| Reading. Orson Scott Card: How to write SF and Fantasy |
[Aug. 24th, 2003|09:08 pm] |
Who hurts the most?
In the world you have invented, who suffers the most? Chances are that it is among the characters who are in pain that you will find your main character, partly because your readers' sympathy will be drawn toward a suffering character, and partly because a character in pain is a character who wants things to change. He's likely to act. ... But your eye should be drawn toward pain. Stories about contented people are miserably dull.
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Who has the power and freedom to act?
Your eye should also be drawn toward movement. Characters who are powerless arent' likely to be doing anything terribly interesting. Your main character usually needs to be somebody active, somebody who can change things in the world, even if it's a struggle.
Remember that you look for people with both the power and the freedom to act.
...If you understand the workings of power in human societies, you'll know that the greatest freedom to act in unpredictable ways is usually found away from the centers of power.
The Protagonist
Who do we hope succeeds?
Comment: This is a very interesting point: suffering + freedom to act. I think this combination explains why so many islamic terrorists now come from from a middle class background. Their suffering is not physical (i.e. immediate danger to genes), it's social (i.e. immediate danger to memes). But more importantly, they have a lot more freedom and means to act upon their [memetic] suffering.
This also creates a very good story for their followers. It moves the significance of the protagonist's spiritual pain higher up in the hierarchy of values.
It would be very useful to find sociological data on muslim societies, specifically, how many educated people don't work in their field of expertise due to their financial independence, e.g. oil money, family ties, aristocracy, and etc.
end of comment
The MICE Quotent
All stories contain four elements that can determine structure: Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event. |
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