Issues in Story Telling: Unsympathetic Characters

This was supposed to be one of those great, underappreciated movies, right? Right? One of those movies that only the Academy can appreciate because all of the rest of us are ignorant, low class plebeians. Right?

Unfortunately, it's kind of true. Kind of. Because it is the kind of movie that only entitled white men can appreciate, and it's only because the Academy and other award agencies are mostly made up of entitled white men that this movie received any recognition.

This movie can be summed up in exactly one word: BAD.

The fact that it won the Oscar for best original screenplay is a travesty and can be summed up by the fact that it was written by a self-involved Boomer for other self-involved Boomers, i.e. entitled white men. I can't really argue Casey Affleck's best actor win because he was the only thing that made the movie at all watchable. I think it must take an amazing talent to bring such a lifeless, flat script to any kind of life at all. Or it could just be that the self-involved white male Boomers felt sympathy for the despicable character of Lee Chandler.

But Lee Chandler is an example of bad storytelling. The problem here is that we are, actually supposed to feel sympathy for Lee Chandler. Obviously, he has suffered some tragedy and doesn't know how to cope with it and it has driven him into isolation. On the surface, sure, he seems like a sympathetic character. But as the movie progresses and we find out what happened, we find that he's just an asshole full of self pity.

In a nutshell, it's like this:
Lee's brother dies and leaves his kid to Lee in his will. His teenage son. Yes, that's almost exactly how it happens, and I'm pretty sure you can't do that, but let's pretend there are no issues with that bit. Lee doesn't want the kid and is pretty much an asshole about the whole thing, including getting into bar fights with little to no provocation. Of course, the movie opens with Lee being an asshole before we find out about his brother, so the death of his brother has nothing to do with the asshole-ness.

Oh, wait, suffered a tragedy, right? Well, as the backstory gets filled in, we find that Lee was also a flaming asshole before that tragedy occurred and that the tragedy occurred because of his asshole-ness. Lee was the kind of guy who would come in while is wife was sick in bed with a fever and force himself on her after she'd said she didn't feel like having sex -- 104 degree fever, snot running out of her nose -- but Lee said he wasn't bothered by her being sick so it was okay and, so, she lets him do it.

I have a huge problem with that scene in the movie, but not because I disbelieve that she might have let him do it. It's the kind of thing where a woman might give in because it would take too much energy -- remember, she's sick! -- to say no, but they played it off as an "aw, shucks" moment. "Aw, you're just so cute when I tell you no and you won't listen. You know what, you go ahead and fuck me all you want, because me saying no really means yes." It's the kind of situation where an entitled white guy would totally expect to get his way for the sake of "white-guy-ness." It made me kind of sick, certainly disgusted. This is the guy you want me to have sympathy for?

But it gets better! Or, you know, worse, because they go on to show his asshole-ness in all its glory. Lee has a gathering of his white male friends over. They're in his... I don't know... his man cave? It's the basement room of his house and has a pool table and "man" stuff. There's probably like 10 of them, and they are all drunk and loud. Which is fine, I suppose, until we find out its 2:00am and they're keeping the whole house awake: his wife and his two young children. Lee and his buddies think it's funny when Lee's wife comes down and demands that they all leave. "She can't talk to us like that!" Even though they do. Eventually.

Lee is a self-involved, entitled white male asshole. He suffers a tragedy that he causes and, rather than use that situation for self-reflection or something beneficial, he continues to be a self-involved, entitled white male asshole. The death of his brother does nothing more than to give him greater opportunity to spread that asshole-ness around.

Then there's the kid: Patrick. He seems to take after his uncle (Lee) rather than his father, because he, also, is a self-involved little asshole who seems to be more annoyed at the inconvenience of his father's death than anything else. "Seriously, Dad, I'm busy trying to fuck my multiple girlfriends and your death is really getting in my way." He's a shit of a kid, and there is plenty of evidence in the movie that he's just a shit of a kid and not being one because his dad died. Like, evidently, he likes to start fights with his hockey teammates and is in trouble for that frequently. And I mentioned the multiple girlfriends, right? That he keeps hidden from each other because none of the girls in question would be cool with the way Patrick spreads the "wealth" around.

Look, it's okay to fill your stories with despicable characters, just look at Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, but you need to know they're despicable. Trying to write a complete asshole as a sympathetic character only serves to display your own asshole-ness, rather like Trump (#fakepresident) and his constant "woe is me" diatribe about how he's the one being persecuted rather than the one doing the persecution. Having your asshole actions pointed out is not, contrary to the belief of assholes, persecution.

The most unforgivable part of the movie is the ending. Lee's ex-wife -- His ex-wife who is married, now, to another man and has just had a child with him (I think? I can't remember now if she'd given birth by the end of the movie or not.). -- comes to him to tell him how she forgives him for causing the death of their children (the unspeakable tragedy) and that she's still in love with him...
What the fuck?!?!
I'm sorry, but this is the exact the same situation as her being in bed sick and telling him that she doesn't want to have sex. "Look, I know you burned up our house and killed our kids because you were busy being a drunk asshole, but, really, you've punished yourself too much and too long, and you need to move on; after all, I forgive you. Oh, and yeah, I'm still in love with you and never stopped loving you. Even though you killed our kids." In other words, "Aw, shucks, you're just a lovable white guy who shouldn't be held accountable for his actions, so stop punishing yourself."

To put it mildly, there was nothing I found redeeming about this movie. That anyone found the character of Lee Chandler to be sympathetic boggles my mind but, then, the entitledness of the Baby Boomers often boggles my mind. And, yes, the writer of the screenplay is solidly a Boomer. And a white male.

So I'm just going to put it out there: The protagonist in your story generally ought to be sympathetic in some way to the audience. Or you need to have the awareness that your characters aren't sympathetic and be using them to some other purpose. You should not, however, try to pawn off your asshole characters as somehow being worth our sympathy. That's just gross.

The Casual Vacancy (a book review post)

It took a long time, but I finally finished The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling.

My first impression of the book remains my impression of the book now that I've finished it, that Rowling was trying too hard to be "adult." It's like the stereotypical starlet who goes out of her way to do as many nude and/or sex scenes in her movies as soon as she turns 18. Or, you know, like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears. Or, prior to them, Drew Barrymore (if any of you remember when she went through that stage and posed in Playboy and all of that). It's not that there is sex in the book, it's that any time there was anything sexual, she conveyed it in the most crude and vulgar way possible. Like the detailed description of a young girl's genital area in a quasi-sexual way. It just seemed to me like a cry of, "Look! I can write adult stuff! I can!"

Aside from that issue, though, it's quite an interesting read. At least it is for a while. Well, it's interesting like a traffic accident is interesting. I mean, none of the characters are what you would call "good." So here is the spoiler warning before I go on.

The most interesting thing about the book is that the only "good" character, the protagonist, dies. No, not somewhere along the way; he dies right at the beginning. That's the inciting incident. And, no, he doesn't come back to life nor is he a ghost or anything like that. He's just dead. The rest of the book is about this election because of his vacated council seat and, along the way, we find out how he influenced his community. We find out just how good he was, which shows us all the failings of the people around him as they are set up against the person he was. I suppose the effect is like taking over a new job and having to listen to everyone go on and on about how great the previous person was. You form a picture of that person (distorted, sure) without ever meeting him.

On the other side of that, none of the other characters are really likable, so there's no driving force to keep reading. You're just not rooting for anyone. So, although the book is really well written and interesting in the way it's put together, it's really hard to feel any empathy for any of the characters. As soon as you start to think, "well, this one's okay," that one will do something horrible to someone and it becomes, "well, never mind, then." I suppose the closest we get to a character we want to see make it is Krystal Weedon, but that's only because Fairbrother (the dead guy) wanted to see her make it. You do feel sorry for her from time to time, but she's also not a very nice person, with reason, so it's difficult to retain that bond with her.

There are two main failings of the book. The first is perspective. It's third person omniscient, but it's kind of all over the place. There are a lot of characters, so there is a lot of shifting perspectives, which isn't really the problem. The problem is that Rowling has no pattern she follows for this. Sometimes, she takes the characters by section by section so that there is a clear change in character perspective. However, sometimes, it's like being at a party with a video camera and the perspective changes as you walk around and film different people. One paragraph you're with one person and the next, because someone more interesting walked past, you're following someone new around. If Rowling had used just one of those formats, it would have been okay, but switching back and forth made it a bit muddled. Still, if this had been the only issue, it would have been fine.

The other issue is the one that makes the book not really work for me in the end. Even though Fairbrother is dead, he serves as the main character for more than 75% of the book. Near the end, though, it's like Rowling decided that she just needed to end the story (which she did), and events quit revolving or being related to the death of Fairbrother. (And double spoiler alert!) It is not, however, because events gradually diverge; that could have worked. Instead, she just starts killing people. Everyone comes into a personal crisis all on the same day, and she resolves the crisis of the book not by resolving the crisis of the book but by delivering arbitrary death upon characters. It was just... unsatisfying. It wasn't even death in a Shakespearean sense where everyone kills each other. There just needed to be resolution, and that's how she did it. I suppose there's not a better way to bring a character's story to an end. Unless you start with that character's death, I guess.

So... great writing on the micro-level. The characters were well-developed and fascinating, just not likable. But the perspective changes and failure at the end made the book just not work for me overall. Few of the characters really learn anything or have any character growth; it just ends. I suppose that's because the death of the one character we're supposed to want to make it, the thing that would have made Fairbrother's life mean something, brought Fairbrother's story to a close. But nothing felt finished even though there was nothing more to say.

I suppose that's real life, but, although I want realism, I don't read a story for real life. I want a story arc, not just a bunch of stuff that happened to some people.

Reading in the Cracks (an IWSG post)

I've always been one of those people that carries a book wherever I go. It started in elementary school, actually, when I would finish assignments way before the rest of the class, and the thing I was allowed to do was read. Well, or sit quietly at my desk. I don't think teachers realize how difficult it is for an eight-year-old to just sit quietly anywhere when everyone else has something to do. So I started filling in those cracks with reading. Of course, at the time, it was from books in the classroom; it wasn't until middle school that I started carrying books with me. Probably so that I'd have something to read on the school bus. But I discovered that having a book with me was a good thing because it didn't matter where I was, when I was stuck waiting for anything, stuck in a crack in time, I had a book to read. By high school, I was the guy with a book. Not that anyone ever called me that, not to my face, anyway, but people would comment. And my friends would ask me why: "Why do you always have to have a book with you?"

They never really understood the answer. Even that I liked reading didn't suffice as an answer. I suppose that was too foreign a concept for most of them. I know they didn't get it, because the same people would ask that question over and over, like I was lying to them, "But why...?"

When I was younger, those cracks in time where I would slip some reading in were often large and happened frequently. Actually, thinking back on it, now, it's amazing how much time kids have to just... waste. And, mostly, that's what they do with it. Yeah, yeah, I know it's part of being a kid, but, still...

The biggest crack was at bedtime. That was like a grand canyon of time every night when I would spend a couple or few hours reading. Man, that was so luxurious, and I didn't even know it.

The problem is that those cracks get smaller and smaller as you get older, especially once (if) you have kids. In fact, some of those cracks get filled in completely. There's no sitting around in class reading because you've finished whatever everyone else is working on. I'm thinking that behavior is mostly frowned on at most jobs, at least most of the jobs I've had. And bedtime reading is nearly non-existent. There is just too much tiredness. Whereas I used to read at least an hour every night, I'm doing good to get in 10 minutes these days (which is why it took most of the last year to read The Casual Vacancy). My reading cracks have been reduced to waiting for my kids after school, a yield of about 20 minutes a day, and waiting in line at the bank, which I generally don't do more than once a month.

All of that means that I need to restructure the way I read. Reading in the cracks just isn't good enough anymore. But there's a bigger reason for that.

The way I read, or have been reading, requires that I have something I can carry with me, which means an actual, physical book (because I have no mobile device for reading), but what I really need to be doing is increasing my e-reading (which requires that I sit at my computer (not entirely pleasant after sitting in front of my computer all day already)). And why do I need to do that, you might ask.

One of the things that really bothers me as I bounce around to blogs by other indie writers ("indie" encompasses (by definition) self-published authors and traditionally published authors published by any publisher that is not one of the "big" publishers) is that, when they talk about the books they "love," they are almost exclusively talking about books from the "Big Six." In fact, there are frequent posts that just gush over books like Gone Girl (being the one that I ran across the most this week (half a dozen separate posts about this book)), which is not the problem. The problem is that there is a deficit of posts like that about other indie writers.

The implied message (which I'm sure is completely unintentional but is there just the same):
I am an indie writer and you should read my books. Yes, I am that good. However, other indie writers out there are not as good as me, which you can tell because I only read books published by the Big Six traditional publishers.

Yes, this bothers me. As an indie writer, I do my best to support other indie writers by reading their books (and reviewing them, but that's another discussion) and letting people know what indie books I've read that I really like (see that reviewing thing, again, which is still another discussion). It doesn't mean that you have to give up reading books by the Big Six, but, if you are an indie writer, you probably ought to be giving something close to equal time to other indie writers. That message says:
I value what you do as much as I value what I do.

That's an important message to be sending. Not to the other indie writers (though that is important) but to readers. Readers need to know that indie books are no less good than Big Six books, and the only way to let them know that is by showing that we are reading them, too.

For me, specifically, this is going to involve some changes in the way I do my reading (at least until I get some kind of portable device). No more just reading in the cracks. I will have to set aside deliberate time in which to do reading at my computer so that I can start working on, really working on, my TBR list of indie authors. It's important.

Goodreads Says I Suck

Goodreads called the other day... Okay, so "they" didn't call; they just sent me an email. Yeah, sure, goodreads sends emails everyday, but this one was different. This one was an update about how many books I'd read in 2013.

Goodreads told me I suck.

I barely read more than a book a month in 2013 and some of those were short! It's not up to my standards at all. At all. And I actually feel quite bad about it.

But figuring out where to squeeze in reading time, lately, has been difficult, to say the least. Especially since school started in the fall. I mean, I started The Casual Vacancy back in, like, March (according to goodreads, which just taunts me with this information), and I haven't finished it yet! It hasn't taken me so long to read a book since I read Dracula back during college (but that was because it was during spring semester, and I had a lot of other reading to do). And it's not like I'm not enjoying it; I am. It's very intricate and interesting, BUT! It's my bedtime book (because I have it as a dictionary-sized hardback, and I don't like to lug those around with me), and, basically, by the time I go to bed these days, the thought of reading isn't even in my head. In fact, there are rarely any coherent thoughts left in my head. [Okay, there's one string of coherent thoughts in my head at bedtime, but they are not polite, and they are all aimed at the cat and what I'm going to do to him if he wakes me up. Which he always does. Every night. More than once. (Does anyone want a pair of cat slippers?)]

As a total aside, I think a pair of cat slippers with the head of the cat at the front of the slipper would be exceedingly cute. Of course, you'd need two cats for that. The other option is that one foot would have the head of the cat and the other would have the... well... the place I want to kick the cat every night when he wakes me up.

No, I'm not bitter at all.

Anyway...

I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions. At all. I hate that whole thing (and I'm pretty sure I posted about that before, so I'm not going into it again). However, I do have the intention of figuring out how to work in more consistent reading time into my schedule, because what I've been doing just isn't cutting it. Specifically, I want to read at least one indie book a month. Even at one a month I won't be reading them as fast as I add them, but I need to start making progress into the... oh, my... triple digit library on my Kindle app. I don't think I'd realized I had that many until I checked. And that's just the indie books, because I do still read traditionally published books, too.

And that's about as close to a resolution as I'm going to get. We'll see how it goes.

The Cat Came Back (part 3): The Cat Reader (and the Dog Writer)

I wish I had a picture of the cat with a book for this post, but the cat has proven to be very troublesome

when it comes to pictures. Anytime he hears the camera turn on, he immediately stops what he's doing. Just before the above picture, he was "hugging" the arm of the couch, but, as soon as the camera made a noise, he sat up like, "What? I wasn't doing anything."

Which brings me to my point. Readers are like cats.

Seriously, ask someone what they're reading, which is likely to be something "trashy," and they'll start making excuses as to why they're reading it. "It's for my reading group." "Someone gave it to me." "My best friend said I had to read it." "I don't really like this, but it's so popular I had to read it." Whatever. It's like people have to make excuses because they're not reading something "better." Sort of like the cat when I try to take a picture of it doing something insane. "What? No. That wasn't me. You have the wrong cat. That cat just ran out of the room."

But it's more than that. As I said in my last cat post, science believes that cats adopt their owners, not the other way around. That is certainly true of readers. As a reader, I've done this myself. When I was in middle school, I adopted Piers Anthony as "my writer" and kept him around for six or seven years at least. Right now, I have two that I've adopted: Neil Gaiman and Mary Doria Russel.Gaiman is good in a way that Anthony never was in that he doesn't always write the same old stuff over and over again. Russel is good in another way in that her writing is just so magnificent. And deeply human. As a writer, the best thing we can hope for is get adopted by a reader and, hopefully, a lot of readers.

But the thing is, cats are finicky. It might be a cliche, but it's a cliche because it's true. You can feed a cat something one day, something the cat barely stops to breathe for while choking it down, but give that same thing to the cat the next day, and it's "blech! Why are giving me that crap? I hate that!" Actually, that sounds kind of like my daughter, too. At any rate, it's hard to know what a reader will want at any given time. Yesterday, it was vampires, today it might be zombies, and who knows what it might be tomorrow: anthropomorphic frogs, maybe.

To make it worse, they're demanding. "We don't know what we want, but we want it right now!" Okay, sometimes readers do know what they want, but it often goes like this:
The cat demands food. The cat demands food again. The cat demands food very loudly. The cat demands food loudly and constantly. You finally get up and give the cat some food, which may or may not be what you gave the cat the day before. The cat looks at the food, takes a bite, and turns his tail on it while giving you that look. If you've never been given that look by a cat, you won't know what I'm talking about, but it loosely translates into "You suck. I hope you choke on a hairball. How could you give me this crap?"

I haven't read The Casual Vacancy yet, but I kind of think Rowling is going through this right now from what I've read of reader reaction to the book. Finicky.

On the other hand, I think young readers tend to be more like dogs; they'll eat anything you throw at them.

Cats also want to get all up in your personal space, but not in a friendly way like a dog does. I mean, a dog just wants to cuddle and be with you, but a cat... well, the cat wants the space. You are no longer you, you are just a pillow. They pop out those claws and start kneading you and molding you and trying to get you to move around into a shape they want. Who cares about whether that's comfortable for you or not, right? And, even when a reader likes what you've written, many of them will tell you how you could have changed it to make it better for them. With those little claws, working you over. Of course, the reader next to that one has completely different suggestions, and that one is working you over with his claws, too.

But writers are much more like dogs. Have you ever been to the animal shelter and seen the little doggies just waiting for someone to love them? Really, they'll take anyone. They're back there like Donkey (from Shrek), jumping up and down and yelling, "Me! Me! Pick me! Pick me!" And, even though readers are cats, writers are still back there saying, "Read me! Read me! Like me! Like me!" There may be less jumping up and down, but, then again, there may not be. And, really, writers will just take anyone. The only thought in a writer's head at that moment is, "Someone to love me!"

Of course, then, you don't want to make writers mad or mistreat them on an ongoing basis, because, then, they become that grumpy, old dog down the street that doesn't like anyone and just growls at anyone that gets near, "I don't care if you like my stuff! Get away from me before I bite your hand off!" I'm not sure if that's any less literal with a writer than with that dog.

But, mostly, dogs are just lovable and want to be loved. They want someone to play catch with and to scratch them behind the ears. They want someone to tell them "good dog." Yeah, that's writer equivalent of buying your book and leaving a positive review.

And, honestly, dogs are so much easier to feed than cats. They'll eat almost anything.
Except my dog, of course; she's picky. Unless the cat is around, then she'll eat anything.

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