Same reason you need a hospital, an office or a ranch.
I hope Discovery places "plot" first, avoids melodrama
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
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To see how your characters react. Science fiction is about changes in technology and scientific discovery and how human beings will react to them. It does not automatically mean "spaceships and aliens."
Any basic creative writing course will tell you plot and story should come from characters, not the other way around. You determine what your characters want and need, what choices they would organically make, and build your story around that. Try the Scriptnotes podcast. I think you would find it very illuminating.
That's exactly what I was referring to before as something to avoid. Nothing means anything if the audience can sense that the writer is simply moving the pawns on a game board. The story would have an arbitrary nature that only exists because the writer controlled it. Audiences often sense when they're being forced in a direction that's not natural. Usually writers talk about how the characters control write the story through the writer, that it's not ultimately the writer playing a god so much as the writer listening to the characters and being their conduit. When that's the process, instead of pawn-moving, then there's a more balanced and honest story that respects the different points of view of those characters.
Really, it's simply an order of operations. If a writer starts with the characters then the plot will emerge. If a writer starts with the plot, then they have to shoehorn the characters into actions that could very well be out of character.
Therefore, while I enjoy stories with both strong characterization and plot, if I had to choose one or the other, then characters win, no contest.
Trying to think of Trek episodes I really enjoyed and that are generally considered to be "good"
Balance of Terror
Best of Both Worlds
The Visitor
Darmok
I wonder how they would fit in this argument....
Balance of Terror
Best of Both Worlds
The Visitor
Darmok
I wonder how they would fit in this argument....
Thinking of my favorite episodes of sci-fi they tended to have both plot and characterisation - one without the other would have been inferior.
Take say one of the episodes of Farscape involving Scorpius and the wormholes - they were beautiful in terms of characterisation, but the fact that the wormholes made strategic sense, and weren't just plucked out of the air without believability made his obsession all the more powerful - the drama comes off as forced if not.
So, to be entertainment of any sort you can make shit up as you go - to be good entertainment you need both.
Think of the galaxy and it's politics as a character if you must - it expresses itself too - when it goes against character you may feel cheated. The writer is also a conduit for the setting to reveal itself.
This is the reason some settings (e.g. Tolkien) command loyalty, and others don't. This is plot too. I don't think Star Trek would have had the fans it did, if it hadn't presented an interesting world, albeit one where the constraints were very free and Giant Green Hands were not out of place.
Take say one of the episodes of Farscape involving Scorpius and the wormholes - they were beautiful in terms of characterisation, but the fact that the wormholes made strategic sense, and weren't just plucked out of the air without believability made his obsession all the more powerful - the drama comes off as forced if not.
So, to be entertainment of any sort you can make shit up as you go - to be good entertainment you need both.
Think of the galaxy and it's politics as a character if you must - it expresses itself too - when it goes against character you may feel cheated. The writer is also a conduit for the setting to reveal itself.
This is the reason some settings (e.g. Tolkien) command loyalty, and others don't. This is plot too. I don't think Star Trek would have had the fans it did, if it hadn't presented an interesting world, albeit one where the constraints were very free and Giant Green Hands were not out of place.
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I could argue that with a good movie, TV show, play, or literature, the characters are more important than the plot. The character's actions, interactions, and reactions is what we usually care about, and the plot is simply the stage upon which those characters act, interact, and react.
That plot might be very simply elaborate or that plot might be elaborate. It might be an often-used plot or one that is highly original. However, as long as the characters act, interact, and react in enjoyable, interesting and/or clever ways, the story being told will be enjoyable.
I think Aristotle was suggesting that each thing subtly comes from the other - the plot is necccecary for characterisation to even take place - because the characters are only revealed in adversity - and adversity is plot, so there would literally be no characterisation without plot.
Same goes for why he places dialogue after plot and character - because if characterisation can only be revealed in plot, dialogue can only be revealed in characterisation and is literally meaningless if it has no character to reveal - so ironically what people think is the originator of the action is it's shadow.
How can I put this another way? So, the purpose of drama is to reveal how the unique quirks and features of an individual emerge into a unique reaction from their interaction with their reality - so the first thing you need is a reality that is believable enough within context to react to, or else the writer's hand becomes obvious - then dialogue, no matter how witty, can only mean anything in revealing the philosophy that the character lives by consciously or not - Tony Stark is revealing B, by talking C, and B is best revealed in encounters with A.
Same goes for why he places dialogue after plot and character - because if characterisation can only be revealed in plot, dialogue can only be revealed in characterisation and is literally meaningless if it has no character to reveal - so ironically what people think is the originator of the action is it's shadow.
How can I put this another way? So, the purpose of drama is to reveal how the unique quirks and features of an individual emerge into a unique reaction from their interaction with their reality - so the first thing you need is a reality that is believable enough within context to react to, or else the writer's hand becomes obvious - then dialogue, no matter how witty, can only mean anything in revealing the philosophy that the character lives by consciously or not - Tony Stark is revealing B, by talking C, and B is best revealed in encounters with A.
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Let's look at Balance of Terror.
That basic plot was done in 1959 and on a WWII submarine for the film Up Periscope. The plot is a pretty simple one of cat-and-mouse, and does not necessarily needs to have taken place in space or involve Romulans (as evidence by the aforementioned WWII film Up Periscope).
So if it's not the plot that sets that StarTrek episode apart as being one of the best episodes, then what does set it apart? I think the strongest quality of that episode are the depth of characters for the Romulan antagonists. That character depth was presented to us via some superb dialogue and very good performances.
Change the setting and remove futurism/science from it and it's just another garbage show like thousands of others.
I agree, but that plot does not need to be highly original, or necessarily (in the case of Star Trek) need to be about exploration. Great films or TV shows could have simple plots, and great Star Trek could be about something other than the exploration of space.
As French writer Georges Polti once suggested, there are really only 36 dramatic situations. I could argue that there are hence really only 36 basic plots for stories.
Georges Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations
That's a bit hyperbolic. Why would it be garbage if the writing and acting are still strong?
If it loses it's raison d'etre, there is literally no point it existing anymore vs a million other nondescript dramas, so Tesophius is right, take away the science fiction, and it isn't Star Trek.
It sounds like he is talking emotional plot triggers, which we all know haven't changed much in 2500 years.
But we arn't talking about the absence or presence of dramatic trigger situations, but rather what happens when drama forgets the importance of internal logic in a plot, and starts to contrive "emotional spectacle" - just like GFX artists going wild with a fight scene where mountains get demolished for 3 hours would be boring as fuck - just pure spectacle - I suggested that melodrama works in a similar way - when a story is all contrived suffering, its boring, pure "EFX spectacle" - emotional FX - this is why after watching a single soap opera, people usually pick up on the cyclical and coercive nature pretty quick.
But a film, standing alone, self contained, with a logical plot makes the catharsis all the more powerful for it.
A Star Trek episode or arc should aim to be like that, not, aim to employ all these soap like techniques so beloved of modern writers - long, boring, drawn out sagas of secret identities - '15 episodes of a Klingon agent among them, conveniently killing off characters whenever they get close, just to prolong the drama!' 'Three seasons of Lt. Lyer covering up the mistake she made, accidentally killing Ensign Meek.' I'm sick of that - it isn't arc storytelling at all, it's actually taking one episode's worth of emotional material and drawing it out for an arc, which isn't what an arc means at all.
Stargate SG1 had the right idea; it's useful to have a Goa'uld in your midst once or twice, but a competent military organization would have to develop defenses - thus they factored in real science and military ideas pretty well as the show went on - using UAVs, an iris on the gate, etc, etc, etc. The sooner you move past a plot idea, the better. Get the payoff, and then move on, don't drag it out for seasons upon seasons.
If King Meneleus had been written in a way contrary to how a King behaved in ancient Greece, the audience wouldn't have liked it. So, there was always an element of "hire Naren Shankar as science advisor" even back then, if a dramatist wanted a better play - plot always included an element of world building. I think Aristotle is probably thinking of all this when putting it first.
When I talk about plot I'm also factoring in concepts like world building and genre - would Stargate SG1's legendary black hole episode "A Matter of Time" have been half as good, if it didn't come up with plausible situations for the characters to find some way to overcome - without Carter's exposition slowly revealing how fucked they are by physical forces beyond their control? Damn, it was all the better science fiction for making the effort, no matter how incomplete. As we have discussed elsewhere recently, Star Trek, was, always meant to be something that it's creators wanted to be taken as seriously as the police dramas of its day, in contrast to the sillyness of TV of it's day - so plot is all important, or else it loses the thing that made it subject to such fascination and loyalty to begin with. But that is another topic.
It sounds like he is talking emotional plot triggers, which we all know haven't changed much in 2500 years.
But we arn't talking about the absence or presence of dramatic trigger situations, but rather what happens when drama forgets the importance of internal logic in a plot, and starts to contrive "emotional spectacle" - just like GFX artists going wild with a fight scene where mountains get demolished for 3 hours would be boring as fuck - just pure spectacle - I suggested that melodrama works in a similar way - when a story is all contrived suffering, its boring, pure "EFX spectacle" - emotional FX - this is why after watching a single soap opera, people usually pick up on the cyclical and coercive nature pretty quick.
But a film, standing alone, self contained, with a logical plot makes the catharsis all the more powerful for it.
A Star Trek episode or arc should aim to be like that, not, aim to employ all these soap like techniques so beloved of modern writers - long, boring, drawn out sagas of secret identities - '15 episodes of a Klingon agent among them, conveniently killing off characters whenever they get close, just to prolong the drama!' 'Three seasons of Lt. Lyer covering up the mistake she made, accidentally killing Ensign Meek.' I'm sick of that - it isn't arc storytelling at all, it's actually taking one episode's worth of emotional material and drawing it out for an arc, which isn't what an arc means at all.
Stargate SG1 had the right idea; it's useful to have a Goa'uld in your midst once or twice, but a competent military organization would have to develop defenses - thus they factored in real science and military ideas pretty well as the show went on - using UAVs, an iris on the gate, etc, etc, etc. The sooner you move past a plot idea, the better. Get the payoff, and then move on, don't drag it out for seasons upon seasons.
If King Meneleus had been written in a way contrary to how a King behaved in ancient Greece, the audience wouldn't have liked it. So, there was always an element of "hire Naren Shankar as science advisor" even back then, if a dramatist wanted a better play - plot always included an element of world building. I think Aristotle is probably thinking of all this when putting it first.
When I talk about plot I'm also factoring in concepts like world building and genre - would Stargate SG1's legendary black hole episode "A Matter of Time" have been half as good, if it didn't come up with plausible situations for the characters to find some way to overcome - without Carter's exposition slowly revealing how fucked they are by physical forces beyond their control? Damn, it was all the better science fiction for making the effort, no matter how incomplete. As we have discussed elsewhere recently, Star Trek, was, always meant to be something that it's creators wanted to be taken as seriously as the police dramas of its day, in contrast to the sillyness of TV of it's day - so plot is all important, or else it loses the thing that made it subject to such fascination and loyalty to begin with. But that is another topic.
I don't know what anyone talking about... sounds like people are using random words to describe "Things I like" and other random words to describe "Things I don't like"
Sort of like people buy Playboy for the "plot" but not the "melodrama" while others watch late-night Cinemax specials for the "character development" but not the "story."
Sort of like people buy Playboy for the "plot" but not the "melodrama" while others watch late-night Cinemax specials for the "character development" but not the "story."
Science fiction. Some people seem to completely forget the 'fiction' part. Star Trek is a pinch of science and a gallon of fiction.
Generally, it's easier to make a more interesting show when you minimize the "science" part and maximize the "fiction" part.
There was also tension and excitement created by the plot. What were the aliens up to? Who were they? When it became known they were warlike Romulans testing the defenses, that again amped up the tension. Then, of course, the cat and mouse battle was exciting. There was a clear goal of the need to stop the Romulans from returning home to prevent a war. So, it's a combination of plot and characters that produced a great story.
Irrelevant of people's views on science fiction, the thread was never really about that - it was about this:
A lot of modern TV drama does not actually write "arcs" - it writes one episode's worth of emotional material across fifteen episodes - that isn't an arc - its a soap.
I don't want that to be where Trek goes.
Note in B5's legendary long arcs, they didn't just drag out one emotional trigger for three seasons; everything built on the last thing; the shadows did something outrageous, and then topped it - Londo sunk to new depths, then lower still, then surprised us again by reaching new realizations - the Narn tragedy unfolded in the most shocking of ways, didn't just get postponed for six seasons, and G'Kar grew into something different. Some modern arcs, aren't arcs at all in this sense.
A lot of modern TV drama does not actually write "arcs" - it writes one episode's worth of emotional material across fifteen episodes - that isn't an arc - its a soap.
I don't want that to be where Trek goes.
Note in B5's legendary long arcs, they didn't just drag out one emotional trigger for three seasons; everything built on the last thing; the shadows did something outrageous, and then topped it - Londo sunk to new depths, then lower still, then surprised us again by reaching new realizations - the Narn tragedy unfolded in the most shocking of ways, didn't just get postponed for six seasons, and G'Kar grew into something different. Some modern arcs, aren't arcs at all in this sense.
^^^
That's STAR WARS
[Which like a lot of Star Trek is science fantasy as well, it's just a bit MORE heavy on the 'fantasy'.]Similar threads
