Tag Archives: theme

Technique

Could Frozen be even better?

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I have little kids. I get to go see Disney movies without any shame. I even get to go to the sing along version. (And be the loudest person in the theater. No shame.) We all really liked Frozen (except for my three-year-old, who’s still upset that Elsa told Anna to go away). The story, the characters, the songs, even the plot twists—we loved it.

Elsa-and-Anna-Wallpapers-frozen-35894707-1600-1200But the more I’ve pondered the story and especially the ending, I’ve wondered if it couldn’t be a little stronger. This has nothing to do with the cute reprises of “Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?” popping up on YouTube.

SPOILERS!

If you haven’t seen it, the movie revolves around a pair of princess sisters, Elsa and Anna. After an accident in their childhood where Anna is badly hurt, Elsa must hide her magical ice powers from her younger sister. Afraid she’ll hurt her sister again, Elsa shuts her out completely. They spend the better part of their lives separated, even after their parents die, and Elsa’s secret powers continue to grow beyond her control.

On the day of Elsa’s coronation, after a fight with Anna, Elsa accidentally reveals her powers to the whole kingdom. Elsa flees in fear, setting off an eternal winter in their kingdom. Anna goes to find her sister and convince her to come back, but Elsa freaks out when she finds out what happened in their kingdom. In her fear, she again accidentally freezes her sister’s heart.

Anna leaves, and discovers that she will die without an act of true love. At the climax of the movie, Anna has a choice to kiss her true love or save her sister’s life. As she blocks the death blow of the villain’s sword, Anna turns to solid ice. Elsa is devastated.

In a Disney reversal, Anna’s selfless sacrifice is an act of true love, and it thaws her frozen heart (and body). Elsa realizes that the answer to her out-of-control powers is love. She’s able to harness her magic and end the premature winter.

Okay, super cute, heartwarming, etc., right? It is. But after a while, you look back at that conclusion and wonder . . . didn’t Elsa always love her sister?

It was Elsa’s love of her sister that led to her fear, led to Elsa shutting her out. So why was love all of a sudden the answer?

Completing the character arc

Although the movie does revolve around Anna and her actions, it’s Elsa that has the biggest character arc. At the beginning of the movie, she’s warned that fear will be her enemy, which she (and her parents) take to mean that others will fear her powers and possibly hurt her. This inciting incident sets up her character arc to grow from a place of fear.

Throughout the course of the story, her own fear rules her life. She cuts herself off from everyone but her parents—and eventually won’t even let them touch her because she’s afraid she’ll hurt them. When she’s afraid and upset, her powers rage out of control, and hurt the people she cares about.

The final image of the movie, Elsa, Anna and their subjects playing with her magic, shows that Elsa has successfully learned her lesson and integrated it into her life. But before that, when she says what she’s learned, she only says, “Love! Of course!”

Again, she’s always loved her sister. That isn’t how she’s grown or changed. What she actually learned was a lesson about not letting her fear overrule her love for her sister and her subjects. I think that expressing that, tying the character arc back to the growth that she’s seen throughout the film and the lesson she learned, would have made the movie just a little bit stronger.

How could we express that better? One or two sentences of dialogue would have been enough, since the positive results of her character arc are already shown well through her actions. The line that keeps springing to my mind is straight out of the Bible: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear.” She’d let her fears override that love (not completely destroy it). When she realizes that she needs to show her love for her sister and receive her love in return, she’s able to overcome those fears and control her powers.

The answer isn’t just love. If we dig a little deeper, we see that the real theme is that love can conquer fear.

A big musical number to that effect wouldn’t have hurt either 😉 .

I still love it

In all, I do still love Frozen. I’m a writer, and I analyze things—and you’d think I wrote a book on Character Arcs or something. As I was telling Jami Gold in her post analyzing another way Frozen might have been a little better, these criticisms and analysis of the movie are actually a positive thing. I think it says a lot for any story to inspire craft discussion!

What do you think? Did you like the ending of Frozen, or could it be better?

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Technique

The power of Because

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My last term of college, I took a 200-level class on English literary theory to fulfill the final requirement of an English minor. I’d already taken the upper-level English courses I needed—but the first week of class, my professor said something that made me wish I’d taken his class a lot sooner.

The typical thesis statement of a paper (say, written on a high school level especially) is usually insufficient, he Just Because by Lee leesaid. In fact, to get to a real thesis, you should add the word “Because,” and expand from there. For example:

Lame-o thesis: In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer is a dilettante, even when social morés no longer prohibit him from acting.

This is especially lame-o because basically all you’d have to do to prove your thesis is quote the line in the opening scene where Newland Archer identifies himself as a dilettante, and then review the final scene of the book. Done.

Better thesis: Because Newland Archer is, “at heart a dilettante,” even when social morés no longer prohibit him from acting, his son Dallas represents the fulfillment of his dilettante desires and the evolution of societal norms.

(Man, I wrote a dang good paper about that book. Waaay better than that example. Wish I could remember the thesis!)

What’s Because got to do with it (writing)

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A couple months ago, I was preparing for a revision and thinking about my book’s theme. I’d really reduced it down to the very core principle—how do you get more crystallized than three short words?

Love is strength.

But realistically, is that a theme? Is that something worthy to be explored in fiction? Is that something you want to read about?

Meh.

Then “Because” popped into my mind.

Because love is strength . . .

I filled in the blank as it pertained to my story, I think, but there’s no one right answer here. That’s not what’s important—what’s important is digging deeper than a belief statement to create an action statement. It may not be enough to have a theme you can state simply—in fact, that might be a detriment.

What do you think? Have you tried the power of “Because”? How would you fill in the blank “Because love is strength . . .”?

Photo by Angel A. Acevedo, via Flickr & CC

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Technique

Secret sauce: focusing your fiction

This entry is part 4 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

Determining your story’s focus is a major part of revision (re-vision). This works on a number of levels—characters, plot, theme, structure, scenes, etc. Whenever you can’t quite put your finger on this character’s main motivation or the novel’s theme or this scene’s purpose, you might be facing a problem of focus.

focusHere are a couple things you can do to hone a book’s focus, from the theme down to the more granular level.

  • Think long and hard about the theme (Yes, this is a revision skill!). If there are two competing themes in the book: one of ignorance being bliss, and one of loving someone being a strength rather than a weakness, it may make it feel like we’re telling almost two different stories. Can you make the themes relate to one another? Make one subordinate to the other? Rephrase/rethink/reframe/re-present one so that they are corollaries? Or maybe pick one and focus on it, and make sure the other stays a subplot?
  • Once you’ve pinned down the theme, look at each scene and each character and each character’s journey. How do they support the theme? (If you’re having trouble with the last point, maybe do this first, writing out what each character’s journey and purpose in the story are currently, and looking at trends before you decide which theme to go with or how to correlate them.) How does that character/scene/journey express or support the theme?Does it serve as a counterexample, and if so, is it presented in a negative light or with negative conclusions? (This is loosely inspired by Holly Lisle’s one-pass revision technique.)

  • A scene chart, with special focus on scene goals. This makes sure that each scene drives the story forward. I always do this: make a spreadsheet of all the scenes in my book, whose POV they’re in, what information is conveyed, but most importantly what the POV character’s goal is going into the scene. Most of the time, the character will pretty much state the goal outright at the beginning of the scene, keeping the scene and the character moving forward with purpose instead of meandering about, waiting for a story to happen to him/her.
  • Tension check! This is something I have to do with every book, and I usually do it as part of the scene chart. One of the columns is dedicated to writing out the source of the tension in that scene. If I don’t know, I look for an antagonist or a disaster. Typically most scenes end in disaster, at least from the perspective of the POV character who came into the scene with a stated goal. Then, when I go through and edit the scene based on that, I make sure that tension is there in every page.
  • Stakes check! Again, this can be done in the scene chart, or on a higher level, like chapter or section. Ask what is at stake—what happens if the character doesn’t achieve his or her goal? What are the consequences? Do they know that? Can we be reminded of that? (This can also be a subtype of the tension check.)
  • Look at the language itself. Is the language specific, concrete and vivid? Can we really see a vivid picture of people (visual and characterization) and settings and emotions and experiences?

What do you think? How else can you help to focus an unfocused theme or story? Come join in the conversation!

Photo credits, respectively: Atondra Hall, Riccardo Bandiera

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Reading

Focusing on themes & audience expectations: Brave

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This is a post about fiction. I swear. It just looks like a post about the movie Brave.

I have three kids, aged 6 & under. They’re a great excuse to go to animated movies, and last month we went to see Brave.

I enjoyed Brave, but it’s very different from Pixar’s other movies. Wikipedia says that some people have likened it to a Grimm or Andersen fairy tale, and that seems very accurate. Brave hasn’t been quite as universally loved as previous Pixar classics, and the darkness inherent in “real” fairytales might be part of it.

But I have to say, when I see people criticizing the form of the film, I’m very confused. I’ve seen a few people call the movie “unfocused” or even “plotless.”

It’s neither.

To me, focus in film or fiction is defined very simply: do most of the scenes support the central theme and plot? Brave‘s central theme and plot is a mother-daughter relationship: how Queen Elinor wants Merida to behave (like a lady) and how Merida wants to be free.

I think part of the problem starts right there. Viewers have seen variations on the princess who wants to (to quote her father King Fergus’s assessment [behind her back]) “let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the glen firing arrows into the sunset” before. Several times:

  • Ariel
  • Jasmine
  • Pocahontas
  • Belle
  • Rapunzel
  • Seeing a trend?

It seems like the only kind of princess Disney knows how to write. So let’s look at the trope established by these movies, using another rebellious red-headed princess who wants to be free to follow her heart but her oppressive parent tries to force her to do her duty: Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

In The Little Mermaid, Ariel rebels. She goes to a witch and gets a spell to get what she wants. So far, so good: Brave‘s Merida follows the same path right down to her hair color.

Yeah, Ariel’s rebellion causes problems, but in the end, she wins. She was right and her dad is punished by being separated from her forever (though they still love and forgive one another, at least nonverbally). The trope is repeated in several movies: princess rebels, gets what she wants, was right all along, shows evil parent how wrong they were. (Exactly the message we need to send to our children!)

Dollars to donuts, that’s the movie people were expecting when they walked in, or at least as we approached the end of Act I. But then the story turns very dramatically, and about halfway through, you figure out, Hey, this movie is about mothers and daughters, not finding true love (which is a scary obsession encouraged by a lot of animated movies—do 4-10 year olds really need romance and marriage marketed to them?). One of Brave‘s greatest strengths was the fact that it’s fresh. But violating audience/genre expectations can result in unhappy audiences.

So some dislike the movie for not following a clichéd trope that we’ve already seen at least half a dozen times. (Come on, like they really wanted to see an Ariel Goes to Scotland retread.) But to call the movie plotless or unfocused? No. Just no.

Every event either developed the conflict or moved the story forward, often by showing character changes. An unfocused story features subplots that don’t support or influence the main plot, focus on characters who are superfluous (okay, the younger brothers did kind of seem that way, but weren’t in all that many scenes), and either no theme or competing themes. In my opinion, Brave did none of these.

Actually, it seemed like Brave was an animated version of a character-driven story. I’ve defined character-driven before as “When the basic story is more about the character’s internal growth and change.”

There is an external plot (and external subplot), and they’re resolved in unexpected (and maybe just slightly too-neat, but it’s an animated film, so hey) ways. But at its heart, Brave is about the growth and change in Merida and her mother Queen Elinor, and how they come to love and accept and understand and change for one another. Did it go over my kids’ heads? Yep, most of it. Will they be able to discover new layers of meaning in the movie in ten years? Yep, most likely.

Was Brave the best movie evar? Probably not. It was good and well-told and unique, and no, not everyone liked it. But I think that probably had more to do with its strengths than its weaknesses.

What do you think? How do you define focus in fiction? How can character-driven stories translate to film? Have you seen Brave?

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Technique

Focusing your fiction

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I recently read a friend’s manuscript and realized that she had good scenes and themes, but somehow I was still left feeling like the manuscript wasn’t very focused. That might’ve just been me, but it’s something I want to think about as I work on my current manuscript, where the “BIG” theme is something the narrator isn’t aware of consciously until the end, and a smaller theme is something she does notice and talk about.

Here are a couple things you can do to hone a book’s focus (shared with my friend’s permission, but all details changed to protect her):

  • A scene chart, with special focus on scene goals. This makes sure that each scene drives the story forward. I always do this: make a spreadsheet of all the scenes in my book, whose POV they’re in, what information is conveyed, but most importantly what the POV character’s goal is going into the scene. Most of the time, the character will pretty much state the goal outright at the beginning of the scene.
  • Tension check! This is something I have to do with every book, and I usually do it as part of the scene chart. One of the columns is dedicated to writing out the source of the tension in that scene. If I don’t know, I look for an antagonist or a disaster. Typically most scenes end in disaster, at least from the perspective of the POV character who came into the scene with a stated goal. Then, when I go through and edit the scene based on that, I make sure that tension is there in every page.
  • Stakes check! Again, this can be done in the scene chart, or on a higher level, like chapter or section. Ask what is at stake–what happens if the character doesn’t achieve his or her goal? What are the consequences? Do they know that? Can we be reminded of that? (This can also be a subtype of the tension check.)
  • Think long and hard about the theme (Note that this is post-first draft work most of the time!). I feel like there are two competing themes in the book: one of ignorance being bliss, and one of loving someone being a strength rather than a weakness. This makes it feel like we’re telling almost two different stories. Can you make the themes relate to one another? Make one subordinate to the other? Rephrase/rethink/reframe/re-present one so that they are corollaries? Or maybe pick one and focus on it, and make sure the other stays a subplot?
  • Once you’ve pinned down the theme, look at each scene and each character and each character’s journey. How do they support the theme? (If you’re having trouble with the last point, maybe do this first, writing out what each character’s journey and purpose in the story are currently, and looking at trends before you decide which theme to go with or how to correlate them.) How does that character/scene/journey express or support the theme?Does it serve as a counterexample, and if so, is it presented in a negative light or with negative conclusions? (This is sort of inspired by Holly Lisle’s one-pass revision technique.)
  • Look at the language itself. Is the language specific, concrete and vivid? Can we really see a vivid picture of people (visual and characterization) and settings and emotions and experiences?

What do you think? How else can you help to focus an unfocused theme or story?

Photo by Riccardo Bandiera

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