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Part two of the discussion of archetypes and their usefulness, which arose out of Jean's response to Shelly's assignment #3 in Essence Of Story:
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Message: 21
From: Paul Kopal

The mail just arrived with me, a general list mail, can't think why you didn't see it. I don't know if he was entirely serious or not, but the idea that real people fail a 'credibility test' was amusing. Mind you, that's documentaries for you-so unconvincing as opposed to soap opera!

From Karen:
From Paul: Ed! Thank you for
From Ed: The problem with using real people is that some of them fail, severely fail, the creditability test that every editor applies to a work of fiction.
        
It made me laugh out loud, which is quite rare for me! That's the trouble with real life, it fails editors' credibility tests. LOL! They really MUST come from a different planet!

I've edited for Ed quite a few times, as I have for others who are students in this course. Sat down with him at Worldcon and discussed his DEMON ON THE BEACH for hours. We've also exchanged numerous e-mails. I've also exchanged private e-mails with you, related to this class. What "credibility test" are we talking about?
Clarify ... don't blanket ALL editors with labels. My credentials can be found at: http://www.simegen.com/bios/klbio.html
Karen

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Message: 22
From Karen

From Paul: The mail just arrived with me, a general list mail, can't think why you didn't see it. I don't know if he was entirely serious or not, but the idea that real people fail a 'credibility test' was amusing. Mind you, that's documentaries for you-so unconvincing as opposed to soap opera

I probably receive a LOT more e-mail than you do, so the post probably was only skimmed. I have six e-mail addresses (some of which are Simegen.com related) and also read much of the Webmaster mail, since I do aid there, too.

People on this list are used to my lurking more than participating. However, they also know that if someone needs me for assistance in writing/editing, I usually come out of lurk mode. I have a life outside of Simegen.com, and editing on the computer, so members here tend to forgive me for skimming a lot of the mail I receive.

If you want to share what I missed, please do.

Karen

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Message: 23
From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Paul:

Marion Zimmer Bradley told me a story once about a time when she really needed money, so she tried writing "True Confessions" -- the TC mags were very popular and paid fantastically well.

It looked like easy money -- but she didn't have anything to confess and others clued her in that neither did the writers of the published stories --so she scoured the newspapers and found a great story idea.

She found a true story -- wrote it up from the first person POV and sent it in. It was resounding rejected as "implausible" -- and that ended her True Confessions career before it started.

But it's a writing lesson in a nutshell. Ed is absolutely correct that many real characters cast into fiction set off editor's "implausibility" buttons.

JL

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Message: 24
From: Paul Kopal

It seems to describe a world in which it is presupposed that readers will not believe something unless it is altered and reduced to match something that they have formerly believed.

It would be a very valuable experiment to somehow offer readers the 'true confessions' directly and see which of them they found implausible. It seems to me very unlikely that there would be a consensus of any kind.

The best that can be said of it is that the previous audience reaction of a particular journal has been noted by the functionaries thereof and presumed to be immutable. Therefore stories of certain types are far more likely to be selected, excluding 'rogue elements.'

Thereby the readers become further habituated to a certain 'flavour' of story and anything deviating that much more 'strange'. Thus perpetuating the original self fulfilling prophecy. Certain opinions become increasingly true the more they are exercised.

Or, it could be that it is generally supposed that life and the world in general is a markedly less strange place than it actually is. Nobody would believe for instance that the corpse of a Swede, who died abroad, was being shipped back home when the vessel bearing it sank. The coffin floated, over to the coast of Sweden, down a fjord and came to rest on the bank at the bottom of the garden that led up to his former dwelling! And yet it occurred.

It hardly seems possible that in arguing over a gun in an upper story apartment a mother could accidentally shoot dead her son who was at that moment plunging past the window while committing suicide from the roof.

The original remark and yours seem to suggest to that Editors must be divorced from reality to an alarming degree! How this can have come about I cannot fathom, given that they are humans more or less like readers and supposedly even writers.

The other lesson to draw is that one is not writing for the public at all but encoding ideas so that they can pass inspection by innumerable intermediaries, which is I agree, depressingly probable.
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Message: 25
From: Jean Lorrah

From Steve: Heinlein's heroes tend not to be geeks (small g). They tend to be Engineers (big G)--brainy alpha males in work shirts who have the solutions to the world's problems, if the world would only listen.

No, not the heroes of his adult novels. The heroes of his Young Adult novels, boys often still in high school or barely out of it, brilliant but inexperienced and unworldly, who think they know all about science until they dig themselves in too deep. Often they have to be rescued from the folly they have created by one of those Engineers who are the direct heroes of his later novels. But in those early YA novels, those master Engineers took the mentor role (Merlin, Gandalf, ObI Wan, et al.)

The books were actually intended for the hypothetical 12-year-old boys who were the supposed audience for science fiction. Thus the protagonist resembled the reader, and he was given this magical older, worldly, educated and experienced mentor figure to aspire to be one day.

Jean
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Message: 26
From: Jean Lorrah

From Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
Paul:

Marion Zimmer Bradley told me a story once about a time when she really needed money, so she tried writing "True Confessions" -- the TC mags were very popular and paid fantastically well.

Actually not. I got a couple hundred dollars per story--good money per word, but nothing to live on.

It looked like easy money -- but she didn't have anything to confess and others clued her in that neither did the writers of the published stories --so she scoured the newspapers and found a great story idea.

She found a true story -- wrote it up from the first person POV and sent it in. It was resounding rejected as "implausible" -- and that ended her True Confessions career before it started.

I was more persistent than Marion. When that didn't work, I started rewriting old stories like Grayfriar's Bobby with a TC twist--and THOSE sold! That and astrology articles are how I furnished my house.

Same old lesson: know the classics so you can write new variations on them.

Jean
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Message: 27
From: Steve Khinoy
(in response to Jean)

It's Heinlein's pulp output I have in mind--stories like "The Roads Must Roll." I was that 12-year-old geek audience in the fifties (my aunt had given me her old collection of Astounding Science Fiction) , but it seems to me that the heroes were the Engineers who had (from their perspective) won WWII. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me that the heroes of YA novels are YA's.
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Message: 28
From: Paul Kopal
(in response to Jean)

So really it comes down to the pragmatism of writers ambitious to just 'be writers' as an intention in itself? That is to say, almost without reference to the actual substance of the work. That is as opposed to the ambition 'to write' which might be stated as the intention to create something that just happens to involve the act of writing it.

Those two intentions are actually pretty far removed from each other when you start analysing them, no wonder the two clans don't understand each other! The illusion that they are in fact engaged upon the same act is strong because the habits of them are so similar, this leads them into unnatural communion on web lists and the like but each never does quite comprehend the other. I have seen it many times and often wondered.

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In response to Karen:
Message 29
From: Ed Wilson

Two Million apologies

You know enough people like my heroes to buy it. However, some others may not - for that reason.

You still might not, but you'd have other (better) reasons.

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Message 30
From: Ed Wilson

From Jean: There are choices in some archetypes--the hero can go through all the beginning and middle beats of the monomyth

Before I make a complete idiot of myself, could you elaborate (define) monomyth, please. (Sorry I was too busy doing energy & momentum methods to catch that English course).

From Jean: I've got this in more than one of my stories, and it is well developed in real life - they are called immigrants. Some of them have said some very powerful things when they leave home.

The ordinary person who flees the tragic fall of his society may well be a hero, but he will only rarely become a tragic or epic hero.

To be frank, I hate tragedies. They have absolutely no place in High School English curriculums, and I still repent of not submitting the English class paper that begins: The Quebec government has failed in its objective in assigning me Grapes Of Wrath. I am still alive, I have not committed suicide. However, any further similar attempts will be met with physical violence.

But as a writer I need a hero / protagonist. So while the boys may not be epic, they'll do for one story I suppose. Would you agree? And if they are neither tragic, nor epic what does that make them?

Ed

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Message: 31
From: Ed Wilson

From Jean: I don't know what a gleek is--I assume some variation of geek.


Quoting CJ Cherryh, Gleeks are the academically accomplished socially maladroit. She, as a known science fiction writer was given the gleek class when she was teaching high school. It is from her telling of what happened next (while we sat in the Winnipeg airport on the way home from a Keycon) that I drew the basis for 3 highland lads.

And indeed Hugh Lou and Alex are academically "skewing the curve," and some of their teachers hate giving them the best marks in the class because they are NOT socially there.

From Jean: Is the geek techie an archetype? Yes--he's the sorcerer's apprentice. He knows just enough of his craft to get into big trouble--and then he has to use the intelligence that got him that far to learn VERY FAST in order to get himself--and often people he cares about--out again.

I like this. And indeed the boys are not wholly successful in this, but they do try.
Ed.
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Message 32
From: Steve Khinoy

Paul: 1) By and large, most humans don't start with an intention 'to create something' and only then discover that it 'just happens to involve the act of writing.' That's because most humans don't have a wide choice of expressive outlets ("Let's see, should this impulse be expressed as a sculpture, a symphony, or a sonnet?').

2) Writing is demanding and time-consuming. Frequently, the decision to "be a writer" involves a decision not to be something else--like employed full-time. That means taking assignments for pay. The challenge is to make them into opportunities to hone one's craft.

3) Writing is a craft that needs to be practiced and practiced. (This is at least true of the making of fiction for public consumption--I'll concede the existence of amateur poets who write only occasionally but produce occasional fine work). One traditional task of apprenticeship is the learning of formulas and the imitation of models--always has been, always will be.

4) But yes, it's of course possible to dash off an inspired first novel without previous apprenticeship. This is usually the result of intensive, though unconscious study of models and formulas. It's also the reason for a lot of promising first novels that have no successors.

Steve Khinoy

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Message: 33
From: Steve Khinoy

Ed, you're entitled to hate "The Grapes of Wrath," (and everything else you had to read in school) but it isn't at all a tragedy.

Steve Khinoy
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Message: 34
From: Paul Kopal

"The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists." Charles Dickens
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Message: 35
From: Steve Khinoy

Paul, We appear to be coming down to a theological argument: can humans create the way God is said to? (Though even in the Bible, God sees that the world is "very good" only after he has created it.)

Put differently, you hold a strongly Romantic position: that intention/will/desire are everything. I hold a more [neo]-Classical position: desire has to be given an answerable form.

I think that it was Jean who cited Alexander Pope as an example of a writer whose works are no longer read. I hold by one of his sayings;

"True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance ..."

(I speak here as one whom people tried to "teach" to dance in the Sixties by people who told me, "Just feel the music;" and also as a fencing coach who has had to teach people to use their weapon the way it wanted to be used, not the way they wanted to use it. )

Note, though, that Pope seems to allow no room for the form that grows organically out of the poet's desire alone. This is the Romantic position--the position that Dickens espouses in your quotation. All I can say is that it doesn't allow for the revision and backtracking that are in fact necessary to produce a work of fiction--even for Dickens, if you look at some of the things he said. "Easy writing makes damn'd hard reading."

Steve Khinoy
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Message: 36
From: Paul Kopal

From Steve: We appear to be coming down to a theological argument: can humans create the way God is said to? (Though even in the Bible, God sees that the world is "very good" only after he has created it.)

Put differently, you hold a strongly Romantic position: that intention/will/desire are everything. I hold a more [neo]-Classical position: desire has to be given an answerable form.

But there has to be a desire for a particular form beforehand, that is the whole point, not just a hankering for a particular kind of work. I can never understand writers who just seem to want to be writers regardless of what they actually might write, as an end unto itself. I'm not saying that it is an unworthy goal - it just mystifies me. Before I started 'Garden of Devices' my much huge opus I desired to craft a world of baroque richness and perversity, with great colour and multitudinous detail, a place akin to Sallambos palace only mated with Lovecraft and even Howard. I had no desire to 'be a writer' I wanted to make that world in the way I dreamed it before its creation. I did, to my own satisfaction, but it came out in a form that I had never envisioned beforehand because there was very little plan and it grew organically from that almost abstract desire and vision. It has been revised and corrected many, many times and I don't really recall advising not revising! What I do NOT recommend is revising before writing which seems to me what is almost championed from time to time. I do believe in the initial wild idea being given its own life without recourse to the pre pre pre editors' market summary and taking in a stock evaluation. If that is 'romantic' then so be it.

From Steve: I think that it was Jean who cited Alexander Pope as an example of a writer whose works are no longer read. I hold by one of his sayings: "True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance ..."

If I am 'no longer read' in three hundred years time I do not expect to be grieved overmuch. I can't see many contemporary authors getting much beyond a year or two at best because someone comes along and writes they book they wrote again, thus replacing it.

Popes translations of the Iliad and Odyssey seem to be still very much in circulation and the 'Rape of the Lock' was performed as a play in London last year. Perhaps the rumours of his death are exaggerated? I agree with him though, 'Art not chance', he didn't write 'glum rule following not chance!' But come Alexander old man, chance must always be a part of art, where would art be without accidents? I accidentally 'let' a relatively minor character completely take over volume three of G.O.D. and do not rue it

From Steve:(I speak here as one whom people tried to "teach" to dance in the Sixties by people who told me, "Just feel the music;" and also as a fencing coach who has had to teach people to use their weapon the way it wanted to be used, not the way they wanted to use it. )

I equally don't think that people who have read many, many books about dance and memorised all the floor patterns can just walk out onto a dance floor and dance WITHOUT 'feeling the music'. The two are not mutually exclusive however it just seems to me that nowadays one does have an unnatural ascendancy over the other.

From Steve: Note, though, that Pope seems to allow no room for the form that grows organically out of the poet's desire alone. This is the Romantic position--the position that Dickens espouses in your quotation. All I can say is that it doesn't allow for the revision and backtracking that are in fact necessary to produce a work of fiction--even for Dickens,

I can't see where Dickens rejects all backtracking and revision. He just didn't let the publisher write it FOR him. (He also began his career as a dreaded self publisher.) The egoist! Poetry minus the poet's desire is a shopping list, AFTER the passion comes the craft. It follows as a tool and it cannot precede the formless intention or you have legions of persons whose novels are still born within them. Grammar can be corrected, spelling amended, but lack of talent fire passion etc is a terminal condition for any art form. It's like grocers and farmers deciding they can do without mother nature to originally grow the produce. Without that mystery they have empty land and shelves. And yet publishers are perilously close to that very belief it seems to me.

From Steve: if you look at some of the things he said. "Easy writing makes damn'd hard reading."

Then why is 'easy listening' music so excruciating to listen to? It is anything but EASY to listen to. Bland obvious unthreatening and easy to ignore except if trapped in a lift with it. I feel the same about 'easy reading' I do not WANT to read easily, to let the slim little words slip past unnoticed. Words are not a wheelbarrow for carrying the over sacred plot to market, they are a living entity in themselves and somewhat an endangered species. A pox upon the literary equivalent of 'lift [elevator] music'. Everything should not be effortless.
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Message: 37
From: Shelly

From Jean: It is possible that you are at that stage mature readers inevitably go through when they are taught or discover on their own that there ARE basic underlying structures and rules for creating literature. For a while they become cynical, "all stories are just formulas," "there is nothing new, so why bother?" It is at that point that they often find that an extremely formulaic kind of story, such as the modern paperback romance, ceases to satisfy forever. But after a while they find more mature works which succeed in building something original upon the archetypal structures, and discover that there is an extra pleasure in recognizing both the originality and the underlying structure.

This is very interesting. I really identify with this as I am currently going through the "why bother" phase.

From Jacqueline: What you bring back is likely to be over-simplified into something like "The Hero Archetype" (you all read the WWW post I pointed you to some weeks ago on The Hero?

Can you tell me where this post is? I did not see it.

From Jean: Is the geek techie an archetype? Yes--he's the sorcerer's apprentice. He knows just enough of his craft to get into big trouble--and then he has to use the intelligence that got him that far to learn VERY FAST in order to get himself--and often people he cares about--out again. By the end of the story he is at least journeyman, and perhaps master.

When I read this I recognized Harry Potter immediately! This is the very same archetype Rowling must have hit upon consciously or unconsciously. And see, two VERY different stories come from this same skeletal structure.

From Steve: It's Heinlein's pulp output I have in mind--stories like "The Roads Must Roll." I was that 12-year-old geek audience in the fifties (my aunt had given me her old collection of Astounding Science Fiction) , but it seems to me that the heroes were the Engineers who had (from their perspective) won WWII. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me that the heroes of YA novels are YA's.

What is "Stranger in a Strange Land" considered? One of Heinlein's adult novels? This it THE book that made me want to be a writer. He meshed in so many things that I had barely begun to learn about. Over the years, I've "grown into" some of the beliefs first introduced to me by this book. Funny, I never read any of his other work.

From Ed: Before I make a complete idiot of myself, could you elaborate (define) monomyth, please. (Sorry I was too busy doing energy & momentum methods to catch that English course

I, too, am not familiar with the Monomyth, but Jean and Jacqueline suggested I read Joseph Campbell's book "Hero with a Thousand Faces" to get a grasp of it. I'm not sure if you were so referred, but it's very dense reading. But, once you get into Campbell's style, you'll catch the hang of it and then it becomes entertaining. But don't try and do much brain work after reading!! <smile

From Steve: Put differently, you hold a strongly Romantic position: that intention/will/desire are everything. I hold a more [neo]-Classical position: desire has to be given an answerable form.

I am not familiar at all with either position. Can you direct me to a book/website that will educate me on this subject?

My Comments:

I did not know a thing about archetypes when this thread first got underway. But now, I have a good working knowledge of the theory. I am now ready to go and read with an eye to finding archetypes in works. I understand Paul's position that it is so obvious that we should not need to learn it externally, however, Jean is also correct (in my humble opinion) that the novice needs to see a foundation so that they can learn to eventually run with it.

And Paul's idea of writing a novel from the POV of archetypes sounds like a great project. Just make sure you fit in a 3-legged dog named Tripod, the editors will love that...

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Message: 38
From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Shelly:

Glad you finally caught up with this VERY remarkable thread you started with your Assignment 3.

From Shelly: What is "Stranger in a Strange Land" considered? One of Heinlein's adult novels? This it THE book that made me want to be a writer. He meshed in so many things that I had barely begun to learn about. Over the years, I've "grown into" some of the beliefs first introduced to me by this book. Funny, I never read any of his other work.

What I note about this is not the influence STRANGER had on you but rather the influence MARKETING had on you. STRANGER was heavily marketed because of a huge trend in place at the time which it tied into -- the flower children, drugs, and a "new" living-group paradigm of the "commune".

The anthropology of "sharing water" made a wonderful symbolism that they picked up and marketed like crazy. We used it in the Affirmation of the Continuity to good effect at that time.

Nothing else RAH did got that kind of marketing -- and now they make a film of STARSHIP TROOPERS. *sigh*

There were many other novels published during those years "better" than STRANGER -- that didn't get marketed. And the same is true today. Watch out of the corner of your reading-eye. As with MZB's Mists of Avalon -- a prolific writer is known and remembered for only one work, and not necessarily the most significant one. Study that. Understand it. It's all marketing.

The Web post I referred to that you were asking about is featured in my Jan 2005 Review column, "Ancient, Modern and Future Myth." "Can the U.S. wake up from its Hero Trance -- In Time?"
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/columns/0105.html
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Message: 38
From: Jean Lorrah

From Paul Kopal: "The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists." Charles Dickens

Oh, that is wonderful, Paul!

Charles Dickens, of course, is a prime example of someone who wrote for a living. His point is that DESPITE selling his stories before they were actually written, and writing madly to make deadlines as the works were being serialized, he FELT that he was creating rather than constructing because he loved what he was doing.

Of all people, Dickens HAD to know story patterns, and plan out his work well, whether on paper or in his head, before he began. Otherwise he could NEVER have kept up the pace of a 19th century serial novelist. And he knew his archetypes. Oliver Twist is the hidden prince. Pip is the rejected suitor of the temptress (same character as the knight in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"). You didn't think Scrooge was the first misanthrope ever to reform, did you? Dickens simply took the figure from Renaissance and Reformation theater and revised him for modern times.

Dickens knew and used archetypes to build the kind of career I only wish I had.

Jean
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Message: 39
From: Jean Lorrah

From Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
Shelly:
Glad you finally caught up with this VERY remarkable thread you started with your Assignment 3.

From Shelly: What is "Stranger in a Strange Land" considered? One of Heinlein's adult novels? This it THE book that made me want to be a writer. He meshed in so many things that I had barely begun to learn about. Over the years, I've "grown into" some of the beliefs first introduced to me by this book. Funny, I never read any of his other work.


What I note about this is not the influence STRANGER had on you but rather the influence MARKETING had on you. STRANGER was heavily marketed because of a huge trend in place at the time which it tied into -- the flower children, drugs, and a "new" living-group paradigm of the "commune

I'm snipping the rest of Jacqueline's post, which is about how marketing made STRANGER Heinlein's best-known works. Below is WHY the marketers recognized, consciously or unconsciously, that this one was the one to push:

STRANGER is one of Heinlein's least original books, even though at the time it was published it was considered by most readers to be incredibly original. But what it is, is the monomyth, EVERY SINGLE BEAT. Somewhere in the middle of THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, Campbell has a couple of pages in which he lays bare the bones of the monomyth, beat by beat. An interesting exercise would be to take STRANGER and compare it, beat by beat, from Valentine Michael Smith's exceptional birth to his martyrdom and rebirth. Every step is there, even the youthful demonstration of power in Harshaw's swimming pool, before his public life begins.

Of course Heinlein deliberately played with the version of the monomyth best known to his readers: the life of Christ. That is probably the reason he chose water imagery (baptism), and most definitely the reason for the cannibalism (communion), so rebellious young folk could feel that they were reading something really dangerous, and perhaps even titillatingly evil.

But in reality, it is a perfectly safe stroll through MonomythLand.

STRANGER is actually Heinlein's MOST derivative work--he discovered Campbell before his readers did. Once you know the monomyth, Heinlein's use of it is BLATANT.

But because of the emotional POWER of the monomyth (the one myth--the biggie--the one that resonates through all our lives), STRANGER became his breakout book, the one that got him known beyond sf fandom.

Jean
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Message: 40
From: Shelly

From Jean: Of course Heinlein deliberately played with the version of the monomyth best known to his readers: the life of Christ. That is probably the reason he chose water imagery (baptism), and most definitely the reason for the cannibalism (communion), so rebellious young folk could feel that they were reading something really dangerous, and perhaps even titillatingly evil.

But in reality, it is a perfectly safe stroll through MonomythLand.

STRANGER is actually Heinlein's MOST derivative work--he discovered Campbell before his readers did. Once you know the monomyth, Heinlein's use of it is BLATANT.

But because of the emotional POWER of the monomyth (the one myth-- the biggie--the one that resonates through all our lives), STRANGER became his breakout book, the one that got him known beyond sf fandom.

I was actually going to use STRANGER as the book for Assignment 6, but decided to go with MZB's WITCH HILL. I'll do as you suggest Jean, and go through STRANGER pulling out each beat of the monomyth laid out in HERO.

I'm telling you, this is the easiest way to learn about archetypes!! This makes so much sense to me. I'm not sure if I can utilize it as yet, I'm still processing it all. But I will...in time.

--__--__--

Message: 41
From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

So Shelly has hit paydirt in this course! Thank you everyone for the wonderfully lively LIST!

JL

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Message: 42
From: Shelly

YES! Thank you everyone, especially to you Paul because you started this thread. You've taught me a valuable lesson about life and about writing.

All the best, S.

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Message: 43
From: Paul Kopal
(in response to Jean)

Of course, there was Dickens strong desire to expose social iniquity to consider. His agenda in that regard was almost journalistic, which must have pulled him away from happy ending myth and towards tragedy, in order to tug at the heart strings. Also the great amount of comedy in the incidental characters and comedy still seems to me the wild card in all of this. Which is only right and proper I think, given the anarchic power of laughter which is in its way more powerful than many a more overt force.
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(Note: here is where I think the thread wanders off in a third direction)
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Message: 44
From: Shelly

Good Morning Everyone --

I was thinking about a speeding train as in Agatha Christie's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. The idea of a train speeding through the night trying to reach its destination; is this an archetype? Or is this a plot type?

I guess I'm still trying to get the distinction down.

S.


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Message: 45
From: Paul Kopal

Sounds more like a location to me. As the object referred to cannot have emotions of its own it presumably is immune to archetypes. As it travels along a pre-ordained track and has no will of its own to deviate in the slightest it does resemble some plots however!

--__--__--

Message:
46 From: Shelly


From Paul: "Don't ask what the world needs; Rather ask what makes you come alive. Then go and do it! Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman


--- What makes me come alive is having my brain picked in 15 different directions all at the same time encouraging me to let go of my old ways of functioning to release something new.

Thanks Paul
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Message: 47
From: Jean

From Shelly: Good Morning Everyone --

I was thinking about a speeding train as in Agatha Christie's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS The idea of a train speeding through the night trying to reach its destination; is this an archetype? Or is this a plot type?

I guess I'm still trying to get the distinction down.

That is a very good question. The only examples I can think of are modern--at least ones with vehicles involved. ALIEN is of course Christie's TEN LITTLE INDIANS mixed with ORIENT EXPRESS and set in space. Off hand, unless others can suggest much earlier examples, I would call this one a plot type that developed with the mystery genre

It's funny--why can't I think of any earlier examples of a group of people locked within a confined space with a killer on the loose among them? You would think somebody would have done it with a medieval castle, wouldn't you? It seems such an obvious means of creating suspense. I can't say I have read every Sherlock Holmes story--is there one with this pattern? Or was it actually invented by Agatha Christie?

Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" is a precursor, but not quite the same because the killer is both allegorical and supernatural, not truly one of the guests

The concept has certainly been borrowed many times since

Jean
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Message: 48
From: Shelly

So would you say, all really good stories have as a base a powerful archetype layered over with an energizing plot (like an action plot)?

In essence, can you "plan" to have a really good book by utilizing tools in an innovative fashion? And then, add current day "hot" topics to add even more zip to your structural foundation.

How do you build a blockbuster? Is there a "formula"?

Obviously, the Stephen King's, Dan Brown's and John Grisham's of the world have found their own particular blockbuster formulas. Does that evolve over time? Or, do people hit on it and just keep duplicating their success? Well, I guess both do happen, huh?

As Steve said, 'just blathering'. I'm trying to grasp something that's too elusive for me to understand yet. Something's stirring in my mind and I don't know what it is.

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Message: 49
From: Steve Khinoy

<snip

From Shelly: The idea of a train speeding through the night trying to reach its destination; is this an archetype? Or is this a plot type? I guess I'm still trying to get the distinction down

For me, neither a plot type nor an archetype as stated unless the train is the protagonist: someone trying to get somewhere, in which case it's a version of the quest type of plot. Archetypes wouldn't come in until we know the characters and forces who are helping or hindering the train/protagonist and relate them to the psychological archetypes.

Locked-room mysteries and the like don't come in until after puzzle-type detective stories come in--think Poe's "The Purloined Letter." Detective stories don't seem to predate more or less modern police forces-- Dickens. Puzzle-type stories are as old as Oedipus.

Steve Khinoy

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Message: 50
From: AM Olson

Hmmmm, what I see going on here are three distinct but related concepts. People tell each other stories, whether they're myths, folk/fairy tales or just plain old garden variety tall tales. Any of you ever say ...

"You won't believe what just happened to me!" and so on and so forth. Or, "Did you hear about .... " Our general format has changed since the Brothers Grimm, or Ovid, or Homer and the details are often wildly different, but the stories haven't changed.

How many of you have heard about the Darwin Award winner who strapped the jet rocket to his car and ran it into a cliff. (Or off of one, depending on the version.) This is the story of Icarus, just with different details.

For the most part, amazingly enough, people don't really change. Its one of those utterly fascinating things about people. We might have wildly different details than our ancestors, a rocket instead of glued on feathers, but the concept is the same. "Look at that moron who tried to do the obviously impossible stunt and killed himself in the process."

I love watching urban legends and lining them up with classical myths or folk tales. Its utterly fascinating how the same stories get retold for millennia. Claude Levi-Strauss was probably the founder of this field, called mythography, dealing with the mythocreation process in primarily tribal peoples. Personally I love watching the mythocreation process in modern urban peoples. Its way more fun because I can go out and do field work and often even get a few free beers for my efforts.

From Jean: It's funny--why can't I think of any earlier examples of a group of peoplelocked within a confined space with a killer on the loose among them?

Hmmm, possibly because it might be far more the realm of pure story telling not mytho-creation or even folk tale. Its too much a human concept, to be trapped with the unknown killer. Probably goes back to living in caves and being chased by smilodons at least. Humans tend to kill each other, particularly under stress, such as trapped in enclosed spaces or by weather.

How many of you heard some variant on 'the killer is sitting next to you and you're the last one' type ghost story as a kid? Only exceptional stories get recorded. The ones that everyone tells around the campfire don't, because everyone knows them. Now we tell these stories in movies and books, but its still the same concept. The predator among the prey we can't tell and one by one we get chomped until the reader is the only one left. The 'wolf among the sheep', or 'wolf in sheep's clothing'. Anyone ever hear of that last? That's the mythographic foundation for 'killer among us'.

From Jean: The concept has certainly been borrowed many times since.


I'd say it was as generic as the 'idiot gets himself killed as an example' and so even as noticeable as the 'star-crossed lovers' or the 'resurrected god' stories, which are also ubiquitous, but they stand out. Thing is that the 'idiot gets himself killed' or the 'wolf among the sheep' stories are things mamas tell their babies in the cradle. We've heard so many stories about "Don't take candy from strangers" and "The little boy who stuck his finger in the light socket" we don't even recognize them as folk tales.

For fun, if you want to see modern examples of this whole phenomenon that might be a bit more recognizable ...

http://www.snopes.com

I mean the Choking Doberman *is* a relative of the 'wolf in sheep's clothing', being that the burglar is still in the house and so lurking, unknown in the background, while one person is left defenseless in the house with him.

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Message: 51
From: Shelly

I was thinking about this. Does Daphne Du Maurier's REBECCA (1938) qualify as this type? It is a medieval-like castle set in Cornwall. And it is a person (and a ghost) who haunts Rebecca, not a group of people. And it is suspenseful.

However, this type of story is definitely plot and not archetype. I see that now.

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Message: 52
From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Shelly:

Ah, the "speeding train" in ORIENT EXPRESS is neither plot nor archetype.

The toolbox tool you are groping for here is SETTING. (a technical term)

We aren't discussing that much in Essence of Story because it's decoration not essence.

But it's decoration that matters -- it carries information that is vital to a reader deciding if they want to read the story or not.

No two writers assemble a story in the same way -- and a given writer may either assemble each story differently from others that writer has done, or evolve slowly over decades from one method to another.

There is no "formula" for achieving a fully assembled story. That's why it's art. Did you read my piece on ART on the 3rd assignment thread? That should answer your question about SETTING to some extent.

When analyzing a story for its component parts, you should notice whether or not all the parts work together smoothly to express the same thing -- the THEME (another tool in your toolbox).

The THEME is the glue that holds a story's parts together and makes it all make sense to a reader.

I believe you will find that the stories that walk off the pages and into your dreams are stories where all the details express a single, central theme and that theme speaks to your personal subconscious.

More complex and sophisticated novels may have several themes, but in that case the themes are assembled in a certain way and related internally in a certain way. That technique is beyond the scope of Essence of Story.

THEME is a very sophisticated part of storycraft and brings into story all the multitudinous philosophies of life you either subscribe to or find offensive. THEME is "what you have to say" -- it's your reason for wanting to write the story and the reader's reason for wanting to read the story and for remembering it and for memorizing your byline.

The master THEME of the Romance field is "Love Conquers All" -- when that no longer seems either true or desirable to you -- you stop reading romance.

The MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS story was set on that train because at that time in history (when the book was written and published) -- that train was the equivalent of a space-ship. It had a reputation and a mystique -- it was set in a far-away place with strange sounding names. It had passengers going from a mysterious place to a mysterious place (from an American or even British point of view). And the passengers could be spies, thieves, businessmen, smugglers, or vacationers. Interesting people to put together.

The train had a reputation for being on-time. It was like a juggernaut --it was relentless and its schedule was everything. The passengers were "helpless" while it was running (horror genre element) -- it didn't stop (express) and it went FAST (express). You couldn't get off. ("Hero" is the detective who empowers people and defends them by reducing the horror to a mere puzzle.)

It's a perfect setting for a murder mystery because of the vast vistas of imagination the very setting opens up for the reader -- so many motives, so many methods, so many opportunities, -- the reader trying to solve the mystery with the detective is straining to sort clues from background and that's the fun of mystery. What else do you know about the world that you can use to solve the mystery before the detective? Are you good enough --well read enough -- clever enough? That's the appeal of mystery.

And the master THEME in mystery genre is "In a duel of wits, the cleverest win." Placing a Murder Mystery in a "mysterious" SETTING is what I refer to as "thematic unity" -- where all the pieces are artistically chosen to support the central theme and explain any supporting themes.

Using a SETTING of a train crossing international borders (a fairly new innovation for the world at that time) for a murder mystery allows the writer to discuss additional political, social, economic and religious themes by careful choice of detail and decoration.

So your question about the ORIENT EXPRESS as an element in a famous novel can be answered with "both and neither" -- the train is neither plot nor archetype. It is SETTING, which is carefully chosen to explicate the THEME and that carefully made choice makes the work a work of Art.

Because it's a tightly constructed work of Art, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS became a candidate for the kind of promotion (see my various posts on your Assignment 3 thread) that boosts a book into a best seller. But more than that, it didn't become a flash-in-the-pan best seller as mere promotion would have made it. It became a classic and has lasted a very long time and is still readable. Why? Because the choices of characters, their biographies, motives and methods all explicate that same theme that dictated the choice of the train for the setting.

Every element in that novel is carefully chosen from the central theme --and every single element is likewise reflective of the murder-mystery genre's master theme. That story couldn't happen anywhere but on that train. It has artistic inevitability.

Like SF, Murder Mystery is a genre that pits the intellect of one truly exemplary mind against another.

Remember how Sherlock Holmes was just a detective without Morioraty? It's the duel of wits between towering figures who are near-equals or actual equals that makes it interesting.

Heinlein's Heroes were the same -- detectives pitted against a puzzle. In SF the puzzle is scientific. In Mystery, the puzzle is "who done it". (or how or why?) (or sometimes whether this is murder at all?)

The isolating a group of disparate people with a threat is a story springboard. It isn't a plot. The plot is who does what to whom. The plot is action and reaction. The plot is "because". And the speeding train isn't an archetype.

Note how I rephrased your question. "The isolating" -- I've now changed this discussion to a different tool in your toolbox. This one is called SITUATION. The condition of being isolated with a group of disparate people is a SITUATION the protag must deal with. But nothing will happen without the THREAT added -- i.e. the conflict.

In ORIENT EXPRESS the conflict (as in all murder mysteries) is detective vs. perp.

Without a conflict you can't have a situation. Each of our tools here is built out of the conflict.

The conflict can dictate the theme by the nature of the resolution of the conflict. "Love Conquers All" resolves the conflict of "Love vs. Obstacles" -- the nature of the conflict's resolution dictates the theme.

Once you have the theme, you have narrowed down your selection of possible SITUATIONS. Nail the situation in such a way that it's the best out-growth of the theme, and you then will know the appropriate SETTING.

Everything rests on CONFLICT. Conflict is the essence of story. Not archetype. Conflict. Archetypes just sit there. Nothing happens until you have a conflict. And until something happens, you don't have a story.

Get all the components of your story to reflect a single, central theme which is the master-theme of the genre you're working in, and you will have the makings of a best seller.

There are thousands of books published each year that all do that with pristine perfection. Many best sellers don't do that -- but they don't become classics. Publishers don't choose which books to promote into best sellers on the basis of their potential to become classics. They choose on the basis of how much money they think they can make in the shortest possible time -- because if they don't, they lose their jobs or their company goes bankrupt.

Writing well won't make you a best seller. Writing medium-poorly won't keep you from becoming a best seller. Writing very poorly will.

But if you're going to write at all - why not write well? It's no more trouble than writing poorly. And in fact, it makes writing much easier and faster -- reducing your cost-per-unity and thus increasing your "productivity". Besides, it's more fun. And it gives your books the chance of becoming a classic.

Yes, there's a formula for writing best sellers that last -- but adhering to the formula won't make your book a best seller. Only marketing can do that, and whether your book gets marketed or not doesn't depend on anything you can do. You have no input into that process. The decisions are made by people who do not read books, and would never read yours -- probably wouldn't understand it if they did.

It's a gamble, and the odds are against you.

JL
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
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Message: 53
From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Shelly:

Read my long complex answer to this question.

No, again in REBECCA -- it's SETTING chosen with thematic unity. Read what I wrote, then re-analyze REBECCA.

Do you remember the movie THE KEY TO REBECCA? Set in Northern Africa during I think WWI -- and REBECCA was the novel used as a code-source?

JL
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Message: 54
From: Paul Kopal

In Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree (One of my first rank favourite books BTW) the tale is boy meets girl loses girl and then marries girl. But the real subject of the piece IS the setting, his lament for the fading of the old village ways. The reader ends up knowing something that the central character does not and suspecting that his marriage is far from the fairy tale ending he assumes it to be. But the village itself and the countryside around is the 'hero'.

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Message: 55
From: Edward Wilson

From Steve Khinoy: Ed, you're entitled to hate "The Grapes of Wrath," (and everything else) you had to read in school) but it isn't at all a tragedy.

No, it was just depressing, which at the time was the last thing I needed! Between SAD in a Montreal Winter, and West Island and only 1 car (my mom didn't drive) well the less said the better. GoW just went too far. I know that JL isn't bothered by this, as are a large number of other people but back in 1970 I was.

I was delighted at the good performance of the tragedy (German) "Moreta; Dragon Lady of Pern" and have re read it.

Yours truly, Ed Wilson

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Message: 56
From: Edward Wilson

From Jean: The ordinary person who flees the tragic fall of his society may well be a hero, but he will only rarely become a tragic or epic hero. The only way he can be either is if A) he returns and becomes a leader either to save his society or take it down with him; B) he is already the leader and like Oedipus' his flight is useless--behind him his society develops his uncle/brother-in-law and his daughter into a weird combination tragic hero (she fulfills the best-of-her-society requirement and he fulfills the tragic-flaw requirement) to complete the destruction of the society; or C) he rises to leadership in the society he emigrates to and becomes an epic or tragic hero there (traditionally in this case the epic hero).


This would be like Daniel Boone who in story is an epic hero, and in real life a tragic one (after he'd founded that part of Tennessee). I'll have conversations off list when I get Lamprey, Sovereign and Mouth Of Hell outlines to you about this.

But Three Highland Lads is a Prequel, and that's all there is to it, and I'm supposed to be outlining the back end of it now.

Ed Wilson

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Message: 57
From: Edward Wilson

From Paul: Thereby the readers become further habituated to a certain 'flavour' of story and anything deviating that much more 'strange'. Thus perpetuating the original self fulfilling prophecy. Certain opinions become increasingly true the more they are exercised.

Indeed, the Bonneycasttles are masters of this format. It is called consistency in production, and is championed by such people as Edwards Deming (who almost put GM out of business by teaching his method to the Japanese when GM wouldn't listen to him).

What a lot of consumers want is something very predictable, and by my understanding the Bonneycasttles Harlequin Publishing did just exactly that. At one point, in the 1970's they were issuing a 132 page writers guide, complete with plot outline, grammar guide, and "style" advice, for a 256 page novel.

With the flow of MS's produced they took over a significant portion of the book sales in NA (something like 20- 30%). I've tried to talk my mom into writing one, and with that package she could.

This is the value to the author of the monomyth and the archetype, they allow you to tap into that latent sales volume and get a couple of good sellers and then you write off that type - if you want to.

Whether you do it deliberately, or subconsciously.

On the subject of apprenticeship, my profession in Canada requires an apprenticeship, 8 years in fact. 4 in University, and 4 more under the supervision of a practicing member of the professional association. At the end of this we are given the license to change society, despite the fact that our craft and training says nothing about how or why we should do so.

In the US you just pass the exam, and a more doubtful notion I've not seen in a while.

Yours truly, Ed Wilson


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