3 Things I Learned from Star Wars Episodes 1-3 AND WHAT NOT TO DO WITH MY WRITING....

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Salivating and pondering over the new Star Wars movie has almost, ALMOST, made the sad, hollow, shell of the past disappear from my memories, but the more I thought about the new movie, the more I thought about the prequel movies....and the more I thought about what I hated in these movies.

Sure, if you had labeled these movies anything else other than Star Wars...like Space Battles, or Fight of the Galaxy, or whatever, it wouldn't have had the expectation the original episodes 4-6 had. But they did happen, and although there were moments of fun, lightsaber-wielding action, there were painful moments where in the theater you wish you could have hit the fast forward button to skip to the next battle.

So, in the refrain of my last week's post, I present, Da Da DUM - 3 THINGS ABOUT STAR WARS EPISODES 1-3 AND WHAT NOT TO DO WITH MY WRITING. 

Because the great flaw in these movies is the creation and development of the characters themselves, I will again focus on the characters, and how the writing did not do them justice, nor did it help the characters reach their potential.

1) Characters acting out of character: Anyone could easily pick out Jar Jar Binks as one of the most hated characters in Star Wars, but if you examine all the characters in episodes 1-3, there is a horrible development that made them do things that just didn't fit. The biggest, blaring disparity to me is the relationship of Anakin to his mother, which eventually contributes to Anakin's downfall as we all know. In the first movie, Anakin obviously loves his mom, and granted he is only a little boy, you could argue there is some kind of attachment, and the act of him leaving his mom on the planet breaks his heart and ours a little.

Fast forward to the future though, where his mom has been taken by the Sand Raiders, where Anakin eventually discovers her, which leads his down the path of slaughtering all the little guys and inching that much closer to the dark side.

All of that is doable, something I can swallow, but the glaring fact that if Anakin really was so attached to his mom, where were his efforts to save her before this point. He had almost a decade to hire a space pirate or a bounty hunter or somebody with a lot of guns to go in, grab his mom, and plant her on a nice little resort planet. Anakin was a war hero...he could have negotiated with Palpatine, could have worked with Obi-Wan to convince him to save the mom. But he didn't....and the real issue is that up until this point, there is no attachment to his mom. No emails, no Facebook pokes, nothing that would even give us any reason to understand why he cared so much.  It was just a contrived plot point to attempt to push Anakin to become Darth Vader. BUT WHY COULDN'T WE SEE MORE OF THAT INTERNAL STRUGGLE? Then it would've been believable our dear war hero boy wonder Anakin could have stooped so low.


2) Love chemistry that is unbelievable, even in a galaxy far, far away: To set the stage, please see this stunning example of how this love story got so hot...there are about two more hours of them sitting on this freaking balcony going gaga over each other, so I will spare you the pain...

Again, this is a perfect example of the plot of the story and where it needs to go that dictates what the characters say or do. Granted, the plot forces the characters to act, but in this example, the plot was making the character act in a way that was out of their nature or personality. The characters should inherently have their attributes and it is the plot that brings out their best or worst attributes, but in the case of Anakin's and Padme's love story, they weren't acting naturally, but just because the director wanted them to have children to fall in line with his overall story, they had to fall in love, and unnaturally they did. Many have said that George Lucas didn't care about episode 2 and just wanted to get to the meat of episode 3, and that was clearly evident by the dialog between these two. That, and it just went on...for far too long. It's hard to fall asleep during Star Wars, but this subplot sure made a good case for it. In short, for writing purposes, character interactions in general, and love stories in particular, need to have characters that relate to each other on some level, need to have dialog that conveys their inner desires and is strengthened by the plot (not dictated by the plot) and needs to not be dragged on until we are all beating our heads (KISS - keep it short and sweet).

3) Characters that serve no purpose don't belong in our story! Jar Jar Binks...need I say more? Rumors were that Jar Jar Binks was suppose to be a Chewbacca kind of character, but he only served to infuriate people, and on top of it, served no purpose other than a distraction. I suppose I am of the old school of thought that I hate characters that do not necessarily contribute to our overall resolution of our plot. The less is more adage comes to mind. Meaning, instead of introducing extraneous amounts of characters, wouldn't it be more productive and of more value if as a writer we focus on improving the conflict surrounding our main protagonist/antagonist? One example is the introduction of Count Dooku as a villain, which would be perfectly reasonable, and provided some good battles such as this famous one:

However, others have pointed out, and I am in complete agreement, that raising Darth Maul up as the main person we love to hate would've been a better use of an antagonist. It seemed like Darth Maul might have died too quickly, and then another villain (Count Dooku) was hastily introduced to fill that role. Would it not have been better to have another conflict which didn't end in Darth Maul's death, but an arm-chopping battle, which almost kills both Anakin and Darth Maul, but really sets the stage for an epic battle in the next movie? Like many superhero movies, we see time and time again the good guys fighting the same bad guys, and no one dies, or they die and come back to life again, only to fight another day. AND WE LOVE IT! Because when it comes to writing, we love conflict. I think that diversification of your primary characters versus making a divers array of characters is a much better use of literary talent. Plus it enables us to really focus on that one character instead of spreading ourselves too thin.

To reiterate, I believe the reason why these movies were so harshly criticized by fanboys like myself lies in the problem of character development rather than plot development so much. They acted out of character too often, created unbelievable love stories, and in general introduced superfluous characters where focusing on the ones that were killed off would've been a better approach.

Agree or disagree? Let me know, thanks!

-C

3 Things About Writing I Learned from the New Star Wars...really....

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Alright you scruffy-lookin' nerf herders (sorry if you're not a Star Wars fan). I saw the movie this weekend, like many other who contributed to the $200+ million that's been made, and I absolutely loved it. Jaw-dropping planetary landscapes, stunning music score, and some really sweet good guys, but I'm obviously not here to talk about that (It's not the proper setting).

What I will talk about is three things about characters that we as writers need to incorporate into our writing, a la Star Wars. 

There may be spoilers, so don't read ahead if you don't want it.

I repeat, there more than likely may be some spoilers ahead, but read on at your own risk...

#1) Create good guys that you can see progress from start to finish (even if it's a multiple book series). Perfect example...our little girl Rey, who starts out as nothing but a lowly scavenger on a planet that's akin to our beloved Tatooine (not a va-kay destination). While she starts out as really a selfish, scared, little girl, she becomes the sweet lightsaber-wielding jedi woman that knocks evil Kylo Ren on his butt, and quite possibly slices off his luscious locks he has no doubt been nurturing his whole life. She progresses, and it isn't a long stretch. It isn't like those attributes and values weren't existent in her before, but through the conflicts that came about in the book, those qualities were able to peek out, and eventually redefine her as a character. Same goes for our characters...we don't want to completely pull a 180 degree stretch, but maybe a 120 degree turn. We need to make it so those qualities are somewhere buried within our character's souls, and use the events that we write to make those qualities redefine our character, either for better or worse. It would be a completely boring novel to have an altruistic do-gooder remain that way to the very last punctuation mark, because we like progress - it's human nature.

#2) Create bad guys who have weaknesses, and use those to define their toughest moments. Perfect example - Kylo Ren. He is the epitome in my opinion of the perfect evil guy. Someone who fights against their light, someone who is human. I don't want to see a story that involves some evil bad guy who was just born from the womb as a mother-killing evil creature who never wants thought about some good thing he/she could do. It makes our antagonist so much more relatable if there is a subtle backstory, even a hesitant move during a conflict to make us think twice about our hatred for that character. I love questioning if I really think a character is truly good or truly bad, and Kylo Ren shows us the internal struggle he's having in defining himself as the ultimate bad guy...which leads me to the final character point.

#3) Don't be afraid to kill off your most beloved characters, even if they are a stunningly charming and handsome scoundrel.  One of the arguably most tense moments (even more tense than blowing up the big planet-killing planetary base) is the moment that our antagonist activates that one switch point that redefines him as a bad guy. Our dear sweet Harrison Ford (AKA Han Solo) attempts to sway his son (BIG SPOILER), Kylo Ren back to the light, and the intensity is felt as that lightsaber is held on by both father and son, only to end in Han Solo's untimely (but desired from a literary standpoint) stabbing death. You feel as though a piece of your soul has been wrenched from you and thrown down to the bottom of the space station pit along with Han, or Mr Solo. That only makes me crave the ultimate destruction of my bad guy that much more, it solidifies in my head that even though there is some light in that bad guy, he is just too bad, and must die in the end. The worst thing would be to have a reader come to the end of a book where the antagonist has been dealt with, only to wish it had gone the opposite way, and that the good guy would have died. Emotions invest us, and as writers, we need to portray that with our characters, even in death.

So there you go...as a means of doing firsthand research, if you haven't seen the movie, I would highly recommend you go see it in the name of literary research while you chow down on bottomless popcorn and make a slob of yourself in the dark. They have a perfect formula for their characters, and I think even if your novel has a weak plot, if your characterization is strong enough, it can tip the scales to make it a great novel.

So go watch a movie this week!

-C