Quote: Original post by guy_with_a_pexel
I'm not sure the deaper reason for it, but it's just what people associate as being good versus bad. If you ever watch stain removal comercials, you will always see the good stain removal on the left, never the right. Same with before and after photos.

Actually, at least in the US, it tends to be the other way around. The left side is the deprecated side, while the right side is the emphasized side. The reasoning is simple: we read from left to right in the US, so we tend to scan scene changes on television from left to right and spend longer looking at the right half than the left. Bounty (paper napkins) is always on the right. Ditto Always (menstrual pads and pantyliners).

It's by no means universal though. Because of the conventions of visual drama, positions oscillate (but I can't verify whether entrances do).

Interesting.

Quote: Original post by oscar maris
I don't ever buy into universal rules like "there are no neutral characters."
People always try to come up with principals like that and I just throw them out the window. So my stories may end up weird, but at least they're not boring and mostly original.

I'm a huge proponent of chucking the "rules" and doing it your way, but what, pray tell, do you consider a neutral character? Considering that tension drives drama (and thus narrative), and that tension requires opposition of characters (directly or indirectly), what would a story about/involving a neutral character be?

Non-conformism for non-conformism's sake is silly. Nuetral characters would be precisely what you claim your stories are not: boring.

a mercenary changing sides at least three times in a story can probably be seen as a neutral character, as long as he doesn't show too much his feelings during the process.

Let's say the merc is TRULY a merc, and doesn't end up shouting battlecries like "for the glory of our King!" but merely some like "And I hope the bounty is worth it!" I suppose accepting bribery, for a merc, is not ethical, but can be considered neutral. If he does, he can always say "I hope there are no hard feelings, there, but he pays more." I don't see the merc as a protagonist, or even an antagonist, but merely as a prop, there. Only said prop is acting, talking, and generally doing things.

The best role-changing story series I ever read was Stephen R Donnelson's Gap Cycle. In it he had 3 main characters, each seriously flawed, 2 of the 3 just downright evil by most standards ... evolve throughout the story into different things. Taking on at various times his 3 pseudo roles of villain, victim, and hero.

By the way, the "victim" role is somewhat neutral, as you don't necessarily like a victim at all, the are often despisable is modern movies, but the "hero" must save them in order to be a hero. So their personal nastiness is almost an antagonist that the hero must overcome in order to stay a hero ... but their general role is one in which their goals are aligned with the hero (to save them) so they are on the protagonist's side.

Quote: Original post by oscar maris
I don't ever buy into universal rules like "there are no neutral characters."
People always try to come up with principals like that and I just throw them out the window. So my stories may end up weird, but at least they're not boring and mostly original.

Considering the other points that have been raised, is it only you who sees the character as neutral? What do the readers/whatever feel about the character?

Consciously you may believe the character neutral, or write with the intent of him/her/it being neutral, but subconsciously?

Maybe because neutral characters are characters you end up not caring about, and if you don't care about them, why are you reading the story? Any time spent on these characters is going to be wasted space then as a result.

Quote: Original post by Fournicolas
a mercenary changing sides at least three times in a story can probably be seen as a neutral character, as long as he doesn't show too much his feelings during the process.

Nope. The character remains either a protagonist or an antagonist, though he does not need to behave rigidly one way or another (protagonists can antagonize, etc). Shifting allegiances have nothing to do with whether, in the context of the overall story, the character is a protagonist or antagonist.

A protagonist is a character that the audience roots for. This character can be evil - or "evil," as in the case of the Wicked Witch of the West in Wicked. The mafia in mob movies? Evil protagonists. The cops? Good antagonists. Conversely, an antagonist is a character the audience roots against, regardless of his affiliations. I'm sure we've all seen movies where the protagonist and antagonist are on the same "side" against an external enemy - Top Gun immediately comes to mind. Sure, they tried to rehab "Iceman" at the end by pitting him as a true comrade to "Maverick," but, please, the audience wasn't buying that.

Quote: I don't see the merc as a protagonist, or even an antagonist, but merely as a prop, there. Only said prop is acting, talking, and generally doing things.

If the merc is a prop, then he's not a character. That is, the audience won't care about him, and he can not be an integral part of the plot.

Focusing on stuff like this leads to hackneyed writing. I know more about writing than I do about animation (well, I wasted a bit of time studing film, so I probably "get it"), but I'd say just sketch it as you visualize it, only turning to the "laws" as a last resort. Your brain already has a marvelous faculty for saying what you mean to say.

I think these sorts of theories function better as descriptives than prescriptives. They probably arose as such, and were only later applied as law by people who want you to think they know what they are talking about.

No critic will ever say an entrance from the right by a protagonist is an "error," if the finished product is good. If they care about that strange law, it will be one of the "exceptions that proves the rule." If the finished product is bad, they may point it out.

I can think of symbolic reasons why you might want it the other way around.

If your prof is docking you for this, in an otherwise good storyboard, he's an overpaid idiot. Of course, you might be able to bullshit him from the "symbolic" angle, and scare him into thinking you're smarter than him--of course, if he can draw better, that isn't going to work.

*I'm not saying that different methods of organization don't work, but it's much better adapt anything like that to your own use, rather than treat it as a blueprint.

**And of course, any characters that don't serve to advance the plot, illustrate detail, or otherwise have a function, are extraneous--delete them. It's worth asking why your characters are there.

Bottom line--don't pay much attention to a regurgitated theory. I'd be interested to see what source the prof even got that from...even though the reading left-to-right and product comparison stuff is obvious, I still don't know what purpose it would serve at all to mention it, unless he was just pointing it out as an "interesting phenomenon" and not as some kind of rule of composition.

[Edited by - abstractimmersion on April 15, 2006 1:14:28 AM]

Quote: Original post by abstractimmersion
**And of course, any characters that don't serve to advance the plot, illustrate detail, or otherwise have a function, are extraneous--delete them. It's worth asking why your characters are there.

Why does something have to advance anything? Why can't you have things besides just 'the plot' why can't you tell your story and fill it as you like?

I have read my reviews of different things say "why was this added? it is a waste of time for me to read/see this as it doesn't advance the plot"

If that is your feeling why not have your whole game/novel/story/movie as

Person shot
Person's friend finds and shoots the person that shot the first person.
The end.

See how that got right to the point with no filler? See how boring that is?

The rule for "Person X enters from position Y" is just as much crap and dull as the bad guy always wears the black hat.

Writers are always told to cut extraneous scenes from their novels to tighten them up because that flab distracts the reader and slows the pace, making for a less intense reading experience. A story should contain all the things and only those things which are necessary to fully tell the story. Consider the completist style player (i.e. me) If you put a sidetrack in your game I _have_ to explore it. So if I spend 10 extra minutes doing that, by the time I get to the next plot point that's ten more minutes I've had to forget what happened previously, or notice plot holes, or decide the game is boring because the plot is not advancing and quit playing it; all things you never want your audience to do.