OK, I was the last person on the planet to read Twilight. I hadn't read any of the other three books in the Edward/Bella series. I haven't seen the films, or even trailers for the films.
How? Just lucky, I guess.
All I knew about Twilight was that young girls raved over it, anyone over the age of thirty hated it, those blessed (or cursed) with even minimal amounts of testosterone became nauseous in its presence, and vampire afficionados spat garlic and holy water when any mention was made of sparkly vampires.
So, last weekend, since my daughter has the complete set, I read Twilight with a relatively open mind.
Possible spoilers
Let me start on a positive note. I liked Stephenie Meyer's style of writing - fast, easy, page-turning stuff. But then I also like Dan Brown's writing style for the same reasons. And James Patterson. All three have accessible, smooth prose and, generally speaking, fairly natural and believable dialogue.
Back to Stephenie.
So, I liked the style. I'm afraid that's almost it for the good points.
Now for the rest.
Content
Our main character is a teenage girl (Bella). Shallow, self-obsessed and totally absorbed in trivia. Never mind global famine or war in Afghanistan. She worries about what her new friends will think of her, and does that green go with her eyes.
Oh, and she falls like so totally in love with a vampire in the space of two weeks or so.
This vampire has nothing going for him except for being inhumanly beautiful, amazingly fast, unbelievably strong, rich and, presumably, never belching or farting. Well, he doesn't eat, does he? Oh, and he saves her life three times.
See? The girl is shallow, like I said. Nothing about his personality, mind, world view or plans for the future. In fact, all the characters are shallow, veering from furious to placid in the space of two sentences - which is always the sign of poor characterization. Real people, and real vampires, hold grudges. They harbour festering resentments. They are slow to change their opinions. Not in teen-girl world, obviously.
No, wait - Edward Vampire is a tortured soul. We know he's tortured, because both he and the author tell us so, constantly. He is in torment, torn between killing the annoying whiny teenager and falling in love with her. He writhes on a knife edge. He oscillates between love and thirst.
Hmmm. Vampires aren't supposed to have a soul, are they?
Most of the vampires in this book have the same moral dilemma. Humans - frail, slow, blundering, short-lived, pathetic - friends or food? Social circle or herd? No wonder people, including our heroine, want to become vampires. Where's the downside?
The vampires - yes, plural. There is a family of these demi-gods going to school with our heroine. This school is set in Washington State. The cloudiest, wettest, most cloud-bound, fog-shrouded part of Washington State. Echoes of Thirty Days of Night.
Why there?
Because our vampires sparkle in the sunlight. It's the place in the USA with the least amount of sunlight per year. The author explains this sparkling as a mechanism to entice their prey closer.
OK, you can catch fish with something shiny. So if their prey (us, remember?) has the IQ of a mackerel, that's plausible. Oh, wait, teenage girls - yes, fair enough.
These vampires also play baseball. Score one for irony. No problem there.
Oh, and they don't hunt humans any more, because they've all sworn to be good vampires. Sometimes they slip, but not often. Well, yes... I suppose I could just about accept that.
When Bella first thinks Edward is a vampire, and then has it confirmed, her reaction is: 'OK, yeah, so, like nobody's perfect, yah? Look how handsome he is.' Where was the emotional trauma about falling in love with a blood-sucking creature of the night? An undead creature of limitless evil? Oh, sorry, I forgot, these are good vampires. They don't even have bad breath.
The trouble with the book, is that in five hundred pages, nothing much actually happens.
She falls in love, he saves her life, but it's all negligible in terms of visceral action or excitement. Even when a rival clan of 'bad' vampires hunts her, we have no real action. There is a hunt, the excitement builds, she is separated from her vamp protectors, she sacrifices herself for the sake of others. Yes! Action at last!
Er, sadly, no. The climax of the book, from my point of view, is totally missed because our protagonist passes out before most of the action occurs. I felt cheated.
And, if I had to read one more occurrence of ' crooked grin', 'sculpted chest', 'burning eyes' or 'compelling gaze' I was going to vomit.
The biggest problem of all?
Plot structure. There isn't one. There is no nemesis. A baddie is brought in 75% through the book, but he's an incidental plot mechanism enabling the author to further elaborate on the implausibly sudden, unbelievably intense love of girl and vamp. You can discount the Indian boy who also wants Bella, and is a werewolf, because he won't be revealed until Book Two or Three. Because there is no nemesis, we can have no major action. It's all Act One - set up stuff.
Of course, for commercial reasons, that may have been the intention all along. How many people bought the book only to find that, in order to gain satisfaction, they had to buy two or three more books afterwards?
So, my verdict?
If you're a teenage girl worried about surface appearances, peer pressure, the allure of 'bad boys' and very little else - 5 stars.
If you belong to the real human race - 2 stars.
But I do think that Stephenie identified and hit her target market perfectly. I have nothing but admiration for that. She can write well. She just needs a decent plot and some believable characters to bring out the best in her.
Showing posts with label plot structure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plot structure. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Friday, 16 October 2009
Plot structure - expanded
This post focuses on the classic Aristotelian three act structure.
Broadly speaking, any work of fiction, whether a novel, novella, short story, play or film script, will fit into the three act structure. I'm going to generalise here, but the structure goes something like this.
Act one:
About one quarter of the length of the work. Starts off with the main characters going about their daily business. A little scene-setting, as it were.
A short way in (3-7 minutes for a film, somewhere in the first chapter for a novel) comes the
Inciting incident (also called the complication.)
This is the thing that forces the protagonist into motion. It doesn't even need to be in the work. It can have happened way back in the back story. In Lord of the Rings for example, you could argue that the inciting incident happened in the Hobbit, when Bilbo found the ring. Or a thousand years ago, when Gollum found it. Or three thousand years ago, when Isildur didn't destroy it. But generally, it happens in the work you're creating.
The II is the thing that propels (or perhaps compels) the protagonist to become involved in the action of the story, often reluctantly.
Also in Act one, all other significant characters are introduced, especially the nemesis. The threads of the main plot are laid. Some of the major sub-plots are introduced.
Act one ends with
Plot point one, a critical incident. Our hero(ine) discovers a crucial fact, gains a significant ally (buddy, rival, mentor or similar) or develops a talent he or she will need to defeat the nemesis.
All the significant features of the story have now been exposed to the audience. From this point on, all that occurs is inevitable because of the groundwork you have done.
Act two:
This is where the majority of the character development, the other sub-plots and a lot of the action takes place. Generally about half the length of the work. If Act one was about laying the foundations, Act two is about building the house. About halfway through this act comes the
Midpoint. This is the first significant trial of strength against the nemesis. Our hero may retire, defeated but alive. He may defeat the chief lieutenant of the enemy. The point is, it is inconclusive. The threat remains, and from here on to the end, intensifies.
Act two concludes with
Plot point two (also called the Crisis.) Our protagonist is at his lowest ebb. His wife has been kidnapped, his dog shot, his son proves to be the spawn of the Devil, and he's hanging head down over a vat of boiling sulphuric acid.
This point is perhaps the most important of the whole story. This is why our protagonist is a hero. Remember the classic themes mentioned in the last post.
Now, any reasonable being would give up at this point. Heroes don't. They're too stubborn, or stupid, to recognise that they're beaten. Instead of dying quietly, they get mad. They stiffen themselves for one final attempt.
They take full responsibility for their life and their actions, taking charge of events. If they have been reacting so far, now, in a titanic expenditure of will and courage, they take charge of events, driving on to the end. Their entire life has narrowed down to one focus; victory or death.
Act three:
This occupies the final quarter of the work. If Act one was laying the foundations, and Act two was building the house, then Act three is defeating the neighbour who objects on planning grounds, stopping a horde of crazed bikers from trashing the place, throwing up a wall of dirt to stop the flood from washing the house away and finally moving in with your loved one.
Almost immediately, we are plunged into the
Climax. The final trial of strength. Our hero generally overcomes his fears, his limitations, masters that crucial flaw and defeats his nemesis, who cannot do the same.
OK, our hero may die in the process. In many ways, it is deeply satsfying if he does. After all, who would actually want to know or live with a genuine hero? They can't be easy people to get along with.
Of course, if you're writing from the 1st person POV, it is not a good idea to have your hero die here. That's the end, fini, right there. If you've used third person, shifting POV, fine. Film scripts, you have written omnisciently anyway, so no problem.
The climax was presaged in Act one, developed in Act two, and is now fully realized in all its violent, terrible beauty.
Act three finishes with the
Resolution. All the loose ends are tied up. Unless you want to leave room for a sequel. Boy gets girl, music swells, they walk hand-in-hand into a beautiful sunset. The audience sighs in appreciation, gets gently returned to reality and walks out happy, having shared time with someone who took charge of their destiny, albeit briefly.
Something most of us can never, will never do.
That's why they're called heroes.
Broadly speaking, any work of fiction, whether a novel, novella, short story, play or film script, will fit into the three act structure. I'm going to generalise here, but the structure goes something like this.
Act one:
About one quarter of the length of the work. Starts off with the main characters going about their daily business. A little scene-setting, as it were.
A short way in (3-7 minutes for a film, somewhere in the first chapter for a novel) comes the
Inciting incident (also called the complication.)
This is the thing that forces the protagonist into motion. It doesn't even need to be in the work. It can have happened way back in the back story. In Lord of the Rings for example, you could argue that the inciting incident happened in the Hobbit, when Bilbo found the ring. Or a thousand years ago, when Gollum found it. Or three thousand years ago, when Isildur didn't destroy it. But generally, it happens in the work you're creating.
The II is the thing that propels (or perhaps compels) the protagonist to become involved in the action of the story, often reluctantly.
Also in Act one, all other significant characters are introduced, especially the nemesis. The threads of the main plot are laid. Some of the major sub-plots are introduced.
Act one ends with
Plot point one, a critical incident. Our hero(ine) discovers a crucial fact, gains a significant ally (buddy, rival, mentor or similar) or develops a talent he or she will need to defeat the nemesis.
All the significant features of the story have now been exposed to the audience. From this point on, all that occurs is inevitable because of the groundwork you have done.
Act two:
This is where the majority of the character development, the other sub-plots and a lot of the action takes place. Generally about half the length of the work. If Act one was about laying the foundations, Act two is about building the house. About halfway through this act comes the
Midpoint. This is the first significant trial of strength against the nemesis. Our hero may retire, defeated but alive. He may defeat the chief lieutenant of the enemy. The point is, it is inconclusive. The threat remains, and from here on to the end, intensifies.
Act two concludes with
Plot point two (also called the Crisis.) Our protagonist is at his lowest ebb. His wife has been kidnapped, his dog shot, his son proves to be the spawn of the Devil, and he's hanging head down over a vat of boiling sulphuric acid.
This point is perhaps the most important of the whole story. This is why our protagonist is a hero. Remember the classic themes mentioned in the last post.
Now, any reasonable being would give up at this point. Heroes don't. They're too stubborn, or stupid, to recognise that they're beaten. Instead of dying quietly, they get mad. They stiffen themselves for one final attempt.
They take full responsibility for their life and their actions, taking charge of events. If they have been reacting so far, now, in a titanic expenditure of will and courage, they take charge of events, driving on to the end. Their entire life has narrowed down to one focus; victory or death.
Act three:
This occupies the final quarter of the work. If Act one was laying the foundations, and Act two was building the house, then Act three is defeating the neighbour who objects on planning grounds, stopping a horde of crazed bikers from trashing the place, throwing up a wall of dirt to stop the flood from washing the house away and finally moving in with your loved one.
Almost immediately, we are plunged into the
Climax. The final trial of strength. Our hero generally overcomes his fears, his limitations, masters that crucial flaw and defeats his nemesis, who cannot do the same.
OK, our hero may die in the process. In many ways, it is deeply satsfying if he does. After all, who would actually want to know or live with a genuine hero? They can't be easy people to get along with.
Of course, if you're writing from the 1st person POV, it is not a good idea to have your hero die here. That's the end, fini, right there. If you've used third person, shifting POV, fine. Film scripts, you have written omnisciently anyway, so no problem.
The climax was presaged in Act one, developed in Act two, and is now fully realized in all its violent, terrible beauty.
Act three finishes with the
Resolution. All the loose ends are tied up. Unless you want to leave room for a sequel. Boy gets girl, music swells, they walk hand-in-hand into a beautiful sunset. The audience sighs in appreciation, gets gently returned to reality and walks out happy, having shared time with someone who took charge of their destiny, albeit briefly.
Something most of us can never, will never do.
That's why they're called heroes.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Plot - theme or structure?
First, yet another apology. It seems that whenever I'm presumptuous enough to post that I'm going to write about something 'tomorrow', fate intervenes, and I get buried in extra work. Yet again it's taken me three weeks to dig myself out far enough to see daylight. In future, I'm going to simply say 'next time I'm going to...'.
So, not tomorrow, but three weeks later...
There are two ways of creating a plot - with almost any sort of story.
You can focus on the structure - that is, what happens in the story?
Or you can focus on the theme - what is the story about?
As a concrete example, consider the clasic Western 'High Noon'.
Structurally it's about a man who is systematically abandoned by all those on whose loyalty he has a right to depend, prior to his impending battle with a band of vengeful killers.
Thematically it's about a man's struggle to maintain his integrity and honour when surrounded by cowardice, hypocrisy and overwhelming temptation. He is an archetypal reluctant hero.
I suppose you can say that structure focuses on the events; theme focuses on how the participants feel about those events; or perhaps the actions they choose when faced with those events.
Now, you might say that the two are very much interdependent. You'd be absolutely right. A person can't be a hero, reluctant or otherwise, unless there is an occasion where heroism is called for.
There are only a limited number of themes available - such as:
You can already tell that this story would be about the protagonist being able to accept help and advice, overcome his weakness and so defeat the antagonist - who of course, because of hubris was not able to overcome his, and so failed.
Structurally, you would start with an exciting idea - a protagonist who has a mortal falling out with his former best friend. They fight on a high, swaying bridge above a bottomless pit.
Synthesis of the two gives you the protagonist afraid of heights, who falls in love with his beautiful psychoanalyst and rescues her from his former best friend turned nemesis. She is of course at the far end of the bridge on which the two are fighting. The nemesis was in love with her till she fell for our hero. He spurned her offer of help overcoming his fear of hamsters.
At the height of the battle, our hero presses forward despite his profound acrophobia to rescue the woman he loves. He hurls his pet hamster at his nemesis, who recoils in horror, slips and plunges to his death. Boy and girl reunite, hero risks all to rescue beloved hamster from the lip of the abyss, and hand in hand in paw they walk into the sunset as the music swells...
OK, it's a silly example, but it illustrates my point. Theme and structure are different ways of looking at the same small, isolated sequence of events that makes up a piece of fiction. Both are still, and always will be, subordinate to the story.
Avoiding hubris myself, I'm simply going to say that next time, I'm going to examine plot structure in more detail.
Till then, enjoy!
So, not tomorrow, but three weeks later...
There are two ways of creating a plot - with almost any sort of story.
You can focus on the structure - that is, what happens in the story?
Or you can focus on the theme - what is the story about?
As a concrete example, consider the clasic Western 'High Noon'.
Structurally it's about a man who is systematically abandoned by all those on whose loyalty he has a right to depend, prior to his impending battle with a band of vengeful killers.
Thematically it's about a man's struggle to maintain his integrity and honour when surrounded by cowardice, hypocrisy and overwhelming temptation. He is an archetypal reluctant hero.
I suppose you can say that structure focuses on the events; theme focuses on how the participants feel about those events; or perhaps the actions they choose when faced with those events.
Now, you might say that the two are very much interdependent. You'd be absolutely right. A person can't be a hero, reluctant or otherwise, unless there is an occasion where heroism is called for.
There are only a limited number of themes available - such as:
- Vengeance - (Gladiator)
- The reluctant hero (High Noon)
- Overcoming inner demons (My Beautiful Mind)
- The tragic hero (Troy)
- The family protector (The River Wild)
- The coward transformed (Deliverance)
- The tortoise and the hare (Die Hard)
You can already tell that this story would be about the protagonist being able to accept help and advice, overcome his weakness and so defeat the antagonist - who of course, because of hubris was not able to overcome his, and so failed.
Structurally, you would start with an exciting idea - a protagonist who has a mortal falling out with his former best friend. They fight on a high, swaying bridge above a bottomless pit.
Synthesis of the two gives you the protagonist afraid of heights, who falls in love with his beautiful psychoanalyst and rescues her from his former best friend turned nemesis. She is of course at the far end of the bridge on which the two are fighting. The nemesis was in love with her till she fell for our hero. He spurned her offer of help overcoming his fear of hamsters.
At the height of the battle, our hero presses forward despite his profound acrophobia to rescue the woman he loves. He hurls his pet hamster at his nemesis, who recoils in horror, slips and plunges to his death. Boy and girl reunite, hero risks all to rescue beloved hamster from the lip of the abyss, and hand in hand in paw they walk into the sunset as the music swells...
OK, it's a silly example, but it illustrates my point. Theme and structure are different ways of looking at the same small, isolated sequence of events that makes up a piece of fiction. Both are still, and always will be, subordinate to the story.
Avoiding hubris myself, I'm simply going to say that next time, I'm going to examine plot structure in more detail.
Till then, enjoy!
Monday, 7 September 2009
Plot structure - Introduction
For as long as people have been telling stories, there has been a structure that works well. One that captivates the audience, hooks them, draws them into the world of the storyteller.
As far as I'm aware, that structure was first analysed and codified by Aristotle in his work 'The Poetics.' Of course, he was talking about epic oral poetry and Greek theatre, complete with chorus. Nonetheless, what worked for 100,000 years huddled round fires at night, worked for Ancient Greece, was followed by the Romans, the writers of Northern European epics such as as Beowulf, the Prose Edda and the Nibelungenlied and was obeyed by great writers of the Medieval and Elizabethan periods (Chretien de Troyes, Mallory, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jonson and others) is as relevant and important today as ever it was.
Don't forget, people have told stories as long as there have been people. The idea of reading stories has only been around for some 500 years. Watching them at the talkies or on the telescreen has only been around for a century.
What I'm saying is that what worked for millennia worked for a reason. It satisfied some basic human need. Technology may have evolved, but the human brain has not kept pace. What worked when the sabre-toothed tiger roared outside and mammoths roamed the plains still works.
We call this the Aristotelian structure.
Aristotle's six most important elements of any drama were:
This list still works marvellously for films, though sadly, Hollywood seems to have reversed the order in recent decades. Special effects do not make a great movie no matter what the movie moguls think.
You might also notice that music is on the list - important for Greek drama, crucial in films.
OK, if we're talking about writing books, you can ignore music.
Spectacle for books is what the reader envisions as he or she reads your prose.
Tomorrow, I'm going to write about the two ways of creating (or analysing) any decent plot. In later posts, I'll go through every other element on the list with the exception of music.
Enjoy!
As far as I'm aware, that structure was first analysed and codified by Aristotle in his work 'The Poetics.' Of course, he was talking about epic oral poetry and Greek theatre, complete with chorus. Nonetheless, what worked for 100,000 years huddled round fires at night, worked for Ancient Greece, was followed by the Romans, the writers of Northern European epics such as as Beowulf, the Prose Edda and the Nibelungenlied and was obeyed by great writers of the Medieval and Elizabethan periods (Chretien de Troyes, Mallory, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jonson and others) is as relevant and important today as ever it was.
Don't forget, people have told stories as long as there have been people. The idea of reading stories has only been around for some 500 years. Watching them at the talkies or on the telescreen has only been around for a century.
What I'm saying is that what worked for millennia worked for a reason. It satisfied some basic human need. Technology may have evolved, but the human brain has not kept pace. What worked when the sabre-toothed tiger roared outside and mammoths roamed the plains still works.
We call this the Aristotelian structure.
Aristotle's six most important elements of any drama were:
- Plot
- Character
- Theme
- Dialogue
- Music
- Spectacle
This list still works marvellously for films, though sadly, Hollywood seems to have reversed the order in recent decades. Special effects do not make a great movie no matter what the movie moguls think.
You might also notice that music is on the list - important for Greek drama, crucial in films.
OK, if we're talking about writing books, you can ignore music.
Spectacle for books is what the reader envisions as he or she reads your prose.
Tomorrow, I'm going to write about the two ways of creating (or analysing) any decent plot. In later posts, I'll go through every other element on the list with the exception of music.
Enjoy!
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