Movies and Thoughts

[alanajoli]

I just watched Stranger than Fiction, which was excellent. I think it was probably a really challening role for Will Farrell, because he's not just a doof--he actually has a full range of emotions and comes off as a really amazing guy. It's also a great look at what story means, and what choices writers make, and why they decide to make them. I don't usually go for really touching movies, but I thought this movie was really touching and I liked it a whole lot. Maybe not quite as much as Lyrics and Music, but I think on the whole it was a better movie.

--

On a completely different note, I've started reading Wicked Lovely, which I'll write about once I've finished it. (Just to keep melissa_writing from being in suspense, I'm really enjoying it so far.) Between reading and watching the movie tonight, I figured something out:

The Hobbomock novel and the Tuatha de Danan novel, which I thought were the same story, are, in fact, not. The concepts I wanted to explore by writing about the Danans are really not going to work with the plot that I had set up. Which means I'll either have to drop that plot to explore the ideas, or I'll have to drop the ideas for the sake of the plot. (Or I'll have to separate them and let them each go their own ways.)

The theme of the story with Hobbomock in it was supposed to be about the relationship between the main character and her sibling, who is dead/missing/crazy (hadn't decided yet). The story with the Danans was meant to find out what it means that the Tuatha de Danan, who were thought to be gods, were defeated by humans and sent underground, where they became the same as the Fomorians. I was struggling to find the link that brought those two ideas together, the character who would bridge the main character from the Hobbomock story with the Danans.

I found her today, and I think she has her own story to tell. She's not interested in what Hobbomock has to say at all.

So I'm a bit back to the drawing board--but I think it's in a good way. I don't have deadlines on either of these stories, so I have plenty of time to explore what this separation means.

Comments

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

Though it can be frustrating in a way, isn't it fun when characters surprise us and make us rethink the whole story? I've had that happen more than once. I see myself sometimes more as a wrangler of these wayward souls than a god who controls them. There's a bit of a power struggle there at times just to maintain a balance between letting them run wild and crafting a coherent tale.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

The best thing I learned as a writing tutor was guiding the paper/story/essay to where *it* wanted to be, not toward what the writer wanted to say. Sometimes we don't even really know where we want things to go--the story has to show us the way.

At least, it's happened to me!

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

That's very true. I don't really see myself as a creator, I see myself as a conduit for the story. The story is somewhere, maybe in Jung's collective unconscious, and my craft is to find the story, follow it to its end.

But, conversely, there is some skill involved in getting that tale down on paper so that others will understand it and enjoy it. While I write mainly for myself (as evidenced by the fact that I haven't published anything in two years) sharing brings about its own joy. And sometimes I find that if I follow what the character wants without some sort of--for lack of a better word--compromise, the characters will kind of each go their own way and avoid the ending altogether.

Of course, that's probably part of the reason I gravitate towards writing serialised stories. I don't have to stop the characters from doing their thing. Haha.

I think I just sometimes lack the discipline to finish, or rather, to declare a novel finished. I'm a perfectionist, as I'm sure you can understand, and I always see things I can improve. Which is why my novel is in its fifth draft. But I'm determined to make it the final one.