A.R. Knight's Blog, page 8

Harry Potter and the Continual Quest

Most board games are one-and-done affairs – you might replay them, but the starting ‘board state’ is going to be the same every time. Monopoly always starts with everyone as middle-class, vagrant pieces. Risk has people’s armies scattered across the globe like some terrifying tornado swept up whole countries and flung them about at unknowable whims.

Making a game an even start for everyone involved lowers that barrier of entry – all you’ve got to explain to a new player is, oh, 9000 rules and then you’re ready to go. And at the end, when the world’s been conquered, evil (or that friend you betrayed on turn 4) has been defeated, and all the cash is now in your pile, that’s, uh, it. You win! Congrats – your prize is the momentary hatred of all the other players!

Then the game goes back in the box and awaits its next turn on the table. Rinse, repeat.

Unless you decide to brave the unnatural, strange and daunting wilds of so-called legacy games. Instead of the dictionary definition, let’s explore this new spectacle through one game in particular – Harry Potter and the Battle for Hogwarts.

As you might expect, this game involves the boy wizard and his best pals (and Neville) taking on a motley crew of Harry Potter villains. Functionally, you each pick your character, get a deck of appropriate cards, and proceed to fling spells, buy items, and pray that you only die (or, in the game’s gentler parlance, get “stunned”) a few times a round.

A quick mini-review: It’s a fine game. Think a bizarro Dominion or Legendary but with a Harry Potter skin. There’s a lot of randomization in the setup that often swings the game into a brutal loss or a low-stress victory, but the theme is on point, and it never gets old yelling at “Ron” to stop sucking.

What I’m here for, though,  is the progression. What carries with your intrepid, constantly “stunned” team from one game to the next. Also as you might expect, the game organizes its progression around Harry’s “Years” at Hogwarts. The foes faced are generally from those books, and as you make your way forward, you’ll get new additions to your characters or card pool from those same books.

And here’s the first catch – the difficult increases with every year. The complexity goes up, and the number of things the players need to be aware of to succeed increases. This is great when you’ve got a consistent crew to play with. And if you do, and you can make time to bring this game to the table with them regularly, it’s a grand adventure. You might start referring to each other by their chosen characters, like we did.

And yet, aside from one time just after we’d acquired the game, we’ve never enjoyed Harry Potter’s spell-slinging adventures with anyone other than our standard foursome.

On the one hand, a great experience full of challenge and growth towards a big goal. On the other, a game that spends a lot of nights mostly unplayable because we’re not with the right ‘group’.

So – if you have a set of people (this game is a strictly 4 person affair) that can get together regularly for the express purpose of murdering some Potter villains, then you’re going to have a great time. If, though, your selection of games/budget is limited, then it might be worth picking up something you can sling onto the table no matter who’s stopping by.

Because Voldemort will not take pity on any new wizards.

Mistborn and the allure of the unknown world

You know Epic Fantasy when you see it – they stand out on the bookshelves, even in the theater (those Lord of the Rings run times are no accident). The genre promises a long adventure, colorful characters, and, in the best of cases, a world that essentially is its own kind of character.

Epic Fantasy requires learning – you, the reader, have to understand how the setting works. Is there magic? How does it function? Are there fire-breathing dragons or lighting-spewing ones? Do gods roam the fields among the people?

The writer has a few different ways of communicating this – the easiest being the sledgehammer, where you beat the reader over the head with reams of terminology (the Lazurstone created the Quirky Ezzerpeaks during the fourth Monnet), back-story (Spittleworth’s great grandfather was the second Lord of Crapcastle), and locations (The Archwood lies fifty leagues beyond the Wundergates, and past its trees of terror sit the Blahblah Fens).

This – and I’m talking my opinion here – is about the least effective way to get people to fall in love with a setting. I’ve got enough junk to deal with in a given day, and the last thing I want when sitting down with a new book is to be given endless lists to memorize.

How, then, to get a good world made?

Tantalize.

Take Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, for example. The very first one in the series. The vast majority of the book takes place in a couple of locations. We learn a lot about them, but they’re also not so exotic that it’s difficult for us to follow along while we learn about the characters, the magic, the politics, etc.

But, what’s even better is that Sanderson lays in little tastes of the broader world beyond the novel’s scopes. Names of faraway lands and species drift into and out of conversation without further explanation – mostly because the characters themselves already know about them. We, however, are left curious, but not overwhelmed. As a result, we spend the book picking up puzzle pieces of Sanderson’s world. We don’t know where it all fits yet, but because we’re learning this in the midst of adventure, we’re not stuck with a bunch of tidbits and nothing to do with them.

This all comes with the added advantage of giving us a through-line to the next tale in the story – we’ve heard about these places, and in the future we’ll likely go to them. I say this without having read the rest of the series, so for all I know the characters could stay put and we might spend the next 1000 pages discussing tea in the city.

(Epic Fantasy is known for that, too)

Point being, play out the setting. The phrase “need to know” should apply judiciously to what the reader’s getting. Why, after all, spoil all the amazing things that are coming if they’re not going to show up for another book or three?

And if you get the irrepressible urge to do so, I encourage you to find a patient, bored friend, buy them a drink (or three) as a bribe to listen to you elaborate on your magnificent creation. It’ll be better than spilling unnecessary ink on pages, and your friend might even have a few helpful ideas.

Choosing to Disbelieve

Fiction of any sort – be it a poem, a song, a movie or a book – requires its audience to be flexible. To silence the inevitable voices in their minds telling them that dragons do not exist, that magic is, well, just that. Space ships don’t shoot lasers, and one man armed with a single pistol can’t take on squad after squad of killer mercenaries and come out alive.

The term bandied about for this flexibility is suspension of disbelief, or the ability for the audience to stop themselves from questioning whatever’s going on in front of them. Lovers of fiction, especially of the wackier varieties, have to hone this skill (and it is a skill) in order to take the exceptionally fantastic tales for a spin and still absorb the impact those tales attempt to deliver, an impact that can often be stronger, and more straightforward than a real-world scenario could provide (just look at fairy tales).

And now the sharp turn towards Avengers: Infinity War, a movie that, is a miracle to even exist. Its primary villain is, more or less, an almighty purple thumb. Its protagonists include a talking raccoon, the Norse god of thunder, a kid who’s been bitten by a radioactive spider, and, uh, a robot brought to life by a magical stone.

To say this story requires a lot of its audience is an understatement.

Which is why it’s rough, and I’m striving to avoid spoilers here, that so many gave it and are now bitter or frustrated by the ending, even though neither of those emotions come from (I think) the film itself. They come from, instead, the realities of the world outside the fiction – namely, the world in which future film schedules and expiring contracts contrive to sap the emotion from the story being told.

In short, when the audience can’t suspend their disbelief because of the circumstances around the story, it seems unfair to blame that story for it. At the same time, it’s nigh impossible not to consider everything we experience through the lens of the lives we lead. Some of us is going to bleed into what we watch, read, or listen to.

Still, if you can, I would challenge you to take the next movie you watch, the next comic you page through, or the next tale you hear told as its own thing. Try to avoid questioning its choices, spotting typos or plot holes. Sink into the world being crafted in front of you and embrace the punches it throws.

Do that well, and you’ll get the experience what the creators are hoping for. And, who knows, you’ll probably have more fun.

A couple things:

I did actually enjoy Infinity War. There’s definitely a “part one of two” element there, which is always a little unsatisfying, but I think that’s lessened here because Marvel has conditioned us to expect a continuing story after all of their movies. And it’s still a blast to watch these heroes and villains crack wise and smash stuff on screen.
I’m reading Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn right now (it’s a trilogy), and I’m realizing how long its been since I’ve dug into a true Epic Fantasy novel. In the book world, an epic fantasy that you fall in love with provides a unique experience – they’re so large, the worlds created are often so detailed, with large casts of characters, that, if you let yourself get sucked in, it’s awesome.

Annihilation Makes its Unreliable Narrator Mesmerizing

When was the last time you took a walk through a living nightmare? Or a dream that you knew, knew was a dream and still kept going?

Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer, is often dreamlike in its descriptions, which come straight from the mind and mouth of the narrator via her journals, and nightmarish in their consequences for the narrator and her team, on an expedition to a strange, military-protected part of the southern U.S.

Every story has a setting, and some describe their’s just as beautifully as Annihilation‘s, but few dare add in the unsettling touch of a narrator choosing what bits to tell and what not to. That this truth comes out very early leads you, the reader, into a very different contract with the words on the page. But unlike your friend bragging about his amazing date or her incredible new job, the narrator isn’t trying to lie, but rather trying to say only what she thinks you’ll be able to understand.

Which makes what happens over the course of the book all the more twisted. You never quite know how much of the story you’re getting, or whether being exposed to the whole truth is even something you would want.

And the worst part is you start to care about this narrator. This poor soul who’s stepped so far beyond her known world. With light flashbacks filling in the cracks, we learn why the narrator survives, who she is, and how, in some ways, she’s the perfect person to be in a place where nothing makes sense.

Often, when you discover that the teller of the story is shading the truth, you’re not particularly thrilled. You might even be angry. Annihilation, though, made me feel a kind of relief – the narrator, you see, is only protecting us. Trying to inform without scarring, without making us throw away the words and run.

By the time the book was done, and it’s a quick read, I was unsettled, fascinated, and vaguely sad to lose this guide through a magical, sometimes hostile world.

A couple things:

– Annihilation was made into a movie that released earlier this year – one I didn’t see, though I wanted/want to. Apparently the movie departs quite a bit from the book, and I don’t think the connection made between the reader and the narrator would come through in film anyway, so I’d take a look at this even if you’ve seen the movie.

Annihilation is also the first in a trilogy, and while I haven’t gone into the next two books yet, I plan to. The world Vandermeer built is too interesting to leave after one.

–  One of the strange dilemmas of someone who travels for work is that, randomly, you will only be home on days it rains. This makes it difficult to mow the lawn – I’ve already burned out one mower engine trying to cut too-wet grass. I have no takeaways from this except to say that, sometimes, Nature makes it her business to mess with you, and there’s nothing you can do about it except live with the jungle your yard has become.

The Phantom Thread and Too Many Genius Jerks

One of the survival mechanisms of a long flight is watching as many movies as possible to the point where the hours you’re spending stuck in a chair, inhaling what amounts to the stale taco breath of a hundred other people, blur into a haze that ends as soon as possible.

I tend to use these opportunities to catch up on films that hanging out in the void of mild curiosity, where I’m not committed enough to carve out time (or spend money) to watch them unless I’m either multi-tasking or, as in this case, trapped.

Perhaps you have your own collection of movies you could sort of watch if given an isolated opportunity. I would urge you to keep Phantom Thread right there. It’s a perfect spot.

This isn’t to say that Phantom Thread is a bad movie, or a boring one. It’s characters are well-acted, the setting and cinematography, provided you like Daniel Day Lewis’ face, is engaging. It’s also, well, familiar.

How many times have we seen a character purported to be some sort of genius who just cannot handle interacting with “normal” people in a polite, standard way? As if having some sort of singular talent means you must be rude, dismissive, or snobbish to those without your gift. Sidenote – Benedict Cumberbatch seems to have made a career out of playing these sorts of roles, now that I think of it.

Phantom Thread‘s version of a jackass genius follows fashion, which, for me, is a fatal blow to its aspirations of getting out of my mildly curious void. This isn’t to say that I won’t watch a movie with fashion as its ‘world’, but fashion alone does not compel me in the same way that, say, basketball might not compel you but you’re going to watch Space Jam because obviously.

Anyway, as soon as we begin to tread upon a familiar story, in which said genius meets someone who he/she initially repels and then comes to realize is necessary and/or that someone changes the genius in some crucial way, its’ time for the mind to hunt for those kernels of originality to keep us hooked. Fashion, and particularly the ins and outs of dress design and high-class clothes cavorting ensues, asking you to overlook the well-worn plot for the flowing lace and well-turned phrases.

Those gowns fell in the face of the Genius-Jerk onslaught. It wasn’t close. I had my laptop out, despite how cramped it made the seat, because I’d seen this movie before, if clad in a more pedestrian outfit.

Point being – if you’re going to make me watch something I’ve seen before, better dress it up in something I’m interested in. That’s not to say plenty of people wouldn’t find fashion and Phantom Thread their jam, but I’m saying you run that risk when you choose to take people through beats with characters they’ll recognize. Your supporting stuff better be enough.

A couple things:

1. The re-design is still in progress, but I feel it’s a little nicer, more pleasant than the previous theme. Of course, it does mean finding images for every post, but I should be doing that anyway, right?

2. Starshot progresses! A day job slows things down somewhat, so the routine is getting adjusted to suit the new reality. If only endless monies fell from the sky into the wallets of hopeful artists…

The best part of The Americans is family dynamics

Yes, yes, I know it’s a spy show. I know there’s guns, conspiracy, murder and more. Yet, somehow, I’ve stuck the words “family dynamics” up there in the title of this post where, presumably, it wouldn’t be without some reason. I shall, in the method of blogs, explain.

 

Spy thrillers make a habit of focusing on the spying – foiling the plot, getting the evidence the government needs (or the government doesn’t want them to have), and so on. The Americans has plenty of that, but it’s not all that different from the dozens of movies and TV series covering similar material. Well-produced and from a different viewpoint, but for most of the episodes, you can more or less forget the main characters are operating on behalf of the Soviet Union and watch them conduct their spycraft as you would James Bond or Jason Bourne.

Where I find myself drawn, and what keeps me coming back, is the focus on the couple and their two children. Specifically, the time spent to seemingly innocuous activities like family dinners or teacher’s conferences. On the changes every family experiences when their kids crash into their teenage years. The difference here being that the parents, you know, are stone-cold killers and, on any given night, might disappear after serving mac & cheese to seduce a government employee. This brings a great tension to just about every scene, with me wondering if this is going to be the time the parents collapse and spill out all the terrible details because, you know, Henry needs help with the homework but Dad’s gotta go pop three rounds in a politician and he just can’t hack it anymore.

What boosts these scenes into truly memorable television is the fact that all of the characters continue to grow over the seasons. You’d expect that from the parents, seeing as they’re the stars, but The Americans doesn’t let the kids languish in side-character purgatory. These are roles that could’ve been left aside, or replaced with other adult characters/more spy sequences, but instead we have long sessions with the daughter struggling with growing up, where the son looks for someone to hang out with and, finding neither of his parents ever home, reacts in strange, yet believable, ways.

Think about how many times you’ve seen Tom Cruise blast away some miserable sap of a villain. How many times you’ve seen someone plan an elaborate heist to get something. Now consider how many times you’ve seen the impacts of that life on a realistic family.

The Americans takes a risk, and they’ve created a family that’s more interesting to watch than most guns-a-blazin’ spies ever have been.

If you’re curious, The Americans is available on Amazon Prime’s video, and the final season is airing now on FX.

A couple things:

1. Shoveled snow today. In April. Some years Winter just doesn’t want to say goodbye. Admittedly, the snow is more palatable when you know it’s going to melt in a couple of days…

2. I’m finding that going for longer continuous dictating (30 minutes +) makes it easier to stay in scenes and character. Before, I tended to pause when scenes ended, but I’m trying to just keep going. Transition into the next bit and keep on talking. Thus far, it’s made things flow together more naturally, and I’m getting more done with less time.

Meddling Kids and Reimagining Classics

Scooby-Doo, that classic mystery cartoon involving a dog and his sleuthing pals, makes for a tempting adaption target. There’s a genre, mystery, baked into the premise, a cast of interesting characters, and even an animal with a personality – there’s a reason the animated series has been around in some form or another since 1969. The shows generally draw from the crime-a-week mold, which makes them great fodder for a novelization or serialization into written work – pick a set of episodes you like and just write them into prose. Easy!

Two problems with that, of course:

Scooby-Doo and anything using those characters is going to be copyrighted for the foreseeable future, so if you want the talking great dane to feature in your masterwork, you’re going to have to secure the rights to do that. Which, well, let’s just say there’s easier ways of achieving your writing dreams than barging into corporate offices and demanding they lease you their property so you can put together that long-awaited Scooby/James Bond crossover, where the dog and spy prevent world annihilation at the hands of a cult of people all wearing lobster costumes.
Even if you do get the direct rights, or just pray the lawyers won’t find you, every single one of those characters is going to carry immense baggage with your audience. The people picking up the book, reading the story, are going to have their own opinions about Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby. You try to do something twisty and original with those characters, and you’re going to get discontent from everyone who can’t believe that Fred is really a 45 year-old man on the run from the law masquerading as a teenager to throw off pursuit while steadily racking up criminals in order to bargain for a suspended sentence from his original crime: running an illegal ascot import business.

So how do you avoid that?

As seen in the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies series, you can go for obvious parody. Your audience is going to know right off that this is not the story they’re familiar with, and these characters shouldn’t be taken all that seriously. The rightsholders and die-hard fans won’t care because the scenario you’ve created is so far from the story they love that nobody’s going to be offended. Scooby-Doo Meets the Mob, in which the dog and the gang team up with Tony Soprano to run drugs through New Jersey? It’s so far from the show and so patently ridiculous that you’re probably not going to get complaints (you also won’t get the rights, but it’s fun to imagine).

The other way, and what Meddling Kids does well, is to play off of a familiar cultural icon just enough to make the references clear and then swing it your own way. Edgar Cantero’s supernatural mystery uses an older cast whose characters have some relation to their cartoon alter-egos, but are more fully-realized. They’re older, they’ve seen some things, and they’re not scared of a man in a mask. The dog doesn’t really talk (and isn’t a great dane either). Yet there are enough similarities – the story picks up on a gang of teenage sleuths years after they’ve split apart – that it’s easy to fall in with the characters. Like friends that you’ve not seen for a while, there’s plenty to recognize.

Cantero also uses the setup to drive a more complex, more wild story than most of the cartoons ever did. These characters are deeper, have more complex motivations and histories – which is, partly, a function of a novel over a 23-minute cartoon for kids, which this book definitely is not – and come across, mostly, as actual people. As such, we’re able to use our familiarity with Scooby-Doo to get us in the door, but the place we’ve walked into is very different from what we know, which makes it fun to explore. If you’re a fan of mysteries, especially supernatural and somewhat comedic ones, this is a rollicking journey from start to finish. You’re not getting hard-boiled detectives or gritty realism, but characters that you’ll both recognize and be excited to ride along with as the story burns towards a nuts conclusion.

A couple things:

One thing Cantero does that I wasn’t fond of, which is definitely a matter of personal reader taste, is use descriptions and narrative asides that are very over-the-top or that seem interjected by the author’s hand. These might be funny to some, and most were clever, or at least produced amusing images, but they often jerked me out of the story. Made me notice the writing, say, rather than the scene, and getting pulled out of the story is not what I want to do. I’m going to keep an eye out for this in my own work too.
Carpet cleaning – it basically makes your entire house damp for a day. I kept forgetting this, soaking my socks. So my advice to those considering cleaning their carpets: get some sandals or slippers, lest your interior become a strange version of the lava game you may have played when you were a kid, except instead of “dying”, what you get instead is minor annoyance. Terrible, I know. On the other hand, the cats seemed to love it, and as everything I do these days is in service to my feline overlords, their happiness made the whole thing worth it.

Ray Bradbury’s Gabriel’s Horn and the other side of Sci-Fi

It’s common in the ol’ realm of science fiction to have spaceships. To have lasers and stars and monstrous alien creatures battling hordes of space marines in galaxy-spanning wars. Technology is often at the core, and devices that would seem like magic to us are used like we use our phones now. The story starts well past the point of familiarity with these wondrous things, and is more about the characters and setting than it is with the technical wizardry on offer. In Star Wars, the idea of jumping to lightspeed or death by a thousand lasers is treated with as much surprise as waking up to a refrigerator in your kitchen. In Ready Player One, the idea of the Oasis is already cemented in the minds of the characters when we meet them – its purpose is clear, and the knowledge of how to use it is well-ingrained in society.

Gabriel’s Horn, a Bradybury short story, illustrates the other side of sci-fi, where new technology and ideas are introduced to a society with strange, unusual effects. In this case, the “technology” isn’t even all that wondrous – a tribesman finds a trumpet, something he believes is a great weapon, albeit one he cannot understand. It fails, after all, to kill deer on a hunt. Fails to protect him and his tribe when blown. We, the audience, know that a trumpet isn’t going to ever kill anything, but if you saw a rounded metal object that looked similar to the guns your enemies used to hunt your friends, you too might believe a trumpet capable of grievous harm.

It would be easy to turn the story into a comedy – a play on how dumb these people must be if they can’t figure out the purpose of a trumpet. Instead, Bradbury takes pains to show that his characters are as clever as they are desperate. Willing to try anything to save themselves from mysterious invaders, who come periodically to hunt their defenseless prey. Gab, the primary protagonist, observes the invaders, puts together plans to outwit them, and demonstrates more than enough intelligence to get the gist of what a trumpet might be used for… which is when you grasp the real sci-fi element of the story: a civilization exposed to something of which they have no conception.

Gad does not understand the concept of music, so he cannot know the trumpet’s true purpose.

And so we see, instead, what other uses might be made of something so far away from its intended place. It’s fun, it’s clever, and Gabriel’s Horn is a reminder that sci-fi can work just as well with the characters learning about their world, rather than already enmeshed within it.

A couple things:

1. March in Wisconsin is a strange time when you rediscover your lawn is a half-frozen mess of yellowed, dead grass. As if to spare you the horror, nature will hide it with snow from time to time throughout the month, giving you time to adjust to the ugly view outside your windows until, in April, rains come to turn it into a muddy soup. Knowing that you’ll be disheartened by these events, the temps play around the 40-50 degree mark during the day, tempting you to step outside without a heavy jacket, breath fresh air for a few moments, and remember that there is, in fact, a world outside your own house.

2. I remain convinced that Peanut Butter Patties are the optimal Girl Scout cookie. I also remain confident in, and nauseated by, my ability to eat a box of them in a day.

 

Tomb Raider and character through action

We’ve seen so many of them – the fast-moving sequence where a character dashes, dodges, darts and dives through one stunt after another, with maybe a pinch of violence thrown in there to spice things up. It’s hard to find an original action sequence these days, and harder still to find one that helps build up character in the process.

Films and stories often do this through dialogue peppered in the action – accusations, questions, and flat exposition while two people slug the crap out of each other. It’s more fun, though, to learn about a character by what they do.

In Tomb Raider, there’s a sequence early on where our protagonist, Lara, is riding a bike as part of a contest, pursued by other bikers. At a certain point, desperate to evade capture, Lara lifts her bike into the back of a moving truck and hides with it. This, while perhaps not strictly against the rules, is definitely against their spirit. We learn, in that moment, that Lara isn’t above doing a bit of cheating to get what she wants.

This might not seem like a big deal, but the move reinforces Lara’s prior actions and shows she’s not afraid of the consequences of being caught. She’s wild, she’s free, and she’s willing to risk her reward entirely for a better chance to win. Those traits come back again and again throughout the movie, and we’re not confused or put off when Lara tries similar gambits in much greater danger, because the story has set us up to believe that’s who she is.

What I really like, though, is the extra thought that goes into how Lara would act in a certain situation. It’s easy to put together an action scene in your head, to plug the characters into their positions and let the movement run. What’s harder, and far more rewarding, is taking that same situation and viewing it through the lens of your character’s eyes. How would they see what’s happening in front of them? How would they, with their worldview and life experience, react?

It’s a challenge. One that, when successful, allows your audience to believe in a character’s actions even when they’re in a setting so far outside the realm of everyday life.

Like, say, an island full of maniacal madmen and mysterious tombs.

A couple things:

Starshot, my next book, is almost done with the editing process (and it’s sequel is closing in on first draft completion). I’m trying a slightly different method with these – namely, writing the first few before releasing any, because it’ll be more fun for readers if the sequel is days away instead of months or years. Either way, I’m having a grand time exploring this strange universe.
Now that it’s warm outside, our cats are clambering to go outside again. We’re not a fan of decimating local bird populations, so we leash them to a stake that lets the two kitties prowl around our little garden and firepit, where they can sunbathe but are otherwise mostly harmless to wildlife. What it really means for me, though, is that every breakfast for the next six to seven months will be eaten to the melodious song of desperate meows from a pair of cats that want nothing more than to sniff their way through grass. It’s a true delight.

Black Panther and the well-drawn side character

There are numerous reasons to like Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, but if I have to pick one, and given the standard size of these posts, I do – then it’s the full, dynamic characters the movie constructs.

This goes beyond the titular Black Panther himself and Killmonger, the villain. Most stories are going to invest a lot of time in their leads, and this one isn’t much different. Where Black Panther really builds its own quality, though, is through its supporting cast. The players movies bring in for a scene or three to propel the protagonist to the next objective, the ones that often have all the depth of cardboard.

By my improvised count, Black Panther has nine substantial side characters, of which 7 or so have real arcs and motivations. The question here, though, is not what those arcs are, but rather how we can find ways to incorporate similar arcs and depth into our own fiction.

Weirdly, I think the best place to define these arcs is outside of the story you are writing. Instead, take the character into the proverbial void of your notebook paper and sketch them out as if they were the star of their own lives. Put together a quick list of what they want, where they came from, and, maybe, some of their interests. It’s not reams of paper, and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

And guess what? You won’t use most of this in what you’re writing. You shouldn’t.

Black Panther certainly doesn’t. What it does, and what you should do, is use pieces from that list to flesh out the scenes in which these characters do appear. This is a minor spoiler from the movie, but one of the side characters remarks, in a scene, that she dislikes having hair. Later, she remarks that “guns are primitive”.

Neither of these remarks are necessary, neither help Black Panther stop the villains, but they add color and dimension to her character. They help us, the audience, form an idea of her world-view, which helps us make sense of her actions down the line. What we don’t get is some elaborate history of why she holds these opinions, or a drawn-out conversation about the lines. The creators may have those in their back pockets, but we don’t need those, because this is still a side character we’re talking about. We’re not that interested, but we should believe in their authenticity.

So now that we’ve scattered bits and pieces of our characters on a page, we can look at developing an arc for them. In simple terms, an arc is something that begins at one point and ends at another – in a story, that journey generally results in a change of perspective. In Black Panther, the arcs that characters go through are numerous and varied, though they’re not all complex, and most fit in with the progress of the story.

This last bit is important – you want your characters to develop as the plot moves along, and ideally all of them wind up somewhere different than where they started (otherwise, what’s the point?). But, especially for small characters, you don’t want to derail the narrative with low-stakes side stories just to check that arc box. Rather, try to define their own arcs to fit their role in the larger story.

In Black Panther, one of the characters firmly believes she can do more good by operating on her own than by being part of the established Wakanda government. She wants independence, and to do things her own way. Over the course of the story, in which she finds that her skills are needed in Wakanda to keep the things she loves, well, alive, she changes her mind.

She learns this not by embarking on some random solo journey that sees her absent at a time of great need, but rather by actually being present in Wakanda, where the main action is, and realizing how badly her home needs her there. The main story flows along, we never really leave the protagonist/antagonist, but she completes her arc nonetheless.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough – Black Panther has great characters, most of whom are more than one-scene jokes or plot devices, most of whom feel like real people, which is what makes it a great movie.

Check it out.