Monday, February 05, 2007

Secrets of Writing: Contrast

This technique is used to highlight the differences between characters, thus defining them in sharp, easy to understand ways. It can also be used to highlight your main character so he stands out from the pack.

In film, the use of color is often used for contrast. The background and costume colors are chosen very carefully. Study films and you’ll see one color schemes used in the entire film. In comics, you may have no control over the coloring, so it’s best to deal with contrast through writing.

As we discussed before there are recognizable personality archetypes. And in addition to that certain people bring out certain qualities in our personalities. When you create a scene, it’s a good idea to use characters that do not blend with each other. You want the characters to seem different. Visuals aren’t enough.

In life, we’re pressured by society and others to conform. Many of us resist it, but we still try to conform in some ways. It’s human nature to try to be part of the herd. If you don’t conform to some model of normalcy, you won’t get laid. And that’s a major motivation right there. But conformity is unacceptable in fiction. Characters need to contrast with one another so we can see why they’re so different and unique from each other. If you don’t do that you create what people call “cookie cutter characters.” Characters that seem to all be from the same mold and that is really boring.

Some writers, when given a job they aren’t enthused about, or if they’re in a hurry to meet a deadline, often write characters with the same voice, have them act in a predictable fashion, and even though these characters are normally unique, they become generic as if they were cookie cutter characters.

I’ve read many a super-hero team comic where the characters were all a bunch of grimacing louts, men and women alike. No sense of humor spread between all of their pea brains. Unless you count the ability to insult people with the wit of a bad sit-com character.

This is something to be extremely aware of and to avoid at all costs. You want characters to bounce off each other. You want them to annoy and amused and cajole and connive each other. You need to get into the heads of each character and see through their eyes. The last thing you want is for everyone to get along too well. That’s boring.

Sure, in some old TV sit-coms like Leave it to Beaver, everyone got along more or less in the family. But each character was distinct and different from each other. They had attributes that made them special. Even in the Brady Bunch.

SO discover what it is that makes a character special and play it off the other characters. It’s its liable to rub one character the wrong way, all the better. In Star Trek, Spock always pissed off McCoy because McCoy was a man of feeling and Spock was a man of intellect. Their archetypes were the Professor and Mr. Sensitive. Spock was a scientist, so he was mainly an intellectual person. McCoy was a doctor, so he was a man with empathy for others. He hated to see someone look at everything from an aloof perspective (Spock also had a bit of the Lord archetype in him). If you threw in Kirk who was a cross between the Hero and the Harlot, you had a potent mix.

Character dynamics are really important to understand because they can inspire you to create great conversations. When you’re writing a scene between two characters with completely different world views, they almost write themselves. Those traits within yourself start to speak you start writing like a demon. It’s a very satisfying feeling when this happens because you know you’re on to something. You’re writing from the heart.

There are three types of contrast characters worth knowing. These three characters are often used in fiction to great effect.

The Straight Man

If you’re familiar with comedy teams, you’re familiar with the straightman. The straightman is the “normal one” who ends up taking the brunt of the humor from the comical character he’s paired with. Abbott and Costello, Lewis and Martin, Laurel and Hardy, even the comedy teams like the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers used straightmen. They would either find an external straight man or one of the team members would play the role. 

If you’ve seen Bugs Bunny cartoons, you know that Elmer Fudd is the straight man. Sometimes Daffy Duck, who in solo stories plays the Comic, ends up the straightman when paired in stories with Bugs. For comedy to work you need someone who gets mad, who’s straight, to play the comedy off of.

But you don’t need to do comedy to use a straightman. Straightmen are symbol of normalcy, some element of society or the status quo. We all get mad at the system. We all get sick of normalcy. Straightmen are the punching bags for writers to work their angst on. But they need to be characters we can relate to on some level. They have to be recognizable types of people.

The Gadfly

This character serves as the thorn in the side. The itch you can’t scratch. The trouble-maker you’d like to see go away, but who won’t. This are great characters to have in stories because they are the source of conflict. They keep things going. You just have to make sure you don’t over do it with these guys.

Gadflies can be likable characters, but they rub certain people the wrong way and they cause problems for others either by being irresponsible, clumsy, impulsive, anything that can lead to trouble.

Dr. Smith in Lost in Space was a gadfly character. The only problem was, they ended up making him a straightman after awhile because they over used him. Gadflies need to be used in the right circumstances and never over exposed. You can dilute their effectiveness that way.

There’s also this annoying tendency writers have lately, of trying to “improve” gadflies. They try to take away all the qualities that make them what they are. This robs them of their usefulness in a story. The idea is to make them a better person.

Newsflash: We don’t want to read about better people. We want to read about jerks.

Wolverine was a gadfly in the X-Men. He didn’t fit in. He was a loner. He was a trouble-maker. He would fight with the other members all the time. And then the writers decided, hey...let’s make him more lovable. He shouldn’t be so angry and violent.

That’s when I stopped reading stories about him.

The world isn’t composed of entirely of nice, well adjusted people. The world is composed of all kinds of people, many of whom are a serious pain in the ass. Even the nice people you want to strangle sometimes.

And in fiction, the point is to create conflict. One way you do that is to throw in characters that stir things up. That make people angry. That people get upset with. Those characters may be hated by the audience, but they will do wonders for your story. Because if the audience ends up hating people they’re supposed to dislike, you’re half way home.

The Mentor

When you have a hero who is basically an uneducated fool, or who is young and reckless, the mentor is a good way to educate him. The mentor is the teacher, the role model, the parent figure who helps your character through his arc. The mentor doesn’t always have to be obviously a mentor. They can play the role subtlety. And they don’t have to be likable or smooth even. Stick, Daredevil’s mentor in the Frank Miller stories was a grouchy old man who used to hit Matt Murdock on the head.

Just make sure the mentor is believable and has something worthwhile to say. But they should never be perfect. People don’t buy that. And they are generally wary of parent figures in stories.

REMEMBER: Contrast highlights character differences and makes for sharper writing.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Global Warming - Bah!

You know my position on man-made global warming. I think Instapundit has an excellent position on the subject, though I am more skeptical than he is. But most people agree we need to get off fossil fuels as soon as we can.

George Will wrote a great piece in Newsweek that sums up the absurdity of the whole debate. The money quote:

Was life better when ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there? Are we sure the climate at this particular moment is exactly right, and that it must be preserved, no matter the cost?

Frankly, I think we’ll be off fossil fuels in our lifetime and the point will be moot. In the meantime, the hysterics and political hacks need to simmer down.  The public will not take reducing their livelihoods and comforts lightly. The more they push this, the more people will push back. 

Woman News

I heard from a good source that Joss Whedon is off the Wonder Woman movie project, but Cobie Smulders is signed to play the character. 

Jack Bauer Hits Boston

To get those pesky Moonites

Secrets of Writing: Reversals

When we try to perform a task, things don’t always happen the way we expect them to. In many cases, the opposite result occurs. It’s called a reversal. You go to do something and you’re prevented from doing it because of something else. 

In your story, the hero will try to take the path or least resistance. You can’t allow him to get away with that. If everything he tries works the way he wants it to, the story will be uneventful and dull. On the other hand, you need to make the reversals believable. If you have a hero jump in his car to chase the Villain and it doesn’t start, you need to set up car problems first. If the car looks like a junker, that’s all the set up you need. But a new car should start. People expect a certain amount of realism.

Reversals work best when they are part of an elaborate set up. you build immense anticipation in the audience as the hero goes to perform a task. And when he tries it seems to work for a second, but then--POW! Major complications result.

The opening sequence of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is a good example of this. Indiana Jones has to deal with all sorts of problems and death traps to get into an ancient temple so he can take a golden idol that’s hidden deep within. He fills a bag with sand to try to approximate the weight of the idol. He switches the bag with the idol and everything seems to be cool. No problems. He turns to leave and that’s when it becomes apparent he screwed up. Now he’s under real pressure to save himself. Before he could take his time evading the death traps. Now he has to run for it and hope he doesn’t get killed.

Reversals should only be the beginning of a set of repercussions and further reversals. You’re trying to apply Murphy’s Law (“If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.”) to your story, but you need to do it in a way the audience can believe.

In bad fiction we’ve seen reversals that seem to be arbitrary plot devices. They aren’t Murphy’s Law in action. They feel more like Sturgeon’s Law (“95% of everything is crap!”). If a complicated reversal occurs, we need the set up. It can be subtle, but we must be clued in as to why the reversal may have happened.

Another form of reversal is the telegraphed reversal. In this one, the audience knows the hero is going to fail when he throws that switch or opens that door. But the hero doesn’t. The story first sets up the hero’s plans, then shows in a sub-plot that the villain or an antagonist already anticipated this move and has countered it. So when the hero tries to do something he thinks will work, it blows up in his face. Because the audience was told to expect this, they are filled with dread before the hero makes his move. They might even scream at the page “Don’t do it!” This technique is very useful in suspense stories.

REMEMBER: Reversals create a feeling of realism, but only if they’re believable.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Secrets of Writing: Sub Plots

Sub-plots are miniature stories within the main body of your story. They exist to develop events and characters that are taking place outside the experience of the Hero. Sub plots are especially helpful in keeping the middle part of the story interesting.

It’s wise to treat sub-plots like one or two act stories. But we usually don’t get to see the whole act at once. Often a sub-plot begins with a trigger event and develops to a crisis, but we don’t see the climax until later in the story where it affects the main plot.

Sub-plots can be broken up in three or four places. We can cut back to them where they left off as needed. But each scene or sequence involving a sub plot should work smoothly with the main body of the story.

There are two kinds of sub-plots. The set up sub-plot serves to set up the Trigger Event for the main story. The complication sub-plot exists to develop the story in the second act by throwing on another progressive complication.

Complication sub-plots are extremely important. They can not only add dimension to your story, they can also be used to contradict the premise and create irony. They can be used to develop supporting characters. They show us events going on outside the main body of the story which are related.

They allow you to play variations on a theme. You can use them to make your story resonate. Even though they are part of your main story, you can use them as counter stories, telling variations of the main tale in order to show the diversity of life.

Sub-plots can give you a lot of possibilities, but you need to make sure they flow seamlessly within the main work. You don’t want discordant melodies running amok.

REMEMBER: Sub-plots help add dimension and resonance.

Thriller Wedding

Return of Zeus!

Some Greeks are starting to worship their old gods again.

It was high noon when Doreta Peppa, a woman with long, dark locks and owlish eyes, entered the Sanctuary of Olympian Zeus. At first, tourists visiting the Athenian temple thought they had stumbled on to a film set. It wasn’t just that Peppa cut a dramatic figure with her flowing robes and garlanded hair. Or that she seemed to be in a state of near euphoria. Or even that the group of men and women accompanying her - dressed as warriors and nymphets in kitsch ancient garb - appeared to have stepped straight out of the city’s Golden Age.

To the astonishment of onlookers, Peppa also began babbling Orphic hymns, before thrusting her arms upwards into the Attic skies and proceeding, somewhat deliriously, to warble her love for the gods of Mount Olympus. But, then, for the motley group of modern pagans coalesced around the temple’s giant Corinthian columns, this was a special moment. Not since the late fourth century AD, when the newly Christian Roman state outlawed all forms of pagan worship, had a high priestess officiated on the sacred site.

Armed with white doves, Peppa, a former advertising executive, was not going to hold back - even if it meant defying the furious Greek officials and riot police gathered at the second-century temple’s gates, unwilling to stop the ceremony for fear of provoking a violent confrontation. “Sixteen and a half centuries is a very long time to wait,” she said. “After so many years of Christian persecution we were finally able to call on Zeus, our king-god, to bring peace to the world ahead of the [2008] Olympics. For us, it was a very, very big thing.”

They want to build new temples to the gods. Will they bring back the temple prostitutes while they’re at it?

Maybe this means I can get more cool busts of Greek gods for my house. I have several already. 

Friday, February 02, 2007

Blofeld Sings!

If only George Lazenby showed up and started fighting him. 

Security Stupidity

I don’t know about you, but I am getting tired of the security hype. It’s getting to be a joke.