Hi - I'm filling in this week, so if someone can republish this to Readers and Book Lovers for me, it'd be much appreciated.
The last time I was up, the discussion was about developing critical thinking skills, as in understanding the uses and pitfalls of criticism. This time, the focus is the related topic of having characters display some critical thinking of their own.
It's easy to have your characters running on rails as a plot unfolds. (Well, relatively easy.) Stuff happens, they react and act on their own in turn. This can be entertaining enough; observing well written characters doing their schtick is not a bad thing. But, the old cliché about the unexamined life not being worth living applies here too, as in the unexamined plot can prove less than satisfying.
Having your characters stop and think about what they're doing from time to time can pay off in multiple ways. It gives you a chance to have them put together those things you've been slipping into the story (guns on the wall, as I believe Sensible Shoes calls them, just waiting to go off), and unfold it into a picture that can reinforce the direction of the narrative, or change it to a new path, or even turn it around completely. It can reveal things about your characters you might otherwise have a hard time pulling out. Done in a way that fits with the flow of the story and the characters, it can be an alternative or complement to third person narrative passages, especially ones that are in danger of turning into info-dumps.
Plus, it can be a sneaky way to work in a recap for those who came in late.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
I once read a book where the plot was only able to advance in the direction the author wanted it to go because the main character was almost completely oblivious to the consequences of her actions. It was a bit like those movies where a character does something you know is not going to end well, like splitting away from the group in a haunted house, chasing the cat through the spaceship where the monster waits, ticking off the big bully too soon before the scene where he/she gets their comeuppance. And this character kept doing things like that all through the story, without an ounce of self-awareness or self-preservation.
The book was the first in a trilogy. Possibly the main character had a "What was I thinking" moment in the subsequent books, but I didn't bother to find out.
In the four volume Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold, the first three volumes are largely about the struggles by Fawn - a farmer girl, and Dag - a kind of warrior/mage, to bridge the gap between their very different cultures while meeting assorted challenges and performing amazing feats along the way. In the fourth book they seek out a mentor/guide to help them with their efforts, and in the process of explaining all they've done, they end up seeing a larger pattern to their quest and the implications of it. They've had moments of analysis like that all through the saga - that's how they survived to get to a fourth - but this puts them all together in a larger context. It helps set up the story for the eventual resolution of their search.
It doesn't hurt that Fawn is young, lacking in experience at the start of the saga, yet is always thinking, always asking questions. Her bright mind is one of the qualities that Dag loves about her, as it complements his worldly experience while breaking him out of the rut he'd settled into. It also allows Bujold to have her characters in effect take their world apart so you can see how it works - and you get to watch as they try to reassemble it in new ways. The process is one way to have your characters 'grow' as the story progresses.
Questioning everything is a standard plot turning point in mystery stories, where the detective/hero/central character usually by necessity has lots of questions, and finally puts all the pieces together to solve a mystery/the big puzzle/uncover the truth; smaller moments like that are often distributed all through the tale. Isaac Asimov used it to good effect in The End of Eternity. The central character comes to discover everything he thought he knew about the world he lived in, one where manipulation of time streams was done for benevolent social engineering, is based on lies, incomplete facts - and ultimately a hidden agenda that changes everything when it is finally revealed at the end of the story.
Just for fun (and because I really enjoyed them when I read them) I'm going to link to two web comics where characters are engaging in critical thinking. The first is from Sluggy Freelance, by Pete Abrams. A brief synopsis is impossible - the strip has been running for years - but the situation is this: Torg, a brilliant and capable adventurer who often seems to have trouble telling when his inner child should NOT be in charge and Gwynne, unwilling custodian of the Book of E-Ville, have landed in a ruined covert facility where an ancient evil has been unleashed. They are attempting to deal with a dangerous magical artifact that triggered it. Gwynne has to figure out what to do, do it - and then explain to Torg the reasoning behind her choice.
The second is from PS238 by Aaron Williams, who has been juggling several web comics simultaneously for years as well. A somewhat evil god (Veles) has transported 5 superheroes into a pocket magical universe, in a contest to locate a magical artifact. They're all leaders of superhero teams, and 3 out of the 4 adults are a bit too 'alpha' about it. The fifth is a young girl who unwittingly has become a role model for her superhero type - of which she is #84 - and is not entirely thrilled by the responsibility. (She goes to PS238, a special school for metahumans, which has mixed classes of both 'light' and 'dark' characters.) As the group dynamics are sorting out, 84 does some critical thinking in response to a question - and also realizes she's spent too much time around one of the future super villains in the school...
I hope you enjoyed the two examples. Both of them advance the stories and reveal insights about the character of the characters. For example, we now know how much Torg trusts Gwynne - and that he's an idiot. We see that 84 can be very direct in assessing a situation, how capable she is for her age, and also get an idea of what kind of person she tries to be. And since the stories are in graphic mode, think of all the descriptive passages that can be left out because we can see the pictures. ;-)
One more thing: I ran across a word today that seems apropos: smupid. From the BBC Culture review of The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present by Douglas Coupland, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Shumon Basar (published by Penguin) -
Smupid (adj.)
Smupidity defines the mental state wherein we acknowledge that we’ve never been smarter as individuals and yet somehow we’ve never felt stupider. We now collectively inhabit a state of smupidity where the average IQ is now 103 but it feels like it’s 97. One possible explanation for smupidity is
that people are generally far more aware than they ever were of all the information they don’t know. The weight of this fact overshadows huge advances made in knowledge accumulation and pattern recognition skills honed by online searching.
Tonight's Challenge: What were they thinking? Are they thinking? Are they just smupid?
Write a paragraph or two in which the characters display some critical thinking that clarifies a plot direction, puts things in context, puts a new slant on what you thought was going on, and/or reveals something about who they really are as people.
1) James Buns, international superspy and his unfortunately-named girl friend assess the nature of the larger threat they're facing, and/or their relationship while attempting to evade the momentary life-threatening situation they've gotten caught in.
2) The Callow Youth and his Stout Companion companion arrive at an important understanding of the relevance of the Dread Least Grebe to the Fabulous Jewel of Togwogmagog - and themselves.
3) Belinda, through some plot Mcguffin, encounters the equivalent of an Archie comic book and wonders in a flash of insight if Archie's interactions with Betty and Veronica parallel her own romantic situation with Lord Postlethwaite-Praxleigh (pronounced Puppy) and her rival Adelaide - and if she's Betty or Veronica.
4) Private investigator Celia Spunk reaches a moment in her latest case where she realizes what she has uncovered only makes sense if she assumes everyone is lying to her, even the ones who think they're telling the truth.
5) Choose a scenario of your own devising, based on characters you've been working with or something entirely new, or share an experience where some critical thinking you had your characters do helped you solve a writing problem.