Developing "Double Vision"

Today I’m going to talk to you about critiquing with "double vision."  It's always fun to analyze a work and give it your undivided attention, but  sometimes looking too long at just one work makes it difficult to imagine what might have been.  At some point in history, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and Virgil all made narrative choices.  Their works were once "in progress."  With the ever-growing popularity of retellings, franchises, and sequels, writers and editors need to hone their "double vision" so they can see how subtle, small changes can completely change the meaning of a work.

I am obsessed with "double vision."  I find the process of comparing two works a limitless delight.  In fact, one of my favorite blog posts I’ve written is "The Ghost in the Shell vs. The Ghost in the Shell." It also explains why I am a crazed fan fiction fan-- even bad fan fiction.  Limitless variation = limitless delight.
 
So I’m recommending you sit down and spend some time with two similar works and revel as your mind oscillates between them.  Let the illusion of “completion” fall away, and see the ripe potential in any work, old or new.  It is something now, but with a little imagination, it can become something else.
 
If you want a more prestigious example of "double vision" than Transformers 16, look no further than the formidable Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined (winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize). It is an excellent example of adaptation illuminating the adapted piece while creating something altogether new.  
 
Nottage used Brecht’s Mother Courage as a model for her piece on the experience of women in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.  Like Mother Courage, Nottage’s Mama Nadi makes her living selling to both sides of the war. Like Mother Courage, she has “children” in her care.  Mama Nadi imitates Mother Courage’s Machiavellian cynicism, laughing at the sentimental, the ideological, and the nostalgic.  She defends her shop above all else because it gives her a sense of ownership and control.
 
But Mother Courage and Mama Nadi are also very different.  Mother Courage is from the 17th century, while Nottage is writing about a current event.  Mama Nadi’s “children” are young women who have been pushed out of their families and their homes.  Significantly, (this is your SPOILER ALERT because I’m about to ruin the endings of both these plays) while Mother Courage trudges on pulling her cart with no family and no rest, Mama Nadi finds a tender shoot of love and hope for a new, shared life.

One could compare the two works infinitely, as they are both fantastic.  But the most obvious differences between them are gendered.  Nottage takes Brecht to task for his obliviousness to the unique dangers women face in a war-ravaged country.  Mother Courage is never concerned that her own body might be a contested site for both armies.  She is an outcast in many ways, but she does not experience the pain of being cast out.  Where Mother Courage’s desire for money builds her lonely prison, Mama Nadi’s same desire is born out of hopelessness.  She has nothing else to cherish but her independence, because society has deemed her worthless: ruined.

I challenge you to find a work you love, and ask “yes, but what if…”  It’s easy to do this with novels, plays, and movies you don’t like, but taking apart beloved treasures will show you more about writing than tearing down bad fictions.  Manipulating a beloved object reminds you it isn’t sacred.  It may be beautiful, but it isn’t holy.  And treading across someone else’s landscape will reveal the work-- the craft-- behind it.

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