Bickering and Boinking

I used to write fiction. It's a longer story than I want to tell here, but from 1997 (when I got a computer) to around 2001, I used to write Star Trek fanfiction -- stories about the characters and settings of the Star Trek television series. Specifically Voyager and Deep Space Nine. I even won a few awards from the audience I was writing for. You can go here, enter my last name in the Search box and read most of what I wrote.

It was tremendous fun, and very fulfilling. Some of those stories I'm very proud of and wouldn't be embarrassed to show to anyone. I had a flair for comedies and parodies, but could turn a serious, thought-provoking tale as well.

Then, I experienced writer's block. Well, more like a drought. I lost the desire and have never gotten it back. Most of my writing energies go into the blog now, which satisfies an even older urge to be a commentator. (My late-teenage wish was to be George Will. Don't laugh.) But I don't think it's a case of water from one glass being poured into another. My mind still works on the old Star Trek stuff, including an original series I had begun that I still think has great potential: Star Trek: USS Goddard. I have reams of stuff still in "work in progress" folders on the computer. But it's almost a physical pain to try to write it now, and the language is flat, awful and lifeless.

(Digression: Last year, I noted I'd written over 400,000 words on Half-Bakered. That's five medium sized novels! A respectable writing career, if traditionally published for pay. By now, it may be six novels worth. End digression.)

I mention all this as prelude to a revelation I had last week. Even though I've written quite a lot, both fanfic and blog, I still find my writing to be too schematic and not compelling enough in the character department. The feedback I used to get on the fanfic said that too, if not directly; as did who didn't read my stuff. I tend to enjoy the mechanics of plot and character resolution more than the dynamics of character interaction.

While watching ads for some crap television show, I started to wonder. How can all these shows, crummy hour dramas about vacuous people and so-called "reality shows," have such dedicated audiences? Then it hit me:

It's all about bickering and boinking! Make your characters moderately distintive; you can even make them stereotypes and cardboard if they can be distinguished individually by sex, race, dress, voice or hair color. Hey, it even applies in anime. Then set them after each other. Have their aims, no matter how dull, predictable or pedestrian, cross. Throw brainless roadblocks in their way. Arbitrarily create relationships and then set other characters after one half of those relationships! Make some lust after others, or simply indiscriminately lustful. It's all about turmoil and coupling.

As long as they are all fighting and f*cking (I still haven't made up my mind on using profanity in this blog. Sorry!), it's compelling. It's the basic formula for soap operas and for nearly every drama on The WB. It's why dramas that have long exhausted their characters can still keep going: they find new ways to pair off or new partners or new "challenges" to themselves. Drop in new characters every so often to shake things up, like in ER.

I know, I know. This "secret" has been known to millions for hundreds, thousands of years. I'm sure I've read it over and over again in the many writing books I've read. But it hit me with the force of realisation, which trumps reading any day.

It's now my number two fiction writing rule, after "Things get worse!" That rule means that just when things are going badly, toss in a further complication to up the ante. If things are going smooth, toss up a dodgeball. Keep your characters constantly on their toes, and the reader is up with them.

Now I just have to get back to fiction writing, right?