Last night, my wife and I went to see The Dark Knight. We’re a little slow about these things. We loved it, but we were both perplexed that the movie felt so long. At 2.5 hours, it was a little long, but not unusually long for movies these days.
And then, the typical post-movie conversation took place.
ME: I think the movie had too many acts.
HER: Too many?
ME: Well, more than I’m used to. I like three. But that was all over the place. Not in a bad way. But it’s hard to wrap my head around the narrative.
Then we spent a few minutes trying to recreate the plot… and we had a lot of trouble. We got lost trying to figure out how a major character ended up dying. So we gave up.
“It’s like the plot was intentionally a chaotic mess,” I said. “Again, not in a bad way.” Thus began an elaborate discussion (during which I missed the Starbucks exit because I can’t talk and drive).
We decided the chaotic structure of the movie supported the overall theme of chaos and anarchy. But not before we raised the old issue of plot versus character. Are the best stories character-driven or plot-driven? No doubt, both elements are important, but which is the most important?
Is a well played Joker enough to satisfy? Is a clever plot with paper thin characters enough to satisfy?
I’ve talked with folks about plot outlines. Mark David Gerson got me thinking about it again today. And I always come back to the same metaphor. When I start a story, poem, book, or even an essay, I have a destination in mind. Writing is a road trip so get a good map. (None of this crazy On Star stuff!) There will be hundreds, maybe thousands of different routes to get from the starting point to the destination you planned. There will be many, many interesting people to meet along the way, if you have the patience to take things slowly.
And of course, sometimes you get lost (in a good way) and end up settling in a different spot than you had originally intended. Which means you may have to retrace the journey several times to change the reader’s expectations at the beginning of the trip.
The analogy is wearing thin, but the question remains. In a good story, do you emphasize character over plot, or plot over character? Which is the most important to you… and why?
I’ve been wanting to create a table of contents of sorts for all my poems. So here’s that page in progress if you’re in the mood to read some poetry today.
Lately, I’ve been writing hard, more professionally than years past, which means also a bit more mechanically. Some words are needed, so I crank them out.
GoodWordEditing.com (which I have tabbed as GWE in my browser) is one of my few places where I can still play. Play is so important. Like I’ve said before, this is not a subscribe to me kind of blog. I’ve thought of posts this week, I might write–about the twenty-two-thirty rule of engaging readers that I learned on Tuesday, about the scene and plot things I’m learning in my own writing, about how to carve out writing time when you have a family and a career and a church and dogs that need someone to throw the frisbee, about how to use tools like Plaxo to follow other bloggers, about how to use Twitter as a method of social note taking, even a spiritual analysis of Battlestar Galactica Resistance clips showing where that series does a good job of opening the door to think about faith and religion as something to be taken seriously.
Except for Battlestar Galactica, those things don’t feel much like play to me. Even Battlestar doesn’t feel as playful when I’m analyzing it for scene structure, character motivation, and theme.
But poetry is so useless, it’s only good for play. The movement of a poem isn’t going to take me anywhere in particular. I’m just here swinging with the words. Up and back. Up and back. Or maybe kayaking around Serenity Island at one of our city parks. (Yes, I live in heaven.)
And earlier this morning, I finally found this poem. Or I should say it found me. People kept sending it to me. Quoting it back to me. And I realized it was time to climb on the swing, time to get in the boat again.
Randy Ingermanson published a good definition of the high stakes, high concept novel over at his site a few days ago. It was an idea that came up several times at a Mount Hermon workshop I took with him a few weeks ago.
In the link above, Randy sez: “The higher the stakes, the higher the concept.” Then follows up with wonderful wonderful examples to demonstrate his point of view. An asteroid threatens the entire planet. An evil emperor threatens the entire galaxy. High stakes.
Then he concedes that good books don’t need a high concept–and he cites Jane Austen. Hmm. Now, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Jane Austen, so I’m a bit of a raving fan. I know, it’s not particularly manly of me to love Jane. But what can I say, Darcy is my hero. Someday I hope to have just a tiny fraction of his infinite coolness.
(And Pride & Prejudice fans should know my secret fear: I’m more Mr. Collins than Darcy.)
See, I love Jane Austen. Her books have this universal conflict of gender that feels very high concept, high stakes to me. We’re talking about love and personal happiness.
But according to Randy’s definition, high personal stakes are not necessarily high concept. I love a good explosion movie as much as anyone. Especially if there are also flying martial artists. Randy, I’m not disagreeing with you on this, I’m just trying to figure out why the division makes me bristle so much.
Patrick O’Brien blows up ships in Master and Commander–so he’s high concept. Jane Austen blows up cultural gender stereotypes (no helicopters, despite what Camille says)–so she’s not high concept.
Do high stakes always involve death? Do more deaths mean higher stakes?
Maybe Hero is my answer. Jane Austen meets Chinese invasion. Love triangle meets assassination plot. There aren’t many explosions, but people fly a lot. They even walk on water. Just watch:
Now if only Pride and Prejudice had a ninja subplot.
At Laity Lodge, we’ve had a close connection to J. I. Packer for many years. Every year, I get the chance to hear this man speak and open the Scripture. At first, his style seemed dry to me, but gradually I came to appreciate the incredible wisdom he has. One Laity Lodge director described listening to Packer as being something akin to drinking from a firehose.
In the first ever posted Laity Lodge video, here’s J. I. Packer describing his calling to write. (I’d be curious what you think of the video, too.)
I love Randy Ingermanson. Let me just start there. I’m very excited to be presenting at Mt. Hermon with L. L. Barkat in part because it means I also get to participate in Randy’s fiction workshop. In fact, I finally went and got Oxygen, a book I’ve been meaning to read for sometime.
That said, I found myself resisting Randy’s latest post at Advanced Fiction Writing…
My wife wants to be Rachel Ray. Based on the dinner, she cooked last night, I’d say she’s well on her way! Pork chops with cooked apples. Homemade macaroni and cheddar with broccoli and curly, spiral noodles instead of tube macaroni.
At our house the Food Network is a favorite channel. We subscribe to Rachel Ray’s magazine. We buy her books. Our daughter has even adopted Rachel Ray’s signature word.
“Mommy, this is YUM-o!” she says.
Which got me thinking about context. I’ve heard statistics about cookbooks being one of the most popular selling genres in publishing. And travel books. Why is that?
I got tired of the never ending blogroll that grew in my sidebar. I’ve now switched to a google reader widget that will share my favorite posts as I read them. For those who prefer the traditional static list, though, here it is:
That’s Dick Staub quoting C. S. Lewis. I asked him about Christian media when I interviewed him recently for TheHighCalling.org. His answer suprised and delighted me, “I don’t think that there is such a thing as Christian media. In a sense, I agree with C. S. Lewis who said, ‘We don’t need more Christian writers. We need more great writers who are Christian.’ ”
Last night, my wife and I went to see The Dark Knight. We’re a little slow about these things. We loved it, but we were both perplexed that the movie felt so long. At 2.5 hours, it was a little long, but not unusually long for movies these days.
Lately, I’ve been writing hard, more professionally than years past, which means also a bit more mechanically. Some words are needed, so I crank them out.
Randy Ingermanson published a good 
I love Randy Ingermanson. Let me just start there. I’m very excited to be presenting at 
