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thenightling · 4 years ago

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I love Gaslight fantasy

I love Gaslight fantasy. Gaslight fantasy is also known as Gaslamp fantasy. And before I go any further, no I am not “Confusing” the terms. Gaslighting as a term comes from a 1940s film called “Gaslight” where a man tricks a woman into doubting her perceptions of reality. The concept of “gaslighting” as a verb to mean this didn’t exist until that film. The title of the film was named for the object, “gaslights” which were common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

This has nothing to do with “gaslighting.” I should not have had to explain this but... Tumblr...

There is a new genre of fantasy / Gothic horror fiction called Gaslight fantasy. This genre can be compared to High Fantasy, Gothic Horror, and Steampunk in many aspects and yet it is wholly it’s own entity.

Gaslight Fantasy is a genre where a fantasy world resembles our world’s Victorian era but the supernatural such as monsters and magick are known to be real. It bears a lot of elements of Gothic Horror and many examples of Gaslight Fantasy also fit the genre of Gothic Horror but unlike the term “Gothic Fantasy” which feels like an attempt to circumvent acknowledging that Gothic Horror is a form of Horror, Gaslight Fantasy can exist in tandem with Gothic Horror as descriptors for the same property. As a result it is a new sub-genre I welcome as opposed to “Gothic Fantasy” which feels like a term invented by those embarrassed of liking horror.

Example: Barnes and Noble slapping “Gothic Fantasy” across the cover of their leather bound versions of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, as well as Dracula, and Frankenstein. Those are all Gothic Horror and the use of “Gothic Fantasy” feels like a term for those ashamed of the horror aspect or don’t realize horror can be more than just gore and jump scares.

Further note: Frankenstein is often considered the first science fiction novel but Victor found the secret of life while reading the works of Agrippa and Paracelsus, a self-proclaimed alchemist and sorcerer. Also Victor was studying metaphysics, not biology. The Frankenstein monster is often considered (in fantasy-loving circles) to be a “Flesh golem with a soul.” Psuedo-intellectualists seem to chafe at the idea that Frankenstein is a horror story and prefer to call it science fiction because there is still this incorrect ant antiquated notion that horror is low brow and cannot contain romanticism or emotional, spiritual, and moral explorations.

Even The Shape of Water, which can easily be mistaken as a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of The Creature (But with a happy ending for The Creature) is often called “Supernatural romance” instead of Horror even though there are scary moments, atmosphere, violence, death, supernatural elements, and other things usually associated with the horror genre.

The same thing happened with Silence of the Lambs, which was branded “Thriller” when it got its Oscar nomination. It seems the Oscar nomination might be why The Shape of Water isn’t classified as horror either.

Director Guillermo del Toro (though a clear lover of Gothic Horror) seems reluctant to classify his own films as Gothic Horror even though Crimson Peak is clearly paying homage to Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath and Hammer Horror films.

It’s the cultural resentment of Gothic Horror that makes me dislike the term “Gothic Fantasy” but I am willing to embrace the new idea of Gaslight Fantasy that can exist within Gothic Horror or side by side with it, in the same story.

Though it’s still a relatively new genre I do love the refreshingly new concept of Gaslight Fantasy as a reimagined Victorian era that isn’t just full of zeppelins, steam engines and gears (like the typical superficial Steampunk tropes) but also supernatural creatures and or magick being common place. Not to mention so many fantasy stories are set in a pseudo-Middle ages Europe-esque land like in Game of Thrones and The Witcher, that it’s clever and different that the fantasy world doesn’t look like the late dark ages but instead the late nineteenth century, just to give it a different aesthetic and atmosphere while retaining a sense of wonder and historical nostalgia, though blatantly and deliberately inaccurate.

Examples of Gaslight Fantasy include: Amazon Prime’s Carnival Row - Set in a nineteenth century style city where humans, faeries, werewolves, Franeknstein-style monsters, trolls, fauns, and centaurs co-exist. This is probably the first true, mainstream, gaslight fantasy and the best example of the genre. It deals with Jack the Ripper style murders in a slum inhabited by magical creatures. It’s a lot like Penny Dreadful but Penny Dreadful pretends to be set in our world where most people do not know the supernatural exists whereas Carnival Row is not quite our world and people know about most of the supernatural creatures who reside there.

Dolls of New Albion - Dolls of New Albion is described as a steampunk musical, is set in a world where human souls can be summoned from Elysium (Greek Heaven) and inserted into semi-mechanical dolls. The fact that the afterlife is treated as a common knowledge fact in a world that just resembles ours in the Victorian era, and human souls can be inserted into doll-like bodies indicates to me that this actually drifts into Gaslight fantasy.

The movie Van Helsing- Though this film is what I would call Goth Action (Gothic Horror merged with action) the film Van Helsing is very much what I would consider Gaslight fantasy. Set in what looks like our world’s Victorian era and even using real-world place names there are distinct differences, such as The Vatican behaving as a secret monster hunting organization instead of just the Capital of the Catholic Church. Similar can be said about the setting of Castlevania that is distinctly another world even though it resembles ours and has our European place names though that one is set in the fifteenth century.

Howl’s moving Castle - Though bearing Steampunk elements, the common knowledge of magick, in a setting that is not quite our world, and reminiscent of the Victorian era of our world, or even the Edwardian era, makes Howl’s Moving Castle very much a Gaslight fantasy.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Though easily considered Steampunk or Gothic Horror, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen bears some fantasy elements mixed with the horror and the resemblance to our world is dubious at best.

Stardust - The film and novel by Neil Gaiman deal with a wall that separates the human world from the realm of Faerie and a young man’s journey where he meets a fallen star in humanoid form, and his own long lost mother. In this world the barrier between the human world and the realm of magick is a known and tangible fact.

Discworld - The Discworld books by Terry Pratchett are set in a fantasy world known as.. the Disworld, supported by four elephants riding on the back of a giant turtle, the Discworld pays homage to and parodies fantasy tropes in a pseudo-Victorian / Edwardian setting. The setting includes witches, wizards, Death incarnate, ghosts, golems, faeries, and so on.

His Dark Materials - His Dark Materials (i.e. The Golden Compass) is set in a fantasy version of the Edwardian and provides a stark commentary about religion and society.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - A very odd British mini-series and novel about two competing men who work with magick in what looks like late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century England but it’s really its own fantasy setting. The subplot deals with a dark faery known as The Gentleman and his schemes.

A study in Emerald - Another one by Neil Gaiman, this is an alternate universe version of Sherlock Holmes’ story A Study in Scarlet, but a version of late Victorian England where Lovecraftian Old Ones have taken over and nothing is quite what it seems. Anno Dracula - Anno Dracula is an alternate universe version of Victorian England set after the events of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker but if Dracula had won and married Queen Victoria.

Beauty and the Beast - The 1740 novel by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Though nearly a century before the Victorian era this does fit much of the criteria of the Gaslight Fantasy. There’s political intrigue with faeries, and unlike the Disney film, the novel is not set in France. It’s a fictional land that just resembles eighteenth century France. And there are other fictional kingdoms such as “The Summer Isle.”

Pinocchio - The original novel by Carlo Collodi was set in a surreal, fictionalized version of early 1880s Europe and featured anthropomorphic animals, faeries, self-aware tree bark, and heavy handed human to animal transformations to represent the metaphor of becoming a jackass.

Ravenloft - The Gothic Horror portion of Dungeons and dragons. Where Dungeons and dragons already featured elves, dwarves, and wizards Ravenloft contains vampires, Flesh Golems (Frankenstein-style monsters) and werewolves.

Castlevania - Not so much the Netflix Castlevania series... yet but parts of the Castlevania video games franchise count as Gaslight fantasy. Castlevania begins in a fantastical version of fifteenth century Wallachia (Romania) where vampires, demons and various other monsters are known to be real. Later installments in the game are set in that world’s version of the nineteenth century. Though place names match our own it is very clearly not our world as teleporting castles, vampire warlords, and entire towns being wiped out by vampire armies never made it into our own history books. There are also some steampunk-esque historical inaccuracies in technology and science. Castlevania is most assuredly a horror themed franchise but it also fits the criteria of Gaslight fantasy.

#Carnival Row #Gaslight Fantasy #Gothic Horror #Gothic Fantasy #Steampunk #Scifi #Fantasy #Faeries #Fae

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scgdoeswhat · 5 years ago

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Unpacking The Elementalists Finale

I’d like to dedicate this to my dear Kane anon (and other TE anons) who have been hitting my ask box up for the last several months. I’m sorry this took forever to get out and I know it doesn’t ease the fact that they ixnayed Kane, but hopefully this makes a little more sense of TE’s abrupt ending.

Without further ado...

I’ve been wanting to make this post since Book 2 Chapter 10, but life has been hectic. TE’s finale finally forced my hand and so here I am, with a bunch of theories, points, and thoughts I've had noted since the book came back from its hiatus. First off, now that TE is officially over (😭) we now know that the hiatus was primarily used to tie up all the loose story lines and to give us a tidy ending. The writing in the second half of the book was more solid, concise, and had a clear cut vision of what the writers wanted and where the plot was headed. As much as I hate to say it, the first half of the book may have been overly ambitious. They introduced the Moral Compass, potentially two villains in Kane and Alma, and a plethora of different storylines. I had a number of people tell me through the first five/six chapters of Book 2 that they were confused with the plot because it became too convoluted and hard to follow along. I think they introduced too many elements into the story, which dragged down the arc. Let’s break down some of these individually: The Moral Compass was something we were all excited to see implemented, because it gave us the potential to be an evil MC. In the end, we know it didn’t make much of a difference, save for dialogue and/or violent options. I think this was originally something intended to be greater than what it amounted to, and part of it is the limitations of the medium that the app is and simply, resources. This also ties into…. The plot involving Kane and Alma. I don’t believe having Kane as the Big Bad was supposed to be as defined as it ended up being. The two Sources were written far more ambiguous in the beginning, with the chance that depending on your choices, you could side with either one by the end of the book and/or series. The hiatus streamlined the plot, discarding elements that were difficult to pull off, including multiple MC point of views that may have held the possibility of being evil or choosing Kane, therefore placing Alma as the antagonist. In a narrative story app such as Choices (as opposed to Lovestruck, where the routes have the same players but different stories altogether), I just don’t think this advanced storytelling would have been doable. These plots are primarily linear, and MC being evil/with Kane/etc, it would present a different set of problems, including the fact that this becomes an entirely different story while there is supposed to be one solid ending. (For what it's worth, I enjoy the MC customizability of Choices more.) Looking at the group of friends, obviously Beckett was incredibly fleshed out while the others were not as much. I wanted to delve further into our friends’ backgrounds a bit more, and I think at the beginning of the book, we were on that path. Aster and her wood nymph family was a perfect example of table setting. We had two or three scenes before the hiatus to go to the forest, and I thought the Wand Wars and their involvement against Kane was slated to be more prominent. I think the writers had something bigger planned, but how would it all tie in if players started choosing the evil choices? Again, having too many choices causes a domino effect that makes it nearly impossible to navigate when the story is supposed to end with a particular goal in mind. The chapter where we can receive the wand was a symptom of ending the book early and I think the execution of the actual Wand Wars scene was lacking the emotional punch the initial introduction of it warranted. This is unfortunate because the setup they had in Book 1 made it seem much more violent, disastrous, and full of hate compared to what was shown (i.e. Attuned just being greedy bastards). We were introduced to Shreya's Serene & Sublime business and the potential of family disapproval and lack of support in the beginning, but everything was tied up with the gala chapter. Looking back, I was curious why it was so easy to get so many financial backers this early into the series, but knowing that TE only went for two books makes much more sense why we knew whether S&S succeeded or failed. (Tangent - for anyone who didn't secure backing, is S&S successful at the end of the book?) I think Griffin, his scholarship, and his decision between Natural Sciences and Thief was also slated to be a bigger subplot. We never met his parents, despite them being brought up very early in Book 1. If TE had gone the originally planned three or four books, I have no doubt his family would've been introduced and MC would have needed to help sway his parents (and the committee for the scholarship) whether Griffin continued on the NS or professional Thief path. Doing the Griffin scenes (even as platonic friends) influenced his standing for the scholarship and not doing them made him lose out to Amy, if I'm not mistaken. Question for everyone regarding Zeph and the Thief captaincy: Does he get it in everyone's playthrough? I wonder if the writers always planned for Zeph to get the captaincy or if Griff would have kept it depending on your playthrough if they had all four books to use. Another big plot point that resolved itself out of nowhere was Atlas and MC butting heads over their Sun Source mother. I was not a fan of this storyline at all. I felt like the disagreements between the siblings was unnecessary drama that came off as forced. They tried to explain Atlas' position, and I understood where they were coming from, but Atlas was very unreasonable with their constant “who cares about mom” shtick.

I think this was something that could have been more impactful if there weren't so many plotlines happening and more focus could have been given to it instead of a few screens of Atlas saying they were pissed off before storming away from MC. This was also a plotline that was directly influenced by the Kane/Alma decisions. If MC sides with Kane, it makes much more sense for MC and Atlas to be against each other as opposed to MC being good/siding with Alma.

Five major subplots were opened, but how do you seamlessly weave these elements into a 17-19 chapter book? In my opinion, you can't. Each time something new was introduced, I felt things were glossed over, despite big chunks of chapters being focused on whichever subplot the chapter was about. Throw in the romance and I think it is nearly impossible to resolve each aspect in a complete manner.

What also hurt was the pacing of the series. This was also seen in Book 1, where sometimes a chapter would span one or two days, only for a huge time jump to occur in the next chapter.

So many ideas could have been explored through the course of four books (which is what I believe they had planned), but all the different elements should have been introduced at different times. Instead, Book 2 was an amalgamation of so many ideas but not enough time, space, or resources to thoroughly hash out and have a satisfactory resolution. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it was having too much Beckett that hurt the series. He obviously kept the series afloat and was one of PB's biggest moneymakers in recent history. Despite the constant complaints on tumblr, people fail to realize that the ENTIRE online fandom (FB, IG, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Wiki) comprises maybe 0.5% - 2% of the ENTIRE player fan base. It only made sense that PB capitalized on him because their numbers dictated that the resources should be spent in that manner. The fallout from this was that Beckett was the only one who had his storyline relatively complete, and that was due to the spending power of everyone who romanced him. I think what hurt them the most was the multiple storylines and the indecision of which direction they wanted to go. They had a grand idea of the direction through Book 2 (and Book 3, let’s not lie here) but in-game mechanics and the type of game Choices is made it difficult to pull off. The app wasn’t the correct medium for what they envisioned. In my opinion, the overall story arc had the potential to be brilliant, but again, the app wasn't designed for the type of story the writers wanted to tell.

I also think the timing and having a very short turnaround hurt, as well. Players had high expectations and when you factor in the hype around the other books that were also released on Fridays, TE lost some of its sparkle. Most players didn’t get a chance to miss it for the regular 2-3 months we’ve been trained to wait for sequels. (I recognize that I’m an anomaly and the previous three sentences do not apply to me at all.)

Even with all this, I applaud the writing team for wanting to deliver a story that was worthy of a magical world. I love all the Pend Pals (‘Motley Crue’ for me), the familiars, the side characters, loved to hate the villains, and from someone who is not into Harry Potter lore at all, I was absolutely sucked into the magick universe that the writers built. (Metal Att for life ⚙!)

If TE does return in the future (and I REALLY hope it does), I think it will be even stronger than the first two books because the world building is complete. We know almost everything we need to know now. Instead of using a Book 3 to search for Sun Mama, the family is complete, MC and Atlas are attuned to all the elements, and there are so many open-ended questions that Book 2 left us.

If they implement a time jump where MC and the Pend Pals are all post grad/mid 20s, it also gives the writers a chance to move the story from the Young Adult genre to a more mature setting. We saw this in the later diamond scenes, where the writing appeared similar in their vividness (and coding in the final scene - THANK YOU, glorious writing team) to Open Heart, Bloodbound, and A Courtesan of Rome. This removes the restrictions placed on the group of being college kids, and therefore are almost fully developed with their magick, giving the possibility of moving the story out of a university setting.

If you've made it all the way here to the bottom, thank you for sticking with me and apologies for spelling/grammar since this has all been on my phone 😂 I think this comprises almost all my notes I've been keeping for the last 2 months. Feel free to agree or disagree; I just wanted to post my thoughts on this book and series that I love so much.

Now, I'm going to go back to my holiday (don't worry, I didn't write all of this while on vacay lol) and I'll try to answer asks when I have downtime.

#the elementalists #beckett harrington #shreya mistry #griffin langley #aster d'yew #playchoices #choices #beckett x mc #griffin x mc #shreya x mc #aster x mc #zeph hernandez #atlas ernhardt #te

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tlbodine · 5 years ago

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Hard-Boiled Fantasy

So a conversation from @firefly124-writing about the TV show Supernatural and where it exists in relation to horror got me to wondering about the origins and trappings of what we now consider the “urban fantasy” genre, which I realized I haven’t really dug that deeply into before.

That sounded like a fun rabbit hole to fall down, so I figured I’d do a bit of digging!

So the initial question was: Is Supernatural a horror show?

It kind of seems like it should be, right? There’s ghosts and demons and all manner of other things that go bump in the night.

But structurally, it sure doesn’t seem like a horror. In horror stories, the monsters usually hunt the characters, not vice versa. And the story beats are all wrong. In fact, if you subbed out monsters for regular criminals, you’d pretty much just have a crime drama.

And in that respect, Supernatural is hardly on its own. In fact, there’s a ton of supernatural crime fiction - from Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, to Angel (not so much Buffy, more on that in a minute) and many, many more besides. In fact, the whole genre of “urban fantasy” seems to have some hefty overlap with supernatural crime stories – but are the two interchangeable? Or is there more to it?

First Off: What the Heck is Urban Fantasy?

Our benevolent overlords at Barnes & Noble compiled a handy list of recommendations for Urban Fantasy series (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/12-urban-fantasy-series-to-binge-read/), and looking at them side-by-side, we can begin to see some trends:

Super-powered and/or badass main characters

Serial format that lends itself to a “monster of the week” type storyline

Crimes and/or supernatural political intrigue

But are they, like, the defining traits of the genre? Let’s investigate further..

According to this article from Writer’s Digest, there are a few key ingredients: setting as character, a central mystery, character-driven story (often in first person narration), and a romance subplot - https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/5-elements-urban-fantasy-novels-must

But I take some issue with that. I think there are a fair number of stories that feel like they should qualify as “urban fantasy” without ticking off all of those boxes. Setting aside everything that could be considered “paranormal romance” - your Twilight and True Blood and whatnot (Buffy slots here better, maybe)- there’s still plenty of things that seem like they should be urban fantasy, like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere or Lev Grossman’s The Magicians or Charles de Lint’s Newford series, or War for the Oaks by Emma Bull.

But it’s OK - urban fantasy is large, it can contain multitudes.

The real question is, why is so much of it just supernaturally flavored crime fiction?

The Origins of Crime Fiction

Crime fiction/mystery/thriller is the second-most popular book genre, coming in right behind romance for sales: https://bookstr.com/article/book-genres-that-make-the-most-money/

With that in mind, it kind of makes sense that you’d want to fold crime fiction elements into other types of stories. A genre that popular and ubiquitous is going to have lots of familiar tropes and appeal to a lot of people.

And as it turns out, crime fiction has its roots tangled quite deeply with horror fiction – so deep, in fact, that the granddaddy of all detective stories is none other than Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe’s character C. Auguste Dupin – from famed stories like “The Purloined Letter” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” – lays down the template for detective stories in the 1840s, from the eccentric gentleman of leisure turned detective to the impossible crimes explained by the power of deductive reasoning. That template would then be lifted almost wholesale by Arthur Conan Doyle in the 1880s with his Sherlock Holmes stories.

And, really, it shouldn’t be a particular shock that detective stories started to really take root in this time period. In a post-Enlightenment world, we were collectively struggling with our relationship to nature, science, industry and the mysteries of the universe. Even as we continued to fear things that went bump in the night, we increasingly sought to rationalize it all.

There was also, of course, more crime – and, thanks to developments in both city living and news reporting, people were aware of those crimes. Jack the Ripper captured public imagination and inspired terror with his murders in 1888, about the same time as H.H. Holmes was running his murder hotel in the United States.

So with that in mind, is it any surprise that crime fiction entered its first Golden Age in the 1920s and 30s – a time when organized crime was at its peak thanks to Prohibition?

What is especially interesting to me is that even as horror waned in popularity in the 1940s and 50s, crime fiction was entering a second Golden Age thanks to Film Noir and all of its now-familiar tropes – from world-weary detectives to beautiful dames in trouble and rain-drenched streets.

Some reading you may find interesting on that topic, especially in regards to how the Noir genre survived the Hays Code: http://hayscodeandfilmnoir.blogspot.com/ and https://vicolablog.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/film-noir-and-the-hays-code/

Putting it All Together

So with this historical context firmly in mind, I think we can make a few logical conclusions.

First, I think it’s safe to say that people like crime stories because they tap into cultural fears and fascinations – crime is something that we are all aware of but which most of us have fairly little hands-on experience with, so it’s only natural that we’d be morbidly curious about it. Crime is interesting because it’s dangerous and taboo, and that makes for good storytelling.

Second, it also seems safe to say that many people prefer crime stories to horror stories because they are more comfortable to consume:

The hero is usually empowered rather than powerless

Justice is usually served at the end (whereas horror tends to have a bleak outlook)

The overall feeling can be fun/adventurous/even silly and largely safe, despite the presence of a murder – see the entirety of the “cozy mystery” genre

Mysteries tap into a puzzle-solving, intellectual aspect of the audience as opposed to a visceral/primal response

Now obviously these lines are drawn in ever-shifting sands. There are plenty of horror stories that are primarily intellectual, and crime fiction can be plenty bloody and visceral. And that’s not even touching on the cross-overs like Thomas Harris’s work or the entirety of giallo filmmaking: https://vicolablog.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/film-noir-and-the-hays-code/

But by and large, speaking in general terms, I think we can make an argument that there is probably a somewhat wider audience for crime/detective stories than for horror specifically because the intended purpose of horror is to make the reader/viewer uncomfortable, and a whole lot of people dislike feeling uncomfortable.

So with all of that in mind, I don’t think it’s too much of a leap at all to see how our modern understanding of urban fantasy as a supernatural crime thriller got its start.

By taking familiar horror tropes that have slipped into pop culture – monsters and demons and zombies and whatnot – and then folding them into the comforting tropes and narratives of popular crime fiction, creators can delve into everything that is cool about horror without the icky, alienating bits that make people feel bad.

(I’d also posit that this type of storytelling is gaining an increasingly powerful foothold in modern times because it side-steps some of the more problematic aspects of realistic crime fiction – ie, the socio-economic status of most criminals, the corruption of the legal system, etc. By making fantastical creatures the perpetrators, we can skip the discomfort of due process and human rights and focus on the fun parts of solving crimes with a clear conscience)

But that’s just one opinion, from an admittedly biased horror blogger. I’ll leave you with this final essay on the topic, which follows a similar path and draws a different (but quite interesting) conclusion – https://carriev.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/the-long-and-diverse-history-of-urban-fantasy/

PS - if you like these deep dives and want to support me in doing more of them, don’t forget to drop a tip in my tip jar: Ko-fi.com/A57355UN

#horror history #crime fiction #thrillers #urban fantasy #deep dive

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writtenbyhappynerds · 4 years ago

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Unit 8: Romance

Welcome to the romance chapter! If you haven’t taken Exam 2 for Fanfiction 101 go do that! It covers the last 3 units, so cliches, crossovers, and realism. If you have taken the exam and want the key to check your answers, DM me. Moving on, romance is a lot of writers’ bread and butter. It is an easy subplot, it can be fun to write, and it allows for both internal and external conflict. Romance can reveal a lot about a character’s personality, and it can be done extremely well where the romance between one set of characters is a hard-earned commitment and partnership between two people. However, more often than not, romance is done very, very poorly. We don’t mean bad grammar or unrealistic standards like we’ve discussed in prior chapters. We mean romance that is not romance and is instead the glorification of abusive and/or underage relationships. Strap in! This is our PSA to the world.

First things first, lots of stories introduce romance as the hook. It’s Harry Potter x [Blank] or Jason Todd x Reader. Romance is usually what gets readers to click because they want to read a story about a specific character. What writers have to be careful of is to not make two characters falling in love the entire plot. A storyline where characters fall in love is a lot more natural if it is a subplot to a narrative; it should appear second to the actual plot. In Unit 6: Making It Real, we talked about how Mary Sues have storylines where they themselves are the entire plot. Lots of romance stories suffer from this as well, and I know you want to care about and center everything about your characters, but you have to give them something to do. The audience gets bored reading it otherwise because they don’t have the same emotional attachment to your characters that you do, and you can’t force them to. So, make romance a subplot. Make it an internal conflict that becomes external with time, and if you write a slow burn, we should not be able to infer that two characters are going to end up together from the first chapter. The Editor and I have seen stories where characters get together in the first 3 or so chapters and then break up repeatedly. That is not a slow burn, which is a slow gradual incline to infatuation. That is an on and off relationship. It also removes the incentive to read because we as the reader have seen the title. We know they’re going to get back together, and then we stop reading.

We’d like to say that this chapter is our love letter to romance fanfic. However, as the Editor and I discussed more and more of the errors we find in fanfiction, it’s become a PSA. More often than not we see fanfiction writers glamorize and romanticize abusive tendencies and abusive relationships in their fanfiction as if it is “goals” or “adorable.” If we may remind you all, Twilight was not an example of a good relationship. It actually hit off all 14 nationally recognized signs for being in an abusive relationship. What this means, is that having a love interest who is overly possessive re: doesn’t let the OC hang out with people of the opposite sex, wants to constantly know where they are, is surprise popping-in to check on the OC, etc. That is not healthy because it represents a breakdown of trust in a relationship and less of a, “He’s so cute and caring that he wants to know where I am all the time.” You see this a lot in werewolf fanfiction. Usually, the Alpha is overly possessive, isolates the OC, and then wifes her up. Sometimes it’s against her will. This isn’t cute, and it isn’t charming. It’s dangerous habits and we as writers and readers should not see this kind of dynamic. I’m about to heavily spoil Frederik Backman’s Beartown for my next point. Beartown is an important book. It is my favorite book of all time. If you haven’t read Beartown there is a break in the paragraph here so you can skip ahead of the spoilers. Beneath it will be a spoiler-free summary of my point but using Beartown as an example gives me more context. There is also a blanket trigger warning. If you are easily triggered skip ahead.

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We as writers and readers usually write abusive fanfiction because we see it as “not bad because he isn’t doing XYZ.” So long as the character isn’t getting assaulted, or isn’t being physically hurt, it’s okay that they did what they did. In Frederik Backman’s Beartown, Maya Anderson is in love with Kevin Erdahl. They have small moments, tiny little slivers of interaction that are cute and warm, and make you smile. In the background, the character Amat is also in love with Maya, but she only has eyes for Kevin. Kevin and Maya are seen as acceptable up until Kevin rapes her and then gets away with it because of the conspiracy of silence and shame that surrounds the hockey town they both grew up in. Kevin is the star hockey player. He’s untouchable, and if we equate it to werewolf fanfic, he’s the alpha. In fanfiction, the audience would never support the relationship between two characters if one sexually assaulted the other because it’s the worst thing you can do to another person. However, just because Kevin rapes Maya that doesn’t mean the other things he does are any less horrible. Kevin is still a piece of shit for gaslighting, manipulating, and lying to the entire town, but those actions are seen as less terrible if Maya is not raped. Abuse takes many forms, and a love interest can still be abusive without ever physically or sexually touching their partner. Look at James Saroka.

Now, the brilliance of Beartown is that it completely subverts our expectations as readers. It surprises us. Up until the point where Kevin rapes Maya, it is a hazy, charming story of a little town trying to make it. After the action, the entire tone shifts, and the silence that this girl is forced to endure, which is so true-to-life for victims of sexual assault, change the perspective of the audience who don’t care if the town dies in a ditch so long as they let Kevin get away with what he did. Beartown shows us that love is messy and shows us a different form of love. It is not always two teenagers slow-dancing in a kitchen. It is not the shy bumbling boy asking a girl to the dance. It is a pining that sometimes never yields, and sometimes in the case of Beartown, it is a boy walking into the middle of a town hall meeting and breaking the team picket line to say, “My name is Amat. Kevin Erdhal raped Maya Anderson, and I saw it. I was drunk, and I’m in love with her, and I’m telling you that so you don’t say it behind my back when I leave.” Amat and Maya are a great example of a love story that doesn’t work out but is still someone caring passionately for another without any sense of entitlement. Amat never expects anything back from Maya, and he gives up everything to do what he does. It is an example of surprising the reader away from what would’ve been an obvious narrative.

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Ok, you’ve skipped the spoilers. Anyway, as I was saying, a character is not less of a piece of shit because they do not physically or sexually abuse their romantic partner. In lots of fanfiction, not just werewolf fanfiction, we see romantic interests that are abusive. However, even the writer considers them not that bad because they aren’t doing XYZ. There is a difference between a bad boy and an abuser. The bad boy doesn’t follow the rules because he finds them harmful or stifling. If you’re doing a High School AU or setting, the bad boy wouldn’t want to sit in a classroom with a bunch of teachers who don’t care about whether he learns or not or what they’re teaching. They’re passionate. They oppose injustice, and they don’t go for petty revenge. A bad boy would be on some Gryffindor shit. An abuser doesn’t follow the rules because they see themselves as above the law or better than the rules. In that same High School AU, they wouldn’t sit in the same classroom because they’ve already learned everything they need to know and school is a waste of time. They get mad when things don't go their way. They do their best to keep what they consider their property close to them. An abusive boyfriend would fight just to prove he’s better than others. A bad boy would fight to defend someone. If your character is overly possessive, manipulative, or controlling towards their significant other that is still abusive and it is not okay. You as writers do not have any obligation to follow the mold of what the rest of your genre does. Alpha werewolves do not have to be overly-dominant and controlling: you can be assertive and be a leader without being a shitbag. Loki characters do not have to be abrasive and play mind-games with their OC. You can be mischievous without gaslighting your partner. A definition of gaslighting is putting doubt or messing with someone’s memory by convincing them something did or didn’t happen. That person might think they’re going crazy, that something’s wrong with them, and the person who is gaslighting them will convince them everything is fine and this is the way it’s always been. In Twilight, Edward gaslights Bella after saving her from the car. It’s an example of this manipulative tendency. “Bella, I was standing right next to you. I pulled you out of the way.” Bella tells him he stopped the van (the truth) and he does his best to convince her that she hit her head really hard and isn’t remembering things properly.

Another sign of an abusive relationship is when a character changes their personality completely to fit the personality of their love interest. Again, this is evident in Twilight, and it’s also evident in the Joker and Harley Quinn in DC Comics. Harley is a very different person and was a different person before meeting the Joker. However, she changed who she was to become something he’d like. You see this in fanfic usually when characters who are written and depicted as “strong” crumble and become weak after meeting their love interest. You also see characters who drop their hobbies, the things they enjoy doing, or their other friends. This happens in writing because the author believes that the plot has shifted from the main character to the main character’s interaction with their love interest. To avoid this, romance should be kept as a subplot. If you have an overarching goal or destination, the romantic interest’s involvement will not interfere with the things that make the main character who they are because they are not the overarching goal or destination. Don’t force your characters to become someone else to better fit the person you want them to fall in love with. Two people can have different hobbies or different personalities. They don’t have to think on the same wavelength.

Relationships don’t experience outward harm and aggression nearly as much as it is written. Lots of very unrealistic fanfics put this in to add conflict to their story, but fail to understand if a character was getting hurt on a weekly or almost daily occurrence, each instance where the character gets hurt loses its value because the act itself is normalized. Accidents happen, and in some lines of work accidents happen a lot. You see that in spies, criminals, or superheroes where injuries are huge problems, yet their line of work is an open door to injuries, and injuries are expected as part of the job. I had a friend lose an eye because someone smashed a pint glass in his face. I had a family member lose a finger because he cut it off chopping wood. Neither of these accidents was at their places of work, and both are living their best lives unbothered. Normal, everyday injuries occur, and accidents are normal. They should never divulge into a conversation about “protection” because that just takes three years off my lifespan every time I read it. Shit happens. My friend’s girlfriend didn’t wax on about being unable to protect him from the pint glass. My cousin’s wife didn’t try to throw herself in front of the ax to save his finger. Mistakes can be made, and you deal with the consequences. You take a workman's comp, you veg on the couch for a couple of weeks, and you get over it. An injury in either of these contexts would never lead to a conversation about protection, and it’s more realistic if you have a character who gets frequently stabbed, shot, scratched, or punched, for their significant other to say something like, “Oh, damn, again? Sit down, and don’t you dare get blood on the carpets I just paid to have them cleaned from last time.” This happens a lot in Supernatural fanfic. Usually with Dean Winchester, where after an injury that is usually a glorified scratch the character who has been written as capable and badass caves to Dean and becomes a backup dancer to his and Sam’s show. If the character was as capable and badass as written, they wouldn’t let Dean talk to them like that, and they wouldn’t have a relationship dynamic like that. Don’t sacrifice your character’s personality just so it fits better with a member of the cast. That’s not what healthy relationships are like.

Speaking of healthy relationships, part two of this PSA. A 15-year old or underage OC (meaning someone younger than 18 years old) can have a crush on an older person: a teacher, an Avenger, etc. They can have romantic feelings for said person. Said person CAN NOT PURSUE THE UNDERAGE PERSON. It is illegal. It is immoral. It is unhealthy. Tony Stark’s daughter or son is not going to end up with Hawkeye, Captain America, the Winter Soldier, Natasha Romanoff, Loki, the Hulk, or Thor. Having a huge age gap like this creates a power dynamic where one side of the relationship has less of a voice than the other because of their much younger age. It creates an unhealthy division within the dynamic where one voice is less important than the other because one voice has less knowledge of the world and is less mature than the other. On top of that, Loki, The Winter Soldier, Captain America, Black Widow, the Hulk, Hawkeye, and Thor would never pursue an underage child because they are all grown, mature, adult men and women. They would not want to sleep with and marry a teenager because a teenager is not emotionally mature or available to these men and women. That’s why the age of consent, at least in the US, is 18. I cannot drive this point home enough. If you have to lower the age of the cast to make the age gap less uncomfortable, you already know it’s wrong and it won’t work. You need to pick a different love interest or raise the age of the OC because as we’ve discussed in Rules of the Universe, this is not a good enough reason to change the canon of the cast. Even if the child is “mature,” a mature underage child is still a child. A child being in a relationship with a 30-year old adult is super creepy, and no 30-year-olds other than the ones who creep after underage girls are going to really pursue those relationships. If you are writing members of the cast to pursue underage girls, you’re writing terrible Onision fanfic. If the characters are say, 30 and 45, those are two consenting adults. The age gap is less important because both are older and mature and have the life experience to make these decisions for themselves that a 15-year old does not have. If you are writing teenage romance, keep them within two years of each other. They should be able to go to high school together for at least two years. Even looking at student-teacher relationships. This ain’t Riverdale. Even Riverdale was weird and cringy and no one liked it. Everyone thought she was the worst because she took advantage of a student and sexually assaulted a minor. That is what happened on Riverdale because when you sleep with a minor, that minor is incapable of giving consent, and what you have just done is commit sexual assault. If a minor sends nudes to an adult that is child pornography. If the adult is caught with that they are charged with possession of child pornography. Underage relationships are inherently unhealthy. Do not write them. Do not romanticize them. An underage OC can have feelings or a crush on an adult, but it will always and must always be a relationship that is never fulfilled. A relationship that does not work out.

Love triangles are another aspect of romance that we see all the time. We talked about love triangles from a plot perspective in Realism. In that unit, they were a bad thing because your OCs deserve a much better story than choosing one person over another. Now, we’re going to examine love triangles from a romantic perspective. They’re tired. They’re old. They’re unrealistic because a girl or boy can be interested in multiple people, and need time to think about which one they’d like to end up with. Remember that we talk about abusive people who would fight to prove they’re superior to someone else. If two boys are fighting to try and prove to the world that they’re a better candidate for the OC, neither of them deserve the OC. If that’s how they treat her potential partner how will they treat her?

In addition to abusive relationships, stop glorifying and romanticizing self-harm and eating disorders in fanfiction to build angst and give the character “flaws.” Going back to Unit 6: Realism, self-harm, and/or depression and/or eating disorders are not character quirks, flaws, or tools to build angst. They are ugly. They are terrible conditions that hurt so many people, and that people all around the world struggle with without getting help. It isn’t cute to write that a character cuts themselves but stops because their love interest tells them to. Not only is that insensitive, but it’s unrealistic. That’s not how that disorder works. There are many cliches that writers fall back on to build angst in a story, but they are often so poorly executed that they never work at making the audience feel the emotion you as a writer want them to feel. These cliches include depression, bullying, self-harm, homelessness, abusive parents, and/or dead parents. Sometimes these cliches dogpile on top of each other. That is unrealistic as well. If you are going to talk about mental disorders and mental health, the burden of proof is on you the writer to make the audience believe it. You have to research these topics heavily and make sure you understand them in their entirety. Then you have to use them as a conflict of the character, not as a plot to push or challenge two characters in a relationship. You can have a healthy romance without having ridiculous plots happen to main characters. Brooklyn 99’s Jake and Amy are a great example of two characters existing sans toxicity. They don’t need outward harm or threats to their relationship, they just need each other.

This is a large information dump. We’re aware of that. To close out, we’re going to give and explain good and bad examples of relationships from TV and media. These are the cream of the crop. If you need examples of what to write or what not to write, look here.

Sokka and Suki are a great example of a good relationship. Neither one ever discounted the other’s ability to be a badass. They respected each other's cultures as well, Sokka going as far as to learn and train with the Kyoshi warriors for the short while he was there. He never tried to “protect” Suki when he knew she could protect herself. In vice versa, Suki was the same way.

Jake and Amy from Brooklyn 99 are a great example. Their relationship is peak good slow burn. They start off as rivals, become friends, and then realize at different times that they like each other. These realizations hit at different times and Jake is able to set aside his feelings for Amy to support her. A healthy relationship is someone who is happy for the person they love whether they are with them or not. If you compare this to something like Twilight, Edward Cullen was so arrogant that Bella would never be interested in anyone but him that it didn’t matter when he told her she could kiss Jacob if she wanted to. Both Jake and Amy retained the original cores of who they are as people while growing. Amy still color-coordinates, but she’s learned to relax and let go of the uptight attitude she once had. Jake still pulls pranks but has grown up a bit and become less immature. When this couple does face conflict, they confront it together and work out their problems as a team. When a couple finally gets together, their relationship usually flatlines because the author doesn’t know what to do anymore (often because the romance is the entire plot and once you accomplish the plot.. Then what?) but because their relationship was a subplot, it stayed alive even after they got together.

Hal and Lois from Malcolm in the Middle are a great example of a good relationship. They knew each other so well, despite being very different people. There was respect. They were a team, and no one loved Lois like Hal did. That was always obvious. The scene where Hal and the boys go against Hal’s family because they made Lois cry is forever iconic, and they are a great example of a relationship.

Ben and Leslie from Parks and Rec are a good relationship. They both respected the other’s career goals, and never forced one into an uncompromising position. They learned to have a balance of love and careers.

Also, read but not explained: Rapunzel and Flynn Rider (Tangled), Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable (Kim Possible), Pam and Jim (The Office), Shrek and Fiona (Shrek), Percy and Annabeth (Percy Jackson), Gomez and Morticia (The Addams Family), and Santana and Brittany (Glee).

Allison and Luther from Umbrella Academy are a bad example of a healthy relationship. They are not goals. They should not be romanticized. If you have to say, “it isn’t technically incest,” you already know it’s wrong. Even Gerard Way himself has said that he regrets putting them together. He himself called it incest. It ain’t PG. Don’t use them as an example.

Allison and her ex-husband from Umbrella Academy are a great example of one person gaslighting and manipulating the other. We know from the show it’s implied she convinced and tricked him into falling in love with her. He created for him an entire world where nothing was real. It’s not a healthy relationship.

Literally, every relationship in Riverdale is a bad relationship. There is not one relationship that did not have abusive tendencies, manipulation, or one person whining about “protection.” None of them are it. Avoid all of them.

We have to talk about Twilight. Twilight’s Edward and Bella big mood bad relationship goals. Edward is overly controlling, obsessive, and needs a healthier coping mechanism. Bella herself changed her entire world to revolve around Edward to the point that New Moon has Bella equating her reason to live and self-worth as a person to Edward’s absence. She’s a great example of a character dropping everything they have for a boy.

Gossip Girl is also filled with unhealthy relationships. According to the Editor, who has seen Gossip Girl many times over, Chuck and Blair are a good example of a couple that can’t exist without some kind of drama. They break up other relationships, cheat on each other, and use other people to make their significant other jealous. If it isn’t something you would expect anyone to put up with in real life, don’t expect your characters to put up with it either. They both were incredibly possessive, Chuck actually attacking Blair for being with a different person (Louis) and ruins a perfectly good mirror. Dan and Serena from Gossip Girl are another example. Dan makes Serena feel guilty and like a lesser person as time goes on. He slut-shames her, talks about her, and when it’s revealed that he is Gossip Girl, we realize as an audience that he’s been saying terrible things about her for years. Leave the, “if a boy is mean to you it’s because he likes you.” crap behind. If a boy likes you, he’s going to be nice to you so you like him back.

Our final bad example is Jade and Beck from Victorious. Jade West deserved so much better. She was toxic and controlling, and Beck is a great example of gaslighting your significant other. He never claimed to have a girlfriend while many women would flirt with him. He never did anything to make her feel more secure in the relationship, and when Jade expressed concerns, he would tell her she was crazy or controlling when really she had every right to be (Beck x Tori). Jade knew the score and was belittled for it, and Beck let her get herself worked up and played directly into her insecurities.

Dictated, but not explained bad examples: Pam and Roy (the Office), Princess Bubblegum and Finn (Adventure Time), Matt and Karen (Daredevil), Joker, and Harley Quinn (DC Comics).

Next week is our last unit. Unit 9: Don’t Like, Don’t Read. We’re going to talk about constructive criticism, and why it is a wonderful thing that you should be open towards. Peer reviews are due in the comments in two weeks’ time. Xoxo, Gossip Girl.

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virginiahodgson-blog · 5 years ago

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loopy777 · 6 years ago

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Since you are asking Lok type questions decided to ask one. Ozai was a villain that had potential (Shishio's Mantra comes to mind) but overtime his depth came across as a flat piece of Cardboard with a tape recorder attached. Thanks The Search. Flash forward to LoK we have Unalaq that retreaded similar territory. This is where my question comes in. What would you have done with him, what motivations would you give, and what sort of relationship would you have given him to Korra and the cast?

I’ve been delaying answering this Ask because when I normally do these kinds of ‘rewrites,’ I try to hone in on what it seems like the story was trying to do, and see if I can reconfigure or streamline the ideas in play to create something clearer and more impactful. That’s a lot easier than what the original storytellers had to do- start from scratch and build something from the ground up. I’m essentially doing another draft of their work, with the benefit of having experienced their vision and knowing what worked for me and what didn’t.

But wow, it is hard to do that when nothing worked for me and I’m just left confused about what the original intention was, or if there was an intention at all.

OH HAI BOOK SPIRITS.

You bring up Ozai as a fairly flat character, and I agree, but I never expected more of him. (Whether the comics could or should have added something to the character is an open question, and not one I’ll get into here.) He is a symbol of the bad parts of the Fire Nation, cast in the form of the ‘evil warlord’ archetype that’s so prevalent in the Wuxia genre that AtLA draws from.

Similarly, the villains of LoK all represent something, but they add some complexity of character to things (although of course some were more successful than others). Amon is intolerance and weaponized blame, but coming from a terrible childhood that created a self-loathing he couldn’t grow past. Zaheer is anarchy and ideological extremism, but he has that intriguing affability that alone of all villains lets him sit down with the protagonist and make some good points in conversation. Kuvira is dictatorship and nationalism, coming from the lack of identity she developed as a result of being orphaned.

And then we have Unalaq and Book Spirits.

And I just don’t know what’s going on in that season.

There are several different subplots in play - the Water Tribe Civil War, Varrick’s takeover of Asami’s business, the rise of the dark spirits, Korra and Mako’s romance, whatever is going on with Tenzin’s family, and the little movie about Avatar Wan - but none of them work together. They don’t share themes. They don’t advance each other’s events. They mess with each other’s pacing. They separate the cast before a sustainable dynamic has been developed. It’s just a mess.

Varrick gets the closest to working, because at least I understand some of his motivations. He’s doing bad things to try to help his Tribe in the war with the Northern Tribe, which is sympathetic, while serving as a flawed mentor to Bolin. But then he’s also sabotaging efforts to get weapons to the Southern Tribe so that he can bankrupt and buy out Asami’s company, which directly contributed to his Tribe losing the war. It’s a mess, and the story never reconciles these two contradictory aspects of his character.

Varrick could have been fixed by either eliminating one of these subplots (either make him a patriot driven to doing bad things, or make him a greedy jerk who’s exploiting his Tribe’s troubles to steal Asami’s company), or making the contradiction the point of his character. His flaw could be his greed, and he fails to balance it with his patriotism, to the point where he defeats himself. I don’t think this is what the cartoon was trying to do, because there’s no payoff to this flaw in the story. Varrick never shows such greed in his later appearances, and there’s no point in Book Spirits anyone seems to even be aware that he sabotaged himself.

But then there’s Unalaq. And I- I just don’t know what’s going on with this guy.

He’s introduced as something like a religious fundamentalist. He’s down on celebrating a spiritual festival with a carnival. He offers teachings to Korra that contain secrets even Tenzin and the White Lotus don’t know. He’s friends spirits to the point where they’re acting as his informants. And his ultimate goal is to release Vaatu and bring about TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS. There’s a possible cautionary tale there about religious extremism and fundamentalism, that it turns people into misanthropes and forms a path to violence and oppression.

But, unfortunately, there’s more to Unalaq. His backstory includes manipulating his brother and enemies of their Tribe to destroy a sacred forest so that he could be made crown prince. He takes over the Southern Tribe for seemingly no reason, oppressing it just to further antagonize his brother, directly trying to kill his brother, and manipulating Korra into doing his dirty work- all eventually leading Korra to cut ties with him and become his enemy.

But Korra is the key to his whole plan to bring about TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS!

So, we have another self-sabotaging villain. Maybe that’s the point? But what is this story saying? That religious extremists are really just flawed hypocrites, despite their posturing? But the story continues on from there, and Unalaq actually succeeds in getting Korra to redeem the plot coupons that free Vaatu. So his flaws didn’t ultimately matter to the story. Korra isn’t even able to successfully rally any opposition to Unalaq, thanks to Varrick and her conflict with Mako. So, again, what’s the message? That religious extremists are really flawed jerks, but the people who oppose them are also flawed jerks, so it’s all a wash? But then Korra gets new magic powers that ultimately let her defeat Unalaq, so what does that add to the message?

I guess it’s saying that we’re all doomed to TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS by our flaws, but it’s okay because a Higher Power will just come along and fix things for us?

Yeah, I don’t think that’s the intended message of Book Spirits. :P

But we all know Book Spirits stunk. We all know it was rushed in development. The original plan was to just do the story of a Water Tribe Civil War, and then when additional writers were brought on to help meet production deadlines, the whole Spirit World subplot was added. The result is a mess that’s infamous in the fandom. LoK would recover in the next season, and we now laugh at Unalaq.

Well, I’m going over all that to explain why I’m not sure how to 'fix’ Unalaq. I can’t identify a goal for him, or for any of the characters.

So on a whim, I’m going to try to base him on my favorite (neglected) subplot in LoK as a whole, the lack of spirituality in the modern world.

It was established in the very first episode of Book Air that Republic City is flawed. The city that Aang built is riddled with organized crime. The people are all mean. Equalists are a growing movement, and they might possibly have a point about the power imbalance between Benders and Nonbenders. The leadership is all either corrupt or ineffective, and also mostly jerks. Tenzin says, “I have done my best to guide Republic City towards the dream my father had for it, but you are right. It has fallen out of balance since he passed.” Korra soon after promises the people, “Look, all I know is Avatar Aang meant for this city to be the center of peace and balance in the world, and I believe we can make his dream a reality.”

So I think Unalaq has the most potential as someone focused on the same goal as her, restoring balance and spirituality to a world that has gotten lost in its own modernization. I’d cut out his conflict with his brother Tonraq; in my version, Unalaq never manipulated his brother into getting exiled. Tonraq did that on his own. Unalaq’s oppression of the Southern Tribe doesn’t extend beyond imposing his own religious fundamentalism on them. Maybe he even tries to butter Tonraq up to get his brother on his side, and to keep Korra as a willing ally.

And, most importantly, I wouldn’t give Unalaq any hidden agenda. He’s not plotting to unleash TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS. He doesn’t even know about Vaatu when the story starts. He puts his plan of taking over the Southern Tribe into action simply because he learns of Korra’s mission, and is overjoyed that he finally has a powerful ally who sees the corruption in the modern world. Perhaps he previously considered Tenzin as a possible ally, but Tenzin was turned off by Unalaq’s extremism. (Which is the first warning sign for the audience. Tenzin thinks this guy is too down on modern society?!) We can keep the part where Korra cuts ties with Tenzin because of the revelations about her past, going along with Unalaq despite her misgivings.

So Korra learns super spiritualism from Unalaq for a while. He shows her how to destroy dark spirits. (Neither of them know what’s up with the dark spirits, just that it’s suddenly a problem.) They work together to decry modern corruption. They make the Southern Tribe go to church once a week under penalty of law. Perhaps they go up to Republic City to try asking the citizenry if they’ve considered letting the light of balance into their lives, check out these pamphlets, etc.

They discover that the Dark Spirits are a result of the modern world’s corruption. Just like Hei Bai was turned into a monster by his anger at his forest being burned down, and the Painted Lady was nearly destroyed by her lake being polluted, the Dark Spirits are nothing more than injured, crazed, dying spirits. The Southern Water Tribe is drilling for oil and disrupting the environment. Oceans are being polluted. Forests are being cut down. The big new cities are producing enough waste to poison the land around them. People don’t commune or talk to the spirits anymore; there’s a shortage of sages around the world. The spirits are being driven violently insane even as they’re being wiped out.

So Korra and Unalaq become environmental terrorists.

Perhaps we can fit in a conflict between Mako and Korra at this point. He’s not really into her new course, and they break up. Perhaps he drifts back towards Asami before the official breakup, leading to both girls kicking him to the curb. We definitely won’t do anything with Korra getting amnesia and maybe forgetting that they broke up. That was pointless and just created more problems for the subplot. As a bonus, this can be an excuse for Asami to maybe bond directly with Korra.

Mako angrily confronts Korra about her tactics, but he just winds up antagonizing her and accomplishing nothing. Asami, on the other hand, demonstrates a more deft touch, and reaches out to Korra in a way that works. Asami gets Korra to see the damage being done, and the ineffectiveness of the tactics. Asami is sympathetic to Korra’s cause and wants to help, but can’t if Korra just wants to wipe everything out.

And that’s the key. Korra and Unalaq are failing, partially because of their extreme tactics, but also because it’s just impossible to turn the clock back. They make no dent in Republic City’s lack of balance. Unalaq is horrified. Korra, too, but Unalaq is really crazed by this. He wonders if humanity is even worth saving. Korra backs away from that, partially because of Asami’s influence; of course humanity is worth saving, she’s seen the good in people, etc.

And during this conflict between them, they learn of Avatar Wan’s history, and the whole story of Raava and Vaatu.

And this is where Unalaq falls. In his extremism, he sees that Vaatu has the power to destroy everything and start it all fresh. So he sets out to free Vaatu, become a Dark Avatar, bring about TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS, yadda yadda. Unalaq falls from grace because of his uncompromising vision. Extremism has poisoned him.

Korra is nearly defeated by him, but as in the cartoon, it is Jinora who somehow provides a key to winning. In this case, though, Jinora is a not a Magic Fairy Princess who’s always been able to see spirits. She represents the best of the new generation and the modern era. Jinora is spiritual, even more so than Tenzin, but she’s also someone who loves Probending and getting into a little trouble in Republic City and terrible modern cooking. Jinora, perhaps along with Ikki and Meelo, are symbolic of the balance that can be achieved. So Korra defeats Unalaq, and does something with Spiritual Energies that create a new generation of spirits living in the modern cities. Korra also sets out to find compromises so that the lands are no longer being polluted so much, to help preserve the old spirits. And, to everyone’s surprise, Airbending is discovered to have spontaneously returned to the world, perhaps the start of new respect for balance and the elements, and a new calling that the people will answer…

Which will be explored in Book Change.

So, that’s my idea. It requires ditching the whole Water Tribe Civil War, and all the shenanigans with Varrick and Bolin. I’m honestly not sure if Varrick can be worked into this storyline. I love the character because he’s hugely entertaining, but none of what he did in Book Spirits is worth preserving. Perhaps he could be tied in to the corruption of the old spirits, that he’s using them as batteries like with Kuvira in Book Balance. His can be a symbolic defeat, that his loss and exile is a tangible sign of respecting the environment. As a symbolic victory, we can also show Asami rolling out some environmentally-friendly reforms with Korra’s help, further building up their friendship, and establishing a partnership.

(Varrick is later hired by Suyin, and later Kuvira, in a kind of Operation Paperclip deal. They’re fine with his awful sciences. But Varrick is slowly influenced into abandoning his ways, and by the end of Book Balance, goes to work for Asami.)

As I’ve previously posted, I’m not crazy about Tenzin’s family troubles, so I’d like to just cut that. Bumi and Kya can still show up, but I think Tenzin’s subplot should be questioning if, as Korra and Unalaq fight their crusade, he’s really living up to Aang’s ideals. He spends time with his family, until Korra arrives with news of Unalaq’s plan to unleash and bond with Vaatu. He tries to help, Jinora proves to be more help, the journey to the Spirit World to chase Unalaq happens, but they can’t stop him, and during the fight Jinora is seemingly destroyed, but really sent to the Fog of Lost Souls to be rescued by her father. And we still get our Zhao cameo. Booyah!

I have no idea what to do with Bolin in all this. But then, neither did the cartoon, so that’s fine. His subplot in Book Spirits was the most confused, and that’s really saying something. Maybe he goes into exile with Varrick, and they both pop up in Zaofu as established members of the leadership there? Perhaps Bolin and Opal are already a thing, and Opal being an Airbender leads him to reconcile with Korra and the others. I don’t know, Bolin’s character never did anything for me.

Eska and Desna can be Unalaq’s minions. They have misgivings when Korra breaks ties with him, but continue to try to help their father and maybe moderate his darker tendencies. They fail, and wind up having to help the good guys. There’s no romance with Bolin and Eska.

So, that’s my take. There’s a lot of rewriting here, in pursuit of finding some message. I just focused on character arcs, and I’m not sure what the final battle would look like. (Hopefully not an episode of Ultraman.) I’d still like Korra’s connection with her past lives to be destroyed, as I think that really works as a character moment and low point for her. I’m not sure how to accomplish it, because I prefer the power of the Avatar State to be the actual accumulated power and minds of the past lives, rather than Raava. I also eliminated everything to do with the Spirit Portals, because they never made sense to me, what with AtLA showing spirits going back and forth between the worlds without any trouble. Vaatu can just be unleashed in a more mundane way. Maybe Wan Shi Tong knows and tells Unalaq, getting that cameo back in. And I really have no idea what Bumi and Kya are doing here, besides hanging out with Tenzin. But we know I have difficulty with their subplot.

I’m not if this would actually be better, but it’s more streamlined, at least. And Unalaq becomes, I hope, someone who is understandable. We don’t sympathize with his methods, but can at least see where he started with a reasonable hope but went very, very wrong. And, as a bonus, we’ve avoided another case of childhood trauma causing someone to become evil!

Score!

#suzakumakoto

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leehama · 7 years ago

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Hi! I just felt I needed to say that I love all your characters. They're very well-written. I also love how you don't put too much focus on the romance part of things. In most stories I get annoyed bc I know that there is going to be something romance affiliated in each chapter, but with this story, I actually get excited and have lots of anticipation for it (especially the apple crumble moments( do you have any tips on how to write without letting romance take over the entire plot? Thank you!

Oh goodness, thank you so much!!

Even though I’m not a big consumer of romance-centered media (it’s just a preference, it has nothing to do with the quality of romance as a genre!), I do enjoy a good romantic subplot! I’m certainly not an expert on how to write romance (it’s one of my greatest weaknesses imo), but I do have some tips I’ve observed from my favorites:

Give them independent motivations: If a character is only defined or motivated by their romance, the story has nowhere to go except toward that romance. If you’re worried that your story is too focused on the romance, have your character(s) chase after something separate (or in addition to) the romance! Your story will get a chance to expand into new territory as your character(s) try to get what they want.

Give them diverse interactions with each other: Characters who are romantically interested in each other have to be able to have interactions that aren’t solely romantic. It’s fine if characters have hearteyes every time they’re in the same scene, but let them get into trouble together, support each other, oppose each other, work together, etc. too!

Give them diverse interactions with other characters: This sort of combines the first two tips, but if you give a character profound, non-romantic interactions with characters other than their love interest, the romantic interaction won’t feels like out-of-place–you’ll just have a variety of interesting character interactions!

Integrate the romance into the stakes of the story so it doesn’t feel meaningless: A lot of the time when it seems like the romance is taking up too much of a plot, it’s because it feels separate from the central direction of the story. Exploring a romantic subplot shouldn’t feel like you’re veering off “the point” of the story–let romance heighten the stakes, deepen character interactions, complicate other relationships, and have consequences!

And honestly, if a romance is compelling enough and you enjoy writing it, just let it take over the plot: It’s trendy to disparage romance and romantic subplots–and certainly, it can be done poorly, and romance isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But if the only thing preventing you from sinking your teeth into a good romantic character interaction is the fear that people will think “this is taking over the plot!”, just be transparent about the kind of story you’re telling from the start, and do what you want! If you’re having fun, the right people will find your story and enjoy it with you!

This kind of got away from me, but I hope this helps!

#ask #Anonymous #i'm probably not the right person to be writing this #i actively avoid stories centered on love triangle tbh ha ha #a truer fan of romance would probably have more enlightening answers but i tried!!#also i got three hours of sleep and STILL might not have turned in the episode on time for it to be posted #i've got to take a nap goodbye for now internet

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ouchmaster6000 · 4 years ago

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First of all, your attitude is shit, and isn't going to do gay people any favors.

Second of all, you talk about gay people only being in 10% of media. Well, guess what, lgbt people make up less than 5% of the population.

Mind you, I think creators should be able to write about whoever they want. If you want your whole cast to trans lesbians or whatever, go ahead. If someone only wants to write about straight cis white people, that's also totally valid. The writer is in control of their universe / story.

But if you do want to make a big deal about representation, realize that "equal" representation is not the same fair or accurate representation.

Unless your story takes place in a gay bar, some made up one-gender place like Themyscira, or focuses on characters that became friends because they are gay (as opposed to people who happen to go to the same school, work etc., or became friends based on factors unrelated to their sexuality) there's no reason realistically more than 5% of the characters would be gay. If you do that means gay people are being OVER represented in the story.

Additionally, 5% means only about one in 20 people. So that's assuming the story even HAS 20+ characters important enough that their sexuality even comes up. That's only going to be the case if it's a large ensemble cast.

If a story only has 10 characters, having 2 of them be gay is less realistic and fair representation than having none of them be.

Finally, less than 5% of people being gay, means that over 95% of people are straight. That includes over 95% of writers, directors, producers, none of whom are obligated to cater to you. Writers generally write about what they know, and characters they identify with.

Same with the audience buying media & consuming fiction. Over 95% are straight, and producers & publishers know this. Lgbt fiction isn't niche because of homophobia, at least not anymore, it's niche because the vast vast majority of the population is straight, and isn't especially invested in the topic one way or the other.

Yeah, there are your yaoi fangirls and Yuri fanboys who read a lot of the erotica and porn (and probably make up a bigger portion of the market than actual gay people) but when it comes to mainstream romance or genre fiction with romantic subplots, the audience is going to be more interested in characters they identify with and the sort of romance they desire than what happens to to turn them on.

Finally you may say you don't want to "heal the divide" but to be frank, you should.

Because if to the vast majority of straight people hated you as much as you think, you would have never GOTTEN as much representation as you did. You wouldnt even have the right to marry or any rights, because that would mean the vast majority of the human race was against you.

You shouldn't want to make the whole world your enemy, and frankly you should be glad your getting as much representation as you are, given what a tiny speck you are amongst the human population.

"you gays are just shoving your agenda down our throats in the media"

Yup, Absolutely, 100%.

The amount of anti-gay propaganda that has been made since fucking...EVER. Is more than enough of a reason for you get gay shit in your Netflix subscription and news feed everyday against your consent, we got to hear and read how we were a bunch of predators and criminals for centuries, you straggots are gonna pay reparations and see shitty pandering gay bullshit with atrocious costume design everywhere you fucking see, and it's gonna be for double the amount of homophobic propaganda that has ever been made and still gets made, and you better shut the fuck up before we triple the numbers

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thecrushsblog · 5 years ago

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Elements of Novel Writing

By Robert Waldvogel | Submitted On October 07, 2019

Elements of Novel Writing INTRODUCTION:

A novel, often subdivided into sections, chapters, and scenes, and entailing expository, narrative, and narrative summary writing, creatively depicts a protagonist’s journey, usually fraught with obstacles and restrictions, toward a personal goal.

“All novels have similar elements,” according to Walter Mosley in his book, “This Year You Write Your Novel” (Little, Brown and Company, 2007, p. 97). “They have a beginning, middle, and end. They have characters who change, and a story that engages; they have a plot that pushes the story forward and a sound that insinuates a world.”

THE NOVEL WITHIN:

Sometimes intellect can be a hindrance or even a handicap. Countless people walk around, wishing they had the time and tenacity to write the novel they believe is already within them. Yet, when they actually sit down to write it, albeit it in first-draft form, they ponder numerous questions, such as, What should I write? I have an idea, but no one will like it. Let me think of what’s popular. Romances sell well, so it doesn’t take much to figure out that that’s the answer. Or is it?

If the author does not have a romance, a fantasy, a mystery, or a science fiction piece in him, they are not likely to come out of him, and, if a meek resemblance to one does, it is not likely to be accepted for publication.

READERSHIP:

Determination of what type of novel-or any other genre, for that matter-the author should craft, should, to a significant degree, hinge upon what he likes to read.

“Why should you write what you love to read?” poses Evan Marshall in his book, “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing” (Writers Digest Books, 1998, pp 7-8). “First, because you’ve read books in a specific genre for so long, you’re aware of the kinds of stories that have been written in it… Second, your passion as a reader will translate into your passion as a writer.”

Readership, needless to say, is integral to the publishing process.

John Cheever expressed this author-reader duality when he said, “I can’t write without readers. It’s precisely like a kiss-you can’t do it alone.”

As a reader himself, the author should determine which types of novels he enjoys reading and why, perusing the book lists to see what has sold, what has been extensively covered, which books may be similar to the one he intends to write, and then decide if he can approach the same subject or topic with a fresh approach or perspective.

Fictional genres include action/adventure, fantasy, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, suspense, western, and young adult.

NOVEL WRITING:

Like the writing of any genre, whether it be nonfiction, drama, or short fiction, that of the novel is not a scientific one, but instead is a creative one. Aspects, techniques, and tips, in an educational vein, can help. However, the process itself involves an evolutionary one, during which the author writes, rewrites, crosses out, rewords, adds, and deletes. The more he persists in his literary efforts, the more, over time, that his expressions will reflect his intentions.

PLOT POSSIBILITIES:

Although plots may only be limited to the ways the author can creatively connect and interrelate the novel’s elements, they can emerge from the following eight aspects.

1). The created protagonist or main character.

2). His goal, sparked by the inciting incident that sets the plot in motion.

3). His motivation for achieving that goal.

4). His strengths, weaknesses, and internal and external conflicts.

5). The antagonist.

6). The supporting characters.

7). The significant, sometimes seemingly insurmountable odds that oppose the protagonist’s quest.

8). How, when, and why he triumphs over the obstacles, leading to the novel’s climax and resolution.

STRUCTURE:

Novels, as already mentioned, have beginnings, middles, and ends. Their approximate lengths are as follows.

Beginning: A novel’s beginning roughly covers the first quarter of the book. It is here that the author illustrates the story’s situation and circumstances, introduces the protagonist and other significant characters, details the inciting incident that sets him on his quest, explains his motivations for pursuing it, and incorporates any necessary background information.

Middle: The middle encompasses half the book’s length. It is here that the writer illustrates the primary action of the protagonist’s story line, journey, and quest, along with any subplots and twists, complications, and surprises.

End: The end occupies the final quarter of the work. All of its story lines, particularly those of the protagonist, are resolved, the plot reaches its fever pitch in the climax, and there is a short denouement or resolution, highlighting how the protagonist himself may have changed because of his journey.

The novel’s third, or last section, should be the most intense, leading to its climax. It can be considered the satisfactory conclusion or payoff or reward for the reader who has followed the book’s literary journey, constituting “the moment he has been waiting for.”

As the section unfolds and the remaining pages indicate that the novel’s resolution must be nearing, the author can use several techniques to effectively craft it. It is here where the protagonist’s options become severely limited, as his avenues and strategies become virtually exhausted and the number of others he can turn to is just as minuscule in number. This ensures that he follows the only path left to him.

His oppositions also intensify and increase in number.

Finally, his last-desperate attempt seems doomed to failure.

When the protagonist has battled his internal and external conflicts, followed the path he believes would lead to his goal, and now stands face-to-face with his greatest obstacle, the book has reached its final showdown.

“A showdown is not necessarily violent or even physical,” according to Marshall (ibid, p. 121). “(It) could be a climactic courtroom confrontation, a nerve-jangling chase sequence, a bloody fist fight, a rundown of the facts before the suspects… or a quiet talk between your lead and her husband’s mistress. It all depends on your story.”

OUTLINES:

Because of the length, complexity, the number of characters, their interactions with one another, the incidents and actions, and the need to strategically and progressively present a novel in literary form, the creation of an outline can greatly facilitate an author’s effort in crafting one.

“No sane person would think of setting out to construct a skyscraper or even a one-family house without a detailed set of plans,” according to Albert Zuckerman in his book, “Writing the Blockbuster Novel,” (Writers Digest Books, 1994, p. 34). “A big novel must have the literary equivalents of beams and joints strong enough to sustain it excitingly from beginning to end, and it also must contain myriad interlocking parts fully as complex as those in any building type.”

NARRATIVE VOICE:

“The voice that tells the story is the first thing the reader encounters,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 17). “It carries us from the first page to the last. We, the readers, must believe in this narrative voice or, at least, we must feel strongly for that voice and have a definite and consistent opinion about it.”

PROTAGONIST:

The protagonist is the story’s central or main character. It is the one around which the plot revolves and to whom all the action and adversity is directed. It is the person who faces the obstacles and conflicts he must overcome to reach his goal.

Ideally, a story should have a single protagonist. He may not always be admirable-for example, he can be an anti-hero; nevertheless, he must command involvement on the part of the reader, or better yet, his empathy. He is the person in the story or book with whom the reader sympathizes or for whom he roots. Protagonists should be complex and flawed. They do not, by definition, need to be likeable, but they should be relatable and believable. The reader should understand their choices.

Although the protagonist’s physical appearance may be integral to the type of character the author creates and the role he plays in the story-from the stunning, attractive blonde to the six-foot-tall, 300-pound body guard to the mild mannered milk toast–his personality, strengths, and weaknesses, more than anything, determine how he or she will pursue his or her goals and what their motivations for doing so may be. It is that journey that the reader most follows, enabling him to care about, sympathize and empathize with, and feel for.

“If you want readers… to spend their precious time on your book, then you have to (create) a character who keeps them engaged,” according to Joanna Penn in The Creative Penn Limited. “This doesn’t mean that you need a goody-goody two shoes perfect person, but you do want to write a compelling, authentic protagonist that hooks the reader so he is desperate to know what happens next in the character’s world.

“Focus on three questions: What does your character want and why? What/who stops him? How does he overcome the obstacles along the way? (And) how is he changed as a result of the journey?”

“Readers remember a wonderful book’s characters long after they forget a story’s exciting scenes or even its climax,” advises Zuckerman (op. cit., p. 99). “Those characters who do stick in our minds over years and years appear in more than one way to be extraordinary.”

“(The author) has to let us see and share the longings, hopes, carnal desires, ambitions, fears, loves, and hates that reside privately within the soul of his characters and that (much as in life) other characters may know little or nothing about,” he continues (p. 99). “The writer must view the environment of the novel (both physical and human) through the eyes and sensibilities of the character.”

Yet, as also occurs in life, no journey can bear fruit if it does not somehow change the character or his perspective.

“All novels, short stories, and plays, and most poems, are about human transformation,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 40). “The subject of the novel is the human spirit and psyche-how the characters interact in their relationships with other souls and with the world in general.”

“As in life, your characters develop mainly because of their dealings with one another,” he further emphasizes pp 46-47). “The complex and dynamic interplay of relationships throughout the course of the novel is what makes change possible.”

ANTAGONIST:

The antagonist serves as the protagonist’s opponent and can often be considered the “bad guy” in the story, whose action arises from the conflict between the two. This is aptly illustrated in “The Wizard of Oz” in which the struggle between Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West plays out until she triumphs over her with her death and brings her broom to the wizard.

The antagonist does not have to be a person at all, but may be an animal, an inanimate object, or even nature itself. For example, the antagonist of Tom Godwin’s story, “The Cold Equations,” is outer space.

An antagonist should also be a “round character.” Simply making him evil is not as interesting as making him or her conflicted. Pure evil is difficult to believe in fiction, since people are multi-faceted and inspired by their own situations and back stories. Therefore, putting time into describing your antagonist and showing his or her own struggles will create a richer and more complex narrative. Just as a protagonist should not only be good, an antagonist should not only be bad.

CONFLICT, CRISIS, AND STAKES:

The crisis, or inciting incident, is integral to the novel, because it launches its plot trajectory. It must be appropriate to the genre and important, vital, crucial, and realistic enough so that the reader will follow it to its destination.

Conflicts can be considered the collective obstacles that oppose the protagonist in his quest to achieve his goal. They encompass two types: external-that is, human, natural, geographical, and physical, and internal-or character strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, and flaws.

The stakes can be considered the consequences or what lies on the line if the goal is not successfully achieved.

MOTIVATIONS:

Inciting incidents spark a protagonist’s journey toward a particular goal, but what is equally important to that goal is his motivation for pursuing it.

Behavior is like a language. It makes a statement about people, provided others possess the tools to “translate” it. Part of that translation entails the understanding of what lurks behind it-that is, what fuels it. If, for example, a person works hard to earn money, his motivations can include the need to pay his bills, the need to own expensive things, the need to own expensive things to prove his worth and perhaps superiority, and/or the need to camouflage feelings of low self-esteem and -worth. Similarly, a person who sits alone at a party could be in a bad or sad mood and therefore does not feel very social on the occasion, could be inherently shy, could lack social skills, and/or be unable to trust others and hence connect with them in any meaningful way.

Motivations bare the soul, demonstrating what a character wants, desires, and dreams about.

They both fuel behavior and either give the reader a reason to find out what they are or, if revealed and understood, give him insight into how they drive him. As he follows the character’s journey, he can often glean insight into his own.

PROVERBIAL SHOW, DON’T TELL:

Fiction, needless to say, recreates reality through action, dialogue, and character interchange, requiring the proverbial “show, don’t tell” delivery method.

“What you must always remember is that the novel is more experiential than it is informational,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 40). “Your reader might learn something, but most of what they learn is gained through what they are shown about the lives and circumstances of the characters therein.”

PLOTS:

Because writing principally informs, as it does in nonfiction, and entertains, as it does in fiction, readers invest their time in the process and hope to see a return on it after they have put the story or the book down. Plots engage, grip, and give the reader something to follow as they unravel. Most of all, they should sufficiently hold a reader’s attention so that he does not put the piece down until he has finished reading it.

Writing three pages about your garden, for instance, may provide a commune with nature and lend itself more to poetry than prose, but how compelling would it be, unless it is integral to the longer story?

Plots are comprised of tracks that lead from origin to destination, as experienced by the proverbial philosophy discussed in most writing classes: if the author introduces a gun on the first page of his story, it had better fire by the last page, or the writer should at least explain why it has not.

“All good writing is mystery writing,” according to Rebecca McClanahan in her book, “Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively” (Writer’s Digest Books, 1999, p. 194). “And every successful story… and narrative essay is a page-turner… We may begin reading out of mild curiosity, to pass the time, but we keep reading to unravel the mystery. If there is no tension, we stop caring. When suspense dissolves, when the mystery is solved, we stop turning pages.”

“By holding back essential information, we arouse the reader’s curiosity and keep them reading,” advises Mosley (op, cit., pp 55-56). “Plot is the structure of revelation-that is to say, it is the method and timing with which you impart important details of the story so that the reader will know just enough to be engaged while still wanting to know more.”

Part of the mystery is not necessarily enabling the reader to find out what will happen. In “Titanic,” for instance, he or even the move-goer already knows. To them the mystery is following the plot and learning how the characters involved will survive and surmount the crisis, and how, if any, they will grow and develop as a result of it.

SCENES:

Scenes are the structured, inter-related links that enable the plot to unfold, which itself should have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Like a mathematical formula, the elements should add up to a sum-the destination and resolution of the story. Plots can be considered contrivances about “interesting troubles” that the protagonist and supporting characters must experience, negotiate, surmount, extricate themselves from, and triumph over before arriving at their-and the story’s-destination.

“The scene is one of the most basic components from which every story is constructed,” according to Baechtel (op. cit. p. 71).

Events, physical actions, conversations, and interactions vividly occur so that the reader almost feels as if he is watching a movie or witnessing a live event.

A scene imitates life and convinces the reader of its occurrence. Seeing, as is said, is believing. This is the proverbial “show, don’t tell” of literature. Don’t tell me that Warren was crushed when he learned that he failed his final exam. Show me how his eyes widened into disbelief, how he tore up the paper, how he fell on to his bed, and how the tears dripped on to the pillow. The word “crushed” is then not needed. You, as an author, illustrated it and I saw it myself in my mind.

“Each scene must build on what has come before it, and provide a necessary bridge to what comes after it,” Baechtel continues (ibid, p. 123).

“A scene is an episode acted out by characters; it takes place in a particular place at a particular time,” according to McClanahan (op. cit., p. 194).

“To maintain suspense, we must alternate between scene and summary, showing and telling, and between braking and acceleration,” she concludes (p. 200).

“The setting up of a dominant, unresolved issue around which the novel’s characters have a huge stake is central to the plotting of a book as a whole,” according to Zuckerman (op. cit., p.123). “A similar technique in miniature can be vital to most individual scenes, the novel’s building blocks. In a blockbuster novel, a scene is almost always more than merely a well-written account in description and dialogue of an episode between characters.”

SURPRISES AND TWISTS:

Nothing keeps the reader more riveted to a novel than an unexpected revelation, surprise, turn-of-events, or twist, and these techniques equally re-energize a plot that begins to sag. For authors who ascribe to the three-part subdivision, surprises should ideally arise at the end of the first, or beginning section, and in the middle of and at the end of the second, or middle, one.

A surprise is a shocking, protagonist- and plot-changing event, which sheds new light on, but significantly opposes, his goal. It can include his discovery of something; an opposition by another character, particularly the antagonist; the revelation of new information that raises the stakes and intensifies his quest; and an event or circumstance that negatively impacts the path toward his goal.

Ideally, each of the three unexpected turns should be worse than the previous one and the last should virtually eliminate the protagonist’s chances of success.

EMOTIONAL AND RATIONAL RESPONSES:

As occurs in real life, characters in novels often respond both emotionally and rationally to situations. The first response occurs in the brain’s mid-section and enables the person to process the events through the spontaneous energy which is generated by them. The second takes place in the brain’s upper portion, which entails reasoning and executive functioning.

If a person is unexpectedly terminated from his place of employment, for instance, he may experience the following two reactions.

Emotional Response: Veronica was stunned. She flushed red. She was numb. Where did this come from? Oh, my God!

Rational Response: I’ll talk to my supervisor before I just accept this. I’m sure she has more information. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. And if I can’t fight this, there’s always unemployment compensation to tide me over and I have some money saved that’ll get me through this until I can find another job.

SETTING:

“‘Setting’ refers most obviously to place, but it is much more than this” according to Baechtel (op. cit., p. 79). “It is the physical, emotional, economic, cultural, even the spiritual ecologies within which our stories are constructed.”

Author Rebecca McClanahan expanded upon this in her book, “Word Painting: A Guide to Write More Descriptively” (op. cit.. p. 171). “Place is only one element of setting. The common phrase ‘The story takes place’ refers not only to the where of the story, but to the when. Setting grounds us, literally, in the fictional dream. And descriptions of setting provide the foothold, the physical and temporal vantage point from which to view the events of the story.”

In order to more fully understand a character, he must have a location which he interacts with and almost defines him.

“Setting affects their moods, guides, their actions, narrows their choices or widens them,” Beachtel continues (op. cit., p. 79). “It can be cast of malevolence, benevolence, or any state in between.”

“Readers… enjoy being introduced to exotic environments where, almost as tourists or students, they can observe and learn about customs, mores, rituals, modes of dress and etiquette, (and) social and business practices largely or wholly alien to those with which they are familiar,” advises Zuckerman (op. cit., p. 23).

Elements of Novel Writing – THE FIVE FICTIONAL WRITING ELEMENTS:

Fiction can include five writing elements:

1). Action

2). Summary

3). Dialogue

4). Feelings and Thoughts

5). Background

ACTION:

“Action is the mode fiction writers use simply to show what is happening at a given moment in the story,” according to Marshall (op. cit., p. 142). “In action mode, you show events in strict chronological order as they occur, you use action/result writing, and you never summarize events.”

While it may be questioned if event sequences occur chronologically, there are those that are only separated by nanoseconds, leading those experiencing them in real life to believe that several things are occurring simultaneously. A person who opens a door while his wife stands beside him and experiences an explosion, for example, may exclaim something while reclosing the door and shielding his wife, who, in a kneejerk reaction, throws her hands in front of her face and screams. The incident, taking place so quickly and perhaps beyond time, may seem as if everything occurs at once, but the person only exclaims after he opens the door and experiences the explosion. This, in turn, causes him to reclose it, and his wife only tries to protect her face after she becomes aware of it.

In order to maintain this cause-and-effect sequence, the novel writer should avoid words such as “while” and “as.” Instead, he should describe or illustrate the action in chronological order, such as, Darren opened his garage door and was met by an explosion. He immediately reclosed it and shielded his wife, who stood next to him. She threw her hands in front of her face and screamed.

If two actions do occur simultaneously, the author should use the present progressive form of the verb to illustrate this, as in “Derek waved at Sylvia, saying, ‘How have you been?'”

DIALOGUE:

Dialogue is the story’s engine: it propels it toward its destination. It turns paper into people. “… (It) has to help the machine that is story generate the story’s motive energy,” according to Baechtel (op. cit., p. 105). “(It) is not merely the words your characters utter; it is the subtle interplay of speech, gesture, expression, attitude, and even silence,” he continues (ibid, p. 120).

It serves several purposes;

1). It moves the story.

2). It conveys information-that is, relates what transpires.

3). It supports characterization-that is, how the story’s characters think, speak, believe, and perceive.

4). It can foreshadow events.

5). It can make these events more vivid when they do arrive.

6). It gives characters, and the relationships between them, life.

FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS:

Feelings, which should be expressed through character behavior and dialogue, can be supported with further mention, such as “The tears that flowed down Sarah’s cheeks after she learned of her husband’s affair were virtually unstoppable.”

Thoughts can provide additional understanding of a character’s mood, emotional state, and mind, such as, (to continue the above example), “It’s not just the hurt. It’s the secretive life! It’s the betrayal! It’s going through my heart like a knife.”

BACKGROUND:

Background information, which should be given sparingly and sporadically, provides understanding about events and people that may not be apparent or illustratable to the reader. However, it does not necessarily propel the story.

Article Sources:

Baechtel, Mark. “Shaping the Story: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Short Fiction.” New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004.

Marshall, Evan. “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Writers Digest Books, 1998.

McClanahan, Rebecca. “Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively”. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 1999.

Mosley, Walter. “This Year You Write your Novel.” New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.

Zuckerman, Albert. “Writing the Blockbuster Novel.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Writers Digest Books, 1994.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Robert_Waldvogel/534926

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askpetethelibrarian · 5 years ago

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Why Don’t Men Read Romance

This article is a lot better than the title would indicate, speaking also about why women don’t read WWII books and the like. As a “men” of sorts, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about why I don’t read romances. Keep in mind, I’m going to tell you why I, an individual, don’t get down with romances, not why men, as a whole, avoid them. But if you want to take what I say and assume there are kernels of truth in there in regards to a large segment of the male population...I’d say you’re probably right to consider it.

By the way, blanket statement: This is my opinion, but I don’t necessarily recommend others live this way, and it’s not my opinion that romance is inferior or bad or whatever. I read books with titles like “Tumor Fruit,” so I’m the the transparent-est of glass houses. Just know that this is my opinion of the little bits of romance I’ve experienced, not a demand that anyone else change their reading habits.

1. They’re Boring

I find most romantic subplots in movies very boring. Creed? Terrible. Nobody should fall in love with their loud-ass neighbor. That person is rude and inconsiderate. Avengers? Why are Hulk and Black Widow in love all of a sudden? When did that happen? And is there not enough stuff going on that we really need that?

Usually, to me, the romance part of a movie is the most boring part, the piece I could do without, and I tend to like movies that have little to no romance. I just re-watched Beetlejuice for the 1000th time, and there’s very little romance. Army of Darkness? Not much romance.

I also find sex scenes boring. What can I say? The 80′s are over, and I think the most common nudity in movies these days is male butts. I find male butts boring, I find it mostly awkward to watch people on a screen have pretend sex. Sue me.

And I’m not really a fan of “how we met” stories, either. In real life, when I know the people. Once in awhile you get a good one, but most of them are same-y. I know they’re very exciting for the people who lived them, but for me, meh.

Being boring is no great sin, it’s just something that keeps me away from romance. I’ve been bored by the majority of romantic plots and subplots I’ve experienced, so taking a deeper dive seems antithetical.

2. Predictability

I hope I’m not saying something hurtful to people who like romances when I say they’re predictable. I mean, they’re sort of meant to be, right? The Happily Ever After and all.

I don’t really like reading a book or watching a movie and trying to predict what happens. I think it’s a weird way to experience something, honestly, because...it’s a fictional story being presented to you. OF COURSE you can make predictions. Because you’re not really predicting what happens, you’re predicting how someone would tell a story of this type. You’re predicting fiction writing. It’s not a huge achievement.

I know I’m wrong about this, but this is how I experience stuff. Most people love uncovering a mystery, and as far as I’m concerned, go for it.

That said, I find it hard not to read and predict with romance. I think you’re meant to think ahead of what you’re reading, wonder how the story goes from Point A to Point Happily Ever After. I feel similarly about mysteries, too. Predicting plot isn’t interesting to me, so plot contortions aren’t all that thrilling for me.

The things I like either tend to have very unusual, unpredictable plots, or tend to be less centered on plot, more on characters, writing style, and so on.

3. There’s Just Other Stuff I’d Prefer

I don’t know who these people are that don’t have a thousand books that they would really like to read. I have such a long list of books that I’d LOVE to read, and romance isn’t on that list. I suppose it could be, given the right options, but I’m just not looking to add a genre, honestly. If my reading habits were a marriage, I’d say that we’ve been pretty steady for a good decade now, I’m very happy, and I’m not really looking for anything else.

Point being, it’s not like I’m avoiding romance and reading nothing. I’m reading other things I’d prefer.

When I finished library school, one of the things I was most excited about was reading whatever the hell I wanted without a sense of obligation. This hasn’t always worked out, but I try to read things I like anymore, avoiding things that I feel like I “should” read.

Some might feel this makes me an inferior librarian, that I’m not able to make recommendations outside my taste, but I haven’t found that to be true. In 15 years, I don’t think I ever recommended books to anyone who I would say had remotely parallel tastes to my own (Tumor Fruit, remember?). Additionally, I think a better method, rather than trying to read everything out there, is to find go-to people you can rely on. Even if I read a couple romances a year, I’d never compare to my co-worker, who read these things by the dozens, spoke the lingo, and knew what was happening in the romance world.

What I’m doing is giving myself permission to read stuff I like, which is what I’m always trying to instill in other readers anyway.

Not a popular librarian opinion, but hey, I wasn’t blessed with a high tolerance for books I dislike, and I would be happy to test my skills against other random librarians in a random genre recommendation contest. I don’t think I’d be the champ, but I think I’d be comfortably in the middle.

4. That Stuff is For Girls

While I’m on unpopular opinions...

While I understand that gender lines are being blurred, moved, and erased, you have to understand, I didn’t grow up that way. I’m a guy. I wouldn’t call myself manly, but I tend to like more traditionally masculine things.

Hey, I have no problem with other people being wherever they find themselves on the gender spectrum, I’m happy to hang out and have a beer with whoever, and I certainly support efforts to make things like books more gender neutral in terms of their covers, marketing, and so on. If I had a dudebro friend who liked romances, I would probably be curious, but whatever!

But I’d be lying if I said romance doesn’t seem designed with a female audience in mind.

Yes, I’m aware that romance is often at the forefront of developing new authors, storylines with non-traditional romances of all stripes, and basically mixing it up and experimenting with narratives.

That said, most of the writers are women. Even of man/man romances. Most of the readers are women (between 85 and 90% it appears). So, most times, even a romance intended for a male reader (or, to move away from a binary, intended for anyone other than a traditional female reader), is very likely coming from a female writer working within a very female-influenced tradition. I don’t have a problem with women writing men, even straight women writing gay men. I just highly suspect these narratives aren’t created to please me and people like me.

We shouldn’t be surprised that men aren’t reading a ton of these. They’re not really intended for us. It’s the same way I feel about, I dunno, Frozen. That’s obviously not intended for me, so I don’t have much interest in it, and that’s fine. Would it expand my horizons to watch Frozen and sing along? Maybe. But most likely, I just wouldn’t enjoy it. Because that’s not the goal its creators had in mind.

5. Rejection or Passivity?

And keep in mind, this isn’t me refusing to watch Frozen. This is me, in a 2019 world of infinite streaming possibilities, choosing other things without Frozen even entering into the equation. As an adult man with no kids, I’m not really presented with the choice to watch Frozen or not. Likewise, I’m not really presented with the choice of a romance novel that I’m turning down.

This really is a key concept. There’s a world of difference between, say, refusing to take my son to watch Frozen because “it’s for girls” and me not going out of my way to watch Frozen because it’s for girls. Turning down a romance novel as opposed to just never picking one up.

I’d have to reach out to romance as opposed to romance reaching out to me, and that’s probably not going to happen. There are plenty of forms of entertainment designed with me in mind, and I’ll probably enjoy the (Tumor) Fruits of those labors. Because I have a higher chance of enjoying what I read.

It’s always a numbers game with books, always a gamble. I’ll invest X time in hopes of getting either Y enjoyment or Y+B enjoyment plus information. Or B-Y, information minus enjoyment. There’s a lot of equations at play here. It turns out this is a bad metaphor because it makes things more complicated instead of less.

Anyway, if a book isn’t designed to please me, it’s a lot less likely that it will. So, when I’m betting on a good return on my time investment, the likely winner is something that’s geared towards me. There, that was a lot simpler.

There ya go. That’s why I don’t read romance. Argue with me if you’d like, but you’re really arguing a matter of taste. Romance novels are not to my taste, and that’s why I don’t read them.

Whether you think what I’ve said applies to men in general, I’ll leave that to you.

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jenniferfaye34 · 5 years ago

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#Giveaway + Excerpt ~ Love's Remains by Jacqueline Simon Gunn... #books #WomensFiction @JSimonGunn

On Tour with Prism Book Tours

Book Tour Grand Finale for

Love's Remains

By Jacqueline Simon Gunn

We hope you enjoyed the tour! If you missed any of the stops you'll find snippets, as well as the link to each full post, below:

Launch - Author Interview

What do you hope readers take with them after they’ve read it? I hope that readers will find something of themselves, something relatable within each character that will offer insight into their own relationships and choices and/or the possibility to think about their relationships differently. So many people find themselves in difficult relationships, holding on when it’s painful, staying when they want to go, being pulled toward the wrong people, not loving those who love them. The answers to these questions are complicated and not the same for everyone. That’s why I chose a fictional format as opposed to non-fiction. Instead of telling readers what they should do or advising, I wanted to give them the opportunity to see various relationship situations in action and then show “why,” show the motivation for the characters’ actions. I hoped by revealing the psychology through the characters, readers would find their own answers upon reflection. But the book is filled with drama and tension and like any other fiction writer, I hope my readers will enjoy the story.

underneath the covers - Guest Post

What does Alex learn from moving on? Sometimes when we love we give so much of ourselves that when the relationship isn’t working it’s very hard to let go; our sense of self is invested and embedded in the relationship. We create illusions and hold on to them to make staying make sense. We create narratives to excuse behavior towards us that makes us feel bad. . .

E-Romance News - Excerpt

I pulled her against me as we walked. We had taken our shoes off and were strolling along the edge of the ocean, the water washing in and out splashing against our feet. She loved the ocean at night, same as I do. “Let’s go in,” she said. “We are a little overdressed.” I raised my brow. She was always full of surprises. As self-conscious as she said she felt, she did things that reflected her freedom or her desire for it. Just like me. It was intoxicating to be with a woman who I didn’t feel like I’d be tied down by. Someone I could want to be with all the time, not feel like I had to be with.

Colorimetry - Guest Post

Do we love people forever? Since Love’s Remains explores what’s left between two people after the relationship is gone, people have written in and asked me if I think we ever truly get over someone. Love’s Remains addresses this theme in both romantic and non-romantic relationships. So, for example, Will has an estranged relationship with his father and new issues arise for him in the context of this relationship. The story shows that although he barely talks to his dad, there are ‘remains’ of that relationship within him that affect him in ways that he might not have even realized until he’s confronted with the unresolved emotions. . .

From Me to You ... Video, Photography, & Book Reviews - Interview

Jess : Which usually comes first for you, the character(s), story or the idea for the novel? Jacqueline : Before I even begin writing a book, I usually have a vague sense of the story and the underlying themes I’d like to explore. When I actually start pounding the keyboard, I begin with the development of my main characters, holding the story in the back of my mind, but letting the characters sort of take over the direction. It’s like being a passenger. I’m there, but I’m not driving once we get going.

Wishful Endings - Guest Post

Why do we love, love stories? If you think about any movie or book, even those that aren’t in the romance genre, there’s often a subplot that involves a romance or teases us with the possibility of one. When people come into therapy, no matter what the presenting complaint is, relationships inevitably become a central topic. . .

Paulette's Papers - Guest Post

Why do you usually write from multiple points of view? Most of my fiction books have at least three points of view. I do this because I want to understand what’s motivating each character, and I want my readers to see that choices do not happen in a vacuum. Every decision made has an impact on those close to us and then those close to them and so on. In this way, there are always webs between groups of people even when the connections are not obvious and/or the relationships are remote. . .

I'm All About Books - Guest Post

What does the relationship between Alex and Cecilia reveal? The unfolding of the friendship between Alex and Cecilia was unexpected. At first, Cecilia was meant to be a secondary character, but the deeper I got into the story the more fascinated I became with her psychological make-up, her background and her decisions. Her unpredictability had me captivated. . .

Reading On The Edge - Excerpt

“You’ve ruined my life.” “I thought we were waaaay past this.” “That’s easy for you to say. I didn’t hurt you over and over and over.” “I hurt myself by hurting you.” His face wore a look of compassion. I hated that look, because it reminded me that he was a good person, that he had tried over and over to apologize. He unwittingly brought out the part of me that I hated, and I projected that hate onto him, because it was easier to hate someone else than to hate myself. Tears poured out of my eyes. And he wrapped his arms around me, holding me as wept.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway at the end of this post, if you haven't already...

Love's Remains (Where You'll Land #2) By Jacqueline Simon Gunn Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Romance Paperback & ebook, 250 Pages June 4th 2019 The second year of graduate school started out as a new beginning. I felt stronger. My heart had stitched itself up. I had finally healed enough on the inside to let love flourish once again. But an ever-present ex-boyfriend made the unresolved emotions between us impossible to ignore. Then new complications emerged: Said ex-boyfriend began dating Cecilia, who just happened to be the ex-girlfriend of my new love interest. I should have hated her. I wanted to hate her. But, I have to admit, I liked her. As the semester progressed, the tangled web between us deepened in ways I never could have anticipated, and it spread to those closest to us. We had the same classes, the same friends, the same interests. Then, of course, there were all the secrets, some of which could ruin the love I believed I wanted, I deserved. Once again, I got pulled into the dizzying vortex of all that remained unfinished. And doubt crept in. Had I really healed enough to make myself vulnerable again? Had I made the right choices? But the big question is: Can we ever really leave past relationships behind? This is the second book in the Where You'll Land series, but can be read as a stand-alone.

Goodreads│LibraryThing│Amazon

Other Books in the Series

Where You'll Land

(Where You'll Land #1)

By Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Romance

Paperback & ebook, 408 Pages

January 8th 2019

After a bad breakup, I packed up my life and moved to Miami to study for my doctorate in psychology. I made one promise to myself: Do not get romantically involved while I was in school. I needed to heal. And then Will Easton came into my life. He was warm and sweet and intelligent. And he got me. What I didn’t know was that Will was running from a tragedy of his own. When you try to escape your past without confronting your emotions, you repeat those same past patterns over and over. And that’s just what happened to Will and me, along with a few others who got swept up into the storm that was our relationship. Then came the awful secret. The one that changed everything. Sometimes the most painful relationships are the ones that help us grow into who we are and to find the love we had been searching for all along. Which begs the question: Can we choose who we love?

Goodreads│LibraryThing│Amazon

About the Author Jacqueline Simon Gunn is a Manhattan-based clinical psychologist and writer. She has authored two non-fiction books, and co-authored two others. She has published many articles, both scholarly and mainstream, and currently works as a freelance writer. With her academic and clinical experience in psychology, Gunn is now writing psychological fiction. Her Close Enough to Kill series, explores the delicate line between passion and obsession, love and hate, and offers readers an elaborate look into the mind of a murderer. In addition to her clinical work and writing, Gunn is an avid runner and reader. She is currently working on multiple writing projects, including three romance novels.

Website│Goodreads│LibraryThing│BookBub│Amazon│Facebook│Twitter│Instagram

Tour Giveaway

One winner will receive:

A Kindle Copy of Where You'll Land

A Kindle Copy of Love's Remains

A $10 Amazon Gift Card

Open to Kindle users

Ends July 31, 2019

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#Loves Remains #Jacqueline Simon Gunn #Womens Fiction #Prism Book Tours #Hearts & Scribbles

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