Characters In Name Only

This is a problem with the adaption of one form of media into another: you have a character from a novel or a computer game and you want to transfer that character into a movie or TV series. Ideally, you will cut those parts of the original story which simply don’t work in the new medium (such as internal dialogue) and keep the rest as intact as the confines of a movie or a series (usually the time available, sometimes also the SFX budget) allow. Or you can do what several studios have done, say ‘fuck the original’, and have the characters in name only instead.

 

The most recent example at the moment is “Artemis Fowl”. The series, written by Eoin Colfer during the 2000s (although there is a recent spin-off series focusing on Artemis’ younger brothers), has been a huge success in the preteen/teen market segment and, as I can personally vouch for, is also fun to read for adults. There were several tries to get a movie or even movie series up and running, but until recently, none succeeded. Then Disney bought the movie rights and has just released their movie version, simply called “Artemis Fowl”, just as the first novel it is, supposedly, based on. Most people already knew it was going to be bad once they saw the trailer (such as Dominic Noble).

The Artemis Fowl series was unique among novels for preteens and teens (and pretty rare when it comes to novels for adults) by starting out unabashedly with a villain protagonist. Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl was a criminal mastermind who successfully kidnapped a fairy and collected ransom in gold bars for her. He outsmarted the entire LEP (lower elements police), made up of people centuries, if not millennia, older than him, and walked away with half the demanded ransom, having traded in the other half for a favour from his former kidnapping victim.

Now, I can see how Disney would be wary about a kid’s movie with a child character who is unabashedly evil, but this bears the question ‘why have they bought the rights in the first place?’ Did they only look at the 28 million and counting fan base? Didn’t any of them read the books - or at least the first one - before deciding on that deal? They bought a franchise and then decided to only keep the name for the movies they wanted to make (not that I think there will be another one - the first is very much guaranteed to tank).

Artemis, for those of you who now think ‘who could possibly love a series with an evil child outside of the horror genre?’, does get his redemption arc throughout the next four books, ending “The Last Colony” as a hero of sorts (before he has a relapse two books later and becomes outright heroic in the following and last book, “The Last Guardian”). There are good influences in his life, such as Holly Short (his kidnapping victim), Julius Root (Holly’s superior at work), his servant/bodyguard Butler, his mother Angeline, and his father Artemis (yes, strictly speaking, Artemis Fowl is Artemis Fowl the Second), once he’s been found and rescued in the second book, “The Arctic Incident”.

 

Disney rode rough-shoed over the complete series, no matter whether director Kenneth Branagh was to blame or whether he himself was under pressure by some Disney executive I have no name or face to.

First of all, they decided that you couldn’t have an evil protagonist - which is not a surprise, since we’re talking about Disney here. So cold-blooded, ruthless and, at times, intimidating (again, as a twelve-year-old) Artemis Fowl the Second becomes, essentially, the complete opposite. We’re told he’s a genius, but everything in the movie is handed to him. It’s mentioned at the beginning of the novel that he’s been working on this plan for two years, starting at the age of ten, putting many, many hours of hard work into getting the background information he has by the beginning of the novel. The reader sees him working at it further, refusing to give up on deciphering the Book, which includes all important knowledge on the fairies, despite being foiled again and again. He manages to work past all the horrible surprises springing up during the novel, working against people who have centuries or millennia on him in age and experience (fairies are long-lived). Artemis earns his success in the end. In the movie, he doesn’t.

The movie does a lot of ‘telling, not showing’ when it comes to Butler as well. In the books, it’s suggested at various points that Artemis’ bodyguard and manservant Butler has a Past worthy of the capital ‘P’. He has definitely been around before taking up his work as Artemis’ servant the night the boy was born - he has acquaintances all over the world, supposedly was part of several different black OPs, has worked for several secret services, and has also made contacts on the illegal side of things. In addition, Butler is one hell of a fighter - the only human to take on a troll (in the first novel) and win. The troll scene is pretty visceral and I’m surprised it was kept in the book, but it’s also an amazing piece of writing. The readers and Artemis also don’t get to know Butler’s first name until the beginning of the third book, “The Eternity Code”, when Butler dies and, with his dying breath, tells Artemis his name. He is revived later (and Holly is forced to use about ten years of his life span in addition to her own magic), but he knew he was dying and wanted to tell his charge and friend this last secret.

There’s basically nothing left in the movie which is in the book, apart from the names. In the books, Artemis’ parents never learn about fairies, in the movie, his father was already working with them. In the books, Angeline Fowl, his mother, is a positive influence in his life, in the movie, she’s dead (and she never dies in the books). Two villains from the second book (one of whom was a minor annoyance to Commander Root in the first book) are brought in to make this work, but they’re neither used well, nor does it really fit. Then there’s a last-minute addition of a MacGuffin which works as well as one would suspect it to: not at all (check another video by Dominic Noble on this).

 

“Artemis Fowl” is not the first or only case in which this happens. Especially with franchises aimed at younger audiences (but also with others), movie and TV studios have bought the franchise and just superimposed their own stories on the characters they bought the rights to. This seems a weird thing to do - it would be much cheaper for the studios to just cook up their own characters (that’s not hard) and start their new franchises where the characters can be whatever they want them to be. It’s not as if Disney has never started their own franchise about two princesses from a Scandinavian country which featured this absolute ear-worm of a song…

Fairies as a such (meaning elves, dwarfs, gnomes, etc.) are not covered by copyright, everyone can use their version of them whatever way they see fit. The same goes for the Greek pantheon of gods (since Percy Jackson was another victim of such ‘in name only’ movie-making) and countless other public domain characters and their lore.

 

If you buy a franchise, keep to the franchise. You don’t make a “Harry Potter” movie without magic where you replace Lord Voldemort with a corporate shark. The same way you shouldn’t make an “Artemis Fowl” movie without a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind who will need to learn to better himself. If you work with other people’s characters (at least professionally, fan-fiction is a different topic), keep the characters and the plot so far intact.

Don't confuse Characters and Plot

 There is a connection between characters and plot, of course. Certain plots demand certain characters and vice versa. Nevertheless, characters alone don’t make a plot and a plot always needs at least one character (most plots need more) to work. They are not interchangeable and they don’t have the same job to do.

 

Let’s start with the plot. A story without one plot arc at least (most stories above flash fiction or short story have more) is like a Porsche without an engine: it may look nice and cause envy in people, but it will never do what it was meant to. Something has to happen in a story and that is what the plot is good for: making things happen.

In most stories, several things happen at once. There’s character-related plots, making the protagonist grown, influencing their relationship with other characters. The protagonist usually has something personal to work on - a phobia they need to overcome, anger management issues, trust issues, other issues. That’s their internal plot arc which runs along and should be finished before the main plot arc (sometimes also called the throughline - thanks, Mythcreants). There’s also several external plots in most stories - there’s the big, high-stakes ones as well as the small, low-stakes ones. Generally speaking, the throughline should be the one with the highest stakes, because that is what will keep people most engaged.

Managing the plot arcs for a long story, such as a novel or even a series of novels (unless, like me, you serialize), can be pretty daunting. That’s where your notes and your bible come in. That’s why software like Campfire Pro (see my post about migrating to it) allows for you to follow several plot arcs (they call them ‘timeline’) in one story. Like this, you can see where they start, where they cross, and where they end. By the time you get to the big confrontation, all the smaller ones should be resolved and tied up. The confrontation (which doesn’t have to be physical at all) is where the strongest arc, your throughline, is tied up. This is where, in one way or other, your protagonist and your antagonist (even if the antagonist happens to be circumstances or fate instead of a person) will crash and the protagonist will, most likely, win. This is what the story is building towards.

In short: the plot is what is fuelling your story, the engine on which it runs.

 

Now for the characters. Characters are tied to the plot arcs, because they’re about them, one way or other. A character you create has to fit with the plot they’re supposed to be connected to. If you have a plot that demands a lot of fighting and daring-do, the character should by physically able to survive all of that and should have the skills necessary to master it. If, on the other hand, your plot hinges on a character being able to outsmart others on the political parquet, there’s a completely different set of skills they’ll need to have. They may fail here and there, that’s fine and part of a good character development, but the audience must be shown that they’re capable of mastering the plot, that the necessary skills are there.

Characters in a story should also be diverse. They should have different skill sets, different views of life and the world, different wants and needs. Wants and needs are important in connection with the plot, too, because the plot should revolve around the protagonist’s wants while teaching them about their needs and making sure they get their needs fulfilled (see this blog post on the topic of wants and needs). Diverse characters also give you more to work with. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every repair job looks like it requires a hammer, but let’s be serious: you’ll never be able to get a screw in and out with one, you’ll never be able to shorten a board with it, and you’ll never be able to paint a room with it, either. If you have five characters in your story who are, deep down, all the same type with similar traits, skill sets, and pasts, you have one hammer - several times, so you will have reserves when one breaks, but it’s essentially the same hammer five times. If you have five characters in your story with different traits, skill sets, and pasts, you have a small toolbox and can not only hammer in nails (and pull them out, perhaps), but you can also get the screws in and out, saw the excess off a board, and paint a room. Suddenly, the situations you put the characters in can have a lot more different solutions and you can have a lot more different situations in the story as well.

While stories usually revolve around at least one character, namely the protagonist, not all plots have to be directly tied to them. They have friends, lovers, adversaries and those, too, can have their plot to follow. Generally speaking, all characters whose job is more than ‘sell the hero some provisions’ (what you’d call an NPC in role-playing) should have a plot to themselves. That plot can tie in with the main plot arc, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. The hero’s old friend using the search for the MacGuffin to see his estranged sister is a fine plot arc to have, but the sister doesn’t have to tie in with anything. She might simply provide the party with a place to sleep and some provisions after she and her brother have gotten things out of the way.

In short: Characters are there to act out your plots.

 

Let’s say you want to write a heist story. Someone is going to bring together a group of people to steal the MacGuffin from the villain who has gotten it unrightfully and is withholding it from its real owner (the protagonist or someone the protagonist cares about). Heist stories are great for diverse casts, because the team in a heist story is made up of experts in various fields (which, naturally, makes them a toolbox, not a stack of hammers). Your throughline is the heist. That’s what motivates the protagonist, that’s where the biggest stakes are. The characters all have to contribute to this plot arc, but they also all can have one to themselves. As a matter of fact, a heist story usually does have a personal arc for every character on the protagonist’s side (and for the protagonist). Bringing the team together means to have every of the characters go through their arc before the big confrontation (in this case the heist itself), so that they can become a team and work together. Once their arcs are all tied up nicely and the protagonist has sorted out their wants and needs, the heist will be pulled off, the villain will be punished, and the MacGuffin will go to whoever really deserves it. (That’s why I think, by the way, that if you want a modernized version of Robin Hood, it should be a heist story. The original is ideal, having a cast of diverse characters with different skill sets and traits - not to mention the ‘steal from the rich and give to the poor’ thing.)

 

Characters and plot are very closely connected, but they’re not the same. At any given time, there’s a variety of characters which you can connect to the same plot and a variety of plots the same character can act in. It’s important to build yourself a toolbox before you go into writing and to make sure you have all tools necessary - so all characters you will need - to finish the throughline successfully.

Ode to my Bullet Journal

In September 2014, I started writing a bullet journal. I wanted to track my writing, see how much I was writing in general per day or week. I soon realized that it also gave me an easy way to track my (always somewhat irregular) period and to write down any kind of appointments I had. It was useful.

I’ve never been much of a diary writer myself, perhaps unlike the majority of all authors. I love writing, but not about myself. When I was a young girl, I wanted to write a diary, because all the cool girls (at least all the interesting ones) in the books I read did it. It never really took off, most of the time I didn’t have much to put in it. Of course, I could have restarted the diary writing once I had turned into a teen, but I never did. Perhaps it’s all for the better - I was a pretty passive-aggressive teen, so who knows what I would have written down and where it would have gotten me? I only got into something similar to diary writing when I got my first, by now mostly discontinued blog. There, I could rant about all the things I was annoyed about. There, I wrote more or less regularly - not any longer, though.

But back to my bullet journal. Until October last year, I kept my bullet journal very simple. I just looked up Ryder Carroll’s website on the bullet journal method and worked with what I found there - the bare minimum. I learned how to use bullet points (although I used the old notation for quite a long time instead of the modern dot) and I made a monthly calendar each month just by writing the days of the month below each other on one page. Add the task list for the month and I was done. Instead of a proper notebook, I used A5 exercise books from a company which delivered them with a cardboard cover, which made them a bit more stable. I don’t carry my bullet journal around a lot, so that wasn’t much of a problem. At some point, I switched to a cheap notebook with grid paper, because I prefer that to lines.

Then YouTube happened. I happened across a video on a bullet journal while I looked at something else and went down the rabbit hole. I learned about spreads and trackers and other nice things. Future logs were an interesting principle, although I don’t have much to put in my future log at the best of times - I don’t have that many long-term appointments, so it’s mostly birthdays and the release months for my books, but it’s fine. The trackers were very useful, though. I track a few habits and, most importantly, my word count and my chapter count for months where I edit a book for release, such as last month. With a more visual look at what I get done, I’m a little more motivated to fill up my trackers. That means being mindful of my habits, of my work, and of myself.

Another new thing for me was, as recently as middle of April, my rolling weekly. Instead of writing down my tasks for the day (usually not many), I write them down for a week and mark on which day I get them done (or not). Instead of having to migrate a task a few times (some weeks are horrid like that), I just migrate it if I don’t get around to it during the week (which is far less likely to happen).

Colour has been added as well. I guess you can’t watch all those beautiful artworks that pass for bullet journals without getting ideas if you’re creative in some way (as a writer should be). Washi tape has found its way into my bullet journal, too. I like that the tape is easy to remove again and I love the vintage washi stickers I found in the stationary department of a store here. It adds a little colour and fun to my bullet journal and that’s never wrong.

Apart from being pretty (and it’s not that pretty, I’m sure), a bullet journal is a great way of organizing yourself. I’m a writer and that means I’m a freelancer. I don’t have a boss who tells me to get the next round of editing done or write those two chapters, stat! I’m my own boss and, apart from the bibles for my stories in Campfire Pro and my Tomighty app, the bullet journal is what keeps me on track.

I know reliably that all important things I need to remember, all important things I need to know about, all important things I’ve noted down are in my bullet journal and I can find them through the index, if need be. It’s calming. When do I need to renew my ID? I have not the foggiest, but I know it’s in my bullet journal, I can look it up. Have I watered my plants this week? One look at my habit tracker (which includes a few household chores I tend to forget about) and I know whether I have. How far am I with my editing? I can see that both in my rolling weekly and in my chapter count for that month. How much have I written? One look at the word count and I know. Which book and which DVD did I pick for this month to work on my ‘not yet consumed’ pile? It’s right next to the habit tracker, as it were. I have a yearly tracker for my period and it’s so helpful to easily compare how it went last month and the month before. Every information I would like to find, I can find it in my bullet journal. It frees up my head to think of other things - things like scenes, characters, plot points. It means I can invest more time in things I want to do and less time in worrying whether I have done all tasks that need to be done.

My bullet journal is a very essential part of my life by now. It helps me track things, it keeps all the information I need, I can use it for planning, and it’s handy for noting things down in a pinch. I can have a bit of fun with wondering where I can put some washi tape. I can think up a few words - a saying, a quote, something similar - to fill a weekly page that isn’t full (most aren’t). I keep my handwriting from getting outright horrid. And, despite how much I do love writing at the computer, there’s something immensely satisfying about writing something by hand, having a completely analogue piece of media you interact with on a daily basis. If you’re looking for a way to organize yourself better, no matter the reason, you might want to give the bullet journal a look. Remember, it’s just about organizing yourself with bullet points. Art is a bonus, not a necessity.

The Interesting Structure of "Knives Out"

So I bought “Knives Out” and decided to watch it right on the next day. If you know me and my tendency to let my DVDs ‘rest’ a little after buying (to the point where I maintain a ‘to watch’ list for my impulse buys), you know how rare that is for me. However, I’m a sucker for good mystery stories and I had heard good things about the movie. Deserved good things.

I’m not even going into the A-list of actors in this movie, although they’d deserve it. I’m also not going to point out that they got a wonderful script to work with. I’m going after the unusual structure of the story.

Essentially, crime stories fall into two categories: mystery stories and stories about whether or not the criminal is caught. On one side, you have the whodunit, the story where the audience along with the detective is trying to find out what happened and who did the crime (usually the murder). On the other side, you have crime stories where the audience knows who did it very much from the beginning and the tension comes from the question of whether or not the detective will catch the criminal (usually the murderer). The two different types have different structures and keep the tension up in different ways.

In the first case, the audience is seeing the results of the crime (often with someone finding the body after the act). In some cases, the audience is given a little prelude first and we see all the possible suspects, so we later on know who has what reason to off the victim. The “Midsomer Murders” do this very well (although should you, gentle reader, take a vacation to Midsomer county and meet a guy who introduces him as ‘Inspector Barnaby’, run as fast as you can, because your life is in danger). The main body of the story is taken up by the detective, no matter whether they’re professional, semi-professional, or amateur, finding clues, following wrong leads (the beloved red herring which makes for a good meal), and striking the suspects from the list one by one. In the last act, then, there will be the reveal of the culprit, be it by simply arresting them, by making a big announcement, or by tricking them into a confession, because none of the proof will stick well enough in court. In any case, the detective will explain how the crime was committed.

In the second case, the audience usually sees the culprit commit the crime, so there’s little doubt to what they did or who did it. The only thing which might be unclear is the reason, which is, of course, what the detective will need to know. The second act, the main body of the story, then is devoted to a chess game between the culprit and the detective, where the detective is looking for clues and trying to find out who did it and the culprit does everything in their power to prevent that, to send the detective off on a false lead, even one which might lead to a false conviction of an innocent party. In the final act, the chess game is decided, either for the detective or for the culprit.

The interesting thing about “Knives Out” is that it mashes the two different varieties up and gives us a mixture where the first and the last act are whodunit and the middle part plays out like a crime story where the culprit acts against being found.

I don’t really want to spoil the story for you, so here is your spoiler warning. In order to discuss the structure of the story, I need to describe what happened in it and that means you are going to learn about a few main plot points. If you don’t want a spoiler, go and watch the movie and come back afterwards to read on.

There, now you’re warned and I can continue with the blog post. In the beginning of the movie, the body of Harlan Thrombey is found by his housekeeper in his little cubby hole in the attic, where he wrote his books. It looks like a suicide on first glance, but nevertheless, the police comes to look and a private investigator comes in as well. They begin questioning the suspects a week later - Harlan’s family is coming together for a mourning and the reading of his will.

During the questioning is where the story flips its structure. Not only does the questioning show us that the suspects are all lying about their relationship with Harlan (which, of course, was always ‘splendid’ - only, it wasn’t), when Martha is questioned, it seems as if she is the one who killed him, if not willingly. Two bottles got mixed up and she gave him the wrong medicine. Harlan was the one who told her to stop trying to save him - which she could never do - and leave silently, so that she wouldn’t be suspected of anything. He clearly loved her - later on we learn that he left all his money to her. In this case, we sympathise with Martha - she didn’t kill him for base reasons, after all, she made a mistake and doesn’t deserve the repercussions. She didn’t know she would inherit all his money - Harlan clearly did, of course, and wanted her safe. Therefore, the middle of the story is all about Martha trying not to be caught, which wouldn’t only get her in trouble, but also her illegal-immigrant mother and her sister.

The structure flips back to the regular whodunit with Martha finally confessing her ‘deeds’ to the private investigator. By deciding that, with the housekeeper severely sick because of her, as it seems, it’s not worth it and she has to owe up (because Martha is a very decent person), she sets herself free - because she didn’t do it. She gives the P.I. the information he needs to put it all together and that enables him to affect that big ‘I’ll tell you what happened’ scene which is so intrinsic to all whodunit stories.

What is the good thing about mixing those two structures, though? Shouldn’t it be a bad thing to mix up two different types of stories like that? It could have been bad - it could have been disastrous -, but done well, as it was here, it instead created a story where you think one thing is going to happen, but then you get the big plot twist and something completely different happens. At the beginning, the audience thinks ‘this is clearly a whodunit’ and readies itself for guessing along with the detective. Then it suddenly is one of those other stories where you wonder who will win, the culprit or the detective, and, because Martha is a sympathetic character, the audience partially wants her to win. She didn’t plan to do it, she didn’t want to do it, it was an accident, after all. Then, when she proves herself a good person by admitting to the deed, to the accident, she gets her reward for being a good person: she finds out she’s not done it. The detective then goes ahead and gives the audience, based on clues we saw, but didn’t register as clues, the story of what really happened that night and later. The double switch in structure keeps the audience on their toes. Who did it, really? What kind of story are we watching? That makes “Knives Out” so enjoyable - together with the great actors, of course, who are the icing on the cake here.

I really enjoyed myself, watching the movie. I actually watched it again right after I’d finished it. The structure Rian Johnson has created for this movie is very interesting and makes the movie definitely re-watchable for me - looking for the details on the second time through. It’s also going on my list of ‘movies for a rainy day’.