fool me thirty-seven times, I got to get some of that action!
37 Signals pointed me to the fabulous blog of storyboard artist Mark Kennedy, Temple of the Seven Golden Camels. Scads of huge long posts of beautiful animation storyboards in which he breaks down particular techniques of visual storytelling. Here he talks about character introductions using the opening scene of Lifeboat (Hitchcock) as a case study: Hitchcock introduces each of his characters in seconds apiece, with subtle cues highlighting significant character traits.
One of my favorite movies, Snatch (Guy Ritchie), uses a flashy credits sequence to introduce the ensemble cast - each of a dozen or more characters is given no more than a second of action following a half-second freeze-frame. Freeze on Brick-top’s face, snarling smile, bad teeth and coke-bottle glasses, then release and he’s turning away and beating a man with a mallet. Zip off to the next character.
In both of these cases the directors intro their characters by showing-not-telling. That’s not simply an artifact of the visual medium; some directors would use voice-over to introduce the ensemble. That can also work - the voice-over does give you the opportunity to characterize the narrator - but it narrows the focus, and slows and dries out the flow. Narration would be a distinctly inferior approach in Lifeboat, which strives to place us into the constricted world of the lifeboat shared by these characters; narration would turn the film into a tale we hear, rather than a sequence we witness. In Snatch, the narrator is the thread that binds the disparate narratives together, helping us trust that the frenetic action sequences will eventually intersect.
This works in text, as well. I’ll try to think of some novels with good active character intros. Thinking about Knave, I realize that I intro two of my three narrators in narration, and one through the actions she’s engaged in. Guess which of the three intros I’m happiest with…
Apparently I’m identifying as an eliminationist right-wing coffee hater. Couldn’t be more wrong.
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I am:Alfred Bester A pyrotechnic talent who put only a small portion of his energy into writing. |
And I only had to change one answer to get there.
Via Jeff VanderMeer. Somebody get that man some cake - he looks angry.
Clearly, Harry is starting a cookie-monster death-metal band.
Just like Ministry…of Magic!
Chris asks us, while unveiling another brilliant painting of Kassandra. An extremely visual thinker, Chris sometimes sketches pictures of scenes in order to figure out how to write them.
I’m a visual thinker, too, but I draw about as well as I skimboard, and I still have a screwhole in my anklebone from my first attempt at that. So I fashion pictures in my head from amalgams of visual memories. Heathness, the setting of Knave, is a mashup of Lisbon, Rome, and Quebec City - cities on steep hills, Lisbon in particular has many alleys that turn into stairs, combined with the idea of a city that climbs up one face of a mountain. Quebec City is perched on a bluff that’s so steep that some of the streets wind back and forth, in switchbacks, to climb the side; it also has at least one funicular connecting its low town and the town center. Some thoughts of Venice in there, as well, which has alleys, marked as streets on the map, that are really tunnels; Venice also has a long, winding main canal, and Heathness has a serpentine main street. There are several parts of Heathness that I’ve mapped in my head, and some views that I can see as plainly as any real place in the world. Then there’s the place that Chris painted, which I never pictured myself:
The first character I pictured in Knave was Lord Helm, who’s a nasty dude, over seven feet tall and probably three feet wide; as a pyromancer, he’s always on the verge of bursting into flame and wears a cloak made of magically treated lead to reduce his cleaning bills.
Owen Barker, the POV character of the first chapter and one of the three heroes of the story, is slender, tall compared to anyone other than Lord Helm, and is always moving - bouncing on the balls of his feet, bouncing his sword off the ground.
Princess Martita is small, black-haired, and shy, always reading or writing or wishing that she were. She sits with her shoulders hunched forward, eyes downcast, but it’s hard to tell whether she’s deep in thought or afraid someone might be looking at her.
Stay the heck out of New Mexico.
The walkback edition…
http://movementarian.com/2006/12/10/comic-book-owners-of-the-world-unite/
Translations:
Randall Squared documented with some care some of the annoying tics in the review:
Now Mr. Swanson has stopped by the comments to drop the following bon mot:
I’m surprised that the one quote regarding Stross being a second-hander has garnered as much attention as it has. Here’s my rejoinder: http://movementarian.com/2006/12/10/comic-book-owners-of-the-world-unite/
Cheers.
Translation: I didn’t mean my words the way I wrote them! Second-hander is a compliment! Mountebanks are skilled entertainers! Quack, quack, quack!
Quick explanation for ideologues: if you wish your critiques to be taken seriously, and not as “hatchet jobs,” you have to refrain from slurs. “Intellectual mountebank” is a slur, a base and obvious one. “Second-hander” is perhaps less harsh, but a slur nonetheless. It’s my understanding of polite discourse that in a discussion of ideas, one refrains from personal attacks. Attribution of any kind of characteristic to the author of work has no place in a civil discussion of the work itself, something that the twenty-something Aggie and the real-estate developer who coathored the original review will no doubt discover as they continue their explorations into academe.
This is my favorite part of the rejoinder post:
The “second-hander†comment simply means that in terms of economics, the author is intellectually dependent on someone else. While this may have been harsh, I think this is fairly clear throughout the book that Stross did not have these portions of the book peer-reviewed by independent parties.
Peer review? for fiction? By economists? Ye gods, next they’ll want to vote on ice skating.
Fiction already has an extensive review process, far more rigorous than any used in academic journals: after the author completes a book, he/she has to find an agent. The agent chooses books on an impression of their market potential, based writing quality, genre fit, market fit, editorial preferences; basically, they represent fiction they think they can sell to editors. Editors buy fiction they think they can sell to bookstores that buy books they think they can sell to readers. Charles Stross has passed all of these filters with flying colors, which means he has run a gamut obviously far more stringent than the Mises Institute imposes on its book reviewers.
How peer review about for book reviews?
