Sunday, December 31, 2006
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Normally, I do predictions for the next year on the last day of the year. But first I review all the predictions I made last year. Unfortunately, thanks to my database being lost, I can’t review them. I know I was right on quite a few and wrong on one big time. That is that the Republicans would hold onto power. But then, tyhey dug their own grave. I predicted oil would drop below $2.00 a gallon. It got close, but they found a way to jack it back up. I also predicted the DOW would exceed 11,000. It went over 12,500.
I think I will wait till tomorrow for the predictions. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great night and a great 2007!
Why the UN is Useless
Most of the world’s worst tyrants died peacefully at old age. For example.
Lenin - Dead of the complications of a stroke, perhaps assisted by poisoning, January 21, 1924.
Stalin - Dead of stroke aided by medical neglect at age 74 at his dacha outside Moscow, March 5, 1953.
Ho Chi Minh - Dead of heart failure at age 79 at his home in Hanoi, September 2, 1969.
Francisco Franco - Dead of old age at 82 on November 20, 1975.
Mao Tse Tung - Dead of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at age 82, on September 9, 1976.
Saddam Hussein is one of those extremely rare examples of a tyrant being brought to justice. And the UN tried to do everything they could to prevent us from toppling him. Those who look to the UN as some kind of answer to world peace need to rethink it. All those African wars, some of which have gone on for decades, were not effected one whit by the UN. Mass murdering leaders get away with it most of the time. Our intervention in Iraq gained us a lot of scorn. Look around on the web and you see lefties calling for the hanging of the President whil chiding the hanging of Saddam.
Obviously, their priorities are screwed up. Kind of like their worship of the UN.
Starship Comparison Chart
How big is your favorite star ship compared to others? Nice work here.
The Secrets of Writing: Heroes
Hero: Also known as the Protagonist. The hero is the center of good in the story. He is the person you root for. The Hero doesn’t need to be good in the purest sense. In fact, people nowadays relate better to characters like themselves, flawed individuals trying to do the right thing. People who try to do good.
The key word here is try. Most people have an idea what “good” is, but not everyone agrees on what that is. Most people think of themselves as basically good. Even the most sordid criminals don’t see themselves as bad. Defining who the hero is in a story is based on one or more of the following factors:
1. The consensus of positive characters in the story ultimately take the side of your hero.
2. The hero is a constructive force in the story, whereas the villain is destructive.
3. The hero, as champion of the premise, is vindicated when the premise is proven.
A good example of how a hero can be a villain or visa-versa, depending on the premise, can be demonstrated in Romanian Folk Tales about Vlad the Impaler, also known as Count Dracula.
In Romania, Vlad is a folk hero, despite the fact he butchered thousands of people. In neighboring countries, he is a monster. Even though both Romanians and their neighbors tell the same stories, Vlad changes from hero to villain depending on where the tale is told.
One story relates how some visiting dignitaries from Turkey came to visit Vlad at his castle. They didn’t take off their hats in his presence. When he asked them why, they said it was a custom in their country never to remove their fez except when sleeping. Vlad then ordered his soldiers to nail the men’s hats to their heads so they would never be tempted to disobey their custom.
In the Romanian version the story’s premise is “Foreigners should respect the customs of the land they visit.” The tale is used to show how Vlad taught those damn Turks a thing or two about manners. How dare they be so rude to a Romanian lord! Whereas in neighboring countries, the premise is: “Romanian lords are a bunch of psychotic despots.”
Or take the O.J. Simpson trial as an example. One section of the country felt he was an innocent black man unfairly persecuted for marrying a white woman. While another section thought he was a murderer who was treated with kid gloves because he was a rich, famous black man and the city of L.A. was afraid of another riot.
The people who thought he was innocent considered all the evidence against Simpson to be planted and made up. The people who felt he’s guilty thought the system was stacked in his favor because the defense could say whatever they wanted and didn’t have to prove it. Whereas the prosecution had to go through strenuous evidence hearings before they could present their data.
This is why the story of Simpson dominated the media so strongly during the time of the trial. The conflict between the premise and counter-premise was extremely hot. You could also choose your heroes and villains easily. The players looked bad or good depending on your side. Johnny Cochran was either a smart, honest lawyer out to save his friend from
the cruel jaws of society, or he was a sleazy con man out to free a rich pal he knew, in his heart-of-hearts, was guilty. Marcia Clark was either a sharp, determined, underpaid civil servant battling corrupt attorneys out to free their wealthy client, or she was a vicious, cold
bitch of a prosecutor, out to put away Simpson at any cost, just to advance her career.
In reality, it’s not so cut and dry. Cochran could have been sincere and still be wrong. Clark could been a bitch and still be right. In a good court room drama, these characters would be fleshed out so you’re never completely sure about them until the conclusion of the story. This way the counter premise is able to give the premise a tough battle, making the story strong.
Unfortunately, the end of the trial did not answer anything for either side. No one’s opinions were changed. Life and fiction are not the same. As we said before, fiction is our way of making sense of the senseless.
In fiction, you need to decide who the hero is and work from there. The hero must be the underdog in every story. If the hero isn’t battling insurmountable odds, they don’t have a real conflict. No conflict, no story.
When the hero has too easy a time winning the Grail, the story has no punch. It’s flat and anti-climactic. Nobody is interested in reading a story where there are no stakes. And nobody is interested in a hero who doesn’t do anything special. The conflict is what makes the hero interesting. The way the hero deals with it, and their ability to overcome the conflict, is critical. So you have to make the stakes high or the story and your hero are going to be awfully boring.
Empathy, not Sympathy
The Hero must be empathetic to the audience, not sympathetic. We must feel for him as an equal, even if we disagree with him. Empathy makes you feel for someone in a way you can relate to. Empathy is something you feel for an equal. For someone you see parts of yourself in.
Sympathy is a more distant emotion. It’s what you feel for someone you feel sorry for. You don’t really see him as an equal. You don’t see yourself in that person, but you feel bad for them anyway. You may feel sympathy for a wino begging for change, but you don’t feel empathy for him. Not unless you see him as a peer.
Empathy is created when we see the hero of a story as the center of good. We know that, of the characters in the story, he is the one who is trying to make things right. He is trying to create order out of chaos. If the story is constructed properly, the audience will root for him as he journeys on his quest.
People, by nature, want to find the good in others. You create empathy by revealing a character’s positive sides. Even when you’re dealing with anti-heroes.
Anti-hero stories work when we feel empathy for the main character, despite the fact that he’s a rotten bastard. Your Hero doesn’t have to be Joe Perfect. He can be a crook. But we must feel empathy for him or you’ve lost.
REMEMBER: Empathy, not sympathy!
Choosing the hero
In some stories, we don’t know who the Hero is at first. Sometimes we’re given multiple protagonists to root for. By the end, one of them is the survivor, or is proven to be the winner of the Grail.
This technique is often used when you need to kill a protagonist to make the point of the premise stronger. A good example is in the musical SOUTH PACIFIC. The story starts when a young navy lieutenant, Joe Cable, arrives on a south seas island during World War II. Cable’s reporting for a secret mission. He needs to convince an expatriate Frenchman, named Emile De Becque, to help him sneak onto another island De Becque knows well. The island is held by the Japanese and Lt. Cable’s mission is to spy on them.
De Becque doesn’t want to do help Cable. He’s middle-aged, successful, and in love with a young American nurse named Nellie Forbush.
It seems clear right away that the Lt. Cable is the hero of the story. But we discover later he really isn’t. The true hero is the Nellie Forbush. The Lieutenant only serves as a device to validate the premise of the story. The Villain is preventing the Nellie from marrying De Becque. The same villain prevents Lt. Cable from marrying an island girl he falls in love with. Because both De Becque and Cable are losing to the Villain, they decide to go off to do the mission against the Japanese. Cable gets killed. This event helps Nellie defeat the Villain and marry De Becque in the end. Who is the Villain? More on that later.
Every story can have multiple protagonists, but usually, there is only one character who is the real hero of the story. They are the Grail winner. They will be the one to walk away with the glory at the end. But that doesn’t mean they have to survive. As we’ll discuss later, there are three possible endings to a story. And you decide which one makes the point better. The hero can win the Grail in a whole lot of ways. Not just by victory.
REMEMBER: The hero is the champion of the premise, whether they like it or not.
Quote of the Day
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” -Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha), 563-483 B.C.
