The whole crew’s dynamic of how they reacted to each other and different situations changed and if to want to extend it to the movie, it shows what changed in the long run.
From what I remember about the show, there were moments of huge character development throughout even single episodes as certain characters realized things about themselves and their situations. Take criminal dude when he discovers he’s a hero on the mud planet and becomes uncomfortable with it.
And from what I recall it was merely internal conflict, but it didn’t change Jane as a character. If Jane is the same in the next episode, no new behavior, outlook, etc, then his character has returned to the status quo and thus its not Development. Can you please give some concrete examples of Character Change from an episodic TV show?
Since you both have said its been some time since either of you have seen Firefly and can’t remember, can you use some concrete examples of something fresher to you?
An example on my end: Castiel from Supernatural. When introduced in season 4 he is a stiff, naive and unquestioning angel who just takes orders. Over the course of five seasons, he becomes to understand free will. He’s become disillusioned, his confidence in himself broken, and now he is untrusting, wary, still lost to his purpose.
The problem with TV show characters though is that they are either inconsistently or poorly written; their attitudes shifting to suit the plot, who’s writing them, or meddling from executives/reactions to fans. You’ll have characters learn a lesson and then utterly forget that lesson half a season or a season later, or go a complete 180, or routinely waffle back and forth. And IMO episodic shows are resistant to change because characters are meant to be static. Change would change what the audience is familiar with, has “come to know”, and expects from that character.
… This has gotten very off topic.
Should have said something about spoilers there Rechan.
I haven’t made it that far in the series…
Gah. I didn’t think anyone was a fan here. And I don’t think this forum has a spoiler HTML tag either. So just deleted anything that’s potentially a spoiler.
Either way, on further reflection I think I’m being way to aggressive and trying to “win” an argument when no one else is.
So I’ll just say that some shows do and some shows don’t care about characters, even episodic ones. I remember Law & Order, there was next to zero character arcs because the characters in there were merely Ideals, and had very little personality to begin with. It was all about the procedure of the law and the details of each scenario. But there are surely others that surely must do something with their characters.
It doesn’t. Really need to look into how to add that tag…
I’ve been arguing over this topic on other boards, and I think I finally refined the language of the problem I have. To do so, first let me give you some examples of stories I’ve written recently.
[ul][li]A stalker summons the ghost of the celebrity he is obsessed with, so he can be with her. It does not end well. [/li]
[li]Man challenges the god Pan to a flute contest. Why he does so, and where he learned his skills, is a secret that is revealed at the end.[/li]
[li]A hitman is sent to kill someone, only to discover too late his target is really a vampire and he’s the vampire’s surprise birthday present.[/li][/ul]
These stories would not work as novels. No matter how much character, depth, and layers I throw at it, that is just not a big enough to hold them. There’s no room for extra obstacles and subplots. It’s not interesting enough to be a novel, and quite frankly no one wants to read 300 pages about a celebrity stalker. But most of all of that characterization and layers distract from the story because the point is the twist ending or the events of a single scene. The ideas I have generally can be resolved within four scenes because there’s no room for expansion in them.
Compare those to this idea: “One man takes down an empire.” That requires so much setup and events that you can’t contain it in a short story. There’s also just more room in that idea for things to occur, there’s room for more characters, there’s room for world-building.
My problem is the ideas I think of are too narrow and limited. My ideas generally come from imagining a single scene play out, or a simple concept (Man impregnated by parasitic wasp), and asking ‘how does that happen?’ or ‘what does that entail?’ The answer is very simple.
What I can’t get is how to think on a much broader scale. I want to have ideas that are more open and require multiple steps to reach. Those are really hard to come up with because all I get are those narrow ideas. So there has to be a way to start thinking on a more epic scale, to get used to wide ideas.
I love your term, “wide ideas.” You also answered your own question as you wrote out your problem:
How does that happen? or What does that entail? The answer is very simple.
To begin thinking of wider ideas… make the answer not simple. Make the answer complicated. Make what might’ve been the end of a short story the “first plot point” as they call it in a novel or screen play.
Example, your story: A hitman is sent to kill someone, only to discover too late his target is really a vampire and he’s the vampire’s surprise birthday present.
…but he escapes. Now he knows there are vampires in the city. Or he did know–but now he knows that someone is trying to kill him. Who? Why? That’s a bigger story.
Orrrr …but he’s also a vampire, and didn’t realize he had competition in the city.
Orrr… …but the vampire likes him and they form a partnership, or make a deal.
I just taught a workshop and I told the kids (yes, kids, but the concepts are good 
) when making their decisions about their stories, always ask, “What’s the worst that could happen?” And write that. Because the more your character has to deal with, the longer your story will be.
It’s also interesting to note that many movies from the nineties and earlier were actually based on short stories, so the potential to stretch what at first might seem a small concept into a larger one is always there.
But I ramble. I hope this helps you to brainstorm a little, and happy writing!
Well, generally the worst that can happen is YOU DIE. There’s not much further you can go form there. I mean there are worse things than death but for most things, but those are special circumstances usually.
But, the rest of that is useful.
I actually find dying to be a rather boring and often inaccurate worst case. The answer to this is dependant on the character, really.
Boring doesn’t enter it.
But, look at LotR. The worst thing that could’ve happened to Frodo: He dies, he fails to destroy the ring (resulting in everyone being doomed), or he becomes a villain. Now the first two are always a risk because character death and failing to meet the prime goal are always present in situations where one is in danger and where one has a goal. He almost becomes corrupted, he almost fails, but the exercise here is ‘pick the worst that could happen and Make it Happen’, so it doesn’t apply because those things did not come to be. When I think of ‘worst case scenario’ I think on terms that would pretty much stop the main character from ever being able to go forward or accomplish their goals, which stops the narrative pretty damn quick.
Now, this may just be a semantic issue. But semantically I think “What could make this situation worse?” is more open ended. Or “What would be more interesting?” or at least “What would complicate this situation?” For instance, let’s say a stealth unit is sneaking around behind enemy lines. WORST CASE SCENARIO: They are discovered by a patrol and an alarm is raised, they are caught and executed, or discovered and sold into slavery, or whathaveyou. Worse/Interesting/Complicated situation: they are discovered by some unarmed civilians who could raise an alarm. The stealth unit subdues them. Now let’s say the members of the stealth unit are very hesitant to just murder civilians, but leaving them tied up/unconscious behind them would be a security risk when someone else comes across the incapacitated individuals. Do they take the civilians with them, try to find a secure location so they can be interrogated/hidden? Doing so would make being stealthy more difficult. Do they swallow their morals and execute the individuals to keep themselves safe?
It’s mostly a semantic issue
The idea is that in general the writer’s instinct might be to go for the first, easy answer, or go easy on the characters rather than challenge them (and challenge oneself as a writer). If you want call it, “What would complicate the issue” then call it that. Whatever works to make you push your own boundaries and ask more what-if questions.
Although I have found myself stuck in an attempt at a novella, because half way through something bad has happened, and while the characters have only one action left to take, I don’t know what happens next. It’s partially a world-building issue and partially a plotty issue.
Generally, speaking, I won’t add anything beyond the bare bones of plot, characterization, action. etc. except in one case. If I come across something that’s genuinely interesting to lotsa potential readers-- and keep in mind that I write a fair amount of non-fiction too, so I think I have a good handle on this-- then I’ll add a paragraph or two with confidence that the reader will smile and forgive me. Even better, if something’s funny-- and the funnier the better-- I’ll add as much as several pages to set it up. Readers will almost always forgive you for digression, if you make them laugh hard enough. Beyond that, IMO the worst thing you can do is “pad” a novella or even worse a short story into a novel. One reason I quit reading so much fiction-- SF at the the time was especially guilty of this-- and started writing my own was that I grew so sick of enduring one work after another that jam-packed fifty or a hundred pages worth of concept/action/“juice” into a trilogy of seven-hundred page books.
I would say that Ryffnah nailed it: in a longer work, characters have to go on a journey, metaphorically speaking. Complex stories have an overall plot arc and a character arc. The main character changes in some way (or less commonly, causes another major character to change); that change is driven by the plot. The story’s main conflict is the crucible for the thematic conflict.
I like the term “wide ideas” – but I think a wide idea is distinct from “multiple narrow ideas strung together” (which is what I see a lot of fannish novel-length works as). For me the longer ideas, which so far have mostly been novella-length, come from that interplay of character and plot. The key, I think, is that the character’s core problem doesn’t have something directly to do with the story’s conflicts. Instead, they’re two intertwining threads. The advancements in one thread push the advancements in the other.
That sort of thing can’t really be done in a short story – not in the same way, at the least. There are always exceptions, but generally to me a short story doesn’t have a plot arc and a character arc, per se – it has a plot event and a character revelation or epiphany. The main character usually doesn’t finish in the same place she started, but it’s not a gradual process of discovery.
My own novel project started out as a short story and as I started to re-write it, I found myself adding more and more detail about the main character’s journey that before long it swelled into the thing that it is today.
There has to be an investment in the characters too, a much deeper one I think than you would have with a short story. I can only speak from my own experience, but when I was working on it whole-hog, I was immersed in the world and its culture for weeks and months at a time almost to the exclusion of other literary pursuits. If you’re ready to put that kind of commitment into a group of characters, then I’d say you’ve got a good base for a novel project.