What do you say to Michael Crichton? (idea)

Well, now. Seems my dear friend nf (how the fuck do you pronounce that, anyway?) has gone and called me out. Yeah, I've heard what people say about how writeup does not mean reply. Well, do you know what? Fuck you. I'm Michael fucking Crichton and I'll write when I damn well please.

Now that we've settled that little issue, let's get one thing straight right from the start:

NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

Oh, and just so we're clear on this, by "nobody" I mean "nobody but a few pretentious lit-crit types who spend their lives mentally masturbating in windowless cubicles while contributing nothing to society and making less money than a non-union garbageman." English scholars are not real people, and don't you forget it.

Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes:

NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

No. Really. They don't. Take a look around you. Take a look at the authors whose books always end up at the top of the charts. Dan Brown? Yeah, right. How many characters of his can you name, aside from that one dude who appears in all his books? Tom Clancy? Stereotypes and acronyms, people, stereotypes and acronyms. Shit, Clancy's weapons have richer backgrounds than his characters do; Ding Chavez doesn't have any personality aside from a bad case of Speedy Gonzales syndrome. J.K. Rowling? Okay, I'll grant you that some of Rowling's characters are at least living in Flatland instead of Lineland--we're all waiting breathlessly to find out whether Ron and Hermione are going to shag each other sore before the end of the series--but Voldemort still sounds like a bad James Bond villain. And her prose? Phoo...her prose sucks the sweat off a stegosaur's balls. And believe you me, I know something about a stegosaur's balls. Hell, I even get asked to lecture about dinosaurs, as though I'd actually done research on them or something. (Can't top that bastard Tom Clancy, though. They had that ugly little fucker on CNN talking about the armaments that were going to be used in the second Iraq war. Like he knew anything other than what he'd read in Jane's! Can you believe it?)

Look, of course my characters are one-sided. Do you know why? Here's a clue: MOST PEOPLE ARE ONE-SIDED. Haven't you noticed? No? Well, then--you're probably one of them, aren't you?

Forget all that shit you learned in school about high drama involving noble figures in tragic situations created by vengeful or whimsical gods. Nobody wants to read that. People want to read about average dinks in exciting situations, largely because they're average dinks in unexciting situations and they want to imagine that something fun might happen to them someday. Oh, and in spite of all this, most people don't lead lives of quiet desperation, no matter what that narcissistic wanker Thoreau wanted you to believe. A sense of quiet desperation requires thought and reflection and contemplation, and that's far beyond the capacity of your average human being. Fuck, most people can't even manage the "quiet" part, at least not for very long. And I always love that bit about "leading a life," as though these people were capable of leading anything more than a dog. These fuckers are following--following a path that will leave them old, washed-up, senile, and poor.

So go ahead and slam me in the halls of your English departments, go ahead and write snarky reviews that nobody will ever take seriously, go ahead and insult me on some time-wasting website that doesn't earn you a cent. I don't care. And do you know why not? Because I'm Michael fucking Crichton, and I've written more books than you.