Some people just don’t get it

I’m sure you guys will, because you’re a lot like me. Avid readers, avid writers, avid TV and movie watchers. Those characters, they’re real. Not in the physical sense, of course. We’re not crazy. But in the sense that we’ve spent time with these people, we  know their stories, we understand their pain, and we want to see them succeed.

That’s what makes them real. In some ways, we know these characters better than some of our friends. There are no walls when you read a book. There are no secrets once you reach the end. You’re like an invisible watcher, able to sit back and see the events in their lives unfold.

So when someone dies, when someone is rescued, when someone succeeds, it’s sad and exciting and thrilling. Those are real emotions that fake characters produce in you. And if the only reason they’re not real is because they don’t exist in this world, then I don’t buy that.

When you know someone that well, when you care about someone that deeply, when you understand their story so much that it inspires you to be a better human being, that person takes shape and they become real to you.

But some people don’t understand that.

I was having a conversation with a certain someone the other day, and she just didn’t understand why I got so emotionally attached to things. We were talking about StarKid and their latest play, A Very Potter Senior Year. For me, and a lot of other StarKid fans, it was an emotional thing to watch. It was the final installment in their Very Potter trilogy. It was hard to watch because it was over, and I knew those characters would never be coming back for something new. I laughed and I cried in equal measures.

This person just looked at me and said, “Why?”

I didn’t bother explaining. If you don’t get it, you never will. If you’re not invested, you won’t understand how incredibly powerful seeing those characters reach the end of their stories is.

Since I know a lot of you aren’t into StarKid, I’ll put it into perspective. It’s like someone asking you why you’re upset that Fred died. Or Dumbledore. Or Sirius.

If those character deaths didn’t bother you, then there’s no point in explaining. It won’t help, and you won’t feel the things we felt.

(And if those character deaths didn’t bother you, by the way, then you’re doing it wrong. So very wrong.)

What I don’t understand is how you could not get invested in stories like this. This person reads for entertainment, which is fine, but I think she misses a huge part of what it is to be a reader. That investment, pain, and joy that comes from living a character’s life through their actions on the page.

I read for a deeper meaning. I read so that book can change my life. I read to forget about the world, to be sure, but also to understand it.

As corny as it sounds, I think reading is a serious business. Not everyone is meant to be a deep reader, but I struggle with the concept of not reading a book for meaning, depth, and understanding. If I didn’t do that, it just…wouldn’t seem worth it.

What do you think? Do you read for entertainment only, or do you want to take something away from what you read? Do you get so deep into the story that you feel like the characters are real people? Do you feel pain or joy when they do?

How to have a massively intelligent character without alienating your audience, with Charlie Eppes

Here’s the next post in this series where I discuss TV shows and movies and the knowledge that we can gain from watching them. We can apply that knowledge to our writing. As always, I never pretend to be an expert. I just like exploring my own thoughts on the matter as I write these blog posts! I welcome all comments and would love to hear what you think about this topic.

Make sure you check out my previous post, titled, “How to turn a bad guy into a good guy, with Damon Salvatore.”

Numb3rs is an oldie but goodie (as in, it’s not on TV anymore) that I used to watch when it was live on TV. I never saw the whole show, or even a large part of it, but seeing as it’s on Netflix Streaming in its entirety, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stare at David Krumholtz watch it from the beginning.

If you’re unfamiliar, the show centers around two brothers. One is an FBI agent (Don) and the other is a brilliant mathematician (Charlie). (Don’t make that face. I don’t like math either. But this show is awesome.) Charlie consults for his brother and helps him solve cases. It’s a pretty basic plot, your typical procedural, but the writing is strong and the characters are dynamic and interesting.

I’m only through the first season in my rewatch, but I knew I wanted to write a post on Charlie and why he’s such a fantastic character.

You see, it’s easy to have a genius main character. They have all the answers. They can solve all the problems. They wrap up the plot in a neat little bow and look hella cool doing it. And that’s fine, to an extent. But what happens when that alienates your audience? What happens when the character is so smart the readers can’t follow along? It makes them feel stupid, and they end up putting down your book.

That’s what makes this show so great. Don is our second main character. He brings Charlie down to our level. He’s a good agent, but he’s not a genius, not like his brother. He often doesn’t understand what Charlie is saying when he starts spewing out all those mathematical terms that the average viewer won’t understand either. Don makes Charlie slow down and explain it in layman’s terms.

Without Don, the audience would say the show was too confusing and wouldn’t tune in every week.

The other great part about this is what Charlie does to explain the conclusions he comes to via his mathematical analysis. In one episode, he explains to Don that he can take the locations of various murders and use them to pin-point the area of origin – the area where the killer most likely lives. Instead of showing Don the equation and going through it step by step with him – which wouldn’t help, because Don (and the audience) wouldn’t understand – Charlie points to a sprinkler that’s sitting in their yard. Knowing where each drop has landed, he would be able to reverse their trajectory and find out exactly where they originated – where the sprinkler is located.

See, that I understand.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a clip of that scene, but here’s another one that does a good job of making math understandable and interesting:

 
The same thing happens in Sherlock. John Watson isn’t on Sherlock’s level, and when Sherlock has to explain something to him, he’s indirectly explaining it to us too. Sherlock by himself wouldn’t be as interesting or as engaging. He would mostly just be looking at things for a few seconds, telling the cops who did it, and walking away. At least with John there, he has to take the time to bring him into the loop, along with the audience.

So, how do you do this in your book? If you’ve got a super-intelligent character (ie. Hermione), make sure there’s another character that your audience can better relate to (ie. Harry or Ron). It’s not that your audience isn’t intelligent – and this is by no means me telling you to dumb down your story in order to make it more understandable – it’s that extremely intelligent characters often need an Average Joe to slow them down and tell them to explain their conclusions. Otherwise, you have something like:

*Sherlock walks into a room, looks around*
“Mrs. Pennyworth was killed by Mr. Jacobson with a curling iron and a box of tissues at 8:36 yesterday morning.”
*Sherlock walks out of the room*

Sure, that’s all fine and dandy, but it makes the solutions to the problems seem too easy and too obvious, even when they’re not.

Plus, let’s face it, most people don’t have an IQ equal to Sherlock’s. We need someone like John to make him talk in English.

Do you have a super intelligent main character? How do you make him or her relatable? Who’s your favorite smart person on TV? Have you ever seen Numb3rs?

Fan-fiction: A Form of Flattery or a Form of Infringement?

I’d heard of fan-fiction before, being the Harry Potter nerd that I am, but I never read any of it. I never dabbled in it either. You’d think, as a writer, that I’d start there before I decided to write my own stories. I mean, I can see the appeal – the world, the characters, the conflicts are already established. You just have to figure out which story to tell, and then write it down. It’s great practice for beginners.

But I’ve always had too many voices in my head. I’m constantly caught in an onslaught of new ideas, new characters, and new stories. I’d love to write fan-fiction, but there just isn’t any room left in my brain.

I was officially introduced into the world of fan-fic late last year when I read Dalton, a story about two of the main characters from Glee. It was a sort of spin-off show to the main storyline. Honestly, the writing was sub-par and some of the mistakes were those you learn to avoid in Writing 101. But the story? The story was beautiful. It had me hooked. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d come home from work and sit in front of the computer for hours reading it. So, no – maybe the author wasn’t the best writer. But she was one heck of a story teller.

And let’s face it. There are plenty of “professional” writers who are impeccable when it comes to language, grammar, and punctuation. But they can’t tell a story. They give you no reason to keep reading. It’s much easier to break someone of the habit of putting commas in the wrong place than it is to break them of the habit of writing bad stories.

What I want to know is this: Is fan-fiction a good thing or a bad thing in relation to the original author and their work(s)? Let’s look at some pros and cons:

CONS

I’m going to start with the negatives because I think they’re a bit more obvious. First off you have the clincher – the fact that a person other than the author is using the characters, setting, and ideas that have already been established to create new stories. Essentially, that’d be like writing a sequel/prequel/spin-off series to an already established book without having the rights to do so. I can see the problem there.

Another major point is that fan-fiction can often cause negative, or at least unwanted, portrayals of characters, which can in turn affect the actors who portrayed them on the silver screen. Just do a Google images search of “Draco and Harry Fan-fiction” and you’ll get a very quick idea of how it might not be well received.

And, of course, fan-fiction writers don’t gain much experience writing in this way. They don’t often get helpful critiques, it doesn’t help them to get better at characterization, and becoming a well-known fan-fic writer doesn’t exactly earn them acclaim and respect in the writing world.

PROS

So, what the heck could be good about writing fan-fiction? Well, a lot actually. For one thing, it helps to perpetuate a story that people don’t want to see finished. Who here actually wanted Harry Potter to end? Fan-fiction not only allows characters to continue living, but also brings about the stories of characters who may not have gotten a lot of scenes in the original work. A great example of this is the Trio’s kids at the end of HP7 – we don’t know much about them and we’ve never seen them at school, except in fan-fic forums. These places allow fans to gather and continue to live in this universe.

This perpetuation also leads to something that most authors wouldn’t mind having more of – word of mouth. Sure, it probably isn’t a big deal to people like J.K. Rowing and Stephenie Meyer, but what about authors who have a very die-hard, niche audience? Authors like Cassandra Clare and George R.R. Martin who are beginning to grow in popularity but haven’t hit that mega status yet. I can imagine a great piece of fan-fic could drive a person to delve into a series if they were previously hesitant about reading it, just so they can discuss the other stories with their friends. I’m sure it’s not a frequent occurrence, but it’s got to happen on occasion.

The last reason is, in my opinion, the most important of all. It gets people to write. Have you ever read a book that was just so good that you immediately sat down and started to type out your own story? I have, but then again I’ve been doing that since the fourth grade. I’m hardwired to write. But what about those other people who thought about dabbling but never got around to it? Then they read that one book that changed everything. Sure, maybe they won’t become published authors, but they’re still writing and adding their creativity into the mix. They’re putting new ideas and stories out into the universe and how can we do anything but benefit from that?

THE BIG QUESTION

But there comes a point, right? There has to be a line. When has it gone too far, when is it not okay to write fan-fiction?

Let’s just point out the elephant in the room: Fifty Shades of Grey. If you haven’t heard of this book yet, I’d be pretty surprised. But for those of you who might not know, Fifty Shades is Twilight fan-fiction that got a face lift. Basically, the author (E.L. James) wrote a story about Bella and Edward and their bedroom escapades (which were quite a bit heavier than the original story would leave you to believe, IYKWIM). A couple of things happened between here and there, but in the end James decided to pursue publication and turned the fan-fiction into a story of its own, replacing Bella, Edward, and vampires with Anastasia, Christian, and a billionaire.

It’s common knowledge that this was originally fan-fiction. And recently it became the fastest selling paperback novel of all time. There are two other books that round out the trilogy. And it’s being made into a movie, and a BIG movie at that – B-list actors need not apply. Let’s face it, she’s making a lot of money off of this. But, is that legal? Well, yeah, I guess. I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of speculation and a lot of people are going to discount her for its origins, but Meyer hasn’t slapped James with a lawsuit yet and at this point I doubt she will.

What does Stephenie Meyer think about it? She’s okay with it, actually. She said in an interview that it isn’t her genre, but that it’s good that James is doing well with it. She also said that obviously James had a story in her, so if it hadn’t started out as Twilight fan-fiction, it probably would’ve surfaced in another way. J.K. Rowling has also said she’s flattered by fan-fiction and glad that people write it. (And, yes, Dan Radcliffe and Tom Felton are aware of certain plotlines and they don’t seem to mind much either.)

But what about authors that do mind? Anne Rice and George R.R. Martin are apparently quite against it. Both of them consider it copyright infringement and Martin thinks it’s a bad exercise for want-to-be writers.

I believe fan-fiction is a good thing. I like being able to find a story I’ve never read before and read about characters that I already know and love. Maybe the writing isn’t the strongest, but these are written by die-hard fans, so you know that the story will be solid and that most details will be canon. I think that as long as it doesn’t leave the world of free publishing on the sites that host these sorts of things, it’s fine. I’m still not sure how I feel about Fifty Shades, knowing that the original intention of the story was a reproduction of the material found in Twilight.

But what I really want to know is what YOU think. Do you think fan-fiction is a good thing or a bad thing? If someone wrote fan-fiction about your characters, would you be flattered or would you call it copyright infringement?

Featured Video: Harry Potter and the Best Picture Summary

This is a little outdated, but I don’t care.

Because it’s still funny.

And I’m still bitter.