Friday, December 29, 2006

Crazy Dubai

This site has lots of pictures of some of the developments going on in Dubai, which include the world’s tallest buildings, the world’s largest amusement park, the first underwater hotel, hundreds of man-made private islands, the world’s largest waterfront development.

Personally, I think it’s good to see an Islamic country channel its energies and money into something constructive, instead of destructive. I wish more of them would follow suit. 

Secrets of Writing: Characterization Pt 1

WHAT IS CHARACTERIZATION?

This may surprise you, but characters are superior to real people. The reason is, characters are clearer. They’re works of art.

Because they are knowable, you can understand characters better than real people. Real people are a mess. They’re confused. Unpredictable. Even the person who think you know can turn on you and do something unimaginable. . We alternate our personas due to a mishmash of upbringing, attitude, world view, and neuro-chemical fluctuations. Real people are complex. Even boring ones.

This is why characters are much more appealing than real people. You can rely on them to be who they’re supposed to be. And if they aren’t you know it’s the writer’s fault. Or his intent.

If only people were that solid.

But to make good characters you need to understand the principles that make people what they are. Your goal isn’t to imitate life. It’s to refine it. To improve on it.

A character is a distillation of human traits. You can either distill 100 proof hard liquor, that blows the brain cells out the back of your skull, or you distill some watery swill no one will want to swallow. It’s up to you.

Characters in a story are not independent of the plot, just as we are not independent of reality. We can’t just snap our fingers and stop time, or decide that the sky will be green today, or decide that we don’t like the existing government so everything changes the second we feel it should be different. We all have to deal with reality as it comes to us. So do characters in fiction.

This does not mean that characters in a story should just go with the flow. People have the power to change the course of events, and your hero in particular, must affect change in some way. Otherwise there’s no point in doing the story. If everything would proceed the same way without your hero’s involvement, he’s redundant.

The same holds true for the Villain. If the Villain has no impact on the events of the story, he isn’t a real antagonist. He’s unimportant and thus, disposable.

As we discussed earlier, conflict is the crux of every story. And conflict is transformed by dynamic will of the characters. When the will of the hero is pitted against the will of the villain it serves three purposes.

1. The conflict heats up and makes the story more exciting.
2. The character’s are more thoroughly defined by their choices.
3. The premise is tested via its conflict with the counter premise.

But there is much more to characterization than the mere actions of the players. In order to make a character believable, you have to understand the principles of character dimension.

Character Dimensions

You’ve heard the term “two dimensional character”, which is often used to describe a person without any depth, or a clichéd character in a story. None of us want our characters to come off as two dimensional, so there are certain criteria we need to understand. Let’s explore the meaning of the term “character dimension.”

A one dimensional character is a single minded individual with one noticeable personality trait. A hero, who is good. A villain, who is evil. Their personality is the same in any given situation. They just want to do what they were created for. That’s their only purpose in life. You could call them plot robots.

Bad fiction is populated with plot robots. They’re basically props in the story.

Two dimensional characters have one contradiction that makes them more complex than a one dimensional character. They are heroic, but are afraid of the dark. They are evil, but have some guilt. There isn’t much more to them than that. But they have the illusion of depth because of their additional side.

Three dimensional characters, or more appropriately, believable characters, have many contradictions.  Simple examples are: A dictator out to conquer the world, who cares deeply about the preservation of his culture, but seeks to destroy others. He’s a vegetarian, an artist, but has books burned he doesn’t approve of. He’s heavily for the advancement of science, but dabbles in mysticism and the occult.. There was a real person like that. His name was Adolph Hitler.

Or how about a housewife who is a good mother, but cheats on her husband, is a closet homosexual, likes bondage, and practices Buddhism, is a peace activist who wants politicians to die.

Of course, these are extreme examples, but you get the point. Realistic characters come off as complicated as real people.

But it takes more than a list of contradictions and characteristics to make a realistic character. The character’s choices need to reflect their personal world view, their usual behavior and beliefs. There’s also the matter of relational characterization which we’ll discuss later.

When writing three dimensional characters, choose your actions carefully at first. Once you get to know them, they will write themselves.

It’s important to understand that every character in a story can’t be three dimensional. Some character’s roles are incidental, and making them too memorable could steal thunder from your main characters. So these walk on characters should be two dimensional in a non-cartoony way. Unless you are going for a cartoon quality in your work.

The Power of Choice

Imagine a restaurant full of people. A gunman bursts in and starts shooting. Most will dive under the tables or hit the floor. Some will just cower there until they are killed. Some will try to escape. Some may even try to fight the gunman. Some will scream to God. Some will lose control of their bladders. Some will laugh hysterically. Some will cry uncontrollably. There are all kinds of possible reactions to this situation. These reactions define what your character is like at that moment in the story.

We are all defined by the choices we make in life. People form impressions based on how they see other people act, dress, and live. You choose what kind of clothes to wear. You choose your hair style. You choose to either be fit or fat. You choose to be lazy or industrious. You choose to be friendly or obnoxious. You choose to be honest or lie to yourself and others. You choose to be good or bad. This defines your character.

It’s also possible that you don’t consciously choose any of these things, but you do them anyway, and that defines who you are. Other people look at you and base their opinions on a range of qualities. This is also true of a reader of a story. They perceive the characters to be a certain way, based on how they look, how they act, what they wear, what choices they consciously, or unconsciously make.

Many people act a certain way because of influences in their life from an early age: their environment, culture, family, friends and experiences. So much of their behavior is instinctive, based on their responses to things that happened to them as they developed. Their actions are reactive rather than conscious. Even so, it is a clue to who they are and where their head is at. At some point, we chose to make ourselves the way we are. We can also choose to change ourselves. And these choices go a long way to defining us.

When you write a character, you are defining that person for your readers. You are telling the reader, in effect, how they should perceive that person.

When you construct a character, you need to take these things into consideration. But to make your job easy, remember to think of the choices your character would make in the course of the story. Choices in clothes, choices in appropriate behavior, choices in verbal and emotional response, they define the character. But the choices they make in a particular scene can affect the course of the story, so they are doubly important. .

Many writers mistakenly write their characters from the hip, basing the character’s choices on their own idea of how to act. Or on clichés that this character is “supposed” to be like. This leads to one dimensional characters, and thus, to unmemorable fiction. You need to step outside yourself when writing characters that aren’t supposed to be you. Everyone’s head is in a different place. Your characters may not agree with your politics, or taste in music. But that’s the point. They are not supposed to be you.

REMEMBER: Choice is one of the most powerful tools of characterization.

The Rules of Choice

Choice behaves by certain rules. If you ignore these rules, you run the risk of offending your audience. Characters must be give logical choices which are not absolute. In other words, choices like: “Eat a bowl of ice cream or shoot your mother!” are not choices anyone is going to take seriously. Obviously, you would eat the bowl of ice cream. If you hated your mom that much, you would have killed her by now.

A choice between right and wrong, good and evil isn’t a worthwhile decision in fiction terms. If a hero makes an obviously wrong choice, the audience will lose their empathy for them and that is fatal to your story.

Have you ever seen a film or read a book, where you liked a character, but then they did something you really disapprove of, so you stopped reading, of you just lost interest in the story? That’s the principal of character choice in action. It’s a very powerful tool and you need to think about it.

You need to learn how to create a third choice. A surprising choice. As long as you understand that every choice has attendant risks and benefits attached.

Example: Let’s say you are forced to do a favor for a mobster or your best friend will be killed. The Choices are:

A: Take an unmarked package onboard a plane.
B. Steal secrets from your employer that will help the mobster rob him.
C: Refuse.

Choice A seems like the safest choice, but the risks are obvious. Packages are scanned by detectors before being allowed on planes, dogs are used to sniff them for drugs. You may be arrested if it’s contraband. And if you aren’t arrested, you’re still probably smuggling something bad. Then again, it could be innocent contents. This choice is morally ambiguous.

Choice B seems like a bad choice because it means stealing, and helping the mobster get more powerful. But it would also keep your friend alive. It also has less risk attached. But it’s also morally inferior to the first choice. This one seems immoral.

Choice C: The morally correct thing to do, but it would mean your friend’s death and maybe your own. The audience would hate you, because no one likes a morally inflexible person. But you may want to say you refuse first, just to see if the mobster really means what he says. Then you could change your mind. Maybe.

You need to create choices with inherent risks, but they should also have benefits attached, otherwise, there is no motivation to do them. The benefit of A and B is that they will buy some time for your friend. The benefit of C is you remain a morally correct person. Choosing A or B is more selfless and heroic. Choosing C would make you look like a person who cares about your morals more than other people’s lives. It’s not an empathetic position to take.

Most people would choose A as the most intelligent (unless they hated their boss, then they might gleefully choose B). Your audience will be choosing alongside your hero and hoping he makes their choice. This will increase their empathy for your character. They will find your character smart if he chooses what they thought was the right answer. But you then have to show them what the risk was in taking it. It can’t just be that easy.

For choice A, let’s call the hero Bob. Bob goes to the airport with the package the gangster handed him, sweating blood as he passes through security. Every screener and cop seems to look at him with distrust. As the package goes through the X-ray scanner, Bob watches the screener look at the video screen, then stop the conveyor belt so they can examine something that catches their attention. They turn to look at Bob, coldly. Or so he thinks. Bob frets, but tries to hide it. Suddenly, they let the package go on through. As Bob walks to the plane, some DEA agents are coming toward him with a big dog on a leash. The dog looks at Bob and starts to make noises. But the DEA men don’t notice. They’re too busy talking about last night’s football game. Bob gets on the plane, fastens his seat belt and lets out a sigh of relief. He made it. The package must be okay.

But, as the plane gets ready for take off, Bob notices a man two seats up on the left. He’s a bitter rival of the gangster who made Bob take the package.

Suddenly, Bob realizes the package could be a bomb! The gangster sent him on a suicide mission to kill an enemy. Oh, no! The plane starts to take off. It’s too late to leave. Now what?

This is how you keep the story moving. Choice opens doors and allows your audience to participate in the story with the main character. But you don’t stop with one choice being made. You create problems that force the character to make other choices as a result of their first choice.

If you’ve seen one of those stories where a character has to choose between three doors, one of which means freedom and the other two mean certain death. The writer is giving the audience a blind choice, where anything can happen. This tends to be unsatisfying because it feels random. This is why writers usually leave clues as to which door is the correct one, so the Hero can make an informed choice. It’s not just a blind decision.

As we discussed earlier, people like a sense of order in their stories. They don’t like randomness unless it’s shown to have been part of a causal chain later on.  For now, remember that characters must be given hard choices. Not obvious ones. And every choice must have repercussions.

If there are no stakes involved, the audience has no reason to get excited. No reason to care. This is why gambling is so popular. Every game involves making choices, each with risks and potential pay offs. People love the excitement and the promise choices can offer them.

Emotional Choices

When we’re feeling emotional about something we may behave out of character for the moment. A normally thoughtful person might make snap judgments when they’re angry. A reckless person may be cautious when they’re scared. It’s important to think about the emotion of the character in a scene before you decide what they choose to do.

Remember the rules of choice, but also remember that audiences respond to emotions very strongly. Emotion has more resonance than logic. Logic is cold. Logic is somewhat impersonal. Emotion is very personal.

But you can’t expect emotional empathy from the audience unless you’ve led them to feel that way first. Showing a person crying doesn’t make the audience cry unless we’ve first been made to empathize with their struggle and pain.

You have to do that carefully, building up to those moments where you have emotional payoffs. An audience will understand a stupid choice if the character was in an emotional frame of mind where they’d be reckless. But you have to first convince the audience that this emotional state was arrived at realistically. People who suddenly change emotions at the drop of the hat are usually nuts. The term “Wacko” is applied to such people. Wackos don’t create empathy in an audience. We can laugh at them, or disapprove of them, but don’t expect too much sympathy.

REMEMBER: Make sure your characters have reasons to be emotional when they make emotional choices. 

Strange Clouds

Some really interesting ones here.

The World’s Most Expensive Chocolate

Here’s the story of Noka Chocolate, the most expensive chocolate on earth. It’s made in a small kitchen in a strip mall in Plano, Texas.

The most charitable approach would be to look solely at the 96-piece “Vintages Collection” in the “Encore Box.” That’ll run you $139, or $1.45 per piece. Each piece weighs approximately seventy-five one-thousandths of an ounce. So the cheapest retail rate you’re going to get for Noka chocolates is about $309 per pound.

I’m in the wrong business.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Iran and the Iraq Mess

Iran is a major instigator in the problems in Iraq. This has been well documented. One of the motivations may be they want to increase Shia dominance in the region. But there is another reason even more obvious. It’s all about oil.

Iran’s oil exports are plummeting at 10pc a year on lack of investment and could be exhausted within a decade, depriving the world economy of its second-biggest source of crude supplies.

A report by the US National Academy of Sciences said rickety infrastructure dating back to the era of the Shah had crippled output, while local fuel use was rising at 6pc a year.

“Their domestic demand is growing at the highest rate of any country in the world,” said Prof Roger Stern, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

When Saddam was overthrown it created a power vacuum. And those nations who were held at bay by Saddam figured they could pull a guerrilla war, which we would inevitably bow out of, thanks to the Democrats propensity for bailing at the sign of trouble. Of course, this war is costing us insane amounts of money. And we’re forced to try to get the Iraqs to defend their own country. Which they supposedly wanted. I mean, wasn’t that the big leftie story? That the Iraqis want us out and that’s why we’re fighting us?

Wrong. Ba’athist holdouts may have been motivated that way. But al-Qaeda wants to kill Shiites and non-Muslims. Iranians want to kill Sunnis and take over. It’s greedy relatives trying to carve up a rich man’s estate. We’re in the middle.

The biggest problem we have is Iran. But what to do? We can’t invade. We have enough trouble holding on to Iraq and Afghanistan. If the western nations were smart they would help us solve the problem, but many are too busy looking the other way or selling Iran nuclear power technology.

Arab countries who have a lot to lose by a powerful Iran need to step in to help. Chide the French all you want, but it’s the Arabs who really are in bigger peril. The Taliban want to overthrow the Arab monarchies and the Iranians have dreams of their former empire. Neither of which is good for world peace, And none of this is our fault.

Saddam would have fallen sooner or later. Those countries who don’t help us are in for a world of hurt.

Secrets of Writing: Truth in Fiction

Truth is subjective, not objective. We all don’t recognize the same truths.

All men are created equal? There’s a lot of people who disagree with that.

God is love? Tell that to someone with cancer.

The earth is round? Scientists say it’s oval. Some people still think it’s flat.

In fiction, the writer’s job is to establish truth. We have to show what truth is for the world of our story. Convince your Audience and you’ll not only validate the premise, you may even make them feel good. Fail, and you’re going to be laughed at, your story tossed in the trash heap of history.

So, if truth is subjective...meaning we all see it differently, then how do we establish it in the story? Well, this series tells you various means to achieve that. But since the goal is to make story structure simple to understand, I’ll boil it down to a few simple maxims as an appetizer for the main course.

We all understand certain truths from our own experiences. We may disagree on a lot of things, but we can all agree on one fact.

Life doesn’t happen exactly the way we want it to. Even billionaires have bad days.

This is why conflict is so important to making a story work. Conflict stands between us and our goal. We relate to it. We understand it. And we want to beat it!

Truth is established by showing the best way to overcome that conflict. We do this by systematically testing and rejecting every action until we arrive at the point of the story, the premise. Every scene serves that purpose. No scene should be empty of purpose. Scenes test the premise in one way or another. When all the tests are completed, we arrive at our conclusion.

But the tests have to be valid. They have to be something we can believe in. They can’t be illogical or nonsensical. And more importantly, they must have emotional resonance for us. Logic and emotion must be married in a story for it to develop the kind of power it needs. When logic is married with emotional resonance, we create meaning.

Stories create change for the characters through conflict. But, because truth is subjective, we arrive at truth when it has meaning for us. So make sure your story creates meaningful truth.

REMEMBER: Don’t preach. Convince!

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

All writers are liars. Good liars can convince you of anything.

No story is true, even if it’s based in fact. Things inevitably get left out. All stories are one sided, even when they try not to be. Someone always wins. Someone always loses.

So, you must convince your Audience that these fables you’re spinning are the gospel truth. Obviously, they’ll know better. But they want to believe. People desire entertainment. Our minds seek to escape for awhile. So you have an opening.

The balance of the Audience’s willingness to be sucked in and your ability to keep them off guard is where technique and structure come in.  As we discussed, people expect reality to come at them a certain way. Classic story structure imitates life as people see it. But the flow of the action isn’t enough. The action has to be believable to them.

To do this you need to create plausible, empathetic characters. You have to create a Milieu they can believe in and enjoy. And you have you present information in an unobtrusive, interesting manner. If you fail to do any of these things, you are going to find yourself with a bored or disenchanted audience.

When the Audience is on your side, they’re your friend. They’ll love you. They’ll praise you to the high heavens. But when they don’t like your work, they’re your enemy. They will bad mouth you and your stories to anyone who will listen. So it’s extremely important that you try to win them over. Their good will has a lot to do with how successful your career is going to be.

Your job is to seduce them. You want them to get in bed with you and stay there until you’re finished. So remember the four rules of story seduction:

1. Create believable, empathetic characters.
2. Create a fascinating, credible Milieu.
3. Tell them what they need to know. No cheap surprises.
4. Respect the Audience. Don’t treat them like idiots. 

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

James Brown is Dead

I know I missed this one because I was at my Dad’s for the Holidays. But Brown was a great entertainer, and a real innovator of soul music. Perhaps he was to soul what Louis Armstrong was to Jazz. Now that 90s song by LA Style is true.

They’re All Gone Now

Lots of Free Music Videos

6 Underground by the Sneaker Pimps is one of my favorite songs of the 90s. 

Lots more music videos here. Love that YouTube.

Open Culture

Audio Book Podcasts of classic literature.