#procedural writing

[earthquakebi]

I’ve been thinking a lot about 9-1-1 8x08, and I’ve figured out what’s really bothering me about it.

Procedural television writing has a formula to it. 9-1-1 is less formulaic than, say, Law & Order, which tends to follow extremely specific story beats in the same way in almost every episode.

But where 9-1-1 absolutely adheres to the procedural formula is in the role supporting characters play. They are there to serve the story, and usually also the arcs of the series regulars. Broadly, they are almost always there to help, hinder, or mirror our main characters.

Helping:

This can be direct help for a character in their professional or personal lives - Jem helping Athena in the plane disaster arc, or the Priest talking to Eddie in 4x06

On 9-1-1, we also see supporting characters moving the story along as part of emergency scenes. We get to know and connect with them, and that raises the stakes, so there is more impact when the main characters rescue them

Hindering:

This can be intentional - Olivia Ortiz’s manipulations, or Doug kidnapping Maddie

It can also be unintentional - someone who has an unexplained medical emergency the main characters need to investigate, etc.

Mirroring:

This technique gives a supporting character a similar problem or flaw to one of our series regulars

A great example of this is Mike, the dad of the injured cheerleader in 8x04. We get a window into how Eddie's feeling about his separation from Christopher through his scenes with Mike

Now, characters with larger roles often have an arc of their own while still primarily serving the main characters' arcs:

In the Begins episodes, Tommy has his own arc of growth, but is ultimately there to provide obstacles to Hen and Chimney, and to help show how the 118 has grown in Bobby Begins Again

Julian, the shady ship captain in the cruise disaster episodes, has a redemption arc before his death, but his main role is to hinder, then help, Bobby and Athena.

So. Brad is a supporting character. His appearances should be in service of the plot and the series regulars. But the vast majority of Brad’s scenes are focused on Brad's arc. The A-plot of 8x08 is entirely focused on a supporting character.

Sure, there is a mirroring scene where Brad tells Eddie about leaving his son behind, spurring Eddie’s decision to look at houses in El Paso. But this plotline - the series regular’s plotline - is relegated to the C-plot of the episode, behind Brad’s overall arc and the cart cop storyline.

Eddie’s storyline could have easily been moved forward by giving him the A-plot of the episode. Write a different emergency - one involving a child - with Eddie at the forefront. Give Brad the C-plot, a similar but pared-down storyline culminating in his talk with Eddie and a decision to reach out to his own son.

It could maybe be argued that Brad is there to hinder Bobby and the rest of the team, but again the writing doesn’t treat it this way. Instead, Bobby’s criticisms are there to affect Brad’s arc in the story and not the other way around.

The problem with Wannabes is that Brad's storyline is given priority over Athena’s, and over Eddie’s. A supporting character is treated like a series regular for an episode. Now, this can be done on procedurals, and has been done on 9-1-1 before. But it has to be earned.

The season 4 episode First Responders gave us flashbacks to Sue Blevins saving Josh Russo and Josh joining dispatch. But these were characters who had made dozens of appearances by that point. They were characters who would continue to appear in the show as part of the series regulars’ storylines. And these flashbacks tied into the main storyline of the episode, which involved our series regulars investigating a hit-and-run.

None of those things apply in this case. The focus on Brad in Wannabes isn’t earned and doesn’t serve a larger purpose within the story. What little purpose it does serve could have been easily accomplished in other ways. The writers break the rules, and for what? An episode focused on a character we may never see again, who was established as annoying, angry, and cruel? A character arc that seems more focused on making said character feel better about himself than on improving as a person?

It was a weird writing choice with no real payoff (unless the 9-1-1 spinoff is going to include Brad Torrance moving to Hotshots: Champaign-Urbana). A midseason finale squandered on an exasperating side character. In a season that has already felt a bit uneven, it's just disappointing.

[artofcompost]

A compost-conceptual nexus

One project I give my compost students is to come up with a generative procedure of their own. Here's the assignment, with links added to make a resource, a compost-conceptual nexus.

This summer I taught ENG 460 The Art of Compost again, the course the blog is named for. This time I included more avant-garde & conceptual writing than I have, wanting that they sharpen – thicken? – their historical sense of their own work.

So we assembled an oddball constellation on the fly, stars plucked out of formations named Dada, ’Pataphysics, Oulipo, Fluxus, Flarf, Conceptual Writing.…

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[hbutkus]

How to Catch a Turkey! Procedural Writing

http://dlvr.it/7b1WYR #ece #HeidiSongs

[missdasneves]

Procedural Writing

Procedural Writing Needs To:

1. Clearly state a goal or objective.

2. Provide an overview or list of materials or resources needed.

3. Address any safety procedures that need to be followed.

4. Include all the steps for the procedure.

- Start at the beginning - Describe the steps in sequential (step-by-step order) -Be easy to follow. The reader needs to be able to follow the procedural writing fully without having to make any assumptions. -Use transitional words (e.g., Use words like, first, next, then, finally) - Has the right ending

5. Include pictures/photographs to guide reader through the task.

[raven-footed]

'Procedural Writing' and why I usually have little patience for it

T is writing this paper on some experimental poets. The kind of experimental poets who, for example, take an existing poem by some other person and then rearrange all the words in it to make a new poem. Or poets who use mathematical formulae to craft poems that may or may not make any semantic sense, even if they are grammatically logical. You get the idea.

T is very interested in this. I am totally not. I am trying to figure out why I am totally not since I am supposed to be really interested in poetry. Like really really interested. 

[BACKGROUND READING: I was thinking about that article about the Afghani women risking death for their poetry (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/magazine/why-afghan-women-risk-death-to-write-poetry.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp&adxnnlx=1335718972-SQJX6fMQIMz40emZLOQatA). I was also thinking about this article (http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/im-sick-of-pretending-i-dont-get-art) which is written by a former art student who confesses that they are confused about the meaningfulness of much fashionable, critically-acclaimed, contemporary art.]

It is not that I find experimental, procedural type writing to be wholly uninteresting, or deny its capacity for playfulness, or think people shouldn't write and read it. But when I look at the kind of poetry and art people are willing to die for, and I compare to the contemporary experimental and procedural writing, I just think that I would rather spend my life reading and valuing and promoting the kind of literature that people would die for. And I think that there is plenty of literature worth dying for. (Though, from what I see of the contemporary Canadian poetry scene, that kind of thing isn't getting published or talked about critically all that much lately). 

Kitsch is cool. Playfulness in art is important. But I want to know how people get through their lives more than I want to know about what [mainly privileged people, i.e. mainly white/straight/cis men] play with in their spare time. 

The funny thing is T totally acknowledges all of this. And agrees with me that it is kind of a privilege for the author to get all "controversial" by using a writing method that questions their own authorial ownership and voice (when other people who write are struggling to legitimize their own [underprivileged, undervalued] voice in the first place). And he justifies his own writing on this "art", saying, "It's just a career move." And then I think about how lucky he is to be able to write about things just for the sake of his career. That because he is white, male, passing cis, and passing straight, he can just write about things because he wants to play with ideas, and because these ideas will get published, and because they will help him carve a cozy space in academia. 

Admittedly, he and I share a lot of the same privileges. So I suppose I could do exactly what he is doing. Except that it seems to me that there are so many more pressing things in the world than what is written about by procedural poets, or various academics who study them, or even what goes on in most of academia. None of which is to say that I am out there changing the world by writing and writing about people writing about -very important issues-. I'm not. I'm just lamenting the space people who are active writers take up with their play, effectively edging out people for whom literature can be a vital part of their well being.

p.s. T does, however, also write about some very important things, attends to very important marginalized writers, and is more of an activist than I will ever be. So this post is not about me respecting or not respecting T's work generally. Actually it's the fact that usually our priorities are in the same place that makes his fascination with procedural/experimental writing utterly perplexing to me. 

p.p.s. My ideas in this post are not at all fully formed. I am just pontificating, very late at night. So this is not literature, not art. 

[asymptotejournal]

Rimbaud, speech-to-text

This is what you get if you translate Rimbaud's poem 'Ville' ('City') by reading it into a microphone in French to MS Word that only understands English in an Australian accent:

History museum in one form of Clinton’s victory onto natal wrote Coumadin are two key to call for new and exciting you don’t end it among the exterior them a song of CB incurred on the counter the EC foreign a senior year. Press the “monument assumes to see all the modern” so we do we do need to solve the spicy on sun is in the longer junkie known to be some do seconded from and none seem to be among the dead castle and make it into the ASA this accord be delighted to have his uniform 100 cases can news that the speak for all the way to get into quantity on the scene, then a financial issue with the speaker and noble over alone). Police did it the name from the dish up and multiple twenty black men can we get to that a new study invaded,” — PM up but the year to more could we seek to the Seahawks, Stacey the more fun to note that the fetus of all the more despair player in Germany clean it all go on the board of

A pretty interesting project, I thought, not because one accesses Rimbaud in any useful way (IMO), but because it's an interesting form of procedural poetry. John Tranter, who created the above text, then reworks it into a poem of his own. See the transformation of this poem here.

AM