Category Archives: The Fictorians

With all the great heroes and villains in the world to choose from, why would I focus on Samwise Gamgee?

Because he’s awesome.

The Lord of the Rings is one of the great fantasy works of all time, and it’s full of larger-than-life characters. We all love the elves, with their grace and beauty. Gandalf is a mystery who captivates our imagination, and Aragorn inspires us with his bravery in the face of evil.

And then there’s Sam.

He starts the story as a side-kick, and seems content with his role. He’s an often comic character. He’s not very smart, and he knows it. He accepts that his place in the world is not to be the hero, but to be the hero’s cook, assistant, and bodyguard. And yet, he demonstrates in his simple way that heroes are not always the great warriors, with the flashy armor or dazzling magic. Heroes get the job done.

That’s what Sam does, without complaint and without hesitation.

Everyone I’ve talked to loves Sam. I think it’s because we see in him a character we can absolutely relate to. Any one of us could be Sam, and that’s inspiring because Sam represents the best qualities many of us strive to live.

Who is Samwise Gamgee?

He is a gardener who love the simple joy of green, growing things.
He loves to eat fine foods and to enjoy life.
He is humble and knows he’s not a great hero, even though he really is.
He’s absolutely loyal.
He’s determined and does not waver.
He knows what’s right, and he’s committed to seeing it done.
He doesn’t let himself get discouraged or depressed or negative
His view of the world is not clouded by shades of gray. He can see dangers that his master willingly overlooks.
He is brave when he needs to be.
He keeps his word and refuses to take the easy way out.

Sam is there to support and assist his master, and when his master falters, to remind him why they must push ahead, despite resistance:

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

When given the chance to turn around and go home, he refuses:

“I made a promise! A promise.”

When Frodo says, “I’m going to Mordor alone, Sam,”
Sam says, “Of course you are. And I’m coming with you!”

Here’s to the little guys whose simple, unwavering goodness can thwart the evils of the world. After all, Sam is one of the few characters who actually got the girl and lived happily ever after.

We all wish for friends like Sam.
Let’s hope we are that kind of friend.

About the Author: Frank Morin

Frank Morin loves good stories in every form. When not writing or trying to keep up with his active family, he’s often found hiking, camping, Scuba diving, or enjoying other outdoor activities. For updates on upcoming releases of his popular Petralist YA fantasy novels, or his fast-paced Facetakers scifi time travel thrillers, check his website: www.frankmorin.org

Something of Value; Of Boyhood Friendships and Harsh Realities

April 17, 2016

fictorians

Character Guest Posts No Comments

A Guest Post by W. J. Cherf.

There are electric moments that leave an undeniable emotional stamp. Many of them showcase outright heroes. For me, first and foremost, there was the assassination of JFK, then, the lunar landing by Apollo XI team, and finally, but hardly last, the sudden and heart-wrenching Challenger disaster.

Before any of those, however, there was Robert Ruark’s book, Something of Value, about colonial farm life in Kenya in the 1940s. In 1957, a movie with the same title appeared with a young Sidney Poitier, playing the Kenyan Kimani Wa Karanja, opposite an equally boyish Rock Hudson, who played Peter McKenzie, the white son of a colonial English farmer.

Kimani and Peter grew up together like brothers, and like brothers shared in a fair amount of mischief. But as they matured, the world and its harsh realities all too quickly caught up to them and strained their bond for each other. Kenya in the late 1940’s was a hot bed of nationalism that resulted in the bloody Mau Mau anti-colonial uprisings. This history engulfed both Kimani and Peter, who much like many brothers during the American Civil War, found themselves facing each other estranged on the battlefield.

I was seven years old when I first saw this black and white movie. By today’s jaded standards, its acting would be reviewed as contrived and its plot judged hokey. But back then, in the late 1950’s, it was a daring film, where Peter (Hudson) dared to challenge the racial superiority of his heritage. Meanwhile, Kimani (Poitier) challenged it openly with the simple question of “Why?” The roles played by Poitier and Hudson impressed this young soul, this Chicago Northsider, who at the time was naive, innocent, and color blind. As a consequence, Kimani (Poitier) became my favorite character (actor) because of his immense depth, passion, pride of place, and desire to succeed. Peter (Hudson), not so much, because he had inherited the driver’s seat, had far less to lose, and potentially far more to gain.

Later as a boy scout in Troop 76, I remember fondly my many good friends of the inner city, who just so happened to be Latino, Norwegian, Korean, Afro-American, Japanese, and Irish. Just how they accepted this Czech into the mix remains to this day a mystery to me. In all of them, I saw a Kimani.

But back to Sidney Poitier’s Kimani. As a young man even then I recognized the inner struggle, the external conflict, and the extraordinary desire for a black man to be seen and accepted as an equal. And yes, even with his dying breaths, after bitterly fighting his boyhood friend Peter, Kimani died hoping, yearning, for “something of value.”

Any time a movie can render you choked up and tearful has hugely succeeded. Poiter’s Kimani did it for me at the age of seven, for he absolutely nailed the character and the role that somehow, someway, has always remained a part of me.

(Little did I know at the time that Something of Value was Sir Sidney Poitier’s breakout film, who was the first Bahamian and first Afro-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the Lilies of the Field. His other cracker-jack films include: To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.)

W. J. Cherf is a deep, witty, engaging author, ancient historian, and archaeologist, who has been there and dug that. He is best known for writing historical science fiction. His award-winning five book series, The Manuscripts of the Richards’ Trust, fulfilled a life-long desire: “to write books without footnotes,” and to share his love for ancient Egypt. But beware as these books provide a wild and sophisticated ride, and are only for those who enjoy lively description and an involved plot.
But get this: Cherf is currently delving into the deep and murky realms of the paranormal, action-adventure, and urban fantasy genres. The first book of his new series entitled, The Adventures of J. J. Stone, will debut before the end of 2016. What’s it about? Think: The Dresden Files meets American Sniper. Reports have it that book three is already finished and ready for the editor. So stay tuned and strap yourself in!
To find reviews and free chapters to all of his published works, not to mention a handy source for the latest breaking news in Egyptology, go to www.wjcherf.com.

Regarding the Humble Blowfish: A Guest Post by Frog Jones

April 16, 2016

fictorians

Character Conflict Craft & Skills Frog Jones Guest Posts POV The Fictorians The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by Frog Jones.

In my day job, I’m a public defender. This means, among other things, that any time I am placed on panels at conventions, invariably one of those panels will be the “What Makes A Good Villain” panel. After years of giving this panel, I can say with a certainty that the question of how to build a really solid, evil character is one of the harder challenges in writing.

Because here’s the thing: humans don’t set out to be evil. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says to themselves “That’s it. Time to go dark. I am going to start the killing with…you.” Doesn’t happen that way. No, evil is a slow, insidious process of a thousand decisions, each one of which appears to be completely correct at the time, but the sum total of which is a monster.

I’m talking about villains, here. Not just antagonists; that can be any opposing force. I’m talking about truly evil people who want to do truly evil things. Writing someone like that who doesn’t come off as a mustache-twirling dude in a top hat next to a woman whom he has strapped to some train tracks is a real trick.

And this is why I want to talk about Walter White.

Walter is, in the beginning of the series, just a normal guy. He teaches high school students, has a wife and a disabled son. He works a second job at a car wash to pay the bills, and even then the family is just barely getting by. They cannot afford a new water heater. Still, it’s his pride to be the guy taking care of his family. He’s constantly under stress, but he takes that stress and bottles it down because, well, that’s what you do.

Fast forward to Season Five, and Walter White is a drug lord with no compunctions about murdering for his territory or threatening his family. He is, by anyone’s account, evil.

Now, I’m not saying you have to write five seasons of a television series to get a believable villain into your plot. But I do recommend that you figure out how and why your villain broke bad. And Walter White is a great model of the basic things you need to get there.

For Walter, the cancer triggered him. Once he knows he’s dying of cancer, he realizes he will no longer be able to take care of his family. And that right there? It’s the one thing he had. Oh, he’s not rich like his college buddy who didn’t sell his stock early, but he is taking care of his family. It’s the one thing he has to be proud about.

This pride? It’s normally considered a virtue in society. Walter wants to make sure that he’s the guy who provides, not someone else. Good on him, right? Way to stand up and take responsibility. Way to “be a man.”

So now we have a series of pressures placed on Walter. One is his financial pressure, because he never has enough money to provide for the basics of life. The next is his self-applied pressure to provide for the family himself. When the cancer comes along, it adds a ticking clock. Now Walter has to make a significant amount of money very, very quickly, because to do otherwise would be to fail in his responsibility to his family.

See what happened there? Not a bad guy. Just a guy put in a position where all the pressures on him forced him into a situation where the next choice seems perfectly logical. If you’re a professional chemist, and you need to make a lot of money very quickly, then cooking meth makes a lot of sense.

This right here? This is the point where you need to take your villain. It may be backstory, in your case; it certainly was in mine. But in the life of every evil person, and I know this as someone who spends his entire life working with evil people, there is a series of decisions that lead, inevitably, to damnation. And it starts with one.

Walter’s decision is wrong. But it’s perfectly logical. It makes sense. He’s going to die anyways, so the legal consequences aren’t really a big deal. He needs the money. Someone is going to sell meth to these junkies, and that meth will be laced with all kinds of other things, because they aren’t nearly as good at this as Walter.

This is the moment. The moment where your villain goes wrong. The moment where he or she makes the decision to do the wrong thing for all the right reasons. After that, it’s a slow and gradual slide into hell.

Not every story can or should be Breaking Bad. But everyone who wants to write an evil character should watch Breaking Bad, because it is a perfect case study in how a villain is born.

About Frog Jones

Frog Jones writes with his wife, Esther. After a ten-year vow to never show each other a word they had written, they eventually broke down and wrote a novel together. Together, they have published the Gift of Grace series from Sky Warrior Books, as well as short stories in anthologies such as How Beer Saved the World, First Contact Café, and Tales from an Alien Campfire, as well as many more.

The Joneses live on the Puget Sound in the State of Washington with Oxeye, who is twenty-five pounds of pure bunny. Frog’s works can be found at http://www.jonestales.com, and he also appears on the Three Unwise Men podcast at http://3unwisemen.com.

“The Most Successful Bankrobber Ever”

April 15, 2016

Kevin Ikenberry

Character Conflict Craft & Skills Dialogue Kevin Ikenberry Movies Narrative Voice Subtle Confict Suspension of Disbelief No Comments

Jack Foley.

The first time I met Jack Foley was in Elmore Leonard’s novel Out Of Sight. Elmore Leonard was a literary genius and his approach to storytelling and dialogue are two of my biggest influences when I write. You’ve probably been aware of his work (notably Get Shorty, 3:10 To Yuma, and the television series Justified to name a few). When I read Out of Sight, I immediately liked Foley as a character. But when the movie came out, something incredible happened. The movie version released in 1998 and was directed by Stephen Soderbergh. It remains one of my favorite movies and, in my opinion, the best of Leonard’s novels turned into film (in a tie with Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown – which I’ll discuss next month!).

Foley’s career bank robber with a good heart escapes from the Glades Federal Penitentiary in Florida and promptly runs into U.S Marshall Karen Sisco. In the commotion of the escape, they end up in the trunk of a Cadillac as Foley and his accomplice, Buddy, run. By the time we see this, we’re already in love with Foley. He is smart, good looking, charming as hell, and always has a plan. In the trunk of the car, lit by the reverse side of the taillights, Foley and Sisco have a conversation that feels as natural as one that you and I could have. In the midst of the dangerous situation, sirens and flashing lights close by, we’re pulled into their discussion as naturally as possible. By the time they got out of the car, and the rest of the tale unfolds, we’re clearly following both of them and wanting them to get together at the end of the movie.

In the movie, George Clooney plays Jack Foley and Jennifer Lopez plays Karen Sisco. With Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Michael Keaton, and Albert Brooks as some of the stellar cast, the movie is very true to Leonard’s novel.

So what’s the big deal? Why is Jack Foley a memorable character?

Flash forward a few years and Elmore Leonard’s sequel to Out of Sight was released. Road Dogs follows Jack Foley after his release from prison as he tries to build a new life for himself but keeps running afoul of shady characters out for money and blood. From the book Out of Sight, which is one of my favorite Leonard titles, I liked Foley’s character. However, seeing him played by Clooney so perfectly, as I read Road Dogs, I could not stop seeing and hearing Clooney in the role. That’s where Foley transcended being a likable sympathetic character into something different. Clooney’s effortless performance as Foley indelibly attaches his “aura” to the character. The likable, memorable character has become something else entirely through the visual medium.

There are a few movies that suck me in when I find them one television. All of them have something in common. A sympathetic, regular guy protagonist with a good heart trying to get by. All of those movies have been perfectly cast so that the main characters are indelibly etched into our minds. Seriously – could anyone other than Tim Robbins have played Andy in Shawshank Redemption? Clooney’s performance as Jack Foley did exactly the same thing. When written stories become films, so many times the elements the make the books vibrant and alive are lost. Sometimes, we cannot see a character in our minds as clearly as the movies define them.

But when a likable, memorable character is played by the right actor or actress – wow. And you all know exactly what I’m talking about. But is it the actor or the character that is memorable? I vote character. No matter the actor’s talent, commitment to the role, or appearance, the character is developed on paper and is the vision of the writer/screenwriter that the actor is to bring to life. When it’s done perfectly in a book, it resonates with us. When we see that on camera, it’s more than memorable. It’s legendary.