TELLING THE STORY

It would be easy to turn this into a review of Speilberg's War of the Worlds, which is a rather pointless version of the story. But instead, I'm going to turn away from ranting and consider why I could so easily rant about it.

It's about storytelling.

The things that infuriated the writer in me about that film have to do with what I consider to be sloppy storytelling choices. I'll use just one example from the film, and then drop it in favor of moving onward.

In the film, at certain crucial plot points, the main character Ray notices important things. He notices the alien roots growing, and notices when they're decaying. He notices that birds can land on the tripods, indicating that the force fields are off and the tripods are now vulnerable. He notices the oddness of wind rushing toward the supposed storm. But for such a noticing man, he cannot notice his own daughter angling for him to notice her yellow competition ribbon.

This is very inconsistent characterization. It's storytelling where the characters do what the writer needs them to do for the purposes of the plot. And that, to me, is lazy work from the storyteller.

Now, I'll admit that from time to time, I myself have fallen into the trap of having characters do things because I need something to happen at a particular point. But I at least know I shouldn't be doing it, and try to correct it when someone points it out to me.

There's a saying that "character is story". I'm not sure why so many writers forget that in favor of "plot is story". Maybe because to focus on the characters means to delve into real things, into our hearts. And not everyone wants to go deep that way. It's easier, "safer" to string together a bunch of actions, with a lot of movement and flash and zip. It's easier to pretend that the rush of action is "just the same" as the rush of emotion. But it isn't. And it ends up showing, in how stories are received.

People want to connect with other people. We want to hear stories about people, not car crashes or explosions or such. Heroes, anti-heroes, it's about people. I think there are three types of stories we want to hear: stories about people we do not want to be, but we do want to know why & how they are what they are (ie, anti-heroes, tragic heroes, bad guys); stories about people we know we are like (ie, the everyman story, the "I could be that guy" story); stories about people we would like to be like (ie, the great heroes, the shining stars we wish we could be like).

Ray in War of the Worlds certainly starts out in the first category. I don't think anyone would want to see themselves as the kind of jerk he is at the beginning. They're not going to identify with him. Ideally, as the story progressed, he would have become more and more someone like us, and then finally someone we would want to be like. But he barely makes it into the territory of "someone like us" - in that he finally reaches a point of being able to communicate how much he cares about his children. But the story ends with that achievement going nowhere, taking the audience nowhere. It's a very disappointing experience for the audience.

So, why is this such a big deal to me?

It's about the responsibilities of the storyteller to the audience. When the storyteller begins with "Once upon a time, there was...", the storyteller begins an agreement with the audience to entertain them. For me, there is a thrill in seeing that I have my audience hooked, that they're absorbed in what is happening next, in how the story is making them feel. And to do that, I have to stay honest about human nature.

And human nature favors consistency. When people act inconsistently, we notice it. We comment on it, in others and in ourselves. In real life, that is. But writers often have characters doing something out of whack, and not only do the other characters not comment on it, the audience sort of lets it go by. If more audience members would speak up and say "That doesn't make any sense for that character" maybe writers would work harder, dig deeper, and deliver more stories that genuinely touch us.

But that still doesn't answer the question of why this matter is such a big deal to me.

Okay, it's really a God-thing.

God gives us our natures, our talents. Our personal histories contribute to our outlooks and choices. But God does not force us to do certain things. He prefers if we choose certain things. Very rarely are there occasions where willy-nilly does he make things happen in our lives. And even then, we still have a choice in how we react to the event. The story is still ours.

I believe that God loves stories. So much that he makes every single person unique in some way. Even identical twins are not precisely the same. For all their physical similarities, each twin still reacts uniquely. Their stories may be very similar, but they are still not the same. So God loves our infinite variety, a variety that springs from our choices. And our choices spring from our characters.

Which brings us back to "character is story". If a character is smart enough to survive incredible disasters, observant enough to see what others do not see, it should be manifested in each expression of his life. Not just when it's convenient for the plot. To tell a story that "rings true" for the audience, no matter how fantastical the setting or events, the characters need to be recognisably consistent in their qualities. And if we see characters change, we also need to see what it is that changes them, we need to see the events, the points, that provoke the changes. Because then we know when it happens to us, in real life.

What it boils down to is this: God has given me the great gift of making my own real story. He's hoping it will come out one particular way. But I still have choices about that. So, when I turn to my own stories, and the characters I'm creating, I feel I have a responsibility to follow through on their consistency.

If I create a heroine who is independantly minded, I can't suddenly have her unquestioningly giving in to someone else's choices. If I create a character who is oblivious about the details of the people closest to him, I can't have him being super observant about everything else, at least not without a very good reason that the audience can understand. I have to let the characters be who I created them to be. I have to let them run toward the end of the story in ways that are organic to them. And if the characters don't head toward the ending I originally intended, I need to think more about changing the ending rather than warping the characters.

Anyway, that's why I get irate about sloppy characterization in writing. I don't see why we need to accept it. God isn't sloppy in giving us our characters (we're free to mangle them ourselves), so why should we as storytellers be sloppy with the ones we create in tales? That's the standard I'm willing to have my stories judged against.