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.

[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 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.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

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

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

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

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I'm so tired and brain-burned right now, none of that seems worth my time. I *am* interested in what you can do structurally to make a better story. I like it when people can't put the story down -- like it even better when they are following a quiet intensity as opposed to explosions every few minutes.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

IMO (and there are a lot of authors who disagree with me) genre in a marketing sense is a tool for the publisher, and genre in a literary sense is a toy for the reader. So I can understand having your eyes glaze over when those kinds of discussions come up :). Yes, it's useful to know how both sorts of genre work, but that doesn't mean you have to enjoy the niggling literary analysis or market analysis parts.

I've often had the experience of reading books where the author is so concious of Genre, Diction, Tone, Theme etc that I start mentally writing an explicatione de texte of the book. Not good. If I *want* to explicate a book, I can. I don't need the author to be so concious of the Stuff Needed For Good Writing that I feel obliged to explicate it just to make them feel like they're writing literature.