Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for the movie Abduction  . Those who do not wish to have the movie spoiled, even in minor details, should skip this entry.

I suspect that script immunity is an issue most authors -- well those authors who write stories that involve danger at least -- struggle with at some point. A character is put into a seemingly impossible situation where survival is extremely unlikely, and yet the plot demands the character's survival. So the author tries to come up with a plausible resolution to the scenario. A great author may luck out and create an entirely believable course of action for the character. More often, a less-than-perfect scene gets written that stretches (though hopefully doesn't break) the reader's (or watcher's, in the the case of a screen-play or other performance piece) credulity. That's life.

And then you have those cases where the writer just doesn't seem to care and doesn't bother to cover up a blatant case of script immunity. That happened a few times in the movie Abduction  . The biggest example is during Karen's capture on the train.

Bear in mind that by this time, the movie had established a pattern where the bad guys swooped in, caught people off guard, got the information they needed, and immediately killed the people. They did it to Nathan's fake parents and were originally going to do it to Karen when she was found outside the home. (That time, Nathan came in and rescued Karen just as she was about to be shot in the head, thereby making the script immunity almost invisible. Her rescue was plausible and reasonable.)

And yet, when the big bad captures her on the train, he gets her to tell him which Car Nathan is in, and then ties her up and leaves her alone so she can escape. No bullet in the brain this time. Just leaves her to escape. (Obviously, he never watched any James Bond movies.) Something he hasn't done at any time prior to this point in the movie.

This is script immunity at its worst. The girl must live, so she gets tied up rather than shot. There's no attempt to explain it or justify it. It's insulting. And while it's the most blatant case in the movie, it's not the only time something like this happens. Gilly too appears to benefit from severe script immunity as Nathan and Karen call on him for help not once, but twice. Given how connected both the CIA and the bad guys seem to be and how they know the couple's every move in every other case, they must have known they contacted their friend with the fake ID's. And yet, no one approaches the young man. No one tries to manipulate his contact with them to their advantage. No one forces him to tell them what he did to help them and then put a bullet in his brain. LIke Karen (and Nathan, though they cover the hero's script immunity more cleverly), Gilly simply gets a pass.

This ruins the story in two ways. First it makes it clear that these characters cannot die, which takes away from the illusion of danger such a suspenseful story depends on. When the villain leaves people alive for no obvious reason -- and worse, in opposition to the fact that he has every reason to kill them -- it makes it clear that everything will be fine. That takes the excitement out of a thriller.

Secondly, it creates clearly incompetent villains. Suddenly, there is no suspense in the too evenly matched hero and villain, and the hero will clearly win in the end with ease.


JarredH

Our tears remind us that we are alive. Our laughter reminds us why.

 

So I started one of the new stories I talked about in Writing Ideas within the World of Magisters. So far, I'm about 800 words into it and I've only introduced two characters. I'm not sure I'm going to be happy with the results, though. So far, Heshan (my main character) seems way too sweet to make it in the colony of barbaric humans and ikati. He may have to toughen up.

Of course, I'm also taking a lot of liberties with the colony. In the end, I might have something very different from what Friedman envisioned, but I guess I'm okay with that. Besides, I'm finding to answer some questions she never really thought about. Like where new consorts for freshly-birthed ikati come from. I mean, someone besides the lone girl who gets to bond with the ikati queen has to help give birth. So that means there must be women who are unbonded in the colony somewhere. Are there men too? That's not as likely. I imagine most men would fight to attempt to bond with the ikati. After all, without an ikati consort, I imagine a man would have no status.

I find I'm enjoying these questions as much as the question about a gay consort. Who knew?

JarredH

Our tears remind us that we are alive. Our laughter reminds us why.

 

Spoiler Alert: This post deals with the world created by C.S. Friedman for her books in her Magister Trilogy  . I will be discussing some of the plot elements and themes in the series. If you have not finished the series yet (What are you waiting for?), you might want to put off reading this until you're done.

Earlier this weekend, I wrote a post   at my everything blog   in which I took C.S. Friedman   to task over self-righteously (in my opinion" claiming she "didn't get" why anyone would be into slash-fiction. As a part of that post, I gave a few examples of why I think her own Magister Trilogy   practically begs to the be target of slash fiction writers. I also admit that I'm tempted to pick up my own pen and write a few stories of my own.

This bog post is my chance to continue exploring that temptation.

To be honest, I'm not interested in writing slash fiction (or fan fiction) in the purest sense. I have no desire to create a story in which Colivar and Ramirus get freaky or in which Kamala seduces Gwynofar. Those are well defined characters, and I have no desire to warp them into something of my own creation. Nor do I want to try to get inside those character's heads and try to write stories about them that fits in with their characters. To be frank, I love character building and therefore would much rather start with blank slates for characters that I can imagine and build up from nothingness.

However, playing in Friedman's world is another story. Exploring an entire species of creatures, the humans that bonds with them, and the humans with hybrid souls through new characters could be fun. I just have to decide what characters and scenarios I want to explore.

One of the ideas that I have going through my head is to explore what it would be like for a gay man to bond with an ikati, and how he might be affected -- or the ikati might be affected by his gay consort -- during a queen's mating flight. Would the original bonding be possible? (I could have my gay character bond with a queen instead, but that just seems too cliche and stereotypical.) If the gay man's consort won the right to mate with the queen, would the human's gayness interfere with the mating because of their shared soul?

And what if an ikati were gay? What if a male ikati joined the mating flight, only to realize he's far more interested in one of his would-be rivals rather than the queen? In a species where dominance, violence, and sex are powerfully intertwined, how would sexual desire between two males of the species eventually manifest itself? Would a gay ikati be driven from the colony? What would this mean for his human consort.

What if gay people simply cannot bond with ikati? Does this suggest that a gay person might be immune to the effects of the species (the mesmerizing power, the ability for a queen to make herself invisible, etc?) in general? I could create a morati character to explore those possibilities.

And of course, I can also explore the possibility of a gay Magister. Even if gay people cannot bond directly with ikati, perhaps they can bond with the remnants of the ikati soul Colivar shared with his fellow Magisters. I could explore why the two scenarios are different. And then, of course, I could explore what it would be like to be a gay man among the Magisters. And this is something I could explore both before and after the Magisters have learned about their true nature.

There are so many possible avenues of exploration, I don't even know where it would be best to start.

JarredH

Our tears remind us that we are alive. Our laughter reminds us why.
 

Recently, I've been rereading the first book in C.S. Friedman's   Magister Trilogy. I'm in complete awe of Ms. Friedman's world creating and writing ability, and hope to be half the writer she is someday.

What particularly draws me in about this trilogy is the source of the Magister's magic and how they manage to survive its use. It's a fascinating concept, and part of me is sad that she came up with the idea before me, as I'd love to explore it myself. However, last night, I got the inspiration to do something similar, but slightly differently. As such, i wrote the short story "Sorcerer's Trial"  [ASR] in which a sorcerer's apprentice must face his final ordeal in order to earn the power he seeks.

JarredH

Our tears remind us that we are alive. Our laughter reminds us why.
 

I have to say that I'm really enjoying WDC. I'm trying to take advantage of the fact that there's a great community here where I can get some feedback on my writing. It's helping to keep me more motivated, as motivation has always been a huge issue for me when it comes to writing.

I can usually come up with some good ideas, and even get out a couple chapters or a half dozen pages. But trying to keep things going is a bit difficult. So one of the things I'm doing here is trying to use WDC as a way to discipline myself to write at least every other day. (Writing every day would be nice, but I think it would be too much of a stretch for me right now.)

One of the big things I struggle with is the "internal editor." I don't just write for the sake of writing, or I feel I have to convince myself that an idea is "good enough" before I even start writing it down. So I'm trying to get myself more into a mindset where if I think of it, I write it. Who cares if I decide it's not good after the fact. At least I wrote it. And let's face it, you have to go through some drudge to get to the good stuff.

To that end, I wrote a new short piece, "A Mother-Son-Talk"   [18+] by JarredH . It's actually part of the same story space of my novel in progress, "When Love Changes Everything"   [13+] by JarredH that I came up with late last night with showering. As I thought about it, I decided it didn't really belong in the novel for various reasons. But today, I realized that I shouldn't let that fact keep me from writing it at all. So I wrote it as a separate piece. It got the creative juices flowing, and possibly gave me a few ideas for things that will go into the story.

Of course, the other thing I'm struggling with is the fact that the novel ideas are coming out of order. I think I need to give up on the idea of writing the silly thing from start to finish, and write teh various parts that come to me as they come to me. I'm not sure if that means I should save them privately and only add them to the site when I get the stuff done that comes before it. Maybe I should just post it all as it comes to me and make notes when I skip parts. Maybe even I could put disclaimer in: "Extra stuff happens between this cahpter and the previous ones. i just haven't written them yet."

 

As I continue to get used to this site, I decided to enter my first contest tonight. I decided to start by entering the "Character Creation Contest" . I figure I'm pretty good at character creation, so it's a good place to get my feet wet. I'll move on to more challenging contests -- one that force me to work on my weak points -- as time goes by. So I put together a character profile:

ID: 1634621   (Rated: 13+) Hargath, Servant of the Dark Goddess  My character profile for round 1 of the Character Creation contest. by JarredH