by
Ayn Rand
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A plot-theme is a conflict in terms of action, complex enough to create a purposeful progression of events. If you recall that this last is the definition of plot, you will see that the plot-theme serves as the seed from which the tree has to grow. To test whether you have sufficient seed for a good tree, ask yourself: Is this the worst situation in which I can put my hero? If these are his values, is this the worst clash I can engineer between them?
If you have chosen the worst clash possible, and if the values are important, you have a good seed for a good plot structure.
The actions that a writer shows must be integrated to his understanding of the characters’ motives—which the reader then grasps by means of these actions. I have talked about the same kind of circle in relation to plot: to project an abstract theme, you must devise the concrete events from which the reader will in turn derive that theme. The same applies to characterization: to project a convincing character, you need to have an idea of the basic premises or motives which move his actions—and by means of these actions, the reader will discover what is at the root of the character.
The reader can then say: “This action is consistent, but that action is not.” He can say it on the grounds of what the actions presented have implied about the character’s motives.
This does not mean that you must present every character in a single key, giving him only one attribute or passion. It means that you must integrate a character. A character comes across as an integrated person when everything he says and does is internally consistent.
It is quite possible that a devoted crusader of science might in childhood have pulled such a stunt—as a prank of the moment, meaning nothing in particular. But when you draw a character, everything that you say about him acquires significance by the mere fact of being included in your story. Art is selectivity. You cannot re-create every minute detail about anything, neither about an event nor about a person; therefore, that which you choose to include, or to omit, is significant—and you have to watch carefully the implications of what you say or omit. If you introduce a boy as seriously interested in medicine and then show him playing silly, childish pranks, the earnestness of his devotion is immediately undercut.
Such an issue as “I always decide for myself” versus “I go by the opinions of others” is extremely wide. If two characters started discussing it out of a clear sky, that would be sheer propaganda. But in the above scene, the two men are stating an abstract issue as it applies to their own problems and to the concrete situation before the reader’s eyes. The abstract discussion is natural in the context, and, therefore, almost unnoticeable.
This is the only way to state abstract principles in fiction. If the concrete illustration is given in the problems and actions of the story, you can afford to have a character state a wide principle. If, however, the action does not support it, that wide principle will stick out like a propaganda poster.
How much philosophy you can present without turning into a propagandist, as opposed to a proper fiction writer, depends on how much of an event the philosophy is covering. In the above scene, it would have been too early for the two boys to make more of a statement than they did, even though the issue stated is independence versus second-handedness, which is the theme of the whole book. Given what is specifically concretized in the scene, one exchange of lines is enough abstract philosophy.
i mean her writing does usually end up being sheer propaganda but i dont disagree with this rule of thumb
Similarly, I show that Peter Keating wants prestige, money, and conventional success, but I also go several onion skins deeper. I ask: Why does a man go after money and prestige? Why is Peter Keating so anxious for popular approval? I show that a second-hander has no independent judgment and can derive his self-esteem only from the approval of others. And I go deeper: Why does a man decide to depend on the judgment of others? Ultimately, because of his refusal to think for himself.
I show Roark’s motives and the motives of his enemies; and I show why the two have to clash. Starting from the first layer of the action—the struggle of an architect—I go all the way down to the fundamental, metaphysical issue: the independent mind versus the second-hand mind.
The characterizations in The Fountainhead can be read on as many levels as the reader’s understanding permits. If he is interested only in the immediate motivation and meaning of actions, he can see that Roark is motivated by art and Keating by money. But if he wants to see more, he can also see the meaning of these choices and, deeper, what in human nature is at their root.
Thomas Wolfe’s style is the archetype of what I call, borrowing from modem sculpture, the “mobile” style: it is so vague that anyone can interpret it as anything he wishes. This is why his appeal is usually to people under twenty. Wolfe presents an empty mold to be filled by any reader, the general intention being aspiration, undefined idealism, the desire to escape from the commonplace and to find “something better in Life”—none of it given any content. A young reader recognizes the intention and supplies his own concretes—if he does not hold the writer responsible for conveying his own meaning, but is willing to take him merely as a springboard.
lol
In regard to precision of language, I think I myself am the best writer today.
go off queen
Zawinski: I know it's kind of a cliché but it comes back to worse is better. If you spend the time to build the perfect framework that's going to do what you want and that's going to carry you from release 1.0 through release 5.0 and everything's going to be great; well guess what: release 1.0 is going to take you three years to ship and your competitor is going to ship their 1.0 in six months and now you're out of the game. You never shipped your 1.0 because someone else ate your lunch.
Your competitor's six-month 1.0 has crap code and they're going to have to rewrite it in two years but, guess what: they can rewrite it because you don't have a job anymore.
perpetual A/N debate
Zawinski: Yeah. Maybe there'd be a vague description of the division between library and front end. But probably not. If I was working alone I wouldn't bother with that because that part is just kind of obvious to me. And then the first thing I would do with something like that is either start at the top or at the bottom. So start with either, put a window on the screen that has some buttons on it, and then dig down and start building the stuff that those buttons do. Or you can start at the other side and start writing the thing that parses mailboxes and that saves mailboxes. Either way. or both and meet in the middle.
I find that getting something on the screen as soon as possible really helps focus the problem for me. It helps me decide what to work on next. Because if you're just looking at that big to-do list it's like, eh, I don't know which one I should do—does it matter which one I do? But if there's something you can actually look at, even if it's just the debug output of your mailbox parser, it's like, OK, there! That's something; what's the next direction this needs to go in? OK, instead of just displaying a tree structure, now maybe I should be emitting HTML or something along those lines. Or parsing the headers in a more detailed way. You just look for the next thing to build on from there.
This was one of my first programs—it was something like K equals grab the next char. Then I said if K equals “a”, print “a”; if K is “b”, print “b”. I pretty much did every letter, number, and some punctuation. Then at one point I was like, “Wait, I could just say, 'Print the variable!'” and I replaced 40 lines of code with one. I was like, “Holy shit, that was awesome!” That was some major abstraction for a six-year-old.
cute