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write_away2014-04-23 01:04 am
ljwrites) wrote in write_away2014-04-23 01:04 am
Review: Part 1 of Plot versus Character
Jeff Gerke's Plot versus Character is another recommendation from inkdust at the books on writing thread. It starts with the premise that fiction writers tend to be strong at one of plot or character and struggle with the other. It may seem simplistic, but it's a dichotomy my own experience bears out. Even those writers who are good at both tend to have a dominant "hand" in their strength as a writer. Ursula Le Guin is no slouch in the plot department, but her stories are distinctly character-driven. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote deeply sympathetic and memorable characters, but the larger story always came first.
I consider myself a character-driven writer, too, so I'm one of those people who picked up the book for Part 2 on plot. I was tempted to skip the character part because that's not where I have difficulty, but the author specifically cautioned readers like me not to skip because the concepts would be building on each other. No skipping it was, then, because I'm a good little reader like that.
After reading Part 1, my reactions are very mixed. So mixed that I decided to review Part 1 before I got to Part 2. I'd like to digest Part 1 completely before I move on, and for me the way to do that is by writing it out.
Checklist-Based Character Building
I admit to being bored by a lot of the early character creation parts. A lot of it was about the character minutiae, their background, how do they dress, how much education do they have, how intelligent are they and so on and so forth ad infinitum. Personally I find "how intelligent is she" a meaningless question because there are so many different types of intelligence. People understand themselves and the world in different ways, and it's an oversimplification to say one way is "intelligent" and another "unintelligent." Far better to discuss what each understanding consists of.
Nevertheless, this "checklist" approach did give me a fuller view of characters. It got me thinking about the way all the parts of a character's background unite to make her who she is. My way of character building tends to be more a process of discovery than creation: I come across this fictional person, then I get to know him better over time. Sometimes the things I learn will surprise me, and some things I will never know. I've never built a character from the ground up using a comprehensive checklist approach and I don't think I ever will; the sheer boredom would undo me. Still, it's a helpful list to keep in mind in order to see where my own blind spots are.
The finishing touch on character building is to write a character soliloquy, in which the character reveals herself completely in a setting that is completely her, down to the surroundings and the clothes. It's something else I didn't bother with. This is another difference of philosophy, but I don't think a soliloquy is the best vehicle for character revelation. The essence of a character to me is revealed in her actions and choices, not what she chooses to say about herself.
A Model of Character-Based Storytelling
After the character building parts come the best chapters in Part 1 dealing with the protagonist's inner journey. It starts with the protagonist's initial state, establishing what normal is for her, and then you introduce the character issue which Gerke calls the "knot." This issue will come into the story in an escalating way as the character struggles with it through the body of the story, and finally the knot will be resolved at the "moment of truth" which I think coincides with the climax of the plot. At the moment of truth the character will either choose a newer, better way or double down on the old, dysfunctional way. Then comes the final state where the consequence of that choice are shown.
It's a simple and strong structure that covers a lot of different kinds of story, and done well can be deeply satisfying. I certainly learned a lot from the discussion. It gave me new insights about how character development might be integrated into plot. The plot could basically be the character's inner journey made physical and turned into specific events, something a character-centric writer like me can grasp.
That said, the simplification also seemed an over-simplification in parts. While the character's inner journey is one model to build a story around, it's certainly not the only one yet it's presented as not a way but the way. The applicability of the model is limited, among other things, by Gerke's "salvational" view of the character arc, where the new way is objectively better than the old way and the protagonist sticks with the old way out of sheer inertia. Even Lord of the Rings, Gerke's own Exhibit A, isn't really the kind of story that's built around the protagonist's character arc. There are also fundamental problems with this kind of character arc-driven storytelling when done wrong, yet the author does little to address them.
Knot So Universal
I looked up Jeff Gerke and his work when I started writing this review, and was not surprised to learn that his main thing is Christian speculative fiction (which I would call Christian genre fiction, from his description). I think for the purpose of Plot versus Character it would have served his readers better if he had been up front about the frame he was using when discussing the creation of fiction.
This is because the story model Gerke is talking about, the inner journey where the old way and the new way of living battle within the character until she makes a final choice between the two, smacks suspiciously of what you might call a salvational model of fiction. The old way is unambiguously framed as bad and the new way as good--the choice is basically whether the protagonist will choose to be "saved" from the old way that is slowly destroying her and choose a newer, better way. This model is great for a certain type of story, and certainly covers a good chunk of the greats like, say, A Christmas Carol.
However, this story model is also far from universal. That's not a bad thing, since there are different kinds of story. The author, however, doesn't go into what specific kinds of story his model is suited for, other than dismissing static main characters as being difficult to write and suggestive of a different structure than the one envisioned in the book. He could have been a lot more specific about why he chose a structure for the book that requires dynamic characters, e.g. "If you want to write the kind of story that explores a character's growth and resolution of her issues, try this model," or "If you want to write a story that promotes good Christian values, try it this way." Rather, the model is presented in absolute terms with very little in the way of nuance or discussion of its strengths and limitations.
I think the use of the "knot" model is even more limited than the author admits, though. Even stories with dynamic protagonists don't fit with the model where the central conflict isn't internal but revolves around external relationships and events. Take Katniss in The Hunger Games, one of the examples Gerke uses as an example of character progression. While she certainly changes from her initial state, her changes are not the central factors that drive the story: The dystopian totalitarian dictatorship and the resistance to it are. Her character development is a product of her reactions to these events and the choices that shape them.
What's more, Gerke's model, at least as described by him, doesn't even apply to stories that are driven by the protagonists' internal issues. In some stories where the protagonist is torn between two ways of life neither is objectively better, and there is no "bright, happy land she could enter if she went the new way." (Chapter 5, "Overview of the Inner Journey") Gerke grants that choosing this new way of doing things could come at a cost. However, the dichotomy is clear that the old way is hurting the character and will become unbearable as the story goes on, while the new way will make the character's life better if he only has the courage to choose it.
Unfortunately, not all major life choices are so clear-cut. Take addiction, a classic subject for redemption narratives. Under Gerke's model, if the protagonist kicks the habit her life should get objectively better. And sure, it'll be better in many ways, yet sobriety may not solve all the character's problems. Sobriety, in fact, means she'll have to face her problems without the buffer of altered consciousness, and some issues may seem too formidable to face this way. I think an honest, truly internal portrayal of addiction would show why that particular character, in those particular circumstances and with those experiences, would find it so hard to kick, without dismissing the addicted character as stupid or cowardly for not seeing and acting on a good thing. The salvationist model of fiction doesn't seem to have much room for this kind of nuance.
These limitations, I think, are all the more reason Jeff Gerke would have done well to be more up-front about the religious frame he's using. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a Christian outlook on life and literature. It is awesome to want to tell stories about people being saved, or not saved, from sin. If that is the truth of life as he sees it, that is what he should write, that is where he will find his voice and his audience, and may his God bless him.
What is less cool is to talk about these stories as though they're not a specific type of story but the sum total of possible stories. You don't advertise a drill as a hacksaw. And yet, because Gerke won't come out and say his passion is in writing Christian fiction and he sees stories in that frame, he also doesn't discuss the fact that the application for his technique is not unlimited. He does use the word "sin" at one point, quotes intact, to discuss the old way, but that's as far as he goes. I think that's a disservice to his readers, who after all are reading to find out how to write a good story and deserve to know both where they can and, just as important, can't use this model he's presenting.
Misunderstanding Lord of the Rings, and Other Pitfalls
Perhaps the single best illustration of the limitations of Gerke's model is the example he used most prominently in the beginning: Frodo from The Lord of the Rings. The way Gerke explains it, Frodo's ambiguity about using the Ring's power (his knot) comes to a head on Mount Doom where he must make the ultimate choice (the moment of truth) about whether or not to succumb to temptation. That is the moment the entirety of the story builds up to, and it's when Frodo is tested to the utmost and makes his final choice.
My reaction was: Really? I think Gerke's analysis of LotR is wrong on several levels. For one thing, the temptation to use the Ring was never Frodo's internal character issue, any more than being chased by orcs is a character issue. That's the Ring's thing, it tempts people to unbearable levels. In fact the very reason Frodo was chosen to be the Ringbearer was because he had neither the inclination nor the ability to use its power. So no, the temptation to power is not Frodo's issue as a character, it's an external threat he's been saddled with.
It's also not at all true that Frodo made a choice about the One Ring on Mount Doom. That's one of Gerke's criteria for the Moment of Truth, that the protagonist make a free choice, but the entire story is set up to make it clear that wanting the Ring is anything but free will. Take the Ring's overwhelming power of temptation with the length of time Frodo has carried it, plus the fact that he's at the very end of its physical and emotional reserves. Frodo's "choice" to take the ring was not free in any sense, but coerced by an external force beyond his capacity. By the author's own terms, therefore, the moment on Mount Doom cannot be Frodo's moment of truth.
Frodo does have an actual, internal character issue he has to make a choice about, but it's nowhere as sexy as the temptation to absolute power. His real issue doesn't drive the story at large, though it's crucial for his own story and ultimately the fate of the world. Can you guess what it is?
Frodo's real inner journey the way I see it, isn't about power but empathy. Specifically, it's empathy for Gollum. Compare these two statements:
In fact, in making the second set of statements at the foot of Emyn Muil Frodo explicitly references the first set of lines. Later on he would go on to save Gollum's life from Faramir and his men, and defend him from Sam who is justifiably suspicious. The consequence of that choice is well-known. Frodo also makes an actual free, considered choice about Gollum, unlike the temptation of the Ring.
So in a way the character arc model does apply to Lord of the Rings, but not in the way Gerke thinks: It's not that the rest of the story serves Frodo's struggle with the Ring, it's that Frodo's struggle with the Ring brings him to a place of empathy with Gollum. Frodo had to have labored under the Ring's seductive power, known the suffering of resisting its pull, before he realized how perilously close he is to Gollum's wretched fate. "Now that I see him, I do pity him." In a way, the entirety of Frodo's story throughout the books was about Frodo seeing Gollum, not physically but through lived experience. That is Frodo's true journey as a character, from smug self-righteousness to genuine pity.
However, it's a stretch to apply Gerke's model in full and say that the entire story is built around the theme of mercy and works to confront Frodo with the issue. There's simply too much else going on. Frodo's character development is one of many things that happen in the story. There are people in Middle-Earth besides Frodo, and they don't all exist to serve his story.
That whiff of ego-centrism is another objection I have to placing the protagonist's "knot" at the center of the story. This method deliberately makes everything about that one person, even when the story might be far larger and contain a lot more people. This was brought home to me with the example in Chapter 7: The Moment of Truth, where an embittered heroine finds herself mellowing when a special-needs child moves in next door. My annotation next to this setup was "I can see so many ways this could turn cringe-inducing." And sure enough, the child is explicitly treated as a tool for the main character's development--his indefagably positive outlook, his antics that get this sad and lonely woman smiling, the way she considers getting out of her bitterness due to her growing affection to him.
Am I the only one who was bothered by this idea? Evidently the disabled child doesn't have bad days, flaws with real consequences, nor an inner life of his own--because such pesky human complexities will interfere with his service to the abled protagonist's story. His story is totally subservient to hers, the way the Magical Negro is solely there to teach important lessons to the white protagonist, or the Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists to teach the male protagonist to appreciate life and its possibilities. There's not even a pretense of hiding the fact that the story is all about the protagonist and other human beings are just props.
By their structure, then, these protagonist arc-based stories can very easily descend into a dreary kind of narcissism where everyone and everything in your life is there to teach you Very Important Life Lessons. This focus on the protagonist's inner life, plus the explicit encouragement to view other characters as tools for that journey, can easily make for flat and formulaic fiction. It doesn't have to be that way, of course; it's fully possible for the central character to have an inner journey while interacting with other richly defined characters who have their own stories. Yet with its exclusive focus on the protagonist's character growth, Plot versus Character doesn't do much to discourage this kind of egocentric storytelling.
Other Annoyances and Upsets, or the First Time I Was Actually Triggered by a Book on Writing
Gerke's comment about religion in Chapter 3: Physical and Natural Attributes about the character's zeal seemed to echo a common Christian line that I found annoying:
This calls to mind the oft-heard Christian assertion that atheism is a religion, and it's always seemed to me a false equivalence. Sure, to the extent that atheism is a belief about non-material phenomena, its subject matter may be said to be similar to religion. However, the lack of belief in the supernatural is not the same thing as belief in the supernatural. It's still more insidious that this atheism-is-a-religion mantra is used for causes like teaching creationism in public school. I found this nonreligion-is-religion passage disingenuous and just plain illogical.
And remember how I said Gerke should have been more up-front about his Christianity? He doesn't exactly make a secret of it when he mentions in the introduction that he wrote The Art and Craft of Writing Christian Fiction. Otherwise, though, other than a brief mention of the Left Behind series, he keeps pretty mum about it. Which is fine, he's not obligated to talk about his religion even though I think it would have been helpful to his readers if he had, as discussed above.
However, at one point this coyness about religion becomes obnoxious when the author mentions reading "a certain nonfiction book" that changed his life. It's not that hard to figure out that he read the Bible and became born again, which is great and all, but why not come out and say it was the Bible? It was vaguely insulting, as though he thought it would somehow fly over readers' heads if he didn't come out and say it. Weird.
A final point that disturbed me about the book was that, most likely unintentionally, the author used language that recalled physical abuse in describing the escalation of the protagonist's inner conflict (Chapter 10: The Escalation). And oddly enough, though there were plenty of male fictional examples, this abstract violent language seemed exclusively used against the feminine pronoun as far as I could see. Here are the passages, and be warned the language is pretty graphic:
This was the first time I was actually triggered by a writing book. I get what Gerke is saying here, which is to turn on the heat until the character is in enough pain to consider the pain of change. As he insightfully says, "Characters will not change until it hurts too much not to." Still, I found this succession of gleefully violent imagery both uncomfortable and unnecessary.
Despite my criticisms, I don't regret reading Part 1 of Plot versus Character. It had genuinely witty and helpful advice, and I was given a lot of food for thought. While I think the author's treatment is incomplete or inconsistent at points, I recognize the value of being wrong because it's an opportunity to clarify things through disagreement and debate. At other points, the author simply did things differently than I did and that's not a matter of being right or wrong.
inkdust at the books on writing thread. It starts with the premise that fiction writers tend to be strong at one of plot or character and struggle with the other. It may seem simplistic, but it's a dichotomy my own experience bears out. Even those writers who are good at both tend to have a dominant "hand" in their strength as a writer. Ursula Le Guin is no slouch in the plot department, but her stories are distinctly character-driven. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote deeply sympathetic and memorable characters, but the larger story always came first.I consider myself a character-driven writer, too, so I'm one of those people who picked up the book for Part 2 on plot. I was tempted to skip the character part because that's not where I have difficulty, but the author specifically cautioned readers like me not to skip because the concepts would be building on each other. No skipping it was, then, because I'm a good little reader like that.
After reading Part 1, my reactions are very mixed. So mixed that I decided to review Part 1 before I got to Part 2. I'd like to digest Part 1 completely before I move on, and for me the way to do that is by writing it out.
Checklist-Based Character Building
I admit to being bored by a lot of the early character creation parts. A lot of it was about the character minutiae, their background, how do they dress, how much education do they have, how intelligent are they and so on and so forth ad infinitum. Personally I find "how intelligent is she" a meaningless question because there are so many different types of intelligence. People understand themselves and the world in different ways, and it's an oversimplification to say one way is "intelligent" and another "unintelligent." Far better to discuss what each understanding consists of.
Nevertheless, this "checklist" approach did give me a fuller view of characters. It got me thinking about the way all the parts of a character's background unite to make her who she is. My way of character building tends to be more a process of discovery than creation: I come across this fictional person, then I get to know him better over time. Sometimes the things I learn will surprise me, and some things I will never know. I've never built a character from the ground up using a comprehensive checklist approach and I don't think I ever will; the sheer boredom would undo me. Still, it's a helpful list to keep in mind in order to see where my own blind spots are.
The finishing touch on character building is to write a character soliloquy, in which the character reveals herself completely in a setting that is completely her, down to the surroundings and the clothes. It's something else I didn't bother with. This is another difference of philosophy, but I don't think a soliloquy is the best vehicle for character revelation. The essence of a character to me is revealed in her actions and choices, not what she chooses to say about herself.
A Model of Character-Based Storytelling
After the character building parts come the best chapters in Part 1 dealing with the protagonist's inner journey. It starts with the protagonist's initial state, establishing what normal is for her, and then you introduce the character issue which Gerke calls the "knot." This issue will come into the story in an escalating way as the character struggles with it through the body of the story, and finally the knot will be resolved at the "moment of truth" which I think coincides with the climax of the plot. At the moment of truth the character will either choose a newer, better way or double down on the old, dysfunctional way. Then comes the final state where the consequence of that choice are shown.
It's a simple and strong structure that covers a lot of different kinds of story, and done well can be deeply satisfying. I certainly learned a lot from the discussion. It gave me new insights about how character development might be integrated into plot. The plot could basically be the character's inner journey made physical and turned into specific events, something a character-centric writer like me can grasp.
That said, the simplification also seemed an over-simplification in parts. While the character's inner journey is one model to build a story around, it's certainly not the only one yet it's presented as not a way but the way. The applicability of the model is limited, among other things, by Gerke's "salvational" view of the character arc, where the new way is objectively better than the old way and the protagonist sticks with the old way out of sheer inertia. Even Lord of the Rings, Gerke's own Exhibit A, isn't really the kind of story that's built around the protagonist's character arc. There are also fundamental problems with this kind of character arc-driven storytelling when done wrong, yet the author does little to address them.
Knot So Universal
I looked up Jeff Gerke and his work when I started writing this review, and was not surprised to learn that his main thing is Christian speculative fiction (which I would call Christian genre fiction, from his description). I think for the purpose of Plot versus Character it would have served his readers better if he had been up front about the frame he was using when discussing the creation of fiction.
This is because the story model Gerke is talking about, the inner journey where the old way and the new way of living battle within the character until she makes a final choice between the two, smacks suspiciously of what you might call a salvational model of fiction. The old way is unambiguously framed as bad and the new way as good--the choice is basically whether the protagonist will choose to be "saved" from the old way that is slowly destroying her and choose a newer, better way. This model is great for a certain type of story, and certainly covers a good chunk of the greats like, say, A Christmas Carol.
However, this story model is also far from universal. That's not a bad thing, since there are different kinds of story. The author, however, doesn't go into what specific kinds of story his model is suited for, other than dismissing static main characters as being difficult to write and suggestive of a different structure than the one envisioned in the book. He could have been a lot more specific about why he chose a structure for the book that requires dynamic characters, e.g. "If you want to write the kind of story that explores a character's growth and resolution of her issues, try this model," or "If you want to write a story that promotes good Christian values, try it this way." Rather, the model is presented in absolute terms with very little in the way of nuance or discussion of its strengths and limitations.
I think the use of the "knot" model is even more limited than the author admits, though. Even stories with dynamic protagonists don't fit with the model where the central conflict isn't internal but revolves around external relationships and events. Take Katniss in The Hunger Games, one of the examples Gerke uses as an example of character progression. While she certainly changes from her initial state, her changes are not the central factors that drive the story: The dystopian totalitarian dictatorship and the resistance to it are. Her character development is a product of her reactions to these events and the choices that shape them.
What's more, Gerke's model, at least as described by him, doesn't even apply to stories that are driven by the protagonists' internal issues. In some stories where the protagonist is torn between two ways of life neither is objectively better, and there is no "bright, happy land she could enter if she went the new way." (Chapter 5, "Overview of the Inner Journey") Gerke grants that choosing this new way of doing things could come at a cost. However, the dichotomy is clear that the old way is hurting the character and will become unbearable as the story goes on, while the new way will make the character's life better if he only has the courage to choose it.
Unfortunately, not all major life choices are so clear-cut. Take addiction, a classic subject for redemption narratives. Under Gerke's model, if the protagonist kicks the habit her life should get objectively better. And sure, it'll be better in many ways, yet sobriety may not solve all the character's problems. Sobriety, in fact, means she'll have to face her problems without the buffer of altered consciousness, and some issues may seem too formidable to face this way. I think an honest, truly internal portrayal of addiction would show why that particular character, in those particular circumstances and with those experiences, would find it so hard to kick, without dismissing the addicted character as stupid or cowardly for not seeing and acting on a good thing. The salvationist model of fiction doesn't seem to have much room for this kind of nuance.
These limitations, I think, are all the more reason Jeff Gerke would have done well to be more up-front about the religious frame he's using. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a Christian outlook on life and literature. It is awesome to want to tell stories about people being saved, or not saved, from sin. If that is the truth of life as he sees it, that is what he should write, that is where he will find his voice and his audience, and may his God bless him.
What is less cool is to talk about these stories as though they're not a specific type of story but the sum total of possible stories. You don't advertise a drill as a hacksaw. And yet, because Gerke won't come out and say his passion is in writing Christian fiction and he sees stories in that frame, he also doesn't discuss the fact that the application for his technique is not unlimited. He does use the word "sin" at one point, quotes intact, to discuss the old way, but that's as far as he goes. I think that's a disservice to his readers, who after all are reading to find out how to write a good story and deserve to know both where they can and, just as important, can't use this model he's presenting.
Misunderstanding Lord of the Rings, and Other Pitfalls
Perhaps the single best illustration of the limitations of Gerke's model is the example he used most prominently in the beginning: Frodo from The Lord of the Rings. The way Gerke explains it, Frodo's ambiguity about using the Ring's power (his knot) comes to a head on Mount Doom where he must make the ultimate choice (the moment of truth) about whether or not to succumb to temptation. That is the moment the entirety of the story builds up to, and it's when Frodo is tested to the utmost and makes his final choice.
My reaction was: Really? I think Gerke's analysis of LotR is wrong on several levels. For one thing, the temptation to use the Ring was never Frodo's internal character issue, any more than being chased by orcs is a character issue. That's the Ring's thing, it tempts people to unbearable levels. In fact the very reason Frodo was chosen to be the Ringbearer was because he had neither the inclination nor the ability to use its power. So no, the temptation to power is not Frodo's issue as a character, it's an external threat he's been saddled with.
It's also not at all true that Frodo made a choice about the One Ring on Mount Doom. That's one of Gerke's criteria for the Moment of Truth, that the protagonist make a free choice, but the entire story is set up to make it clear that wanting the Ring is anything but free will. Take the Ring's overwhelming power of temptation with the length of time Frodo has carried it, plus the fact that he's at the very end of its physical and emotional reserves. Frodo's "choice" to take the ring was not free in any sense, but coerced by an external force beyond his capacity. By the author's own terms, therefore, the moment on Mount Doom cannot be Frodo's moment of truth.
Frodo does have an actual, internal character issue he has to make a choice about, but it's nowhere as sexy as the temptation to absolute power. His real issue doesn't drive the story at large, though it's crucial for his own story and ultimately the fate of the world. Can you guess what it is?
Frodo's real inner journey the way I see it, isn't about power but empathy. Specifically, it's empathy for Gollum. Compare these two statements:
“What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance! ... I do not feel any pity for Gollum. ... He deserves death." ("The Shadow of the Past," from The Fellowship of the Ring)
"But we can't [kill him], not as things are. Poor wretch! ... I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him." ("The Taming of Sméagol," from The Two Towers)
In fact, in making the second set of statements at the foot of Emyn Muil Frodo explicitly references the first set of lines. Later on he would go on to save Gollum's life from Faramir and his men, and defend him from Sam who is justifiably suspicious. The consequence of that choice is well-known. Frodo also makes an actual free, considered choice about Gollum, unlike the temptation of the Ring.
So in a way the character arc model does apply to Lord of the Rings, but not in the way Gerke thinks: It's not that the rest of the story serves Frodo's struggle with the Ring, it's that Frodo's struggle with the Ring brings him to a place of empathy with Gollum. Frodo had to have labored under the Ring's seductive power, known the suffering of resisting its pull, before he realized how perilously close he is to Gollum's wretched fate. "Now that I see him, I do pity him." In a way, the entirety of Frodo's story throughout the books was about Frodo seeing Gollum, not physically but through lived experience. That is Frodo's true journey as a character, from smug self-righteousness to genuine pity.
However, it's a stretch to apply Gerke's model in full and say that the entire story is built around the theme of mercy and works to confront Frodo with the issue. There's simply too much else going on. Frodo's character development is one of many things that happen in the story. There are people in Middle-Earth besides Frodo, and they don't all exist to serve his story.
That whiff of ego-centrism is another objection I have to placing the protagonist's "knot" at the center of the story. This method deliberately makes everything about that one person, even when the story might be far larger and contain a lot more people. This was brought home to me with the example in Chapter 7: The Moment of Truth, where an embittered heroine finds herself mellowing when a special-needs child moves in next door. My annotation next to this setup was "I can see so many ways this could turn cringe-inducing." And sure enough, the child is explicitly treated as a tool for the main character's development--his indefagably positive outlook, his antics that get this sad and lonely woman smiling, the way she considers getting out of her bitterness due to her growing affection to him.
Am I the only one who was bothered by this idea? Evidently the disabled child doesn't have bad days, flaws with real consequences, nor an inner life of his own--because such pesky human complexities will interfere with his service to the abled protagonist's story. His story is totally subservient to hers, the way the Magical Negro is solely there to teach important lessons to the white protagonist, or the Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists to teach the male protagonist to appreciate life and its possibilities. There's not even a pretense of hiding the fact that the story is all about the protagonist and other human beings are just props.
By their structure, then, these protagonist arc-based stories can very easily descend into a dreary kind of narcissism where everyone and everything in your life is there to teach you Very Important Life Lessons. This focus on the protagonist's inner life, plus the explicit encouragement to view other characters as tools for that journey, can easily make for flat and formulaic fiction. It doesn't have to be that way, of course; it's fully possible for the central character to have an inner journey while interacting with other richly defined characters who have their own stories. Yet with its exclusive focus on the protagonist's character growth, Plot versus Character doesn't do much to discourage this kind of egocentric storytelling.
Other Annoyances and Upsets, or the First Time I Was Actually Triggered by a Book on Writing
Gerke's comment about religion in Chapter 3: Physical and Natural Attributes about the character's zeal seemed to echo a common Christian line that I found annoying:
Humans are religious. Even nonreligious people express the faith that there is no god or afterlife to concern themselves with.
This calls to mind the oft-heard Christian assertion that atheism is a religion, and it's always seemed to me a false equivalence. Sure, to the extent that atheism is a belief about non-material phenomena, its subject matter may be said to be similar to religion. However, the lack of belief in the supernatural is not the same thing as belief in the supernatural. It's still more insidious that this atheism-is-a-religion mantra is used for causes like teaching creationism in public school. I found this nonreligion-is-religion passage disingenuous and just plain illogical.
And remember how I said Gerke should have been more up-front about his Christianity? He doesn't exactly make a secret of it when he mentions in the introduction that he wrote The Art and Craft of Writing Christian Fiction. Otherwise, though, other than a brief mention of the Left Behind series, he keeps pretty mum about it. Which is fine, he's not obligated to talk about his religion even though I think it would have been helpful to his readers if he had, as discussed above.
However, at one point this coyness about religion becomes obnoxious when the author mentions reading "a certain nonfiction book" that changed his life. It's not that hard to figure out that he read the Bible and became born again, which is great and all, but why not come out and say it was the Bible? It was vaguely insulting, as though he thought it would somehow fly over readers' heads if he didn't come out and say it. Weird.
A final point that disturbed me about the book was that, most likely unintentionally, the author used language that recalled physical abuse in describing the escalation of the protagonist's inner conflict (Chapter 10: The Escalation). And oddly enough, though there were plenty of male fictional examples, this abstract violent language seemed exclusively used against the feminine pronoun as far as I could see. Here are the passages, and be warned the language is pretty graphic:
You strike [the protagonist] with a redemptive fist until she is forced to admit that her old way is hurting her and will lead nowhere good.
But she never would've gotten [to her moment of truth] if you hadn't acted like a torturer and thrown her on the rack, cranking up the tension one peg at a time. Bring the pain.
You take her through successive waves of beat downs in which she tries harder and harder to resist the new way and stick with the old way.
You must, in a sense, break her.
This was the first time I was actually triggered by a writing book. I get what Gerke is saying here, which is to turn on the heat until the character is in enough pain to consider the pain of change. As he insightfully says, "Characters will not change until it hurts too much not to." Still, I found this succession of gleefully violent imagery both uncomfortable and unnecessary.
Despite my criticisms, I don't regret reading Part 1 of Plot versus Character. It had genuinely witty and helpful advice, and I was given a lot of food for thought. While I think the author's treatment is incomplete or inconsistent at points, I recognize the value of being wrong because it's an opportunity to clarify things through disagreement and debate. At other points, the author simply did things differently than I did and that's not a matter of being right or wrong.
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From your description, I shared your amazement that the writer found it only possible to imagine character arcs that went one way. The character could only be "saved" from the old way that is slowly destroying her and choose a newer, better way.
Isn't the other way around more likely and more human? The character starts saved, then slides?
Looked at from a certain way, the Lord of the Rings is all about this. Frodo starts in the Shire, where he's happy and harms no one. By the end of the book he's become aggressive, violent, and possessed by the ring. I couldn't believe Gerke had so misinterpreted the LotR storyline so badly (although I have a little, wilfully, just there myself, to make a point).
As you said, LotR is all about how there is no way to combat the ring's influence. Frodo's ending is entirely out of his own hands. It's in no way a struggle of will for him, in which he overcomes adversity and chooses the righteous path. That's just annoying.
Gerke's coyness of his religious viewpoint does come off as sketchy. You didn't state that outright, because your review was nuanced and level headed. So I'll say it instead. It feels like he is being outright dishonest.
As for his suggestion to have a disabled neighbour in a story only in terms of how it could be a life lesson for the protagonist, words do not suffice. Unfortunately, this is all too common among many Christians I've met. The 'advanced' ones that is, who congratulate themselves that they don't think being disabled is a punishment from god. Obligatory disclaimer, some of my best friends are Christians, which they are, but... blah. How is this so prevalent? It's exactly as self-centred and insulting as the other examples you mentioned.
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Isn't the other way around more likely and more human? The character starts saved, then slides?
Yeah, there are a ton of other types of character arcs to work with, yet the author doesn't really give his reason for sticking with this particular one. Does he think it's the easiest to work with for beginners, or the most commercially viable, or the most Christian, or what? It's hard to tell when he doesn't explain or explore his own choices.
Looked at from a certain way, the Lord of the Rings is all about this.
LOL yes. I kept being struck by how cavalier the author was about choosing a newer and better way. He does acknowledge there might be a cost, but didn't seem to recognize the complexity of human problems that might not be solved by just going another way, or might be made worse.
Frodo's ending is entirely out of his own hands. It's in no way a struggle of will for him, in which he overcomes adversity and chooses the righteous path.
In fact, a reader over at the LJ post reminded me that Frodo wasn't even the protagonist near the end of the story; Sam was. I'd forgotten about that part, but it only emphasizes how deeply Gerke misunderstood the story. Which is odd, seeing how LotR is by his own admission one of the works that turned him on to genre fiction. It's also a much better example of Christian fantasy than Star Wars, the first genre story to enthrall him when he was young.
I bit my tongue on a lot of stuff about evangelical Christianity in the main post, since I wanted to stick with the book rather than turn the post into a culture critique. However, since it seems Gerke is indeed part of evangelical culture (he says here that submissions to his publishing house "must arise from an Evangelical Christian worldview"), I think it's fair to draw a parallel between Gerke's calling Frodo's action a "choice" and conservative Christians' very disturbing beliefs about purity and consent, i.e. it's your fault even if you were forced. Cases like making a 14-year-old sign a confession of adultery for being molested by a 60-year-old man with authority over her may be extreme, but still arise from the same beliefs. Calling it Frodo's "choice" when he was overwhelmed by an irresistible and malignant force seemed to have obvious parallels to this RL attitude and left me feeling slightly ill.
So I'll say it instead. It feels like he is being outright dishonest.
Yeah, me too. I mean, I didn't even blink at his mention in the intro that he wrote a book about writing Christian fiction. What did I care about his religion? I only wanted to see if he could also give me great advice as a writer of secular fiction. It was his horrifying ideas and insinuations that lost him points with me, not his religious affiliation.
How is this so prevalent? It's exactly as self-centred and insulting as the other examples you mentioned.
I was immediately reminded of this passage from Daddy-Long-Legs:
Though I don't think Judy would have lost lady points for giving the bishop a piece of her mind. :P
Maybe this attitude springs from Jesus' deeds, esp. the one where he cured the blind man. He said the man was blind not as punishment but to reveal the glory of God, a line that later generations seem to have interpreted as revealing the glory of God to edify the abled. My interpretation is somewhat different, though; I think everyone, in their flaws and imperfections, is created to reveal the innate glory of the divine in all of us. Blind, short, accident-prone, developmentally delayed, whatever, we are all worthy of love just as we are, not for what we can do for others but in of ourselves. What do I know, though, I'm a lapsed Christian and practically an atheist. :P
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Your criticisms, on the other hand, have actually led me to understand more about how I read and digest books. Because in spite of my own recommendation, I think I agree with every negative you laid out. I realized as I read your review that when I read a book intended to advise, I very readily dismiss pieces of information as not applicable to me without necessarily building up a sense of wrongness toward the book as a whole.
For instance, as I read that one,
Christian bias - "Eh, that's part of his world, he can go have fun with that. Doesn't apply to my work."
Instructions to write out character soliloquy - "Eh, I don't really need to do that. Some people probably do, but that doesn't apply to me."
Simplistic portrayal of character struggle - "Eh, that's meant for someone just starting out, of course it's intended to be expanded and deviated from later."
Model presented as universal - "Eh, that's to help beginners."
Analysis of Lord of the Rings - I don't think I actually paid that much attention to this. I get bored by examples from outside stories, so I probably skimmed, oops. Yeah, that one doesn't make much sense.
Basically I have no hesitation about picking the bits that seem helpful to me and chucking the rest as "beginner's stuff," while I think rather unconsciously believing that the advice-giver is well aware of the limitations of their advice and simplifies purely to aid beginners. Which may not be true at all, and may be something I should work on.
The thing I did take serious issue with was the part about the special-needs child as a prop. From a story crafting standpoint, I can see how viewing non-protagonist characters as tools to aid the protagonist's journey can be helpful initially, but only as a rudimentary step before turning them into actual characters. But that isn't what I got from that paragraph. I found that entire idea and his tone shallow and demeaning, and something an editor should have excised immediately.
I think in the end, I have an egotistical tendency to view myself as "above" any advice I disagree with, and for that reason I think I sometimes overlook real issues as I cherry-pick the rest. I need to be more aware of that, so in an odd way, thank you for bringing it more consciously to my attention. My recommendation was based on what I remembered from my reading a year ago, which was obviously the collection of what I found helpful and none of the parts I rejected. This really makes me wish it was a better book as a whole.
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I think that's a really good way to read books, actually. There's a difference between using a book for yourself and seeing how it might read for others, and I think it's an economic approach to take just the parts that are helpful for you.
The thing I did take serious issue with was the part about the special-needs child as a prop.
Yeah. Ew. I mean, if he'd immediately given cautions about taking the prop idea too far and given pointers about how not to let that happen, I would have been all on board. Not doing so was a big oversight, especially since this already happens all too often.
I think in the end, I have an egotistical tendency to view myself as "above" any advice I disagree with, and for that reason I think I sometimes overlook real issues as I cherry-pick the rest.
Haha, you're probably right to think yourself above it. You recognized the problems with the book yet didn't feel the need to write a giant blog post about them, so you come out ahead. :D I'm not sorry about picking it up, since I really got a lot to think about both through agreement and disagreement. Part 2 is also a whole lot better so far, and the part about prologues was pure gold. It really had potential to be a much better book, and would have been with more self-awareness on the part of the author and a better editor.
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That said, I think that Gerke suffers from a common writers' ailment. He writes what he knows, but he doesn't know it. Your beliefs, upbringing,
life circumstances, etc. will find a way into your writing. I would say it's completely impossible to remove all of yourself from your work, unless you're writing technical manuals. There's a reason that a certain plot structure, character type, or writing style appeals to you. I think a lot of 'how to write' authors think they're being a lot broader than they really are. Genke got saved, so not only does he write Christian fiction, but he advises people to write under that same model. In On Writing, Stephen King tells you to "write what you like, then imbue it with your [self]", which means that, no matter the plot, there's going to be an alcoholic writer somewhere. Of course, King admits it.
I don't think it's really a bad thing, but the reader needs to be more aware, I suppose, than the writer in this case. If one person is telling the reader, "this is all you need to know", when it really isn't, they should go find someone else's ideas of 'all you need to know', then someone else's, and so on.
It really annoys me when there's a Magical Minority. I find them false, usually schmaltzy, and I hate any character that's just a plot device. I have been, being bipolar, treated like I'm automatically an inspiration, but it always comes from a sense of pity. My disorder doesn't make me a stronger person, and I'm not here to be any sort of catalyst. It's a sucky disease, and if your life sucks, I'm not going to be able to make it better. Certainly not with mood swings.
And it makes for such hackneyed, over-played writing. How many times can the rich white girl be inspired by the poor black woman? How many men learn how to love life through a spunky girl with cancer, or her brother with Downs? These characters only exist to make the protagonist happier. But what about their happiness? Their trials? Why is the story so rarely focused on the people who are actually interesting, with realistic problems and personalities? It's almost always the bland, uninspired, boring protagonist.
And I'm going to echo the others in saying that this is a wonderful review. Even if I disagree (completely, thoroughly, etc) with an author's views, I try not to discredit everything because of it. After all, no one is right or wrong all the time. And it's a good idea to read views other than your own. It's a great resource for realistic characters! Now we all know better how to write someone like Gerke!
I wish I could touch on the misinterpretation of Tolkien as well (did he even read the books?), but I'm afraid I wouldn't stop. God, it's been too long since I read those books.
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Also known as the "completely devoid of compassion or scientific knowledge model." Experience tells me that people like Jeff Gerke are likely to be perfectly nice and polite, but also rather oblivious about people that fall outside their worldview and are just vaguely bad, lazy, and thus deserving of ridicule and a sort of subsumed aggression.
it almost seems like he's trying to covertly convert the reader of this book
Ironically, in Part 2 he discusses being subtle about your agenda when writing a novel, a line I can't help but side-eye given his own nonsense about his religious background.
I wouldn't advocate being subtle about an agenda, personally. I'd advocate putting it front and center, but also being honest about every angle, warts and all. In that way it becomes not an agenda but a multifaceted examination, like anarchism in Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed.
He writes what he knows, but he doesn't know it. Your beliefs, upbringing,
life circumstances, etc. will find a way into your writing.
Yes, exactly! There's a difference between "Oh, I am a Christian and that affects my writing and teaching in these ways," and "I am a Christian and therefore this is the only correct way to write." One's proclivities can be a liability or asset in writing, and self-awareness makes that difference. This may well explain Gerke's lack of explanation about why he made these choices, what kinds of writing his model is suited for and so on; he simply hasn't given thought to these issues because he doesn't see his own biases.
It really annoys me when there's a Magical Minority.
It boils me up, too, when suffering is treated as this inspiring and magical thing. People can choose to make whatever meaning they like of pain, there are many different ways to cope, but suffering itself doesn't have any special meaning.
I remember an article where the author talked about losing his newborn to a terrible condition, and said there was no meaning to his child's death, no lesson to be drawn, or benefit to anyone. I was briefly shocked before I was ashamed of my shock--of course there wasn't. In fact, how horrible is it to say, "oh, my baby died painfully to make me a better person?" And how awful and dehumanizing is it to say that you're suffering a crappy condition so you can make other people's lives better? It's truly surprising how prevalent these ideas are.
Why is the story so rarely focused on the people who are actually interesting, with realistic problems and personalities?
I love the explanation in The Stereotype Business, which theorizes that it's basically a cartel that excludes less-dominant groups, forcing everyone into a media market that caters almost exclusively to dominant groups.
And I'm going to echo the others in saying that this is a wonderful review.
Thankee! *blushes*
Now we all know better how to write someone like Gerke!
In this context his use of the soliloquy as a device to capture the essence of a character becomes oddly apt. He's basically given us a book-length soliloquy!
I wish I could touch on the misinterpretation of Tolkien as well (did he even read the books?)
Strangely enough, he counts himself a great fan. I can understand losing details of a book you haven't read in years, but a re-read would have helped him refresh his memory.
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I've never heard of Gerke or read his books, but I do have some experience with reading Christian fiction.
We have a Christian bookstore near us, and my mother sometimes goes there to buy books. While there are a lot of good nonfiction theological books in there, the fiction section doesn't offer much good reading material.
It follows a specific format, which Gerke is covering in his book - the focus is on the main character "being saved" and repenting, and after that everything's fine. (Haha!) The other characters exist as inspirational cardboard props for the protagonist's development. For stories which could deal with potentially meaty issues, the characters in Christian fiction never seem real to me. It's such a shame.
It is disingenuous of the author not to make it clear that he's coming from a Christian perspective. And it's also a theology & worldview that's based in American Protestant Christianity. Yet, from what you've written, he seems unaware of how his own perspective is influencing what he's writing. (That unconscious violence in his words is also pretty disturbing, I don't blame you for being triggered...)
It's a shame because it sounds like he's got a lot of good ideas in there about character development, but he's framing it as "The One and Only True Way to Write A Story".
EDIT: Not to mention - how can you get an analysis of LOTR so wrong? My mother would have a long rant about that, she is a MASSIVE Tolkien nerd.
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he seems unaware of how his own perspective is influencing what he's writing.
Yeah, and that (along with his being less than forthcoming about his religion) doesn't make him a fully trustworthy voice. I mean, how awesome would the book have been if he'd talked about his Christianity, how it's affected him as a person and writer, and any struggles or problems he might have had with faith? Or if he were honest enough with himself on these points that his personality and background shone through the book? His failure of self-awareness seems to reflect the failure of much of Christian fiction, which is both apt and sad.
I think it was the "it's for her own good" parts that bothered me even more than the violence itself, because I don't blink at most depictions of ill-intentioned violence. I've been subjected to verbal and occasionally physical violence by someone who thought (and still thinks) good intentions justified it. I mean, "redemptive fist?" Been there, buddy.
Not to mention - how can you get an analysis of LOTR so wrong?
I know, right? Even if he weren't a fan, which he is, and even if LotR weren't the perfect example of the kind of Christian genre fiction he wants to write, which it is, there's no excuse for not doing his research when citing it in his own work.
That reminds me, I've written a couple of analytical essays about LotR centering on Eowyn, the second of them for a friend's mother. Maybe your mom will be interested if she likes the character. My friend's mother liked the essay I'd written for her but was puzzled, and asked her daughter if her friends liked to do English homework for fun. I guess that's geekdom in a nutshell, lol.