On the Grand Scale

How do we make our tales feel big?

Milestones

Some tales feel major. They have an epic feel. When we finish hearing or reading or watching them, we feel as if we’ve been through a war, as if we have undergone great changes in our life, as if nothing will be the same. They act like milestones in the lives of us the audience.

These tales give me the greatest feeling of pleasure from tales.

So it’s not surprising that from time to time the question comes to me, How do I make my tales work like that? What’s the trick?

What follows is not at all definitive. It isn’t even complete. This is only as far as I’ve gotten so far in answering that question.

Big is Big

These epic tales can cover large vistas of time or space. They can also cover a large vista of the inner life of a character, but it seems to me in this case (which I haven’t explored very much) the talesman is best advised to follow the models of spans of time and space — in other words, to use the same techniques.

Big in space means that the tale tells of events that happen over a large geographic (or cosmic) area. But what is ‘large’ here? It means well beyond the common ken. That is just a way of adapting scale to scale. If you look at a tale from an urban point of view, we would then cover the space of the whole city, from its outer edges to its inner core. Most of the folk who dwell in a city are only able to move in a small part of the whole. They restrict themselves to a few local neighborhoods (most of the time) and are pent up within a certain class or ethnic group within the city. A big tale of the city would take a hero, set up for us his usual milieu, and then watch him leave that milieu, while never leaving the city proper, and visit other neighborhoods, quarters, ghettos, barrios, maybe from the poorest to the richest, from beggars to the princes of the city. But a tale about a nation would take the hero from his city, which he has almost never left before, and send him out into other cities, other climes within the nation, and so on. And a tale about space would seem small if it covered only from the Earth to the Moon, even though that space, measured in kilometers, is greater than a trip around the world. So a big tale about space must take its hero into vaster scales of travel and experience.

Big in time means years, decades — centuries. Here the physical arena can be limited to what the hero commonly knows, but the bigness is a question of the changing of days, months, years, and decades. We could call it a big tale if it told of a farmer who never left his own home fields, but we watched him from the time his parents met to his birth, his childhood, his making of his own family in adulthood, his dealings with his children, with his grandchildren, and the aftermath of his death at a great age. Once again the scale is relative; the tale of a man’s whole life could be but a part of a saga that spans generations of a family or the cosmic scale of civilizations and worlds as in E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman cycle.

Soft and Loud, Humble and Proud

Along with these journeys, a big tale will use the like of volume in a symphonic work to take us readers ‘out there and beyond.’ Such a tale may begin with what seems a simple (deceptively simple) and calm, quiet scene, a trivial bit of business that will end by having vast consequences. It is then the talesman’s task to keep it in his audience’s mind both the mighty oak and the tiny acorn from which it grew. In a like way, when the vast consequences reach the peak of their frenzy, the big tale will often not end abruptly but will show the aftermath, in descending shudders, until it reaches again what seems a simple and calm, quiet scene to end — but we the audience will still hear the echoes of the tumult that has been reached.

Likewise, those ‘quiet’ moments will have their counterpart in scenes that we could call ‘humble’ and which will be struck against other scenes that we could call ‘proud.’ This is like to the contrasts we saw in the big tale of the city: we will watch the hero as a poor man and a mighty; or watch him go among the poor as well as among the mighty. Scenes of poverty will contrast with the pomp and ceremony of the ruling class.

Scale of Tone and Other Techniques

This brings the big tale closer to the Romantic notion that contrast lies at the heart of an artist’s technique, and the starker the contrast the better. These scenes of contrast need not abut each other, but the talesman must keep the grand in the reader’s mind when he shows them the tiny, and vice-versa.

Arc of Character Has its Own Scale

The changes the main characters go through should also be more than the changes most men endure. By this I mean not only in their outer circumstances but also in their hearts. They will be very different men at the peak of the tale than they were at its start, and at the tale’s end they will be very different men than they were at its peak.

Space and Time are Not Within the Page Alone

There is another type of ‘space’ and ‘time’ for these big tales, for normally they take up many pages of text, and many minutes of screen time, relating, and reading. The same tale can seem ‘bigger’ when it takes up more time to get through; I suspect this is mainly because we the audience go through more changes while we take in the tale, and yet that can’t be the whole of it, for we will sit through a long play or movie whilst our lives sit in abeyance, apart from whatever wheels of consideration still turn deep in our hearts relating to the problems as yet unresolved in our lives. We can’t really do anything about those problems, but we can consider them, even if we are not openly aware of doing so, and in relating our problems and our lives to what we hear of in the tale, we can shift our attitude towards them. A simple example would be that the big tale, in showing us the grand scale of its events, may make our problems seem smaller, less critical, and more manageable by contrast.

The End is Not the Beginning

Whatever the measure of the tale’s bigness, where it ends is distant from its start. Sometimes these big tales take a complete circle only to underscore how far the end is from the start, paradoxically: we are taken back to the ground of origin only to see more clearly what changes have taken place. So for example J. R. R. Tolkien takes both his hobbits back home after their journeys in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings only for them and us to see the Shire in a very different light.

This is a common technique used in these big tales.

Big Tales Have Tales Inside Them

One technique used is to have tales that take up a part of the big tale, that might serve as tales themselves. The best example I can give is that of the physical journey, though it must also apply to movement through time and a hero’s inner life.

In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien gives us a journey which is broken into many different smaller journeys. At each stage of the journey, we the audience know only that the heroes mean to go to a certain destination, and neither we nor they know what they will do after that, or whither they might go next. This has the effect on us, as we look back over the tale, of seeing it as composed of several smaller tales.

After preparatory matter in the Shire, Frodo Baggins and his companions Sam, Pippin, and Merry set out for Tookland, still within the general land where hobbits live, but seen as ‘strange’ and somewhat foreign to the hobbits of the Shire proper. From there they mean to travel farther.

Just getting to Tookland is an adventure in itself. From there they will go to Bree to meet Gandalf, they hope — this is another great journey. At Bree they learn that Gandalf has been delayed, and they agree to let Strider lead them on to Rivendell. The journey to Rivendell is the longest leg yet, and fraught with yet graver peril. At Rivendell they find Gandalf at last, and a Council is held, at which it is decided that Frodo must take the Ring to Mt. Doom in Mordor. They set out along the way but cannot cross the mountains as they wished, and must go under the mountains through the mines of Moria, which gives a great change in the tone of the journey (such changes of tone also help to vary the journey and mark off separate segments of the tale). From Moria they enter Lothlorien, a great contrast in place and inhabitants. After this there is a short journey down river, and the company parts ways.

Parting into two companies allows Tolkien to take us on the next segment, divided into two: one party goes to rescue Pippin and Merry from their captors, while Frodo and Sam wander the wastes on the East side of the river with the new goal of finding a door into Mordor — after which they don’t quite know what they will do.

When Pippin and Merry are free of their captors, this segment splits again: we follow the two hobbits among the Ents in Fangorn Forest, and the others into Rohan and battle. These two sides come together again at the White Tower, only to divide again, now in three: Pippin goes with Gandalf to Gondor, Merry rides with the knights of Rohan, and Strider and his companions take another and darker road to Gondor. These three come together again for the battle of Gondor.

When Gondor is delivered, for a time, Strider Gandalf and the others march to assault Mordor. This makes a new leg to this now-united braid of segments, and is set against Frodo and Sam, who have entered Mordor and now must cross its dread terrain to Mount Doom.

When the menace is overcome, there is a celebration and healing in Gondor, a coronation, and the beginning of the journey back to the Shire, forming a last segment of the journey. But at the Shire the hobbits find all not well, and they must rally their fellows and free the Shire. They do so, but the Shire has changed forever, even as the hobbit-travelers themselves have. We have come back to the beginning only to remark on how much everything has changed.

One other note on how this grand journey has been split into smaller parts, is that each leg of the journey ends with a time of rest. This follows the traditional cycle of all journeys, each stage ending with a rest at which we are told of other activities beside movement. So at Tookland the hobbits take a bath and get dressed, and make new plans; at Bree there is ale-drinking, and a dance, and new considerations; at Rivendell there is peace, healing, and the council; Lothlorien serves as a sort of rest-stop after the dread of Moria; the coronation of the King at Gondor is the rest-stop of the journey Out, to be followed by the journey Back Again.

Only the Start

This is only the surface of this topic. I hope I will learn more about it and be able to add that knowledge here later.

(Composed on keyboard Friday, April 25, 2008)