A Tale of Two Camps

Yesterday I had JJ Abrams on the brain so hard I watched Star Trek and thought about rewatching Alias. This morning, I read a fascinating interview with Steven Soderbergh. These two guys got into my head and made me realize something about the fiction I'm enjoying lately. Basically, everything I'm enjoying right now comes from two camps of thought, and these guys can represent them well.

The Abrams Camp

Abrams makes beautiful movies and tv shows that are pulse pounding and interesting. They're usually pretty smart with well-oiled plots as well. But if it comes down to Smart versus Exciting, Abrams is going to go with Exciting every time.

He considers himself to walk in Spielberg's footsteps. The craft of movie-making will be in full effect, but these movies are here to make you eat the living hell out of some popcorn.

For examples, watch the first season of Lost and Alias, 2009's Star Trek, or Super8.

The Soderbergh Camp

The Soderbergh Camp is just as likely to give you a low-fi indie thing as it is to give you a slick, exciting film that makes you eat popcorn by the handful. But even when it's giving you slick and exciting, there's more going on there. Sometimes the craft slips or becomes a little rote, but there's always a lot of thinking and character work going on beneath the surface.

Bottom line, even when the Soderbergh Camp makes pulp entertainment, it's always doing something else beneath the pulp.

For examples, Sex, Lies, & Videotape, Out of Sight, Ocean's 11, or The Good German.

No Judgment Zone

These descriptions should not be read as value judgments. Remember, I led with saying these are the two camps I'm enjoying these days. Not necessarily everything from both camps tickles my fancy (sometimes slick and exciting is also stupid and sometimes multi-layered is just muddying up the better bits), but these are the generalized approaches I love.

Figuring this out, or at least putting names to it, has already helped me understand some of the issues I've had with my creative endeavors lately. Basically, I've left myself in a really confusing place.

The Unruh Camp?

If you ask me what camp my work is in, I'd say the Abrams Camp. But the fact of the matter is, when it comes to my work habits and the way I plan my fiction, I write as though I'm from the Soderbergh Camp.

Even if I have a thrilling story half planned, I often find it difficult to explain my Story Question succinctly. As much as I love plot driven pieces, I often start with a theme, a feeling, or a character who needs twisting and then create a plot to get at that.

Basically, I really and firmly believe I want to be one thing until I actually have to do the work, and then I realize I have to be the other thing in order to finish the work. But when it's finished, you could very likely mistake it for the first thing.

I can think of one writer -- a comic book writer, of all things -- who manages to synthesize these camps nearly perfectly. Maybe that's what I'm working towards. Or maybe I'm just figuring myself out as a writer on the job. (The best way to figure it out, by the way.)

What about you folks who have read a few things by me? Do you have any thoughts or theories on which Camp I trend toward? Maybe you see neither one? I'd be interested to hear from you guys on this, because if I actually stopped to gaze at my own navel that hard, I might never come out again.