Character A is some sort of a community leader, cares greatly for their people and are fighting for them in a long battle with small victories here and there.
Character B does not have the same capacity of compassion. It all matters very little to them- at first.
As B grows to learn more about A and cares for them more as time goes on, they still dont have that same compassion or care, but they are willing to protect A's people because *they do care*. And the fact that they care is a fundamental part of this person that B has come to love.
[And bonus point if A had been in a previous friendship with C, who is similar to B, but went a very different route. One where they would burn the world to be the only one A cares for.]
Making this a separate post, but I still deeply hate how Neferet’s takedown was handled.
( @cuttoncandyhair would love to hear what you think!)
Someone whose whole arc was "everyone failed me and so did Nyx, so I will become a better goddess than her, and all will worship me", to end up as "taking over downtown Tulsa from my swanky penthouse suite is a fine goal to have", just so an overpowered teen can defeat her without having to put in some hard graft, is quite honestly insulting to the intelligence of the characters the authors have given us, not to mention the reader.
I don't necessarily disagree that it would be Neferet’s own actions leading to her downfall, but if I may, I think it would ideally have a lot more to do with her own mounting ambitions and fatal flaws, than being nerfed by the plot out of convenience. I also think it would have been better served to demonstrate the flaws in the system that allowed her to get as far as she did -- flaws where high priestesses are so respected as to be seen as nigh infallible, where professors are expected to always agree and never be seen complaining about the high priestess.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if Neferet is an allegory for the priests who attacked children with reckless abandon, then at least show us the system that allowed her to do that! Otherwise, it would be tantamount to calling the professors we're supposed to respect and admire utterly useless for seeing nothing, saying nothing, and failing to act. And if that's the case anyway, I want to see those professors examined as flawed people! I want that flawed nature to be shown as a feature, not a bug we hand-waved away!
Back to Neferet. I know the books upped the ante by killing off the High Priestess of Vampyres, Shekinah, never mind that we the readers were given no reason to care about her other than "she's the vampyre pope and Neferet just lanced her like a damn zit", and nor are we given a reason to think she's more powerful than any other vampyre, other than her being older than most vampyres and good enough at the Voice to land her a spot with the Bene Gesserit. (That especially sucks because it wastes a fascinating character for the Big Bad's power moment). But I honestly think it would have been better to have Neferet stick to the original plan, in killing expendable professors in gradually extensive and cruel ways and blaming it on the People of Faith until she could spark a big enough uprising, eventually baiting actual People of Faith to kill a vampyre in front of witnesses. From there, she could use the media spotlight to incite that uprising into action. She would be a likely winsome face of the movement, and I don't doubt she could manipulate the Circle to be her poster kids to the same end.
(The question there is, would that narrative bring up problematic implications? Would that suggest that civil rights movements are based around hatred (in the sense that the media framed such as MLK and Malcolm X as threats to (white) peace before assassinating them), or bring up that there have indeed been bad actors and grifters manipulating the oppressed, who have used movements for human and civil rights for their own ends, or leaders for peace who have turned out to be violent (say, Aung San Suu Kyi, who led Myanmar in committing genocide against the Rohingya people)? I suppose that would lay with how that narrative was handled.)
What would undo Neferet then would be her fatal flaws, such as her ego and pride.
This isn't a new or non-canon compliant thing, I don't think. Neferet is the type of person who has such utter confidence in her ability to do anything she sets her mind to, with such inimitable conviction, that she is both unable to conceive of the slightest possibility that she might fail and unable to consider for even a moment that she could possibly be wrong in taking that path in the first place.
This is why she had the professors killed in crueler, more drawn out ways each time, by the way: as a reminder, she had Patricia Nolan beheaded and her head on a spike before nailing her to a cross, whereas Loren Blake was disemboweled first. Naturally, we can assume she meant to show that the People of Faith were more and more emboldened to attack vampyres without fear of getting caught (or the consequences if they were).
That is, were this story to stick to the original arc progression, based on her characterisation, there are two possible avenues that will lead to her getting caught:
1, As careful as she is capable of being, her egotism means that she would kill her colleagues in more and more cruel and drawn out ways -- yes, to emulate an emboldened People of Faith, but also without heed of the notion that she might get caught in the process -- until her or a lackey is caught in the act, or a victim lives long enough to tell someone who attacked them.
2, Again due to her egotism, she is so convinced of her own importance that when authorities do start investigating, it is not guilt that causes her to slip, but her paranoid certainty that such as the FBI are on her tail and looking into her every move -- because surely they would send their best after her! Now, it doesn't matter where that paranoia is coming from, it is still paranoia, and it can still make a murderer slip.
As to whether there are other factors involved that could cause that downfall, I do think she has an accomplice, and possibly one other than Loren Blake. This is based on the fact that both Loren and Patricia's murders seem to have involved wooden crucifixes (I say "seem"; the writers are a bit shaky on the canon details), and vampyre or no, there are three things I know:
- You need more than two hands to incapacitate a victim and stabilise a cross (Jesus had more than one Roman with him at Golgatha, after all).
- The Casts are fully the type to take a girl power stance in their fantasy matriarchy while also assuming that a woman alone isn't strong enough to murder anyone.
- You don't send a poet to do an assassin's job.
Next, given that the warriors didn't show up until after Patricia's murder, not least the fact that the more people you have involved in your conspiracy, the quicker it fails to remain one, there's enough reason to doubt that Neferet had Loren assist with murder 1, then brought someone in (say, a warrior) for murder 2. I personally reckon, unless there's a big piece I'm missing here, that Neferet had an accomplice, and the writers decided that this person's role no longer mattered right around the end of book 4. Which sucks.
I think the only thing that the books and I agree on is that Neferet would absolutely employ the power of a bigger divine bad in order to make herself a goddess, out of the belief that she could fully quell and manipulate whatever that bigger bad was. Why? For one, it plays into her fatal flaws (see above). The issue I have though is that Neferet would not be defeated once, then settle for a smaller domain to call her own. Again, this is not someone who thinks she can be defeated, and this is also someone who believed she could inspire all of vampyre society to take the world back; she would have taken any small defeat as a sign to aim bigger and higher. To not be goddess-like, but be *the* goddess. Nothing less would do.
By having her take herself down to smaller goals, we lost a chance to see Zoey and her friends work harder and become stronger and more skilled through their graft. Call me brainwashed from a childhood of watching Dragonball Z and Avatar: The Last Airbender, but what's the point in rooting for main characters who don't have to do much of anything for victory?
Goku is a great protagonist because he trained, he gained, and he gave *everything* in his battles, for his friends and the planet. His victories meant so much because he earned them with blood, sweat, tears, and no less than one dead Yamcha (one of his oldest friends, btw!). Frieza's defeat meant so much to us because he kept aiming higher, upping his power levels and metamorphosising to match. He didn't stop with any small defeat - he got stronger and worse. By the end of it, we wanted him *dead.* This was no longer business -- this was PERSONAL, and with the high cost, so was Goku's victory on planet Namek.
Aang was the same way: he gave nothing but his best, and he did it when Fire Lord Ozai had crowned himself the Phoenix King and had Sozin's comet boosting his own firebending, when he was at his strongest. When Aang defeated him, after all he'd lost, he didn't even need to kill him to do it -- he not only took away his bending and humiliated a fascist dictator in the process, but preserved his cultural heritage (the heritage of a genocided culture) and kept his hands clean. He won not only a physical victory, but a spiritual one, too, and you cannot help but love it.
With House of Night, there's none of that. There's no hard fought battle because it was barely fought. With no training of the heroes, no heightening in power, there's nothing to be invested in, no sense that we fought *with* Zoey and her circle, and so no reason to care. And with Neferet having to lose her own power and position before the final battle, with no thanks to Zoey's efforts, well, why did we put a 12-book series into a big(ish) bad that Buffy could have packed up in a two-episode season finale?
And that's really the moral of the story, isn't it? I love the potential of the world, but for what we have on the page, why.... should we care?
Happy belated to the show that reminded me—twice now—how much I love the nuts and bolts of storytelling. <3
I’m a day late to celebrate, but then, I didn’t get to watch S2 until later in 2020, and I didn’t get to rewatch it until pretty recently, so I’m just late all over.
I’ve been trying to articulate in my head for a while now why this moment above fascinates me so much, and it occurred to me tonight that of course it’s because of these moments:
And these moments:
God, this last one. AAAAAAH.
Stranger/SF was the first Kdrama I saw, and in the beginning I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to follow it well enough to get into it, as I tend to find subtitles really distracting…but this moment right here knocked me flat and then ran me over repeatedly, and I never looked back. There’s so much packed into this little scene that I got teary watching it (I still do; I am right now) long before I’d actually gotten attached to the characters; it’s just... beautiful.
Anywho.
It’s a tightrope-walk, figuring out how much backstory to shoehorn into a plot. Too much and it weighs down the pace and confuses the narrative; too little and there isn’t enough of an anchor for a multidimensional protagonist.
Season one had a fairly conventional answer to this: a short prologue + a flashback in the first episode to establish motivation and dramatic irony, followed by a secondary character nosing around for details, leading eventually to a crisis in which the backstory plays a significant role—two, actually, if we’re counting the tabloid-fueled focus on Si-mok’s school days. (And I am counting it: I think Lee Soo-yeon chose that one carefully to be red herring + added pressure on Our Hero + a shot of fuel to keep the pace from getting bogged down by the politics. She really excels at making her plot threads and scenes do double- and triple-duty, which is one of the reasons I find rewatching this show so satisfying.)
Season two’s answer to the problem of backstory is so characteristic of this show’s writing that I’m still stumbling over how classy it was: they just expected their audience to pick up the hints and do the math based on what season one had already established. And relied on Cho Seung-woo’s remarkable acting skills to fill in the blanks, of course: surely that was not a difficult decision.
Stranger/Secret Forest isn’t an extravagant show. It shades in details slowly and sparingly, leaving plenty of room for the audience to engage their imaginations. It rarely spends more than a moment on its leads’ personal lives, so it can get away with this approach; it’s entirely possible to follow the plot without knowing/remembering why Si-mok isn’t staying with his family, why he’s so isolated even though he’s finally back in Seoul. Knowing why is an added layer of meaning, and an expanded understanding of his character. It's pleasure, not (at least so far) necessity.
And yet: this tactic does demand a degree of trust between the show’s creators and the audience that I don't often see in a second season (maybe a third or fourth). Also between the creators and the leads, that they’ll be able to carry the weight of that backstory without the aid of a plot device or two.
Cho Seung-woo certainly delivered. That little hitch forward in the chair when Si-mok sees that the text is from his mother, who's finally caught up with his move back to Seoul, is a goddamn work of art. Everything about this moment is, actually, from the tiny hesitation of his thumb when he texts an agreement to come home to the way he sets the phone down without turning it off, and looks at it like it's going to bite him. AAH, I say. AAAH.
</fangirl swoon>
Now here’s hoping we get some backstory for Yeo-jin in season three (please god, season three). I feel like the focus on fleshing out her character in season two, and the focus on making Si-mok and Yeo-jin’s partnership one that is mutually supportive, was a strong sign that we’re going to get to learn more about her now.
This is an unpopular opinion but I actually want to see the Stenza back in series 12 but definitely not Tim Shaw.
What I want to see is the Stenza Empire because rewatching The Ghost Monument it really felt like they left that hanging. In another show I would think it would be building up to a confrontation between the Doctor and the Stenza Empire.
Especially since the Stenza seems to run concurrent with Earth’s present time, for me, I felt like there was a hanging thread about the Stenza systematically cleansing other planets and systems and while the Doctor wouldn’t want to put her friends in direct danger I feel like she would want to keep an eye on them.
It’s like a confrontation waiting to happen except instead of the Empire showing up to the fight we got a storm trooper trying to punch above their weight.
Sometimes it’s okay not to resolve all your plot. Life isn’t a neat package with a bow, after all. Some things that happen to characters require a whole other story arc that’s separate from the one you’re writing. That’s not to say it doesn’t get resolution, but it’s not happening today, in this story.
How do you know when you have enough arcs before the main arc?? Like, I have four or five arcs before the climax, is this okay?
A minor note: Your entire story should be your main arc, unless you’re writing an anthology or a television show. The other, smaller arcs all build towards the climax, but they’re a part of the main arc.
How do you know you have the right number of plot arcs?
There’s no set number of plot arcs you should have in a story. Some novels have few or one, some have a large handful of consecutive arcs, some have multiple pov characters going through their own unique arcs simultaneously.
The ‘right number’ or arcs is how ever many it takes to guide your characters to the climax while sufficiently amping the tension.
Other things to thing about:
More plot arcs will equal a longer novel.
All plot arcs should have something to do with the main arc.
All plot arcs should allow for character development.
Each plot arc should build on the last plot arc.
Individual plot arcs don’t need to be distinct from each other. (They blur together and overlap. Sometimes smaller plot arcs fit inside larger plot arcs. Sometimes multiple plot arcs run at the same time.)
Hi Mason! Don't worry about deleting the inbox, what's important is your health :) My question is - do you have any tips on creating and resolving conflict so that it seems well-paced and appropriate? I feel like my stories' "big problems" at the end are either so inconsequential that the characters' reactions to them are overdramatic, or so big that my resolutions to them feel forced and not serious/natural enough. How to find the happy medium? Thank you and best wishes for your recovery!
I think that this depends on a few factors, and it’s going to be different depending on the kinds of problems your story is dealing with, as well as the tone of the piece and the kinds of characters you’re writing about.
A problem that seems inconsequential to some may turn into a big problem for someone else, either because it happens to be something that they’re not equipped to deal with, or because they refuse to deal with it early on, and the problem snowballs into a big problem. In this case, you might want to think about why it is that the character has allowed this to get out of hand – did they dismiss it as no big deal until it was too big to ignore? Have they been struggling to deal with it without any success and were, perhaps, simply too embarrassed or proud to ask for help?
Sometimes the ostensible problem of the story isn’t the real difficulty, say that the problem that the characters think they’re having is something practical: who is going to be in charge of the family ice cream parlour when Mum retires? This could be a fairly big problem on its own, but paired with, say, a couple of brothers who are constantly arguing and miscommunicating with one another, but who both want to run the parlour, it takes on the dimensions of a family drama.
So, if your problem seems too small to be creating such a big issue, think about the ‘hidden’ problems that are going along with it, what are the roadblocks that your characters are facing interpersonally, or in terms of their health or mental illness or financial circumstances, or any number of other ‘invisible’ issues that might be getting in the way of them being able to deal with a small problem. These things will help make the trouble around the little problem understandable and relatable, but it will also help to flesh out your characters and plotlines.
As well, in thinking about character reactions to problems, perhaps someone behaving in an ‘overdramatic’ manner about the problem is, in itself, a problem? This could be an interesting moment.
I remember a scene from a movie (though I don’t remember the movie itself) where a character very specifically asks her husband to buy her a dozen lemons. He comes home with one lemon, and she explodes and they have a massive argument. She didn’t want the lemons for anything essential, but this interaction, and her perception that the husband didn’t care about her or the things she was trying to do, was brought to a head by the seemingly insignificant matter of a dozen lemons.
It illustrated a lot about both of their characters in how they responded to the situation, as well as about their whole relationship dynamic. (That said, I don’t think the movie was all that amazing, as this one scene is the only thing that stands out about it in my memory.)
Now, going the other way, the big problem that seems to wrap up too easily can be really disappointing. I think that the biggest thing to do is to decide to allow some things to go wrong or be unresolved. You want there to be a cost to the victory. It doesn’t have to be something massive, but amongst the general sense of success and completion, there should be some minor notes of discord or disruption.
Thinking about The Lord of the Rings as an example, the BIG problem of the series is wrapped up when the one ring goes into the volcano. That’s it, right? Problems solved!
Well, not quite. There are a lot of issues that still need to be dealt with, and there are problems that are never resolved, and tragedies that occur after their great victory. Frodo never recovers from the wound he received on Weathertop, the elves go into the west, the Shire is scourged by Saruman. These are all part of the great big problem, but they aren’t so easily wrapped up with the major victory, they’re part of the change that has occurred in the world during the course of the story.
Part of making a good resolution of a big problem, is acknowledging that not everything can be resolved. Those small moments of un-resolution show that the story means something, that there are consequences for what has happened, and that victory comes with a cost.
Now, as to how you go about figuring out these elements, I am, as usual, going to recommend a brainstorming or listing of what your options are.
Small problems:
Who is dealing with/ not dealing with this problem?
What is their attitude to the problem?
How do they intend to approach the problem?
Who else knows about/ has to deal with this problem?
Are they going to have a conflict over dealing with the problem?
What are the consequences that the characters will face if the problem isn’t dealt with?
What is the best possible outcome?
What is the worst possible outcome?
What other issues are the characters dealing with, that might make this problem more difficult to deal with?
Big problems:
Who is able to deal with this problem?
Who is willing to deal with this problem?
Who will this problem affect if it isn’t dealt with?
What are the side effects of this problem occurring?
In the best case scenario how would this problem be resolved?
In the worst case scenario, what would happen?
What smaller problems are the protagonists unable to deal with because they’re working on this big problem?
In what ways does this big problem change the world of the story?
In what ways does this big problem change the characters who deal with it?
Thanks for your well wishes, and I hope this helps!
Does anybody else expect the University of What It Is to be a part of this arc? I mean- they dropped it so suddenly and left us with so many questions, it'd make some sense if it was. It seems they're filling up more plot holes from Year 1 in this arc.
