I was listening to a lecture today about writing. In it, the

>>9884155
...Usually all the deeper meaning is addressed in the journey.
What are you on about?

If you want more in depth stuff, learn the Hero's Journey.
Also Dan Harmon is surprisingly insightful in terms of writing process. (Google his story structure circle.)

Just finish the lecture. Surely they are gonna go more in-depth. Establishing a goal and conflict/obstacle is literally writing 100.1
And you don't HAVE to do it.

>>9884155
Most writers are plebs writing for plebs and have the imagination of a vacuum salesman.

People want what they want, and often they don't want to admit what they want, so it has to be veiled and moralized when told in story form.

To take a pleb example from pleb media, the nerd, which is to say that guy we all know with the center parted hair, suspended shorts, and a short sleeved shirt with many pens in its pocket, this very realistic character wants to murder the jock, an equally realistic character that dwells in the pleb imagination.

(The pleb imagination is full of stereotypes. Bubba who wants you to drop the soap, the middle aged balding guy with the flashy car, the cat lady, the rich southern asshole in the white suit whose job is to be wrong in a smug way - such a rich cultural universe these plebs inhabit.)

But back to the point. In this pleb drama, Poindexter wants to kill Jock. He wants to humiliate him in return for the humiliates he has received. But instead the pleb writer veils and moralizes his pleb drama, and instead has events play out so that the nerd turned out not be a nerd after all, the jock turned out to be a coward, the ugly girl turned out to be beautiful without requiring laser eye surgery or liposuction.

Everyone celebrates and the novel is peacefully resolved without ever touching the raw nerve of reality.

Bear this in mind when pleb writers talk about their character's "moral choices" and "emotional journey." And if the writer starts banging on about how writers are "just entertainers," run for the hills, because he's gone full prole punchclock on you.

So, basically, you're asking: why choose a certain topic? Or, equivalently, how does a writer choose a topic/plot/storyline?

There isn't a good answer for that. Ultimately, the writer might play around with various low level plots before combining them for high level, thematic consistency; or, they will straight away have a story with legs that works on both a low level and a high level.

Most great novels are essentially 2-3 main topics/plots and maybe a dozen subtopics/plots combined together, all starting and stopping at different points.

>>9884344
Basically. The furthest this guy went into on characters was looking at archetypes, and what makes people like them. Given this is a guy lecturing primarily about genre fiction, but I was still curious what he had to say. As >>9884290
said, the analysis basically stopped at archetypes, what they are, and how to make a character likable. It seems to take a lot of arguments as a given: that a character being likable or relatable makes them better, that archetypes are valuable for describing a realistic character, or that subverting an archetype is somehow valuable with no mention of simply ignoring archetypes altogether.

>>9884155
>Why should the woman want to fall in love? Why should she have difficulty trusting?
While definitely contributing to motivation, these topics are a better fit for a lecture on backstory and creating realistic characters.

>Why is being mistrustful a flaw?
This would be part of a lecture on theme.

>None of this was addressed.
There are so many things to consider when writing that one lecture can't cover it all.

>Should you avoid deeper subjects and focus simply on mechanics for a student?
The problem is that beginning writers are often clueless at creating a compelling story. If you have high minded ideals but your character is boring or overwrought, if you start writing walls of text on your philosophy of humanity and love, you're going to lose the reader and your book will be put aside never to be picked up again.

Certainly aim high but learn the basics.

>say something meaningful

good lit is prior to meaning (all meaning is cliché), and brings about the very vocabulary needed to describe /analyze it through an aesthetic trauma that new 'meaning' then seeks to cauterize

there are no good guides as to why a story ought to do what it does b/c the aesthetic faculty is not conceptual – while infallible, good taste is always given what it didn't know it wanted, and judges the particular to be subsumed into the new conceptual, rather than applying the latter as a schema

you fucking pleb.

>>9885434
>all meaning is cliché
What did he mean by this?

>>9884952
Theme is an excellent way to put it. Should new writers be educated on the importance of theme before they start writing? I think this would eliminate a lot of the problems we had today. Writers should know that writing can and should have a purpose besides entertainment. Before one starts writing, the first questions they should ask themselves are, what am I writing about, and why does it matter?