I’ve now seen The LEGO Movie twice, and I loved it just as much the second time around, if not more. The composition and action are clever and inventive, the aesthetic is charming, the humor is genuinely funny, and the theme is something I can jam on. But a thought occurred to me that I was not expecting:
There isn’t a single character I don’t like.
The primary audience for the movie is going to be youngsters. As much as it’s written at a level that parents can both grok the themes and laugh at the humor, it’s basically a kid’s movie. It would be terrifyingly easy for the writers to keep the heroes and villains simple, if not one-dimensional, to make sure there’s no ambiguity or confusion on the part of the young audience.
However, the writers of The LEGO Movie demonstrate a level of skill and an abundance of trust in their audience. The characters in their movie are nuanced and deeper that you might think. Emmett, our hero, has no real power or even imagination to speak of. What I like about his starting position and presentation is that you don’t have to be born with some sort of special power or destiny to do the right thing or to be heroic. This comes to fruition in the end when he’s talking to Lord Business about what it means to be special (or The Special if you want to get technical).
Speaking of Lord Business, it’s been a long time since I’ve sat in a family movie and realized that the antagonist is really only villainous in presentation. Sure, his methods for going about what he wants are pretty diabolical, especially in the visuals, but in the end, Business just wants things to be ordered and organized. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. He is driven to get what he wants to an extreme, and that extreme leads to some real scorched-earth moments, but the amplification of this desire for order comes from a place where such desire might seem terrifying. I won’t say more because I still want to avoid spoilers (you really should go see this movie if you haven’t already), but suffice it to say that what the writers do with the main villain really struck a chord with me.
I mentioned that the message in The LEGO Movie isn’t quite as strongly delivered as that from Wreck-It Ralph, but I’m not going to be too hard on a movie this inventive telling kids to be themselves. Again, Emmett is encouraged to cultivate what is special about himself. So too is Wyldstyle. What impressed me the second time around is how much the girl whose name sounds like a DJ’s handle is struggling with her own identity. She’s tied so much of her desires and ambitions into the quest that Emmett stumbles into that she seems to wrestle with who she is as opposed to who she wants to be. It’s subtle, but the desire for definition of identity touches her as much it does any of the other characters.
Last but not least I want to talk about Bad Cop. In addition to just loving hearing Liam Neeson voice this character (and Good Cop… and Dad Cop…), this is another character that easily could have been one-note: the primary hench-villain. The switching between Good Cop and Bad Cop could have just been an inventive little gimmick in a movie full of them. And yet here, again, we have a character who struggles to define who they are and who they want to be. At one point, Bad Cop says a line (again, spoilers) that indicates he’s painfully aware of the better nature he could be following. He’s in a position where he has orders to follow, prides himself in results, and does not give up in pursuit of a quarry, and yet as an officer of law, he wants to do the right thing, not necessarily just what he’s told. Again, for what’s ostensibly a kid’s movie, this is pretty deep and interesting stuff.
I could talk about this for a while, about how Benny’s identity is perhaps the most one-note of them all yet he manages complexity of his own, or how Princess Unikitty’s brave-face facade reflects those of kids trying to pretend everything is fine when things are anything but fine, but I think I’ve made my point. The LEGO Movie is not just a two-hour sales pitch for plastic building blocks; it is a story about finding what’s special about one’s self and completely embracing it, because that’s how we make the best of ourselves for our own benefit and that of the world. For a family picture, one that could have skated by on pop culture references and physical humor, it’s obvious to me that this tale of LEGOs and characters and realms and spaceships was very carefully assembled.
I’m looking back over my characters, both old and new. The ones I’ve just met definitely need to be fleshed out properly. Older ones that I already know could benefit from some tweaks here and there. But for all characters created in fiction, not unlike people I encounter in real life, walking a mile in their shoes yields incredible benefits.
It can be difficult to get inside the mind of another person. Their background, upbringing, experiences and personality are unique to them, and create a very different reference point from which they approach life. Yet we are encouraged to ‘walk a mile in their shoes’, to imagine them as complexly as we imagine ourselves, in order to achieve some measure of understanding and, in so doing, make the world a better place to in which to live.
Since writers are, for the most part, writing about people, it benefits the writer to walk that mile in their character’s shoes. In some cases, this is actually more difficult than walking the mile in the aforementioned person’s shoes. We can understand (to an extent) things like playing football or doing other people’s taxes or fighting depression or falling in love. It’s a little more difficult to wrap our minds around walking in space or riding a horse in pursuit of a dragon or surviving in a dystopian city of cybernetic nightmares.
The focus, I think, should not be on the specifics of the experiences, but the emotions and thoughts involved. What scares the character? What motivates them to do what they do? What are their dreams? Who do they love, admire, despise, pity? What drove them to the choices they’ve made so far, and what will push them to make the choices that change your story?
It can be difficult, but you definitely should walk that mile.
Normally, on Thursdays I use this space to geek out about something related to games. For example, I have a deck in Hearthstone that’s doing really well, I have thoughts on how important board game expansions are to a base game’s life cycle, and I want to help more people get comfortable with the somewhat daunting game of Twilight Imperium. But I can’t talk about any of that today. Last night, something happened to me that is so writerly, I just have to share it with you.
I was laying in bed last night, having trouble getting to sleep. I rolled around, trying to clear my head, but it wasn’t shutting down. There was too much noise. It took a while, but at around 2:30 am, the noise started to take shape. It was dialog. A scene. An idea.
At 2:45 I rolled out of bed and came back to my desk. I pulled out my Moleskine and started writing. It’s a rough outline, little more than the barest of bones for a story, but it got the idea out of my head enough for me to get some sleep. This morning, I’m still thinking about it. I’m turning the idea over in my head. And I likely will consider it throughout the day.
I have no idea if this story will work. It’s an extremely raw idea that could simply be unworkable. But the point is, it didn’t let me go. It grabbed my attention and I had no alternative but to deal with it before I could get any rest. This happens when you’re a writer. And the only thing to do is write the idea down.
It’s okay if you look at the idea in the light of day and say “why did I think this was good?”, since if you don’t take the moment to write the idea down, you won’t know either way. Things that seem vivid and crystal clear at night can dissolve by the light of day. But we mustn’t fear new ideas, when it comes to story or life.
We need our ideas, even the ones rude enough to keep us awake. We need to always be considering new alternatives, notions that keep us motivated, points of view we hadn’t considered. The brain, despite its composition, needs to be worked like a muscle to stay in shape. Let it atrophy or fester or dwell on the same-old same-old, and it’ll deteriorate faster than an ice cream cake at a corporate luncheon. The muse, that ephemeral and often anthropomorphised part of our minds that generates new ideas, is almost like your brain’s personal trainer. Listen to it.
There are a lot of things that can keep one awake in the dead of night. Worries over finances, anxiety about relationships, wondering if you left the gas on, and so on. New ideas are one thing that can not only be adequately dealt with, but also can lead to new patterns of thought, new creative endeavors, entire new pathways in life. Don’t be afraid of them. Don’t be afraid of your muse. Let it guide you to imagine, to think, and to create.
Then give it a warm glass of milk and send it back to bed because dammit, I need sleep already.
I’m happy this morning, but I’m really, really tired.
It almost feels redundant posting a Writer Report the day after discussing Cold Streets and how it’s not ready yet. I mean, things I’m working on are nowhere near ready yet. But I do think people get a lot out of learning about the artistic process, and I’d like to be as transparent as possible about my work.
So yes, I’ve been plugging away at the new novel. In addition to the dayjob, the freelance writing, and the games that keep me up late, I’ve been aiming to write at least 350 words a day on the thing. I have a character spreadsheet started, to track the descriptions and motivations of the people I dream up, and a general outline of how things go that I should really write down one of these days.
What I don’t have is a title.
I’ve had a couple of ideas, but none of them have really stuck in my mind the way Cold Iron or Godslayer did. Do I just call it ‘the novel’ until something pops out of my subconscious? I’m not sure what alternatives I have.
In the end, the important thing is for me to keep writing, as much as I can, as often as I can. That is, after all, how this shit gets done.
