{"id":2609,"date":"2010-03-26T12:20:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T19:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/?p=2609"},"modified":"2010-03-26T12:37:13","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T19:37:13","slug":"musing-about-great-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/musing-about-great-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Musing about Great Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First, a brief linkage: yesterday, I wrote a post on ktliterary.com. It was supposed to be about what it&#8217;s like to live with a literary agent, but it really ended up being about what an agent&#8217;s job is like, from the point of view of a writer. People seem to like it a lot, which is kind of a happy surprise. <a href=\"http:\/\/ktliterary.com\/2010\/03\/on-being-rexroth-living-with-a-literary-agent\/\" target=\"_blank\">Check it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/stories-within-games\/\">A couple days ago<\/a>, I blogged\/reposted a comment I made about Games and Stories and Could One Be the Other and Other Big Questions Like That.<\/p>\n<p>Today, not so much.<\/p>\n<p>Reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2010\/03\/26\/once-upon-a-playtime-iii-return-to-the-gamestory-lagoon\/\" target=\"_blank\">Chuck is already talking about that<\/a>, and\n<ul>\n<li>I chimed in there (a number of times) and really can&#8217;t bear to repeat it all here (twice in the same week)<\/li>\n<li>That &#8220;can games, which inherently have more than the author creating the end product\/story, really produce Something of Meaning, if the creators didn&#8217;t really have final say in the end product?&#8221; question, while worthy and interesting, wearies me, because I&#8217;ve been <em>having<\/em> that discussion for about (checks game blog)&#8230; huh. Almost exactly six years ago, to the day. Interesting. \u00a0ANYWAY, it&#8217;s all good discussion that I&#8217;ll follow avidly, but after thinking about it this morning, I really can&#8217;t bear to get into all of that again <em>personally<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>While the &#8220;are games breaking into that high-level of story product&#8221; question is interesting, there&#8217;s something else I find more interesting. Here&#8217;s the quote that got me thinking about it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Chuck:<\/strong> ME2 is [&#8230;] a dumb story in a rich storyworld \u2014 a generic adventure amidst great characters, fascinating situations, and troubling moral quandaries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which got me thinking. (Obviously. I mean, here I am, thinking.) When Chuck talks about ME2&#8217;s dumb story, what he&#8217;s referring to is &#8220;the plot&#8221;. I infer this because he then mentions great character, situations, and quandries, so &#8220;plot&#8221; is about the only other story element left.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I want to make this clear:<\/strong> this post isn&#8217;t about\/attacking\/defending ME2 or Dragon Age or anything. I have a post I want to write for the game blog about those games, but I&#8217;m waiting until Kate&#8217;s done with ME2, and it&#8217;s much more about the games <em>as games<\/em>, hence the eventual location of the blog post. That&#8217;s not what this is about. Suffice it to say I enjoy games and move on.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2608\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2608\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/tic-tac-toe.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2608\" title=\"tic tac toe\" src=\"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/tic-tac-toe.jpg\" alt=\"I like some games more than others.\" width=\"500\" height=\"335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/tic-tac-toe.jpg 500w, https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/tic-tac-toe-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2608\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I like some games more than others.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It&#8217;s also not about taking apart Chuck&#8217;s statement. I feel like I&#8217;ve been picking at his stuff for the last couple days, and that makes me hate myself a little.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, I&#8217;m quoting Chuck because he got me thinking about what stories <em>are<\/em> &#8212; what elements they must contain in order to be called a story, and how &#8220;concentrated&#8221; those elements have to be to be called a good story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So.<\/strong> I just posed two questions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>One:<\/strong> what elements must a story contain in order to be called a story? I go back to that quote, above, and extract this list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Plot<\/li>\n<li>Characters<\/li>\n<li>Situation\/Setting<\/li>\n<li>Quandaries<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I could google up some kind of official list of story elements that hundreds of literary experts agree on, but frankly I don&#8217;t care to; this list works for me. If you have a list you like better, use that one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Two:<\/strong> How &#8220;concentrated&#8221; do those elements have to be to be called a good story?<\/p>\n<p>Okay, in order to judge levels of &#8216;concentration&#8217;, we need some kind of rating system.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Hmm. I see where I&#8217;m going here. No. No, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m going to use the FUDGE rpg&#8217;s &#8220;ladder&#8221; to rate literature. The end result is going to sound like that horrible essay the kid reads near the beginning of Dead Poets Society. No.<\/p>\n<p>(Even though it would totally work.)<\/p>\n<p>So anyway, let&#8217;s just focus on the descriptive words.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Man, the plot is piss-poor, but the characters, the quandries, and setting\/situation? All great.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Okay&#8230; so, looking at that, that&#8217;s three elements where the story is &#8216;great&#8217;, and the one where it&#8217;s &#8216;poor&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Is it a great story at that point? Over all?<\/p>\n<p>I think it is.<\/p>\n<p>Disagree?<\/p>\n<p>Okay, well, what if I told you that that quote above wasn&#8217;t Chuck talking about Mass Effect 2, but me talking about\u00a0Cormac McCarthy&#8217;s Pulitzer Prize winning <em>The Road<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>Because it totally is.<\/p>\n<p>Great characters. Gut-punch quandaries. Very compelling setting\/situation. Plot?<\/p>\n<p>Plot?<\/p>\n<p>A guy and his kid walk from Point A to Point Z. They almost starve and almost freeze to death&#8230; about a half dozen times. I mean, I don&#8217;t mean to spoil the book for you, but&#8230; that&#8217;s the plot. <em>The Road<\/em> is (in my opinion)\u00a0<em><strong>ALL<\/strong><span style=\"font-style: normal;\"> in the characters and quandaries.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Or I can make it a little more personal: I&#8217;ve got a book out with an agent right now where, so far as the plot is concerned, nothing changes. The situation <strong>in terms of plot<\/strong> as it exists on page 3 remains completely unchanged at the end. The characters travel from point A to point Z. That&#8217;s it. I&#8217;m willing to mention this &#8216;weakness&#8217; because, judged objectively, that doesn&#8217;t seem to fucking matter to anyone.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve done seven full revisions on the story at this point, as requested by my agent, a publisher, and others, and not once did anyone say &#8216;this lack of plot kills it for me.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>You know what they ask for? Over and over? More stuff with the characters. More psyche delving.<\/p>\n<p>So I have to wonder: if some of the elements are strong enough, does it matter if one of the others is weak? Or absent?<\/p>\n<p>Or&#8230; dare I say it&#8230; unimportant?<\/p>\n<p>Another example: I love reading Greg Rucka&#8217;s stories, in part because he writes really good yarns that I could never write myself, not in a thousand attempts. Densely packed international intrigue, these things, with double- and triple-crosses and international political ramifications you need the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/library\/publications\/the-world-factbook\/\" target=\"_blank\">CIA Factbook<\/a> to comprehend, let alone <em>create<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t say moral quandaries are very important to the story, though. They&#8217;re there, but the characters don&#8217;t sit there and agonize over them. They might drink themselves into a coma about what they did later, but at the point of decision, they just pushed the button\/flipped the switch\/pulled the trigger and walked away.<\/p>\n<p>Does that matter? Nnnnoo&#8230; actually, it&#8217;s a spy story; that&#8217;s sort of the point.<\/p>\n<p>Slightly different example: Neal Stephenson and Dan Brown don&#8217;t hinge their (quite amazing) stories on great, deep characters. In my opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Hell, neither does Tolkien. Compelling archetypes and &#8220;great characters&#8221; aren&#8217;t the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying you couldn&#8217;t have a wonderful, amazing, mind-blowing story that really gets all these four elements up in the &#8220;great&#8221; range. Certainly you can.<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230; certainly you <em>must<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;m still thinking about it. But I don&#8217;t think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, a brief linkage: yesterday, I wrote a post on ktliterary.com. It was supposed to be about what it&#8217;s like to live with a literary agent, but it really ended up being about what an agent&#8217;s job is like, from the point of view of a writer. People seem to like it a lot, which &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/musing-about-great-stories\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Musing about Great Stories&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[200,205,635],"class_list":["post-2609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing","tag-games","tag-stories","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2609"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2612,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions\/2612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}