I have kept relatively quiet about that whole over covered ordeal, but this morning I had an epiphany:
Black community mourns the loss of their white icon.
Why did MJ change his skin color? For the longest time I had assumed it was a rejection of his heritage. Then, seeing Paris between what could only be ten family members vying for a spotlight, I realized that MJ wasn't escaping his culture, he was escaping his family. All of the changes, the flamboyancy, the gender bending, they stemmed from a need to escape the shadow of his dominating father and talented siblings.
This is a great example of an internal dilema creating changes in a chracter's life. Not only was MJ struggling against a demanding public and the greedy record companies, he was struggling against the complexes created by his upbringing. Often times internal conflicts breed strange symptoms in the external conflicts, manifesting themselves in 'weird' behaviors. Think of a homophobic senator that can only express his sexuality in a bathroom stall, or the desperate and lonely housewife who has no real control of her situation becoming a super control freak when given a simple decorating task.
Have these conflicts in mind when you write characters. Is there a way that this character's past could have loaded him to react in a special way to the problem at hand? Would Grant's disdain for children effect his actions towards them in Jurassic Park? Would Sarah Conner's experience with a Terminator make her distrust the one sent to help her son? Would a childhood of poverty have an effect on the richest citizen in the world?
If only we could write as well as God does.
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