Real life and its political and murderous intrigues is not nearly so well plotted as even the least competent of novels. We expect in our fictional stories that the writer will have taken care to organize things such that the tale, as fantastic as it may be, will possess an underlying structure that is sequentially and logically stable. If the story lies to us, if it makes a mockery of our intelligence, we will discard it as not worth reading. But clearly, those who fashion real world narratives find themselves under no compunction to be reasonable.
Take this real world plot, for instance: An American resident, a Saudi born citizen who is now a reporter for a major American newspaper, walks into a high security Saudi Embassy in Turkey and does not come out again. The first plot goes like this: He disappeared.
Well, that doesn't work at all well, even for those who don't really care much about plots, because … well, because it is quite impossible. You can't have a story where a person simply disappears, the end. So they come up with a new twist. Oh, on second thought, the man didn't disappear. He was interrogated and something went wrong, he died, and then he disappeared.
Where is the body?
Well, according to Turkish officials, the body was cut into little pieces and removed from the embassy in this manner. So, now we have a man who was interrogated by a group of interrogators. The interrogators accidentally killed the man--not a good thing--but by a stroke of good fortune, just happened to have brought along the tools, bone saws and such-like, to dismember the unintended corpse. Gosh, we just wanted to ask him some questions. Good thing we brought along these bone saws. Whew.
Rogues, our president says (curiously beating the Saudis to the use of the same word). So here's the new plot: Eight rogues walk into a high security embassy lugging bone saws and body bags. They interrogate and (accidentally) kill their captive and then chop him into little pieces. No one notices anything amiss.
The president finds the story very strong, very convincing.
I find myself very much on the verge of being ill. I would hope that most readers feel the same.
Take this real world plot, for instance: An American resident, a Saudi born citizen who is now a reporter for a major American newspaper, walks into a high security Saudi Embassy in Turkey and does not come out again. The first plot goes like this: He disappeared.
Well, that doesn't work at all well, even for those who don't really care much about plots, because … well, because it is quite impossible. You can't have a story where a person simply disappears, the end. So they come up with a new twist. Oh, on second thought, the man didn't disappear. He was interrogated and something went wrong, he died, and then he disappeared.
Where is the body?
Well, according to Turkish officials, the body was cut into little pieces and removed from the embassy in this manner. So, now we have a man who was interrogated by a group of interrogators. The interrogators accidentally killed the man--not a good thing--but by a stroke of good fortune, just happened to have brought along the tools, bone saws and such-like, to dismember the unintended corpse. Gosh, we just wanted to ask him some questions. Good thing we brought along these bone saws. Whew.
Rogues, our president says (curiously beating the Saudis to the use of the same word). So here's the new plot: Eight rogues walk into a high security embassy lugging bone saws and body bags. They interrogate and (accidentally) kill their captive and then chop him into little pieces. No one notices anything amiss.
The president finds the story very strong, very convincing.
I find myself very much on the verge of being ill. I would hope that most readers feel the same.
2 comments:
Count me in for feeling the same way!
Count me in for feeling the same way!
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