Talking about scary stuff, because it’s the season.  Not in the way we usually do, though…

             H.P. Lovecraft once said “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”  Stephen King said terror is the finest emotion.  And Terror, Inc. once said “My name is my business, and business is good.”

            Okay, that last one’s a bit obscure.

            Anyway…

            I’ll go one step further with this and say that fear is one of the most common emotions.  Most of us live in a state of fear.  I don’t mean that in some socio-political way.  On a regular day, most of us experience fear on some level or another.  Fear of failure.  Fear of rejection.  Fear of injury.  Fear of humiliation.  Maybe even the big ones like fear of helplessness or fear of death.

            In most stories my characters are going to begin things in a state of fear.  Again, maybe not a crippling, hiding-in-the-corner level of fear, but that fear is going to be there. There’s going to be something they don’t want to happen—or something they want to happen—but fear of some kind is going to  keep them from it.  Maybe Yakko wants to ask Phoebe out but is scared she and her friends will laugh at him.  Maybe Dot really wants to make detective, but doesn’t want to risk failing the test for a third time.  Or maybe Wakko just doesn’t want to be torn apart and eaten by a zombie horde.

            Hey, it’s a valid worry.

            Now, I know a lot of people pitch stuff about “strong characters,” and it’s not uncommon for people to misread this to mean characters that are powerful, smart, capable, and confident.  Being afraid of things doesn’t fit into that idea, does it? 

            “Strong characters” isn’t supposed to refer to physical/ mental abilities—it’s about how well they hold up to examination.  Are they believable?  Relatable?  Fleshed out? A strong character can still be nervous about asking Phoebe out in front of her friends.  They can be worried about failure to a point of near-paralysis.  He or she can even be a snivelling coward… as long as they aren’t a shallow, stereotypical snivelling coward. 

            By having my characters begin in a state of fear, I’ve just made them very relatable.  Even better, I’ve automatically set up a challenge for them to overcome.  I’m forcing them to become active and do something.  Better still, my characters have to change internally to overcome fear.  Conquering fear isn’t an exterior challenge (although there can be plenty of those, too).

            Y’see, Timmy, when people are done being scared, they have to be brave.  And that’s when they shine.  Because now that  I’ve forced them to grow and change, they have an arc.  They’ve become better people right in front of us.

            Those characters who aren’t scared?  Well, a few times I’ve mentioned the problem with uber-powerful characters who can deal with anything or who are utterly prepared for everything.  That also ties into this idea of beginning in a state of fear.  It can be summed up best with a joke I heard once…

            A police officer pulls over an elderly lady for a busted tail light.  He’s stunned to see a pair of shotguns and an assault rifle in the back seat, and a pistol strapped to the old woman’s thigh.  She also admits to a pistol in her purse and another one in the glove compartment, as well as a few more rifles and extra ammo in the trunk.  But she has all her permits and everything’s in order. 

            As they’re finishing up, the police officer says, “Ma’am, I have to ask… What are you so afraid of?”

            And the old woman smiles sweetly and says, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

            If my characters don’t have anything to fear, they don’t have anywhere to go from there. They don’t need to grow and change.  They don’t need an arc.  I’ve begun my characters where basic storytelling says they should end.

            So, be afraid.  Be very afraid.  Let your characters be afraid, too.  They should be scared of pain and rejection and failure.  And perhaps also of zombies and werewolves and little alien worms that wiggle into their ears and burrow into their brains.

            Next time… well, I won’t be posting on Halloween for religious reasons, so next time will be in November.  And considering what comes out in theaters around then, I might let somebody else talk about writing movies for Marvel.

            Until then, go write.

            Pop culture reference, long overdue.  Hopefully you get it.  If not… you’re missing out.

            If you’ve followed this collection of ramblings for a while, you know that I worked in the film industry for a number of years before I stepped away to start writing about it.  In that time I worked on a lot of television, but also did some low budget movies.  And as time went on, something became very clear to me, and once I realized this it changed my attitude a lot.  And I came to realize you could always spot inexperienced (or plain ignorant) people on set by this lack of clarity.

            Y’see, every member of the crew—for at least for one moment every day—is the most important person on set.  Not just the actors and the director and the assistant directors—everyone.  The makeup artists, the dolly grip, the on-set dresser, the clapper-loader, the assistant prop master, and even the production assistants.  At some point during a given day, they will be the most important person on set for one reason or another.

            What’s the proof of this, you ask?

            Well, the film industry is focused on money.  For all the stories you hear about Hollywood wasting money on things, the truth is most producers squeeze every penny they can out of a film shoot.  If someone doesn’t need to be on set—and drawing a paycheck—they just wouldn’t be there.  Their job would’ve been eliminated or rolled into someone else’s.  Or sometimes just handed off to a production assistant, or even an intern.  It’s a regular thing on film sets to have temporary crew members who work a day or two, then vanish until they’re needed again. 

            If they don’t need to be there… they’re not there.

            Now, I gave you that little insight so I could tell you this story.

            Back in the early ‘90s the X-Men were taking off and mutant characters were the flavor of the decade at Marvel.  Every new character was a mutant.  Any old character who’d never had a specific origin became a mutant.  Needless to say, most of these new creations were tissue-thin with nothing interesting about them except their random power or ability.

            One of those characters was a guy named Guido.  He was a very over-muscled, bespectacled guy with super-strength who’d originally been created as a bodyguard (mutant, of course) for another character (mutant, of course).  Guido ended up on the new, government-sponsored X-Force team (in the same-titled comic written by Peter David) and he was there when the team was introduced at a press conference.

            Problem was, Guido never picked a code-name.  Their NSA liaison couldn’t exactly introduce Havok, Polaris, Quicksilver, Wolfsbane, Multiple Man, and… Guido.  Confusion ensued for a moment, during which Guido wandered out on stage in his uniform, seven feet tall and about eight feet wide.  And one of the reporters at the press conference said..

            “Wow!  He must be the strong guy.  Every group’s got a strong guy, it must be him.”

            To which Guido grinned and proudly announced, “Yes, that’s me.  I’m Strong Guy!”

            Much giggling ensued.  For about two years.

            Anyway, there’s a keen little observation there, and it’s why I used this comic book as my example.  Almost every superhero team doeshave a strong guy because, at some point or another, every team needs a strong guy.  X-Force needed Guido.  The Avengers needed the Hulk.  The crew of Serenity needed Jane.  SG-1 needed Tylk.  You can trace this all the way back to Grimms’ Fairy Tales, when a wandering man would gather a group of friends who were fast, keen-eyed, sharp-hearing… or extremely strong.

            And, much like the film crews, these groups have a strong guy because at some point they’re going  to need a strong guy.  The whole point of having someone like the Hulk on your team is that eventually there’s going to be some kind of giant space war-snake that needs to be taken out with one punch.  If I wasn’t going to have going to have a key moment like that, I wouldn’t bother to include a strong guy.  

            This doesn’t just hold for the strong guy, of course.  It holds for all the characters.  If I’m going to have a super-smart, deductive character in my story, there needs to be an intellectual problem for him or her to solve.  If I’m going to write in the greatest sniper in the world, at some point something’s going to need to get shot with pinpoint accuracy. 

            Is this all starting to make sense now?

            Simply put, characters need a reason to be in my story.  Sure, there’s always going to be those nameless folks there to bulk up the mob, fill in the ranks, or just serve as cannon fodder. Thing is, though, I shouldn’t be putting a lot of effort into someone who isn’t actually going to be doing anything.  All my characters should be propelling the plot and/or story forward.  If they’re just standing around not affecting anything… why am do I have them there?

            If Yakko’s just standing around not taking part in anything, odds are he’s going to get in the way.  We’ve all dealt with people like that, right?  The ones who just stop moving in the middle of a walkway or stand in front of a door.  They’re just hindering everyone else from getting things done, and the common response to them is anger or frustration.

            I’ve mentioned a bad habit before, the tendency to name every single character in a story or screenplay.  That idea has a lot of ties with this one.  Naming someone is a clue that this person is going to be important one way or another and that the reader might want to keep track of them.  So when I’m giving names to the waitress, the security guard, the cab driver, the homeless guy in the alley, and the woman jogging by the diner… well, it’s going to cause chaos in the reader’s head because they’re going to assume all these people are important somehow.  It’s the character equivalent of Chekhov’s phaser on the mantle.

           Then it’s going to cause frustration because none of them are doing anything.  They’re just standing around (or sitting, or jogging by outside), getting in the way of the story.  They’re wasting time and space that could be spent on the plot or on developing the characters who are actually doing something. And my readers are going to resent them for that.  And resent me.

            One last example.  The title one, in fact.

            When Russell Davies relaunched Doctor Who for the 21st Century, fans were almost instantly united on one point.  Mickey Smith was the most useless recurring character ever.  He was introduced as the on-again-off-again (mostly off) boyfriend of Rose, the Doctor’s companion, and for a year and a half that’s all he was.  He showed up, moped, grumbled, and then got left behind again as Rose and the Doctor took off for new adventures.  He had no personality and no real purpose.

            But in the second season, something happened.  Mickey realized he had no purpose.  He decided to stop standing around and to become part of the story.  In fact, after a few episodes Mickey even decided he needed to have his own story, one that didn’t involve Rose and the Doctor.  The next time we saw him, Mickey had become a confident, dimension-hopping resistance fighter.  And at that point, we couldn’t wait until the next time we saw him.
            Mickey went from annoyance to cool, just like that.  He was so cool that he turned down an offer from Torchwood and became a freelance alien hunter.  Hell, in the end Mickey hooked up with one of the Doctor’s other companions, Martha Jones, and we all knew she was way cooler that Rose.

            No, come on.  Admit it.  Martha was cooler than Rose.

            Anyway…

            Y’see, Timmy, there needs to be a reason for a character to be in my story.  At some point, just for a moment, they need to be the most important person in the story, the one who’s making things happen.  If they don’t do that—if they don’t advance things somehow—they shouldn’t be there.

            Next time… well, I’m taking Halloween off, so next time I’ll get to the scary stuff a little early.

            Until then, go write.