Arrow, Heir to the Demon, part two: Rewriting characters
One more Arrow post, this time on a completely different subject: character development and the writing process.
When last I chatted about Laurel Lance on this blog I noted with excitement that Arrow was doing something unusual for genre shows: it was changing its main romantic pairing. In doing so, they also changed the story of Laurel Lance, aka the Black Canary - bringing in a brand new Black Canary, her sister. Some of this was thanks to fan reaction, some probably thanks to the realization that the relationship between Laurel and Oliver was just not working on screen for most viewers for any number of reasons, and some of it, I am beginning to think, was there as a possibility from the very first episode - before Felicity Smoak ever made an appearance.
Anyway. This did leave the showrunners with a problem: what do you do with an already unpopular character who is no longer the main love interest or the main action girl?
The writers promised to address this issue after the main Christmas episode, with a five episode Laurel Lance arc. The assumption made by many viewers was that this would be Arrow's attempt to establish Laurel as a more sympathetic, likeable character.
Let me pull out a couple scenes to discuss this, because I find the writing fascinating.
In the second episode of this arc, Laurel decides to contact Arrow to help her investigate Sebastian Blood, one of this season's villains. She uses her father's Secret Arrow Burner Phone (it's like the Batsignal except not pointing at clouds) and says help, help, help. This is interesting, since the last time Laurel saw Arrow (she doesn't know he's Oliver, because Contrived Reasons), Laurel tried to have Arrow arrested by a full SWAT team.
They meet. It goes like this:
Laurel: You're late.
Arrow: --
No, wait, I'm going to stop there.
While rewriting a recent story, I realized that I wanted to make a certain character unsympathetic to other characters in the story from the get-go. I went back, and changed an elaborate greeting to a "You're late."
In a story, "You're late" sets up immediate consequences and conflict. It suggests that one character has screwed up and the other is willing to call out the screw-ups. It suggests that for a moment, at least, the two characters are at odds, in contrast to the, "Oh, crap, we're late," suggesting that the lateness is something that the characters will face together.
And if not immediately followed up by a "What happened?" or "Is everything ok?" it can make the speaker come across as demanding, judgemental, unreasonable, or all of the above or worse. It can make the speaker seem to take others for granted, or to assume that everyone puts the speaker's schedule above everything else.
Now, imagine this scene with just a few changes in dialogue:
Laurel: Are you all right? You're late. [Shows that Laurel can be concerned about others, and not just her schedule.]
Laurel: I wasn't sure if you were actually coming. [Establishes that yes, she is aware that she and Arrow are not on the best of terms at the moment after she tried to have him arrested, and she is not taking him for granted.]
Later on in the episode, Sebastian Blood gets away in part because of Laurel's drug addiction - her suspicions were right, but he's able to deflect said suspicions. Also, Laurel gets kidnapped again which is a kinda calm thing by now because it happens so often by now and is not what I'm talking about here anyway.
In the next episode, Laurel verbally attacks her father, Quentin, after he tries to sneak her into an AA meeting. She's got a point. Dude didn't handle it well. And then, she follows up that point by attacking her father and everyone else in the AA meeting, saying that none of them have gone through anything as bad as she has. Which, ok, sure, she's had a really bad time of it in the past year, what with losing a friend and constantly getting kidnapped and now losing her job, plus she's an addict and they tend to be annoyingly self-centered (with all due apologies to the non-self-centered addicts out there) but -
She's saying this to the one character on the show that she knows has gone through hell. (One of the annoying notes of the show is that a full season and a half in, Laurel still doesn't know what Oliver and Sara have gone through. Moving on.) She knows that Quentin lost a daughter, lost a marriage, became an alcoholic, got demoted and just had his partner die in the past five weeks. It was vicious, it was cruel, and it was followed up just a few scenes later by Laurel verbally attacking first Thea and then fan favorite Felicity.
Writing process again: how do you make a character hateful or at best morally grey? You have them verbally or otherwise attack an innocent character, or a well liked character. Five books and three seasons of TV in Jaime Lannister still hasn't worked off the "Yeah, I throw little kids out of windows." The same applies here.
(I'll just note from my own experience that if you write a first person narrative about someone attacking innocents people will ask why on earth you want to write about horrible people. So.)
Last night's episode, Laurel went on an amazingly self-centered rage blitz screaming at Sara for wrecking her entire life and family and finishing it up by throwing glass and alcohol at her. This after Sara had killed herself to save her family (it's a very complicated show) including Laurel. But this also after Sara had, as Laurel pointed out, made an incredibly stupid decision that brought major grief to the family and helped break up her parents' marriage and then didn't bother to make a phone call and had assassins show up like yay Sara.
However, it was framed like this:
Sara and Laurel's mother: Sara! YOU'RE ALIVE! ALL IS FORGIVEN!
Laurel: THROWS ALCOHOL.
Fandom: Way to be thrilled to see your sister's alive, Laurel.
If I had to guess, given the other ways the writers could have written these scenes, I'd guess that sometime last summer, the writers sat down and said, ok, they hate Laurel? Fine.
We're going to make her evil by the end of the season.
I say this because so many of their writing choices have been the ones you use to make a character unsympathetic and hated and despised.
And then, if you are George RR Martin, you take that despised character and make viewers/readers understand, a few books or seasons on.
I don't know if the actress or the writers are up to doing the same. I really don't. The writers have shown that they are brilliant at manipulating emotion - take a look at Twitter and any of the fanboards to see the reactions to the last 30 seconds of the episode. They got people upset. They got people talking. They got people intrigued.
But can they turn Laurel into Jaime Lannister? This is going to be trickier, because, really, Laurel is more the Theon of this show: the character who thinks she's more put upon and yet more deserving than anyone else, who tried to do the right thing (in his own little head) and got screwed for it.
This assumes, of course, that they are even trying that route. But evil, I think, is coming.
But this does lead to a serious problem I had with the last thirty seconds of the episode, in which Oliver and Sara hooked up.
Viewers exploded, pro and con. But one thing seemed universal: "This," said almost everyone, "will sink the Oliver and Laurel ship." (Full disclosure: I had the same feeling.) And quite possibly any hope for Sara and Oliver: your sister shows you how much your betrayal hurt, and you go and do it again? Great, Sara.
And then I thought...
Wait a minute. Why did Sara do this again?
And my heart sank. Because, well, she did this to sink the Oliver and Laurel ship.
In other words, this was not just a hook-up meant to keep Oliver and Felicity apart (a problem right there) but a hook-up meant to provide another character with motivation.
And that...that I have a problem with. Mostly because the last four episodes have featured storylines and characters getting changed to allow Laurel to change into a new character -- instead of just allowing Laurel to grow.
She had a character arc. Not necessarily a great one; not necessarily a likeable one. But she had one; she had reasons to turn evil without this.
But it perhaps says something that to allow Laurel to be an action hero a few episodes back (when she and Arrow broke into the city records) and get her chance to swing around with Oliver on a rope, the writers could only do so by turning Laurel and other characters into idiots. It says something that plots have to be written to accommodate her and around her; that other relationships have to be shifted so that Laurel Can Grow.
I hope, if I'm right, and Laurel does turn evil, that the writers do better than this.
And now to head back to my own writing. With some tricks up my sleeve.
When last I chatted about Laurel Lance on this blog I noted with excitement that Arrow was doing something unusual for genre shows: it was changing its main romantic pairing. In doing so, they also changed the story of Laurel Lance, aka the Black Canary - bringing in a brand new Black Canary, her sister. Some of this was thanks to fan reaction, some probably thanks to the realization that the relationship between Laurel and Oliver was just not working on screen for most viewers for any number of reasons, and some of it, I am beginning to think, was there as a possibility from the very first episode - before Felicity Smoak ever made an appearance.
Anyway. This did leave the showrunners with a problem: what do you do with an already unpopular character who is no longer the main love interest or the main action girl?
The writers promised to address this issue after the main Christmas episode, with a five episode Laurel Lance arc. The assumption made by many viewers was that this would be Arrow's attempt to establish Laurel as a more sympathetic, likeable character.
Let me pull out a couple scenes to discuss this, because I find the writing fascinating.
In the second episode of this arc, Laurel decides to contact Arrow to help her investigate Sebastian Blood, one of this season's villains. She uses her father's Secret Arrow Burner Phone (it's like the Batsignal except not pointing at clouds) and says help, help, help. This is interesting, since the last time Laurel saw Arrow (she doesn't know he's Oliver, because Contrived Reasons), Laurel tried to have Arrow arrested by a full SWAT team.
They meet. It goes like this:
Laurel: You're late.
Arrow: --
No, wait, I'm going to stop there.
While rewriting a recent story, I realized that I wanted to make a certain character unsympathetic to other characters in the story from the get-go. I went back, and changed an elaborate greeting to a "You're late."
In a story, "You're late" sets up immediate consequences and conflict. It suggests that one character has screwed up and the other is willing to call out the screw-ups. It suggests that for a moment, at least, the two characters are at odds, in contrast to the, "Oh, crap, we're late," suggesting that the lateness is something that the characters will face together.
And if not immediately followed up by a "What happened?" or "Is everything ok?" it can make the speaker come across as demanding, judgemental, unreasonable, or all of the above or worse. It can make the speaker seem to take others for granted, or to assume that everyone puts the speaker's schedule above everything else.
Now, imagine this scene with just a few changes in dialogue:
Laurel: Are you all right? You're late. [Shows that Laurel can be concerned about others, and not just her schedule.]
Laurel: I wasn't sure if you were actually coming. [Establishes that yes, she is aware that she and Arrow are not on the best of terms at the moment after she tried to have him arrested, and she is not taking him for granted.]
Later on in the episode, Sebastian Blood gets away in part because of Laurel's drug addiction - her suspicions were right, but he's able to deflect said suspicions. Also, Laurel gets kidnapped again which is a kinda calm thing by now because it happens so often by now and is not what I'm talking about here anyway.
In the next episode, Laurel verbally attacks her father, Quentin, after he tries to sneak her into an AA meeting. She's got a point. Dude didn't handle it well. And then, she follows up that point by attacking her father and everyone else in the AA meeting, saying that none of them have gone through anything as bad as she has. Which, ok, sure, she's had a really bad time of it in the past year, what with losing a friend and constantly getting kidnapped and now losing her job, plus she's an addict and they tend to be annoyingly self-centered (with all due apologies to the non-self-centered addicts out there) but -
She's saying this to the one character on the show that she knows has gone through hell. (One of the annoying notes of the show is that a full season and a half in, Laurel still doesn't know what Oliver and Sara have gone through. Moving on.) She knows that Quentin lost a daughter, lost a marriage, became an alcoholic, got demoted and just had his partner die in the past five weeks. It was vicious, it was cruel, and it was followed up just a few scenes later by Laurel verbally attacking first Thea and then fan favorite Felicity.
Writing process again: how do you make a character hateful or at best morally grey? You have them verbally or otherwise attack an innocent character, or a well liked character. Five books and three seasons of TV in Jaime Lannister still hasn't worked off the "Yeah, I throw little kids out of windows." The same applies here.
(I'll just note from my own experience that if you write a first person narrative about someone attacking innocents people will ask why on earth you want to write about horrible people. So.)
Last night's episode, Laurel went on an amazingly self-centered rage blitz screaming at Sara for wrecking her entire life and family and finishing it up by throwing glass and alcohol at her. This after Sara had killed herself to save her family (it's a very complicated show) including Laurel. But this also after Sara had, as Laurel pointed out, made an incredibly stupid decision that brought major grief to the family and helped break up her parents' marriage and then didn't bother to make a phone call and had assassins show up like yay Sara.
However, it was framed like this:
Sara and Laurel's mother: Sara! YOU'RE ALIVE! ALL IS FORGIVEN!
Laurel: THROWS ALCOHOL.
Fandom: Way to be thrilled to see your sister's alive, Laurel.
If I had to guess, given the other ways the writers could have written these scenes, I'd guess that sometime last summer, the writers sat down and said, ok, they hate Laurel? Fine.
We're going to make her evil by the end of the season.
I say this because so many of their writing choices have been the ones you use to make a character unsympathetic and hated and despised.
And then, if you are George RR Martin, you take that despised character and make viewers/readers understand, a few books or seasons on.
I don't know if the actress or the writers are up to doing the same. I really don't. The writers have shown that they are brilliant at manipulating emotion - take a look at Twitter and any of the fanboards to see the reactions to the last 30 seconds of the episode. They got people upset. They got people talking. They got people intrigued.
But can they turn Laurel into Jaime Lannister? This is going to be trickier, because, really, Laurel is more the Theon of this show: the character who thinks she's more put upon and yet more deserving than anyone else, who tried to do the right thing (in his own little head) and got screwed for it.
This assumes, of course, that they are even trying that route. But evil, I think, is coming.
But this does lead to a serious problem I had with the last thirty seconds of the episode, in which Oliver and Sara hooked up.
Viewers exploded, pro and con. But one thing seemed universal: "This," said almost everyone, "will sink the Oliver and Laurel ship." (Full disclosure: I had the same feeling.) And quite possibly any hope for Sara and Oliver: your sister shows you how much your betrayal hurt, and you go and do it again? Great, Sara.
And then I thought...
Wait a minute. Why did Sara do this again?
And my heart sank. Because, well, she did this to sink the Oliver and Laurel ship.
In other words, this was not just a hook-up meant to keep Oliver and Felicity apart (a problem right there) but a hook-up meant to provide another character with motivation.
And that...that I have a problem with. Mostly because the last four episodes have featured storylines and characters getting changed to allow Laurel to change into a new character -- instead of just allowing Laurel to grow.
She had a character arc. Not necessarily a great one; not necessarily a likeable one. But she had one; she had reasons to turn evil without this.
But it perhaps says something that to allow Laurel to be an action hero a few episodes back (when she and Arrow broke into the city records) and get her chance to swing around with Oliver on a rope, the writers could only do so by turning Laurel and other characters into idiots. It says something that plots have to be written to accommodate her and around her; that other relationships have to be shifted so that Laurel Can Grow.
I hope, if I'm right, and Laurel does turn evil, that the writers do better than this.
And now to head back to my own writing. With some tricks up my sleeve.