Make Them Suffer

Yes I know this isn't Skyfall.

I saw the latest James Bond movie Skyfall over the weekend.  I liked it.  My husband is a big James Bond fan in general and I’ve seen a lot (not quite all) of the James Bond movies.  Daniel Craig is by far my favorite James Bond, and these last three movies have been eons better than the previous ones, and I think the big difference, why they work for so well for me, is how much the movie makes James Bond suffer.

I’m not going to give anything away since I know the movie just came out, but if you’ve seen Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace you know what I mean.  These writers aren’t afraid to make Bond suffer emotionally and physically.  Every movie puts Bond through a wringer.

I feel kind of bad that I like to see characters suffer almost like I’m a little sadistic, but honestly, I think making the characters suffer ups the stakes, it makes you feel that they have a lot to lose and that success isn’t a given, in fact, it is almost impossible, and that ratchets of the tension while making the hero feel vulnerable, more relatable.  And that is what I personally like in a story.

Leverage

I started watching Leverage a TV series when it first came out.  And I thought it was really clever.  It was about a team of ex-thieves and ex-con artists conning bad thieves and bad con artists who are ripping off innocent people.  Of course the noble team gives most of the money back to the original victims of the bad guys and keeps only a small percentage for themselves.  It’s kind of a modern day Robin Hood and his merry men.

 I’ve always loved a good heist flick, so I was pretty excited about this show.  And really it had everything I like in a good story, interesting and fun characters with a lot of clever dialogue and twists with great character-character dynamics, and I’m sure that there are a ton of people who love this show (and I do understand why), but I gave up on the show after four or five episodes, and it took me a while to figure out why this show didn’t work for me.

In every episode that I watched there was a point when their mark was on to them, and it looked like their whole scam was unraveling, but in the end, it was always revealed that they had planned the whole thing, that the mark catching on was just part of the con.  It was really clever how everything came together and how they tricked the bad guys, but it go really old really fast for me.

I realized the show didn't work because there was a the lack of stakes.  The team never really suffered or struggled.  They were always better, smarter, one step ahead of everyone else, and while it was cool that they were so awesome, but it also made them less interesting, less real, less human.  And while it is fun to watch a group of criminal geniuses pull off a clever con, it is more fun to watch that clever con fall apart completely and leave the team scrambling and struggling to pull the pieces together and somehow managing to regroup and pull off an even cleverer scheme, like in the movie The Italian Job.

Elena vs. Bella

Just because Breaking Dawn was recently released and I haven’t blogged about Twilight in at least a couple of months, I feel the need to mention Breaking Dawn.  I’ve blogged before on how I felt about Bella’s transition into a vampire was too easy (you can read it here), but the recent episodes of Vampire Diaries have made me think about this a little more (WARNING:  massive spoilers for both Breaking Dawn and Vampire Diaries).

This season in Vampire Diaries, the main character, Elena, has just turned into a vampire.  There are a lot of parallels between Elena and Bella since they are both human girls who fall in love with a vampire (or vampires in Elena case), but unlike Bella, Elena never wanted to be a vampire.  More than anything, she wanted to remain human.  Even in times where her problems would be solved if someone just turned her, she always chose the harder path of staying human.  So she wasn’t happy at all about being turned.

In the past several episodes, Elena has struggled immensely with being a vampire.  She can’t keep down animal blood and has to drink human.  Enjoys drinking blood a little too much, and almost killed her human friend who was a willing donor.  She struggles between that predator vampire side and her overly compassionate human nature.  Even though she is super strong and wicked fast and will be young forever, the down side of drinking blood and nearly killing people is torturing her.  And for additional angst, her vampire boyfriend, Steffen, is having a hard time adjusting to the new Elena because he’s struggled immensely trying to keep those murderous urges in check and seeing those aspects of himself that he loathes in Elena has put a strain in their relationship.  This all translates into lots of tension and conflict, and I think it makes for a very compelling story, and I’m really enjoying this season.

Honestly, this is where I thought Breaking Dawn was going.  There was all of this build up about how hard it was to become a fledgling vampire, and I really thought Breaking Dawn would focus on Bella struggling to adapt to be a vampire and maybe even some conflict between Bella and Edward because of how becoming a vampire changed her.  It felt like a natural place for the story to go, and I was disappointed that Bella had no struggles at all in becoming a vampire.  I thought it was a missed opportunity for lots of great internal conflict that would have enhanced the tension of the story.

I just think that there is something about seeing a person or character suffering that makes us empathize and care more about that them.  Although, I do think that there is a limit.  You shouldn’t go out of your way to make your character’s suffer.  That can feel just as false as going out of your way to protect your characters.  Also, it can be emotionally exhausting for the reader when everything goes wrong and the character loses everything.  Like in all aspects of writing, there needs to be a balance.  I’ve heard the saying that a writer should essentially chase the character up a tree and then throw rocks at him, and I’d like to add that maybe the writer shouldn’t go a step further and burn the tree down.  There is a limit to making your characters suffer, but you should make them suffer.

~MaryAnn

On Gossip Girl and Growing Up

or Why I Haven't Gotten Anything Done Since Christmas

We television lovers know the holiday season, despite its joys, can be a desolate time. After eating yourself into a coma at Thanksgiving, you plop on the couch and... gasp! Re-runs. You can no longer lose yourself in an addictive, magical world full of perfect-looking 20-year-olds pretending to be unsupervised 17-year-olds exchanging clever sexual innuendo with 30-year-olds pretending to be immortal 22-year-olds who drink scotch like alcoholic 40-year-olds.

In other words, Vampire Diaries went on Winter Break. (Until last night!)

My older sister came to the rescue this year when she told me she couldn't wait to catch up on Gossip Girl while she wrapped presents.

Really? Gossip Girl? Isn’t that about high school students who, ah, gossip a lot? Secretly I thought, “Okay, sis, you've passed the 4-0 mark and you're watching high school drama that doesn't even have vampires. That's just sad.” And then, equally secretly, I checked Netflix to see if they had it streaming.

"Mind-blowingly inappropriate" - Parents Television Council.
What more endorsement could I need?

They did. They do. I watched the pilot while wrapping ten gazillion Legos. I'm hooked.

I'm not going to tell you how many episodes I've watched since Christmas. Fellow Proser MaryAnn is kindly waiting for me to send her the next batch of my behind-schedule novel for critque, and I will lose her respect forever if she finds out the actual numbers behind my procrastination.

So I'll just say this: After a non-stop writing focus through December, I took a break for Christmas and getting back in the swing of things feels like trying to hop on a moving zoo train filled with angry lions. So much easier to watch it ride off into the sunset without me while I sit on this comfy bench and fire up the Netflix.

Moreover, I really, really, need to see Nate and Serena get together. Or Nate and anyone. I don’t care. I’ll watch Nate kiss a tree. (I avoid reflection on what a creepy old lady this makes me by watching another episode.)

Still, as I sink into another 42 minutes of glammed-up teenagers non-chalantly ordering martinis at an exclusive Manhattan nightclub, the never-ending novel is in the back of my mind—specifically, a conversation I've had several times about my genre. It goes something like this:

Friend: What are you writing?
Me: Urban fantasy, I guess. Or maybe paranormal romance. I'm not sure where it fits yet. I don't know if it's quite a romance, but it's not quite gritty enough for UF. (Translation: My writing style just doesn't match up to the first-person, action-packed exploits of a bad-ass heroine with a tramp stamp.)
Friend: Why don't you write young adult?
Me: But I don't want to write teenagers.
Friend: Just make your characters 17 and then find a way to get school and parents out of the picture.
Me: That seems a little sneaky. Plus I want my characters to be able to get naked if and when I learn how to write a decent sex scene.
Friend: Forget that. Skip the sex and write YA. Your book sounds more YA. I like YA better than most adult books, anyway.

I write adults because I want my characters to be able to travel on a whim, buy and sell real estate, order liquor at a bar, have adulterous affairs, and pay their own bills.

I've never had a martini. Sad.

Photo: Microsoft Office Images

I turn on the television and find out—news to me—these are all things that teenagers do! Who knew?

And there's the crux of why I can't turn my characters into teenagers. Teenagers are kids, and kids shouldn't be doing the things my characters do, let alone what TV teens do. I think that Gossip Girl, as fun as it is, isn't really about kids, and it shouldn't even be for kids. What happened to kids having a different set of behaviors, a different set of rules to live within? Where's the drama in being a teenager if you don't have a curfew?

Sometimes I wonder: Are we portraying teenagers as grownups because they relate to it, or because adults do? Is it that we "grown-ups" really aren't so different from our teenage selves, except that losing the holiday weight has gotten fifty times harder? I don't wanna grow up... except for the money, sex, and alcohol please. Those are pretty sweet. But I'll keep the youthful skin tone, thank you. Whose fantasy is this?

One of the themes that makes Gossip Girl great—that keeps it from being just parties and fashion and musical beds—is characters constantly making mistakes that force them to question who they are becoming. Are their friends just stops on the way to a greater, more important destination, or are they the connections that ground them? What is the difference between having a social network that can get you into any party and having a friend who will come over in the middle of the night? They question their values, they question the roles that other people play in their lives, they flirt with independence and push people away, and they do stupid, hurtful things and then try to make amends.

They attempt to reinvent themselves, only to be haunted by their own most deep-seated beliefs about who they are.

Chace Crawford. Sigh.
Photograph by Christopher Peterson

I was always more Jan Brady than Serena van der Woodsen, but adulthood happened: I’m married with two kids, plenty of bills, and a doctor who now answers my physical complaints with, "Well, you're getting to that age..." Yet no matter how much reality I throw at myself, I’ll always relate to that person who longs for adventure and excitement and fairy tales. I’ll never stop being someone who would trade my right arm to be five inches shorter, I may never stop getting zits at the worst times, and I will definitely never stop trying to blossom into a different flower, trying to shape who I am into who I want to be. It’s in my nature. Perpetual teenager.

So bring it on, Gossip Girl. I’m with you all the way. 
And if I had a daughter, I might even let her watch, too... When she was 30.


But for my own writing, I'll stick with characters following the rules I grew up with, which means if they want to take adult risks, they'd better be adults.

XOXO
~Sarah

Five Reasons why I Love Vampire Diaries

So I blog about one TV show, and apparently that is enough to make Sheena think I watch a lot of TV.

http://theprosers.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-ive-learned-from-first-month-of.html#comment-form

So either Sheena doesn't watch any TV at all (which is possible since she reads so much) and thinks watching one show is one show too many, or she has somehow tapped into my TV like some sort of Nielson rating system. Either way, she is right. I do watch too much TV.

Since I'm confessing, I might as well admit that I LOVE CW's Vampire Diaries series. Maybe I'm a little outside the target age, but I don't care, it is so good.

Every thursday night I ignore my kids, husband, housework, and dreams of publishing for about an hour while Sheena is reading or writing her way into fame. Gotta find a way to catch up with her.


Here are five reasons why I'm so addicted.



1. Elena: Elena is an awesome main character. She is not some damsel in distress, but she isn't some kick butt vampire slaying chick either. I get tired of the two extremes, and the idea that a character must be a physically strong to be a strong person. There are all kind of strengths. A strong character to me is one who stands up for what she believes in, protects those she loves, and willing to face insurmountable odds when she has to. That is Elena, and she is an awesome heroine.

2. Awesome supporting characters: The show does focus on Elena and the vampire brothers who love her, but there are a lot of other interesting characters as well. There is Bonnie, Elena's best friend and a powerful witch who is as devoted to Elena as Elena is devoted to her. Katherine, Elena's vampire look alike, who is conniving and selfish but every once and a while seems almost redeemable. She is also in love with the vampire brothers. Klaus who is a well-developed, self-centered villain who truly loves his family, even the ones he killed. Those are just a few, but the Vampire Diaries has a strong supporting cast. There are a lot of interesting characters and interesting relationships between them. They really are fun to watch.

3. Brotherly love: I know, I should be more into the love triangle (I really like love triangles), but I find the complex relationship between Stefan and Damon more fascinating. The two brothers definitely have a love-hate relationship. They clash all the time and are even in love with the same girl, but they will sacrifice anything for each other. I always like a good familial love story.

4. The twists and turns: This show is really one wild ride. Last week I blogged about how I love big twists, well this show has a lot of them. It always keeps me guessing and never ceases to surprise me. I love it.


5. Balls, galas, and cotillions galore: It seems like every week there is some big founders day event that gives all the characters an excuse to dress up like Gone with the Wind. Mystic Falls is The Best Town Ever.

Okay, it is a little soap opera-ish, but it is fun. Definitely my guilty pleasure.

So what about you? Confession time, what shows do you love to watch? Or am I really the only couch potato surrounded by literary geniuses.

~MaryAnn

For more on Vampire Diaries go here. http://www.cwtv.com/shows/the-vampire-diaries