Well, I’ve been on such a roll with generic writing advice, it’s time for another post about it! Yes, this also means I don’t have anything else to talk about! How astute!
Derek has been experiencing the joys of labour unions and during his civil duties he’s bemoaned of how tiring and exhausting he finds them. I don’t really have anywhere to go from this statement other than I wanted to record for posterity the minute struggles with plague my reticent co-contributor. Now the Internet shall forever know your day to day struggles. Also, you’re getting destroyed by Adam in Terra Mystica. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed.
Of course, in my desperate attempt to perform the perfunctory requirements of social empathy, I encouraged Derek that his struggles build character. And, in literature, no truer statement can be made. I know this is pretty beginner advice but it’s remarkable how often this tiny detail crops up during the creation or editing phase of writing. We readers are malicious sorts. We expect, nay, demand stress and ill-will towards our most cherished characters. Imagine how dreadful The Lord of the Rings would have been if Frodo had decided to stay home and simply attend his garden with nary a trouble to shadow his door outside of a tobacco addled old man too easily shooed from the porch. I mean, Samwise waxes for five pages over rabbit stew, I really don’t think the audience would have the attention to outlast five hundred pages of rusty hoes and spreading manure.
No, it’s the mental and physical anguish which makes the story. It’s the building jealousy and paranoia towards his best friend–fueled by the dire whispers of the demented Smeagol–that keep us glued to the pages and turning each one. Conflict drives narrative. This is perhaps as basic a tenant one could get for writing. But not all conflict is created equal. An unruly garden certainly produces conflict. I’ve seen my sister attempt her green thumb during the summer. There’s lots of reticence to be overcome through dry weather, scavenging pests and determined plants who refuse to sprout in their optimal time. And yet, I’d wager that audiences would be grabbing for the story about a midget driven mad by a gold ring every time.
Card-Playing Soldiers by Willem Cornelisz Duyster (1625-1630).
I’ve spoken at length about how self-insertion into one’s own work can be ruinous and I think part of the problem stems from the selfish desire to portray oneself in as positive a light as possible. In this way, the Mary Sue character takes on ubermensch-esque proportions where everything about them is perfect and their only struggle is against a world which does not appreciate or actively undermines through immeasurable jealousy the simple hopes and aspirations of this perfected self. The problem is that literature is not a job interview and there is no prize for portraying yourself in as perfect a light as possible. In fact, it mostly drives people away with how ludicrous the narrative becomes.
And it’s because the trials the Mary Sue faces are so… impersonal. I don’t mean to say that their rivals are unknown to the character but that there’s so little actually involved of the protagonist in these tales. Truly, the best conflict strikes deep at our main character and plays upon the most buried and repressed aspects of our protagonist. It’s when conflict aligns to the core flaws of our heroes that stories carry the greatest weight. Literature studies are drowning in such examples. Hamlet isn’t about the usurping Claudius as it is about the ineffectual and maddeningly indecisive titular character. Albeit, this shift from pure plot to character is no doubt a product of a modern shift to the unconscious drives and aspects of our psyche (sorry, I’ll try to keep psychology out of these discussions as best I can).
Recently, I’ve been reading the Lies of Locke Lamora which I’ve been reluctant to comment on until I’ve finished. However, the one aspect that really stands out to me for the novel is how rather unmotivating the whole affair really is for the main character. The book follows the roguish Locke who is a master thief in a city of thieves. The tale mostly revolves around his major caper of conning a wealthy nobleman of his money over some fabricated brewery dispute. Things then happen. It’s been taking me forever to finish the book because I’m simply disinterested in the tale. I can’t get into it because Locke himself is so not into it. I’m halfway through the story and Locke’s coterie of rogues keep asking him why he doesn’t bother running from the trouble and, truly, the reasons Locke produces for remaining involved are as unconvincing to me as they are to the character himself. Locke is, essentially, flawless and the story has no pulls into his flaws. He isn’t driven by a self destructing avarice or pride that forces him to remain in continually disadvantageous positions out of a desperate need to satiate his ego’s needs. Instead, he lingers in the building conflict of the city… because… well, he simply has nothing better to do. It’s much like the whole reason he keeps at his crimes–it’s not for a want of money as the author went to great pains to detail how stupidly wealthy the character is. He’s there because if he weren’t, there would be no story. It’s as simple as that.
I’m bored because Locke’s bored. There’s an earnestness to the tale which strives so hard to intrigue through political maneuvers and wondrous site-seeing but it fails on the core aspect of tales: character. And character is, perhaps, the universal constant in the stories which hold our interests. Its what keeps workers at the water cooler, gossiping about their colleagues weekends. And if you keep an ear to people’s gossip, no one ever focuses in on the perfect, unassailable qualities of an individual. No, it’s those dirty, dark actions, attitudes or behaviours which keep us engaged. We want to see failure since it’s the only way that success is ever rewarding. In a sense, the only difference between comedy and tragedy is that when the protagonist falls on his sword in a comedy, he rolls over to simply reveal it for an embarrassing flesh wound.