Headhunting (Points of View, Pt. 2)

‘Go Ahead, call me all the names you want,’ Sansa said airily. ‘You won’t dare when I’m married to Joffrey. You’ll have to bow and call me Your Grace.’ She shrieked as Arya flung the orange across the table. It caught her in the middle of the forehead with a wet squish and plopped down into her lap.

‘You have juice on your face, Your Grace,’ Arya said.
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

As discussed in my last blog post, point of view can extend far beyond just perspective and tense. Many stories feature multiple protagonists, often times skipping between them when the narrative requires it. For novels, this often occurs at the start of a new chapter. In contrast, movies much more fluidly move between the characters. Video games tend to be all over the place in this regard, sometimes allowing for a change in viewpoint with a press of the button.

Perhaps the most famous series of novels for alternating perspectives is the book series Game of Thrones, which features upwards of 25 point of view characters. (Some characters have many more chapters than others, depending on the book.) Every chapter is centered around one character’s viewpoint, featuring a limited third-person narration with subjective observations. This essentially means that George R.R. Martin is extremely restrained in his storytelling, not factually elaborating on things beyond the character’s comprehension.

Such a rich mosaic of character perspectives is extremely difficult, but Martin does a tremendous job of it. A self-proclaimed storytelling “gardener,” he organically grows his narratives through each individual’s experiences. Teenage girls think like teenage girls, while cutthroats are always looking for a throat to cut. While stupendously impressive, this means that Martin has to be a very slow writer. As many viewers well know, the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones has moved beyond the novels and concluded its tale.

Tyrion cocked his head sideways. ‘Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my headache worse?’

Varys smiled. ‘Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.’

‘So power is a mummer’s trick?’

‘A shadow on the wall,’ Varys murmured, ‘yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.’

Tyrion smiled. ‘Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.’

‘I will take that as high praise.’
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

Perhaps most importantly, Martin chooses to avoid using the perspectives of certain characters. Lord Varys in the scene above is never given a perspective, making his actions and underlying motivations all the more mysterious. Tyrion perceives him not through the eyes of Martin but of his own prejudiced perspective, which often times serves to give the reader additional hints regarding Tyrion’s own mental state. The most entertaining part in any of Martin’s books is when two characters witness something and perceive it very differently.

Perhaps the largest downside to having multiple points of view is the audience’s bias. Everyone is going to prefer certain characters over others, creating the incentive to quickly read through certain chapters featuring undesired perspectives (if not skip them outright). This can be a huge problem to the author, as critical plot points might be missed by the careless reader. The only real solution is for a writer to make all of their perspectives fully engrossing, or be willing to remove the weaker ones when necessary.

Movies can simply shift perspectives around in a whimsical fashion, but this too poses a distinct problem. Audiences can be easily confused, or they might simply experience unprepared narrative whiplash. Compounding this problem is most movies refuse to do inner monologues, something extremely informative that is often found in novels. All of these issues explain why most movies tend to have much more simplistic plots than serialized novels, television shows, and even video games.

Every writer needs to prioritize their storytelling in an understandable fashion with a firm comprehension of their narrative choice, regardless of the number of perspectives involved. What works for Martin doesn’t always work for other skilled writers, especially if they aren’t aiming to tell a story as grand as his. There are still even more factors than that just these attributes, however. Next time, I will be scrutinizing chronological point of view storytelling, which introduces the element of prolonged time to the narrative.

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com

An Invited Guest (Point Of View, Pt. 1)

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it. – Tom Wolfe

A point of view is critical to every story. Is it reliable? Is it all-knowing? Does it shift from character to character? Is it present or past tense? Does it traverse a timeline in chronological fashion? All of these aspects form the basis for a distinct narrative that stands on top of the literal language used by the writer. To make things crazier no guild of writers has ever decreed how exactly all of this perspective stuff should work. The fact of the matter is that every individual in every audience enjoys specific brushstrokes.

Perhaps the best way to start this multi-part blog series is highlighting the starting point: the viewer. All things begin with an individual’s comprehension of the narrative at hand. To put it another way, every person is an invited guest into a story that transpires before their eyes. Sometimes it can be a very passive (yet analytical) experience like a movie or can be very interactive like a video game. No matter the medium, every guest is invited in and given a tour of the story by some implicit or explicit narration.

This vehicular narration perspective can take a variety of person tenses ranging from first to the third person. The first person uses “I” and “we,” which typically indicates that the perspective is an active participant in the story. A second person narration is far more experimental, using “you”. By using “you” the narrator is essentially addressing the audience in a very fourth wall breaking act. Lastly, the ever popular third-person utilizes “he/she” and “they”, which typically makes the narrator standoffish.

I can feel Peeta press his forehead into my temple and he asks, ‘So now that you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?’ I turn into him. ‘Put you somewhere you can’t get hurt. ― The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is a great example of first-person storytelling that utilizes a present tense, not a past tense. By using this form of narration Suzanne Collins does a tremendous job of putting you right in Katinss’ head. There’s no awkward passerby feeling with the reader, only an intensity that comes with proximity and urgency with the present. While the movies did a decent job of recapturing this, no cinema can fully reveal to the audience a protagonist’s mental processes without being jarring.

 

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Likewise, many story-driven video games emphasize this kind of experiential narration. Deus Ex frequently immerses the player in present-tense dialogue, sometimes even going so far as to have verbal debates with major characters that severely impact the game’s outcome. Naturally, the “fights” do more to engage the player than any other cinematic splendor shown in the game. Even very Hollywood-esque games like the Uncharted franchise have started to incorporate these features in amusing ways.

Something hits the Mayor on the shoulder. It hurts like hell! There on the floor-a jar of mayonnaise, an eight-ounce jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Half full! Half consumed! Somebody has thrown a half-eaten jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise at him! In that instant the most insignificant thing takes over his mind. Who in the name of God would bring a half-eaten eight-ounce jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise to a public meeting? 
― The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe always keeps things lively, even if he is using a third-person perspective in his story. Still, he keeps the present tense in his narration to great effect. Wolfe is unafraid to have entire side sequiturs to a scene, running through a character’s related history even as a short dialogue elapses. This would be extraordinarily difficult for a first-person narration, as most people don’t reflect about deeply personal and lengthy prior experiences in a detached way during a normal conversation.

Don’t worry, there’s a lot more to cover in relation to the fictional form of narration. Next time, I’ll be tackling the various forms of narration in relation to a shift in perspective. It’s one thing to have a single protagonist, but it’s a whole another ball game when you’re juggling a dozen characters each with their own perspective in life!

 

 

Need to Know Basis (Sci-Fi, Pt. 3)

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

There’s a great desire for cool things in science fiction, specifically the military sub-genre: big robots, epic battles, and some glowing stuff that vaguely feels scientific with enough mumbo-jumbo vocabulary. Not surprisingly, it’s tough to build a narrative around such things, even if they are cool. However, even a comprehensive and thoughtful story bears its own risk. Star Trek, Warhammer, and every other science fiction story involving military personnel tend to have too many characters, too many factions, and too many scientific discoveries that are difficult to understand. It’s like a game of chess, but the players are having difficulties understanding how the game is played and why the bishops are hovering.

Another problem is that science fiction loves to alter human nature, especially in this military sub-genre. In the world of Star Trek, for instance, humanity has evolved into a socialist utopia that only faces serious problems when trying to make peace with weird aliens. This incredible story becomes literally that: incredible. Somehow science and technology have made man better in this unbelievable world, all forsaking self-destruction and corruption at every turn to the benefit of the collective. How again is the viewer supposed to take any of this seriously? Suddenly those cheesy uniforms start to fill a lot more silly, as does the magical teleportation technology that the Federation spams.

Ideally, the story of any science-fiction narrative is built on characters in a cohesive plot, but the ideas beneath them have to be solid as well. Starship Troopers is a provocative work, not because men shoot guns at aliens but because of the ideas that they discuss during training. Humanity in this story has become highly martial in its nature, forsaking many of the values we take for granted in our current real world. Military service is recommended for everyone, as without it no citizen is able to vote in politics. Violence is viewed as a means to an end. It’s a jarring read and quite fascist, but far more believable than hippies in red shirts with saucer-shaped ships and knockout phasers.

So how can a writer go about being true to humanity while the same time expressing newfound scientific permutations in a succinct way? There are three critical elements to the story that cannot be overlooked: the scientific world building as it relates to the protagonist, the development of a clear antagonist, and the exposition that serves to be a bridge between the two. Why is a protagonist doing the things that they are doing in this weird future? Why should a viewership care about the antagonist when everything seems so alien in the world? And why are those chessboard knights hovering again? A writer is always in danger of losing their narrative if the audience can’t answer these questions.

Unfortunately, every decade of science-fiction is filled full of writers who forget these elements. Not to bash Star Trek too much, but the original motion picture in 1979 forgot to have a real villain, disappointing many until the menacing Kahn appeared in the 1982 film. GenLock is another example of forgetting these critical elements. Clearly starting with the cool stuff first, this new high profile television sci-fi drama has a lot going for it: flashy protagonists, cool robots, and energetic action. Unfortunately, the villains are essentially poorly defined cardboard cutouts, which calls into question the motives of the protagonists. Why is everything happening the way it’s happening again?

Thankfully, some science-fiction does do right by these three elements. Gundam is famed for its flashy mix of politics, war machines, and “hard” space opera that stays relatively focused. While the Gundam franchise takes a variety of forms in a whole host of timelines, the most high profile stories are centered around the Universal Century timeline. This timeline features earth at war with its colonies in space, each side in a prolonged and ever-simmering struggle for supremacy. The protagonist and antagonist are well fleshed out in their scenarios, as are the science-fiction elements that unify the story.

Regardless of what type of sci-fi story a writer is creating, there are rules that must rise above the temptations one-note ideas, convoluted summations, and the other pitfalls I’ve outlined in this three-part series. Thankfully, it appears that things are moving in a positive direction for this form of storytelling. Many writers and viewers of this generation are now more interested in the “who” over the “how,” which means that solid storytelling is of a higher priority than groundbreaking special effects and concepts. Much remains to be seen, however, but people will always continue to dream up ambitious ideas of the future.

System Singularity (Sci-Fi, Pt. 2)

Science fiction has a lot of ideas. Too many ideas, unfortunately. Between robots, time travel, and spaceships there is a lot going on in any fictional futuristic world. Quite frankly, there’s not enough time to communicate all the ideas in science fiction and still tell a compelling traditional story in a succinct fashion. Most movies are under three hours, most books have less than 700 pages, and television shows are always uncertain in their length. Any writer of sci-fi has to bring focus to a story, oftentimes prioritizing elements most critical to the plot. Most importantly, every writer must harmonize these elements into a singular plot thread that unifies the entire narrative in a satisfying way.

That’s a lot easier said than done, especially when considering many of the plot elements introduced in any science-fiction story are either alien (literally or metaphorically) to the audience. Even something that is universally known like time travel still has to be detailed in a customized fashion that can be confusing. A writer has to make sure they are both educational and entertaining in their approach while they advance the story coherently. The necessary evil of exposition must be deployed with great care, as it can often trip up any number of things.

Perhaps the biggest problem with exposition is that everyone has a different opinion about it, as I elaborate in my blog post Necessary Evils:

I would like to now point out that exposition is often times viewed very differently by subgroups in the viewership. Nerds love all lore and general information in the story, as long as it is not painfully presented in a ham-fisted way. Conversely, more casual partakers of fiction don’t like to be bombarded with a lot of silly stuff that doesn’t apply to their real daily lives. Perhaps the average viewer lands in between, who typically like to know more about their favorite character’s background but doesn’t care to figure out if the Gregorian or Julian calendar is being used in the story.

The movie Interstellar has a lot of great ideas: wormholes, time travel, black holes, and Matthew McConnaughhay wearing his shirt the entire time. Thankfully, director Christopher Nolan does an excellent job weaving a story of a family struggling to survive into the foreground. Starting off on a humble farm struggling to survive the worst blight mankind is ever seen, a compelling premise is generated that escalates over the course of a long movie. We see how these realistic, yet still fantastical scientific concepts impact father and daughter across time and space. It’s deeply emotional and wondrous at the same time.

Likewise, in the movie Looper by Rian Johnson, we experience an entire lifetime of a protagonist over just the course of a few hours. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt portray the same character ravaged by time and events that are overlapping due to time travel shenanigans. The entire narrative could’ve been a tangled mess, but an excellent core narrative of humanity and redemption runs through the story. When the protagonist makes his final decision in the movie the audience invested, sympathetic, and horrified. Most importantly, no one is scratching their heads as the credits roll.

Some movies navigate two parallel storylines and their narratives often are interwoven with the power of science-fiction. The movie Napping Princess is one such example, featuring a teenage girl in the real world that often experiences dreams of a fantastical one. Throughout the movie, the audience is allowed to mentally fill in the gaps, but they are still told the important details that make the conclusion profoundly epic. The science-fiction aspects of the story meld beautifully with the more classic fantasy tropes, yielding a story that is both visually awe-inspiring and believable in its logical jumps at the same time.

Regardless of the science being used in any fictional tale, every writer has to do more than spin a metaphorical idea plate for several hours on a thin stick. Just because someone has teleportation or time travel doesn’t mean the writer gets the same kind of shortcut. A coherent story with a heart has to be present, or the cold clinical nature of science-fiction will emerge, sterilizing everything good it comes in contact with. Next time, we will explore the writing perils of military science fiction, chiefly the desensitizing tangential nature of it.

 

Space Step by Space Step (Sci-Fi, Pt. 1)

As a guest writer on this blog has recently outlined, science fiction writing has a lot of pitfalls. Unlike other types of fiction, sci-fi stories tend to fall victim to grievous sins in writing. Plots centered around tangential ideas. Paradoxes lurking around corners. Fragmented narratives pretending to be a cohesive plot. The list never really ends when dealing with the type of fiction that is akin to running around with binoculars taped to your face. If you don’t take slow steps and stop to look around at this odd world you’re going to fall flat on your butt and be run over by a bus. No number of giant robots, time-traveling agents, or fascinating evil corporations will save you.

On the upside, sci-fi typically needs the shortest elevator pitch of any story. “A romantic drama about partners who use giant robots to battle evil.” Boom, you got me! “A wormhole opens up above the planet, presenting a mirror image world beyond.” Wow, that sounds cool! But how does a writer take these cool concepts and not end up with fragmented and paradoxical tangents? To put it another way, how does one sustain interest in a cohesive story with memorable characters and a great ending? If it was easy, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus would have been hailed as an excellent prequel to Alien.

You see, the dark little secret about science fiction writing is that it is extremely iterative. Because science fiction is rooted in so many abstract concepts beyond basic human life, every successful attempt is integrated into successive works that have no relation. To quote the lead Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, “I didn’t steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!” A standout original work, the 1979 Alien was cobbled together by at least four writers attempting to meld standalone ideas and then streamline them into a pleasing film. The process ultimately was successful, but the basic plot was nothing memorable by itself.

When Prometheus was released in 2012 by Scott it failed in its basic goal: to recapture the magic of the original film in a self-contained prequel for modern audiences. Why? Times had changed. You see, Science-fiction had continued to evolve in new directions after 1979 that emphasized more coherent (yet expanded) plots that went beyond a weird alien manslaughtering on a ship. Even the 1986 sequel Aliens by James Cameron had already surpassed Prometheus in that regard, adding space marines in an action-heavy plot that also featured a cute little orphan girl suffering.

Time travel science-fiction is another example of original, yet iterative storytelling that has evolved yet stayed the same. A staple of much science-fiction for good or for worse, the fascinating concept of time manipulation never fails to be reassessed. H.G. Wells took the first crack at the idea in his famous 1895 novel The Time Machine, featuring an Englishman having a romp through the space-time continuum. Naturally, there is all manner of traveling paradoxes lurking in the background, but such notions did little to dissuade well over a century of emulation. From video games to TV shows, time travel has become such a ubiquitous plot device that no one needs an introduction to it.

Edge of Tomorrow, the American movie (based on a Japanese novel) is a far cry from The Time Machine in its storytelling methods, opting for a constant organic rewinding of time versus a more leisurely cruise in a machine. Likewise, the protagonists played by Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise are warriors steeped in combat, not a scientist residing in the English countryside. During their story, an entire World War II style invasion is transpiring on the beaches of France, forcing them to improvise time and time again to perfect a victory against a slippery alien foe. It’s a fun two hours of twists and turns, giving a distinct human feeling that is as critical as it is entertaining.

Next time, I’ll continue my analysis of science fiction writing and the ever-present perils that a writer faces in translating futuristic ideas into an engageable plot worthy of any medium.