Spock
This is for all my Trekkie buddies. I love you, but I just don't understand you. :-)
Spock was the logical one--his mother was a human, and dear old daddy was a Vulcan. I am not going to say anything more, because surely I will them mess up on Spock's life history, thereby uncurring the wrath of Trekkies.
But most of us . . . we're not Spock. There are some things we do as humans that simply make NO SENSE. Case in point, I am planning on visiting Oldest Daughter by train. I like trains. I like them less than cars, a lot less than walking, but more than planes and WAY more than buses. I am utterly phobic about buses. Cannot GET ON a bus (not kidding). I SEE a bus and break out in a cold sweat. I feel trapped and claustrophobic on buses.
Oldest daughter asks why do I hate buses but not hate trains. Well, for one, on trains, you can get up and walk around. They have bathrooms. They have club cars. "So then why do planes bug you so much? You can get up and walk around." OBVIOUSLY, it's because planes crash. Not often, but that doesn't matter. I used to have to fly heavily medicated--I mean, enough tranquilizers to put down a lame racehorse. But no more--thanks to deep breathing, prayer, and forcing myself to fly sometimes. Still . . . not LOVING the plane as a transportation vehicle. Now . . . none of the statistics about ANY of these elements makes any sense of my phobias. In fact, I KNOW (before anyone starts trotting out stats), that cars crash. Often. Doesn't matter. I am illogical.
I think my mailman is a serial killer. When he arrives at my mailbox, my mother, when she visits, is amused at how I wait until he is three houses up before I retrieve my mail. Do I have a REASON for thinking he is a serial killer? The first few times I was out at my mailbox when he arrived, he talked way too much to me. He creeps me out. Reason enough. Illogical? Indeed, Captain Kirk. I think my mailman reads my mail--where it's from, who's writing to me.
Clowns. Look, I won't even go into how dangerous they are. I dont' have to tell you WHY. I don't.
So bringing it back to the writing . . . I think when searching for ways to make characters real and interesting, it's important to not be too logical. Real people aren't built logical. Spock is. But flesh and blood people are full of contradictions, and things that make zero sense, but somehow make sense in that person's worldview.
One of my favorite D.A. series, the Butch Karp series, has the D.A. build a powerhouse team. Except that he hires his lawyers based on what position they can play for his softball team. Logical to Karp. Illogical to Spock.
So . . . Trekkies . . . how Spockian are you? What about your characters?
31 comments:
As logical as I need to be but not as logical as I think I am.
As for characters, they tend to be problem-solvers, so they're pretty rational, although they have some pretty irrational moments.
mark:
I know I am utterly illogical, so . . . it is what it is. :-)
As for my characters--I tend to give them the same quality--they may be very competent at what they do, but they will all throw caution into the wind for reasons only they understand (and I hope, by proxy, readers do, too).
E
And logical to one person is illogical to another.
Same with characters. One sees herself as perfectly reasonable, but perhaps the reader and the secondary characters do not. Raising questions of logic without asking them gets a reader (and a writer) thinking.
My characters are logical enough to get the job done. Anything outside of that, I can't make promises. They're real people to me, so they always do things that don't make sense. Whether or not it bites them in the butt remains to be seen. Hmmmmm. That sounds like how I live my life. ;-)
And I'm with you on the clowns. Don't like 'em and don't want 'em anywhere near me.
Erica, once again, you've verified that I should always stand behind the characters I've created. I've been chided over some of them - the masses saying things like, "I don't buy that he'd act that way," or, better yet, "I don't buy that that HORSE would act like that..." I still scratch my head over that one.
If the way my characters act makes sense to my story, that's all that matters. I do what they tell me and not what everyone who isn't in my story,does, because to err IS human, or in some cases, horsely.
Don't you wish you could just beam on over to your daughter's school?
Logic works to a point; but, as we saw in many of the Star Trek episodes, human intuition and creativity often save the day.
And logic itself isn't exactly static. It sometimes evolves with knowledge and understanding.
amy:
I think the trick is having illogical moments without Too Stupid To Live moments.
E
marcia:
Clowns FREAK ME OUT!
E
kath:
I think if the evidence is there, then you can get away with a lot. I.e., when I wrote Double Down, I wrote about a gambling addict (for MIRA, writing as Tess Hudson). Did she always make wise choices? Not a chance. But she was an addict. Therein was all the logic--or lack of--that I needed for the story.
E
Jude:
Wow! Deep today. Yes!!!!
E
Jude:
P.S. I SO wish I could be beamed there!!!
E
E wrote: Spock was the logical one--his mother was a human, and dear old daddy was a Vulcan.
Honey, I hate to break it to you, but if you know this little tidbit about Spock, you're a Trekkie. ;-)
karm:
LOL!
I looked it up on Wikipedia.
I had cousins who were/are major Trekkies though, so I do have the genetic mutation.
E
Erica, my characters are a mixed bag of nuts, and I love it. I just sit back, and let them Be.
As far as travel goes, I'm comfortable flying for the most part, sometimes not so much especially right after 9/11. Wierd how that works. Buses would bug me cause of that scary newpaper story about the killing on route. That really freaked me out. I'd rather go it alone via jeep, or fly I guess.
Don't like to fly. Valium is my friend!
Characters with flaws are easier to relate to and thus more interesting.
ladonna:
I don't like being confined. So anything but walking or my own car, I am not too fond of. I don't even like being in a car if I am not at the wheel. CONTROL issues. LOL! As usual, paging Dr. Freud.
E
hi anti-wife:
Next week I have to fly with Demon Baby. Valium would be truly the wise course of action, but unfortunately, I need to be alert enough to deal with him.
Heaven help me.
E
Since Spock isn't here to speak for himself, I'll have to stand in: the rules of logic are NOT flexible and DO NOT evolve. Philosophers and mathematicians may disagree about a point or two (the "axiom of choice," for example), but the subject is as solidly built and universally accepted as a subject can possibly get. The tenets laid down by Aristotle stand today exactly as he laid them down.
I think everyone's a serial killer. You could be right about your mailman, be careful.
I think the whole bus, plane, car, train issue goes down to control. In a plane you give up complete control. Bus's are second (stand behind the line please) Trains give us more freedom and of course in the car we have more control over the situation than anything else.
Face it; you're a control freak! lol (But so am I)
Clowns? Who would every think that a face that looks like a bloody skull is funny? Sick people, thats who! And serial killers of course.
I like to give my characters difficult family members. I think how they react to their family says a lot.
Stephen:
Do you have pointy ears?
And I do not need logic to know that clowns are deadly.
E
aimless:
I give my characters horrendously difficult yet lovable families. Kind of like cuddly pit bulls.
I know from whence I write.
:-)
E
Premise 1. All former math majors are buttholes.
Premise 2. Stephen is a former a math major.
Logical conclusion: Well...
;)
I probably should have said our acceptance (or rejection) of certain premises sometimes evolves with knowledge and understanding, not the logic itself. I stand corrected. Butthole.
All former math majors are buttholes.
I've been working to fix that. I fell off the wagon today.
Umm . . . guys . . . no name-calling on a zen-blog, okay?
E
Umm . . . guys . . . no name-calling on a zen-blog, okay?
Hey, you were the one who played the pointy ear card.
;)
Hope everyone realizes I'm just teasing.
Jude:
Men take name calling to a different level than women, I think. You pointy-eared bastard, you.
;-)
E
I have an aunt who takes the train cross-country all the time because she WILL NOT FLY. The few times I've taken one I was surprised at how nice they are.
The writing book I'm reading just touched on needing contradiction within a character for it to be interesting and hearing your take on that really drives that point home.
And, I love Butch Karp. :)
melanie:
A little contradiction is good for the soul. ;-)
E
I just realized something important about my character's motivations. I am an INTJ which means I'm part of a small percentage of the population and most people do not think the way I do. So when someone tells me they don't understand my character's motivation, I need to take another look and see if it's my personal leaps of thought behind the confusion.
I love what a friend said the other day. "There's no explaining crazy." But we do want explanations. We want it all to fit in nice, neat little packages. We want it to always make sense (at least I do). And it doesn't.
Hi Sarah:
Absolutely. My friends know how worked up I can get over some things I am passionate about. From the outside it may not make sense, but to ME, it's like life or death (even though intellectually I know it's not so). I know I was labeled a big-time FEELER on a personality profile. But I have some oddities of logic and math in my profile too. Nonetheless, feelings rule. And it can be very easy for me to forget that others don't necessairly think the way I do.
E
Fascinating...
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