Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 221

Cherry Saturday 11-26-2016

Today is Shopping Reminder Day.

Like I need a reminder.

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Happy December Holiday, Here’s the Drifters

Thanksgiving is over, and it’s Christmas time, so here’s your Argh tradition:

(Full disclosure: it’s Dec. 26, 2015, as I type this, but I forgot to post this in time this year. It’s not going to happen in 2016, you betcha.)

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Thinking About Story Teams 3: Antagonists

Have I mentioned here how important an antagonist is to shaping a plot and the protagonist’s arc? I have? Huh.

Wonder why I never remember that.

So I was having fun writing Nita pretty much by the seat of my pants until I got far enough into it that it was clear it might be a book and that I was going to need a plot which meant, yep, gotta find an antagonist. (Do as I say, not as I do, Argh People.)

Except this time, I have an antagonist. Well, I have three. Well, I have three groups, one of whose leaders is probably the antagonist. Yeah, I don’t have an antagonist.

Nita wants to find out who killed Joey. I think that’s the head of the secret White Power group on the island. They’re anti-demon. Not that Joey was a demon. He just Knew Too Much. (Yes, that’s weak, I’m just starting here.)

Nick wants to find and close the hellgate and drag the demon who opened it back where he belongs. I think that’s the head of the secret Green Power group on the island. They’re anti-human.

And then there’s the Demon Firsters who are opposing Nick’s appointment as Devil back in Hell. That’s Mammon, who has Max and Sequins working for him. I don’t think they’re the antagonist and his minions but they’re going to end up on the island so they’ll be part of the conflict mix.

So that’s Nita vs. the White Power group and Nick vs. the Green Power group. Huh. Usually when my protagonist has a conflict with an antagonist, I make the hero’s separate conflict with the same antagonist so they can join forces to fight him or her. But looking at this mess, Nita and Nick are caught in the crossfire between two nutso groups fighting each other. So that’s going to take some cogitation. I can see them supporting each other in their separate battles, I just don’t see them having a common enemy. That’s not good.

Of course, a common enemy isn’t enough. He or she has to be a great common enemy.

I’m thinking of all the deplorables that Leverage fought, especially the head of the insurance agency in the first season and Victor in the pilot and fourth season finale. They were loathsome but powerful. Actually, all the Leverage bad guys were loathsome and powerful, probably because they were based on real loathsome and powerful corporations and executives who were selfish asshats. And then there was Sterling, Nate’s doppelganger antagonist, the guy who’d worked with Nate for so long that he knew every move he’d make, and who always won, or at least got what he wanted while the Leverage team walked away free because Nate knew Sterling as well as Sterling knew Nate. Sterling was a brilliant antagonist. Leverage knew how to do antagonists right.

Person of Interest was great at antagonists, too–HR, Elias, Vigilence, Root, assorted crooked CEOs and secretive government agencies, culminating in Samaritan, the computer that defeated them over and over again for the last two seasons. There was a real sense there that they were outgunned, which is really important in heightening conflict, and the last season when they were on the run, pretty much scraping themselves up from the pavement to fight back, was the most emotionally compelling of the conflicts. A great antagonist doesn’t just shape the conflict, he or she intensifies it because he or she is smarter, stronger, and better equipped than Our Team.

That’s one of the many reasons why an antagonist shapes a team. In the beginning there’s a leader with a goal, and that leader recruits or inherits a group of people with skills who may have different goals and motivations, and then he or she has to mold them into an efficient working unit. That’s probably the first act of your story, or the first half, or the first three acts, but at some point those people have to be bonded to each other, forged in a crucible that makes them a unit, and that’s where your antagonist becomes essential.

Think of Leverage pilot, the team assembled by Victor for a theft, quarreling with each other until Victor tries to kill them. Their common thirst for vengeance brings them together as a bonded fighting force for just one more job, to bring down Victor. Then Victor is hauled off to prison, and the team realizes they had a good time and want to keep working together, at which point their antagonist is Nate, who says, no, he doesn’t work with thieves. The end of the pilot is three of the team following him down the street, arguing with him to keep them together until they come up to the deal clincher, Sophie, who pretty much seduces Nate into sticking with them, right there in broad daylight. The team defeats the last antagonist and goes off to grind the bones of bad guys for the next five years because first Victor and then Nate made them fight for the team. Every job the team pulls shapes them further, deepens the relationships within the teams, strengthens the bonds that make them sacrifice for each other, and arcs the individual characters in concert with the character of the team. When they come full circle to face Victor again in the Season Four finale, it isn’t just organic, it’s a final test of the team, forcing them to bring in doppelgangers to pull the biggest con of their team’s career. Victor shaped them in the beginning, and he proofs them in the end. That’s a great use of an antagonist in a team story.

The key is, the reader/viewer has to respect the antagonist, consider him or her a real threat, stronger than Our Team. That’s why the Comic Antagonist makes for such a weak story (unless the whole story is farce, in which case, never mind). A weak antagonist shapes a flabby narrative.

Oh, and one more thing: an antagonist should be as fascinating at the protagonist, as complex and layered and real as the person who drives the narrative. Like this:

Which brings us to Legends of Tomorrow, and the immortal Vandal Savage, Destroyer of Empires and the Worst Villain Ever. This is a guy who needs red light bulbs to create a sense of menace.

I’m using Villain instead of Antagonist because Savage keeps twirling his mustache as he ties different team members to the train tracks. He lurches through the first season of Legends bragging about how he’s pals with Jack the Ripper and Joseph Stalin and playing Psych 101 games with the team, many of whom evidently never took Psych 101. Also he’s immortal, so the fact that they keep killing him is meaningless. At some point, one of them should say, “Shouldn’t we figure out a way to kill an immortal that doesn’t rely on the Hawks because they’ve blown it 206 times?” Sara, who’s studied a million ways to kill people with the League of Assassins? Stein with his three PhDs and nuclear capabilities? Why do they keep doing the same dumb things? Savage doesn’t so much shape the team as confuse it, which is why the Legends team is a complete mess until the end when they find out that the reason they’ve so incompetent is that they’ve been used as puppets, a realization that drives one of their to die to save them. That death sends them into the last episode as a single fighting unit, which Rip Hunter, the Worst Team Leader Ever, splits into three parts. Also a problem: The team member who dies isn’t killed by Savage or even the soporific Time Master who’s been manipulating them; he dies shutting down a source of power for the bad guys of his own volition in part to save the team but also because he’s really mad about being played. It’s a powerful death, but it’s only a step in bringing down Vandal I’m-Best-Buds-With-Hitler Savage, whose subsequent triple-slaying feels like an anti-climax.

Legends had a lot of first season problems–let me count the ways–but a lot of them would have been solved with a decent antagonist (Damian Dahrk was right there, too).

So a good team antagonist . . .

• is a fascinating character who is stronger and smarter than the team leader and the team as a whole

• shapes the team by pushing back against it and unites it by giving the members common goals and motivations

• tests the team by trying to divide them and forcing them to work together to solve whatever puzzle he presents

• forges the team in a final obligatory scene/battle that makes them work as one.

Or something like that.

So Nita’s antagonist has to be so dangerous that Nick’s demon team unites with Nita’s human team to take him or her down. And so smart that they have trouble doing that and must learn to trust each other and rely on each other’s skills in order to prevail. Hmmmm.

Back to cogitating.

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Legends of Tomorrow Binge Watch

AG made me look at the Legends of Tomorrow dynamics more closely, and now I want to do a one-week binge watch. (That’s Killer, Klepto, Pryo over there in the logo.) The first season is on Netflix so if you want to watch along and you have that, you’re good. Expect a lot of bitching from me about Hawks and a truly awful antagonist, plus Rip Hunter, Worst Team Leader Ever. So why do I want to do this? I think this is a great series to look at because it fails so badly at team-building in some aspects and succeeds so brilliantly in others. Leverage is the gold standard in team story-telling, but I think I’m learning more from Legends.

So here’s the plan:

Monday November 28: Episodes 1 and 2: “Pilot”

Let’s talk about how to start a team by giving them a common goal and the importance of a powerful leader.

Right,this is the Legends pilot. Let’s just wargame how we’d fix this.

We’re skipping Episode 3 “Blood Ties,” although watching Sara take out a bank lobby full of suited thugs and Snart and Mick steal an emerald is fun.

Tuesday November 29: Episodes 4 “White Knights” and 5 “Fail-Safe”

The team invades the Soviet Union during the Cold War so Wentworth Miller can say, “This is not my first prison break.”

And we’ll look at character arcs and beginning relationships, good and bad (Hawks).

We’re skipping Episode 6 “Star City 2046” because it’s mostly Arrow fan service. One key story point: Mick loves the lawlessness of this year and decides to stay; Snart knocks him out and drags him back on board the ship. That’s gonna leave a mark.

Wednesday November 30: Episode 7 “Marooned”

Because Time Pirates. Also Mick is still upset about being dragged out of 2046. Snart thinks he’ll get over it. No, no he won’t.

Let’s talk about how much easier it is to arc character and forge team alliances when the team is forced to work together because they’re under attack.

We’re skipping Episode 8 “Night of the Hawk” even though Sara gets a girlfriend and Jax turns into a winged monster, all very good value, because it’s mostly Savage Hawk stuff. Episode 9 “Left Behind” gets ducked because it’s mostly Ray/Kendra angsty stuff. Episode 10 “Progeny” gets skipped because because it’s Rip and Savage stuff in a “Let’s kill Baby Hitler” plot that makes no sense. This may have been the stretch where I dumped the series and didn’t watch the end. Mistake.

Thursday December 1: Episode 11 “The Magnificent Eight” and Episode 12 “Last Refuge”

First a Western, then the team goes back to rescue themselves as kids.

One of the biggest reasons to build a team is the fun you can have with it, and both of these episodes are fun (fast forward past the Hawks). Let’s argue about what’s entertaining here and why, and what’s just annoying.

We’re skipping Episode 13 “Leviathon” because it’s Savage-heavy and much of the action makes you think the team is made up of morons, although Ray does get to battle a giant robot, and Snart and Savage have this now-memed exchange:

Savage: “Who are you to stand against me, Vandal Savage, destroyer of Empires!”

Snart: “Leonard Snart, robber of ATMs.”

Friday December 2: Episode 14 “River of Time,” 15 “Destiny,” and 15 “Legendary.”

Bonding a team in a final fight. Kinda.

Looking at all five of those story team definition points to see if they hold up and if Legends finally succeeds. Also, we can brainstorm fixes for Season Two (eight episodes of which will have already aired, so there may be cheating).

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving for Americans, but the rest of the world is not eating turkey while arguing politics so the story-teams-and-antagonists post will probably go up then. If your family is like mine, antagonists will fit the day beautifully anyway, says the only Democrat in a family of Republicans who think Nixon was framed.

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Thinking About Story Teams: Part Two: Four Teams

My reference points for this story team analysis have been many and varied, but the three I’ll hit the most often in these discussions are Person of Interest, Leverage, and Legends of Tomorrow. Since we’ve binge-watched the first two here, I’m going to assume most regular readers have at least a general idea of how those teams work even if they haven’t seen the series; I’m using Legends because it’s such a sterling example of what not to do coupled with a great team hidden inside the dysfunctional larger team; I can often learn a lot more by figuring out what didn’t work than what did. Think of the following as my practice jumps before turning to Nita’s team.

Needless to say there are MASSIVE SPOILERS IN THIS ESSAY. And the shows I’m talking about are really good; you should watch first. The post isn’t that great and it’s really long and probably redundant, which is what happens when I think out loud on paper. You’re not missing anything. Go watch good story.

LEVERAGE

1. A team has a common goal that unites them

In Leverage, in the beginning, it’s because Nate offers four solo crooks a chance to do what they do best within a team framework that enhances their skills. When they follow him down the street at the end of the pilot, they’re asking him to keep them together because they had fun and they want to do it again. When Nate points out that he’s not a criminal, Sophie tells him to find them some criminals to scam; they don’t care who the marks are, they just want to have fun. The rest of the first season is the individual members of the team evolving and with those evolutions come personal goals–Eliot wants to make up for the evil he’s done, Hardison wants to be part of something bigger, Parker wants to be able to pass for sane–and they all want the sense of purpose they’ve gotten from saving people. By the end of the first season, it does matter who the marks are.

I think that “sense of purpose” may be the single most defining element of a team goal: “We came together because it’s our purpose in life to do this thing.” Just as individuals become happier and healthier when they find their true paths in life, so do teams.

2. Team members should have sets of skills that complement each other and are directly useful in attaining that goal, no overlaps.

Leverage really is the gold standard here. Nate’s the mastermind, not just because he’s smart but because as a former insurance investigagor, he’s been chasing all of them for years. Now that he’s on the other side, he really knows their skills and their weaknesses, but he also knows how to use them to best advantage while circumventing the law. He really is the mastermind. Oddly enough, he doesn’t choose his team; his nemesis Victor chooses Parker the thief, Hardison the hacker, and Elliot the hitter, and Nate makes it clear in the beginning that he would not have chosen these three because they work alone and because Parker is insane. So the first half of the pilot is Nate trying to patch three rebellious loners together into a crew long enough to pull one job. When the reversal comes and they decide to band together for vengeance, Nate brings in the only member of the team that he chooses: Sophie, the grifter, the one skill that was missing from the original team because Victor was the one pulling the con.

The clear delineation of skills means that the team works smoothly; if somebody needs conned, they send in Sophie; if they need a pocket picked, Parker goes without argument; if it’s a computer problem, everybody turns to Hardison; and if muscle shows up, it’s Eliot on deck. Nobody fights for favor or argues about who should do what part of the job. This is why the original design of a story team is so essential: it cuts through a lot of crap that would slow down the action of the story.

3. Team members should have individual character arcs that are echoed in the character arc of the team as a whole.

Much of the fun in Leverage is watching the team work together, but that goes back to our attachment to the damaged people that make up that team and the way working together helps to alleviate the pain of the individual characters. Eliot is haunted by past crimes; working with the team to save innocents, working to save the team in times of trouble, Eliot finds himself again in a new sense of purpose. Hardison began life as a foster child with a fierce foster mother; he finds family and direction working with a team that lets him showcase his talents and gives him a sense of purpose beyond I’m-really-good-at-this-isn’t-this-fun in using them. Parker’s another foster child, her attachment and relationship skills stunted by abuse; in the safe shelter of the team that protects her like a little sister, she finds her feet and comparable sanity and something she’s never had before: that sense of purpose. Sophie and Nate are older; working with the team shocks them out of their ruts and gives them a new sense of purpose: they’re the adults watching over three talented but damaged children, heading up the family business, Leverage Inc. Parker’s leap off the building into Sophie’s arms in the first season finale is fun to watch on its own, but the emotional impact comes from Parker’s fearless leap into the arms of a mother who will finally save her, not desert her. It’s a character arc completed in one action sequence and probably my favorite in the entire series.

4. Develop individual relationships within the team that keep them from being cogs in a machine.

The Sophie/Parker mother/daughter relationship isn’t the only one that matures over the course of the series. Nate, the bereaved father, clearly sees Hardison as a son, giving Hardison the father he never had; his mentoring, scolding, praising, loving relationship with the hacker is an integral part of the show’s emotional bedrock. The Eliot/Hardison nobody-hits-my-brother-but-me relationship isn’t just entertaining, it’s the focus of several stories and the clearest demonstration of both men’s emotional arcs. Romances in action shows are often there because, hey, romance, but Parker’s ability to trust and attach to Hardison is more than just a rom com, and the Nate-Sophie romance only works once they’ve both moved past what they once were and become who they were meant to be (which, bonus, also makes Sophie a good actress). All of these individual relationships fuel the team/family relationship as a whole. At the end, when the three younger Leverage members go off to start Leverage International, there’s no sense that the team is fractured because of all the interpersonal relationships. You know they’ll be together at the holidays, that their kids will call Nate Grandpa, that Sophie will be teaching the next generation to act and grift, and that Eliot will always protect them all because it isn’t just the team that binds them, it’s the inter-relationships within the team that make them a family.

5. Have a leader who deserves to be the leader, whose world view and focus gives the team its identity.

Nate may be an arrogant drunk, but the Leverage team follows his orders because they know through experience that he sees the Big Picture and he will always save them if something goes wrong. He designs the con using everybody’s skills to the best effect, and deals with setbacks as they come because he has a Plan B. And C, D, E, F, and G (Hardison dies in Plan G). Add to that, he’s the only one of them who isn’t a criminal, so he becomes their moral center. Even at the end of season two, when he finally accepts who he is and says, “My name is Nate Ford and I’m a thief,” he’s still their moral touchstone. If Nate says it’s wrong, it’s wrong, and nobody argues. That’s a great leader.

And now I want to watch Leverage again.

PERSON OF INTEREST

1. A team has a common goal that unites them

The common goal in PoI comes about because Finch and then Reese organically assemble people who need redemption. Finch chooses Reese and tells him that he’s offering him a sense of purpose because he’s lost his way. Reese brings in Fusco, a cop who turned to corruption through bitterness at the unfairness of the world; Finch offers him a chance to make things fair again on a case-by-case basis, giving him a chance to be a good guy again. Finch draws in Carter, an honest cop working in a force riddled with corruption; he shows her the way to work outside the law to protect it, saving the innocents that gave her a sense of purpose as a by-the-book cop. Shaw loses her way when her employers betray her and murder her partner; Finch offers her a chance to do what she’s best at outside the system, giving her that sense of purpose she was beginning to lose in the face of the corruption. Root begins as an antagonist and becomes part of the team because she loves the Machine and can see the coming apocalypse that the others will fight with her to prevent. The Machine Gang in the end is united by that sense of purpose, the clear knowledge that they can make a difference, and because they’re united, they evolve from saving individuals to saving the world, at least for now.

2. Team members should have sets of skills that complement each other and are directly useful in attaining that goal, no overlaps.

One of PoI‘s few weaknesses was that they incorporated team members with redundant skills. You want a computer genius? Finch and Root. You want somebody who will kill without hesitation? Reese and Shaw. You want somebody with no moral boundaries? Shaw and Root. You want a good cop? Carter and Fusco. You want somebody driven by lost love? Finch and Reese. You want . . . well, you get the picture. I wouldn’t want to lose any of these characters because I love them all, but looking at them simply as a set of skills, they weaken the team construct. If you think of them as a set of planned redundancies they work a little better, but even then PoI overcompensates. Carter dies, and Reese becomes Second Cop. Root dies and the Machine becomes Root. Given the dangerous tasks they take on, the redundancy makes sense from a practical standpoint, not so much from a story standpoint. Having said that, I want all of these characters to thrive onscreen for as long as possible even if they do gum up the works.

3. Team members should have individual character arcs that are echoed in the character arc of the team as a whole.

The arcs in PoI are strong and radical, some of them 180 degrees, none more so than Fusco who begins a corrupt cop capable of murder and ends the heart of the series, the guy who says to the man who murdered the partner he loved, “I’m not going to kill you; she made me better than that.” The damaged Root moves from heartless con woman to a partner who dies to save the man she knows will save the world. Emotionally stunted Shaw moves from cold killer to the passionate defender of a young girl and the passionate lover of a woman as damaged as she is. None of these transformations is fast or unbelievable–at the end Fusco will still put a body in a trunk to save the team and Shaw is in a committed relationship with a computer–but they are still transformations, earned through pain and joy and action throughout the series. Finch learns to trust, Reese learns to love, Root learns compassion, and all of those arcs are echoed in the arc of the team, which moves from Finch and Reese in a cold partnership saving individuals to Finch, Reese, Root, Shaw, and Fusco all willing to die for each other, bonded together in a team that will save the world.

4. Develop individual relationships within the team that keep them from being cogs in a machine.

Finch and Reese may be the pair that begins the Machine Gang, but as the others are slowly added, individual relationships become the interlocking web that keeps the team going through tragedy and defeat. The bond that Reese and Carter form frees Carter by giving her the unconditional back-up she’s never had and almost destroys Reese when Carter dies. Carter and Fusco’s partnership gives her the same thing; Fusco coming through for her in the safe house with the mob bosses is a major turning point not just in their characters but also in their relationship, a bond that becomes transformational in its impact on Fusco. Root’s admiration for Finch may be based in awe at his computer genius but it manifests itself as love when she sacrifices herself for him at the end. Shaw’s emotional detachment melts when it meets Root’s manic drive; their love saves Shaw from torture and transforms them both. And there’s no greater relationship arc than the emotionally detached Reese dying with a smile on his face because he’s saving Finch, the man who saved him, and the distress and acceptance on Finch’s face as he leaves Reese to his fate, knowing that Reese needs to pay that debt. At the end of PoI most of the team is dead, and their leader has gone to Rome to reclaim his one true love, but Fusco and Shaw keep the team alive with the Machine in the lead, still insulting each other affectionately, both of them committed to taking care of the dog. The team survives because the team members made personal bonds that transcend even death.

5. Have a leader who deserves to be the leader, whose world view and focus gives the team its identity.

Finch chooses Reese and then slowly admits him into his confidence. Reese chooses Fusco and Carter, and then Finch slowly admits them into his confidence. Finch sends Reese to save Shaw and then waits until she’s ready to join the Gang. Only Root inserts herself into the Gang by kidnapping Finch, and even then, it’s Finch who unlocks the door to the library and invites her to join them in order to save Reese. The rest of the team has highs and lows, uncertainties and fears, but Finch has already reached bottom and so his sense of purpose is steadfast, a sense of purpose that gradually communicates itself to the rest of the team. This is what they do, this is their purpose, he tells them: They save people. The Machine Gang may not like everything Finch tells them to do or not do (“Stop killing people, Miss Shaw”), but they follow him because he designed the system and assembled the team for that single purpose they all accept, and because he’s their moral compass. And in the end the team that remains follows Finch’s successor, his child, the Machine, continuing that purpose in a chaotic but free new world.

And now I want to watch Person of Interest again.

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW

(NOTE: The above team picture is missing Stein, Jax, and Rip; if you can’t get your whole team into one picture, that’s a clue you have too damn many team members.)

1. A team has a common goal that unites them

At the beginning of Legends: Rip assembles a group of people and shows them the future as a burning wasteland created by the immortal Vandal Savage (worst antagonist name ever). They can change that future, he tells them, and in so doing they will become legends, their names remembered forever in the future. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Rip is lying in his teeth, let’s look at how bad he is at leading a team. After his big speech . . .

• Snart and Mick walk off, unimpressed; they decide to join later for their own goal of robbing the past through time travel. Screw the future.

• Stein goes for the knowledge he can attain and the historical figures he might meet. Screw the future.

• Jax refuses to go; he ends up on board the ship because Stein drugs him because he can’t go without him. Screw the future.

• Ray goes because he wants to be remembered as a legend. Rip’s con works on him.

• Sara goes for the adventure and to save her city in the future. Rip’s con works on her.

• The Hawks go to defeat Savage, although Carter has to beat Kendra in a fight to get her to go. Rip’s con works because Carter know Savage is coming for them anyway.

So Snart, Mick, Kendra, and Jax refuse the call. Sara and Carter accept for personal reasons. Mick and Snart accept for greed. Ray accepts because he wants to be a legend.

Nice team you got there, Rip. Good luck with those multiple goals.

Okay, no team begins as a unified entity; teams need to evolve over time. In fact, one of the pleasures of reading about a team is seeing how it comes together, a kind of multi-player romance story in which the way the relationships among the members are built foreshadows the team’s future success. But on the first season of Legends, too many people with too many goals made a hash of the team concept. Instead, teams formed within the team. Sara, Snart, and Mick became Killer, Klepto, Pyro not through any conscious decision but because they were the three who were the most practical and the ones most willing to cross moral lines to get things done. They were also, not surprisingly, the most effective and most popular of the group. Stein and Jax worked out their father/son power issues and became the working team that was already Firestorm. Kendra and Carter tried to work out their relationship which was tough because Kendra couldn’t remember her past lives, and then Carter died (207) and she was left on her own, still whining about the way her life changed without her permission (she didn’t ASK to be a demi-goddess). Ray wandered around trying to attach to everybody and ended up in a doomed romance with Kendra, a woman he knew was fated to be with another guy (reincarnated 206 times, Ray, and always ends up with the same guy). The team only becomes a team in the last two episodes when Rip’s lie is revealed, further compounded by the betrayal of the Time Masters. At that point, the team comes together to save itself, a common goal at last, and then to gain vengeance for the death of one of its own. There’s a reason the last episodes of the first season are the best: they’re finally about a team.

Now contrast that with the second season: Sara’s in charge with a clear goal: save the timeline from anomalies. She invites the others along with a clear sense of purpose: They’ll replace the Time Masters and save the world. Those who accept–Stein, Jax, Ray, and Mick–accept knowing that’s the mission. The new members, Nate and Amaya, are told that’s the mission from the beginning. There are still too damn many team members, but they’re all working together for the same goal that they’re all committed to, which is why the new season in infinitely better.

2. Team members should have sets of skills that complement each other and are directly useful in attaining that goal, no overlaps.

God knows why Rip picked these people. He even tells Mick the only reason he’s along is because it’s the only way he could get Snart. Why he wants Snart is a mystery since his plan is to kill Savage and Snart’s a thief. So here’s the team Rip assembles in Season One:

Kendra: Flies and can kill Vandal Savage (has tried and failed 206 times).

Carter: Flies and can kill Vandal Savage (has tried and failed 206 times).

Ray: Flies and is a physicist.

Stein: Flies and is a physicist.

Jax: Flies and is an auto mechanic.

Snart: Thief who freezes things.

Mick: Thief who burns things.

Sara: Assassin.

Okay, your goal is to kill the immortal Vandal Savage. You’d want one of the greatest assassins in the world (Sara) and the two demi-gods who are psychically linked to Savage and who may be the only people who can end his immortality )the Hawks). Now explain to me the physicists, the auto mechanic, and the thieves. Yes, the physicist and the auto mechanic can fuse to become a nuclear weapon, and the other physicist built a suit that allows him to shrink to the size of an atom, but since Savage is immortal, you really don’t need that fire power. If there was some totem or amulet that gave Savage his power, then the thieves would make sense, but nope.

Now look at the second season:

Sara: Leader, assassin, and general badass.

Mick: Time travel expert, thief, muscle.

Stein: Physicist, can fly.

Jax: Time ship mechanic, can fly.

Ray: Physicist, grounded without his suit.

Nate: Historian, can turn to steel.

Amaya: Channels animal spirits to transform herself, general badass.

The goal this season is to monitor the time lines, find where anomalies are happening (bad people messing with time for criminal ends) and go stop them. Everybody on the team, with the possible exception of the now grounded Ray, is going to be useful in fighting bad guys, and once Ray finds himself again, I’m sure a new skill will crop up. The only real problem this team has is that when Stein and Jax fuse to become the nuclear weapon Firestorm, they pretty much make everybody else redundant, something the show hand waves away. Rip’s gone missing so he can film Broadchurch, but he’s not missed because he’s not necessary; Sara is a vastly better leader. Snart, on the other hand, is a grievous loss because amoral brains in a master thief are always useful, and he was an exceptional cold-blooded Lancer to Sara’s Leader. The team still has doubles–Ray and Nate are both goofy innocents, so we could lose one of them, and Sara and Amaya are both kickass fighters, although I’m okay with that one, we need more badass women on film, but at least they’re all working together toward a common goal and consider themselves a team instead of being told they’re one.

3. Team members should have individual character arcs that are echoed in the character arc of the team as a whole.

First season Legends gave its characters arcs, but it did that through their individual relationships, not through the actions of the team.

Stein and Jax change each other, develop an understanding of each other, and grow closer, giving Stein the son he never had and Jax the father he lost and making them both healthier and more valuable to the team.

Sara arcs from rebel in search of adventure to sober leader in search of time anomalies.

Snart arcs from bad guy to hero, his death the capstone of the second most compelling arc of the series.

The most compelling arc belongs to Mick, who evolves from mindless, amoral pyromaniac to intelligent, caring thug, which moves him from comic relief to fully realized, complex character.

The rest of the team is pretty much treading water. Ray loses Kendra in Season One and his suit in Season Two, setting him up for tremendous character growth, but Ray is still just Ray, dealing with insecurities in spite of being a billionarie genius who looks like Brandon Routh, one of the reasons that even though he’s goofy and lovable, he’s not a character that evokes a passionate response in the viewer/reader. Rip is still angry and secretive and now missing but not missed. Kendra and Carter few off at the end of last season, pretty much the same people they were when they flew in, and again, nobody misses them.

4. Develop individual relationships within the team that keep them from being cogs in a machine.

Because the Legends team is so fragmented, they stay reluctant and rebellious cogs in Rip’s machine until the last episodes. The Leverage team in the beginning is having a good time while saving the innocent; in the end, they’re saving the innocent, which also happens to be their idea of a good time. The Machine Gang begins as individuals trying to save individuals, by the end they become a world of their own trying to save the world. The first season finale of Legends, in contrast, begins with all those different motivations and ends by splitting the team into three groups in three different time periods to do the same thing; even though they’re finally united by a common goal and the loss of a team member, they’re still not really a team. The true team within the team, Killer, Klepto, Pyro, gets the real climax, rescuing the others and taking out the Oculus Rift that negates free will, their fierce independence as a group and interdependence on each other freeing the rest of the world from the Time Master’s control at the end because one of the three is willing to die to save the other two (and the world). I think one of the reasons Sara, Snart, and Mick were the MVPs of the first season of Legends is because they formed a unit to rebel against Rip, the guy who turned out to be lying to them and flat out states that he’d sacrifice them all to save his family. The emotional arcs of the three characters, the relationship arcs of Sara and Snart, Snart and Mick, and even Sara and Mick fuses them into a true team with clear goals and clear motivations in the middle of muddy and often ridiculous story. Snart in particular arced through relationships; he grows close to Sara and tries to initiate a romantic relationship (“I’ve been thinking about what the future might hold for me. And you. And me and you” might not sound romantic, but boy, it is), he takes Mick from the team when he becomes a danger to them all, saves Mick from sacrificing himself at the end because he’s a brother, and earns a kiss from Sara before he dies. If Legends had been Killer, Klepto, Pyro, it would have been a much better story.

5. Have a leader who deserves to be the leader, whose world view and focus gives the team its identity.

Unfortunately for the team, Rip is lying in his teeth; he does want them to stop the bad guy who burns the future, but it’s to save his wife and child. Also, in the future, nobody knows who they are. It’s all a con. So Rip does things no good leader does: he insults his team, he lies to them, he manipulates them, and he uses them for his own selfish ends, telling Sara at one point that he’d sacrifice them all to save his family. That’s human, but it’s lousy team leadership. In return, some of the team doesn’t trust him, and most of them don’t follow his orders. When Rip says, “I’d like to remind you that I’m in charge here,” Snart says, “I remember, I just don’t care.” A leader can’t order people to respect him or her and, outside of the military, a leader can’t order people to follow him or her. The leader has to earn that, which is another reason most story teams are built up over time. Watching a team come together is a kind of love story, and the connection is that much more powerful if we witness it instead of just being told it exists. And the single most important thing in pulling a team together is a strong leader. Contrast Rip in Season One with Sara in Season Two; she connects with each member of the team, she makes their missions clear and motivated, she listens to their concerns, she never lies to them, and she protects them at all costs. So early in Season Two when Mick turns to the team at the end of a battle and says, “Sara says it’s time to go back to the ship,” they all go immediately. She’s the leader, and Season Two is turning out to be good, if still ridiculously out there, storytelling.

So what have I learned from this?

THE DEVIL IN NITA DODD

1. A team has a common goal that unites them

Right off the bat, I have a problem.

Nita wants to find Joey’s killer. It’s Mort’s and Button’s jobs to do the same thing, so they have a united sense of purpose.

Nick wants to close the hellgate. It’s Dag and Rab’s job to help him, so they have a united sense of purpose.

If whoever opened the gates or is guarding the gates is the same as whoever ordered Joey killed, they can combine to fight a common enemy, a plot move I really like.

I just don’t know why anybody would do both of those. Or one of those. ANTAGONIST PROBLEM.

2. Team members should have sets of skills that complement each other and are directly useful in attaining that goal, no overlaps.

Nita’s a cop.

Button’s a cop and a sharpshooter.

Mort’s a doctor/medical examiner who is also a self-taught demon expert.

Nick’s a fixer, Devil-elect

Dag’s a fixer/demon.

Rab’s an Earth Studies expert/demon.

I can see potential there, and even better I can see room for assigning different traits, but mostly I can’t see a pattern because I don’t know what they’re fighting. ANTAGONIST PROBLEM. I can see that Nita’s team is well-equipped to find Joey’s killer and that Nick’s team is well-equipped to close a hellgate, I just can’t see the larger problem. Because I’m not sure what the larger problem is. ANTAGONIST PROBLEM.

3. Team members should have individual character arcs that are echoed in the character arc of the team as a whole.

Nita’s going to find out that she’s not what she thinks is, which is going to explain a whole lot about her previous life, allowing her to arc into a new, more powerful one.

Nick, who is dead, is going to evolve back toward life again, becoming more than he was before when he was living (but staying dead, I think).

The rest, I hadn’t really thought about their arcs. They’ll have to have them, but I think they’ll be informed by the relationships they make and their struggles to achieve their goal of defeating . . . ANTAGONIST PROBLEM.

4. Develop individual relationships within the team that keep them from being cogs in a machine.

Nita and Nick will become lovers (duh, romance novel) which will transform both their lives.

Dag’s in love with Daphne, which will arc him into a new life.

I’m sure the others will develop relationships . . . crap.

5. Have a leader who deserves to be the leader, whose world view and focus gives the team its identity.

This is where Nita has to step up. She is moral and determined and smart, and she’ll never lie to her team, but I don’t know what her plan is because I’m still not clear on who she’s opposing. ANTAGONIST PROBLEM.

I think tomorrow I’ll look at the impact of antagonists on teams.

The post Thinking About Story Teams: Part Two: Four Teams appeared first on Argh Ink.

Thinking About Story Teams: Part One: Definition

I’ve been thinking about fictional teams a lot because I’m writing one. Krissie was here this week, and we were arguing discussing the idea, and she pointed out that the theory depends on how I define “story team” or, in fact, how I define “team” in general. Since I’m also disagreeing with TV Tropes on their discussion of TV teams as a five-man-band (let’s start with that name, shall we?), I figured it was time to define my term.

Here’s my definition of “team” in story:

A team is a group of people who

1. Have a common goal that unites them.

2. Have a set of skills that complement each other and are directly useful in attaining that goal, no redundancies.

3. Have individual character arcs that create the character arc of the team as a whole.

4. Develop individual relationships within the team that keep them from being cogs in a machine.

5. Have a leader who deserves to be the leader, whose world view and focus gives the team its identity.

And then not as part of a story definition in general, but as part of my preference in teams:

Are diverse in gender, race, and sexuality, avoiding stereotypes (looking at you, TV Tropes with your “Chick” designation).

I had written a huge post with lots of examples, but I think to start this argument discussion, I’ll just stick to those five things. Then tomorrow I’ll do a post that analyzes three very different TV teams and my brainstorming for Nita’s team. Why not books, you ask? Because the book series that I’ve read don’t have teams. They have communities which are very different things, in spite of the post I put a couple of years ago that discussed teams and communities as if they were the same thing. A good team is also a community, but many communities are not teams. Why not?

1. Most communities do not have a common goal that unites them. They’re groups of people that share a geographic location and possibly some other circumstance that brings them together (they’re in a workplace, they’re in a family, they’re in school, etc.) but they feel no allegiance to one overwhelming, common goal.

2. Most communities do not have a set of skills that complement each other. Some workplaces might have people with common skills–they’re all teachers, they’re all salespeople–but the members weren’t chosen because each had a separate but complementary skill.

3. Most story communities are made up of people that have individual character arcs, but those arcs usually don’t create the character arc of the community as a whole. When they do, the story is most likely horror, “The Lottery” or “Children of the Corn.”

4. Most community stories develop individual relationships within the community, but these can weaken the community as often as they reinforce it.

5. Most communities have a leader, deserving or not, who tries to impress his or her world view on the community to give it its identity. If the community doesn’t have a common goal to unite them, the harder the leader tries to impose his personal goals, the more likely the community is to rebel.

So what makes a story team?

1. A team has a common goal that unites them

“We’re going to save people about to be murdered.”

“We’re going to stop corrupt people from preying on the weak.”

“We’re going to stop an immortal madman from destroying the world.”

In single protagonist stories, the protagonist’s goal drives the action. In team stories, the team goal fuels the story. In both cases, the individual passion behind the goal determines the emotional strength of the plot. In team stories, it usually begins with the leader’s passion for his project–Finch is driven to save people after his horrified realization that his rejection of Nathan’s plan kept him from preventing Nathan’s death; Nate’s inability to save his son from corporate greed drives him to take down the corrupt whenever he can, Rip’s grief and guilt over his family’s deaths drives him to try to erase Savage from the time line in order to save them. But at some point, the team as a whole has to accept that goal as their own, care about it as much as the leader does. Until then, they’re just a group of people working for a boss.

Therefore when constructing a story team, you can start with the leader’s goal, but keep in mind that everybody on the team is going to have to care as much about that goal as the leader does by the last act.

2. Team members should have sets of skills that complement each other and are directly useful in attaining that goal, no redundancy.

The whole point of a team, any team, is to tackle a project, be it swindling a grifter or saving the world. Teams therefore need the skills for that particular project. It doesn’t matter how good a team member is at physics if the problem doesn’t require a physicist. The gold standard in teams for me will always be Leverage, and the showrunners there didn’t mess around, identifying team members by their skills in the show’s posters: Mastermind/Brains, Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Thief. PoI’s beginning team was pretty much Brains and Brawn. The functioning team within the dysfunctional Legends team went by Killer, Klepto, Pyro. Labeling team members like this isn’t a dumbing down of characters; all of those labeled characters are complex and compelling. It’s a capsule description of the strengths and skills of each member, and listing them helps you see why they’re an effective team: They need each other’s skills to accomplish their goals.

Therefore when constructing a story team, identifying each team member by his or her skill set and listing them together can tell you if your team is a coherent group with complementary skills or just a bunch of people who can do random stuff.

3. Team members should have individual character arcs that are echoed in the character arc of the team as a whole.

While it may seem that we attach to a team because team stories are most interesting when the team is working together, if we don’t care about the team members as individual characters first, we won’t care about the team as a whole. Beyond that, if we care about the individual characters, but their characters and character arcs don’t inform the team, they’re not a team, they’re a community. The Leverage team began as five damaged people who preferred to work alone; each character’s arc was different in the way he or she learned not only to trust each other but also to value and protect the group as a whole, and those individual arcs were echoed in the arc of the team from strangers to working partners to family.

Therefore, when tracing the character arcs of the individuals in the team, it’s important to pull back and see how those arcs taken together also arc the team’s character.

4. Team members should develop individual relationships within the team that keep them from being cogs in the team machine.

This goes hand in hand with character arcs: One of the ways we develop character in fiction is through the relationships that character forms, how he or she acts in regard to other people, how other people react to him or her. So the members of your team may pair off in skilled partnerships that supersede the team (Nate/Eliot), in pseudo-parental relationships (Sophie/Parker, Nate/Hardison), in sibling relationships (Eliot/Hardison), in romantic relationships (Nate/Sophie, Parker/Hardison), or any kind of relationship you can devise. If those interlocking bonds within the team are acknowledged and respected by the team, they strengthen it and make it more effective.

Therefore, after you’ve analyzed your individual arcs, look at how each member of the team reacts to every other member of the team. That’s where your team dynamics, weaknesses, and strengths will play out in your story. (This is the place where large team stories start to come unglued; it’s just too damn many relationships.)

5. A strong team has a leader who deserves to be the leader, whose world view and focus gives the team its identity.

The leader, in this case, is the person on the team that people follow, not necessarily the designated person in charge, although it simples things up considerably if the designated leader is also the person everybody follows. The Machine Gang may not like everything Finch tells them to do or not do (“Stop killing people, Miss Shaw”), but they follow him because he’s the one who designed the system and assembled the team and because he’s their moral compass. Nate may be an arrogant drunk, but the Leverage team follows his orders because they know through experience that he sees the Big Picture and he will always save them if something goes wrong. These leaders deserve to be leaders because they have earned the respect of their teams.

Therefore your team leader (who is probably your protagonist but not always) has to appear to the reader or viewer to be the natural team leader, the one with the good plan who commands the respect and loyalty of the rest of the team.

Those are the five guidelines I’m going to use to analyze Nita’s team, which at present has nine members. Yes, that is too many. That’s why I’m analyzing sucessful teams. So tomorrow’s post is looking at four teams–Leverage’s Leverage Inc., Person of Interest‘s Machine Gang, Legends of Tomorrow‘s Waverider crew, and Nita’s assortment of humans, demons, and devils–to figure out where they succeed and where they fail as story teams.

Next:

Story Teams Part Two: Four Examples

The post Thinking About Story Teams: Part One: Definition appeared first on Argh Ink.

The Leverage Binge Watch: A Table of Contents

If you want to know how to build a story community that’s also a team, the gold standard is Leverage.

This binge watch began in February of 2014, but it was disorganized since I was going week by week. In 2016, after the blog was hacked and I had to go back into every post and reformat, I decided to look at the series as a whole, and at this binge watch as a way to look at the elements of fiction writing through the focus of community. For example, I’ve written a lot about conflict, but how does a community handle internal conflict? How does it work together or fall apart against external conflict? And how are the stakes raised and the conflict complicated because instead of one protagonist in conflict, you have five?

That means I have to go back through all of the posts, tweaking and in some cases flat out rewriting them, while adding new posts to cover the gaps in the general craft content. My plan is to make this series of posts a coherent whole, a textbook on writing community as a companion to a great television series. Every episode is not a winner, but the community never fails each other or its viewers, and in the end, Leverage delivers a great long-form story about the best family of morality-challenged misfits ever put on screen.

That means that Leverage posts are going to pop up randomly during the next year until I’ve made the series of posts a coherent whole. Here’s the TENTATIVE plan of topics:

COMMUNITY:

Creating a Community (1-1)

Internal Conflict Within the Community (1-10)

External Conflict and Its Impact on Community (1-12, 1-13)

Rebooting the Community (2-1)

Community as Competence Porn (2-14, 2-15)

Romance and Community (4-15)

Characterizing Community Through a Common Theme

Evolving Community (5-9, 5-10)

CHARACTER:

Point of View (3-11)

External/Internal Conflict (2-11)

Goals, Motivations, and Stakes (5-4)

Integrating a Single Character Subplot (1-11)

Completing Long Form Character Arc (5-8)

Foils and Doppelgangers (2-7)

Gender and Community

STRUCTURE:

Linear Structure (3-1)

Patterned Structure (3-11)

Turning Points (3-16)

Reversals

Integrating Back Story (3-3)

Endings (4-17, 4-18)

Schmuckbait and Chaos (5-15)

And here’s the TENTATIVE plan of episodes analyzed in the order they should have been aired:

SEASON ONE

1-1 “The Nigerian Job” by John Rogers & Chris Downey: Creating a Community

1-10 “The 12 Step Job” by Amy Berg & Chris Downey: Internal Conflict Within the Community

1-11 “The Juror #6 Job” by Rebecca Kirsch, Integrating a Single Character Subplot

1-12 and 1-13 “The First and Second David Jobs” by Chris Downey & John Rogers: External Conflict and Its Impact on Community

SEASON TWO:

2-1 The Beantown Bailout Job by John Rogers: Rebooting the Community

2-7 “The Two Live Crew Job” by Amy Berg & John Rogers: Foils and Doppelgangers

2-11 “The Bottle Job” by Christine Boylan: External/Internal Conflict

2-14 “The Three Strikes Job” and 2-15 “The Maltese Falcon Job”: Community and Competence Porn

SEASON THREE

3-1 “The Jailhouse Job” by John Rogers: Linear Structure

3-3 “The Inside Job” by John Rogers: Integrating Back Story

3-11 “The Rashomen Job” by John Rogers: Structure

3-11 “The Rashomen Job” by John Rogers: Point of View

3-16 “The San Lorenzo Job” by John Rogers & M. Scott Veach: Turning Points

SEASON FOUR

4-1 “The Long Way Down Job” by Joe Hortua & John Rogers: Characterizing Community Through a Common Theme

4-8 “The Boiler Room Job” by Paul Guyot: Reversals

4-13 “Girls’ Night Out” by Chris Downey & Jenn Kao, 4-14 “Boys’ Night Out” by John Rogers: Gender and Community

4-15 “The Lonely Hearts Job” by Kerry Glover: Romance and Community

4-17 “The Radio Job” by Chris Downey & Paul Guyot, and 4-18 “The Last Damn Job” by John Rogers: Endings

SEASON FIVE

5-4 “The French Connection Job” by Paul Guyot: Goals, Motivations, and Stakes in Community

5-8 “The Broken Wing Job” by ?: Completing Long Form Character Arc

5-9 & 5-10: “The Run-Down Job” and “The Frame-Up Job”: Evolving Community

5-15 “The Long Goodbye” by John Rogers & Chris Downey: Schmuckbait and Chaos

The post The Leverage Binge Watch: A Table of Contents appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday 11-19-2016

Today is Have A Bad Day Day.

I think most of us have already had this one. You are all excused.

The post Cherry Saturday 11-19-2016 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Keep Calm and Carry On

I bought a canister of tea yesterday even though I have plenty because I wanted the pink tin to remind me that even though there is real and present danger on the horizon, every day life is important, too. And in that spirit, I’ve been working on pulling the basics of Nita’s book together. I’ve looked at the cast and tried to figure out how to make them a team, so next week, there’ll be a post on defining and building a story team. I think I’ve solved my antagonist problem and I’ll probably be talking about that, too, because this is a new approach for me. And I’ve been talking with Krissie about the importance of touchstone images while pulling a story together, and I have a lot of those. So starting Monday, it’s gonna be a lot of posts about writing and Nita again.

Add a hot cuppa for attitude readjustment and I’m good to go.

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The Joe Meme

I somehow missed these this week. Google for more; they’re all over the net. Come back, Joe. We need you.

I know we’d have lost them even if Hillary had won, but I’m still blaming Trump: I’m so going to miss these guys.

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