"Drama" should never be caused by "The stupid, it burns"
I really hate when the drama is caused by a character being inexplicably dumb.
I just finished listening to Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, and the "tension" of the climactic battle at the end of the book is driven by inexplicable stupidity.
So, people have superpowers, and one of the superpowers is to suppress other superpowers.
Mare (our narrator) and Cal (whose power is fire) are facing down 5 people who aim to kill them. Mare is having her very strong lighting/electricity power suppressed by a 6th person, who she can see, standing there, over in the doorway. She needs him to lose/weaken his hold over her for just a moment, and then she can really cut loose.
Before the fight starts, does Mare whisper to Cal to immediately attack the person suppressing Mare's lightning powers so that they can have 2 to 5 odds? No.
Does Cal, who is supposed to be a great strategist, immediately move to attack that person? No.
At this point, I wanted the bad guys to win, because, wow, holy fucking shit, that's GRADE A STUPID.
She eventually uses her cunning to trick one of the bad guys into killing the Suppressor, BUT ...
What really gets me is that this could've been avoided with some very simple changes in the story.
Mare arrives at the final confrontation and knows that the Suppressor is somewhere near, because she can't access her power, but she's not quite sure where he's at.
I just finished listening to Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, and the "tension" of the climactic battle at the end of the book is driven by inexplicable stupidity.
So, people have superpowers, and one of the superpowers is to suppress other superpowers.
Mare (our narrator) and Cal (whose power is fire) are facing down 5 people who aim to kill them. Mare is having her very strong lighting/electricity power suppressed by a 6th person, who she can see, standing there, over in the doorway. She needs him to lose/weaken his hold over her for just a moment, and then she can really cut loose.
Before the fight starts, does Mare whisper to Cal to immediately attack the person suppressing Mare's lightning powers so that they can have 2 to 5 odds? No.
Does Cal, who is supposed to be a great strategist, immediately move to attack that person? No.
At this point, I wanted the bad guys to win, because, wow, holy fucking shit, that's GRADE A STUPID.
She eventually uses her cunning to trick one of the bad guys into killing the Suppressor, BUT ...
What really gets me is that this could've been avoided with some very simple changes in the story.
Mare arrives at the final confrontation and knows that the Suppressor is somewhere near, because she can't access her power, but she's not quite sure where he's at.