[MISC] Plot vs. Character

[Martin Phipps]

Saxon Brenton wrote:
> As an afterthought, on Saturday 2 Sept 2006 Martin
> Phipps <martinphipps2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Oh yeah.  I probably should also mention that Net.Heroes on Parade, Speak,
> >House of Fiction and The Green Knight are all excellent examples of
> >character driven fiction.  The Nostalgics, so far, is less successful
> >because it is not clear why the narrator is including a lot of seemingly
> >irrelevent details that would appear to have little to do with what he is
> >ultimately trying to say.
>
> I would submit that _Nostaglics_ is a slightly different animal:
> it belongs more to the detective mystery style of story, in
> which lots of background information is added.  In a more
> conventional story that sort of surfeit of information would
> constitute something like characterisation or even world
> building, but in this style it's primarily about hiding clues
> among red herrings. Whether that's the true nature of the
> story itself is something that I can't tell. However, since the
> narrative is not so much a confessional by Jason (he's freely
> admitted he killed one of his teammates) but rather an
> attempt by him to ellicit help to identify why he did it, it
> makes sense that Jason himself would be deliberately
> giving as much potentially relevant information as possible.

I suppose it is a question of who he is actually talking to.  He can't
be talking to a police officer because the police officer would have
asked him to get to the point.  So presumably he has already confessed
to the crime and provided an answer as to why he did it and at this
point he's talking to somebody else.  So the big reveal would be not
only why he did it but who (he thinks) he is talking to and why he
feels he has to explain himself.

Martin