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Daily Archives: November 6, 2012
- by Tara Maya
The Symbiosis of Hero and Villain
Now that I think about it, Batman Begins has a shockingly similar premise to Crime and Punishment. As Raskolnikov does, Batman decides to commit crimes (vigilantism), but justifies it on the grounds that it will prevent worse evils. The antagonist in the story presses him to take this rationalization to its logical (but evil and therefore tragic) end point. Batman sees the trap and avoids it, while Raskolnikov falls into it, so Raskolnikov becomes a tragic hero, while Batman becomes a superhero.
Remember that the hero and the villain, or the protagonist and antagonist, often have parallel journeys. In the mythic sense, the antagonist is the dark side of the hero: either his mirror, his complement or his opposite.
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| Evil Counterparts of Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. |
In comics, science fiction and fantasy, this can even be literally true: the heroes face their own evil counterparts, or selves from a parallel universe, or evil self magically or technologically split from themselves.
One of the best sf stories of all time, The Forbidden Planet, captured this perfectly. First of all, despite the fact this movie was made in the 50s without CG, the monster was frickin’ scary. But this was no simple monster movie. And not just because of the similarities to The Tempest.
(Spoilers for The Forbidden Planet follow.)
Commander John Adams (the hero, played by a buff, young Leslie Nelson) and his crew arrive on a distant planet to check on the colonists there. They find all the colonists dead except for Morbius (what a classy villain name!) and his gorgeous, nubile daughter. A creepy, seemingly all-powerful monster that defies the laws of known psychics killed off all the other colonists, and now starts killing off Adams crew.
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| It’s even scarier when invisible. |
Morbius is surprisingly sanguine about the deaths, busy as he is studying the fantastic technology left on the planet by a dead civilization, the Krell, as he explains to Addams:
Dr. Morbius: In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty, noble race of beings who called themselves the Krell. Ethically and technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind, for in unlocking the meaning of nature they had conquered even their baser selves, and when in the course of eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, crime and all injustice, they turned, still in high benevolence, upwards towards space. Then, having reached the heights, this all-but-divine race disappeared in a single night, and nothing was preserved above ground.
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| Innocent Altaira lives in the paradise created by her father with Krell technology. |
Doc is the first crew member to try Krell “brain enhancing” technology. It overpowers his puny human brain and kills him, but not before he has a critical insight:
Doc Ostrow: Morbius was too close to the problem. The Krell had completed their project. Big machine. No instrumentalities. True creation.
Commander John J. Adams: Come on, Doc, let’s have it.
Doc Ostrow: But the Krell forgot one thing.
Commander John J. Adams: Yes, what?
Doc Ostrow: Monsters, John. Monsters from the Id.
Commander John J. Adams: The Id? What’s that? Talk, Doc! [Doc slumps and dies]
Morbius and his daughter are never attacked by the monster. But that changes after Altaira falls in love with Addams. Suddenly, the monster comes after her as well. As the couple and Morbius all flee deeper and deeper into the ruins of the Krell city, Addams finally confronts Morbius.
Commander John J. Adams: What is the Id?
Dr. Edward Morbius: [frustrated] Id, Id, Id, Id, Id! [calming down]Dr. Edward Morbius: It’s a… It’s an obsolete term. I’m afraid once used to describe the elementary basis of the subconscious mind.
Commander John J. Adams: [to himself] Monsters from the Id… Monsters from the subconscious. Of course. That’s what Doc meant. Morbius. The big machine, 8,000 miles of klystron relays, enough power for a whole population of creative geniuses, operated by remote control. Morbius, operated by the electromagnetic impulses of individual Krell brains.
Dr. Edward Morbius: To what purpose?
Commander John J. Adams: In return, that ultimate machine would instantaneously project solid matter to any point on the planet, In any shape or color they might imagine. For *any* purpose, Morbius! Creation by mere thought.
Dr. Edward Morbius: Why haven’t I seen this all along?
Commander John J. Adams: But like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger – their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.
Dr. Edward Morbius: The beast. The mindless primitive! Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.
Commander John J. Adams: And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious had access to a machine that could never be shut down. The secret devil of every soul on the planet all set free at once to loot and maim. And take revenge, Morbius, and kill!
Dr. Edward Morbius: My poor Krell. After a million years of shining sanity, they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them. [pause] Yes, young man, all very convincing, but for one obvious fallacy. The last Krell died 2,000 centuries ago. But today, as we all know, there is still at large on this planet a living monster.
Commander John J. Adams: Your mind refuses to face the conclusion.
At last, Morbius recognizes the monster.
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| I feel like this ALL THE TIME. Especially faced with chocolate. |
If you are writing a heroic story, in the end, your hero will succeed and your villain will fail because his own dark side will do him in. In a tragedy, the hero will fail because his own dark side will do him in. A tragedy, in a sense, is just a story told from the point of view of a villain. In a tragic as much as in a heroic story, evil never wins. There is only one genre in which evil wins, and it can still be a satisfactory story: satire or farce. Farce is a more satirical form of comedy. Since satire and farce invert norms for humorous effect, evil wins and good guys end up losers.
(Please do me a favor if you write something like that, and make it clear that’s what you’re doing from the start. I read Alan Clement’s Rogue Nation [spoiler alert] thinking it would be a heroically told thriller, and indeed it was told that way throughout most of the book. At the end, however, to be “clever” (blegh) the author revealed the whole thing was a farce, a mere satire about politics. The good guy came out looking like an moron and a loser, and every single other character in the book were revealed to be schmucks…but clever schmucks, who succeeded in getting everything they had wanted all along. The book wasn’t funny (as satire should be) and it wasn’t satisfying either. But it was published, so what do I know?)
The other thing to remember is that the villain is the hero of his own story. Therefore, you can use a No Fail Story Formula for the villain just as well the hero:
Once upon a time there was a villain (farmboy, housewife, spy…) named ______ who wanted more than anything to ______.
But the problem was that ______.
Then one day, something new happened and ______.
So the villain went/met/tried a place/person/thing______.
But this didn’t work because ______.
So the villain went/met/tried another place/person/thing ______.
But this didn’t work because ______.
And all seemed lost until the hero ______.
Finally, the villain went/met/tried a third place/person/thing ______.
And the villain failed (or succeeded) because ______.
Therefore at last the villain was forced to ________.
- by Tara Maya
NaNoWriMo Tip #6: A No-Fail Formula To Storyboard Your Novel
These are my personal tips for NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.
You know how when a movie comes out, especially a children’s or superhero flick, short book versions appear on the shelves at the supermarket. These are short story versions of the movie, often illustrated with film shots. If you’re lucky, the writing is adequate, but seldom inspired. However, these books are instructive in how to reduce a two hour movie, or a novel length story, to a ten page short story. The shorter the book, the more it skips large subplots and tells the story only in broad sweeps.
Writing your novel in short story form can be enormously helpful in making sure that you have an entire story arc.
You should already know the ending of your story. It’s more important to know where your story will end than where it will begin. It’s a mistake to sweat over the first scene, or worse, first sentence of your book, when you don’t even know what the rest of the story is going to go.
Once you a have an ending, though, you can work backwards and ask yourself, “If the hero achieves Outer Goal X by the end, what inner transformation did he have to make since the beginning of the book?” That will show you where to start your story. At the beginning of the book, the hero should not yet be the kind of person capable of achieving his outer goal, because he’s not yet undergone his inner transformation.
Knowing the ending should also give you a clue about the theme of the book. One way to test this is to see if you can trace an arc in a short story. Write a one-page story or synopsis (you can think of it either way) of your entire book that shows the key transformations of your character.
This will help you write a back blurb for your story, but there’s an important difference. The blurb on the back of the book should not include spoilers for major plot points. Of course it cannot tell the reader the ending. When you write a short story version or synopsis of your novel, you need to include the major plot twists and the ending. If you are writing a mystery, you need to reveal the killer and the major clues that the detective found to unmask him.
If you need a prompt to write the short story, here’s one in fairy tale form (this doesn’t mean you have be writing a fantasy).
Once upon a time there was a hero (farmboy, housewife, spy…) named ______ who wanted more than anything to ______.
But the problem was that ______.
Then one day, something new happened and ______.
So the hero went/met/tried a place/person/thing______.
But this didn’t work because ______.
So the hero went/met/tried another place/person/thing ______.
But this didn’t work because ______.
And all seemed lost until the hero ______.
Finally, the hero went/met/tried a third place/person/thing ______.
And the hero succeeded (or failed) because ______.
Therefore at last the hero was able to ________.
Any story reduced to this will seem formulaic, but once you add in your character development, your worldbuilding, your subplots, your themes and symbols, your further twists and turns, it needn’t be predictable at all. Yet if you try to write a story without at least some solid backbone of a story arc, your story will be a shapeless mass no matter how great your characters and how subtle your writing. Could Shakespeare or Dostoevsky be put into this formula? Yes. I’ve the comic book versions of classic literature to prove it. So don’t turn your nose up at this method!
The Comic Classics reminds me of other ways to approach this. If you enjoy drawing, or don’t mind playing with stick figures, you can actually do a comic or storyboard of your novel. If you can’t draw, you can grab pics from around the net (as long as you don’t use this for anything but your own purposes—you can’t sell it unless the pics are royalty free) and use those in your storyboard. Either way, it’s fun, but it does take time.
As proof, or at least as amusement, let’s take a look at a bit of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, envisioned as a Batman comic strip. If you’ve read Crime and Punishment, and of course you have, you’ll see how succinctly the comic condenses the main storyline. In the novel, Marmelodov isn’t run over until Chapter 14; here’s it’s on Page 4. (The fact that Sonia / “Sonny” is a whore is also skimmed over, but that’s because the comic was intended for innocent minds, which could handle ax murder but not prostitution.) Obviously, a lot of the subplots have been left out of the comic, and a few changes of clothes have been added, but even with these elisions and wardrobe revisions, a surprising amount of Russian angst shines through. Just think if Christopher Nolan had decided to go with Dostoyevsky to write the “real” Batman’s backstory!
Can you fit Crime and Punishment into the No Fail fairytale form? Indeed you can; easily. (Try it for fun!) Also a simple rule of thumb is that if the hero succeeds at the end, story is heroic or comic; if he fails it’s tragic. As part of deciding your ending, you should already know if your story will be be heroic, comic or tragic.
If you prefer these Tips as an ebook you can buy it here for $0.99:
