Oceans Without Waves
February 2019 Editorial
www.ink2quill.com

I´ve often thought about the elements of characters I like and those I don´t. Sure, honesty, bravery, compassion are great ingredients to an individual but so are aggression, nasty dispositions and self centeredness in certain cases.

Take the example of stories with zombie apocalypses. The characters in those stories have to always stay on guard in a world that has become hostile. They must evade the swarms of zombies and avoid people most people. They can no longer be the generous, outgoing people they were and must run and hide like rats.

In the novel “I Am Legend” the main character Robert Neville is holed up in his house and it´s his neighbor Ben Cortman who is one of the many people he must avoid. Back when society was normal, they were acquaintances who got along. They probably would´ve helped each other out, if say, one of them needed a jump for their car or ran out of coffee one morning. However, after the apocalypse they were on the opposite sides of a struggle for survival.

What I´m getting at is what some call the character arc. Basically, the character starts the story in one situation in one state of mind and when there´s a character arc they travel and undergo change, as the story progresses, and end up in an entirely different place, be that a physical place or a change in the character´s state of mind. Think of the classic from ancient days “The Odyssey”.

So my question is can a good story be devoid of a character arc?… Well, the answer to that is a simple yes. Think of most TV series and film series. That is one of the reasons, I feel, TV is dying and series like “The Game Of Thrones” and “Rome” were so popular. They weren´t just good stories. They had very good character arcs. TV series like “Star Trek” and movies like the “James Bond” series are a good examples of stories without a character arc but are still a good watch.

That is one of the reasons sci-fi books and films are not taken seriously by many literary critics. They say there´s no arc or depth to the characters. That´s not always so, take the example of “Never Let Me Go”. I´ve heard it said that stories without character arcs are like oceans without waves. That may be so but there still is nonetheless a place for those stories. They can still be a good watch.

John

I2Q Blogs / Opinions ink2quill / oceans / singularities /