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beccaelizabethMy head been feeling wrong again. Makes everything feel urgent. So, instead of actual sleep, I boot up the computer to share my thoughts on:
Original characters
In both fanfic and continuing TV series you have a set of characters that carry from episode to episode, the regulars, the canon characters, and you have characters that you the writer are sitting down to make up. And while you really love the canon characters, hence the wanting to write about them at all, you just meet this new person and suddenly they're the most interesting person in the 'verse. Slight problem: Interesting to the writer. Interesting to the reader? Trickier.
The biggest problem is forgetting who the story is about. Clue: Not the New Guy.
If it is about the new guy, you have written a spin off. It probably won't be as popular. Good luck with that.
To write original characters that work you've got to remember that even if you're talking about a person who looks, speaks, thinks, acts nothing like the established characters, they are secretly telling a story about the established characters. The new is there to illuminate the continuing. They highlight a facet, an aspect, a mood, a phase in the life of the canon characters. If done well enough they'll fit in with the theme, habits, conventions of storytelling of the source text so well they'll be popular with people looking for more out of those texts. They might even work so well they'll become the new regulars. But to do that they've got to generate stories about the central concerns of the show, and the regular characters.
So say we've got Lisa, or Beth, or Mary. Torchwood women who turn out to be bad guys but get a lot of screen time while they're there. Each has SF style power, insider knowledge, and a capacity for violence. There's the superficial humanity covering a secret slide to monstrous, and three different reactions to it - assimilation, horror, and reveling in it. Why these are all great Torchwood stories is that team Torchwood have to worry about becoming the monster. They've got the hidden power, they've got the violence, they've got to worry about what it's doing to them. So repeatedly we get these characters turning up that illustrate that. And each of them connects to some Torchwood team through similarities, Ianto Gwen Tosh being on their side, and others through conflict, Jack stopping them, but still revealing ways he resembles them. His horror is in how far he'll go, and the suspicion Ianto was right from the start, he's always been as much a monster as the things he kills. The audience sympathy for him comes from the sometimes very skinny ways he's different. And when Captain John turns up - a character who reads as very fanfic, guest star with a secret romantic past and a near identical skill set but in some ways just slightly better - well that's a compare contrast too. He's there to be all Jack used to be, in large print, and let Jack reject it. And then he comes back and blows hell out of everything because actually Jack can't just walk away from consequences.
... I can see how Children of Earth got put together thematically. I just think the balance was off between existing and continuing characters. Who did Frobisher illustrate except Frobisher? No, seriously, does he compare/contrast like this? Screen time on him was excessive else.
There's always characters that are tempting to write, corners of the 'verse you really want to fill in. The long lost secret brother or daughter or ex. People who logically exist. The number of stories I've read where one of those turns up? I lost count. The thing is though usually the camera is the wrong way around. Erm, that made sense in my head. Okay. What I mean: Usually when the newbie turns up the story shows how newbie reacts to existing characters. All we're likely to be interested in at first is how existing characters react to newbie. And then maybe the newbie can show us a side we haven't thought of, but if that's the whole story? Probably it leaves out what attracted us to the 'verse in the first place, what we're there for.
... see CoE.
It's all about the balance.
Why I love the character Ethan Rayne isn't just the power and the trickster fun. He brings out new facets in existing characters. Possibly too new - if every episode is Halloween we get... Dollhouse? Huh. I haven't watched that yet though. But who Ethan is to Giles gives us a new perspective on Giles, because it puts him in a role none of the continuing characters has with him - he's an equal, who knows the work in progress years, pre tweed and without the books. Giles has other relationships, but he has no one else who can bring up the tension with who and what he used to be. So who else could be productively introduced? And who would be a comparison or a competition? Canon characters have Giles in the role of mentor on the whole. So if we wanted a story about Giles we could put him in the role of student, have an old teacher turn up, which might be what happened when the Watcher's Council were around evaluating him. Or we've got the semi parental role, "Wish I could play the father". So to make him the child role could be interesting, though I've always vaguely felt his parents were probably dead before the series started because he seemed to be flying without a net. If they're alive, how did we go 7 years with not the slightest reference to them? A story could live there. Or, of course, this being the Buffyverse, they could be dead and yet still part of the story. Then again, flip it another way, with Buffy he only plays the father. If a biological child of his turned up, what would be the difference in his role with them?
I think one set of problems turns up when a character strolls in to new relationships with every canon character. The previously unknown daughter turns up and dates one, is best enemies with another, academic rivals with a third, and best friends with another. Having one character that can realistically mirror, shadow, re-emphasise more than one character? Difficult. And a fail becomes a cascade fail, card house falling.
Ethan walks in to be a shadow Giles, and for the space of two episodes sets up in relation to Buffy because of that. Because Giles is mentor and Ethan is his shadow Ethan is a dark mentor to Buffy. In Halloween he's making her the kind of girl she thinks she wants to be; in Dark Age he's putting her between himself and the demons. Both of those functions are things Giles does, from a certain point of view. But from Halloween we can see Giles gives Buffy knowledge, not takes memory away, and he teaches her to be strong, not wraps her in a costume. From Dark Age we get him trying to take on the demons himself. And failing, and needing rescue, but the point is he's willing, just not able. Ethan's twisting of the mentor role illuminates the ways Giles does it right, and wrong.
If the point of the show was Buffy choosing between just those two models Ethan could stick around and play temptation of the week, but instead we get a lot of alternatives turning up and being rejected week after week, and no simple duality about it. Which is why the show has enough stories to fill out all those seasons and why it's complex enough I'm still interested.
I love Ethan because I think he could do the dark mentor thing opposite and beside Giles, for any character Giles was connected to in that way, while showing us more about Giles, until they reached some kind of balance between them that suggested a working solution to some big philosophical problems. But, key, showing us more about Giles. It isn't his show. We don't need Ethan to tell us about Buffy's life, not uniquely. So away he goes again. :-(
To set someone up in relation to every other character also suffers from probable duplication. There already is a best friend. Shadow best friend turns up? Okay, play with that a while - but eventually they either have to redeem or be rejected. Or the main characters start looking really very stupid.
New characters are not about showing us the new character. New characters are about showing us those we already know in a new way. Keep that in mind and they won't Superstar your story.
... and I'm eyeing a Torchwood fanfic I couldn't get to work properly right now and telling me this quite strongly. Always oh so tempting.
Make someone who tells the theme again and makes it new and you've made a great story.
Make someone who does that and makes the regulars new and you've made a great story in that 'verse.
Which is just a teensy tricky.
Original characters
In both fanfic and continuing TV series you have a set of characters that carry from episode to episode, the regulars, the canon characters, and you have characters that you the writer are sitting down to make up. And while you really love the canon characters, hence the wanting to write about them at all, you just meet this new person and suddenly they're the most interesting person in the 'verse. Slight problem: Interesting to the writer. Interesting to the reader? Trickier.
The biggest problem is forgetting who the story is about. Clue: Not the New Guy.
If it is about the new guy, you have written a spin off. It probably won't be as popular. Good luck with that.
To write original characters that work you've got to remember that even if you're talking about a person who looks, speaks, thinks, acts nothing like the established characters, they are secretly telling a story about the established characters. The new is there to illuminate the continuing. They highlight a facet, an aspect, a mood, a phase in the life of the canon characters. If done well enough they'll fit in with the theme, habits, conventions of storytelling of the source text so well they'll be popular with people looking for more out of those texts. They might even work so well they'll become the new regulars. But to do that they've got to generate stories about the central concerns of the show, and the regular characters.
So say we've got Lisa, or Beth, or Mary. Torchwood women who turn out to be bad guys but get a lot of screen time while they're there. Each has SF style power, insider knowledge, and a capacity for violence. There's the superficial humanity covering a secret slide to monstrous, and three different reactions to it - assimilation, horror, and reveling in it. Why these are all great Torchwood stories is that team Torchwood have to worry about becoming the monster. They've got the hidden power, they've got the violence, they've got to worry about what it's doing to them. So repeatedly we get these characters turning up that illustrate that. And each of them connects to some Torchwood team through similarities, Ianto Gwen Tosh being on their side, and others through conflict, Jack stopping them, but still revealing ways he resembles them. His horror is in how far he'll go, and the suspicion Ianto was right from the start, he's always been as much a monster as the things he kills. The audience sympathy for him comes from the sometimes very skinny ways he's different. And when Captain John turns up - a character who reads as very fanfic, guest star with a secret romantic past and a near identical skill set but in some ways just slightly better - well that's a compare contrast too. He's there to be all Jack used to be, in large print, and let Jack reject it. And then he comes back and blows hell out of everything because actually Jack can't just walk away from consequences.
... I can see how Children of Earth got put together thematically. I just think the balance was off between existing and continuing characters. Who did Frobisher illustrate except Frobisher? No, seriously, does he compare/contrast like this? Screen time on him was excessive else.
There's always characters that are tempting to write, corners of the 'verse you really want to fill in. The long lost secret brother or daughter or ex. People who logically exist. The number of stories I've read where one of those turns up? I lost count. The thing is though usually the camera is the wrong way around. Erm, that made sense in my head. Okay. What I mean: Usually when the newbie turns up the story shows how newbie reacts to existing characters. All we're likely to be interested in at first is how existing characters react to newbie. And then maybe the newbie can show us a side we haven't thought of, but if that's the whole story? Probably it leaves out what attracted us to the 'verse in the first place, what we're there for.
... see CoE.
It's all about the balance.
Why I love the character Ethan Rayne isn't just the power and the trickster fun. He brings out new facets in existing characters. Possibly too new - if every episode is Halloween we get... Dollhouse? Huh. I haven't watched that yet though. But who Ethan is to Giles gives us a new perspective on Giles, because it puts him in a role none of the continuing characters has with him - he's an equal, who knows the work in progress years, pre tweed and without the books. Giles has other relationships, but he has no one else who can bring up the tension with who and what he used to be. So who else could be productively introduced? And who would be a comparison or a competition? Canon characters have Giles in the role of mentor on the whole. So if we wanted a story about Giles we could put him in the role of student, have an old teacher turn up, which might be what happened when the Watcher's Council were around evaluating him. Or we've got the semi parental role, "Wish I could play the father". So to make him the child role could be interesting, though I've always vaguely felt his parents were probably dead before the series started because he seemed to be flying without a net. If they're alive, how did we go 7 years with not the slightest reference to them? A story could live there. Or, of course, this being the Buffyverse, they could be dead and yet still part of the story. Then again, flip it another way, with Buffy he only plays the father. If a biological child of his turned up, what would be the difference in his role with them?
I think one set of problems turns up when a character strolls in to new relationships with every canon character. The previously unknown daughter turns up and dates one, is best enemies with another, academic rivals with a third, and best friends with another. Having one character that can realistically mirror, shadow, re-emphasise more than one character? Difficult. And a fail becomes a cascade fail, card house falling.
Ethan walks in to be a shadow Giles, and for the space of two episodes sets up in relation to Buffy because of that. Because Giles is mentor and Ethan is his shadow Ethan is a dark mentor to Buffy. In Halloween he's making her the kind of girl she thinks she wants to be; in Dark Age he's putting her between himself and the demons. Both of those functions are things Giles does, from a certain point of view. But from Halloween we can see Giles gives Buffy knowledge, not takes memory away, and he teaches her to be strong, not wraps her in a costume. From Dark Age we get him trying to take on the demons himself. And failing, and needing rescue, but the point is he's willing, just not able. Ethan's twisting of the mentor role illuminates the ways Giles does it right, and wrong.
If the point of the show was Buffy choosing between just those two models Ethan could stick around and play temptation of the week, but instead we get a lot of alternatives turning up and being rejected week after week, and no simple duality about it. Which is why the show has enough stories to fill out all those seasons and why it's complex enough I'm still interested.
I love Ethan because I think he could do the dark mentor thing opposite and beside Giles, for any character Giles was connected to in that way, while showing us more about Giles, until they reached some kind of balance between them that suggested a working solution to some big philosophical problems. But, key, showing us more about Giles. It isn't his show. We don't need Ethan to tell us about Buffy's life, not uniquely. So away he goes again. :-(
To set someone up in relation to every other character also suffers from probable duplication. There already is a best friend. Shadow best friend turns up? Okay, play with that a while - but eventually they either have to redeem or be rejected. Or the main characters start looking really very stupid.
New characters are not about showing us the new character. New characters are about showing us those we already know in a new way. Keep that in mind and they won't Superstar your story.
... and I'm eyeing a Torchwood fanfic I couldn't get to work properly right now and telling me this quite strongly. Always oh so tempting.
Make someone who tells the theme again and makes it new and you've made a great story.
Make someone who does that and makes the regulars new and you've made a great story in that 'verse.
Which is just a teensy tricky.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-05 11:12 am (UTC)