S.B. Stewart-Laing's Blog, page 21

Xenofiction

Writing fiction is an amazing exercise in stepping out of one's usual mental patterns and inhabiting the viewpoint of someone utterly different from ourselves. We write characters who come from different time periods, genders, races, religions, nationalities, native languages...and other species.
Xenofiction is any story from the point of view of a non-human character. This could be an alien, or a species native to Earth as we know it, or a fantasy animal of some kind, or an object*. Switching out of the human mindset opens up infinite possibilities for original and thought-provoking stories. 
Getting immersed in a non-human consciousness is hard work. It challenges our fundamental assumptions about things as basic as our senses and the way we construct thoughts. My recommendation is to put in a lot of research into your chosen PoV species, or do a lot of worldbuilding if it's a fantasy or alien creature. Obviously, you can't interview a sea serpent or an intelligent amoebae from Europa or even a housecat. But you can figure out things about your creature which allow you to make logical speculations about how it's mind works. It will also allow you to develop the character's values and conflicts. 
Go ahead and have fun. The more effort you put into this bit the more convincing and intriguing your character will be. 
*Fiction starring inanimate objects--called 'It Narratives' in literary scholarship-- started appearing and gaining popularity in the mid- to late-18th century, not coincidentally as the debate over slavery meant the public was caught up in discussion over what makes someone human. 

Writer on Board

‘If you want to send a message, use Western Union.’— Samuel Goldwyn
As I've said before, I don't have an inherent problem with message fiction. Just poorly executed message fiction. Cringeworthy message fiction can actually undermine its own message by annoying and offending readers and shutting down critical thought on the issue instead of opening up ethical discussion.

A major cause of obnoxious message fiction is obvious authorial meddling. The worst specimens actually involve the writer stopping the action to have a character or the omniscient narrator lecture the audience on their views. This is incredibly rude to the reader, and a good way to make them lose interest . It also messes with the pacing and the buildup of suspense (or any other emotional response).

Authorial meddling can also introduce problems into the narrative by scuppering reader interpretations. For example, Injun Joe is one of my major pet peeve characters because he'd be a great villain-- he's smart, ruthless, and driven by a believable and borderline sympathetic motivation-- if it weren't for Twain telling us via narration and plot railroading that Joe is an example of how Native Americans Are Evil*. Without the annotation from above, the reader would be free to speculate about the villain and see him as a character rather than a vehicle for an author rant.

*Twain had Issues with Native people for mysterious reasons-- his comments on various tribes are reminiscent of anti-black rhetoric of the time, so given his views on Southern racism, it's particularly jarring. 

Villain Makes the Plot

If you study story structure, you know that stories kick off with a decisive event-- the 'inciting incident' or 'call to adventure'. This event disrupts the protagonist's status quo and spurs them to action, kicking off the rest of the plot. In other words, the antagonist is the one who starts off the story and keeps it going.

I think this is true even of stories where the protagonist seemingly initiates the adventure. For example, if a mountaineering enthusiast finally gets their chance to climb Everest, the plot doesn't start getting interesting until something goes wrong-- a storm, an evil climbing guide or what have you. Otherwise you have a piece of travel writing about someone having an uneventful (if impressive) climb. Further conflict will then stem from how the protagonist responds to those events.

In stories where there is a high degree of background discontent, such as a dystopian society or a Fantasyland nation which has recently been occupied by the Evil Overlord, there still needs to be an event which-- for the protagonist at least-- turns the unpleasant-but-bearable status quo into an untenable situation which requires their immediate reaction.

Ugly Guy, Hot Wife

If you've spent an appreciable amount of time on the internet, you've probably encountered Nice Guy Syndrome. This, in it's most basic form, occurs when someone (usually male) whines on the internet that they have met the basic standards of decent human behaviour and yet swimwear-modeling neuroscientists who foster orphaned kittens on the weekends are not falling at their feet. And if you're wondering where they got that idea in the first place...may I present this trope.
As absurd as this sounds in real life, wildly mismatched pairings occur all the time in Fictionland. I'm not just talking about mismatched looks, which is the original source of this trope. It's completely believable to have a couple where the less conventionally hot party has some outstanding trait the other person values more than looks-- kindness, money intelligence, humour, artistic talent, or mad cooking skills. My peeve is the couples in which one character's positive traits are essentially 'not a terrorist' and 'has a heartbeat', while the other character is cultured, funny, kind, good-looking, and inhumanly patient with their partner being a loser.
This trope is usually sexist as well, with the awesome partner being female and the person with no discernible good characteristics being male. The underlying message is that the guy deserves a gorgeous, accomplished woman who's patient with his man-child quirks simply because he exists and hasn't committed any major felonies. (Although the variant of the woman whose only positive trait is...being herself?... getting a smoking-hot, overachieving guy is unfortunately gaining momentum).
Giving your main character a perfect partner to mark them as a Good Person doesn't work. You need to show by the character's actions that they are the sort of person whom awesome people would want to date.

Token Evil Teammate

He's a bastard, but he's our bastard— Richard Nixon (on then Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza)

If your characters are part of a group of protagonists, chances are good that one of them may be the group jerk to some degree. Sometimes they're a selfish pest whom everyone has to put up with, and sometimes they can veer into outright evil. Before writing them in as an easy path to inter-group conflict, it's vital to answer the following question: why is this person here? Fortunately, there are lots of credible answers that can give some structure to their story arc. Logical reasons for this character to stick around include:


They have a critical skill which outweighs their bad qualities. For example, if they're the only one who can fix and operate the spaceship everyone's stuck on, the other characters are basically forced to tolerate their antisocial shinanigans or be stranded. This also includes people who have access to money, social connections, or other resources the group desperately needs. They're a teammate's relative. This works especially well if you've established the characters' culture values family loyalty no matter what.  They have power or connections. Maybe this character is the office supervisor or the ship captain. Or maybe they have powerful relatives or friends who will come down on the main characters like a ton of rocks if the jerk comes to harm. They're bound to the group via magical contract. In a world with supernatural elements, perhaps this character got stuck in a contract with the group, and they're forced by magic to put up with each other. Proximity. In situations where characters can't really control their social group, they can easily get stuck in situations where the best solution is to make nice with people they don't like. They share a goal. If the end is important enough, the characters have a strong incentive to cooperate. The hero wants to keep an eye on them. Perhaps channeling this person's efforts for good is better than leaving them to their own devices. 

If you come up with a compelling reason for the Token Evil Teammate to stick around, you have an endless well of possible conflict and potential plot twists to work with.

Schmuck Bait

There's always free cheddar in a mousetrap...— Tom Waits, God's Away On Business
Humans are curious creatures. As a scientist, I usually think that this is one of our best qualities as a species. Unfortunately, Fictionland is littered with things, including dark basements, allegedly abandoned castles, and various forbidden magical texts, which are better left unexplored.

Investigating these things is excusable in situations where the characters have no reasonable way of knowing the sinister nature of bait, or the bait is cleverly disguised by the antagonist. In that case, it will either be a genuine surprise to the reader, or a source of dramatic tension if the reader was let in on the secret first.

This ventures into the realm of destroying suspension of disbelief when taking the bait involves an act of blatant stupidity, such as pressing the big red button that says not to press it, wandering into a dark ally when you know the were-iguanas are on the prowl, or trying to summon a demon that you know ate the last dozen people who tried that. While people in real life do equally idiotic things all the time-- hence the existence of the Darwin Awards-- we tend to hold fictional characters to a somewhat higher standard of rational behaviour unless they are being deliberately depicted as dumb.

Generally, if you're tempted to use Schmuck Bait as a plot device, it's best to consider another option, unless you have a compelling reason to use that in favour of a more clever ruse by the villain, or a more innocuous-looking trouble-making artifact. 

Royals Who Actually Do Something

The royal family of Fantasyland has a lot of issues, one of which is an impressively vague job description. Judging by their role in most plots, their main duties include getting ousted from power at inopportune times, hiding in peasant villages, and plotting rebellions to reclaim their throne. Occasionally their female members have tantrums about arranged marriage and having to wear dresses, and everyone gets to plot against their siblings on the regular.

This trope kicks in when the author puts aside the idea that Fantasyland royalty are the idle rich, and gives them a work ethnic and a conscience. Understandably, this is usually applied to the good guys to make them more appealing to the reader; however, there's no rule that says the Evil Usurper can't roll up their sleeves and put in some serious effort.

The trope comes in two possible flavours. First, there's the character who could get away with doing nothing, but chooses to follow a career path of some kind, or at least develop some useful life skills. The second-- which is surprisingly less common-- is about the work which comes with the position. Running a country is a full time job and then some, whether you're the Queen, the President, or the Grand Dictator for Life.

Personally, I feel that Fantasyland needs a lot more of the second one. The following questions should help get you started.

What specific duties are expected of the leader? On a daily basis? For special occasions?How much of a role in governmental logistics does the leader have?What other people or institutions contribute to running the government?What happens to people who don't fulfill their leadership duties?
Once you've worked this out, you're in good shape to start thinking about what your Fantasyland leaders actually do with their day.

Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything

My coauthor and I a both enjoy us some good speculative fiction. Being scientists, though, we're also pretty sensitive to tech-babble pretending to be something meaningful. Whether or not this is almost unnoticeable, excusable, annoying, or part of the 'so-bad-it's-good' entertainment value of a piece of fiction depends on a lot of factors, such as how seriously the story takes itself.

Now, in speculative fiction-- science fiction in particular-- it's often necessary to dash ahead of current scientific discoveries. After all, a good deal of science fiction posits events in the far future, well past what one could extrapolate from current knowledge; alternately, some relies on technology which may never be able to exist in reality, but provides the basis for a powerful thought experiment. Either way, you want to keep the potential distraction of off-base science-babble to a minimum (unless you're writing a story with parody overtones). 
Obviously, you'll have to make things up. However, reading up on the current work in that field can make your in-story explanation sound much more credible and better able to maintain suspension of disbelief. Another possibility is that the majority of the characters don't really know how a particular piece of technology works, and simply take its existence for granted. Remember, as long as everything in your universe follows its internal rules, you don't have to explain every detail to the reader (assuming said details aren't plot-significant).

The main goal is to avoid distracting the reader with obvious science-nonsense when you're showing off your awesome spec-fic world. Choose a route to make things credible and use it.

Pinball Protagonist

Any number of writing advice guides will tell you that having an active protagonist is a make-or-break story element. Actually, I don't think it's absolutely essential that your protagonist be the lead force fighting the villain or such. In fact, some of my favourite books and movies feature our buddy the Pinball Protagonist. That said, when this trope goes wrong, it can spawn some of the most annoying characters in Fictionland.

A Pinball Protagonist done right is a character struggling against forces which are much larger than they can handle. It's not that they're useless, but rather that other characters, social forces, or the physical world itself are much more powerful. This can be an excellent tool for comedies where the main character is essentially fighting for survival in an overwhelmingly absurd world-- Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, or on a less cosmic scale, Harold Crick in Stranger Than Fiction as he struggles against the constraints of his fictional universe. Alternately, it can be the stuff of drama, with characters or events which are beyond their ability to control. The crew of the Pequod is essentially powerless in the face of Captain Ahab's obsession, and the suspense comes from watching the main characters get dragged into the abyss with him. 
The reason these plots work is that although the protagonist may not be able to drive the plot, we are still very invested in their conflict. Their efforts, though sometimes futile or only partly successful, are still tremendous and also sympathetic. 
However, if that drive is lacking, the character quickly wilts. These are characters who seem utterly content to sit back and watch everyone else solve their problems, usually whilst moaning about how hard their lives are. Instead of a comedic or tragic struggle, this is the equivalent of listening to the diary of a mopey and spoilt teenager. It's particularly irritating when the other characters orbit the passive lump and spend much of the plot solving the Pinball's problems rather than getting on with larger issues. 

Boston

As many of you lovely regular readers know, my coauthor lives in Boston.

HE IS OKAY.  (So are our business partners over at Magpie Games). All former classmates & their families in the area confirmed safe, including one runner!!
For anyone in the nearby area who is eligible to give blood or plasma, now is a great time to do so. The Red Cross will be accepting help as soon as they get more intel.
They can also help you find friends and loved ones if someone you know is MIA. If you're worried about a runner, you can find their check-in here.

Everyone else, good thoughts and prayers are appreciated.