Building on the Levi-Strauss I've been reading (very slowly), I decided to take his technique for comparing different versions of the same myth and apply it to a batch of my own story idea summaries. Basically this technique takes two or more story synopses and lays them side-by side to identify what pieces and structure they have in common. The result is something like an equation for a story, which different variables can be plugged into. This has interesting applications for a writer to analyze what is subconsciously important to them, and also applications in story generation, where modularity of story elements is of the utmost importance. Anyway, the first variable I identified was one which is essential to starting every story, because it is a keystone of creating conflict. This is the Disjunction. A disjunction is something which is wrong. Maybe it has been wrong for a long time, maybe it has been gradually getting worse over the past few years or months, or maybe it has suddenly gone wrong. And this wrongness provides the motivation for the initial incident - a character reacts emotionally to this wrongness and tries to do something about their feelings. But what are these mysterious disjunctions anyway? Basically, anything which a character feels ought to be one way, but is in reality some other way. And this disphoria, this impression that something is not the way it ought to be, causes the basic character motivations: ambition, fear, loneliness, desire, boredom, disgust, and all those other feeling that make a character want to change something. Specifically disjunctions may be misperceptions (an AI is perceived as a machine and struggles to show people that they are a person), misexpectations (a pacifist is expected to be a soldier), lacks (a person may be unhappy because they lack self-confidence, they may be lonely because they lack a lover, they may be frustrated because they lack permission to pursue their desires), and transformations (a person is placed into an unfamiliar body, job, world, which seems wrong because it is unfamiliar and they don't understand it and can't anticipate how it will behave. Transformations are essentially a lack of information or experience.) So, why don't you all tell us some disjunctions you want to use in your own writing or have found interesting in others' writing? [smile] [Edited by - sunandshadow on June 19, 2006 11:47:11 PM]

Here's the list of disjunctions I identified among my various story ideas:

Adult perceived as Child
Sexual Being perceived as Neuter
Person perceived as Pet Animal
Person perceived as Dangerous Animal
Person perceived as Freak
Non-Dominant perceived as Dominant
Mother perceived as Soldier
Human is transformed into Alien
Human is transformed into Computer
Person is transformed into Different Gender
Lover lacks Beloved
Lover lacks Requitement
Type of Attraction lacks Permission
Natural Follower lacks Leader
Destined Leader lacks Self-Confidence
Closeted Gay lacks Safety to Come Out
Ship lacks Pilot
Barren Person lacks Trigger of Fertility
Young Adult lacks Trigger of Maturity

Person lacks a soul.
Person lacks a purpose.
Machine percieves itself as human.
Human percieves himself as machine (in terms of emotion).
Person percieves ingrained nepotism.

Cool thread!

Writer lacks dictionary.
Writer lacks thesaurus.

Quote: Original post by Codejack
Person lacks a soul.
Person lacks a purpose.
Machine percieves itself as human.
Human percieves himself as machine (in terms of emotion).
Person percieves ingrained nepotism.

Cool thread!

Glad you like it - I was getting kind of puzzled whether it was too confusing or something when I noticed I had 50 views but no replies.

So, I'm curious - what exactly does it mean for a person to lack a soul? How would they think and act differently from a person who had a soul?

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: Original post by Codejack
Person lacks a soul.
Person lacks a purpose.
Machine percieves itself as human.
Human percieves himself as machine (in terms of emotion).
Person percieves ingrained nepotism.

Cool thread!

Glad you like it - I was getting kind of puzzled whether it was too confusing or something when I noticed I had 50 views but no replies.

So, I'm curious - what exactly does it mean for a person to lack a soul? How would they think and act differently from a person who had a soul?

You picked out the one I was hoping to develop! The way I am seeing it, a person lacking a soul would be a shell. They would feel void and empty inside. He may have his daily routine - he goes to work every day. He is very much alive and is lucid but he is highly withdrawn. Others think there is something... not quite right about him. He has no lust for life. He can't empathise with people. He sees people, colleagues, laughing and conversing but he can't participate as he doesn't relate to them or to emotions.

He knows he never used to be this way and so he has lost something. I can only best describe it as a soul. How, when and why he lost this he doesn't know. How does he reclaim whatever is missing to lead a normal life?

I like this exercise - it gets the mind turning over. I find it hard to develop a story. Do you have any more writing exercise (or a good source for more) that could help me flesh out this premiss?

The problem is, would a soulless person care if they were soulless? Would they be capable of feeling motivated to change that?

Here's some stuff about developing a plot outline, but let me know if you meant more the brainstorming stage of development including characters, worldbuilding, etc.
Plotting thread (for old game writing contest)
List of lots of plotting/outlining techniques

Writer lacks imagination.
Idea lacks originality.
Words lack meaning.
Shape lacks dimension.
God lacks hope.
Culture lacks truth.

First off: my apologies for coming across as an utter prick. I think this is a great exercise, but I'm not a very good writer. My writing usually focuses on my own difficulties with writing and coming up with original ideas. It's not great reading.

I did not mean to imply that the others here were unoriginal or lacking in talent. But I can understand why that kind of misunderstanding could occur. Curse, my poor communication skills :-(


Writer lacks communication skills

Quote: Original post by jjd
First off: my apologies for coming across as an utter prick. I think this is a great exercise, but I'm not a very good writer. My writing usually focuses on my own difficulties with writing and coming up with original ideas. It's not great reading.

I did not mean to imply that the others here were unoriginal or lacking in talent. But I can understand why that kind of misunderstanding could occur. Curse, my poor communication skills :-(


Writer lacks communication skills

Ah, I wondered what that was about. Glad you weren't trolling in my forum, that wouldn't be good for your health. [wink]

As for writing about difficulties with writing, hmm, I kind of get the feeling that topic would automatically produce boring awkward stories, or at best an essay on the difficulties of beong a writer. Have you tried analyzing some of your favorite stories to figure out what themes you like reading about? In particular, what are your favorite fairy tales, cartoons, or single episodes of tv or anime, because those are the easiest to analyze. One of my favorites has always been beauty and the beast, and I learned a lot about what themes are important to me and the direction my writing has been trying to go by analyzing it.