Liking books, TV shows and movies: Craft

This is the fourth part of a series in which I examine elements of the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show. I disclose and discuss my own personal preferences here, but I believe that the approach is more generally applicable: just substitute your own preferences for mine.

In his short story, ‘Low Men in Yellow Coats’, Stephen King has one of his characters comment on a book that a boy is reading. He tells the boy that the book (a Clifford D. Simak novel) has a ‘great story’ but ‘not such great writing’. He continues:

‘There are also books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words—the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers that won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.’[1]

In previous installments, I covered character, setting, and plot. I based these three elements on Nancy Pearl’s description of appeal characteristics.[2] This week, my schema and hers start to diverge. Also, the three elements I’ve discussed so far are characteristics of the world depicted in the story itself: the people, places, and events. This week’s installment deals with the first of three external characteristics of the story that I want to discuss.

Pearl formulated her characteristics with mainstream literary fiction in mind. After character, setting, and plot, she considered language as her fourth and final characteristic:

‘...the quality of the writing is what makes [this] novel stand out. The author’s use of language is evocative, unusual, thought-provoking, or poetic... [It] is impossible to talk about [these books] without commenting on the way each of their authors makes use of language.’

To me, she’s describing the writer’s craft, which in a novel is entirely expressed in the words used to tell the story. However, on film or TV, the words of the screenplay or script are only one tool out of a wide range with which storytellers work. For example, I would say that 2001: A Space Odyssey is an ‘evocative, unusual, thought-provoking, [and] poetic’ film, but almost none of this has to do with the text of its screenplay. Rather, the cinematography, visual design, and music do most of the work here.

Therefore, I take Pearl’s notion of language as an appeal characteristic of novels, and broaden it to craft as an appeal characteristic of stories told in other media too.

It’s pretty rare for the craft to be the only thing—or even the main thing—that I like about a book, movie, or TV show, but it can occasionally happen. And if I like the way that a writer uses their words (or a film-maker uses their other tools) I might find myself interested in stories about people, places, and events that might otherwise hold no appeal for me. More often, though, the craft adds appeal to something that I find appealing for other reasons, like the example of 2001 I mentioned earlier, or much European and Asian cinema.

Writing

Wells Tower’s short-story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a recent example of of a book where the primary appeal for me was in the craft. Nothing about this book appealed to me other than Tower’s writing: the stories are about ordinary, shabby people leading lives full of failure mostly in awful places in contemporary rural America—quite the antithesis of the kinds of people, places, and events about which I prefer to read. Yet I enjoyed this book more than most other books I’ve ever read. Kate Grenville’s novel of convict-era Sydney The Secret River is another example. These two books typify two very different styles of prose that I enjoy, one sparse and economical, the other expansive and lyrical. Compare:

‘But it was not a pleasant surprise when I came home one afternoon, and there, in the sunlight on our living room floor, was Jane sitting in her brassiere, Barry’s hands on her bare shoulders. When I walked in with our daughter, Marie, they both jumped up and started laying on about how Barry was just showing off some new shiatsu moves. I then lashed out at Barry with a piece of hose I’d brought home to stick on the bath spigot. I shouted and made my daughter cry. I broke some things. I made promises of more and worse violence, and Jane left with Barry and Marie. I remember her standing in the doorway with an armful of clothes, her jaw muscles standing out and her telling me how I’d rue what I had done.

And she was right: I did wind up ruing it, but after a while, neither often nor deeply. Jane bought out my share of our house at a fair price. I took a place outside of town, a redone shotgun cottage on six acres with a creek running through the yard. The house suited me well, except for a million black wasps chewing holes in the clapboards. The little fellows made an awful grinding racket, and on weekend afternoons when feelings of failure and regret could not be kept at bay, I found pleasant distraction in squirting poison up those holes.’

—‘Down Through the Valley’ in
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, pp.91–92

with:

‘Thornhill’s wife was sleeping sweet and peaceful against him, her hand still entwined in his. The child and the baby were asleep too, curled up together. Only Thornhill could not bring himself to close his eyes on this foreign darkness. Through the doorway of the hut he could feel the night, huge and damp, flowing in and bringing with it the sounds of its own life: tickings and creakings, small private rustlings, and beyond that the soughing of the forest, mile after mile.

When he got up and stepped out through the doorway there was no cry, no guard: only the living night. The air moved around him, full of rich dank smells. Trees stood tall over him. A breeze shivered through the leaves, then died, and left only the vast fact of the forest.

He was nothing more than a flea on the side of some enormous quiet creature.

Down the hill the settlement was hidden by the darkness. A dog barked in a tired way and stopped. From the bay where the Alexander was anchored there was a sense of restless water shifting in its bed of land and swelling up against the shore.

Above him in the sky was a thin moon and a scatter of stars as meaningless as spilt rice. There was no Pole Star, a friend to guide him on the Thames, no Bear that he had known all his life: only this blaze, unreadable, indifferent.’

— The Secret River, pp.3–4

Writing is also a major factor in the kind of comedy I enjoy. I’ll discuss comedy in more detail in a later installment (on affect) but I note here that most of the comedy that I value most highly relies on clever, subversive, or eccentric use of language, or just plain wordplay. This is true whether in a book (Lewis Carroll, Douglas Adams, Jasper Fforde) or as a script (much of the Monty Python and Muppet oeuvres, my favourite parts of Yes, Minister). For example:

Wensleydale:	Good morning, sir.
Mousebender:	Good Morning. I was sitting in the public library on Thurmon Street just now, skimming through ‘Rogue Herries’ by Horace Walpole, when suddenly I came over all peckish.
Wensleydale:	Peckish, sir?
Mousebender:	Esurient.
Wensleydale:	Eh?
Mousebender:	(broad Yorkshire) Eee I were all hungry, like!
Wensleydale:	Oh, hungry.
Mousebender:	(normal accent) In a nutshell. So I thought to myself, ‘a little fermented curd will do the trick’. So I curtailed my Walpolling activites, sallied forth and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles. (smacks his lips)
Wensleydale:	Come again.
Mousebender:	(broad northern accent) I want to buy some cheese.
Wensleydale:	Oh, I thought you were complaining about the music!
Mousebender:	(normal voice) Heaven forbid. I am one who delights in all manifestations of the terpsichorean muse.
Wensleydale:	Sorry?
Mousebender:	I like a nice dance—you’re forced to.

—Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 33, ‘Salad Days’

written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, 

Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, 

and Terry Gilliam

Finally, I very much enjoy writing that uses language in unusual ways or which deliberately pushes language to its limits. Examples include: 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Riddley Walker, the Twilight Zone episode ‘Wordplay’, the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Darmok’.

Goodparley said, ‘I can as plain the mos of it to you. Some parts is easyer workit out nor others theres bits of it wewl never know for cern jus what they mean. What this writing is its about some kynd of picter or dyergam which we dont have that picter all we have is the writing. Parbly that picter ben some kynd of a seakert thing becaws this here writing (I dont mean the writing youre holding in your han I mean the writing time back way back what this is wrote the same as) its cernly seakert. Its blipful it aint jus only what it seams to be its the syn and foller of some thing else. A Legend thats a picter whats depicted which is to say pictert on a wall its done with some kynd of paint callit fidelity. St is short for sent. Meaning this bloak Eustace he dint jus tern up he wer sent. A.D. 120 thats the year count they use to have it gone from Year 1 right the way to Bad Time. A.D. means All Done. 120 years all done theyre saying thats thats when they begun this picter in 120 nor they never got it finisht til 1480 is what it says here wel you know there aint no picter cud take 1360 years to do these here year numbers is about some thing else may be wewl never know what.’

—Riddley Walker, pp.124–125

Film and TV production

The craft of a film or TV show encompasses more than the words of its script. Some of the most obvious avenues of appeal on the basis of craft would include aspects such as the acting and direction; the visual design including sets, costumes, and special effects; and cinematography. There are plenty of other aspects to film production too, but I think these are probably the ones most likely to provide significant appeal. That is, I’ve never heard anyone tell me: ‘you’ve just got to see this film! The sound effects are incredible!’ However, if you know that really good foley is one of the things that you admire in a film, you should certainly consider that aspect when assessing why you liked or did not like a particular movie.

Acting and direction

I don’t follow many actors or directors; it’s quite common for me not to even know the names of stars who appeared in a movie I’ve just seen. It’s just not something to which I’ve ever paid much attention. I actually believe that most acting and direction in most professional productions is really rather good. If you don’t believe me, I suggest a trip to the local amateur theatre or watching some fan films on YouTube. There’s sometimes gold there, true, but I usually find that it recalibrates my expectations of even the most modest professional performances. If I had to define litmus tests for the kinds of performances I like, the most important one would be the degree to which I’m conned into thinking that the person on the screen is who they say they are and that I forget I’m watching a performance. Really compelling performances like this can certainly make me interested in characters and situations about which I might not otherwise care. Two films that I liked a lot more than I expected to were Taxi Driver and American Beauty, both because of performances that I really enjoyed watching.

Visual design

I honestly can’t think of a film or TV show where the visual design (including special effects) has led me to like something that I otherwise wouldn’t have liked anyway. The closest I can come is the couple of episodes I watched of Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire were so beautiful that they almost lured me in, but in neither case was it quite enough to make me want to follow either series. I know I’m drawn to sumptuous period pieces like Cyrano de Bergerac, La Reine Margot, The Duchess, or Master and Commander, but these are films with high appeal due to their settings anyway.

I’m interested in the technology of special effects, but they are not a strong source of appeal for me. I can take them or leave them, and at most, they add appeal to films that would have appealed to me anyway.

Cinematography

It’s not an original observation, but I find some films are so beautiful to look at that I’d blow up just about any frame and hang it on the wall. 2001: A Space Odyssey is like that for me, but that’s a film with very strong appeal for me from other directions. I’ve also enjoyed wild landscapes like Atanarjuat and... a Japanese film whose name I can’t remember right now (one word, starts with ‘S’) [edit—I have since recalled it was Naomi Kawase’s Suzaku] but whose bamboo forests are as vivid in my mind’s eye as when I saw the film over ten years ago.

Lack of craft

Craft is not a strong source of appeal for me, and poor craft will rarely be an obstacle to my liking something that appeals to me for other reasons. And complete incompetence is likely to provide its own perverse appeal to me as well.

---

Next time, Idea.

Audiobooks — a re-appraisal

I haven’t had much experience with audiobooks. When I was a teenager, I read a few favourite Star Trek novels onto stacks of audio tapes so I could listen to them while lying in the dark, instead of having to have a light on to read by. I hated lights.

The first professionally produced audiobooks I tried were years later—combinations of favourite books and performers like John Cleese reading The Screwtape Letters and Douglas Adams reading his own Last Chance to See. These were enjoyable as novelties.

I’ve also enjoyed various spoken-word productions like the original radio series of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the BBC’s audio-only releases of various 1960s Doctor Who episodes for which the video masters are long-since lost.

All of these encounters informed me of a couple of things: audiobooks are slow (very slow), and that audiobooks require almost my full attention.

Still, I have some friends who like this delivery mechanism very much, so when one of them pointed out that Audible were running a free book promotion (thanks, Lee!) I decided to see what audiobooks were like these days. I picked a book from close to the top of my Goodreads ‘to-read’ list, signed up to Audible, and downloaded Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl.

Here’s what I learned: audiobooks are slow (very slow), and audiobooks require almost my full attention.

I’ll review the novel itself over on Goodreads, but here are some thoughts on the audiobook experience.

The first thing I really liked was the narrator’s voice. Jonathan Davis presented the book with great clarity and at a pace that I thought suited the text. I thought his vocal interpretation really brought out the drama of the story, and that he differentiated the characters so effectively that I was never in doubt about who was speaking. I liked his delivery so much that it made me choose to stay with the normal speed of the book, despite the slowness being one of the things I like least about the format. The Audible app on the iPhone  let me increase the speed by up to three times, while adjusting the pitch to avoid any Chipmunk-like effect. I tried various speed settings over the course of a few chapters, but never liked the outcome. While the sped-up performance remained completely intelligible (even on 3× natural speed) I felt that even the lowest speed above natural (1.5×) significantly detracted from my enjoyment of Davis’ wonderful reading and I eventually completed the book at natural speed.

One interesting aspect of the performance was Davis’ use of accent. The Windup Girl is set in Thailand and almost all its characters are from different parts of Asia. When representing these characters, Davis uses a range of Asian-sounding accents, some of them quite strong. I have to admit that this sometimes seemed a lot like yellowfacing to me.

Being set in a part of the world quite unfamiliar to me and being a science-fiction novel, The Windup Girl contains many words and names I hadn’t heard before. Despite Davis’ great clarity, this meant that when looking up a few details of the book online, I discovered that I had occasionally misunderstood things. For example, a key (ha!) technology in the novel is the ‘kink-spring’, which I had heard as ‘king-spring’ throughout. Frequent mention is made of a fictional disease, cibiscosis, which I heard as the real disease, psittacosis.  And some of the character names were impossible for me to parse with any certainty.

One annoying characteristic of this format was the high chance of missing something—that the narration would keep running while I was distracted by something or had simply let my mind wander. Even now, there’s an absolutely key event in the novel which I can’t say if it happened on-stage or off-stage. I certainly have no memory of it happening, only of characters referring back to it. On the other hand, that kind of off-stage action is not a characteristic of the rest of the style of this novel and I strongly suspect that I simply missed it!

But really, the worst part of the audiobook experience for me was the opportunity cost. The only time in my day that I found to listen to the book was during my daily commute, which averages 30 minutes each way, five times a week. Previously, I had used this time to catch up on social media, read short articles online, and to listen to music. I found that I could not read on my phone while listening to the book, and I obviously couldn’t listen to music. The social media and other reading was replaceable at other times of the day, but I don’t have many other opportunities to listen to music, and I started really missing it.

So while I thought The Windup Girl was really well rendered as an audiobook, the experience of listening to it only confirmed for me that this is not a format for me. I will certainly be purchasing the ebook version of the novel at some point, to find out what I missed out on, and I don’t see myself listening to another audiobook anytime soon.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — a response

So, I’ve done it—watched DS9 through for the first time.

I first tried DS9 when the series was new. It was first available in Australia on sell-through VHS tape (even before it had been broadcast on TV). I bought the first two seasons, and watched most of those before I reluctantly abandoned the show. This was really hard for me to do! I had been a devoted fan of Star Trek's original series, as well as The Next Generation, and the movies for many years. I had read dozens of spin-off novels and hundreds of comics. It seemed like high treason to just give up on Star Trek! But I had to face the fact that if the characters hadn't been wearing Starfleet uniforms and talking about familiar technology and locales in the Star Trek universe, there is no way I would have kept watching even that long. So I gave up.

Although I’d heard that people liked the show a whole lot more the further along it got, I’d remained sceptical and never made the time to revisit it and find out for myself.

My decision to finally watch it through came when I inherited some of the DVDs from someone very dear to me, who had loved the show. I just wish I could have had this discussion (and argument!) with them. So, A., this post is for you.

When I abandoned DS9 in the mid-90s, it was for a variety of reasons. Not only did I not warm to most of the main characters: I found most of them actually irritating. I found the storylines—with their emphasis on character development instead of galactic exploration—petty and dull. Having just watched the whole series from start to finish, I stand by those initial assessments almost completely.

Almost.

Because, here are the things I found to like about DS9, in no particular order:

• Garak, played with such palpable relish by Andrew Robinson. I always wanted to know more about this character whenever he appeared.
• Quark and his family. It took a few seasons, but I eventually grew to like the Ferengi characters, maybe when the show stopped playing them exclusively for laughs and took Rom and Nog in some unexpected directions. Leeta too.
• Kai Winn, right up until the silliness that was season 7. I thought this character was beautifully written and acted. She was the fundamentalist religious leader you just love to hate. Moreover, her complete oppositeness to other, more sympathetic, Bajoran religious leaders was a nice depiction of how a change in leadership can so abruptly change the face of a culture. 
• The Klingons in general, and Martok in particular. Yeah, there was nothing new or unexpected here, but they were just so much fun as the gloriously untrammelled id. 
• Tora Ziyal and the storyline around her. I really felt for this character.
• The first appearance of the prophets in ‘The Emissary’. Their puzzled frustration at the non-linearity of Sisko’s memories, even though he lives in linear time has become a powerful image for me. 
• The design of the runabouts.

These things aside—and as I write them down, I realise that what I came to like about the show basically boils down to some of the regular supporting characters—I mostly stand by my initial assessment. In 176 episodes, DS9 rarely told a story that interested me, and I actively disliked most of the main characters.

But as DS9 progressed, I found another powerful reason to dislike the show: despite its trappings, the show's ethical centre seemed a long way from Star Trek. I saw this in Sisko's complicity in manufacturing a casus belli to draw the Romulans into the Dominion war (‘In the Pale Moonlight’) and in his casual gunning down of Jem'Hadar soldiers (‘Rocks and Shoals’). I saw it in the actions of Starfleet's intelligence agency, Section 31 (particularly in its decision to commit genocide against the Founders, again, with Sisko's complicity). DS9 is not Roddenberry's utopian, humanist future.

I also thought that the show wasted a wonderful opportunity in the character of Kira. Apart from the superb first season episode ‘Duet’, I never felt the series explored her coming to terms with not being at war with Cardassia any more. I didn't think that Kira was forced to confront and re-examine her prejudices regularly enough or deeply enough. Captain Kirk makes a far more meaningful journey in this regard in two hours of Star Trek VI than Kira did in seven seasons of DS9.

So, I'm glad that I watched it all the way through, but only for what it did for my Star Trek literacy. I still watch the original series and TNG all the way through once every three years, but do not plan ever to sit through the whole of DS9 again.

A, I would have loved to argue all this with you into the small hours of the morning. And then again another weekend. And another. I am very, very sorry that it took me so long to get here. I hope that one day we will discuss all of this beyond the final frontier.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Plot

This is the third part of a series in which I examine elements of the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show. I disclose and discuss my own personal preferences here, but I believe that the approach is more generally applicable: just substitute your own preferences for mine.

In previous installments, I covered character and setting. This time I focus on plot, another element that I have adopted from Nancy Pearl’s appeal characteristics.[1] By ‘plot’, I mean the events described in the story, as well as the way in which they are assembled.

Events

The events of a story usually form the answer to the question ‘what do these characters do?’ or at least, ‘what do these characters witness?’ if they do not participate in the events described.

I find some areas of human activity—real or imagined—far more interesting than other areas, and I suspect that most other people do too. Let’s call this the subject of the plot. So, to return to the idea of a storyteller offering a story to me, the storyteller who says:

‘These people are searching for a lost grimoire.’

or

‘These people are hunting an enemy warship.’

or

‘These people interpret barcodes on ordinary household items to uncover evidence of a vast conspiracy.’

or

‘These people are building a spacecraft to put a crew on Mars.’

already has my attention. If the offer is:

‘These people solve homicides.’

or

‘These people are setting up a small business.’

or

‘These people are working hard to save their farm.’

or

‘These people are having mid-life crises.’

I’ll need something more to convince me that this is a tale I want to hear.

The degree to which the subject of the plot can profoundly affect my reception of a book was illustrated most vividly to me by Flashman’s Lady. This book is the sixth in a series by George Macdonald Fraser, depicting the various escapades of a Victorian-era cavalryman and anti-hero, Harry Flashman. Most of the books involve ‘Flashy’ participating (and seeking to avoid participating) in the various colonial wars of the era. As much as I adore the series, a lengthy first part of Flashman’s Lady relates to Flashman’s cricketing exploits: a game about which I know very little and care even less. Trudging through this was a truly miserable experience, even populated with characters in whom I was interested, located in a setting in which I was interested, and in the context of a series that I was already five books invested in. Fortunately for me, the novel progresses to Flashy fighting pirates in Borneo and becoming a pet slave to mad queen Ranavalona of Madagascar—and showed me just how large an effect subject matter can have on the appeal of a tale.

The subject matter of a tale is thrown into greater relief by contemplating what’s at stake in the story. Screenwriter Max Adams reduces the premise of any plot-driven film to:

‘(Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who must (objective) or else (dire thing that will happen if protagonist fails).

[...]

Apollo 13 is a drama about three astronauts who must repair their spacecraft or they will suffocate in space before reaching home.

[...]

 Raiders of the Lost Ark is an action/adventure about Indiana Jones, a procurer of lost artifacts who must travel to Egypt and find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis unearth it and use it to take over the world.’[2]

If it happens that I don’t actually care about the thing that will happen if the protagonist fails, I’m unlikely to care whether the protagonist succeeds or not.

Structure

Most narrative does not simply recount events: it claims connections between these events. My favourite insight on narrative structure comes from screenwriter Lew Hunter:

‘In life, things happen one after the other. In structure one thing happens because of the other.’[3]

A story that neglects that sequencing is a very strange tale indeed: the effect is surreal and disorienting. Eschewed deliberately and thoughtfully, an absence or ambiguity of causality between events can produce a masterpiece like 8½. When causality is ignored by a film-maker who shows no evidence of knowing what they’re doing, that same absence or ambiguity produces that hapless handbook on how not to make a movie, The Room.

Most stories relate events in a straightforward linear pattern and deviate from this only in their use of flashbacks, or perhaps a framing narrative. I enjoy complex structures, so any story that goes beyond these fundamentals already offers me something that I might enjoy. For example, I like the unreliable narrators of Rashōmon or The Usual Suspects or Iain Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost. I like the multi-linear storytelling of Amores perros, the reverse storytelling of Irréversible, and the ‘what if?’ storytelling of Casomai. 

Engagement

Quite aside of any intrinsic interest I have in the subject matter of a story and of whether I think it’s told in an interesting way, I might still find a story engaging. I admit that I find it hard to define what characteristics might lead to this engagement, but I certainly know it when I experience it. I know that I’m engaged with a story when it passes the Scheherazade test—I feel that I have to know what happens next. Conversely, if after some time I realise that I have no interest in finding out what happens next in a story, I know I’m disengaged and will probably stop watching or reading at that point.

The Scheherazade effect can be a powerful one. I found the characters of The Da Vinci Code unlikeable and dull, the setting uninspiring, and the subject matter tired and ill-considered. Yet, for some reason that eludes me, I found it a compelling page-turner of a novel and I just had to finish it—I really needed to know what happened next. Having-to-know is also the factor that has me hooked on True Blood. Not caring about what happens next is ultimately why I abandoned such highly acclaimed series as The Wire and Breaking Bad.

---

The three characteristics that I’ve discussed so far—the characters, the setting, and the plot of a story—are all intrinsic to the world of the story itself (they are diegetic). Next week, I’ll begin to discuss three characteristics extrinsic to that world (extra-diegetic), the first of which will be craft. Before that, I might also write up a summary as an intermission.

Why I left Miso for IMDb

When I came to social media in 2010, I quickly found Goodreads as a convenient way of tracking and sharing my reading habits, and was a little surprised that nothing quite as good existed for TV and movies. I knew and had used IMDb, but back then, its coverage of TV episodes seemed to me quite lacking, as did its social functions. Eventually, I settled on Miso as the closest fit for me.

I was pretty happy with Miso, and apathy would have prevented me from looking further afield until in late 2012 they merged their database with theTVDB.com. In the process, they trashed the episode histories of a couple of shows that I follow.

Since then, I’ve reappraised IMDb and think that it’s a better fit for me now. It’s sad to move on and drop the history that I’ve built up on Miso (1160 check ins!) and also to lose a couple of things that IMDb doesn’t have.

I hope that one day something even better comes along.

Here’s the list of features that I would want from such a site; with Goodreads, Miso, and IMDb for comparison:

	Goodreads	Miso	IMDb
Movies	✘	✔	✔
TV episodes	✘	✔	✔
Link separate titles by series	✔	✘	✘
Can rate	✔	✔	✔
Can review	✔	✔	✔
Lists	✔	✘	✔
Facebook integration	✔	✔	✔
Twitter integration	✔	✔	✔
iOS app	✔	✔	✔
Machine recommendations	✔	✘	✔
Friend recommendations	✔	✘	✘
See friends’ updates	✔	✔	✘

Of all these, making and maintaining lists is probably the feature I missed most on Miso, and I’d been keeping a list of what to watch next as a Google document instead. Of the things that IMDb currently lacks, I’d most want to see friends’ updates and be able to give recommendations to and take recommendations from them.

Seenth.at is an effort to build a movie check-in website with Goodreads-like functionality. It’s still under development and looks very promising, but its (deliberate) lack of support for TV shows makes it a non-starter for me, unfortunately.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Setting

Carrying on from last week, where I considered the effect of characters on whether I might find a book, movie, or TV show appealing, this time, I’ll talk about setting:

Setting

The role of setting is another appeal characteristic that I take directly from Nancy Pearl’s schema. It is a characteristic of a story that is—in the vast majority of cases—immediately obvious and which requires little explanation or unpacking. Simply, setting is where in space and when in time the events of the story occur.

I know that I have strong biases towards certain settings and against others, and I believe that most other people do too. It would surprise me to discover somebody who would be universally embracing of any and every setting for a tale, but perhaps this is just me over-generalising my own experience.

For a start, I admit that I have a strong positive bias for imaginary worlds, so, for example, a storyteller who says:

‘Let me tell you a story set on an Earth starship in the 27th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in the Elven kingdom, in the waning years of the Age of Arlûthtan.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in contemporary New Orleans in an alternate universe where the Confederacy had been successful in its bid to secede from the United States.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in a separate physical dimension—at a time unknowable and irrelevant—inhabited only by sapient flashes of light who communicate by casting three-dimensional shadows at each other’

already has my attention in a way that a storyteller who offers:

‘Let me tell you a story set in the Seattle of today.’

does not yet. This latter storyteller is going to have to find a more compelling hook to engage my interest, when I'm already listening attentively to the others.

For me, the appeal in an imagined world is often the degree of ingenuity and detail that has gone into the world-building. I find tremendous pleasure and delight in this aspect of speculative fiction, and stories told in the real world, past or present have nothing to offer me in direct competition.

Secondly, I admit that I find some real-world historical settings prima facie more appealing than others (and more appealing than contemporary settings). So again, for example, if the offer is:

‘Let me tell you a story set in Thebes during the Middle Kingdom.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in Jerusalem in the 11th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in London in the 16th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set on a French frigate in the 18th century.’

I’m already more interested than in an offer of a tale set just about anywhere in the world today.

For me, the appeal of a historical setting is in its attention to detail and as a springboard for further exploration and learning. I value the novel or film that can transport me to a bygone time and place in which I have an interest, most especially if I come away knowing more than I did when I started. History lessons in fictional form are part of the great appeal of George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman novels for me; I love fact-checking these as I read, and frequently learning that the full truth of an event or historical figure is even stranger than fiction.

Lastly, I’ll freely admit that familiarity breeds my contempt. This was driven home to me many years ago while watching and enjoying a caper movie from Argentina, Nueve Reinas (‘Nine Queens’). At some point in the course of the film, I thought to myself, 

I’m sure if this exact same story were told in an English-language American film set in New York instead of a Spanish-language Argentine film set in Buenos Aires, I’d have lost interest by now. 

I could attribute some part of that reaction to other aesthetic preferences that I know I have (for example, a far greater reliance on non-diegetic music in most American film compared to films from most other places in the world). But mostly, I admit that the preference is rooted in the opportunity to experience something unfamiliar or even completely new.  

Just as with historical settings, when it comes to contemporary real-world settings, I find that I really enjoy learning a little about a place about which I knew little previously; and if this learning happens via a film or TV show, I like to see foreign sights and hear languages that are not part of my everyday experience. Even a setting as basically unappealing to me as (near-)contemporary New York can become interesting to me if viewed through the lens of a culture that is not my own, for example, in the novels of Chaim Potok.

Taken all together, I realise that my preference is essentially for stories set in worlds (real or imagined) as far from my own as possible. I’m happy to accept labels of escapism or even exoticism to describe this real preference that I know I have. 

Setting as a filter

One of the possible ways that setting interacts with narrative is to filter the types of stories and types of characters that are likely to be presented. When I take up that offer to read or watch that tale set on an 18th-century frigate, I already come primed with a set of expectations. I feel confident that as long as everything else is handled at least reasonably competently, I’m probably going to enjoy this story. An offer of a tale told in contemporary Glasgow isn’t ripe with the same promise for me; I am less certain of what I am getting myself into.

Of course, this also leaves me vulnerable to bait-and-switch, something I find particularly common in science fiction. It’s all too easy to find purportedly science-fiction tales that are nothing but mindless action stories with ray guns in place of Uzis and hover sleds in place of getaway cars. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek effort in 2009 stands out to me as a particularly atrocious example of this.

Setting not-as-a-filter

On the other hand, some tales translate easily between settings. This premise:

The protagonist has to make a decision whether to honour a promise made to a powerful superior and thereby injure a member of their own family; or protect their family member, defy their superior, and face the consequences.

translates equally easily to Imperial Rome, Mediæval England, Tokugawa Japan, Prohibition-era Chicago, Nazi-occupied Europe, folks dealing drugs in the western suburbs of contemporary Sydney, and to any number of completely imagined worlds—anywhere with a feudal-like power structure. 

A litmus test to gauge how important the setting of a particular tale is to me might be to imagine (or see!) that tale translated to another setting. All else being equal, I’d be much more interested in seeing the scenario above played out in any of  the pre-20th century settings I named, or in an imagined world.

Similarly, I have no trouble with The Tempest reincarnated as Forbidden Planet. So it seems that I’m not especially protective of the Elizabethan setting of my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays, at least when one setting I like is replaced with another setting that I like.

However, to see Sherlock Holmes lifted from his home in the late 1800s London (a setting I like very much) and deposited in early 21st century London (a setting that doesn’t appeal to me) in Sherlock left me cold. A large part of the charm had evaporated from the story for me, and while the show was unquestionably well made, I turned off ‘A Study in Pink’ half-way through, profoundly disappointed.

Setting as everything

Finally, setting is sometimes absolutely intrinsic to the tale in a way that makes relocating it impossible. Flatland springs immediately to mind; if the setting doesn’t intrigue you, there’s really nothing else here. The story stands and falls on that alone. But it’s far more common that a personally appealing setting will only be one ingredient in anyone’s enjoyment of a story.


What settings bias you for or against a book, film, or TV series?

Next week, I’ll discuss the appeal of plot.

Is your small business idea viable?

There are lots of reasons why folks want to go into small business, so there are just as many ways of answering whether an idea is worthwhile or not.

This post examines just one criterion:

How much do you need to earn from your business for it to compare favourably with paid employment? (ie, working for "The Man").

Well, the median earnings for full-time workers in Australia in 2011 was $62,570 per year, including wages, superannuation, and other benefits.[1]

A salaried, full-time worker typically works a 5-day week, with four weeks' paid leave a year, plus around 10 days' worth of public holidays and up to around 10 days' worth of sick leave available. Totalled up, that means that our typical worker earns their $62,570 in 220 days of work.

Put simply, if your small business isn't returning you more than $285 per day on average, or if you're having to work more than an average of four days per week to earn that, then chances are you'd be better off working for someone else: most people with a full-time job are making more than you are (or are working less to make that same money).

Furthermore, with the national minimum wage at $31,530 per year[2], if your business isn't paying you $145 per day, you're not even making minimum wage.

I am not a financial adviser and this is not financial advice.