The Politics of Dancing
by Elizabeth BearPolitics are the basis of human behavior, equally at work in royal courts, high school cliques, military organizations, modern corporations, international negotiations, alien first contact situations, and stone-age tribes. Politics are present in everyday life, and everyday decision-making; we each practice the delicate art of intrigue as surely as we breathe, and yet almost no one writes it well. Its ubiquity makes it invisible.
The most practical means by which to discuss the construction of intrigue is not by example, but by breaking it down into angles and elements, the way one might deconstruct a dance, or a chess match, or a sword fight, or the act of love. If one intends to write intrigue, one must first set up a situation where the intrigue is believable, one to which the writer and the reader can relate. Fairly often, in fiction, one sees a situation where the politics appear to be for their own sake - for the entertainment of bored nobles, or the mere fact of the Great Game. This is often an auctorial dodge, intended to cover for the writer's failure to set up a believable political situation that both requires intrigue and promotes the reader's investment in the characters' eventual success or failure.
Goals: First, you gotta want it.
Intrigue arises in situations where there are limited resources and intense competition for those resources. The resource could be the Queen's favor, customers, power, oil, or the attention of a favored upperclassman. The competition could be between courtiers, businessmen, political candidates, modern nation-states, or cheerleaders.In the simplest construction, every participant in the intrigue has the same goal. In the cheerleader scenario, for example, Buffy and Bobbi both want to win the attention of Biff, and his eventual favor and the right to wear his letter jacket (the victory condition).
In a less simple construction, additional players are added, with conflicting or layered goals. Perhaps Buffy honestly wants to date Biff, either because she cares for him or because of the status involved in being Biff's girlfriend. If she can only land Biff, she thinks, it will finally prove that she is good/pretty/smart enough, and maybe her brother will stop picking on her about her inability to get dates. Bobbi, on the other hand, doesn't really care for Biff, but she hates Buffy because Buffy "liberated" an old boyfriend of Bobbi's, or perhaps Bobbi wants to make Bruce jealous, and Biff (for whom Bruce nurtures a well-concealed rivalry) is the ideal means to this end.
Meanwhile, Biff's friend Aaron is trying very hard to protect his friend from this pair of sharks, because Biff's football scholarship to Notre Dame will be threatened if Biff starts blowing off practice to spend time with the girls. And Biff's estranged mother, who wants him to be a doctor, is pressing him hard to give up football and accept her funding to study pre-med at Columbia instead.
In other words, everybody needs a goal. And they don't all have to be the same goal. In fact, intrigue is more interesting when all the characters do not have the same victory conditions.
This cheerleader analogy, while tongue in cheek, is exactly transferable to the other situations presented above. To move our setting to a royal court for a moment, Biff would be replaced, say, by a Louis of whatever number, and Bobbi and Buffy by courtiers or courtesans hoping to woo him to their favorite projects. Regardless of the setting, everybody - even Biff (or Louis) - has to have a goal. Even if it's just to be left alone.
Means: You do what you gotta do.
Once the characters are established and their goals have become apparent (and the nature of the character himself will or probably should suggest a worthy goal), it's time for the characters to start planning how to achieve them. There are two basic means by which they can accomplish what they want. Let's return to Buffy and Bobbi for examples, since they're still loitering nearby, shooting one another dirty looks.The first way they can win Biff's attention is by making themselves seem attractive to him. They can do this by making themselves beautiful, making themselves indispensable, or making themselves elusive and mysterious, as dictated by his character and theirs. This can be handled in a straightforward manner, or through deception. Buffy, for example, may excel at math, and perhaps she could help Biff with his homework. Meanwhile, Bobbi might be making eyes at Aaron, with the intent of making herself seem more attractive to Biff due to the competition with his friend. This would have the additional positive effect (from Bobbi's point of view) of potentially making Aaron's advice to Biff that Bobbi is only after one thing (the letter jacket) seem a little self-serving, so Biff will perhaps disregard it.
The second means of advancement is tearing down the competition. Buffy can distract Bobbi, perhaps by arranging for her friend Cleo to ask Bruce (who, we will recall, is the initial object of Bobbi's affections) to the prom, thus provoking poor manipulative Bobbi to tears and overindulgence in chocolate mousse cake. While Bobbi is laid up with indigestion, Buffy has a free run at Biff. Alternately, Bobbi could respond by spreading (true or untrue) rumors about Buffy's odious personal habits, such as toad-sucking. A gorgeous guy like Biff can't afford to be seen with a toad-sucker, no matter how cute she may be.
Scheming: Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way.
Now that Buffy and Bobbi are thoroughly involved in their intrigues, things get interesting. Plots beget counterplots, and subterfuge and deception become a way of life. It's paramount, of course, that Biff not learn he's being schemed over, because unless he's a particular type of individual, he's bound to find the scheming unattractive, and he might offer the coveted letter jacket to someone else entirely. (Maybe sweet Cleo, whose only involvement so far has been innocently accepting her friend's suggestion that she ask Bruce out.)Say Buffy discovers Bobbi's plan to blacken her name with allegations of toad-sucking. Denials never work, so Buffy's only option is to thoroughly discredit Bobbi. At this juncture, she has a choice of strategies, again dictated by her character and those of her co-conspirators. Perhaps, through Cleo, she could arrange for Bruce's assistance in having Biff catch Bobbi and Bruce in a compromising position. Bruce, after all, would be happy to embarrass his rival.
More generally, the mid-game, as it were, builds on character motivations and relationships established earlier. In the process, it reveals move and countermove as the characters must not only advance their own goals, but counter the actions of other characters - or suffer the consequences.
Consequences: Surviving contact with the enemy
Plans never survive enemy intervention. Often, in fiction, characters don't either. To be believable, the intrigue has to have a component of improvisation. It's frustrating when the characters run up against a bad guy who seems to effortlessly defeat their every plan, or who has foreseen all their actions in advance and - anticipating those choices - has railroaded them into a trap of his choosing. It smacks of auctorial laziness.Real intrigue is messy. There are false trails and false starts and junctures where the characters are completely confused and acting on instinct, or can't come up with anything better to do than to kick the board over. There are plans that have to be aborted mid-stream, and fallback positions, and sacrifices. There are unforeseen consequences, brilliant improvisations, and devastating losses. The successful writer of intrigue will be aware of the goals and motivations and of the actions of all of the characters, including the ones who aren't on stage at any given time, and she will also be aware of the constant need to attend to and direct and redirect plans as situations emerge. Politics are fluid, not static, and alliances shift constantly, based on personal friendships, ideological loyalties, and perceived opportunities.
These character intersections need to be shown, which is to say demonstrated, for their best impact. It's very easy to say, "Spring Valley High was a hotbed of intrigue and politics to rival the court of France." It's another to show it, and to show the deception and hurt, the way the characters are damaged or triumph through their schemes and those of others. For example, during the cheerleading tryouts, Buffy dabs the sole of Bobbi's tennis shoe with Vaseline, and then later, when Buffy is helping Biff with his math homework, Bobbi slips a cotton ball soaked in skunk extract into her waistband. You don't need to tell the reader what that means. She can figure it out for herself.
As for Cleo, she might not be sweet and innocent, but extraordinarily tricky, merely awaiting her moment to reveal Buffy and Bobbi's gamesmanship before picking up the pieces and winning the coveted prize for herself, leaving poor Bruce with no choice but to comfort himself by confessing his secret love for Aaron. (I like to think they live happily ever after.) Meanwhile, Buffy and Bobbi, disgraced, are left to plot their revenge, and Biff, unfortunately, does not get what he deserves - which is to say, he's stuck with Cleo (butter wouldn't melt in her mouth).
At least, until the sequel....
© Elizabeth Bear
Elizabeth Bear is cranky, outspoken, uppity, runs with scissors, and doesn't act her age - but she does play well with others. Most of the time. Her second novel, Scardown, was published by Bantam Spectra in July of 2005. (Read RE's review here.) A complete listing of her work is available at elizabethbear.com. Her article "Achieving Freshness in Fantasy" was featured in the December 2004 issue of Reflection's Edge.