Audiobooks — a re-appraisal

I haven’t had much experience with audiobooks. When I was a teenager, I read a few favourite Star Trek novels onto stacks of audio tapes so I could listen to them while lying in the dark, instead of having to have a light on to read by. I hated lights.

The first professionally produced audiobooks I tried were years later—combinations of favourite books and performers like John Cleese reading The Screwtape Letters and Douglas Adams reading his own Last Chance to See. These were enjoyable as novelties.

I’ve also enjoyed various spoken-word productions like the original radio series of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the BBC’s audio-only releases of various 1960s Doctor Who episodes for which the video masters are long-since lost.

All of these encounters informed me of a couple of things: audiobooks are slow (very slow), and that audiobooks require almost my full attention.

Still, I have some friends who like this delivery mechanism very much, so when one of them pointed out that Audible were running a free book promotion (thanks, Lee!) I decided to see what audiobooks were like these days. I picked a book from close to the top of my Goodreads ‘to-read’ list, signed up to Audible, and downloaded Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl.

Here’s what I learned: audiobooks are slow (very slow), and audiobooks require almost my full attention.

I’ll review the novel itself over on Goodreads, but here are some thoughts on the audiobook experience.

The first thing I really liked was the narrator’s voice. Jonathan Davis presented the book with great clarity and at a pace that I thought suited the text. I thought his vocal interpretation really brought out the drama of the story, and that he differentiated the characters so effectively that I was never in doubt about who was speaking. I liked his delivery so much that it made me choose to stay with the normal speed of the book, despite the slowness being one of the things I like least about the format. The Audible app on the iPhone  let me increase the speed by up to three times, while adjusting the pitch to avoid any Chipmunk-like effect. I tried various speed settings over the course of a few chapters, but never liked the outcome. While the sped-up performance remained completely intelligible (even on 3× natural speed) I felt that even the lowest speed above natural (1.5×) significantly detracted from my enjoyment of Davis’ wonderful reading and I eventually completed the book at natural speed.

One interesting aspect of the performance was Davis’ use of accent. The Windup Girl is set in Thailand and almost all its characters are from different parts of Asia. When representing these characters, Davis uses a range of Asian-sounding accents, some of them quite strong. I have to admit that this sometimes seemed a lot like yellowfacing to me.

Being set in a part of the world quite unfamiliar to me and being a science-fiction novel, The Windup Girl contains many words and names I hadn’t heard before. Despite Davis’ great clarity, this meant that when looking up a few details of the book online, I discovered that I had occasionally misunderstood things. For example, a key (ha!) technology in the novel is the ‘kink-spring’, which I had heard as ‘king-spring’ throughout. Frequent mention is made of a fictional disease, cibiscosis, which I heard as the real disease, psittacosis.  And some of the character names were impossible for me to parse with any certainty.

One annoying characteristic of this format was the high chance of missing something—that the narration would keep running while I was distracted by something or had simply let my mind wander. Even now, there’s an absolutely key event in the novel which I can’t say if it happened on-stage or off-stage. I certainly have no memory of it happening, only of characters referring back to it. On the other hand, that kind of off-stage action is not a characteristic of the rest of the style of this novel and I strongly suspect that I simply missed it!

But really, the worst part of the audiobook experience for me was the opportunity cost. The only time in my day that I found to listen to the book was during my daily commute, which averages 30 minutes each way, five times a week. Previously, I had used this time to catch up on social media, read short articles online, and to listen to music. I found that I could not read on my phone while listening to the book, and I obviously couldn’t listen to music. The social media and other reading was replaceable at other times of the day, but I don’t have many other opportunities to listen to music, and I started really missing it.

So while I thought The Windup Girl was really well rendered as an audiobook, the experience of listening to it only confirmed for me that this is not a format for me. I will certainly be purchasing the ebook version of the novel at some point, to find out what I missed out on, and I don’t see myself listening to another audiobook anytime soon.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — a response

So, I’ve done it—watched DS9 through for the first time.

I first tried DS9 when the series was new. It was first available in Australia on sell-through VHS tape (even before it had been broadcast on TV). I bought the first two seasons, and watched most of those before I reluctantly abandoned the show. This was really hard for me to do! I had been a devoted fan of Star Trek's original series, as well as The Next Generation, and the movies for many years. I had read dozens of spin-off novels and hundreds of comics. It seemed like high treason to just give up on Star Trek! But I had to face the fact that if the characters hadn't been wearing Starfleet uniforms and talking about familiar technology and locales in the Star Trek universe, there is no way I would have kept watching even that long. So I gave up.

Although I’d heard that people liked the show a whole lot more the further along it got, I’d remained sceptical and never made the time to revisit it and find out for myself.

My decision to finally watch it through came when I inherited some of the DVDs from someone very dear to me, who had loved the show. I just wish I could have had this discussion (and argument!) with them. So, A., this post is for you.

When I abandoned DS9 in the mid-90s, it was for a variety of reasons. Not only did I not warm to most of the main characters: I found most of them actually irritating. I found the storylines—with their emphasis on character development instead of galactic exploration—petty and dull. Having just watched the whole series from start to finish, I stand by those initial assessments almost completely.

Almost.

Because, here are the things I found to like about DS9, in no particular order:

• Garak, played with such palpable relish by Andrew Robinson. I always wanted to know more about this character whenever he appeared.
• Quark and his family. It took a few seasons, but I eventually grew to like the Ferengi characters, maybe when the show stopped playing them exclusively for laughs and took Rom and Nog in some unexpected directions. Leeta too.
• Kai Winn, right up until the silliness that was season 7. I thought this character was beautifully written and acted. She was the fundamentalist religious leader you just love to hate. Moreover, her complete oppositeness to other, more sympathetic, Bajoran religious leaders was a nice depiction of how a change in leadership can so abruptly change the face of a culture. 
• The Klingons in general, and Martok in particular. Yeah, there was nothing new or unexpected here, but they were just so much fun as the gloriously untrammelled id. 
• Tora Ziyal and the storyline around her. I really felt for this character.
• The first appearance of the prophets in ‘The Emissary’. Their puzzled frustration at the non-linearity of Sisko’s memories, even though he lives in linear time has become a powerful image for me. 
• The design of the runabouts.

These things aside—and as I write them down, I realise that what I came to like about the show basically boils down to some of the regular supporting characters—I mostly stand by my initial assessment. In 176 episodes, DS9 rarely told a story that interested me, and I actively disliked most of the main characters.

But as DS9 progressed, I found another powerful reason to dislike the show: despite its trappings, the show's ethical centre seemed a long way from Star Trek. I saw this in Sisko's complicity in manufacturing a casus belli to draw the Romulans into the Dominion war (‘In the Pale Moonlight’) and in his casual gunning down of Jem'Hadar soldiers (‘Rocks and Shoals’). I saw it in the actions of Starfleet's intelligence agency, Section 31 (particularly in its decision to commit genocide against the Founders, again, with Sisko's complicity). DS9 is not Roddenberry's utopian, humanist future.

I also thought that the show wasted a wonderful opportunity in the character of Kira. Apart from the superb first season episode ‘Duet’, I never felt the series explored her coming to terms with not being at war with Cardassia any more. I didn't think that Kira was forced to confront and re-examine her prejudices regularly enough or deeply enough. Captain Kirk makes a far more meaningful journey in this regard in two hours of Star Trek VI than Kira did in seven seasons of DS9.

So, I'm glad that I watched it all the way through, but only for what it did for my Star Trek literacy. I still watch the original series and TNG all the way through once every three years, but do not plan ever to sit through the whole of DS9 again.

A, I would have loved to argue all this with you into the small hours of the morning. And then again another weekend. And another. I am very, very sorry that it took me so long to get here. I hope that one day we will discuss all of this beyond the final frontier.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Plot

This is the third part of a series in which I examine elements of the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show. I disclose and discuss my own personal preferences here, but I believe that the approach is more generally applicable: just substitute your own preferences for mine.

In previous installments, I covered character and setting. This time I focus on plot, another element that I have adopted from Nancy Pearl’s appeal characteristics.[1] By ‘plot’, I mean the events described in the story, as well as the way in which they are assembled.

Events

The events of a story usually form the answer to the question ‘what do these characters do?’ or at least, ‘what do these characters witness?’ if they do not participate in the events described.

I find some areas of human activity—real or imagined—far more interesting than other areas, and I suspect that most other people do too. Let’s call this the subject of the plot. So, to return to the idea of a storyteller offering a story to me, the storyteller who says:

‘These people are searching for a lost grimoire.’

or

‘These people are hunting an enemy warship.’

or

‘These people interpret barcodes on ordinary household items to uncover evidence of a vast conspiracy.’

or

‘These people are building a spacecraft to put a crew on Mars.’

already has my attention. If the offer is:

‘These people solve homicides.’

or

‘These people are setting up a small business.’

or

‘These people are working hard to save their farm.’

or

‘These people are having mid-life crises.’

I’ll need something more to convince me that this is a tale I want to hear.

The degree to which the subject of the plot can profoundly affect my reception of a book was illustrated most vividly to me by Flashman’s Lady. This book is the sixth in a series by George Macdonald Fraser, depicting the various escapades of a Victorian-era cavalryman and anti-hero, Harry Flashman. Most of the books involve ‘Flashy’ participating (and seeking to avoid participating) in the various colonial wars of the era. As much as I adore the series, a lengthy first part of Flashman’s Lady relates to Flashman’s cricketing exploits: a game about which I know very little and care even less. Trudging through this was a truly miserable experience, even populated with characters in whom I was interested, located in a setting in which I was interested, and in the context of a series that I was already five books invested in. Fortunately for me, the novel progresses to Flashy fighting pirates in Borneo and becoming a pet slave to mad queen Ranavalona of Madagascar—and showed me just how large an effect subject matter can have on the appeal of a tale.

The subject matter of a tale is thrown into greater relief by contemplating what’s at stake in the story. Screenwriter Max Adams reduces the premise of any plot-driven film to:

‘(Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who must (objective) or else (dire thing that will happen if protagonist fails).

[...]

Apollo 13 is a drama about three astronauts who must repair their spacecraft or they will suffocate in space before reaching home.

[...]

 Raiders of the Lost Ark is an action/adventure about Indiana Jones, a procurer of lost artifacts who must travel to Egypt and find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis unearth it and use it to take over the world.’[2]

If it happens that I don’t actually care about the thing that will happen if the protagonist fails, I’m unlikely to care whether the protagonist succeeds or not.

Structure

Most narrative does not simply recount events: it claims connections between these events. My favourite insight on narrative structure comes from screenwriter Lew Hunter:

‘In life, things happen one after the other. In structure one thing happens because of the other.’[3]

A story that neglects that sequencing is a very strange tale indeed: the effect is surreal and disorienting. Eschewed deliberately and thoughtfully, an absence or ambiguity of causality between events can produce a masterpiece like 8½. When causality is ignored by a film-maker who shows no evidence of knowing what they’re doing, that same absence or ambiguity produces that hapless handbook on how not to make a movie, The Room.

Most stories relate events in a straightforward linear pattern and deviate from this only in their use of flashbacks, or perhaps a framing narrative. I enjoy complex structures, so any story that goes beyond these fundamentals already offers me something that I might enjoy. For example, I like the unreliable narrators of Rashōmon or The Usual Suspects or Iain Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost. I like the multi-linear storytelling of Amores perros, the reverse storytelling of Irréversible, and the ‘what if?’ storytelling of Casomai. 

Engagement

Quite aside of any intrinsic interest I have in the subject matter of a story and of whether I think it’s told in an interesting way, I might still find a story engaging. I admit that I find it hard to define what characteristics might lead to this engagement, but I certainly know it when I experience it. I know that I’m engaged with a story when it passes the Scheherazade test—I feel that I have to know what happens next. Conversely, if after some time I realise that I have no interest in finding out what happens next in a story, I know I’m disengaged and will probably stop watching or reading at that point.

The Scheherazade effect can be a powerful one. I found the characters of The Da Vinci Code unlikeable and dull, the setting uninspiring, and the subject matter tired and ill-considered. Yet, for some reason that eludes me, I found it a compelling page-turner of a novel and I just had to finish it—I really needed to know what happened next. Having-to-know is also the factor that has me hooked on True Blood. Not caring about what happens next is ultimately why I abandoned such highly acclaimed series as The Wire and Breaking Bad.

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The three characteristics that I’ve discussed so far—the characters, the setting, and the plot of a story—are all intrinsic to the world of the story itself (they are diegetic). Next week, I’ll begin to discuss three characteristics extrinsic to that world (extra-diegetic), the first of which will be craft. Before that, I might also write up a summary as an intermission.

Why I left Miso for IMDb

When I came to social media in 2010, I quickly found Goodreads as a convenient way of tracking and sharing my reading habits, and was a little surprised that nothing quite as good existed for TV and movies. I knew and had used IMDb, but back then, its coverage of TV episodes seemed to me quite lacking, as did its social functions. Eventually, I settled on Miso as the closest fit for me.

I was pretty happy with Miso, and apathy would have prevented me from looking further afield until in late 2012 they merged their database with theTVDB.com. In the process, they trashed the episode histories of a couple of shows that I follow.

Since then, I’ve reappraised IMDb and think that it’s a better fit for me now. It’s sad to move on and drop the history that I’ve built up on Miso (1160 check ins!) and also to lose a couple of things that IMDb doesn’t have.

I hope that one day something even better comes along.

Here’s the list of features that I would want from such a site; with Goodreads, Miso, and IMDb for comparison:

	Goodreads	Miso	IMDb
Movies	✘	✔	✔
TV episodes	✘	✔	✔
Link separate titles by series	✔	✘	✘
Can rate	✔	✔	✔
Can review	✔	✔	✔
Lists	✔	✘	✔
Facebook integration	✔	✔	✔
Twitter integration	✔	✔	✔
iOS app	✔	✔	✔
Machine recommendations	✔	✘	✔
Friend recommendations	✔	✘	✘
See friends’ updates	✔	✔	✘

Of all these, making and maintaining lists is probably the feature I missed most on Miso, and I’d been keeping a list of what to watch next as a Google document instead. Of the things that IMDb currently lacks, I’d most want to see friends’ updates and be able to give recommendations to and take recommendations from them.

Seenth.at is an effort to build a movie check-in website with Goodreads-like functionality. It’s still under development and looks very promising, but its (deliberate) lack of support for TV shows makes it a non-starter for me, unfortunately.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Setting

Carrying on from last week, where I considered the effect of characters on whether I might find a book, movie, or TV show appealing, this time, I’ll talk about setting:

Setting

The role of setting is another appeal characteristic that I take directly from Nancy Pearl’s schema. It is a characteristic of a story that is—in the vast majority of cases—immediately obvious and which requires little explanation or unpacking. Simply, setting is where in space and when in time the events of the story occur.

I know that I have strong biases towards certain settings and against others, and I believe that most other people do too. It would surprise me to discover somebody who would be universally embracing of any and every setting for a tale, but perhaps this is just me over-generalising my own experience.

For a start, I admit that I have a strong positive bias for imaginary worlds, so, for example, a storyteller who says:

‘Let me tell you a story set on an Earth starship in the 27th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in the Elven kingdom, in the waning years of the Age of Arlûthtan.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in contemporary New Orleans in an alternate universe where the Confederacy had been successful in its bid to secede from the United States.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in a separate physical dimension—at a time unknowable and irrelevant—inhabited only by sapient flashes of light who communicate by casting three-dimensional shadows at each other’

already has my attention in a way that a storyteller who offers:

‘Let me tell you a story set in the Seattle of today.’

does not yet. This latter storyteller is going to have to find a more compelling hook to engage my interest, when I'm already listening attentively to the others.

For me, the appeal in an imagined world is often the degree of ingenuity and detail that has gone into the world-building. I find tremendous pleasure and delight in this aspect of speculative fiction, and stories told in the real world, past or present have nothing to offer me in direct competition.

Secondly, I admit that I find some real-world historical settings prima facie more appealing than others (and more appealing than contemporary settings). So again, for example, if the offer is:

‘Let me tell you a story set in Thebes during the Middle Kingdom.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in Jerusalem in the 11th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in London in the 16th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set on a French frigate in the 18th century.’

I’m already more interested than in an offer of a tale set just about anywhere in the world today.

For me, the appeal of a historical setting is in its attention to detail and as a springboard for further exploration and learning. I value the novel or film that can transport me to a bygone time and place in which I have an interest, most especially if I come away knowing more than I did when I started. History lessons in fictional form are part of the great appeal of George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman novels for me; I love fact-checking these as I read, and frequently learning that the full truth of an event or historical figure is even stranger than fiction.

Lastly, I’ll freely admit that familiarity breeds my contempt. This was driven home to me many years ago while watching and enjoying a caper movie from Argentina, Nueve Reinas (‘Nine Queens’). At some point in the course of the film, I thought to myself, 

I’m sure if this exact same story were told in an English-language American film set in New York instead of a Spanish-language Argentine film set in Buenos Aires, I’d have lost interest by now. 

I could attribute some part of that reaction to other aesthetic preferences that I know I have (for example, a far greater reliance on non-diegetic music in most American film compared to films from most other places in the world). But mostly, I admit that the preference is rooted in the opportunity to experience something unfamiliar or even completely new.  

Just as with historical settings, when it comes to contemporary real-world settings, I find that I really enjoy learning a little about a place about which I knew little previously; and if this learning happens via a film or TV show, I like to see foreign sights and hear languages that are not part of my everyday experience. Even a setting as basically unappealing to me as (near-)contemporary New York can become interesting to me if viewed through the lens of a culture that is not my own, for example, in the novels of Chaim Potok.

Taken all together, I realise that my preference is essentially for stories set in worlds (real or imagined) as far from my own as possible. I’m happy to accept labels of escapism or even exoticism to describe this real preference that I know I have. 

Setting as a filter

One of the possible ways that setting interacts with narrative is to filter the types of stories and types of characters that are likely to be presented. When I take up that offer to read or watch that tale set on an 18th-century frigate, I already come primed with a set of expectations. I feel confident that as long as everything else is handled at least reasonably competently, I’m probably going to enjoy this story. An offer of a tale told in contemporary Glasgow isn’t ripe with the same promise for me; I am less certain of what I am getting myself into.

Of course, this also leaves me vulnerable to bait-and-switch, something I find particularly common in science fiction. It’s all too easy to find purportedly science-fiction tales that are nothing but mindless action stories with ray guns in place of Uzis and hover sleds in place of getaway cars. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek effort in 2009 stands out to me as a particularly atrocious example of this.

Setting not-as-a-filter

On the other hand, some tales translate easily between settings. This premise:

The protagonist has to make a decision whether to honour a promise made to a powerful superior and thereby injure a member of their own family; or protect their family member, defy their superior, and face the consequences.

translates equally easily to Imperial Rome, Mediæval England, Tokugawa Japan, Prohibition-era Chicago, Nazi-occupied Europe, folks dealing drugs in the western suburbs of contemporary Sydney, and to any number of completely imagined worlds—anywhere with a feudal-like power structure. 

A litmus test to gauge how important the setting of a particular tale is to me might be to imagine (or see!) that tale translated to another setting. All else being equal, I’d be much more interested in seeing the scenario above played out in any of  the pre-20th century settings I named, or in an imagined world.

Similarly, I have no trouble with The Tempest reincarnated as Forbidden Planet. So it seems that I’m not especially protective of the Elizabethan setting of my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays, at least when one setting I like is replaced with another setting that I like.

However, to see Sherlock Holmes lifted from his home in the late 1800s London (a setting I like very much) and deposited in early 21st century London (a setting that doesn’t appeal to me) in Sherlock left me cold. A large part of the charm had evaporated from the story for me, and while the show was unquestionably well made, I turned off ‘A Study in Pink’ half-way through, profoundly disappointed.

Setting as everything

Finally, setting is sometimes absolutely intrinsic to the tale in a way that makes relocating it impossible. Flatland springs immediately to mind; if the setting doesn’t intrigue you, there’s really nothing else here. The story stands and falls on that alone. But it’s far more common that a personally appealing setting will only be one ingredient in anyone’s enjoyment of a story.


What settings bias you for or against a book, film, or TV series?

Next week, I’ll discuss the appeal of plot.

Is your small business idea viable?

There are lots of reasons why folks want to go into small business, so there are just as many ways of answering whether an idea is worthwhile or not.

This post examines just one criterion:

How much do you need to earn from your business for it to compare favourably with paid employment? (ie, working for "The Man").

Well, the median earnings for full-time workers in Australia in 2011 was $62,570 per year, including wages, superannuation, and other benefits.[1]

A salaried, full-time worker typically works a 5-day week, with four weeks' paid leave a year, plus around 10 days' worth of public holidays and up to around 10 days' worth of sick leave available. Totalled up, that means that our typical worker earns their $62,570 in 220 days of work.

Put simply, if your small business isn't returning you more than $285 per day on average, or if you're having to work more than an average of four days per week to earn that, then chances are you'd be better off working for someone else: most people with a full-time job are making more than you are (or are working less to make that same money).

Furthermore, with the national minimum wage at $31,530 per year[2], if your business isn't paying you $145 per day, you're not even making minimum wage.

I am not a financial adviser and this is not financial advice.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Characters

Whether or not I liked a book, a movie, or a TV show, I like to try to understand why I felt that way about it. I prefer to be able to explain my reaction (to myself, or to others) in a way more substantial than simply ‘I love that book!’ or ‘I can’t stand that show’.

In general, I’m also attracted to systems, and in thinking about the appeal of stories told in various media, I’ve become quite attached to the four ‘appeal characteristics’ defined by librarian Nancy Pearl: Setting, Story, Characters, and Language.[1] Pearl developed her criteria for use with mainstream fiction books (specifically, to help librarians quickly gauge what a patron liked about a particular book so that they could be more effective at recommending others). When thinking also about genre fiction and about stories told in media other than books, I find it useful to loosen her definitions around these characteristics somewhat, and to add another two characteristics to the mix.

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to share a little about each of the six characteristics I use when reflecting on how I received a story.

Two things that I don’t set out to do here:

• I’m careful to try to distinguish this personal reaction from any assessment of whether the story was well told (‘good’) or not. I find that a book being well written or a show or movie being well made is a pretty poor predictor of whether I will like it.
  
  I like lots of stuff that is, on any objective assessment, poorly made; and conversely, a lot of stuff that’s won wide approbation doesn’t appeal to me at all. In other words, I find the Metacritic or IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes score has little to no correlation with whether I’ll enjoy watching something.
  
  When talking to people about a book, TV show, or movie, I try only ever to say something is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ if I genuinely think it was well done or not. When discussing my personal reactions, I try to adhere to ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn't like it’.
• I don’t usually think in terms of dislike or hate: I usually find it more useful to think in terms of an absence of appeal. I try to reserve ‘dislike’ or ‘hate’ for things that I actually find distasteful, annoying, or offensive in some way. Happily, I find that such things are few and far between. It’s much more frequent that I just don’t find anything to enjoy in a particular book, movie, or TV show.

Finally, I’m very conscious of the unspoken pact between storyteller and audience; I’ll keep coming back to the question of what kind of story am I being told, and what therefore might I expect from such a story.

This week, characters.

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Characters

As a reader or viewer, characters might appeal to me in one of two ways: because of what they are or because of who they are.

What

A question of ‘what’ can be examined by reference to their role in the world of the story and by imagining the author or filmmaker saying:

‘Let me tell you a story about a...’

So, to use just a few random examples, if that sentence is:

‘Let me tell you a story about a sorcerer.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a sea captain.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a rocket scientist.’

chances are I’m already listening for more. Conversely, if the pitch is:

‘Let me tell you a story about a cop.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a doctor.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a politician.’

chances are I’m already wondering what the teller might bring to the story that would possibly make me want to listen to the tale to follow.

Steinbeck once put it:

[French literary theorist] ‘Boileau […] insisted that only gods, kings and heroes are worth writing about. I firmly believe that. The detailed accounts of the lives of clerks don’t interest me much unless, of course, the clerk breaks into heroism.’[2]

I tend to agree.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to think that I’m going to dismiss a story just because the central characters don't belong to some pre-determined set of Acceptable Professions for Protagonists. All I’m doing here is acknowledging a set of preferences that I know I have. This is not Procrustes’ bed.

Who

This second way of examining characters is a little more nebulous. It asks whether this imaginary person—whatever their role in the world of the story—is, subjectively to me, interesting as a person. Perhaps a very crude litmus test here would be a variation of that familiar hypothetical question that asks us who, out of the whole world and all of history, we would invite to dinner if we had a chance. Similarly, I might wonder whether the character is someone with whom I’d like to share a meal.

For examples, I can look to books I’ve enjoyed in the last few years that have contemporary settings (to avoid any degree to which setting—to discuss another week—might influence how interesting I find these fictional people).

So, the central characters in Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle are a male porn star and a woman suffering a psychosis.  Davidson portrayed them with such sympathy and tenderness that I felt that I knew and loved both of them by the end of the book. And although not one of the main characters in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex cast a fireball, commanded a patrol boat, or launched a rocket, each of them would be more than welcome at my table too.

Another litmus test: do I actually care about the fate of this character? Have I got anything invested in this imaginary person at all? The most memorable counter-example for me: when a main character is ambushed, shot, and—I thought—killed close to the end of season 1 of The Wire, it had zero emotional impact for me at all. This left me fairly certain that I had nothing invested in that character.  The death of Adric in season 19 of Doctor Who moved me far more, and that was a character I despised.

Considering the characteristics of a breakout novel, Donald Maass suggests:

‘A work of fiction grips our imaginations because we care, both about the characters in the tale and about ourselves. To put it another way, we are concerned about the outcome of the story because what is happening to the characters could happen to us.’[3]

This seems entirely reasonable to me, but the converse is also true: if I don't care about the characters, I’m less likely to be gripped by the tale. Maass’ focus is a little different (he’s writing about the plausibility of the basic premise of the story) but he continues:

‘Looked at that way, the requirement that a premise be plausible is not so strange. If it could not really happen, then why should we bother with it?’[3]

Or, presumably, if I never actually cared about any of these fictional people anyway.

Credibility

Which brings me to the credibility of characters. I've come to understand that some folks highly value psychological credibility in fictional characters: they want these characters to behave, react, and talk as real people behave, react, and talk. They want characters to have motivations that seem like plausible reasons for them to do things they do in the course of the story. I have few such expectations. To quote Steinbeck again (talking about his second novel, To a God Unknown):

‘Its characters are not “home folks.” They make no more attempt at being human than the people in the Iliad.’[2]

Rather, I look for psychological credibility in characters that is commensurate with the kind of tale being told. The characters in Middlesex are ‘home folks’, and I respect and value the high degree of plausibility in Eugenides’ portrayal of them. However, if I’m reading epic fantasy or most kinds of sci-fi, I have no such expectations and probably even prefer characters who are larger-than-life: here I do want ‘gods, kings, and heroes’.

I think much of my dissatisfaction with some recent sci-fi TV franchises is due to a growing trend to try and humanise and naturalise their characters.  The companions of the revamped Doctor Who series are certainly more well rounded than any of their counterparts on the classic series, and to me, the show is all the weaker for it. When a character becomes a companion travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor, I really could not care less about the home life of the family that they leave behind.

I suppose that for me, credibility intersects with the ‘what’ and ‘who’ in that if I’m interested in a character by virtue of what they are, I don’t need or perhaps even want psychological credibility. But for me to care about who that character is, they probably need to have that credibility as a prerequisite.

Transformation

Finally, a note on growth and transformation, the  expectation that the events of a story should change the characters who participate in them. Writing in 1973, David Gerrold saw this as an essential difference between plays and movies on the one hand, and TV series on the other:

‘In drama other than series television—say, a play or a movie—the event that is being told is the most important event in the hero’s life. It is the whole reason for the existence of a story about this person...

What the hero learns from the event is what makes it the most important event in his life...

The story is about the lesson that this person has to learn—and these are the events that will teach it to him...

[...]

In a series the form has to be turned upside down—the events depicted must not be the most important events in the hero’s life. Otherwise, there’s no point in going on with the series. Everything after that would be anticlimactic.’[4]

Since the 1990s, the rise of TV shows with season-long and series-long story arcs has certainly changed this landscape. Characters on TV now do grow and develop as their counterparts in plays, movies, and novels have done.

I’m certainly open to growth and transformation in characters in all these media, but neither do I insist on it. I’m aware, though, that this kind of character development is very important to some people, and for example can lead to a strong preference for serial TV over episodic (or as Gerrold called it, ‘semi-anthology’ TV).

Again, I think it comes down to the type of tale being told.


Next time, I’ll discuss setting.