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

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

Some of the more esoteric discussions sail right over my head. I don't care, really. I'd rather just go do the writing than sit around and debate stuff. But there are those who write *and* debate just fine, so more power to them.

I actually have McKee's book, but I don't like it much. I do like other books on structure, plot, conflict, etc. Not because they're more black and white (is anything in craft?) or practical, but because there's so many cool ways to devise a story.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I like STORY. I'd like to take one of McKee's classes the next time it rolls through Chicago.