tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6771775388110854391.post8108670501254438766..comments2024-01-29T06:21:11.353+00:00Comments on Sarah Duncan's Blog: Good Choices are Essential for Compelling StoriesSarah Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12530089356370140344noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6771775388110854391.post-70174077117470700672011-02-10T19:05:33.937+00:002011-02-10T19:05:33.937+00:00You're right - choices are best if we can see ...You're right - choices are best if we can see the characters taking both routes, as Superman invariably does. <br /><br />I agree that good people make bad choices, but I was talking about the choice being a real choice, ie that both sides of the choice were evenly weighted so it was a difficult decision to make. That's interesting. If the path to take is obvious, then it's less interesting for the reader. <br /><br />So with your Star Trek example, you'd have to show the characters being torn between their careers, or life on Planet Zog with their soulmate. Which would probably get boring if it was frequently used.Sarah Duncanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12530089356370140344noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6771775388110854391.post-47919134370727749022011-02-09T09:23:06.218+00:002011-02-09T09:23:06.218+00:00Of course Superman would always find a way to do b...Of course Superman would always find a way to do both. That’s why he’s Superman. What I struggle with when it comes to choices is where a character makes a choice that I personally wouldn’t make. The one that jumps to my mind is one that just kept happening over and over again in <i>Star Trek</i> - a character meets someone who looks like they might be the soul mate and yet they don’t run off into the sunset, they both go on with their lives/careers and invariably never meet again. Someone presses the reset button and the next episode it’s as if the whole incident had never happened. I don’t get it because I’ve never had that kind of job and I’ve never been particularly ambitious. But there are people like that. I just don’t get them. Nor do I get characters that choose to murder someone. I honestly can’t imagine any situation where doing away with someone would be a choice. So the problem the novelist faces to getting inside a mindset that is potentially alien and making you believe that, yes, a mother <i>might</i> just conceivably put her career over the health of her child; she might rationalise even that she’s doing it <i>for</i> the child. Good people make bad choices – especially when under pressure – and I think that needs to be considered and there are invariably consequences which is where the author gets to come in with a nice tidy moral: “And what do we learn from today’s story? Yes! If you go for a job interview when your child is sick they <i>will</i> die.”<br /><br>Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com