Someone engaged me in this age old philosophical question - do we have free will ?
Or are we wholly the product of our genes and environment.
What I'm here to discuss with you all however is a little different.
In the context of story do we give our characters free will?
I say No. We don't want our characters to have free will!
We want our endings to be surprising but at the same time inevitable, we want destiny to unfold and the audience to say "yeah that makes total sense, why didn't I see that twist coming!!"
We want plot and character choices to influence and inform the next scene as the story unfolds.
What we DON'T WANT is this .. lets pick a big famous movie, like say Shrek
Originally Shrek gets his swamp massively occupied, and his character doesn't like being surrounded by strangers in his swamp so off he goes on his farkwad adventure. His genes and backstory wholly motivate this reaction of his.
But what if he instead of reacting in character he made a choice?
He said "Whatever I'll adjust."
That makes for a terrible story because the choice is out of character.
We only want "choices" that are in character, choices that are 100% based on the genes and environment of our characters. Anything that deviates from "in character choices" we regard as bad, and therefore I propose that we don't want characters in story to ever make a real choice.
Or are we wholly the product of our genes and environment.
What I'm here to discuss with you all however is a little different.
In the context of story do we give our characters free will?
I say No. We don't want our characters to have free will!
We want our endings to be surprising but at the same time inevitable, we want destiny to unfold and the audience to say "yeah that makes total sense, why didn't I see that twist coming!!"
We want plot and character choices to influence and inform the next scene as the story unfolds.
What we DON'T WANT is this .. lets pick a big famous movie, like say Shrek
Originally Shrek gets his swamp massively occupied, and his character doesn't like being surrounded by strangers in his swamp so off he goes on his farkwad adventure. His genes and backstory wholly motivate this reaction of his.
But what if he instead of reacting in character he made a choice?
He said "Whatever I'll adjust."
That makes for a terrible story because the choice is out of character.
We only want "choices" that are in character, choices that are 100% based on the genes and environment of our characters. Anything that deviates from "in character choices" we regard as bad, and therefore I propose that we don't want characters in story to ever make a real choice.