Melancholia, a Gestault process of writing

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1 - Preface

One of the greater sins I've found with planning a story head-to-toe is that you lose out on the driving spontaneity - of having your story grow beyond your confining expectations. You may argue that it is inherently safer to know where all the beats fall into place, but I say I have found it drab to paint a canvas by numbers. It's boring if you already know how the audience will— nay, should react, long before you tell the punchline.

You might have resorted to Writing by the Seat of Your Pants (improvised writing), as I had done, as a search for that spontaneous joy. The danger however, falls in lying victim to a dead end. You've tongue-tied yourself with the story, and you are stuck where to head next, if anywhere. The only way out seems to be backing up, and writing a different route to go. The truer danger in the bigger picture is that you lose coherency in your storytelling; the once-precise laser loses its potency in the distance. Without that coherency, you lose momentum and ultimately you find - not spontaneity, but stagnation. If your story were a marathon runner in the Olympics, she'd fall heads over heels onto the ground. "Fucked you will be," Yoda shall say.

It is tempting to view this as a "My Way or the Highway" dilemma. But I do not believe in limiting yourself to the obvious choices. You always can forge your own choice, in life and outside the box. Here, your imagination becomes a powerful ally in subverting the 'definitives' – and therein, as the bard says, lies the rub.

Then the idea hit me, as I listened to Chopin and Beethoven – what I was really longing after in my storywriting. To move the Soul with what you've nurtured so long in your unique heart. If music can move someone directly, then why not with words? An artist needs an outlet with with to express herself, and we writers compose stories in turn with words; like musicans compose music with notes, and artists paint pictures with ink.

Coupled with Kubrick's quote above, I decide to make methodology enabling the storywriter to have free-rein on hir creative forces, allowing hir to organically create something of beauty, like a tree growing from its soil in spite of its surroundings. A writer's methodology proves as important towards storytelling, as her keyboard or pencil/paper. It fundamentally influences the story's quality, similar to how Game Engines influence ze video games you play. Imagine Half-Life 2's gameplay without its intutive modularity or exquisite physics, or F.E.A.R. without its opponent A.I. or dynamic muzzleflash lighting. Of course, the beauty of the story must come from the writer hirself – hir methodology is the essential foundation with which to build a story on. A good foundation I believe, makes for robust creativity. A badly foundation provokes a sloppy, rigid story.

Melancholia, I adapt from the Orchestral Symphony, as I think the symphony has shown itself to allow a natural progression of mood in its comprising parts. You can hear in Beethoven's 9th, the ode to joy explode in your ears after that uncertain peril beforehand, and the multiple unities between the movements which echo and resonate harmoniously.

Here, our metaphorical symphony (story) is comprised of some movements (storyline arcs/acts), and these movements are comprised of the individual songs (scenes/segments). And in a song, the instruments which play (characters).

I'll post more later.

edited 9th Aug '11 1:23:27 PM by QQQQQ

I'm going to give my blunt opinions, QQQQQ, because I respect you enough to not just roll my eyes and disregard you outright, as I normally would such an ambitious project. Firstly, your words would have probably had me scratching my head if I didn't already have three Masonic degrees worth of experience harvesting flowery language and translating it into my own foul-mouthed vernacular.

Let me see if I read your thoughts correctly:

• An overly structured story is wont to be too by-the-numbers to enjoy reading, and too industrial to enjoy writing. (Perhaps: I'll wait and see if you have a better idea.)
• Writing by the seat of your pants will eventually bite you in the ass: it's fun at first, but you'll soon forget where you were going, and write yourself into a corner. (A point I agree to without reservation.)
• You are intending to propose a methodology whereby the delight of that sort of writing can be recaptured, and combined with the benefits of a more structured writing style.

Well then. Good luck: you'll need it. These might not be the words of encouragement you were hoping for, but I hope you prove my low expectations wrong.

edited 11th Jul '11 10:47:44 AM by KillerClowns

I did not need Killer Clowns' translation to understand your post. Do I get a medal? /joking

It is certainly a hard balance to achieve, and I have been searching for it. This is also why I will never do Na No Wri Mo again.

Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest

I... don't understand what you said here, really. Rather, I was with you until you finished, and I was still waiting for you to describe your method. I mean, okay, you've got that whole Symphony metaphor. But you know, that's not a specific method. Unless what you mean is "It'll be something between planning everything and writing by the seat of your pants." Which would meaningless to create a thread about. So, ummm, elaboration?

(I'll disagree with what you said about both planned and spontaneous writing. I see nothing wrong with either method. Of course, no method will ever be failproff, but that doesn't mean they're inherently bad.)

Edit: QQQQQ's posts are not that confusing. You just have to always use your philosophy filter when reading them.

edited 11th Jul '11 10:58:23 AM by Dealan

It seems I underestimated QQQQQ once already. Maybe I'm being too hard on him, or maybe it's sleep deprivation slowing my brain down. Either way, that bodes fairly well for him.

This is oddly apropos, as I'm in a philosophy class right now. Also, I must add another voice against you, Killer Clowns. I got that the 1st time through.

As for your idea, QQQQQ, I will say that it is an endeavor of remarkable difficulty, although I feel that my own writing style may tangentially contact it in places. I've used a similar framework to yours, with massive segments joined by free writing and on occasion altered to fit each other better. So I support this idea; it seems practical and fairly rooted, but it may take effort to locate the proper form for this.

Since I haven't touched a musical instrument since I was 10, I'll take your word for it that it's like composing a symphony.

This is this.

KC: Well, you helped me out a bit, if it helps

Read my stories!

Why should this be difficult? I think the principle(s) behind seem relatively simple.

@QQQQQ, I'm glad I can say this for once with regards to your posts, but I understand. At least I think I do.

I think the gist of what he's saying is "how you go about writing your story has a lot to do with what it ends up becoming" and if that's the case then I absolutely agree. I personally despise the very concept of attempting to base every story on this Hero's Journey monomyth, or claiming that every story has this basis or should have this basis. Admittedly many do, but I find this serves more to their detriment than anything. It is simultaneously incredibly general and stiflingly restrictive, and it feels like the former only exists so people who defend it can twist any work to say it fits within those parameters. To me it's just a recipe for unoriginality and I feel as if I have personally become so well-versed in it that it's become an instantly recognizable cliche. Formulaic stories are boring to witness, no matter how you dress them up.

I also find conceiving of a plot as a large circle where the end is as the beginning, where the circle takes you from some sort of "state of perfection" to imperfection and then back again to frankly be some real ghetto-ass romanticist bullshit. For those of you who don’t know, one of the main ideas behind romanticism was that there was once some kind of enlightened existence in Humanity’s past that was lost. A previously held glory that Humankind has now fallen from. And that our goal should be to reach this ancient state of perfection again. The real world doesn’t work like this.

That is one of the reasons why I adhere to not so much to, in QQQQQ's words, "improvised writing" but rather "emergent writing." In this system the setting comes first, and all subsequent developments in character or plot derive from that initial setting. What do I mean by this? Well first of all, a LOT of world building. In a setting-driven storytelling methodology you of course first need a setting. Preferably one that is well-researched and detailed and well-thought-out and all that good stuff. A good setting is important in more ways than that, because it’s from the setting that we get the characters (because they live in the setting) and is because the setting and the characters are convincing that we can empathize with them.

Let’s take the example of a villain. A villain is a good villain because he is convincing. Because he is a person before a storytelling tool or archetype. After all, it is what a person thinks (and how he subsequently behaves) that defines what type of person he is and therefore what role he plays in the story, not the other way around. You should never start with an archetype or an overarching plot, wanting simply to populate your story with the requisite types of characters that will be necessary to constitute story. You should craft a universe, populate it with people, and then by the laws and logic set down in that universe build a plot from in-universe events.

A universe or character takes on a life of their own after they become sufficiently developed. They reach a sort of critical mass after which they start to think on their own. What I mean by this is that while you do have total control as the author, once you’ve decided on a character and what they’re personality is going to be like, or the history and events of a universe, there is usually only a certain limited set of things that can logically follow. A limited set of things that your character given his/her personality will do as defined by that personality, or a limited set of things that can happen in the universe given the universe’s history or present circumstances or even laws of physics, while staying within the limits of the premise you set up. Basically, Magic A is Magic A. You start to get a feel for what a certain character will do based on that character and those traits you gave him and the same applies with a universe. If your characters decide t go out and do something, the most plausible effect such actions would have on the universe, by its own rules, must follow. Else, it breaks immersion. All of this is based on the string of logic you set up as a part of your setting, and you need to keep it straight if you want your universe to be believable. If you need something to change for plot reasons or to throw the reader for a loop, it needs to be sufficiently justified. It also helps for this justification to have previous references in the text, for example some kind of foreshadowing etc.

Now, was than any more comprehensible than QQQQQ's post?

As a side-note, you've really got to wonder where QQQQQ is philosophically.

edited 11th Jul '11 12:06:23 PM by Gault

yey

To be honest, I don't think it would be the principle tripping people up. More the flowery language and extended metaphors. *

That being said, I'm listening. I haven't seen much I disagree with so far, at least not as applied to long novels- the metaphorical comparison to a symphony is one I've always thought was remarkably apt. I'm skeptical about the method itself, but I'm skeptical about everything until I see it- especially things that would be remarkably difficult to produce.

edited 11th Jul '11 12:39:07 PM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Literature is art. Music is art. But they're different kinds of art. I love to listen to music, but I can't write a lick of it despite having a degree in music.

Different people write in different ways. If you outrun your headlights or paint yourself into a corner, you get into trouble. It happens. Unlike in a musical performance, a writer can back up and do a part over.

There are systems for writing a story, but they rarely produce good stories. Sorry. As I've said many times, writing is easy, but writing well is not. There are no shortcuts.

Under World. It rocks!

I don't believe in being a masochist— and I especially don't believe that art must be arbitrarily, painstakingly hard. Do you call it a shortcut, if I show that you can walk between the trees in the dank forest of creation, instead of wasting time following the meandering path set down by Tried-and-True followers?

I wouldn't proclaim my way is the way, nor would I force you to follow what I say. I am just glad to share with you another option to consider, for your repertoire.

Actually, yes, there are no shortcuts in writing. But you shouldn't have to put with a badly road. Now let me write my nice detour..

edited 11th Jul '11 1:29:25 PM by QQQQQ

At the risk of breaking the mood with my concreteness, I think the word you're looking for is gestalt.

As for the method, regardless of the details, there simply isn't a correct process, and probably not even a generally-good one. No one method will work for everyone (or even most people) and no one method will be useful for producing every kind of work.

Poof.

edited 12th Sep '11 10:29:43 AM by QQQQQ

To be fair, I can't tell you how to write or how not to write. If you find a method that works for you, use it. Some people can't stop writing (Thomas Wolfe comes to mind), and it becomes a matter of organizing it all.

I don't see the confinement of plotting out a story ahead of time. For me it's like laying out a cross-country trek—I have a rough idea of where I'm going, but I can still be surprised by a quiet glen or a mountaintop vista when I reach it. When you have a plot, it's like having a map on your journey, but it's no guarantee you'll follow the route you chose or even reach your original destination.

On the other hand, I can see the attraction of plunging into the unknown. Even done it myself a couple of times. It works for others, and as I've said many times, you have to let it out the way it wants to come out.

Under World. It rocks!

On the sliding scale of Plotting to Spontaneity, most people do in fact fall in the middle. It's simply that some genres require more plotting to strike the right nerve with readers (intellectual pieces like mysteries, for example, or hard science fiction), and others can safely be written with no forethought at all (Slice of Life or true absurdist works).

Some people are suited to outlines because that's the way they think, so they throw themselves into the nuts and bolts of making spaceships. Others are naturally spontaneous and when they write themselves into a corner, they simply go in another direction and regain the momentum they've lost.

There is nothing wrong with either of these methods. Most people happily make a living using only one of them (though admittedly, spontaneous writers are rarer). Nor is there anything wrong with blending the two (which is actually done more often than you think).

But should they try to write something outside of their usual genres thinking that the same approach will work, simply because it's the one they are most comfortable with—that's when things go wrong. The problem is learning to switch to another method, or adjust the proportions if there's a blend of them, which is pretty much the same as learning to use your other hand.

edited 11th Jul '11 4:08:10 PM by Leradny

2 - the Gestalt Principle

I always found I could write short stories much better than longer-term writing (novellas and serials). While I used similar approach to their writing; for short stories, I feel like I have a better overall image to picture – to write. I do not have to consider ze long-term continuity, as with serials – the question there always rings, what now? What happens next? What should happen next?

In short stories, I just have a clear idea of the mood I wish to write. In that mood, the movements are easy to picture, and everything sprouts out very fast. The characters, what they want out of each other – the rest follows easily, and the short story finishes nice. Writing by the seat of my pants has made a goodly here, because the emotions are very tangible. You might even cut the tension in the air with a butterknife, smelling the bittersweet roses.

For serials and chaptered works, it doesn't work for me well. I'd imagine following Stephen King's advice (from his book 'On Writing') – plot is the dullard's first choice, and is anti-creative compared to the situational approach. Put well-defined characters in situations, and you know these people well enough to see them try worming their way out the pit they've fallen into. Instead, I'd worry too much about the continuity, the upcoming events after— I'd imagine maybe later the story will automagically turn interesting. Later, instead of Right Now(TM).

It would be fumbling blindfolded, and blindly heading towards an imagined point B on the field.

What is different between short stories and novellas?

In NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming), they say our conscious focus, our short-term memory may only recall up to seven objects at hand. Anything more than that, and we fall over ourselves forgetting the rest.

Consider the following meaningless string:

092j0djknj0982dj

Ja, what if you have to memorize every number and letter there, in order? There's 16 of them. "Nein," you go, "you expect me to do that? Zat is impossible!" It's damn difficult to do, at the moment.

Let's make things easier:

09 2j 0d jk nj 09 82 dj

Now there are eight objects to consider. (It reminds me of hex coding.) How about we chunk it up more:

092j 0djk nj09 82dj

Lumping these groupings of two together, we only have four of these to memorize. That is an easy task now, I presume? But what's this about a digression into memory theory? The principle I illustrate is the ability to lump 'memorable objects' into gestalts. We think in gestalts. Our creative right-brains likes thinking with gestalts, lumping everything together into a whole. If we did it only one at a time otherwise (left-brain thinking), Ser Maester Yoda will giggle his green butt off on his floating chair. "Shame on you."

Putting this gestalt idea at point, I realize I have an easier time writing short stories - because I already can grasp the short story as a whole, if vaguely at first. Whereas in longer-term writing, I stumble over, trying to move my characters like pieces in chess, like the cogs of an uncertain clock.

Thus, I make a way to write the long stories in flexible gestalts.

I write more soon.

edited 12th Jul '11 3:53:05 PM by QQQQQ

Okay, that's at least totally understandable. But... aren't these flexible gestalts called chapters?

You'd like to think so, Dealan. It's not just chapters though. I explain more on next post.

Huh. That makes pretty much perfect sense.

I'd never really thought of it in these terms before, especially as related to memorization and "chunking" *

before, but this is...more or less how I write. A bunch of short term character goals and ideas stack into a full scene, a few scenes stacks together into an idea for a full chapter (short story), and over the long haul, these chapters are designed to fit somewhere into a greater story.

Although I suppose I should wait to see the next post before assuming too much.

edited 12th Jul '11 12:28:40 PM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

^^^ I think he's getting to that.

I always found short stories to be very difficult. Most of my ideas need to span at least a novella, and breaking things into chapters only makes things harder. I take it to mean that I do not think in gestalts.

edited 12th Jul '11 12:29:01 PM by snowfoxofdeath

Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest

QQQQQ, I'd like your opinion on that megapost I made further up the page. It seems, at least to me, that what you're talking about is similar to my own ideas on the subject.

yey

Is your problem with short stories that they always entwine themselves with other ideas, until they become a long, tangled mess that is far too complex for anything short?

If not, ignore this crap. If so, read on.

I do more or less the same thing, because the ideas always chain themselves to other ideas. It's just how my brain works, everything becomes connected to something else. That doesn't mean you can't think in gestalts, it just means they refuse to stay as discrete units- before you can create them as an individual unit, another five of them have attached to the original.

It's like pulling a magnetized paperclip out of a tin- you only want one, but seven more will cling to it because of the magnetization and the abundance of paperclips. That doesn't mean you can't get individual paperclips, it just means something is binding them faster than your hand can pull one out.

That was a pretty terrible metaphor, but eh.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

It's not that they attach to other things. They just sort of grow, like weeds, until have to kill them. Otherwise, I would be giving my English teachers and contest officials a lot of dead trees, since they're the only people that ask for short stories. Only when one of those weeds refuse to die do I give in and it until it blooms into my next time-consuming megaproject.

Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest

I also have a problem with short stories, in that I can't think of a story proper. Rather, I think of short scenes, which don't seem to have a point. For example, in the latest contest I scrapped my first few ideas, because while (some of them) were writable, with a clear beginning, middle and end, I felt there was no point in them. I heard the hypothetical reader say "Okay, I finished this... so what? Why did I read that?"

In a long story, the point lies somewhere in there. I expect to satisfy the reader through the journey. But I can't do that in short stories. Even the contest entry I actually wrote reads more like a part of a larger story than a stand alone text. There's too much exposition in there, and there's also a lot of stuff that is either hinted or not explained at all. And the point of that entry lies in its connections with the non-existant rest of the story.