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Problems writing...
I signed up to do a Sam Carter fic thinking that the assignment I get will give me the plot, all I have to do is write it. It’d be fun playing in the SG1 universe. However, the assignment really didn’t give me a plot at all. Instead, it listed a couple of requirements that would happily fit any fic I’d write: Team interaction, Sam as scientist and soldier, a little action, a little humor, no ship, no bad endings. There is no plot in that. Now, I have come up with a dozen different ideas, but none have any teeth. When I start writing them, they don’t even give me a scene!
I know what the problem is, too. I just don’t understand Sam. I love the character, mind, but I don’t understand her. To be honest, I have a really hard time understand most female characters on television, which is why I always write the guys.
Without an understanding of the character, I have no story, no flesh to hang on my skeleton of a plot, no reason for the characters to do anything at all. I need a plot to have a story, but I need character motivations to have a plot.
So, in an attempt to figure out how to write this story, I give you Sam Carter as I see her:Sam is brilliant and she’s brilliant at just about everything. You name a science and Sam has dabbled in it – she’s even helped with the medical side of things. She doesn’t know it all, but she knows enough to be able to do what she has to. She can think outside the box, as demonstrated by the number of times she comes up with a solution when no one else could. She goes after every puzzle with a “make no assumptions” attitude.
Sam is a decorated soldier and is an excellent officer. She is this despite a history of disliking the service, as evidenced by the fact that all her “other selves” clearly are shocked that she is with the military. (Of course, I totally don’t get the “hate the military because your father is in the military and because of that he didn’t pick up your mom on time, she got impatient, took a cab instead, which got in an accident and she was killed”. Wow. That makes no sense to me.) She is a perfect second-in-command. She provides alternatives and follows orders exactly when needed. With all that said, she does have a bit of a problem when in command. Not when she’s by herself, mind (she did great when fighting off the super soldier), but in command she tends to second-guess herself too much.
She is able to express her emotions openly and without being ashamed of them. She accepted the intense feelings for Martouf that she got for Jolienar (once she realized what was happening) as her own, without any resentment or desire to suppress them. When Daniel walked up to find them in a situation that was obviously fairly intimate, Sam had not indication of embarrassment or discomfort. She forms quick and strong attachments people: Cassandra, Narim, Orlin, Pete. She cares deeply and legitimately for all of them. She is loyal and faithful.
She has willingly and consistently put work ahead of personal life, but at the same time she obviously longs for a “family”, so much so that she was willing to ‘settle’ for Pete – someone she cared about, but who obviously wasn’t who she really wanted. In the end, she had enough courage to do the right thing even if she put it off a little too long.
Sam can see the good in every one, often to the extent of turning a blind eye to their faults. She firmly believes that the good in anyone can outweigh the bad – even more so than Daniel, I think. This is especially true with herself, when Replicator!Carter pops up, she doesn’t suspect any evilness at all, as if she can’t see herself doing anything like that.
I see Sam as someone who graduated HS early and attended a couple of years of regular college. She then went to the Air Force Academy because it was the best route to becoming an astronaut. Yet, after that dream blew up with the shuttle, she liked Air Force life enough to stay part of it.
I know all these things, but I don’t know why she is all these things. Why did she want to be an astronaut? To explore, to help humanity, to see Earth from orbit? Why does she stay a soldier when she is so obviously perfect for being a scientist? What is her center, what keeps her going, what stopped her from “settling” for Pete? What are her insecurities? What holds her back? More importantly, what drives her?
I know what drives Jack, Daniel and Teal’c. I even know what drives Jonas and Cameron. But what drives Sam? A thirst for knowledge? A drive to succeed? A quest to explore? A promise to someone or herself?
This is the key to writing Sam (or any character) and I’m completely missing it.
I know what the problem is, too. I just don’t understand Sam. I love the character, mind, but I don’t understand her. To be honest, I have a really hard time understand most female characters on television, which is why I always write the guys.
Without an understanding of the character, I have no story, no flesh to hang on my skeleton of a plot, no reason for the characters to do anything at all. I need a plot to have a story, but I need character motivations to have a plot.
So, in an attempt to figure out how to write this story, I give you Sam Carter as I see her:Sam is brilliant and she’s brilliant at just about everything. You name a science and Sam has dabbled in it – she’s even helped with the medical side of things. She doesn’t know it all, but she knows enough to be able to do what she has to. She can think outside the box, as demonstrated by the number of times she comes up with a solution when no one else could. She goes after every puzzle with a “make no assumptions” attitude.
Sam is a decorated soldier and is an excellent officer. She is this despite a history of disliking the service, as evidenced by the fact that all her “other selves” clearly are shocked that she is with the military. (Of course, I totally don’t get the “hate the military because your father is in the military and because of that he didn’t pick up your mom on time, she got impatient, took a cab instead, which got in an accident and she was killed”. Wow. That makes no sense to me.) She is a perfect second-in-command. She provides alternatives and follows orders exactly when needed. With all that said, she does have a bit of a problem when in command. Not when she’s by herself, mind (she did great when fighting off the super soldier), but in command she tends to second-guess herself too much.
She is able to express her emotions openly and without being ashamed of them. She accepted the intense feelings for Martouf that she got for Jolienar (once she realized what was happening) as her own, without any resentment or desire to suppress them. When Daniel walked up to find them in a situation that was obviously fairly intimate, Sam had not indication of embarrassment or discomfort. She forms quick and strong attachments people: Cassandra, Narim, Orlin, Pete. She cares deeply and legitimately for all of them. She is loyal and faithful.
She has willingly and consistently put work ahead of personal life, but at the same time she obviously longs for a “family”, so much so that she was willing to ‘settle’ for Pete – someone she cared about, but who obviously wasn’t who she really wanted. In the end, she had enough courage to do the right thing even if she put it off a little too long.
Sam can see the good in every one, often to the extent of turning a blind eye to their faults. She firmly believes that the good in anyone can outweigh the bad – even more so than Daniel, I think. This is especially true with herself, when Replicator!Carter pops up, she doesn’t suspect any evilness at all, as if she can’t see herself doing anything like that.
I see Sam as someone who graduated HS early and attended a couple of years of regular college. She then went to the Air Force Academy because it was the best route to becoming an astronaut. Yet, after that dream blew up with the shuttle, she liked Air Force life enough to stay part of it.
I know all these things, but I don’t know why she is all these things. Why did she want to be an astronaut? To explore, to help humanity, to see Earth from orbit? Why does she stay a soldier when she is so obviously perfect for being a scientist? What is her center, what keeps her going, what stopped her from “settling” for Pete? What are her insecurities? What holds her back? More importantly, what drives her?
I know what drives Jack, Daniel and Teal’c. I even know what drives Jonas and Cameron. But what drives Sam? A thirst for knowledge? A drive to succeed? A quest to explore? A promise to someone or herself?
This is the key to writing Sam (or any character) and I’m completely missing it.
Part 1
I think in order to understand Sam Carter you have to think about what you do know and what you don't know, which you've definitely done. But then you need to imagine the rest of it because there's a certain amount of freedom that you have with her history because we just were never shown her complete background.
I think people also tend to have slightly different versions of Sam, and that's okay. Each one seems very Sam-like.
I can give you my version of Sam and how I see her. If anything, maybe it will get you thinking. Hopefully?
Why did she want to be an astronaut? To explore, to help humanity, to see Earth from orbit?
I think all kids want to be astronauts at some point in their lives. They give it up when they realize how much work and math is involved. But Sam is GREAT at math. Awesome, in fact. For her the dream could keep building and never be crushed. But I like to imagine a moment or two where someone said, "Women can't be astronauts, dear. How about being a nice secretary?" Because (argh!) there's some prime motivation there, and a reason for all the in-your-face feminism when we first meet her. And the sexism would have gotten both better and worse once she joined the Air Force.
Why does she stay a soldier when she is so obviously perfect for being a scientist?
She likes the field. She loves doing this wonderful thing of stepping through the gate. She's curios like we all are about what's out there. I'm not sure you can really ascribe a particular motivation to this. She's a risk-taker, we've seen this in the way she comes up with all the wacky scientific ideas and then makes them work, time after time. And maybe science comes so easily to her that without the field work it becomes dreary.
What is her center, what keeps her going, what stopped her from “settling” for Pete?
Eesh. This one's a little more difficult as I feel the writing for her during this time period was very uneven and often unfair. She's a theoretical astrophysicist. She's working in theory and is eager to prove everything she puts together in her mind. The gate offers her this chance regularly. It allows her to grow as a scientist. But, er, her personal life? Not so much. I tend to give her a bit of an "outsider looking in" angle to her center/personality. She's basically giving up that normal life with a husband and kids for gate travel. At least for right now, and she's not getting any younger. The guys have all had that for a time, but not her.
With Pete, I just feel she saw the opportunity to have that life, and she loved the guy, so why not? But... she'd never really dealt with the Jack thing in any meaningful way, and so of course as things got closer to actually becoming permanent, she got more and more nervous. She needed to deal with Jack first.
With the others, she was free to express her emotions because, well, 1) they were more open than Jack ever has been. And 2) there wasn't the regs thing to worry about.
*sigh* I guess I will have to do a part 2. Drat! I was trying to keep it short and simple for you.
Re: Part 2
This will be some random sentences: I tend to write her as a bit socially inept. Not really stunted, but she has a hard time identifying with other women outside of the SGC (and men for that matter). She can't tell them what she does. She's most likely smarter than they are. She isn't into the soccer mom and mini-vans thing. She's always thinking about science in some way. She's not the best at conveying her feelings when it's someone who really matters. A little afraid of losing perhaps? She does have some ego to contend with. She knows she's smart, accepts it, gets on with it. Do the other scientists think of her as Super Sam? Rodney McKay irritates her when he says she's wrong. She's beautiful, so surely she's had male attention before, but she tends to pick fairly strong personalities, just like her father. No surprise there. She seems mostly unwilling to disobey orders, even when she doesn't believe they're right. She will question authority, but ehhh... not really so much.
I think the writing in general for the show tends to cloak all the shippiness in order to make all the fans as happy as possible, and then it's hard to really see some important points about Sam and her non-soldierey self.
I've read meta about Sam from someone else who writes her as much less of a dork than I do. They approach her entire life and center and motivation from a scientific POV. That Sam looks at everything logically. It works for them. I come from more of a POV where Sam felt alone most of her life because her gifts set her apart. She found a family at the SGC. When she's outside of that family, she feels like a bit of a misfit.
And, maybe I should stop for now... I hope this gives you *something* to think about. ;)