Thanks kickflop. I’m hoping their will now be a marked improvement in the quality of these pieces now I am not distracted by social media.
The plan is to do the absolute best I can for the people who have already signed up rather than trying to chase after new signups.
If I can improve at my craft so that a higher percentage of pre-existing people feel absolutely compelled to support me then I will be all set. Going for quality rather than quantity of reader and focusing on over-delivering with these essays.
I think it’s a viable strategy. Thank you for taking the time to comment here. It’s very much appreciated.
You've managed to put words on something I knew without being able to explain it.
Every good story must have a rhythm, and I'm convinced most of the time when the ending, the "revelation" or the climax fall flat, it's less an issue related to the ending per-se, but more about proper building up, rhythm and how much you planted the seed of the ending in the reader/viewer's mind. I may be wrong, but I feel like people empathize more with a climax when you've sowed little bread crumbs and they "feel" how it's going to end without being able to formalize it completely. Works especially with tragic endings, that are meant to be an "example" (think of the Greek mythology protagonists eventually getting punished for their Hubris by the gods.
Readers can believe the most unbelievable ending if you slowly build your world and make sure they can empathize with your characters. Someone like Stephen King is especially good at it; he uses and abuses the abundant means by describing you each square inch of a little Maine city, the history of each street, each inhabitant, how they live, how they feel toward each other; it's always super mundane stuff; why the town mill manager has marriage issues, how he unloads on his kids, how the kids bully the fat kid at school, who in turn makes friend with the nerdy guy from the divorced parents, etc. Each new chapter is a deeper drawer in the big dresser that is the story. And you may not realize at first why you get that over 200 pages, and how exactly that could benefit the story. But when stange things begin to happen, when the scarce means are progressively introduced, you are hooked and can't let the book down. If these scarce means were introduced only after a 10 pages overview of the characters and situation, you probably wouldn't feel a thing. And the closer you get to the ending, the lesser the abundant means; the crescendo is perfect.
I like the image of the building standing still that Warhol would have filmed for 8 minutes. We all agree, it doesn't bring any emotion out. It is poseur, because he's giving you a transcendance that's not been earned. It's like a priest giving you the communion wafer right from the start, it doesn't mean anything and it's useless. Now imagine a movie telling you the story of a man working extra long hours in a banking job in New York. You're meant to understand he does that for his family (maybe he comes from a poor family and is terrified by going back into poverty). But as the movie goes on and you get to know him, his job and his family better, you begin to question his motives. Does he really do it for his family ? He's never home, his health rapidly deteriorates, his wife and kids slowly become estranged to him, and all along he keeps telling you this lie; that he's doing it all just for his family. The "bank" he works at, and the entire skyscrapper slowly become meta-characters of their own; maybe the building is filmed from menacing angles, wide shots when he comes out from work at 1AM showing how insignificant he is againt this daunting Moloch made of glass and concrete; slowly, you begin to see the sparse means. Let's say at the end of the movie our working man dies at the office from a heart attack. You see the family destroyed, wife and kids crying in their little suburban home. And then, the last image is a 30 seconds/1 minute still-shot of the skycrapper, standing straight in the night, everlasting and waiting for new souls to be fed.
There, your "building shot" has tremendous meaning. Because the shot is not the point; it is just the way you create transcendance and give a superior meaning to the world you've spent 2 hours slowly building with abundant means.
Anyway, great newsletter Thomas, and happy Easter to you !
Happy Easter to you to Sebastien, I hope you are having a restful time and (I can only assume) great weather.
Back in my social media days (nice to be able to refer to that in the past tense) I would always give the same advice re: story structure which was precisely visualise the ending and then reverse engineer from there. The idea being that if you know what target to hit you can make all of the preparations to hit it precisely.
And this, as you say, is a question of build up, of leaving the breadcrumb trail. With a good story everything must have both a feeling of surprise but also that it couldn’t have happened any other way. When you trust an author, they may make pains to talk about something seemingly inconsequential but also at some length on page thirty, but you know it will be relevant later on. In a good story *everything* pays off later, nothing is a tangent.
And as with so much writing stuff, a lot of the initial impulse is instinctual. The author feels compelled to talk about x because on some level they know it is all part of the pay off.
The unspoken truth about fiction writing is that the process is logical but also hard to articulate clearly. It’s almost pre-logical in a sense, or a logic beyond logic.
I know that makes barely any sense, but it’s true nonetheless.
Thanks as always for your great insight here, Sebastien.
I read a lot about the story structure for a script I'm writing but this abundant-sparse structure is something completely new for me. It makes me rethink some of the stuff and I need to meditate on that.
Also, I found this related to what you mentioned before about "building up a problem" and "crescendo". Starting with something small and understandable definitely helps to build up empathy and engage.
Do you think it works the same way for visuals? To support my question, I read a lot of Bruce Block and he wrote that "visual story structure should go in parallel with narrative structure". Meaning that moments of higher story intensity should be supported with visual tools (like higher contrast between different visual elements - colour, shapes, movement, etc). So my guess is, in cinema, if we want to reach transcendence we must somehow support it visually, too.
I haven’t read Bruce Block but I agree with his idea as you have presented it. In regards to how abundant and sparse relates to story structure I would highly recommend reading the Schrader book that this essay is (heavily) based on. It’s a short read and one of those that sparks a lot of ideas as well as inspiring you to get around to watching the cinematic masterpieces that he references.
One of your best pieces yet. I'm very glad to be following along with your writing journey.
Thanks kickflop. I’m hoping their will now be a marked improvement in the quality of these pieces now I am not distracted by social media.
The plan is to do the absolute best I can for the people who have already signed up rather than trying to chase after new signups.
If I can improve at my craft so that a higher percentage of pre-existing people feel absolutely compelled to support me then I will be all set. Going for quality rather than quantity of reader and focusing on over-delivering with these essays.
I think it’s a viable strategy. Thank you for taking the time to comment here. It’s very much appreciated.
You've managed to put words on something I knew without being able to explain it.
Every good story must have a rhythm, and I'm convinced most of the time when the ending, the "revelation" or the climax fall flat, it's less an issue related to the ending per-se, but more about proper building up, rhythm and how much you planted the seed of the ending in the reader/viewer's mind. I may be wrong, but I feel like people empathize more with a climax when you've sowed little bread crumbs and they "feel" how it's going to end without being able to formalize it completely. Works especially with tragic endings, that are meant to be an "example" (think of the Greek mythology protagonists eventually getting punished for their Hubris by the gods.
Readers can believe the most unbelievable ending if you slowly build your world and make sure they can empathize with your characters. Someone like Stephen King is especially good at it; he uses and abuses the abundant means by describing you each square inch of a little Maine city, the history of each street, each inhabitant, how they live, how they feel toward each other; it's always super mundane stuff; why the town mill manager has marriage issues, how he unloads on his kids, how the kids bully the fat kid at school, who in turn makes friend with the nerdy guy from the divorced parents, etc. Each new chapter is a deeper drawer in the big dresser that is the story. And you may not realize at first why you get that over 200 pages, and how exactly that could benefit the story. But when stange things begin to happen, when the scarce means are progressively introduced, you are hooked and can't let the book down. If these scarce means were introduced only after a 10 pages overview of the characters and situation, you probably wouldn't feel a thing. And the closer you get to the ending, the lesser the abundant means; the crescendo is perfect.
I like the image of the building standing still that Warhol would have filmed for 8 minutes. We all agree, it doesn't bring any emotion out. It is poseur, because he's giving you a transcendance that's not been earned. It's like a priest giving you the communion wafer right from the start, it doesn't mean anything and it's useless. Now imagine a movie telling you the story of a man working extra long hours in a banking job in New York. You're meant to understand he does that for his family (maybe he comes from a poor family and is terrified by going back into poverty). But as the movie goes on and you get to know him, his job and his family better, you begin to question his motives. Does he really do it for his family ? He's never home, his health rapidly deteriorates, his wife and kids slowly become estranged to him, and all along he keeps telling you this lie; that he's doing it all just for his family. The "bank" he works at, and the entire skyscrapper slowly become meta-characters of their own; maybe the building is filmed from menacing angles, wide shots when he comes out from work at 1AM showing how insignificant he is againt this daunting Moloch made of glass and concrete; slowly, you begin to see the sparse means. Let's say at the end of the movie our working man dies at the office from a heart attack. You see the family destroyed, wife and kids crying in their little suburban home. And then, the last image is a 30 seconds/1 minute still-shot of the skycrapper, standing straight in the night, everlasting and waiting for new souls to be fed.
There, your "building shot" has tremendous meaning. Because the shot is not the point; it is just the way you create transcendance and give a superior meaning to the world you've spent 2 hours slowly building with abundant means.
Anyway, great newsletter Thomas, and happy Easter to you !
Happy Easter to you to Sebastien, I hope you are having a restful time and (I can only assume) great weather.
Back in my social media days (nice to be able to refer to that in the past tense) I would always give the same advice re: story structure which was precisely visualise the ending and then reverse engineer from there. The idea being that if you know what target to hit you can make all of the preparations to hit it precisely.
And this, as you say, is a question of build up, of leaving the breadcrumb trail. With a good story everything must have both a feeling of surprise but also that it couldn’t have happened any other way. When you trust an author, they may make pains to talk about something seemingly inconsequential but also at some length on page thirty, but you know it will be relevant later on. In a good story *everything* pays off later, nothing is a tangent.
And as with so much writing stuff, a lot of the initial impulse is instinctual. The author feels compelled to talk about x because on some level they know it is all part of the pay off.
The unspoken truth about fiction writing is that the process is logical but also hard to articulate clearly. It’s almost pre-logical in a sense, or a logic beyond logic.
I know that makes barely any sense, but it’s true nonetheless.
Thanks as always for your great insight here, Sebastien.
Thanks, Tom! This was fascinating!
I read a lot about the story structure for a script I'm writing but this abundant-sparse structure is something completely new for me. It makes me rethink some of the stuff and I need to meditate on that.
Also, I found this related to what you mentioned before about "building up a problem" and "crescendo". Starting with something small and understandable definitely helps to build up empathy and engage.
Do you think it works the same way for visuals? To support my question, I read a lot of Bruce Block and he wrote that "visual story structure should go in parallel with narrative structure". Meaning that moments of higher story intensity should be supported with visual tools (like higher contrast between different visual elements - colour, shapes, movement, etc). So my guess is, in cinema, if we want to reach transcendence we must somehow support it visually, too.
I haven’t read Bruce Block but I agree with his idea as you have presented it. In regards to how abundant and sparse relates to story structure I would highly recommend reading the Schrader book that this essay is (heavily) based on. It’s a short read and one of those that sparks a lot of ideas as well as inspiring you to get around to watching the cinematic masterpieces that he references.
Thanks John.
Thanks a lot for the recommendation! I'll look into it.
My pleasure. I’ll drop a link to it in our discord, along with some recommendations of Schraders best films. See you there.