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desperanceSome of my fellow writers on LJ have been posting about process, as people do: and specifically about their process of analysis, scene by scene. What work is this scene doing, where's the conflict, how many beats, etc etc.
I just so do not think about my work this way, when someone else pointed at this analysis of the three-act structure I thought I'd slide over and have a look at it, see how far I got.
The first sentence, that's how far I got.
"In Act One the protagonist meets all of the characters in the play."
Um, not in my books, they don't. It is also true, of course, that I tend not to have one protagonist; but not even I-the-author have met all my characters by the end of act one. It's one of the pleasures of my process, that I can still be surprised by new people walking into the story very late.
Perhaps I would sell better if I followed all these formulae, but, y'know. If the money was my focus, I wouldn't be a novelist. I did read the rest of the piece, but I just kept tripping over his assumptions. "Everybody can usually plot Act One because we have to know the problem to have the idea." Um, no? Problems arise because of what people do, within a situation. I never know what they're going to do.
Etc. I cannot, I can not think about my work this mechanistic way, even once it's written. Whatever I know about writing I learned from reading lots; it's all ... unformulated. Subconscious, perhaps. I only know one way to approach a scene, a character, the next page in the story, which is the same way I approach a walk: and that's word by word, step by step across the ground and keep your eyes open, see what's coming at you.
It's probably no coincidence that going for long walks is inherently a part of my process.
I just so do not think about my work this way, when someone else pointed at this analysis of the three-act structure I thought I'd slide over and have a look at it, see how far I got.
The first sentence, that's how far I got.
"In Act One the protagonist meets all of the characters in the play."
Um, not in my books, they don't. It is also true, of course, that I tend not to have one protagonist; but not even I-the-author have met all my characters by the end of act one. It's one of the pleasures of my process, that I can still be surprised by new people walking into the story very late.
Perhaps I would sell better if I followed all these formulae, but, y'know. If the money was my focus, I wouldn't be a novelist. I did read the rest of the piece, but I just kept tripping over his assumptions. "Everybody can usually plot Act One because we have to know the problem to have the idea." Um, no? Problems arise because of what people do, within a situation. I never know what they're going to do.
Etc. I cannot, I can not think about my work this mechanistic way, even once it's written. Whatever I know about writing I learned from reading lots; it's all ... unformulated. Subconscious, perhaps. I only know one way to approach a scene, a character, the next page in the story, which is the same way I approach a walk: and that's word by word, step by step across the ground and keep your eyes open, see what's coming at you.
It's probably no coincidence that going for long walks is inherently a part of my process.
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Date: 2009-11-17 02:56 pm (UTC)