Architects vs engineers

[ksmith]

This will be on the short side, as most of my posts about writing are.

I think I should turn in my Intellectual ID card, if I ever really had one to begin with, because when I start reading essays like this and this, my gaze slides off the page/screen every few sentences and starts looking for the memes/cartoons/gutter margins. I can't maintain the interest, even though I suppose definitions of genre should interest me--genre is my preference to read, and I do write the stuff. But gods help me, I quickly reach the point that I don't fucking care. I write it--here it is--call it spec fic and be done with it. Better yet, call it Fiction. It pays better.

OTOH, show me stuff like this, and I could wax rhapsodic and rattle on for days, because I love to talk about the structure of story itself. Archetypes, the stepwise build to the climactic moment, the twists and turns of plot. The choices characters make. The turn of a tale on a single line, or word, or in a movie, expression. The structure of the thing itself, and not the skin in which it's dressed and presented to the world. Utilities rather than windows. Floor load rather than facade. Engineering rather than architecture. Both aspects are necessary to construct the whole--I'm not arguing one over the other. But I have a bend, a preference. Whether it affects what I write and how, I don't know. I suspect it might.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I like 'em both, though McKee seems to have about two good ideas and the rest is styrofoam filler.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I thought he had more than two good ideas, but I read STORY at a time when I needed it. And I do enjoy screenwriting/scriptwriting discussion because given the barebones nature of the beast, the marks need to be defined so much more economically. I actually signed up for an online screenwriting short course in September, which is one small reason why I want to get the millstone out of the way.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Screenwriting is fun, and it really can lend itself to novel plotting.