Pity and fear, Aristotle said…are the great emotional engines for tragedy.   ~ from “Hit Lit” by James W. Hall

Pity and fear—I’m often surprised when I learn what makes a good movie worth watching. 

“The Artist”, fired up the twin engines of pity and fear and took off with this year’s Oscar for “best picture”.  The protagonist, the silent-era movie star who can’t cope with the advent of “talkies”, becomes disillusioned to the point of blowing his head off. 

Tragic. 

The guy can’t adopt a new worldview.  His belief system won’t allow it.  He loses everything, including his self-respect, all the way to self-loathing.  And we loved every minute of it.  (See, The Artist: a case for killing George.)

“John Max, a Portrait” is a documentary that again illustrates our appreciation of tragedy.  A once-revered photographer, Max loses his chops, his confidence and (arguably) his grip on reality.  It’s a classic display of…

The tragic power of a belief system.

Max lives alone (obsessively-compulsively rolling his own cigarettes) amid a chaos of photographs, equipment, chemicals, magazines, books, boxes, pots and pans.  He’s become a hoarder.  He believes he’ll get his act together—revive his darkroom and start printing again—but he never will. 

The City tags his premises as a no-go zone.  His friends rally to help him clean up, but Max won’t cooperate.  After he’s slapped with an eviction notice, Max continues to behave as if divine justice will somehow prevail on his behalf.

The clock ticks down.

Friends try to wake him to the facts of life, but Max interprets truth as negative thinking.   Terrified, he chain-smokes those roll-your-owns as he retreats deeper into an Eastern philosophy of “non-doing”. 

As reality charges toward him like the Orient Express, it’s clear that John Max is in a dead-end from which he’ll never escape.  He’s living in a by-gone era.  His friends (as discreetly as possible) pack up his life and haul it away…

while Max, unable to face realty, sits with his back to the camera frantically rolling more cigarettes. 

His is a belief system that refuses to die. 

Pity and fear.  Aristotle was right. 

John Max, a Portrait.  A tragedy.  An oh-so-human story.

A story well worth watching.

As a queen sits down, knowing that a chair will be there,
Or a general raises his hand and is given field glasses,
Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.
Something will come to you.
~ Richard Wilbur (quoted in an interview with novelist, Anne Tyler, in the guardian) 

6:30 a.m.

This morning I awake to a new schedule—START NOVEL. 

No shower, no coffee, don’t even get dressed.  Don’t clean up the desk.  No email, no surfing blogs, no Facebook or Twitter.  No opening the snail mail, no Globe and Mail.  No logging on to the Internet, period. 

I have a speech to write—forget it.  Another blog post—not now.  Another eBook in the works—later!  Just man up to the blank screen, PJ, and thrill to the experience of not knowing what’s going to happen.

6:37 a.m.

I resist rereading The Guardian interview that sits on my desk.  American novelist, Anne Tyler (The Accidental Tourist), discusses waiting for our muse—big mistake: 

“[I] just go to my room and plug away.  It doesn’t take very long for most writers to realize that if you wait until the day you are inspired and feel like writing you’ll never do it at all.”

I know that!  That’s why I’m here confronting the blank “page”, so to speak.  Perhaps I should write it in longhand, on paper, as Anne Tyler does.  I’ll need a smoother pen, one of those ‘gel’ jobs.  Do they even sell pads of paper anymore?  You know, those yellow, legal-sized…

6:43 a.m.

I pick at some crud lodged under the “L” key.  I overturn the laptop and blow the lint loose. 

6:45 a.m.

The blank screen again.  That sinking feeling.  I’m reminded of something Eckhart Tolle said.  E.T. and the Dalai Lama were on stage at Vancouver’s Peace Summit (2009).  Herr Tolle was riffing about—of all things—Soccer.  About the penalty kick. 

Tolle has observed that when the ref signals the kicker with a whistle blast, some players will…

PAUSE. 

Those who pause have a better scoring percentage.  It’s generally explained as “concentrating”.  “But what does that mean?” asks Tolle. 

“The question I would like to ask [is] what happens in that moment of going within?” 

Tolle rejects the idea that the player is “concentrating”.  On the contrary…

“The attention is taken away from all that and there’s a redirecting of attention into the depths… where you touch a deeper layer, a deeper level of your being, and that is where all power resides.”

I resist a powerful urge to look at that guardian interview because I recall therein a stanza of poetry that speaks to this absurd faith in the creative process. 

6:49 a.m. 

This blank screen—it’s the pause.  I’m sinking into it. 

As a queen sits down, knowing that a chair will be there,
Or a general raises his hand and is given field glasses…

I set my fingers on the keyboard…

Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.
Something will come to you.” 

My finger tips are moving… oh, look!  On the screen… “The dead don’t care…”

My novel has begun!

Years ago, I won a “24-hour One-Act Play competition”.   Later, I wrote a feature screenplay over a long weekend with two buddies.  The 3-day novel competition, I’ve survived that twice.  Now it’s time for…

Inkubate’s first annual LITERARY BLOCKBUSTER CHALLENGE!

According to Inkubate, a “literary blockbuster” is a novel that “explores the eternal philosophical questions and grabs and holds the reader’s attention from the first page.”

It’s a book that “…joins the psycho-sociological themes of Mrs. Dalloway with the page-turning suspense of The Godfather.”

 (Should the twain even be encouraged to meet?)

 “How about merging James Joyce’s psychologically complex characterization with a Stephen King plot?”

 Inkubate thinks it’s possible.  They’re a brand new eTeam aiming to present writers’ work to publishers and agents.  “We’re working hard to create a place that writers, publishers and agents will love.”  The love-in will begin when the literary blockbusters start pouring in. 

The deadline is December 15, 2012.  No entry fee.  It’s all about the challenge:

“Write a thought-provoking literary novel that’s also a page-turner. We invite you to combine the goals of serious literature (thematic depth and high-level craft) with the bestselling formulas of the mega-blockbusters.”

Easier said than done!  The beginning especially.  The first page sets the all-important tone.

HOW TO BEGIN?

With a death in the first paragraph?  A body washes up on the beach.  A dead man in Business Class, unlit cigar hanging from his lip.  Good.  At the same time we need to glimpse the protagonist’s interior, a constellation of neuroses and lies which render him unreliable as a narrator and which promise mystery and irony and sex and which, most of all, portends a theme at least as large as the collapse of civilization.   

And then in the second paragraph…

This may be the greatest literary challenge ever.  Are you up for it?  There’s no shame in asking for help, which I’m doing right now:

1. How do we begin to understand this hybrid genre?  Insights anyone?  How do we meld the “literary” and “blockbuster” genres without mocking both?
   
2. What authors should we emulate?  John Le Carré?  Graham Greene?  William Boyd? Have you ever read a “literary blockbuster”? 

Please chime in to the “Comments” section and share your experiences. 

And don’t forget to check out all the rules and regs at INKUBATE.com. 

(Disclaimer: I have no connection with Inkubate, although you will see that they have kindly listed my free eBook, STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR, as a writing resource.)

Do you have a pusher?

I do.  He emails me stark messages like, “Well?” 

It’s not a reminder, it’s an order.  It’s also a show of faith.  He believes in me.  I don’t know why but he seems to have a vision of a PJ Reece that even I don’t have.

“Outlined it yet?” 

Is it possible that he sees me better than I see myself?  Do I really have self-sabotaging strategies? 

This pusher of mine once listened as I read him the opening pages of my novel-in-progress.  It concerned the pending death of my protagonist’s wife.  The story concerns little else but this death.  My friend laughed.  I was dismayed until I realized, yes, it was funny.  I knew immediately how to proceed.  I finally saw my story for what it was—a work of humour.

“Mailed it yet?”

I don’t know why this friend of mine believes in me so much.  Why should he?  He’s a writer himself.  He has his own resistance issues.  Does he email himself rude little notes?  Or does he have a pusher, too?  I hope so, because…

We see others better than we see ourselves.

We can’t see ourselves.  It’s a protective function of the human organism.  We have a blind spot over that which, if seen, would cause our precious little assumptions to crumble. 

My friend sees something about me.  He sees my weaknesses and my possibilities.  We all see potential in others.  Call it the thrust of a life.  A trajectory.  Our true friends are disturbed to see it veer off course, or remain unfulfilled. 

“Well?”

The same concern makes friends be tough critics.  Joe Bunting is discussing this very thing today on his Write Practice blog.  

Do you have a friend who may be stalling short of the threshold of success?  You could explain to them, “Every door is open; there is no one in charge; we’re just afraid of judgment on the other side.” 

Or you could just say, “Well?”

Go ahead, risk their wrath.  Push a little. 

“Every book has an intrinsic impossibility.” ~ Annie Dillard.

I don’t mean to ruin your day.  Quite the opposite. 

As a reader, I’m drawn to the impossible dilemma.  As a writer, I’m pumped by the prospect of accomplishing the impossible.  In her little book, “The Writing Life”, Ms. Dillard suggests that every novelist asks two questions: Can it be done? and Can I do it?

The appropriate answer is ‘no’.

At the level of “story”, it’s the hero who confronts the impossible.  The powers of antagonism compel us if they appear insurmountable.  Writers generally understand this.  But Dillard is more concerned with a worse impossibility facing the writer. 

The problem of story structure:

“…it is insoluble,” says Dillard, “it is why no one can ever write this book.”

Ernest Hemingway acknowledged that “writing well is impossibly difficult.”  His advice for the would-be writer was to “go out and hang himself”.  Then…

“…he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life.  At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.”

Launching a tale is rarely the writer’s problem.  But soon the plot sags for want of a protagonist with momentum—to say nothing of her reaching a meaningful conclusion.  The writer swears that the original idea literally oozed meaning.

So, what went wrong? 

In her beloved little book, Dillard suggests that the writer typically discovers the “structural defect” and then “wishes he had never noticed”. 

“He finds ways to minimize the difficulty; he strengthens other virtues; he cantilevers the whole narrative out into thin air, and it holds.  And if it can be done, he can do it, and only he.” 

Dillard loves the notion of the writer doggedly intuiting his way toward truth.  Farther and farther out on that limb, you can hear the bough cracking…I’ve been there!  It’s an impossible situation.  I love it.

Dillard befriends the impossible because there’s no alternative to it.  Nothing can rescue the writer.  No writer has ever faced this particular challenge before:

“There is nothing in the material for this book that suggests to anyone but him alone its possibilities for meaning and feeling.” 

Dillard would appear to suggest that no laws of fiction exist to guide the writer.  Then, on the next page, she contradicts herself.  She tells us where the mother lode of story truth lies:

In “…that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly as creatures set down here bewildered.” 

Story structure exists solely to serve “that power”.  The power of awakening.  It arises out of loss and disillusionment, and it “seizes” the protagonist and “reveals” to her the truth of her existence.  Dillard calls the human condition “bewildered”.  

“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? 

Toward that awakening—however it manifests in the protagonist—that’s where every writer (cantilevering the plot til it breaks) needs to force their hero. 

Ruthless, maybe.  Tragic, sometimes.  Impossible, it only seems that way at the start.

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.” ~ Somerset Maugham

We “have to” because our muses won’t leave us alone.  I’ve been struggling to write about the muse and its modus operandi—but I don’t want to bother writers with vague thoughts about inspiration. 

I even did a little research:

Historically the muse was “demonic”, which didn’t always mean evil.  The “demon muse” was “the inner force that inspires a person to perform the life work for which he or she was born.”

The demonic part I like.  But subtle realms working for “me” personally?  No, that’s the business of my ego.  Subtle realms work toward something more universal.  That’s why they must be subtle.  That’s why the muse behaves like a secret agent.

Anyway, I went to bed.

I was awakened at 3:00 a.m. by pressing thoughts.  I knew instinctively that this was my muse talking, and that I should pay attention.  And that this would be the grist of my blog post:  

WHAT THE MUSE HAS TO SAY

It came immediately clear that my muse is a doer, not a talker.  She doesn’t talk at all, she connect dots.  I saw the connection between her urgings and what it’s all in aid of.  She’s only interested in Art. 

As for any messages, my muse defers to Art.  Art speaks.  My muse has nothing more to say than what Art says.

Whatever it is that Art says, that’s what my muse wants to say.

Which explains why my muse badgers me…to make Art.  If my writing ignores the laws of fiction, it won’t become Art.  It won’t say what Art can.  If I quit, or if I fail to go the distance, Art won’t happen. 

“If you’re going to try, go all the / way. / otherwise, don’t even start.” ~ Charles Bukowski

So, what does Art say?

I’m no expert on art-Art, but I can speak for fiction.  Masterful stories lead us to truths that our belief systems prevent us from experiencing first-hand.  The art of fiction serves the truth about the human condition.  Namely that:

• Desire is our glory and our downfall
• Struggle, emptiness, and despair reveal the truth of our existence.
• Death of our belief systems open us to our higher nature.

“We are working not for work’s sake, producing not for production’s sake.  What we are trying to do is to find a way to release the truth that lies in all of us.”  ~ Ray Bradbury  

That’s what the muse was trying to tell me.  It exists to serve Art.  I’m there to serve the muse by creating a protagonist who goes the distance to discover the truth about himself.  Oh what a glorious day! 

“Do it, do it / all the way… you’ll do it / despite rejection and the / worst odds / and it will be better than / anything else / you can imagine.” ~ C. Bukowski

My muse works hard to lead me to Art—because the truths revealed make the world a brighter place.

IF YOU ENJOY THESE MUSINGS OF MINE… I invite you to subscribe.  There’s a subscription link at the top left of this page.

And if you haven’t downloaded my new eBook, “STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR”, it’s still FREE.  Click here.

I’m struggling to put together a post about ‘the Muse’.  I have a hunch it’s not the benign little pixie most of us think it is.  I’m wondering, though, if it matters.  Would it matter if you knew that your Muse were trying to kill you?  Would you care? 

While I work on this ‘dark Muse’ theory, I invite you to log on to three popular writing blogs.  If I’ve been slack in publishing timely posts lately, I blame them:

• The Write Practice
• Write to Done
• The Artist’s Road

Two of them have paid me the honour of being a “guest blogger” on their site.  If you’ve taken an interest in my new free eBook, STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR, you’ll find these Reece’s pieces to be succinct explanations of my theory.  I can’t do better than this:

http://thewritepractice.com/story-hole/

http://writetodone.com/2012/03/26/how-to-create-story-structure-to-die-for/

Meanwhile, over on The Artist’s Road, you’ll find a short interview with an American songwriter who speaks graphically about the Muse.

The interview started me obsessing about the purpose of creative endeavour.  He describes the state of mind he cultivates for himself prior to performing — becoming a hollow bamboo.  In this way, his Muse can work through him. 

If that’s not annihilation of the personality, what is?  I’m telling you, the Muse is out to kill you. 

I can hardly wait to deal with that in an upcoming post. 

SPOILER ALERT!

I’m talking about the Oscar-studded film, The Artist.  If you’d rather not know…

• why it won “Best Film”
• why it didn’t deserve to win    and…
• why it would have been better if George Valentin had blown his head off…

then get back to work on your novel and we’ll see you next week.

The Artist, an overview

Silent movie star, George Valentin, makes a stand against the coming of talking pictures.  George believes passionately in silent movies, and it’s a belief system that refuses to die.

Good characters have belief systems that refuse to die.  But die they must! 

Who wants to watch a movie about a hero whose philosophies (dogmas, principles, whatever you call them) out-muscle his will to live?  Imagine being dictated to by strategies that are outmoded yet fatally entrenched.  This happens.  People’s minds prevail over their evolution as more omnipotent beings.  How depressing. 

How tragic! 

George Valentin presents a classic case of a belief system under attack.  He’s a silent movie god—then along come the talkies.  He digs in his heels because silent movies are… well… they’re Art.  Sound ruins everything.  But sound sells tickets.  Alas, George isn’t buying it at all. 

Why The Artist won

The Artist presents a rare and graphic example of a character struggling against his habitual belief system.  Half way through the film, George Valentin would appear to have nothing to live for—no job, no girl, no money, no fans.  Yet he refuses to believe that silent movies are dead. 

With half a movie left, what else can the script writer take away from George?  Lots.

His comb, his razor.  His self-discipline, self-respect, self-esteem.  From the look of that gun barrel in his mouth, George hates himself. 

This is why The Artist won—the film devotes half its length to stripping George down to self-loathing.  You can’t do better than that.  A gun in his mouth—Wow—that’s the dead-end of all dead-ends.  I loved it!

Audiences pay to vicariously experience utter failure—because they are nourished by the subsequent resurrection.    

Why The Artist didn’t deserve the Oscar

George is saved by a third party, that’s why.  Deus ex machina, of all things.  The writer eroded his protagonist’s belief system, but not far enough that George let go of it.  Had he released his grip, he would have fallen into the blessed hell of total darkness where aspects of his higher nature would have become available. 

But George is saved by…someone else.  No!  That’s melodrama.  He’s handed a resolution by some starlet who is operating from another belief system.  No!  George was so very close to an  answer. 

And as the story fades to black, viewers are entertained—but not nourished as they might have been.

Why George should have pulled the trigger

Had our hero blown his brains out, we would have learned something about the human condition—that belief systems can be stronger than a person’s will to live.  That’s tragic.  

Tragedy: a drama in which the protagonist’s belief system holds firm unto suicide. 

(I feel ill…because it happens.)

No way that the writer could have ended The Artist on such a dark note.  The tone of the film was fun and upbeat.  But George’s death would have taught us the sad truth about the tyranny of a belief system. 

Instead we got to watch him dance a duet.  Man, he sure can dance.

Sorry to have spoiled the movie for you.  But then what did I really spoil?  I spoiled a movie that was already spoiled.

Oh, and another reason why The Artist won the Oscar—because Hugo and The Tree of Life are spoiled too, each in their own way. 

I so enjoy talking about movies, I might just further spoil them, too.

If you risked downloading my eBook, “Story Structure to Die for”, you’re not alone.  Almost a thousand writers have e-grabbed their free copy this week.  

I’m gratified to hear back from people I don’t know, people who owe me nothing and yet have taken a moment to leave words of thanks:

“It’s truly a wonderful gift, and anyone who reads it should consider themselves lucky indeed.”

Writers never know! 

We don’t how far our words might travel; neither do we know if those words make sense; if the ideas add up.  Part of this eBook experiment has been to float this theory of structure out there to see if it sinks.  Maybe I’ve been deluding myself. 

“Thank you for this amazing book, ‘Story Structure to Die For’…it most certainly is.  I feel like I have been given the keys to the kingdom!  Thank you and thank you again!!”

“The keys to the kingdom.”  Wow.  I want to thank that commenter for putting it so poetically.  I might have said something about a key to “understanding how fiction works”.  I have to be careful not to oversell this thing.  But I welcome all the embellishments that come my way beause a writer never knows if his concepts are unlocking any doors. 

“What an encouraging, simplified method to writing a story—a good story, an award winning one!”

Those are original exc!amation marks, I swear.  I didn’t add them.  A writer never knows if his love for stories is being transmitted one heart to another.  So it’s a joy to see the excitement radiating back.   

“I am very excited.  I am lucky to have read it, and it made me think.”

A writer sits alone in his writing hut—how is he or she to know? 

I was fortunate this week to have been a guest blogger on a popular writers blog called The Write Practice.  I presented my super-simple overview to the readers of that popular blog and spent the day fielding comments.  It proved an excellent way for me to find out how I was doing. 

Readers of the blog, writers in their own right, sought advice on problems of structure with their own works-in-progress.  A week later, we’re still e-chatting.  Who would’ve thought?

A writer never knows. 

Now I know.

The wait has been excruciating.  For me!  But finally…

STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR is available as an eBook. 

There’s a link somewhere on this page, so go ahead and click it.  It’s FREE.  Free to download, free to pass on to your friends, and of course you’re more than free to tell me what you think of it.

My manifesto is short enough to skim in fifteen minutes.  I’ll be disappointed, though, if you don’t slow down, occasionally, to better understand…

• What are a story’s most basic building blocks?  (Not what you’ve been taught.) 
• What and where is the heart of your story?  (Writing manuals don’t even mention such a thing.)
• What makes a hero truly heroic?  (You’ll be surprised.)

One of my advance readers, a writing coach, wants to use STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR as a resource with her clients.  She also said:

“Maybe I can finally find my way into the heart of my screenplay that has eluded me for years.”

I was so glad to hear that because a writer never knows if he’s making sense.  So you can imagine my relief at hearing such feedback.  Another writer loved its “simplicity and applicability”.  He said:

“[PJ] has managed to find a way of showing us what really counts in a work of fiction: that it has two stories and a heart.”

Another author with two novels under her belt said:

“Yesterday, my clouds cleared and the sun is shining in my head.  I know exactly what to do now to make my story better.  Thank you.”

I had no idea.

I sent my little manifesto off to UCLA.  The Screenwriting Department is run by Dr. Richard Walter, who kindly responded thus:

“I’ve looked over the pages. They’re great! Breezy and engaging but at the same time profound in their insights into the nature not merely of screenwriting but narrative expression in any and all forms, formats, and media.”

Here’s my own précis of the book:

“STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR recounts one writer’s near-miss in Hollywood and his journey to discovering how fiction REALLY works.”

How fiction really works

This blog is an ongoing examination of that question, so after you’ve downloaded the eBook, I encourage you to subscribe to receiving my blog by email.  Somewhere on this page there’s a link to that function, too.

Enjoy.