NANDINI NAYAR
 May05 Enid
Blyton II
Apr05 Enid
Blyton I
PENI GRIFFIN
Mar05 Last
Column
Feb05 What's
In Your Notebook?
Jan05 Read
A Little Louder
Nov/Dec04 Creativity
IV
Oct04 Creativity
III
Sep04 Creativity
II
Aug04 Creativity
Jun/Jul04 Social
Angst and All That
May04 Reading
In Public
Apr04 Elephant
In The Living-Room
Mar04 Literary
Synchronicity
Feb04 The
Most Important Thing in the World
Jan04
Year-End Wrap-Ups
Dec03 Editors...
They Ain't Want You Want, They're What You Need
Nov03 The
Secret Formula for Originality - Revealed!
Oct03 An
Incoherent Message Concerning Narrative Structure; or 'Reality. What a
concept.'
Sep03 Preaching
to the Choir
Aug03 FanFic
on ACHUKACHAT, the website discussion board...
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An Incoherent Message Concerning Narrative Structure; or 'Reality.
What a concept.'*
by Peni Griffin
A memorial service. A wedding. A birthday party. Two plane trips with my sister, her
toddler, and two bears. Illness. Insomnia. Cat-killing dogs. Moldy walls. Bosses who assume
that because you're paid to do it, it must be possible to do.
That's enough of that, thanks.
When I was little, I was a hyper-realist, always thinking about what was left out.
Characters in books only used bathrooms to take baths, and those not often. People who weren't
part of the story never entered it, so that if the main character was being picked up at the
airport by some relative who she'd never met, she either made the correct connection immediately,
or made a wrong connection which would prove to be important later. All coincidences and random
events were meaningful. Routine events, such as school and work and church, might delay the
progress of the plot, but could always be circumvented or skipped without too serious a
consequence. Good people triumphed and bad people got their comeuppance. Hauntings happened
for reasons, supernatural powers were consciously malevolent or benevolent, and what you
believed had a direct impact on what happened to you. Conversations consisted of complete
sentences and people only said "uh" to indicate that they were unwilling to communicate the
truth, didn't understand it, or didn't expect to be believed.
All this bothered me, because it contrasted so wildly with the chaotic play of
biological and social necessities in my life. I never saw a bad person get his comeuppance, and
I was roundly set down when I tried to arrange it. No matter how hard I believed in magic, it
refused to happen. When I read "true ghost stories" the apparent supernatural entities behaved
capriciously, as if they had no conscious intent, and the story tended to peter out without a
climax, or to continue past what should have been the climax. Nobody used complete sentences.
Restrooms, arbitrary authority, random people, meaningless events, and time-devouring routines
were central rather than peripheral.
Yet, when I tried to write stories that reflected reality, they bogged down quickly.
When I even tried to recount real events accurately, I lost my audience; and I soon found that
the simplified, more-structured accounts of other people, which left out many elements I tried
to include, and interpolated interpretations of events I didn't think were supported by the
evidence, invariably trumped my precisely-told true versions.
Structure is not a natural component of the string of events we call "life;" but it is
psychologically necessary. It is literally true that we can't handle the truth. There's just
too much of it. Before we can accomplish anything, we have to get organized.
We tend to structure our lives as if they were stories, casting ourselves (or being
cast by our families and schools) in various roles, and then treating those roles as identity.
We tell ourselves stories about what we're going to do (called plans), what we could do
(called daydreams), and what we have done (called memories). It's not just stories. Daily
routine and overarching theoretical frameworks like religion or political ideology also break
things down into manageable chunks. As long as we can cut out our awareness of much of the
distracting underlying chaos, we can cope. When we are forced to deal with life as it really
is - vast, chaotic, purposeless, and indifferent - our finite minds founder in the sea of
infinity.
The disadvantage of this need to create structure is that mistaking the map for the
territory can have grave consequences. It's all very well to cast yourself as the hero of your
own story - but does that mean you've cast someone else as villain? And how does that affect
your real behavior in the real world, where the villain also assumes that he's the hero, and
where bombs as often as not take out everything except the primary target? People become
accustomed to the routines of the job, the prison, and the hospital, and cannot cope with life
outside that structure. We adapt to the rules of our culture, and then treat those cultural
rules as eternal verities which other cultures violate. But none of these things has anything
essential to do with reality, except insofar as our action or lack thereof based on the framework
results in exploding buildings or well-fed children.
Nothing is more surely conducive of misery than to live in the full stream of real life,
except the attempt to adapt one's self to an artificial framework that doesn't fit. In my case, the day
job. I can't do without the day job, but if I ever accept it as inescapable reality and the way
I ought to live, I might as well swallow a bottle of pills and lie down to sleep forever.
The advantage of creative works is that their structure lies outside my
interaction with real life. I read The Lord of the Rings or Diana Wynne Jones or "Jack
and the Beanstalk," and I get a rest from the chaos; but I don't get confused that the
structure I'm enjoying is the real world. When I sing along with Melissa Etheridge ("Sometimes
I feel that it's never enough. Survival is fine, but satisfaction is rough."), I get the
extreme pleasure of a structured, simplified, rythmic expression of a truth of my life; but I
also know that it's a song, not my life. My role-playing characters live lives in which the
rules mean something; but I'm never tempted to roll dice to solve my own problems.
In a story, the choices a character makes have structure and consequences. The author
is in control of those choices, and the reader can usually tell, by clues provided in the text,
whether those choices lead to defeat (tragedy) or victory (the happy ending). A really good
plotter can surprise the reader by satisfying him - this is the great strength of a good puzzle
mystery, as exemplified by Agatha Christie. An honest reading of a Christie mystery - yes,
including Roger Ackroyd - leaves the reader content that he was fooled honestly, that his
misreading of the clues was his own fault. A bad plotter who attempts the same trick will
merely anger the reader, either planting clues that are too obvious, or planting bad clues that
point in the wrong direction.
If life had an author, he'd be a bad plotter. All the clues point seven ways at once, and
no one is in control. If someone were, it would probably be a bad thing.
Reality is, that my life is a trap that I'm in voluntarily. My choices have brought me
here. The plan, if it functions correctly, will free me from my trap into a world where the
structure is more to my liking in four years.
Four years is a long time. Heart attacks, car accidents, business failures, political
upheavals - they can all render plans irrelevant. I could be in the trap for the rest of my
life. This knowledge drives me mad. I'm perfectly capable of throwing a coffee mug at a boss
and running out of the office screaming "I'm breaking." But that would create chaos. No one
can cope with chaos.
So I have to pretend the trap isn't there. I have to forget about it.
Stories, music, and games can do that.
For awhile.
If I'm careful.
If real life doesn't flood in through the bars and nearly drown me.
Wish me luck.
And next month, I'll try to be back with a nice, structured idea carried to some sort of
logical conclusion - or question, anyway.
*Yes, I stole that from Robin Williams. The album of that title dates from 1979. Jokes have structure, too.
OCTOBER 2003 © Peni Griffin
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