Quantum Storytelling

Okay. I’ll just say it. I’m stuck again. I didn’t fill out a few of my characters enough. Now I’m at a point (in NaNo) where the scenes I need to write involve characters I haven’t given enough thought or depth.

I also got a root canal last week, and dealt with a little jaw tenderness. I took the Vicodin prescribed for only a day… it fogged me out and gave me what I’m dubbing a ‘Vicodin hangover’ — I had the hardest time waking up the next morning and when I did it was with an aching brain with only one solution; More Vicodin. Rather than going down that route, I elected to just take it easy for a couple days.

This weekend I breezed through 361 by Donald Westlake. Yay for discovering old authors you’ve never read, who have a large body of work to explore. I’ll probably review 361 here if only for the fact it represents what I think is the ideal in writing: To the point, sharp, action-packed, and funny.

I also saw Casino Royale which was very compelling for a Bond film, minus a few contrived scenes added for your typical 007 cheese. I agree for the most part with the review over on This Writing Life, especially in why Jason Bourne has become a more identifiable hero for our times than the showing-his-age Bond character. That said, Daniel Craig makes a solid Bond. Better than the previous shall-remain-unnamed pretty boy.

But back to this whole storytelling fiasco. As we blaze, or fail at blazing through NaNo, let’s not forget we do it because we enjoy this grand thing called storytelling. Without that enjoyment, 30 days of beating yourself doesn’t mean anything.

And next time, I promise to be better prepared!

Over at Writer Unboxed is a post on Writer’s Journey by Chris Vogler. Like McKee and many others, Vogler is big on ‘dramatic structure’ — organizing a story into acts, sequences, and scenes. While this is sure to be helpful for most writers, it inevitably raises the question of formula. Writers who are not big on structure or organization will be quick to label something like Vogler’s mythic structure as formulaic in a derogatory fashion, implying that stories made from it are cookie cutter and unoriginal.

It is useful to point out to the formula naysayers, as well as those on the opposite side of the spectrum who might take the stages of the Writer’s Journey too literally, that the map is not the territory. What does that mean?

It means that an abstraction like a map is not the same as the actual thing it is describing. A map of New York City is not actually New York City… it’s just a drawing on a map, a symbol, a representation. While this is fairly obvious, it is easy for people to forget — even easier for those of us who spend all our days working with symbols, metaphors, words, and other representations of things.

“The map is not the territory.” is a useful expression for writers to remember, because although we are masters of creating metaphor, we are also sometimes fooled by metaphors about our own work and what writing is all about. To take something like Vogler’s mythic structure of a story, and copy it directly into a story would be mistaking the map for the territory. We would be taking the metaphor too literally.

At the same time, rejecting structure out of hand is like the driver who doesn’t believe in maps. Eventually you will get lost, and if you’re like most drivers who shun maps, your pride won’t allow you to admit you are lost. This means it will take you much longer to find the right road and reach your destination. It may even prevent you from ever finding that road at all.

It is best to strike a balance. We need maps to find our way, but we must remember when it comes down to the nitty gritty, that the map is not the territory.

I’m trying very hard to suppress my anger over this.

“Gunmen dressed as police commandos kidnapped scores of staff and visitors in a lightning raid on a Baghdad higher education office Tuesday,”

Because, you know… educated people are the enemy of morality (re: fundamentalists).

I was just having a conversation last night with someone about the difficulties of crafting a smart villain. One of the biggest reasons why crafting a smart villain is tough, is because we associate intelligence with ‘good’ and qualities like ignorance and stupidity with ‘evil.’ Thus by creating a villain who is smart, we often end up with characters that are accidentally sympathetic.

It doesn’t help that more often than not, the ‘evil acts’ of the world are committed by very stupid or very ignorant people. So then how do you write a villain who exhibits the values of intelligence, without those values being overwhelmingly positive?

I have my own thoughts on that, but I’m going to hold back on them a bit for the sake of discussion. How do you, as a writer, get past the contradiction of a smart villain who does evil or stupid things?