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Workshop:  Characterization Show and Tell

 

 

OCTAVIA BUTLER - CHARACTERIZATION

I'm not sure if I touched on her in my review column - but for the workshoppers here I have a comment.

Butler's series about Earth being invaded (DAWN I think is one of the titles ) - uses a human woman protagonist who is supposed to be an anthropologist or archeologist - I forget which.

At any rate, we are deep within this woman's viewpoint - she's definitely the protagonist - we are rooting for her to WIN.

We follow her thought processes as she works through the problem of how to escape from this alien ship which has kidnapped her.

We are TOLD she is an anthropologist - we WATCH her problem-solve - and the whole fictional "suspension of disbelief" crashes for me.

The character does not THINK LIKE an anthropologist.

Each profession has a certain style of problem solving, a method of generating questions and finding answers and generating the next - a method of laying out the details of a problem a searching for the pattern.

I know a number of such methods - including anthropology and archeology.

The character didn't THINK LIKE an anthropologist.

I don't mean the part of thinking that's a "character trait" - I mean the part that's learned.

Butler TOLD us the character was one thing - and SHOWED us another - and I believed what I was shown not what I was told.

Other than that, she's a very good writer.

Some readers will have a problem with her blatant political agenda within her fiction - a little too feminist for some perhaps, and a few other closely held beliefs. But those she deals with properly within the context of the art - this show/tell problem is, I think, to be regarded as a mistake and nothing more (like when you see the light fixtures or boom mike dipping into a TV shot).

Live Long and Prosper,

Jacqueline Lichtenberg