September 30, 2021 / 1 Comment

Saving Dumb Cats

Last week I mentioned an issue I’d seen pop up in the Saturday geekery movies once or thrice. This one also pops up a lot in B-movies, but I’ve seen it more than a few times in books as well. So I thought, hey, here’s another thing to talk about.

So let’s talk about cats and dogs and killing people.

Something I’ve brought up here once or thrice is saving the cat. It’s a screenwriting term, but I think it applies fairly well to all storytelling. Really simply put, it’s when a character does something simple that establishes they’re a good person. Or, at the least, a person we should be rooting for. It tends to come early in the story because saving the cat isn’t about changing our opinion of a character—it’s just about reinforcing it. If we thought they were pretty good… yeah, this just lets us know we had the right idea.

Not, the flipside of this is what I call patting the dog. I’ve talked about this before, too. This is when someone does an equally small, minor thing and it’s supposed to make us look at this character in a whole new light. Saving the cat is about reinforcing an opinion, patting the dog is about completely changing it. Because of this, patting the dog tends to come later in the story—we can’t have new thoughts about a character until we’ve had time to make old thoughts, right?

Now… I mention all that because I wanted to talk about killing supporting or background characters.

How many times in books or movies have we seen the person who stays behind to defuse the bomb? There’s no time and we’ve already admitted it’s next to impossible and everybody else is clear, but god damn it they can dothis. Or we know the wendigo is out there and it can mimic human speech and these are its prime hunting hours but god damn it what if that’s really a little kid in the woods? Or we’re sure the whole shelter’s been cleaned out and we can’t contain the fire any longer but god damn it Yakko’s heading back in to make sure we didn’t miss a cat in one of the cages…

And then, y’’know, they die. Doing something brave and noble. But also, like… really, really stupid.

When we see something like this, the storytellers are trying to up the stakes. They know it’s time for someone to die so the audience understands how real the danger/ threat is. But at the same time… I mean, we don’t want to kill one of our main characters, right? And it turns out we haven’t really developed any of our other characters past  “Redhead #2” or “Soldier with Hat” so it won’t mean anything if they die.

Unlessssssssss…

What we’ve all probably tried once or twice is to make the way someone dies get the emotional response. So it’s not so much that we feel for them, it’s that the writer’s created a situation where we’d have an emotional response for anyone who died this way. This is really common in the torture porn subgenre, where it’s not so much about the character as it is what’s being done to the character. No matter who they are, no matter what they’ve done, you have to feel sorry for someone who gets that done to their… well, look, it’s uncomfortable just making this up.

And that’s what a lot of these fake “saving the cat” moments are trying to do. It’s not about creating a character who does something brave or noble or righteous—it’s about creating a situation where anyone would be brave or noble or righteous. If Thanos runs back into that burning building to make sure there weren’t any cats left behind, we’d still go “Wow… almost a complete monster, but at least he tried to save those hypothetical kittens. He didn’t deserve to die like that. Goddamn shame, that’s what it is.”

The big catch, of course, is that these situations still have to make logical sense with everything else going on in my story. Oh, and even a flat stereotype of a character has to behave in ways we understand human beings tend to behave. If “Soldier with Hat” suddenly starts disobeying direct orders, this isn’t a sudden burst of characterization—it’s just someone acting unnaturally. And if they’re doing this in an unnatural situation… well… I can’t be shocked if the whole thing comes across as fake.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with killing characters. I‘ve killed tons of people in my books. Main characters and supporting characters. I don’t know how many background folks who never got a name or more than a word or two of description.

But I have to be honest about the weight these deaths actually bring to my story. Killing “Soldier with Hat” shouldn’t seem inconsequential, but it also shouldn’t be the dramatic linchpin of an entire chapter. The wendigo getting Redhead #2 is bad, yeah, but we can’t pretend it’s as bad as if it got Phoebe. I can’t manipulate deaths into being important or make characters noble and brave after the fact.

If I want these deaths to matter—really matter, in a way that sticks with my readers—I need to actually care about the characters. If I don’t have any investment in them, if I don’t wantthem to survive, then it doesn’t matter if they survive.

And I’ll look kind of silly for insisting it does.

Next time, I’d like to explain why that guy really doesn’t represent me. Or you.

Until then, go write.

May 3, 2018 / 1 Comment

Dogs and Cats! Living Together!

            Pop culture reference!  From a movie I used to love and now have mixed feelings toward because of a bunch of internet trolls.
            But anyway…
            I was working on a rough outline for a book I’m hoping to write next year, and it occurred to me that I’d written a classic device into the story. About halfway through the book, my protagonist saves her cat.
            …in a really clever and freaky way, I assure you.
            You’ve heard that phrase before, yes?  Saving the cat?  I’ve talked about it here once or twice, and this little incident made me think it might be worth mentioning again.
            “Saving the cat” is a term screenwriter Blake Snyder came up with many years ago.  It’s when my character does something simple and quick early on in my story that gets everyone on their side.  The example Snyder uses is saving a cat.  My heroine sees a cat stuck in a tree, she gets the cat out of the tree.  No big deal, moving on, right?  It’s just a simple action or moment that assures my readers that this character is an overall decent human being.
            (fun fact—“saving the cat” is a reference to Ripley saving Jones in Alien. Seriously.  Look it up.)
            Remember in the first Captain America movie, when scrawny Steve Rogers stands up to Hodge out behind the movie theater, even though Hodge is twice his size?  That’s a saving the cat moment.  How about in Wesley Chu’s The Rise of Io, when the title character makes a point of sharing her food with the mangy dog that hangs around outside her apartment?  Or when poor unloved Harry Potter sympathizes with the snake in the zoo about being raised in captivity? 
            All of these are save the cat moments.  They’re small, almost inconsequential things that rarely have repercussions in the larger plot. But they affect how we view the character.
            Now, here’s two key things to remember when I’m playing around with a save the cat moment.  First, as I mentioned before, they almost always come fairly early in my story.  Second. the reader has never been against the character who’s having this moment.  Because saving the cat isn’t about changing my reader’s opinion of this person, it’s about emphasizing their opinion.  It’s a shortcut to help my reader like them more and get invested in them sooner so I can move on to bigger and better things.  The plot, for example.
            Why do I mention these key things?
            Well, there’s another device that mistakenly sometimes get lumped in with saving the cat, but it’s really the exact opposite.  It’s not even a device so much as a bad habit some people have.  It’s called patting the dog.  This is when one of my characters does a small token thing late in the story and it’s supposed to make up for the numerous awful things we’ve seen said character do up ‘til this point.
            See, patting the dog is usually third-act type stuff, because I’ve spent all my story up til now establishing this character in a certain way, that they have certain beliefs and loyalties.  And the whole point of patting the dog is to then reverse how my reader feels about this person.  If up until now, we wanted to see them dead under a bulldozer, at this point we should cheer for them.  This one small act’s supposed to cause an emotional 180 in the reader.
            Like I said, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of saving the cat.
            It’s worth noting—patting the dog is almost always applied to antagonists.  Usually as some kind of twist to turn the bad guy into some sort of anti-hero, or even a full on hero.  When Wakko murders a dozen families and their children, but then realizes killing *this* person would be wrong… that’s patting the dog.  Same with the evil cheerleader who’s made Dot’s four years of high school a living nightmare, but then decides to chip and help make posters for a bake sale.  So’s the evil villain’s loyal lieutenant who tortures and maims our hero’s friends, but then discovers he has some vague relationship with the protagonist and decides to turn on his boss of ten years.       
            Now, this isn’t to say I can’t reverse how my readers see one of my characters.  That’s one of the big goals in writing—to change how people think about things. But it’s never going to be a quick fix I can pull off with one paragraph.  It’s going to take lots of moments and a lot of work.  It’s a process that can’t be rushed.  Even if I’m doing it with a clever twist, the reader needs to look back and see that the seeds of this change stretch all through my story.
            Because you may remember the other word for when someone does a sudden change of beliefs and loyalties.  It’s called a betrayal.  And no one likes to be betrayed. 
            Even if it’s just by something they’re reading.
            Next time, I’d like to talk a bit about what’s going on in that other scene.
            Until then, go write. 
June 15, 2012 / 4 Comments

Patting the Dog

            Oh, get your minds out of the gutter.

            This week’s topic comes from a comedy sketch done many years ago by British comedian Benny Hill.  He’s best known in America for having lots of scantily clad women dancing around him, while the rest of the world also remembers his ability to rattle off some clever wordplay or jokes.  If I do this right, though, “patting the dog” will become a regular writing phrase and we’ll all get to give him credit for that, too.
            Many years back, Hill did a sketch where he played a foreign film director being interviewed by the press.  When asked about his new film (and I’m paraphrasing a bit here), he explains in broken English that it’s a “deeply emotional tale of love and human kindness.”  When the interviewer prods him a bit, Hill goes into further detail.
            “It’s about a man who tries to leave the mob and sees his friends slaughtered by criminals with machetes.  So he tracks down the villains and kills them all.  Then he finds their boss and kills him in front of the man’s family.  Then he kills the man’s wife, and then his children.  Then he desecrates their bodies and, as he leaves, he sets fire to their home.”
            “I thought it was a deeply emotional tale of love and human kindness?”
            “It is,” insists Hill.  “As he walks out the door, he pats the dog on the head.”
            That got a big laugh from the studio audience.  And from me, even though I was only eleven and really watching the show for the scantily clad women.  It was clever enough to stick with me, even past those distractions.
            See, the studio audience and I both recognized the absurdity of what Hill’s character was suggesting—that one miniscule, token act could balance out, or even override, the atrocities he’d just described.  Patting the dog is a nice thing to do, yes, but in all honesty it’s kind of low on the scale.  Heck, for most of us it’s more of an automatic response than a deliberate act of kindness.  We see a dog and we pat him or her on the head.  That’s all there is to it.  We probably think more about tying our shoes in the morning.
            So the idea that patting the dog would make us completely change our views on this character or this story is… well, laughable.  It’s too little, too late.  It’s the weakest kind of spin job.
            And yet, how often have we seen this sort of thing in books or movies?  We’ll have a completely unlikable person who does nothing we can sympathize with or relate to.  Violent drug dealers, sadistic assassins, abusive spouses, jerk bosses, there’s dozens of characters that could fit this category.  And all too often, the writer will give them some tiny, banal moment that’s supposed to make us suddenly change how we feel about them.  They pat a dog.  They thank the guy who sells them their morning coffee.  They get drunk and confess their awful childhood.  They go to church and say their prayers.
            Y’see, Timmy, if I’m patting the dog, it means I’ve got a character who’s doing some small, token thing that’s supposed to counterbalance a lot of really awful things. And that just doesn’t work.  I can’t spend page after page making the audience feel one way about a character, then expect their views to completely shift because of one minor action.
            Now, at the risk of possible Armageddon, let’s mix dogs and cats
            I’ve mentioned the “save the cat” moment once or thrice.  This is Blake Snyder’s term for when a character does something small and quick early on in the story that gets us on their side.  His example of this is “saving the cat” (which some writers take way, way too literally) but it can be any number of things.  It’s just a simple action that assures us this person is a decent human being.  In my new book 14, the main character’s saving the cat moment is when he decides not to drown a cockroach.
            Here’s a well-known save the cat moment from the movie Robocop.  Remember when we see the still-human Murphy practicing his quick-draw and spinning his pistol into his holster?  He explains that he’s learning the trick for his son, who sees all the great cops on television do it and therefore assumes his dad should also be able to do it (because his dad must be a great cop).  And, Murphy tells his new partner with a grin, it is just kind of cool.  It’s a quick little moment, barely thirty seconds long and only about fifteen minutes into the film, but it establishes Murphy’s a good dad and an overall decent guy.
            Now, the big catch with a save the cat moment is that we’ve never been againstthis character.  Saving the cat has never been about changing our view of a person, it’s about emphasizing our view of them.  It’s just a shortcut to help the reader like them quicker so the writer can move on to more important things.  Like, say, the plot.
            A lot of folks try to have half-assed save the cat moments in their stories, but really they’re just patting the dog.  A couple easy ways to figure out which column my random act of kindness falls in…
–If everything I’ve done up till this point has been to make the character unlikable, then this moment is patting the dog.
–If it comes more than halfway through the story, odds are I’m patting the dog.
–If I’m trying to change the reader’s perception of my character with this moment, I’m just patting the dog.
            This isn’t to say I can’t reverse how my readers see one of my characters, but it’s not going to be a quick fix thing that I can do with one line.  It’s going to take lots of moments and a lot of work.  It’s a long process that can’t be rushed.  Even if I’m doing it with a clever twist, the reader needs to look back and see that the seeds of this change stretch all through my story.
            Because there’s another word for when someone does a sudden reversal like that.  It’s called a betrayal.  And no one likes to be betrayed.  Even if it’s just by characters in something they’re reading.
            Next time, I’d like to run some numbers by you real quick.
            Until then, go write.  And remember to thank Benny Hill.

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