Inconvenienced!

“They’re not so much villians as…” - Mer Haskell
“Inconveniencers?” - Me

So, I’m out at Hastings Point this weekend for the annual summer auxiliary writing retreat (in anticipation of the blowout, full on Hastings Point Writer’s Retreat), and we were headed back from lunch where we had spotted pictures of puppies which Elizabeth said were evil. From there we worked around to the quote seen above.

Which, in me, sparked an observation I’ve long since wanted to make. There’s a “best practice” in writing advice that I’ve heard so often it’s become a sort of truism, and that is: “Think of the worst thing that could happen to your character, and do that to them.” And my feeling, of course, is that that is a lie. The only time this actually works is the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (and fails to work, in my mind, at the end of Mostly Harmless). Or, as we discussed, if you’re George R. R. Martin, who doesn’t just get away with doing incredibly horrible things to all or most of the likeable characters in his Ice & Fire books, but draws an NYT Bestselling audience along the way.

So maybe it is good advice.

Anyway, what we determined (and this probably works for Martin too, in other ways), is that there’s an unspoken addendum to the advice which is: …that allows the story to go forward. The worst that could happen to any given hero or heroine is a bit variable, but you could start with “death” and work your way down from there. Of course, there’s a genre of story where the hero is already dead, or dies shortly into the story, but generally there’s still some kind of final, ultimate doom that stands in nicely for death. Anyway, the list of really bad things is long before we generally get down to the horrible things that authors are realistically able to write for the characters and still have a story that anyone gives a damn about.

In reality, what we’re talking about is inconveniencing the hero. Set up enough of a stumbling block that they can’t keep stride, but not so much that it completely incapacitates. The key, and the skill in presenting these kinds of stumbling blocks is that they a) seem organic to the story, and b) that they have a solution, but not one with a resolution that’s visible from the moment the inconvenience appears.

And of course, I’m being flip about the inconvenience thing, but it’s one of those things that was neatly illustrated in the first Austin Powers movie. When he and Vanessa are captured, Dr. Evil (a true inconveniencer) places them in the typical “slow death” Bond-movie device. Scott, who is a true villain, suggests the guards just shoot them. But, of course, that would be the end of the movie. Dr. Evil’s solution lets the story go forward (and there is the visible resolution there, but that’s part of the comedy of the scene). A true villain has read the evil overlord list and doesn’t muck around. Fiction tends to be populated by inconveniencers , more than villains.

Which is fine. As readers, we tend to appreciate that the author bad guy isn’t going to massacre the hero and his buddies and their loved ones and pets and hometowns and so on in the first ten pages. There’s a sort of understanding there that someone (hopefully likeable) is going to be left standing at the end, even if it’s only Horatio, and the interesting bit will be in seeing them get there.

And of course, it strikes me with everything I say that you don’t do, you could write a story that does just that. Which is also fine. Done well, I’d love to read it.

Crossposted with klech.net