Creating characters and the worlds that they live within is one of the main jobs of any author and it’s a topic I’ve discussed before but when it comes to creating the different ‘sides’ in the story, the big battle is down to ideas.
At the most base level, everyone on one side thinks one thing, everyone on the other thinks another, and it’s there you find the conflict.
Lord of the Rings, 1984, The Hunger Games, as examples have a difference of thought on a single idea which cause the issues that unfold. LOTR – Enslavement of Middle Earth, 1984 – Control v Freedom, The Hunger Games – State Control.
Now I know that these stories deal with so very much more than just that single point, but in these cases, that one group wants to exert control and tyranny over another is a classic fear of humanity.
Be it from the totalitarian government, a foreign nation, a business, the idea of a group of people being able to bend a population to a point where brutality and loss of life for even the smallest infractions is something which creates a smaller group of the powerful who hoard the freedoms from everyone else. Agents of the ‘powerful’ follow the dictates of their masters to remain on the right side of any possible action themselves or that they’re ideologues as well though out of the position of power.
That singular thought at the centre of what the powerful are doing may have started from a point of positivity, but it quickly turns to the powerful solely working on remaining in power and dissent is squashed by ever growing levels of reaction. We’ve seen through history where governments have brutalised their people to keep them in line where any kind of deviation from what those at the top want gets you clobbered. Major religions have engaged in actions of utter barbarity against those who don’t have the ‘right’ ideas and we’re seeing more readily now, the huge multinational businesses that are seemingly trampling all over the lowest of the low to ensure those at the top succeed.
In our stories, as in the real world, we all recognise the threat that greed and naked ambition can pose to a healthy life for everyone. The Emperor in Star Wars did everything he did to put himself at the very top of the pile and it didn’t matter who was hurt on the way. Kim Jong-Un lives in opulent palaces while his population are tightly controlled and limited in pretty much everything they do. Looking at the UK and the US over the last few years, our leaders have dealt with the highest office in the land as a way to enrich themselves and that rules only applied to other people.
If we as a planet of people, detest this idea of the wealthy few standing on everyone else, maybe we need to come up with a different way of thinking? So it all falls back to a singular idea again.
Maybe just all working together is what’s needed?
Stay safe all.