Critiquing and ending

[mrissa]

So. I was talking to some folks about critiques for the current book, when the time comes, and I had to keep saying the same thing enough times that it just needed to be public: I think it's extremely valuable to have non-writers read and critique books. This is not in lieu of having skilled writers doing critiques but in addition to it. Ideally, the finished books will be read by non-writers, and just as only having people of one sex or only having people of one age critique a book can skew the type of critique one will get, only having people of one approach to the written word read it might skew the response.

I think some non-writers are a little shy about this because they don't necessarily know what a good critique looks like. Trust me, writers sometimes have all the jargon down and brilliant ideas for exactly how, technically, to fix a scene -- and other times we will look at each other and go, "I dunno, it's just that this part kinda goes whoppita whoppita whoppita when it should go whirrrrrr, y'know?" Or else, "I think it needs to be more, kinda, um, um...manic...does that make sense?" If you socialize with writers you should know that we are not necessarily more coherent than other people until we've had several drafts to hammer out the whoppitas and the ums. And we probably ask each other, "Does that make sense?" more often than the international average, not less. And sometimes the whoppitas and the ums are the bits that make for a good and useful critique and the detailed, technical jargon ideas about how to fix something turn out not to be very useful.

Also writing-related: awhile back people were talking about what, if anything, writers owe readers. And watching Season 3 Veronica Mars made me think of something in that direction. I think one of the things we owe readers is to put telling the current story to the best of our abilities ahead of marketing future stories. And another thing is to do our damnedest to tell them whole stories. The ending may be unresolved, but as long as we're alive and able to work, it shouldn't be unresolved for no reason. An ambiguous ending should be a choice rather than a failure to finish. Because a story is not about the storyteller being able to continue telling tales. It's about itself, and it should have a pretty firm dependence upon the storyteller's tales being worth telling.

The way TV shows are made is terrible for this, and I know that. No book editor in the world would ever look at someone who had written two 100K novels and say, "Okay...well...I might let you write another 100K about these characters, but...give me a 30K novella about them first. Then we'll see if we can tack on a 10K novelette. Twice. And then we'll see if another 40K novella does the trick, and no, wait, you can't have those last 10K; oh well. Hey, you appear to have turned in incompetent directionless crap! Huh, let's see how that sells. Badly. Oh. Bye, then." But the choices Rob Thomas made in the way he handled the impending cancellation of VM were not about bringing the story to as much of a close as he could at that point in its telling -- they were not about giving us the ending of a decent "middle book," say. They were about flailing around desperately trying to demonstrate to the network that he wasn't done telling it. As if the network cared.

I feel sorry for him, but having watched the director's commentary, I just wanted to shake him and say, "Idiot, the network was already screwing you over. It was going to keep screwing you over. And doing a crappy job for the actual viewers, few though we may have been at that point, was not the answer. Dude. You have just been telling two seasons worth of a story about how everything has consequences. I want you to watch the old episodes of your own show and think about what you've done. And for your penance, write me a show starring Percy Daggs as a bioengineer and Francis Capra as...um...something appropriately snarky and conflicted, okay? And Tina Majorino as Mac In A Very Slight And Unconvincing Disguise. All right, you can go now."

Sheesh.

Comments

Re: finishing a story

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. If a writer has engaged an audience in their tale, they owe it to the reader to follow through. JK Rowling owed her readers the final Harry Potter book. It would not have been okay to decide she was bored and just walk away after Half Blood Prince. In a similar vein, George RR Martin owes us another Fire and Ice book and I am trying susper hard to be patient even though I may just die of the waiting. ;)

What they don't owe me is the ending of my choice. A lot of people are mad at Rowling over one thing or another that didn't come out the way they wanted. I have a few things I wanted to see that didn't happen (and one that I wanted NOT to happen but it did) but those aren't my due. It was her world, her book and her choice how to wrap it up.

Re: finishing a story

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly: annoy me with your ending if you like. But don't annoy me with your wandering off to look at something shiny.

(No introduction of new secret societies in the last two episodes of a show! Sheesh!)

Re: finishing a story

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

There's a fine line, though, between a writer wrapping up the story the way you wanted them to, and wrapping it up in a way that is honest and fair to the preceding material. If the latter is not the former, then I may (from my subjective point of view) feel like the writer betrayed their story, when someone else might say they did exactly the right thing.

Does that make sense?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I always thought the way Angel handled its cancellation was interesting. It didn't satisfy me, per se, but I don't think they had the space left to manage satisfaction without being offensively trite. In which case, screw wrapping stuff up; just go out with the biggest bang you can achieve.

Of course, sometimes that puts you in a hole. My understanding was that The X-Files was canceled after one season. Fortunately for them, they found a way to make plot out of the door they slammed shut at the end of that season.

You're absolutely right, though, about the crack-ass setup of TV production. Makes it all the more impressive when they manage to build a solid, compelling story out of it anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, not wrapping stuff up when you're canceled, fine. If that's what you have to do under the circumstances. Creating new stuff out of thin air to be not-wrapped-up: um, cut it out, dude.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

And then there's The Sandbaggers. Which ends in a horribly unsatisfying manner because the show's creator and main writer vanished in 1980 under highly suspicious circumstances.

On the other hand, given the show's subject matter, that just adds to its mystique.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yah, that may well fall into "beyond the author's control." One certainly hopes so....

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Maybe, maybe not. The popular theory among the cast and crew was that he had defected to the Soviet Union -- but when the Iron Curtain fell, no sign of him over there, either.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I agree about how TV is a horrible way of telling a complete story.

What I find interesting is reportedly the show Heroes has announced a definitive end to the series, I think after four seasons. Do I believe them? Not so sure about that. But I respect that they're attempting to tell exactly one complete story.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, and I was satisfied with the way VM told Seasons 1 and 2. Not everything was tied up with a bow, but the major story arcs for each season were resolved in interesting ways. It's just Season 3 that fell apart utterly.

I think it's far easier to tell a complete story in a single season than to tell a story that arcs over multiple seasons -- personnel changes/availability over four years have to be an issue. So if Heroes can pull it off -- I haven't tried it, and most of what I'm hearing lately makes me nervous of trying it -- I'll be pretty impressed, too.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

Thirded with addenda. Television is not like this everywhere and all of the time. Though it is less prevalent now, in Britain, many shows are produced as a series of set length from perhaps four to 15 episodes, with the next series not to be made and the cast and crew re-united until the head vision person (whether this is a showrunner, writer, producer or whatever) has got a complete story to tell in the same universe and the energy and circumstances to do it justice. Sometimes this isn't for years. Yes, this means that you don't get to lock in actors for five years, or have a 'sure bet' show that you can build an audience for over years of broadcast, but it means that you've got a better chance at better shows and time in-between for word to spread about them. Neil Gaiman wrote a nice peice about how that worked, both as a viewer and when involved in production of television, but 20 minutes of looking hasn't found it for me. Maybe someone else might have better luck.

Oh right, and a nice example of someone actually pulling off a multi-year planned storyline in the North American TV environment is J. Michael Straczinsky with Babylon 5.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Oh right, and a nice example of someone actually pulling off a multi-year planned storyline in the North American TV environment is J. Michael Straczinsky with Babylon 5.

Considering the pacing crunches and grinds in the last two years of that because of uncertainties about continuation, I hope you were being sardonic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm with rysmiel: Seasons 4 and 5 were certainly patchy at best when it comes to pulling off the planned multi-year storyline.

I also wonder if it's coincidence that I've seen very few British shows with very young actors (pre-university age), or whether it's harder to think, "Well, we'll just get the cast back together and do another one...except...crud, the 10-year-old is now quite visibly 14...."

[seabream.livejournal.com]

Granted about 4 and 5. I remembered enjoying events from those seasons more than I did flow. I couldn't think of a better example, in genre, of that length or I would have used it instead. I suppose that it just stuck with me that someone did sketch out a five year storyline and get five seasons in which to tell it, even with interference and schedule problems, in NA, on television. As I understand it, it is getting even more difficult to do that now as executive tenures seem to be getting shorter and individuals have less discretion, so it will probably be awhile before someone else can come close. So, mmm, lesson reinforced - always be careful with adjectives, among other things. *ow, sigh*

You have a point. Another characteristic of most of the shows I've seen this with (mostly in the mystery or procedural side of things) is generally there is only one central character with few supporting so almost everyone can be written around or re-cast without causing serious disruption. Offhand, I can't think of any ensembles. That said, (though these use the season rather than series model) examples of successful ensemble shows that re-cast everybody can be found in soaps on both sides of the Atlantic as well as Australia, so re-casting children for a returning series could probably be done with the right kinds of audience.

I wonder if we transitioned to that production style if we would just end up with lots of series of the types that we already get in mini-series. i.e.: often low-production values and formulaic plots.
I would hope for more daring ideas and artistic freedom since the monetary risk could be lower, not only for production, but for promotion since a lot of the costly big events and blitzes that one sees networks do for shows intended to be anchors for a year of 22 episodes wouldn't make sense for a schedule composed of six to eight episode series.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am always mildly baffled by recasting a role. "Oh, really, this is Bob! We know he looks totally different! But -- definitely Bob!" But if the gap between them was years long, maybe it would work better for me. I don't know.

"What she said" about critiques

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Based on listening to quite a few full-time writers talk about critiques, from each other, from me, from other friends, over the years, it's so VERY much not about technical terms, doing it "right", etc.

From what I have heard writers saying, the single most important thing most writers get out of a critique is the knowledge that a reader was unhappy, uncomfortable, had a problem, with some particular scene, action, outcome, paragraph, or something. What they thought the problem was is less important (and this is just as true when the critique is from another professional writer as when it's from some "random" reader). Suggestions on how to fix the problem are mostly not useful (except each writer knows a very few people they seem to be able to get useful ideas on how to fix things from).

Since all writers are fruit-bats, no doubt there are writers for whom this works very differently, in all possible directions. The grandeur of diversity!

Re: "What she said" about critiques

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And the very few people who are good for ideas on how to fix things may or may not be writers. Because the ideas are often things like, "What about her grandma?" or, "Should it maybe begin in the middle instead of the beginning [or vice versa]?" rather than things no non-writer could possibly think of.

Re: "What she said" about critiques

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"Why don't you put the climax at the end ?"

Re: "What she said" about critiques

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

*goes to fix book*

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

If you socialize with writers you should know that we are not necessarily more coherent than other people until we've had several drafts to hammer out the whoppitas and the ums. And we probably ask each other, "Does that make sense?" more often than the international average, not less.

*weeps* Yes.

[david-de-beer.livejournal.com]

"Does that make sense?" more often than the international average

lol! I didn't know other people did that too, now I feel less self-conscious about it.