Tag Archives: craft

I have a strong fascination with systems for classifying characters, like my born great/achieve greatness/have greatness thrust upon them post from some years back. I don’t really use them that much when I’m writing, but they still interest me. So here are a few.

The original DC Comics RPG from about 30 years ago broke down heroic motivations into five categories.  They uphold good (Superman). They fight evil (Batman and Spectre). They’re burdened with unwanted power (Cyborg. The Doom Patrol. The X-Men). A sense of duty (Green Lantern). The thrill of adventure (Green Arrow. Warlord)

My friend Gray Rinehart posted a list on his blog (I don’t have the exact link) of how characters respond to outer and inner expectations:

• Upholders struggle to live up to what other people expect of them, and their own standards.
• Obligers meet other people’s expectations, but resist setting internal, personal standards.
• Questioners follow their own code, but resist outer expectations.
• Rebels push against other people’s rules, and against their own standards.

John Rogers discusses levels of corruption on his blog Kung Fu Monkey in relation to his TV show Leverage but I think it’s also useful as an assessment of how bad a character (or a real person) is.

1)You discover your business has done something bad and harmful (your new product has harmful side effects say). You put a stop to it, make restitution and acknowledge the error. Or on a personal level, you do something — cheat on your spouse, say — but you stop, confess, don’t do it again and don’t dig yourself in deeper defending yourself. Overall, you’re a good person (subject to just how bad your actions were); you sinned, but instead of excusing it, you’ve done your best to atone and resume walking the walk. For example, William Powell in Manhattan Melodrama who resigns his post when he fails to live up to his own standards.

2)You did something wrong but you don’t admit to it. However you also don’t repeat your error. So (again depending what you did) you’re still a decent human being.

3)You don’t admit it, and you also don’t try to control it. For example, you know if your old lover shows up, you’re going to sleep with them, but you don’t take any steps to avoid being alone with them.

4)You actively doing stuff — selling tainted products, sleeping with strangers on trips out of town, cutting corners on regulations — while holding yourself as a respectable person. The higher the risk of harm, the worse you are: if you hide a 10 percent risk your nuclear plant will cause cancer in the neigbhorhood, that’s bad but it’s not as bad as if there’s a 60 percent risk.

Rogers does a much more entertaining breakdown, so check it out.

Foz Meadows and I use a similar classification scheme for Bad Boys (hers) and Bad Girls (mine). The ones who makes a good romantic lead, “the rebel – is defiant, confident, anarchic; a counteragent to the conformity, he breaks rules, laws and established social mores alike, both on principle and for the joy of it.” They push the protagonist to rebel too, against everything that’s strangling them in their lives. Next come the ones who see the protagonist mostly as a possession or a source of sexual satisfaction, but don’t care about them much beyond that (see either of the original posts for examples). And then the ones who are abusive, manipulative, treat you like shit or talk you into murdering or stealing for them. And that goes even if they’re charming and/or beautiful and/or the sex is incredible; that may explain why the protagonist can’t quit them but it disqualifies the for the happy ending.

#SFWApro. Cover by Curt Swan, all rights remain with current holder.

While I wasn’t a fan of the Kamandi Challenge round-robin limited series, one or two of the text page discussions stuck with me. Most notably Greg Pak discussing the old improv phrase, “yes, and.”

The point of the phrase is that in improv, you don’t reject whatever weirdness the other performers throw at you, you accept it, then build on it. Say yes, then add “and …” That forces you to go up, instead of down. My Mum made a similar point about theater (she was an awesome community theater director): if one actor’s going so big they overshadow the rest of the cast, you don’t want to damp them down, you want everyone else to go up and match them.

I think that’s good advice for writing too. Don’t just stop at “well, that’s a good idea.” Where does it lead us? What does it lead us to? What could it lead to?

For an example, there’s the Chip and Dales Rescue Rangers episode, A Case of Stage Blight. Sewernose de Bergerac is an alligator who lives in the sewers under an opera house. Growing up there after his owner flushed him down a toilet, he’s fascinated by show biz and dreams of performing on stage. The Rescue Rangers run up against him when he kidnaps the lead in the current production to take his place.

Which is weird, in a good way. But they don’t stop there. Sewernose also has two hand puppets, Euripedes and Voltaire, who alternate between giving him pep talks and critiquing his performance. It takes a wild idea and makes it several times wilder.

As does the H. Rider Haggard/Andrew Lang The World’s Desire. We start with Odysseus hunting Helen of Troy in Egypt, then the authors pile on a reincarnate love triangle and the Ten Plagues of Egypt taking place in the background. It creates a truly wild result.

Or Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run, which just piles weirdness on weirdness.

Of course, improv is a lot more forgiving if “yes and” leads us to the wrong place than readers will be. But unlike improv, we can go back and rewrite when that happens. So what’s to lose?

#SFWApro. Image by Jack Kirby (top), covers by Vincent diFate (middle) and Mike Sekowsky. All rights remain with current holders.