Month: April 2014

The Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil

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If you have been on social media for any length of time, you likely have seen a meme that looks something like this:

alignment

And half of them seem to use Game of Thrones character for whatever reason. (http://postitjournal.blogspot.com/2012/03/viewing-life-through-alignment-grids.html)

Long before these charts became “meme worthy”, players of RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons were familiar with building characters in a similar way, aligning their characters along a “moral and ethical axis”. A full (very handy) breakdown is available on TV Tropes, but it can basically be broken down into:

alignment_graph_3756

tvtropes.org

Now, these breakdowns don’t always work for fiction writers (as TV Tropes very smartly says, “remember that the vast majority of characters in fiction are not tabletop game characters, and therefore lack a canonical interpretation of alignment“) more and more I have found it helpful to think of characters who fit a “vague alignment”, both when it comes to writing and editing. Why? For the same reason the charts came into fashion for role playing games, I imagine. Because it is a handy way to develop just who your character is.

Personally, looking into alignments arose as part of writing my Broken Line Series. With each book following a different main character (and yet interlocking with each of the others) it became very important to develop each character as their own person, otherwise everything slowly began to get a little too wishy-washy with an ever-growing cast of characters. Thinking of a character in terms of a designation (along with plenty of other character building of course) it can be simpler to think just how they would react when thrown into a tough spot.

So, if dealing with a number of characters (or simply needing to flesh out a single character further) consider their alignments:

  • Lawful Good: Simply put, the Lawful Good believes that, well, the law is good. Being a good person (which they strongly wish to be) requires upholding the law. This character believes in truth, justice, and other ideals seen as virtuous, but such strong convictions may also prove their undoing (see poor Ned Stark up there). They are so committed to their ideals, they may struggle to uphold them even to their own (or other’s) detriment.
  • Neutral Good: For the Neutral Good, doing the right thing is very important, but the right thing doesn’t always mean the lawful thing. Following their personal morals, doing good is more important than upholding the law, but they also don’t see law as a bad thing. If they are able to do good by playing by the rules, they will.  If they have to break a few laws to save someone, however, they don’t find themselves in an ethical quandary. As TV Tropes puts it, “Just think ‘basically nice person’ and you’ve probably got it.”
  • Chaotic Good: Home to the rebels and free spirits, the Chaotic Good want to help people and do good, but they tend to believe that things like order and discipline get in the way. For all the Whovians out there, my personal favorite picture I’ve seen for Chaotic Good is The Doctor. The man always wants what is best for everyone, but isn’t about to let silly things like laws (even generally good ones) get in the way of achieving good.
  • Lawful Neutral: The Lawful Neutral is “the rule-abiding sort”. Good and evil are all well and good, but not something that keeps them up at night. Law and Order (not the show) are what drives the Lawful Neutral with “justice” not necessarily coming into play. As TV Tropes says, “They’ll arrest a robber or rapist, but may also kick a family out of their home for failing to pay rent” even if the family missed rent for a “good” reason. TV Tropes and I agree probably the best example here is Inspector Javert from Les Mis (stealing bread to feed your starving family is no better than stealing cigarettes to hock to school kids). Any other character who is the same staunch type of Legalist would be a Lawful Neutral (protagonist, antagonist, or anyone in between).
  • True Neutral: True Neutrals are either characters who want to “keep the balance” and thus not interfere (think the Elves staying out of things in Lord of the Rings) or characters that don’t care about just about anything for one reason or another (be it they’re too stupid to realize they should care, have a “calling” they see as above Earthly problems, or just simply want to be left alone).
  • Chaotic Neutral: The Chaotic Neutral is either “the ultimate free spirit” or someone who is just plainly crazy. Chaotic Neutrals don’t wish to harm, but neither do they want to help others. Freedom is their be-all end-all. As long as you don’t try to rein them in, they really couldn’t care less what happens to anyone else.
  • Lawful Evil: Heading into the villains and antiheroes, the Lawful Evil is the “sort of Evil that often ends up in charge.” Lawful Evil don’t care in the slightest about hurting people, but they care a lot of keeping order (whether because they believe it’s intrinsically important or because order is easier to exploit).
  • Neutral Evil: As TV  Tropes so gracefully puts it, “Sometimes known as the Asshole Alignment.” It doesn’t especially matter who gets hurt to the Neutral Evil, and it doesn’t especially matter to them if they play by the rules or not. If the rules suit their purposes, they’ll follow them. If not, they’ll break them. They are often considered more dangerous than the Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil simply because you never quite know where they’re going to swing next. (For those who have read The Copper Witch/The Copper Rebellion,  this is where I would honestly place our anti-heroine).
  • Chaotic Evil: Just as interested in being a free spirit as the Chaotic Neutral, the Chaotic Evil is all about doing whatever they want, even if it hurts other (for some, especially if it hurts others). Rather than simply being willing to break rules if they don’t agree/they get in their way (like the other Chaotic alignments) Chaotic Evils often take great pleasure in destroying order/causing chaos. Batman’s The Joker is perhaps one of the best examples of Chaotic Evil.

(Need more information before you can place your characters? Read the full descriptions on TV Tropes or click any of the links above for more examples of the specific alignments).

Editing 101

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As I head into edits for Book 2 of The Broken Line Series (The Porcelain Child, for those who are wondering), I have been asked for some editing tips for when you are taking a stab at going through the several thousand words of a rough draft.

Of course, there are no set rules anyone must follow when it comes to editing your own work. Much like writing, it’s about developing a style that works for you. To help take the first steps, however, I have included the “standard” advice I have heard when it comes to editing and my own thoughts on each.

1. Take a break after you have written it. Whether it’s a day or Stephen King’s suggested six weeks, the first piece of advice most writers hear when it comes to thinking of editing. In my own opinion, this isn’t bad advice, if you start right into editing the moment you write “the end” you will likely still be in writing mode and miss a lot of problems you might otherwise. Of course, if there are still large portions of the story you know you will have to rewrite, taking yourself out of this mindset might be detrimental.

Verdict: If you are ready for straight editing, take a break. Possibly even work on another project that will take your mind off things. If you need large swaths of rewrites/changes, go ahead and start right away. (Personal caveat–if you are writing a series and have a publisher waiting for books 2 and 3, it’s probably best to go right into edits so you can send that off before they yell at you…)

2. Just do a read through. After you have taken a break, the most common advice I’ve heard is to read through the manuscript without making any changes. While this is good if you need to put yourself in another mindset (if you need “editor” brain, rather than “writer” brain) I have never personally followed this advice. I never make big changes on the first read through (unless I was already rewriting a section, as mentioned in Step 1) but reworking wording here and there to fix problems will not make or break how you edit.

Verdict: It is a good idea not to start making sweeping changes on your first go through (otherwise you might find yourself causing more problems than you fix) but, unless you need “editor” brain to work, you can feel free to make changes as you go along on your first read through.

3. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Yes, grammar is important, but it is not the most important thing at the beginning stages of editing. If you realize after your first read through that a character simply isn’t working or there’s a plot hole that needs to be taken care of, deal with that before you work on the exact wording for one sentence and worry about if you should have subjunctive tense or not in another. If you end up reworking entire scenes, you’ll likely find new typos popping up anyway. Don’t worry about those until the big pieces have all fallen into place.

Verdict: Definitely good advice for an early go through. There’s a reason copy edits always come after content edits when working with a publisher. Grammar and spelling are important, but not until everything else is taken care of.

Note, “big pieces” generally include:

  • Plot holes
  • Characterization problems
  • Info dumps rather than interwoven back story
  • Inconsistent tone
  • Unnecessary/repetitive scenes
  • Missing scenes

Along with anything that will perhaps require substantial rewrites and/or added/deleted text.

4. Read it Out Loud. Once you’ve gotten the big things ironed out, one of the best ways to hear if a sentence is off is to read it out loud. I find this especially helps people who have trouble with dialogue. Dialogue is about capturing how people speak, so if seems stiff to say aloud, it’s probably too stiff for the page.

Verdict: If you are still developing your voice as a writer, or have a specific problem with clunky sentences/dialogue, reading aloud is a great way of fixing that. If you are more seasoned/can “hear” how it sounds in your head, it isn’t as necessary, though it can still be helpful.

5. Read it Backwards. Having moved on from the large problems, reading backwards is what I have often heard suggested for catching typos. Not caught up in the story, you are more likely to see that that “the” was supposed to be “they”. Since half of grammar to me is being able to pause over what doesn’t sound correct in a sentence, personally, I don’t find this as helpful a step as others, but the idea holds: Find some way to take yourself away from the story and focus on the words themselves.

Verdict: While the principle holds true, this might be more helpful in finding spelling mistakes than grammar if you “write by ear” like I do. (Personal note, I prefer running my stories through a text-to-speech program. While I may miss a typo, since I know what I meant to say in a sentence, hearing a mechanical voice say “The walked down…” will let you catch the/they just as easily [if not more so] than reading backwards).

Once you have gone through a story this far (and are perhaps sick of reading it over and over again) it’s time to call in the beta readers–which means you’re done, until you get all their notes back and have to edit to fix those.

But that’s a post for another time.

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