True Grit

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

Characters whose only notable trait is getting the shit beaten out of them.

Sure, stories thrive on conflict and the lack of any adversity will result in characters so bland as to make mayonnaise seem spicy in comparison, but the opposite is also true.

We’ve all seen it: the gentle character that gets the absolute shit kicked out of them on repeat only to develop into Billy Badass out of nowhere.

I think this particular problem stems from a critical lack of understanding on what was actually going on in a traditional montage. Think of your stereotypical 80s action flick. The movie shows the hero getting worked over by the antagonist and enter into a plan to better prepare for round two. Enter some cheesy high paced music and scenes of the hero trying and failing again and again until at the end they finally can do the thing.

Many authors apply this same tactic in their book and, spoilers, it’s not a great idea.

 Montages are cliched in cinema but they don’t really translate well into the written word.

Telling someone a character trained isn’t enough, you have to show your reader things happening. Not only that, but you have to actually chart the growth in a believable journey to where the reader can conceivably buy the character(s) in question have put in sufficient work to do whatever it is you want them to achieve.  

Thus beginneth stage 1 of the problem: you show the character getting the crap kicked out of them repeatedly just like in the montage until, again like in the montage at the end they can solve all of their problems with a roundhouse kick to the face like God intended. One small problem: how did they learn to do that? I don’t know if you realize this, but humans do not absorb physical traits simply by osmosis. If Mike Tyson beats my face into hamburger meat I am not going to recover, well, probably at all to be honest, but if I DID I would not inherintly possess some weird transmuted muscle memory of how to be a better boxer.

It’s such an easy thing to show a character who fights and loses time and time again to learn from each engagement. Not anything titanic, mind you, just a little thing here and there. How to better block. Maybe that their assailant has a certain tell, SOMETHING that shows they are actually trying to win. If they simply get their shit kicked in and get left for dead on a routine basis and then suddenly turn into a killing machine that is at best going to make your reader question whether they missed something and at worst let your readers know that, no they didn’t, and you simply forgot to lay sufficient groundwork for this sudden and revolting development.

Have your characters be smarter than a wet sponge and remember: A story without conflict isn’t much of a story, but conflict without growth is futility by another name.

(And don’t tell me that wouldn’t look good on something you found inside a fortune cookie!)