Tutorial Writers' Wretreat or Crytics' Crypt? (love needed)

I don't know about all writers everywhere, but for me personally, I believe an adage about writing applies to me "You have to know the rules well in order to know how to break them."

I need structure. I can deviate from the norm, and usually try to in some way but in order for me to break one or two writing rules, I need to make sure my other writing rules are firing on all cylinders to support my deviation from rules.

You, @Paradoxical Pacifism have a free form writing style that I enjoy. I tried free form writing. That's something I cannot do well.

I don't know if this directly applicable, but this makes me think of hard world building versus soft world building. Hard worlds are not better than soft worlds and visa versa. I feel more comfortable with hard worlds as is clearly by anyone who has browsed any of my stuff on Scarterra, Westhammer, or even humble Klodorex.

I just notice that hard world building seems to correlate with formal writing style and soft world building seems to correlate with free form writing style.

 

IDK if this was already linked...

 

Scalenex talks about Stupid Villains

I am going through a lot of stuff right now, and I have often been reflecting on myself as a person and myself as an artist. If this post is a rambling, that is my excuse.

I've been poking around a lot of videos about writing the last couple weeks.

I'm not a fan of Tom Clancy. I don't dislike him as a person or an artist, I am just not a fan of his genre.

I did recently run across a quote attributed to Tom Clancy "Fiction unlike reality has to make sense." and this really clicked with me.

Another thing was a youtuber I like said he had a strong left brain and a strong right brain which means he is mentally powerful, but he can be paralyzed by indecision or cognitive dissonance. I thought "Hey that sounds like me!"

I remember that my MBTI type is logician. My strong right brain means I love creativity, both my own creativity and those of other people. My strong left brain make me good at logic and math.

While I love creative and out of the box thinking I also like to put things into categories and for everything to be in it's proper place. That's why I created the Lustriapedia. To both celebrate creativity while also forcing creative things into a sense of order.

I sometimes peruse a youtube channel called Media Zealot. It focuses on movies, occasionally TV shows. Mostly but not always science fiction.

It's main two series are "Advanced Civilizations too stupid to really exist." and "Villains too stupid to win." Essentially these are the same thing, only in one case the protagonist is fighting a person and in the other the protagonist is fighting an institution.

I noticed something. I believe Media Zealot is usually right with his assessment about the bad guys being too stupid to win.

I looked over Media Zealot's video list and I noticed something that unifies all his villains and institutions too stupid to win apart from the aforementioned stupidity.

Nothing obvious binds them.

Some movies and TV shows with really stupid antagonists are timeless masterpieces and some of them are unwatchable garbage. And everything in between.

This made me think. "Maybe fiction doesn't need to make sense in order for it to be good."

Now, I'm a logician, so if my work doesn't make sense, I will literally be unable to sleep at night. But the rest of you, I guess you don't have to be constrained by logic or reason.

Lord of the Rings (Sauron), The Hunger Games (Panem), The Incredibles (Syndrome), Star Trek Deep Space Nine (Dukat) all are media that I like and they have villains arguably too stupid to win.

My desire for categories forces me to look for something that binds these things together.

The Lord of the Rings has strong themes of honor, friendship, loyalty and hope. Peter Jackson tried to adapt Tolkien as faithfully as possible without putting in his own views into Lord of Rings, but I would argue that the movies had one thematic element that the book didn't quite have. In the books, Sauron is the ultimate villain. In the movies, I would argue that the One Ring is the villain, as an allegory for addiction. Especially looking at the Hobbit and the Arkenstone and dragon sickness), I think Tolkien was aiming more "the dangers of greed" as opposed to the power of addiction. Product of his time and all that, I don't think addiction was as well understood in Tolkien's time as it is now.


Anyway the Hunger Games has strong themes of family, loyalty, sacrifice, and gritty determination. The fact that the government of Panem is run by incompetent morons is not really a problem for the story.

And when I saw the video explaining why Panem was too stupid to exist, I would point out that Panem barely held together for 76 years. That is actually pretty realistic. There are a lot of real world governments that are both tyrannical and short sighted. 76 years is actually pretty realistic. The Soviet Union lasted 69 years. 76 years is approximately three generations of leaders. The Jong-Il family has been ruling North Korea since more or less since 1948, that's 74 years. With all the stuff going on world wide, not a lot of attention is on North Korea right now but the family's grip on power in North Korea is extremely tenuous. I'm betting within ten years the Jong-Il family will be ousted from power. That doesn't mean North Korea is going to turn into a freedom loving nation full of well fed people. I think a new despot dynasty will take over, but the old government will be gone.

I would argue that the very real North Korea's reckless and short sighted economic policies, institutional corruption, and over the top propaganda is roughly on parallel with the fictional nation of Panem.


I'm not going to go too deep into The Incredibles and Star Trek DS9, but I will say that the main story is about the heroes, not the villains. While Syndrome's and Gul Dukat's villainous plans are full of flaws, the flaws in their villain plans are internally consistent with the flaws in their own psyches.

So maybe, a good story can have a stupid villain if the rest of your story elements are lined up in a smart way.

Also, I think if a villain is too smart, it makes good storytelling that much harder.

First, in most stories the villain has a stronger starting hand than the hero. If the villain is not flawed in some way the hero is not, the hero probably cannot win.

Second, I believe a smart villain is actually less dangerous than a stupid villain. Sauron, Panem Syndrome, and Dukat are all eventually brought down by their own victims. Maybe there are other ways to have a villain be a smart villain, but I see a smart villain as one who applies the principles of Machiavelli's famous work The Prince. My own fictional world's smart King Drosst might be too smart. I may have to give him incipient madness just so he can lose. If a Machiavellian can accomplish his goals without being evil and cruel, he will do so. This way he avoids accidentally creating a vengeful victim who will one day rise against him. Second, when a smart Machiavellian does use force, it's lethal force. A smart doesn't let any of his victims live to plot revenge.


So by all means. Bring on the stupid villains. It makes for good stories. Especially if their stupidity is connected to their shortsightedness and over confidence.

 

I like watching Youtube videos talk about the craft of storytelling.

Some aspects of storytelling, especially character arcs, are universal whether you are writing a novel, making a comic book, writing a play, creating a television series, or writing a movies.

There are certain things that work in a book but not in a movie.

Filmento has been tearing apart the Fantastic Beasts series of movies and he goes into detail on why he thinks JK Rowling is unknowingly sabotaging the movies because she doesn't know how to write screen plays and writes her stories like she would a novel and not everything translates.

This lady in this video makes a clear case for the five minute rule being important rules but she says this applies to ALL storytelling without providing evidence.



Does the five minute rule apply to literature? I have noticed that novels written after 1980 are faster paced than novels written before 1980 (I arbitrarily picked a year, don't ream me with a fast paced 1975 book or a slow burn book made in 1985).

When a teacher told 13 year old me I would probably like The Hobbit, she advised me to skip the first two chapters because. I didn't. I was hooked anyway.

That said, I've picked up books written by writers less skilled than Tolkien and have quit in the first two or three chapters because it started too slow.


What are the guidelines for how fast do you have to introduce the main plot in a piece of literature, especially a longer piece?

 

It's amazing how so many writers these days believe that a "strong protagonist" is one that doesn't need to face internal conflicts.

 

I have a problem that I am not good finishing longer pieces. I have an ambition to write a long Scarterran novel but I think I should cut my teeth on some Scarterran short stories for practice.

In any event, my first novel, is inspired by The Hobbit in that a country bumpkin gnome has his ordinary life disrupted when he is shanghaied into a dangerous quest.

One of the things I've pondered is whether to start with his normal peaceful life or start with the villain doing something evil or start with something else.

I also had the idea of using an ancient myth as a prologue every three or four (ie a mini story arc) where the myth develops setting lore AND serves a metaphor or foreshadowing for the next story arc.

I've seen this work well and I've seen this work less than well.

 

Here is a good example of you have to understand the rules of storytelling in order to break them correctly.



This technique should not be overused, but it would work well with many Lizardmen or almost any WHF character really because even the good guys have harsh characteristics.

Sometimes it could be used poorly or become played out. For instance, in cop movies if the protagonists boss is always mad and yelling, they probably will really pull through in a heroic or helpful way at the end, whereas very accommodating police chiefs to the protagonist cop usually end up in cahoots with the bad guys.