Ninja Mutants: An Extended Review -- Part Two: The Fantasy Paradigm

Recently, I went to see the new Ninja Turtles movie with my kids (you can read my review of that here), and there are some things in it that go along with the fantasy "discussion" we're having right now. It's interesting enough that I think it deserves its own post, although I'm not including it in the actual exploring fantasy series. First, let's bring up our list of things that go along with fantasy stories:

1. The protagonist (I'm just going to say "hero" from here on out; it's shorter) is not an adult (and usually male).

2. The hero is an orphan (usually both parents are dead, although there is sometime one (usually the mother)).

3. The hero is "special" in some way.

4. There is a prophecy, generally related to the hero.

5. There is an old mentor of some sort, usually a male. (We recognize this character as "the wizard.")

6. There is a quest of some sort involved that only the hero can complete.

7. There is some kind of descent 

8. The hero has companions who help him on his journey.

9. There is some sort of "dark lord" who can only be defeated by the hero.

10. There's an absence of technology.

The thing of interest to me with this new movie is the protagonist. Yes, protagonist. Historically (I use that term a little loosely, but the Turtles have been around for three decades, now, so there is some history involved), the protagonists of the Turtles stories have been the Turtles themselves. If you look at our list, the Turtles fit virtually all 10 of the points, even the one with the prophecy at various times in the stories.

But the Turtles are not the protagonists of the movie. No, that honor goes to April O'Neil. In the comics and other, previous stories, April is merely one of the companions, but she is the main character in the movie, and the Turtles are the companions. How can we tell?

Well, let's look at the facts:
In this movie, April is an orphan. [I don't remember this being a part of her story previously, but, then, maybe I'm just not remembering it. Actually, I don't remember it ever coming up before, which would lead me to think she had parents.]  Effectively, she's also not an adult. Technically, she's an adult, but she's being portrayed as someone not quite there yet, basically, coming of age. April is the special one and, loosely, of prophecy in that she, in this movie, was the owner of the Turtles back when they were just turtles. She was their savior.

This thing where they made the Turtles her childhood pets is a huge change and plunges April into the role as the story's protagonist. The Turtles become her companions on her journey to "destroy the dark lord," in this case Eric Sacks. The goal of the Turtles is to keep April alive and assist in her journey. Splinter still serves as the mentor figure, and the world of the Turtles, into which April descends, lacks technology. Sort of. There is technology, but it's Donatello's "magic."

I find the changes they made to the Turtles mythos very interesting, probably because it comes in the midst of this fantasy series, but, still, I find it interesting. I have to assume they made April the protagonist because she's easier for audiences to connect with. After all, they have very much downplayed the teenager-ness of the Turtles in this iteration, so there's not that for the audience to connect with. I also find it very interesting that in making the changes they made, they brought it into alignment with the fantasy paradigm I've been discussing. It's not surprising, but it's interesting. Of course, super hero stories tend to follow the fantasy model, even if April herself is not the super hero.

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part One: The List

Prior to Tolkien, fantasy writing was sparse. At least, what we think of now as fantasy was sparse. Because of that, Tolkien is widely considered the "Father of Modern Fantasy" or, specifically, the "Father of High Fantasy." Along with the title has come the assumption that it was Tolkien who established our model of how fantasy ought to be written, that it was Tolkien who originated the tropes. People, often people who have not read The Lord of the Rings, look at what Tolkien did and ascribe the origins of all that fantasy has become to him.

Now, I love The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, as you'll know if you've checked out my "Of Significance..." page on my own StrangePegs blog, is one of the three books that I think everyone should read. And I don't undervalue Tolkien's importance. There would be no fantasy genre as we know it today without him. However, I don't think that we can "blame" Tolkien for today's fantasy tropes. In fact, many of the things we think he did, he did not, in fact, do. No, for the origins of fantasy, we have to look elsewhere.

And we will. But not today. Before we get to that, we need to figure out what are the key elements of fantasy literature, and these tend to hold true whether it's high (epic) fantasy or not.

With that in mind, I've come up with a list. This is my list, mind you, because I couldn't find anything that resembled a definitive list or even lists with many things in common. I'm just going off of the fantasy I've read (which is a lot) and the things I've found in common amongst them.

1. The protagonist (I'm just going to say "hero" from here on out; it's shorter) is not an adult (and usually male).
2. The hero is an orphan (usually both parents are dead, although there is sometime one (usually the mother)).
3. The hero is "special" in some way.
4. There is a prophecy, generally related to the hero.
5. There is an old mentor of some sort, usually a male. (We recognize this character as "the wizard.")
6. There is a quest of some sort involved that only the hero can complete.
7. There is some kind of descent
8. The hero has companions who help him on his journey.
9. There is some sort of "dark lord" who can only be defeated by the hero.
10. There's an absence of technology.

These are the ones that come to mind as being part of the general "fantasy ideal." I could include other things like:
There are other races like elves and leprechauns.
The setting is generally medieval.
Magic of some sort is involved.
But these things seem to me to be decorations for the story, not actually necessary to the functioning of it, so I'm not including them on the list (unless you can convince me otherwise), although I'm sure I'll talk about them as we go along.

Speaking of convincing, I'm not trying to say this is a definitive list, just the list I'm going to work with in looking at the origins of fantasy and, when I say "origins," I actually mean the blueprint that we use as the basis for modern fantasy writing. If you have other things that you feel are essential, please let me know what they are, and I'll look at them.

Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not dealing with any sub-genres like paranormal or vampire or anything like that. Even though those often use these same basic "rules," they have their own twist on them.

No Respecter of (Third) Persons: Part Two -- The God Problem

All right, so we were talking about third person and why it's preferable to first, especially when you use it. Again, I don't necessarily mean you you, but I do mean the general you that's out there, 95% of whom are all writing in first person. Seriously, there was a study. Okay, well, I bet there really was a study, but I'm not actually citing any study. I'm just saying... The actual study was actually with ewes, and that study found that all ewes, all ewes that write, that is, write in first person. As it turns out, ewes aren't very imaginative, and most of the stories they write, something like 99.8% of them, contain a wolf or a big bad wolf as the antagonist. The other .02% contain a bear. The most frequent line in manuscripts by ewes is "I was scared," followed closely by "I was afraid," and even more closely by "I was terrified." Some of them write in present tense, too, so it's "I am scared."

The literary history of sheep. It's a thing.

So anyway...

Why shouldn't you write in first person? You should definitely go back and read part one of this to find out the obvious reasons. The other reason is larger but more subtle. Not as noticeable in general but more pervasive. It's the thing I think that most often wrecks first person manuscripts. I call it the "God Complex."

This problem springs up because, as the author of whatever you're writing, you know everything. That knowledge, however, does not extend to your protagonist... or, at least, it shouldn't, and that's a really hard line to hold in your head. It's the thing that makes first person perspective writing, good first person perspective writing, more difficult than third person perspective writing.

One of the most common abuses of first person, and it is an abuse, is the assigning of feelings of other characters by the protagonist. For instance, "I could see that she was hurt." On the one hand, this seems like a perfectly natural thing to say, and sometimes it is, but there are a couple of main issues with it:
1. It's a shortcut that allows the author to skip showing us the actions of the character in question, and it's the actions that should show the readers the emotions, not just being told what they are.
2. The protagonist is always right about how other characters are feeling which makes for an overly empathetic protagonist. Knowing people and how well people generally relate to each other, I find it difficult to believe in a protagonist that always just knows how every other character is feeling in any given situation.

Another issue is that first person protagonists are always incredibly observant, like Sherlock Holmes levels of observant, and that's also just not realistic. People don't notice things, so, coupled with the empathic-ness just mentioned, it's like every first person story was written by the same superempathic, superobservant hero. And this also goes back to what I said in part one: If you want to give detailed descriptions, just write in third person. At least, that way, it's an outside description and makes sense in setting the scene (or whatever) for the reader.

This also applies to first person protagonists explaining how things work, especially in sci-fi novels. When your protagonist is explaining how devices work, something is wrong:
1. How many of you know beyond, say, a general idea how your television works? Or your car? Or the Internet? Basically, you turn on your thing (whatever that thing is) and you don't worry about it as long as it works. So, when your protagonist goes to use the teleportation device and explains how the thing works (probably because the author had a "cool" idea and just had to put in a description), it's not realistic.
2. Besides, even if you did know how it works, would you explain it to yourself (which is essentially what the character is doing) every time you went to use it? Or the first time each day or whatever? I mean, when you turn the TV on, do you muse to yourself how the remote control activates the television and what brings the picture to the screen? I don't think so.

Your first person protagonist needs to only pay attention to things that s/he would pay attention to, which is actually difficult to do, because there's always more information that the author wants to give other than what the character would be able to give, which leads us to the last thing:

Frequently, in first person stories, the protagonist knows about events s/he should have no knowledge of, both things going on concurrently with the character and historical events (back stories) that the character has no business knowing. It's entirely too easy for the author to make the assumption of his/her knowledge about what is going on the world equate to the protagonist's knowledge, essentially making the protagonist omniscient. And that's true of all the other things I mentioned. Now, really, unless your character is actually God (or a god) or Charles Xavier or someone like that, your character just shouldn't know things.
Period.
Seriously.
And it's difficult as a writer to confine yourself that way.

Which is why you should be writing in third person, because, then, you can let us know whatever you want us to know. Even how your nifty teleportation device works.

Or the opposite happens and your character doesn't know basic things about, say, his or her own culture and has to have them explained to her by some other character. For me, that's even more annoying than the character explaining things to herself. For instance, I was reading something recently and, basically, some other character mentioned (the equivalent of) college and the character was, like, "huh? What's college?" Seriously? If your character is that ignorant of his own society, you might want to rethink your choice of protagonist.

All of that to say that I know first person seems like such an easy choice to write in. It's natural and all of that, but it's also way easier to mess up. It's really all about discipline and control, and you ought to learn that stuff by writing in third person where it's not so easy to see when you stray from what you were trying to do.