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chengxia Since: Jun, 2011
#1: Aug 8th 2011 at 9:06:09 PM

Can an audience root for my main character?

Project: Sequel to Korean drama Sungkyunkwan Scandal[1]

Genre: Korean historical drama – fusion sageuk (+mystery, action, drama)—> killing someone could already put a character past redemption

Setting: 18th century Korea during the reign of King Jeongjo

Morality: No one can be pigeonholed into bad and good. (Grey-and-Gray Morality) There are some characters that step closer to the relative bad side, but not too far.

The female lead is on contract with the Ministry of War to do all manner of morally questionable things e.g. assasination, messing with foreign politics in exchange for a carte blanche to take revenge on the person who killed her family.

Rootable areas: kicks ass, loyal, honest, compassionate, self-aware, has a tough life but never complains about it Not rootable areas: She can override her own sense of morals to achieve her goals. (aka. Being okay with killing someone if she can be in the position to kill someone else) External factors: Tragic past

Problem: She has some justification/likeable points on her side. But, her ability/tendancy to push aside her moral beliefs for "I'm-sorry-I-have-to-kill-you-but-it's-too-bad" may be too much for this genre, even if she tries to be gentle. Later, she will be unable to kill some women and children and she’ll start rebelling (albeit discreetly) against her organization. I’m not sure if that’s enough for the audience. This may be based on personal opinion for each person but is this mucking up the moral waters too much? Closest trope: Hitman with a Heart

Why this is a problem: How will it make sense if the male leads fall in love with her? She needs to be worthy of it. Even if her backstory and what she goes through in the storyline is enough for ten characters and she redeems herself (as mentioned above), the audience may not be able to root for her as well because of what she’s done.

Solutions I want to avoid: Make morality setup simpler. Have heroine do less bad things. (This would be closer to the political espionage situation in that time period). Her moral dilemma would be more palpable too.

edited 9th Aug '11 12:32:30 PM by chengxia

nrjxll Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Not war
#2: Aug 8th 2011 at 9:40:01 PM

Too... many... tropes...

too... little... actual... description... of... character...

dRoy Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar from Most likely from my study Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just high on the world
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
#3: Aug 8th 2011 at 9:40:55 PM

[up][up] I don't care what you do, but people here don't like it and aren't likely to take your work seriously when you describe your works and your characters in terms of tropes. Like [up] said, you better have actual description.

Btw, are you a Korean?

edited 8th Aug '11 9:42:31 PM by dRoy

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
chengxia Since: Jun, 2011
#4: Aug 8th 2011 at 10:26:19 PM

Sorry for the unreadable post. I've fixed it up a bit and hope it's better. I'm not Korean, but I'm really a fan of Korean dramas, especially historicals. Good Korean drama writers are really the best at using tropes well. I tried to cut out as much content as possible, because for character content there is a lot. Thank you for the suggestions! smile

dRoy Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar from Most likely from my study Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just high on the world
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
#5: Aug 8th 2011 at 10:38:47 PM

[up] Funny, because I'm a Korean but I abhor those dramas.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
chengxia Since: Jun, 2011
#6: Aug 8th 2011 at 11:14:00 PM

If you are referring to cancer, random hand-biting, and gimmicky scenarios with no writing flair, then I know what you mean. Well...what do you like then... (Could click on your page...) *gasp* You like blood and gore too! evil grin There was this horrible Korean drama that I was skimming for scenes with my favourite actor in it. They were torturing the main character by hitting her with a tiny twig. A TWIG. I was like: "Bring out the whips! Do that weird two poles torture thing! Punch her in the face! SOMETHING!" I'm horrible. But there is a serious torture scene in mine. Bring out the hot pokers. waiiANIME. When I go to an anime store where I live, I need to be physically restrained. But I am a fan of the more morally ambiguous animes. Like Blood+. Deathnote. Claymore. As many characters in these animes do, my main character snarks too. But you can snark and still be beyond redemption...

edited 8th Aug '11 11:18:03 PM by chengxia

Wolf1066 Crazy Kiwi from New Zealand Since: Mar, 2011 Relationship Status: Dancing with myself
Crazy Kiwi
#7: Aug 8th 2011 at 11:32:48 PM

Here in NZ - and as far as I know in Australia, too - the rootability of a character means something completely different to how it's meant here. evil grin

alethiophile Shadowed Philosopher from Ëa Since: Nov, 2009
Shadowed Philosopher
#8: Aug 8th 2011 at 11:56:57 PM

Here I read the post title and thought it was talking about computer security. tongue

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)
Wolf1066 Crazy Kiwi from New Zealand Since: Mar, 2011 Relationship Status: Dancing with myself
Crazy Kiwi
#9: Aug 9th 2011 at 12:00:54 AM

You're depraved, Alethiophile tongue

RiotousRascal Since: Dec, 2010
#10: Aug 9th 2011 at 2:41:17 AM

Yeah. Australian speaking here, and I thought that title meant something completely different to what was intended. cool

Ahem. Anyway.

Do you have any samples of your character's actions, dialogue, et.c.? I find it a lot easier to understand characters when they're speaking.

edited 9th Aug '11 2:41:37 AM by RiotousRascal

chengxia Since: Jun, 2011
#11: Aug 9th 2011 at 12:23:25 PM

Format: Well, the style for this one is quite restricting, since I wanted to create something that could really be a drama. A script is very jarring to read, and you can't get sucked in too well. So I've decided to use limited omniscient with some intrusion into the character's thoughts. The same amount of information or perspective a camera would have.

She is pretending to be a man by the way.Sweet Polly Oliver. Not so sweet in this case.

So as part of my character's job, she either has to assassinate people or people will end up dying so she can fulfill her missions, which are part of the Ministry of War's agenda. (Often true in history)

This amounts to a lot of people. All of them won't be shown or given fuller characterizations obviously. But other characters will talk about them. At most I'm going to put in a Dead-Hand Shot or something like that and this character has constant nightmares and insomnia about this.

At first, the audience will only see her routine when she comes home: 1)come home looking like hell 2)beeline to the bath 3) stay in the bath for a long time 4) go to bedroom and crash. More and more information will be revealed e.g. like her washing blood from her hands.

There will be two scenes that will give the victims some characterization. Rule of Empathy The first one will show us how the main character deals with this part of her job in the moment.

I've been fighting with the Men Are the Expendable Gender and {{Wouldn't Hit A Girl}} tropes since they lead to Unfortunate Implications and this drama/story is really about subverting those. However, Korean drama sticks on the safe side of that. So the first kill that we as an audience will get to know will be a man. Sigh.

Gist of Scene (Haven't written it yet): He will be a low-ranking official that the Ministry of War needs to disappear because he's found out stuff (will not specify, too much content).

To make this work, the Ministry has turned on the pressure and he hasn't caved. They will use the "It's that massacring thief" trick and make the official's death look like an accident.

The main character, Seol Yeon just needs to kill him and take away some stuff to make it look like it should. The official, being smart has sent his family away.

In the scene, she'll try to kill him in his sleep. He's awake and ready and tries to put up a fight. He identifies her as part of the Sasin, the Ministry's main covert special ops and realises that he can't escape. She promises him that she'll make it quick. She tries to hit him on the head so she can snap his neck.

He grabs her by the arms (somehow, will need to chereograph this) and tells her, "Look me in the eyes when you do it. Look at me!" She is startled by this and he grabs her sword and stabs himself with it. He sinks to ground and extremely disturbed, Seol Yeon holds his hand. "They won't give you what you want. They'll kill you," he says.

He keeps looking at her and she realises that he's dead. A girl that always tries to keep her cool, Seol Yeon is visibly shaken as she takes some of his stuff. When she goes home and starts washing herself, she is lost in thought and looks hard at her bloodied hands for a long time. She'll have nightmares about this one.

Second scene:

FYI: Sasin mission protocol 1. Complete mission. 2. Make it look like an accident. 3. Split up, get out, unseen and unheard.

Here's my chance to subvert the gender trope. Seol Yeon is on a mission to take out a Korean spy/courtesan = giseang that is fleeing to China with intelligence. Seol Yeon and other Sasin masquerade as bandits and raid her convoy. Their timing is off and the woman's Chinese lover has come to meet her.

The lover tries to save the woman and the Sasin kill him. The woman has some fighting skills but they're nothing compared to Seol Yeon's. She stabs her in the throat and is about to leave when she discovers a toddler, a girl, hiding in her dead mother's skirts.

The Sasin have a strict Leave No Witnesses policy. Defiance of this will lead to suspicion of being a double-spy or mole. Such is the world of espionage. We can see Seol Yeon, her bloodied dagger raised, considering the consequences.

She sheathes the dagger and bundles the frightened girl into her shirt. There is commotion outside and it seems like the lover's men have arrived. The team regroups and tries to get away. They discover the dead lover and grieved and enraged, they try to take down the team.

Seol Yeon tries to shield the girl and straps her tightly in and hides her with a bundle of loot from the convoy held tightly to her chest. Too tightly though and Seol Yeon doesn't notice the girl struggling as she tries to fight off the lover's men.

They split up and Seol Yeon outrides her pursuers on horseback. She starts planning: hide the girl at home, drop her off at a temple on the way home, etc. She tells the lump in her shirt: "I'm sorry, but I'll do all I can for you."

The bundle doesn't say anything. It doesn't move either. Seol Yeon checks the girl in a panic and the girl is dead from suffocation. She rides home in a stupor, the dead girl still cradled in her shirt.

It's nighttime at this point. Her partner, Gu Tae Suk comes out and meets her and whisper-yells at her for not following protocol. He looks at her face ,he shuts up, takes the body away, gets on a horse and leaves. (presumably to dispose of the body somewhere)

Cue the scene where the male lead, Ha In Soo comes out of the house and finds her still sitting on the porch covered in blood. He rushes her into the bathhouse and she spills the beans about everything and tells him not to be good to her, etc. Basically a Heroic BSoD.

After this, Seol Yeon starts discreetly rebelling against the Ministry of War. They try to get Ha In Soo to kill her etc.

So I hope that was enough information. This was just a quick run-through of these scenes. I'm sure that there are issues there that need to be fixed.

Here, we could argue that Seol Yeon is sympathetic. But everyone is in this drama/story is to a certain degree. There is a difference though between being evil and killing people and being good and killing people.

It may be Dirty Business, but you're still choosing to do it. I thought self-awareness in a character would be very interesting because most female leads in dramas are very very slow on the uptake, but that also upps her level of responsibility for her actions too.

If you're blinded by your revenge or sense of justice, fine. But Seol Yeon isn't. She's fully aware of the impact of her actions.

Does this bring her beyond being a character that people can root for? What do you think?

This story is very big and very complicated. It is Whedon's Angel to Whedon's Buffy. If you haven't watched Sungkyunkwan Scandal, the characterizations may not have as much impact. But, if you'd like to see the master plan for this story/drama, it is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VfYLyG3xaiJWNuvF5PJgmre3A3X-V6WRSlvFATVlN50/edit?hl=en_US#heading=h.ldovsp86a4li

edited 9th Aug '11 12:25:17 PM by chengxia

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