14 KiB
[D] Rationally Writing 24 - Beginnings
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Author: u/DaystarEld Pokémon Professor*
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Score: 12
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Created: 2017-02-14T01:08:45
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u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 minutes later)
Hey everyone, this week I'm recommending The Laughing Corpse, by Laurell K. Hamilton. It's the second book in the Anita Blake series, and I'm recommending it because even with all the vampires and werewolves and zombies running around, it's a crime novel, and you can't talk about book beginnings without mentioning crime novels.
Whether it's the classic writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, the contemporary masters like Grisham and Connelly, or even the supernatural genres like the Dresden Files or Anita Blake, most crime stories have a formulaic beginning: the first chapter is almost always the main character at a crime scene, or if they're a private detective, sometimes meeting a client with hidden motives.
This has become a formula because it works. It immediately starts the action and plot of the book, and gives the author the opportunity to show, rather than tell, the character's skills and attitude toward their work. In the case of the crime scene it also gives the readers a hook, either an extra grisly murder scene to raise the stakes, an unusual or improbable killing to raise intrigue, or both. Or, in the case of the client meeting, it gives the readers a chance to feel, along with the main character, whatever unease or suspicion they might have about the client.
A lot of books have both kinds of openings as their first two chapters, and The Laughing Corpse is one of them that I think does them to great effect. It's also just a great book on its own, and the Anita Blake book that really hooked me into the series. It gets weird later on, but I enjoyed the first dozen or so books quite a bit, and they have many great qualities.
If you want to try listening to The Laughing Corpse on your next ride to work or while you're getting some exercise or doing daily quests in a game, Audible has a free 30-day trial that gives you one book credit, which you keep even if you cancel the trial right away. If you use this link, you can even support the show while you do it. Thanks for listening!
u/blanktextbox [+2] (2 days later)
Another good episode. Not sure how much n listeners and x likes means on your end, so I feel motivated to comment here just to get that message across.
I've been considering a few books and movies for that "beginning at the end" bit and what about them makes them work despite the trouble. Most are biographical, which often puts us first-person as you had noted helps and - in nonfiction - always means the writer can suppose the audience is aware of the basic facts of the subject (in fictional biography, the writer can affect that tone anyway). Still spinning on what makes it work out in Brief Encounter, one of my very favorite films.
I guess I share this to say that your show engages me and I think through your conversation throughout my day, rather than out of a sense of having some insight to offer anyone else.It's interesting that you both find knowing what's coming to be problematic when reading or watching something. I should expect you two reread and rewatch things. I've never minded spoilers, feeling that it's the merit of storytelling that bids me to read on rather than a sense of not knowing what will happen. And there's Leavitt and Christenfeld's research showing spoiled audiences report greater enjoyment than unspoiled ones.
Then again, knowing the next few beats does make me prone to impatience if there's a bad chapter. Hmm.There must be something here, as with the principles underlying Chekhov's Gun, where more context and stronger expectations allows for greater satisfaction. Spoilers offer a lot of that. Perhaps with too many and too accurate expectations things begin to decline, as with reading a book so many times as to be able to recite it.
Funny you brought up Gurren Lagann, as it opens with a very brief "this is where we're headed" prologue glimpse of the future that nobody remembers - including the show's creators. It's a pretty common device in anime and I never remember they exist. I'd think the serial format would be a factor, perhaps compounding with whatever goes on for movies.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
Thanks for the comment! We do get relatively few Likes/Upvotes/Reviews (I think we still haven't been reviewed enoguh on iTunes to even have a rating show up), so they definitely stand out and are appreciated :)
I should expect you two reread and rewatch things.
This is something I get asked often when I discuss my aversion to spoilers, since I do indeed reread things often. However, I would say that there is a premium on the first read or watch of something that is qualitatively different. A spoiled movie or show is rarely completely worthless if you know where it's going and how it ends, but you can re-experience and enjoy them over and over again at any point in the future. The only time you can specifically enjoy going in blind is the first time.
And there's Leavitt and Christenfeld's research showing spoiled audiences report greater enjoyment than unspoiled ones.
I always just interpreted this to mean that people who enjoy spoiled shows outnumber people who don't, not that people who believe they enjoy non-spoiled movies actually secretly enjoy spoiled movies more.
There must be something here, as with the principles underlying Chekhov's Gun, where more context and stronger expectations allows for greater satisfaction.
So my understanding of Chekhov's Gun is more that it's a Rule of Writing to prevent deus-ex-machina. It definitely acts as a build up of suspense in some cases, and can be executed very well sometimes, but most of the time it's fairly obvious and ham-handed, and I understand that "this is being brought up because they want to make it important later, and they can't just have it suddenly appear with no warning." It's rather immersion breaking, most of the time, but even when done poorly, is still a necessary evil to avoid even greater immersion breaking, if that makes sense.
Funny you brought up Gurren Lagann, as it opens with a very brief "this is where we're headed" prologue glimpse of the future that nobody remembers - including the show's creators. It's a pretty common device in anime and I never remember they exist. I'd think the serial format would be a factor, perhaps compounding with whatever goes on for movies.
Yeah, I think I often forget such spoiler opens because they just don't have any emotional attachment to them early on. Like we're seeing them as completely contextless, random bits of sound and noise, and we know it's supposed to be important later, but it just doesn't register as important.
u/ZeroNihilist [+3] (2 days later)
I always just interpreted this to mean that people who enjoy spoiled shows outnumber people who don't, not that people who believe they enjoy non-spoiled movies actually secretly enjoy spoiled movies more.
I agree. You can't apply the conclusions to the enthusiast population. People who enjoy reading mysteries and the like would have to be stupid to avoid spoilers if it turns out they actually like them, but the general population might just not enjoy mysteries all that much.
From the paper:
Participants (176 male, 643 female) were recruited from the psychology subject pool at the University of California, San Diego.
If I understand this correctly, it means that these are (a) all psychology students, and (b) volunteered for a general research pool, not for the specific study.
Thus the selection process for the study (i.e. you study psychology) doesn't necessarily correlate with the selection process for, say, a crime fiction novel (i.e. you want to read crime fiction novels).
This means that, while the conclusion is (probably) true for aggregate groups of psychology students (78.5% female; not that it's likely that matters, but it does illustrate the biased sample), it might not generalise to enthusiasts. People who seek out content that is susceptible to spoilers may well not enjoy spoilers, but comprise a smaller portion of the sample population (especially the bubble that is a student body in a tertiary education institution).
u/blanktextbox [+3] (2 days later)
I looked around for more studies and found one by Johnson and Rosenbaum (pdf) performed in the southeastern US that had the opposite result. They define enjoyment a little differently, more rigorously, and across all categories unspoiled report a little more enjoyment (but for one that's tied). They don't expand on how they gathered their subjects, but the sample was just over 400, similarly gender-biased, also racially biased (it's a historically black school).
The paper also references a second Leavitt and Christenfeld study that explored the reason for the result in their earlier one, which found that it would have to come from processing fluency - that it's easier to understand what's happening.
But as for having to be stupid to avoid spoilers if they enrich enjoyment, I have no trouble believing people would fail to notice that difference in enjoyment where they have been socialized to dislike spoilers or hold a belief that they ruin stories. Even having opposed results, both of these studies show only a modest change between the spoiled and unspoiled.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
that it's easier to understand what's happening.
So this might legitimately be an area where "story intelligence" or "familiarity" would be a differentiating factor in whether someone enjoys a spoiler more with or without spoilers.
My dad often has trouble following the plots of modern movies. It definitely helps him to know what kind of movie we're watching and what the plot is... things that personally I would call "spoilers," but which many would just refer to as a "synopsis" or basic description.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
Right, I imagine spoilers tend to be more likely to matter to people who are enthusiasts for a certain genre or medium.
u/blanktextbox [+2] (2 days later)
I always just interpreted this to mean that people who enjoy spoiled shows outnumber people who don't, not that people who believe they enjoy non-spoiled movies actually secretly enjoy spoiled movies more.
Fair. It'd be nice to have a study controlled for spoiler-caring.
My take on Chekhov's Gun places it alongside other notions about respect for the reader's ability to make predictions about a story, like Sanderson's First Law of Magic, making them a matter of having context for the occurrences in the work. I'd say a lack of context for what happens in the climax is the primary jarring factor of the deus ex machina.
But to take it further, recommendations, reviews, and ads give the reader information about what to expect in a work as without any info nobody will take time to check it out. This jumps back to your comment about going in blind: how blind do you want to be? We develop and maintain tropes for a lot of reasons, among them providing context and expectations through patterns and norms. So I think there's a minimum acceptable amount of knowledge of a work and ability to anticipate its actions the audience must have to be able to enjoy something. In this way, spoiler sensitivity is a matter of where a corresponding maximum lies for a person, and what that information can and can't be (my first guess would be to look at that in terms of plot).
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
how blind do you want to be?
Most of my favorite experiences when watching media have been from going in absolutely and completely blind. Not a single trailer, not a single idea of what the movie is about, or even the setting if possible.
(To be fair, a couple of my worst experiences watching movies were like this too, including one that I recently ranted about. )
Note that this isn't to say that the media itself is "elevated" by going in blind, necessarily. I knew what The Fellowship of the Ring was about going into the theater, and think it was objectively more amazing a film and story than, say, Arrival was. But the enjoyment I got out of Arrival was almost exclusively from not knowing what was coming next, or what to expect. And maybe I would have had that, PLUS the original value of Fellowship if I had gone into that blind, but I know that I would have enjoyed Arrival far less if I had gone into it knowing what to expect (and if I fully knew what to expect, including the twist, I wouldn't even have bothered, because it kind of ruined the movie for me, but I on the whole don't regret watching it thanks to the pre-twist experience).
I do think that I'm a general exception to this, however, and that the vast majority have not just different tolerances for spoilers, but different preferences. I do not think I would make a useful case study for marketers trying to figure out how to better entice people to watch their films.