dooooooommm
Apr. 25th, 2012 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardI have this list of things I would like to have in the epic novel I shall someday right (what, think small? me?), which includes the following:
1. ladies
2. mentor/student --> equals
3. good v. evil --> shades of grey (?)
4. friendship
5. ~destiny + fate (thwarted?)
6. changes + growth
7. Machiavelli
8. family (the kind you make/choose)
9. ass-kicking
10. loss
11. no right answers
12. faith
But I was thinking the other day how one thing I really like in my fiction and my history is DOOOOOOMMMMMM -- or tragedy, if you want to be less melodramatic about it. The feeling that some kind of fate is rushing headfirst at you or your characters, and there's nothing they can do to avoid it. The hunt, the White Stag, and the end of the Golden Age in Narnia; the end of the Republic, Order 66, and Anakin's betrayal in Star Wars; the Ides of March in Rome; Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere in Arthuriana; that sort of thing. And you only get this sense of dramatic DOOOOOOMMMM because you as the reader or the viewer know it's coming -- because the Star Wars PT is a prequel, because we're familiar with Narnia, because the Ides of March and the betrayal of Arthur are shared cultural memories. And I've been trying to figure out if one can actually get that sense of DOOOOOMMM (I'm sorry, this is just what it is in my head) across in an original if it's not a prequel or doesn't deal with something in that shared cultural memory. I could do it in a historical novel: I'd love to do something sometime leading up to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. But that's because the reader knows it's coming; it's why in Rome, the PTB don't have to show Antony romancing Cleopatra; you just need that thirty seconds or so where he walks into the Rome and she says, "Antony," and he replies, "Cleopatra." And that's it. That's all you need. Because we know what happens. It's why in TPM all you have to say is the name, "Anakin Skywalker," and the audience sits up and pays attention. We know what happens. And I don't know if you can do that in an original except in retrospect. Can you do it if the audience doesn't know what's coming? Maybe that's the only way to do it, because it only works on reread. (Like ASoIaF, except I can't think if this is the best example because there's so much doom and gloom going on it's hard to pick out anything as DOOOOOOOMMMMM.)
...there is a possibility I am not making any sense. I guess I'm trying to figure out how to imply DOOOOOOOMMMM if you don't know what's going to happen. It's that shorthand, I guess, that imminent tension of knowing what's going to happen but not how or when or maybe even why. And you can do that in fanfic, because most people who are reading know the major events -- so if you have a clone trooper in a corner on the holocomm with a guy in a hood, then you know that someone's probably about to be shot in the back.
Eh. *handwave* Today is not my day for coherency. Tell me if this makes any sense at all?
1. ladies
2. mentor/student --> equals
3. good v. evil --> shades of grey (?)
4. friendship
5. ~destiny + fate (thwarted?)
6. changes + growth
7. Machiavelli
8. family (the kind you make/choose)
9. ass-kicking
10. loss
11. no right answers
12. faith
But I was thinking the other day how one thing I really like in my fiction and my history is DOOOOOOMMMMMM -- or tragedy, if you want to be less melodramatic about it. The feeling that some kind of fate is rushing headfirst at you or your characters, and there's nothing they can do to avoid it. The hunt, the White Stag, and the end of the Golden Age in Narnia; the end of the Republic, Order 66, and Anakin's betrayal in Star Wars; the Ides of March in Rome; Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere in Arthuriana; that sort of thing. And you only get this sense of dramatic DOOOOOOMMMM because you as the reader or the viewer know it's coming -- because the Star Wars PT is a prequel, because we're familiar with Narnia, because the Ides of March and the betrayal of Arthur are shared cultural memories. And I've been trying to figure out if one can actually get that sense of DOOOOOMMM (I'm sorry, this is just what it is in my head) across in an original if it's not a prequel or doesn't deal with something in that shared cultural memory. I could do it in a historical novel: I'd love to do something sometime leading up to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. But that's because the reader knows it's coming; it's why in Rome, the PTB don't have to show Antony romancing Cleopatra; you just need that thirty seconds or so where he walks into the Rome and she says, "Antony," and he replies, "Cleopatra." And that's it. That's all you need. Because we know what happens. It's why in TPM all you have to say is the name, "Anakin Skywalker," and the audience sits up and pays attention. We know what happens. And I don't know if you can do that in an original except in retrospect. Can you do it if the audience doesn't know what's coming? Maybe that's the only way to do it, because it only works on reread. (Like ASoIaF, except I can't think if this is the best example because there's so much doom and gloom going on it's hard to pick out anything as DOOOOOOOMMMMM.)
...there is a possibility I am not making any sense. I guess I'm trying to figure out how to imply DOOOOOOOMMMM if you don't know what's going to happen. It's that shorthand, I guess, that imminent tension of knowing what's going to happen but not how or when or maybe even why. And you can do that in fanfic, because most people who are reading know the major events -- so if you have a clone trooper in a corner on the holocomm with a guy in a hood, then you know that someone's probably about to be shot in the back.
Eh. *handwave* Today is not my day for coherency. Tell me if this makes any sense at all?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 08:50 pm (UTC)Because I was writing a short story today in which the characters win: only they don't. They postpone their defeat. And they are known historical characters, so you know that this isn't the end, that this victory is temporary.
Implying doom: I'm not sure how. But I'd love to find out.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 08:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 09:16 pm (UTC)Or shorthand it 'round with familiar tropes: decadent society, characters who love each other like brothers (TOTALLY LIKE BROTHERS), vows broken for a woman...
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 09:27 pm (UTC)I do kind of want to do a novel about Peleus and Thetis sometime, because duuuuuude. The art surrounding that is basically ALL SHORTHAND FOR TRAGEDY.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-26 06:42 am (UTC)I'm a Ricardian. I am used to tragedy!
(And so anyone who knows about Ricardian history can tick off the characters at the start of the short story with "...starved to death. Died of TB. Died at Bosworth. Also died at Bosworth. Executed after Bosworth. Oh, got sent to a nunnery!")
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-26 04:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 09:08 pm (UTC)and we didn't end up finishing it, because I was too little to take the sense of impending tragedy, esp. stretched out over months, esp. right before bed. A year or two later I read the whole thing myself. But it's that child-experience of "oh hell this isn't going to end well" I'm trying to dredge up. Maybe the trick is in just making it Bloody Obvious that there's no way out, while simultaneously upping the stakes so that it's not just that people will be unhappy it's that the WORLD AS YOU KNOW IT IS ENDING OH GOD. man, idk.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 09:23 pm (UTC)I'm trying to think of something -- anything -- that I've read or watched in the past decade or so that manages to get that trick of approaching doom down without being something that's already pretty well-known (like Arthuriana or Roman history) or is a prequel (like the Star Wars PT or Caprica). And I know something like that must exist, but I can't think of it. Maybe Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows? But I'm not even certain about that.
I mean, there are certain ways you can shorthand it (any time you have dates or timestamps going, you know something's going to happen), but that's just mechanics. Maaaaaaybe Lost managed it in the final season? BSG did some stuff in S4 that might count, but I can't remember if I had that feeling. The one that goes DOOOOOOOMMMM. And maybe that's just because the creators pull their punches? I dunno. *hands*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-25 09:50 pm (UTC)I think that maybe it has something to do with showing that the characters would rather do anything else, and completely cutting off their options. Which is sort of one of the usual writing strategies, so maybe it has to do with being more extreme in cutting off options? I don't know.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-26 05:14 pm (UTC)There's also the shorthand of tropes -- like, in certain situations, whenever a pair of brothers or partners show up talking about How Much They Love Each Other, I pretty much expect them to somehow end up on opposite ends of the battlefield eventually. (This is the first example I can think of, because...well, I was rewatching parts of RotS last night, because apparently it was a day for DOOOMMM.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-26 09:19 am (UTC)In the extreme case, create your own mythology… publish some novels set in the post-doom future, and only then do the novel you first thought of set pre-doom. This may lead to your readers having long arguments about which order it is best to read your novels in, but that seems to be the sort of problem which it is good to have… though there do exist other difficulties with this scenario!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-26 05:16 pm (UTC)