Are we stupid?
"It would insult your intelligence."
Not a phrase one hears very often these days and one I'm going to drift away from almost instantly, but it seemed liked a good place to start.
I'm wondering about you where transparent becomes blatant. Harking back, recapping and how necessary these are. Anybody seen the new Bond film? There's a sequence in it where Bond figures out the baddie's 'tell'. The thing which, supposedly, every poker player has. A pantomime which, if you know it, will tell you they're bluffing. I have about ninety-five of them. But I try and fox people by using a different one every time and swapping them round, too. So, in one hand me tapping the table will mean I'm bluffing, in the next it'll mean I've got a really good hand and am desperate for you to bet. Basically, I can't sit still. It's impossible, so I figure I might as well try and make it work for me.
Back to my point - Bond spots the baddie's tell, informs the other goodies (so that we'll know) and then five minutes later it happens, but we, the audience, are not expected to remember this. Oh, no. We need to be reminded.
"Look. There is it, the tell. Do you remember - James told us?"
Of course we fucking remember! He only told us five feckin' minutes ago. That precise example, I felt, was truly stupid as the person being reminded (for our benefit) was the Bond Girl who was set up as a terribly clever person, well able to keep up with Bond, so why did she need reminding of something that happened five minutes previous?
I realise that, "They're dumbing everything down!" isn't a new debate (or whine), but I'm intrigued, from a writing point of view. Must I pander to this sort of thing? If something in the first chapter or section of a story or book is key to events later on, do I have to figure out how to remind people?
Consider this. That's so me. No, not watching Beauty and the Geek but I totally remember stuff like that. It's why I clap hands over my eyes when the super-long trailers for films I want to watch come on. They can entirely ruin a film for me because I remember them in their entirety and so know that the dying person isn't actually going to die because he's in a sequence I've seen in the trailer which hasn't happened yet. Now, I know I'm not the only one, as Mr Dean's comic attests, but are there many? Or are we two freakish?
Basically, I'm groping my way towards point of view and an attempt to genericise. Which is impossible, I realise, but I don't think happy medium is too much to ask. There again, as the author there's my intent, too. A writer's group I used to contribute to once had a discussion on colloquial terms, regional expressions, that kind of thing. One contributor thought that the author had a responsibility to provide a glossary or something of the sort to explain and define the out of the ordinary terms. Myself, I thought that lazy. Still do. So, from that I can decide it's my story, I think you should bloody well be paying attention so I'm not going to hold your hand through the whole thing.
Hmmm.
Tomorrow (or Monday, actually) : authorial intent vrs audience interpretation.
...
Beaten at my own game. I am very ticked off. One of the advisers sent a note up to the info team saying she was having trouble accessing a site. Was it dead and out of date or just blipping for today? I did a quick search and couldn't find much of anything, so sent back (to everyone on the distribution list) that I thought it was dead.
Then one of the other info team members found the fucker, under a changed name. Grrrrrr.
She was kind enough only to copy in me and the adviser, rather than pointing out my idiocy to the whole team. Which was nice of her, and quite finely courteous.
But still. Grrrrrr.
...
Patrick has his first lot of photos up, for those of you who haven't been by yet. This one is my personal favourite. Blogger having one its fits where it won't let me put up photos. *huff*
...
I'm paying my deposit and first month's rent for new pad today. One of the few occasions where handing over nearly a grand in cold hard cash can be termed exciting...
...
Have a good one,
C
Not a phrase one hears very often these days and one I'm going to drift away from almost instantly, but it seemed liked a good place to start.
I'm wondering about you where transparent becomes blatant. Harking back, recapping and how necessary these are. Anybody seen the new Bond film? There's a sequence in it where Bond figures out the baddie's 'tell'. The thing which, supposedly, every poker player has. A pantomime which, if you know it, will tell you they're bluffing. I have about ninety-five of them. But I try and fox people by using a different one every time and swapping them round, too. So, in one hand me tapping the table will mean I'm bluffing, in the next it'll mean I've got a really good hand and am desperate for you to bet. Basically, I can't sit still. It's impossible, so I figure I might as well try and make it work for me.
Back to my point - Bond spots the baddie's tell, informs the other goodies (so that we'll know) and then five minutes later it happens, but we, the audience, are not expected to remember this. Oh, no. We need to be reminded.
"Look. There is it, the tell. Do you remember - James told us?"
Of course we fucking remember! He only told us five feckin' minutes ago. That precise example, I felt, was truly stupid as the person being reminded (for our benefit) was the Bond Girl who was set up as a terribly clever person, well able to keep up with Bond, so why did she need reminding of something that happened five minutes previous?
I realise that, "They're dumbing everything down!" isn't a new debate (or whine), but I'm intrigued, from a writing point of view. Must I pander to this sort of thing? If something in the first chapter or section of a story or book is key to events later on, do I have to figure out how to remind people?
Consider this. That's so me. No, not watching Beauty and the Geek but I totally remember stuff like that. It's why I clap hands over my eyes when the super-long trailers for films I want to watch come on. They can entirely ruin a film for me because I remember them in their entirety and so know that the dying person isn't actually going to die because he's in a sequence I've seen in the trailer which hasn't happened yet. Now, I know I'm not the only one, as Mr Dean's comic attests, but are there many? Or are we two freakish?
Basically, I'm groping my way towards point of view and an attempt to genericise. Which is impossible, I realise, but I don't think happy medium is too much to ask. There again, as the author there's my intent, too. A writer's group I used to contribute to once had a discussion on colloquial terms, regional expressions, that kind of thing. One contributor thought that the author had a responsibility to provide a glossary or something of the sort to explain and define the out of the ordinary terms. Myself, I thought that lazy. Still do. So, from that I can decide it's my story, I think you should bloody well be paying attention so I'm not going to hold your hand through the whole thing.
Hmmm.
Tomorrow (or Monday, actually) : authorial intent vrs audience interpretation.
...
Beaten at my own game. I am very ticked off. One of the advisers sent a note up to the info team saying she was having trouble accessing a site. Was it dead and out of date or just blipping for today? I did a quick search and couldn't find much of anything, so sent back (to everyone on the distribution list) that I thought it was dead.
Then one of the other info team members found the fucker, under a changed name. Grrrrrr.
She was kind enough only to copy in me and the adviser, rather than pointing out my idiocy to the whole team. Which was nice of her, and quite finely courteous.
But still. Grrrrrr.
...
Patrick has his first lot of photos up, for those of you who haven't been by yet. This one is my personal favourite. Blogger having one its fits where it won't let me put up photos. *huff*
...
I'm paying my deposit and first month's rent for new pad today. One of the few occasions where handing over nearly a grand in cold hard cash can be termed exciting...
...
Have a good one,
C
posted by Chris at 9:49 am
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