mbarker: (ISeeYou2)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 17.6: Hitting Reset Without Getting Hit Back
 
 
Key points: How do you reset expectations, break old promises and make new ones, without breaking the trust of the audience? Deliver something different and amazing! Yes-and, keep the old promises and make new ones. No-but, break the old ones, but give them a different wonderful experience. Oh, crap. I broke it, and I don't know how to fix it. Dash through the red paint and hope no one notices. Telegraph the change as much as you can, and accept that you may lose some audience. Long-running shows often do a reset during season breaks. Give them a big moment of character change instead of the big climax they expected. And a Big Can of Worms for resetting your career... 
 
[Season 17, Episode 6]
 
[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, Hitting Reset Without Getting Hit Back.
[Kaela] 15 minutes long.
[Sandra] Because you're in a hurry.
[Megan] And we're not that smart.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Kaela] I'm Kaela.
[Sandra] I'm Sandra.
[Megan] And I'm Meg.
 
[Howard] We are talking about resetting expectations. We are talking about breaking promises and then making new ones without actually betraying the trust of the audience. I'm trying to think of a good example of this. It's possible that the good example may be Million-Dollar Baby…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Which breaks a promise to the audience, this is a sports movie, by giving us 1/3 act that shows that it's actually a drama about euthanasia, about… It's very dramatic and it's not very sports movie. As we pointed out when we mentioned it earlier, it's got a 90% fresh rating from critics and audiences over at Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe part of this is because it's 15 years old. But it won a lot of awards and it did great grossing in theaters. It was something which broke promises that audiences felt had been made to them, and then delivered something different, but delivered it so well that the majority of the audiences put up with it, they accepted it. They loved it, they came out of the theater… I don't want to say happy, but having experienced something amazing, which is what the filmmaker set out to do. So let's talk about that. What are some examples of things where you feel like the expectations have had to be reset and they did it well?
 
[Kaela] Well, I think that, personally, for me, there are two main movies that come to mind for this. One is Kung Fu Panda Two, which is one of my favorite movies ever, and How to Train Your Dragon, for different reasons, but both of them playing with expectations. I think Kung Fu Panda Two does multiple things with your expectations. For one, it kind of gives you an origin story again, except it's deeper, it's bigger, it's… You're like, "Whoa, I didn't think I was going to get this from a Kung Fu Panda franchise."
[Laughter]
[Kaela] So I think that's the other thing is, tonally, it's a lot harder, it's a lot… It's more explorative of pain, of destruction, of trauma, of working out issues like… Heavier themes than the first one. Like, the first one had a good heart still, but the second one just really dives in there in a way that you wouldn't have expected. But at the same time, I was not like, "Why is my fun movie sad?" when I watched it. I was like, "Oh, my gosh, they do a great job of acclimatizing you." They start out fun and everything too, but they do a good job of acclimatizing you to this is going to be a bit heavier of a movie. It's still going to be an amazing adventure, but it's going to be more emotionally in-depth than the first one without losing you. I don't know anybody who was lost with Kung Fu Panda Two. I think… I know most people just sat there stunned and in awe instead. Not disappointed.
[Howard] Yeah. I was kind of slack-jawed. I was, "Wait. How did they do that?" Usually, the origin story has to come first, and the two movie is a raising of stakes and a new adventure. But you managed to raise the stakes and give me a new adventure and give me an origin story and it's… Wow. It seems to defy… It seemed to defy the number two.
[Kaela] Yeah.
[Howard] Which was pretty cool. Meg?
 
[Megan] I actually have an example of something that did it badly, that raised my expectations and then turned it on its head.
[Howard] Okay.
[Megan] It's the anime Attack on Titan. Which is about humanity fighting to survive when they are constantly attacked by huge giants who are referred to as Titans. We have are very strong protagonist character who's going to get revenge on all the Titans and he's going to save the world. They kill him off, seven episodes in. I was like, "Amazing. I love this. Now his meek sidekick character is going to have to step into his shoes and become the new protagonist and…" No. Protagonist came back, magically, and with magic powers.
[Chuckles]
[Megan] And is so magical now. I was like, "Man. I mean, that's cooler now, but… I wish he'd died."
[Laughter]
[You want a ghost?]
[Howard] Why couldn't you stay dead?
 
[Howard] As I categorized these in our outline, I talk about yes-and, which is a raising of expectations, making new promises while keeping old ones. I feel like yes-and is the easiest expectation reset. Because really, all you're doing is raising the bar. It's not like you've broken promises. No-but is the next one, and that's the actual reset where you had to make promises by breaking earlier ones. Yes, I know I promised you a sports movie, but I'm going to give you an amazing cinematic experience that's going to touch your soul and you wouldn't have come out to the theater to watch this anyway, but it's important and, thank you, everybody, and I'll take my Oscar now. I may be projecting a little bit. The third category is what I call oh, crap. It's the one where I felt like I most often lived in Schlock Mercenary, which is the discovery that you've broken a promise but only after it's too late to fix things. I foreshadowed something and got the technology wrong. Oh, crap. Oh, I can't actually make that work, what do I do instead? So in these three categories, what are our strategies?
[Sandra] I remember watching… Oh, it was decades ago, the making of Indiana Jones. A documentary. So it was like one hour long, the making of show. Listening to Steven Spielberg talk about how when they're writing the scripts, they would actually literally paint themselves into a corner. The opening sequence, Indiana Jones has just run from the boulder, tumbled out, and now he is standing trapped, facing a circle of spears, and there is literally no way to get out. Spielberg basically says, "Well, what you do when you've painted yourself into a corner is quickly duck and dash your way through the red paint and hope that nobody notices the footprints."
[Laughter]
[Sandra] Which is pretty much what that movie does. There may be better tools for this, but honestly, I think of like the Pirates of the Caribbean, I think it's 5, that begins with we're dragging an entire building through the middle of town using a horse-drawn cart.
[Howard] Yes.
[Sandra] It is absolutely completely and totally ridiculous, but basically what it's saying is, "This is the movie you're getting. If you're not on board, just go ahead and leave the theater now." So if you have to reset, any time you have to reset expectations, you're going to lose some audience, you're going to shed some audience who don't make the turn with you. That's just normal and expected. If you need to make the turn, make the turn anyway. Telegraph it is much as you can, so that people are ready for that moment. Okay, we all need to lean to the right. Lean to the right so we can make this turn, and… Now the wheels are back on the ground and we can keep going.
[Howard] There were a lot of turns in that scene where they were dragging the…
[Sandra] The whole building.
[Howard] The bank through the village, and, as I recall, they lost all of the money.
[Sandra] They lost the entire building.
[Howard] In the course of doing that. Yeah. Nice. Good choice of scenes. Nice metaphor. Well played. Bravo.
 
[Megan] There's something, especially in long-running television series, where, in between seasons, they will reset. So it's always sad sometimes when they come back into a season and these characters are now gone, and, oh, no, the set where they spent all their time, that's different now, they're going to spend all their time here instead. Sometimes writers rooms will literally just reset the world and which characters we have and we just never mention it.
[Laughter]
[Sandra] Yeah. That becomes part of the expectation of watching a long-running show. You just kind of know that there's going to be a reset. A…
[Howard] Sorry. Let me interrupt you there. That's the experience of someone who has watched lots of long-running shows.
[Sandra] Right.
[Howard] There are plenty of people who watch a long-running show for the first time and as those things happen, they're like, "No!"
[Yeah]
[Howard] No. Because they feel like they've been betrayed.
[Sandra] An excellent reset to examine is the movie Serenity versus the TV show Firefly. Because you have this TV show that only ran for a very short time and then was canceled. Then you have this gap of time. Then they make a movie. In order to… Which is actually a jump in media. It's… A movie is a different medium than a TV show. Which meant that there are different expectations, different language you can use, and in order to make that shift, they had to do some reset. The one that I… That jarred me the most, was that by the end of the run of the show, the doctor character had kind of become reconciled with the captain character as we're a family. When they start the movie, there's a lot more friction between them and it's more like the beginning of the show than the end of the show. They had to do that reset in order to give the proper arcs to the movie, because the movie had to be able to stand alone as well. So, it jarred me, as a watcher of the show, but once I was like, "Eh," it was not so jarring that I was knocked out and walked away. I was like, "Eh, I don't like that, but… Okay. Take me along for this ride." So…
 
[Megan] As an example for the no-but resetting expectations, Avatar the Last Airbender did that to me in, like, the third season. Like, the day of black sun. Because they really built up to it. I was watching this is a kid at the time, about 13-ish. I was like, "It's finally happening." We've had seasons building up to this day, they really built up to it in those moments, too, where they're like, "We're really… This is the day we lay siege on the Fire Nation." It's the eclipse that we risked all our lives to find information about in the previous seasons. This is it. It's a two-parter, and everything, so I was like, "Oh, this is finally going down. We're going to take down the Fire Nation." And it doesn't. It does not pan out. They fail the invasion. Because they already knew and were already ready and just gone. They're shocked and terrified, and I was too. I was like, "What?" But what they did was a great job in that, because otherwise it could of felt like really deflative, where you're like, "Well, great. Okay, but what did we spend all this time for, then?" But what they give you is a bunch of other things that you really wanted and needed, like, most particularly, the Zuko storyline carries out the days of black sun two parts. Having Zuko come in and that's the moment where he decides to defect from the Fire Nation and healthy avatars make his new plan to take down his dad. Like, that ends up making the story worthwhile. So, no, I didn't get like the big climax that I was really prepared for, but I got Zuko's storyline intersecting finally and his big moment of character change.
[Howard] You can argue that we set out to defeat the Fire Nation, and we got the victory we didn't expect, which was turning Zuko.
[Megan] Yeah.
[Howard] So, you can make the argument that you actually fulfilled the promise. I think that's part of how you make no-but work is that you take the new thing that you hand them and say, "By the way, this actually fulfills all of your other expectations." Trust… I'm just going to paint it red so that it looks like what you were…
[Giggles]
[Howard] Yeah. [Garbled a neat] trick.
 
[Howard] We need to have a book of the week. Or a thing of the week. I think Meg's got it.
[Megan] I have a thing of the week that also ties up a lot of the things that we've been talking about in all of the other episodes. This is a Korean drama that I originally watched on WB's drama streaming service, which no longer exists. But you can purchase the show on DVD which I have. The show is called Circle: The Two Worlds or Circle: the Connected Worlds depending on your translation. But every episode is two completely different stories. The first half of the episode takes place in 2017, the other half takes place in the far future. The 2017 story is about these twin brothers who are going to university and there's some strange things going on and they're investigating it. It's a smaller story about brothers investigating a mystery. The future story is high sci-fi, and there's this town where you can only live if there's a chip implanted in your brain that regulates your emotions and there's no pain and no fear and there's no crime. It's about a police detective who is trying to investigate an alleged murder that's happened inside the perfect city. But the guards won't let him in. But it turns out he has a second motive to get in there. He believes there's evidence about two twin brothers who disappeared back in 2017. It's these two completely different stories, completely different genres, and you've got expectations set up for how these kinds of stories work. It's slowly about how these two storylines tie back into each other and influence each other. Circle: the Connected Worlds.
[Sounds cool]
[Howard] That sounds really cool, and I wish I had it on a streaming service right now.
[Megan] Howard, I have my DVDs here in Utah. They could end up at your house on accident or purpose at some point in time.
[Whew!]
[Howard] Well, see now you're making all of our listeners terribly, terribly jealous…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Which just doesn't seem like a fair thing to do.
 
[Howard] Early on in Schlock Mercenary, I was writing… I mean, the design principles for Schlock Mercenary were I am not making fun of science fiction in my science fiction comic, the comedy will come from other things. But it was very newspaper humor, dad joke type stuff. Would have fit right in in the age of people collecting newspapers. But this was a web comic. About two years in, the Teraport wars begin, and the stories begin getting bigger. Brandon Sanderson wrote the introduction for book 2, The Teraport Wars, and said, "This is the book where Schlock Mercenary figures out what it wants to be when it grows up."
[Accurate]
[Howard] It very much… This was not a thing that I did consciously. It certainly wasn't a thing I did expertly. But it was a thing I did. I had an existing audience, an existing brand, and I decided to take them from a quick episodic fast beats sort of story to a much larger form story. I got lucky in that I guess the audience was so small to begin with that when it grew, we didn't notice that we lost anybody. But this was definitely a case of something which at the time I began creating it was one thing, and at the time I finished it was very much something else. Even though you still have this blob character and mercenaries running through the core of it.
[Sandra] You had an assist from the fact that web comics are expected to evolve. So there is a genre expectation that there will be evolution which totally assisted in the redirect, which [garbled can be…]
[Howard] Yeah. That is the… That is what we called the low expectations of audiences watching amateurs.
[There's that. Anyway…]
[Howard] Good times. Wow. Are we really already 19 minutes in? What else can we say? I had a… We just need to can of worms this part. The whole career level can of worms of how do you rebrand yourself after spending 20 years as a cartoonist. Whatever I go do next, how do I keep the promises of my old brand…
[That's]
[Howard] Or break them in such a way…
[Another can of worms]
[Howard] I don't know.
[I think we just need to…]
[Howard] That's an old can of worms.
[Garbled]
[slap a lid on that, and say, whoops, can't cover it.]
[Howard] Whoops. Sorry. That's another eight part thing.
 
[Howard] Okay. We ready for homework?
[Homework. You are giving us the homework this time.]
[Howard] Okay, I am. In the first episode, I talked about how this intensive was expectations and promises, and how I didn't call it Eight Expectations because that would have forced me to drill down and to configure the content in such a way that there were eight discrete elements covered across seven episodes plus a… It was a headache. Your homework is to fulfill the promise that I decided not to make because I would have broken it. Call this intensive, call this discussion we've had over these last eight episodes, Eight Expectations. For you, for your toolbox, write down eight different categories in which promises and expectations can be used as structural elements, as troubleshooting elements, as critical elements, as career elements. Laying over all of the other tools that you use, that we all use, when we write, when we create. So there's your homework. Write the thing that I was either not smart enough or into much of a hurry to write, the course outline for Eight Expectations. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
 
mbarker: (MantisYes)
[personal profile] mbarker
Writing Excuses 13.48: Character Death and Plot Armor
 
 
Key points: When and why do you kill off characters? First, ask yourself what is the worst thing that could happen to your character. It may not be death. Character death should be the best move for the story, not just an easy way to make the reader feel loss. What are the consequences of the death? Do writers look at character death differently than readers and fans? Everybody hates it when you can predict a character's death. Make them care, but don't telegraph a death. "Most people don't die for real at a point where the story is geared for maximum impact." A death, like any event in a story, should be surprising yet inevitable. Set up a longer arc for the character, follow through on consequences, and make it pay off. Beware of fridging! Killing a character as inciting incident, as backstory… Make sure the dead character has a purpose beyond simply acting as motivation for the protagonist. When do you decide to give a character plot armor, because they are too important to the story to die? Consider ablative plot armor!
 
[Mary] Season 13, Episode 48.
[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Plot Armor and Character Death.
[Mary] 15 minutes long.
[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Brandon] I'm Brandon.
[Mary] [squeal]
[Dan] I'm okay. Don't worry.
[Laughter]
 
[Brandon] Well. That line… I'm okay. To kill off this season of Writing Excuses, we're going to be talking about character death. So. First question. When do you kill off characters and why?
[Mary] Chapter 6. No.
[Laughter]
[Howard] I've come back to…
[Oh, he's serious…]
[Howard] Any time I'm thinking about killing a character or threatening the reader with that as an option, I always come back to what I think Pat Rothfuss said on one of our casts years ago, which was there are so many things that are worse than death that can happen to your characters. I ask myself that question first, because I want to know that I am choosing character death because it is the best failure mode or the best success mode that this particular story can have. I can't just default to it, because I think that's the only way to move the story forward or to make the reader feel loss.
[Mary] I look at the consequences of the death, for exactly the same reason. Because the death itself, sad that that character's dead and all, but people who survive, those are the ones that I'm going to be traveling with. The consequences of that death on the plot, that… If it's just, "Oh, and then everybody's going to be really sad…" That's not a consequence. I mean, yes, that is a consequence, but that's not a unique consequence that's going to drive things, usually.
 
[Brandon] Let me ask you a follow-up on that, because it prompts something in my thoughts. Do you think we look at this differently because we're writers than readers and fans do?
[Mary] I started doing this because deaths in books as a reader annoyed me so much. It wasn't a structural thing. Because I didn't know why they annoyed me. I just… I hate reading things where I'm like, "Oh, that character's going to die." Or where they die…
[Howard] I hate reading things right can do that…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Where I can say, "Oh, they're dead."
[Dan] Where you can tell.
[Mary] I hated it when characters would die and I didn't feel anything. Because I just didn't care.
[Brandon] I would say that annoys me a lot in cinema. They do that sometimes.
[Dan] My brother and I came up with the phrase, "That character wants to live in Wyoming." Which comes straight from Hunt for Red October, where there is the one Russian officer who's like, "I would like to live in Wyoming." He's gone. You know he's dead as soon as he says that.
[Howard] Was that Sam Neill? Was that Sam Neill's character?
[Dan] Yeah. So as soon as somebody starts talking about how they're going to retire soon or they're going to go to this place, all their plans for the future… They want to live in Wyoming. It's hard, because the space that you're aiming for is in between those. You don't want to telegraph it, but you also want to make them care. Those were the two problems that you had. Finding that middle ground… This is a character I love and don't see their death coming. That's what I shoot for, basically, with most of my characters.
[Howard] But I don't want that death to feel like a cheap shot. This is one of the places where the argument for narrative-driven fiction versus fiction that feels real is often centered around that. Most people don't die for real at a point where the story is geared for maximum impact. That's probably not how I'm going to go. That's probably not how any of us are going to go. But when you look at deaths in stories, we always have… Always is the wrong word. But we very often have the narrative is shaped around that death. When it isn't, often I'm annoyed. When it is, sometimes I feel like it was too convenient. There's no pleasing me. Just stop killing your characters.
[Chuckles]
 
[Brandon] See, I asked this question as a writer just because the thing that it prompted in my mind is how I will have people come through my line, and just really be torn up by a character death. Which, for me, this is kind of maybe seeing in my brain, I'm like, "But that was a really good death." Right? I'm like, "Why are you torn up about that?" It was… They fulfill their character arc, it came to a good conclusion, it… They sacrificed for something they believed in. This was a really good death."
[Howard] I respond… in that exact situation, my response has nothing to do with my work and everything to do with the person at the table in front of me. The person at the table in front of me is grieving, and what they need me to do is grieve with them. My response is, "I loved that character too. In fact, I may even have loved them more than you did."
[Mary] Now, see, I'm evil because my response to that is, "I am so delighted I made you cry. Thank you for telling me. I worked really hard on that."
[Dan] My usual response is, "That's why I killed the character, is because I knew you would react that way. If you wouldn't react that strongly, what's the point?"
 
[Brandon] Though, I will say… This is something that's maybe just a little pet peeve of mine. I remember… This is going to date me, it's a long time ago, but there was this TV show called 24. This had a really big cultural impact on myself and my friends when the first season came out. We watched it, riveted. In that scene… Spoilers for a 20-year-old show or whatever… The main character's wife dies. The whole plot is set up for we need to save her. He's going to save her. He's the action star. He gets there a little too late, and she's dead. I was… totally thought it was great, until I listened to the commentary, which was the wrong thing. Where they said, "Yeah, we weren't sure if we were going to kill her or not. Then we decided, well, what would the reader… Or the viewer, not expect." For me, hearing that, that is not what I wanted to hear. I did not want to hear you just said, "Well, what's going to… What's the most unexpected?" This may just be a thing for me, because that's good storytelling in some ways. But I don't want it to just be what's unexpected. I wanted to be what the story's pushing for.
[Howard] I don't want it to be unexpected. I want it to be surprising, yet inevitable. It's startling, but when you look at it in retrospect, you're like, "Nope, that's…"
[Mary] I'm really sympathetic to the, "Well, what would the readers not expect?" Especially when you are trying to decide in the moment. Because sometimes… Like, I mean, I have done things where I have plotted, planning for the character to live, and thought, "Well, maybe I will kill them. I'm not sure." It's not until I get there that I really… The story itself kind of… The shape of everything that's come up to that point makes it clear to me which choice I'm going to need to make. I have a… This is going to involve spoilers.
[Brandon] Okay. For?
[Mary] For one of my own stories.
[Brandon] Which one?
[Mary] The Worshipful Society of Glove Makers. Which is on Uncanny. I kill a character in that. I can avoid… I'll just tell you which one. I did not plan to kill that character. At all. I had planned for them to have the… We're going to try to work this out. There's… Trying to deal with the situation. The simplest solution for this problem character was to just… If they were just dead. So another character just kills them. I wrote it, and I was like [gasp]. Because sometimes you just… Sometimes you do just right things and discover it. I looked at it and I was like, "Oh. That… Huh."
[Howard] Surprising, yet inevitable.
[Mary] Because it's the simplest choice. But, because I had set up this longer arc for the character, people consistently tell me that they actually gasp out loud when they get to that death. So… That's why I'm like… I'm a little sympathetic to that.
[Dan] Well, I think the way to make that work is to follow that up. You kill a character on a whim like that, which I've totally done. But then, like you were saying in the beginning, you need to follow…
[Mary] Consequences.
[Dan] The people who survive, and follow through on the consequences, and you can totally make that pay off, even if it isn't inevitable.
[Brandon] I think it is good storytelling. It just didn't work for me, because I wanted to believe they were doing what was best for the story, not what would surprise me.
[Mary] But it worked for you until you knew their motivation.
[Brandon] It did. That's what I'm saying.
[Mary] Never asked the author why they did something!
 
[Brandon] Let's go to our book of the week.
[Howard] Ah, yes. Schlock Mercenary book 13, Random Access Memorabilia. I did two things in this book that I totally loved, and I'm totally going to spoil for you, because there's so much more going on in the book that's fun. One of them is that I killed Sgt. Schlock and brought him back from a completely… Like, from a backup. From a clone. He'd lost five days. At one point, he's watching the video of his death, and somebody says, "Are you… How do you feel about this?" He looks at her and says, "It's kind of cool." It was significant to me because one, it pulled plot armor off of everybody. I demonstrated that anybody can be killed, and can lose something. Yes, I may bring them back. Second was if this is the only consequence for death, if the reader doesn't have to mourn, how can I possibly threaten characters with death in the future? The second thing that I did was part one, part two, and part three were called Read, Write, and Execute. When part three aired, all of the computer nerds in the audience were like [choke] surprising, yet inevitable. Just by the naming of the chapters.
 
[Brandon] All right. So. Question for you. Can you kill off a character, as… Like a side character and have it provide motivation for other characters, but not simply fridge the character? Do you know what I mean by fridging?
[Dan] Yes.
[Mary] But why don't you define it? Or shall I define it?
[Brandon] I'll define fridging. Fridging comes from an old Green Lantern comic book, where Green Lantern arrives home to his house and finds his girlfriend stuffed in a fridge. Famously, without any kind of warning that this would happen. Simply to add more character to Green Lantern himself, to give him something to mourn over, to provide motivation. It's become a cliché of the comic book, and just at large, media industry, that if you want to provide motivation, for often a guy, you will then kill off a female love interest or friend, to give them something to mourn over. Yet, at the same time, we've just been talking about killing a character when it's completely unexpected, and the effect it has on the people around them. What is the difference between these two things?
[Mary] So, for me, this was the thing that I had to reverse engineer, because I was planning to kill off a character. For me, it's making sure that the character has a longer plot arc that is clear and obvious, and they're going to be fulfilling this all the way through the story. It usually involves something with the main character. Like not, "Oh, we're going to go be happy together," but "I am disagreeing with you about this thing." That there's a conflict they have with the main character. So that when you kill them off, that is left unresolved. Which is the way things happen in real life. That there's a lot of unfinished business that you have with the people who are gone. There's a whole that they leave. I think that that's one of the things that happens when a lot of these characters are fridged, is that they don't leave a hole in the plot.
[Howard] It's very, very difficult… Very difficult for… If you kill a character as your inciting incident, and that character has a close relationship with your protagonist, you're going to have to have done some miraculous writing to not be accused of having fridged that character. Because that piece as a motivation to start the story is very, very hackneyed.
[Brandon] Well, let's… 
[Howard] It's super hard to do right. I wouldn't try it. That's just the way I feel about it. At this point. And I work in comics. So.
[Brandon] You're extra sensitive to it.
[Howard] I just gotta steer away from it.
 
[Brandon] I mean, I'm going to push us on this one, just because… I do think this is totally a thing. I'm not trying to discount fridging as a cultural thing we should avoid, but at the same time, some of the best stories are told about people who wear loss as a motivation. If we look at… Just even Batman. Batman is a guy who lost his parents, and it changed him into this thing. That's like this archetypal story that has been retold and retold and we are fascinated by it. What's the difference between that and fridging? Is there a difference?
[Mary] Well, Batman, it's backstory. Which is, I think, a little different.
[Brandon] Okay.
[Mary] The… I mean, honestly, you can fridge someone mid book. I think when… I mean… I keep feeling like I'm saying the same thing over and over again.
[Howard] That character needs to feel like they had a purpose beyond simply dying as a motivation point, as an arm bar for the protagonist, for the plot.
 
[Brandon] Okay. So, spoiler for the first Avengers film. When Agent Coulson dies and it brings the whole team together and that's like the pivotal moment of the whole thing. Agent Coulson? Not a fridge? Because he had had all these interactions with them before, or is he a fridge because he…
[Dan] Well, Coulson specifically sacrifices himself. So it's a very different situation. It's not an inert character being acted upon. It is someone making a choice.
[Brandon] So you think… That one you would say… That was a [big point]
[Howard] Well, Nick Fury even… Nick Fury knows that he needed something to pull these characters together, and so… To pull the heroes together. So he dials up the emotional impact by throwing the bloody trading cards at Capt. America. Coulson never did get you to sign these, did he? He staged that. He went and got them out of Coulson's locker, and made them bloody. So, yes, you can argue that this is fridging, but you could also argue that it wasn't because Fury… Fury didn't want this to happen. He used it. He used whatever he had to turn the team into a team.
[Mary] But Coulson is also an example of how you can give a character a sense of a life outside. I've pointed to this in previous podcasts. The scene when he's getting off the elevator with Pepper and he's… And she's like, "Are you still dating that cellist?" That's just… It's like, "Oh. There is this whole other life to this character." Whereas most of the time, you're like, "What can I tell… What can you tell me about the character who's been fridged? They really, really loved the main character so much. They just loved them."
[Howard] One of the reasons that Coulson works so well is that Stark really just does see him as… "Why are you calling him Phil? His first name is Agent." Then we come around to Ironman facing off against Loki and saying, "And there's one more person you upset. His name was Phil." We realize that yes, he liked… He had come to recognize that Agent Coulson, Phil Coulson, had a life that Tony Stark was now wishing had continued.
[Mary] This is an example… Thank you for bringing that up. This is an example of that thing I was talking about, about making sure that the… There is a conflict point that the dying character has with the main character. Because it looks like the arc that they're setting up is Ironman learning to recognize the puny ordinary people. Which is actually an arc that Ironman goes on. It's just Phil is not there at the end of it.
 
[Brandon] I appreciate you guys letting me push you on this one. It is something that I'm really interested in. So thanks for putting up with me on it. I do want to ask just a different question. We have very little time left. I want to ask when do you decide to do the opposite and give plot armor? This is the phrase where we say a character is too important to die in the story right now. They haven't fulfilled their plot arc. I'm going to prevent them from dying. I'm going to rescue them in some narrative way from the consequences of their choices. When do you do this? Why do you do this? Mary's wincing, so maybe she does…
[Mary] I haven't done that. I haven't done that yet.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Well, I did that in book 15. Lieut. Sorlie, who I had kind of planned for her to sacrifice herself heroically. I got to the end of the story and realized nothing she can do at this point will seem more heroic than what she has already done. The death would be a downer, and it doesn't need to be a downer. That's… I don't need that sacrifice in this story. So… She lived.
[Brandon] I've done it before. I have a character that their story isn't done and I feel it will be less sat… More satisfying to rescue them and continue their story than it would be to let them die there with unresolved major plot things. But I don't always make that choice. It's always a really hard one.
[Dan] Well, Howard touched on this earlier, but there is so many things that are worse than death. So if I find myself in this situation, I'm not going to kill that character, but I'm going to hurt them. I'm going to make them live through something, or experience something, or maybe even they get off scot free and all their friends are dead because they are the only one that lived through whatever it was. So that there are still consequences for the scene. They don't get off scot free.
[Howard] That's ablative plot armor.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Something hits them, it explodes outward…
 
[Brandon] All right. I'm going to give you a writing prompt instead of some homework this time. A good old classic Writing Excuses writing prompt. I've been thinking a lot about the story Mary talked about last month, where she had the people… The alien race where they went through a kind of butterfly-like transformation at the end of their lives and lost all of their memories and had to be reminded of them. I thought this is an interesting take on death. That a story where the characters die, but don't die. So your writing prompt is that. Do something where, perhaps fantastical, perhaps not, one of your main characters is going to go through a major transformation that is going to feel like death to those around them, but they're not actually dying. Write that story. See how it goes. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
 
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 11.44: Project in Depth, GHOST TALKERS, by Mary Robinette Kowal

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/10/30/11-44-project-in-depth-ghost-talkers-by-mary-robinette-kowal/

Key Points: Catalog pitch and sales pitch are often different. Catalog pitch is to get readers, sales pitch is the emotional core of the story, with spoilers. Even though you know an event is coming, when it happens can still be a surprise. Changing viewpoints, letting a character explain why he's a slimeball, can make them more real. Watch for the tension between who a character wants to be and who they are. Sometimes you can split a conflict into parts and play them at different points in time to misdirect the reader. Just because a story deals with horrific things does not mean it has to be a horror story. It depends on how the main character views things. Pay attention to what matters to the character. Emotionally powerful moments often combine two conflicting emotions at the same time. Also, telegraph that this moment, this goal is coming well ahead of time. Writing combines craft and internalized practice, and working on specific things at specific points. Use your revision to find and fix overused stuff, or places you left vague. If you know you overdo something, replace it with a different piece. You can keep a style book to help you with the colors of emotions, or other fine points! Don't be afraid to use friends and 7 point plot structures and other tools to help with outlining, and to help fix places with problems. Remember, your reader only sees the final version, they don't see the drafts and drafts. Don't judge your first draft by anyone's final version, even your own.

A whole lot of words... )
[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 28: Brainstorming the End and Working Backwards

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/07/18/writing-excuses-4-28-brainstorming-the-end-and-working-backwards/

Key points: Many writers start by figuring out the ending, then working towards it. Be careful about telegraphing the endings too much. You can always turn an too-obvious ending into an early reveal distraction.
Leaving out the middle... )
[Howard] Okay. Is there a character arc for our biker dude?
[Brandon] Yes. But I don't think we have enough time. Dan... um... oh, writing prompt... What is the character arc for our biker dude?
[Dan] Writing prompt. That is a great writing prompt.
[Brandon] We planned that all along, and was our twist ending.
[Dan] And we went back and foreshadowed it in the beginning of the podcast.
[Howard] 15 minutes long because you need to write about a motorcycle, and it's actually 18 minutes in.
[Brandon] All right. Well. There you go. This has been Writing Excuses. Next time, we promise not to throw any puppies at bulldozers.

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