One thing that changes everything

In my introductory essay I spoke of the idea of a story as a machine, where moving one part of the system could produce a drastically different end result. Ayn Rand discussed this in detail in a fiction writing class which was held in her living room that later became the basis of her book "The Art of Fiction." Her focus was on the idea that in order to achieve a certain end result a specific groundwork must be built in advance.

She used as an example the first meeting between Howard Roark and Peter Keating:

In the published novel Roark sticks to his principles and refuses to acknowledge his expulsion from architecture school setback or gauge his expulsion against Keating's graduation with honors from the same school. He shows a quiet confidence which can be mistaken for rudeness or arrogance while Keating seems entirely unsure of himself or his future.

In her rewritten excerpt Roark is much more polite. As a result of this Roark does compare his own expulsion to Keating's graduation and shows just a hint of fear about the fact that he may not come back from this setback. Keating's confrontational nature with Roark comes off as confidence against Roark's lack of strength in his conviction while in the other version it just underscores Keating's own insecurities against Roark's strong convictions.

Rand pointed out that the Roark of the rewritten version could not handle the stress of the later events of the book and would give up his struggle far too easily. This would effectively kill the story. But what about cases where a change like this wouldn't necessarily kill the story so much as create a new one.

David Morrell's novel First Blood stayed in developmental limbo for a long time with every major leading man in Hollywood turning down the role of Rambo. Ironically the character did not receive the first name of "John" until a young actor/screenwriter named Sylvester Stallone finally did take the role as well as take up the task of cleaning up the script which had become a mess by this point.

To be fair a number of factors kept this film from happening. The novel covers a cat and mouse game between a small town sherriff and a mentally unstable vagrant, but if the story really was that simple adaptation would be easy. Both men are portrayed as mirror images of each other both decorated veterans (Will Teasle receiving the second highest honor of Distinguished Service Cross, John Rambo receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor) with their biggest difference being how each did or didn't reintegrate into society. There is a big focus in the novel on the idea of fathers and sons, with a number of key elements of the story resting on this theme, but there is also a large focus on what goes on in a man's mind as opposed to what they make known to the rest of the world.

The way the novel was structured was so that it was up to the reader with whom they sympathized. A great deal of this was based largely on the aforementioned internal dialogue. Each man did questionable things but the internal monologue made each man's actions a bit more sympathetic. This is one of the hardest things to capture on film and as a result it would really only be likley to treat the film as one sided while the other side was drastically simplified.

As a result, the script that finally made the book filmable used a technique like the one from Rand's class. In the book Rambo had essentially made into an unstoppable killing machine by his time in Viet Nam and he winds up mercilessly killing a large number of innocent deputies and national guard members. Stallone's Rambo still understood enough to maim but not kill most men he encountered. It's hard to look at Stallone's Rambo as anything other than a hero when you can see how easy it would be to kill everyone in his path yet he uses enough restraint to avoid killing almost any innocents.

It's a slight shift to the character that changes the whole story. Rambo doesn't do anything drastic until after being provoked enough that anyone would respond. Instead of killing first and possibly never asking questions, he lashes out hard, but always makes it clear that all he really wants is to just be left alone. By the end of the story Rambo isn't just a wild animal who needs put down, he's a man who's had a hard life who deserves a real chance at redemption who will eventually get many.

If you have a singular goal for a work of fiction the initial groundwork is very important and something which needs to be done, and done in a very specific way, but there have been a number of largely commercial undertakings that show just what can happen when you're ready to see what happens when you change one small foundational point. Mark Steven Johnson's Daredevil film changed from a story of love and revenge to a story of a man brought to the breaking point by an all consuming feud. And if you're willing to brave the world of comparing theatrical cuts to directors cuts and scouring director commentary you can find dozens of other examples of such changes. Who knows sometimes using this technique can be the thing that turns a good story into a great one.

The Story is Key

I've read some recent reviews of Frank Miller's solo directorial debut the Spirit and it seems he should've spent another film or two working as an apprentice to really learn how to undertake working in this new medium for him. Another thing which I think may have been the problem with this film was the source material of a project like this. Eisner's run on his creation, the Spirit was marked by constant experimentation as well a range that ran all the way from the dramatic to the whimsical.

The previous adaptations of Miller's work were as good as they were because they had a strong story (or stories) working as their spine. In some cases the techniques which Miller had developed on the printed page after finally learning that "comics are more than just films on paper" fell flat on film, but the whole work itself was strong.

If you ask any fan of the Spirit they will tell you that the series' draw was the experimentation, like every installment was a clinic in storytelling in the comics medium. They also probably could not tell you which singular Spirit story they would call a "signature" story.

In a way this was probably the worst license to give Miller to "experiment with" however. Since there is no signature Spirit story offering Miller this film would be like one of the major publishing houses offering him someone like Spider-Man and simply saying "Make a movie."

The irony being that it would be substantially easier with a number of the major characters from Marvel or DC.

Spider-man has a fairly interesting origin story, even though it's a bit recycled since all major Marvel heroes share some variation on the same origin. But likewise the same could be said of each of his numerous interesting villains. On top of that there have been a number of great stories which could be mined to great benefit, such as: The death of Captain Stacy, the Death of Gwen Stacy, his courtship and marriage to Mary-Jane Watson, etc...

Batman has a laundry list of great stories, the origin of course which is a bit overused if for no other reason than being one of the first of its kind, each of his numerous villain's unique origins, but beyond that there have been a number of great stories which could be easily adapted, A Death in the Family, A lonely Place of Dying, The Killing Joke, Year One, The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Venom, Knightfall/Knightquest/Knight's End.

You may think that Superman would have a similar amount of great stories behind him but he suffers from a fate similar to Mickey Mouse in that he's almost more of a logo than a character. Most of his great stories are unique re-tellings of his origin or stories of his end. Though because his supporting cast and world is so well established if it is respected it is very easy to create a great story. Just remember that Lois and Clark/Superman always have a great back and forth like any screwball romantic comedy pair whether Lois knows the secret or not (but she is a great reporter so don't make her look stupid). The rest you could probably figure out.

But for something like a film it isn't something which should be done on the fly which based on what Miller says his comic writing style is like as well as reviews of the film seem to indicate has happened. Hopefully Miller will get a chance to learn from his mistake. One thing that anyone can learn from this is the importance of a strong story as the core of a great film, because there's only so much that be covered by a unique visual style and a great cast... which are luxuries which many filmmakers cannot afford.

That's such a Rip-Off.

"The Machinist" is a total rip-off of "Fight Club." I mean it features a lead character who suffers from insomnia whose subconscious creates a trickster character as a delusion who tries to control the actions of the actual person.

It's just like in comics when they copied that character who was an orphan who through a strange combination of events (possibly involving an animal) gained some phenomenal abilities which he would later go on to use to fight injustice maybe in response to some personal loss. I'm trying to remember whose story that was, Superman, Batman, Spider-man or all of the above.

J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the show Babylon 5 and author of a good run on Amazing Spider-Man, made a point when discussing plagiarism. He gave the basic plot to a story which went like this:

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy runs into opposition to love for girl. Boy Dies.

He then proceeded to ask if this was a summary of Romeo and Juliet or King
Kong, to which he answered yes.


An interesting thing about the progression of human knowledge is how it actually works. Every advance is an accomplishment and an achievement in and of itself, but once it happens it becomes a tool which can be employed by others.

Artist Micheal Newberry made a great point about this:

Innovation is a funny thing in art. An artist could easily lose their way by attempting to be innovative in everything they do and lose sight of what their core belief and soul are. On the other hand there are plenty of artists that remain true to themselves and yet use the tools of art that they were simply taught. I view art history more like a palette of colors to tweak, as one of many means to breath freshness into the work; but the end point always comes out of my soul.

There's also a well known saying that "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." And it's rarely on better display than in examples like the ones I listed above. But this requires further explanation.

A film like "The Machinist" was often dismissed as a simple derivative work of "Fight Club." It used a number of the same narrative tools of "Fight Club" this includes: an unreliable narrator, a trickster character who later turns out to be a product of said narrator's imagination, and insomnia as a plot device.

What made it different was the manner in which those devices were used. In "Fight Club" the plot is driven by the emergence of the lead character's frustrated ego in the form of a separate personality named Tyler Durden who tries to drag the man's behavior deeper into madness, terrorism and nihilism. The insomnia facilitates this development in both stories. In "The Machinist" the events are similar but the motivation is in reverse. The trickster delusion in the Machinist serves the opposite purpose. In the Machinist Trevor Reznik is both trying desperately to discover an underlying mystery that will explain his insomnia, but at the same time he's deathly afraid to discover the secret. His delusion serves the purpose of keeping him focused on reality and facing his metaphorical demons no matter how hard. But it's also fair to mention that "The Machinist" takes at least as much from the Roman Polanski film "Repulsion" (a film which is frequently copied in its own right) as it does from Fight Club.

In the course of using a number of the same story elements something completely new and different was created. This is how great art is supposed to work. You learn to understand what made everything in a story work, and then learn to use it as a tool of your own. Just because something hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it's good, but the real secret is to learn how to use everything that's gone before you and add more than you took.

Introduction to Dissecting the Machine

Storytelling has really been my life. I started coming up with sets of characters and scenarios when I was very young and one of the big driving forces in my life has been the idea of doing this well and constantly learning to do it better. But the truth of the matter is that even if the drive comes naturally, the skill to use that drive does not.

At the end of the day I'm a "nuts and bolts" guy when it comes to aesthetics. I'll read a novel and compare it to the film adaptation to see where things were improved or worsened. I'll compare different adaptations of the same story. I watch different edits of the same film. I listen to director commentaries and watch deleted scenes and try to determine if they handled the tough decisions correctly.

I can watch a film or read a novel and see it like an engine and understand how moving different elements of the story or "pressure valves" can drastically affect the overall work. It can turn an unstoppable psychopath into a lovable loser who can't catch a break. It can turn a bold man who takes charge of his own life into a neurotic wreck who can't keep anything together.

Ultimately more so than any other form of art a story is a machine. The characters, setting, events and everything that goes into a story are little more than Gears, tools and pressure valves which make this machine run properly and perform the task it was built to do.

My goal here is to discuss the ideas behind how the machine itself works. To name, describe and discuss all the tools that make a good story and point out how they have been best applied in the past and can be applied in the future.

The nature of visual literary arts

The origin of this piece has many roots, most notably the works of Scott McCloud and Will Eisner in defining the nature of how storytelling works in the medium of comics. The works I'm speaking of are linked in the sidebar so I won't link them here. I'm not going to say my ideas here are more "advanced" versions of their arguments so much as more integrated and applied. Said integration and application came about after a number of discussions with different people over time.

A good place to start is comparison to one of the closest ancestors to comics, static visual art (painting, line drawing, etc). Painting tends to be about essentials, but it's more the essentials of a specific moment in time. Like when you think back on your first kiss or something like that, how you remember what you were wearing, what color the walls were, how you were standing, what the expression on her (or his don't want to leave anyone out) face looked like just before etc.

Specifically, a painting captures just everything that would hit you about a particular moment. It's the essentials of everything that moment was, but enough to bring it all back and completely re-create the moment over and over again. In painting you're saying with a single image "this is what life is to me."

In a comic you're saying in effect "the sum total of everything in this narrative is what life is to me, from its darkest lows to its brightest heights, everything." Comics are about essentials pared down as far as possible. To this end comics work on the idea of the visuals as narration.
In a sentence, they are two completely different languages; the language of self contained art and visual literary narrative. Probably the biggest difference between static fine art and comics is the fact that comics use amount of detail as a specific narrative tool. You have to make more choices about what is and isn't essential in any given scene in relation to your plot.

Artists of the standard school of comic art know the importance of essentials. By keeping it very simple as black and white, either or: your mind assimilates the story information in a more controlled manner. By drawing a quick shot of your central character walking/running against either a blank background or flowing lines you realize he is moving towards a goal (or away from a fear) and it gives you insight to his value judgments (he doesn't care about what's going on around him). This is a standard employment of this tool. Another is your central character interacting with a single prop and/or background element against either an all black or all white background gives you insight as to the importance of that object to the character and again how the world around him has ceased to matter to him.

Fine artists use blends of several colors (possibly even avoiding the central color you would associate with an object) to render the color of a singular object in a certain light. This is the perfect approach for fine art/illustration. Say using a number of yellows oranges and browns to render an apple. But if that approach in rendering an apple was taken in a comic, literary significance is given to that apple by the artist, meaning this apple is very important to the story, and you should spend lots of time noticing it because it's very detailed and those details catch your eye.

Conversely, imagine you see a character walking into a large panel with several trees, a swing set, a few lampposts, some children playing, lovers kissing on a bench and your central character sitting alone on another bench reading a thick book. Think about how long it would take for all of that information to imprint itself on your memory if you were in that scene in that particular park. How much of a long relaxed stay in that area it would take for all this information to register in your mind in this manner. This is another narrative tool.

The literalistic set dressing of modern films lends itself to the idea of actually experiencing an event happening before your eyes. This leads to deeper immersion but it also allows for too much potential distraction. When a story takes place within a room, every element in the room is reproduced on the screen. If a director uses this to an advantage it can have great effect. This would entail only using set dressing that directly forwards the premise. Some great if ironic examples of this can be found in films like I know who Killed Me (a bad film with great art direction)or Memento (a great film all around).The drawback to this is that on the off chance that you choose a plant, piece or art, piece of furniture, or photo that might draw someone's attention away from what your prime focus is, you take the chance of diverting the viewer's attention away from where you want it. A truly good director would always be aware of this but that breed is getting rarer as time passes.

Many of the great original silent films had a strong expressionist element to their overall design, which lent itself to deeper abstraction applied to the stories. Like how in the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari each piece of set dressing lends itself to the overall impression of fear and confusion which the film's premise demands. Metropolis is often considered the last of the “German impressionist films,” and after Metropolis films demanded a move toward the more literalistic set dressing of today.

Selective and even abstract set dressing has the down side that it pulls itself away from literal interpretation and it requires a bit more thought on the part of the viewer. But since it operates on a more abstract level it lends itself to selectivity. Every piece has to fit the concept, and every piece leads the viewer exactly where it he supposed to be, and pulls him deeper into the premise.

While this approach no longer works well in film, it is quite effective for both comics and stage plays. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that one of comics' biggest innovators (Will Eisner) had a father who had a background in set design for the stage. It also comes down to the fact that, both of these mediums tend to be more essential based. If it doesn't directly forward the premise, you're not going to build it onto the stage or draw it.

The iconography in comics is kind of a double edged sword. In comic strips/straight drama it already draws on a large amount of shared human experience. So in that context something like Garfield, Dilbert, or on the level of deeper narrative Strangers in Paradise or Hepcats requires that people be able to place themselves in the story as easily as possible, it's important as many people as possible should be able to see themselves as Charlie Brown, (or Lucy or Schroeder) as Dilbert (or Dogbert or Wally), as Francine (or David or Katchoo). It is common experience brought to the lowest common denominator and exaggerated to the point of abstraction. It is odd that this seems to apply most strongly to both the lightest and deepest type of writing. The link may be that they are two of the most relatable types of stories.

You tend to notice that the artwork in adventure (super-hero, sci-fi, fantasy) comics tends to be far more realistic. I think this has to do with the fact that you're introducing a premise that takes a greater degree of abstraction to find something which can be applied to your life and consciousness. Superman needs to be seen as a real person that you could (and should) bump into on the street (or at the very least someone who you could believe would be on the cover of Newsweek or Time). Brian Michael Bendis had some interesting thoughts on this in reference to his work on the comic Daredevil. I'm paraphrasing but it was to the effect of

"I'm asking you to make a pretty big leap initially. I'm asking you to believe this guy got hit in the eyes by radioactive waste, DIDN'T DIE, and to top that off even though he was blinded, he can now do things that most Olympic athletes can't. That's a lot to ask out of someone right off the bat. Since the audience paid their part of their bargain (they're still reading aren't they?) I owe it to them to keep the rest of it as believable and relevant to life as I possibly can."

That may sound like a plea to naturalism, in Bendis' case it might even have been (I can't speak for him). But I take it as recognizing the bond which art must have to reality and the reader's consciousness to be valid. It seems kind of funny that as often as stories like this are described as escapist, when people are actually honest they realize how important it is to tie even the most outrageous ideas to reality for the story to have any depth or connection with a reader.

Ironically another book Bendis writes points out an exception to this rule. His comic "Powers" is the story of a few officers on the "Powers" division of a city's police force (i.e. the division of the police that deal with the legal wrangling of super-heroes and villains). It is written very realistically (as realistically as can be) and thus employs a cartoony style in the art. It's kind of like a special bond between the creators and readers. Since the key points are done so well it works on a more relatable level than most comics in this genre.

So what should a person, be they reader or creator, take from this. Is a hyper-realistic and super detailed approach best, or is a more simplified and impressionistic approach the one which should be taken in this medium. All I can say is that it simply depends on the creator and the creation, these two factors dictate the style I'm simply outlining what the choices are and what their nature is.

Fearless Aesthetic Self-Analysis

There was an episode of a show called Dead Like Me. The premise of the show was that once a person dies they spend a long period of time working as a reaper, acting as a normal living person among the legitimate living. The lead character is a young girl who died far too young who's working as rookie reaper in a small team among veteran reapers.

Among the reapers there are many rules, one of which is you're not supposed to go back to meet your family. The lead reaper is agressive about stressing this rule to the rookie. This continues until she breaks the rule and gets heartbroken because she doesn't look like herself and she just said something that sounded crazy to her mother. She's cut herself off from her old family forever. After she does this all that the lead reaper says to her is "you all right?" and gives her a hug.

Many people resist the idea of aesthetic self analysis for a number of reasons. This mainly applies in Objectivist circles. Among many there's an idea that your tastes have to measure up to some strangly defined set of criteria and that if you follow this mentality, you either measure up to this and you're a good person, or you don't and you're dispicably evil. At least that's how many see it.

But the truth for myself and many people in another group is that the Objectivist aesthetic is a challenge and any time you've honestly experienced something which not only fit into that mold but matched your particular values and personality, nothing else will do. After you've been exposed to this it's both tempting and scary to run everything you happened to enjoy earlier in your life through this new lense.

It's tempting because you bubble with excitement about new things you'd never truly appreciated before. New levels to understand a story on, a new context to appreciate a melody through. Some times it truly blows your mind when you discover something so great and so new.

What seems initially scary is the idea of being found guilty by an unseen jury of a deficient sense of life. But the scariest thing about re-evaluation of your nostalgic loves isn't that you are going to be a horrible person for loving a bad work of art. It's likely that you'll still love your most treasured works of art just the way you remember it forever... you'll just learn that this version of it never really existed.

One of my earliest influences as a writer was the horror genre in general and the idea of "final girl" Today my view is that much of the genre itself is dismal, poorly executed, and the best example of a malevolent universe premise you'll ever see. But the idea of a heroine will for me always be exemplified by Alice Johnson from Nightmare on Elm Street 4 & 5. In some ways I appreciate her even more now that I realize what she had to rise above.

There may still be many things of value to be derived from flawed work of art, but once you view it through this lense it will never be quite the same again but it will ultimatly you'll be richer for the experience. Fearless aesthetic self analysis is a difficult process, but an important one.