Beans
are a magical fruit, as the immature song tells us. Full of protein
and complex carbs, they can be used in anything from a simple
appetizer to a hearty soup—even a delicious brownie. And while
they're easy to grow, none are as cool as Jack's. They're his ticket
to a new life. Without the gimmick of his magic beans, Jack would
still be a down-on-his-luck farmer's son.
Or the
village criminal, who sneaks in through your back door to “borrow a
cup of sugar.” Your call, young writer.
Jack
needs the beans, though, to
make his story work. Most fairy tales can be told without the magic.
Countless revisions of classic favorites attest to that. Jack without
his beans equals a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. If he's going
to sell anyone his ocean-view resort in Nebraska—I mean, his story
about how a nobody broke
into a fabled, wealthy
kingdom—he must dazzle the audience.
If
Jack were to simply say that his family needed the money and he took
up a life of crime to help his ailing mother, it would read more like
the Michael Keaton crime spoof Johnny Dangerously. Funny,
but still wrong. And Jack wants your good opinion, so that's not a
venue that works for him.
A
recent story that mimics Jack's story pretty well is the film 21.
Our Jack, Ben, is asked to “dazzle” a prospective employer in an
interview, so he spins a tale. He is a wanted criminal, who pinned
all his crimes on the man who first dragged him off the
straight-and-narrow. A double life, between his normal life at MIT
and his wild one in Vegas. A beautiful girl out of his league. A
twist at the end, as Ben works to outsmart powerful con men.
And
all the cooler, because it's a true story.
Anti-heroes
have been making the rounds a lot in current fiction. Some writers
think “good guys” are boring. Some writers think there's no such
animal as a genuinely good person. Some writers identify more with
the antagonists. All of these writers must then jump through hoops to
convince the reader to side with their anti-heroic protagonists.
This
is where your spin control comes into play, young writer. You are not
required to make a protagonist all good. Nor must you trick your
reader into loving an anti-hero. But you should be well aware of what
you are doing, and know what tricks are at your disposal.
Human
nature can be deceived by looks, so if you have a man who is rich and
good-looking, your reader will excuse him for a multitude of sins.
Yes, really. The Harry Potter fans who love Draco Malfoy. The girls
who swooned over a certain sparkly vampire. And even the Jews, who
wanted a human king instead of divine governance, who liked Saul for
his great height and mafia-like family connections (I Samuel 9 and
10).
If
wealth and looks seem too cliched a way to sway your readers over to
the side of your anti-hero, you can put Stockholm Syndrome to good
use. This has become a common practice in post-modern story-telling,
actually, so don't fear that this will seem far-fetched for your
readers. It's a fairly simple process:
1.
Capture your reader. Hook the audience on the absolute importance of
finding out what happens next. This can occur almost instantly, or it
may take a long while. Don't rush the process.
2.
Hurt your reader. Whether this is accomplished by harming other
characters or by writing a foreign worldview is up to you, but the
reader needs to be intimidated and hungry for an emotional
connection.
3.
Make your reader vulnerable. A desire for an emotional connection is
a good start, but it's not enough. The reader needs to open up and
share in the hopes that the anti-hero will care. Characters in the
story who have been victimized by this character can share their
fears, pasts, or dreams in order to facilitate this step.
4.
Hurt the reader again. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding, or
perhaps the anti-hero hears the sob story but responds in an
unexpected way. The vulnerability needs to be reinforced by more
damage.
5.
Share a little. The anti-hero isn't all bad, and here the reader
learns about his abusive childhood or the trauma of prison. One piece
of information, painting the anti-hero in a sympathetic light, will
attach the reader to him. Or her, if you happen to be writing an
anti-heroine.
6.
More pain and/or violence. But this time, the characters who have
been victims of the anti-hero are now fighting alongside their
captor. The reader should be swayed enough to want to defeat “the
real villain” rather than escape the captor.
If
this sounds cruel or manipulative to you, GOOD. It should. Harming
and tricking innocent people takes a lot of work and a certain amoral
bent. Modern stories are often developed along these lines, and it
has normalized a lot of dangerous behavior in popular culture and
fiction.
If
you've seen Disney's Frozen,
echoes of this can be found in the film. Anna is the fun little girl
who wants to play with her sister. Who hurts her. Yes, it's
unintentional, but that only increases the audience's sympathy. Anna
grows up cut off from her sister, starved for affection and
attention. Her sister explodes with icy sorcery, stomping on Anna's
fledgling romance and rejecting both family and kingdom. Anna chases
her, only to have her sister hurt her again. Anna is desperate to be
healed and be loved, and her race home reveals unwelcome news: her
sister was right to doubt Anna's suitor. (Anna is unaware of her
sister's imprisonment and fears for the family, though the audience
is kept up to speed.) Freshly sympathetic to her sister, Anna would
rather die defending her than break free of her sister's spell.
That's
a specific, slanted take on the story, I know. It
is, however, a retelling that does not mention by name the anti-hero
of the story: Elsa. Hans is a bad guy, no doubt, but Elsa is the
anti-hero who is spun to be a victim of her own ignorance and just as
hungry for love as her little sister. Much like Jack is only trying
to save his family, or he never would have robbed (or killed) a
giant.
Anti-heroes
have their place in story-telling. Sometimes they are necessary
because nothing else will work for a story. In spinning a tale so
that the anti-hero “gets better,” the author runs the risk of
doing something scary: normalizing evil. Jack makes it okay to steal,
as long as the victim is already bad. Elsa makes it okay to neglect
loved ones, as long as the intent is to protect. The more normal any
evil becomes, the farther an author has to reach to find a new edge
to that envelope he/she is pushing. Violence, abuse, and outright
horror become increasingly gray areas for the reader, the more
excuses the writer provides.
Young
writer, use your anti-heroes with care. How you weave a story is
between you and your conscience, but have a care for what it will
open inside the reader. Some of the thoughts you put in your reader's
head cannot be unthought.
Keep
in mind, Jack isn't all bad. There are sweet and delightful variants
of the story, full of his pluck but without his kleptomaniac
tendencies. But that's a story for another day...
