Author has written 5 stories for StarTrek: The Original Series, Battlestar Galactica, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and Dungeons and Dragons. Because satisfaction comes from having your expectations met, I wanted to let folks know what to expect from me. It has come to my attention that I'm different - while most folks watch a movie or read a book one way, I do it another. I'm the opposite. For me the story is about the situation, events, setting, challenges, plot etc and the characters are purely incidental - they're there to give us a chance to explore the setting & to move the plot along. So, for illustration of the idea, let's take the example of a story that everyone knows, or knows of: Star Wars episode IV. I guess my outlook on characters comes from over 35 years of playing roleplaying games, and being gamemaster for them. When designing a new adventure or campaign in an RPG, you come up with all kinds of details on the situation, events, setting, challenges, plot etc, and absolutely nothing on the characters. That's because the players will provide the characters and may choose to run any kind of characters - you could have a dwarf warrior, and elf wizard and a halfling thief. Or you could have something totally different - say a group of nothing but human monks all from the same monastery. Or a half-orc paladin teamed with a drow cleric, both trying to leave dark things behind them and be good guys. Or just about anything. For one great example of this, do a web search for "Darths and Droids" - it's a comic done only with screenshots from the Star Wars movies, but using very different character personalities to tell the story differently. Though it isn't a perfect example of my point, since it also sets out to tell a different story. So: most people want to know what the characters look like, their background, likes/dislikes, quirks etc. If you're a True Believer in 'the One True Way of Doing Things', Please don't try to convert me to it - I've heard it all before about why characters are really everything & how we need to be able to identify with them and so on. I think I come up with interesting stories, which are rigorously self-consistent. But you're unlikely to learn about anybody's favorite lunch. Also, I like for the good guys to win - I challenge them but don't beat them up too much. See my other stories at https://www.fictionpress.info/~calculonius |