Kat Dancing

So I've finally been introduced to the tv series Firefly and am about three-quarters of the way through it. I'm enjoying myself. It's a good show, a lot of fun, and there's some hysterical one-liners.

I can also see why it was cancelled; the show has a bad case of Letting The Characters Win.

I sympathize. I have a hard time with this one too. The problem is that it's difficult to diagnose, and easy to defend against it. New writers often complain that the characters are supposed to win, dammit, they're not writing a tragedy here. Intermediate writers - or those who have been infected with literature - try to fix the problem by doing really horrible stuff to their characters. Then they smugly brag about how much their characters hate them, and chastize others for being "too nice" to their characters.

The problem is that that both behaviors are symptoms of the same overall problem. Yes, if characters win every fight, argument, and poker game in the story, it's Letting The Characters Win; but if characters loose every fight, argument, and poker game, and are horribly tortured, and don't get the girl, and spend every moment that they aren't actually being beaten up talking about how much their life sucks... this is also Letting The Characters Win. Because it's still all about the characters. The characters have taken over the story.

The common excuse heard now - I've used it - is "But I'm a character writer. The story's all about characters for me, not plot or science or all that other stuff. And anyway it's the characters people want."

Well, yes... but no. A story is a fragile thing - and I'm talking about the story, not the plot. A story is the characters. It's also the plot, and the setting, and the science. For writers the story also means the writing, the words on the page, grammar and spelling and all that other stuff that beginning writers want to dismiss; for television and movies, it's the special effects and the acting and the lighting and, God help them, the budget, and many other things besides. And most of all, story is about timing. It's about hanging together all of the elements in that particular way that makes them a story.

Let one element get out of hand, and you throw the whole thing off kilter. Too many special effects, too many plot threads, too much exposition, not enough attention to grammar or too much time spent playing with the nifty words... some people will like the end result, of course; there are people that go to the movies just for the sfx, and people who read books just for the science. There are people who will hate it. And if you get it right, there's people who will like it and people who will hate it, and no particular guaruntee that you'll get more of the former.

But you won't have betrayed the story. Get the balance wrong, and you betray the story.

I enjoy watching Firefly. I'm a character sort of person; I don't mind having nine main characters. I love the character interplay, and I laugh my ass off at the fabulous one-liners. But I'm also a writer, and I pay closer attention than most. I can see that most of the episodes - especially the early episodes - have no central storyline. I can see that most of the show's scenes have been created just so the characters can deliver those fabulous one-liners, and that the plot is little more than a hasty fabrication for stringing the individual scenes together. I can see where the story has been bent out of shape or squeezed too small to make it fit all the nifty character bits in. The show's creators loved their characters too much; they've let them take central stage. They're good at it, but I can still see that the plot, the setting, the timing, everything, has been either created for or deformed to fit the characters, pushed aside to give the characters more room to grandstand.

I can see the seams.

There's a Mark Twain essay (which I sadly cannot find now) where he talks about how he used to be able to lean on the railing and think how beautiful the river was - until he became a pilot and learned to "read" the river, and then all he could see was the danger signs. Sometimes I feel that way about writing. On the other hand, if I'd watched Firefly five or six years ago before I began seriously writing, I might have just felt vaguely dissatisfied without knowing why. Who knows?

In the meantime, I've still got a few Firefly episodes to watch.