I appreciate your point about the narrators assignment pushing the action forward. The assignment means that he must go into danger, as opposed to running away when he hears, "You're a grown man, but you're about to get the sh*t beat out of you, like a junior high school kid, because you wear glasses."
I appreciate your point about the narrators assignment pushing the action forward. The assignment means that he must go into danger, as opposed to running away when he hears, "You're a grown man, but you're about to get the sh*t beat out of you, like a junior high school kid, because you wear glasses."
However, the assignment itself doesn't really do it for me, as a reader. If all that happened was that he got an assignment, I'd be bored to death. The thing that pushes the story forward for me is the fear. It's not just his fear, but my fear for him. I read more because I want to know how the situation will resolve itself.
Yes Amy, I'm with you. 'Fearing' is a form of emotion of engagement, and what's more deep rather than shallow engagement. A further frisson of 'fear' must come with knowing that while you hope the situation may resolve itself you know that, possibly, it will not.
I definitely agree! A pulse on its own pushes the plot forward, but it can't necessarily make us *care.* This pulse only works because we read it as a deepening/escalation of the narrator's already established fear. The meaning of the pulse is defined by all that "how," which is really a question of who and when and where and why, not to mention so much else!
A distinction between pushing the plot forward (mechanical) and pushing you, the reader, forward (psycho-emotional) should definitely be made. A series of coherent pulses doesn't define whether a story is successful or not, that is, doesn't define whether you keep caring and reading to the end or not. It's simply a diagnostic or blueprint for what the story seems to be trying to do: "Well, the assignment seems to be the big plot point here. Now that I know, does the author succeed in making it interesting and/or meaningful?" As George said, "Once we knew what work the scene was doing, each team knew what it had to do - it knew the flavor of what it had to do." Once we know what a scene is for, then we can start judging it.
I appreciate your point about the narrators assignment pushing the action forward. The assignment means that he must go into danger, as opposed to running away when he hears, "You're a grown man, but you're about to get the sh*t beat out of you, like a junior high school kid, because you wear glasses."
However, the assignment itself doesn't really do it for me, as a reader. If all that happened was that he got an assignment, I'd be bored to death. The thing that pushes the story forward for me is the fear. It's not just his fear, but my fear for him. I read more because I want to know how the situation will resolve itself.
Yes Amy, I'm with you. 'Fearing' is a form of emotion of engagement, and what's more deep rather than shallow engagement. A further frisson of 'fear' must come with knowing that while you hope the situation may resolve itself you know that, possibly, it will not.
Thank you!
I definitely agree! A pulse on its own pushes the plot forward, but it can't necessarily make us *care.* This pulse only works because we read it as a deepening/escalation of the narrator's already established fear. The meaning of the pulse is defined by all that "how," which is really a question of who and when and where and why, not to mention so much else!
A distinction between pushing the plot forward (mechanical) and pushing you, the reader, forward (psycho-emotional) should definitely be made. A series of coherent pulses doesn't define whether a story is successful or not, that is, doesn't define whether you keep caring and reading to the end or not. It's simply a diagnostic or blueprint for what the story seems to be trying to do: "Well, the assignment seems to be the big plot point here. Now that I know, does the author succeed in making it interesting and/or meaningful?" As George said, "Once we knew what work the scene was doing, each team knew what it had to do - it knew the flavor of what it had to do." Once we know what a scene is for, then we can start judging it.
Thank you. That makes sense.