Core value definitions and literary examples, going the distance with “core value” in your work by watching, not forcing the principles
Hi and welcome:
Today it’s like living in a cloud. The coast is socked in, and it was the same yesterday. You can reach up and grab a hunk of the sky. Or so it seems. Looking out the window as I shape up what I want to tell you about this, the last ingredient of the literary secret sauce, also known as value (or the value that creates the antagonistic force's response to that value), I’m in a bit of a daze. I’m emerging from four days of hard writing. Now I’m teaching again, I get only sixteen hours each week and ask myself to move through at least 2500 words per sit, or 10,000 words a week. Keeping up this pace, this draft should be done by the end of the month. Fingers crossed.
It’s very odd to be a memoir writer, toggling between the present and the past, taking what one has learned over the years and putting it into a cohesive story, and at the same time working to balance the right voice against the theme, hold to the tension, build out the best images, and move through time. Writing, no matter the form is like being a juggler. Is it not? And I’m not talking about a simple juggler; I’m talking about Chris Bliss juggling in time to a Beatles song. Haven’t seen that one yet? Take a minute and watch and tell me if you are not near tears at the end.
This is hard work. The hardest you’ll ever do in your life. Please don’t ever, for one minute, think it’s not. It is. And yes, I think it’s worth it (obviously), but man-oh-man, it does wear a girl out.
Let’s get to it, then.
Literary Secret Sauce Ingredients:
1. Structure
2. Plot
3. Core value
Instructions: Study each independently with examples, pull the three together, and apply them to your memoir.
Core value is my term, but it comes from the use of the word “value” by Robert McKee in chapter fourteen of Story. This is one of the books I suggested you add to your library, and once we know the value of your story, we can start talking about antagonistic forces and how to use them in a logical sequence.
The value is there, just like plot and structure, because you can’t have a story (even a badly told one) without it. You’ll have to look and look closely, but it’s there. It’s always there. The reason core value is hard to see has to do with complexity. All tales, like life, are loaded with complexity, so it’s easy to miss the core value. But again, it’s there.
Think of any story you’ve read, think hard, and then ask yourself the “what was that about?” question. A few examples:
To Kill a Mockingbird: Justice, or the lack of it.
Where the Crawdads Sing: Freedom.
Eat, Pray, Love: Love.
Educated: Wisdom.
Now, these many books didn’t deliver on the core value; that is, they didn’t “go the distance” but tried.
Going the distance means they worked through the full range of antagonistic forces that challenged that value, or as McKee calls it, The Negation of the Negation.
A story that progresses to the limit of human experience in depth and breadth of conflict must move through a pattern that includes the Contrary, the Contradictory, and the Negation of the Negation. ~Robert McKee, Story
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