Ten alternatives to writing a 'character learns a lesson' story

[limyaael]

In a way (a very vague way) this is like one of those rants about things I think are cool and ignored too often, but it concentrates more on plot and characterization ideas than world-building or themes. And it springs directly out of having read far too many fantasy short stories that follow the exact same structure

Comments

[dragovianknight]

I was hoping for something along the lines of #10, though in my brain I phrased it, "The Obviously Right character actually is hopelessly WRONG, because the fantasy world isn't 21st century Earth."

[limyaael]

I've read a few stories where the character ignores some fact of the fantasy world and gets butchered for it, but I've seen very few that aren't simple reversals of the lesson story, or another breed of it. I'd like to see something more complicated done with the concept.

[trinity_clare]

Number 6 is killing me. I haven't seen the new Star Wars movie yet, and everything that remotely ties in to it sticks out at me like a sore thumb.

[kid_apocalypse]

Amen to that. I just saw aforesaid Star Wars movie yesterday, and as terrible as I am at criticism, I think the 'seduction and surrender' part of it was well done. But if you see it and disagree with me, feel free to spork me viciously via email or comment or something.

Beautiful icon, btw.

[trinity_clare]

From what I've heard, it was well done.

Thank you. :-)

[raleighj]

:: spork! ::

****Spoiler-ish stuff, here****

I thought it was rather muddled and rushed in its execution.

But there was incredible potential. Lucas hit upon a crisis of faith mixed with the Nietzschien ubermensch "beyond good and evil" idea. And developed it very well until 1) the return of Petulant!Ani, and 2) the "become consumed by the Dark Side in 60 seconds" part. (On #2...it's one thing, I think, to open yourself up to the Dark Side, and say "teach me." It's quite another to become so consumed and blinded and overcome by it that you kill all the Jedi within the next hour).

[limyaael]

It's odd how rebellion and personal desires get contained and channeled in a fantasy world. The archetypal generic fantasy character is the rebellious teenager who runs away from home, yet that teenager often gets snatched up by someone else/another group of people and made to do what they want, which doesn't coincide with his or her initial plans. If a moment of confrontation comes, it's against people it's pretty safe to confront, like a Dark Lord that can't hurt the teenager, or parents who crumple up into dust at the first shout. So the teenager ends the story not what he or she wanted to be, and yet pretty damn content about it. It's weird.

[dwg]

5 & 6 are my pet favourites. saadiira has me trained on #5 from our online writing-fests. Oft times she's got the moral character that's trying to convince the sociopath that it's wrong to kill and maim innocent people, though lately the tables have turned and I'm trying hard to write something along the lines of just surviving having the amoral dictating the rules. Which kinda leads into #6, which I really want to sit down and do in conjunction with a transformative fantasy. I've got a nice, slightly unusual world, and nice, slightly unusual leading man, and my fingers are itching to rip not just his own personal world apart, but the world at large too. It'll be interesting to see how he copes both with his own personal problems and those with the rest of the universe as it goes turvy-topsy.

I urgently need to set aside some of my weekends to just sit and work on this. I have a feeling I can do this well.

[limyaael]

Good luck with the transformative fantasy. It does sound like you could do one well, and, of course, it always helps when you have training in one kind of the background writing. :)

That, and I'm happy to see other people adopting my term for the genre and deciding to write in it.

[dwg]

Not very meany people (at least in the areas that I read, and I'll admit that I usually stick to the horror / dark fantasy genres) seem to write about that sort of thing, and I find the idea exciting. It adds a while new dimension to, "I'm not trying to change the world, I'm just trying to get by in it," attitude.

[ex_l_clause]

#10--shit. I tried to write a story once where the value being taught is that "men are born cowards and only become brave through training in discipline." It's easy to make the people in the story's world believe that thing after the "lesson," but afterwards I had to deal with a mass of complaints from readers who claim to be "rugged individualists" and who say that the character "should have found another way out" like it was easy to do under the weighty stare of a respected authority figure. Most of them tell me that the characters should be more individualistic.

Now who's supposed to make the story here?

[limyaael]

Rewriting and rebuilding may be the answer in that case. It's one thing if one reader doesn't get it, but for a story to go against the strong reactions of a people, there's either something about the story that really pushes their buttons (I dig my heels in when the author starts a monologue about how many great things the character has done in the past), or the story needs to be stronger. Rewriting could probably help.

[ex_l_clause]

That was exactly what I thought after I looked over the flood of initial responses. There was one fundamental fault: I did not insert enough cultural details so the readers mostly judged the charcters' actions by Western cultural standards insted of the world's culture. If I had spent a little more time on writing out the specific distinctions in interaction patterns, I guess the result would have been much better.

Of course, I didn't, and that was why the story got kicked all over the place.