My Life As A Writer: The Creativity Comes From The Constraints

Every once in a while, a Pop Cult figure comes up with something useful. This is modeller EC Henry, and his video essay on Star Wars vehicle design is worth your time.

It is the constraints that define the creativity of the series, as they had to work around the limitations those constraints imposed. Combine that with other influences dancing around in Uncle George's head--Flash Gordon being most explicit--and you get this Art Deco aesthetic of the Prequels and the Used Future of the Originals that combine to show a clear cultural decline between the two- itself a powerful statement.

Consider what Henry says when you create your own setting aesthetic, and this is something that both authors and setting designers should spend some time figuring out. There is a lot you can tell a reader by, say, telling him that everyone in a place has their clothes made by skilled artisans instead of purchased off the rack at a mass market corporate retail outlet.

Consider what you tell someone when you have a panel in a comic that shows your giant robot half-stripped and being worked upon by technicians as if it were an ordinary tank or bomber in the background while your pilot protagonist engages in a dialog scene with another character. Compare that against a panel where the giant robot repairs itself autonomously, or in an automated repair bay, while the pilot does the same thing. Decisions like this communicate massive information efficiently to the viewer.

The language of a medium is a very powerful tool. We speak highly of those with mastery of the language of film, or of the novel, and so on. That means it can be taught, and that it can be taught means that you can learn it- learn it and master it.

The greats of the Pulps were just such efficient masters, as they grasped their form and their medium with the firm confidence of someone that not only achieved mastery but also self-awareness of that mastery- they KNEW that they knew. The greats of film were likewise self-aware in their mastery. This is something to strive for, not disdain and shun, and it is good to see that there are those that find joy in the chase.