Lamb, or How Christopher Moore Actually Made Me Care About Jesus

**Note: The product links in this article are Amazon Affiliate Links. No extra cost to you, but I get a kickback from any purchases. Let's call it a headhunter's fee...but less cool.**

So, I've said in the past in various interviews that I don't have a favorite author, per se. I find it nigh impossible to actually nail down one singular author I love the most. Rowling embedded herself in my soul, but Valente's words make my heart soar. Lem's wit and absurdity never lose their shine, but Jemisin's worldbuilding is to die for.

But I think, if you drove the tacks down under my thumbnails and said I had to give one name, I think that name would probably be Christopher Moore.

Those who know him are probably nodding to themselves knowingly. For those who don't...how to sum up Christopher Moore...hmm...

Take a Mel Brooks movie. No, not that one. Yeah, that one. Then cut out all the fluff. Keep the insane, WTF concepts, then add a Richard Pryor sense of humor with a Joan Rivers (RIP) dry delivery, and then sprinkle on the sort of heartbreaking poignancy present in a movie like RENT or The Green Mile.

Also some magic.

And if you can imagine that, then you've got a much better imagination than I do. Christopher Moore's work is hard to parse out in a short summary like that because there really isn't anything like what he does. You have to make a minimum of two or three comparisons to really try and capture it. From The Island of the Sequined Love Nun and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, with their over the top absurdity, to his vampire trilogy (You Suck, Bite Me, and Bloodsucking Fiends) rife with wit, to my personal favorites (And personally, I think Christopher Moore's favorites, too.), his research-heavy novels. I've written already on Sacre Bleu, his Impressionist era fantasy, but it also includes Fool and The Serpent of Venice, his riffs on Shakespearean classics (King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, respectively.).

But probably his most famous of the lot, maybe his most famous book of all, is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff.

One side will say it's sacrilegious...and the other side will agree, we just don't care. Have you ever wondered what happened in the missing years of Christ's life? Well, Christopher Moore has the best answers for that.

(Umm...the spoilers are going to start here. So be aware of that shit.)

See, I'm not a Christian. We won't get into many specifics, but suffice it to say that view isn't changing any time soon...ever, really. I don't buy into the religion, and I also have never bought into the sort of heart-wrenching, hair-ripping zealotry to Jesus that I grew up around. I've read The Bible. I've read The Book of Mormon. I've read a lot about Christianity, along with a lot of other religions. I didn't understand why people would love Jesus so God damn much.

Lamb is the first and only book that has ever made me love the Christ child. It's the only one that made me care. And after my fourth or fifth re-read just recently, I've been picking apart why.

It's dead simple.

Moore's Joshua (Apparently that would have been his actual name? Maybe? I'm not sure, but let's go with that for now.) is the only time I found Jesus sympathetic. He was relatable. He was human, which is supposed to be the big draw, right? He's just one of us. He's, at his core, supposed to be a man. But the religious version of Jesus is so holy and shit that it just doesn't connect to me. Never has.

But in Lamb...the first time we see Joshua, he's reviving a dead lizard that his brother keeps killing. Just an endless cycle of resurrection. Because what the hell else would a little kid with godly power do? He falls in love with Mary Magdalene, but he knows he can't do anything. It's a little boy crush. His best friend is a crude, sinful son of a bitch. And Joshua is wracked with doubt: he's not ready to be the Messiah, his dad won't talk to him, and he's trying to figure out how to just cope with all of this.

For five sixths of Lamb, everything is spent building up Joshua and Biff as characters. They travel along the Silk Road to meet the three wise men. They learn ancient Chinese chemistry and acupuncture and medicine. They study in a Tibetan monastery and learn Kung-Fu and Buddhism. They study with a yogi in India.

And Biff has a lot of sex. Joshua doesn't.

So by the time we get back to preach the gospel, we've followed about 2 decades of Joshua's life, traveling the world. And because the story is told from the POV of his best friend, we see him in maybe the best light possible.

That makes the return to Israel brutal. Saving Mary Magdalene from a disastrous marriage. Gathering the Apostles. Preaching on the Holy Ghost...I mean, it's a Jesus story. It ends one way.

But when we get to the scourging, the sacrifice, the crown of thorns, the crucifixion, it's heartbreaking. Not in a "human condition" kind of way, but in a "this is Joshua, and he's refusing to speak in his own defense" way. And for such a funny book (The scene where Jesus has coffee for the first time is one of my favorite scenes in any book, ever.), the ending is...well, it's a freaking Jesus story. the ending is miserable.

And that is to its credit. In the midst of the laughing, the silliness, all of that...you forget that this is the story of Christ. Somehow, Moore manages to make the crucifixion a surprise gut punch at the end. And it's the longest gut punch ever. Up to the last moments, he's feeding you hope...but there is no hope.

So rather than the actual Biblical Jesus, a figurehead instead of a person, Lamb takes Joshua, puts him through hell, shows you his human side in the best and worst ways, puts his flaws on display...and then rips him away from you. And that is why Lamb is the only book that makes me give half a crap about Jesus. Ever.

Friday Writer Roundup: 20,000 Names

Yikes. I've been so caught up in drafting, I've completely neglected the last few Friday Writer Roundups. My apologies. This book has stolen my attention quite effectively.

But I'm here today, however late, with one of my favorite resources: 20,000 Names.

When it comes to naming websites, it's not the most glamorous, but it's by far my favorite. It gives the ethnic origin, the meaning, and the traditional gender of all the names it lists. And, while I can't say for certain that they actually list 20,000 individual names on their website, it wouldn't surprise me if that number was at least close.

But there's another one I find almost as useful: the Social Security Administration's Baby Names Section. It only really helps with American names, for obvious reasons, but it has lists of the top hundred or so names for boys and girls in any decade from the 1880s to the 2000s. Which makes it awesome for NPC characters. Just give a guess to their age, subtract it from the date your work is set, and then go through that decade's listing until something catches your attention.

Of course, there are always other alternatives. SeventhSanctum has several name generators in its depths, including Angel Names, Vampire Names, and plain General Names. Another one that can be useful, and also make a very good breeding ground for procrastination, is Behind the Name's generator. You can customize your generator for several factors (origin, masculine/feminine, style), and have it provide you with a matching surname, or provide your own. The downside? It does one at a time only.

So, I hope you have a lovely rest of your Friday. And don't forget, there's still time to enter the drawing for free copies of Zirkua Fantastic and The Jester Prince.

Voss

The Bludgeon or the Rack?

I'm sitting here, watching The Golden Girls. It's one of the episodes that's hardest to watch--you find out that Rose (for those that don't know, Rose is a Minnesota farm-girl, totally innocent and a huge sweetheart) has been taking prescription painkillers for thirty years.

It's painful to watch, because everyone loves Rose, and it just comes as a shocker when you find out she's been taking these drugs. Aside from the fact that such a heavy issue has been dropped on the sweetest, kindest character of the entire series, it makes you re-evaluate her entire character: is that why she's been so happy this whole time?

That's perfectly pointed torture to a 'T,' and it's incredibly useful. Take a look at another example: Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series. He loved--true, deep, everlasting love--Lily. but, when all's said and done, she marries James Potter, the one man he can't stand, his personal tormentor fro, his school days. Fast forward a few years and they have a son. Then they die. Their son, when he grows up, looks exactly like James, except for Lily's eyes. He's also under constant threat of death from a horrible, dark wizard. When it comes down to it, their son is thrust into Snape's life. He's torn between hating what of James is in Harry and his love for Lily, and thus her son.

Torture: as far as writers are concerned, torture is a good thing. Room 101 is even better. Find the one specific torture that will break your character, that will infiltrate every second of his or her life, and pile it on. Thick. As my high school band director would say, use more peanut butter. Of course, we're talking more like cyanide butter, but the metaphor still stands.

Off to go oil the iron maiden,
Voss

Personable Characters

Writers are generally sarcastic, snarky, witty people, and that's wonderful—we tend to like each other like that. But, here's the thing—we shouldn't write for writers. It's kind of like a composer writing a piece specifically to pander to the musicians that see it—it might have sixteenth note runs in the tuba line, but it's probably much more fun to play than it is to listen to.

Sorry. I forgot the point for a second. Any who, I see it a lot—we write characters like ourselves. They're snarky, ironic, and can often times come off as intellectuals—which all kind of adds up to a real asshole, if you don't strike that perfect balance between all the potentially offensive elements.

Do I like sarcastic characters? Yes. Is it just a writer thing? No, but we need to be cautious about it anyway. Take, for instance, the smirk. This is an error a lot of people make—myself included—in the name of vocabulary variety. People tend to think of a smirk as sort of a half-cocked smile which, if that's a universal understanding, it could work. However, for the time being, a smirk is a nasty little bugger, and it makes your smirking character look and seem weaselly.

Take Miranda Priestly from 'The Devil Wears Prada'. While she's a delightful character, she isn't really all that likeable. That's because she's too sharp and kind of nasty. However, Andrea is a great heroine—she's smart, outspoken, but not mean and nasty. It sounds like really dumb advice, but you'd be surprised how often unpleasant characters make it into the hero role, and not even as an anti-hero.

It could be a non-issue, but it's such a dangerous path to tread. The more personable your main characters are, the easier it's going to be for the fans to really connect and care, and those hooks are barbed, making them the perfect tool. Once your reader really gives a crap about the characters you want them to, they're going to care, because ripping those hooks out is going to hurt like a son of a bitch. Of course, if you start ripping them out, making your character slowly transform into an utter asshole—believably, of course—there's going to be a slow pain and an open, bloody wound in your reader, which is kind of our job, right?

But they have to be good people first, or you have to write an anti-hero, which is a whole 'nother beast. The problem is that not everyone likes sarcastic people—though I don't know why—or overly witty people. I feel kind of like a nutter on a street corner at this point, prophesying the doom of your writing career, but that's not what I mean. I'm just saying to be cautious, and honestly ask yourself if your sympathetic characters are actually sympathetic, or if they're just nasty. Honestly answer the question, too.

Voss

Norm!

'Cheers' fans—anyone with me?

There's a reason 'Cheers' was so successful—the characters. I can say Sam Malone and we all get the same ladies' man, misogynistic, former alcoholic barkeep running through our head. Heck, all I had to do was bring up Norm and everyone got it, right? They have sticking power because, like most really good characters, they're caricatures, just a little shy of reality. That doesn't mean they're unsympathetic—who here doesn't feel for Carla, somewhere deep down inside of you?—but they're not real people. That's what makes the most recognizable, beloved characters, and there are some real masters out there—Mervyn Peakes comes to mind, for me, as well as Robert Rodriguez and Tetsuya Nomura.

How does it work? I have an exercise (I know, I know—I always have an exercise. Sue me.) to help out with that. We all have at least one character sitting in our brains fully formed, right? Get them clear in your head right now, and then grab your thesaurus. Yes, I said the 'T' word. That little book you've been told to keep shelved for so long is officially allowed out of its cage.

I want you to make a list of, say, three to five words that you would use in a brief description of this character—leave some space between them, though, enough to jot down some words. Now take your first word and—no, don't touch the thesaurus yet!—think about it. How many connected words can you think of that bring the right effect to your character? If you wrote angular, maybe you're thinking sharp or pointed or spiny or carved or harsh—anything you can come up with for that single descriptor on your own.

Once you've done that for all of them, crack the thesaurus and go to what you think the best word is on each aspect's list. It may be the original one, or it may not. What matters is that it speaks to you. Put that on another list and look it up in the thesaurus and list your favorites of those words. That's not to say you'll be using them as descriptors in your work, but you now have a different view of this character, a different, perhaps deeper understanding of them physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Now, you could do it for all of your characters—it sounds like a good bit of fun—but eventually you won't have to. Eventually it will internalize and you'll start pulling things together naturally—and that's when your writing really takes off, in my opinion. When you create these skewed characters, it makes your work look better. It sounds crazy but, in practice, it works. Looks at Miranda Priestly from 'The Devil Wears Prada.' No one is actually like that. Look at Irma Prunesquallor from 'Titus Groan.' No one actually looks like that. El Mariachi from 'Desperado', 'El Mariachi' and 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico', Rorschach from 'Watchmen', Bellatrix Lestrange from 'Harry Potter'—they're not realistic. Everyone says they want realism in their fiction, but they want a semblance of realism, in reality (really).

It might sound crazy, but what's the harm in trying?

Trying to figure out how to make people yell my name when I enter the room,
Voss

Modifying the Standard

Classic image of Hell: fire and brimstone.
Classic image of a dragon: great, bloody, flying, fire-breathing lizard.
Classic image of high elves: noble, slender, beautiful, ancient humanoids.
Classic portrayal of magic: muttering magic words and *bam* magic.

I could go on. These are all wonderful—especially as fallbacks, little minor things to fill in at the spur of the moment, since they require no real explanation—but boring. If something classic is going to figure into your work, change it up a little. I once read an interview with Masashi Kishimoto (the writer and artist for Naruto) on how he came up with the world. He just said (I'm paraphrasing) that most of what he came up with was him just trying to break the norm. Ninja? Put him in an orange track suit. Magic? Screw magic words, they're just going to make pretty symbols with their hands.

Guess what? It worked! Huge, multi-national franchise from a blonde, orange ninja that makes shadow puppets (I love Naruto, don't get me wrong on that point. The world-building is breathtaking, to say the least.)!

So, why not have some fun and change it up? It's one of my favorite exercises. Take a basic idea like dragons and see where you can go. Sure, fire-breathing is awesome, but take a look at Douglas Niles' drackans from the Watershed Trilogy. They breathe a fog that knocks out their prey...until they taste darkblood. Then it turns into a scorching blast of steam. They have a carapace over their wings that breaks open after puberty. They have a color war between brown and green. I love them.

Dwarves don't always have to dig tunnels and have excess body hair. Who says there can't be comely, dwarves? Who says elves have to be gorgeous, or shoot arrows? Why can't an elf, just once, shoot a sub-machine gun, or be a heroin addict?

The best wizard I've seen wasn't just kooky and wise—he was just insane, rambling, and had no bloody idea what he was talking about.

We all know the normal things, but they've been done to death, revived, and killed again at this point. Yes, you are going to get crap from people for messing with the 'official' lore. Stephenie Meyer did, and she has one of the best vampire mythos I've read. But, you can also root into the foundation much better with something different—I bring you to Meyer again. In today's age, vampires sparkle and are very, very pretty.

So, take a chance and have some fun. Screw the norm, just do what you want to do—if you prefer that your dragons live underwater and knit sweaters for the fish, make it work.

Now go, frolic with your imagination,
Voss

Lamentation of Swans, Fluther of Jellyfish

Yes, a fluther of jellyfish. It's the proper terminology for a group of jellyfish. Trust me. It's an example of the sort of useless knowledge you're bound to pick up along the way. Your characters are no different, but there's a beginning author syndrome dealing with those tidbits—characters always seem to have just the right knowledge for the situation. They've either been to the right city, no matter how obscure, studied the right tribe, no matter how long extinct, or happen to be everything short of a doctor of whichever out-there subject you happen to pull out of your rear end.

That works about, maybe, once. Things aren't easy in real life. Unless your character is under some kind of luck spell or blessed to have an eternal good life, it takes more effort than that to get things taken care of. You can't just have them knowing everything, or have an expert waiting off-stage to explain the entire thing. There's no conflict that way. Somehow or another, they need to earn the information. Sure, there can be flashes of trivial, otherwise useless knowledge, but not a whole slew of it.

Those flashes also provide a unique opportunity for continuity. If you introduce a piece of information early on, and then have it come up later in your plot as being actually useful, it creates resonance. Even if your reader doesn't explicitly, consciously remember the information, hearing it again jogs the memory, and they go 'Hey, there's that thing! You brought it back around! Whose a good author? Whose a good author? You're a good author! Yes you are, yes you are!'

What? That's what authors really want. Honest to goodness.

I suppose this could be more informative, couldn't it? That's kind of why I write fiction, though—I can make it all up. Here, let me try again.

Okay, I think I've got a little more in me. That little trivial knowledge can also be used really well to bring people together. I kind of don't want to admit the number of times I got together with my friends and just talked trivia, or played Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit. It brings people closer to see what menial crap we all know. That's why games like that exist—they're fun and, unless the players are insanely competitive, lighthearted. That's how my first ex and I met, actually—historical trivia.

Okay. I'm officially spent. Not the best night's sleep, I have yet to get coffee, and 'Burlesque' is on—I think it's a good show of focus on my part I wrote this at all.

Considering how much it would take to buy a lamentation of swans,
Voss

Jell-O and the Pudding Pops

Come on, you know you know that guy—it's the Cos. Bill Cosby is one of the most often imitated celebrities of our modern era, because he has very recognizable aspects to his speech. Whether or not that's a real part of his speech, a part of his stage speech patterns, or simply something attributed to him through his characters in 'The Cosby Show' doesn't matter—it's completely and instantly known that certain things are imitations of Bill Cosby.

The same thing has to be true if you're going to use character imitation to great effect. This links directly to having totally different, unique speech patterns and pet phrases for each character. If you're going to have characters imitate one another, there has to be something to latch onto.

I remember distinctly one moment in fourth grade (I remember a lot of moments from fourth grade, actually, but one that's applicable.) when we were reading 'The Wanderer.' It was about these people on an old boat or something like that, and it was told through their journal entries. Now, as they grew closer, they started to imitate each other. There was one character that had a habit of repeating things three times (i.e. Bored bored bored.). Late in the book, another character (Looking back, I'm pretty sure they had some kind of budding romance I didn't pick up on as a fourth grader.) starts to do the same thing.

As people get to know others, they pick up on conversational idiosyncrasies—I do it all the time. It makes your characters that much more real, that they are affected by the people around them. Of course, imitation can also be used as mockery—we all know that. But, to do it properly, you still need that uniqueness of speech pattern. Mockery isn't nearly as easy to pull of as books as it is in speech, so you need to really lean heavily on those speech patterns and such.

As far as I'm concerned, imitation and the techniques that go along with it are quite useful, particularly in romantic situations (where two people sort of start to blend personalities) or with younger people, who have a greater tendency to make fun (it's a cliché, but we all know it's still sort of true. We were all teenagers. Remember how it was.).

Now I'm going to go get the pudding...it works better if you can actually hear my voice, I promise...
Voss

Dialogue, Ye Many-Headed Viper

What sells better, gets more recognition nowadays, books or movies? That's right, movies. Now, I do often prefer a good book, but the appeal of cinema is pretty simple to see. It's all action and dialogue, none of that pesky back story to get in the way of anything else. Personally, I like the back story, but this is about mass appeal, after all—I think I've made that abundantly clear through the course of this blog.

Some writers are afraid of dialogue, since it's not a tool we're often trained in, but dialogue is probably the most important tool we have at our disposal in fiction. Look at it this way—in real life, you most likely can't read people's thoughts, so you only have their dialogue to judge them on. Why should your characters be any different? Especially with such an unclear image of your characters as we have in a book, what they say is of utmost importance.

One would think that we would be good at writing dialogue. I mean, we all speak, after all, so we know how it sounds, right? Not necessarily. People fluent in a language use passive listening rather than active listening, meaning that we enact a sub-conscious mechanism to gather information when we listen to people. Combine that lack of knowledge with the human tendency to, uh, stutter and, um, like, kind of, fumble with words when, uh, we speak, and you have a nightmarish cocktail.

Again, there's always a solution. The most fun is one of my favorite things to pull out of my writer's group—write a scene first without any dialogue, just action and explanation, and then write the exact same scene with just dialogue, and try to make each one viable and believable. At that point, it's closer to writing a script, in which we draw on our osmotic knowledge of scriptwriting gained from watching plays, movies, and operas (Or am I the only opera fan here?).

You can also try your hand with some public speaking lessons. In fact, go to your library and look along with the writing section for books on public speaking. Go ahead. I'll still be here when you get back. I don't think your characters should be constantly giving speeches—trust me, that's really the last thing I want to read. The important thing in those books is the way they dissect human speech. To teach you how to speak the 'right way' in front of a crowd, they have to show you how the average person speaks in a normal situation. Admittedly, it doesn't work for a more historical speech pattern, but I'd bet that, somewhere, you can find a resource for those too.

The other thing that no one ever wants to explain to writers is the differences in character dialogue. We all hear it—your characters should sound different from one another—but no one ever bothers to give us the tools for that. Well, I'm no linguist, but there are certain things you pick up on. Think about the way the different people in your life talk. We all have little idiosyncrasies (personally, I always use 'correct' instead of 'right,' use 'any who' instead of 'anyhow,' and often end long, drawn-out stories and explanations with 'et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.') that people take notice of. Some people use choppy sentences, others use long, languid sentences. Multilingual people will sometimes slip between languages. There are colloquial sayings, foreign speech patterns, and all sorts of countless other things that make people's speech more interesting. Go ahead and use those things to mark your characters as unique—but keep them to one character. If every character uses high honorifics when addressing people, it becomes a part of the culture, not a quirk of the individual.

If all else fails, though, go to the old standby (What? You knew I'd mention it at some point, didn't you?) and read your dialogue out loud. If you're really lucky and really nice to your writer's network, you might get people to read your other characters' parts. If you can't, then it's advisable that you at least don't read it in public. I mean, talking to yourself is one thing, but holding conversations with yourself in different voices can garner you a few weird looks.

Peace for now, loves,
Voss

Top Five Female Characters

I caught a commercial of some kind for "The Hunger Games" today. They were doing an interview with a fan, I think, and they were just so happy to have a strong female character. Of course, that set my radar going.

There are a lot of strong female characters. A whole lot. Why are you acting like there aren't?

Now, I was going to post this yesterday, but I'm glad I waited until today--it's more important, today...somehow. The top five list (although in no particular order, as is par for my course) of female characters in literature.

~Lyra Belacqua: The heroin of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. From book one, she's brazen, scoffing at the standard male authority. She also manages to run off, see the world, take part in politics. And that's the first book. We see her rise to womanhood by the end of book three. She stands as a lone voice of reason, traversing the land of the dead for her cause.

~Narcissa Malfoy: All right, don't hit me. How much stronger do you get than Narcissa. I'm not even talking about her power or skill as a witch. I mean as a mother. Molly is supposed to be the 'mother' of the book. I understand that, but a part of me would rather have Narcissa. For her son, no other reason, no thought of the consequences to herself, Narcissa lies directly to Lord Voldemort, and lies so believably that even he believes it. Everything she's ever done, really, has been for her son--and normally in direct defiance of the Dark Lord.

~Loor: Fans of 'Pendragon' will understand immediately. Loor is a consummate human being--compassionate, physically powerful, calm, wise, and possessing of foresight most people will never have. Through the series, she grows into a serene, respectful woman, capable of leading anything you put before her, and willing to take up that challenge. And she has a quality lacking in many literary characters--the ability to defer. If she isn't the best to handle the job, she will step down.

~Lisbeth Salander: Possibly the epitome of the strong female, she isn't necessarily a role model. As she stands, however, she can take care of herself--and does. Intelligent enough to hold a high-paying, high-stress job and she doesn't take anything from anyone. She doesn't buckle to the evils of the world, instead she takes her fate in her own hands, handles her own problems, and, eventually, cares. Slow to emote, she stays resilient to everything trying to erode her.

~Elphaba: The main character of "Wicked", from birth she struggles to her place in the world, and is constantly brought down. Left well and alone because of her green skin, dishonored for pursuing her chosen research, harassed by the government of Oz, thrust into the shadows by Galinda--and yet she still gains power, gets a castle, ends up, through a strange, somewhat confusing series of events, in control of a country, and carries on her research until the very end of her life.

Of course, there are other strong female characters out there--Esme Cullen, Hermione Granger, Osa, Ororo Munroe, Rosalie Hale, Alyss, Homburg Molly, Weaver, et cetera, et cetera--but that's a good sampling, for now, don't you think?

Feeling the girl power,
Voss

Your Team

Lately, I've been examining a lot of visual story-telling formats. Cinema, television, graphic novles, comics, anime, manga--and I've always had a soft spot for what I call simply "teams".

We all know the teams--they're grouped together for some greater purpose, and each one of them is a unique individual instead of a faceless nothingness.

There's a formula to these teams, I'm noticing, that the most sucessful stories that use the team format use. I could be completely off base on this, but I doubt it. I thought I would share it here, since it interests me and I hope it will interest you.

1. The Number: The ideal number of people for this team seems to be from 5-8 individuals. Traditionally, 6-7 is the number used. Look at the Power Rangers (it's successful, so deal with it). They rarely have more than 6 members. "The Magnificent Seven", "Seven Samurai", and "The League of Extraoridnary Gentlemen" all use 7 (Except the graphic novel "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", which uses 6.). "Watchmen" uses 5 core members to their team. "Fullmetal Alchemist" has 7 homunculi. Even less obvious examples of the team ("Ouran High School Host Club" comes to mind.) stick generally to that 5-8 rule. That doesn't mean it's hard and fast, but it seems to work for the big names--why not give it a try?


2. The Skills: Not only are all of the characters unique in their personalities, but they always bring something to the team that the other members don't. Sometimes it's completely idiotic and shallow, as in the Power Rangers (different major weapons), but sometimes it's actually useful, as in the dynamic differences in "Ouran High School Host Club". Their goal (see below) is to please their customers, and each one of them brings something different to the plate. One is strong and manly, one is calculating, one is traditionally handsome, one is just adorable, the twins are mischiveous, and they have one natural rookie. Again, though, this isn't an absolute. Look at "Seven Samurai". Several of them are nothing more than good swords, they have one archer, a strategist, and one guy that's impulsive about the things he does. But, you have to have some variance, either in skill or personality.


3. The Personalities: You thought I forgot, didn't you? Yes, there are certain personalities that seem to pop up fairly regularly throughout this sort of team dynamic. You often have said impulsive character, who is usually naive, and someone more intelligent to temper that passion with logic. Someone rebellious and someone that adheres to the rules. You often have someone with a completely self-serving set of actions, which may or may not end up benifiting the team as a whole. A loner, a sweetheart, a flirt, a vixen--and all of these can be combined into any number of characters...though I don't reccomend having a flirty, logical, impulsive, strict, rebellious, self-serving, loner-sweetheart-vixen--that just makes you look like a bad writer.


4. The Goal: This is why your team has been brought (or forced) together. Our Host Club friends are together to serve as escorts for youg ladies. The Seven Samurai are there to fend off the barbarians from the village. The Thundercats and the Power Rangers are both there to protect the world from evil and destruction in whichever form it's decided to take this time around. Whatever this goal is, they all have to be behind it, at least to some extent, at some point in the story.


5. The Relationships: This is the easiest part--or the hardest. Why do these people get along or not? How do they get along? What about your loner? What's the deal there? I'd worry about leaving someone alone too long in a group--you might not wake up the next morning if they feel excluded. Who wants to go out? Who is going out? Who's married? Who's related? Who does the horizontal mambo? Who used to do the horizontal mambo, but doesn't do it anymore? And on and on and on. Look at "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". Allan Quatermain uses Tom Sawyer as a replacement for his son, and views Mina Harker as more or less in the way. At the same time, Captain Nemo is his equal. Dorian Gray and Mina Harker used to tangle the sheets. Dr. Jekyll has to deal with Mr. Hyde...which is another thing entirely. Sawyer wants to get it on with Mina, and everyone loves our resident Invisible Man--most of the time.

That's all it is. Take it or leave it, but that's the formula I've discovered through research and observation. If nothing else, I hope it was interesting to read.

Voss