When building a house it is almost impossible to start from the roof and work your way down. Every author needs a solid base, with all the concrete history, plot, and character development clearly mapped out before braving the adventure of creating a masterpiece.
One of my favorite examples of backwards house/story making comes from George Lukas’s attempt to take on three additional movies to an already great saga. Of course I’m talking about Star Wars. I can see the economic motives for creating these movies, but to put you’re masterpiece on the line and subject it to anything less than perfection after truly creating a tremendous modern heroic quest simply for money doesn’t sit comfortably with me. His first three movies did have a strong foundation had he wanted to probe further into the future adventures of his characters, but to go backwards is a completely different matter. In this case he had the roof down and maybe the siding and a few windows, but his house of cards could only crash in on him.
A successful story isn’t just about mechanics, as crucial as they are. A story should flow from its characters. Instead of the character(s) following the story the story should follow them, as life follows us. The story shouldn’t have a road map of where the characters are going, but instead the audience should relish when a hero, or villain makes a decision that is completely unexpected, but also be satisfied when one of these characters make choices that abide to their personalities. These choices should be what drives the story/, and not simply because the author chicken scratched the plot in a brainstorm web.
Although to me these are important qualities to a piece of literature, I would have to admit that these story essentials are things that I have yet to master in my own writing. When I write, it is more of a release, an almost euphoria, or an escape. It is rarely planned out and mapped on a piece of paper. If a character develops it is usually full of kinks, and qualities that are just not quite right. These are things I hope to improve on in my writing. I love to sit down and feel the words flow from my hands onto a page. Now I’d like to transform that love into a more organized and structured talent that can create truly beautiful stories.
-Samantha Audet
Nice post, Samantha :)
ReplyDeleteI will try to write from an unbiased position since I happen to be a fan of Star Wars! I like your analogy of building a house from a strong foundation. Using this analogy, I think George Lukas built Star Wars with strong building blocks. From the very beginning, the characters were firmly established and the history and plot were mapped out clearly. The story was written before the movies were put out. Even though the movies were put out in a backwards chronological sequence (Lukas's aim was to utilize modern technology to create increasingly advanced films), I think the solid foundation was built from the start. He could not have put out the first film (which contained the last chronological scenes in the story line) without having established the entire story first. In this sense (established characters/plot), would you say that Lukas did work his way up from the ground to the roof?
Nice observation that stories should flow from characters and not vice versa. I never really thought of writing in this way :)
You said you want to improve your writing because it is rarely planned and mapped out. I say, don't try to fix this! Interestingly enough, I have the opposite problem--instead of writing freely and unabashedly from thoughts to paper, I overthink in hopes of creating perfection in my first writing. I think it's great that you can release your writing as a euphoric escape--this is a great skill. This way, what you are writing is true and honest, and you can always go back to revise and edit. Keep it up!
-Jackie