Character Design: The Obligatory
Plonker
By Ben Miff
When you read most stories, you’ll probably find one character (or more)
that never seems to be able to do anything right, and when it seems that
they’ve managed it (shock horror), it turns out that the mistake just wasn’t
visible yet. While useful for driving the plot on, the obligatory plonker must
not be used to excess, for otherwise the reader may find themselves feeling
like the story isn’t getting anywhere, and therefore become disinterested,
something to avoid if at all possible.
Designing the obligatory plonker as a functional character the reader actually
likes can be attempted by following two main paths; either that of comedy, or
of sympathy. Needless to say, different storylines will work better with different
paths. If you’re trying to write a deadly serious piece, then having a comedic
character could work to nullify the atmosphere you’re trying to create. On the
other hand, if you are writing a comic story, then it’s probably not a good
idea to have a character that inspires sympathy, as that could quite easily
result in the reader feeling too depressed to even giggle slightly.
Writing the two different paths isn’t necessarily to do with your
initial outlay; more, it has to do with how you write the character. Frelchek
(my Fur Future character) is a prime example of how to avoid the sympathy
response, merely because instead of hurting himself, he tends to injure others.
Especially when he’s falling out of vents. If I desired to gain sympathy, I
would instead need to ensure that he incurs all the negative effects that
falling from heights would normally inspire, and (possibly) make the falls not
his fault. As such, since he normally lands on someone else, is stupid enough not
to know when to give up, and doesn’t seem to recognise the existence of
vertical vent shafts (even though they still recognise him), it’s his own fault,
and so the reader doesn’t feel guilty at laughing at him (well, not much
anyway).
However, the initial outlay is important for getting the obligatory
plonker to work. If the character has a plethora of (useful) skills, then when
they start generally fluffing things up all that will happen is that the reader
will sit there is disbelief, not quite knowing what’s going on. The character
needs to be one that can actually be believed in his role as the twit. A good
way to achieve this is to have the character have some little aspect that
explains away why they can never get anything right. Frelchek has the minor
fact that his mind seems to have any kind of integrity, probably as a result of
not having much of a face left. Many of the obligatory plonker characters have
an innate clumsiness, or generally do not understand the situation as it truly
is.
The obligatory plonker also has that rather useful ability of “storyline
extension”. You get the villain trapped in the corner, and are in the perfect
position to kill him / her off and finish the story. The minor problem is, you
don’t want to stop there, and you don’t want to have to do rewriting. This is
where the obligatory plonker shines; have them provide a disabling or
distracting manoeuvre, and watch as it all falls into place. Have them miss
with a shot and hit your hero in the paw, or have them fall out of the ceiling
(like Frelchek does on frequent occasions). The villain can quickly run away
(or jump into their rocket ship, or whatever), and by the time your hero would
have recovered, you’ve got a hunt to play with.
However, through mistaken accidents, you can sometimes use the obligatory
plonker to end the story. A perfect example of this can be seen in the ancient
cliché which involves the villain-standing-over-hero-gloating. The plonker
knocks something over by accident (and seemingly completely at random), and
traps the villain / knocks him into a random deadly machine / shoves him off
the edge of something very tall indeed / pushes him into his own trap, and
saves the day. Of course, then he’s likely to follow by blowing something else
up, launching the hero into orbit, or something equally annoying, but there you
go.
All this talk so far has been about the heroes, you may have noticed.
Yet the obligatory plonker also fits well into the villain structure. After
all, most of the evil men (and women) in this world will, inevitably, have to
rely on some people lower down their structure from time to time, and it’s
reasonable to assume that one twit can slip through the net. (Maybe the
admissions officer didn’t get much sleep the night before?) Also, the nature of
villain groups is that some people in that group are going to get hurt, and the
target is quite likely to be the obligatory plonker, merely because they’re an
easy target. Also, the obligatory plonker can be fun to use for the end; after
all, chances are they’d fluff and end up doing something to give the heroes the
edge. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to controlling Frelchek, so this is it.
Honest.
There’s nothing interesting down here.
Shoo.