Complications Ensue: “Canon”

Alex Epstein at the always excellent writing blog “Complications Ensue” had a particularly tasty post yesterday about genre writing:

I watched the BLADE series pilot. When I’m watching a show with mythology, I’m looking for two things. One is true for any show: I want convincing, compelling characters involved in entertaining, moving stories.

The other is particular to genre shows. I want a consistent, coherent mythology that rings true, and I want the stories to bring insights into that mythology.

So, for example, TWILIGHT had a consistent, coherent mythology that did not ring true for me. If all vamps do in sunlight is sparkle, then Edward is not a scary predator, he’s just Bella’s big sparkly pony. It’s fine for teenage girl wish fulfillment; girls need stories about big, powerful ponies that will obey them. But he’s not a vampire. Because to me, the vampire mythos is about the power of death, and the seductiveness of evil, and if he can go out in the sun and doesn’t have to kill people, then his undeadness lacks all thematic punch. He’s not a vampire, he’s a “vampire.”

What I love is when a genre story takes itself seriously and really examines what people would do, and who they would be, in a world in which technology is more advanced or different, or magic or fantastical critters exist. So for example, I loved the difference between the Sarah Connor of TERMINATOR and the Sarah Connor of TERMINATOR II. In the first, she’s nearly killed by a scary robot from a hell future. A lesser writer might have pretended that she’d try to put that horrible experience behind her, like characters in horror movie sequels. But the truth is, if you’ve nearly been terminated by a scary robot from a hell future, you become someone different. You remake yourself into a badass killer yourself. You learn how to use guns and explosives. And you probably come off to other people like a paranoid schizophrenic. James Cameron had the courage to pursue the logic of his science fictional universe.

The subtext: Don’t only be aware of the canonical ‘rules’ and customs of the genre in which you’re writing, be curious and interested enough to dig deeper into it — to find unique and fresh dimensions as yet unexplored.

Then Epstein lays out a simple but important imperative:

If you’re working in genre, first, please, make sure you’re thinking it through. What would real people do in this situation. Be brave. Pursue the ramifications as far as you can. For vamps to exist in our world without our knowing it, what would the rules of their existence have to be? How are they suppressing our knowledge of their existence? Are they showing up for the first time, as Dracula did in DRACULA — so, in that case, no one knew about vamps because there hadn’t been any in Britain. Do they cut a deal with human society — do the rich and powerful know that they exist but they’re hiding it from us? And so forth.

“If you’re working in genre, first, please, make sure you’re thinking it through.” There is almost nothing worse than the experience of reading a script and bumping into characters who act in ways that are completely inconsistent with their place in their particular story world. That’s bad. What’s good? When the writer immerses him/herself in the story universe they’ve created and identifies with the characters enough so that they can imbue those characters with choices and actions that are both surprising and believable.

For example, this summer’s best movie — hands down in my view — Up is what can be called an action-adventure movie. Its Protagonist Carl Frederickson (voiced by Ed Asner) finds himself (A) alone due to the death of his beloved Ellie, (B) facing the threat of being forced into a retirement home, and the © loss of the house he’s lived in for decades, holding out all that time against ‘modernization’ on all sides. So what does he do? Combining his pledge to Ellie to go to her fantasy spot in South America and his background as a balloon salesman, Carl fills thousands of balloons with helium and goes airborne, thereby beginning his big adventure.

Now if we sat in a room for 12 hours a day, every day for a year, I doubt any of us would have come up with a character like taking an action like that. Fortunately, there are the good folks at Pixar who did concoct that scheme. Almost every narrative element about Up — the aged Protagonist, pairing him with a young boy, flying to South America, being stuck with the house the entire second and third acts, the Nemesis not showing up until midway through act two — is a fresh, distinctive take on the action-adventure genre.

And that’s because the filmmakers took the time to understand the genre, create a story that is consistent with the mythos of the genre, yet think it through to generate some interesting and fun new ways to explore it in their whimsical story. Epstein sums it up well in his post:

The fun of genre is in the thematic ramifications, and in the “what-if?” But don’t stretch the theme so far that the human characters stop behaving like real people — find the fun in real reactions to the outlandish circumstances. Take that all the way, and you won’t be able to help yourself coming up with something convincing and fresh.

H/T to Kate Eberle for forwarding me Epstein’s post.