Three things that set my thoughts whirling (in a good way)

[capri0mni]

In order of entry into my brain:

1) via butterflydreaming: The significance of plot without conflict (contrasting the predominate Western views of narrative structure with the storytelling form Kishōtenketsu in Japan)

2) Zen Pencils 119: John Green - "Make gifts for people."

Zen Pencils is a web "comic" that creates strips to illustrate inspirational quotes from different people. Here's the quote from John Green:

Every single day, I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice on how to become a writer... and here is the only advice I can give: Don't make stuff because you want to make money... it will never make you enough money. Don't make stuff because you want to be famous. You will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people. And work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice. Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won't. And if they don't notice, I know it's frustrating. But ultimately, that doesn't change anything because your responsibility is not to the people you're making the gift for... but to the gift itself.

3) Vi Hart has not been making very many videos, lately... but she'd been teasing for months that she was working on something epic. Yesterday, that epicness went up: a full thirty minutes explaining the philosophy and methods of 20th-Century Twelve Tone composers, like Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Along the way, she talks about the philosophy of creativity itself, and how we make meaningful connections out of chaos. She also rants about U.S. Copyright Law, and illustrates everything with awesome doodles... I've watched it something like five times through already, because every time I've gone to get the link to post it here, I get sucked into watching it again -- and end up laughing out loud, and applauding, and squeeing.

Here's her take on "Mary had a little lamb Laser Bat":

Mary had a Laser Bat,
Laser Bat, Laser Bat,
Mary had a Laser Bat
Whose eyes exterminated.

And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
And everywhere that Mary went
Her bat echo-located.

Here's a link to the whole thing: Twelve Tones

Comments

[spiralsheep]

1) Ooo... shiny link, thank you.

[capri0mni]

*G* That was pretty much my response to butterflydreaming

[spiralsheep]

Heh, and my other reactions are, of course:

2. to internally list exemplary refutations of the author's apparent simplistic assumption that the dominant "Western" narrative has ever been the only narrative (and equally assume that there are other narrative structures in Chinese and Japanese cultures - and non-narrative structures).

3. to, yet again, growl at the "Western" tendencies towards binary oppositions (and defining the tension between opposing pairs as "conflict" rather than dynamism, despite our scientific understandings that this is not the One True Story).

4. to want to make stuff (the juxtapositions and sudden new perspectives in the Japanese poetic forms I'm aware of have similar attractions. I was taught one layer of content structure as Subject → Moar on Subject → Meaningful Juxtaposition).

[capri0mni]

Heh. Yes... For all the author's claims that she was writing, meta-fashion, in the "Eastern" way, I did note that she seemed to set up Kishōtenketsu in conflict with the protagonist-antagonist narrative style.

4. Yes! for all of the above, I mostly felt: whee! a new way to think about stories (I wonder what I could do with it?)!

[fridgepunk]

I think the point of the peice is that it sets up the first 3 stages of kishotenketsu (here is kishotenketsu, here are elements of how it works, here is the three act structure) and is maybe leaving the 4th "act" unspoken as a way of saying "and now you must provide the 4th act that resolves and unifies this conflict"

Though I may just be overthinking things ;-)

[capri0mni]

and is maybe leaving the 4th "act" unspoken as a way of saying "and now you must provide the 4th act that resolves and unifies this conflict"

Perhaps.

It's definitely an idea I'd like to play with... especially since many ideas that come to me are little vignettes that have something to them... But I can't find an entry point into a "Story line" as I've been taught to think of it. Taking this on as an exercise may be a way to placate my myriad plot bunnies...