Lesson from the Ms: Make It Personal

Her rage is personal.

Less noble. More interesting.

Perusing so many fiction books, I've been reminded of how much human beings love stories. They love them for many reasons, including C.S. Lewis and Tolkien's belief that in creating story, human beings try to emulate their creator. 

Here, I suggest that stories allow us to zero in on the personal. Out of all the complications within life, we can focus on an individual. Through that individuals, the complications sometimes come into focus.  

I wrote a story many years ago based on Sleeping Beauty, only my "Sleeping Beauty" was a prince who was cursed with unending sleep if he should ever pick up a sword (rather than a spindle). And I put him in a warrior-type culture; here's a guy who can't relate to any of the male figures in his society, not to mention he has nothing to do all day, and he's really brassed off about it all.

The witch was young and sophisticated and rather ruthless. She was one of the first female characters I created who wasn't just me dressed up in someone else's clothes (I was about 20 at the time). Her motivation for cursing the prince was her hatred of war.

Even at the tender age of 20, I wasn't much of an anti-warmonger, but that didn't much matter because the character wasn't me. The problem with giving the witch an abstract reason wasn't my lack of empathy; it was that the abstraction got boring and generalized.  

I realized that to make the story work as a story, I had to change her motivation. That is, I had to make the reason for her behavior personal. She hated war, but she hated war because it killed off her lovers. She wants one lover who will stick around for more than a couple of months. So, she curses the prince, and, since witches don't die and don't get old, as soon as he gets old enough, she takes him for her own. A sort of Chia Pet homegrown boyfriend!

The story wasn't a general statement about war. It was about an individual's free will--how much the prince has or doesn't have. And the story didn't work until the witch's motivation become something close and personal, rather than abstract and faraway. 

Along the same lines...

Every time I watch early X-Files, I am impressed again by how complete Mulder and Scully are as characters. One writing aspect the show got spot on was making Mulder's quest personal. He has a back-up group of conspiracy theorists, the Lone Gun Men, and although I believe one of them has a personal story behind his obsession, they are mostly obsessed for the sake of being obsessed--the abstract motivation: The Truth is Out There. And they make fine minor characters. But for a major character, abstract motivation isn't enough. 

By making Mulder's obsession personal (his sister) and then giving him Scully as a sounding board, the creators of X-Files gave the show the kind of relationship and existential grit that every show since has tried to copy. Scully becomes Mulder's safety net. He can allow himself to go crazy because he knows he has this cautious voice-of-reason to hold him down.

In terms of plot, I never did get the whole "Scully was given to Mulder to discredit his work and Mulder is allowed to continue to keep him from becoming a martyr" explanation since, as far as I'm concerned, dead men tell no tales. Mulder dead would be less of a problem to the bad guys than Mulder with Scully. I agree with Phil Farrand that Cigarette Smoking man is Mulder's dad; he came up with all that "can't make him a martyr" crap to keep Mulder alive. 

And that relationship at the personal level has grit. 

At its best, the show explored attitudes and complexities of belief. But it did it through focusing on the personal, not the abstract.