Character Motivation: Pain and Illness

One of the more difficult challenges you face when you create a story is that the hero needs to be smart enough to get out of a jam, but dumb enough to get into it in the first place. I wonder if an illness could be used to explain the lapse.

I wrote about character motivation before. You can read a couple of my earlier discussions at the links at the end of this post.

I've thought about the possibility of illness as a motivation for a character's behaviour for a while now.

Can Illness or Pain Affect People's Behaviour?

Illness and pain have affected many of my own decisions. More that once I made bad decisions because some pain or illness distracted my thoughts. I remember meetings where I agreed to something I later regretted because I just wanted the meeting to end so I could go home to bed. I expect that other people have done the same thing.

I read recently that up to a third of people have to cope with chronic pain. Not everyone reacts the same way. Pain can lead some people to become very selfish, while others may have the opposite reaction and develop greater empathy for other people.

"The Crying Woman"

I can think of only one character I created where pain or illness could impact their decisions. The character Johnny in "The Crying Woman" has an illness. When I wrote the story, I didn't consciously think about that as a motivation for his character. I did use it as an explanation for why the character Mary didn't recognize him.

In the story Johnny shows a lot of empathy. When I wrote the story, I thought this was based on his previous experience with Mary. It could also be that with his experience with his illness has made him more aware of the struggles that other people have in life. This must be a factor, since his situation is much worse than hers, and yet that doesn't diminish his empathy.

Other Stories

Pain and illness do show up in many stories.

·         There are stories where pain or illness are obstacles that a character needs to overcome.

·         There are stories where pain or illness is used to create empathy for the character.

·         There are stories where pain or illness is used to remove a character from active involvement in the story.

I don't remember any stories where pain or illness is used as a character flaw to cause a character's bad decision. This may represent the limits my own knowledge. There may be many stories where pain and illness are important factors in a character's behaviour that I am just not aware of. Maybe other people can name examples.

Opportunities

This strikes me as a missed opportunity. As I noted above, many people have to struggle with pain and illness in their lives and these pains and illnesses directly impact their decisions.

I don't want to become an evangelist and push others to use pain and illness for character motivation. However, in future, I will be open to these as motivators in my own stories.

Related Posts

Don't Let Your Heroes Be Stupid

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/articles/dont-let-your-heroes-be-stupid/

Can Cognitive Biases Help Me With Character Motivations

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/can-cognitive-biases-help-me-with-character-motivations/

The Crying Woman

http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-crying-woman/

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New Wall Poster for "The Barrier"

I redid a poster that I have on a wall in one scene of "The Barrier" this week. The poster isn't a big element of the story, but it is a detail that some people might find distracting if it doesn't look right.

In the open house scene Arthur stands in front of a poster that describes the barrier on Gladstone Parkway. The scene starts at the 46:18 mark in the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

I felt that it look primitive compared to the other posters in the scene and I wanted to replace it for the next version of the movie. While most of the others incorporate images that look like aerial photos, the Gladstone poster just has a line drawing.

I created a pseudo air photo from the same Blender file I used to create the animations of Arthur on the Gladstone Parkway. From the top, the forest looks rather sparse, so I moved and added some more trees. It still looked a bit sparse to me, but I decided that it would be enough. I may need to modify the traffic simulation video to match the look.

I created an image file of the area and then imported it into the PowerPoint file I used to create the original Gladstone poster. I had to make some adjustments to the captions on the poster so they'd be visible. I think the new poster looks better.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Dabbling in "The Barrier"

I restarted my rewrite of "The Barrier" this week. My family responsibilities took precedence over my movie for the last few weeks.

It had been a while since I looked at the rewrite, and I found that I had changed my mind about what I wanted to go with it. Most of the effort I put in was on story structure. I deleted several scenes, I added some scenes, and I changed the order of some of the scenes.

One of the problems with the old version of the story was that I felt more emphasis needed to be on the barrier part of the story. Too much focused on Campbell's Glencoe development. I found in the rewrite that most of scenes ended up longer, which made the whole movie longer than I wanted. That allowed me to drop some of the Glencoe scenes.

Most of the scenes I added were to accommodate the new scene I created of Arthur's video shoot on Gladstone. I also needed to modify some existing scenes to fit it in. I did need to add a short scene to fill a gap left in the Glencoe story when I deleted those scenes. It was fortunate that I was able to cut them out without creating a major issue with the story.

I wrote brief versions of the new scenes, but they will need to be rewritten. I wanted to have something that I could start from. I had a good idea what I want to happen in them, but found it hard to get motivated to write them in much detail.

The hard part will come when I have to rewrite other scenes to adjust for the scenes I deleted or I added. There is a lot of good stuff that I will need to cut out.

With all the politics, doom and gloom in the news lately, the subject of "The Barrier" can seem trivial. However, I think the issues I address in the movie are important. Big complex things are built from many small simple things.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Super Habitable Planets and the Fermi Paradox

Recently I read that some scientists think that there may be planets more suitable to life than Earth. How does this relate to the Fermi Paradox?

What is the Fermi Paradox?

The Fermi Paradox comes from a question that the physicist Enrico Fermi asked during a discussion of flying saucers in the late 1940s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

When you consider the age of the Universe, it seems likely that civilizations should have developed on other planets. If so, they should have been able to colonize the entire galaxy by now. Since we see no evidence of aliens, the question we need to ask is "where are they?"

Over the years since then, scientists have come up with a variety of solutions to this question. If there are super habitable planets, how can we explain this paradox?

What is a Super Habitable Planet?

René Heller and John Armstrong suggest that many exo-planets may be more conducive to life than Earth.  (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhabitable_planet) Briefly, a super habitable planet would be larger than Earth and orbit a smaller, and cooler, star.

Heller and Armstrong suggested that a planet about twice the mass of Earth would be the most suitable for life. The larger size would help maintain a thicker and more stable atmosphere for a longer time.

Cooler stars, like orange dwarf and red dwarf stars, are much more common that yellow dwarf stars like the Sun. The habitable zone around these star would be stable for longer periods. This would allow more time for life to develop and evolve on a planet in the habitable zone.

There is a lot of room for debate about the habitability of planets. For this post, I will accept these ideas.

Civilizations on Super Habitable Planets

If super habitable planets are common, then why do we se no evidence of them? I think it may be that conditions on these planets make it more difficult for advanced civilizations to develop the technology to explore space.

Michael Chorost in his article "Do Super-Earths Trap the Civilizations On Them?" considers the possibility that the higher gravity and the required escape velocity would make it harder to reach space. (see https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/blog/world-wide-mind/201211/do-super-earths-trap-the-civilizations-them). He concludes that these limitations would not stop development of space travel. I think he is too optimistic and that the additional effort may make it unlikely that these civilizations would explore beyond their own planet.

A second explanation is that civilizations on super-earths may not be aware of space. These planets would have deeper and thicker atmospheres, which would limit their ability to see the stars and other planets in the sky. This would be particularly true of planets around smaller stars. These planets will become tidally locked and life could only survive in a narrow twilight band around the planet. The thick atmosphere and the brighter sky would prevent them from seeing the stars.

Lonely Planets

Another possibility would be planets that are the only sizable body in a solar system. Without an nearby destination, like the Moon and Mars for Earth, there would be no easy first steps. Also, without other planets, the imaginations of civilizations on these planets could not develop a science fiction literature about travel to other planets. With out this fantasy, there would be less drive to develop space technology.

Summary

One possible explanation of the Fermi Paradox is that most civilizations on habitable planets are unable to develop space technology. This may be due to the limits imposed by the nature of super habitable planets on the ability to reach space. The nature of these planets may also limit the ability of these civilizations to even conceive of the idea of travel beyond their own planet.

Earth may be rare, in that it is large enough for a technological civilization to develop, but is also small enough that space travel is relatively easy to develop.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Ancient Alien Probes and the Breakthrough Starshot Proposal

The Breakthrough Starshot  proposal from Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner got me to think about ancient alien probes again. Their proposal adds a twist to my earlier thoughts.

I've listed the ancient alien probe blog posts I did earlier at the bottom of this post.

Hawking, Milner and their collaborators have proposed a plan to send probes to visit nearby star systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot  

Their proposal is to build a multitude of centimetre sized probes with meter sized light sails, which would be accelerated to 20% the speed of light by huge lasers. This would allow them to reach the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in about 20 years.

One of the research goals is to develop the technology to build useful probes that are a thin wafer about 1 or 2 centimetres in size. While this is a big challenge, they point out that smart phones already have similar capabilities and the bsic components are almost that small.

When I've thought of alien probes in the past, I've always envisioned them as similar to the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey". It's my favourite movie, so that influenced my thoughts. I assumed the probe would be of a similar size, something on the order of 3 to 4 metres.

The Starshot proposal made me realize that alien probes could well be no more than a few centimetres tall. A probe that small wouldn't look very impressive, unless you are an ant.

It is quite realistic to search for a 4 metre tall probe. Large parts of the Moon and Mars have already been photographed in sufficient detail to spot something that large. However, a search for a 4 centimetre tall probe is far beyond what we are currently capable of.

A failure to find an alien probe with our current technology would not prove that there are no alien probes in the solar system.

Some other posts on Ancient Alien Probes:

"Felix" and The Ancient Astronauts

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/felix-and-the-ancient-astronauts/

If There Really Were Ancient Astronauts, What Kind of Evidence Would We Find?

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/if-there-really-were-ancient-astronauts-what-kind-of-evidence-would-we-find/

Why Would Ancient Astronauts Visit Earth?

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/why-would-ancient-astronauts-visit-earth/

Do Ancient Alien Probes Watch Earth?

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/do-ancient-alien-probes-watch-earth/

A Brief Thought About the Fermi Paradox

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/a-brief-thought-about-the-fermi-paradox/

Ancient Alien Visitations: Show Me the Garbage

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/ancient-alien-visitations-show-me-the-garbage/

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Preliminary Version of New Scene for "The Barrier"

I've completed the preliminary version of the new scene I wanted to create for my transportation planning movie: "The Barrier". I wanted to make sure I could do it before I continued with the script rewrite.

When I'm ready to make the new version of "The Barrier", I will do a final version of this scene. For this trial version I used some old stills of Arthur, my main character. When I do the final version I will do an animated version of Arthur with Nawmal. For me, it seems like the scene runs slowly, so I may go back and speed it up. It may seem faster after I add the animated Arthur.

Now, it's back to the script rewrite.

You can watch previous version of "The Barrier" (version 0.6) here:

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Tests Shots for A New Scene in "The Barrier"

For the next version of my transportation planner movie, "The Barrier", I want to add a scene where Arthur makes video of the place where he wants to put the barrier.

I had wanted to do this for the original movie, but thought it would be too difficult. I decided to use Blender to create the scene. I made good progress this week, and have some test shots to share. Later I will use Nawmal to add Arthur to the scene.

You can watch the test shots here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oitpW0NeYg

I would like to come up with a better looking SUV than I created for the video.

You can watch previous version of "The Barrier" (version 0.6) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog