McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Mind control to further plot?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 10, 2012, 03:23:19 PM --- If those characters are not significant and dont matter, then why would I care what they think or feel or see?
--- End quote ---
Same reason you care about what you think and feel and see yourself, would be my reaction.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on May 10, 2012, 08:00:11 PM ---Same reason you care about what you think and feel and see yourself, would be my reaction.
--- End quote ---
well, yes, but that seems to demote the character to a particularly subjective Narrator, rather than an active member of the story in the traditional sense. I can see stories where it might be useful to have a war correspondent sort of character that is not supposed to interfere, but it sets a particular tone all on its own when the focus of the story (ie the Main Character) is powerless to effect events. Not that its a bad tone, but it does limit your overall options somewhat.
Snowleopard:
In some ways this mind control character comes across as a Deus ex Machina which
the Greeks sometimes used to save their lead characters. IE - god would come down and save them.
That's how your mind control character - if he's doing this deliberately - comes across.
However, and this is just a suggestion, if the mind control character gets mentally bound up with
your main character every now and then accidentally and is forced, for his own survival, to do stuff that makes it less 'god in the machine' and more 'oh crud, I'm here again!"
Figging Mint:
--- Quote from: arianne on May 10, 2012, 12:08:14 PM ---My question is, what does everyone think about using said mind control to further the protagonist's motivation, and by association, the story. Is it bad to use mind control as a plot device until such time as the protagonist realizes that he actually possesses backbone when pushed to the wall?
--- End quote ---
I was just reading this and thinking that it would be absolutely /awesome/ if you could bring off the opposite - the mind control is what is creating confrontational avoidance and removal thereof creates hero-wannabees who then lurch and lump against actual reality.
Figging Mint:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 10, 2012, 08:16:38 PM --- but it sets a particular tone all on its own when the focus of the story (ie the Main Character) is powerless to effect events. Not that its a bad tone, but it does limit your overall options somewhat.
--- End quote ---
It's a tone that can be used to create depths of fear or despair in the reader that are simply impossible otherwise. It limits in one direction, but very much expands in another, which is why it is a trope of the horror genre. I think SF and fantasy don't do enough of it by half, and the books that manage it are the ones I usually wind up enjoying the most.
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