Category Archives: POV

*Warning: Spoilers in the form of 2 pictures, but that’s all*

They say that great art invokes emotion. If that’s the case then Captain America: Civil War must qualify. It invoked emotion for me, much more impactful than entertainment awe.

First, I have an admission. I’ve noticed that many of our blogs this month are focused on Fictorians’ favorite movies or TV shows. As much as I love Marvel and Captain America, that’s not why I chose it. It sounds a bit shallow, but it may or may not be true that I just wanted an excuse to see the film as soon as it came out and knew that even if taking the whole family wasn’t in the budget, my having to write a post would give me “permission” to go see it anyway. We did take the whole family and at the end of the movie, the emotions and viewpoints leaked into our little family to create another civil war.

One of the great aspects of fantasy and science fiction that I love is the ability to present real world problems and perspectives in less threatening ways. By using a fantastical backdrop and alien characters, we get our audience–whether readers or viewers–to let down their guard. There’s a reason that religion and politics are often a taboo subject in our society. People tend to have very set views in those areas and arguments can heat quickly.

Whether we realized it or not, I believe that Civil War took down mental walls and then slammed us with a very real-world question, one that is both philosophical and political: Is it better to have more oversight in an effort to protect or have less in order to safeguard personal autonomy? How much do we want our police policed and how much do they need freedom to make split-second decisions? It’s a question that comes up in stories of every kind, from traditional westerns to post-apocalypse young adult novels. But I think it’s rare for both sides to be so well balanced. Civil War did a great job representing both sides. Which is what led to the Black family civil war of May 5th, 2016.

After the movie, we started talking about the parts we liked most; my teenage girls really enjoyed Captain America holding Bucky’s helicopter so he couldn’t take off and my tween son thought Ant-man going giant was pretty awesome. But then my college-daughter expressed how Iron Man had the right of it. Captain America should have just signed the accords. I disagreed. They were too stringent and would get the Avengers caught up in too much red tape. We argued all the way home and it only escalated. Ridiculous, right? And yet, this movie evoked thought, emotion, and real-world comparisons. Which is one of the reasons that I will call Civil War great art.

I think we, as writers, can follow Civil War‘s example. In our own stories, do we evoke emotion from our readers? Does each character’s perspective ring true? Do we present each character’s beliefs like a good lawyer in a courtroom, giving the best representation that we possibly can whether we agree with it or not? As we strive for that level of authenticity, rather than push our own agenda, I think our art can help the world come closer to understanding one another…even if we must wade through difficult disagreements.

Colette Black Bio:

Colette Black lives in the far outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona with her family, 2 dogs, a mischievous cat and the occasional unwanted scorpion. She loves learning new things, vacations, and the color purple. She writes New Adult and Young Adult sci-fi and fantasy novels with kick-butt characters, lots of action, and always a touch of romance. Find her at www.coletteblack.net

Yippee-ki-yay: The Most Reluctant Hero

April 25, 2016

Kristin Luna

Action & Adventure Character Craft & Skills Kristin Luna Movies POV The Fictorians The Writing Life Tropes & Archetypes 1 Comment

Welcome to the party, pals!

When I think memorable characters, I think of villains first. Because villains make the heroes. It’s the villain’s scheme that proves the hero’s worth and skill. A hero’s purpose is to stop the antagonist. The stakes are almost always incredibly high, and the hero feels the crushing weight of the responsibility upon his or her shoulders.

Unless that hero is John McClane. (Not to be mistaken with John McCain. Ever.)

The best part of John McClane is that he doesn’t want to be there. At the start of every movie, we glimpse our reluctant hero about to embark on a situation he doesn’t want to be in, whether it be a Christmas party or another day without a drink. His motivations are simple, and have hardly anything to do with what actually happens to him. The story of his life: the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. By the middle of each movie, not even God knows what he’s doing. He’s solving puzzles like who the 21st president was, killing a helicopter with a car because he’s out of bullets, and figuring out why Hans Gruber has such a horrible American accent. What do all of these situations have in common? His clothing that always gets increasingly dirty, and his lovable nonchalance. As he says in Live Free or Die Hard, “You know what you get for being a hero? Nothin’. You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah, blah, blah, attaboy. You get divorced. Your wife can’t remember your last name. Your kids don’t want to talk to you. You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me, kid, nobody wants to be that guy.”

A ray of frickin’ sunshine.

In Die Hard, NYPD cop John McClain flies to LA to attend his wife’s company’s Christmas party. The two have been recently separated, and John hopes to rekindle their relationship. Instead, he kindles a witty cat-and-mouse game around Nakatomi Plaza with German terrorist Hans Gruber (played by the incredible, late Alan Rickman).

John’s Initial motivation: attends a Christmas party, tries to get his wife to love him again.

Final outcome: saves nearly everyone in the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles, kills terrorist Hans Gruber and foils his entire plan, saves his wife Holly. Ho ho ho!

In Die Hard 2, the ugly stepsister of the Die Hard movie franchise, John’s wife Holly finds herself in the middle of a terrorist plot (Again! What luck!) at the Washington D.C. airport. I’m not going to lie, I fall asleep every time I try and watch this one. Some planes crash, there’s a news helicopter in there, Holly’s okay, and that’s the end. I think.

John’s initial motivation: pick up Holly from the Washington D.C. airport.

Final outcome: McClane foils another terrorist plot, has a really badass scene where he lights a trail of fuel and blows up a plane, rescues Holly, again. Another basement, another elevator. How can the same stuff happen to the same guy twice?

In Die Hard: With a Vengeance, we find John a bit down and out. Holly’s no longer in the picture (after all that, she just didn’t like him I guess), and John’s nursing the bottle. When a call comes into the NYPD and the caller specifically requests McClane, John must get himself together for a race around the city with the best side-kick ever, Zeus Carver, played by Samuel L. Jackson.

John’s initial motivation: drink all day.

Final outcome: runs around the city with new bestie Zeus, saves an elementary school, meets super knowledgable construction driver, foil’s terrorist plot, saves a bunch of gold, decides to call his fickle wife Holly. This stuff happens when you throw a terrorist’s little brother off the thirty-second floor of Nakatomi Towers out in L.A. I guess he’s a little pissed off about it.

In Live Free or Die Hard, the world becomes more technological, but John McClane is still who you’d want around when things go offline. A terrorist (shocker) recruits computer hackers to build separate parts of fire sail. When most of the hackers turn up dead, the remaining hackers are left to figure out what they’ve all built. It’s one hacker’s lucky day because it’s John’s job to keep him safe.

John’s initial motivation: just wants to stalk his estranged daughter in peace.

Final outcome: McClane gets America (back) online, begins repairing relationship with daughter, foils and kills terrorist. McClane is a Timex watch in a digital age.

In A Good Day to Die Hard, John now has to repair his relationship with his son Jack, who just so happens to be under arrest for an assassination attempt in Russia. This movie takes place in Russia. It’s difficult to count this movie because the other Die Hard movies are as American as John McClane drinking apple pie-flavored moonshine.

John’s initial motivation: wants to see what’s going on with his son in Russia.

Final outcome: almost blows up the Ukraine with uranium. Oops! But also foils the Russian terrorist and reunites with his son, Jack. They’re not a hugging family.

What I’ve learned from a nearly 30-year love affair with John McClane is this. Your hero doesn’t always have to be willing. Sometimes, that’s exactly what will make your readers love him more. He can be the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time and still kick some major butt. Giving your hero a strong personality and a little reluctance can be a recipe for one of the most memorable heroes of all time.

Regarding the Humble Blowfish: A Guest Post by Frog Jones

April 16, 2016

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Character Conflict Craft & Skills Frog Jones Guest Posts POV The Fictorians The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by Frog Jones.

In my day job, I’m a public defender. This means, among other things, that any time I am placed on panels at conventions, invariably one of those panels will be the “What Makes A Good Villain” panel. After years of giving this panel, I can say with a certainty that the question of how to build a really solid, evil character is one of the harder challenges in writing.

Because here’s the thing: humans don’t set out to be evil. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says to themselves “That’s it. Time to go dark. I am going to start the killing with…you.” Doesn’t happen that way. No, evil is a slow, insidious process of a thousand decisions, each one of which appears to be completely correct at the time, but the sum total of which is a monster.

I’m talking about villains, here. Not just antagonists; that can be any opposing force. I’m talking about truly evil people who want to do truly evil things. Writing someone like that who doesn’t come off as a mustache-twirling dude in a top hat next to a woman whom he has strapped to some train tracks is a real trick.

And this is why I want to talk about Walter White.

Walter is, in the beginning of the series, just a normal guy. He teaches high school students, has a wife and a disabled son. He works a second job at a car wash to pay the bills, and even then the family is just barely getting by. They cannot afford a new water heater. Still, it’s his pride to be the guy taking care of his family. He’s constantly under stress, but he takes that stress and bottles it down because, well, that’s what you do.

Fast forward to Season Five, and Walter White is a drug lord with no compunctions about murdering for his territory or threatening his family. He is, by anyone’s account, evil.

Now, I’m not saying you have to write five seasons of a television series to get a believable villain into your plot. But I do recommend that you figure out how and why your villain broke bad. And Walter White is a great model of the basic things you need to get there.

For Walter, the cancer triggered him. Once he knows he’s dying of cancer, he realizes he will no longer be able to take care of his family. And that right there? It’s the one thing he had. Oh, he’s not rich like his college buddy who didn’t sell his stock early, but he is taking care of his family. It’s the one thing he has to be proud about.

This pride? It’s normally considered a virtue in society. Walter wants to make sure that he’s the guy who provides, not someone else. Good on him, right? Way to stand up and take responsibility. Way to “be a man.”

So now we have a series of pressures placed on Walter. One is his financial pressure, because he never has enough money to provide for the basics of life. The next is his self-applied pressure to provide for the family himself. When the cancer comes along, it adds a ticking clock. Now Walter has to make a significant amount of money very, very quickly, because to do otherwise would be to fail in his responsibility to his family.

See what happened there? Not a bad guy. Just a guy put in a position where all the pressures on him forced him into a situation where the next choice seems perfectly logical. If you’re a professional chemist, and you need to make a lot of money very quickly, then cooking meth makes a lot of sense.

This right here? This is the point where you need to take your villain. It may be backstory, in your case; it certainly was in mine. But in the life of every evil person, and I know this as someone who spends his entire life working with evil people, there is a series of decisions that lead, inevitably, to damnation. And it starts with one.

Walter’s decision is wrong. But it’s perfectly logical. It makes sense. He’s going to die anyways, so the legal consequences aren’t really a big deal. He needs the money. Someone is going to sell meth to these junkies, and that meth will be laced with all kinds of other things, because they aren’t nearly as good at this as Walter.

This is the moment. The moment where your villain goes wrong. The moment where he or she makes the decision to do the wrong thing for all the right reasons. After that, it’s a slow and gradual slide into hell.

Not every story can or should be Breaking Bad. But everyone who wants to write an evil character should watch Breaking Bad, because it is a perfect case study in how a villain is born.

About Frog Jones

Frog Jones writes with his wife, Esther. After a ten-year vow to never show each other a word they had written, they eventually broke down and wrote a novel together. Together, they have published the Gift of Grace series from Sky Warrior Books, as well as short stories in anthologies such as How Beer Saved the World, First Contact Café, and Tales from an Alien Campfire, as well as many more.

The Joneses live on the Puget Sound in the State of Washington with Oxeye, who is twenty-five pounds of pure bunny. Frog’s works can be found at http://www.jonestales.com, and he also appears on the Three Unwise Men podcast at http://3unwisemen.com.

You Had Me at Nitrogen Pentoxide

April 13, 2016

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Author's Perspective Character Guest Posts Ideas & Plotting Jacqui Talbot POV Reading The Fictorians The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by Jacqui Talbot

When I was ten, my uncle gave me a chemistry set, and with my first successful experiment, I was hooked.

There were a few less successful endeavors.

Like the time I decided to make a homemade stink bomb. Nothing too difficult. Just cut the heads off some matches and stick them in a bottle with some ammonia. Give it a swirl and then leave it for 3-4 days. Et voila! A perfect tool with which to prank my older siblings.

That is, of course unless a certain person—who shall remain nameless—decided to alter the recipe for maximum stench, and then forgot about it, leaving the bottle in a kitchen cupboard for two weeks during one of the hottest summers on record. And if that nameless (and blameless) child’s stepmother happened upon said bottle, gave it a little shake, and then opened it…. You get the picture. I was grounded for a month and the kitchen was uninhabitable for almost that long.

And then there was the incident with that batch of super-charged homemade gunpowder. (I was trying to make my own fireworks and wound up losing the porch and my eyebrows in at the same time.)

The point is that I have two great loves in my life: chemistry and the written word.

So, as you can imagine, when I discovered Alan Bradleys’ intrepid protagonist, Flavia de Luce, I was entranced. A beguiling cross between Pippi Longstocking and Sherlock Holmes, Flavia is an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry (specifically poisons) and a penchant for crime solving.

You can see why I love this kid.

She stars in seven novels, each one told in first person with some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read. To say that Bradley has a way with words is like saying Michelangelo was handy with a paintbrush. The way he crafts the language is mind-blowing. Here’s the first line of the fourth book in the series: I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS:

“Tendrils of raw fog floated up from the ice like agonized spirits departing their bodies. The cold air was a hazy, writhing mist.

Up and down the long gallery I flew, the silver blades of my skates making the sad scraping sound of a butcher’s knife being sharpened energetically on stone.”

*Sigh* See what I mean?

If Flavia sounds like a character you want to meet, I recommend starting with book one in the series, THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE:

Reading one of Bradley’s books is like diving into a soft bed covered in silk sheets and down comforters. It’s like a hot bubble bath after a long day’s work.

Just be careful when you dive in. Because when it comes to Flavia, you never know what lurks beneath.

But when it comes to memorable characters, that’s not really a bad thing, is it?

About the Author:
Jacqui Talbot is a book worm, devoted Whovian, and certified fantasy geek. When not pursuing her dream of becoming a full-time writer, she spends her time learning different languages (six and counting) and being a nuclear chemist. Her current projects include SPINNERS, a YA supernatural thriller set on the Choctaw Indian reservation where she grew up, and KARMA AND CHEMISTRY, a MG fantasy adventure featuring a twelve-year-old protagonist who uses science to battle dark magic.