Monday, March 23, 2015

A lack of mystery

The Princess is mourning the end of her mystery writing class, during which she was immersed in the intricacies of creating sympathetic yet dynamic characters, bumping off characters without leaving behind too much to clean up, and pondering exactly what "sympathetic yet dynamic character" means. During this time, she often asked the Hero deep questions about life, such as "Do dogs eat graham crackers?"

This question was extremely relevant to the story she was working on, because the character she found most challenging to write about was not the main character -- a hair stylist by day and food blogger by other times -- nor her friend, a priest, nor even the bad guy. No, the most challenging character was: a dog. The food blogger's terrier, named Massachusetts. This difficulty of taking a dog's perspective arose because the sum total of the Princess's knowledge about dogs is 1) they eat, 2) they sleep, 3) they bark, and 4) they are among the most pitiable of creatures, because they cannot eat chocolate.

Unfortunately the Hero's canine knowledge is about the same, and he had no wisdom to offer on the graham cracker question. You can see how this small store of knowledge would limit what the Princess could write about Massachusetts. His principle role in the story is mostly as a vacuum cleaner of sorts, inhaling anything with even a particle of food substance in it, and standing guard at the oven door when his owner, the food blogger, is testing one of her new creations. He is not, however, an entirely one-dimensional character: He also stars in a few napping scenes.

However, we should point out that the story currently has just two chapters and a prologue, so there is the potential for Massachusetts to climb to heights of greatness and extreme usefulness in the story, provided there is some tasty treat at the top of the climb.

For ten weeks the Princess parked on a couch to plan and execute devious plot scenes and write witty dialogue. She was loathe to interrupt her writing sessions and leave the couch, so she often prevailed upon the Hero to bring her beverages, snacks, and other life-sustaining substances such as the Sunday comics. Though happy to oblige, at times the Hero feared that she would eventually fuse with the couch, and that would never do, because then how would he take naps?

The Hero provided invaluable feedback as an objective reader of the Princess's writing, particularly because he could offer an all-important male perspective ("You should put in more puke scenes"). Not all of his advice was followed ("Why doesn't the good guy beat up the bad guy?"), but it was appreciated nevertheless.

Now that the class, and its deadlines, are over, the Princess is suffering ennui, although the Hero is strongly urging her to finish her story (and to include something that blows up, like a car, or an oven). She may, she says. To keep it percolating in her mind, every now and then she has a random thought about her story line. Like, whether sympathetic yet dynamic characters ever experience ennui.

1 comment:

A Distant Nosy Neighbor said...

I had abandoned all hope of ever seeing another blog posted to your site, so I had stopped looking for one on a daily basis as was my habit for weeks. And now I see that I must prod you to produce the rest of your story, as the little you talked about in your post makes me want to read the actual story. So, please stop reading what I have written, go back to your couch, and complete what you started. By the way, dogs are incredibly complex creatures who will love you without judgement and tinkle on your floor if needs be. Why are you reading this...GO WRITE.