mid-work update:

[cimorene]

okay, that pop song with the girl singing was playing on the way from the housesitting house to dad's office. i think i've asked about it before: the hook is "if you want to i can save you, i can take you away from here" etc, etc, only to finish with "and all you wanted was somebody who cared," which seems to be the point of the song.

i was thinking about that, and it really started to piss me off. no one's problems consist entirely of ONE problem, let alone one as asinine as that. no one can be "fixed" by one little thing. people are mysteries, sometimes, depending on how you look at them (i see them that way): they're not puzzles.

a lot of novels take people this way, especially trash romances. not the best example of literature, but (a) it's pop culture and (b) you already know i've read them.

where does this idea come from and what prompts people to try to base poetry, prose, and lyrics on it?

augh.

it comes to the point where a well-characterized story seems like a declaration of independence

Comments

[kwirbx.livejournal.com]

They like shakira here (as in will and his friends) more than breathing! So i'm watching all of her old music video's...they've never heard of michelle branch here. There's this one video where shakira looks exactly like one of the olsen twins!

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

michelle branch. "all you wanted." do you NEED me to send you all my mp3's?? ;)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

certainly not. i hate the song.

[orangeblossomb.livejournal.com]

i was thinking about that, and it really started to piss me off. no one's problems consist entirely of ONE problem, let alone one as asinine as that. no one can be "fixed" by one little thing. people are mysteries, sometimes, depending on how you look at them (i see them that way): they're not puzzles.

I was just thinking on this very subject, so I'm hopping in. I get so tired of each character having one defining "issue" or whatever. Its too simplistic! I mean, if it were that simple, hell, I'd solve a lot of problems a lot faster.

[kwirbx.livejournal.com]

is it really? or do we make our lives more complicated to give it more meaning? Hahah idunno. Just something to think about. I like to think of life as a game of tetris. On one hand it's really simple looking, but...well you know the rest!

amen

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

i agree. although, i do think that solving your problems is much harder if you can't at least "boil it down" to some extent. there are almost always some core issues - but both you and cim are right, it's never truly that simple.

and yes, it's a big problem in fiction. bad (by which i mean steroetyped or simplistic) characterization is the only thing that's ever caused me to actually put down a novel and never finish it.