The Upgrade

If you’re one of our regular readers, you might have noticed that we’ve really stepped up our game here at the Fictorian Era. For one thing, we’ve increased the amount of content we deliver to you-almost doubled it, in fact. This has allowed us to bring you a lot more guest posts and points of view. We think that’s a good thing, and our site statistics since March tell us that you do, too. Activity on the site has steadily increased ever since, with each month trumping the last.

Therefore, to serve you better and further our goal of delivering some of the best writing content on the internet (a daunting goal), starting today we are making some site upgrades. Hopefully, you won’t notice the effects at all and the transition will be invisible. That said, we don’t want you to get worried if things don’t work/look exactly the same way you have become accustomed to. Even if we go dark for a little while, the Fictorians aren’t going anywhere. We promise!

Over the next few days, the old version of our site will be locked down. The primary symptom of this is that you sadly won’t be able to comment on any of our old posts. That’s only temporary. When you try to access the Fictorian Era, you also might see a message that says our site is being moved. If that happens, just wait patiently or try again later. If you don’t see that message, great! It means that the transition either hasn’t happened yet or you’re already seeing the new version of the site.

Our regular content will resume tomorrow, with an introduction to a whole month of new posts on the theme of writing and gaming, and the various ways those two pursuits intersect each other. As always, we’ve got a great line-up for you to look forward to.

See you on the flip side!

Storytelling Across Platforms

The first stories were told orally, in the light of flickering fires.  Over the centuries, storytelling has continued to evolve into a wide variety of formats.  One of these formats–movies–has been our topic this past month.  Another format will be our focus in August.

Storytellers-both ancient and modern-often act out parts of their stories.  Dramatization evolved into theatrical arts, such as stand-up comedy and plays.  The widespread use of home radio created radio dramas.  The invention of film evolved plays into movies.  The creation of television evolved plays into TV shows.   Or, consider cave paintings.  Sometimes, when viewed in sequence, they depict events, such as hunts.  When images are married to the written word, comic books, manga, and graphic novels are their descendants.

Yet TV didn’t kill plays, and comic books didn’t eliminate novels.  Radio dramas might be rarer today, but audiobooks continue to sell.  All these different forms of storytelling have survived and thrived side by side.  The reason for their proliferation is that different forms of storytelling appeal to different people.

We all have different learning styles:  visual, auditory, tactile, or some mixture of methods.  I have a friend, vision impaired and legally blind, who finds it much easier to enjoy television-listening to the story and watching the screen through a special magnifier-than to read a printed book with his devices.   I have another  friend-a published novelist-who doesn’t read novels for entertainment.  She learned her storytelling skills from movies and television and applied them to the written word.  Personally, I have prosopagnosia-the inability to distinguish between faces-which makes TV and movies challenging for me, since I often struggle to tell the characters apart.  As a result, my novel and comic book library vastly outstrips my DVD library.

Or, sometimes we want a specific experience with our story.  There’s the summer popcorn spectacle of going to see a movie with a group of friends.  There’s the dinner and the theatre date that marks a special occasion.  There’s curling up under the covers with a good book on a stormy winter day.  There’s the sick day spent in a video game marathon.   None of these experiences are the same, but all of them are centered around a story.

The keys to good storytelling are common across all these different forms.  These keys include:  suspense, strong characterization, eliciting emotion from the audience, interesting plots, conflict and resolution, theme, mood, and more.  Techniques vary – for example, in a novel, the author can write out the character’s thoughts, whereas in a movie, the director must choose between using camera work and the actor’s gestures to convey those thoughts, or using a voice-over narration to relate the thoughts to the audience-but story elements remain.  That’s why the lessons we learn from other forms of media can be applied to novel and short story writing.  That’s also why people are hired to write scripts that become movies, TV shows and video games; because you can’t just turn a group of actors and a camera crew loose and expect a coherent story to create itself.

This past month we’ve talked about storytelling lessons we’ve learned from movies.  Next month, we’ll be taking a look at storytelling in one of its newest forms:  games, both video and otherwise.  We’re fortunate to live in an era where we have so many different options for enjoying, and creating, our stories.

Amadeus: Dealing With an Unlikable Protagonist

A guest post by Scott Lee.

Amadeus JPEG for FictoriansThe central theme of 1985 Best-Picture winner Amadeus is the contrast between the sublimity of art created by God-given genius, and the all-too human person through whom the talent is expressed. This requires the film to first portray Mozart as a disgusting, vulgar, immature mismatch for the easy, perfect elegance of his music, and then, in the course of the story’s development to redeem him. The film makes several simple, brilliantly executed moves to bring this about. (1) It establishes Salieri as a sympathetic character for the audience to identify with so they don’t lose interest waiting for Mozart to grow more likable. (2) It lays seeds for the transfer of audience sympathy to Mozart even while explicitly establishing the more disgusting aspects of his character. (3) It moves Salieri on an opposite track, darkening him as Mozart is ennobled. Mozart becomes a maligned-if crass-innocent; Salieri, a literally satanic figure.

The audience is introduced to the suffering, forgotten Salieri before the end of the first shot. He cries out for forgiveness. He attempts suicide and is committed to a sanitarium. He proves to have been completely forgotten in his own land despite a life as a public figure. Finally, he has been eclipsed by Mozart, a man he considers his chief rival, and an immature, disgusting person.

This opening shows Salieri suffering profoundly for no apparent reason. It appears to demonstrate his sanity by comparison with other inmates of the sanitarium and demonstrates his sincerity by making his tale a confession to a visiting Priest. This firmly places the viewer’s sympathy with Salieri as the film begins.

Still, the seeds for a transfer of sympathy to Mozart are present. Mozart is the better known name. Our sympathies naturally fall with those we know. While no one living in the twentieth century can claim to know Mozart personally, we know his music and acknowledge him a towering musical talent. Furthermore, Salieri is shown attempting suicide which must occasion some doubt in the audience about his mental stability.

When Mozart appears, he is revealed as extraordinarily immature and vulgar, and completely unaware of social norms. His patron the Archbishop of Salzburg calls him a spoiled, arrogant brat. Attending a court function he disappears, chasing a young lady, swearing at her, and making vulgar sexual suggestions replete with middle-school bodily function vulgarity. He appears first to Salieri and the audience as a nameless “creature” only to be revealed as Mozart by ensuing dialog. The film leaves viewers appalled, having demonstrated the refined, elevated behavior of others at the concert, and having suggested that Mozart’s appearance and behavior would echo the heavenly elegance of his music. We are shocked along with Salieri. Salieri, who has pledged his industry, chastity, and humility to God, appears to great advantage next to Mozart. He seems everything expected of the composer of Mozart’s music: refined, poised, polite, and elegant, with an accomplished social grace.

Mozart’s next appearance is his first audience with Emperor Joseph II. He proves arrogant and condescending, and continues to be gratingly socially awkward. His brashness is matched by his talent, giving some partial justification of for his behavior, but the audience’s sympathy remains firmly with Salieri, whom Mozart indifferently humiliates.

Although still unlikable, Mozart is cast as an archetype from American popular myth: the gifted artist challenging tradition. He is placed in the role by the contempt the musical figures of the court show him. The artist in this role doesn’t have to overcome tradition to be heroic, he or she merely has to be shown to be true to their own artistic vision. In addition, our culture’s tendency to forgive the “peccadillos” of gifted artists begins to work in Mozart’s favor. Finally, while the audience still generally forgives Salieri, the doubts planted earlier continue, and his envy and dislike of Mozart are both obviously present and obviously growing, beginning Salieri’s darkening.

Mozart hits rock bottom in the aftermath of his first staged opera at the National Theater. He is caught having cheated on his fiancé with the woman who Salieri has chastely loved. Thus Mozart offends by hurting his naïve fiancé, and, although unknowingly, by acting against Salieri, who holds the audience’s sympathy. The film then demonstrates Mozart’s selfishness yet again, as he stands smiling guiltily and staring after the angry, departing Madame Cavalieri, while his fiancé vainly attempts to draw his attention to her unconscious mother.

With Mozart in the depths of opprobrium and Salieri at his highest estimation, the film begins the transfer of sympathy in earnest. Salieri steadily darkens, resorting to Machiavellian politics, lying to Mozart, posing as his friend and promoter at court while blocking his commissions, performances, etc., and finally plotting to murder him and steal credit for his work, While Mozart becomes increasingly sympathetic. His obnoxious behavior lessens. His laugh, a high pitched, animal’s bray that emphasizes his social awkwardness, disappears, only reappearing as a sign of growing illness and insanity. Despite Mozart’a apparent laziness, he is proven by Salieri’s own spy to be tremendously industrious in his work on his compositions. He proves loving and faithful to his wife, and increasingly more conservative in dress. His household is shown in slow dissolution, dropping from prestige into poverty as the result of Salieri’s hidden machinations. His immaturity appears increasingly innocent in comparison with Salieri’s increasingly malicious actions. His health deteriorates. His role as embodiment of common, democratic tastes is highlighted, while Salieri becomes the embodiment of authoritarian tradition. Finally, Mozart, lying fatally ill in his bed as Salieri pushes forward with his murderous plan, asks Salieri’s forgiveness for having thought ill of him. In return Salieri admits honest admiration and claims false affection, then insists that Mozart continue the composing effort that is killing him.

In a final shot at Salieri, the film returns to the sanitarium for the conclusion, where Salieri gloats about his victory over God through Mozart’s murder, proclaims himself the patron saint of mediocrities, and is wheeled through the sanitarium “absolving” the imbecilic inmates of their flaws and failings while a voice over of distinctive braying laughter literally gives Mozart the last laugh.

This is not to say the film presents a Christmas Carol style redemption of Mozart. Mozart fails to provide for his family. His wife abandons him for a time in the final act of the film, because he cannot resist the urge to slip off to drink and party. His drinking continually increases throughout the film, and his dependency on various unidentified medicines is explicitly mentioned. He has moments where he ignores his family in favor of his music. His tremendous self-confidence never lessens. Mozart is no Ebeneezer Scrooge, transformed overnight, or indeed even over years, into a perfectly virtuous saint. He remains to the end a vulgar man gifted with transcendent musical talent.

Amadeus beautifully makes a delicate storytelling move-choosing a protagonist who is initially flawed and unlikable and redeeming him in the eyes of the audience, transferring to him the audience’s sympathy and trust mid-story while never denying his essential character with its already established flaws. It accomplishes this by presenting Salieri to hold the sympathy and interest of the audience while establishing Mozart’s all too human character, and then slowly darkening him, even as Mozart’s own suffering and talent lead to his redemption.

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Writer, teacher, director, actor, husband, and father, Scott Lee has written stories and poetry since he learned to hold a pencil. His short story collection Singular Visions (a masters thesis written at CSU-Pueblo), is available through Proquest. He has also published in CSU-Pueblo’s Tempered Steel, and blogs at http://7worlds.tumblr.com

Ratatouille – A Recipe for Success

RatatouilleIf you’re going to name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn’t sound delicious. It sounds like “rat” and “patootie”. Rat patootie. Which does not sound delicious. (Linguine talking to Chef Skinner)

Aye, that’s the secret of success for the movie Ratatouille. Something ordinary, something that doesn’t sound delicious is made special, quintessential in fact,  through its treatment. This ordinary dish, with extraordinary treatment saves the day for our heroes. And it is this simple story, with its simple theme and simple circumstance, with attention to detail and character which makes an ordinary tale an extraordinary one.

Dear, sweet, innocent Remy is an ordinary rat with an extraordinary dream and a talent that only he believes in. As many writers and artists know, there’s a little Remy in all of us for coming of age isn’t just about teenagers – it’s about all who struggle to follow their hearts when no one else sees, let alone believes in the dream. This is the life lesson in Ratatouille and it is one which has been told countless times in books and movies but never as poignantly or memorably. Released in 2007, Pixar’s eighth film it grossed $623M, won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and garnered other honours.

What makes this movie it so appealing? It is its ability to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. It does this in terms of craft and emotional appeal. It’s a simple coming of age story told well with setbacks, physically dangerous moments (shotguns, sewer rapids, poison), emotional highs and lows and quintessential characters who aren’t overdone. Take the “bad guy’ Chef Skinner. He’s not an evil monster, just someone who has perverted Chef Gusteau’s dream for his own dreams of wealth. Emotionally, Remy’s passion to cook is something we can all relate to on a very basic level (we all like to eat) unlike fanciful dreams of having super strength, special powers or conquering evil demons. We all aspire to live our simple dreams, to have our talents grow so we can live them fully.

We are told that what seems extraordinary really is ordinary and the dream is within everyone’s reach. This happens when Colette tells Linguine, the garbage boy turned Chef with Remy’s help, that “People think haute cuisine is snooty. So chef must also be snooty. But not so.” She then gives Linguine the sordid bios of everyone cooking in the kitchen.

The movie also gives the option for settling – subverting the dream to do what others find acceptable. When his keen sense of smell saves his father from eating poisoned food, his talent is used sniff-check all food for poison before the pack eats it. Remy is now destined to suppress his desire to become a chef and to do work that benefits the pack. But settling isn’t an option when passions are followed and that’s when break out moments happen and that’s when Pixar plays to our deepest fears of rejection.

Unable to still his passion, Remy finds a piece of cheese and tries to cook it but he’s struck by lightning. Now, he needs some saffron and he knows it’s in the old woman’s house. While there, we learn that he reads and watches TV, something that rats don’t do. When the old woman she sees him, she grabs her shotgun and in the ensuing melee shoots down the roof, revealing the rat colony. In the ensuing escape, Remy is separated from his family. This is the ultimate break out point – alone, separated from his family emotionally and physically by his passion. Yet, this isn’t the only break out moment. The others happen when Remy and later when Linguine risk everything when they reveal themselves and share their secrets. Remy makes himself known in Chef Gusteau’s kitchen and is nearly drowned for it. Linguine reveals that he isn’t a chef, Remy the rat is and he loses his staff. Linguine and Remy reveal themselves to the food critic at the risk of losing all.

And though these trials and tribulations, the recipe for success is given for life and for the artist. When Colette is teaching Linguine about working in the kitchen, she tells him the golden rule: It was Chef Gusteau’s job to have something unexpected in every dish but it is their job to follow the recipe. That is the lesson every writer is told – learn the rules, master them and then only break them when you know what you’re doing and why. Incompetent Linguine can barely follow a recipe and is destined for disaster when Chef Skinner has Linguine cook Chef Gusteau’s worst dish ever. But it’s his mentor, Remy, who has studied food forever, who saves the day by breaking Colette’s golden rule.

Ratatouille is a beautiful movie that appeals to people of all ages, all walks of life and to everyone with a desire to follow a dream. It is a movie where the glamorous is made ordinary (French haute cuisine) and the ordinary is made glamorous (ratatouille, an ordinary stew becomes a signature dish) as the downtrodden (rat and orphan garbage boy) succeed. And it does this with grace, humour and wit without skirting the consequences of the journey.

When we make the ordinary extraordinary we indeed are masters of our craft.