"LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD" WITH CHARACTER ARCS

Character arcs are overused today, and I blame that excess on all the how-to-write books that are on the shelves nowadays. Most of the books take a simple, boring premise and shamelessly try to pump it up by character arcs.

I don't know how the people who write these books sleep at night. They've ruined a whole generation of writers by convincing them that story is less important than character embellishments. They obscure the simple fact that writing is about story. The story can and should have character conflict (like "The Odd Couple")...it can even be about character arcs (like "Twelve Angry Men")...but there's gotta be a story, and it's gotta be a really good one. You have to watch out because obsessing over character arcs can distract you from the fact that your basic story sucks.

Well, I've said all that in previous posts. What I want to talk about here is how misapplied character arcs can subvert a story that already works. "Little Red Riding Hood," for example. The original story...which has no character arcs at all...is wonderful. It's evocative and magical, and manages to dig deep into the human psyche. Not only that, it's told with great economy. Would that story be improved by adding character arcs? Let's outline a rewrite and see....

Since we're rewriting for character arcs, it'll be necessary to firm up Riding Hood's personality at the outset, so the reader'll be able to understand how she evolves during the course of the story. For that, we'll need a sequence to establish her carelessness, and show how this worries her parents. Maybe we add a few farm animals and see how vexed they are when Riding Hood neglects to feed them.

Of course we want people to like Riding Hood in spite of her flaw so we'll need some incident to set that up, too. We can forget the economy that characterized the original...our story will take a while to get off the ground.

When her mother finally gets around to sending her to Grandma's house and orders her to not to talk to strangers, we'll need to see Riding Hood's disdain for what she thinks is her mother's paranoia. Remember that we want the reader to like Riding Hood, so that disdain will have to be carefully expressed. We'll see the worried look on the mother's face as Riding hood disappears into the forest. To tie up the father's role, maybe he joins the mother and puts a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Since the arc is so important we'll need Riding hood to mutter to herself in a disgruntled fashion while walking through the forest. Maybe we should give her a pet dog so she'll have someone to voice her thoughts to. Of course we'll need to establish their relationship. We'll also need some time to establish the dog's personality, and what it thinks of what Red is saying. And...oh, yes...we may need to get rid of the dog later so we should also take time to establish that it likes to chase squirrels, and is prone to get lost in the forest.

Aaaargh! All these arc helpers are going to need time to play out. That's okay, we can buy time by eliminating details that added texture to the original story, like the "What big eyes you have" litany at the end. Character arcs are voracious eaters of time. You end up cutting the guts out of a good story just to shoehorn all the arcs and extra characters in.


Well, that's all I have space for here. You can tell from what's here already that the arcs drastically slowed down the story, gave too much attention to minor characters, trivialized atmospheric elements, and drained the story of the deep psychological/archetypal resonances of the original.

I love the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Her walk to Grandma's house is the most famous walk in Western fiction. What a pity that it can be rendered so banal by modern storytelling technique.

Good writers know they're home free when what they've written is so primal that it lends itself to satire, as in the Tex Avery remake of Little Red Riding Hood shown above. Think about the woman on the ice flow in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or the orphan who asks for more gruel in "Oliver Twist." These are tragic figures but you can't deny that they inspire humor. Can you say the same about the arc rewrite we just did?

Would the rewritten, formula version inspire countless puppet shows, as the Brothers Grimm version did?

Could you get a Betty Boop cartoon out of it?

Would it inspire funny drawings like the one (above)?

MORE FROM MY FAVORITE PORTRAIT STUDIO

Here's more from Retroatelier, my favorite portrait photography studio (link on the sidebar). They publicize their work using pictures of models in retro settings, then offer to do similar types of photos for paying customers. They're so well-known in the Ukraine that they occasionally pack up their props and do road tours.

Believe it or not, this (above) is a recent picture.

I could see a woman getting a nude portrait if it was done as well as this (above).

Men (above) photograph particularly well when they act in front of the camera.

Hollywood-style glamour photography!

A Marlena Dietrich pose above).

This (above) could have been taken by Man Ray.

A Symbolist picture (above)! I can't believe the length these guys will go to to get an effect.

This (above) is their most versatile model. She does sci-fi, Art Nouveau, gritty 30s realism, and 50s pin-up, all with equal conviction.

So far as I can tell, a good portrait (like the one above) requires at least two sittings. The first time a lot of experiments are made. It's important to do a lot of quick and dirty pictures to find out what the camera will accept from the subject.

Here the camera has decided to accept "mean." The subject might have been the nicest person in the world, but the camera decided she was mean, and that's how the picture was taken.

Very nice (above)!

What a great idea! This (above) is portrait photography disguised as journalism. The newspaper print is fake.

A portrait (above) that suggests good times had in France in the 1930s.

Above, an imaginative way to take the portrait of a man (above) who flatters himself as being analytical.

Man, these guys are great!

WHAT MY HALLOWEEN WAS LIKE

Actually I had a terrific Halloween. I didn't make a "Tunnel of fear" this year, but I made lots of paper witches and goblins which I put out on the porch, and I got lots of really cute little kids at the door.


By far the most common costume was Snow White (above). There were zillions of plump little Snow Whites on my steps!

More than a few adult Snow Whites (above) too.


That's the "sexy" Little Red Riding Hood costume above. Boy, those "sexy" costumes sold big this year! I didn't actually see any Riding Hoods tonight but I show it anyway for the edification of my male readers.

Forgive me; I digress.

Now I'm a pretty good keeper of Halloween. That's because I realize that the whole kid year revolves around Halloween and Christmas. I don't know any other holiday where you can make so many people feel good with such a small investment of time and money. But....I confess that even I, Halloween enthusiast that I am, had one big lapse.

My name is eternally written in the Book Of Infamy, because one horrible year, maybe ten years ago, I darkened the house and pretended I wasn't home. I can't remember why, I just know that I'd been been feeling rotten and curmudgeonly all month. Maybe like Scrooge, I reasoned that kids should be working in textile mills and eating gruel for dinner on dirty benches. It was the winter of my discontent.

When the night came I parked my car a block away, so people would think I was out carousing. I darkened the entire house, which was devoid of decoration. It was a moonless night, and the trees and shrubs on either side of my lawn kept the house as dark and black as I've ever seen it.

The only light inside was the light from the TV which I kept so dim and nearly silent that I could hardly make out was going on...and even that was shut up behind closed drapes. It sucked to sit there in the dark like that, but I figured that I was at least safe from trick or treaters.

Well, to make a long story short, I wasn't safe. Millions of kids knocked on my door. I don't even know how they found the door without tripping in the dark. They even knocked on my window, with me sitting only a few feet away! I could hear them talking about me, wondering what happened to me.

Every new group had one kid who was an expert at ferreting out hiding adults. Just when the group would be ready to give up and leave, this kid would catch a stray photon from the TV and bring everybody back. I had to listen to whole debates about myself.

One line in particular stands out in my mind. I heard a mother talking to her kids as she approached my house with a flashlight, and she said "Wait'll you see this house. He always does something for Halloween, wait and see." She knocked and knocked, then I heard disappointed groans from the kids. Man, that hurt.

The next day seemed normal enough on the surface. None of the neighbors said anything insulting, but I could feel an icy radiation coming from them. It took six months for people to talk to me normally again.

So I'm a faithful keeper of Halloween again...not only because I love the holiday, which is so rich in color and imagination...but because I felt the lash administered to those wretches who fail to keep it.

MY HALLOWEEN MASKS

I guess everybody collects something. For me it's funny Halloween masks. I line the tops of my book shelves with them.

Here's (above) one of my favorites. Look at the planes in the face, and the beautiful lines! It has that combination of strength and grace that characterizes true art, and it's funny, too! I wish I could meet the artist who sculpted this.

A mask (above) derived from Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks." The film was fatally flawed but it had some great moments, and the Martians were originally designed by Wally Wood.

Of course, the mask doesn't do justice to the magnificent creature in the film.

Another brain Martian (above). We can only hope that real aliens from other planets are ugly bloodsuckers like this one.

Oliver Hardy (above) wearing a fez.

A Frankenstein mask, with wonderful detail in the face.

The Penguin from Batman #2!

Remember when Max Headroom's face (above) was all over the billboards and toy stores? The fedora doesn't fit, but it'll do until I can get one that does.

Here's my Bobby Bigloaf mask (above), which is sadly bland and brittle now. When I tried to restore the old shape by stuffing the mask with newspapers, it started coming apart in my hands. I lost a lot of masks that way: my old Sadie Hawkins mask, the Nairobi Trio caveman, and my Roy Orbison and Borneo cannibal masks suffered the same fate.

I'm afraid to use Amour All-type preservatives because of outgassing, and I don't want to keep the masks in plastic or in heat-safe areas where I can't see them. *Sigh!* I guess nothing lasts forever.

Haw! Mike F. just sent me this (above) Halloween news item. See what you think!

PROPER ATTIRE FOR THE LADIES AUXILIARY

After posting the Muskrat piece it occurred to me that I goofed up the part describing proper Ladies Auxiliary attire. I offer my humble apology. I should have realized that no real lady wants to wear a moth-eaten, old coonskin cap. Ladies of good upbringing and refinement prefer traditional straw hats with flowers.

A net on the hat is a nice touch.

Fur pieces and pearls are welcome additions if you happen to have them. Phony fur is OK, even preferable, since nobody wants to think of an animal actually dying for this.

Here's some hats (above and below) that work okay. All the women in my house left for a vacation back East, so I'm stuck with modelling them myself.

Aaaah, the traditional lone sunflower (above) on a straw hat.

Here's a hat that's a bit racy, but still okay. Maybe it belonged to a wicked city woman, or a widow who was looking for a second husband.

Easter baskets (above) make great hats.

More acceptable hats (above): pretty "out there," but still good for The Ladies Auxiliary.

Unacceptable hats: too minimal, too tasteful and too understated. They don't give testimony to the pride a woman feels for being a member of the Muskrat Ladies Auxiliary.

Also unacceptable: too avant garde. The Ladies Auxiliary is already cutting edge. Farther than the edge is...chaos...what can I say?

So what is the preferred attire for a member of The Royal Order of the Muskrat Ladies Auxiliary? It's what club women wore in the golden age of women's clubs, circa 1900 - 1960. Dressing this way doesn't limit Auxiliary women's full participation in Muskrat discussions and activities.

I thought you might find it interesting to see what club women were like in 1953. Here's a commercial showing several club women assembled for a washing machine demonstration. The range of women in the room is amazing. At one end is Betty Furness, who comes off as a super intelligent star ship captain, and at the other is a woman who sounds just like Aunt Bea. The commercial only lasts for a minute or two...just skip the rest.