Stories and egg salad
I have a character in search of a story, and while trying to shake that loose, I thought I'd list out the books and authors that made a huge impact on me over the years, and see what most jumped out.
I went through my bookshelves and jotted down the authors/books/etc that had a huge effect on me, either growing up or as an adult--the ones that lived in my head and imagination, the ones that I stole from and mixed up to create stories in my head over the decades, and/or went back to reread many times.
I dropped them into a spreadsheet column, then made columns for Characters, Setting, Plot, and Other, just to jot down the things that I remembered--I deliberately didn't go look them up, even if I hadn't read them in years and remembered almost nothing.
The thing I found surprising was that in no circumstance did I remember a book, video game, or graphic novel for its plot. Many of them have a sense of travel, journeying or questing, but I didn't go "Wow, man, there was this great plot twist!" or anything like that. To me, it seems that plot is mostly a vehicle to carry characters through a setting, which might explain why I have terrible problems coming up with plots: they're just not that important to me.
I seem to look for cynicism, mystery, history and absurdity.
"Cynical" popped up many times--cynical characters, cynical narrative voice. First person smartass/third person-limited smartass as a narrative voice (Miles Vorkosigan, Vlad Taltos, Hap [Hap and Leonard books, not show]). World-weary, stoic, charming bastards, and more often lower class than upper, Miles Vorkosigan aside.
Mystery is a big thing as well: feeding into a sense of deep time, deep history or a sense of the numinous. A sense that there are things outside one's knowledge or experience, and a number of the stories concern brushes with that. Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, which posits an Earth myriads of years in the future, with layers upon layers of civilizations beneath the feet, Tanith Lee's Flat Earth and its storylines playing out over centuries and millennia, Mushishi-concerned with the problems that happen when the mushi interact with the human world, Brunner's Traveller in Black, the wider world of the Moomins.
There's a set that concern the mythic made real, or travelling from this world into the mythic: O'Shea's Hounds of the Morrigan, the Green Knowe books, Jeanne Larson's Bronze Mirror and Silk Road (those books had a dual strand of a prosaic story told at the same time as a mythic, intertwining every so often), the video game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Others pull elements from the mythic to make the world: the Moomins (Finnish lore), the Witcher game (based on books I saven't read much of that use Polish and Eastern European fairy tale and lore). A deal of them also seem to fit a frontier theme, but that probably fits into the mythic as well: Mandalorian, Fallout 4, Saiyuki, Mass Effect (on the stellar frontier).
It may be notable that the only ones set in our world, in the modern day, that aren't mystery all have tricksters in them (Alan Mendohlsson, Gordon Korman, Alvin Fernald). The Hap and Leonard books are the only ones that don't fit that mold, but they're first-person smartass, a duo of badasses who bumble along, and an East Texas so over-the-top that it might as well be mythic.
And there's a huge streak of absurdity. Either the world itself is partially or completely absurd (Alice's Adventures on Wonderland, the Bagthorpe Saga, Pippi Longstocking, Gordon Korman's books), or the characters and/or narrative voice have a sense of the absurd (Ursula Vernon's characters, Terry Pratchett).
Other things that popped up: Badass/child duo and variants thereof such as Mandalorian/Child, Manji/Rin (Blade of the Immortal). Other other duos (these slashes are not slashing slashes): Frodo/Sam, Cutter/Skywise, Hap/Leonard, Fafhrd/Grey Mouser, Moomintroll/Snufkin. Something I loved as a kid, and while not so much now, I still like them to an extent is tricksters: Pippi Longstocking, Alan Mendohlsson, Alvin Fernald, the Fourth Doctor, Howl of Moving Castle fame, Miles Vorkosigan. (Miles is an anomaly in that we see the trickster from inside his own head: most times, the trickster is observed from outside.)
If anyone's interested, the spreadsheet is here.
DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE ME ANY CLOSER TO HAVING A PLOT? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SEND HELP
(Attempting to poke at plots, and all I can see is that most of them are solving mysteries or going on quests and that's pretty much takes in 2/3 of all the plots out there, really.)
Also, unrelatedly except that I've been intending to post this for a very long time and keep forgetting: the Bacon Deviled Egg Salad from Nom Nom Paleo is the most fantastic egg salad that either I or![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
myrialux have eaten. We've made it before--I must add neither of us cares for parsley so we leave it out, and we don't actually eat Paleo or keto, so we just use whatever mayo we have on hand (usually Kewpie). This time we added chopped-up leftover turkey to it, which works excellently, and there were no shallots at the grocery store so a Texas sweet onion was pressed into service. She also steams the eggs for 12 minutes and I usually steam them for 14-15 (I've been steaming instead of boiling for a few years now, because it's faster than waiting for water to come to a boil).
I went through my bookshelves and jotted down the authors/books/etc that had a huge effect on me, either growing up or as an adult--the ones that lived in my head and imagination, the ones that I stole from and mixed up to create stories in my head over the decades, and/or went back to reread many times.
I dropped them into a spreadsheet column, then made columns for Characters, Setting, Plot, and Other, just to jot down the things that I remembered--I deliberately didn't go look them up, even if I hadn't read them in years and remembered almost nothing.
The thing I found surprising was that in no circumstance did I remember a book, video game, or graphic novel for its plot. Many of them have a sense of travel, journeying or questing, but I didn't go "Wow, man, there was this great plot twist!" or anything like that. To me, it seems that plot is mostly a vehicle to carry characters through a setting, which might explain why I have terrible problems coming up with plots: they're just not that important to me.
I seem to look for cynicism, mystery, history and absurdity.
"Cynical" popped up many times--cynical characters, cynical narrative voice. First person smartass/third person-limited smartass as a narrative voice (Miles Vorkosigan, Vlad Taltos, Hap [Hap and Leonard books, not show]). World-weary, stoic, charming bastards, and more often lower class than upper, Miles Vorkosigan aside.
Mystery is a big thing as well: feeding into a sense of deep time, deep history or a sense of the numinous. A sense that there are things outside one's knowledge or experience, and a number of the stories concern brushes with that. Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, which posits an Earth myriads of years in the future, with layers upon layers of civilizations beneath the feet, Tanith Lee's Flat Earth and its storylines playing out over centuries and millennia, Mushishi-concerned with the problems that happen when the mushi interact with the human world, Brunner's Traveller in Black, the wider world of the Moomins.
There's a set that concern the mythic made real, or travelling from this world into the mythic: O'Shea's Hounds of the Morrigan, the Green Knowe books, Jeanne Larson's Bronze Mirror and Silk Road (those books had a dual strand of a prosaic story told at the same time as a mythic, intertwining every so often), the video game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Others pull elements from the mythic to make the world: the Moomins (Finnish lore), the Witcher game (based on books I saven't read much of that use Polish and Eastern European fairy tale and lore). A deal of them also seem to fit a frontier theme, but that probably fits into the mythic as well: Mandalorian, Fallout 4, Saiyuki, Mass Effect (on the stellar frontier).
It may be notable that the only ones set in our world, in the modern day, that aren't mystery all have tricksters in them (Alan Mendohlsson, Gordon Korman, Alvin Fernald). The Hap and Leonard books are the only ones that don't fit that mold, but they're first-person smartass, a duo of badasses who bumble along, and an East Texas so over-the-top that it might as well be mythic.
And there's a huge streak of absurdity. Either the world itself is partially or completely absurd (Alice's Adventures on Wonderland, the Bagthorpe Saga, Pippi Longstocking, Gordon Korman's books), or the characters and/or narrative voice have a sense of the absurd (Ursula Vernon's characters, Terry Pratchett).
Other things that popped up: Badass/child duo and variants thereof such as Mandalorian/Child, Manji/Rin (Blade of the Immortal). Other other duos (these slashes are not slashing slashes): Frodo/Sam, Cutter/Skywise, Hap/Leonard, Fafhrd/Grey Mouser, Moomintroll/Snufkin. Something I loved as a kid, and while not so much now, I still like them to an extent is tricksters: Pippi Longstocking, Alan Mendohlsson, Alvin Fernald, the Fourth Doctor, Howl of Moving Castle fame, Miles Vorkosigan. (Miles is an anomaly in that we see the trickster from inside his own head: most times, the trickster is observed from outside.)
If anyone's interested, the spreadsheet is here.
DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE ME ANY CLOSER TO HAVING A PLOT? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SEND HELP
(Attempting to poke at plots, and all I can see is that most of them are solving mysteries or going on quests and that's pretty much takes in 2/3 of all the plots out there, really.)
Also, unrelatedly except that I've been intending to post this for a very long time and keep forgetting: the Bacon Deviled Egg Salad from Nom Nom Paleo is the most fantastic egg salad that either I or
myrialux have eaten. We've made it before--I must add neither of us cares for parsley so we leave it out, and we don't actually eat Paleo or keto, so we just use whatever mayo we have on hand (usually Kewpie). This time we added chopped-up leftover turkey to it, which works excellently, and there were no shallots at the grocery store so a Texas sweet onion was pressed into service. She also steams the eggs for 12 minutes and I usually steam them for 14-15 (I've been steaming instead of boiling for a few years now, because it's faster than waiting for water to come to a boil).
no subject
1. Protagonist wants something, and will grab/break/steal whatever or whoever is necessary to get it. (Cf Babylon 5: "What do you want?")
2. Villain wants something, protagonist will do whatever it takes to stop him/her/they/it. (Frodo would've been fine with staying a country squire, but he wasn't going to let Sauron get away with stuff.)
3. Protagonist wanders around and bumps into interesting people (Not as strong as the others, but Pratchett got a lot of books out of Rincewind).
For your situation, what does your character want? Fear? What constraints are they limited by? (A Regency romance character doesn't want much, but the constraints are tremendous.)
no subject
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/another_word_01_18/