character types

[marycatelli]

It is possible to have a -- comic -- story about a character who blunders from success to success.  Who solves people's problems by accidentally saying the right thing for entirely selfish reasons.  Who accidentally stumbles on solutions to puzzles and finds lost items underfoot.

That has to be the only mode of operation.  Perhaps the character can do something right by intention up front, but then be trapped in a cascade of situations where the comic blundering saves the day.  But having a character flipflop between dumb luck and shrewd -- or even commonsensical -- action breaks the unity of the theme and plot 

Comments

[nodrog]

That's true.  It only works if, like Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, he's able to think he's being smart because it does, after all, work.  That it did so by sheer dumb luck does not register.