The Powers Game

A few weeks ago, I proposed the McDonald's game.  If you know enough about your character or characters, you can say what your character would order at McDonald's whether or not there is one around.  This week, I came up with a different game: the Powers Game.  Most authors could [or should be able to] answer the question, "What does my character want most in the world?"  In "Finding Nemo," the whole story is driven by Marlin's desire to be reunited with his son.  In "Finding Dory," likewise, the story is driven by Dory's desire to be reunited with her parents.  If you can't name the greatest desire of your character, that's important.  It shouldn't be part of a game but part of characterization to begin with.

So what is the game?  Imagine your character can have any power in the world (or can get rid of a power he has but does not want.)  What would it be?  Marlin may want the ability to track his son from anywhere, so he could never lose him again or possibly to put a bubble around his son, so his son could never get hurt.  Dory would want the simple power to remember what happened five minutes ago, or even yesterday.  At some point in "Incredibles," many of the characters would like to wish away the power they do have to simplify their lives.  In a similar fashion, one could go through most characters in Pixar movies and decide what powers the characters would like (or get rid of) based on their particular desires and drives.

Now, go through your characters and figure out what magical/super/technological power your character would want if he/she could do anything in the world.    If you can't answer that question, you may need to work a little more on what drives your character to do what he/she does.

Hero of Your Own Story

Villain's Motivation

In reality, everyone is the hero of his or her own story.  Everyone [almost] thinks they are doing what's best, even if others would say they are doing what they're doing for the wrong reasons.  That's why a truly interesting story has a villain/opponent/rival who has clear motivation, who is, according to his/her own narrative, the hero of the story.

Take Magneto, for instance.  According to Magneto, the villain of many of the X-Men movies, humans have destroyed the world and are endangering his people.  In the first X-Men movie, humans' treatment of mutants is paralleled with Nazis' treatment of Jewish people.

Let's expand our net to history and legend: Al Capone thought of himself as a provider of useful services, while the media vilified him for his mob-related killings and bootlegging.  The same could be said of Jessie James, who some saw as a folk hero while others viewed him as nothing more than a bank robber and a murderer.  From the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Robin Hood could be seen as the villain.

Wrong Way

Just as a story is better when the hero's motivation is clear, a story is also better when the villain's motivation is clear.  In many a melodramatic tale, villains delight in calling themselves a villain and fight the good guy simply because he's good while the villain is bad.  No more motivation than that is needed.

Early Disney movies provide a very simple motivation--Snow White's stepmother's vanity, Cinderella's stepmother's jealousy on behalf of her daughters, and Maleficent's desire to fulfill the curse she'd lain. Yes, these can be called some kind of motive, but why?  Why are the stepmothers and evil fairies so harsh, they'll cause death before letting the princess marry the prince?  What led them to sacrifice their lives and reputations to oppress or murder an innocent?  None of it is clear.  One supposes they do it because they're evil, but this is no kind of clear reasoning or motivation.  Why are these female characters evil?  Nobody knows.

Right Way

We understand that Magneto is willing to destroy humanity because they stole his family away and are trying to oppress his people.  Why do we know that?  Because he has a back story.  We see his childhood--not a lot but enough to know why he does what he does.  We can feel and understand WHY.

When we understand why, the character becomes real to us.  We understand that Kylo Ren is willing to fight the light side of the force and kill anyone who gets in his way because of his resentment toward his father and because he adopted a new father figure in his grandfather, Darth Vader.

Furthermore, we understand that Mother Gothel must keep Rapunzel isolated in "Tangled" because she will lose her youth and her life if she loses the source of her power.  Their motivation is clear. Back story makes the difference between a believable villain and a stereotypical Bad Guy who is bad because he's bad.

Caveat 

However, because we don't agree with his motivations, he remains a villain, the enemy.  That is the one caution here, that there is such a thing as having a villain become too sympathetic. If your villain is more sympathetic than your hero, you have the new problem of the audience being confused by your story.  This confusion can be useful when you flip the story around and tell the story from the villain's point of view, as mentioned in last week's blog.  But in general, that confusion is to be avoided.

Conclusion

If your villain is supposed to remain on the dark side, make sure that your hero has a more vivid and sympathetic back story than the villain.  Help us view the villain as understandable but not the one for whom we're rooting.  Best of luck on your villains.

New Perspectives

I've found that sometimes, if you're looking for a story to write, the best thing to do is to see a familiar story from a new angle.  This method has worked really well and has gotten a lot of attention and popularity of late.  Look at the Broadway musical "Wicked."  The story retells a very familiar story from the witch's point of view, and it's a new story.  The same is true with Disney's "Maleficent" and the popular teen made-for-tv "Descendants."  Each of these tell a fairy tale or crossover of fairy tales from the villain's point of view.

But you don't have to limit yourself to writing just fairy tales or stories already written and told.  You can write something new but tell it from someone's point of view other than the stereotypical hero's.  Look at "Despicable Me" and its sequels and spin-off and how people love the villain-turned-daddy.  Modern audiences are hungry for a new perspective.

Nor do you have to limit yourself to the villain's perspective.  Read Ender's Game, which was written by Orson Scott Card many years ago and which has since been made into a movie.  A lot of people are familiar with the story of a child groomed to rescue the human race from a big enemy race.  But fewer people have read Ender's Shadow, the same story told all over again from Ender's sidekick, Bean's point of view.  He views the world entirely differently, so through his eyes, the story feels like a different one.

Disney has used this trick as well with "Lion King 1 1/2," which is told from Timon and Pumbaa's perspective.  It features many of the scenes and plot points from the first movie but shows them in an entirely different context.  And Like "Despicable Me," it's hilarious.

Try it.  Tell an old story from a new point of view or try retelling your story from a different point of view.  If your story isn't working as is, make it new.  Tell it from the point of view of the hero's opponent, his dog's point of view, or his girlfriend's.  Maybe what you're doing wrong is telling it the normal way.  Time to get crazy.

Depth of Feeling

The Problem

I watched the sci-fi movie "Fifth Wave" recently.  It bothered me.  It's not that it was a shallow popcorn flick with invading aliens causing lots of destruction.  That was no big surprise.  It was kind of like the dreadful Tom Cruise vehicle, "War of the Worlds" for teens.  I didn't hate this movie like I hated that one.

What bothered me is the writers did what I often recommend writers do:  1. Start in the middle of the story to get the reader/audience into the action and excited about the plotline.  2. Spend some quality time with the protagonist early in the story, showing her/him bonding with other characters, so we understand the protagonist's character.  3. Give the protagonist someone important to him or her like a puppy or a child to take care of, so we see the character's heart.  4.  If possible, have the character suffer or remember a great tragedy in their life that helped shape who they are.  5.  Give the protagonist a companion on the journey, so there is a reason for dialogue, which helps enlighten both characters and situation.  Solo characters are hard to make interesting, though it can be done.  6.  If there is an antagonist, make his motivation clear, which leads to more clarity in the protagonist's motivation.  All of this should, theoretically, deepen the story and make the character more compelling.

So why didn't it work with "Fifth Wave"?  This question bothered me.  Then I looked closer.  I realized there is no depth of feeling to any of this.  The main character of the movie starts in the middle of the action then we go back to the beginning.  The scene is no more compelling the second time than it was the first.  We still don't care about her character.  Why is that?  Well, it's because during the time she spends bonding with other characters, most of whom die quickly, the script emphasizes she's a totally normal teenager.  There is nothing unique or interesting about her.  She's a normal teenage girl with a normal crush on a normal guy, and she has a normal family.  Their supposedly meaningful bonding scenes could have been taken from any other teen flick.  She's not compelling because she's too generic.  She spends a very brief scene looking lovingly at her little brother, but that scene gives us nothing to care about, no words to make either character memorable.  When her normal parents [spoiler alert] die one at a time in front of her, the audience has a hard time caring because, other than a brief sort of emotional reaction, she doesn't seem to care.  There is no great sense of tragedy.  The companion she gets is a generic attractive guy with nothing really special about him.  Even the big reveal of the secrets behind the companion and the whole story is not big or very revealing because it's predictable.  The characters, in fact, predicted it earlier in the story.  The reveal basically repeats what one of the characters already said.  It does not deepen the understanding of the antagonists' motivation because they don't seem to have one.

The Heart

What this says to me is that the five suggestions above are good but can't be turned into a formula.  Once they get turned into a simple formula [do x, y, and z, and you get yourself a killer plot line] the humanity and depth of feeling they're supposed to convey go out the window.  There has to be a real sense of tragedy, an actual character with quirks and dialogue to care about.

Above all, we have to get the sense that the character cares.  If there is nothing convincing about her tragedy or character-building scenes, all the action and excitement in the world can't save the movie or the novel.  It all falls as flat as a cardboard cut out.   Start with a character who actually cares about someone or something.  All events in the story should build on that caring.  We should never lose the sense that she cares, just because we've moved on to another scene.  If we don't cry when she cries or laugh when she laughs, chances are, there is no depth of feeling to our scenes.  If the story isn't based first and foremost on humanity, on some aspect of the human condition, why tell it?  If there's no meaning, it's all a waste of time.  Find the meaning, the real heart of the character, and you'll find your story.

Fantasy Fiction as Metaphor

Once upon a time, I wrote fantasy novels.  I mentioned this in my first blog post on this blog.  I have two fantasy novels and plotlines that will never be completed because they ceased to be part of my identity after my baby died.  I moved on to LDS fiction because I can deal explicitly with topics meaningful to me such as mourning and healing.  

However, fantasy is my home base.  One day, I would like to go back.  But like mine was, so much of fantasy literature is simply about story and sometimes characters.  Its charm for so many, as it was for me, is in its escapist quality.  It takes one away from regular life.  But since my life has been altered so drastically, I don't see the point in spending the kinds of hours it takes to write a novel simply to tell a story that doesn't mean anything or change lives.  For me, genre fiction of any sort, particularly fantasy, science fiction, or adapted fairy tale, ought to be a metaphor for the human condition.  

For instance, if a character's struggles with his super or magical powers aren't a metaphor for disability or strange gifts or even simply differences from others, it doesn't mean much to the reader or audience.  In "Frozen," Elsa's ice power seems to me to be a metaphor for disability, which causes her isolation as well as her family's.  When one reads the movie like that, it can have so much more universal meaning.  Until I can tell a fantasy/science fiction/superhero/fairy tale story that brings in genre as a mode to share meaning and make a statement or tell an allegory, I don't see the point in going there.  

Oral tales told by generations from one generation to the next were all about reflecting the human condition.  Yet so many of our modern stories just don't.  They tell a story for the story's sake.  A lot of people like that kind of story, but I find I can't bring myself to write them anymore.  I don't want a fan to come up to me and rave about my story and what a great writer I am.  I want someone to come up to me and tell me how my words changed their life, helped them feel understood, etc.  If I'm going to go the route of these genres again, it will be because I have something meaningful to say through these vehicles.  Until then, I will stick with this foreign language [to me] of realistic fiction.  

What can we learn from "Captain America: Civil War"?

I think my preteen boy gets what some movie makers don't yet get.  I showed him two superhero movies this week, and he saw something I didn't notice until he pointed it out: X-Men, the first one, fell a little flat.  Why?  The characters were pretty well-developed.  The storyline was coherent.  The action scenes were good.  Remember when I posted on humor and its importance to writing a compelling piece a few weeks back?  There was maybe one humorous line in the entire show.  Even a superhero show that is just a little too straight-faced fails to hold my boy's interest, and he's part of the target audience.  For some people, action scenes are enough.  For others, great characterization is plenty.  For others, as long as the plot is good, they will follow you all the way.  Humor adds the humanization and enjoyment that pull the rest of it together and keeps the audience coming back for more.  I haven't seen it, but I understand "Deadpool" brought people out in droves.  Why?  Because it was snarky, sarcastic, humorous.

Most recent Marvel superhero movies seem to get that.  DC seems to be lagging behind a little.  Joss Whedon breathed humor into almost every scene, not enough to make it cheesy but enough to keep the characters lovable and interesting.  In "Captain America:Civil War," the movie makers follow suit.  It has everything that keeps an audience entertained.  The characters have clear motivation, which leads to a compelling plot.  Rather than melding together in a messy, action-packed phone directory like the critically and audience-panned X-Men 3, each character stands out as the hero in his/her own piece of the tale.  The characters are more-or-less fully realized, all of them.  We get a some origins/introduction of characters from Black Panther to Spider-Man, and several continuations of characters, with the title character, Captain America, and his adventures in the foreground.  I believe each of those characters.  Furthermore, I like most of them, whether I like them in comic book version or not.  Having all of that work in a movie simultaneously is quite a feat.

But what my boy noticed that I really didn't was that the story didn't come alive until Spider-Man and the attending humor enter the picture.  My boy has never been a huge Spider-Man fan, but he is now because his enjoyment in the movie only started when he could laugh.  And characters only started wisecracking when Spider-Man showed up and got the humor ball rolling.

What can we learn about storytelling, then?  Well, for one thing, when we write, we should make sure our target audience is entertained.  And the best way to do that includes character development, including clear motivation, which leads to compelling action, all spiced with humor to help us care.  And that, my friends, is my formula for good storytelling, whether it be in a movie or a novel.

Companions

I've been reading a book recently that bugs me because there is little dialogue.  Dialogue makes a story.  It gives the writer a chance to show the reader what's going on inside the character's head without endless paragraphs of explanation, which can get dull.  Another reason dialogue is so important is it creates bonds between characters, helps us see how much the character cares about someone else, which helps us care about him.  In this book I mentioned, this character cares about no one, so no one cares about him.  Therefore, I as the reader don't care about him.  I don't know what's going on inside except through paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation and narration, which gets dull.  Take for instance Star Wars: Episode 1.  A large part of the action passes without dialogue.  You set that back to back with Star Wars: Episode 4,5,6, or 7.  They all have meaningful dialogue between characters, and, therefore, a heart.  We all love Han because of his chats and heart-to-hearts with Chewie.  We love Rey, in part, because of her bond with BB-8.

So how can a reader include dialogue that means something?  Most people choose to include a companion, someone with whom the main character can converse.  Now this companion can be human, animal, or anything else.  In "Castaway," the companion was a volleyball.  Yet we truly feel the main character's heart through his dialogue with Wilson, the Volleyball.  We cry with him when Wilson is swept away because Wilson has come alive through their "conversations."  In my books, the companion is often a pet.  With an animal companion, the main character is more or less monologuing for the sake of the reader, but we can feel his heart.  We feel the love [or sometimes hate] between main character and his animal companion, which helps us care more about the character.  If you find large spans of your book dragging because of an excess of internal chatter, start asking yourself if he could use a companion.  Can you add a companion outside his head to whom he could talk about the issues important to him?  You would, thereby, show rather than tell the reader what those issues are.