I'm REALLY big on theme. One of the best workshops I ever took was in 2017 with Sarah Gerard through Litreactor called "The Alchemy of Theme" (It was expensive, most of the class were severe dilettantes, and I was just there because I wanted HER opinions on theme, I already had all my own. Also, I really liked her work and wanted a crit from her.)
On the second assignment of a four week workshop when I broke down the possible thematic elements of a story so hard her only response was to the tune of "I don't know if ANYONE has ever looked at it that way, or that deeply" she pegged me as a semi-pro, or at least someone who was not fucking around (tm).
The interaction in most of the workshop was so bad (Rob Hart was still running the workshop coordination program for Litreactor at that point and I even brought up the lack of interaction with him, most of the class I felt like a man screaming alone into a void) I'm pretty sure it helped hasten her divorce and at the same time she was writing a series of articles about herself and her relationship with food, et al. for another lit site, and had started drinking a bunch of bourbon, which given how this workshop was going, I could see why. (She never did another workshop with Litreactor, she divorced her first husband, and I believe she teaches at The New School now) But anyway, the first embryonic draft of my short story Our Year came from that workshop.
She professionally ripped it to pieces in a way she did NOT treat anyone else's in the workshop (Someone pays you 500 bucks for 4 weeks of tautology you have to hedge or else it can fuck you. This is a problem with both paid independent editors, and people leading workshops, the workshop leads, the name draws, often pull their punches. A few negative student reviews can shit on your life), because I'd already signaled being there in a professional capacity. It took me from 2017 until 2024 to finish it, finally giving it a much deserved spit shine of an ending on a final sectional rewrite when I posted it to Substack (after reading her crit about fifty million times. I noted when final crits dropped for the final week that I was the only person she ripped to shreds in a field of, I will not lie, really shit stories, but I was also the only person she punctuated the gang fucking of my short story with "I look forward to seeing this in print."
Your breakdown here is excellent. I believe that theme can be baked in (but you have to know what you're doing) or it can be emergent. (Notice how in the last abusive parenthetical I say "you have to know what you're doing." What I mean by that is YOU REALLY MUST KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND BE VERY INTENTIONAL ABOUT IT.) And there are shortcuts, dirty tricks, I'd know, my bag is full of them. The only problem is, you also have to know HOW TO USE THOSE AS WELL.
So there's no easy way around it.
My personal way of working usually starts with either an idea, a sentence, or a bit of imagery. Sometimes it leads somewhere, sometimes not, but a plot is just the causal chain of your story, and if you plot too tightly, you're going to find yourself at some point having veered off track, something will almost inevitably go wrong, and you've stifled the discovery process.
I do believe in form. Genres and stories have forms and expectations. We've sublimated those things to the point of knowing whether a story "works" or not, just from reading it. We're that media and narrative saturated. The issue is these expectations aren't all written down in some book somewhere (sorry anyone looking for the magic solution) but they're what we figure out the hard way. One issue I see with a lot of writers starting out is they want to immediately go into something that is on the surface simple (genre, pick one, external arch plot genre, say, basic hero story, it pops up everywhere) and try to subvert it off the blocks. The issue is 99% of the time, they're trying to subvert something done so often it's already HARD to write in an innovative way, and not only, they're also trying to subvert something everyone knows. (I wish for all beat sheets to burn eternally) So, good luck, better hope you're the literary equivalent of an undiscovered Van Gogh.
But after I have my bit of imagery, scenes I want or events I want will start to cohere, what I want is a topology of the general form and shape of the story, not a paint by numbers. I'm almost never thinking more than 20-30 pages ahead unless I'm hitting an inflection point soon and I know it. And that inflection point may turn out not to be what I thought in the first place.
(Read the Hotel pieces on my Substack. Yeah, tight zero drafts. Before the before. That was all on the fly, as I went, a year and change later, I know the topology and there is more input from things written in the inbetween, now I know I'm going to have to completely rework the story from Point A to X, but some things will remain generally in some sort of form as they have already, mostly key events, King of Killers HAS to happen, the Lobby Assault HAS to happen, Introducing The Heavies and the Russians coming to the hotel mysteriously HAS to happen, but now I know part of WHY they're there, and how they came to be there. But this requires rewriting a lot of what now reads as clunk to me in those six pieces on my Substack.)
Or, closer to the now. I wrote My Name is My Name, based on a three word prompt. Barley, Replaceable, and Banter, were the words. It took me a MONTH to get to sitting down to bang out the story. But the very first image I had in my head was actually the last scene of the story. I knew I wanted to keep that scene, specifically the last sentence, because I took it to my moms (English lit BA) and we both agreed that it sang. It was short, but it sang. Another framing came into view though, and I was able to create something more interesting in the completion of it than I would have without that scene, which, if you read the story closely, is PACKED ON WITH THE THEMES OF THE STORY in one way or another.
I love when you comment. It's like an easy an off its own.
One of the biggest lies out there is no one can teach you how to write. I took it to heart and it kept from seeking the right instruction for far too long. I received by Bachelors in Psychology from USC, and while I was there, I took every eyeing class I could, except for anything directly pertinent. I studied forms. Playwriting. Songwriting. Scriptwriting. (Asking with basic cinema, production, and animation.) But I was looking to be taught how to write because I didn't think that was possible.
I think some wiring processes are very hard to teach to and some people take a long time to learn... and many teachers can't teach at all. Add all that together, and prep or think you can't teach someone how to write.
Throw in that we don't all share the same objectives with our writing.
Throw in what you shared snot people guarding their reputation.
This happens in MFA programs too, traditinally, sometimes a student needs to be cut off at the knees, so a prof will tell the better student who is less of a braggart shitheel to go apeshit on their next crit of previously mentioned next Pynchon wannabe or whatever because honestly, sometimes people NEED to be taken down a peg. (I've been there, I wanted to be the next Bret Ellis. As reality sank in, time took me down as many pegs as needed until I admitted I knew nothing and started the real work. But first I had to realize I was NOT a beautiful and unique snowflake, and that I was NOT in the same sort of position Bret Ellis was when he wrote Less Than Zero.)
It's not even about guarding your reputation, Sarah Gerard gave me the ripping I deserved, undoubtedly, it's about how precious and special writers can be when they think they're "artistes" but don't know shit. I've come in on more than one workshop as hatchetman to give the crits the lead couldn't but wanted to.
I remember all the times I was cussed out by someone who came to my online critique group for a critique and got... a critique. People don't handle it well.
Blade runner being one of my all time favourite films of all time - (one of those that if I happen to catch a glimpse of means I have to watch it all YET AGAIN) I was keen to read all of this. It's interesting to see the take that others have on things especailly when they differ so much from one's own.
I have never seen this scene as rape. I have always seen it as a struggle between Rachael's torment and Deckard's torment - both coming from different places.
Rachael is tormented by the burgeoning realisation of what she is or may be - she is filling with sorrow that her life is not her own, that she is not real. But at the same time, she is attracted to Deckard, to his human-ness. She is at the same time scared of Deckard because she knows what he is and that it is his job to kill replicants. She is confused by human feelings now that she knows she is not human. She wonders how she can feel this, how she can live out these feelings when she is not human. She is apprehensive as to what may happen if she gives way to these feelings. But most of all she is a sad child - she has only a few years of lived experience, and so she is a child, who has lost everything. Physical desire is new to her - she has plopped out of a vat, perhaps only weeks or months beforehand.
Deckard is tormented because he is attracted to Rachael (but of course) He knows it is his job to kill her. He is sorrowful about that and full of pity for her, because of what he knows she is: as you quote "how can it not know what it is?" This inspires an empathic sadness in him. Despite knowing what she is, knowing what she has lost and seeing her evident torment, he is overcome with empathic sorrow for her plight. He expresses this with the forceful passionate embrace - he wants her to feel humanity, to experience the joy, the release of physical desire and giving in to those human drives and urges - it is quintessentially human - physical union. He wants for her to feel that she is wanted by a human - he has no concept yet that he is a replicant (in my opinion, he is certainly a replicant - cue unicorn origami, dream sequence argument - I rest my case) -
I know this could perhaps be seen as the classic male chauvinist line "What she needs is a good seeing to." but in a way I think this is what the scene is about at a much more profound level.
I do not think Deckard is disgusted or hateful in this scene - he wants her, as a man, but he wants her to feel human, to feel that she is wanted, to feel safe with him, to know the closeness of
sex. It is forceful but it is not violent. The feelings are forcefully shown, not violently meted out.
I believe that if rape was the message, then Scott would have made the scene more explicitly a rape scene. There would have been anger; more evident disgust, self loathing, resistance, but to me I see more sorrow and tenderness than anything violent.
How could I not join in to the discussion - I am going to have to upgrade Thaddeus - I feel I peaked too soon with some of my subscribing - and I don’t have money to burn on nice, when there is brilliance.
I'm one of the few idiots in my generation who was introduced to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep before Blade Runner, and it took me a while to judge Blade Runner on its own thematic terms, separate from its source material. The book is nearly drowning in themes (maybe a consequence of being a noir written on amphetamine), and though I love it I find it interesting that the adaptation might be the stronger of the two (or at least one of its MANY cuts) because its themes are comparatively limited.
...and for those curious about Contrapoints' video on Twilight (don't be a coward), you can find it here: https://youtu.be/bqloPw5wp48
"Until you know your story’s central theme(s), you don’t know your story.
It’s not the plot. Your story is never about the plot, but once you know the pattern that’s key to your story, then you can do something amazing. You can answer the question: what’s your story about?
It’s about abandonment and learning to trust again when the opportunity for love arises.
See that? See how neat and tidy and inviting that description is? That’s not what writers usually do. Their minds are stuck in the plot..."
EXCELLENT recap of theme. (posted on EKU Facebook page) However, would people read a book with the tag line:
The story is about a man who learns it is impossible to act nobly, or shamefully, without power.
Such simple words that obscure their complexity. (What kind of man, power, and definitions of nobility and shame are we talking about?) Yes, the writer should be able to answer the question, but the average reader describing the book to a customer who doesn't want to pay for a headache? Maybe not. The reason people hold on to emphasizing plot over theme, I suspect,is the inability of people to be objective; they'd rather hold onto stereotypes, and emotionalism because its safer and more comfortable. And that's probably best because, to destroy the moral universe of the average person is to destroy the pretenses they maintain in order to function is an irrational world.
Oh sure. I’m really just thinking about how we answer that question that always has us stymied. If they like the theme, they’ll ask for more, and I think that’s when the main character and their central problem fit in.
I'm REALLY big on theme. One of the best workshops I ever took was in 2017 with Sarah Gerard through Litreactor called "The Alchemy of Theme" (It was expensive, most of the class were severe dilettantes, and I was just there because I wanted HER opinions on theme, I already had all my own. Also, I really liked her work and wanted a crit from her.)
On the second assignment of a four week workshop when I broke down the possible thematic elements of a story so hard her only response was to the tune of "I don't know if ANYONE has ever looked at it that way, or that deeply" she pegged me as a semi-pro, or at least someone who was not fucking around (tm).
The interaction in most of the workshop was so bad (Rob Hart was still running the workshop coordination program for Litreactor at that point and I even brought up the lack of interaction with him, most of the class I felt like a man screaming alone into a void) I'm pretty sure it helped hasten her divorce and at the same time she was writing a series of articles about herself and her relationship with food, et al. for another lit site, and had started drinking a bunch of bourbon, which given how this workshop was going, I could see why. (She never did another workshop with Litreactor, she divorced her first husband, and I believe she teaches at The New School now) But anyway, the first embryonic draft of my short story Our Year came from that workshop.
She professionally ripped it to pieces in a way she did NOT treat anyone else's in the workshop (Someone pays you 500 bucks for 4 weeks of tautology you have to hedge or else it can fuck you. This is a problem with both paid independent editors, and people leading workshops, the workshop leads, the name draws, often pull their punches. A few negative student reviews can shit on your life), because I'd already signaled being there in a professional capacity. It took me from 2017 until 2024 to finish it, finally giving it a much deserved spit shine of an ending on a final sectional rewrite when I posted it to Substack (after reading her crit about fifty million times. I noted when final crits dropped for the final week that I was the only person she ripped to shreds in a field of, I will not lie, really shit stories, but I was also the only person she punctuated the gang fucking of my short story with "I look forward to seeing this in print."
Your breakdown here is excellent. I believe that theme can be baked in (but you have to know what you're doing) or it can be emergent. (Notice how in the last abusive parenthetical I say "you have to know what you're doing." What I mean by that is YOU REALLY MUST KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND BE VERY INTENTIONAL ABOUT IT.) And there are shortcuts, dirty tricks, I'd know, my bag is full of them. The only problem is, you also have to know HOW TO USE THOSE AS WELL.
So there's no easy way around it.
My personal way of working usually starts with either an idea, a sentence, or a bit of imagery. Sometimes it leads somewhere, sometimes not, but a plot is just the causal chain of your story, and if you plot too tightly, you're going to find yourself at some point having veered off track, something will almost inevitably go wrong, and you've stifled the discovery process.
I do believe in form. Genres and stories have forms and expectations. We've sublimated those things to the point of knowing whether a story "works" or not, just from reading it. We're that media and narrative saturated. The issue is these expectations aren't all written down in some book somewhere (sorry anyone looking for the magic solution) but they're what we figure out the hard way. One issue I see with a lot of writers starting out is they want to immediately go into something that is on the surface simple (genre, pick one, external arch plot genre, say, basic hero story, it pops up everywhere) and try to subvert it off the blocks. The issue is 99% of the time, they're trying to subvert something done so often it's already HARD to write in an innovative way, and not only, they're also trying to subvert something everyone knows. (I wish for all beat sheets to burn eternally) So, good luck, better hope you're the literary equivalent of an undiscovered Van Gogh.
But after I have my bit of imagery, scenes I want or events I want will start to cohere, what I want is a topology of the general form and shape of the story, not a paint by numbers. I'm almost never thinking more than 20-30 pages ahead unless I'm hitting an inflection point soon and I know it. And that inflection point may turn out not to be what I thought in the first place.
(Read the Hotel pieces on my Substack. Yeah, tight zero drafts. Before the before. That was all on the fly, as I went, a year and change later, I know the topology and there is more input from things written in the inbetween, now I know I'm going to have to completely rework the story from Point A to X, but some things will remain generally in some sort of form as they have already, mostly key events, King of Killers HAS to happen, the Lobby Assault HAS to happen, Introducing The Heavies and the Russians coming to the hotel mysteriously HAS to happen, but now I know part of WHY they're there, and how they came to be there. But this requires rewriting a lot of what now reads as clunk to me in those six pieces on my Substack.)
Or, closer to the now. I wrote My Name is My Name, based on a three word prompt. Barley, Replaceable, and Banter, were the words. It took me a MONTH to get to sitting down to bang out the story. But the very first image I had in my head was actually the last scene of the story. I knew I wanted to keep that scene, specifically the last sentence, because I took it to my moms (English lit BA) and we both agreed that it sang. It was short, but it sang. Another framing came into view though, and I was able to create something more interesting in the completion of it than I would have without that scene, which, if you read the story closely, is PACKED ON WITH THE THEMES OF THE STORY in one way or another.
I love when you comment. It's like an easy an off its own.
One of the biggest lies out there is no one can teach you how to write. I took it to heart and it kept from seeking the right instruction for far too long. I received by Bachelors in Psychology from USC, and while I was there, I took every eyeing class I could, except for anything directly pertinent. I studied forms. Playwriting. Songwriting. Scriptwriting. (Asking with basic cinema, production, and animation.) But I was looking to be taught how to write because I didn't think that was possible.
I think some wiring processes are very hard to teach to and some people take a long time to learn... and many teachers can't teach at all. Add all that together, and prep or think you can't teach someone how to write.
Throw in that we don't all share the same objectives with our writing.
Throw in what you shared snot people guarding their reputation.
It's a mess.
I love these essay-length comments too, there are always a lot of gems in them to contemplate.
The shithead in me, however, is always tempted to reply to them with a single "okay"
I'm often a man of few words. That might be an you get from me. 😆
Okay
Brilliant, sir.
This happens in MFA programs too, traditinally, sometimes a student needs to be cut off at the knees, so a prof will tell the better student who is less of a braggart shitheel to go apeshit on their next crit of previously mentioned next Pynchon wannabe or whatever because honestly, sometimes people NEED to be taken down a peg. (I've been there, I wanted to be the next Bret Ellis. As reality sank in, time took me down as many pegs as needed until I admitted I knew nothing and started the real work. But first I had to realize I was NOT a beautiful and unique snowflake, and that I was NOT in the same sort of position Bret Ellis was when he wrote Less Than Zero.)
It's not even about guarding your reputation, Sarah Gerard gave me the ripping I deserved, undoubtedly, it's about how precious and special writers can be when they think they're "artistes" but don't know shit. I've come in on more than one workshop as hatchetman to give the crits the lead couldn't but wanted to.
I remember all the times I was cussed out by someone who came to my online critique group for a critique and got... a critique. People don't handle it well.
Blade runner being one of my all time favourite films of all time - (one of those that if I happen to catch a glimpse of means I have to watch it all YET AGAIN) I was keen to read all of this. It's interesting to see the take that others have on things especailly when they differ so much from one's own.
I have never seen this scene as rape. I have always seen it as a struggle between Rachael's torment and Deckard's torment - both coming from different places.
Rachael is tormented by the burgeoning realisation of what she is or may be - she is filling with sorrow that her life is not her own, that she is not real. But at the same time, she is attracted to Deckard, to his human-ness. She is at the same time scared of Deckard because she knows what he is and that it is his job to kill replicants. She is confused by human feelings now that she knows she is not human. She wonders how she can feel this, how she can live out these feelings when she is not human. She is apprehensive as to what may happen if she gives way to these feelings. But most of all she is a sad child - she has only a few years of lived experience, and so she is a child, who has lost everything. Physical desire is new to her - she has plopped out of a vat, perhaps only weeks or months beforehand.
Deckard is tormented because he is attracted to Rachael (but of course) He knows it is his job to kill her. He is sorrowful about that and full of pity for her, because of what he knows she is: as you quote "how can it not know what it is?" This inspires an empathic sadness in him. Despite knowing what she is, knowing what she has lost and seeing her evident torment, he is overcome with empathic sorrow for her plight. He expresses this with the forceful passionate embrace - he wants her to feel humanity, to experience the joy, the release of physical desire and giving in to those human drives and urges - it is quintessentially human - physical union. He wants for her to feel that she is wanted by a human - he has no concept yet that he is a replicant (in my opinion, he is certainly a replicant - cue unicorn origami, dream sequence argument - I rest my case) -
I know this could perhaps be seen as the classic male chauvinist line "What she needs is a good seeing to." but in a way I think this is what the scene is about at a much more profound level.
I do not think Deckard is disgusted or hateful in this scene - he wants her, as a man, but he wants her to feel human, to feel that she is wanted, to feel safe with him, to know the closeness of
sex. It is forceful but it is not violent. The feelings are forcefully shown, not violently meted out.
I believe that if rape was the message, then Scott would have made the scene more explicitly a rape scene. There would have been anger; more evident disgust, self loathing, resistance, but to me I see more sorrow and tenderness than anything violent.
Wonderful breakdown! Love it. No notes.
How could I not join in to the discussion - I am going to have to upgrade Thaddeus - I feel I peaked too soon with some of my subscribing - and I don’t have money to burn on nice, when there is brilliance.
Thank you!
I'm one of the few idiots in my generation who was introduced to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep before Blade Runner, and it took me a while to judge Blade Runner on its own thematic terms, separate from its source material. The book is nearly drowning in themes (maybe a consequence of being a noir written on amphetamine), and though I love it I find it interesting that the adaptation might be the stronger of the two (or at least one of its MANY cuts) because its themes are comparatively limited.
...and for those curious about Contrapoints' video on Twilight (don't be a coward), you can find it here: https://youtu.be/bqloPw5wp48
I want you to know I watched over an hour before realizing I'd seen it before 😆
That's amazing ha ha!
I watched it recently on the big screen, in a public venue. The kitchen scene was truly disturbing.
What worried me most was that for so many years people may have taken it on face value - in that the depicted sexual violence was somehow acceptable.
I’m not sure the thought behind the construction.
Difficult questions:
Can you rape a robot?
If a robot passes for human, surely his actions are no different than those of a rapist.
Is the violence his attempt to see if she feels anything?
I think the sex and violence overlap.
He kills replicants, she’s the latest version of his enemy. etc.
Still, the damage in some way is done. It’s sexual violence against a female form.
And then it’s art…. and we open another door of critique.
Best wishes,
Great read, thanks
TE
I appreciate that take. Thank you
Best lines of the essay:
"Until you know your story’s central theme(s), you don’t know your story.
It’s not the plot. Your story is never about the plot, but once you know the pattern that’s key to your story, then you can do something amazing. You can answer the question: what’s your story about?
It’s about abandonment and learning to trust again when the opportunity for love arises.
See that? See how neat and tidy and inviting that description is? That’s not what writers usually do. Their minds are stuck in the plot..."
EXCELLENT recap of theme. (posted on EKU Facebook page) However, would people read a book with the tag line:
The story is about a man who learns it is impossible to act nobly, or shamefully, without power.
Such simple words that obscure their complexity. (What kind of man, power, and definitions of nobility and shame are we talking about?) Yes, the writer should be able to answer the question, but the average reader describing the book to a customer who doesn't want to pay for a headache? Maybe not. The reason people hold on to emphasizing plot over theme, I suspect,is the inability of people to be objective; they'd rather hold onto stereotypes, and emotionalism because its safer and more comfortable. And that's probably best because, to destroy the moral universe of the average person is to destroy the pretenses they maintain in order to function is an irrational world.
Oh sure. I’m really just thinking about how we answer that question that always has us stymied. If they like the theme, they’ll ask for more, and I think that’s when the main character and their central problem fit in.
When I sat down to write Tranith Argan, I had two very important themes I wanted to explore. The entire saga is an exploration of those two themes.
That's how it's done!