Change Takes Time...Sometimes

   Jerry Turncoat followed his master down the narrow servants' passage into the grand ballroom. Earlier that night the room had been filled with dancing and laughter. Now it should be just another empty chamber in their path.
   "Stay close," his master warned. "We might have to use force."
   "No problem," Jerry said with a grin. "That's why you brought me in."
   "Yes," his master said. "But I want to bring you out again too."
   Jerry had been right to choose this master. Other masters were weak, uncaring, or petty. Jerry's master had always cared. Jerry never wanted for protection or friendship.
   Once inside the ballroom Jerry saw three palace guards.
   "Halt! Who goes there?"
   "I'll handle this," Jerry's master said and turned to the guards. "We're just on our way to see the Magistrate."
   The nearest guard rested his hand on the hilt of his sword in a way that suggested that he wasn't afraid to use it.
   "Through the servants' way?" the guard said.
   Jerry's master raised his hands to show that he had no weapons.
   "We didn't want to disturb anyone." his master said.
   The farthest guard stepped forward. Her sword swung out as she walked.
   "Consider us disturbed."
   Jerry pulled his dagger and slipped between his master's ribs. His master dropped silently to the floor.

Bwhah?

Let's talk about character. Character development is a tricky thing. In the scrap above I gave you some clues that Jerry might not be completely reliable. At this point in the story you could accept his betrayal, because we aren't really connected to either character. But there was some disconnect between his final action and the rest of the scene.

At this point what do we know about Jerry? Nothing really. He's willing to kill...that's big, but not uncommon in literature. The big question is what is he willing to kill for? And why did he kill someone that seemed to be on his side. One thing we have established is that Jerry is a turncoat (Ah...see what I did there? With his name...) is that he is willing to shift allegiances. He is untrustworthy, and throughout the story we would always have that thought in the back of our mind. "Who will he kill next?"

Since this is early in the story I could spend some time explaining Jerry's seeming allegiance shift as time went on....but we would expect his future actions to line up with this killing.

Ok. That was a poor example. A better example is the scorpion and the turtle. The turtle gives the scorpion a ride across a river and halfway across the scorpion stings the turtle and they both sink into the water. Just before they die the turtle asks, "Why did you sting me when you knew you would die too?" The scorpion responds simply, "Because I'm a scorpion."

Characters have real motivations. They make choices based on who they are. And the audience needs to see who they are. A characters actions must always fit. Can they be unexpected? Yes. But the reader should say, "Oh yeah. That makes sense." At some point.

Changes in characters take time. If you establish a character, then make sure they follow through with who they are. If you want a character to change then let us feel the whole change. People don't change overnight unless something has prepared them for it.

In the movie Willow, Sorsha is the faithful daughter of the evil queen. But when she changes sides we understand. 1 - we want Willow to win, and 2 - we see the change happen over time. A number of scenes lead up to that change to make it believable.

Anyway, have fun with your writing. Remember to keep your characters motivated, and make sure they react believably to their motivations.

Modern Developments

I recently posted that, "Nobody cares until the whole thing's done."

There have been some recent developments in publishing and self publishing that seem to change that. One thing in particular that I'm talking about is kickstarter.

There are those who may believe that with kickstarter you don't need a final product, but an idea. That's true to some degree, but it's also false. Kickstarter is an investment program. You are trying to get customers to invest in your work with the promise of some reward. They aren't investing for money, but for a product and, more to the point, the chance to be "involved" in something.

Look at indie music, where everything is most popular before it is popular. It is always nice to be one of the fans that saw the band before they really developed their skill so you can say, "I like them until they went mainstream."

But when you are looking for investors for a project it's because you don't have the money upfront. You are essentially advertising either:

• a) the full product when it is finished (i.e. The published book if you've already written it, or the published book that you haven't finished it yet.) or...
• b) the idea of an amazing book that you're going to write.

The outcome is the same. You're trying to get someone hooked on your book. Where kickstarter has an advantage is that you have a venue where people can look over your stuff and buy right away. They can act on their impulse. The idea of buying things online has fed into this. If you just tell someone "I'm writing this awesome book and here's the story." You're selling the idea of the finished story to them. But only if the idea is fully fleshed out. They're still willing to put out money for a finished product. They want to read it, but they don't have it so they lose interest. With kickstarter you're just saying the shipping will take a while.

It's easy to take advantage of this system and sell an idea that will never see daylight. But you'll only do that once. Just like big publishers your readers will stop investing if nothing comes from it.

So, if you're selling a thing, or the idea of a thing, just remember: even with modern changes, people are paying for the finished product. Make sure it's worth their money.

Paradoxes

The curse of a writer is that you are never really alive unless you're talking about things that no one cares about (partly because those things are not in finished form). Our only hope is to write those things down and hope that there is some transformation between the written symbols and your voice, and that some day in the future the misconstrued wonderings of some distant relative will give our ramblings some wise meaning.

Get writing.

Cheers!