Sketching Characters

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Falling Down: The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world

Think of a few literary characters or movie characters who made an indelible mark on you. Ask yourself, why do I remember these particular characters when I've forgotten so many others? What makes these characters, but not others, memorable?

Probably, you will identify certain characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and even views of the world. The characters you admire will probably have acted honorably, valorously, heroically. Those you recall, perhaps with a shudder, feeling fear, disgust, or horror, as evil or dangerous probably strike you as contemptible or loathsome because of, paradoxically, their characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views. While the admirable characters support others, the contemptible are usually interested in serving only themselves. More specifically, though, how are characters sketched by writers?

Most are collections of personality traits. These traits are then implied through the characters' actions, or behavior, including the words they speak, that is, through dialogue. In movies and, more than ever before, in novels, behavior is the means by which personality traits, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views are shown.

In the thriller Falling Down (1993), William Foster, an unemployed engineer, sees society as “falling down” right before his eyes. While the movie leaves no doubt that society is, in fact, in a state of partial collapse, it is also true that Foster himself is “falling down.” He's lost his job. His marriage has ended in divorce. His ex-wife, Beth, has been awarded sole custody of their daughter Adele, and has secured a restraining order against Foster, who has a penchant to act aggressively, even violently, toward others, including, apparently, Beth herself. Foster has lied to his mother, with whom he stays, telling her that he is still employed. In fact, he carries an empty briefcase around town, wearing out shoe leather as he wanders more or less aimlessly until he conceives of the idea of visiting Adele on her birthday, despite the restraining order that has been issued against him and Beth's clear demands that he avoid contact with her and Adele.

Throughout the film, as Foster encounters escalating example after example of the increasingly extreme societal decline he is convinced has overtaken life in Los Angeles and, perhaps the United States as well, he himself collapses further and further psychologically and he reacts to the instances of social decline with more and more extreme behavior, ratcheting up his aggression and violence, revealing himself to be a truly unstable and dangerous man.

In the film, social decline is reflected by other types of decline as well—declines in technology, in government, in civility, in business relations, in attitudes regarding racial and gender equality, and in class privilege.

Heavy traffic

On a terribly hot day, the air conditioner in Foster's car won't work. He abandons the vehicle, leaving it in a traffic jam, and sets off on foot across the city.

My rights as a consumer

Wanting change to call his ex-wife, he asks for, but is refused, change for a dollar. He is told that he must buy something first. He reacts by breaking up the proprietor's merchandise and ranting about his greed. Foster also takes issue with the owner's pronunciation of “five” as “”fie,” insulting him by telling him that, as an immigrant, he should have “the grace to learn the language,” especially after all the money the United States has given the store owner's country.

Territorial dispute

Next, he encounters two Latin street thugs who try to rob him. Foster uses a baseball bat to beat them into retreat and picks up a gun one of them drops. Later, these thugs, accompanied by other gang members, spray bullets at Foster during a drive by, missing their target but wounding several innocent bystanders. When they wreck, Foster takes their cache of guns, shooting the diver in the leg.

Ganging up on D-Fens

At a park, Foster is accosted by an aggressive panhandler after he sees rude people shoving others as they storm a bus that has stopped to pick up passengers, a billboard decrying child abuse, and alcoholics openly drinking in public. He flings his briefcase at the panhandler, telling him he can have it. Inside, the angry panhandler finds nothing but a sandwich and an apple—the lunch Foster's mother had packed for him.

 Late for breakfast

Foster's attempt to order breakfast a few minutes after a fast-food restaurant has changed to its lunch menu elicits sarcastic, condescending remarks from the server and the restaurant's manager. Foster responds by shooting an automatic rifle into the ceiling and terrifying both the staff and the diners, before leaving. Although, once he resorts to gunfire, the manager fills Foster's breakfast order, he leaves the food behind, saying the fries are limp and cold and the hamburger looks nothing like the one shown in the oversize photograph that advertises it.

Not economically viableVisiting a swat meet to buy a birthday present for Adele, Foster observes a young black man in a business suit lamenting a bank's refusal to grant him a loan, crying to passersby, as he is being arrested, “I'm not economically viable.” He catches Foster's eye. “Remember me,” he says, and Foster nods.

Out of order

When he attempts to make a telephone call to Beth, a man rants at him from outside the telephone booth, demanding that he hurry. Foster reacts by shooting up the booth with an automatic rifle. “I think it's out of order,” he tells the terrified man.

Nick's back room: "I'm with you"

In an army surplus store, which Foster visits to buy a pair of boots to replace his worn shoes, he encounters the store's sexist, racist neo-Nazi proprietor, who insults a female detective and a gay couple before turning on Foster, when Foster denies being “just like” him, and attempts to hold Foster at gunpoint until the police he plans to summon arrive. Foster manages to kill the neo-Nazi befolatere continuing his trip across town.

Something to fix

Suspecting road work is not needed but is underway simply to waste taxpayers' money by providing work for the city's department of transportation workers, Foster uses a rocket-propelled grenade launcher he has taken from the street thugs to destroy a tunnel in order to give them some actual work to do.

Passing through

At a gold course, he shoots a golf cart after a golfer challenges his presence on the course, claiming that the links belong solely to him and the other members of the country club upon whose property Foster trespasses. The irate golfer's nitroglycerin pills are aboard the cart, which coasts downhill, into a lake, leaving the golfer, who has a heart attack when Foster shoots at the cart, to die “wearing [his] funny little hat.”

Obsolete; like it was before

After climbing a wall that surrounds an exclusive estate, Foster briefly kidnaps the caretaker, his wife, and their young daughter, as he hides from a helicopter flying over the area. When he learns that the estate is owned by a plastic surgeon, Foster says “the system” has betrayed him, rewarding the plastic surgeon, whose work, he implies, is merely aesthetic, rather than rewarding him, an engineer whose work in the defense industry protects America. When he realizes he has frightened the girl, he leaves the family, resuming his trek, now that the helicopter has left the area.

Officer down and the pier: all points converge

Finally, toward the end of the movie, after shooting Detective Sandra Torres, Foster holds his wife at gunpoint, intending, Sergeant Prendergast says, to shoot them.

End Credits

In addition to showing Foster's personality—his traits, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view—as he reacts to various incidents which confirm his belief that society is “falling down,” even as his own psyche collapses, the film shows how inappropriate, unnecessary, and dangerous his reactions are by contrasting them with another character who encounters similar problems as those which face Foster. Using a foil, a character whose behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view strongly contrasts with those of another, opposing character, is a tried and true means of characterization which Falling Down uses to good effect.

Prendergast is Foster's foil. Foster has “lost” a daughter; Prendergast has lost one through the girl's death. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce. Prendergast's wife, Amanda, suffers from anxiety, which makes her feel the need to control her environment and to order both her own and Prendergast's lives. Foster has been fired from his job. Despite less-than-ideal working conditions, Prendergast wants to remain on the Los Angeles Police Department's force, but Amanda wants him to retire to Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Both Foster and Prendergast see a collapse of social traditions, organizations, institutions, and mores, but—and here is the chief difference between these men who, to a large degree, live rather parallel lives—Foster feels cheated by “the system” and wants what he considers to be his due, whereas Prendergast is content to prop up society and to help to protect and defend it against its threats, including Foster himself. The use of Prendergast as Foster's foil more sharply defines the characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views of both the unemployed defense engineer and the detective.

Such techniques of characterization are widely used as time-tested ways of sketching characters because they are effective. By showing characters react to a variety of situations and incidents and by contrasting these reactions with those of another character who is the opposite in his or her characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views, writers create indelible characters who stand out as memorable individuals. Such an approach can be, and is, used in all genres of fiction, both on the page and on the soundstage.

Note: The subheadings are from the "Scene Index" for the film, as provided on its DVD release.

Plotting Board, Part 8

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Although there are several patterns of plots, one is the three-part structure described by Aristotle in his Poetics: beginning, middle, and end. We can think of this three-part structure as consisting of a cause of an action by which action an effect is produced:

1. Cause
2. Action
3. Effect

Every effect, or outcome, can be either comic (end well for the protagonist) or tragic (end poorly for the protagonist).

With this in mind, many varieties of plots can thus be developed:

The Problem-Solution Plot

1. Problem
2. Solution
3. Effect (Outcome)

As Good As It Gets (1997) uses this plot:

1. Problem: Misanthropic Melvin Udall suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder
2. Solution: Melvin falls in love with Carol Connelly, a server.
3. Outcome: Through his relationship with Carol, Melvin reaches the point at which he can overcome his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The Sex-Violence Plot

1. Sex
2. Violence
3. Outcome

Fatal Attraction (1987) uses this plot:

1. Sex: Dan Gallagher has an affair with Alexandra "Alex" Forrest.
2. Violence: Unstable and possessive, Alex refuses to end the affair, attacking Dan's wife, Beth.
3. Outcome: Dan rescues Beth, who shoots Alex, preventing her from killing her husband.

The Masquerade-Unmasking Plot

1. Masquerade
2. Unmasking
3. Outcome

The Crying Game (1992) uses this plot:

1. Masquerade: Dil, a transvestite, masquerades as a woman.
2. Unmasking: Dil's true sex is revealed as she is about to have sex with Fergus.
3. Outcome: Fergus and Dil remain close friends.

The Victimization-Vengeance Plot

1. Victimization
2. Vengeance
3. Outcome
   
   
   
   
   
   

Sudden Impact (1983) uses this plot:

1. Victimization: Jennifer Spencer and her sister are raped.
2. Vengeance: One by one, Jennifer kills the rapists.
3. Outcome: Detective “Dirty Harry” Callahan learns the serial killer's identity, but lets Jennifer walk.

The Temptation-Sin Plot

1. Temptation
2. Sin
3. Outcome

Joan of Arc (1999) uses this plot:

1. Joan of Arc is tempted to commit the sin of pride.
2. Joan arrogantly insists on attacking Paris.
3. Joan repents and receives God's forgiveness.

The Status Change-Adaptation Plot

1. Status Change
2. Adaptation
3. Outcome

Shakespeare's King Henry IV, Part II uses this plot:

1. Status Change: Prince Hal becomes King Henry IV.
2. Adaptation: Henry IV adapts to his new status, becoming responsible and wise.
3. Outcome: Henry IV defeats his enemies and rules well.

The Threat-Response Plot

1. Threat
2. Response
3. Outcome

Alien (1979) uses this plot:

1. Threat: An alien aboard the Nostromo space tug threatens Warrant Officer Ripley and the rest of the vessel's crew.
2. Response: Ripley fights the alien.
3. Outcome: Using her wits, Ripley defeats the alien, opening an airlock, which causes the creature to be sucked from the vessel, and blasts it with Nostromo's engine exhausts.

The Role-Reversal Plot

1. Role
2. Reversal
3. Outcome

The Final Girl (2015) uses this plot:

1. Role: Veronica poses as a helpless young woman, allowing four teenager serial killers to “lure” her into a forest as their next intended victim.
2. Reversal: Actually a highly trained assassin, Veronica, the boys' intended prey, becomes the predator.
3. Outcome: One by one, veronica kills her would-be killers.

There are plenty of other variations on this basic plot pattern. Perhaps we will consider others in a future post.

Plotting Board, Part 7

Plotting Board, Part 7

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

Problem-Solution Plotting

One of the X-Files's enduring plot devices is the introduction of a problem and its eventual solution. The problem-solution dynamic has built-in suspense: once a problem is posed, we want—maybe we even ache—for it to be solved. In The X-Files, the central problem, as set forth in the series's “mythology” about a possible alien invasion preceding possible alien colonization, becomes, more or less continually, more and more complicated, so the solution, which is put off again and again, has a much greater and more intense emotional payoff when it does come—or should have, at any rate.

According to VanDerWerff, episode 16 of season nine, “Release,” finally “wraps up one of the [show's] major [remaining] mysteries” (419). This mystery is “What happened to Doggett's son when he was murdered?” (410) Although this episode “answers that question,” VanDerWerff says, the answer is anything but clear. Perhaps bringing clarity and closure would make a problem-solution plot much stronger, as readers have invested much time and emotion in the ongoing, long-term, increasingly complex problem. After the tease, it's only fair to deliver.

Techno Thrills

Technology is constantly changing and developing. My father's life encompassed by the Model T and the landing of an astronaut on the moon. My own includes black-and-white television which featured, on tiny, thick screens, programming from ABC, CBS, NBC, and a local affiliate, WTTG, to drones, DARPA's robotic wonders, and self-driving cars (and there's still much more to come—or, at least, I hope there will be.)

That's the point that VanDerWerff makes about storytelling when he writes:

. . . Video software and image manipulation programs are getting so good that it will soon be incredibly difficult to ascertain when footage that seems too good (or too bad) to be true has been faked. We won't always know who's dead and who's alive, and all it will take for those in power to introduce suspicion around a certain set of facts is to stand up in front of all of us and shrug and say, “Nobody knows for sure” (469).

As always, the possibilities are only as limited as our imaginations.

Backfield in Motion

A way of developing plots while characterizing characters is to build a character's backstory. Of course, too much of a good thing is generally a bad thing, so writers have to be careful not to include too much backstory and, when they do build such a history, the character's past should be delivered piecemeal over a number of episodes or, if we're talking book series, a number of volumes.

A case in point is “Kitten,” the sixth episode of The X-Files's season eleven. This episode is unusual, VanDerWerff thinks, because it “takes what was already a serviceable character backstory (specifically that of Water Skinner) and attempts a direct dramatization of it” (474). The character's “Vietnam background” was presented in previous episodes (“One Breath,” [season two, episode eight] and “Avatar” [season three, episode twenty one]. In “Kitten,” viewers learn about Skinner's sacrifice of his own “career to support Mulder and Scully” based on Skinner's belief that their “mission to expose the truth of what the country was doing to some of its most vulnerable citizens was more important than his personal advancement” (475).

As long as a character's backstory doesn't start to take over the current story, as it does, for example, in Arrow and verges upon doing in Punisher, building a character's background to show how it has helped to shape him or her, how it has, in part, made him or her the person he or she is today, is a good way to add to a narrative's plot.

Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files has much to recommend it, not the least of which is its even-handed balance of praise and condemnation for the series it evaluates. Both Handlen and VanDerWerff point out what they believe is right and what they believe is wrong with the series's episodes. Mostly, in reviewing their book, while tossing in a few of my own observations, I've concentrated on what these critics state and imply about the plotting of the sci fi-horror series. However, depending on one's purpose, on how one reads the book, Monsters of the Week can provide a good many more—and different—insights.

And, remember: the truth is out there!

Plotting Board, Part 6

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

With a Little Bit of Bloomin' Luck

Our belief (or relative belief) in the influences of certain phenomena, including our feelings and attitudes, often affect our thoughts and our overt behavior, even when we deny that such is the case. In The X-Files, Mulder is frequently guided by his belief in the existence of paranormal phenomena, while his partner, Scully, is often led by her skepticism.

Other phenomena, real and imagined, also affect the characters, one of which, as VanDerWerff points out, is the concept of luck. “We all sort ourselves . . . into the categories of 'lucky people' and 'unlucky people'” (323), he suggests. FBI agents Mulder and Scully are no exceptions, which allows the series's episode “The Goldberg Variation” to explore “the ideas of luck” as “a giant system you pay into, then make withdrawals from” (323). By exploring other commonly held beliefs, communal or individual, writers acquire many ways to develop plots for short stories and novels, just as TV and movie writers do.

Religious fanaticism, as represented by a snake-handling cult in The X-Files episode “Signs and Wonders” is another example. According to VanDerWerff, the exploration of power of fanaticism to shape and manipulate religious fanatics has a lot to do with “the lure of complete commitment, of surrendering oneself to someone who claims to know all the answers” (328). It's an idea for plotting as contemporary and terrifying as Allison Mack's alleged involvement in the NXIVM cult, which, again, allegedly, included her branding other women as her and her master's property. (Religious fanaticism also has quite an influence on Pilgrim a character in the Punisher series.)

Such ideas as blessings and curses, optimistic and pessimistic attitudes, biases and prejudices, fetishes and phobias, the supernatural and the otherworldly, to name but a few such influences, also permit such stories as H. G. Wells's “Pollock and the Porroh Man,” “The Red Room,” and “The Apple”; Ray Bradbury's “Skeleton”; the effects of idols in Stephen King's Desperation; Rod Serling's “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”; Shirley Jackson's “Just an ordinary Day”; and W. W. Jacobs's “The Monkey's Paw,” to name but a few.

(Seemingly) Alternate Solutions

As Handlen notes in his commentary on “The Amazing Maleeni” episode of The X-Files, one way to spin a plot while maintaining suspense is to present a mystery which has—or at least seems to have—multiple possible solutions. As the characters (or readers) discover the solution they've figured out isn't the solution at all, they continue to pursue leads or watch (or read), hoping their next deduction may prove correct, only (hopefully) to be frustrated yet again, until, finally, the true, one-and-only solution is presented, by either Mulder or Scully, naturally:

“Several times through the episode, our heroes believe they've solved the case only to come up empty-handed. The result is something that continually pulls us forward along with Mulder and Scully, promising new and greater mysteries with each new discovery” (326).

Ask the BIG QUESTIONS

Plots can be generated by simply asking the BIG QUESTIONS, as the “Sein und Zeit” (“Being and Time”) episode of The X-Files does. This installment, Handlen and VanDerWerff imply, asks what might happen to a character whose “very belief system” is “eradicated before his eyes” (330).

This is such a compelling question that its very asking is enough to make anyone want to stay tuned (or keep reading, as the case may be). It also parallels such events in the lives of historical figures and, indeed, the men and women of everyday life. What became of Jefferson Davis, the man, after the Civil War ended in the South's defeat? What did the ordinary Roman think and do after the Empire fell (or the average Brit, for that matter, after the fall of the British Empire)? What does one do the day after he or she has lost his or her entire family in a tragic accident? What happens to the citizens of a nation after the fall of their country? History records some of the answers, but never all.

The question that “Sein und Zeit” asks, implicitly, is what happens to Fox Mulder when his “very belief system [is] eradicated before his eyes”? The second part of this story is presented in the next episode of the series, “Closure.” BIG QUESTIONS, it's obvious, lead to longer plots. They also generate immediate and profound interest on the part of their audiences.

NEXT: A bit more.

Plotting Board, Part 5

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

 

Alternate Histories

 

 

Just as some movies, such a Hide and Seek and 1408, offer alternate endings, some novels get a lot of plot mileage by "overlaying [their] own version[s] of history over actual history," VanDerWerff observes (245).

 

Essentially, such plots offer two stories, the actual historical account of events and the fictional version. Ironically, the latter purports to show what actually happened, after the true events are challenged as spurious, perhaps as the result of a long-ongoing conspiracy by a power elite or another group with vested interests.

 

In The Taking, for example, Dean Koontz suggests that aliens are reverse-terraforming the Earth to prepare for their invasion when, in fact, Satan and his fallen angels are preparing to take over the planet. 

 

We Are (and Do) What We Believe

 

 

The more we believe in something, the easier it is to see how that belief impacts every aspect of our lives, Handlen says:

 

If you believe in God [as Dana Scully does], then everything you do and everything that happens to you is affected [sic] by God . . . . And if you're Fox Mulder--conspiracy enthusiast and fervent follower of little gray men--every calamity is just the latest iteration of a government dedicated to crushing its citizens and consolidating power in the face of a potential alien invasion . . . .

. . . While it may be comforting to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that you can understand what that reason is, it can also be unsettling. It means that nothing is without meaning, that any hiccup [sic] or snag has dark implications (251).

To avail oneself of this method of plotting, simply ask what your characters believe in and have them act accordingly. (Philosophy, theology, biography, autobiography, and history might come in handy as reference sources in investigating world views.)

Bottom Line Plotting

To plot a series of interconnecting story lines that occur over a fairly long time span, create a situation, VanDerWerff suggests, that can "run along in the background and resurface when needed," as in "the idea that the X-Files [department] is just too expensive and ineffectual or irresponsible" and should be shut down (270).

 Motives for Momentum

"At its most basic level," Handlen contends, "plot is just a pretext for momentum." Characters need a reason to keep moving, to keep acting. The X-Files episode "Drive" provides a simple, but effective, motive for Walter White's momentum: "Keep moving, or you die (271).

Mulder, likewise, has a simple, but effective, motive for momentum: his 'compulsion to find the truth" forces him to act (272).

These characters' motives move the story forward. What compels your characters?

Be Your Own Critic

After writing a scene, critique it from the point of view of a critic. To do this, you need to know what critics typically criticize, but, until you've read a few hundred volumes of lit crit (the more, the merrier!), these principles could do as starters:

• Does the scene contain all the elements of a story as a whole: protagonist; antagonist; secondary characters, if necessary; conflict; setting; action; dialogue, if necessary; motive; narrative purpose?
• Does the scene drive the story forward?
• Does the scene provide needed information?
• Does the scene's protagonist act, rather than react?
• Does the scene have its own beginning, middle, and end?
• Does the scene end with a cliffhanger?
• Does the scene evoke a strong, definite primary emotion? (It may or may not also evoke other, secondary emotions.)
• Are the characters well-drawn and believable?
• Is the pace appropriate?
• Does the tone work?
• Could the scene be revised to present its material in a more dramatic manner?
• If the scene uses figures of speech, do they work? Are they subtle, rather than obvious?
• Should the point of view be changed?
• How might a famous author have written this scene?
• How might a famous director shoot this scene?
• How does this scene fit with those before and after it?

 NEXT: To be continued . . . .

 

Sounding Board, Part 4

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

 Role Playing

To generate plots, the writers of The X-Files sometimes have a character adopt the role of another literary figure. For example,
VanDerWerff notes that "The X-Files seems heavily influenced by the doubting apostle Thomas," (114) especially in regard to Scully, the series's skeptic who is, paradoxically, also a practicing Catholic.

In addition, in the "731" episode, Handlen explains, Mulder plays a Don-Quixote-like figure who must accept that the "answers" he finds on his "quest" differ from those he'd expected to learn. There are no aliens; his sister, therefore, was not abducted by extraterrestrial beings. Instead, "the government has been kidnapping and running tests on humans and hiding it under the cover of 'alien abductions'" (114-115).

By adopting roles played by earlier characters of other stories, which roles are thematically appropriate to the plight of their own characters, The X-Files writers not only enrich the series's storytelling through allusions, but they also acquire vehicles for advancing their narrative's own plot in a meaningful way.

"Assume" Makes an . . . .

Among the many other plot-generating devices employed by The X-Files writers is that of having a character (often Mulder) make wrong assumptions, which then produce "bad decisions," which, in turn, tend to result in potentially fatal situations (117). For example, Handlen reminds his readers, in the episode "War of the Coprophages," although Mulder and other characters believe "a bunch of bugs from outer space" have come "to earth to mess with our minds," skeptical Scully is right again; the insects "are only cockroaches," just as she'd supposed (116-118). Thanks to the false assumption of the citizens of Miller's Grove, where the roaches land (and to Mulder, of course), quite a bit of the episode's plot is generated, demonstrating the truth of the idea that false assumptions can be effective plot generators.

Either-or Premise

As VanDerWerff notes, The X-Files plays with two alternative explanations as to the causes of the series's strange events: (1) "The government did bad things, and now it's trying to keep them covered up" (Scully's point of view) and (2) "yes, aliens . . . have been visiting our world and, yes, they intend to colonize it" (Mulder's perspective) (124). This either-or premise maintains the series's fantastic character ("fantastic" in Tzvetan Todorov's sense of the word), its mystery, and its suspense, while offering a dual approach to plotting.

Memory Sucks

One way of advancing the plot while examining the human condition is to offer a definition of what it means to be a human being and then, after eliminating this identifying quality, character, or state, explore whether the character from whom the essence of humanity has been stripped is still a person, still a human being. If, VanDerWerff asks, "we are our memories," and those "memories are sucked out," do we still exist as human beings or, as X-Files writer Darin Morgan puts it, "If someone has the ability to manipulate your memory--all your memory--then, what are you, if, say, your happiest memory or your most depressing memory are [sic] all fiction?" (133-135). 

Of course, other writers might posit other characteristics or abilities as essential to human existence as such: intelligence, compassion, the ability to effect cause, religious belief, etc. However, the story would still follow the same avenue: by eliminating this characteristic or ability (or whatever else is considered essential to human existence), it would explore whether the character who lost it remains human at all, and if not, why not. By exploring what it means to be human, writers can generate plots. This approach is most suited, perhaps, to stories of fantasy, but it could inform almost any genre.

We Are What We Choose to Be

Another way to investigate the human condition is to ask not what makes people human, but whether a person is who he or she is because of the way that he or she chooses to live or because of how other people treat him or her.

The "Small Potatoes" episode of The X-Files tests this question, VanDerWerff suggests, by having a shape-shifter become other people--but he always reverts back to his own identity, resigned to being himself. He is who he is because he has adopted the persona (that of a "loser"), based on everyone else's view of him, rather than asserting his own identity through the choices he makes (193-195).

This way of developing plots has the benefit of allowing writers to investigate such heady matters as those which are more ordinarily examined within the sphere of philosophy or psychology,  thereby enriching the more mundane affairs of the typical X-Files story.

In an interesting footnote, as it were, to this question, Handlen suggests that, in fiction, autonomy is represented as an effect of doing; in doing, a character forces others to react to what he or she has done. Mulder, he says, is a doer; therefore, he is autonomous. Scully, on the other hand, more often follows a path set for her by Mulder or someone else; she is more likely to be reactive than active, and she is, therefore, only partially autonomous (224).

NEXT: More of the same! 

Plotting Board, Part 3

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

The MOTW Formula Redux

In a previous post, we identified the Monster of the Week (MOTW) formula as one of the two basic plot generators The X-Files writers use. Handlen also fills us in on a variation of the MOTW formula. In this alternative approach, he explains, "A mysterious crime or phenomenon occurs; our heroes are assigned (or stumble upon) the case; they face increasing danger as they try to understand and defeat the threat before it's too late; and finally the crime that started it all is resolved (though there may be one last shot of the monster still lurkjing in wait for the next opportunity to strike)" (216).

Spinning the Past

One way to use historical events to plot stories is to put a "spin" on them that, presenting the actual events from a different perspective and in a different context than they are traditionally seen, makes these events seem fresh. The X-Files filtered "some of the awful actions the United States had taken during the Cold War through the prism of alien technology theories to give them a new spin." VanDerWerff points out (96). The series suggested that "alien/human hybrids" could have been engineered "by Nazi doctors who'd tested the capabilities of the human body in the Holocaust. A giant warehouse containing tissue samples and medical information from everyone who received a smallpox vaccination" is eminently possible, VanDerWerff contends, "assuming the federal authorities chose to collect such samples and data. Likewise, a UFO stored in a secret mountain facility is a possibility, as is the deployment of CIA operatives "to clean up a problem involving U. S. citizens" (98-99).

Narrative Transcendence

The X-Files frequently misses the mark, the authors of Monsters of the Week suggest (and often say outright), and one area in which they err is in not milking the sources from which some of the series' plots or story ideas arise. An example, Handler suggests, is the episode "The List," in which "a prisoner is executed but swears he'll come back from the dead to avenge himself on five people who have wronged him. Mulder and Scully . . . try to stop him. They fail" (104).

 Episodes like this fail, the writers claim, because they fail to transcend their origins by taking "advantage of a trope without digging into its origins or underlying mechanisms," says Handlen (105). Such a failure prevents writers from enriching their stories by infusing their narratives with the stories' historical, philosophical, theological, cultural, psychological, or scientific underpinnings, making a potentially powerful tale much weaker than it needs (or should) be. 

As examples of how a writer can enrich his or her fiction by adopting the author's suggestion, check out Joyce Carol Oates's takes on Edward Hopper's paintings in In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper and Alive in Shape and Color: 17 paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired, both anthologies edited by Lawrence  Block.

Teamwork

A team of writers (imagined or real) can bring a variety of "voices" (special interests, skills, styles, perceptions) to a story: "[Chris] Carter is there for the big picture stuff and any detour into mysticism. [Frank] Spotnitz will become Carter's right-hand man for the alien conpsiracy plot . . . [Howard] Gordon . . . will be the one most dedicated to crafting the . . . scary MOTW episodes . . . . [Vince] Gilligan . . . is capable of writing a tense monster tale or a goofy comedic episode" (VanDerWerff, 106). 
 

Questioning the Reader 

 A story or serfies should pose specific questions for the reader (or viewer). The questions should be related through the relationships of important  characters, by characters' participation in a common situation, or by some other appropriate means: According to VanDerWerff, "The three central questions of The X-Files--'What happened to Mulder's sister?' and 'What do the aliens want?' and 'What happened to Scully?'--were so personal and pressing to our characters that they always pushed harder for answers in mythology episodes than they might when investigating a stand-alone case" (113). 

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Plotting Board, Part 2

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

The MOTW Formula

In our previous post, we mention The X-Files's use of the Monster of the Week (MOTW) as a plot generator to provide variety which would prevent the series from rehashing these series' mythological elements and becoming boring an “repetitive” as a result. But we didn't explain the formula the show's writers used. (There has to be some incentive to return for more posts, after all.) So here it is (the formula, not the incentive):

The MOTW episodes follow the same formula: “There's a monster; Mulder and Scully chase the monster; people die; the monster is caught or killed; and the status quo is restored . . . or is it?”

Innovative Investigation

An innovation in the investigation of a mystery is to have the detective solve it as a result of a shift in his or her thinking. This approach is as old as detective fiction, having been used, for example, both by Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as well as such over-the-top police procedurals as Hawaii 5-O. (I use it myself in my historical murder mystery, Death in the Old Dominion, which is set in colonial Williamsburg).

The X-Files takes this approach in “The Erlenmyer Flask,” as VanDerWerff explains: “At every turn of the episode, Mulder and Scully are confronted with what seems to be a brick wall, until they twist their thinking in a new direction and discover the solution waiting just around the corner” (47).

Often, an intuition or the chance discovery of a clue or the understanding that a clue can be interpreted more than one way (as in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, in which what is assumed to be the name of a person is finally understood to refer to a building.) However, this turn of thought can also occur as the result of a deliberate review of the evidence (as in several of Doyle's short stories, including “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”).

Upsetting the Apple-Cart

In many television series, to keep things fresh, the last episode of a season upsets the apple-cart, as it were, by introducing several significant changes to the status quo. These changes can involve characters, the principal setting, the show's basic situation, or other elements, as “major changes” are made, some of which are “easily” reversible, while others “reverberate for years to come.” 

As VanDerWerff points out, at the end of The X-Files's first season, “the death of Deep Throat,” Mulder's revelation “that the X-Files has been closed down,” and Mulder's and Scully's being split up as they are “assigned to different divisions” certainly upset the apple-cart (47-48).

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the apple-cart is upset by Buffy's death at the end of season one, by Buffy's dispatching Angel's soul to hell and leaving Sunnydale at the end of season two, by Faith's escape after Buffy stabs her during a rooftop fight and by Buffy's graduation from high school at the end of season three.

Art Imitates Life

Another way to generate new directions in the plot of a novel is to imagine that the book is a television series in which actors portray the characters and that something unexpected happens to an actor, which requires a new, if temporary, change in the plot's routine. For example, as VanDerWerff recounts, during the filming season two of The X-Files, Gillian Anderson (Scully) became pregnant; as a consequence, Scully “had to recede from the narrative” (52). To accomplish this requirement, she is abducted.

Similar situations can occur in your own novel, if you imagine your characters are enacted by flesh-and-blood personnel rather than described in words on paper. Such an approach may open many possibilities that might not occur to a novelist otherwise.

MORE next post!