Category: challenge

            Sorry for missing last week.  Just had a couple of those jumbled days where I kept getting called away for other things.  And while I had a topic for this week, it never quite gelled the way I wanted it to in my head.  Although four or five others did, so I’m set for a while here.

            (topic suggestions are always welcome in the comments, though)

            Anyway…

            I wanted to talk a bit today about godlike characters.  Not just in the sense of robes and brilliant auras and hurling thunderbolts.  Sometimes it’s that rugged, locked-and-loaded man or maybe the tall, super-competent blonde.  Really, it’s anyone who is, for one reason or another, way beyond the level of every other character in the story.

            Which really means they’re out of everyone’s league.

            Quick segue.

            One thing that I see come up in discussions of different open-play, MMPORG type games is a balance between players.  For purposes of this discussion, it’s when the overall population of the game has hit a level where it’s essentially unable to support new players.  If everybody’s level 72, it makes it tough for anybody to interact at level one. All those 72’s are using their bigger, badder gear to go on bigger, badder missions, where they’ll face bigger, badder monsters and get even rewarded with even… well, you get the point.

            Meanwhile, I’m over here in the goblin village, poking at things with a knife and hoping I can get my dagger skill up to 65%…

            And if we actually have to fight each other?  Well, I don’t have a prayer.  I mean, we can argue that statistically there’s a chance, but really… there’s no chance.  And from the 72’s point of view, I mean, can we even call it a wasted three seconds?  Yeah, there may be some jerks who just like beating up the noobs, but for everyone else… yeah, this gets to be kind of boring, right?

            See where I’m going with this?

            Stories need this kind of balance, too.  We want characters to have a chance at achieving their goals, but we also don’t want it to be easy.  If the story leans too far one way or the other, it just gets dull.  For everyone.

            F’r example… 

            If my antagonistis all-powerful, my hero never has a chance.  That’s boring as hell.  There might be a few dramatic moments, if the writer really knows what they’re doing, but probably not.  We all know how it’s going to end, and if we know where it’s going… well, then this is all just noise.
            Plus, it’s discouraging.  We identify with the heroes.  That’s why we’re reading.  And to see someone we identify with get beaten down again and again by an opponent we absolutely know they can’t beat…

            Well, it doesn’t make for a lot of repeat reads, let’s say that.

            Keep in mind, too, my antagonist doesn’t have to be a seven foot-tall somebody in body armor and a chrome skull mask.  The high school mean girl, the abusive drill sergeant, even society in general– any of these can be the antagonist.  And, again, if there’s no chance whatsoever of beating the antagonist, my story isn’t going to hold most people’s interest.

            I’ll also point out that beating the antagonist doesn’t always mean bringing about their ultimate, final defeat.  But as far as our immediate story’s concerned, the bad guy needs to have a chance to succeed at their immediate goals.  No chance means no interest.

            Now, as I hinted above, the flipside of this is also true.  If my main character has absolutely no chance of ever being stopped or hindered in any way, that’s not very interesting either.  I’ve talked about this once or thrice before.  When Yakko can effortlessly deal with anything the antagonist, nature, or the universe itself throws at him, it gets boring really fast.  If Dot’s prepared and trained for everything, to the point there’s little or no chance of failure, that means there’s no challenge.  And no challenge means… well…
            An analogy I’ve mentioned before is me getting a glass of Diet Pepsi.  Not exactly something epic stories are built around.  You’re not going to see teams of people stealing ships, racing down city streets, or forming Fellowships around me as we undertake the great adventure of going to the kitchen and opening the fridge.  Because it’s mundane.  It’s easy. There’s absolutely no challenge in it.

            Even if something might be challenging for us, personally, it doesn’t mean we want to watch someone else do it with no effort.  I’m pretty sure if a zombie plague ever descended on the world, I’d be one of those folks gone in the first week or two.  But I don’t have any interest in reading three hundred pages of someone who walks through the undead apocalypse like it’s a guided tour.  Yeah, no matter how colorful the descriptions are of zombies being blown apart.
            Y’see, Timmy, if there’s no challenge—because either my protagonist or antagonist are too powerful—it means there’s not much of a plot.  As I’ve mentioned before, no plot makes it really tough to have a story.  And you may have noticed there’s not a big market for high-stakes character descriptions.
            I also want to toss out one other downside to nigh-omnipotent characters. Gods are boring as hell.  Seriously.  They’re tough to relate to, and if people can’t relate to my characters, they’re probably not going to make any investment in them.  Good characters have needs and desires and flaws, but godlike powers tend to nullify most of those things. 

            Even if it’s not actual powers, it can be dull.  When you have characters who can do anything and succeed at anything… it just gets boring fast.  We like reading about problems, not about potential problems that were planned for and avoided.

            True fact—one I worked very hard at.  My Ex-Heroesbooks have a super-competent character named Stealth.  She’s their version of Batman.  Every book in the series has at least one example of her demonstrating how she’s hyper-trained and/or four steps ahead of everyone else.

            But…

            Every book also has at least one example of something getting past her. Something she didn’t catch or didn’t think of or somebody else figures out first.  She’s world’s greatest detective, but she’s still fallible.  She not perfect.

            If you’ve got a powerful, competent character in one of your stories, take another look at them.  Do they need to be that strong?  Would they be more interesting if there were two or three scenarios they hadn’t been planning for over the past six months?  Isn’t your story going to be a bit more interesting if success and failure both seem like viable outcomes?

            I think it would. 

            But that’s just me.

            Next time I want to talk about something a little more campy.

            And maybe update the FAQ.

            Until then… go write.

            Well, it’s that time of year again.  Time to cue up that playlist of holiday music and pick out your stack of favorite movies.  Maybe you go a little more unconventional with your choices, maybe you stick to the classics, but whatever your flavor is, I’m sure there’s a lot of them.

            Hell, holiday movies are pretty much a solid, dependable genre at this point.  Just between Hallmark and Netflix, I think there’s forty or fifty new ones just for this year alone.  I worked on one ten years ago and it still gets heavy circulation.  People go nuts about the “plague” of superhero movies, but seriously—Christmas movies are the real machine.
            Anyway…

            We laugh at a lot of these and roll our eyes because they often feature some kind of painful romance.  And that’s what I wanted to talk about.  Where that awkwardness comes from and why these stories kinda keeps us at arms length rather than pulling us in.
            The standard Christmas movie goes something like this.  A young woman (it’s almost always a woman) falls for a guy who’s a few weeks away from getting engaged, married, etc.  The two of them have chemistry, while his girlfriend/ fiancé rages away at her job or as a larval Bridezilla or maybe just as a generally awful, awful person.  Eventually the guy comes to see the error of his ways and our two impossibly good-looking people end up together just in time to kiss on Christmas Eve.

            I’ve talked about this general type of romantic triangle once or thrice before, and before we dive in at might be worth going back and glancing over that real quick—it sums up the ground rules of how and why these triangles work.

            Y’see, there’s a really basic flaw in how a lot of these holiday movies set up that triangle.  It’s why they always come across as a bit weird and the protagonists always seem a bit… well, wrong.  And I think it’s one of those things that’s really easy for me to avoid once I see it all laid out

            Let’s use that basic structure up above for our example.  Our test story, so to speak.  Amy (A) has a meet-cute with Bob (B), who is in a relationship with Kat (C, just to keep you on your toes).  Amy and Bob have chemistry, Kat is bordering on (if not openly) awful and clearly wrong for Bob.  And it’s Christmas because… y’know, that’s when this always seems to happen.

            Now, normally in a romantic triangle situation like this, our protagonist would be Bob.  Bob, after all, is the one who needs to make a choice here, right?  He needs to be active and decide if he wants to be with Amy or Kat.
            But…

            Our protagonist is Amy.  And the only way I can make Amy active in this situation is to make her… well, kinda unlikable.  If she does anything to improve things with Bob—all those standard romance bonding moments like long talks and quiet dinners and heartfelt discussions about shared passions—it kinda means she’s undercutting Bob’s relationship with Kat.  Which is a little rough, morally, no matter what we think of Kat.
            And geeeeez, if things get physical to almost any level, well, now they both look bad.  Amy’s making moves on somebody in a relationship.  Bob’s in a relationship and hooking up with someone else.  I mean, how bad does Kat have to be for us to be cool with Bob cheating on her?  And if she’s not that bad, then… well, yeah, he’s a jerk.

            And, yes—sometimes odd things happen between people in really specific situations.  Everybody reacts differently to stress and fear and all that.  Firm embraces may happen.  Maybe even a kiss or odd proclamation.  But that’s a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally fine line.  Scary fine.  It’s so easy for that situation to go from understandable and excusable to what-the-hell inappropriate.

            Y’see, Timmy, when Amy’s this point in the triangle, she isn’t the one with a choice to make. Not a real one, anyway. She has two options. She can do nothing (which ends the story pretty quick) or she can try to disrupt Bob and Kat’s relationship. Those are her only paths, as far as our plot goes, and neither of them is a great one from a storytelling point of view.

            I think when writers do this, they’re confusing the outcome with the choices that lead to it. We’ve all heard “the ends justify the means,” but this tends to ignore the fact that the means I use also determine what kind of end I get. There are tons of ways Amy and Bob can end up together, but a lot of them can be paths that make one of them—or both of them—characters we don’t really like or care about. In some cases, we may even be actively rooting against them. Cause they’re horrible people.
           Don’t worry about outcomes. Outcomes are the conclusion of a story.  Think about the path to that outcome. The choices my character has to make in order to get there. 

            Because those choices are my story. They’re my plot.  And if there aren’t any real choices, or they’re all being made by supporting characters, or they’re the wrong kind of choices, or they’re just all bad ones… well…

            I shouldn’t be too shocked if people think it’s a bad story.

            Speaking of stories, here’ s one last reminder that books make fantastic holiday gifts, and to maybe check this out if you’re having trouble affording things this year.

            Next time, I wanted to talk a little bit about time.

            Until then, go write.

            Day late.  Sorry.  Still recovering from the move.  It’s just this sort of ongoing project…

            Anyway, an idea crossed my mind recently and—after batting it around for a bit—I thought it might be worth sharing with all of you.

            A while back I talked a bit about a certain type of character—the chosen one.  That lucky person pretty much preordained for a great destiny.  Sometimes literally preordained.  Ancient scrolls and prophecies aren’t that uncommon, although there are also legendary parents and preternatural skills to take into account.

            The most common beginning for such a story is, after a chapter or two establishing their completely normal and mundane life, somebody shows up to collect said chosen one and whisk them off to that amazing destiny we were just talking about.

            And that’s kinda the bit I want to talk about.

            I think it’s very important to note that our chosen one’s story doesn’t begin because of some overwhelming threat.  It’s almost always for simpler reasons.  They’re finally the right age.  They found the hidden room.  They inherited that special book or locket or sword.
            You might be able to find an exception to this rule, sure, but let’s go over a few popular examples…

            Buffy Summers doesn’t receive her Slayer calling because the Master is rising in Sunnydale—the last Slayer died and she inherited the power.  That’s it.

            Harry Potter isn’t brought to Hogwarts to fight Voldemort—he’s only brought cause it’s his birthday and he’s old enough to start classes.

            Katniss doesn’t take her sister’s place to become the symbol of the resistance—she just happens to be successful in the Hunger Games in the right way at the right time.

            Luke doesn’t join the Rebellion to blow up the Death Star.

            Rey didn’t join the resistance to fight Kylo Ren.

            Jay didn’t join the MIB to stop an Arcturian Battle Cruiser.

            I think the reason for this is that if X is this overwhelming threat… all these training montages and bonding moments are going to seem like a horrible waste of time.  “Wow, Phoebe’s the chosen one—the one who was foreseen—who will save us from the murderous threat of the Yakkonator.  Even now it closes in on our city of three million people, ready to drain their blood and harvest their souls. But first… you need to practice your footwork for a few days.  Also, you and Wakko need to figure out how to be better partners—in every sense.  Focus on that for a bit.”
            One of the big tricks to a successful chosen one story is that it’s really two parallel stories.  It’s about Phoebe discovering her destiny/parentage/abilities, yeah, but it’s also about our heroes discovering, oh, crap, it looks like the Yakkonator is waking up now, not in 2021.

            These threads need to stay separate so they can each develop on their own.  Phoebe needs that time to train and grow as a character, because if all we need to do is toss a nineteen year old Banana Republic clerk in front of the Yakkonator—trained or not—to fulfill her destiny, then the Yakkonator isn’t much of a threat, is it? And if she absolutely needs training but the Sacred Order of Antiyakkination waited until the last possible minute to bring her into the fold… seriously, what’s wrong with these guys?  If you’re trying to fit six years of training into six days, maybe you just could’ve started six years ago?  These people just look stupid now.  And if she needs those years of training but pulls it off in days… well, aren’t we back at that first example again?

            So when I’m plotting out a great destiny to for my chosen one, I need to remember not to tie them immediately to that destiny.  Give them space to grow.  Maybe not hit them up with that ultimate evil in the first hour or two.

            Everyone’ll have more fun with it that way.

            Next time, I’d like to encourage you to take a few deep breaths.

            Until then… go write.

            This title might sound familiar, but I’m going to blab about something a little different this week.

            Also I may be using the words “narrative” or “tale’” a lot this week, just to cut down on confusion.  You’ll see why as I go on.  Trust me, it’s easier this way.

            I’ve talked about plot and story here a few times.  You may remember the idea that plot is what takes place outsidemy character, story is what takes place inside my character.  Plot affects the world while story affects my character.

            I’d like to add to that a bit…

            I was writing up a post a few weeks ago and found myself second-guessing a statement I made. Paraphrasing, I said that everything my character does, the decisions they make, the actions they take, is plot.  And I pondered that for a few minutes, then even discussed it with my special lady-friend. After all, aren’t there decisions that fall under story?  Aren’t their actions that could be considered part of the story?

            Maybe not…

            I think story tends to be a bit more passive than plot.  While plot results from a character’s decisions and actions, story tends to develop from their experiences and observations.  Plot develops from what they’re doing, story develops from what’s done to them.  Story is character development, their arc.

            No one decides to fall in love, or to learn to trust again, or to shift their political views.  There’s no single moment where Ebenezer Scrooge decides to give up his miserly ways and be a better person.  We may come to realize these things have happened, but that’s after the fact.  The change kinda happened on its own as we were exposed to new facts and new situations.  Simple truth is… we rarely change by choice.

             Even if I have a narrative where someone doesmake an active decision to trust again, that usually isn’t their story.  Think of any successful tale where someone makes an active decision to change—the end lesson they learn, their big realization, is almost never about that change.  If I decide to lose fifty pounds, I’ll find out I do have the willpower to do this.  Or that ultimately looks aren’t as important as happiness, and Phoebe’s really shallow for thinking otherwise.  Or that I secretly have pyrokinetic powers which have been activated by the sudden metabolic increase in calorie-burning.

            But a narrative where I decide to lose fifty pounds and then I just lose fifty pounds?  That sounds boring as hell, doesn’t it?

            There’s a good phrase to remember, and I’ve already used it a few times– “…comes to realize…”  If I’m using this, I’m implying something already happened and my character’s kinda getting caught up. A lot of the time, when I’m talking about Phoebe coming to realize she’s hated her job for years or Wakko coming to realize he’s been pursuing the sexy nurse when he’s really in love with Phoebe… that’s a huge part of their arc.  That’s their story.

            Yes, Batman can also come to realize the Riddler’s been behind this all along. That’s a different kind of realization.  Don’t get pedantic on me.

            And it honestly just hit me while I was writing that Batman joke, this might be why so many “story” heavy narratives end up feeling a bit shallow.  To me, anyway.  If I accept that story develops from things happening to my character—that this is where their arc comes from—then how can they have a story without a plot?  If today’s just another day in my characters life where nothing different happens… why would they change?  And any change that did happen to them would feel really unmotivated because…well, there’s no motivation for it. Because there’s no plot.

            So when I’m trying to find that plot-story balance in my work, maybe I should keep this aspect of it in mind.  My character can do things to affect plot… but the plot needs to have an effect on the story, too. Despite the title of this little rant, it’s not really plot vs. story, so much as it is the two of them in this sort of mutually-symbiotic relationship where they feed off each other and grow stronger together.

            Next time… I’d like to talk about horses.

            Until then, go write.