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Sound Off for January 26, 2008
I'm gonna try to make a habit of posting these in the morning instead of when I get around to writing, so that hopefully we'll miss fewer days ^_^
And in the spirit of what we're all up to here, here's a passage from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee.
The stuff of a story is not its words. Your text must be lucid to express the desk-bound life of your imagintion and feelings, but words are not an end, they are a means, a medium. The substance of story is the gap that splits open between what a human being expects to happen when he takes an action and what really does happen; the rift between expectation and result, probability and necessity. To build a scene, we constantly break open these breaches in reality.
As to the source of energy in story, the answer is the same: the gap. The audience empathizes with the character, vicariously seeking his desire. It more or less expects the world to react the way the character expects. When the gap opens up for character, it opens up for audience. This is the "Oh, my God!" moment, the "Oh, no!" or "Oh, yes!" you've experienced again and again in well-crafted stories.
And in the spirit of what we're all up to here, here's a passage from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee.
The stuff of a story is not its words. Your text must be lucid to express the desk-bound life of your imagintion and feelings, but words are not an end, they are a means, a medium. The substance of story is the gap that splits open between what a human being expects to happen when he takes an action and what really does happen; the rift between expectation and result, probability and necessity. To build a scene, we constantly break open these breaches in reality.
As to the source of energy in story, the answer is the same: the gap. The audience empathizes with the character, vicariously seeking his desire. It more or less expects the world to react the way the character expects. When the gap opens up for character, it opens up for audience. This is the "Oh, my God!" moment, the "Oh, no!" or "Oh, yes!" you've experienced again and again in well-crafted stories.