For the last year and a half, I have been working on the first novel of a sort of LDS romance trilogy, a tag team novel that starts with After the dream and is about Julia and Pedro, who discover that the illusion of happily ever after doesn't last and then have to pick up the pieces and start anew. The next one will feature one of the major characters from the first one and will be called Pigs Fly. It's about Connor, a man who decides he will only marry when pigs fly, then he meets a female pilot with a pet pig. The third, Drama's Queen, features Connor's mentor, Gayle, who is a woman in her late fifties/early sixties and has decided since romance has never worked out for her, she only ever needs to worry about taking care of her elderly mother and running a community theater. Then a man comes along to complicate things.
I have been wanting to get properly published in a popular market for as long as I can remember. I have children's books and other short pieces to send out, but it always feels like pressing things get in the way of moving forward on my dream. There is no satisfaction like seeing that email that publishers have received your manuscript after a lifetime of wanting that. Of course, it will be better yet when I get an acceptance. But that email ranked among the best Christmas presents I've ever had. It means I followed through on a commitment to myself at long last. Now, to push forward with the next.
I hope everyone who reads this had a wonderful Christmas season.
A Movie that Didn't Work:
I tried to watch "Tomorrowland," one of the newer attempts by Disney to get people jazzed about their amusement park rides. I like the director. He's Pixar. He wrote "Up," "Wall-E," "Monster's Inc," both of the first "Toy Story" movies, and directed "Iron Giant." The man's a genius. [Pete Docter] Yet I slept through half of the movie and don't particularly feel the need to watch it again to see what I missed. It makes me sad because it feels kind of like this movie, in spite of the man behind it, lost its soul to the Disney machine. Or never had one to begin with BECAUSE of the Disney machine.
Why?
So I asked myself why didn't I care? Where did this movie go wrong? And then I thought of how this show felt more like the live-action phone directory "X-Men 3" than it did "X-Men Origins." The visuals were awesome. But I didn't care. The characters could all have died in a massive explosion, and it wouldn't have bothered me. Why? Because it made the standard mistake I wouldn't have expected of a genius like Mr. Docter. I watched the entire first third at least, and I couldn't tell either main character from any other kid/adult on any other movie. They didn't have quirk. They didn't have a puppy, the quickest and easiest way to make an audience care. They didn't have a child or someone they loved and lost or simply loved in the first place. No tragedy or angst and little humor. They just stayed flat, without a heart with which I could identify.
Card's Story Types:
I understand part of it is the story type Mr. Docter employs here. Orson Scott Card discusses four types of drives in a story. [Story Types, #OrsonScottCard] I'm sure others have described this, but his descriptions are the ones that stick with me. One has to complete the story arc dictated by the type of story being told, or it will not feel complete and satisfying. A writer can employ multiple aspects of the basic types, but one tends to be the true driving force.
1. Question-Driven:
One type is question-driven. Think murder mystery. Who dunnit? The story ain't over until you answer that one driving question. Any kind of story can have a question drive, but that doesn't always make them totally question-driven. Questions can propel any story and make it more compelling. Much of the Harry Potter series is driven forward by questions. How did his parents really die? What and where is the Chamber of Secrets? That sort of thing. But if your story is primarily question-driven, you can't start with who dunnit and expect readers to be satisfied when your murder remains unsolved, but your main character lives happily ever after. This is not "Tomorrowland," though some questions did attempt to propel it forward. What are those lapel buttons? Why do they take one somewhere different when touched? But the story wasn't over when the questions were answered.
2. Plot-Driven:
"Tomorrowland" is more like two other types, plot-driven and milieu. When a plot drives the story, the author usually begins with a world with major problems. With the beginning of the movie, they tried to introduce a problem with the world, that the future is in danger. It was such a nebulous and clichéd problem that I wasn't really convinced. But that's the basic idea behind plot-driven stories, that something is wrong with the world that needs to be fixed, and the story isn't done until it is fixed. Once again, with Harry Potter, the novels aren't done until the blight on the world, Voldemort and the Death Eaters, are killed or imprisoned. Most fantasy and sci fi stories fall here.
3. Milieu:
But really, first and foremost, "Tomorrowland" is, in my mind, the least interesting of the types, the milieu story. The story is a tour of this magical futuristic paradise, Tomorrowland. This makes sense because it's a movie about a Disney theme park ride. But any story where the world IS the main character tends to fall flat for me. Even Lord of the Rings, the prototype for a large segment of modern fantasy novels, fails to keep my interest all the way through because it is clearly milieu. The characters are just a feature of the landscape. Card points out that all elves, dwarves, even humans are fairly interchangeable with others like them. The only thing that makes them unique is that there tends to be one of each: Legolas is the only elf on the quest, Frodo or Bilbo, the only Hobbit on his respective quest, Gandalf the only wizard, etc. This is not to say that it's not a great work of modern writing. I appreciate its merit and its importance in books and movies to come. I just personally don't find it all that compelling. The movies succeed more for me because the movie makers worked harder to make the characters unique. But the first of the Hobbit movies fails for this reason for me because of the mass of indistinguishable dwarves. As in a milieu story, Harry Potter tours the Wizarding World, but that is secondary to the characters' voyage, making that series primarily something else.
4. Character-driven:
That something else that most drives the Harry Potter series is the kind of story I find most compelling. It is character-driven. In a character driven story, the main character is somehow dissatisfied with life, unhappy in his own skin. The story ends when he has grown, improved what is wrong, or come to terms with life. Harry begins an awkward kid, miserable in his own skin because the people around him make him miserable. It ends when his character rises triumphant and has gained the confidence he lacked before and has gained mastery over his world. Everything else is secondary to this. Yes, we tour various aspects of the Wizarding World. Yes, we have our questions answered. And yes, what is wrong with the world is now fixed. But more importantly, Harry is happy and in a much better place in his relationship with himself.
What's Lacking?
This character-driven aspect is the part totally lacking in "Tomorrowland." The flat characters learn things and might change in relationship to each other, but there is no growth because there wasn't really a starting place to begin with. The "characters" took a back seat to the land all the way through, so there is action and movement without growth or development. This is where "X-Men 3" totally and utterly failed as well for me because the movie makers made a huge mistake in relying on the audience already knowing and caring about the characters. I did know and care about them, but I wanted that renewed. I wanted Wolverine to remind me who he was, Jean Grey to remind me why two heroes are vying for her love, and so on. When that didn't happen, and when even what I did know about the characters was betrayed and undermined by what I saw on the screen, the movie fell totally flat. Any new characters were introduced by face, name, and powers but not by why I should care about them. I know the movie makers must have realized this in retrospect because its sequel erased its existence, inserting time travel into the story to make sure "X-Men 3" never happened.
So What?
And here's where the writing part comes in. Rule number one for me, and for most people whether they realize it or not, is make me care. Give me a character about whom I can and do care. I will forgive special effects flaws. I will forgive a weak or somewhat silly plot line or writing. I will forgive a world that isn't entirely convincing. Obviously, it's best if I don't have to slog through all of that because you focus on improving it all by the end of the writing process. But I will forgive all of this and stay with you to the ends of the universe if you first make me care about your character. Give him or her a heart, someone to love, someone to mourn, and humor to draw me in. If an atomic bomb had wiped away all the characters by the end of "X-Men 3" or the book Fellowship of the Ring, I would have yawned and gone to bed. But I will follow you anywhere, cry when the character cries and soar when he triumphs, if I first care. This is your so-what, your compelling force that will take me through a question-driven mystery about which I may not otherwise care, a plot-driven, cliched sword and sorcery yarn, or even a milieu tour of your tired universe. Within two or three pages, give me someone to love, to identify with, to be for this moment, and you have me and other readers no matter what your genre.
