Mmm. That's a very good point. Tension and drama - which is basically tension, heh - is very important in fiction. In fact it's very important in real life too. We only tell stories about ourselves that involve a sense of conflict, no matter how minor, how mundane
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If there's no conflict, I'm not interested. There has to be something happening, something moving, something changing when two people touch one another's lives. If there isn't, it's an absolute waste of time.
And that's why I find it hard to hang on with a lot of the rps I've done. The majority of the people that are on my f-list are amazing writers and can write characters brilliantly. But there's only so much I can stand of random, pointless character interaction before I want to bang my head against the wall
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I bet if you took a Fiction 101 course you'd hate it, and you'd want to break all the rules. It's probably much more fun to discover them yourself.
Dramatic tension is certainly one way to make something interesting. Not all dramatic tension is conflict, though. Something that is boring probably lacks both dramatic tension and conflict. Even if there's conflict it can get boring. For example, consider the movie Braveheart, the three-hour Mel Gibson vehicle. (Yes, I know it's viewed, not read, but somebody had to write it.) I got bored two-thirds of the way through. There was plenty of conflict. In fact, the same damn thing over and over. That's why it was boring. Tension or conflict can be boring if it's predictable, too
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And that's why I find it hard to hang on with a lot of the rps I've done. The majority of the people that are on my f-list are amazing writers and can write characters brilliantly. But there's only so much I can stand of random, pointless character interaction before I want to bang my head against the wall ( ... )
Reply
I bet if you took a Fiction 101 course you'd hate it, and you'd want to break all the rules. It's probably much more fun to discover them yourself.
Dramatic tension is certainly one way to make something interesting. Not all dramatic tension is conflict, though. Something that is boring probably lacks both dramatic tension and conflict. Even if there's conflict it can get boring. For example, consider the movie Braveheart, the three-hour Mel Gibson vehicle. (Yes, I know it's viewed, not read, but somebody had to write it.) I got bored two-thirds of the way through. There was plenty of conflict. In fact, the same damn thing over and over. That's why it was boring. Tension or conflict can be boring if it's predictable, too ( ... )
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