ARE YOU SURE EVERYTHING IS OK?

I was casually mooching about on You Tube the other day, not really paying huge attention to every video that popped up, but just letting them wash over me, when I stumbled over a clip from a legal TV show. The details of the clip don’t matter but one of the comments under the video did make me think.

Someone pointed out that one of the big issues with the show in question is that the characters could save themselves hours upon hours of worry by just being open and honest with each other and asking for help when they need it.

We’ve all been there.

Something happens and we can feel it in our bones that we want to just get the issue resolved without drawing any undue attention to it. We try to fix that which went wrong and despite our best efforts, things spiral and all of a sudden, everyone knows and are pointing at you. We see in stories, how characters try to fix something and their attempts to do so are what ultimately cause the biggest issue that everyone then has to fix.

One way that this reluctance to admit to a problem is used in story telling regularly pops up in zombie tales. There’s always the situation where someone gets bitten but decides that trying to hide said fact will be the best course of action. The truth ultimately gets out when it’s far too late to achieve anything and chaos ensues. I’m writing something at the moment which uses this idea of hiding an issue and although it’s not about zombie bites, the general premise is the same.

In the zombie example, the characters very often recognise that they’ll need to be killed if they share the fact of the bite and thankfully, that doesn’t happen out here in the real world. We hope. In the good old day to day world we all enjoy, reaching out for help can be the first step to making a problem go away but it’s that act of reaching out which can be the toughest.

We see regularly online, at work, on TV etc. so many examples of encouragement to reach out for help if you need it but it can be the reaction that we receive which is the killer. Can you imagine phoning up The Samaritans help line and when you pour out your concerns the person on the other end just laughs at you or tells you you’re a prick for getting it wrong? I’m writing characters who have to face something along these lines and it’s that crushing of them following a problem which has caused them all so much pain and then shapes their behaviour from then on. The book I’m reading at the moment also deals with the idea of ridicule for people who’ve made a mistake of a certain kind.

And that’s the core message really.

We all make mistakes, and none of us can go through life totally separate from everyone else so the idea of accepting help from another can’t be so alien a concept that no-one thought of it. The reluctance to accept help comes from how that help makes a person feel. One of my characters shrugs their shoulders and just gets back on the horse, as it were, but for another it breeds a resentment grown from a shame they were made to feel at their own failure.

Characters then want to prove those who pointed and laughed wrong, they want their redemption, and it’s in that fertile ground we can grow either a hero or a villain.

Maybe we all just act a bit nicer to each other?

We’re all after some kind of redemption.

Stay safe all.

DRINK THE FAT?

It’s a big old theme, redemption.

Literature from all ages has delved into the pot with religions the world over never afraid to use it as a way to spread their teachings, but why is redemption such a powerful message.

Redemption is, at it’s core, a message to the reader that, even if they take the wrong turn at some point in their lives, that they can always find their way back and that is a hugely powerful thing to cling to. At some point through all of our lives, we’ve done or said something which puts us firmly on the wrong side of the ‘moral’ line. Be it deliberate or accidental, we’ve done the wrong thing and we all know it.

So is that it?

We’ve done something wrong so that means that we should be forever shunned?

Redemption is something we’ve all got to strive for after we fall on the wrong side and we’ve all got to do our best to earn that redemption. If we’ve done something bad, even if we were doing it with the best of intentions, our forgiveness and redemption is a journey to embark upon. Each of us is the hero in our own story and we do what we think is correct but knowing that there will be a way to make amends for anything we may do wrong can be that very small spot of light in our darkened skies.

Criminals, when they are released, are said to have paid their debt to society, which means that there is a recognition that there is a concept of amount to what has to be done / endured to fully atone. That they’ve erased the rot that they caused to society by their crimes gives the powerful second chance which we’ve all reached for at some point.

But redemption isn’t for everyone really.

What could Hitler have done to balance the scales?

So the next consideration of redemption comes from how the choices are made. Who chooses who deserves the chance for redemption and who doesn’t? Should everyone have the same labours or should they be dependant on the ‘crime’? To prove that he was sorry in Friends, Ross had to apologise to a cat and on another occasion, had to drink a cup of fat so redemption isn’t solely for the really big things. But down here in the muck of the evil deeds we can find ourselves being affected as well as we choose the path to take. Humanity can often lurch away from thoughts of redemption to thoughts of revenge.

Redemption is a powerful storytelling tool and is often the driving heart of films, TV and books because it’s something we can all recognise, that drive to make amends should we fall short in some way. It’s the manifestation of justice where members of a group can do all they can to redress the balance that they caused to fall off centre and ultimately return to that group as a welcome member.

If all we want to see is people being punished for their wrongs and don’t give them the chance to ‘drink the fat’, we’re not interested in the rehabilitation and redemption of people, just that they’re suffering.

Stay safe everyone.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

No, nothing to do with The Hobbit this time. This week gives me the chance to consider the use of the redemption arc in story telling.

We all love our baddies twirling their moustaches while they roar out a crazed cackle standing over the damsel tied to the train tracks but having just be that arch all of the time leaves them with the chance of becoming too flat. I’ve spoken in the past about the way horror icons have had their back story fleshed out in prequal films and we see how the lives that they lived have made them the way they are but that still leaves the monsters as the monsters.

Can’t they come back?

Having the villain of the piece just be the villain for the hero to overcome, despite having the knowledge of why they’re acting in the way they are, can leave something of a hole in the feeling from the reader. They start evil, travel through evil before finally succumbing to the hero while attempting to do mega evil. Not much of an arc.

There’s a lovely saying out there which asserts, “Everyone’s a hero in their own story” and it holds true that there has to be a reason behind the actions of the monsters. All of the dictators of the world, in the same way as all of the activists, believe they are doing the right thing. They may be making horrific choices along the way but in their minds, the greater good is going to be worth it in the end. There will be examples of people doing evil for the sake of it but if characters believe they’re acting in a way that is correct, then you can break them down and explore their internal logic.

In the same way that the society in 1984 didn’t spring into existence fully formed, so too will the villain’s redemption have to take it’s time, with single steps along the road nudging the character further and further away from where they were. Darth Vader didn’t just snap and launch the Emperor off the gantry, he’d been given more and more breadcrumbs to follow all the way from the very first film, and indeed the prequals as we learn who he is, until he finds himself at the point of understanding what he’s been doing all along.

The eventual action of redemption or sacrifice is then imbued with a great deal more resonance because we understand that journey more clearly and are then able to mourn for the loss of not a brutal monster but instead a flawed being who did what they thought was best.

And if there’s a chance for that brute to be seen as something more than just a monster, maybe people will be willing to see beyond the mistakes we all make in the real world.

If the villains can understand what needs to done in books, maybe we can all get there too?