The Savage Take on Structure
February 19, 2002
7:32 a.m.
Another pretty good morning at the keyboard. I'm not yet finished with the new material I want to add, but would guess I'm through with about 60% of it. With luck and a little hard work it'll be done by tomorrow, but if it moves into Thursday, that'll be fine. The deadline is February 28th. I should make it without a problem--assuming, of course, constancy of purpose. [grin]   The NAW's own John Savage has written a sprawl of words on plotting over the past few entries in his journal. I've read them all with interest because John is nothing if not intelligent, witty, and generally right. In this case, he is right again. Kind of. He discusses the seven points and he discusses Campbell's enlightenment theory and he discusses the quest. To all these he adds his own unique twist. All of it good. But (you felt the "but" coming, didn't you?) there is one telling bit buried down inside this commentary of his that always surprises me. Somewhere in there, he says that these structures imply an order in the manuscript--as in "a character must come first, with a setting second, and his problem defined third." Then you can get into the events that happen wherein a character fails and succeeds and things get better or worse. Then you can have the climax. Then the validation. While this is a standard way to present a story, the fact that structure exists by no means requires the plot to be presented to the audience in such a fashion. I've discussed stories like Momento and It's a Wonderful Life in the pages of my journal. Both are presented backward, both were supposed to be fully fleshed out stories. If you've read my opinions, then you know that I think one succeeds and the other fails miserably. Momento is art. But it is not a story. It's a Wonderful Life is a story, complete with all elements, despite the fact that we are not presented with his explicit problem until the last reel. Let's get it straight. Story structure does not imply presentation order, and the fact that you do not present the structure in the "standard order" does not mean that one of these structures is not present. Other than this little hiccup, I agree with John. Good stories are about interesting people that are presented in interesting ways, with interesting problems that result in interesting solutions. Using a structure does not guarantee a successful story. This doesn't disarm the structures that he presents, though. It just means that you can use the structure and still not come up with great art.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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