My Enemy is Made of Fluff.

My biggest pet hate with any medium of storytelling is a completely useless enemy. When the primary opponent is built up to be a potent danger to the cause of the protagonist we need to believe it to make the story work. They’re perhaps lauded to be deadly in combat, or deviously intelligent, or in possession of a great power. But when they actually step up to centre stage it turns out they’re nothing more than an obstacle to the plot. I call it Stormtrooper Syndrome.

Forgive me for stating what many fans would consider the obvious while I elaborate. In the Star Wars universe, Stormtroopers are the soldiers of the Empire. They’re the workhorses on which the Empire has established dominance, the front line of troops charged with carrying out the orders of this huge intergalactic house of bad-asses. In the first scene of the first film Stormtroopers invade Princess Leia’s vessel, kill all her defending guards and capture her without much effort. Even Obi-Wan Kenobi points out the marksmanship of these soldiers later on, stating that the wreck of a transport vehicle on Tattoine was attacked by Stormtroopers based on his observation on the accuracy of the blaster hits.

What happens when the Stormtroopers encounter the heroes later on? They get their teeth kicked in on a regular basis. In every scene they’re in. The aforementioned accuracy goes to shit as they don’t hit any of the main cast at any point despite firing off hundreds of shots. They get blown away by the dozen. The highlight of their futility is their crushing defeat at the paws of four-feet-tall, twittering bloody Ewoks. All they become is a plot device used to give the heroes something to quip over as they meander from one scene to the other.

Star Wars is brilliant. Stormtroopers are fucking rubbish.

(There are a few spoilers here. If you haven’t seen or read Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Alien or Se7en, then don’t read any further.)

Take Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I’ve only seen the film, so if the book makes better use of Hades then that’s brilliant. The plot was fun. But if the film should stand alone as a story, and it should, then Hades is terrible. He is the God of the Underworld, and he’s trying to take over Zeus’s throne. You’d think, therefore, he’d be pretty powerful and terrifying and all that gubbins. I mean, he’s got a legion of hell hounds surrounding the heroes. He’s got Zeus’s lightning bolt in his hands. He’s won, surely.

But no, he gets betrayed and rendered unconscious by some completely secondary character who turns up about five minutes prior to his own fifteen minute scene. He loses the bolt, the heroes get away, and that’s it. That’s his contribution. In this instance not only does it nullify the threat of Big Bad Hades, but the heroes also escape via methods entirely out of their control. They had nothing to do with defeating Hades. They were superfluous to their own success. (As a side note, Steve Coogan was a terrible choice to play Hades. Coogan is an excellent actor but he’s neither scary nor commanding.)

In my opinion, if a story involves direct conflict then the main character should have to work his or her kidneys out to overcome the primary foe. Alien is an excellent example. By the time Ripley’s alone with the xenomorph in the airlock of the Sulaco we know that it has acid for blood, we have witnessed it kill off all her crewmates with ease, and we know she doesn’t have a weapon in her hands. Therefore we can accept that she’s scared witless as she tries to open the airlock hatch. Even more so there’s Se7en. The killer John Doe manages to complete his scheme of seven murders. The good guys win on a technical level by shooting the bad guy at the end of the film. There’s that payoff. Good guy shoots bad guy, which is what you want to see when you root for the hero for an hour and a half. But in this story John Doe’s death completes his work. Even as he faceplants the floor with a bullet in his chest, he wins. He dies a successful enemy. He confirms his credible threat.

If the enemy soldiers are made out to be Spartans and then the hero takes out five of them at once with barely a scratch in return, then I feel it devalues them. Maybe the hero is that skilled or deadly or powerful, of course. But it just means the next time more pseudo-Spartans are sent to capture or kill him, it weakens the tension there.

Anyway, what have I done recently. I wrote two short stories, one for the Bridport Prize competition as mentioned last time, and one as a proposed magazine-webzine submission. I’m going to write a few stories to send off to various places while waiting for the second draft of the book. It’s fun doing a few thousand words as a complete tale again. I enjoy the pace of it. I might write up something small for this blog to show off my writing style. After all, it might be upsetting to keep up with my progress only to discover I can’t write for toffee.

I nearly put a smiley at the end of that paragraph there. The temptation is terrible, like a smoker trying to ignore the call of the open packet lying before them. Speaking of which I am in the process of trying to quit smoking. I say that with a grin on my face because I am absolutely hopeless at it. I’ve been trying to quit for about four years. Still going strong.

Oh, and I really want a Kindle. If anyone has one I’d love to hear your opinions on the thing. Two month battery life? Yes, please!