Kids' Movies and Plot
November 30, 1998
5:20 a.m.
"Kids' movies are great for analyzing plot," Lisa said as she picked up a corn chip. "What?" was Brigid's reply. But I had heard her, and I smiled. I smiled because I had been thinking the same thing just before Lisa said it. Every Sunday is family day, you see. And yesterday Lisa and I took Brigid to the movies. We saw The Rugrats Movie, and then we saw A Bug's Life. Yep, two movies. When I say we went to the movies yesterday, I mean it. [grin] We went to a Mexican place for dinner afterward. And that's where Lisa made her comment. "Kids' movies are great for analyzing plot," she repeated. We took a moment to explain 'plot' to Brigid, and then we were all ripe for the discussion. We talked about try/fails, and try/succeeds. We identified collections of nested try/fails, and Lisa pointed to the obvious validation scenes. We've been doing this ever since the Kris and Dean show. Talking about stories. It's a wonderful way to be, I think. Some folks don't want to see the structure under stories. They want to feel the magic of the thing, instead--they want to enjoy the ride. That's fine. And I certainly understand their desire. In fact, it's the way I want people to feel when they read my stories. Riding a story is an exhilerating feeling. But I'm different. Maybe it's the engineer in me. I want to see the details. I want to know how a story works. Storytelling isn't engineering, though. It's entertainment instead--more like a magic trick than an algorithm design. And that's what's got me thinking this morning. One of the things that differentiates a storyteller from a reader is this curiosity for how things work on the page. Or maybe this is the difference between being a writer and being a storyteller, too, I'm not here to fight semnatics. But I'm thinking that being a writer/storyteller is a lot like being a magician, you know. The plot line is your process. It's how you tell the story, what happens next and all that. The structure is your environment, the mechanics you've used to tell the plot. But every good magician blurs the edges of his plot and his environment with things that divert the attention, just as every good storyteller fills his pages with characters and problems and dialog that are so compelling that the reader is forced to ignore his mechanics. When it's done right it works. And when it works, you find yourself cheering for the characters and loving the work. ... even when the main character is an ant. Just something to think about on a Monday morning.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"The Greatest Joy There is in Life is Creating." L. Ron hubbard |
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