"Semantic" is in fact about the meaning of language and words. The idea was that the plot elements are the syllables and words that speaks the meaning of the story. Story design is the language. The Semantic of a story is about the assignment of meaning to such symbols and using them to convey the underlying meaning, and the transitions, requirements are the grammar of the story. The Semantic aspect of a story design is the study of how meaning is conveyed through composition of story elements. It is an analogy to how words are used in a language to string together something that makes sense. It is kind of convoluted, if you have a more representative word, it would be cool.

You can always observe how people think based on their posts, and you can almost never learn nothing from someone's post. So these two points do not suffice. If the conversation was on topic, we would be comparing methods in terms of what areas each method most like to get stuck on, and possibly what method is better for what kind of story. The current discussion is skewed. It is sad how an experiment with potential get distracted and untended.



Thematic vs Semantic description

What you described still sound a lot like just a summary of the plot and conflicts. You are able to describe why the choices are argonizing, important, and meaningful to the character, but you did not describe the meaning of the story. He is in a tough situation, but so what?

"How far can a man go to accomplish his desires? What can he renounce to protect his family?"

This is closer to describing the meaning, but it is still not it. Think about this as an argument. And think about the views and conclusions involved.

In Spiderman, Spiderman was put in a similar situation, that he must choose between his love or the people in the bus. But this is not the end of it. The villain, Green Goblin, made a statement, to proof to Spiderman that Superheros cannot exist, because the Superhero can never save everyone, they are completely vulnerable if they try to do so. Don't you think that this is more to think about than simply presenting a hard choice?

The story goes a little deeper when the hostages in the bus tell Spiderman to defeat the villain, that they are willing to sacrifice. This reveals the deeper meaning of the story, that a Superhero is never alone. This central idea is carried on in Spiderman2 when the passengers in the train stand before Dr.O, and when MaryJane tells Peter that she is not afraid to be with Spiderman. You can derived another central ideas, where 'The strength that sustains a hero is not the physical strength, but the emotional support' or 'The biggest villain against a hero is his own concerns and doubts.'

These are concrete descriptions of what the story is about, in terms of meaning, not in terms of plots and choices.

It would be interesting to read what you think of the semantic, or meaning of, say, Lethal Weapon movies, or Dirty Harry... Or even of Payback, one of my favorites..

Estok, I also disagree - if this thread has derailed, it was neither tragic nor irresponsible, because I waited a week to see if anyone else was going to reply to the original prompt, and they didn't. The thread's original direction was finished, so I gave a new direction to it, and politely gave boolean a chance to object, which he didn't. The new direction has been interesting and useful at least to Fournicolas and I, and nothing interesting and useful can be tragic.


I wan't trying to say Forunicolas' story has no meaning, I just think the meaning is disorganized and subconscious, and need to be identified, clarified, and strenghened. I would go so far as to say that human beings are incapable of creating a totally meaningless story, since all of us subconsciously evaluate things in terms of their moral value and encode those evaluations into the structure and content of our stories.

For example, look at the bit about how magic works by 'stealing' raw materials and power from the world, and the reaction of the non-mages teaming up to kill all the mages. This has huge semantic importance, it's just a question of taking these stray elements and structuring them to convey a clear meaning.

So let's look at Fargo, since that was the original question. Principles are very important to Fargo, but when forced to choose between them and his family, he chooses his family. Okay, so in this story principles and family are in conflict. This is echoed with the zombies, and with the idea that 1 in 4 people is a mage so in this rebellion (actually civil war is probably a better term, or maybe even ethnic war, if magical ability can be considered an ethnicity) mage and non-mage relatives will likely be figting aganst each other because of their different principles.

Now, Fournicaols, you say that Fargo succeeds in saving his family - but aren't they going to jail? Personally I would think of that as a failure. And what about that hand? Somebody obviously survived the big explosion - was it Fargo or the bad guy? Is it supposed to be an ambiguous ending? This is important to know so you can figure out what your story's premise or moral is. A premise is a statement about how the world works - sometimes it's a statement about fate and inevitability, sometimes it's a statement about which political philosophy is the right one, and sometimes it's a statement about which method is right for solving a particular problem. The premise of this story is going to involve principles, family, fighting, and your judgement of the main character's decisions. So it could be something like, "Principles and family are always in conflict; if you try to have both you will end up having neither." or "The best compromise between princliples and family is..." or "Family is more important than principles, so get your priorities straight and be wary of principles which are in conflict with family.", etc. So, what do you think the premise of your story is? Once you know that, you can use it to check your plot and organize your content for thematic unity.

The morale? Maybe it's "shit happens, not matter what..." Maybe it's "No matter what you give, you can't outbid destiny"... Maybe it's "Keep your principles, the most evil bastard wins anyways". I ain't sure about that.

As for the ending, it is ambiguous on purpose. I told you I loved when the reader was involved enough in the story to keep wishing AFTER the story and the book has ended, that HE could have altered the story otherwise, and made it a happy ending. It is ambiguous so that he can keep wondering what is the happy ending. I have thought about the aftermath. It is most likely that the ritual has been completed, but with TWO persons in the circle of fire, but when the effect of it happened, there was only ONE person left standing. That person received eternal life (probably in a static form, like, never ageing, always healing, and suffering from loneliness and pain, of course although physical damage don't hinder him much). I suppose that Fargo finally killed that priestess in the end of the ritual, and received the blessing/curse instead of her. Then the building crumbled on him. It was enough to make him painfully jailed, and still able to struggle free, just to understand afterwards that he is trapped in this form of neverending life. He will probably try to free his family, and will probably be close enough, but will also fail. Or he will free them, but will have to leave them, since he will think that he cannot live by them, seeing them age, and not him.

I REALLY love unhappy tragic endings. fargo gives up everything. He first has to give up his duty to rescue his family. Then, he must abandon the idea of rescuing his family. Then, he learns that they are still alive, and decides that in order to save them, he needs to erase the death ward that has been set on them by killing the Archdeacon. The Archdeacon kills himself, and he learns what he must do to save his family, that is to kill the woman he has come to like. And when he comes back to that woman, he merely has time to see his wife and son before throwing down his life so that they could live. After that, his wife and son are still sent to jail. No wonder he decides to "rise from the grave" to free them again. This kind of man is so set in his determination that nothing can hold him back. I imagine him being just as stubborn as Marv, in Sin City, by Frank Miller, or that cop played by Bruce Willis, in the movie taken from the comic books. They are ready to give up everything they have (and ultimately DO), even their own lives, to achieve their goals. This is the kind of men I want to describe. This is the kind of lives they have, and the kind of end they meet.

As for the psycho mumbo jumbo, if you REALLY must know, I write about this as a kind of exorcism. Because these principles are mine, and I believe that, if these men of paper met these ends, I should prepare myself to do the same, some day. Inventing stories, just like in PnP RPG, is living a new life, a new situation every time. I remember them as being past lives. Even if the events were fake, the thinking behind them was genuine, and the gut wrenching emotions that relate to them are genuine too. My paladins usually died with a smile on their faces and tears in their eyes, happy to die usefully. I have been training in martial arts for a while, and have been swimming, trimming my body for the past 15 years. And as I wish to die old, happy having never been involved in a fight or anything. I know that if and ever I have to, I will, knowing fully what the risks are, and happy to help someone in need, even if that someone is me.

I think I know what the morale is, after all. It is something I have known and learned all my life. It is :" Family is above everything, even one's life r a nation's safety. Self-sacrifice is nothing if it means saving someone else." I think most soldiers should have these two mottos sewn on their sleeves:

"Morituri Nolumnus Mori", meaning "Those who are about to die don't want to die".

And "Buttukz buzzdruck duzk" (or something equally badly spelled and hardly pronouncable) in Discworld's Uberwald dwarfish, meaning "today is a good day for someone else to die"...

It was irresponsible that boolean has took off. It was also irresponsible that give a new direction to a thread. There was no reason for you not to start a new thread, even if the original thread is dying. Again, you can always learn something from anything. It is quite meaningless to argue that this result justisfies what happened. Think about the case if you had started a new thread. people may still comment on your thread, and people may still have a chance to do the monolog test.


Re: Meaning

Quote: I wan't trying to say Forunicolas' story has no meaning, I just think the meaning is disorganized and subconscious, and need to be identified, clarified, and strenghened.

This is correct. This is what a story looks like when a story is disoriented. It is the same kind of arguement above. Every story is a representation. You can always extract the baseline meaning of it. A casual signiture can tell a lot about the person. However, in the perspective of design, if you consider this baseline as having meaning, you may as well not discuss having meaning at all. So what you said is correct, I actually rid of some clarification in the original post to make it shorter by using a threshold. Instead of saying your semantic content is indistinguishable from the noise, I just say that your story carries no semantic signal.

Quote: I would go so far as to say that human beings are incapable of creating a totally meaningless story, since all of us subconsciously evaluate things in terms of their moral value and encode those evaluations into the structure and content of our stories.

This is of course true. But if you look at a story from design perspective, you can see how weak this is. I am not objecting the process of discovering the meaning through writing, I am arguing the role of meaning and the design. Think about this statement:

"I have been brooding drawing different lines and curves to tell what is it that I feel. After a while I understood what I wanted, and I start from scratch again to present what I want using what I have learned while brooding."

A creation process has three phases. In terms of essay writing, there is the prewriting phase, the organizing phase, and the writing phase. A Design begins in the organizing phase, where the goals are verbalized, and elements are chosen to support the goals. It should be obvious that not all works are called a design. This is the distinction. This is the distinction between a work based on self-expression, and a work based on design.

Quote: For example, look at the bit about how magic works by 'stealing' raw materials and power from the world, and the reaction of the non-mages teaming up to kill all the mages. This has huge semantic importance, it's just a question of taking these stray elements and structuring them to convey a clear meaning.

This is partially correct. In your reply you suggest that you simply let the ideas float and then tie them up at the process continues. My argument is that the so called 'huge semantic importance' is ending up distracted, scattered, and non-integrated. It is equally disoriented when you compare to what the hero (Fargo) is doing. They are not related semantically. It is the same as listening to someone talking about everything without a focus. This is what you can get if you simply amplify the noisy signal without filtering it. Filtering is done in the pre writing process, where the designer identifies the meaning and design the story to support it coherently. Of course you can filter at the end, it will be as wasteful as chopping off limbs of your creation.

Also notice that the 'huge' semantic importance is unexplored by the story, which is unacceptable. You can rephrase the Baron's argument as: Magic destroys the foundation of possession and poses a public threat, therefore it must be destroyed. In order for this to have semantic importance, 'Magic' has to be place holder, a symbol for something else. I don't think he is going this direction, because this is heading toward just a classic social political problem.

If you think that this is one of the semantic ideas, don't you think that the rest of the story is not integrated to support this, and that this idea is also not support other ideas? This shows you that the 'meanings' of the story is disjoint. A story can have multiple focuses, but they should follow the same semantic theme. This is why the current work as a design is in very bad shape.

Quote: So let's look at Fargo, since that was the original question. Principles are very important to Fargo, but when forced to choose between them and his family, he chooses his family. Okay, so in this story principles and family are in conflict. This is echoed with the zombies, and with the idea that 1 in 4 people is a mage so in this rebellion, mage and non-mage relatives will likely be figting aganst each other because of their different principles.

IF you believe that this should be the case, you will refine what exactly that is meaningful about conflicts between a family and a principle. You can always set things up in conflict, like having a themed battle between an apple and orange. The question is why. If you simply make a story where your lover is a vampire and you have to kill it but you don't want to, there is still no semantic content to it. It is a meaningless conflict. The same goes for if you setup the story so that a family are going against one another due to conflicting principles. It is just the situation (Thematic and Emotional), it is not where the meaning lies.

If you believe in what you read in vector theory, a beneficial direction to think about this is, "If the conflict is solved by a transformation, what would that transformation be?" The answer to this question is the semantic idea.

Quote: Original post by Fournicolas
It would be interesting to read what you think of the semantic, or meaning of, say, Lethal Weapon movies, or Dirty Harry... Or even of Payback, one of my favorites..

I don't think I know enough about these movies. If you think that they don't have a meaning, I would say it again, directed meanings are not required for a story. It is always valid for you to reply that you don't want a directed meaning in your story, that you just want to depict the emotion and plot. There is nothing wrong with taking a picture just because you like it. There is also nothing wrong with writing a story just to depict a situation. But the norm is that such works also have directed meanings.

Quote: The morale? Maybe it's "shit happens, not matter what..." Maybe it's "No matter what you give, you can't outbid destiny"... Maybe it's "Keep your principles, the most evil bastard wins anyways". I ain't sure about that.

These are related to TechnoGoth's message in his story. Where in order to survive in a evil world you have to be evil (Sharks using one another and betraying). But in your case it is not as concentrated and directed. And possibly lacks depth.

"Those who are about to die don't want to die". "today is a good day for someone else to die"

These are indeed the realistic mindset a healthy soldier should have. You can philosophize and romanticize warfare, but deep down, wars aren't about who is right, but who is left. And soldiers and especially commanders, need this mindset to carry out the duties.

The presentation of such meaning usually involve a band of brothers (soldiers) doubting the meaning of their effort, doubting whether they are fight the right war. But as the story continues, they realize that all really mean to them is to keeping their comrades alive, to fight for and protect one another. At the end of it, the whole world may seem to be against them, but only they would understand why they did what they needed to do.

Then, I' would like to hear what you have to say about Romeo and juliet. It is a widely known story, it is quite powerful, dramatic in the classic sense, but I can't see a real "meaning" or "morale" to be drawn from it. Two lovers fight to the bitter end to live their love happily, and fail utterly. No beautiful ending, no things getting better afterwards. They just died and loved every minute of it.

Maybe I just get your point wrongly...

Re: Romeo and Juliet
Summary
I am using the link to show that the arguments I posted are completely old. You can tell that the drama of the story and the meaning of the story are two different aspects. A good story is not just drama (Thematic/Emotional Contents).

Semantic Ideas:
- (Theme) The Forcefulness of Love
- (Theme) Love as a Cause of Violence
- (Theme) The Individual Versus Society
- (Theme) The Inevitability of Fate

Semantic Presentation:
- (Motif) Opposite Points of View
- (Motif) Light/Dark Imagery

Literal Ideas:
- (Symbol) Poison
- (Symbol) Thumb-biting
- (Symbol) Queen Mab


Note that some Semantic Ideas are pretty out-dated. For example, if you do 'Forcefulness of Love' or 'Inevitability of Fate' again, people will go 'duh'. You need some thing more precise, something more thought provoking. At some point it is no longer an interesting idea to explore again. Being able to see the Semantic Ideas helps you get rid of ideas that are boring at heart.



Perspective:

"Two lovers fight to the bitter end to live their love happily, and fail utterly. No beautiful ending, no things getting better afterwards."

"This tragic choice is the highest, most potent expression of love that Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense."

The suicide is not about the plot nor the situation nor the ending. It is not about the drama. The suicide is a statement to manifest a meaning.

[Edited by - Estok on May 11, 2005 7:33:07 PM]

Certainly Romeo and Juliet has a premise. Personally, I would phrase it as "Persisting in old grudges will destroy the possibility of a happy future."

Forgive me for insisting, SnS, but I don't think your definition fits in the least the story that is told. It can be seen as a morale, or maybe a lesson to be learned from that experience, but it is NOT the intended meaning of the tale. Or else I should go and read it again, just in case...


As for the rest of the subject, Estok, can you please enlighten me on the semantic content of Conan, by Robert E Howard? It has always puzzled me how such a book about blatant vengeance could get anyone to finish it? And I just kept reading it through my teens, which just shows... Maybe I was just fascinated by all the bulging muscles words? In my opinion, "Don't mess with a cimmerian" does not qualify as semantic content. It doesn't even qualify as theme. It is a simple conclusion.

What about the James Bond stories? "the bad guy always get his butt kicked in the end"? What are the semantic content of Dashiel Hammett's stories? What is the semantic content of "The Maltese Falcon"? Is it "Hard-boiled get through everything"? Does it have to do with vengeance? With pride? With honesty? Maybe with the fact that there are lots of shades of grey, not simply a black&white world?

Same happens for many stories in the same vein, like Payback, with Mel Gibson. This man just wrecks Havok and kills two dozen people because his former associate stole him 70 000$, and he wants them back. He doesn't want more, but won't accept less. What is the semantic content? "don't mess with thieves"? "Pay your dues"? I'm probably too stupid to understand this whole semantic content thing. I usually prefer stories that wrench your guts, instead of those who leave you thinking and analysing long after what was the intended meaning of the author.

I've spent ages analysing "A streetcar named desire" and "Snows of the kilimandjaro" in class, and all was left afterwards was that dry taste in my mouth that, since it could all be resumed by two short sentences, that was what the author should have done. And still, they were great stories, which involved a lot of emotions. Butwhen you want to convey MEANING, you simply do so by making it evident and simple. When you want to convey EMOTION, you go for the words that will convey images. For if you try to use emotion-creating images to convey MEANING, you end up loosing your readership on what they are reading, and come to wonder over the meaning, which is NOT what you should get in the end. You should get someone o says "it's brilliant" because, suddendly, they've understood it all, like in a mystery story. They shouldn't think it's brilliant because it's obscure (note the oxy-moron...).

In my opinion, which I happen to share with myself, the reader should end your story with a feeling which can be anything BUT puzzlement. Pleasure, joy, sadness, hatred towards a character, sense of loss, anything but a sense of puzzlement towards what was your real meaning. Either it is plain, or it does not have it's place in there. Reflecting on what I just wrote, I come to think that maybe THAT was precisely what you were trying to lead me to...

But if THAT was where you were trying to get me to, WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY SO? There was no use for damn long complicated words!! gaaaah!! :D

Anyway, if you want to have a story about a theme, then it is because you are interested in this theme. I am not interested in themes, on the whole. I am more interested in people acting. Doubting. Suffering from choices and actions. Failing. Or only partially succeeding. Now you know what I like to write about, YOU tell me what the probable semantic content of my stories are. It is late at night, and I am tired. I don't want to analyse what I write. i want it to flow, freely. Shit happens, you know? Stories too. Newspapers are full of stories, and not all of them make sense, unless you look hard. And when you do, the story looses a lot of its magic. A fireman saved an old lady. Two punks injured a cop driving over him. Nikei looses 136 points lowering to 9635, lowest since 1999. No hidden meaning. Just facts. Just stories. When you start adding meaning to facts, you forget about the stories, and start telling TALES and FABLES.

My opinion...