Happy Thanksgiving

Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good!  For his mercy endures forever.  -Psalm 136:1

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I am so thankful this year for my family and friends.  That's what I'm always thankful for, but hey- they're such awesome people.  

My blog posting has been really erratic this past year.  I keep disappearing and not telling anyone, so this time I thought I should say something; I have decided to stop blogging until after New Year.  (Well, I'll probably do a Christmas post because why break tradition?)  I had hoped to get myself back on some kind of schedule, but the holidays are not the time to do it (especially not when you're trying to make some of your presents, and all of a sudden December is almost here.  Yikes!  Where did the time go?)

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thoughts on the Movie `God's Not Dead' and the Use of Subplots

In Ansen Dibell's book `Plot' he talks about the importance of patterns and echoes, how they hold a story together on a subconscious level.  By allowing a subplot or character to echo your main one, you give yourself room to explore your theme from a different angle.  Instead of presenting just one idea or outcome, you're allowing the audience to see your problem from several sides.

I just saw the movie God's Not Dead, and it is a great example of this kind of weaving.  (If you don't want to be spoiler-ed, now would be the time to stop reading.)  The main plot is that Christian law student is challenged by an atheist Philosophy professor to prove that God exists, so the story is basically a courtroom drama.

 One major theme in the movie is the importance of standing up for God despite outside pressure.  This theme could have been carried by the main plot but it would have been weakened by the fact that the hero's decision to stand up for God has no negative impact on his life.  He doesn't flunk the class and he doesn't publicly humiliate himself.  In fact, he gets publicly honored.  It's a total win.  This ending runs the risk of making the story seem trite.  

Fortunately, the main plot is echoed by several sub-plots.  We follow a girl from a very traditional Muslim family and a Chinese foreign exchange student who is also in the Philosophy class.  The girl from the traditional Muslim family turns out to secretly be a Christian.  When her father finds out, he throws her out of their home.  The Chinese student is left with a similar situation he texts his father about all the talk of God in Philosophy class and is told to go with what the teacher says, and also that the line they are using might be insecure.  He becomes a Christian in America, but will eventually be returning to a country where Freedom of Religion is not a right. 

 By creating a pattern the storyteller deepens the story and invites the viewer to truly think through their theme. 

The Sculpture

This past Sunday was Walk for Life, the fundraiser for CareNet, our local pregnancy crisis center.  As always, a wonderful group of people turned out to support the center.  We had a diaper sculpture competition.  My friends and I put this one together. 

 
Contrary to what it may look like, I did not build this alone. 

Action

A bit ago I ran into a bit of a difficulty in the new novel I've been working on.  Thirty-odd pages in I realized I was coming up on the first action scene -and suddenly the story stopped wanting to come.  Instead of typing I was standing around the kitchen because waiting for a tea kettle to whistle was a lot more exciting than my story at the moment.

Fortunately one of the things I do when I should be typing is read other people's blog posts.  I was going through Janice Hardy's archive (because I wasn't quite desperate enough to clean bathrooms) when I came across this article on raising stakes.  Janice points out that it's difficult to make a situation suspenseful when you're too aware of how the scene needs to play out.  You can end up just going through the motions.  It was a major eureka moment for me.  My problem was that my heroes couldn't die this early in the story -and my audience would know it.  Sure, they could suspend disbelief.  They could pretend to think everyone will die by page thirty one and the next two hundred pages will be a stirring eulogy, but in the back of their minds they know -and I know that they know- that nobody was going to die this early in the story.

Janice's blog reminded me that lives don't have to be the only thing at risk in an action scene.  What if the villains don't know who the heroes are during the first encounter -and the heroes have to keep it that way?  Now the audience is afraid one of the heroes will slip up during the fight and let the secret out.  Or what if the hero is on his way to Aunt Matilda's eightieth birthday party when the villain jumps him?  If he doesn't escape in time for the party (or arrives with his clothes torn and his present stolen) his family will continue to think he's a dead-beat who doesn't care about them -especially if he's a spy and can't tell them what he's really up to.  

 When it comes to life and death stakes, story placement has a huge impact on suspense.  I'm always more worried about a character in physical danger if I'm in the last two thirds of a stand-alone novel, or if I'm on the last book in a series.  I know the author is less likely to think this character has to stay alive so I can use them later if there isn't a `later' left.  Also, I've spent enough time with the character to become attached -often because of those early action scenes where I knew all along that the hero couldn't possibly be in danger yet. 

A New Sketch

I like to give myself a visual of my characters.  This guy is innocent and curious, and not human at all.  He came about, oddly enough, while I was trying to write about a teenage elf assassin.  Maybe my subconscious has something against assassins?

Piglet

I was re-reading Winnie-the-Pooh and House on Pooh Corner.  I found it interesting that the penultimate chapter in the first book is Piglet's rescue from the flood, and the two chapter before the final in the second book are both stories where Piglet does the rescuing.  It made me take a closer look at the heroism of Piglet.

 The first time Piglet comes to the rescue -climbing through Owl's letter box to get help when the house falls over- Pooh talks him into it by promising to write a song about him afterwards.  Piglet wants to be brave -that's foreshadowed in chapter three of House at Pooh Corner when Piglet highjacks Pooh's story about heroically answering back to a heffalump but gets completely flustered as soon as he thinks an actual huffalump is talking to him- and he admires Pooh's courage.  Piglet is very aware that he is vulnerable because he is `a very small animal.'  After Owl's house blows down his smallness becomes a strength instead of a weakness.  He is the only one who can escape for help.

The second rescue -sacrificing his house so Owl won't be homeless and also to save Eeyore from embarrassment- is driven at least partly by Piglet's defining traits of his loyalty as a friend and his role as a peacemaker.  In The House at Pooh Corner when Rabbit is trying to find out where Christopher Robin goes in the morning, Piglet is the one who thinks to cheer Eeyore with violets and then use them as a distraction when Eeyore takes offense at Rabbit.  In the Woozle hunt in the first book, Piglet shows his loyalty.  He may be the first to try to call off the hunt when he realizes that he and Pooh are outnumbered, but he doesn't leave until Christopher Robin appears and he knows Pooh will be protected.

Piglet does not appear heroic in most of the stories; he is mostly small, and friendly, someone who tries to avoid confrontations.  But the groundwork for his heroism is there from the start.  It just needed the right circumstances to shine. 

Musings

Last night I went to see a local stage production of Music Man.  The choreography was amazing, especially in scenes like the Fourth of July celebration which always seemed to drag a little in the video but suddenly made sense when I saw it on stage.  The one thing I did have trouble with was the romance.  Marion was perfect in her initial disgust of the professor and in her later love for him, but the change between the two seemed abrupt.  I suspect a lot of the abruptness has to do with when the play was written.

The show did get me thinking about how stories translate in different mediums -and the way art speaks different languages.  For example, my music major friends actually understand the ending of An American in Paris while I always go "yeah, but if they just skipped that big song and dance number they could show the rival guy releasing the girl from her engagement, and the whole story would make more sense."  (Then when I add that if they shortened a few other songs and skipped that one with the piano player it would solve a lot of pacing problems, I get the sad looks reserved for one who has just missed the entire point of the movie.)  My music major friends can see the correlation between the music, the dance, and the emotional turmoil.  For them the story truly does rise to a climax and resolution.  

It's a bit like Gary Chapman's Love Languages.  Maybe people have `soul languages' and that's why there are so many different types of art.