kuranes
23 Jan 2008, 04:03 AM
When writers and editors get together for brainstorming a new project for books or theater or film/video etc. there is one subject that often comes up ?
"Where is the conflict ?" It's one of the things new writers sometimes omit, thinking that all they need to do is describe an original sort of place and characters that have unusual occupations etc. However, though they may be OK for home movies and such, there normally needs to be some kind of conflict going on in a story to keep things interesting.
It may be conflict between people or conflict between ideas ( in a more cerebral presentation ) or both. Often the differing concepts are represented by different people, and so the conflicts may seem "personal" anyway.
I thought it was interesting that Edahn had asked ( as part of his ideas for what we might discuss in this "Meta-Forum" ) how we manage conflict on this board. Or how it is resolved. Something like that, and I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment.
That's a good question. The answers to it may provide some interesting .......conflicts.
I've already mentioned why conflict can be a good thing sometimes. If there's not enough at stake, a "story" can get boring. Personally I don't think that it needs to permeate everything going on, but, on the other hand, no tension at all makes for a jellyfish kind of existence. On the flip side, I think an intelligent person ought to be able to come up with some polarities on a complex subject, without having to require it be framed as a "under-rated X" or "over-rated Y" in order to talk about the different flavors, the differing trade-offs of choosing one option over another, with the pros and cons of each etc. That is what the "P" is all about, is it not ?
"Stories" need not be fictional. We're all here telling our own "stories" part of the time; however minimally some people here want these "anecdotal" possessions to be valued. ( Just like you can make a case with circumstantial evidence, anecdotes can have great value. Many trends and facts have no central archivists keeping graphs etc. on them and so often these stories are all we have to evaluate things by. )
Back to making the stories interesting with conflict - there seems to be agreement that there are desirable conflicts, undesirable conflicts and also, of course, a lot that it's hard to tell about until....maybe the conflict has already ended by itself. Others may need interventions to guide or stop them. The Madmins used to spend a lot of their time trying to decide about which ones are worth keeping lit. Maybe even which ones could stand a little gasoline....:devil: :) Nooooo....
There was a time here on the board when there was such an emphasis on free speech ( with only the most obvious fouls disallowed ) that flaming was almost allowed to get pretty respectable. We were even going to have a kind of arena for people who wanted to engage in it as an art form. See my thread "Levels of Flaming" for a window into some thinking of the time. http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=9499
However, it was pointed out that if people got more heated up as a result of the flames then they might carry narstiness back into the main forums, disrupting more staid conversations. So there was a debate about whether people could quench their need for flame there, and be thus emptied of their peppers when returning to the regular forums. Eventually it was decided that the "arena" ( which had by then been set up as a segmented place ) should be more of a "dunce corner" for behavior that was being discouraged. This is what is now known as Purgatory. If you had been in that debate, as a Madmin, how would you have voted ?
Typically the conflicts here are settled in two ways. The members have it out between themselves and/or the Madmins put a stop to it with a ruling or a technical end to the thread's visibility.
Now, "disruption" is different from conflict, and can include "derailing". Usually conflicts cause disruptions, but disruptions don't have to be "conflicts". Just as basketball is a sport but not all sports are basketball.
Some derailments can be undesirable and some can be desirable. I'm sure we've all seen threads where the tangents ended up being more interesting than the OP-oriented thread itself. They are not always split, for various reasons.
There are pros and cons to splitting threads.
My feeling is that it's generally considered to be an undesirable disruption if one goes into a conversational tangent that lasts three posts or more. No one ever came out and said that, but that's a kind of rule of thumb that I sometimes remember to follow. Is that too long of a disruption? Considering that there may be another poster sharing with you in the disruption, and so that would represent 6 posts, then there is an argument that an opposing side can make towards "yes, it's too long even at 3, Kuranes". However, it is a very complex issue, since the thread might already be fizzling out, and so the "disruption" actually revived it. Also, I know if I want to do so, I can always simply pick up a point of divergence and try to get people going again. But this debate can go on, with the other side then saying that "yes, you could attempt to revive it Kuranes, but to really get the original discussion going again, you would need all those people present that were originally there contributing. Your inviting them back won't necessarily make that happen." And that's true also. It can be a pretty complex argument even before you bring in the idea that "T" disruptions are to be considered preferable over "F" interruptions.
As long as we're going to allow other types on the board, I think we should concede that their points of view are different, but may still be valid. So, to me, a disruption is still just a disruption. Maybe a good one, or maybe a bad one.
Are there exceptions to what I've been pointing out ? Of course.
Next on the agenda - trolls and pseudo-trolls.......
Well, that ought to be enough to get started on here......in the Meta-Forum.
"Where is the conflict ?" It's one of the things new writers sometimes omit, thinking that all they need to do is describe an original sort of place and characters that have unusual occupations etc. However, though they may be OK for home movies and such, there normally needs to be some kind of conflict going on in a story to keep things interesting.
It may be conflict between people or conflict between ideas ( in a more cerebral presentation ) or both. Often the differing concepts are represented by different people, and so the conflicts may seem "personal" anyway.
I thought it was interesting that Edahn had asked ( as part of his ideas for what we might discuss in this "Meta-Forum" ) how we manage conflict on this board. Or how it is resolved. Something like that, and I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment.
That's a good question. The answers to it may provide some interesting .......conflicts.
I've already mentioned why conflict can be a good thing sometimes. If there's not enough at stake, a "story" can get boring. Personally I don't think that it needs to permeate everything going on, but, on the other hand, no tension at all makes for a jellyfish kind of existence. On the flip side, I think an intelligent person ought to be able to come up with some polarities on a complex subject, without having to require it be framed as a "under-rated X" or "over-rated Y" in order to talk about the different flavors, the differing trade-offs of choosing one option over another, with the pros and cons of each etc. That is what the "P" is all about, is it not ?
"Stories" need not be fictional. We're all here telling our own "stories" part of the time; however minimally some people here want these "anecdotal" possessions to be valued. ( Just like you can make a case with circumstantial evidence, anecdotes can have great value. Many trends and facts have no central archivists keeping graphs etc. on them and so often these stories are all we have to evaluate things by. )
Back to making the stories interesting with conflict - there seems to be agreement that there are desirable conflicts, undesirable conflicts and also, of course, a lot that it's hard to tell about until....maybe the conflict has already ended by itself. Others may need interventions to guide or stop them. The Madmins used to spend a lot of their time trying to decide about which ones are worth keeping lit. Maybe even which ones could stand a little gasoline....:devil: :) Nooooo....
There was a time here on the board when there was such an emphasis on free speech ( with only the most obvious fouls disallowed ) that flaming was almost allowed to get pretty respectable. We were even going to have a kind of arena for people who wanted to engage in it as an art form. See my thread "Levels of Flaming" for a window into some thinking of the time. http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=9499
However, it was pointed out that if people got more heated up as a result of the flames then they might carry narstiness back into the main forums, disrupting more staid conversations. So there was a debate about whether people could quench their need for flame there, and be thus emptied of their peppers when returning to the regular forums. Eventually it was decided that the "arena" ( which had by then been set up as a segmented place ) should be more of a "dunce corner" for behavior that was being discouraged. This is what is now known as Purgatory. If you had been in that debate, as a Madmin, how would you have voted ?
Typically the conflicts here are settled in two ways. The members have it out between themselves and/or the Madmins put a stop to it with a ruling or a technical end to the thread's visibility.
Now, "disruption" is different from conflict, and can include "derailing". Usually conflicts cause disruptions, but disruptions don't have to be "conflicts". Just as basketball is a sport but not all sports are basketball.
Some derailments can be undesirable and some can be desirable. I'm sure we've all seen threads where the tangents ended up being more interesting than the OP-oriented thread itself. They are not always split, for various reasons.
There are pros and cons to splitting threads.
My feeling is that it's generally considered to be an undesirable disruption if one goes into a conversational tangent that lasts three posts or more. No one ever came out and said that, but that's a kind of rule of thumb that I sometimes remember to follow. Is that too long of a disruption? Considering that there may be another poster sharing with you in the disruption, and so that would represent 6 posts, then there is an argument that an opposing side can make towards "yes, it's too long even at 3, Kuranes". However, it is a very complex issue, since the thread might already be fizzling out, and so the "disruption" actually revived it. Also, I know if I want to do so, I can always simply pick up a point of divergence and try to get people going again. But this debate can go on, with the other side then saying that "yes, you could attempt to revive it Kuranes, but to really get the original discussion going again, you would need all those people present that were originally there contributing. Your inviting them back won't necessarily make that happen." And that's true also. It can be a pretty complex argument even before you bring in the idea that "T" disruptions are to be considered preferable over "F" interruptions.
As long as we're going to allow other types on the board, I think we should concede that their points of view are different, but may still be valid. So, to me, a disruption is still just a disruption. Maybe a good one, or maybe a bad one.
Are there exceptions to what I've been pointing out ? Of course.
Next on the agenda - trolls and pseudo-trolls.......
Well, that ought to be enough to get started on here......in the Meta-Forum.