Wednesday, October 21, 2009
"On Defamiliarization"
I found that "On Defamiliarization" was especially helpful with characterization. Often times I find myself wanting to write about a character who is someone that I myself would like. I'll write about the girl who is beautiful, who is quiet and smart and good, but just can't find her way. I'll write about the bad-boy guy who comes along and rescues her (yes, I enjoy love stories). But after reading Baxter, I realized that nobody really cares about these characters. Okay, so that's not entirely true, people do care, but these types of characters aren't memorable. They're like every other character in every other love story. In order to write something that is memorable, you need to give characters shocking qualities, along with likeable qualities. That way, the contradictory characteristics send you into a turmoil of confusion, making the story one you won't be likely to forget anytime soon. Baxter was not only helpful with characterization but with plot as well. You can do the whole "boy meets girl, boy likes girl" thing, but it's overdone and we all know how it's going to end. Now, throw in controversy that ends in a way we wouldn't want real life to end, and you got yourself a good story. Albeit, a sad story (maybe), but a good one.
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i think it's less that they aren't memorable and more that they aren't human. those tropes are the result of caricaturing actual people to the point that they're no longer recognizable as discrete individuals and seem more like devices whose only purpose is to advance the plot.
ReplyDeleteI think Rob Love has a point, that these qualities aren't realistic. Life is gritty and raw and rough, and so are the people in it. And yet, another way in which these "unmemorable" characters seem uninteresting is in their utter mundanity- they remind me of the simple and boring existence of stock love characters, un-static and unchanging in their traits.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your take on this familiarization process as discussed in the reading. It brings forth a very interesting theory- that the bad guys are more interesting. We all remember Lucifer the cat from Cinderella (if that was your thing as a kid, as it was for me), or Maleficent the Witch from Sleeping Beauty, much more clearly perhaps than we remember the actual Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty title characters. I use this Disney reference because I was a complete child of the 80's and these stock characters remain vivid and solid to me. Talk about defamiliarization?