#Narrative crafting

[ink-the-artist]

Love the contrast between the Americans’ “Apollo” and the Soviets’ “Sputnik.” You got the Americans naming their rocket after a Greek god trying to communicate the grandness and importance of this rocket. And you got the Soviets naming their rocket “fellow traveler.” Like a friend you go on an  adventure with together. This rocket is our little friend lol 

[cologona]

Yeah nothing Jason does would work in the real world. Good thing he does not live in the real world. He lives in Gotham, which operates on the logic of Hollywood movies from 40 years ago. Oh wait- perhaps that’s integral context for his character!!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Against Lore

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

One of my favorite nuggets of writing advice comes from James D Macdonald. Jim, a Navy vet with an encylopedic knowledge of gun lore, explained to a group of non-gun people how to write guns without getting derided by other gun people: "just add the word 'modified.'"

As in, "Her modified AR-15 kicked against her shoulder as she squeezed the trigger, but she held it steady on the car door, watching it disintegrate in a spatter of bullet-holes."

Jim's big idea was that gun people couldn't help but chew away at the verisimilitude of your fictional guns, their brains would automatically latch onto them and try to find the errors. But the word "modified" hijacked that impulse and turned it to the writer's advantage: a gun person's imagination gnaws at that word "modified," spinning up the cleverest possible explanation for how the gun in question could behave as depicted.

In other words, the gun person's impulse to one-up the writer by demonstrating their superior knowledge becomes an impulse to impart that superior knowledge to the writer. "Modified" puts the expert and the bullshitter on the same team, and conscripts the expert into fleshing out the bullshitter's lies.

Yes, writing is lying. Storytelling is genuinely weird. A storyteller who has successfully captured the audience has done so by convincing their hindbrains to care about the tribulations of imaginary people. These are people whose suffering, by definition, do not matter. Imaginary things didn't happen, so they can't matter. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet were less tragic than the death of the yogurt you had for breakfast. That yogurt was alive and now it's dead, whereas R&J never lived, never died, and don't matter:

https://locusmag.com/2014/11/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/

Hijacking a stranger's empathic response is intrinsically adversarial. While storytelling is a benign activity, its underlying mechanic is extremely dangerous. Getting us to care about things that don't matter is how novels and movies work, but it's also how cults and cons work.

Cult leaders and con-artists know that they're engaged in mind-to-mind combat, and they make liberal use of Jim's hack of leaving blank spots for the mark to fill in. Think of Qanon drops: the mystical nonsense was just close enough to sensical that a vulnerable audience was compelled to try and untangle them, and ended up imparting more meaning to them than the hustler who posted them ever could have dreamt up.

Same with cons – there's a great scene in the Leverage: Redemption heist show where an experienced con-artist explains to a novice that the most convincing hustle is the one where you wait for the mark to tell you what they think you're doing, then run with it (scambaiters and other skeptics will recognize this as a relative of the "cold reading," where a "psychic" uses your own confirmations to flesh out their predictions).

As Douglas Adams put it:

A towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Magicians know this one, too. The point of a sleight is to misdirect the audience's attention, and use that moment of misattention to trick them, vanishing, stashing or producing something. The mark's mind is caught in a pleasurable agony: something seemingly impossible just happened. The mind splits into two parts, one of which insists that the impossible just happened, the other insisting that the impossible can't happen.

You know you've done it right if the audience says, "Do that again!" And that's the one thing you must not do. So long as you don't repeat the trick, the audience's imagination will chew on it endlessly, coming up with incredibly clever things that you must have done (a clever conjurer will know several ways to produce the same effect and will "do it again" by reproducing the effect via different means, which exponentially increases the audience's automatic imputation of clever methods to the performer).

Not for nothing, Jim Macdonald advises his writing students to study Magic and Showmanship, a classic text for aspiring conjurers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/11/13/magic-and-showmanship-classic-book-about-conjuring-has-many-lessons-for-writers/

There's a version of this in comedy, too. The scholarship of humor is clear on this: comedy comes from surprise. The audience knows they're about to be surprised when the punchline lands, and their mind is furiously trying to defuse the comedian's bomb before it detonates, cycling through potential punchlines of their own. This ramps up the suspense and the tension, so when the comedian does drop the punchline, the tension is released in a whoosh of laughter.

Your mind wants the tension to be resolved ASAP, but the pleasure comes from having that desire thwarted. Comedy – like most performance – has an element of authoritarianism. You don't give the audience what it wants, you give it what it needs.

Same goes for TTRPGs: the game master's role is to deny the players the victories and treasure they want, until they can't take it anymore, and then deliver it. That's the definition of an epic game. It's one of the durable advantages of human GMs over video game back-ends: they can ramp up the epicness by "cheating" on the play, giving the players the chance to squeak out improbable victories at the last possible second:

https://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/03/behind-the-screen.html

This is so effective that even crude approximations of it can turn video-games into cult hits – like Left4Dead, whose "Director" back-end would notice when the players were about to get destroyed and then substantially ramped up the chances of finding an amazing weapon – the chance would still be low overall, but there would be enough moments when the player got exactly what they'd been praying for, at the last possible instant, that it would feel amazing:

https://left4dead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Director#Special_Infected

Critically, Left4Dead's Director didn't do this every time. As any showman knows, the key to a great performance is "Always leave 'em wanting more." The musician's successful finale depends on doing every encore the audience demands, except the last one, so the crowd leaves with one tantalyzing and imaginary song playing in their minds, a performance better than any the musicians themselves could have delivered. Like the gun person who comes up with a cooler mod than the writer ever could, like the magic show attendee who comes up with a more elaborate explanation for the sleight than the conjurer could ever pull off, like the comedy club attendee whose imagination anticipates a surprise that grows larger the longer the joke goes on, the successful performance is an adversarial act of cooperation where the audience willingly and unwillingly cooperates with the performer to deny them the thing that they think they need, and deliver the thing they actually need.

This is my biggest problem with the notion that someday LLMs will get good enough at storytelling to give us the tales we demand, without having to suffer through a storyteller's sadistic denial of the resolutions we crave. When I'm reading a mystery, I want to turn to the last page and find out whodunnit, but I know that doing so will ruin the story. Telling the storyteller how the story should go is like trying to tickle yourself.

Like being tickled, experiencing only fun if the tickler respects your boundaries – but, like being tickled, there's always a part where you're squirming away, but you don't want it to stop. An AI storyteller that gives you exactly what you want is like a dungeon master who declares that every sword-swing kills the monster, and every treasure chest is full of epic items and platinum pieces. Yes, that's what you want, but if you get it, what's the point?

Seen in this light, performance is a kind of sado-masochism, where the performer delights in denying something to the audience, who, in turn, delights in the denial. Don't give the audience what they want, give them what they need.

What your audience needs is their own imagination. Decades ago, I was a freelance copywriter producing sales materials for Alias/Wavefront, a then-leading CGI firm that was inventing all kinds of never-seen VFX that would blow people away. One of the engineers I worked with told me something I never forgot: "Your imagination has more polygons than anything you can create with our software." He was talking about why it was critical to have some of the action happen in the shadows.

All of this is why series tend to go downhill. The first volume in any series leaves so much to the imagination. The map of the world is barely fleshed out, the characters' biographies are full of blank spots, the mechanics of the artifacts and the politics of the land are all just detailed enough that your mind automatically ascribes a level of detail to them, without knowing what that detail is.

This is the moment at which everything seems very clever, because your mind is just churning with all the different bits of elaborate lore that will fill in those lacunae and make them all fit together.

SPOILER ALERT: I'm about to give some spoilers for Furiosa.

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FURIOSA SPOILERS AHEAD!

Last night, we went to see Furiosa, the latest Mad Max movie, a prequel to 2015's Fury Road, which is one of the greatest movies ever made. Like most prequels, Furiosa functions as a lore-delivery vehicle, and as such, it's nowhere near as good as Fury Road.

Fury Road hints as so much worldbuilding. We learn about the three fortresses of the wasteland (the Citadel, the Bullet Farm, and Gastown) but we only see one (The Citadel). We learn that these three cities have a symbiotic relationship with one another, defined by a complex politics that is just barely stable. We meet Furiosa herself, and learn something of her biography – that she had been stolen from the Green Place, that she had suffered an arm amputation.

All of this is left for us to fill in, and for a decade, my hindbrain has been chewing on all of that, coming up with cool ways it could all fit together. I yearned to know the "real" explanation, but it was always unlikely that this real explanation would be as enjoyable as my own partial, ever-unfinished headcanon.

Furiosa is a great movie, but its worst parts are the canonical lore it settles. Partly, that's because some of that lore is just stupid. Why is the Bullet Farm an open-pit mine? I mean, it's visually amazing, but what does that have to do with making bullets? Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal – the solarpunk Green Place is a million times less cool than I had imagined it. Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal and stupid: the scenes where Furiosa's arm is crushed, then severed, then replaced, are both rushed and quasi-miraculous:

https://www.themarysue.com/how-does-furiosa-lose-her-arm/

But even if the lore had been good – not stupid, not banal – the best they could have hoped for was for the lore to be tidy. If it were surprising, it would seem contrived. A story whose loose ends have been tidily snipped away seems like it would be immensely satisfying, but it's not satisfying – it's just resolved. Like the band performing every encore you demand, until you no longer want to hear the band anymore – the feeling as you leave the hall isn't satisfaction, it's exhaustion.

So long as some key question remains unresolved, you're still wanting more. So long as the map has blank spots, your hindbrain will impute clever and exciting mysteries, tantalyzingly teetering on the edge of explicability, to the story.

Lore is always better as something to anticipate than it is to receive. The fans demand lore, but it should be doled out sparingly. Always leave 'em wanting more.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/27/cmon-do-it-again/#better_to_remain_silent_and_be_thought_a_fool_than_to_speak_and_remove_all_doubt

[deancasforcutie]

The way Dean’s queer joy and revelation at others just being outside the stereotypical control images is also ours

Honorable mention:

[maelancoli]

i'm kind of late to this but i just finished reading the scholomance trilogy by naomi novik and i feel like it is such an underrated urban fantasy?? taking the chosen one trope and turning it on its head with a fmc who has been prophesied to bring death and destruction, who is imbued with terrible power, but cannot even properly use said power to solve any of her obstacles because it would obliterate them and her soul. it takes a tired trope and the idea of an 'overpowered mary sue' and throws it back in your face by showing how all the power and destiny in the world is useless against a system filled with corruption that has burdened you with an easy way out (evil/destructive magic) that you can't take so now you have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to do simple, constructive spells instead of flicking your wrist and being done with it.

[momochanners]

Yes, YES; This one gets it.

[wine-dark-soup]

thinking about the time my coworkers gave me shit for playing video games again because i just realized how hard it is to explain games to people who don't play at all.

THAT BEING SAID. It is very funny in a vacuum that i cant explain how a fucking game changed my life without explaining first that it's full of frilly catboys and that we like gathering by groups of 8 to kill moth god every week. Yes the catboys. They are killing god. With their bow that's a guitar. YES we find this fun. YES it's fun to hunt a few squirrels at level five and yes the very principle of smashing buttons in a specific order to fight is thrilling to some people. Yes we have an in-game economy and i swear it's not boring - listen i WILL craft food there IS a point i prommy. But also did you know that let there be no way back. from that temptation i sunder us. No more shall man have wings to bear him to paradise. henceforth he shall walk. As a catboy

[reksink]

Thorns, Bouquet

[normalbrothers]

s01ep06

[gorandomshesaid]

this has definitely been done before but

[the-star-rigel]

SAPNAP: I genuinely respect you. May the best man win.

SHADOUNE: I’m glad you’re here at the final with me.

-

SHADOUNE: Sapnap! We fought, together-

SAPNAP: -we die together!

[aleebeesplats]

Vacay times😝

July 7th-National Park

Narr is wowed by their amazing writing!(Totally(Definitely))

TSP road trip by @/employee052

[averlym]

litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

[oneblckcoffee]

and here we thought netflix lost their main character but in fact they got the most fucked up insane storyline of all time i hope the producers are popping bottles you really couldn’t write this

[hexy-lynesdein]

The Traveler & her Path Behind

“Wounds suffered, lessons learned.”

I think the most prominent part about episode 4 other than it being Alice's trial— wherein she was able to ended her generational curse for once and for all; changing something that she thinks “wasn't real”, is that you get to see how it affecting her.

How Alice realizes that she was angry at her mom who was only trying to save her. Lorna did everything in her power to protect Alice in any way she could. So that even if she was no longer present on Alice's life— her protection through the song, in which she pours all of her love for her daughter into, would persist. Thanks to the people who sang that song with as much passion as how Lorna is writing it for Alice.

And I love how she learned all of this from a journey with a broken coven, each filled with covenless witches who had their own issues. But even though they are hardly a “true” coven— they were there for Alice. They sat there with her on that campfire, talking about each scars that they had, so that she wouldn't feel so bad about hers. And for once, she felt that hole in her heart was slowly filled with warmth. That similar type of warmth that she's been missing for ages.

Alice has always been angry all her life. It's easier for her to get angry and blame something instead of grieving it. Because being angry is relatively easier than grieving because you feel like you are in control of your life, you get this power to push through from that fire burning in you. But unlike anger, grief is far from that. It's that feeling of hollow and emptiness— that you acknowledge something was no longer yours. It's gone and you have to accept that. You will eventually move on and there might be something else that will replace it. You will learn to live side by side with this pit that sits with you and it will left you in a vulnerable state, and that's not alright. It's hard to said it'll be alright when it clearly didn't. But eventually, you'd move on. People always do. That's just how life is always been.

And for once, when the cause of Alice's angers was no longer there— and that she was finally free from it after a long time of suffering, she felt nothing but sadness.

This is a simple phrase if it were to be said by anyone. However, it held much bigger weight when it was Lilia who said that.

Lilia being the oldest witch from the coven. Lilia who's been alive for 400+ years. Lilia who made it this far in life, seeing all the horrors, and the tragedies that humanity experienced— the malice that lurked in their hearts. She's seen it all. She saw their path and “destination”; but mostly their destination because of her gift. That's almost all the thing she ever saw throughout her life up until now. Not to mention the flow of time that seems to be never standing with her.

It makes her angry. Because she saw it all. Lilia has seen their death. The causes and what's about to happen. But there is nothing she could do about it. She warns them. She tells them. And it didn't change anything. There's nothing she could do about the outcome. Because her task as a seer isn't supposed to change. She's there to observe — to see. And that alone upsets her. She turned away from her gift. Unwilling to use something that is a part of herself. For years. Decades. Probably centuries. Because why would she be? Death is all she'd seen. Why would she want to subject herself into something that would hurt her? Something that would only make her sad? And that's why, in the end, she resorted into being a con artist. Masking herself behind something that was not Lilia Calderu the chased-out-of-every-village-for-accurately-predicting-tragedies; running away from her true self.

Lilia already lost count on how many days and nights that she yearns for a change. To be able to do something for once. Flashes upon flashes would appear on the peripheral of her vision. About her coven. Her family. Her sister in the craft. And often times she wondered if a miracle would happened again in her life.

And it finally did.

When Agatha Harkness recruited Lilia to joined her coven, she almost wanted to spat. No one with a sane mind would willingly joined her coven. But fate always has its own ways with Lilia as her future self went back into that fateful day, where she write down the name of her new coven. Assigning herself to embark into a treacherous journey with a group of people that she, somehow, has quite a lot in common.

From there, she learns again what it feels to have a coven and be in a coven. Each trials they faced with death and their worst nightmare following in their step. But at least they are together this time. Lilia is not alone and maybe she could actually count on these people. Perhaps the walk down on this road with the infamous Agatha Harkness is going to change her. Maybe she still couldn't prevent deaths but at least she could piece up something that she has been missing. A part of herself that she was trying so hard to ignore— a part of herself that yearns for some form of connections through sisterhood.

And she finally got it again. She saw Jennifer who's capable of saving a life while being bound. Changing the outcome of Teen's life. She saw Alice fighting, oh ever so bravely, and full of fire. Ending her family's generational curse for once and for all — changing something that she thought she couldn't. She's seen all the struggles and how it impacts them.

And there they sat in that campfire, after the fire-trial. Sharing their own scars as an attempt to make Alice felt better about herself. Lilia saw the sadness that lingered on the once fierce and full of fire woman. She's seen it and she acknowledge it, she knows that feeling all too well. Lilia feels like she saw a piece of herself on her new coven members yet again, and she felt the urge to give Alice one last words of comfort, “Sad is better than angry”. And maybe that words is not enough to fully filled the hole in Alice's heart on its own, but as long as it means that Lilia could have a chance to do something for her sisters in the craft instead of running away again or being indifferent like how she always do— then that's fine. It's okay. She will take those chances.

And Alice? Alice is grateful to hear that from Lilia— who lives longer than her, who suffers worse things than her, and who knows so much more than her. Because to be loved, is to be seen and heard. And now Alice is surrounded with love.

[lazycranberrydoodles]

COME ON GUYS DON'T LET DIANXIA DOWN