James Alan Gardner's Blog, page 13

Villains (Part 5)

So after a series of posts about villains, we come to the question of how to make a good villain. As always with writing, the answer is, “It depends what serves the story best.” But since that’s too vague to be much help for beginning writers, let’s try to get some more specific suggestions. (Suggestions! Not rules, suggestions.)

Villains only exist because they make the heroes’ stories better. If a villain is a great entertaining character, but doesn’t fit with the hero’s story, the villain has to go. (Save such villains for later; maybe give them stories of their own.)

So what does it mean for a villain to “fit” with a hero’s story? At the very least, the villain must provide enough opposition that readers think the hero might fail. If a villain is a pushover, there’s no dramatic tension.

But that’s the easy part. There are plenty of straightforward ways to make someone imposing: make them stronger, smarter, better equipped, better prepared, more connected, less inhibited…the list goes on. But which qualities from this list are best suited for opposing a particular hero?

That depends on the hero’s personality and character arc. How is the hero going to change in this story? What are the temptations that might lead the hero astray? What kind of villain might threaten to induce such changes? What kind of villain reflects the hero’s personal demons? What kind of villain may have strengths that the hero lacks?

As a case study, let’s take Batman. He’s famous for having some of the best villains in comics. Some are just physically imposing (e.g. Killer Croc or Solomon Grundy). But many are more distinctive and tailored to Batman himself.

The Penguin is a rich kid gone wrong…as opposed to Bruce Wayne, the rich kid with moral fiber. Poison Ivy crusades for a noble cause (just like Batman), but she takes it too far and doesn’t care who gets hurt. Two-Face went through a traumatic experience (much like Bruce Wayne losing his parents), but instead of gaining a purpose in life, he gave up and decided that everything is completely random.

All these villains (and more) are twisted reflections of Batman, suggesting ways he might have gone—ways that he still might go if he loses his resolve. But of course, Batman’s foremost enemy is the Joker, because of Joker’s threat of corrupting what Batman is.

The Joker kills for fun. Batman never kills at all. The Joker is guaranteed to keep on killing—he’ll never stay locked up long before he escapes and starts killing again. Everything about the Joker is aimed at tempting Batman to kill him, thereby saving numerous future victims. That’s the challenge that the Joker presents: not whatever scheme the Joker is up to, but whether Batman is going to resist resorting to murder. And the Joker knows exactly how to push Batman’s buttons to bring him to the edge of finishing the Joker once and for all.

Of course, the Joker is also colorful, unpredictable, and sometimes even funny. But that’s not why he works so well in Batman’s stories. The Joker is the guy who does something awful, then laughs in Batman’s face and says, “What are you going to do about it?”

The Joker is perfect for making Batman prove himself. And that’s the sort of villain that’s worth aiming for in any story you write.

Villains (Part 4)

In three previous posts, I talked about villains in fiction and the nature of their motivations. Today, I want to look at actually developing villains for use in a story.

Stories grow from many kinds of seeds: little bits about characters, or a setting, or plot elements, or images, or twists, or conceptual frameworks, or memories, or…

But as soon as you have a seed that grabs you, then you have to start gathering and/or inventing all the other elements that the story needs. You need characters, a setting, at least the start of a plot, and much else. If you’re the type of writer who plans a lot in advance, you’ll need a firm grasp of all these components before you get started. Even if you’re the type of writer who mostly improvises, you still need a sense of what kind of story you’ll be writing and why it’s worth your time. (I’m prepared to believe that a few good stories have resulted from writers sitting down to write with absolutely no ideas of what might come out, but this strikes me as an unreliable way to build a career.)

One of the elements you need in order to build a story is an answer to, “Who is this story about?” Who will readers be following? And why will they want to keep following that character’s experiences? Even in a story like Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains, there may not be any humans, but there are “characters” with whom the reader connects: the dog, and of course, the house itself.

Such central characters may be called “heroes”, “protagonists”, “viewpoint characters” or several other names, depending on how technical you want to get and how useful you may find it to make subtle literary distinctions. One way or another, however, they’re who the reader makes a connection with. Readers soon know whose story they’re following…and if the story is any good (or at least halfway conventional), they’ll realize when the story has come to an end, because they’ll recognize when something significant has changed in the central characters’ lives.

Villains are the agents of change. They may force the heroes out of a rut, or they may push back when the heroes try to change on their own. Classically, villains constitute the foremost obstacles to the heroes being able to change in positive ways. Remove the villains, and the heroes just romp across the finish line without resistance.

So when you’re developing a story, devising a suitable villain can be crucial. The villain must suit the tone of the story—comedies need comic villains, thrillers need thrilling ones, etc. And this is where the villain’s motivation comes in: what villains want and why they want it has a huge effect on the feel of a story. Grim motives create grimness. Sincere sympathetic motives create a sincere sympathetic ambiance. And so on.

As a simple example, consider a story about a music competition. The hero and the villain both want to win the prize. If the villain is an arrogant scumbag who wants the prize for the sake of ego, that gives you one type of story. If the “villain” comes from a poor family and really needs the prize money in order to go to music college, that’s completely different…and your hero damned well needs to have an even better reason to win the prize, or else the hero is at risk of switching into the villain.

The big question is what kind of story you want to write. The nature of the conflict between the hero and the villain determines what the reader feels as the story unfolds.

Next time, I’ll talk more about the hero-villain dynamic, and how  you can use it to convey emotions.

Villains (Part 3)

In previous posts, I talked about villains being useful in stories and about their need to have a reason for their villainy. It’s a cliché to say that villains consider themselves the heroes of their own stories, but it’s pretty much true—even villains who know they’re terrible people still tell themselves they’re justified in what they do. Their excuses are the same ones we all use: “I didn’t have a choice” or “Everyone else does it too.”

Essentially, villains try to fulfill their desires and allay their fears, just like we all do. This brings us to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as shown in the picture above. It’s a useful model for thinking about human drives.

At the bottom of the hierarchy are basic physiological needs: food, water, air, etc. Villains driven by such needs are just trying to survive. In science fiction and fantasy, we mostly see such villains in very desperate situations, e.g. post-apocalyptic wastelands where people have to fight over everything. In such contexts, villains are easy to understand; perhaps too easy. Who can blame them for wanting to live? And if everyone is fighting for scraps of food, distinguishing heroes from villains is a characterization challenge. The usual writing technique is to show that there’s enough for all if everyone works together. Heroes are the people who play nice; villains are the ones who try to take it all.

The next level of the hierarchy is safety. Perhaps you’ve eaten enough today, but what about tomorrow? And what if there are active threats to your life? A classic example of villains in need of safety are people who want to kill anyone they perceive as a danger. “You know too much, so I can’t let you live.” “I’ll never be safe as long as there’s still a legitimate heir to the throne.” The wonderful thing about such villains (at least from a writer’s standpoint) is that their fears never end. There’s always one more person they have to kill before they feel safe. The villains can keep on driving the plot until the heroes stop them.

Next up is love and belonging. Doing bad things to win someone’s love is a time-honored tradition in stories. The villain is in love (or lust) with someone, and kills all potential rivals, or carries out some scheme to force the beloved to give in. Once upon a time, this may have even had overtones of romance. These days, however, readers are much more sensitive about anything that smells of sexual coercion. Today, a villain who kills for food may still be sympathetic, but a villain who kills for “love” almost certainly won’t be.

Then we come to esteem. Ego. Prestige. Status. These are standard motivations for villains in positions of privilege. Rich people never have to worry about starving, but they may have a desperate need to outdo their neighbors. I have a feeling that more villains fall into this category than any of the others—in a story context, such people have the power and resources to be dangerous to almost any type of hero. Often, they’re also “villains you love to hate”: people who have almost everything, but do despicable things to get even more. It’s satisfying when such villains get stomped…which is why writers use them so often.

At the top of the hierarchy is self-actualization: becoming the most you can be. Occasionally, you see villains with this motivation, but it’s rare. Self-actualization is a little too spiritual and abstract to produce much villainy. A few characters in fiction do bad things for purely aesthetic reasons—Thanos comes to mind—but it takes a lot of work for a writer to pull this off. More commonly, a villain may claim to be acting from such motives but is actually driven by something lower down the pyramid.

So those are some useful possibilities for why villains do what they do. Next time, I’ll write about how this all shakes down in writing an actual story.

Villains (Part 2)

In Villains (Part 1), I talked about how useful villains can be.

In terms of plot, they get in the way of what the protagonists want to do, thereby creating action.
In terms of character, they often demonstrate qualities that the protagonists lack, thereby indicating ways in which the protagonists must grow in order to become better rounded people.
At the same time, villains can also demonstrate unwholesome aspects of those qualities. The reader then wants to keep reading in order to see whether the protagonists can develop the qualities in a healthy way, without becoming as bad as the villains.

Villains generally need a good reason for what they do. Admittedly, horror stories occasionally get away with villains being incomprehensible. The first example that comes to mind is Hill House, the villain in The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Hill House is a haunted house that drives people mad. There’s no clear reason why it’s haunted, or why it does what it does—we get hints about its unsavory past, but Jackson never tries to spell out explicit causes. It’s simply a bad place, and it has bad effects on people who go there.

But apart from such rare exceptions, villains need a reason for their actions. Readers want to understand motivations. In fact, the lack of motivation is one reason why Hill House and other motiveless villains are so disconcerting: they’re evil just because. You’re never going to make sense of it.

But a villain’s motivations shouldn’t be trivial or simplistic. The great screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, mocked “The Rubber-Ducky School of Drama” which invented lame excuses for why villains did terrible things: “Someone once took his rubber-ducky away from him, and that’s why he’s a deranged killer.”

Villains need better reasons for being villainous. And in the next installment of this series, I’ll talk about some possibilities.

Villains (Part 1)

I’ve been thinking about villains and what writers say about them.

Some writers say they never use villains. Often, this just means they avoid writing about people who are “only” evil. They do write about characters who actively impede the protagonist(s). However, those characters aren’t purely wicked; they just have goals that can’t co-exist with what the heroes want. Thus, the “non-heroes” try to stop the heroes from achieving their ends.

Some stories have characters who get in the hero’s way, but not out of any ill will. One example would be opponents competing for the same prize, such as people running a race. A villainous villain might cheat, or at least try to exploit an unfair advantage; a less villainous antagonist would play fair, but still try to beat the hero to the finish line.

And of course, the problems in some stories don’t come from characters at all. Sometimes the “villain” is a force of nature (like surviving a storm or the hardships of Mars). Sometimes the problems come from the protagonists themselves. People can be their own worst enemy, in which case the story arises when they try to overcome some inner weakness.

But one way or another, most stories need something that prevents a character from immediately getting what he/she/they want. If a character doesn’t want anything, the story has nowhere to go. And if nothing gets in the character’s way, the story ends quickly, without tension.

So villains are hellishly useful in stories. They make protagonists sweat. They make protagonists get up off their butts and take action. Often, a villain will embody what a protagonist lacks—villains are confident when heroes are conflicted, or passionate when heroes are just shuffling through life. Villains are often a wake-up call and they shake heroes out of a rut.

Which is why I love villains. They’re like weights that the hero has to lift in order to get stronger. And the ways in which they’re villainous can add immeasurably to a story.

But this post has gone long enough. I’ll write more about this tomorrow.

Not a Spectator Sport

Writing sucks as a spectator sport, which is why I often struggle to find anything to blog about. If things go well, I produce at least 1000 words a day…but what that looks like is me sitting at my dining-room table, either writing longhand or tapping out words on my iPad. Not an engrossing sight.

However, in the interests of upping my engagement with readers, I’m going to try to report more on what I’m doing. So here we go: I’m simultaneously working on three novels which I’ll call Project Moon, Project Tech-Bro, and Project Angel of Death. (Hey, if I’m going to make up names, I may as well amuse myself.)

Juggling three projects takes a fair bit of concentration. Most days I can’t handle all of them; if I manage two out of the three, I consider it a good day. Ideally, that will be 1000 words on each project I work on. Bit by bit, the word count grows, and eventually, I get to the end.

Mostly I write. But research and planning are also important. For major research, I get books from the library, but for passing tidbits, Wikipedia will do just fine. What kind of things do I look up? Occasionally on my Twitter (@jamesagard), I note topics I’ve looked at recently. Here are some for Project Tech-Bro:

The Haunted Mansion
Stepin Fetchit
Navajo Nation
Erich von Daniken
Photoshop

For Project Angel of Death:

A. J. Raffles
Kitty Pryde
Puff Adders

For Project Moon:

Rapier
Decibel
Frank Frazetta

And no, I’m not going to explain how any of these fit in. But I’m always amused where writing takes me.

A Regular Day

Someone recently asked me what a regular writing day looked like for me. So…here you go (or at least the highlights):

Get up & eat breakfast, during which I read email and Twitter. I usually don’t answer any email immediately unless it can be done in less than 3 lines. Also I do the NY Times mini-crossword puzzle and review my to-do list.(NOTE: I keep a daily to-do list in a straight-up text file. The file contains stuff for at least a week in advance. I also use my iPad’s calendar program to keep track of dates, but I copy any appointments from the calendar into the text to-do list. The to-do list is inspired by bullet journals but more informal.)
Write a few morning pages longhand, mostly reviewing things I saw or heard the previous day. I try to record tangible experiences, rather than just chatting about ideas.
Transcribe any longhand writing from the day before. Basically, when I’m writing something new, I write longhand first (yes, pen on paper). The next day, I start my writing session by transcribing the longhand stuff into Scrivener. This helps remind me where I was, and also gives me a chance to do quickie rewrites on what I produced the previous day.
Use the Pomodoro technique to write longhand for two hours. That means 25 minutes of nothing but writing, then five minutes of break-time (bathroom, having a snack, etc.). Repeat the 25-on/5-off for a total of four sessions, giving about two hours of new writing.
Take a longer break: half an hour. I’ll do my daily Duolingo (currently learning Japanese, and keeping up on Spanish) and have a small lunch
Back to another four Pomodoro sessions: either writing or editing (if I have an editing job…and by the way, if you ever need editing services, feel free to inquire).
Another longer break. Usually, this is when I go for a walk to my local library. I almost always have something I want to pick up at the library, or something I have to take back. Even if I don’t have anything to get or return, going to the library is a nice break.
Back for another two hours of work. This is either editing work, or business stuff. Here is when I answer email, deal with business paperwork, etc. If I’m working on a definite project (e.g. editing), I’ll do it Pomodoro style again, but often it’s just little bits and pieces that don’t fit the work-in-depth system.
Thus ends my writing/editing day. Now into other stuff. Half an hour for hobby-like activity.
Walk or drive for errands (shopping, etc.) in the late afternoon.
Most nights, I either do kung fu or role-playing games.
Read for at least 15 minutes before going to bed.

Auxiliary reading:

For bathroom reading, I (very slowly) work through something “classic”. Recently, I worked my way through Christopher Logue’s poetry version of the Iliad. Now I’m working through Ishmael Reed’s “Mumbo Jumbo”.

For kitchen reading (when I’m eating snacks or drinking coffee), I do idle research. In preparation for writing Miranda in NOBODY TOLD ME YOU COULD BREAK THE MOON, I worked through a first-year physics textbook. Now, I’m reading BLACK EDGE by Sheelah Kolhatkar, so I’ll know about sleazy financiers. (This is preparation for something secret I think I’ll call Project 3H.)

And for times when I want a break from reading, I do cryptic crossword puzzles. Right now I’m working through a book of New Statesman crosswords from the 1980s.

So there: if there is such a thing as a typical day, that’s how it goes. Any questions?

Quickie Writing Tips: Establishing Shots

In  movies, it’s common for scenes to start with an establishing shot: a second or two that shows the audience where the scene will take place.

For example, if a scene is going to take place in the kitchen of a suburban house, the movie often doesn’t go there directly. Instead, the movie might start by showing an external view of the surrounding suburbs. Then when the movie cuts to the kitchen a few seconds later, you understand that the kitchen is inside a house that’s in the suburbs. Otherwise, one kitchen looks a lot like any other (at least if we’re talking modern day), so viewers may not be able to tell if it’s in a city, the country, in a desert, on the coast, wherever. The establishing shot orients the audience so that they have a better appreciation of where and when this is happening.

In fiction, quick establishing shots are also useful…but typically what you want to establish isn’t just where and when but who. Who is the viewpoint character whose experience you’re going to read about?

People connect to people. It’s as simple as that. You connect your reader to a story by connecting the reader to a character. Once in a long while, the character can be a persona assumed by the writer. When I think of writers assuming a persona, I always think of Charles Dickens and Terry Pratchett. Both have a habit of opening their books with little preambles, where the author directly addresses the reader. They basically send the message, “Sit down and let me tell you a story…”

But usually the viewpoint character is someone who actually takes part in the story. Whether the story is written in first-person or third, it’s almost always desirable to give the reader an immediate sense of who the viewpoint character is and what that person is like. Some simple examples:

I was nursing my third cup of coffee, trying to avoid going into the office because I expected I was going to be fired. This gives you an immediate feeling for what kind of person is telling the tale. You don’t know name, sex, or other particulars, but you already have a sense of personality. A connection has begun.
John Ling always hated trying to get the blood out afterward. In this case, you have a name, a probable sex (indicated by “John”), and a sense that this is someone who often experiences violence. Again, there’s the start of a connection—you don’t yet know if John is a “good guy” or “bad guy”, and you probably don’t have a lot of experience with bloodshed, but you can still sympathize with a guy who gets stuck with lousy jobs.By the way, it may be a cliche, but starting the very first sentence of a scene with the viewpoint character’s name is a damned useful technique. Hiding the character’s name seldom buys you anything. Even if you’re writing in the first person, it’s a good idea to reveal the character’s name as soon as possible.

Contrast the above openings with something like this:

It was a rainy night in Los Angeles. The headlights of cars reflected on the wet streets, occasionally accented by flashes of lightning and… 

This is the sort of establishing shot you might see in a movie—it shows the place and time—but it doesn’t connect the reader with a person. It doesn’t even present an interesting situation. Yet so many novice writers write this kind of opening. Maybe they do it because they’re used to seeing it in movies, but books and stories work differently.

People connect with people, not weather. Unless you’ve got a hell of a good reason, give the reader a person to connect with in the very first sentence. Better yet, give us a interesting person doing something interesting. That’s what makes a good establishing shot.

Half an Hour a Day

Many moons ago, I read an article by the writer Tom Robbins (or maybe just about Tom Robbins) in which he talked about keeping his brain alive. If I remember correctly, he said that he had a strict regimen:

Half an hour a day of reading poetry, since that would improve his feel for language
Half an hour a day of being outside, because he needed fresh air, plus the sights and sounds of nature
Half an hour a day of exercise, because a healthy mind needs a healthy body to sustain it
Half an hour of pornography…and we’ll just leave that one where it is.

I don’t have an urge to adopt that program exactly, but recently I started thinking about cultivating my brain a little more intentionally. So I decided to put in half an hour a day on activities that would expand my horizons and keep me sharp. I came up with a four-day cycle that I’ve been following for several weeks now:

Day One: Music. I’ve played the piano since I was a kid, and I even used to perform in coffee houses. In recent years, I’ve let that slip…but I decided to get back to playing and singing—half an hour a day, every fourth day.
Day Two: Math. I’ve loved math almost as long as I’ve been playing the piano. I adore working problems and finding answers. However, it’s been years since I tried to learn new stuff, or even reviewed old fields I ought to know cold. So I’ve begun swotting up on linear algebra, in preparation for bigger and better things. (I have several advanced books out from the University of Waterloo library, but haven’t decided which I’ll dive into once I’m back up to speed. Differential topology? Category theory? We’ll see.)
Day Three: Embroidery. I used to do a lot of embroidery while sitting in front of the television. I don’t watch TV anymore, so I’ve gotten out of the habit…but I still have plenty of cross-stitch patterns I’d love to work on, so why not start again? Embroidery is good for the brain and eye-hand coordination. I do it for half an hour every fourth day, and instead of watching TV as I stitch, I listen to podcasts. (Current faves: Writing Excuses, The Sisterhood, Hardcore History, and Revolutions.)
Day Four: Sculpture with Modeling Clay. I really wanted to do something involving visual art, but I’ve gradually come to realize that I’m not drawn to drawing, no matter how much I think I ought to be. So instead of picking up a pencil, I bought some modeling clay, took out some books from the library, and began messing around. The picture at the top of this post is one of the first things I made. I’ve ordered some simple tools, but they’re literally on a slow boat from China. When they arrive, I’ll start messing around in earnest.

There: my daily half-hour program of attempting more than the same-old same-old. So far it’s been fun. It gives me things to do away from the keyboard and computer screen. Of course, I still train in Kung Fu and go for walks every day…but moving in new directions and reviving old amusements has been invigorating.

 

Ravings

For the past few weeks, I’ve been sick: first with a cold, then with a nasty flu. During that time, it was hard to write real work…but I kept writing anyway, because that’s what I do.

I came up with the following story. Since I doubt that it’s publishable, I thought I’d post it here just for my own amusement. Consider it the raving of a fevered mind.

Discord

Zeus holds a feast, but Eris is not invited. She sneaks in anyway, and throws a golden apple into the midst of the diners.

Hermes, the fastest of the gods, snatches the apple from the air. He reads the inscription. “To the best endowed.”

Clio, Muse of History and chronicler of events on Olympus, manages a creditable “record needle scratch” sound as her quill pen jerks across the official scroll.

“Say what?” Zeus asks Hermes.

“To the best endowed,” Hermes repeats. “And she’s made a little drawing—”

“We get the picture,” Artemis interrupts.

Athena sighs. “Eris has upped her game.”

* * *

Hera says, “We all know what Eris is doing. She’s just annoyed because you wouldn’t invite her.” She glares at her husband. “And didn’t I tell you something like this would happen? But no, you thought snubbing the Goddess of Discord would be a brilliant idea!”

“She makes everyone uncomfortable,” Zeus mumbles.

“She makes you uncomfortable,” Hera says. “Because she calls you out on the rape-y shit you do.”

Ares yells, “Yo, Hermes, where you going with that apple?”

Hermes has been edging toward the exit. “I’m just, uh, going to get rid of this,” he replies. “Cuz it’s an obvious provocation, and we gods, who aren’t like totally juvenile, would never treat it seriously, right?”

“You were taking it back to your room, weren’t you?” Ares says.

“Mayyyyy-be.”

“Look, it is an obvious provocation,” Artemis says, “and since we’re all grownups here (except for Aphrodite’s date), we aren’t going to start making fools of ourselves by…guys, are you even listening to me?”

“Just hypothetically,” Zeus says, stroking his chin, “how would we go about determining such a thing?”

“You could just ask Aphrodite,” Athena says. “I imagine she’s schtupped you all, so she knows the truth.”

“Yeah, right,” Aphrodite says, glancing worriedly at Hera, “I may be indiscreet, but I’m not getting in the middle of anything like this. Ladies don’t kiss and tell.”

“Ladies,” Hera says. “Darling Aphrodite, you can be so droll.”

Hephaestus says, “I never go anywhere without a tape measure.” He pulls it out and puts it on the table. The tape measure.

Demeter grimaces. “Please, no.”

“Wrong time and place completely,” Zeus agrees, “considering how much some of us have been drinking. We should name a date for an official weigh-in, so to speak. With an impartial judge.”

“Yes, that’s not going to end badly,” says Athena. “Oh, and just FYI, there’s no frickin’ way I’m going to be judge.”

“No one asked you to,” Poseidon says. “We need someone who won’t make us shrivel.”

“Next you’ll be suggesting some beautiful fourteen-year-old virgin,” Hera says in disgust. “Someone who’ll lead you to lengths unimagined, and who’ll you’ll all just love showing your—”

“Stop!” say Artemis and Hestia in unison.

“Well, there’s this girl Helen in Sparta…” Zeus says.

“Seriously?” Hera says. “Seriously?”

“Look,” Athena says, “we all know how this will play out. You men will be too afraid to compete on your actual ‘merits’, so as soon as someone gets picked to be judge, you’ll all try to bribe them with divine interventions. The winner won’t be the one with the most inches, but whoever makes the most obscenely irresponsible offer to some poor mortal who doesn’t know that gifts from the gods always blow up in your face.”

Zeus, Ares and Poseidon exchange looks. “Works for me,” Zeus says.

“Helen then?” Poseidon suggests. “Because I’m not showing my junk to a dude.”

Hera says, “For the love of—”

“Silence, wife!” Zeus bellows.

Hera glares at him. “Fine. You deserve what you’re going to get.”

Zeus, who clearly has some cognitive deficiency, as evidenced by every story ever, thinks she’s cheering him on.

* * *

Helen of Sparta is indeed beautiful: fourteen years old, except that she looks like twenty (if you know what I mean), except that she really looks fourteen (if you know what I really mean)…so yeah, basically, god-bait.

And king-bait too: her father, Tyndareus of Sparta, raffled her off by inviting a bunch of kings to ogle her, having them each pay a fortune for the chance to compete for her, and giving her away to whoever won some nude wrestling contest (or whatever), but not before making all the suitors swear they wouldn’t get mad if they lost, and wouldn’t ask for their money back, or burn down Sparta, or rape and kill Helen out of spite. (As one does, if one isn’t forced to promise otherwise. These were, after all, kings.) Helen was won by Menelaus, and the couple ascended the throne of Sparta, reigning with co-equal power.

Just kidding. Menelaus ascended the throne, Helen got locked into a backroom of the palace, and life unfolded as per paternalistic usual on the Greek peninsula.

Until the night when a succession of gods visits Helen in her room like the worst version of A Christmas Carol ever.

Zeus is the first to arrive. He intended to be third, because it’s always the third contestant who eventually wins the prize, but Zeus has jumped the gun, as is his tradition. He shows up in the form of a platypus, since it’s one of the few animals he hasn’t done yet. He has a box of chocolates clutched in his bill, which he figures is necessary, because seriously, platypus.

Helen takes the chocolates, and begins to eat them as Zeus explains the contest. She nearly chokes to death with surprise as Zeus lays out the details.

“So you’ve come here to show me…” Helen’s voice trails off as she regards the platypus with all the dubiousness a fourteen-year-old can muster. Marsupial anatomy is not her particular study, yet she makes an educated guess that platypi are not gifted to any apple-winning extent.

“No,” Zeus says. “In deference to your tender years, I will instead offer a generous inducement to name me the winner.”

“You mean you want to bribe me to cheat?”

“Look, girl, it’s either that or I show you—”

“Right,” Helen says, “bribery it is. Induce me.”

“I offer you Power,” Zeus says, occasionally referring to notes he’s written on 3×5 index cards. “Power to rule the greatest empire this world has ever known, to command wisely and well, to live a long happy life, and to be remembered as a great and beloved monarch down through the centuries.”

“Huh.” Helen contemplates the prospect. “It doesn’t matter that I’m a girl?”

“Well…” Zeus says, not making eye contact, which is quite easy when you’re a platypus, “Option #1 would be to make you not a girl.”

“You mean turn me into a man.”

“Yes. A vigorous manly man who can crush his enemies beneath his feet and forge a legacy with the strength of his mighty arm.”

“Yeah, no,” Helen says. “That not me.”

“I realized you might say that,” Zeus replies, “for am I not the wise all-father of the gods? Option #2 is trickier, and I normally like to avoid time travel, but I could swap you into a life where you’d get the empire, the happiness, etc. in a time and place where girls wearing a crown isn’t quite so beyond the pale. Tell me, what do you think of the name Victoria?”

“You’re saying you would swap me into…wait, does that mean you’d be swapping out some other girl and putting me in her place?”

“Yes.”

“And she’d end up here as Menelaus’s wife? And spend the rest of her life as me?”

“Yes.”

“I assume she’s a terrible person and fully deserves to have her wonderful glorious life ripped away from her so I can enjoy myself in her stead?”

Zeus shrugs. “Probably? But I can’t whether she’s really good or bad because I’m basically incapable of seeing women as sapient beings.”

“Oh-kay then,” Helen says. “Inducement noted. Thank you. When you leave, please send in the next applicant.”

She thinks, They weren’t even very good chocolates.

* * *

Next comes Poseidon, smelling of the sea: briny and slightly rotten like a haddock that’s been dead for three days. This is less of a turnoff than you might expect, because Helen is a true blue Greek girl. The low-tide aroma brings back happy memories of expeditions to the seashore before men starting lining up to kidnap her, rape her, buy her from her father, etc.

Poseidon himself is an old bearded dude encrusted with barnacles, but Helen has encountered a lot of old bearded dudes encrusted with barnacles, so Day In The Life. “Are you going to bribe me too?” she asks.

“Gladly,” says Poseidon, who’s much more at ease paying women than talking to them. “I offer you all the treasure beneath the waves! Gold and jewels from every sunken ship! The fine spermaceti oil of whales! The healthful fins of sharks!”

“That’s an old wives’ tale, you know,” Helen says.

“Okay, how about rich deposits of petroleum, more valuable than gold itself? And methane clathrates? Athena keeps going on about methane clathrates. They’re going to be very big one day. And black smokers, whatever they are. You can have those too.”

“Are they cute black smokers?” Helen asks.

“They are oily plumes of sulphuric chemicals emitted by hydrothermal vents, thereby supporting unique biological communities,” Poseidon replies, trying not to sound like he’s reading off an index card. “Conceivably, some of the tube worms are cute, when viewed from a flattering angle. Or when bejazzled.”

“Okay then,” Helen says. “That’s your offer? Cash?” She nods. “I like it. Simple. To the point.”

“Good,” Poseidon says. “Now would you like to see my—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Helen says.

“It’s really no trouble,” Poseidon says.

“Leave a photo in one of the treasure chests,” Helen tells him. “If I happen to choose you. Next!”

* * *

Next is Hermes, who slips in fast in front of Ares. Hermes doesn’t have an offer, he just wanted to be third, because everyone knows that’s best. He eats all the chocolates left by Zeus, steals some of Helen’s clothing, and zips out again without saying a word.

* * *

The last in line is Ares. There are, of course, other gods in Olympus; but Hephaestus says the whole contest is shite, Dionysus is too drunk to find Greece, let alone some girl’s place in Sparta, Apollo never competes in anything he isn’t one hundred percent guaranteed to win, and of course, nobody has bothered to tell Hades there’s a contest at all, because nobody bothered to tell Hades about the original feast, or about the twenty previous feasts that Zeus has hosted, and there’s a whole Eris-to-the-power-of-OMG situation just waiting to go off like a powder keg when Hades finds out what he’s missed, but everyone kicks that one down the road a little farther because no one has ever accused the Greek pantheon of future-oriented thinking.

Ares arrives dressed in his best bronze and leather, with his hair cut short and with numerous barracks tattoos. Helen considers it a much better look than barnacles or marsupial fur. She can’t immediately think of a look that wouldn’t be better than barnacles or marsupial fur, but kudos to Ares for not finding one.

“So,” Helen says, “is this another bribe offer?”

“Well,” Ares says, “my wife wants me to call it a present, not at bribe.”

“You have a wife?” Helen asks.

“Sort of. It’s not official, but after the whole blowup with Hephaestus catching me with Aphrodite, we all cooled down and worked out an arrangement. Because Aphrodite. So she and Hephaestus and I are kind of together now, and it’s working out okay.”

Helen remains silent for a moment, then says, “I don’t know what to do with this information.”

“Well, actually, it’s going to work out well for you. I didn’t know what to get you for a present, because Aphrodite usually handles that kind of stuff—you know, remembering birthdays, clipping the toenails on Phobos and Deimos, booking me for a checkup with Asclepius once a year—so I asked her what a girl like you might want, and she said, ‘How about helping her go off somewhere nice with a person of her own choosing?’ Not another husband, unless that’s what you and he want…not even a ‘he’ if you aren’t into guys, and nobody’s saying this is even a sexual thing, just go with a friend, have some laughs…but basically this is a Get out of Sparta free card, with a full-paid two-person vacation away from Menelaus for the rest of your life.” Ares scratched his beard. “Personally, I think it sounds kind of cheap, considering that Zeus and Poseidon must have offered you, what, a gazillion drachmas, or maybe elevation into a god yourself. But Aphrodite seemed to think…”

Helen throws her arms around Ares and hugs him. “It’s a lovely gift.”

Embarrassed, Ares says, “I could sweeten the pot by killing someone for you. Your choice of whether or not he suffers.”

“No, getting out of here is all I need,” Helen says. “Except it’ll have to be someplace Menelaus won’t find me. He’ll look high and low, I know he will.”

Ares thinks for a moment, then says, “Go to Troy. I know people there; I’ll set you up. And I’ll introduce you to a few of the guys. Who knows, maybe you’ll hit it off with someone.”

Helen hugs him again. “Thanks. I declare you the winner.”

* * *

Ten years later, in the ashes of Troy, with the Age of Heroes dead and Olympus ruptured by schisms that would lead to its irrelevance, Zeus says to Ares and Poseidon, “Okay, so we pay some poet to blame this on the women, right?”

The men nod in agreement.

THE END