Writers' blok #2: The Turing Massacre

A recent find during a rather barren and desperate troll of the internet happened to catch my flickering interest by saying, and here I quote, 'All stories can be boiled down to the following: A wants B but can’t have it because of C. or, put simply: Character + Desire + Conflict = Story'.

I sat and stared at it for a while, dumbly, pondering the implications of what lay before me, either a stroke of pure genius, or [resists the urge to make a monkey on crack comment, those're getting too old] a colossally stupid generalisation.

But why was I so hung up on which one it was? Sure, it might be true. But is that all there was to a story? I mean, sure, a whole lot of tales fit that description. But did that mean that this was the turing machine of storytelling? Regardless of its accuracy, in this age of tinpot self-styled writers and two-bit blog-owners, [yes, i can see the irony of that statement] of wannabe hacks and camera-phone journalists, of bestsellers on self-help and sex for dummies, what happens when we simplify fiction to nothing more than a mix-and-match equation?

No, i'm not answering that.

Instead, let me present my argument in this manner. Writing's a lot of things to a lot of people.

For some, its an outlet. A way to express themselves, either publicly, in a blog, or the letters column of a newspaper, or by printing ten thousand copies of your rant, accompanied by a photocopy of your buttocks, and scattering it off the top of the tallest building in the neighbourhood, shouting 'suck it, bitches!', or privately, in the confines of a diary or, for the less speculative, a journal.

For others, its a means to an end. To tell a story, to make a hypothesis concrete, or to communicate a sentiment too complicated, cumbersome or tedious to do by speech, or a 160 character message.

But for writers, its more than that. Its muscle and bone. Its that precious motorcycle, that well worn pair of jeans, that scratchy fountain pen, that battered camera, and a whole lot of other things, that you can't help but love. It is something to use, to exercise, to hone, to repair and service, with sweat and blood and oil and polish, to patch and mend, to refill whenever it runs dry, to develop over time.

And when writers write stories, it could be to flesh out an idea, or to develop some characters. It could be just because they need to make money, or because they can find nothing better to do with their time. It can be because they are inspired by something they saw, or heard, or someone they held. It could be to prove a point, or illustrate a moral. It could be because they want to immortalise the beauty of their homeland, their culture, their language. It could be because they can make people smile and laugh, to give them hope, or because they like to thrill and seduce. It could be just because they want to use 'Smite thee, foul creature!',  'Return from the wretched pits from whence you came.' and 'Oooh, talking cat!' in the same conversation.

And then it strikes me, that even though a story's essence may be decomposed into something a third grader can bluff his way through [you wouldn't believe how smart some third graders are these days] it takes something more to make an epic an epic. [cheesy as this may sound] It needs a soul. Not in the whispering-fairies and santa-is-real manner, but rather in a i-don't-know-what-but-i-refuse-to-believe-just-anyone-can-become-a-writer-so-i-make-a-requirement-that-can-not-be-seen-or-measured-or-quantified sort of way. But the more i think about it, the better it fits. Some writers use dry humour. Some create entire worlds and languages. Some use suspense to race the plot, others use the morbid fascination of  horror, yet others use an overactive imagination aided by science, or magic, or well, dragons that shoot laser beams from their eyes. And like blends of coffee, each one has its own taste.

So, tough as it may be to digest, the Turing machine does work, in principle. In practice, well, go on and write your story. I'll just grin and set fire to your manuscript, fill your pen with invisible ink, format your hard drive and fill it with porn involving nothing but flies, smash your keyboard with a baseball bat, scatter your notes across multiple space-time dimensions, feed your ideas to the pigeons and watch them suffocate on their own smugness, and toss your shiny new typewriter out of the window and finally, take the one remaining copy of your story and read it to your target audience, who will, doubtlessly, then join me in the extremely enjoyable activity of laughing at you.

Just awesome, ainnit?