There are many other ways of dealing with plot, but the important thing to remember is that they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A humorous novel can be full of quite serious ideas and develop interesting characters, for instance.
On the other hand, writers can, more or less deliberately, sacrifice some elements of plot buildups in their anxiety to do, in great detail, what it is they want to do. I am so intent on presenting my opposing ideas, for instance, that I make no serious attempt to characterize brilliantly or to drench the tale in humor.
As a result, much is made of my “cardboard characters” and I am frequently accused of being “talky.” But these accusations usually come from critics who don’t see (or perhaps lack the intelligence to see) what it is that I am trying to do.
But I’m sure that this is not what Ms. Sullivan meant when she said I had “the greatest mind for plot.”
I rather think she means that my stories (especially my novels) have very complicated plots that hang together and have no loose ends, that don’t get in the way of the ideas I present in my stories, and that are not obscured by those ideas, either.
Now, how is that done?
I wish I could tell you. All I’m aware of is that it takes a great deal of hard thinking, and that between the thinking and the writing that I must do, there is little time for me to do anything else.
Fortunately, I both think and write very quickly and with almost no dithering, so I can get a great deal done.
Which brings me to another part of the interview. The reporter speaks of my apartment as “filled with eclectic, utilitarian furniture chosen more for comfort than for style, much like Asimov’s wardrobe.
For a recent speaking engagement, he wore a Western tie, a too-big jacket, and a striped shirt with the kind of long wide collar that was popular in the 1970s.”
She’s absolutely right. As far as style is concerned, I’m a shambles. It doesn’t bother me, though.
To learn to live and dress with full attention to style would require hours upon umpteen hours of thought, of education, of decision-making, and so on. And that takes time I don’t want to subtract from my writing.
What would you rather have? Asimov, the prolific writer, or Asimov, the fashion plate? I warn you. You can’t have them both.
Metaphor
I received a letter from a fan the other day, one who had bought a copy of Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove, which appeared in a series entitled “Isaac Asimov Presents.” (That’s why he wrote to me.)
The cover shows a man dressed, says my correspondent, “in a Romanesque military uniform, holding a Roman helmet in his left hand.” He also carried “a very large, very modern, very lethal-looking blaster rifle” and “an electronic scanning device.”
My correspondent was intrigued by the anachronism, bought the book, read it, and “enjoyed the book.” However, he found no place in the story where a man was holding such a rifle and scanning device, and he felt cheated. He had been lured into buying and reading the book by an inaccurate piece of cover art, and he wrote to complain.
So I thought about it. Now my knowledge of art is so small as to be beneath contempt, so naturally, I can’t be learned about it. There is, however, nothing I don’t understand about the word trade (fifty years of intimate, continuous and successful practice at it gives me the right to say that), and so I will approach matters from that angle.
I see the reader’s complaint as the protest of the “literalist” against “metaphor. “ The literalist wants a piece of art (whether word or picture) to be precise and exact with all its information in plain view on the surface. Metaphor, however, (from a Greek word meaning “transfer”) converts one piece of information into another analogous one, because the second one is more easily visualizable, more dramatic, more (in short) poetic. However, you have to realize there is a transfer involved and if you’re a “born-again literalist,” if I may use the phrase, you miss the whole point.
Let’s try the Bible, for instance. The children of Israel are wandering in the desert and come to the borders of Canaan. Spies are sent in to see what the situation is and their hearts fail them. They find a people with strong, walled cities; with many elaborate chariots and skilled armies; and with a high technology. They come back and report “all the people we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants…and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers and so we were in their sight.” Right! They were of “great stature” in the sense that they had a high technology. They were “giants” of technology and the Israelites were “grasshoppers” in comparison. There was as much chance, the spies felt, of the Israelites defeating the Canaanites as of a grasshopper defeating a man.
It makes perfect metaphoric sense. The use of “giants” and “grasshoppers” is d ramatic and gets across the idea. However, both Jewish and Christian fundamentalists get the vague notion that the Canaanites were two hundred feet tall, so that ordinary human beings were as grasshoppers in comparison. The infliction of literalism on us by fundamentalists who read the Bible without seeing anything but words is one of the great tragedies of history.
Or let’s turn to Shakespeare and the tragedy of Macbeth.
Macbeth has just killed Duncan and his hands are bloody and he is himself horror-struck at the deed. Lady Macbeth is concerned over her husband’s having been unmanned and gives him some practical advice. “Go,” she says, “get some water and wash this filthy witness from your hand.”
And Macbeth, his whole mind in disarray, says, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”
It’s a powerful figure, as you see a bloody hand dipped into the ocean and all the vast sea turning red in response, but, literally, it makes no sense. How can a few drops of blood turn the ocean red? All the blood in all the human beings on Earth if poured into the ocean would not change its overall color perceptibly. Macbeth might seem to be indulging in “hyperbole” (an extravagant exaggeration which sometimes makes its point, but usually reduces it to ridicule).
This, however, is not hyperbole, but metaphor. Consider! Macbeth has killed a man who had loved him and loaded him with honors, so he commits the terrible sin of ingratitude. Furthermore, the man he murdered was a guest in his house, so that Macbeth has violated the hallowed and civilized rules of hospitality. Finally, the man he murdered was his king and in Shakespeare’s time, a.king was looked upon as the visible representative of God on Earth. This triple crime has loaded Macbeth’s soul with infinite guilt.
The blood cannot redden the ocean, but the blood is not blood, it is used here as a metaphor for guilt. The picture of the ocean turning red gives you a violently dramatic notion of the infinite blackness that now burdens Macbeth’s soul, something you couldn’t get if he had merely said, “Oh, my guilt is infinite.”
A literalist who sets about calculating the effect on the ocean of a bloody hand is getting no value out of what he reads.