Shades of Grey and the Cult of the Gun.
by celinekiernan on Apr.08, 2010, under Celine Kiernan and Glenda Larke
YippeeKiiaaaa M****r F****r.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Die Hard movie as much as the next person; I love a good western. I like it when a clearly defined good guy beats a clearly defined bad guy over the head with his truncheon and everyone wins in the end. Just don’t expect any of it in my Moorehawke books – ok? Because as much as I like John McClain wisecracking his way through a series of cardboard cut-out black-hats, real life doesn’t work like that, and I was more interested in dealing with the intricacies of real life in Moorehawke than I was in supporting the tried and true ‘cult of the gun’ solution to our problems.
It would have been very easy to have had a ‘big bad’ to whom the reader could point their finger and say, ‘ah yes, that’s who we need to beat’. If we get rid of that person everything will be well.’ But I think it’s far more interesting to put my characters into a swarming pot of grey area and see what they make of the situation (and, conversely, what that situation makes of them)
What might a moral, intelligent person do in a situation where they have complete power, and where violence is not only an accepted way of winning an argument, but also the more respected way? As a ‘good’ person, what are your options when protecting those you love in a world where the toughest guy wins? What about your Kingdom? What if your Kingdom is one of those rare places where people have a true chance at equality, at freedom of choice, at education? How far would you go to protect that?
Some of my characters’ problems would be solved by hanging a bad guy, by shooting a bad guy, or by making the bad guy drive his horse off a cliff. The temptation to wipe one’s enemy from the face of the earth, and the potential to do so, is a constant in these books. But, more often then not, the characters in Moorehawke, are going to find themselves sitting at a negotiation table with the very people they wish they could kill – they’re going to be asked to lay aside the cleaner, quicker and more satisfying option of slitting an enemy’s throat, and pick up the messier, more challenging and often agonising tool of diplomacy. It’s not a tool that many are willing or able to use and those that do are often despised as weak and ineffectual; the results of parlay being far slower and less visible than the results of a gun. ( Can you tell I’m from Ireland?)
It was difficult to write, I must confess, pulling together the many many threads of such a diverse cast of characters with such diverse motivations and histories and focusing them on this one, vital premise, ‘how do we manage to survive this brutal world and make it a better place for longer than just one moment.’ It was complex - three books worth of complex - and far more interesting, to me, than solving the problem with a bullet.
Related posts:
- From the turbulent and insubstantial fog. Yesterday Glenda wrote a fascinating piece about how her world building is influenced by the many and varied places she has lived, and the differing physical and social landscapes she has found herself adapting to. It got me thinking about how much of our internal landscape we bring to...
- No MTV moments, please. Hi Glenda, *waves* Hi babel-clashers. World building, huh? I guess I‘m very different to Glenda in this approach – world building is something I admire in other writers, but not something upon which I primarily base a story. Me, I love politics, characters and plot. All my stories start with...
- Subverting the Character Tropes I absolutely agree with what Celine has to say about character in her previous post. As a person who starts the creation process for a book with an idea for a world or some aspect of the magic rather than the protagonists, I suppose there is a danger that the...
April 8th, 2010 on 3:54 pm
I prefer characters who are grey, though I haven’t always. It’s interesting to me to see what a “good” guy will do in a bad situation. Will s/he stay true to his/her morals or compromise them? Grey characters are dynamic. Entirely black or white characters are static and often dull.
I call this the Faramir effect, actually. Faramir is lovely and good and when I was twelve years old and reading Tolkien for the first time, I had a crush on this ideal of virtue. When I got older and wiser (maybe . . . the jury is still out on the wise part), I started to find Boromir more interesting. He’s primarily good, but he struggles with himself. He has weaknesses and demons and he makes very bad choices in the name of very good causes. In my eyes, this makes him more human than his perfectly good brother.
April 8th, 2010 on 6:03 pm
OMG! Boromir - until you mentioned him I completely forgot my girlhood crush on Boromir. Maaaaaannnnn I was smitten with that conflicted hunka manhood!
Coincidentally there’s a bit of a conversation going on over at my FB page about the interpretation of the main characters in Poison Throne. A reader expressed surprise that one of my reviews called my characters ’saccharine’ I must confess I was surprised at that too. Considering the fact that the main characters in Poison Throne beat a guy half to death, then viciously torture him, then ask ‘did you get anything out of him, then cut another character’s throat, then interrogate the ghost of the torture victim, then all abandon each other to their individual fates ’saccharine’ is a bit of a strange choice of word
April 9th, 2010 on 12:50 pm
I love me some gray characters, too. There is nothing so instantly boring to me than the physical representation of dichotomous “truths”; that there is anything more than an act to an act. It tends to make characters, as Terry said, dull and predictable.
While I enjoy the aspects of the moral dichotomy in that it tends to give *weight* to actions - what would have happened if Frodo didn’t take the ring, etc. - but to assume that the weight it lends cannot be achieved by clever storytelling or well-written characters is amateur at best. It also tends to steer stories toward epoch-ending villains - an evil SO EVIL as to be unstoppable by any NORMAL means - that has a strange way of cheapening it, thus removing the narrative weight. It’s hard to imagine anything of import happening at Hogwarts after Voldemort is taken care of, for instance.
I think it’s partly because such polaric displays of good and evil need equally polaric representations of the cost of failure. In a world where nothing exists in the gray, even the results must be black or white.
April 9th, 2010 on 5:58 pm
Well put Adam, it’s also one of the reasons that I tire of the ‘man who has lost everything so takes arms against evil’ cliché. How much more interesting ( but ever so much harder to write) is the protagonist whose lover and child HAVEN’T been murdered by the bad guys, whose relationship ISN’T over within the first five minutes of the story - who must struggle to combat wrongs while also living a life worth living. To me this is very much more interesting than the over-used lone wolf with nothing left to lose.
And yes, I agree, the ‘world will end if we don’t win’ cliché can be far too overblown and often leads to my feeling quite removed from the protagonists and plot. What if the price of failure is the loss of something wonderful/vital which no-one else will notice until it’s too late? Again - harder to write, but potentially more interesting ( have you seen the movie The Citron and The Flame? Brilliant, slow moving exploration of just such a theme. I recommend it!)
This is why I find stories like the wonderful ongoing comic book series ‘The Walking Dead’ fascinating and Neil Gaiiman’s American Gods so great and fresh.
April 9th, 2010 on 7:19 pm
From the description of that movie, it sounds very similar to “Army of Shadows” which is another complex exploration of World War II resistance agents. Flame and Citron is on the netflix instant queue though! Excellent.
April 9th, 2010 on 7:24 pm
*Puts ‘Army of Shadows’ on list of must sees.*
April 10th, 2010 on 11:42 pm
I think I find gray characters as more human and interesting. There are reasons behind what they are doing, and in the end to them those reasons are for the good - even if the deed is bad.
It seems to help me to relate to the characters I am reading better. More three dimensional in a way.
I just got done with The Poison Throne and I am very curious to see where the story goes next. I am just not sure yet who the one is to blame or what they are all planning. I like not being able to fortell a story. Thank you!
April 11th, 2010 on 4:08 am
I’m so glad you liked it enough to want to read more, Melissa, Thanks! I guess because we’ll only ever know what Wyn knows, and what her father or the King are willing to tell her, we’ll always be guessing right along with her. It was hard to write it that way. As the all knowing author, to stay in the BG and not put my big omnipresent foot in it was a trail sometimes LOL! ( you know what I mean, right? I had to be careful not to make my protagonists too knowing or have unfounded ‘flashes of inspiration’ where they suddenly figured something out that no normal human being would.) Like I was saying over at Orbit, it was important to me that this be a legitimate exploration of Wyn’s perspective and that the reader be with her every step of the way sharing her confusion and frustration.
April 11th, 2010 on 10:08 am
I do have to say, from where I am sitting, it seems Wyn’s thoughts and questions are legitimate ones with the information she has given to her. I have to agree with her in the end of the book, why is the machine so dangerous. I am really looking forward to reading on in the chapters to come.
I think every thing Wyn has come up with has been justified with what has been heard or detailed out to her. But, there is still so much to learn about. Really great writing!
April 12th, 2010 on 7:12 am
Thanks so much! After all the painful bloomin hacker problems I’ve been having, you made my day!