What makes a good story?

What set me off thinking about stories was watching The Time Traveller's Wife on television the other night and really not liking it, but seeing The Lakehouse the previous night and really liking it. And I wondered - Why? They're both love stories with fantastical twists and The Time Traveller's Wife arguably has better credentials.

So I arrived at a kind of philosophical question. What makes a good story?

OK - this is subjective, but not entirely. Often when we're left with a disatisfied feeling at the end of a book or movie it's because there is a fault in the story telling. I recently reviewed an action sci fi script, which is completely not my thing, but it was a good story. It is only partly a matter of what you like, because I should have liked The Time Traveller's Wife.

But here is why I think I didn't

a) The story has a time travel plot, but is nothing to do with science fiction. This is a romance. The time travel is explained as some sort of genetic disposition. That's not the problem. The problem is time travel should have some sort of meaning in the story. It doesn't beyond what a bummer it is when your husband keeps disappearing.

b) The two main characters are creepily manipulative. The time traveller, as a mature man, deliberately goes back in time to meet his future wife as a child and keeps meeting her, in secret, until she grows up enough to fall in love with him. Later he has a vasectomy without her agreement, so she hooks up with a younger him just passing through on a time travel in order to conceive. Further, he disappears on their wedding day so she marries an older him.

Contrarily, in The Lake House, which in theory is just as odd, the two main characters get together in one time zone and presumably live happy ever after. It was based on a French movie, which may explain why it seemed both more romantic and more plausible.

It is OK to have creepily manipulative characters, but I think it has to be clear that their behaviour is seen to be creepy and manipulative and is in some way, condemned. In The Time Traveller's Wife we are meant to think that these are two star-crossed lovers, not a paedophile and a control freak.

Where does evil come from?

Recently I viewed two stories that were engaged with evil and the havoc it causes in the world. They were good studies of evil in that they didn't shirk the consequences, although I wouldn't say they were among my favourite experiences.

The first was a live play called "Gagarin's Way" set in Scotland in recent times when economic hard times have hit. There are four male characters, each reacting to the hard times in different ways.

The youngest character is the kind of modern liberal who espouses the "middle way". He is caught up in nefarious goings on because of his greed and sense of superiority about his degree in politics. He allies himself with two men who are plotting violence against one of the management. The manager himself is a study in cynism, a local made good, he is so world weary the prospect of meeting an untimely end at the hands of two kidnappers doesn't seem to bother him much. He understands that the proletariat of old has been seduced by the materialism of modern culture, something the older of the kidnappers doesn't understand. He is an old school political activist, trying to stir up a political movement. He is the most sympathetic character, in a way, because at least he believes in something and he also shows concern for his victim, to the point where he doesn't want to carry out the plan. In the end it is his tear stained face that haunts you as you leave the theatre.

The fourth character is a psychopath who enjoys violence and making trouble. He has no political beliefs at all and indeed, cleverly skewers them all in a way that makes you understand the futility of human systems of social organisation. His view of the world is bleak and completely amoral. The play is a comedy of the blackest kind, but the blackness only grows on you as you realise that the two kidnappers are completely different. The psycho has no interest whatsoever in the anarchist's agenda.

Where lies evil? In the amoral perceptions of a psychopath who uses the hatreds of others for his own ends? The play flinches a wee bit in making it clear that the psycho is, indeed, a psycho, having been in an institution. Although it is a clear eyed play about politics and its shortcomings as a philosophy, it cannot face the truth of the existence of pure evil. An evil man must be sick ...

The second was the movie "Four Lions" - again a black comedy. Here it was hard to locate an evil character at all. They all had their moral weak points (clearly, as they were jihadist bombers), but they were also sympathetic characters. Perhaps the least sympathetic was the white Moslem, who felt he had to be more jihadist than his peers because he was white. They were all idiots so it is hard to label any of them the source of the evil. It was more as if a source from outside had simply stoked their hate into a force for evil. This of course is the cause of fanaticism on such a scale. Get enough people hating hard enough and you can persuade them to do anything.

The most intelligent of them, their leader, was perhaps the most culpable. In one scene he persuades his somewhat intellectually deficient friend that his gut feeling that what they are doing is wrong is really the devil usurping God's place in his heart. It's a clever, amoral manipulation of someone who clearly doesn't have the capacity to make a properly informed decision about being a suicide bomber.

Although this is laugh out loud funny in many places they don't come to a good end. And it left me with lots of questions. These men were just ordinary British moslems with ordinary lives . And yet they were the type of people (not just men) who's hatred can be stoked to the point of violence.

Perhaps hatred is the biggest evil - the one we are all capable of and the one we should be on guard for all the time.

The latest NZ flick - patchy at best

We are interested in movies in our family. My husband and I enter the 48 hours (six years now and counting), my children help us in other productions, we even have a presence on YouTube (see a previous post on The Vintner's Duck), so we try to see New Zealand movies as they come out (if they seem at all interesting and/or suitable for young teenage girls). So we went off last weekend to see Predicament - the latest New Zealand flick, completing the filming of every work of fiction by iconic New Zealand writer Ronald Hugh Morrieson. I have not read Morrieson, nor seen any other movie made of his work, but Predicament did not change my impression - a black comedy, obsessed with the gothic and scandalous and black, black, black.

But the story was fun. Obviously the concoction of some sort of genius. Morrieson does not fit in the usual New Zealand literary tradition. This is not serious stuff - it's fun and thrills and blood and guts and a little bit naughty. Small town gothic. I doubt Morrieson was terribly worried about the Great New Zealand Novel (which is really refreshing).

The film looks beautiful but is so patchy. Also, it was useful to understand that Morrieson had not completed the story upon his death, for the ending is quick and perfunctory and leaves a lot unexplained. Jemaine Clement, who receives star billing, steals the show. He plays a character called Spook, whose main characteristic is appearing as if from nowhere - and it is impossible to imagine anyone else doing this so well. Unfortunately he departs the scene well before the end and takes most interest with him. None of the characters are in the least bit sympathetic, except the Gran, who is a very minor character and this is a problem in watching the movie. So after Jemaine departs it gets a bit tedious. Other reviewers have mentioned that the actor playing Toebeck overplays most of the time so that his secret sinister side is actually not so secret. Although the pivotal scene where we become aware of his possible involvement in his father's death is effective.

The main character, a callow youth who is terminally embarassed by his father, is extremely unsympathetic and this is a real weakness, possibly inherited from Morrieson - and put this together with the hustled up ending (not written by Morrieson) and you're left with an unsatisfactory cinema experience.

Big slick Hollywood movie making 101

Inception is the latest big event movie. As such it invites direct comparison with the other BEM of 2010 - but it's a much better movie than Avatar - much less gimicky, much less simple minded and a uniformly terrific cast.

But ... I can't call it great.

For example, it invites comparison with The Matrix, involving worlds that exist only in the mind, but it is not as primal as The Matrix, it's only playing with the concepts. It reminded me more of Wim Wnders Until the End of the World, which was a bit of a mess of a movie (coming for me, as it did, on the heels of Wings of Desire which is one of my greatest ever movies) - but has in common with Inception the idea that our dreams could be addictive if we were ever able to control our access to them. In Inception our dream worlds threaten to become our reality and the end (somewhat simplistically) plays with our inability to discern reality over delusion.

But, for me the deep issues of Inception are laid over the top, they're not really significant to the movie. They're more like a shallow attempt to make the movie important.

Basically it's a heist movie. The main characters are thieves on a mission impossible. The direction is almost flawless. At one point we are four dreams into the maze of the unconscious and we know exactly where we are at all points. The only thing that slightly confused me was the firefight in the snow where everyone was wearing white - I wasn't sure who was actually dieing and who was surviving.

The apparent emotional core of the movie, the main character's angst over the death of his wife, remained extremely unmoving, although it did complicate the heist.

There was remarkably little in the way of SFX, which was refreshing, and if you want to cast an action hero Leonardo DiCaprio is probably your best bet. The unbelievably dependable Michael Caine turns up, and Ellen Page and Marion Cotillard - I told you it was a great cast.

Inception is a brilliant action/sci fi movie that doesn't rely too much on gimmicks. Just don't expect a masterpiece.

How to write chick lit

I have read chick lit on and off my whole life, obviously being a chick and being into lit, and I have come to some conclusions about how it's done.

True chick lit involves the friendships of women. Books and stories mainly about men/women relationships are romances. I think this is probably my arbitrary division, but it seems chick lit celebrates something about women. Chick lit is about how women are the best friends of women, how our relationships with our friends meet all our emotional needs, how wise and special women are. Men are in these books and stories only as objects or caricatures. So Sex and the City is the TV version, The Jane Austen Book Club or The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants or The Joy Luck Club are the book (and sometimes movie) versions. Another movie version in The Making of An American Quilt (I haven't read the book). In all these stories a woman's girlfriends put her back together after crisis, or help her mature and grow up, etc.

Another strand of chick lit builds on the premise that women are wise and loving and the fount of all that is good. Examples here are Chocolat, Babette's Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, The Colour Purple (I'm aware that these are movies, but they started as books, three of them are also about food - hmmmmm).

Most of the sisterhood books have in common that you really can't understand what brought these women together in the first place. Margaret Atwood's Robber Bride comes close to answering that. The three friends are drawn together over each other being the victim of the same Other Woman stealing their men. Atwood correctly identifies that sometimes the enemy is one of us, not all are sisters.

So my recipe for chick lit:
1. Take three or four women as different as possible
2. Put them together over a particular past time (quilt making, a book club)or
3. Have them share an experience (the same woman stole their husbands)or
4. Just have them be friends for no apparent reason (Sex and the City)
5. Have them meet and talk endlessly
6. While recounting their rotten marriages, rotten children, thwarted dreams
7. Have them come through a life time of friendship stronger and happier

OR have one particularly strong woman befriend a whole lot of weaker, more victimised ones
have her power be absolutely benevolent and mysterious and have every woman (remember men are the enemies or the weak ninnies) who comes near her be blessed and live happily ever after.

See, they're fairy tales!

Patchwork and Quilting - how to write a short story

Just recently I have been writing short stories (Lankaren is taking a rest) and I have realised I make stories in much the same way I make fabric art. That is, I save little scraps of this and that and look for ways they work together to create an overall "something" that is more than the sum of its parts. I suppose all art is like this - the juxtaposition of pieces that contrast and reflect on each other - creating a resonance between them that is a whole new thing.
A writing friend once described her way of writing as casting a fishing line into a pond and pulling something out which had something else tangled in it, and that something else had something else dangling off it ... in a little string of things that together made a story - not just a sequence of events, but also details that when added together give the story depth and richness and truth. So for example a character loves shoes - this fixation is both a detail of character and a device by which ideas about materialism, luxury, the Cinderella myth and even political comment (Imelda Marcos anyone?) can be explored.
I have also been reading about writing again - including Writing from the Inside Out, by Dennis Palumbo (a therapist who specialises in creative issues - only in America!) and Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood. Palumbo manages to be both encouraging ("you are enough") and depressing ("writing is hard"). Atwood is a very intelligent writer who makes me feel like an intellectual pipsqueak. she is one of the few current writers I actually admire, so perhaps this is not surprising. Her book explores issues such as "Is a writer a prophet, a high priest, or a court jester?" and "Who are we even writing for?" (ourselves, critics, the masses, etc). Heavy stuff.
Maybe I should stop reading and get writing!

History, like politics, is personal

Recently my family attended the unveiling of a plaque on my great great grandfather's previously unmarked grave.

It has long been considered among many, certainly the young I think, that history is irrelevant. Who cares about what dead people did long ago? I have the usual barrage of answers to this - those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, ideas have consequences (so we better know where they came from), our identities are rooted in the history of our culture. However, great great grandfather's ceremony has reminded me that history is personal.

You see great great grandfather's plaque was donated by the US government because he was a Civil War vet. Yes, he fought (in the navy) in the 1861-65 war when the US finally abolished slavery. He fought in the conflict that posed the greatest threat the Republic of the United States of America has ever faced and the American Government is still grateful!

The ceremony was held on July 4th, the day Americans celebrate their country, their democracy, their way of life, and it was carried out by the deputy consul of the American Consulate in Auckland, and he took the time to explain to us how important our ancestor's contribution was to the survival of his country. It was moving and revealing.

Suddenly my daughter's studies of the Civil War and black American civil rights came into clear focus for her. She has a stake in that story.

But there is more. The day was a family reunion. Great great grandfather married the grand daughter of a pre-Waitangi settler. His wife was also half Nga Puhi. His last surviving grandchild, a lady of 103, was at the reunion. She is the carrier of a sacred taonga - a name given her by her grandmother. Again, my children could see how they fit into history. They are Nga Puhi, from the Bay of Islands, and they both bear Maori names handed down as taonga.

Suddenly they understand the precious gift of heritage, of history, they can see how history has made them.

I amazes me when I see on television various celebrities researching their family histories and being surprised to find out things about their grandparents. For our family, our history goes back all the way to settlement in New Zealand. Also, of couse, there is the whakapapa that goes back to Kupe.

As settlers we grasp onto our history, we are proud. The courage and tenacity of our forebears sets us apart as a people, it is our identity. Tribal peoples also have this sense of pride in forebears, hence the whakapapa. Such tribal memory gives a people it's sense of separate identity, of being special, if you like. We settler peoples perhaps also have the same sense. I'm not enough of an anthropologist to really know. But it's kind of sad that for all but the Maori branch of my family, knowledge stops at England's sea ports.