Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald

Author:Brian McDonald
Format: epub

The masculine and the feminine

'The King died and then the Queen died' is a story. 'The King died and then the Queen died of grief' is a plot.

—E. M. Forster

The quote above is often used to define the difference between plot and story, but I'm not going to use it for that. I'm going to use it for what I call the "masculine" and "feminine" elements of story.

First, a little background. I was watching Shirley MacLaine on Inside the Actor's Studio and she was asked what time of day she likes to write. She answered that if she was writing about the present, she liked to write by the masculine energy of the sun, and if she was writing about the distant past, she liked to write by the feminine energy of the moon.

The concept of seeing the moon as feminine and the sun as masculine seemed to make sense to me, in an ancient sort of way. And for some reason it stuck with me and I began to look at the two attributes in terms of story. Then I had, what was for me, an epiphany: there are masculine and feminine elements of story.

When I put this hypothesis to the test, and applied it to classic stories that have worked over time, it held up. When I then applied it to my own work, it elevated the level of my stories. When I told friends and students, they also found that it helped them.

I define masculine elements as external, while feminine elements are internal. Without equal, or close to equal, parts, your story is unbalanced.

Consider the way most of us think of comic book stories—a square-jawed hero who is all good and never questions himself. Its concept of good and evil, right and wrong, is cartoonish. There is no gray, only black and white. Everything is on the surface. It is external. This is masculine.

Now consider the typical soap opera. It is all about evoking emotion. The outrageousness of the situation doesn't matter as long as it leads to a strong emotional response. It is all about what characters are experiencing inside. This is feminine.

There are action films, full of excitement, in which lots of things blow up and tons of people are killed, which men just love and which bore most women stiff because they are devoid of emotion.

Conversely, there are stories that bore men because they seem so slow and plodding—films that deal with the emotional lives of people but seem to have no story or forward movement.

Allow me to generalize here: Who buys pornography and who buys romance novels? One is all external and devoid of emotion and the other is largely internal and all about emotion. Both are unreal fantasy worlds. In movie-world vernacular they are "boy movies" and "chick flicks."

Why is it that all of these forms—mindless action films, soap operas, comic books, pornography, and romance novels—are considered "trash" by most of us? Even those of us who indulge in them regard them as guilty pleasures.

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