Layered Conflict

[beccaelizabeth]

So, I've been sitting in the bath thinking about writing.
Which leads to not having written and being really wrinkly.
But, I think I got some useful meta out of it.

So, I read in a comic editorial once that there are basically three kinds of conflict. I'm sure the editor got it from some other source, but I remember it from there. He was using it to explain an unpopular story arc, iirc, probably the one where some guy spent an entire issue being all manly emo about if his best friend was gay for him. There were no superheroics anywhere, was the unpopular point, so the writer guy said:

There are three basic kinds of conflict
Man vs man
Man vs nature
Man vs self


Ignoring the gendered phrasing, I found this a very useful point.
It also occured to me that any story that is missing one of the three is going to leave a certain segment of readers unsatisfied, and the stories I like layer all three together.

Nature, for the purposes of what I've been thinking about, has nothing to do with all natural organic never been touched by man type fluffiness. Nature is the stuff you can't negotiate with. It is coming, it is a problem, and you have to deal with it.

So a forest fire is Nature, or a flood, but past a certain point and out at a certain scale so is a war. You get a huge great fight scene where a hundred bad things charge at the hero, and there is no chance whatsoever he can go 'can't we all just get along?' then you've kicked off a 'nature' kind of conflict.

Alien, the classic original, has all three kinds of conflict, if I remember correctly. Its all about being stuck in a small space you can't get out of with a Very Bad Thing. Classic dark house scenario. And the Alien is really not open to negotiation. So there we have a Nature kind of beastie. But if that was all that was going on, it would be a less fun film. We have also layers of conflict between thinking beings who can negotiate, Man vs Man, and also characters who have to deal with aspects of their own personality (for instance fear), which gives you Man vs Self.

Speed - There's a bomb on the bus, and if it slows down they go boom. Once that kicks off, that is nature. You aren't going to talk to it, you just have to deal. But if it was just bus go boom, kind of empty. So you have the chess game man vs man, and the scared passengers man vs self.

Demons, aliens, and all that F&SF stuff can play *any or all* of these three roles. A demon can be an implacable going to kill you kind of a bad thing, it can be a thinking being you can chess match, or it can be a threat or temptation that exposes aspects of Our Heroes.

A really *fun* story will have a bit of all three.

The Supernatural episode with the bugs has some obvious man vs nature going on. But around about when the bugs actually turn up on the last night, I get really bored and start thinking about fast forwarding. Why? Because the nature part on its own bores the hell out of me. Its like watching someone put out a fire. I mean, very flamey sounds like it will be very exciting, but either the fire goes out or it doesn't, and given that we know there is an episode next week we can be pretty sure it goes out. The part where you have to worry about if they save the innocents can raise the stakes, but it doesn't change the nature of the conflict, so I get kind of bored.

Earlier on it had the other aspects. Conflict between people, trying to get different things, maybe hostile to each other, all that bit. Conflict within, emotional stuff, with the Daddy Issues segment.

So how to bring that to the actual bug confrontation?

Well there's probably a bunch of ways. What if the kid actually did have something to do with summoning the bugs? Okay, that could make it rather like the telekinetic kid, or possibly the stupid teenagers in the asylum. But it would give the guys the conflict of 'do we save the guy who is doing the bad thing'. It would complicate the Issues when Sam identified with him. We'd get another couple of kinds of conflict on top of the running around hiding from bugs, and I wouldn't have lost interest.

A bit like the Highlander episode where there's an army attacking the house because they say this one young man there is a rapist. You get a big external conflict, nameless army dudes all trying to kill them, and you get a bunch of named and negotiated stuff, her word against his and the soldiers against the diplomat, and then you get the internal conflict, where the defenders gradually realise the guy really did do it and is actually kind of a bastard, but they feel they have to defend him anyway. That has layers.

If the only vs self conflict is vs fear, you really have to amp it up to make that work. Because the whole point of these hero characters is they get into the scary situations and kick ass, so if they do it again this week, there really doesn't seem like much of a conflict. The Buffy episode 'Fear Itself' cranks up the horror and makes it personal, and in fact they all *lose* to the fear. And that makes it interesting, a real conflict with uncertain outcome. Similarly, seeing Dean go up against a scary monster, you can be pretty sure he isn't going to back down from fear. Seeing him freak out because they have to go fly somewhere? Now we have conflict.

Funny conflict. But fun.

So, trying to construct a story. Do I need all three kinds of conflict?

It looks like one could leave out man vs nature. But it depends on the definition. If it is 'nature=no negotiating' then it turns into nature conflict whenever something starts that you can't talk your way out of. And if your characters never get in that kind of corner... Well, I'd think it likely to be less fun.

Comments

[cinder1013.livejournal.com]

Kudos for bringing the kinds of conflict up. I'm glad you've got this here.

I'm just gonna argue with a couple things: Speed is man vs man. The bomb serves the protagnonist, Payne (Dennis Hopper) in his attempt to revenge himself on the LAPD. It's a tool. The other passengers on the bus are also in conflict with Payne. They want to get off the bus.

I'm not saying you can't have multiple kinds of conflict in a piece or a story, but I think it's important not to get muddled. Fear in and of itself is not a qualifier for what I would call "vs self." In a situation where you have fear, 99% of the time you have something causing the fear. Fear is a tool. A good example of man vs self is Frodo and the Ring.

When you're looking at layers here, I would suggest that what you're actually looking for to create complexity is complex story arc.

[beccaelizabeth]

The bomb is a tool, the not slowing down is a condition they can't talk to and will have to deal with ie by my revised scheme nature. The bomber doesn't tell them what roads to be on or that they have to jump the bridge, thats fallout from the must go fast condition. Not a chess match thing.

Everything is caused by something, fear, whatever. Frodo vs the Ring is Frodo vs tool of dark lord, but since it isn't a chess match just an internal whatsit then it is vs self.

Story arc is a whole different thing. I'm looking at any specific scene in a story and trying to find vs self or vs man or whatever. That makes that scene interesting.

[cinder1013.livejournal.com]

The kind of conflict you're talking about here is an over-arcing concept. You can't reduce to scene by scene. You can reduce it to subplots and it gets much more fun in epics and long running dramatic shows, but it's the causation of plot. It had better be over-arcing or the writer has serious issues.

[beccaelizabeth]

maybe the kind of conflict people are talking about with those words elsewhere is over-arcing concept, but what I was thinking on was the boy vs bug ending to an episode of Supernatural.

Here via metafandom

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, this is a very interesting post. I was always taught that every story had one major conflict, and that it was either internal (man vs. himself) or external (man vs. nature or man vs. society). There are probably lots of permutations of each of these; for instance, an internal conflict could be a person doing battle with elements of his own personality, or a person doing battle with what he has been socialized by society to believe (Huck Finn and Brokeback Mountain come to mind).

When I'm writing, I'm usually better at the internal conflicts than the external, because I find external conflict hard to write. But I am trying to force myself to write more external conflict, so I can get better at it and overcome my fears (my very own internal conflict).

I'm not sure that every story needs all three conflicts that you have identified, but I do think you're right that having at least two will give a story depth and layers.

Re: Here via metafandom

[beccaelizabeth]

One major conflict is only one way of writing, I reckon. Some stories plait the sorts together.

Stories can be perfectly good stories with only one kind of conflict, but if someone is man vs self fan and the whole story is man vs nature, they're not going to find anything in it for them. Layer them up, maybe more readers find something in it.

Which is a bit like saying include every favourite character and more readers find something in it. Works, but may not be the point right then.

Re: Here via metafandom

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

Stories can be perfectly good stories with only one kind of conflict, but if someone is man vs self fan and the whole story is man vs nature, they're not going to find anything in it for them. Layer them up, maybe more readers find something in it.

I guess that's true, but what if the story is rich and compelling even with only one conflict? Once I start thinking about how many readers I am going to please, I am in danger of getting away from my original intent just to gain readers.

I'm not sure if I'm really comfortable with that. I want to write what I want to write. I hope and pray that others will also be interested in it, but once I start writing stuff because I think other people want to read it...I don't know. That makes it more of a chore and a lot less fun.

But it's an interesting thing to think about. Maybe I have the wrong attitude about the whole readership issue.

Re: Here via metafandom

[beccaelizabeth]

Don't have to please all the people all the time, nope. Having any readership is pretty cool. Having a story is the point of writing.


The other thing I thought of was, starting a story with one kind of conflict and ending up with another is probably not going to please.

iirc, that's the problem with the original ending to Blade. Started out as a man vs man thing with Blade and Frost, and then Frost turned into a big blood whirlwind of gooey doom and the film lost the whole preview audience. So they kept him human instead. Which I guess means resolving the kind of conflict they'd set up.
And also a really cool sword fight.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

[Here from metafandom. [wave]]

That's classic lit-crit stuff. [nod] And yes, it can be very useful to work out what's going on in your story on a symbolic level, whether you write it down or diagram it or just think about it, because it lets you manipulate things from a step farther back than just "plot" and some particularly nasty knots can only be untangled from there.

Another thing to think about is internal and external conflicts, as lemurgrrrl mentioned. If you want to include multiple major conflicts in your story, a good way of doing that is to make linked internal and external conflicts, where they're distinct but they relate or reinforce each other. I have no idea which fandom you write in so I'll use a more generic, non-fannish example. :)



Suppose you're writing a historical romance. The Girl meets a Guy and they fall in love. But alas, the Guy is illegitimate [gasp!] and poor besides. He's not destitute but he's nowhere near wealthy or even particularly well off. Our Girl, though, doesn't care. She's an heiress and has no problem marrying the Guy and having them both live on her money. Or heck, if he's going to get all stuffy and honorable about it, she'll donate her money to the local orphanage and they can get a picturesque but ramshackle cottage somewhere and live on what he makes, which isn't luxury but who needs luxury when you have love? <3 <3 <3

Well, actually the Guy is going to be all stuffy and honorable about it and he refuses to marry her and subject her to the ridicule of her friends and neighbors, or to take her away from the comforts she's known all her life, figuring that she thinks near-poverty in a cottage sounds romantic now but she'll change her tune next winter when she's washing his shirts in forty degree weather.

But! His mother (the fallen woman, remember?) dies and her lawyer sends him a letter Mother wrote for the purpose, saying that he is indeed legitimate, that she and Lord Weakling snuck off to be married in secret against the objections of his family, since she was merely a poor curate's daughter and they Strongly Disapproved the Match. He brought his new bride to a small cottage he'd bought for her (which is where the Guy grew up and how he therefore knows about laundry and cold weather and drafty walls) and went back to present his family with a fait accompli, figuring they'd forgive him and accept his new wife since she was his wife after all and there wasn't much they could do about it at that point.

BUT! Lord Weakling's family managed to bully him into denying the match, since he'd been stupid enough to bring the marriage papers to show said family and his father grabbed them and threw them into the fire, so there. Now the new wife, who was clearly a fortune-hunting adventuress, had no way to prove she'd ever been married to him and he could ignore her and marry the very nice young daughter of Lady Upsnott, a brilliant match, and forget all about this folly of his youth.

So that's what he did, being a Weakling. And his poor wife was left -- with child, no less! -- with an absent husband who got more and more absent. Her letters went unanswered and when she showed up at her husband's ancestral home, the gatekeeper drove her away, the cad. She staggered off, her reputation ruined, and made as good a life as she could for herself, and later for her son, who was falsely believed to be a bastard and herself a harlot, alas.

Now, what this means is that our Guy is actually the rightful Lord Weakling! (Well, maybe he can change the name later.) If only he could prove this -- it would solve all his problems! He'd be suddenly wealthy and well born and would deserve the hand of the Girl! Joy!

And there's a hint about one more possible piece of proof he might be able to lay his hands on, if his father's treacherous family haven't destroyed it as well....

[Continued on Next Rock...]

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

[...Continued from Previous Rock]

OK, that was fun. :D Anyway, there are two basic conflicts here from the POV of our protagonist, the not-a-bastard Guy, one of which is internal and the other external.

The internal conflict (which is Man vs. Self) lies in the fact that he's in love with the Girl, madly and passionately, and desires beyond all else to marry her. But at the same time his sense of honor and right refuses to allow him to allow her to degrade herself so far as to marry a baseborn man, and one moreover who would be unable to support her in the manner to which she is accustomed. His desire for personal happiness conflicts with his need to see himself as a good and honorable man.

The external conflict (which is Man vs. Man) is between the Guy and his blood family. He's going to go looking for that piece of proof of his mother's marriage hinted at in her letter, and the current Lord Weakling and the rest of the Weakling family are obviously not going to want him to find it. So we'll get some action and some mystery and some puzzle-solving and some race-against-time type scenes and whatever all else we can think of while the Guy (and probably the Girl too, since she has a vested interest in helping her True Love prove his legitimacy) try to find this whatever-it-is and remove the cloud from his birth so they can get married already.

And because these two conflicts are linked, each one has a stronger impact on the reader than if they were completely separate. The external conflict has to be solved not only to see justice done, but also in order to provide a resolution for the external conflict. This interconnectedness strengthens the story as a whole.

You can add more, of course, and for something novel length you probably should, but these two conflicts are going to be the supporting cable of the main storyline. They'll be the first conflicts the characters encounter and the last ones solved. And because of the way people tend to feel more deeply emotional about internal conflicts than about external conflicts, the internal conflict should be the first one encountered, then the external conflict comes up next. At the end, obviously, the external conflict will wrap first and then the internal conflict. It's sort of like programming nesting IF clauses, where the first one opened is the last one closed and cetera. :)

But often you see fan writers, or less experienced writers who are trying to go pro, introduce one or more minor conflicts before the primary conflict comes along, or solving the primary conflict while leaving one or more minor conflicts dangling for the next chapter or three. The first problem makes it tough for the reader to see what the main thrust of the story is while the second makes your last chapter or few chapters literally anti-climatic.

(In our example above, perhaps the Girl's mother objects to the Guy because he's a Whig while she's a staunch Tory; the woman doesn't give a damn about his base birth or his lack of fortune but refuses to give her daughter permission to make a political mesalliance. Since this is not part of the linked major conflicts, it should be introduced after they are and wrapped up before they are, not left to dangle until the Guy has already transformed into a properly wealthy nobleman because once they've solved the legitimacy thing, Mom's objection is pretty minor and not really worth reading about anymore.)

But anyway, taking a step back and labelling things so you can see what the structure is doing can help you lay it all out logically, and perhaps even help you figure out what your main conflict is.

Angie, who takes far too much pleasure in talking about story structure :)

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about linking the conflicts. I think that's really important. Otherwise, the story seems less organic and more like one idea was grafted on to another.

I am not a big fan of romances, but I am a big fan of detective fiction. My favorite detective fiction has some outside conflict (the case) and an inner or interpersonal conflict that's going on at the same time and is, in some subtle way, related.

I like writing these, and I actually wish I could find more of these to read. Most fanfic writers seem more into romantic stories, though.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Otherwise, the story seems less organic and more like one idea was grafted on to another.

Exactly. [nod] It definitely takes more than one "idea" to make a story, especially a longer one, but they need to be connected or it comes across as confused and pointless. The connections might not be apparent until the end -- there are a number of SF novels which start out as six or ten apparently unrelated plotlines, each with its own conflict and set of characters, but by the end the've all been woven together in a way which inspires great admiration, at least in myself. :D But there has to be some reason why all these things are in one story or it just doesn't work.

I agree that the best detective fiction works that way but in my admittedly limited experience with the genre it seems like it's difficult to sustain that over an extended series, and most detective writers don't do one-shots. [wry smile] If the detective has twenty-five books, though, it seems like it'd be pretty tough to either figure out an internal conflict which stretches out that long, without having the readers get impatient because he doesn't just solve it already, or coming up with a different, related internal conflict for each book. [ponder]

I've never wandered all that much among areas where there are a lot of gen stories (in fact I'm just assuming such places exist, LOL!) but detective stories without a romantic component would be more likely there than in the pornier areas, or so I would think. I've read a lot of stories where there was some kind of puzzle to solve, although nothing I can think of that I'd call an actual "detective story" with all the genre markings intact. I hope you run across a stash of them eventually.

Angie

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

there are a number of SF novels which start out as six or ten apparently unrelated plotlines, each with its own conflict and set of characters, but by the end the've all been woven together in a way which inspires great admiration, at least in myself.

Yep. Stephen King used to do this very well, too. The Dead Zone comes to mind.

I agree that the best detective fiction works that way but in my admittedly limited experience with the genre it seems like it's difficult to sustain that over an extended series, and most detective writers don't do one-shots.

You're right about this, but I just thought of a great example: Silence of the Lambs. I admit it's more of a horror flick than a detective story, but at its heart it is a suspenseful detective story. In it, there is the outer conflict (Jodie Foster's character trying to solve a string of brutal killings) and the inner conflict (her character having to deal with Hannibal Lechter, and thereby being forced to deal with her own insecurities and issues).

Have you ever read any of the Spenser books, by Robert Parker? They always involve a case, and also Spenser's relationship with his longtime girlfriend Susan. Sometimes there is conflict between them, sometimes not, but I like the balance between outer threat and inner relationship drama.

I've never wandered all that much among areas where there are a lot of gen stories (in fact I'm just assuming such places exist, LOL!) but detective stories without a romantic component would be more likely there than in the pornier areas, or so I would think.

Ha! But my point is, I really want both a detective story AND porn!!! Can't I have everything I want? (I've written some of my own, but I really want more to read.)

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (collaborating) also do that a lot, with the far-flung characters and plotlines which eventually come together. They write SF if you've never heard of them.

I've seen two of the Hannibal Lechter movies, but I've never read any of the books. I don't know that it'd be the same without Anthony Hopkins. [grin]

Was the TV series "Spenser for Hire" based on those books? A friend of mine was into it and got me to watch an episode or two back when and I thought a PI who quotes the classics was pretty cool, but I wasn't watching much TV at the time and never watched it regularly. But yeah, having interrelated conflicts and plotlines which support and strengthen each other, no matter what the genre, is always cool.

About wanting a mystery and porn, but without romance, that's tough, seriously. Of course, you can duct-tape a sex scene in wherever you want, into any kind of story you want, but if you're doing a good job of crafting your story then everything you include is something which is necessary. A sex scene usually isn't, in and of itself. The sole exception being true pornography, where one of the definitions of a porn novel is that there's at least one scene of sex or something else intensely erotic in each and every chapter, whether it supports the plot or not, and usually it doesn't. That's what true porn is about though, so you kind of have to have it. But in most cases, sex is like anything else -- it has to pull its weight with the plotline or character development or something, or it doesn't belong in the story.

It's easiest to include sex in a story which is primarily a romance, or has a strong romantic subplot. Even if the romance doesn't have a positive conclusion, the developing relationship can be illustrated using sex scenes (not too many, but just enough) as can general character. Someone who's selfish is going to do sex differently from someone who's generous or someone who's naive or someone who has serious self-esteem problems. Someone who's usually supremely self-confident, including in bed (which the reader knows because you showed a couple of sex scenes with that character earlier) might turn into an empty-headed fumbler when they find themself in a bedroom with someone they're ga-ga infatuated with, and depending on how you present that scene it might be sweet or funny or annoying or embarassing or whatever, any of which can be key pieces of information for the reader to have about that character and their reactions, even if the story isn't a romance and the object of the protagonist's infatuation never appears in the story again.

Or a horror or suspense story can have a sexual component, part of what fanfic circles call "darkfic." In this case, the sex scenes could be an important component of the horrific plotline, or maybe a character is having sex with someone they don't know is a murderer and the readers are kept in suspense wondering whether he/she was going to end up stabbed or strangled or whatever right in the bedroom. Or a contrast between how the murderer behaves during sex and how he or she behaves at other times could underscore the horror of the murders. Or if the murderer has carefully and methodically dissected their victims, and the reader's seen them do it in an earlier chapter, then watching this same person carefully and methodically arouse their partner could give the reader some serious willies.

My point being that there has to be a point to it, if you're doing it right. You could write a mystery where sex is an important component, but sex isn't always a key component of a mystery the way it is with a romance (even if the sex happens offscreen, which it still does in many romance books) and it... it "sticks out" more if you write a number of mysteries which closely incorporate sex, whereas it just blends in if you're writing a romance.

[Continued on Next Rock...]

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

[...Continued from Previous Rock]

Also, most mysteries (from my admittedly limited experience, and considering books and movies and TV shows) are told primarily from the detective's POV, so if you want to have any significant number of sex scenes in your story, most if not all of them would have to involved the detective. So, why is it that the reader needs to watch the detective having sex in order to further the plotline of this mystery? For a one-shot, sure, you could work it out, but over and over? [grin]

It's certainly doable, but a mystery in and of itself takes a lot of skill and planning, to work out what's going to happen and what the clues will be and what red herrings will be planted and have it all wrap up neatly so that, ideally, the reader will come to the end part where the detective says, "Mary did it in the library with the the iPod and this is how I know!" and the reader reads the explanation and does a facepalm and goes, "Of course! Why didn't I see that?!" Doing that and pulling it off is tough enough without adding the necessity for weaving a legitimate sexual component through the thing. I think that level of planning is beyond most amateur writers. Heck, I think it's probably beyond a lot of professional writers, seriously. I've never heard of any mystery writers who say they write seat-of-the-pants style, which seems to be the most common method used among fanwriters, who aren't generally known for their heavy devotion to pre-planning and organization in their stories. :)

Which is all a very long-winded way of saying that I think there are technical reasons for the lack of porny detective fiction in fandom. :) I have no idea how many people would be interested in reading that kind of thing, but the technical specs for writing it are a lot more stringent than they are for a romance or even a basic adventure-type story.

Angie

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

1) I was talking about the movie, Silence of the Lambs. I've never read the books.

2) Yes, Spenser was a tv series for a bit.

3) I'm not really clear on why you think there can't be porn in a mystery or detective story. Also, I'm not talking about the English parlor-type mysteries like Miss Marple or whatever. I'm talking about detectives. You know, private eyes, gumshoes, or even cops. More procedural than whodunit.

These detectives, they have girlfriends or boyfriends, yes? They have sex with them, yes? So, why can't these elements just be depicted more... pornographically in fanfic?

It's true that some private dicks (har har) are loner types, but others, such as Spenser and Sandra Scoppettone's detective Lauren Laurano, have romantic partners.

4) You're aware, right, that such detective or cop shows as Starsky & Hutch and The Professionals have slash written about them, right? Sometimes, though not often enough for my taste, a writer is able to combine action/adventure/mystery plot with romance/sex. I have done it myself! See here (http://meandthee.shahrazad.net/display.php?storyid=812) for an example.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but it's certainly been done! It's very possible! I was just wishing it were done more often.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I didn't say there can't be sex in a mystery or detective story, but rather that a good, tightly-written mystery already has a lot of stuff in it and it's difficult to insert [cough] sex in a meaningful way. It's one more baton to juggle and it's difficult. It can be done but it makes an already challenging genre even harder.

Let me back up a bit. [ponder] When you're writing a story, whether it's a short or a novel, every element of the story should have a purpose, should further the plotline or depict character or show a relationship between characters or something. It doesn't matter how beautifully you describe the forests and mountains; if the reader doesn't need to know a lot about what they look like in order to understand the storyline then several pages of poetically beautiful description of scenery has no place in your story. How good it is doesn't matter -- if it doesn't pull its weight then it doesn't belong. If your protagonist goes to a party and it's a lot of fun, there are some really cool costumes and he heard some hysterically funny jokes and the decorations were wildly creative and it's all just incredibly neat, but nothing that happened at the party helped the story move along, then the whole party scene needs to be cut. It doesn't matter how hard the writer worked on it or how original the ideas are or whatever -- if it doesn't pull its weight then it doesn't belong.

A certain amount of scenery is allowed for flavor -- descriptions of period clothing in a historical or of weapons in a war story or of roll call and paperwork in a police procedural -- but in these cases we're talking about a couple of lines or maybe a paragraph at a time, interspersed with other things which do move the story along.

Many baby writers, including but by no means limited to a large percentage of fan writers -- will stick anything they think is "cool" into their story, just because it is cool, without considering how it contributes to the storyline as a whole. Often it doesn't, at all. If you listen to professional editors griping about what makes their slushpile reading so frustrating, this is one of the main complaints -- that baby writers think that just because something is clever or creative means that adding it to their story is always a good thing, but instead it only demonstrates that they don't understand story structure. Persuading newbie writers to cut out what they think of as some of their best bits is incredibly difficult, but it has to be done if they ever want to start selling.

Within fandom, a sex scene is often seen as one of those "best bits," fun to read for its own sake, with no consideration as to whether it supports the story. Most sex scenes don't, and strictly speaking don't belong. Including them actually weakens the story, but most people don't care 'cause they like to read sex. :) Heck, I do too when it comes down to it. But my favorite kind of sex scene is one which is firmly embedded into the plotline, one which carries its weight as a story component and gives me some information I need to have to understand the story and the characters and their relationship, in addition to being hot. Hotness in and of itself is not actually sufficient reason for including a sex scene in a story. Unless, as I said before, the story is porn by the strict definition, in which case all bets are off. :)

When I get to talking about writing in the abstract, I tend to drift over to the standards of professional writing. I guess it's not always fair to bring these standards into a discussion of fanfic, but I'm idealist enough to think that there's no reason fanfic can't be well written by professional standards, so I try to spread them around whenever the subject comes up.

[Continued on Next Rock...]

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

[...Continued from Previous Rock]

I had a nice stack of dead-tree Starsky and Hutch zines, before I lost all my stuff back in '90, and I don't actually remember any stories which I'd call mysteries, or even police stories along the lines of what was shown on TV. Most of the stories which had any plotline at all were relationship stories rather than catch-the-criminal stories, and as such were technically romances. [wry smile] But if someone did write a story where the main plotline involved figuring out what was going on with some criminal case, collecting evidence and catching the bad guy, then a scene stuck into the middle where Dave tackled Ken into bed and ravished him until his toes curled would be one of those really cool bits which unfortunately should be cut, because it wouldn't contribute anything to the plot.

Although again, you could make it work. If the guys were undercover as a pair of gay men and ended up at a play party and at some point someone looked at them and said loudly, "Hey, how come you two still have your clothes on?" and everyone else stopped and stared at them, such that they pretty much had to strip down and make out or blow their cover, that'd be very much furthering the plotline, to say nothing of the characterization complications later on when they had to deal with what'd happened, especially if this were a story where they weren't lovers before that point. :)

You can do it, sure, tie up the sex and relationship stuff with the police and criminals stuff so that it all actually belongs together. But it takes more effort to do a good job and make it all blend smoothly. Most people just get out the duct tape and stick in a sex scene, splat, and that's that. And the vast majority of fans reading the story won't know the difference and will enjoy it, and heck I'd probably enjoy it too, for what it was. But if you're aware of how things are supposed to go together then seeing a sex scene -- or anything, I'm not just picking on sex scenes -- stuck into a story without contributing anything to the overall story, it grates. Because it's something that's not supposed to be there and it's like having a rock in your shoe. And in my perfect world, everyone would learn to do it right and make it blend, and we'd all get to read good stories and good sex together. :)

Angie

[beccaelizabeth]

'supposed to' are words I avoid when talking about art.

sometimes the sex scene is the cherry on top. might not seem necessary to the cake making process, but makes it very pretty.

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

I feel like we're either talking about entirely different things, or I'm just not making myself clear, because there are a lot of examples of detective/cop/mystery stories out there that integrate romance/sex in a clear and cohesive way, so that the sex or romance scenes do not seem extraneous at all!
And I'm talking about both profic and, to a lesser degree (only because it doesn't seem popular, not because it's not doable) fanfic.

The Big Sleep Book or movie. Philip Marlowe's on the case, and he's also driven a bit wild by his client's daughter.

The Big Easy Movie. Dennis Quaid is on the case, and the assistant D.A. is on his. Luckily, the a.d.a. is played by Ellen Barkin, and she thinks she can "reform" him. Good luck, Ellen!

In the Starsky & Hutch fic I mentioned above, S&H are on a case in which a boxer and his manager are at odds, and it brings up issues of loyalty and trust in their own relationship.

I don't think mixing detective work with personal relationships is all that odd, unusual, or hard to pull off. My experience with fanfiction, however, is that most writers and readers are more drawn to pure romance, and a bit less interested in police or detective procedural work. But that doesn't mean the two can't be mixed, and very satisfyingly at that!

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I've never seen The Big Sleep, but if a detective is being distracted sexually by his client's daughter then that's something which could very easily have been part of the plotline. That's definitely a conflict of interest, especially if the daughter was or turned out to be involved in whatever situation his case was based on, so he'd have to balance out his feelings and desires against his professional and personal integrity. This is pretty closely analogous to the romance example I gave above, where the protag has an internal conflict between his integrity and his personal desires.

The Big Easy sounds the same, although I've never seen that one either. I don't know what Dennis Quaid's job is, but if they're both involved with the same case then I'm pretty sure someone would object on ethical grounds to his boffing the ADA, so you've got a nice internal conflict there as well, and possibly an external one if the wrong person finds out what's going on between them.

It sounds to me like I'm saying "difficult" and you're hearing "nearly impossible." [wry smile] I think we actually agree pretty closely and are just having a vocabulary problem. [laugh/flail]

If a mystery-detective specialty bookstore (new and used titles at a discount!) has fifty thousand titles in stock and a thousand of them have a strong sexual relationship as an integral part of the main storyline, that's still only two percent. But it's a thousand books, which is a lot in an absolute sense. Or if it's five thousand titles with the strong sexual plot thread, that's a heck of a lot of sexy detective books but it's still only ten percent of the total. I never said the two "can't" be mixed, only that mixing them and doing a good job of it takes more effort than not mixing them.

At any rate, I've heard a lot of fans in various fandoms say that they like stories with strong mystery or adventure or suspense or whatever kinds of plotlines, usually to go along a romantic storyline, but they do enjoy both and wish there were more stories like that. This means there's a lot of demand for stories which aren't purely romances. You're one more person who wants that and I like them too -- I've always been a plot whore. :) So the demand is there, the audience is there, and there logically must be some reason why more people aren't writing them. Note that I'm not saying that no one at all is writing them, only that there aren't enough people writing them to meet the demand.

I think it's because juggling two plotlines -- the mystery or adventure or suspense or SF or fantasy or whatever, along with the romantic plotline -- is a more complex task, and therefore more difficult and more work than just focusing on a single plotline. Not impossible. Not undoable. Just a bit harder and requiring more effort. There might be some other reason why people aren't writing more of these, but this is my theory. :)

Angie

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like I'm saying "difficult" and you're hearing "nearly impossible." [wry smile] I think we actually agree pretty closely and are just having a vocabulary problem. [laugh/flail]

Yeah, you're probably right about that! Also, I'm trying to come up with famous examples of movies that you might have seen and books that you might have read, so it doesn't help that you're not familiar with the genre. It's hard for examples to illustrate anything if you're not familiar with them.

I think it's because juggling two plotlines -- the mystery or adventure or suspense or SF or fantasy or whatever, along with the romantic plotline -- is a more complex task, and therefore more difficult and more work than just focusing on a single plotline. Not impossible. Not undoable. Just a bit harder and requiring more effort. There might be some other reason why people aren't writing more of these, but this is my theory. :)

Yeah, I think you're definitely right about this. It is harder to write them. It's harder for me to write them--plotting is not my strong suit. But I try because they're what I like to read, and I very often write to fill a void I find.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I do that sometimes too. Now if we could only get more people chipping in, the problem would go away. :D

Angie

[beccaelizabeth]

if a story is pleasing to a whole bunch of readers, trying to apply the standards of a different community (in this case pro editors) isn't necessarily going to make it better for the audience that already liked it.


I'd agree that structuring a story so everything connects is pretty nifty.

But I'd also note that random naked sweaty martial arts musical interludes haven't put off any fan I've met.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Sure, and if the writer and her or his readers are all having fun then there's nothing wrong with it.

I like working on my writing and doing it as well as I can, though, by the standards of writers whose work I not only enjoy but also greatly respect. And yes, this does include some fan writers; we've got some really incredible talents in the fan community, people who not only have the creativity and gut-level ability but who've also studied writing well enough to be able to sand off the rough edges and polish everything up.

Not everyone wants to focus on it that hard, or do that much studying, or whatever, and that's cool. But seeing a writer work and learn and reach her full potential is incredibly cool, something I love doing, whether it's a professional writer publishing books or magazine stories or whether it's a fan writer posting online and getting better and better.

And yes, a lot of it has to do with environment. It's like... if you go to a potluck and everyone brings something they cooked or baked, your standards are going to be different than if you went to a nice restaurant. Probably some of the dishes at the potluck will be better than what you get at the restaurant, because the people who made them are very talented amateurs who are serious about cooking as a hobby, but most probably won't. But you'll enjoy them anyway because the standards for a home kitchen are different from those for a good restaurant, where the chef(s) graduated from culinary school and are good enough to be well paid for what they're doing.

I've never read a story with a random naked sweaty martial arts musical interlude, so I can't really comment on that, LOL! I'll grant you it sounds like fun, though.

Angie

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

Also, I'm very sorry to beccaelizabeth for hijacking her LJ. Please forgive us.

[beccaelizabeth]

Is cool. I get thoughts without having to do thinking.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Glad you're enjoying it -- feel free to jump in anywhere. [grin]

Angie

[beccaelizabeth]

seat-of-the-pants style, which seems to be the most common method used among fanwriters, who aren't generally known for their heavy devotion to pre-planning and organization in their stories. :)

Your idea-of-fanwriter is not my experience-of-fanwriter

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Maybe not. [nod] There are a lot of different ways of writing after all, even among the pros.

What I meant by "seat-of-the-pants" is where you come up with characters and a situation and a very general idea of where you're going and just start writing. You keep going until the end, just creating the story as you write, without an actual outline (for this purpose I'll define an outline as some sort of plan for what's going to happen in each chapter at least, if not each scene). If you're writing by the seat of your pants then you might know how the story ends but you're not quite sure how you're going to get there until it happens. Or you might have some ideas for events during the story but you're not sure how it's all going to turn out. There's nothing wrong with this method -- I've known professionals who work this way and produce very good books.

For a classic mystery, though -- not necessarily an Agatha Christie type, but for a story where clues and red herrings need to be planted along the way and everything has to come together neatly with all events explained and nothing left dangling -- the seat of the pants method doesn't work terribly well. I won't say that no mystery writers at all work this way because I've never taken a poll :) but the genre wouldn't seem to lend itself to a spontaneous outpouring of text.

Many, many times I've seen a fanwriter comment one one of her WIPs something like, "I have no idea what's going to happen next," or "I'll have to see what the muses say," or "I didn't expect this to happen at all and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens in the next chapter as much as the rest of you are!" or something similar. And as I said, plenty of pro writers work this way too. It does work, but for a classic mystery, something which holds together and which the reader has a chance to solve before the detective does the reveal at the end, I have a hard time imagining this working.

Angie

[beccaelizabeth]

I always have an outline. I'm usually wrong about how many words it will take to get each section done, and sometimes new and cool turns up in the story and the outline needs modifying, but there is always a detailed outline.

Pro writers mostly don't show their the WIP so there is no knowing if they albuquerque or not.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

True, but they talk about it a lot, and you can listen in and join the discussion if you hang out in the right places. I used to hang out in three different RTs on the old GEnie network where a lot of pro writers and a bunch of working-on-their-first-sale folks (some of whom went on to become pros) gathered and wrote and workshopped and produced many megabytes of verbage about writing and the elements of same and how a story goes together and how they personally approach a project. RomEx was the official online home of the Romance Writers of America at that time; the Science Fiction Roundtable had at least a couple of hundred professional SF and fantasy writers, each with their own topic (sort of like a journal, kind of) plus many more topics where the discussion was of writing specifically rather than more generally of books or movies or aliens or whatever; and the Writers' Roundtable was for anyone interested in writing, and many pros hung out there as well. Some people hung out in all three places. All three had workshops and active technical discussion areas. The RWA has a new online home now, and there are at least a couple of major places online where the SF pros went after GEnie closed down in the early nineties, aside from their personal web pages and such.

You can also go to conventions (in fact, I'm at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim right now -- the con just wrapped today and we're going home tomorrow) where writers and editors come and talk about writing and publishing and their own writing habits and what does and doesn't work for them and what does and doesn't work about amateur stories they've read and pretty much anything else you can imagine being discussed about writing. The info is out there if you know where to look, even though the pros don't post their WIPs a chapter at a time the way so many fanwriters do.

And yeah, a lot of them definitely Albuquerque on a regular basis. :) One guy on a panel I went to yesterday said that he does outlines but sometimes he'll run into a problem partway through and in writing around it he ends up doing a hard left which renders the rest of his outline completely irrelevant. And another writer on the same panel, someone whose name I forget but she used to write Buffy tie-in novels, talked about more than once turning in a manuscript which didn't bear much resemblance to the proposal she'd submitted when she got the original contract. [grin]

Angie

Also here via metafandom

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

Interesting post, I appreciate.

Re: Also here via metafandom

[beccaelizabeth]

:-)

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

Was just watching Halloween, the first Giles-Ethan dialogue, and a thought whispered in my head: is that man vs man, or man vs self, only triggered by the other man? It came right after I noticed the emphasis on "division of the self, light and dark" by Giles, and the way they stand facing each other.

*random*