For those who don't pay attention to college sports, or were kidnapped and hidden away on the dark side of the Moon for the past few weeks, the big college football championship game was held Monday, pitting the Ohio State University against Notre Dame. Now, if you went to either of these institutions, you probably have certain feelings about the game (spoiler: OSU won). However, even if you don't, you probably know someone with some kind of tie to either or both schools, and now that person acts like they have some skin in the game as well. Fine for college athletics, tricky when it comes to writing.
Now, I dropped in this picture of my beaten, battered OSU cap as sort of a trigger mechanism. A number of my friends who are OSU alumni, those who enjoy the school in general, or those who live near the school and gave me the cap (you know who you are) are now beaming with pride. That being said, a lot of my Notre Dame friends and family (side note: my father's family basically lives within smelling distance of the school) are now gritting their teeth and preparing to send me some very nasty letters (they still use the post office out there; they worry that e-mail and the internet are dangerous and might lead to greater sins such as dancing). Whatever the case may be, however, emotions are on edge for both camps.Now, as a writer, how does one manage such a situation? Plenty of other jobs have pre-defined behaviors for approaching the big game: Most presidential candidates won't even take sides on the World Series if a swing state is involved and it's an election year. Other people will try to be diplomatic and say, "Well, this team has a great offense, but the other team's defense is pretty strong, so it should be a great game," (in essence saying nothing). The bottom line, though, is that as someone creating a piece of reality, if you are writing a perspective about such a room-splitting subject, you have to choose a side. There is no "right" side. It's more like two wrong sides because you will lose some audience one way or the other. The only thing you can do is make your point as clear as possible.
Now, let's bring out our favorite fictitious character, Tom, for a little example. Frankly, Tom would just shrug off the OSU-Notre Dame game because he's not really invested in it (unless he placed a bet with his bookie/best friend). However, that's not his jam - he's a baseball guy. How do we know this? Well, Tom lets everyone know. He wears his Cubs cap proudly to work on the first day of Spring Training. He never works on Opening Day - as he says, it's for religious reasons. However, if he encounters a White Sox fan, he doesn't get very confrontational. Usually he takes a passive swipe, such as, "Well, you're a Sox fan, and you're entitled to make whatever choice you want. I smoked for 17 years before I figured out there was a better way to do things. Your call..." And that's usually when the fight starts.
Yes, writing about Tom might lose some appeal to Sox fans, and to Cleveland fans as well (if you know, you know). However, Tom's real strength is the fact that he has opinions which are consistent and unapologetically displayed. This is where a character builds their strength - not from choosing the right side of a no-win situation, and not from choosing the more favorable position, but staking their claim and sticking to it. Tom didn't get a cell phone until 2003 because, "they're just a fad." Well, you can laugh that he was wrong, but you know him better because he staked out a position and held onto it until his girlfriend made him get a cell phone. (That's another story.)
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