Character Design: Spontaneous

So some of you might forget that I am actually a professional writer, not just some chump with access to blogspot.com and a keyboard. I forget myself sometimes. I've decided to take a bit of time to stretch my writer's muscles every now and again. So I've decided to start up a recurring section looking at what makes a good character. Usually this will be inspired by whatever I happen to be indulging media wise at the time. Let's get started.

Good characters think on their feet.

Romantic movies and books always point out how women want men to be spontaneous, to do the unexpected. A cute thought, but not what I mean. Spontaneity is the notion of not settling into a routine. That is not, however, what we expect out of a hero. A hero needs to have a plan when there seems like there can be none.

Take Batman. Batman has contingency plans for everything. His main strength, however, is his mind and his ability to think. In his work, if a plan goes wrong, he will be able to think up how to come at the problem from a different angle. Even as plan A fails, plan B is being implemented, plan C prepped, and plan D going into beta. Thinking on his feet is the reason Batman can come out on top.

Now what does this mean for writers? It's all well and good to say that characters need to think on their feet, but how do you put that in as a writer. That comes through in the execution of sequences. Here's what I mean. When crafting a scenario where you the author knows something goes wrong, there needs to be a back up plan that the character can implement later. The mechanics for that have to be in the works before hand as well. That is your job as the writer.

When writing the scene, there can be little indication that there is other plans in the works. It's so tempting to drop little hints that, when looking back, give away what happened. This is a big thing in movies, and can be pretty cool. But most savvy readers can pick up on stuff like that, especially if it is in a suspense or mystery story. That ruins it for them and makes the plot predictable. The goal should be to execute the new plan in a way that seems organic. It should seem to flow from the failed first plot and round out the story.

Surprisingly, Scooby-Doo was great at this. Fred always came up with ingenious (and stupidly elaborate) plans to catch the bad guys. Typically something would go wrong and the monster would avoid the first trap. Then, Scooby and Shaggy would find a way to haphazardly catch the monster for the big reveal. These situations show that a secondary option can appear completely out of the blue as long as the writer understands how to make the character seem like they thought of it on the fly.

I'm still trying to figure out how they managed to screw up Batman's plan when he teamed up with Scooby.

Just something to chew on.

A Pirate's Life For Me

Yes, I've been gone for a while, but I'm back. I know you think that I'll probably be writing about something that is deep and spiritual for me. And you would be right...just not now. Instead, I'm going to take a look at the internet, media, and profit. Basically I'm just avoiding writing about what I've been thinking about. On to the subject.

I believe we are thinking about piracy wrong.

While I wish I was talking about the high seas and raiding local villages for plunder, I'm taking about the ideas of digital property. Interestingly enough, a recent survey suggested that the ones who pirate music illegally are also the ones who buy the most legally. Honestly, I can understand. I feel that those who really like music always want to expand their libraries of music. They may pirate music to sample it, then purchase the one's they like. I can understand not wanting to invest in something you don't know if they're any good. I appreciate this because it shows that "pirates" are not just cheap, greedy music grabbers who don't support the artists.

The thing is, however, digital property is something we don't understand. It is created material, and some ownership of that is true, but that falls more under copyright laws than protection. See, I don't believe in plagiarism as acceptable. It should never be okay to take someone's work and use it for your own gains. I should not be able to copy the direct idea from a Stephen King novel and try to sell it. That is intruding on an artist's work.

But acquiring the work is another thing entirely. The thing about digital media is that it is not a physical thing. Taking a book from Barnes and Nobel is depriving someone else of a physical, limited material. Meaning, there are only so many physical copies, and you have denied someone access to one of them. However, with digital media, there is only the information file. It costs nothing to copy the material and send it to someone. In that regards, you are not depriving anyone of anything.

I do think that there needs to be some kind of protection for this material. If all material is free, then there will be no profits for anyone. I can see this causing a lot of trouble in the videogame world. There is so much capital poured into them that there needs to be some kind of return. On the flip side, so much media is so expensive, that it is hard to come by it in a legal way that is also personally responsible. What we need, I believe, is not laws that demonize the individual, but one's that help the company. It is such a hard thing to regulate, but there should be ways to legally obtain this kind of information. We need to take time and think about how to best regulate and not to punish.

I do think it should be a crime to listen to Justin Bieber, however.

Just something to chew on.