Is it ok to intentionally make a character the Watson?

[Queshire]

In case you don't know what I mean by the Watson please look here; The Watson - Television Tropes & Idioms

Basically, I'm considering having a protagonist / pov character who acts as an audience surogate. She (I'm pretty sure I want it to be a she, though I'm not confident about how well I can write a first person perspective of a girl) would be a normal high school student who, after some supernatural stuff happens to her (still thinking what... maybe fairies stole something from her, or she broke an ancient thingamajig and let loose an evil curse) She goes to the local mage-for-hire in order to get rid of the supernatural weirdness. The local mage for hire happening to be one of her classmates by the way.

She starts out as a normal girl, but I'm thinking of giving her a demonic sword in a later story that she tames through pure pig-headedness.

The problem is, that I kind of feel like I loose by having to intentionally invoke a trope like The Watson.... Ugh... it'd make things easier but I dunno...

What do you guys think?

 

[Ankari]

I would hate reading something like that in a book. Also, I think author's that use this are cheating the reader and themselves. They just infodump continuously instead of explaining it succinctly enough to allow the reader to put it together. Also, you are robbing them of they mystery of the world you are writing about.

You'll have some characters ask questions like that, but a character to do it all the time......Also, it is the same thing to use any number of characters in rotation asking the question instead of only one.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Yeah I would recommend against it. It usually reads as amateurish to me. If you want some good ideas about how to accomplish this moving forward, you might read Robert Asprin's Myth series. It's about a boy apprenticed to a wizard who dies and he gets into all sorts of "Mythadventures" and has to learn pretty much everything about the world. HOWEVER it is done in a really humorous way.

I think with the above example, you run the risk of just relaying information, which let's be honest, isn't much of a story, and will detract from your concept. Try humor or something to make it palatable.

Just in case you're undecided, I like the idea of fairies stealing things. That sounds pretty fun to me.

Out of curiosity, is it a YA novel? I only ask because you said she's in High School.

 

[Queshire]

Well, I don't like the term YA but I guess that applies... And it's not like I'm going to have it be just plain info dumping, this watson's going to be stubborn and headstrong, she's asking about all this stuff so she'd be able to deal with it herself. Further the mage doing the info-dumping is a bit of a bastard.

 

[Penpilot]

I think it's fine if it's done without being captain info dump. I mean there are lots of characters that fit this role. Any story that has a new comer enter a foreign situation fits this role at least in part. You could say Harry Potter and Ron fill this role with Hermony as little miss exposition. Watson as it says in the link you gave is an archetype. There's nothing wrong with archetypes. As with most things, it's all in the execution.

 

[JCFarnham]

Is there anything particularly wrong with the trope namer? By modern standards Watson's narrative reads stale, I know this, but it was a different time.

Following on from that, an audience surrogate is something that crops up time and time again across the literary ages. In much then same way that people hate on prologues, this tool get much the same treatment, I fear. I just want to say this. It is not inherently bad. In fact it can be the opposite. The character acts as a window into a fnatasy world that the audience would otherwise have little to no ability to understand.

Have you ever watched a show where one character is constantly lauded as the idiot who needs things explaining to him? Take Jack in the Stargate franchise and his favourite line (paraphrased) "and in english?". He is the Watson of the story. With out that character Samantha and Daniel would take over each episode. In a way I'd say it would have been more tempting on the writers to dump exposition without the Watson. He doesn't care. Does the dohicky work? Does it blow up the bad guys? Yes. Great. -wanders of to do something heroic-

Don't be afraid of using it Queshire. Try it. It's very possible to make exposition interesting even when it is a bit of a dump. Context is the key here. I know you won't use the Watson to bore your readers, but without her how would a discovery story work?

I'll leave you with that thought.

 

[Steerpike]

I agree with the last two comments. In fact, the question to "can" I do X, or "is it OK" to do Y is always the same. The answer is YES, if you do it well. If you can't do it well, stay away from it.

Digging into how it is done well versus poorly is a much deeper matter, but there's no reason you can't have a character who serves this function if you can write that character well enough that it works.

 

[Anders Ämting]

In case you don't know what I mean by the Watson please look here; The Watson - Television Tropes & Idioms

I think I can pretty much guess what it means, actually.

The problem is, that I kind of feel like I loose by having to intentionally invoke a trope like The Watson.... Ugh... it'd make things easier but I dunno...

What do you guys think?

You know, if you're worried about intentionally invoking tropes, then you should probably try to avoid hanging around TV Tropes too much. See, I don't think tropes are bad things, but I do think they should be intuitive - you shouldn't overthink them. You definitely shouldn't be asking people: "It is okay to use this trope?"

Is it "okay" to use a literary technique named after an iconic figure created by a wold-famous author, as well as countless other writers? Well, of course. Why shouldn't it be? Arthur Conan Doyle sure made it work.

Look, there's no right or wrong answer here. You can do whatever you want as long as you do it with skill and vision. Use your gut instinct: Does this approach feel appropriate for the story you want to tell? If yes, the rest is just a matter of writing it well enough.

 

[gavintonks]

You can do anything you want as long as you do it well

 

[Steerpike]

You know, if you're worried about intentionally invoking tropes, then you should probably try to avoid hanging around TV Tropes too much.

I think writers sometimes tend to overanalyze their works. I find it entertaining to look at sites or posts about cliches, tropes, or whatever, but if you fixate on those things and let them dictate how you write your story, I think you're making a mistake. So I agree with you here. The writer should focus on the story that is envisioned, and on making it engaging, writing it with the greatest of skill, and so on. Whether it might tread on certain tropes or cliches should be at best a minor consideration, and arguably not a consideration at all.