Kdot wrote:MacBeth Act I Scene I
When shall we three meet again?
Is stasis merely that the witches meet on some agreed upon schedule? I dare say that stasis is introduced in the second chapter rather than the beginning of the story.
Indeed in Macbeth and Hamlet the story-telling of status quo ante is sprinkled through the plays, but this in a way tells us how not to write a novel.
I was going to make mention of this in a review of your Tia of the Stratosphere versus Legend One. I was able to glean more of stasis from one later (#30) chapter of Tia, not having read anything other than chapters 29 and 30, than in 3 Chapters of a full episode of Legend. I believe the word "episode" is crucial to understand that you are certainly writing Legend as if a movie or TV show and Tia not so much or not at all. To hold Shakespeare's Tragedies as "episodic" makes the point that plays, movies and tv are a form different than a novel, and it is a mistake to formulate a novel in the same fashion. Suppose you sit to watch a movie and you see a black screen and dialogue starts up and runs for five minutes, then flashes of scene and action, perhaps with dialogue, appear periodically for the next two hours still filled mostly with talking and blackness. That is a novel with action and dialogue and no stasis.
Even though the play is older than the novel, Homeric story-telling is far older than Golden Age Greece plays. Homer clearly sets stasis in a mere 174 words (Butler translation), not about the Trojan War (which comes later) but about the heart of the story - which is to tell why Achilles is so upset, then later about the consequences of his pulling out of action, then later what brings him back in.
In spite of the bromide show, don't tell in an age of TV & Movie, the art of storytelling for writing is telling.
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured Chryses his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the sceptre of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant's wreath and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs.