Drive, Drove, Driven

I went to see March of the Penguins this weekend and thought it was a great movie that knew just when to end, which is a good quality for a movie to have. As I watched the story, penguins marching off to find a mate, shag a mate, lay an egg, offload the egg to the father, eat, come back just in time for birthing the baby, and then feeding the baby. Expect for the 'offloading the egg to the father' bit, it could have described my post-collegiate years (and if I could have offloaded the egg to DH during pregnancy, the movie might have been spot-on).

As I nibbled on popcorn, watching the wind blow over the frozen tundra for the 80th time, I thought to myself, "Why isn't this boring? This should be boring.' There weren't many cute penguin moments, and it's not like the penguins were out there performing Macbeth, but it kept me bound to my seat, and when the credits were rolling, I had a marvelous light-bulb pop over my head. Those penguins were motivated penguins. They were passionate about what they were doing. They didn't sit down and contemplate their existence, (nor their navel), they just set out on a 70 mile path, and didn't complain or whine, or even stray -- not once. That's determination, that's steadfastness, that's pretty much the entire movie. And you really got into their journey. This wasn't even a survival story for Mom and Pop. It was just about birthing little penguins. You wanted them to succeed, you want to see them get what they wanted, because they cared so much, and ergo, the audience cared as well.

Sometimes it doesn't matter whether the protagonist is a story is sympathetic, or empathetic; we like characters who know what they want and go out to get it. If Darth Vader huddled in a group of Little Darths to keep warm in 70 degree weather, we would find ourselves cheering for Darth. We want to see people succeed in their goals. Cute and cuddly helps, but it's not impossible to create a driven character who is unlikable and nasty and still have the book be a captivating page-turning best-seller (see Day of the Jackal).

The best characters are those who don't waver from a path unless absolutely necessary, which is part of the reason that Linda Howard characters are to fun to read. They don't ponder the meaning of life. They want what they want when they want it. And Outlander, and oh, the list can go on and on and on….

This isn't an absolute, but if you're wondering why you don't care when your characters achieve their goal, perhaps it's because the characters themselves don't care enough about what they want.

Just saying.