Theme Repetition, or A Rant about Chris Claremont

One piece of advice I often hear given to writers is: Read. Read lots. Read lots of things. So I thought it might be fun to spend the next post or two reflecting on the various odd media that I ingest and what I might learn from them. Today I would like to reflect on how an author uses personal themes and tropes.

I am currently reading, among other things, a Pulitzer prize winning novel and a series of comic books. So let’s talk about the comic books.  I am currently reading X-Men Forever and boy howdy, has someone let Chris Claremont off his leash.

Perhaps I had better explain that.  Chris Claremont was (quite deservedly) one of the rising stars of the American superhero comics industry in the late seventies and early eighties. He wrote a lot of titles, including a small, floundering book called the X-Men, which he (along with artists Dave Cockrum and John Byrne) elevated to the status of Marvel’s flagship title.

Along the way he explored some themes and ideas that were just beginning to show up in the genre – the potentially corrupting influence of great power,  heroes and villains switching sides, heroes having to fight other heroes (not in the silly misunderstandings already common in the genre but in deadly earnest), heroes being transformed and having to readjust to who they are now, heroic sacrifices and unexpected character deaths, strange and unexpected turns in the heroes’ love lives, and a  focus on the female characters becoming increasingly more powerful.

Flash forward to 2009.  Claremont has long since left the X-Men for other titles, and even taken a break from comics to pen a few novels. Wherever he’s worked, he’s continued to explore the ideas he helped pioneer back in the X-Men.  And then someone has a great idea – let’s publish a comic series showing what the X-Men would have been if Claremont had never left the book. Pick right up where he left off.

And now we get to the part about writing: it’s not wrong to work with certain themes, motifs, ideas and all, but they can become a trap. You see, X-Men Forever has a slight problem: it’s all Claremont’s established themes and ideas, all the the time.  Heroes and villains switching sides? Got five of ‘em.  Transformations? At least three. Unexpected character deaths? Start right up in the second issue. Heroes fighting heroes in deadly earnest?  All the bloody time.  And all the rest, too.

Authors naturally write about what interests them.  We like to explore themes and use plot tricks we think are entertaining. And if we are lucky enough to be well established and have a fan following (which, let’s be fair, describes Claremont but not me) it is likely due, at least in part, because our readers like the paths we choose to explore.

I have, over the years, noticed repeating ideas in my work. I have several romantic pieces based on the idea that true love is a crock and you don’t get a happy ending unless you work for it.  My novels all touch on the responsibility of power and the consequences of its misuse.

So how do we know when to stop?  When are we approaching an idea from a new perspective or when are we just repeating ourselves? I wish I knew.  But I suspect we start by acknowledging the problem.

Tune in next time when I explore what I’ve observed about character development from playing online games.

Working Backwards

In the last three installments, I played around with building a story out of various pieces – a setting here, a conflict there, couple of characters – with the intention of showing how none of the individual pieces were enough to be story by themselves.

Today I’d like to take another approach.  If the point of art is to express something, to make your audience feel, then why not start at the point? In stories this is usually done through conflicts, through the risks the characters take and the decisions they face.

There are some concepts (regardless of how they are presented – scenes, images, conflicts, etc.) that we can expect most people to respond to strongly. Children in peril, for example. There are other concepts that, human individuality being what it is, that different people will respond to differently.  Say a cold glass of iced tea. It’s great if the weather is hot and you happen to like tea.

You want to include concepts in your narrative that people will respond to. But it most stories aren’t all children in peril, all the time. But the less universal the interest point, the more you have to build around it.  If you want to focus on that glass of ice tea, for example, you should probably also provide the hot day (a setting element) and someone who could really use a cup of tea (a character element) and possibly even some additional background.

What we are doing here is starting with an interest point and then working backwards to insert the elements that help sell that interest to the reader. All stories are contrivance and all stories contain conflict but it is never good for your conflict to feel contrived to the reader.

So if you have a really good, interesting conflict, perhaps somewhere in between my child is in danger! and I could sure use some iced tea, the next step is to construct the narrative elements that lead naturally to that conflict so that it doesn’t feel like it’s just been dropped into the story like a falling piano in a cartoon.

Sure, there are events in life that feel that sudden to the people they impact, but remember that your characters are only one element of your story.  A bomb going off can be every bit as stunning as it should be to your protagonist, even if your readers saw the bomb planted by the antagonist several pages ago. And better still if we’ve spent enough time with the villain to believe he or she really would resort to explosives.

All of this is really a way of saying you can work backwards, if you like. Start with a scene you’d like to have and then consider everything that is required to make the scene work, building the elements from the needs of the story instead of drawing the story from the elements.

I have a tendency to work in both directions. But as I have said before and will no doubt say again, every author is different, so play around with the tools and find what works for you. No one cares what tools you use to fix the sink – they care if the sink works.

Peeves on a Leash

It startles me that, in this modern and enlightened age, I have read professionally published novels with Deus ex Machina endings. I mean, there are still editors, right?

I once heard an author at a convention say that one of the big things that gets people into trying to write professionally, for whatever medium, is when they look at something and say “I could do better than that!”

Generally, I suspect they find that writing well is harder than it looks. But at least they know which mistakes they are not going to make.

So what are your pet peeves when it comes to storytelling? What tropes drive you nuts? Me, I’m getting awfully tired of the idiot listening to loud music through headphones who fails to hear the carnage and screaming from right behind him. We’ve all seen that movie, right?

And I don’t like it when a character makes a promise and the reader knows instantly that the story will be set up to make him or her break the promise.

And the Deus ex, of course. Any contrivance so old it’s name dates back to classical antiquity should be probably be avoided.

But it’s all personal taste, isn’t it? There are some tropes that I’ve seen as often as the idiot in headphones and they still work for me every time. 

Crafting a story is  an art based on choices, on making decision after decision after decision. And consciously or not, the tricks you’ve seen before are in your head, part of your storytelling arsenal.

Use them wisely.

The Two Deaths of Andrew Dolbeck

There are two types of character death in fiction. (No, actually there are probably thousands. But there is a division of two that I would like to discuss. And while we are being parenthetical, today’s writing lesson can apply to more than death – feel free to substitute any dramatic plot event.) Let us call them the story-driven death and the reality emulating death.

The story-driven death suits the story. No surprise there. The deadly event occurs at just the right point in the plot, it fits the themes of the work, it advances the progression of the surviving characters.

There are many classic examples – the person who has done wrong, seeking redemption, dies saving the lives of others. Or, for a twist, the pure and good hero dies saving the person who has done wrong, adding value to their redemption quest. And let us not forget the mentor figure who dies in the middle of the classic Hero’s Journey. Or the passing of the sword from one generation to the next. In horror movies, the character that invents or unleashes the evil force is typically on the to-be-killed list.

You’ve seen these stories before – you know the drill.  And that’s part of the problem. Story-driven deaths can be effective and moving, but they can also be predictable.

I personally favor action genres, with cops and detectives and space pilots and characters who, for no reason, wear bright spandex costumes while fighting crime. These characters operate in dangerous worlds. In such worlds, death should strike unexpectedly. It should not be predictable.

Which brings us to the reality emulating death. The argument here is simple: people die. In real life, no one dies to suit the plot. Death occurs on its own time. 

There are benefits to having this kind of death in your story. In most fiction, a certain degree of willing suspension of disbelief is required. Having people dodge bullets all day without consequence doesn’t exactly make that suspension any easier.

The reality emulating death also makes a statement about hazardous environments. In war people die. People die unfairly and unexpectedly in space, in unsanitary conditions, and in the bad part of town.

And once a well loved character dies unexpectedly, outside what we believe to be the rhythm and structure of the plot, all bets are off. No one is safe. Anything can happen.  And that’s a fun place for the author to have the reader.

On the other hand, we don’t always want our fictions to be as haphazard and meaningless as our real lives. Character deaths that do not sync with the story may seem arbitrary and forced. Or, depending on the story, too harsh.

Of course, every reader will have a different opinion. In the end, as always, you need to weigh carefully what suits your story.

Because your readers certainly will.

Points of Interest

The hero of your story has just arrived at a remote village.  The village serves some plot function – maybe it is a place for the hero to rest and recover, or learn something, or maybe it needs to be defended against hordes of killer penguins.

But aside from its plot function, it’s really just a village.

How to we make it something more?  The key here is providing points of interest to our audience.  Something to make the place real, to make the people of the village come alive.

First, there are the minor details that add up.  Does the village have interesting street names? Does it grow crops, raise horses, sell the best  household waste disposal robots in fifty parsecs?  Then there are the living details – maybe there’s a funeral going on when our hero arrives.  Or a romance going on between the farmer’s son and the blacksmith’s daughter.

What does any of this have to do with the advancement of the plot?  Absolutely nothing.  Which means there is a danger of spending too much time and attention on it.  But without something, the village is boring.

And authors never want to be boring.

Besides, some side detail may grow into something important.  These happy moments happen in writing.  It’s part of the creative process.  The blacksmith’s daughter may remind our hero of something important.  Or maybe the best household waste disposal robots in fifty parsecs are just what we need to deal with those pesky penguins.

Unexpected Romance

I have a sneaking suspicion that the novel I am currently reading is a romance novel. They used to keep the darn things safely quarantined in the bookstore, but recently they’ve been allowed to sneak over and infect the fantasy and time-travel stories.

It’s easy to poke fun at the romance genre, with its ripping bodices and lurid covers. But to be fair, I am hopelessly devoted to other genres that are just as ludicrous when viewed from the outside.  “No capes!” as Edna Mode would say.

If this is a romance, it will be only the second I have ever read. I didn’t know what I was getting into with the first one, either. I hope this one is a better novel. But I am having a problem with it.

In the story, the female lead, who is also the viewpoint character, is forced to work with the male lead.  She considers him to be arrogant, condescending, and generally infuriating.

And so far, I like him a lot better than I like her.

Now if I am correct and this is a romance novel, she will slowly come to appreciate his worth and he will ultimately prove worthy of her affection.  This means that the author has a difficult task – because looking back from the end of the novel, the male lead cannot have been so bad at the beginning that hooking up with him is unacceptable at the end.

So maybe I’m just not supposed to see the obvious, like not asking why no one can tell in a glance that Clark Kent is Superman.  The downside to relying on genre conventions to protect you is that the reader has to know what they are.

In any case, I appreciate that the author has set her viewpoint character up for a significant change in perspective. It should be a nice growth arc.  But so far, the change has to be in her, because the male lead is currently a lot better at knowing right from wrong and acting accordingly.  I think the sea change would work better if some of her accusations were a little more on the mark. (Ok, he is a little pompous.)

So maybe we can add a new thought to our early discussions of making a satisfying story:  It works even better if the reader doesn’t see it coming a mile away.

I’m only a third of the way into the book, so it is possible that it will break my expectations and prove to be something other than standard romance fare.  But if it wanted to be a horror novel, it is already too late.

More on that in our next installment…

How it Ends

It’s April 29. For those of you in the audience that have not been following along at home, here’s the story: I signed up for the Script Frenzy challenge (www.scriptfrenzy.org) to write a 100 page script in the month of April.

I took as my topic a fantasy screenplay with the intent of writing a better Dungeons and Dragons style movie than the actual D&D movie that hit the theaters. I like attainable goals.

Yesterday, I finished the script. I ran the formatting utility that set it into standard screenplay format. It was exactly 99 pages.

Now if the story is good and tight and complete at  99 pages, then that would be the place to stop. But I know this is only a first draft.

So I went back over it, thinking about what I could do better. One of the things that was weak was the character development arc for my lead. He started out strong and skilled and honorable. I didn’t want a story in which he got worse. That left the question about how he was going to change or improve. Who goes on a quest in order to stay exactly the same?

Now the major thing that happens over the course of the movie is that our team of heroes is assembled. When I wrote the end, I had them laughing and joking together, being friends.

I looked back at the very start of my script, which I wrote on April 2.  I had established my hero, Jon Warder, and his home village, but I hadn’t paid much attention to whether he had any real friends there.

So I went back, 25 days later, and rewrote the opening to show a distance between Jon and the farmers under his care. To show that he didn’t really have friends.

Then I rewrote the ending to make the final scene with the laughing and joking a little stronger.

And now Jon at least has something he didn’t have before his quest started. It sounds backwards and contrived when I explain it this way, but remember, the audience only sees it in the correct order, with the problem before the solution.

The result?

101 pages.

I’m off the map.

Admittedly, it wasn’t that good a map to begin with.

But I still feel lost.

What the map said was this: Jon Warder goes into the big city, sees the plight of the dwarves, feels responsible because he helped lead them here as refugees after a war, and decides to do something about it.  And since this is a fantasy movie, doing something will involve going on a quest and fighting lots of monsters.

I’m nearly half-an-hour into the film (by rough estimate). I’ve got Jon into the city. I’ve shown injustice being done to the dwarves.

But I don’t have the moment.

The moment that stands as a metaphor for all the cumulative injustices that are going on.  The moment when Jon says, enough, no more, I’m doing something about this.

Worse, looking for that moment was leading me on a downward spiral, where each bit of inhumanity was worse than the one before. I mean, I’m writing a D&D knockoff here, not District 9.

So I cheated.  I brought in a quest-giver figure to say, Jon, you must help us.  Take the McGuffin to the Dungeon of Doom. Fight a lot of monsters while you’re at it.

Had to rewrite three pages and I’m still not sure I like it.

But I know a secret: If I can get the plot moving again, I can move on to the end of the story. And once I have the end of the story, then and only then will I have the perspective to adjust the steps that lead up to that end.

This doesn’t end at the end of April. It doesn’t end at 100 pages.  It ends when I say it’s done.

Location, Location, Location

I like to have some sense where I’m going when I write but I also like to be open to discovery.  So I tend to have more general outlines than detailed ones. I did a preliminary outline the other day, but because I’m working on a movie instead of a play script, an interesting thing happened.

Instead of breaking down by plot points or significant events, the outline fell into place by locations.  I now have three major sections of the film, which take place in increasingly large and fanciful places.

My outline is far from complete, but it gives me some of the questions that I will need to answer.  In rough form, it looks something like this:

1. I. THE VILLAGE
   A. Jon and Bard (Darrion?) in tavern
   B. Beastmen come to the Village, looking for the McGuffin, which Jon once had
   C. Fight against the beastmen
   D. Jon needs to go to the City, Darrion invites himself along
        a. Why does Jon go the City?  He had the McGuffin, but he left it in the City.
        b. If he leaves the Village, hopefully the beastmen will follow, leaving the village safe
        c. I think Darrion just goes along for the adventure
2. II. THE CITY
   A. Challenge entering the City – meet the surly guy (Bear?) – the “Little John” scene
   B. Meet the dwarves.  (Why dwarves? could and probably will be a whole ‘nother blog)
         a. Background info on the McGuffin, Jon’s past
          b. Need to take the McGuffin to the dwarven hold of Citadel Stone
   C. Challenge leaving the City – why is it hard to leave? 
   D. With the help of Bear and Tatters, escape the city (Tatters brought in for this purpose?)
3. III.  CITADEL STONE
       I have only vague ideas what happens here, but I can picture the set...

Note that I have inserted challenges/conflicts at certain points, even though I don’t yet know what exactly they are. There is a danger here that my challenges will feel contrived because, well, they are. I will need to tie them in to the ongoing plot or be willing to drop them. 

The beastmen, by the way, let me have orcs without having orcs.  In a D&D game they could be gnolls, bugbears, overly hairy hobgoblins, or other things.  But having them furry and animalistic is a good visual and keeps them from looking like anything in either the Lord of the Rings or previous D&D movies. And of course, the McGuffin will not be called that.

 

Note: Next Thursday is the first day of Norwescon, our largest local SF convention, so there might not be a blog for that day.

Tensioning the Reader

In my last post, I discussed a simple formula for conflict: Find what the characters want and don't give it to them. This time, I'd like to discuss a more advanced and more difficult version: Figure out the readers (viewers, audience, etc.) want and don't give it to them.

Ultimately, you want to satisfy the readers but you can keep them waiting for it. You have a villain that they need to see thoroughly defeated? You have a couple that are so perfect for one another that the readers want them to fall in love? You can tease the readers with almosts -- the hero looks like he's going to trounce that dastardly villain this time, but no, this isn't the final showdown. Not yet. And there's still that pesky ex to deal with. It's another way to create dramatic tension.

The longer we have to wait for that grand moment, the better it is when it finally arrives -- at least to a point. You don't want to go on so long that the reader loses faith that we will ever get there. And the more you build to a climax, the more, well, climactic it has to be. The pay-off has to be worth the wait. It's back to that idea of keeping your promises to the reader in order to make a satisfying story.

And there is another danger as you steer the plot to tease the reader. The reader might see what you are doing. The actions of the plot still have to develop naturally from the decisions and actions of the characters. If a character does something the reader thinks they are unlikely to do and the result of that character action is clearly the creation of an additional plot wrinkle -- it all just ends up feeling contrived by the author.

I suppose all action in a story is contrived by its author, but the reader is willing to suspend some awareness of that point if the actions appear to be derived from the characters rather than the needs of the writer. If the audience asks "Why did the writers make her do that?" instead of "Hmm, why is she doing that?" you've already lost the battle.