thread: 2005-11-14 : Long and Short
On 2005-11-15, Kip Manley wrote:
I must remember to breadcrumb my antecedents better, Vince, since that wasn't what I meant at all.
For "systematize it," I meant "creating a system howsomever formalized with the express goal of taking up a story and subjecting it to pressure."
I have no problem whatsoever with loading shotguns and handing them to other people so that they might point them at me. I have no qualms at all about systematizing that to whatever extent.
But the story that results for me is always the center of the burning wheel. It's radioactive. It's also only and always where you find it. Systematizing your approach to story necessarily excludes all the ways of approaching story that aren't in your system, and I go over all heebie-jeebie at the idea.
I realize I'm splitting hairs, and probably couldn't even point to the hairs I'm splitting: shades of the old story is character, character is setting, setting is plot debates, oy. All's I know is you've got systems for putting characters immediately under intense pressure, for which bully; you gestured vaguely toward the possibility of an idea of treating story the same way; and my knee jerked, my bones ached, and my weather-eye went all squinty. Nossir. Don't like it. (Thinking of story as analogous to a character under pressure in this manner as a way of conceptualizing or starting to how some start and some stop and some fizzle, that I have no problem with, because story is character, and character is plot, and.)
This makes VB go "ah, aha, aha."
No - I only meant that when you pressure a character, you get story. As many ways to create a story there are, they're all many ways to pressure a character.
This makes KM go "Swoosh!"
So I totally misread your vague gesture, which is what I was starting to think. See? Not so much with the clarity.
