Creator vs. audience

Fans of the television series “Game of Thrones” had a pretty upsetting evening Sunday night, and I sympathize with them.

Before we go any further, I have to admit that I haven’t watched any of the series. I have read the first 3 books of the series that the T.V. show is based on, however. I abandoned the series, which is very uncharacteristic for me, because I just couldn’t take another round of finding a new character to root for.

I felt manipulated by the author. He put effort into creating a likable, suitably heroic-sounding patriarch of an interesting family. And shortly thereafter, he begins a long, drawn out process to murder, abuse and denigrate the entire family. And it’s not like the poor Starks ever get a break-just one terrible thing after another. So, when my hopes for the Stark family making a triumphant return from the darkness faded, I grudgingly switched my support to another character. That character died. I then threw in my support to the not-quite-so-bad guy Tyrion, but that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that George R.R. Martin was sadistically using my emotions to prove how much control he, as the author, had over readers like me. 

By the time the story switched to some chick overseas who hung out with jerks on horses and had a baby dragon, I checked out. I didn’t have anyone I cared about anymore. Maybe I’m old fashioned or unsophisticated, but I need to have at least one character in a story that I can cheer for. I need a hero of some sort or another. I appreciate that it’s intriguing to explore a fictional world where everyone is morally ambiguous and your favourite person can drop dead at any second, but isn’t that the burden we struggle with in real life? Can’t our stories give us the sense of hope that sometimes, things work out for those who want to do good?

Appreciation

You’ll forgive me if I allow my thoughts to meander across this blog post, with no predetermined destination or strategic direction. It’s been a very long time since I’ve given myself permission to blog aimlessly, and this seems to be a good kind of night for it.

I could, of course, dive into the topical events and issues from the last week or so. Lord knows there are enough topics to dissect, interpret and muse upon. But I’ll put those aside. That’s not where my head is at.

Instead, I’ll be simple and plain with my words.

I love my wife.

There will be some of you who have never had the experience of having someone invest the full extent of their faith in you. I hope someday you have that happen.

It’s amazing.

Even more so when the faith is given to you on speculation of your ability to live up to it. I don’t know where I’m going to end up. I don’t know who, exactly, I’ll be when I get there. But she believes that it’s worth it. She believes I’m worth it.

 

Creativity is complicated

And now for your amusement, a tour through one of the cluttered creative areas of my mind. Here’s a quick glimpse into the complicated and convoluted fictional narrative that fills my thoughts.

We’ll start with a song with just the right lyric. Sometimes, it’s just a single line. The words being sung evoke an emotional response from me. While I’m caught in the swell of emotion, I start to build a story around the lyric. It’s not enough for me to just feel the sentiment, I need to come up with a context for it.

I think we all do this to some extent when we’re young, putting ourselves into the story as the main character. Luckily, I have a whole stable full of existing and potential imaginary characters that I can plug into these scenarios, so I can stop making it a daydream fantasy about myself. On the other hand, aren’t all my characters just extensions of myself? Maybe it is all about me.

So last week, a song came on and set the creative machine in motion. This time, however, I took it to a new level of  complexity. The story based on the lyric involved 2 as yet unwritten characters, reaching a point of crisis and conflict in their relationship that had been building for several years.

And then I pulled back from that immediate scene and found a way to connect this one story (still about characters that don’t even really exist yet) to 2 other stories, only one of which is currently actually in existence. I was mapping out a multi-story arc plot crossover event where 2 of the 3 story arcs aren’t real, and won’t be real for several years. I had to draw a colour-coded chart to even begin to understand any of this, and I’m still turned around. Complicated!