The butcher’s apprentice

I’m at home, watching trailers for upcoming movies on Five. Guns, fisticuffs – combat as a fundamental dramatic component. It’s so all-pervasive, you don’t notice it any more.

And I’m sick of it. Sick of the reduction of the subtle emotional conflicts inherent in drama to meatheaded literal battles; sick of the constant presentation of violence as a positive response to problematic situations; sick of the idiot miscalled-morality that can only respond to opposition with absolute destruction.

Encoded in violence-as-entertainment is a whole broken world view, over-brought in to a narrative structure that demands a frangible antagonist for every protagonist, and makes every hero an innocent victim of evil, a by-definition justified responder to a situation that’s been forced onto him or her, thus absolving them of any real moral responsibility for their actions.

This sickened externalisation of such a limited view of evil, this self-indulgent definition of the other as both dispensable and perpetually unjustified, is at the root of so much of the damage we do in the world, complaining about our own hurt while butchering by the thousand to re-confirm our brutally narrow, boneheaded definitions of what heroism is.

You want to hold up a mirror to up to the worst parts of what we are? Turn on the television, and watch endless butchery presented as narrative positivity, casual massacres as a constant solution to opposition. We are our obsessions – and, in the modern world, our obsessions are so brutally, perpetually present and exposed.

A pirate’s life for me, Pt 2

Well, more on pirate narrative structures. Today, it’s Key Equipment and Supporting Characters, below.

What interests me about this exercise is not so much the usefulness of better understanding pirate stories, but rather the way it reflects onto the construction of fiction in general.

A story of any kind is an end product of a series of questions - who’s my protagonist? What’s their situation? What do they want to change about it? What happens as a result of that desire? etc. The answers to those questions are on one level limitless; the content of fiction can be equally wide ranging.

However, answering those questions - ‘Who’s my protagonist? A pirate’ - and fulfilling the expectations associated with those answers (’this is how pirates behave’) can lead to a surprisingly restricted set of moral arguments. Fiction is infinite; our moralities aren’t, something it’s very useful to be aware of.

3) Key equipment

The pirate is outside a given society. His equipment should represent that outsider status:

a) Living space

An entirely personalised space, springing from the pirate’s obsessions and representing his history. It should be both an accurate representation of his / her character and personality, and easily abandoned.

b) Transport

The pirate should have access to modes of transport (whether virtual or real) that allow him / her to circumvent any restrictions created by the oppositional culture. The OC’s attempts to prevent the pirate from achieving free movement in pursuit of his goals will form key plot points.

c) Armaments

As previously noted, the pirate takes sustenance from the oppositional culture on his / her own terms. He will make use of whatever armaments necessary to achieve this. Again, the type and level of damage that these armaments do to the OC / its representatives are a key plank in the moral judgements that the story expects the reader to reach.

4) Supporting characters

Other characters will either be for, against or neutral towards the pirate. Moral ambiguity is difficult to sustain in such a morally charged narrative.

a) Other characters

Explicitly or implicitly they will share the pirates estrangement from the oppositional culture. Level, type and significance of support will be dependent on their depth of estrangement. Contrasts between the supporting characters’ and opposition culture’s morality cast light on each.

b) Neutral characters

Under certain circumstances, non-judgemental characters could be used to cast an ironic light on the absurdities of both pirate and opposition culture positions, implying a set of moral absolutes that exist above and beyond the set of dualistic oppositions that protagonist and antagonist embody.

Hmm, thought I’d written something about opposing characters - obviously not. Tho’ having looked over all the rest of this, I don’t think I need to. Their narrative function should by now be pretty clear!

And finally…

Aaaarrrrrrrrrr….

*stumps off one-leggedly to look for treasure*

Breaking out of heaven

Non-realist writing is about the creation of transparently fictional, secondary worlds for the mind, imagination and emotions to play in. One of the joys of such worlds comes from the suspension of disbelief needed to enter them. Put simply, you can pretend that they’re real – a complex joy, but a joy nonetheless.

It’s easy to forget that we create fictions of the world around us in day to day life, as well. We build narratives around work, around play, and enter into them wholeheartedly. Here, too, there’s suspension of disbelief; we forget the wider possibilities of the self as we settle ourselves into the restrictive, consensual limits that daily life creates.

It’s when we forget that these limits are defined by a fiction we’ve created that problems happen. We come to believe that the story IS the reality, that we have no choices in a given situation; but that’s rarely, if ever, true. There is no story that cannot be reframed, no narrative that cannot be stepped out of.

There’s an interesting mythical take on this, as well. In the Christian narrative, we fell from heaven so we could have choice. Such a shattering birth has ensured that free will is a core component of our lives. We can never lose as much as we’ve already lost through exercising it; and so, we are absolutely free.

A pirate’s life for me, Pt 1

Well, not much time to write today, so digging through the files I found my ‘how to build a pirate story’ document from a while back. Which set me thinking about how much narrative structure is pre-formed by subject matter in general…

So, in honour of general piracy, here’s Part One, dealing with Subtext and Key Narrative Strategies. Part two tomorrow, about Pirate Equipment and Characters…

1) Subtext

Two basic ways of presenting the story. In both, the pirate represents a critique of a given set of social or moral values. Both are reliant on the pirate’s position as an outsider, an individual who has rejected conventional norms for better or for worse. Any pirate story must embody and explore this tension.

a) Pirate as liberator
An ironic inversion of moral values. The pirate becomes an exemplar of honesty and truth, breaking away from the pretensions / hypocrisies of a corrupted social setting. The important thing is the moral relationship between the pirate / society – character and setting could be widely varied, such as historical, fantasised or deep space.

b) Pirate as dark other
A distillation of fear. The pirate upsets the moral order of a given individual / group of individuals / society, and is used to explore the strengths of that order as the protagonist fights to restore it.

2) Key narrative strategies

An implicitly moral, oppositional story demands certain types of narrative strategy to achieve its effects.

a) Appropriate point of view
Point of view should be such to allow for effortless contrasting of pirate and accepted ethics / behaviours. At no point should the reader’s experience of such contrasts feel forced or difficult.

b) Clearly defined protagonist / antagonist
A dualistic relationship, where conflict allows for examination of the moral / ethical structures that drive each of the characters. This conflict is made explicit, not implicit.

c) Crime in motion
The narrative should be centred on a crime. The reader is expected to reach a moral position regarding that crime. The moral position they reach (approving / disapproving) defines the pirate either as a liberator or a dark other.

d) Crime and punishment
The pirate will either be punished or not punished for their crime. The nature and intensity of the punishment that he / she undergoes will further support moral judgements reached by the reader.

e) Battle of the sexes
Sex of the pirate is relatively unimportant. Sexual contact achieves plot significance in so far as it supports the subversive / conservative nature of the protagonist / antagonist / supporting characters.

f) Self support
The pirate should support him / herself by utilising the resources of the oppositional culture on terms defined by him / her rather than by the culture. The level of hazard / damage to the culture and its representatives, and any moral judgements resulting from these activities, are a key support for the moral judgements that the reader is expected to reach.

Slaying Bob from HR

Was still pondering yesterday’s post about weakness / achievement gaps in genre fiction when I went to read SF Diplomat, where Jonathan McCalmont is fascinating on the content of fantasy:

‘Why does fantasy prefer to dwell on saving a morally simple world instead of making the best one can in a more realistic one?’

He’s looking for a greater sense of the cut and thrust of the commercial, for narratives that may be fantastic in setting but that acknowledge and riff off the source of most day to day drama in this world - business life, as many of us live it.

One effect of this is to create a more credible weakness / achievement gap - but it also raises a very interesting question - if you’re writing this kind of fantasy, then what’s the fantasy for?

Something very positive, I would say; rather than facilitating muscle bound escapism (’I pulled out my battleaxe and slew - SLEW!!! - Bob from HR! And all those other fools who do not appreciate my world saving genius!!!’) it enables (amongst other things) a metafictional exploration of why dealing with Bob from HR can feel so much like a deep betrayal of the self in the first place, motivating the desire to hew.

It also takes a far saner view of resolution. Rather than amassing a monstrous pile of treasure / saving the world from imminent oblivion / restoring the balance between Law and Chaos, etc, heroes in this kind of narrative resolve through infinitely more credible, less compensatory achievement sets.

And come to think of it, that kind of understanding of fantasy leads directly to M. John Harrison - but I’m not going to talk about that until I’ve had some breakfast…

The weakness / achievement gap

Well, the Alan Wall Guide to Writing has arrived (you can also check out his music here), and skimming through it this morning over my breakfast toast I was already feeling sparked by it. For example, here’s Wall on one of fiction’s key obsessions:

‘Fiction is fascinated by darkness and misfortune, and ‘plot’ is usually the negotiation of this by those whom the darkness, however temporarily, enshrouds. What might horrify us in life tends to magnetize us in writing.’

Now that to me is a fascinating comment, and it chimes interestingly with an (I think) Darko Suvin comment on fantasy; that it’s obsessed with weakness, not strength. As Wall points out, it’s not just fantasy that’s fascinated by that – it’s fiction in general.

For the most part, narratives are about failure, not success. Once a character has succeeded in their key task (whether it’s throwing a ring into Mount Doom or just throwing a dinner party) the narrative resolves; the story is at an end.

The action of the narrative comes from the protagonist’s failure to achieve their goal, not their success. The narrative they’re a part of engages the reader by probing protagonist flaws and weak points. As Wall puts it, they face deeply testing ‘darkness and misfortune’.

Which leads – with a bit of a leap – to an interesting way of differentiating between more fantasised and more realistic fiction. You don’t look at the scenery (is it set in Mordor or Knightsbridge?) – rather, you look at the gap between character weakness and achievement.

Frodo is a short, hairy person; and yet he saves an entire civilisation. This, to me, isn’t particular credible, although admittedly he does have some help from his short, hairy gardener. Mrs Dalloway is an upper-middle class Londoner – and she manages to throw a dinner party. This is a gap between weakness and achievement that I can buy into.

That’s a comparison between two books that work in very different ways, written for very different audiences. But the same holds true for books within genre. Compare, say, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ with ‘Gormenghast’. The latter offers a richly imagined, entirely fantasised setting; but within it, Titus’ great achievement is to leave home.

The weakness / achievement gap here is – in human terms – entirely credible, and so the book has an emotional credibility that LotR lacks. It doesn’t need to be read as myth or metaphor to have a real, human impact; it dramatises a situation we’ve all faced, and uses the machinery of fantasy to universalise the weaknesses and failures that set the drama in motion in the first place.