"Airline Barbie and her Friends" could be an aweso...

2010-01-02T12:21:19.134-05:00

"Airline Barbie and her Friends" could be an awesome story.

It seems Eric has good advice to offer. For me, I...

2010-01-02T10:46:12.881-05:00

It seems Eric has good advice to offer. For me, I can only offer my thoughts.

All I could think of when I saw the pic of the "uniforms" was, "Airline Barbie and her friends."

Let me say the most important thing first: that yo...

2010-01-01T18:51:11.945-05:00

Let me say the most important thing first: that you should go for it either way, and you shouldn't worry about "done that" given that it's rare to come up with a wholly original plot or character. (I don't buy into the old adage that there aren't any new plots or characters, but that's a whole 'nother ballgame; also, I should just note that just because I think there might be original ideas waiting to be stumbled upon doesn't mean I've ever had one....)

Now the constructively-intended bad news: the competent young officer pushed into command is the flip side of the untested young officer pushed into command. In the SF context, it's kind of whether you're thinking of Jim Kirk as he was done last year in the J.J. Abrams Trek reboot or Kirk as he was sort of conceived by Roddenberry and in some of the novels and short stories dealing with a young, competent but arrogant Kirk thrust into command situations before gaining full command over the Enterprise.

But let's go back to the first paragraph: just because both your character concepts are archetypes doesn't mean you shouldn't write the story with one or the other. They're archetypes for a reason: people like reading about them. Furthermore, characters aren't just their capsule descriptions: your character might, f'r'instance, be the "classic" inexperienced young officer thrust into command prematurely by happenstance in a nutshell--but in the story (s)he's one of the funniest or the most-compelling or most-profound or best-realized exemplars or [insert whatever] of the type. Put another, more specifically-illustrated way: Dumbledore may have been a total cliche in the Merlin/Gandalf/Obi-Wan mold, but I still almost cried when he sat down for a paternal heart-to-heart with Harry in Book 5 and was pretty damn upset when he got whacked in Book 6. He wasn't just a type, he was a person who happened to fit the type.

So go for it!

Comments on Polybloggimous: I Told You I'd Be Back.

"Airline Barbie and her Friends" could be an aweso...

It seems Eric has good advice to offer. For me, I...

Let me say the most important thing first: that yo...