Category: Story Tools and Theory

Today we tackle and solve one of the eternal questions of humanity: what is truth? And what do we mean when we talk about truth and story? We have all the answers here for you guys. Seriously, we worked it out. You’re welcome.

Ross’ Notes:

• Man, I’m talking fast. But hey, I’m passionate about truth and story! Maybe listen to this at 0.75 speed. I don’t know.
• What percentage of the Bible do YOU think is factual? Tweet us a percentage mark with the #fictionhack.
• Here is the letter from theologian Karl Barth:

Basel, 18 Feb. 1965 

Dear Christine, 

You have had to wait a terribly long time for an answer to your letter of 13 Dec.—not because of indifference, for I am sincerely interested in your welfare, and in that of your mother and sisters, and am always pleased to have good news from Zollikofen [near Bern, Switzerland].

Has no one explained to you in your seminar that one can as little compare the biblical creation story and a scientific theory like that of evolution as one can compare, shall we say, an organ and a vacuum-cleaner—that there can be as little question of harmony between as of contradiction? 

The creation story is a witness to the beginning or becoming of all reality distinct from God in the light of God’s later acts and words relating to his people Israel—naturally in the form of a saga or poem. The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain the same reality in its inner nexus—naturally in the form of a scientific hypothesis. 

The creation story deals only with the becoming of all things, and therefore with the revelation of God, which is inaccessible to science as such. The theory of evolution deals with what has become, as it appears to human observation and research and as it invites human interpretation. Thus one’s attitude to the creation story and the theory of evolution can take the form of an either/or only if one shuts oneself off completely from faith in God’s revelation or from the mind (or opportunity) for scientific understanding. 

So tell the teacher concerned that she should distinguish what is to be distinguished and not shut herself off completely from either side. 

My answer comes so late because on the very day you wrote, 13 Dec., I had a stroke and had to spend several weeks in the hospital. 

With sincere greetings which you may also pass on to your mother and sisters, 

Yours, 
Uncle Karl

Taken from http://www.faith-theology.com/2006/01/creation-and-evolution-letter-from.html

• I was always curious as to why it is The Picture of Dorian Grey, not the Portrait. Not sure why Wilde made that decision, but he was was a genius, I don’t question, only seek to understand.
• The line from the preface I’m referencing reads, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” And, as I say, he goes on to write a startlingly moral book. Again, Wilde is so complex, and he understood truth and story as meaning something different to what we’re talking about here, that there were any number of reasons why he may have written what he did. One that I didn’t bring up was that he thought this was true. Again, author’s aren’t always the best people to talk to about their own work, or how it should be purposed.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes I’m referencing are Descent I & II, from seasons 6 and 7.
• I’m thinking of making t-shirts that say “You Can’t Live On Crack”.
• That G. K. Chesterton quote in context (emphasis mine):

Literature and fiction are two entirely
different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
A work of art can hardly be too short, for its climax is its merit.
A story can never be too long, for its conclusion is merely
to be deplored, like the last halfpenny or the last pipelight.
And so, while the increase of the artistic conscience tends
in more ambitious works to brevity and impressionism, voluminous
industry still marks the producer of the true romantic trash.
There was no end to the ballads of Robin Hood; there is no end
to the volumes about Dick Deadshot and the Avenging Nine. These two
heroes are deliberately conceived as immortal.

The full short essay is available at: http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/penny-dreadfuls.html

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We all think we know what we mean when we talk about protagonists and antagonists, but do we actually? Let’s dive deeper into the words’ origins…

Ross’ Notes

• First up, as I hope I made clear, I am not using these two words in their conventional meaning. The accepted usage of “protagonist” today is simply “main character”. I think that this loses an important nuance, however, and one that we would have to invent terminology to redefine both protagonists and antagonists. Why go to that hassle when we can just use the old word in a new way?
• From Wiktionary: PROTAGONST – from Ancient Greek πρωταγωνιστής (prōtagōnistḗs, “a chief actor”), from πρῶτος (prôtos, “first”) + ἀγωνιστής (agōnistḗs, “a combatant, pleader, actor”).
• From Wiktionary: ANTAGONIST – From Ancient Greek ἀνταγωνιστής (antagōnistḗs, “opponent”) (ἀντί (antí, “against”) + ἀγωνιστής (agōnistḗs, “a combatant, pleader, actor”)), from ἀνταγωνίζεσθαι (antagōnízesthai, “antagonize”).
• My explanation of Greek Tragedy is very brief and mostly inaccurate. But it will do for now as a simple understanding until we can explore it more later. A certain amount of Classics scholarship is guesswork, supposition, or hearsay anyway.
• Important to understand about Predator (1987), the actual story being told changes. This is a comprehensive flip–all story objectives are exchanged for completely new objectives. Thus the protagonists’ and antagonists’ roles flip.
• Anagnorisis is my new favourite word. Might be worth an episode. Write in if you’d like to hear that.
• That’s me, still bringing up Star Wars…
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was written by Robert Bolt, who certainly knew what he was about. He won two Oscars and wrote the screenplays for Doctor Zhivago (1965), A Man For All Seasons (1966), which is another personal favourite, and The Mission (1988). 
• Definitely check out Changing Lanes (2002). Very interesting when discussing protagonists and antagonists.
• Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is certainly one of the more spirited and violent fish-out-of-water stories you’ll come across.

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As Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once said: “I’ve got a gun!” Why is this an important statement in the history of fictional narrative? And how does it relate to some sort of box that J. J. Abrams once got as a kid? (Hint: Alfred Hitchcock)

The answers are inside…

Ross’ Show Notes

• The Chekhov’s gun quotes are from Wikipedia:

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

“One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (pseudonym of A. S. Gruzinsky), 1 November 1889.

“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” From Gurlyand’s Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov, in Teatr i iskusstvo 1904, No. 28, 11 July, p. 521.

• The Hitchcock quote about suspense vs surprise can be found on Goodreads, but the book it is from is called “Hitchcock” by Francois Truffaut:

“There is a distinct difference between “suspense” and “surprise,” and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”

• The Damon Lindelof quote about Star Trek: Into Darkness is from Collider.com. I just found that it was originally from an interview with the LA Times:

“[If I tell people who Cumberbatch plays, they know that they] would have a five-second rush of exhilaration followed by four months of being completely and totally bummed out that they can’t tell anybody else and that when it gets revealed in the movie, it will have been spoiled for them. That’s why they’re called ‘spoilers,’ they’re not called ‘awesomes.’”

• J. J. Abram’s TED talk is still up on their website, but I’ll also post it below. I’m still scratching my head about it. I don’t know, should I let it go?

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