Narrative Efficiency
[Storytellers Unplugged, March 7, 2009; awesome reader=awesome]
We just got back from seeing Watchmen. I can tell you neither the first time I read the graphic novel, nor how many times I’ve read the graphic novel, so you may understand that it is something of a coup for the movie that I was by and large pleased and impressed. There are one or two matters where I was disappointed, but this is largely an inevitable effect of the translation from one medium to another. And there’s one matter where I think the movie improves on the graphic novel--which, as the title of this post suggests, is its narrative efficiency.
The graphic novel Watchmen is narratively a sprawling object; there are several different foci of attention (I hesitate to call them plot threads, because they aren’t plots), and one of the beauties of the graphic novel is the way these different foci are played off each other, the way Moore and Gibbons use each to comment on the others. It is not, to use a thematic image that both graphic novel and movie utilize, a watch. All of its intricacy and delicacy come on the thematic level. The movie, on the other hand, is a watch; the pared-down plot is actually far better constructed than Moore and Gibbons, and it achieves something which the graphic novel does not, in that the playing out of the external plot is also a playing out of the story’s central themes.
(As you can tell, I’m trying very hard not to spoil anything, since although the graphic novel is twenty-three years old, the movie is new, and I can imagine that many people may go see the movie who have never read the graphic novel. If you’re one of them, I do sincerely recommend the novel. For all the movie’s loving recreation of the graphic novel’s visuals, the book is not the same as the movie and it is a tour de force of its form.)
This is a very neat trick. It makes the movie feel cohesive; it makes the movie feel organic, as if this is the way the story always has been, the way the story has to be. Because it all fits together. Theme and imagery are reflected in the plot; the plot tells you something important about the theme. It’s coherent. It’s efficient.
Now, it may fairly be said that my novels are not efficient. They are large and sprawling (not unlike my assessment of the graphic novel of Watchmen). I don’t know if I have it in me to write a narratively efficient novel, one that works like a beautiful watch. But I can certainly admire it when I see it done, and I think that the fundamental thing that makes narrative efficiency possible is this idea that the plot itself is an expression of the theme, and that the theme, conversely, has something to say about the plot.
I’ve never felt very comfortable with plot--certainly never felt that it is one of my strengths. External action is rarely where my interest lies. Recently, in fact, I’ve been having difficulty writing short stories because the ideas come to me as themes and don’t bring any plot along with them, and because I’m not much good at plot, I’ve been unable to do anything with them. So this new way of looking at the relationship between theme and plot is exciting for me. In the dead end I feel like I’m stuck in, it gives me hope of a door.
We just got back from seeing Watchmen. I can tell you neither the first time I read the graphic novel, nor how many times I’ve read the graphic novel, so you may understand that it is something of a coup for the movie that I was by and large pleased and impressed. There are one or two matters where I was disappointed, but this is largely an inevitable effect of the translation from one medium to another. And there’s one matter where I think the movie improves on the graphic novel--which, as the title of this post suggests, is its narrative efficiency.
The graphic novel Watchmen is narratively a sprawling object; there are several different foci of attention (I hesitate to call them plot threads, because they aren’t plots), and one of the beauties of the graphic novel is the way these different foci are played off each other, the way Moore and Gibbons use each to comment on the others. It is not, to use a thematic image that both graphic novel and movie utilize, a watch. All of its intricacy and delicacy come on the thematic level. The movie, on the other hand, is a watch; the pared-down plot is actually far better constructed than Moore and Gibbons, and it achieves something which the graphic novel does not, in that the playing out of the external plot is also a playing out of the story’s central themes.
(As you can tell, I’m trying very hard not to spoil anything, since although the graphic novel is twenty-three years old, the movie is new, and I can imagine that many people may go see the movie who have never read the graphic novel. If you’re one of them, I do sincerely recommend the novel. For all the movie’s loving recreation of the graphic novel’s visuals, the book is not the same as the movie and it is a tour de force of its form.)
This is a very neat trick. It makes the movie feel cohesive; it makes the movie feel organic, as if this is the way the story always has been, the way the story has to be. Because it all fits together. Theme and imagery are reflected in the plot; the plot tells you something important about the theme. It’s coherent. It’s efficient.
Now, it may fairly be said that my novels are not efficient. They are large and sprawling (not unlike my assessment of the graphic novel of Watchmen). I don’t know if I have it in me to write a narratively efficient novel, one that works like a beautiful watch. But I can certainly admire it when I see it done, and I think that the fundamental thing that makes narrative efficiency possible is this idea that the plot itself is an expression of the theme, and that the theme, conversely, has something to say about the plot.
I’ve never felt very comfortable with plot--certainly never felt that it is one of my strengths. External action is rarely where my interest lies. Recently, in fact, I’ve been having difficulty writing short stories because the ideas come to me as themes and don’t bring any plot along with them, and because I’m not much good at plot, I’ve been unable to do anything with them. So this new way of looking at the relationship between theme and plot is exciting for me. In the dead end I feel like I’m stuck in, it gives me hope of a door.
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