Book Review or 'Wtf did I just read'

[crantz]

So. I'm reading Characters & Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card because I figured it couldn't hurt, right?

And while I'll admit up front I have actually found some information of value in this book, I'm not exactly sure about the rest of his advice...

I'll get into it more in-depth after this quick example. First off, he offers us two scenes to establish a character with the use of stereotypes.

Here they are:

The old man was wearing a suit that might have been classy ten years ago when it was new, when it was worn by somebody with a body large enough to fill it. On this man it hung so long and loose that the pants bagged at the ankle and scuffed along the sidewalk, and the sleeves came down so low that his hands and the neck of his wine bottle were invisible.

and

She heard them before she saw them, laughing and talking jive behind her, shouting because the ghetto-blaster was rapping away at top volume. Just kids on the street in the evening, right? Walking around outside because finally the air was cooling off enough that you could stand to move. One of them jostled her as he passed. Was it the same one who laughed? A few yards on, they stopped as if they were waiting for her to catch up with them. The one with the boom box watched her approach, a wide toothy grin on his face. She clutched her purse tighter under her arm and looked straight ahead. If I don't see them, she thought, they won't bother me.

He then crows about how it was a wino and scary black kids and how we all knew from his stereotype words, even though he never specified it was either. He's very proud of his writing feat. Especially the jive talk bit. Then he says 'let's turn this on its head!'



Here is the 'turned on its head' scene:

"Hey, old man," Pete said. "You've lost some weight."
"It wasn't the cancer, Pete, it was the cure," he answered. "I'm glad you're here. Come on upstairs and help me finish this Chablis."

The 'damn scary black kids' paragraph is never touched.

MOVING ON

There are odd bits and pieces here and there. Here's one of them, where he revels at the sheer amazement of someone's amazing character idea (I'm not sure if this section is fail or just plain weirdness vibing):

For instance, Michael Bishop faced this problem in his brilliant 1988 novel Unicorn Mountain, in which one character, Bo, is a young homosexual who is dying of AIDS. Bo and another character are at a motel swimming pool when three muscular young men come to swim. Bo might have had any of several responses: envy at their health and strength; resentment that these boorish young heterosexual men don't have to pay a price like AIDS for their sexual activities. But what Bishop chose to show was simple lust. These three young swimmers had attractive, muscular bodies. Having AIDS hadn't stopped Bo from being a homosexual. He still looked at these young men with desire.
I believe that Bishop, who is not a homosexual, based this scene primarily on analogy. What is it like to be a homosexual with AIDS? This question surely came up again and again as he worked on Unicorn Mountain. I think it led him to this analogy: It is very much like being a heterosexual with a fatal disease that has cut you off from having sex with anyone, but hasn't yet made you impotent or weakened your desire.
Bishop knew what we all know, that swimsuits reveal people's bodies a great deal more than business suits do, and that nowadays swimsuits are designed to emphasize sexual attractiveness. It just happened that Bo was interested in and aroused by the men at the pool. Yet he was not affected the way a woman is usually affected when watching men in swimsuits. He was affected as heterosexual men are affected when they watch women in swimsuits.

I'm not so much criticizing this as being a little bemused by how amazed he sounds. Mostly because I have never been so sure that Orson Scott Card is so far in the closet he's wearing narnian shoes (thanks, Ann) than reading this page. "he was attracted? A homosexual? Attracted to men? God, that's brilliant."

Although he makes a good point that no, you don't lose your penis when you get sick.

BUT THE MEAT OF THIS POST is when we get to the 'what you can do to make sure the audience hates a character' section.

It is revealed that these things will make a character loathsome:

1. Being smart, because America hates smart people and will drag them down with hate. He really said dumb down what your character does, and a good idea for making a villain elitist and hateful is (see below)


2. Talking proper English. Seriously. That also pisses off Americans because you're placing yourself above them. With you English ways.


3. Did I mention the whole placing yourself above thing? Don't seek responsibility or glory, America will hate that character. That damn elitist character. He implies it's America's fault for being an 'egalitarian society'


4. Being insane. I'm going to explain this one.

INSANITY: EVERYONE HATES AND WANTS TO KILL THE MENTALLY ILL (Thanks, Orson. I thought we were bros. Guess not.)

ZEE PAGE:

We are terrified of people who don't live in the same reality we do, who don't have the same definition of rational behavior. You can't talk to them, you can't reason with them; there is no common ground. However much mental health professionals might deplore it, the fact is that when the public is convinced someone is dangerously insane, all considerations go out the window except one: stopping this crazy person. Unless the storyteller works very hard to win sympathy for the insane character, the audience has no qualms about seeing him brutally subdued or killed. The world isn't safe as long as the madman has any chance of escaping. And if, like Charles Manson and his "family" or Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, the madman has succeeded in convincing others that his version of reality is the truth, the audience's fear and loathing is all the greater.
In film and on stage, insanity is easy to depict—a wide-eyed stare or darting eyes, nervous tics. But the best actors don't resort to such easy tricks, and neither do the best writers. It is far more effective to convince the audience that a character is insane by letting us see her strange perceptions of reality—her paranoia or delusions.

"Do you think I don't know what you're doing?" asked Nora softly. "I know why you brought me here."
"Yeah," said Pete, a little confused. "I brought you here for dinner."
"You just want to impress all your friends," she said. "You just want them to see me with you. But it won't work. I'm in disguise. That's why I wore this red scarf. Nobody ever recognizes me when I wear this red scarf." She leaned forward and whispered a secret. "I took it from my mother's coffin before they buried her."
Oh good, thought Pete. Not only is this the most expensive blind date I've ever gone on, not only did Steve and Gracie back out at the last minute so I had to go alone, but also this Nora turns out to be crazy. If she isn't at least OK in bed, Steve will not live to see another day.
"Don't eat any of the shrimp sauce," Nora said. "It's poisoned."

There is no chance that the audience will be hoping for Pete and Nora to end up with a long-term relationship. They will have no sympathy for Nora's character—unless the author goes to extraordinary lengths to make her sympathetic, either by showing the cause of her insanity or by convincing us, somehow, that she isn't insane at all.

Dude, it's not Nora I hated in that paragraph. Also... yeah. I'm a little afraid of America after reading the stuff above this, actually.

He made some comments I wasn't sure was bitching about feminists or agreeing with them, so I left them alone.

This post would be more in-depth but someone named little sister was chattering behind me the whole time. Something about leaving for five weeks and me having to 'pay attention to her' but guys, I'm on a mission. A mission.

I'm actually paring down all the stuff I found in the book.

It HAS, however, left me with an urge to talk to a deep south person so I can find out if my accent really does sound like jabbering to them. It was one of the things he said that sounded interesting, not stupid.

There really is some good stuff in the book, and I'm glad I've learned enough to be able to spot the off parts.

Comments

[gloss]

I hate writing advice, that tone of HERE IS THE TRUTH NOW FOLLOW IT EXACTLY, because you *know* millions of words are wasted by trying to write to formula.

But that hatred has *nothing* on the loathing I'm feeling right now for the passages you've quoted. Let's fuck the insane and boggle at the gays and scurry away from the Black kids! OH GOD EWWWW.

...you didn't pay for this book, I hope? ):

[crantz]

Ah, thankfully that's not the advice I've been following. Just stuff like keeping a character bible of details to make sure I don't mess up on continuity and stuff, and asking constant questions to flesh things out in my head.

It's sad, but I'm sort of glad for those paragraphs because they showed me how much I'd grown in seven years, where I would never have noticed the wrong at all.

Book was totes free, me hearty.

[sorchar]

Just when I thought OSC couldn't possibly fail any more.