Character or action?

My early stories are action-based. I know that from re-reading some of the them. There is little or no character development. More recently, I have emphasised character more. That is not to say there isn’t any action—far from it. But central to the story is the character(s)’s development. I want to see them evolve as the situations and encounters they go through force change on the individual. Be it for good or bad.

Now a lot of writers/readers will say, “Yoopee! We like this.” Yet! Yet, in practice they don’t like it much. They want to write/read action, action, action. The less interesting aspect it seems is to see character development.

You can see this in the way movies have changed. Hard to believe that Alien, the first of the movie franchise is 45, as it was released in 1979! Recently, I listened to a podcast interview on the movie that revisited it. What came across major was the extended scene setting. Not so much the physical environment, though Ridley Scott doesn’t spare our enjoyment of these. As an aside, I was totally transfixed by the setting. I just loved the space tug and the alien spaceship and the creature itself were so wide of what had come before, they were stunning. Thank you, Giger.

But back to the story/plot. If you watch the movie again, you will realise that a good 20 minutes of the movie is introducing the characters, especially Riply are carefully developed and their interractions as crew explored in some depth before the action starts. The podcast made the very valid point, which is the point I’m making in this post, that this extended introduction wouldn’t be acceptable to modern audiences. The sequels and especially the most recent ones, all start in media res. The introduction of the characters and their relationships are developed—if they are developed!—in the midst of the action. This is a pity, really.

One of the great achievements of Alien is that by the time the action starts, we have a firm idea of who the crew are and their likely behaviours when faced with the alien horror. That is one reason why, after all these years, I still remember Parker going against his cynical world view when faced by the creature. We also have Ripley’s cynicism put to the test. Indeed, one of the interesting observations from the podcast and an an aspect of her character I’d forgotten, was just how unlikeable she is at the start. We and the rest of the crew have to learn her respect, even if we don’t actually like/love her at the end.

That Ripley goes from dislikeable to a heroine over the course of the movie is one of the great achievements of Alien and in my humble opinion one of the reasons it has stood the test of time and 9th in Entertainment’s 40 Best Alien Movies of All Time and it has some serious competition (E.T., Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Day the Earth Stood Still, etc.). Wow!

The moral: give me character every time.