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Workshop: Characterization & Style

Workshoppers:

Another section of the early Workshop posts from the Virtual Selyn Listserv with Margaret Carr and Kaas Baichtal to thank.  This is true of everything dated before 1998, except for the items saved and posted in the First Year School by Marge Robbins. 

WORK: CHARACTERIZATION =========================================================================

Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 10:39:18 -0500 From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg< Subject: WORK:characterization

-- [ From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg * EMC.Ver #3.0 ] --

Folks:

Here's an item I'm posting to the Welcome folder B5vsVoyager discussion on AOL's shared author spotlight board where my folders are. I made this file in WORDPAD instead of notepad - if anyone is seeing the wordwrap on the paragraphs all screwed up, please let me know. JL

"Kathy" discussion has me thinking again.

I've articulated a specific element that has been annoying me about the Janeway characterization.

I've said before, in my review column and in the writer's workshop online that the problem with Janeway is that the writers don't know how to use the archetype of the Woman As Authority Figure. That's very general and perhaps difficult for some students of writing to apply when analyzing this show.

Here's a very small, specific observation.

In the episode they just reran - the one with the swarm of tiny ships that attached themselves to Voyager while the Emergency Medical Hologram suffered memory loss - we see a perfect example of what drives me crazy in the WRITING.

Mulgrew did a superlative job of interpreting Janeway in this situation - but to do it, she had to play two separate and totally different characters.

You can see it best if you have memorized (as I have) the Kirk-Trek episodes . I've spent a goodly number of years analyzing Kirk and rebuilding his character into something worthy of Starship Flag rank. You might see it too in contrast with Picard, but not so starkly because Picard was more suited to the role of Captain before he got the job - whereas Kirk was wholly unsuited (an overgrown teenager with the power to destroy the Galaxy by one mistake.)

Now Kirk was a typical Aries Leader type. How he did what he did was a total mystery to everyone but Spock - who was also a typical Aries but not the Leader type, but the Lone Researcher type Aries, a totally self- contained and independently functioning individual. Kirk was a very dependent character - he can't function in a vacuum. He needs people following him - he needs a team spread out all over the San Francisco Bay Area finding whales and Nuclear Wessles and Transparent Aluminum. He needs people willing to trust him to lead them by bold intuitive risk-taking.

One of the things lovers of VOYAGER have been saying (which I feel is true) is that of all the Treks, VOYAGER is the most like Kirk-Trek.

And I suspect that one of the ways they are alike is that Janeway is perceived by the writers as unsuited to the role of Captain, in a way different from how Kirk was unsuited, but just as massively unsuited.

Kirk was perceived as unsuited because he was young and had a youth's attitude toward risk-taking. His risks generally paid off big time (if after some heroic "saves") because he had good judgment and a modicum of ESP . In fact, the only Captainly attributes that Kirk had was judgment - and leadership charm. All the rest of the necessary Captainly skills he relied on his crew to supply. Kirk-Trek was the story of how Kirk got away with being an eternal teenage boy with the power of a man. That is the quintessential core material that is necessary to sell a story as science fiction. Or at least it was in Roddenberry's day.

Janeway is an attempt to bring SF into the post-Feminist era. And it is a first attempt - nothing like it has ever been on television. Think a moment - Six Million Dollar Woman had a male boss though she could do feats of strength. Her schtick was that she experienced raw terror (acted out visibly) and then did the job anyway. But it wasn't her judgment that was relied upon by others stronger and smarter than she, in save-the-whole-world situations.

Mrs. King on Scarecrow was a fabulous character - but not a boss, not a leader, not an administrator. And a Captain must be all of those.

The schtick on Remington Steele was that a woman might be good enough as a detective to do the job but nobody with a lot of money would ever hire a woman to excersize INDEPENDENT JUDGMENT. The show was popular because a very broad audience could relate to that. The people who believe that women don't have and can't develop adult judgment that can be relied on day in and day out without fail saw REMINGTON STEELE as confirming that view. The people who see that prevailing cultural attitude as WRONG saw REMINGTON STEELE as confirming their view. It was a great show because it used what I called, in STAR TREK LIVES!, the Tailored Effect.

Now, in the era where it is broadly acknowledged that the best rising stars in the field of money management on Wall Street are women, and those women are trusted with hundreds of millions (even billions in some few cases), of dollars, we have JANEWAY.

And the Janeway character flips back and forth in an insane wobble between someone whose judgement you'd trust to save the Universe (nevermind something as minor as a galaxy), to someone you wouldn't trust to darn your winsocks.

In this week's episode, we see a perfect example of this all within one episode.

Now, as a script, I think this episode is riddled with unfixable defects because it was badly conceived from the outset, but that's art-by-committee and the result of it being a TV show not a novel. So I'll ignore all the obvious stuff.

Just excerpt two items from the plot-event-sequence.

First Janeway, knowing that the Emergency Medical Hologram was malfunctioning, orders the ship to dive across hostile territory WHEN THERE IS NO REASON NOT TO WAIT A DAY OR TWO AND FIX THE MEDICAL PROGRAM.

This is classic bad judgment - the sort of thing teenagers do that gives their parents fits. Even Kirk at his worst would NOT HAVE DONE THAT because there's no reason to. (yes, I know the lack of a reason was due to the time-constraints on a syndicated show! But if I were the writer in charge, I could have fixed it within the time constraints and budget. Therefore I assume that the writers who worked on this episode just didn't see it or consider it an important flaw.)

Then, when her bad judgment has misfired and gotten them caught by the little energy sucking ship, Janeway exhibits Kirk-Like character in boldly combating the menace with adroit moves, genius, and superstar leadership.

Juxtapose these two behaviors and consider what it would mean if Janeway were a real person.

You're looking at a person who is deeply emotionally disturbed and has no business in control of a garbage scow.

Each behavior is understandable - even tolerable in a best friend. But taken together, they set off Red Alert sirens.

Kirk was a solid, well integrated, sane personality with a single intractable irrational trait - reinforced by an unbelievable run of good luck - that he took insane risks. But his risks were always based on necessity and a very precise assessment of his own abilities and those of his crew.

Janeway doesn't "take risks" - Janeway never sees the risk in order to assess it.

Kirk acts independently of his superiors, BECAUSE he relies on his own judgment above all others.

Janeway acts independently of her superiors (remember in this episode how she disturbed Tuvok when she decided to go through that hostile territory against Star Fleet Regs and offered no explanation or apology? After forcing all the Maquis aboard to toe the Star Fleet Line?) but not BECAUSE she relies on her own judgment, but just because she doesn't feel like relying on Star Fleet's today. Maybe tomorrow.

My read of the bottom line here is that the writers of this show believe that the audience of this show sees women as incapable of developing adult judgment. Otherwise that scripting flaw would have been unacceptable and they'd have fixed it at the expense of something else.

But I see it differently. If Starfleet could find a woman with real reliable judgment, they certainly would never have allowed an emotional wreck like Janeway to Captain any kind of a ship, even a rowboat.

Now, you have to give the creators of the Janeway character credit. They are in fact TRYING. The first people to do anything, especially in the realm of Art have to expect the first attempts to fail. It's not a stigma or a reason to dislike the show. And I'm not convinced they are doing this on purpose. I think they really are doing their best.

It simply doesn't come up to my personal standards. And there's no reason on earth why it should. Because this show exists, the next attempt may succeed. We have had some shows from Canada that showcased the Woman as Authority Figure and did a fairly good job of it. FOREVER KNIGHT, and KUNG FU: THE LEGEND CONTINUES come to mind. HIGHLANDER didn't try it though they gave us some strong female characters and some independent ones - they never showcased the Adult Woman Whose Judgment is Relied on By Everyone At All Times.

B-5 gives us strong female characters as members of the team not leaders. Ivanova comes to mind. Delenn is an Authority Figure to her people (not to humans), but look what happened when she boldly went where no Ambasador had gone before. They abandoned her and kicked her off the Gray Council for taking on human attributes - they refused to rely on her judgment. And who was the instigator of this political maneuver? Was it another female indicting her judgment?

True they presented this as part of an alien culture - but it was contrived for a human audience, and it basically said that nobody in their right mind would rely on a woman's judgment.

To change this attitude, we need Art that presents The Adult Woman Whose Judgment Is Consistent and Reliable (whatever other pockets of craziness might exist in her psyche to make her an interesting character.) This person has to be recognizably female (a lot of writers who've tried it have lost the sense of feminity along with the bad judgment, as if they were the same thing) and this person has to be the sort who evinces loyalty and trust .

I rather doubt that television will originate this character. I suspect we'll find her first on the fiction delivered on the Web.

Live Long and Websearch! Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Live Long and Prosper,

> Date: Monday, 20-Jan-97 07:46 PM > > From: Cheryl Wolverton \

Subject: Re: Companion'sHeart > ..JL said something about style...to me style is simply how the person writes their > book...you mean there is more to it?

(1999 comment: "Companion's Heart" is a Sime~Gen story Cheryl Wolverton (the now becoming famous Romance Writer) is working on in her spare time.  She is also doing the Romance Section.  )

Oh yes "style" is an entire whole long complex subject - the worse because it's so hard to define. What it is in essence (and the reason it's so hard to define) is that it is composed of ALL THE OTHER TECHNIQUES and the distinctiveness of it resides in the formula you use to combine all those techniques into one seamless whole.

Theme is one component of style. Characterization is a component. Word- choice and sentence length and how you use dialect in dialogue and so on is another component of style. POV and how you use it and for what you use it is a component of style. Flashbacks and for what you use them is a component of style. The half dozen techniques that comprise what I term "information feed" are a single component of style. Pacing is a component of style. How you bundle sub-themes and sub-conflicts are a component of style. There are probably a few others I've dealt with before that I haven't listed here.

But you see why STYLE is the first thing that a student writer grabs onto and is desperate to assert - it is what MZB calls your "voice" - what makes the reader know YOU are telling them this story and nobody else.

But MZB also teaches that style must be invisible to the reader. The writer must not stand up on the page of print and blow a whistle and wave her arms to get the reader's attention and yell, "SEE WHAT A GREAT WRITER I AM? I HAVE WONDERFUL STYLE - SEE SEE?" The kind of book MZB likes to read and write, and the kind I prefer, is the kind where the writer is as invisible and imperceptible as possible.

So the benchmark of virtuosity in STYLE for us is its invisibility.

There are legitimate schools of writing for which invisible style is a sign of bad writing.

This workshop is about mastering style to the point where you can choose whether you want it to show or not, and then choose just exactly what you want to display and what to keep behind the scenes you write.

It is what MZB calls "finding your own voice as a writer."

And no, Cheryl - you haven't worked hard yet. I'll tell you when.

Cheryl wrote: ...in the story I sold it was > chicken jokes(I know, how very strange...but it worked)....the jokes played a > part in the story...it was a thread that continued to weave throughout the > story...so, either I'm missing what JL is saying about style or this is what > she is talking about???

No, the chicken jokes are what is termed a motif or - since I haven't read the book - possibly a gimmick. Robert Heinlein made that "gimmick" technique famous in sf. He had one in every book. Ever notice the red hat - I think it was Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's like Hitchcock showing up in a scene of every one of the shows on his tv series (or movies, too I think).

The use of this kind of thing - symbol - gimmick - motif - is yet another component of style (whether you use it or not is a style element - how, when and for what you use it is a style element.)

> ANYWAY...the only way to learn(AT LEAST FOR ME)is to do it, get it wrong, and > have someone show my it's wrong, why it's wrong, and how to correct > it...eventually it sinks in!

That's generally the way we all learn. But for it to work, you have to work with someone who writes like what you want to write like. > > I can look back now to my first s/g novel and say...ah, I understand why JL > wanted that;)....Although, don't be surprised if you see my lips pursed like > I've eaten a lemon occasionally...still, that doesn't mean I'm NOT going to > work... > > Sorry you can't read it Jean...I LOVE Carre...Carre is my life, my hope, my > heart....I don't know when I grew so attached to your house...but they're so > special to me...the only reason I decided to base the first story there is I > live in Baton Rouge and thought Zeor was near where I lived in OK(And was > terrified to touch that one)...but this one is set with Carre too... dear > sweet Carre....Those people there are special(Or would be if they were really > alive, I suppose).... (1999 comment -- "Carre" is a Householding -- a living group within the Sime~Gen Universe stories.) Oh, they're really alive. Trust me on this one. JL > > Anyway...thanks for the words of wisdom...I'll pull out a box of tissues.. .make > up plenty of casseroles so when JL slams something I can cry, point to the > freezer so the kids will have something to eat while I have an "artistic" > fit...and then go on;)

Way to go, kid. That's how it's done. Casseroles and take-out. What all wives need is a wife. JL

Live Long and Prosper, Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 

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