Twilight: Paging Mary Sue

Twilight, pp. 127-128.

Now that Bella has had the plot explained to her (the plot being "Edward is a Good Vampire"), it's time to get back to her favourite activity that doesn't involve Edward: humiliating Mike!

"There you are, Bella," Mike called in relief, waving his arm over his head.

"Is that your boyfriend?" Jacob asked, alerted by the jealous edge in Mike's voice. I was surprised it was so obvious.

"No, definitely not," I whispered. I was tremendously grateful to Jacob, and eager to make him as happy as possible. I winked at him, carefully turning away from Mike to do so. He smiled, elated by my inept flirting.

You know, with all the big bad going on in this book, I find myself continually surprised by how much the little things get to me. Relief? What, he thought he'd lost her? She and Jacob walked along the beach for all of 20 minutes! Mike could still see them from where he was. It's not like they disappeared into the woods. And if he really did lose her, he can just call or text her. Oh wait, he can't because Bella apparently doesn't have a mobile. In 2005. It's inexcusable. Again, maybe I could buy this if Bella grew up in Forks, but are we to believe Bella almost finished high school in Phoenix without a mobile?

Of course, the reason Bella doesn't have a mobile is that Stephenie Meyer didn't have a mobile when she was in high school. This goes back to a writer's need to think about what a character would do, not what she would do. Novice writers are often told "Write what you know." Like a lot of simple, commonsense advice, it's misleading. What it ought to mean is "Don't write about stuff you haven't taken the trouble to learn about beforehand." That way you won't be embarrassed by having people or events in your story that are utterly unbelievable. However, it's often used to mean "Write about experiences that you yourself have had", the idea being that this will make your writing sound authentic to the reader.

But that only works if you're pretty much fictionalising your own life. This approach worked for Oliver Stone, whose Platoon is a fictionalised version of his experiences serving in the Imperial military during the Vietnam War. He was writing about his own life, and Platoon does carry an air of authenticity. What Stone couldn't have done was set Platoon during the Persian Gulf War, because everything about it is different. The Vietnam War was a protracted low-intensity conflict fought primarily in the jungle and primarily against guerillas. The Persian Gulf War was a short, high-intensity conflict fought in the desert against a conventional military force. Not to mention the character of military service in the Empire had changed quite a bit, as the army serving in Vietnam was a mixed volunteer/conscript force, as against the Persian Gulf's all-volunteer military. If Stone had thought to himself, "Well, I was in the military during Vietnam, so I can writing authentically about the Persian Gulf", he'd have looked like an ass. If Stone ever decides to make a film about the Persian Gulf War--or the Iraq War, which in some ways resembles the Vietnam War--he'll start out by doing lots and lots of research on that war.

That's right, research. Fiction writers--well, the good ones--do research. A lot of it. That way, when their doctors start talking, they sound like doctors. When their firefighters need to do something, they do what actual firefighters do. If you don't research this, if you just wing it on what you've picked up through cultural osmosis, your lawyers will sound unprofessional, your business people will make decisions guaranteed to make them fail, and your scientists will be wealthy eccentrics who do Science! by pouring coloured liquid from this beaker into that beaker. And your readers will know you're lazy, because even if they aren't cops themselves, they can tell if a character sounds like a real cop or not. Those readers who actually are cops will be laughing uproariously at everything you get wrong.

So Oliver Stone would do research. He wouldn't just assume his own experiences from 20 years earlier will suffice. Meyer, on the other hand, couldn't be bothered to put any effort into writing this novel. Research? P-shaw! Ten years ago, she was a high school girl. Write what you know! I know what it's like to be a high school girl. Authenticity!

That's what's going on here. Meyer didn't bother to find out what a teenager's life is like now, and so Bella is firmly trapped in the magical land of early '90s angst.

I've got it! Twilight is My So-Called Life fanfiction!

Meyer is also lazy with her first-person narrative, telling us matter-of-factly why Jacob did something. Bella doesn't have access to Jacob's mind. All she can do is guess that he's asking his rather odd question because of how jealously Mike says, "There you are, Bella." (That's quite a feat, by the way. How do you make such an innocuous statement sound jealous?) But it would've been harder to write this scene if it were actually confined to Bella's perspective, so Meyer just breaks the fourth wall and lets her fauxtagonist know what she knows. Beats the heck out of that "writing" stuff.

Also, it's rather appalling that Bella is so grateful to Jacob and so concerned with making him happy that she doesn't stop flirting with him. Which makes a crock out of her next lie...err, statement:

"You should come see me in Forks. We could hang out sometime." I felt guilty as I said this, knowing that I'd used him. But I really did like Jacob. He was someone I could easily be friends with.

Not guilty enough to stop using him, I guess.

The Forks kids are leaving, so it's time for Bella to depart. Jacob taunts Mike over Bella's flirting with him instead of Mike (what a guy!), and Bella makes sure to sit with people who won't talk to her so she can be think about Edward, despite her claim that she's trying not to. (If you're really trying to avoid brooding, how about, I don't know, talking to your friends?) And with that, Chapter 6 comes to a close.

Twilight: The Civilised Tribe

Twilight, pp. 123-126.

This week, I'm not going to go on about why I hate the characters or how the conversations are nonsensical or the way Meyer stacks the deck in her self-insertion main character's favour. No, this time it's strictly Carl Eusebius going on about bad writing. Specifically, how not to handle exposition.

Last time, I gave Bella's side of the conversation with Jacob that was the entire reason she came on this trip to La Push beach with her so-called friends. This time, let's take a look at the unwieldy wad of exposition poor Jacob is forced to spout once Bella's flirting has got him to open up about "the treaty" that he was specifically forbidden to talk about, with Bella's narration and responses (consisting entirely of "[word], what's that?") omitted. Remember, these are supposedly the words of a boy who "just turned fifteen".

"Well, there are lots of legends, some of them claiming to date back to the Flood--supposedly, the ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the ark. Another legend claims that we descended from wolves--and that the wolves are our brothers still. It's against tribal law to kill them. Then there are the stories about the cold ones. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, some much more recent. According to legend, my own great-grandfather knew some of them. He was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land. He was a tribal elder, like my father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf--well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. You would call them werewolves. So you see, the cold ones are traditionally our enemies. But this pack that came to our territory during my great-grandfather's time was different. They didn't hunt the way others of their kind did--they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces. There's always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they're civilised like this clan was."

This, my little droogies, is what we in the bad movie world call an info-dump. That's a scene in which the screenwriter has a whole bunch of information the audience needs to know and can't be bothered to work it organically into the story. The solution is simple: Have one or more (but usually one) character dump the information on the audience through a lengthy explanation to another character.

Exposition (a fancy critic's term for "explaining stuff") is tricky to write, especially when it's information the characters all already know. You've seen this handled badly in films before. You may not have consciously noticed the problem, but your brain did, and something probably felt "off" about the scene. Jaws: The Revenge provides an example. Ellen Brody is on the phone with her granddaughter, and her son Sean says, "Ask the big doctor about his job. Tough life, you Bahamian beach bum, playing in the water all day." Now, I think Ellen already knows what her own son does for a living, and she might even know where he lives. Sean also knew these things. These two lines are only in the film to tell the audience what Michael's job is and where he lives.

It's easier when one character actually doesn't know the information, because then another character can explain it for both her benefit and the audience's. You've seen this done well in other movies, though exposition done well usually isn't noticed. An example from the original Star Wars film is Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke Skywalker about his father, the Empire, and the Jedi. Short, sweet, and Kenobi gives us our first glimpse of the lightsabre, so we have something to interest us besides just him talking.*

But sometimes you have a situation in which you need to deliver a lot of exposition. The world the characters inhabit is so different from anything the audience is familiar with that they can't make sense of events without this information. Still, even if one character doesn't know the information, having another character launch into an uninterrupted lecture is an info-dump that puts the audience to sleep. So a talented writer finds a way to break this exposition up. The Matrix is an example. Once Neo wakes up, he needs the Matrix explained to him. This is done mostly with Morpheus's dialogue, but it's not one long scene of him lecturing. A few hints are dropped when Neo is being medically treated, and then Morpheus meets him in the resistance's Matrix-like program and brings him up to speed partly through dialogue, partly through images, and partly through training. Perhaps the finest example of exposition done well is the original Terminator (1984). Reese has to explain to Sarah Connor that he is from the future, that he has travelled through time, there was a nuclear war, humans were enslaved by machines, humans built a resistance, that resistance is about to defeat the machines, the machines desperately sent a terminator back in time, a terminator is a nigh-indestructible robot that looks human, and that terminator is programmed to kill Sarah because it is her future son that will lead the successful resistance. He delivers all of this information, but while he's doing so:

1) The terminator engages in a car chase with them.
2) Reese and Sarah escape briefly as they change cars.
3) Reese and Sarah crouch inside the car because at any moment the terminator might spot them.
4) Sarah, hearing part of this exposition, understandably concludes Reese is a nutjob and attempts to flee.
5) The terminator reacquires the pair, and they engage in another car chase.

The final bit of exposition is delivered when the cops attempt to convince Sarah--who's taking him more seriously now that she's seen how unstoppable the terminator is--that Reese really is crazy by letting her see him ranting about time travel and laser guns.* Reese does come off as loony, and Sarah begins to doubt her earlier trust in him. This sets up the terminator's attack on the police station, when Sarah is hiding and Reese is looking for her. There's a moment where we wonder: Will she trust him? Or will she trust the police, who are utterly unprepared for what awaits them? An exposition scene ends up setting up a suspenseful payoff later in the film. Thus, the necessary information reaches the audience, and it does so in a way that emerges organically from the events of the film.

Now imagine Reese and Sarah standing in a room and Reese proceeding to explain the entire backstory of The Terminator, the only interruption being Sarah saying, "Cyborg? Like, a robot?"

That's an info-dump. That's what this scene here is. That's Meyer's atrocious writing.

I don't want to shock you or anything, but the Twilight film shortens this scene quite a bit. Plus, as I noted last week, the movie only has Jacob drop hints about werewolves and vampires, never using either of those words. In fact, I think--it's hard to tell from the acting--that movie Jacob doesn't know the Cullens are vampires. He just knows, like his nameless pal, that "the Cullens don't come here".

Book Jacob dispels any mystery there might have been. Yep, we're werewolves, and the Cullens are Good Vampires.

"What do you mean, 'civilised'?

"They claimed they didn't hunt humans. They were supposedly somehow able to prey on animals instead."

I tried to keep my voice casual. "So how does it fit in with the Cullens? Are they like the cold ones your great-grandfather met?"

"No." He paused dramatically. "They are the same ones."


They call the Cullens civilised because they're easy to sneak up on.

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* Though since Kenobi is played by Sir Alec Guinness, a scene consisting entirely of him talking would've worked just as well.
** The film also deftly avoids the pitfall of trying to explain how time travel works without getting itself all tied up in knots. Reese is a grunt, not a technician or scientist ("I don't know tech stuff"), and so there's no reason he ought to know the intricacies of how time travel works.

Twilight: Paint It, Jake

Twilight, pp. 114-122.

Well well well, my little droogies, the time is finally upon us, to meet the third piece of our sad, sick love triangle. But first, the set-up:

At least Mike was happy to see me.

"You came!" he called, delighted. "And I said it would be sunny today, didn't I?"

"I told you I was coming," I reminded him.

"We're just waiting for Lee and Samantha...unless you invited someone," Mike added.

"Nope," I lied lightly, hoping I wouldn't get caught in the lie. But also wishing that a miracle would occur and Edward would appear.

Mike looked satisfied.

"Will you ride in my car? It's that or Lee's mom's minivan."

"Sure."

He smiled blissfully[!]. It was so easy to make Mike happy.

"You can have shotgun," he promised. I hid my chagrin. It wasn't as simple to make Mike and Jessica happy at the same time. I could see Jessica glowering at us now.

So much wrong in so few lines. Then again, you could take any group of lines from this book and likely find a dozen things wrong with them. Of course we need to be constantly reminded that Mike is interested in Bella, as if we'd forgotten, since that's the only reason he's in the story. Okay, that's not fair, he's also here to be not-Edward in this first book, since the real not-Edward non-rival is still to be introduced (and doesn't become an alleged rival until the sequel). I especially like that Mike smiles "blissfully" that Bella will be riding in his car. I guess he's already assuming she'll be sitting next to him--and brother, if that isn't bliss, I don't know what is--though he's blissful before she's actually done this. Bella, ever concerned about others' feelings, squeezes Jessica between herself and Mike to placate her. We're supposed to think Bella's such a great friend that she's putting her own happiness second to that her two friends', but she doesn't want to sit next to Mike anyway! (You may notice there's a lot of "we're supposed to think, but" while reading this novel.) She wants someone else to talk to Mike so that she won't be bothered.

Notice that Mike expresses surprise that Bella showed up. As I said last week, I, too, am surprised. In fact, it's almost as if there's a hidden, omnipotent power manipulating events behind the scenes so that things happen even if they're not consistent with anything we've seen before. What's laughable is Bella's reminder that, "I told you I was coming." Is Meyer really this blind to her fauxtagonist's actions? Bella's word isn't worth anything! She lies frequently and well. I wouldn't trust her to take my order at Denny's.

The funniest part is how easy Bella is to predict. Mike's "unless you invited someone" is the last sentence on the page. As I was turning the page, I knew Bella was going to lie, and sure enough, she does (lightly, whatever that means). Anybody remember way back on page 65?

"It matters to me," I insisted. "I don't like to lie--so there'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it."

Do a search on this blog for "lie" or "lying". Click the tag at the end of this post labelled "lying". You'll come up with a half-dozen times Bella has lied in the, what, three days that have passed in this story so far? (Yes, weeks have passed off-screen, but I'm pretty sure we've only spent three or four days in the company of the characters.) And that's only the times I've mentioned it. I'm sure I've skipped over a few of the more minor lies. For someone who doesn't like to lie, she certainly does it readily, easily, and often, so much so that when this opportunity to tell a lie came up, there wasn't a question in my mind that she would take it.

Oh, and if you remembered that Bella told her "I don't like to lie" lie in reference to something that wasn't even a lie, give yourself a cookie.

Once at the beach, a few of the kids (one of whom is Mike) decide to go hiking. Bella makes the decision to go based on who she most wants to avoid (in this case Lauren, Tyler and Eric, who've decided to stay on the beach), and she gets "a huge smile" from Mike, of course, for choosing his group. (Poor bastard.) She's completely enthralled during the hike by all the wonderful sights and sounds and "wonder[ing] what Edward was doing now, and trying to imagine what he would be saying if he were here with me". When they get back to the beach, some kids from the Indian reservation are there chatting up the ones who stayed behind. We know which one of them matters because he gets a name, Jacob Black. Jacob, being a male, is instantly smitten with Our Bella, "looking at me appreciatively in a way I was learning to recognise". Remember when I talked about how Bella is alternately too jaded and too naive to be 17? Here's an example of the naive part. "Learning to recognise"? This is something I imagine most girls in the Empire start to get a handle on around age 12. Bella grew up in Phoenix, not the backwoods of Appalachia. How could she possibly have reached 17 without recognising boys' interest in her? Answer: Because Meyer, despite having been a 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix, is such a terrible writer that she's less able to write a convincing 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix than I am.

Lauren, of course, notices this and is (wait for it) jealous of Bella. With her "pale, fishy eyes" and "insolent tone", she's really interested in this boy who "just turned fifteen", but of course, every boy only has eyes for Bella. One of the other boys--this one doesn't get a name--says "The Cullens don't come here" when Lauren mentions Edward for no reason. Now the film more or less leaves it at that. It simply has Jacob and Bella walk on the beach with Jake expositing that the Cullens aren't allowed on the reservation and in exchange the Indians aren't allowed to--uh, go to their house, I guess. The novel, however, has Jacob straight up tell Bella that the Indians are werewolves and the Cullens are vampires. Now the film's way of handling Bella's discovery that Edward is a vampire isn't exactly brilliant; she basically does a Google search and concludes vampirism is the only possible explanation for Edward's pale skin and avoidance of the sun. (I guess her search didn't turn up "emo kid".) But it still beats the novel's having Jacob flat out tell her. I mean, a Google search isn't overly exciting, but at least Bella found out on her own. Here, even that tiny sliver of agency is absent, because she doesn't have to do anything but listen to Jacob tell her.

Wait, no, that's not quite true. She does do something: She uses her sexuality to manipulate Jacob into doing something for her. Get used to it, as it won't be the last time she does this to him. Again, this isn't my analysis. She tells us that's what she's doing.

I was still turning over the brief comment on the Cullens, and I had a sudden inspiration. It was a stupid plan, but I didn't have any better ideas. I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he couldn't see through my sure-to-be-pitiful attempts at flirting.

Again, Bella is allegedly a 17-year-old girl who went to public school in a major urban area, yet we're to believe she has no experience flirting with boys. I'm going to quote these "pitiful attempts" with Jacob's part removed. Here's some raw Bella action for you:

"So you're, what, sixteen?" I asked, trying not to look like an idiot as I fluttered my eyelids the way I'd seen girls do on TV[!].

"Really?" My face was full of false surprise. "I would have thought you were older."

"Do you come up to Forks much?" I asked archly, as if I was hoping for a yes. I sounded idiotic to myself, afraid he would turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but he still seemed flattered.

I purposefully lumped myself in with the youngsters, trying to make it clear that I preferred Jacob.

"Oh, I won't tell anyone, I'm just curious." I tried to make my smile alluring...

"I love them," I enthused, making an effort to smolder at him.

I focused on keeping the vital interest I felt out of my eyes.

Our Bella, she doesn't like to lie. Nope. There'd better be a good reason why she's doing it.