Esteemed /lit/erati,
This is a question about storylines and what makes a good one, inspired by realising what the core thread of the SoIaF "trilogy" really is.
I have a question about some popular fantasy series by some guy with too many 'R's in his name, but, actually, it is a question about stories and storylines full-stop. I don't particularly want this thread to descend into "Martin sux" shitposting. I want reasoned thoughts about stories. While I've never read Martin's books, I'm now at a point in the tv series that the core thread of the story is coming to light.
See, I read somewhere that Mr RRRR conceived of a trilogy and while he was busy writing the first book – copying the whole thing from an English history text he borrowed from the library – he apparently realised, "Hey, this is good, I should do more of this," and ended-up turning his "first book" into three or four.
Yet, it does serve to distract from the core thread of this being a tale about the dragons, controlled by Brandon, saving the world from the magical White Walkers – a classic "dark lord" story if ever you've heard one. And, along the lines of the recent "Cliches" thread, doing something new and different is the way to rehash old storylines. Furthermore, it has kept the magical elements of fantasy to a minimum, thus attracting a large (tv) audience in who would normally be pretty wary of too much fantastic magic. Reasons I reckon LotR works, too. Concentration on the political war for three-or-four books, on making "The Tudors", Westerosi-style, dribbling out the core story thread in snippets and introducing ten thousand different characters all serves to distract and keep us from seeing the real story.
LotR was a pretty linear storyline and there's really not much, structurally, to it – Frodo inherits ring; Frodo journeys with some buddies to get rid of ring; Frodo is let down by buddies; Frodo worms his way through Mordor; Frodo is helped/hindered by Gollum; Frodo disposes of ring/Gollum; the end. It is a very simple storyline, and might have ended-up entirely boring were it not for all the … and here's that key word again… distractions from the core story.
So, we have Aragorn, an elf and a dwarf doing things in Rohan and then at a final battle that's really NOT the final battle but it serves as an exciting distraction, and we have a couple of comedy hobbits doing funny things (in the movies anyway) and destroying Orthanc. Again, while I appreciate it is all important threads in the story, especially Aragorn's slow acceptance of his future role in all this, the core thread of the story is Frodo and that damn ring. LotR's distractions are not as bad as quad-R's political/10,000-characters gumph, more like the whole Black Castle/Jon Snow storyline – definitely relevant for us to know all about the impending doom, but not being the core story.
>>8160483
(continued)
Another oft-used example (in sci-fi moreso) that comes to mind, is the old mixed-up timelines storyline where you're following the core thread rigidly, and nothing but that main character, but the timeline is all messed-up so you have to concentrate to keep-up – Memento by Chris Nolan comes to mind. It's again, the same linear story, but we're distracted from seeing it as that because time is messy.
Make sense? The theory is:
There is a core, linear thread of a story but to distract us from seeing it (as well as to make the whole story broader) we have other gumph or non-linear ways of telling it
Alright, so am I on the ball – that it is all about distraction and filler – and can we think of other TYPES of this sort of thing?
And, also, what works and what does not about this? What's the balance between "nice gumph" and "arrrrrrrrgh, get to the fucking point!"
tl:dr lol
yeah TLDR wtf man
>>8160488
>From sticky
>/lit/ is a slow board! Please take the time to read what others have written, and try to make thoughtful, well-written posts of your own.
Good to see /lit/ is staying true to its roots
And it's "tl;dr", philistine
>>8160488
>>8160504
>reads 300,000 word novels
>won't read 3,000 character essay
In film this is called an A-plot and a B-plot. It's so we don't get bored of the A-plot.
>>8160540
the only decent reply
I should have expected nothing more from the "hurr durr I dun read a book once" extension of /pol/
>>8160484
>There is a core, linear thread of a story but to distract us from seeing it (as well as to make the whole story broader) we have other gumph or non-linear ways of telling it
>Alright, so am I on the ball – that it is all about distraction and filler – and can we think of other TYPES of this sort of thing?
>And, also, what works and what does not about this? What's the balance between "nice gumph" and "arrrrrrrrgh, get to the fucking point!"
One of the first books that I thought of after reading this, the second in fact, was Ulysses, in which, as in many other stream-of-consciousness novels, the main story line is rather simple, but the way in which often very simple events are described lengthens the work, and gives additional depth to scenes that could have easily been otherwise ignored.
From Ulysses we can come to Odyssey and digressions and side stories—the oddyssey itself is not central to the poem; Odysseus’ homecoming is—although I find that Tristram Shandy exemplefies this a bit better, although it does go a bit too far to be compared to other novels. There is a ‘present time’ in TS, but very little occurs during that time and most of the novel is spent on long-winded digressions, which at times have nothing to do with the ‘main story’ if such a thing can be said to exist. Perhaps TS is the best example, as ‘[t]here is a core, linear thread of a story’, but Sterne works hard to confuse the reader and make him forget the rather simply story line as the novel jumps between different characters and points in time.
But I think that rather than asking ‘what works and what does not about this? What's the balance between "nice gumph" and "arrrrrrrrgh, get to the fucking point!"’—to which the answer would be it depends; it depends not only on the work and how it is employed, but also on the reader: some find long-winded digressions or extensive descriptions of simple events boring while others enjoy them—I think it would be better to think about their function within a certain work and compare different methods or techniques and how their purpose and usage differ. Questions such as ‘What is the purpose of the digressions in Tristram Shandy?’ ‘Why is the beach scene in PotAaYM written the way it is and not in some other way?’ and so on.
>>8160483
>reading for plot
Fail. Go back to /tv/, pleb.
