Gratuitous Danger and Other Bad Writing
So, you hate gratuitous sex?
Well, aberwyn has just coined a great term, "gratuitous danger."
Here's my response to that post, slightly tweaked, below...
What a great post and a great term, "gratuitous danger." I absolutely hate it even more than gratuitous anything else. Gratuitous danger is what makes idiot plots.... The number one culprit.
Instead of having a story arrive at a crisis and resolution via character development and natural narrative logic, some authors are compelled to throw in a "crisis" out of left field, usually toward the end, to give the protagonist an excuse to rush around and do something. Usually something unnecessary, out of character, and anticlimactic, or worse, something that throws the reader out of the main theme development and deteriorates the readerly bond with the narrative.
Romance novels are particularly guilty of this -- usually the last quarter of the book has a villain who pops out of the woodwork and abducts the heroine, and the hero has to rush to the rescue. UGH! What a total waste of my time as a reader!
Why not have the resolution hinge on a battle of wits or an emotional cathartic interaction between the main characters instead? After all, that's what any good story is about -- how people we learned to care about (protagonists) learn to understand each other and break though personal barriers of "self" and "other."
All else is just shitola.
And the best action sequences happen when there is a good reason for them.
So, no more gratuitous danger, I say! :-) Enough!
If, as a writer, you feel your ending is lacking in conflict and tension (it probably is), it's the inter-character tension you need to re-write, not throw in some idiot mayhem as an external distraction from the fact that your real story is shallow, underdeveloped, or outright faulty.
Well, aberwyn has just coined a great term, "gratuitous danger."
Here's my response to that post, slightly tweaked, below...
What a great post and a great term, "gratuitous danger." I absolutely hate it even more than gratuitous anything else. Gratuitous danger is what makes idiot plots.... The number one culprit.
Instead of having a story arrive at a crisis and resolution via character development and natural narrative logic, some authors are compelled to throw in a "crisis" out of left field, usually toward the end, to give the protagonist an excuse to rush around and do something. Usually something unnecessary, out of character, and anticlimactic, or worse, something that throws the reader out of the main theme development and deteriorates the readerly bond with the narrative.
Romance novels are particularly guilty of this -- usually the last quarter of the book has a villain who pops out of the woodwork and abducts the heroine, and the hero has to rush to the rescue. UGH! What a total waste of my time as a reader!
Why not have the resolution hinge on a battle of wits or an emotional cathartic interaction between the main characters instead? After all, that's what any good story is about -- how people we learned to care about (protagonists) learn to understand each other and break though personal barriers of "self" and "other."
All else is just shitola.
And the best action sequences happen when there is a good reason for them.
So, no more gratuitous danger, I say! :-) Enough!
If, as a writer, you feel your ending is lacking in conflict and tension (it probably is), it's the inter-character tension you need to re-write, not throw in some idiot mayhem as an external distraction from the fact that your real story is shallow, underdeveloped, or outright faulty.