The Elementals of Writing

No, not Water, Fire, Earth, Air

But

Love, Death, Conflict and Outcome

 

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It’s quite the gambit for us writers, to know when the wish fulfilment must end and the fictional reality begins. Both Austen and Bronte knew love’s complexities from a distance, their most famous and beloved of male characters are reticent, tortured souls.

Being accomplished women of their age still meant a limited viewpoint of men but do they gloss over their knowledge with wish fulfilment? No, they do not, for their subtle genius recorded the bittersweet dailies of life and love even for the characters who had the silver spoon in their mouth.

And Yet Janeites and Eyreheads would like to think there was a semblance of Rochester or Darcy in the Authors’ real lives, even if it’s but a moment. Even if we fawn over the grove scene, Charlotte Bronte reminds us that our beloved Edward is flawed and compromised and maybe that little bit manipulative. Yet I will defend him to the ends of the Earth regardless of how stormy that Wild Sergasso Sea is!!

The love forged in a good book is sometimes a remnant of what happened to the writer. What they wished happened or the lessons incorporated from that love encounter, indeed the best of writers have scars of all shapes and sizes. The two of the largest are those marked on the psyche and the heart, that’s why the invention of the book is such a wonder, yes it can be a simple tale to be told but it acts a mirror with words that reflect us as people.

Literature is Melponeme’s gift, a treasure of escapism and retrospective and it’s among the oldest challenges in the world for the writer to fuse both with the perfect balance of realistic expectations in a fictional world

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It’s a strange time to talk of such things, history is waiting with baited breath for a saga is ending and another is about to begin. It’s a fool’s errand to ignore such things, death is unavoidable even in fiction. From a glance the Writer is a dreamer’s friend and confidant, if that really were true many, many book characters would have been perfectly safe!

The Storyteller is a very romantic notion of what we are, what we do – The very idea that we simply tell stories is greatly inadequate. Writers are story slaves, we are lost in the many story arcs if we don’t choose a direct enough path and if that includes the death of our most rounded characters, so be it!

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Nothing is really more important than the story, I could add the Protagonist but then the villain of the piece is just as vital. As a former fan of a once grand spectacle of television involving Dragon Queens and Nitro Glycerine bombs I must warn all writers….

Death should always spearhead a story along and not just be there as a bookend. A few years ago I came across a film called Brimstone, not only was there unnecessary deaths but a man so bizarrely evil, the story became a parody. My husband was waiting for justice but it never arrived until the very end! My point is never allow one feature of a story become the cornerstone that builds everything else because the audience will notice!

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The Drive, the challenge, the Mcguffin, sometimes known as the red herring to draw unsuspecting audiences. The latter of conflict methods is the one that drives people the most crazy! But nonetheless, it works like a charm, a magnet to pull people to wonder if this time an old subplot template will change. It never does of course, but there’s always the hope that it will one day.

Conflict is the most potent and possibly the most important ingredient of the Writer’s Recipe, it adds dimensions to the character and reels the reader in with the how’s and the whys? Dracula, for example churns the story of a fiend to be feared, Nosferatu dangerously copies this formula but makes the fiend more obvious in his monstrosity with Gnarled looks and detailed diary entries of the doomed Demeter. This more personal angle oddly makes Nosferatu that much creepier than its predecessor.

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Pop Culture really through the gauntlet down on us, Thirty years ago – for prior to that the villain was either theatrical or nuanced. Gary Oldman changed all that when he made a monster an impassioned monster. Brad Pitt followed suit as did a few others, then came an angle from a young method man that I did not see coming….Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus

I beg all writers and even directors to watch Gladiator, not for Russell Crowe but for the most gloriously succinct descent towards villainy I’ve ever seen! At the beginning Commodus is the Archetypal On-Screen Ancient Roman, spoilt and languid and selfish. But after, Joaquin helps the Audience record what makes him turn to Sociopathy!

Let your audience chapter your character’s rise or fall, love can hurtle a story onward but not quite like conflict does!

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I watched a documentary on Casablanca and it revealed something in storytelling that is unpopular but very true. It struck a chord with me as it was said very plainly, as if it was a badly kept secret: Not all the best stories have a happy ending and the greatest love doesn’t always remain.

This is the 21st Century and it’s stories are not Grimm Fairy tales, the world is too old and cynical for such things. But not if it has a good story, A Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor is when history and fiction come together to make absolute magic. It being a children’s story, you as a young reader are given hints of the dangerous prejudice of 1930’s but only because of the hints Cassie Logan is allowed to see and interpret for herself

Despite the poverty, the family unit is strong and you feel and appreciate it even with the subject matter. The writer must always find ways to alleviate a heavy storyline with thoughts and narratives of the human condition, even by humour.

Humour is the reason My Left Foot is such an institution in Irish Film-Making, Christy Brown was a painter with Cerebral Palsy, who honed his craft via ‘his left foot’. Despite the enormous struggles he and his parents faced, the Dublin humour depicted in the movie shines throughout and remains the best film showcasing Irish tenacity and heart, in my opinion. And the people are very proud of it, even now.

My point is life is a journey and so is the story, show it as such to your reader. The aching sadness of Thomas Hardy’s Jude, the Obscure may have been a bridge too far for the needful reader of happy endings but life is still life, even in fiction

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