TECH: Nanowrimo Notes #11: She Stoops to Conquer?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

aka Ethics for the Nanowrimo Races?

Okay, it's time for that ever popular game called, "what's your scruple?" So pick a number from 1 to 6 and let's see what you've won.

1. The local grocery gives you 50 cents more change than you deserve. You discover this outside the store. Do you return with the change?
2. Nine dollars in quarters come spilling out of a payphone. Do you report it?
3. Your neighbor in an adjacent apartment building insists on doing yoga nude, in full view. Do you complain to your neighbor's landlady?
4. Your lover is away and you are looking after his/her apartment. You come across a diary. Do you read it?
5. During a discussion with a seat mate on a plane, you promise to send a relevant magazine article. Do you actually do it?
6. You are a high school principal. Will you hire a gay teacher?

Now since we're doing nanowrimo, these are problems for your protagonist or perhaps one of the other characters in your story. You may need to tinker with it a little to get it to fit -- perhaps it is the 24-hour convenience store on the corner that gives the hero extra change. Or perhaps it is a friend who is looking for advice about hiring a potential employee for their small company? Bevel the edges if you need to, but add this complication into your story -- this ethical dilemma, some of the reactions and thinking about it, and at least one attempt to deal with it.

How does your hero respond to some of the little mistakes in life that give him or her more than they really deserve? Do they try to balance the books, returning the overage to the source? Do they pocket the difference, with children watching? What does your reader expect the hero to do?

How about unexpected views? Do you read that diary? Do you look at the neighbor? How do you handle some of those secrets?

What about those social commitments that are just little stuff? No one will ever know if you do it or not -- so do you?

How about the wonders of prejudice? Sure, gender, age, color, sexual preference, and all that stuff shouldn't enter into hiring decisions and other arenas, but does it? Do your characters treat the character who came out of the closet just the same, do they make them want to dive back into the closet, or do they play the game of over reacting, which may make the closet look like the best place to be?

Lots of little fun stuff. If you want to, you can use the scale that Kohlberg put together. There are pre-social thinkers, who want to know whether they'll be punished or what kind of pay is in it for them. Then there are the social thinkers who want to be known as a good boy or have reached the level of doing things for law and order as part of their social duty. Finally, there are those who judge their ethics by the social contract or by principles, deriving direction from abstract considerations. What's fun here is that you can do some debating, about whether or not anyone will notice, about who is hurt, and so forth. You can also play some tricks between what your character says and what they do. For example, the stalwart upstanding member of the community who happily preaches about our duty to our neighbors might very well have walked away with $4 in extra change, and apparently thought that the clerk would never figure it out.

So -- have at 'em, nanowrimowers! Let those complications twist!
tink
(about 600 words)
rock around the clock