Excited! 10: ...from INSIDE THE STORY.
Last fall, I got frustrated by two noteworthy warning signs on a heavy metal door, inside a Victorian home, built inside an old bowling alley in New Mexico.
. . .
Wait.
Let's rewind and start here instead: with a moment from a movie that I don't, uh…particularly…care for (SAVE YOUR HATE FOR THE END, PLEASE) to explain a word that I admire beyond reason …and will probably overuse by the end of this email.
If you've seen Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy (or clicked those images to watch the opening credits), you know that instead of merely filling a soundtrack with the director's favorite Funky Jams Of Yesteryear, they made a point of putting the soundtrack into the world of the movie. As in, it's a physical cassette tape, "AWESOME MIX VOL. 1," which Peter Quill cues up on whatever ...cassette player he inexplicably has …in a starship …in a galaxy …far far from Earth. C'mon, people. Let's not think about this too hard.
The word for this trick, in fancypants formalist film phrasing, is diegetic ("die-UH-jet-ick"), which—for our purposes—means "occurring within the story world."
Come onnnnn, you know what I mean.
Here's where we pretend to have read Aristotle: "diegetic" comes from Poetics' diegesis—narration, or telling. It's the counterpoint to mimesis—enacting an imitation of reality, or showing.
As I understand it, mimesis is about consistency within the world of the story, about what story is told (and why it makes sense). Does the time-travel model in this story follow it's own internally-consistent logic? Does that chainsaw belong on the kitchen table? Do that character's choices and actions make sense (for that character) within the constructed reality of the story?
On the flip side, diegesis is all about how the story is told (and why that telling makes sense). Does that character in the story hear that music, too? Are the elements used to tell the story, like the user interface in a game, a part of the story that the characters are aware of, as well? The telling of any story often involves the structure of the medium itself, whether that medium is film, television, stage plays, books, audiobooks, websites, comics, games, etc., etc., etc., even (yes) email.
I mean,
On February 19, 2018, you wrote:
Um…why do I care about diegesis?
HOW DID YOU KNOW TO ASK THAT?? Did I accidentally send you a draft of this email?
Knowing what works and doesn't in storytelling can help you to understand what works so well in the stories you enjoy and to tell better stories yourself—keeping in mind that stories are so often how we communicate with others. Thinking about diegetic elements (and the medium itself!) is thinking about the way a story is told.
What can diegetic elements do?
They can increase your immersion within the story.
- Your film could take diegetic sound design to an obsessive level, constructing camera pan "whoosh" sounds from background noises that make sense in a particular scene.
- Your sport could invent stories about its athletes, and present background fiction as fact, borrowing from the narrative trappings of real sports, even inventing a word for it: "kayfabe." (RadioLab has an excellent piece on kayfabe…and Don Quixote.)
- Your books about a fantastical epistolary romance could use real postcards and letters, so that readers have to open envelopes.
- Your interactive fiction games, whether as a method to prevent piracy or to give clues to players, could include "feelies," props from the game world.
Or you could slip them in with your minicomics. Or you could build stories entirely out of these props—and we're not even going to dive into alternate reality games, and save that for a future missive.
They can help cover up seams that might break your immersion.
- You could figure out a way to keep a science-fiction television show going …well, theoretically, forever…by building actor changes into the rules of your storyworld.
- You could cover up the fact you don't know what people look like when they're in your VR experience, by putting everyone in stormtrooper armor.
- You could figure out a way to have humans on-scene to look after your muppets (manage crowds, clear doors, fix malfunctions) by making them in-story assistants.
- You could even use these techniques—and, yes, this is a stretch—for communication in emergency medicine, by staying inside the story of elderly or distraught patients.
They can let you break the story to play with form in fun ways.
- Diegetic tomfoolery! You could "break the fourth wall" and have characters acknowledge the audience's existence.
- Your narrator or captions could lie to the audience, or omit information.
- Your musical numbers could be real in the mind of a character as dissociative episodes. The main character could hear the narration, see the band playing the music, see (and talk with) the comics captions, or meet a version of the author…and these links are just a few small examples!
- You could require the reader to reveal the story by playing with their phone, or reveal a second story (that only the main character can see) by using a special flashlight.
- You could tell people not to enter a door.
Oh, right. The door.
The heavy metal door with the two frustrating signs. The Victorian house. Inside the old bowling alley. In New Mexico.
Let's tease this apart: George R.R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones books, bought a 20,000 sq. ft. bowling alley in an industrial park in Santa Fe, gifted it to an artist collective called "Meow Wolf," and inside it, they built The House Of Eternal Return, an installation experience somewhere in between a children's museum, interactive theater, and a live-action adventure game. It's incredible, and you should go see it.
When you enter, there's a message for you (presumably!) in the mailbox.
As a visitor, it would seem you're working with The Charter, piecing together what happened in the house and its interdimensional nexus.
However, there are also Meow Wolf staff (in Charter lab coats) mingling alongside visitors, ✌️ "investigating" ✌️ …and (non-diegetically) repairing the installations from the daily wear-and-tear of busloads of schoolkids and tourists.
Because visitors can interact with pretty much EVERYTHING, this maintenance is vital. You're given free reign to wander through the house—and its many connected dimensions!—and snoop in kitchen cabinets. Poke around the closets. Rifle through shoeboxes of photos for clues. Crawl through a clothes dryer into another dimension.
And that's where the problem with the first sign on the door comes in.
You're a Charter agent, right? (Maybe??) You should be able to go in this door! Let's try the doorkno—oh, there's a second sign now.
>:[
When you're telling people stories, you need to make it clear when you're telling a story, and when you've stopped telling a story. Where the audience knows what's not inside the magic circle. If you want to keep everything within the world of the story, then come up with a reason that truly makes sense in the story.
It's not easy, but it's worth it.
So sorry for pickin' on you, Meow Wolf. Picking on you with possibly unreliable memoriiiiiiiies.
Big thanks to Miriam for insisting I go to Meow Wolf, Dani & Chris for telling me about the Mysterious Package Co., and R for talking Disneyland.
What are your favorite examples of diegetic elements? Drop me a line.
What's happened since last time in the world of CODE-NAMED PROJECTS?
- [✓] Relaunched the website for STRAYLIGHT, running on Kirby. That turned out to be a lot of work, and I'm still fixing a backlog of tiny issues.
- [✓] Shipped version 1.0 of KIMON! On to v2.0 then v3.0 (which will probbbbably be when it's made public) then beyonnnnnnd.
- [⋯] Teaching three completely different workshops in the next three weeks: DERBYSHIRE with B on Wednesday and Friday night; PINAX with E; and then GALETTE with C. The latter will possibly kill two birds with one stone and let me wrap up RIO GRANDE.
- [⋯] Can't I go two weeks without starting a new side project? Apparently not: CHRYSAOR.
- [⋯] Pitching another iteration on HATCHEL based on their visitor testing feedback.
- [⋯] Found myself guest co-hosting an episode of a podcast I've admired for years(!!!) as a manner of backdoor pilot for DIASPORA. (C registered domain names for that, so it's getting a tiny bit more real.)
- [→] Nothing to report since last time on ARETHUSA, COLLINS, HAMMERSTEIN, BOMBILATE, or BAYEUX.