The answer is C, I divide my force into to parts, one of which rides out ahead of the enemy and withdraws to the city, the larger of which descends on the enemy rear and destroys their seige supplies and rear command staff, leaving them helpless to maneuver or conduct a seige. The situation is a dilemma, but the presentation of only the two worst choices makes it a false dilemma.

Why do I bring this up? Well, a certain person to whom I am related often tries to fix a bad decision by taking the exact opposite course. When she does this in her writing, she ends up having her protaganist act in incredible and foolish ways.

For example, a ruler has to punish a group of traitors. First she is going to have him let them all go. Then she decides to have him kill a bunch of people for mouthing off. But those aren't the only two alternatives.

For a while she portrays this guy as a total puppet of whoever can browbeat him into doing stuff, then she starts portraying him as a total control freak that makes all the decisions for everyone and won't let anyone else speak.

I could give a few more examples, but I'm sure that would be going too far, and that's the whole point of this topic. How do we end up going too far? What makes us lock characters into unrealistic choices that ignore real possibilities? Why do we construct pretentious dilemmas that anyone else can see as having obvious solutions?
 

Jeannette
 

I would not want that responsibility.

 

But the original point was only briefly touched on by Jeannette. And her answer is not really satisfactory. I all the time find my mom putting someone in a situation that she herself would know how to deal with, which I know because she's been in similar situations, and she doesn't provide them with the option that she would have chosen herself.

What makes an author lock characters into unrealistic choices that ignore options and possibilities that the author is perfectly well aware of themselves? This might work if we have cast the character as lacking some key bit of knowledge or skill that we ourselves have, but what about things that are just too common for our character to be lacking?
 

The fact of the matter is, I am trying to push the perceptions open, bring in new arguments and ideas and test them in an environment where they are exposed to other points of view. But while it is deliberate and sometimes calculated, it is also myself. You might have noticed (or perhaps not) that there are persistent threads running through my various deliberations. I am open about my thoughts, and yes, I make an effort to reveal rather than obfuscate my opinions and insights. And of course, it is quite deliberate.

But of course, I would not care (in the theoretical case of my being another person reading my own argument) whether or not I was playing a part or showing my true self. I would be studying the ideas themselves, seeing if they were cogent and coherent. If they were not, I might speculate about why that person expressed them, though not usually.

Anyway, I guess that to some extent my own writing suffers from the fact that I almost never have my viewpoint characters suffer from the kind of indecision that accompanies a knotty dilemma. So maybe this discussion should focus on how we can add believable dilemmas to our stories
 

How can the reader tell what you're character really feels or thinks if he is just playing around, trying out new pick up lines.

Or, on another tack, how can one actor determine if another person is just acting or is expressing his/her real opinions.

I'm not trying to be flippant here. As annoyed as I am with you right now, I still do find your posts thought provoking. If those thoughts involve bodily harm, then...

Actually, just because all the world's a stage, doesn't mean that we have to "consciously" act like it.


 

Now, Survivor, as far as your closing suggestion, I'd say I must agree. Other than the main story/conflict, how can one insert other, smaller dilemas along the way? One of the elements of good adventure writing for RPG's involves this tactic, and I'd like to develop better skill with it. That's the problem I'm having with the second part of the story I'm working on. It's from a totally different point of view, and perspective, than the first part, and I have to get this guy from point A to point B in a way that isn't boring, but he still has to make it. Sigh....

Basically, I break down a character into twp parts, the inner and the outer. I leave relationships out since they are only half (at most) based on a character, the other half (or more) being a reflection of the other character, the environment and situation, past history, ect.

The outer part is things like physical and mental abilities, appearance, the sort of thing that would be represented by 'stats' in a RPG situation. The inner part is motives, attitudes, beliefs, the sort of thing that is represented (continuing our RPG analogy) by player decisions ('alignment'--such as good, evil, or neutral--is really more a matter of history and reputation, i.e. relationships, so I don't count it here).

Of course the environment affects the character, and within the character there is interaction between the outer and inner aspects. A storm might make a character sick, changing physical attributes, and illness can lead to depression. Conversely, determination, an inner characteristic, could lead to efforts to change the environment, leading to better physical attributes, like a slave escaping and teaching himself to read, thus becoming mentally superior (and leading to a change in venue as well).

So if you are telling a story in which the attitudes and beliefs of the character must change, then you can have the environment challenge his starting character, leading to a cycle of action and reflection/response that takes the character into a series of problems that require adaptation. This is very vague, but I can't really get more specific without knowing something of what the change in viewpoint is supposed to be.

I have a story or two that revolve around that kind of crucial experience, though I've never really gotten a long development of character going, since my characters tend to start out pretty good, and leap right to almost perfect on their first try But I would like to try it sometime...I think.
 

Anyway, I think that just because a character is more cerebral doesn't mean there is less perception of danger. After all, think of the Lord of the Rings, the part where the company gets split up. Merry and Pippin are only worried about whether they are going to die, they can't do anything about the larger war. Aragorn is oppressed by the weight of responsibility for the whole group, while Frodo is all but crushed, almost in a demented state half the time, because he's responsible for the whole war. He would gladly die if only the ring could be destroyed in the process.

I think the more thoughful and introspective a character is, the more they are able to understand dangers, the more tension is implicit in everything uncertain. So really, with a more cerebral character, you can illustrate the larger consequences of failure. That alone increases the drama of your story. And also, a more perceptive character can see dangers that wouldn't be apparent to a character with more immediate concerns. So it's really not a handicap or barrier at all, writing from the more detached perspective.
 

No, I'm just kidding. Just make sure that he doesn't keep on having to figure out what to do next. Make up something plausible, and have Mr. Frost deal with it as a sensible person would. In order to make the distinction between the first half and the second half apparent, the progression of events need as unpremeditated in the second half as they were premeditated in the first. But just to be fair, the number of obstacles in the second half should just about equal the number in the first.
 

Storm is still nominally in charge, right? And Frost is following her lead, but he could effectively dissent or betray her, and he has at least some plausible motives for doing so. So that makes it a sort of interesting trust game, in a sense. Every situation provides a chance for him to defect, and he isn't decided about whether he will or not. The real element of suspense, though, is whether or not Storm is aware that he may betray her. He doesn't know that, he doesn't want to tip his hand, and he doesn't really know whether she has some contingency plan in case he defects.

That's the real danger to him. His former employers won't kill him, not until it's a last resort, but can he be sure about Storm? It becomes a game of pure maneuver and deception.
 

The author has the character doing XYZ then comes up with bad reasons for that.

Or the author doesn't understand the character, and feels free to make that charcter do XYZ.

 

On the note of why do some writers keep making the same mistakes over and over--ego, stubbornness, an inability to see the mistakes they make (thus they see the suggestions as a mistake rather than what they wrote)-- I have been in crit groups where one person keeps doing the same error over and over and over no matter how many times people point it out. The writer simply cannot see a way past the error because they do not see the error.

But--we are not the writer and should keep our dang hands off that writers work.

Shawn

 

I would suggest explaining, nicely since it is your mother, that to make the change believable she has to show why the change occures. Give some believability to the change that is happening. Of course I'm throwing in quite a few assumptions here.

Good luck.