It's Goodbye to Mitchell

My favourite series of the moment has lost it's major character. Sob. I know a woman of my age shouldn't get so hooked, but when actors of such calibre get together with a script that is full of odd quirky humour in the middle of high drama, what's to stop me? Certainly not the fact that the BBC aimed this series at the 18-34 age group.
I'm talking about Being Human. The final segment of series three played at the weekend, and Mitchell is leaving. In fact, Mitchell is dead. It's Aidan Turner who is leaving to join Peter Jackson in the next Tolkien film.

Being Human

Being Human is back on our BBC Three screens on a Sunday night and I record it and watch it when I’m alone. Otherwise my dh would be scoffing at it all the way through, and ruin it for me. So I just accept that dh doesn’t always appreciate my tv choices.

Being Human is the story of a quartet with problems. A ghost, a vampire and two werewolves. Now if that makes you choke on your cornflakes, read no further. Sometimes the storyline is deeply horrifying, the visuals shocking, but surprisingly for such a storyline, the acting is terrific. And sometimes a real gem sneaks through, as it did when Mitchell advises a young vampire to find good people and live to their expectations, because their trust will keep him true.

There’s humour too, in unexpected places, as when Nina buys black lace underwear for a special tryst with George, only to give up in frustration after a series of interruptions. I tried reading a screenplay adaptation of one of the Being Human series, and couldn’t hack it as the writing was banal. But as a visual, with in-depth characterisation brought about by brilliant acting, it has me hooked. And there is a lesson there for all wannabe writers. Characterisation is key. Without it, a story is nothing but cartoon characters going through the motions.

High Stakes

You have to have something for a hero/ine to aim at. I understand that. Start with the inciting incident, preferably on page one, and go from there. Small problems get worked out and larger difficulties follow.

Some people call these high stakes stories where the hero/ine is absolutely bound to face hardship, danger, and emotional pain before s/he gets to that happy resolution. If the story is not in the romance genre, then the resolution may not be pain free, either.

We’ve all read about common themes in storytelling. For heroes, one event leads to another, and as he nears whatever it is he’s striving for, the difficulties get higher, larger, and hurt more. At the moment I’m trying to decide where my hero goes next and my musings led to thinking about the delicate art of storytelling balance.

The problem for the writer is in keeping the imagination within the bounds of what is possible. For example: Events have to be believable, and the hero must, in some weird way, like David and Goliath, be equipped to deal with the things that confront him. These days it’s not everyone’s good luck to be a whiz with a slingshot, but you take my meaning.

If the winning shot that fells Goliath also costs the hero in some way, that’s excellent from the writer’s point of view, otherwise it all seems too lucky to be credible if he got away with a wry grin, and a shrug of the shoulders. That belongs to the cartoon character. Or maybe Indiana Jones.

No, I take that back. Indie suffers physically and from his fear of snakes in almost every film, and sometimes Dad steals his girl. That's the thing about Indiana…a writer needs to know when enough is enough. Indie doesn’t; he goes on chasing the demon until he himself verges on becoming a cartoon character.

If we once ask ourselves if a man can survive all this pain, then we’re very close to the borderline of believability, where a thumping good storyline will suddenly be taken over by cartoon characters like the feminine creation in the film Salt I talked about a few posts back. And unless you are writing for movieland, then personally, I think cartoonland is a bad place to be.

Yippee! Being Human is on the way back! Next time I'll have to write about how BH gets away with being a high stakes story (hee hee) and avoids the cartoon trap.

Protagonists

One character takes over a story and sends the intended protagonist reeling. Is there a name for this? I don't know, but I suspect it is happening in my latest wip.

My intention was a male protagonist but I find a female keeps taking up the pages in a most demanding way.

She needs to be kept in check. Or I need to bring them together, perhaps, in a more meaningful way.

I'm thinking my male lead looks something like Aidan Turner in the BBC's "Being Human." (I watched the first episode and the last and thoroughly enjoyed them, but chose not to watch the intervening ones.

Strange decision, but there you go. The ghost (female) was a bit of a drag, forever bemoaning her fate. The werewolf was a sweet character deeply troubled by his present predicament - well, changing into a werewolf every full moon could make anyone a tad hysterical. The vampire, our beautiful AT, swore off blood. They all wanted to be human. Now why didn't I watch the middle episodes?

Possibly because there wasn't a great deal of storyline in episode one. The situation was great, but the action didn't quite match the promise of the premise. Something I must watch out for in the new wip. The main character must lead, must be proactive, must have something to do, a goal to strive for from page one. Publishers and agents pass over heroines who simply react to situations forced upon them. So, with that in mind, I must go do some work on my wip...