{"id":10381,"date":"2014-10-02T12:41:31","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T16:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=10381"},"modified":"2014-10-02T12:41:31","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T16:41:31","slug":"writing-relationships-into-a-corner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/10\/writing-relationships-into-a-corner.html","title":{"rendered":"Writing Relationships into a Corner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"faces\"<\/a>
From Dresden Codak\u2019s tutorial on character design<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Earlier this week, I was chatting with a friend about A.O. Scott\u2019s big piece on storytelling and the death of adulthood<\/a>. \u00a0Scott discusses the tendency of male heroes to \u201clight out for the Territory,\u201d escaping the feminized world of social expectations and perhaps a specific female person (be it mother or maiden). \u00a0While Huck stepped outside of society in order to critique it, men in modern stories, Scott claims, tend to be rebels in retreat; they\u2019ve traded in Jim\u2019s raft for the stoner\u2019s couch.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve love to return to some of the main thesmes of Scott\u2019s essay in another post, but, for today, I want to just focus on one question: what drives the anagonistic, pushmi-pullyu nature of many fictional relationships, whether romantic or not? \u00a0I think there\u2019s another structural factor besides the need for conflict to progress plot.<\/p>\n

The kinds of stories we tell limit the kind of romances and coming of ages that we can write. \u00a0On an ensemble tv show, with a regular cast of characters, each new character is expected to add\u00a0something<\/em> to the group. \u00a0Maybe, on a thriller, it\u2019s a new skill (lockpicking, translation, etc), or on a comedy, some new tic or gag (Wesley\u2019s<\/a> propensity to be aggrieved\/concussed), and, on\u00a0any<\/em> show, the new character is usually brought on to refract some fact about the main character or the ensemble to date, to bring it into better focus.<\/p>\n

That means there\u2019s very little duplication of character traits on a tightly written show. \u00a0If a line could have\u00a0easily<\/em> come out of the mouth of several of your characters, you probably have too many characters or a very dull scriptwriter. \u00a0Couldn\u2019t you save some money by having either characters, writers (or both!) eaten by Olvikan<\/a> in your finale?<\/p>\n

But economy of writing means that, when it comes time to pair off your secondary characters, you\u2019ll\u00a0have<\/em>\u00a0to arrange a marriage of opposites, since anyone who\u2019s too similar to your existing cast has already been shot, transferred, or simply sent out to a parking lot from which she never returned<\/a>. \u00a0Each of your characters either needs someone new, written just for them, or will wind up with someone else who\u2019s been carefully written to avoid too much overlap.<\/p>\n

Thus, we wind up with more characters who are united by a shared mission (like destroying Horcruxes) rather than a shared\u00a0disposition<\/em>\u00a0that they bring to this mission and other, more quotidian ones (like raising children). \u00a0When we drink in these models, we\u2019re in danger of generalizing incorrectly from fictional evidence<\/a>\u2013in our own lives, there\u2019s no Pauli Personality Exclusion Principle<\/a>\u00a0that prevents sufficiently similar people from existing in the same settings.\u00a0\u00a0If most of the friendships and romances we consume are about carefully differentiated characters, though, we may try to hard to match with people who fit this model (or just expect the arc of our relationships to resemble theirs).<\/p>\n

I\u2019d be curious what fictional examples come to mind when you think of partnerships (romantic or not), in which the dyad supported each other by being similar. \u00a0The first pair my friend and I came up with were (rot13\u2019d)\u00a0Senax naq Pynver Haqrejbbq sebz Ubhfr bs Pneqf. \u00a0Who can you think of?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, I was chatting with a friend about A.O. Scott\u2019s big piece on storytelling and the death of adulthood. \u00a0Scott discusses the tendency of male heroes to \u201clight out for the Territory,\u201d escaping the feminized world of social expectations and perhaps a specific female person (be it mother or maiden). \u00a0While Huck stepped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":10382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-10381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marriage-2","tag-friendship"],"yoast_head":"\nWriting Relationships into a Corner<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Earlier this week, I was chatting with a friend about A.O. 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