What Ever Happened to April?
Let’s say you are Lynn Johnston writing For Better or For Worse, and you have promised everyone that you are going to freeze time so your characters will never age again, but you also have an idea in your head that you want the readers to know how things will end up with your characters if time were to continue on running? Well that’s a dilemma isn’t it?
You have a character named April who is 16 years old and in Grade 11. She’s not established in a career. She doesn’t have a husband, but she has been dating the same guy for 4 years. She currently plays in a rock and roll band and has done so for the last 4 years. How do you let your readership know how April’s life will end up?
If you are Lynn Johnston, you set the basic premise for April’s life:
a. She is going to go to veterinary school and become a veterinarian, just like my ex-husband’s sister.
b. She is going to drop her high school boyfriend while she explores life, but then ultimately return back to him.
c. She is going to continue her love of music, but she will no longer be in a band.
The next question is how to put these ideas across in a week’s worth of strips. Lynn Johnston chose to have April raise the issue over a band performance put together by her boyfriend. This leads to April telling us her chosen profession and recognition that this is the right choice for her by the boyfriend. This leads to the end of the relationship with the boyfriend, but a promise to get together again later. This leads to the other band members acknowledging they no longer want to be in a band, except to play together for fun, but to enjoy their bandship while it lasts. This leads to some of the most ridiculous and stilted dialogue in comics today.
How would you do it? How could you achieve the goals set forth by Lynn Johnston and do it better than she did this week?
1. Vet school. There is no reason April could not have mentioned this. The easiest way would be for her to realize that pre-vet programs require certain courses to be taken in Senior Secondary School. Someone says to April, “What classes are you taking?”, and she replies “I am taking this and this, because this is what is required for veterinary school at the University of Guelph.” Thus in a few sentences not only does it communicate April plans to be a vet, but it also communicates she is serious about it, which the strips this week failed to do.
2. Dropping the high school boyfriend, while she explores life, but leaving the door open for him to come back. The easiest way to do this is to have a break with the boyfriend for reasons which do not leave any hard feelings. So, no infidelity. Disapproving parents are usually a good choice. That way there is someone else to blame, and there is a sense that when the person turns 18, then the parents are no longer allowed to interfere.
3. The band plays for fun and not professionally. This is the easiest one of all. A band member gets involved in some other activity they value more. For example, Duncan supposedly plays soccer, and the soccer schedule and the band schedule don’t mix. This kind of thing happens all the time in high school. Then the band, rather than getting a new bass guitar player, instead decides they will just play together when Duncan is available, effectively ending their ability to play professional gigs.
That didn’t take too much thought, and yet Lynn Johnston doesn’t think that way. She has to have her characters make sudden and unexpected announcements and also relies heavily on the clichéed romantic phrases and the awkward wordplay. The problem often claimed for Lynn Johnston is that she doesn't know how to write for teenagers, but I think the actual problem is that she has ceased to take the time to make sure the plot makes sense.
You have a character named April who is 16 years old and in Grade 11. She’s not established in a career. She doesn’t have a husband, but she has been dating the same guy for 4 years. She currently plays in a rock and roll band and has done so for the last 4 years. How do you let your readership know how April’s life will end up?
If you are Lynn Johnston, you set the basic premise for April’s life:
a. She is going to go to veterinary school and become a veterinarian, just like my ex-husband’s sister.
b. She is going to drop her high school boyfriend while she explores life, but then ultimately return back to him.
c. She is going to continue her love of music, but she will no longer be in a band.
The next question is how to put these ideas across in a week’s worth of strips. Lynn Johnston chose to have April raise the issue over a band performance put together by her boyfriend. This leads to April telling us her chosen profession and recognition that this is the right choice for her by the boyfriend. This leads to the end of the relationship with the boyfriend, but a promise to get together again later. This leads to the other band members acknowledging they no longer want to be in a band, except to play together for fun, but to enjoy their bandship while it lasts. This leads to some of the most ridiculous and stilted dialogue in comics today.
How would you do it? How could you achieve the goals set forth by Lynn Johnston and do it better than she did this week?
1. Vet school. There is no reason April could not have mentioned this. The easiest way would be for her to realize that pre-vet programs require certain courses to be taken in Senior Secondary School. Someone says to April, “What classes are you taking?”, and she replies “I am taking this and this, because this is what is required for veterinary school at the University of Guelph.” Thus in a few sentences not only does it communicate April plans to be a vet, but it also communicates she is serious about it, which the strips this week failed to do.
2. Dropping the high school boyfriend, while she explores life, but leaving the door open for him to come back. The easiest way to do this is to have a break with the boyfriend for reasons which do not leave any hard feelings. So, no infidelity. Disapproving parents are usually a good choice. That way there is someone else to blame, and there is a sense that when the person turns 18, then the parents are no longer allowed to interfere.
3. The band plays for fun and not professionally. This is the easiest one of all. A band member gets involved in some other activity they value more. For example, Duncan supposedly plays soccer, and the soccer schedule and the band schedule don’t mix. This kind of thing happens all the time in high school. Then the band, rather than getting a new bass guitar player, instead decides they will just play together when Duncan is available, effectively ending their ability to play professional gigs.
That didn’t take too much thought, and yet Lynn Johnston doesn’t think that way. She has to have her characters make sudden and unexpected announcements and also relies heavily on the clichéed romantic phrases and the awkward wordplay. The problem often claimed for Lynn Johnston is that she doesn't know how to write for teenagers, but I think the actual problem is that she has ceased to take the time to make sure the plot makes sense.
posted by howard at 1:25 AM
5 Comments:
Disapproving Parents! That's something that ties directly into the strip's past, isn't it? Let's say that John and Elly suspected that Gerald is trying to sweet-talk April into 'going roadside' without benefit of marriage. Do they know about the incident during Mike's party? Possibly, but, as her parents, that knowledge is optional. Do they blame her? Maybe, but maybe they think she has no sales resistance, so to speak. Whatver the reason, the Continental gets John's spider senses tingling and he wants to derail the Hands-On train. That would be a damn good reason to cool things down. So would the Delaney-Forsythe's disapproval of the Patterson family in general and the pouty-faced little idiot who stood between their boy and a juicy recording contract in particular.
dreadedcandiru2,
There are lots of ways to do it where it could have made sense. Of course, she would have to take more than a single strip in a week to put across a disapproving parents storyline, and we can't have that. The other restriction I failed to mention is that, for some reason, Lynn Johnston decided to do all these things in one week + throw in a joke about overloaded backpacks.
Since Lynn loves to leave plot threads hanging in a failed attempt to build suspense, she could have John allude to his discomfort with the company she keeps in that interminable drive home from her trip to the farm or posit longing for someone he hated as the reason she was spoiling the Housening for everyone. That way, we could have been forewarned if her parents expressed a certain amount of relief that this had happened.
dreadedcandiru,
You're right. Without a leading, dangling plot thread, I have no idea how Elly and John would react to the loss of Gerald as a boyfriend. We know John likes him well enough to joyride with him, and a loooong time ago, Elly said he reminded her of Anthony at the same age. I suppose they might be disappointed, however, his association with the EVIL music and his desire to be a professional like Becky, could turn them the other way.
As for April's band, their opinion on the loss of that is clear, since they have never liked April's band. I would expect high-fiving and the like, when April announces the band will break up.
The temporary loss of Gerald would be a small price to pay if it meant that they wouldn't have to endure music. If John Patterson were to magically appear in the Ministry of Love building, the Inner Party torturers would make him love Big Brother by threatening him with a Top 40 station. As for Elly, if it's not Bobby Curtola, she doesn't wanna know about it.
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