A Resolution of Sorts

Best wishes for 2013 to you all.

It is becoming an unwelcome habit, starting a post with an apology, but it seems that finding the wherewithal to post entries is a challenge to which I have yet to rise!  The end of 2012 was a very fulfilling one for me, with news that my TV series The Track (which is being produced by Hoodlum for broadcast on Australia’s Network Ten) got the green light.  The last weeks of 2012 were an immersion in story development.  And while TV is a delightfully collaborative process (and I’m working with some fantastic and smart people on this show), the work to date is serving more and more to confirm some things I’ve suspected about storytelling.

I recall in a workshop I participated in last year speaking about suspense.  I think the workshop was a mere hour, and I had the pleasure of sharing it with the lovely and talented Katherine Howell.  In retrospect, an hour was too short.  Indeed, a day would be too short, as might even a solid week. I recall, in that workshop, suggesting to the participants that suspense and surprise were two very different things – suspense builds, I said, and surprise happens.  I now believe that suspense and surprise are two sides to a very valuable coin that buys the hearts and minds of readers and viewers.  For why else do we read and watch, if not to wonder what will happen next (suspense), and to be shocked when what we think might happen is supplanted by something unexpected (surprise).

But neither side of this coin – suspense nor surprise – matters a jot without something else.

For a long time, I thought that extra essential ingredient was ‘idea’, but two things I recently enjoyed suggested for me that it is not ‘idea’ at all – or, at least, not ‘idea’ in the way I’d been considering it.  I read The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers, and saw Skyfall, the latest James Bond film.  They are both, in their own ways, quite wonderful.  The former is lyrical and tragic; the latter is fun and exciting.  The former is a bildungsroman in a war setting; the latter is the twenty-third film about the super spy.  Neither is a new idea.  Both suffer nothing because of it.  Because both are rich with style and character.

The Yellow Birds has a story as deceptively simple as a Rousseau painting – but, like one of my favourite paintings The Sleeping Gypsy, its simplicity masks a raw beauty and hidden complexity that will draw me back again and again, much as I keep returning to the classics by masters of the seemingly spare like Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy.  The idea didn’t need to be new; the truth of the character and the beauty of the style meant that only a track slightly off the beaten one was needed to engage the reader.  And because the style was so compelling and the character so very flawed and real and – most critically  – understandable, it was enough to keep me at least wondering: what happens next?

Skyfall could not have been more different fare.  Where the whining of bullets in The Yellow Birds were fraught with real mortal terror, they were stagecraft in Skyfall.  It was high theatre and superbly done.  Yes, the villain’s plots were overly complex, and the villain himself far larger than life – and bravo for it.  And yes, Bond himself thought just a little and fought beyond the point when most others could – and bravo for that.  The film delivered what was expected – it was like a delicious steak meal served with just enough new seasonings and flourishes to satisfy mightily well.  Again, because of character and style.  We know Bond won’t die, so the surprises are few. The suspense comes from wondering: how will Bond get out of this mess?  And we know the villain will want to rule the world and extract convoluted revenge, because that is the genre, and the style suited it perfectly.

What is taken away from reading The Yellow Birds and watching Skyfall?  From the former, a soul-scouring reminder of the preciousness of life, the fragility of the mind, and the futility of war; from the latter, joyful entertainment and a carefully weighed handful of memories about the one-liners we love our changeless heroes to utter.  Plot?  Not so much.  Sure, it would be notable by its absence in both works, but it was satisfying enough in both to not interfere with those larger qualities of character and style.  Plot is like a map – yes, it's important to know where we're going, but please don't let poring over the map stop us enjoying the changing landscape.

So, as I embark on a new year of writing, I’ll be sure to working hard on my ideas, on ensuring my plots have both suspense and surprise packaged in plots that have logic and freshness… but I suspect my sun and moon this year will be character and style.  At least, that’s my resolution.  Or one of my resolutions, of sorts.