Some comments and musings just to the two of you, I hope you find
them interesting:

At 02:16 PM 6/29/2002 -0400, allyn yonge wrote:

Tom Clancy novels have as much characterization as a bowl of week old
noodles.<SNIP>

[Horsefeathers! I don't know about DragonballZ, because I have never read it
or watched the anime,

In defense of Dragonball, I'd advise looking at the manga, especially
for the later part which was animated as DBZ.  Thinking about it,
Toriyama is a master of *visual* language.  For combat or ballet,
this can both help carry a work and makes comparative analysis with
pure prose much more difficult....  Like ballet, it just might be
at least partially a different art form (although a lot of ballet
has little or NO plot (well, any plot greater than keeping the sun
out of your eyes :-)).

[ Don then defends Clancy, although I have to point out for his first
two works you don't know how much to credit Larry Bond, except a *lot*
for Red Storm Rising.  BTW, Don, did you like Red Phoenix, or what
followed?  (Bond was a pioneer --- I think he wrote the first PC
techno-thriller, but he lost me there and afterwards). ]

 
I can't remember if I have ever read any of Bond's work. Clancy was a big
Heinlein fan. I have enjoyed nearly everything Clancy has written so far,
but his last one, _The Bear and the Dragon_, dragged a little, but I don't
agree with Allyn's assessment of it. Characterization was not a major issue
for me. OTOH, I am neither Russian nor Chinese so the complaints about
inaccuracies in Clancy's portrayals of such characters may well be on
target.
 

[...] (Though I doubt it) Tom Clancy, E.E.(Doc) Smith, Robert Forward,
Micky Spillane . . .there is a LOOONG list of writers (successful ones, good
story tellers) who?s characters are, charitably, card-board.

Robert Forward surely (dropped the first book I started to read of his
like a hot potatoe :-), and you're getting me to think harder about Doc
Smith.   Although to be really fair, you need to analyze his later works,
like First Lensman or Children of the Lens (where he really blows up a
planet with style :-), as opposed to, say, The Skylark of Space, the
first draft of which was as I remember around the turn of the century
and I think was first published in the late '20s).

 
I don't agree that Spillane was all that bad at characterization. I've heard
younger readers complain that Tolkein's work "uses every fantasy clich� I
ever heard about." Guess what, Tolkein was the guy that invented those
clich�'s. Much the same can be said of Spillane's work. He had a great many
copycats and emulators--especially on television.

Heinlein commented that Smith's worldview was formed by the Mauve
Decade (1890s), and I'd be interested in publication dates for
many of the classics you've cited.

However, this is no excuse --- while we can't hold up "pulp" to the
standards of Shakespeare, it was certainly well known how to do great
characters way before anyone we've cited, and we can assume the older
authors like Smith had to read a fair amount of e.g. Shakespeare back
then before schools started getting watered down in earnest.

@@Nope. See R. Forward, E.E. Smith, Spillane, also J.W. Campbell (The Moon
is Hell is strictly hardware oriented, One of my favorites, but as much
characterization as an ether distillation) Opinions differ, but IMO
characterization means that I care about the characters

I think this is the KEY point, the key axis to judge really good
characterization by.  It allows me to plot out Clancy, Smith, etc.
and then the really good characters quite nicely.

And e.g. Cambell for me comes out at the bottom of the scale; I could
never get very far in any of his works that I tried because of the
non-existant characterization (and other flaws).

A.C. Clarke would be another good example, he's a zero at
characterization, and while I liked a fair amount of his stuff, I
found only the City and the Stars to be great --- he matched his
abilities to the story.

 
I'll agree with you here. I found a lot of Clarke's work entertaining, but
found little of it compelling. I disagreed with and hated his themes. Asimov
was much better at characterization, but he too often adopted the same
themes as Clarke. I liked his non-fiction much better.

But this is why I repeatedly tell writers that my C&C is IMO only. Rejection
means only that ?THIS editor didn?t like THIS story at THIS time. A different
editor or the same editor at a different time may love the story. Or a
different story by the same author.?

Bingo; e.g. Smith does have characterizations of *some* quality in the
Lensman series (and you have to be old fashioned to appreciate them, I
suspect, but then I think the three of us are :-), but it doesn't drive
the story, and you care for them less than others from other writers.
E.g. of the female Children, thinking back I can't seperate them except
by their affiliations, even though I re-read it within the last few months.

And that makes me think of another issue, one that is a problem for
Smith, "Red Storm Rising", Boring Germans in Space/LOGH, Gunbuster,
Evangelion, etc. ... how do you handle a story that is so gigantic in
reach that it is very difficult to tell both the story and do justice
to the characters?

Has anyone done a *really* good job of this?  LOGH (after the early
first season boring part :-) ... maybe it strikes a fair balance.
Switching POV from leaders to grunts works in theory.  You can also
shift focus like Anno did in Gunbuster in the small and large.  You
can also cheat like Anno did with Evangelion and trick the less
perceptive of the audience by have no intention of doing the large
story (EVA was from the first episode clearly a character story),
yet still do a better than fair job on the large story.

Any comments?  Furies is certainly fodder for this sort of analysis.

Right now I'm reading Churchill's history of WWII, which works, but
there are few special cases like him!  And even then, his primary
focus is shorter scale, while he keeps the whole thing in mind and
places events in context.  And he doesn't bother to tell the detailed
stories of some of the greatest events, pointing out that others have
done better jobs already.  (Maybe worst of all, it was 30-40 or so
years later when the Enigma codebreaking was unclassified....)

I'll use my favorite example of Dynamic Tension,  Alfred Hitchcock and
the bomb. If you set off a bomb, you give the audience about 1/10 sec. of
surprise. BUT, if you put a timer on the bomb and let the clock tick down
to detonation while the heroine fights to find the bomb and diffuse it . .

[One defuses a bomb, hopefully before the bomb diffuses one's person.]

@@See below. That?s the point. IF you detonate the bomb, no more tension. ^_*

Err, I think his point was that a bomb has a fuze, an old electrical
distribution box has fuses, and diffuse is one way of describing the
fate of those things close to an explosion....

 
Actually, I was giving Allyn a hard time for using "diffuse" where he should
have used "defuse". In fairness, Word will put "diffuse" in for you if you
don't watch it.

And getting back to character and hardware, in one of the little stories
in Triplanetary, the one at the WWII explosives factory (where I think
he may have been speaking from experience), a very minor character is
drawn with one stroke when a secretary tells the protagonist that
he doesn't know the difference.

Going to have to re-read Heinlein's tribute and defense of Smith in
Expanded Universe ... but come to think of it, just how good was
Heinlein at doing characters?  I think uneven at best, but I need
to do some review/re-reading.  I think he did moderately well on some
of his more mature stories, Citizen of the Galaxy as his penultimate
juvenile certainly struck me then and now (Starship Troopers was his
last juvenile, but it was written with unusual motivation (although
still fitting in the theme of his juveniles), and was too much for
his editor which loathed everything about him and his books but the
profits which kept her unit in the black. :-)

 
I don't know that Heinlein ever had a problem with characterization. Some of
his juveniles had very thin plots, but his characterization was the
salvation of those works.

On the other hand, even in junior high, the characters in e.g. Time for
the Stars, Tunnel in the Sky, and, gack, Podkayne of Mars struck me
as quite bad.  And I have to wonder about the fusion of plot and
character, e.g. do I like the protagonist in Have Spacesuit, Will
Travel intrinsicly, or in part because of his actions, especially
at the climax?  Something to think a lot about....

 
I suggest you re-read those. The characters he portrayed were thoroughly
disagreeable people, but they were masterfully portrayed.

How much do we love Usagi because of her great heart, and how much
because of her actions due to it...?

@@Excellent synopsis of POV. Thanks.

Indeed.  I'm going to try to write it in flaming letters across the
sky for one author whom I'm prereading....

PLOT:
This is the framework of your story. IMO it?s the least important part of
the story. NOT UN-important, rather the easiest to deal with. IF you have
well crafted interesting characters and escalating, perfectly timed dynamic
tension, you need only a minimal, plain vanilla type of plot. Alfred
Hitchcock?s ?The Birds? . . .You can?t get much simpler than ?monster of
the day?, yet it?s wonderful due to :
1)Characterization
2)DYNAMIC Tension.

[Nothing to grump about here per se, but I would add that most serious works
of fiction are built around a theme and the plot is structured to support
that theme. I suppose, however, that I am here delving into a completely
different school of thought concerning literature, given that modern
literature often seems completely devoid of anything like a recognizable
theme. Still, the better works are built around themes. Some, such as Philip
K Dicke's work, were all theme and next to no plot. Ranma1/2 has a great
deal more in the way of theme than it does plot. Harlan Ellison was another
master of thematic content and, amazingly, could cover a difficult theme
with a single short story. See, "I Have No Mouth and I MUST Scream". I
sometimes kid about not having any talent but I MUST write. What I have
discovered, is that talent is largely a function of practice.

Seems to be true for all but "naturals" like Heinlein, who's first
story is still quite vivid in my memory after 25 years....  (Although
he did get better (till the usual point).)

Although ... WRT to your talent, how could a new author (at least to
the FFML) write a story using some of most hoary Ranma 1/2 cliches, and
yet produce a rather compelling story (Spreading Wings)?  Unless you'd
done some writing before, you started with some significant talent.

 
I had been writing off and on for quite a while before attempting,
_Spreading Wings_. Almost all of that stuff is now safely stowed in the
circular file where it belongs. Understand, I was a terrible writer in the
beginning. You don't know that because I never let you see my early stuff.
Looking back, I can see considerable improvement in my writing since
participating in the mayhem that is FFML. People will write things to you
that will make you howl with agony, butt your head against a wall and cause
you to threaten serial murder for a past time, but in the end, it all makes
a better writer of you. No pain, no gain, boys and girls!

@@ I guess I didn?t make myself clear.

Hmmm, I think Don has an important point here; a strong theme adds to
everything in a work, and can carry a very minimal plot.  And while this
may be a little unfair, I'd like to use one of your stories as a example
(granted I only *just* read it, and was somewhat tired while doing so):

You?ve got to have a plot. BUT, plot is easier than characterization or
Dynamic Tension IMO. Put the effort into characters, place them in
interesting situation (DT/problem solving/suspense) and the PLOT will
take care of itself as the characters work to solve the problem/relieve
the tension.

The story is Blood Fist, and it does follow the above prescription, but
the plot, while even after some analysis has no big holes, in my
belief significantly weakens the story emotionally.  Details upon
request, but tell me, where's *the* *emotional* climax?  Perhaps
I missed it ... and there are plenty of little ones ... but....

 
I haven't read this and I should, given that Allyn has spent more than a
little time reading my stuff and critiquing it.
 
Thanks for the input, Harold.
 
Don.

- Harold

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