[MISC] Plot vs. Character

[Pudde Fjord]

Jesse Willey wrote:
>
>> This brings us to RACC.  It's really cool when
>> somebody is writing
>> their hundredth issue or so and they have a lot of
>> plot threads to draw
>> on but sometimes it is just interesting to read
>> about characters.
>> Jesse has been criticized for expecting people to
>> have read everything
>> he's written.  But he's not alone in this sense. Tom Russell, on the
>> other hand, tries to make almost everything he
>> writes a jumping on
>> point by providing a full page of exposition at the
>> beginning of each
>> story: sometimes it's better to jump in mid res and
>> explain things as
>> you go along.  Mid res.  That's actually a term I
>> picked up from Tom
>> himself, oddly enough.  I should reiterate that I
>> don't think issue
>> summaries are a bad thing: I love the fact that
>> Marvel does them and I
>> wish that DC would do them.  But summaries, by
>> definition, should be
>> brief.
>
>   It's not like I don't do character driven stories. The whole point of
> ABC was to do stories that are
> entirely first person narration so the reader would
> only get one character's point of view.  Their
> thoughts and feelings.  Who these people are.   In ABC, the readers
> reactions to events are colored
> by the narrator.  I've wanted to, since the start of
> the series, do a multipart Rashomanesque story where
> most if not the entire story is exactly the same
> dialogue/plot 2-4 issues in a row.  I know, it'd put
> the audience to sleep-- but if read individually each
> character (and hopefully) the audience would find each
> character to be absolutely justified in doing what
> they do.  I just haven't figured out that story yet.

I read a series of three French albums that saw the same events from
different characters point-of-view in each album. However, other events
were added in the second and third album, because they all had lives
*apart* from that overlapping events.

I read them in translation (not english), and the title was something like
"Deadly Lullaby". The writer was Tome, who also writes "Spirou".

How it worked:

A: Separate 1 - common - separate 2- common final
B: Common - Separate - common final - aftermath 1
C: Backstory to char C - A-separate 1 - B-separate - Common final -
aftermath 2

There were twists in the story that didn't appear until album 2 and 3, but
album 1 could be read and understood by itself.

Pudde.