McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
balance of sympathies
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
I'm kicking some stuff around for a rather complex setting, and I am wrestling with where the reader sympathy lies.
Ideally, I would want characters on either side of the central conflict, as close to equally sympathetic as possible. I am not particularly interested in the story having a hero or a villain, let alone a hero defeating a villain; it's a complex issue where I want to explore questions rather than throw out simple answers.
Anyone got any thoughts on how best to balance the sympathy so the reader does not immediately jump to taking one side or the other ? I'm aware there are some readers who would gravitate to one side or the other instantly and absolutely on principle in ways that are external to anything that can go in the text, and not thinking of those as an audience here; more interested in, if this could in theory work for you at all, what would make it work better ?
Any more general notions of what has worked well for you as a situation with a balance of sympathy on both sides of a question that avoiided collapsing into having simplistic goodies and baddies would also be appreciated here.
neofyte:
The danger in balance is tenable plot arc. If you are shooting for reconciliation, great. If you are aiming for a treatise on misunderstood intention causing catastrophe, well..you may end up with an epic read and re-read in literature classes for generations to come, but it may not make Amazon's top 500 =)
I intuit that you could pull off a fair examination of both sides of any given story better than most. My peanut gallery points:
1. Character identification: a) Vulnerabilities - embedding the characters with weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that resonate with the reader - I love Gemmel's characters, if for no other reason. Druss makes a dayamed good flawed hero. b) Redeeming traits - surprisingly noble, stand up and be inspired, behavior from less desirable characters.
2. Mitigating background that puts otherwise untoward behavior into - if not a rational context - at least an understandable one. Requoting Longfellow: If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find there enough sorrow and suffering to disarm all hostility. The big mitigating forces being those very things over which the characters have zero control: circumstance, developmental neglect and/or abuse, genetic limitations or predispositions, and personal history forged over a lifetime which cast certain events into incontrovertible predictions - regardless of whether the perception is valid or no. Self-fulfilling prophecy shades of the Montagues and Capulets, perhaps?
3. Ubuntu: For philosophical back story try Desmond Tutu's No future without forgiveness He translates an ecosystem world view of the South African tribes into something like: 'What dehumanizes you dehumanizes me, to forgive isn't noble, it is the best form of self-interest'. Permitting the plot arc to take you to short term victory that ends in long term suffering for the victor may support such a theme.
4. Dressing up familiar themes in new garb. Lucas's rewrite of Taoism as the 'force' in the Star Wars universe is a good example. A step further, though, for comparable sympathy rather than juxtapose ego against interconnectedness, just use the two compliments. Yin and Yang, intended to be complimentary and both needing each other to be whole, but dissembled into antagonism, makes for a compelling conflict.
5. Shared stage time: Perhaps overly obvious, but worth re-mentioning, equal narrative attention. Human nature is easy sympathy, guided by propinquity. But if we feel equally close to both sides? Harder to take sides.
6. Competing priorities: I rarely face life dilemmas between world changing good and apocalyptic evil. I am defined much more by the common but subtle choices. Plot arcs leading to choices between good and good, or good and maybe a little better, would lend a real life quality to the story if you could write it convincingly.
7. Rather than write archetypal characters, allow them to change and either grow or be subverted through the text. Or even change their positions based on the acquisition of new information.
8. Do the same with the reader. Lead the reader through various sympathy shifts before leveling the story field. 'Wait I like her, no him, no her." :)
9. Write to your strengths. Help the reader challenge their own implicit assumptions. To my mind this is your signature gift.
10. Don't over think it. Rumi penned "people spend their lives stringing and unstringing their instruments. They are always getting ready to live." Your signature gift can be a compulsive weakness to flawlessness.
Just write and see what happens. And whatever you do, don't write the epic that will be read and re-read. Just write to write :)
If you ever decide to take on beta-readers, please add me to the applicant pool.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
Lots of good stuff here; where I'm not commenting it's because I agree without further issue.
--- Quote from: neofyte on June 04, 2010, 08:54:01 PM ---The danger in balance is tenable plot arc. If you are shooting for reconciliation, great. If you are aiming for a treatise on misunderstood intention causing catastrophe, well..you may end up with an epic read and re-read in literature classes for generations to come, but it may not make Amazon's top 500 =)
--- End quote ---
I think Song of Ice and Fiire is an arguable counter to that last. fwiw.
--- Quote ---2. Mitigating background that puts otherwise untoward behavior into - if not a rational context - at least an understandable one. Requoting Longfellow: If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find there enough sorrow and suffering to disarm all hostility. The big mitigating forces being those very things over which the characters have zero control: circumstance, developmental neglect and/or abuse, genetic limitations or predispositions, and personal history forged over a lifetime which cast certain events into incontrovertible predictions - regardless of whether the perception is valid or no. Self-fulfilling prophecy shades of the Montagues and Capulets, perhaps?
--- End quote ---
I'd kind of like not to have the story in question recapitulate the neverending freewill debate in the on-topic parts of this board, though.
--- Quote ---9. Write to your strengths. Help the reader challenge their own implicit assumptions. To my mind this is your signature gift.
--- End quote ---
Thank you.
--- Quote ---Just write and see what happens. And whatever you do, don't write the epic that will be read and re-read. Just write to write :)
--- End quote ---
Average of three thousand words a week, nine weeks out of ten, for the past fourteen years. That bit I've got down.
--- Quote ---If you ever decide to take on beta-readers, please add me to the applicant pool.
--- End quote ---
Duly noted.
Fwiw, it seems worth mentioning an example of something in a direction similar to what I have in mind that did work really well for me:
Judge Dredd, the comic, has been running since 1977, and is set 122 years in the future, advancing in realtime.
There's been an ongoing thread over much of that time over the democracy movement in Mega-City One, where the Judges rule with an iron grip. There was, in I think the late 1980s, a climax to that where there was a referendum, in which the citizens voted overhelmingly against democracy. Since which point the democracy movement has gone underground and become increasingly extreme in trying to bring democracy to the city whether people want it or not; the "Terror"/"Total War" storyline in 2004 featured them using nuclear weapons to make that point. (Real-world applicability left as an exercise for the reader.)
neofyte:
--- Quote from: neurovore on June 04, 2010, 09:08:51 PM ---1 I think Song of Ice and Fiire is an arguable counter to that last. fwiw.
2 I'd kind of like not to have the story in question recapitulate the neverending freewill debate in the on-topic parts of this board, though.
3 Judge Dredd, the comic, has been running since 1977, and is set 122 years in the future, advancing in realtime. There's been an ongoing thread over much of that time over the democracy movement in Mega-City One, where the Judges rule with an iron grip. There was, in I think the late 1980s, a climax to that where there was a referendum, in which the citizens voted overhelmingly against democracy. Since which point the democracy movement has gone underground and become increasingly extreme in trying to bring democracy to the city whether people want it or not; the "Terror"/"Total War" storyline in 2004 featured them using nuclear weapons to make that point. (Real-world applicability left as an exercise for the reader.)
--- End quote ---
1. Thanks for the recommend. Sad to say I haven't read it...yet
2. Sorry, wasn't my intent this time. Simply saying that as a reader, I identify with characters when I see/read them wrestle with the tough choices. Back story may or may not be useful in engendering sympathy in those instances.
3. Wow, I like it :)
Aakaakaak:
One thing I've noticed is how the standard story push directs a reader towards the absolute antagonist/protagonist characters of a story. It's trained into large swaths of society as a whole. (At least from what I've seen.) It's difficult to write stories that don't necessarily have these polar opposites.
I have, however, seen storylines that intentionally blur the edges, but most only move from one side to the other. District 9 and Training Day were two examples that I can think of. Protagonist becomes Antagonist or vice versa.
There have been a couple, which I can't remember at this time, that have flip-flopped good and bad to the point where the edges are so blurred there is no definite good or bad. Some /very/ good ones will blur the edges to the point a third option to one side or the other becomes relevant.
Good luck. I hope this helps on some level.
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