Well, you tell me before I complete that quote for you. I'm listening to a Master Class from David Mamet. He's teaching "Dramatic Writing" and the lesson is on "Structuring the Plot":
“The difference between a vacation and an adventure is on an adventure you always wish you were at home."
You can imagine what's going on in this lesson. In a plot, the hero needs to get from Point A to Point B, and everything that happens has to be part of that journey. It's not a vacation. It's an adventure.
It's one thing to write, quite another to write with a plot. This blog has no plot. There's no Point B I've been trying to reach all these years. Imagine trying to come up with a plot. Would I have something like a plot in blogging if I had a political cause? No! In dramatic writing, you take the reader on the journey and you get him to the destination. Political writers are pointing out a destination and telling the readers that they need to get there. That's not a plot. It's just incitement.
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I assume he’s using the terms somewhat euphemistically. Otherwise adventure tourism is an oxymoron.
Mamet seems to start by suggesting the difference is vacations are planned while adventures just happen. Ok, fair enough. But then he limits it further—vacations are enjoyable, adventures are not. Now his terms don’t work so well anymore—unless In an unexcerpted portion, he’s set out specialized definitions that distinguish his meaning from everyday use.
In my “Frankenstein, Part II,” the hero is alone in the world and he seeks love and a mate despite being pursued for murder by obsessive London cops.
... about $5,000
A vacation is relaxing, an escape from work. Adventure entails risk and requires work and a taste for the unknown.
... a warm pistol.
I get what he's trying to say but what terrible word choice. An adventure is "an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity." That's not a reason to wish you were home, that a reason to leave home! I leave home for both reasons. I leave for vacations and I leave for adventures. Sometimes I have adventures on vacation and sometimes I just vacation. I've had vacation-free adventures.
I've never said or heard anyone say oh man when these adventures happen I just want to be home.
Isn't this guy a Word Master? What's wrong with him?
Mamet is what got me to subscribe to that 'course'. I went through his, and a couple of others, then got bored with it. Mamet is one of the all time greats, but it still comes down to finding your own voice and just doing it. No- your blog does not have a plot, but it does have a few themes that seem to run through it. And I'm thinking I treat it as a vacation...from my work.
I've read a few books on writing, including Stephen King's 'On Writing', but the one I loved best was Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing.. This is a good preview list of it: Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing
My favorite: "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip". With this subset: "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
Fred Allen called it the Treadmill to Oblivion. Of course, a lot of his work disappeared into the ether.
There's some plot advice in The Rewrite (2014) with Hugh Grant.
One of his cinema students resents his dumping her and produces plots with a virtuous woman and an evil man. There has to be some development, Grant tells her.
Stranger than Fiction (2006), literary critic analyzing what sort of plot the hero seems to be living: we need to determine whether it's a comedy or a tragedy. In a tragedy you die and in a comedy you get married.
He was famous for an essay on "Little did he know."
Keep your writings brief and too the point; opening statement of purpose, how one plans to get there, journey, and closing statement. Make it pithy, humorous, and self-deprecating.
A vacation gone sideways becomes an "adventure" if you want to maintain sanity and/or avoid divorce.
David Mamet is clearly a Tolkien fan.
'I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.'
'I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!'
--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Reminiscent of Joss Whedon's equally cynical/realistic:
'Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later.' - Zoe in Serenity
"The difference between a vacation and an adventure is on an adventure you always wish you were at home."
False. Did I get it right?
Sometimes the best plots emerge from the journey. IMO, that's how the plot of this blog is developing. Maybe not?
This got me thinking about Alan Watts
Because we simply cheated ourselves a whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end the thing was to get to that end success or whatever it is or maybe heaven after you’re there. But we missed the point the whole way along it was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played.
Mamet's famous memo to the writing staff of "The Unit" is pure gold, even tho it's WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS. Especially the part about how the producers want you to give the audience INFORMATION. I use this memo extensively in the comedy writing work shop I do at the local teen arts festival every year, even though there's not a syllable about comedy in. It's just incredibly useful. You can find it all over the place, for instance here.
I especially love the part about how the producers will be demanding that you need to communicate INFORMATION (i.e. plot points) into the dialogue so the audience will "understand" what's going on. God is that true. Harvey Weinstein was notorious for 'fixing' his movies in post production with new dialogue that EXPLAINS what's going on, usually by overdubbing scenes where the character 'speaking' has his back to us or is in extreme long shot. Once you're aware of it, you just keep seeing it in movie after movie. Oscar wining movie after Oscar winning movie, in fact. It's maddening.
And it's the polar opposite of #7 on Billy Wilder's "Ten Screenwriting Tips": 'Let the audience add up two plus two. They'll love you forever.'
The Wilder List.
...one involves putting your life or others' lives at considerable risk.
seems I broke some of those rules in my novella, about 31,000 words so far, the prologues, the regional dialect
I thought it a socratic exercise, was I wrong about putting forth a certain premise,
"This blog has no plot."
It's Waiting for Althouse, every day.
Fortunately, never long.
dustbunny said...
A vacation is relaxing, an escape from work. Adventure entails risk
Thank you dustbunny!
i wanted to say that an Adventure involved risk of life; but that didn't sound right
you nailed it. An Adventure involved SOME SORT of risk (not, necessarily to life)
Taking your loving wife, to a bed and breakfast is a vacation
Taking some floozie you just met in the bar, out into the ally is an Adventure
Wait. This blog doesn’t have a plot? I can go home at time?
We went to Disney with all the grandkids in February. Vacation. Destination, itinerary, prepaid events.
14 years ago we flew to Germany to visit our daughter when she was doing her study abroad, stint. The only reservation we had was car rental, and 1st night hotel. The other 6 days were and adventure. Unscripted, following what was interesting, living in the moment, until we had to make our boarding time, back to the States
Driving up little used abandoned logging roads in the middle of nowhere is a vacation. The vehicle breaking down, finding out there is no cell service, and then remembering you didn't tell anybody where you were going is an adventure.
A vacation without any planning can be an adventure.
There's a quote I remember and have been trying to find since our escape from New Zealand while the borders were closing and airlines shutting down in March. It's something like:
"An adventure is other people in trouble in a land far away".
Can not find it. Maybe I dreamt it.
This is where I came in....
Uncertainty.
My parents were missionaries and I grew up in Africa in the mid 70s to 90. Mama already said you knew you were having an adventure when you wished you were home in bed.
On an adventure you await the next adventure. Whereas a vacation is bifurcated into adventure and homeward bound.
Althouse could not be called an adventuress.
"David Mamet is clearly a Tolkien fan."
LOL! I was thinking of the exact same thing as I was reading Althouse's post.
Rick T.,
Those roads in the middle of nowhere get especially adventurous if you happen to encounter The Misfit.
Deliverance was a vacation that turned into an adventure.
If you buy a one-way ticket, it's an adventure.
I disagree. This blog does have a plot, albeit very slow in revelation. Over time, there are interesting twists and turns in the Life Experience of Madame Althouse; the most interesting twist is the pony-tailed pistol packing mama.
Something new and wonderful unfolds in real time.
I have no talent for making plots, though I'm married to someone who does. I can, however, almost always recognize where someone else's plot is going. There are almost no surprises for me in movies. (And that's fine. Surprises aren't what I really enjoy in stories.)
Though I will say, I recently watched Lonestar, and the last two minutes were a genuine surprise.
"Okay, I did *not* see *that* coming."
It's Lone Star, two words. My mistake.
I've listened to part of that Mamet class. He is an entertaining lecturer.
I have no talent for plotting, but I can slog through it. The plotting is, for me, the most arduous part. I have more free time as the kids get older. Have pulled out a lot of ideas and half-finished things to work on lately.
“...when you lose your passports.”
The Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was grouchy on the subject of adventures:
"Having an adventure shows that someone is incompetent, that something has gone wrong. An adventure is interesting enough in retrospect, especially to the person who didn't have it; at the time it happens it usually constitutes an exceedingly disagreeable experience."
I don't necessarily agree, but I always liked it.
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