The number 43 was stuck in my head. I think I’ve written entries based on forty three. I looked it up. Didn’t find the reference I was looking for, a lot of sevens and a thirty six. I suppose if I dug through the digital rubbish I could find the source I was looking for. It’s the number of plots and variations.
Seven is silly, though without variations I suppose it’s right, sort of. I actually held the book in my hand some thirty odd years ago, it’s depressing. Thirty some odd years ago I was going to write something original.
You want to balk against the idea that every plot has been used because otherwise it makes writing hopeless. It’s probably a really good exercise to try to break that barrier. The real problem is in the telling of a story. I could write three hundred pages of plotless fiction, but it would be unreadable. That’s the rub. There’s a number of things that need to happen for fiction to be readable and things like conflict and resolution limit you as does the idea that a character has to change if in no other way than psychologically. I’m sure you can think of an instance where the latter hasn’t happened, but not in a story, movie or tv show that you actually liked.
And that’s where I’m going, TV shows. There’s been a trend over the years to stretch a single plot out over a full season. It’s one way to keep getting additional seasons. It’s not really the plot that keeps someone interested in a TV show though, it’s the characters, and, on a more shallow level, the actor; an animated icon of the character.
Comedy is easier, if you’re funny. I mean writing comedy, performing comedy is easy to, but you have to be funny and charismatic or implausibly not charismatic. Comedy is also like porn, the plot isn’t the point at all as long as it’s funny, the script, not the plot. There aren’t original plots to comedy either, but topical plays better with comedy.
Um, my teeth hurt.
It’s difficult to tell on prose box, but I’m a funny motherfucker. Sometimes I’m so funny I scare myself, well, not scare, but it’s troublesome. Most comedy has to do with pain, if I go on a binge I know I’m heading towards somewhere dark. I obviously haven’t been binging, not here at any rate, I’ve been so unfunny it’s almost healthy, sort of.
I seemed to crack everybody up at the dentists last night. Well, not everybody, but the finance manager, one nurse and the receptionist. To be fair the finance manager was an easy audience. The safest kind of humor is making fun of your own pain. It doesn’t even have to be direct with content. If I had a script of what I said to these people it wouldn’t seem funny at all. Some famous dead guy once said something like “Comedy is when you fall off a ladder and break a leg, tragedy is when I stub my toe”. A bunch of people dead and living have paraphrased that. One day they’ll all be dead. Funny.
I rescheduled my fake psychology appointment for a dentist visit next week. That cracked up their receptionist. To be fair I know her because my fake psychologist is actually an internist and is scheduled through internal medicine. Even if I hadn’t been in there 36 times in the last 36 months I make it a point to know high people in low places. That’s why you always tip the waitress not the manager.
I did sort of want to bitch at the fake shrink internists, but, you know, some other day. I’m afraid I’d be way to funny on the regular schedule.
I still don’t get what the fuck an internist actually does let alone a fake shrink internist, and it’s not from lack of exposure or explanation. I know way to well what a dentist does.
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