Mind control to further plot?

[arianne]

Been working on a fantasy where the main character is something like, uh, Butters in the Dresden files. Don't want to spoil Butters for people who haven't read about him yet, but let's just say that if a vampire threatened my main character, he would take off running in the opposite direction and never come back.

As you might have guessed, it's not easy to further plot or generate conflict with a main character whose sole action is to avoid conflict.

Thankfully, there exists in my universe a guy who has the ability to remotely control people's minds.

My question is, what does everyone think about using said mind control to further the protagonist's motivation, and by association, the story. Is it bad to use mind control  as a plot device until such time as the protagonist realizes that he actually possesses backbone when pushed to the wall?

[Quantus]

Probably depends on how heavy handed you are with the Mind Control.  If it just puppets him so that his body is moving and his mind is along for the ride, it will seem a pretty big violation from the MC's perspective, and would probably require a lot of internal monologue to make interesting.  It would trivialize and victimize your MC to one degree or another, because he is essentially a meat-suit for someone else.  So why do we care about him or his Choices, when they never seem to matter?

If, on the other hand, it is more like using illusions to make him think he has no other choice, or no place to run, that would be more interesting to me because it is still the MC who is making the Choice, and it would become more like a Con for a good cause.  Then the MC could still find some clever ways out of the situation and do some legitimately brave things;  it would be more about showing him that he can be brave, by backing him into an imaginary corner.

All of that depends on the Mindbender character, and what he is after?  How does his Mind Control work?



0.02

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

As you might have guessed, it's not easy to further plot or generate conflict with a main character whose sole action is to avoid conflict.

The central character in the Thing I Should Be Working On really hates being involved in anything resembling a plot or adventures and very much wants it all to go away and leave him in peace, so I have some sympathy for your position, and it's possible my experience there might be of some use, so fwiw:

The basic way round that difficulty I picked was a variant on the Hitchcock "running man" plot.  My protagonist finds himself in a situation where he is, without knowledge or consent, suddenly important to some people; he doesn't really know who they are, why he is important to them or what their motivations are, and the obvious first guesses at those answers fairly rapidly show themselves to be wrong.  Meanwhile different bunches of people are variously chasing him, shooting at him, and framing him for crimes he did not commit, all to try to get him to do something, but he does not know what, and are interpreting his actions as part of a complex plot based on the assumption he has information he doesn't; and there are factions whose interests are served by other factions being distracted by all this running around.

The thing that most needs, sfaict, is for there not to be reliable competent authorities to whom the character can immediately turn to have the problem solved.  (My character's expectation is very much that there should be, but this turns out not to be the case.) 

As for using mind control, the question that raises for me is; why is this person in particular the one who gets controlled ? I can see any number of ways to make a good story out of that (the first one to come to mind is; villain controls protagonist to do something criminal, then disappears, leaving protagonist hunted by police for a thing protagonist did without intent).  Quantus makes a good point that that could read as a severe violation (me being me, I am immediately seized with the desire to assemble a social context and set of moral assumptions where it isn't, but that's just worldbuilding-brain talking) but if it is one, that might serve as motivation for the character becoming more proactive later.

I should note that I don't actually understand how people mentally correlate "this character's choices are significant and matter" with "this is a character worth caring about and reading about"; from my perspective we live in a world where most of any random individual's day-to-day choices have relatively little significant effect, so for the same to be true of a fictional character just makes them more plausible.  (This is coming from a perspective of having OCD such that I frequently run up against people talking about choices or thinking choices exist where from inside my head they just obviously don't.)

[LizW65]

As you might have guessed, it's not easy to further plot or generate conflict with a main character whose sole action is to avoid conflict.

Two excellent examples of this are Bilbo Baggins and Rincewind from the Discworld series, both of whom want nothing more than to stay home and never have adventures, but somehow get sucked into them anyway.  Rincewind, in particular, never grows a backbone, and running away ends up only getting him involved even deeper in the plot.  I suppose the mind control thing could work if done very carefully; otherwise it could come off as a rather clumsy plot device.  Personally, I would try to avoid it if at all possible and work on getting the character into situations where (s)he is (a) forced to take action or die, or (b) where cowardice actually works in the protagonist's favor.

[Quantus]

I should note that I don't actually understand how people mentally correlate "this character's choices are significant and matter" with "this is a character worth caring about and reading about"; from my perspective we live in a world where most of any random individual's day-to-day choices have relatively little significant effect, so for the same to be true of a fictional character just makes them more plausible.  (This is coming from a perspective of having OCD such that I frequently run up against people talking about choices or thinking choices exist where from inside my head they just obviously don't.)

Theres probably some pop psychology about the inner desire to believe one person's choices (and by extension our own) DO matter, and DO make a difference, to cope with our own fundamental lack of control.   But the truth is that we spend half the book, at least by the Scene-Segue structure many authors generally (JB included), reading about how a particular person (or small group) reacts and feels and interprets the events that are occurring.  If those characters are not significant and dont matter, then why would I care what they think or feel or see? Why arent I, the reader,  following somebody more important instead of listening to some nobody philosophize about things that now seem inevitable? 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

If those characters are not significant and dont matter, then why would I care what they think or feel or see?

Same reason you care about what you think and feel and see yourself, would be my reaction.

[Quantus]

Same reason you care about what you think and feel and see yourself, would be my reaction.

well, yes, but that seems to demote the character to a particularly subjective Narrator, rather than an active member of the story in the traditional sense.  I can see stories where it might be useful to have a war correspondent sort of character that is not supposed to interfere, but it sets a particular tone all on its own when the focus of the story (ie the Main Character) is powerless to effect events.  Not that its a bad tone, but it does limit your overall options somewhat.

[Snowleopard]

In some ways this mind control character comes across as a Deus ex Machina  which
the Greeks sometimes used to save their lead characters.  IE - god would come down and save them.
That's how your mind control character - if he's doing this deliberately - comes across.
However, and this is just a suggestion, if the mind control character gets mentally bound up with
your main character every now and then accidentally and is forced, for his own survival, to do stuff that makes it less 'god in the machine' and more 'oh crud, I'm here again!"

[Figging Mint]

My question is, what does everyone think about using said mind control to further the protagonist's motivation, and by association, the story. Is it bad to use mind control  as a plot device until such time as the protagonist realizes that he actually possesses backbone when pushed to the wall?

I was just reading this and thinking that it would be absolutely /awesome/ if you could bring off the opposite - the mind control is what is creating confrontational avoidance and removal thereof creates hero-wannabees who then lurch and lump against actual reality.

[Figging Mint]

but it sets a particular tone all on its own when the focus of the story (ie the Main Character) is powerless to effect events.  Not that its a bad tone, but it does limit your overall options somewhat.

It's a tone that can be used to create depths of fear or despair in the reader that are simply impossible otherwise.   It limits in one direction, but very much expands in another, which is why it is a trope of the  horror genre.    I think SF and fantasy don't do enough of it by half,  and the books that manage it are the ones I usually wind up enjoying the most.   

[Quantus]

It's a tone that can be used to create depths of fear or despair in the reader that are simply impossible otherwise.   It limits in one direction, but very much expands in another, which is why it is a trope of the  horror genre.    I think SF and fantasy don't do enough of it by half,  and the books that manage it are the ones I usually wind up enjoying the most.

Agreed, when used with .  However that powerless, swept along feel is, for me at least, all build-up to at least one big action, big choice, that actually does matter.  That moment when the coward butters jumps on the Denarians back and saves the big bad wizard.  Without that moment of importance you end up with War of the Worlds, where everybody runs around for a while until the badguys fall over for no apparent reason.  Interesting thought experiment, but not the book I like to curl up with on a rainy day. 

[Figging Mint]

Without that moment of importance you end up with War of the Worlds

Or Helliconia Spring/Summer/Winter.   Or Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco.

People differ; I find plots that conclude without moments of individual importance to be quite comforting.    Because the existence of collective, group mechanisms and external factors significant enough to be game changers on their own is quite realistic and quite better framed on the same scale as we (individuals) perceive our own world.    IOW and IMO, looking at real world history as a collection of moments of individual importance misses the boat and leaves me with a queasy feeling - why should fiction be different?

[Quantus]

Or Helliconia Spring/Summer/Winter.   Or Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco.

People differ; I find plots that conclude without moments of individual importance to be quite comforting.    Because the existence of collective, group mechanisms and external factors significant enough to be game changers on their own is quite realistic and quite better framed on the same scale as we (individuals) perceive our own world.   

Fair enough, i am certainly no the norm in my tastes, let alone the only thing out there.  And Ill admit Ive never heard of either of those. 

But to bring it back to the point that sparked this, In general, do you find Main Characters whose Choices are unimportant and don't matter to be "worth caring about and reading about"?  I am just having a hard time figuring out how this would work.  If he doesnt matter, then to my mind he would need to be close to a character that does, at which point he has become a Chronicler, not the MC himself (like a less useful Watson).  If no character on stage matters, then why am I focusing on them instead of something that matters more.  I am having a hard time imagining an interesting story with meaningful Conflict that is devoid of meaningful Choice. 

To be clear, Im not saying that the MC has to be saving the world every time; maybe the story is just about surviving Bad Things.  But in that story context their survival is what Matters, even if its a smaller stage. 

[Figging Mint]

But to bring it back to the point that sparked this, In general, do you find Main Characters whose Choices are unimportant and don't matter to be "worth caring about and reading about"?  I am just having a hard time figuring out how this would work. 

Yes, certainly, on "a day in the life" type of level.   

  I am having a hard time imagining an interesting story with meaningful Conflict that is devoid of meaningful Choice. 

Pretty much every historical-immersion type reality show works this way, no?   I mean none of the choices TV characters make while living in the Victorian house/Colonial village/Cod fishing shack are really meaningful Choice.   Yet we're fascinated by their human-level interactions and the meanings they impose on those.

To be clear, Im not saying that the MC has to be saving the world every time; maybe the story is just about surviving Bad Things.  But in that story context their survival is what Matters, even if its a smaller stage.

I can make the case that in stories like Asimov's Nightfall (or in real world stories like Grapes of Wrath), there is no individual choice or moment that will significantly improve the characters' outlook.     What's important is that the character is fully engaged in their world, and has feelings about it that we can relate to, and hopes that we can relate to.    Individual hope sets tension far better than rigged externalisms, imo.   

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

But to bring it back to the point that sparked this, In general, do you find Main Characters whose Choices are unimportant and don't matter to be "worth caring about and reading about"?

Yes. Absolutely. (And even your capitalising "choices" is making me a little uncomfortable.)

I may be coming from a slightly unusual perspective on this; my experience living with OCD is such that it is unarguably obvious to me that no amount of wish or desire (or "will" if you want to use that concept) suffices on its own to even make my own mind and body do what I want them to do, some unpredictable amount of the time, let alone affect the rest of the world.  I don't, in other words, believe in free will, at least in the way it is formulated in the DV, and I find philosophical formalisations centring on and valorising free will and constructing responsibility accordingly to very easily fail in a direction equivalent to telling a paraplegic "Of course we'll get you a wheelchair but you just have to show you deserve it by running up these nine flights of stairs first."

If no character on stage matters, then why am I focusing on them instead of something that matters more.  I am having a hard time imagining an interesting story with meaningful Conflict that is devoid of meaningful Choice. 

I think we're using different values of "meaningful"; I've never been particularly sold on conflict being an essential ingredient to a story worth reading, and I am sufficiently solidly convinced that significance is entirely subjective that if you show me a character happy that their day-to-day, unconflicted life is meaningful and worthwhile, sure I'll identify with that and find it emotionally congenial and reassuring.