past moment’ forever.

What I love about this is it creates a kind of philosophical dressing to complement the fact that the story jumps all over the place to various moments in Billy Pilgrim’s life. The nonsensical structure actually follows the logic of it’s own mythmaking–that the alien race understands time the exact way that Billy Pilgrim is traveling through it. This lends a logical beauty to the entire work which it would not have without the aliens’ concept of time.

The second element is that Slaughterhouse is written beautifully. It is laced with vivid metaphors throughout, and Vonnegut’s tact for description is exceptional. Note my use of the word exceptional. He is the exception for a work of this nature. Vonnegut’s ability to describe even the ordinary in an extraordinary way makes it fun to go along with whatever he’s explaining. He could be describing the grass grow or the paint peel, and I’m sure in its Vonnegut style it would be interesting. Most writers do not have that skill, or have not cultivated it to the same degree that Vonnegut has, for whatever reason.

Normally I wouldn’t enjoy this kind of self-indulgent work. And I suspect if it had been written by any other author, the masses wouldn’t have enjoyed it either. There is a lesson to be learned here. If you’re going to be self-indulgent, and whisk your story throughout whimsical flights of fancy, make sure you know what you’re doing. If your story isn’t much of a story in the traditional sense, at least make sure the audience has fun, and that you’ll reward them for putting up with your nostalgia and whatever else by making the moments interesting, and the descriptions vivid.

Tread carefully, for this brand of self-indulgence is often not executed well by amateurs.

There’s nothing that ruins my creative momentum more than indecision.

“Should I place this scene before that one?”

“Should I have this character appear earlier or later in the story?”

“Should I use a metaphor or a simile?”

These are the kinds of questions that make up the work of a storyteller. They are healthy questions to ask for the sake of the story, until they become a point of indecision or paralysis. It is at this point they become a burden.

One of my favorite tools for dealing with this is the instant decision. Even if you are not sure you are making the correct choice, at least you are making one. It can always be changed later. A buddy of the instant decision is the appendage “…for now.” This allows you to make the decision and move on without feeling any anxiety about the choice you’ve made, because you know you can always change it at a later date.

“I’m going to put the scene in the diner before the fight with the protagonist’s boss at work… for now.”

Certain pieces have to fall into place before the structure of the story can congeal, even if those pieces may be slightly jumbled in the order of things.

Make a few decisions today, because indecision is the enemy.