I promise no one is raging that these four didn't start the story as badasses.
Every time we critique the first book in a series, the first movie in a trilogy, or the first season of a TV show, it is inevitable that the comments section will flood with folks demanding to know how we could do such a thing. Don’t we know there’s more to the story than this? How can we judge the first installment on its own?
Oddly, this never happens when we praise something. When I dissected the worldbuilding of Three Parts Dead, I noticed a distinct lack of people asking how I could praise just the first book in a series. What if the later books ruined everything I said was good?
Obviously, a lot of this sentiment is little more than fan ragers looking for any excuse to invalidate critique of something they like. But there is also some genuine confusion here. A book series, film trilogy, or TV show could each be considered a single story, so how and why would we critique just part of it? I’ve discussed this before over several articles, and now it’s time to put the salient points all in one place.*
Every Moment Matters
There is a pervasive idea among some people – generally fans of whatever story we might be discussing – that it doesn’t matter how the audience feels in any particular moment, so long as a story’s content is in service of something later. This philosophy can be applied across multiple books, within one book, or even to a single chapter.
You might be bored to tears because there’s too much technobabble, but you need all that technobabble to understand the hero’s brilliant solution in the climax. Sure, the world might be confusing because you’re expected to memorize 42 varieties of elf, but that’ll be important three books from now when a 42-way elven war breaks out. It’s not much fun to read about a puppy-kicking protagonist, but it’s important that you stick with the story for the catharsis of the hero learning not to kick puppies.
Suffice to say, this is not a productive way to look at storytelling, especially for storytellers themselves. The most practical issue is that audiences have no reason to push past boring or confusing parts of the story. Both experienced and newbie authors have a habit of maintaining the same patterns throughout the entirety of a story. That means if there’s a problem early in the story, it’ll probably be there for the rest of the story too, whether that’s one book or ten.
Even if there actually is a later payoff, and said payoff is better than my snarky examples, it doesn’t magically undo how unpleasant getting to that payoff was. Nothing can do that, thanks to the linear nature of space-time. Some people might weight a story’s ending so heavily that this can actually work out for them, but it’s pretty unrealistic to expect everyone else to feel that way.
From a storyteller’s standpoint, if a trilogy’s premise requires that book one be boring or confusing so it can set up books two and three, that’s not a reason for readers to buckle down and push through the unpleasant stuff. Instead, it’s a sign that the premise needs to be revised so that the first book can be enjoyable too.
For a real example, consider the Clone Wars TV show. The first season, along with most of the second season, is rough. Really rough. Anakin is the same wooden grump we know so well from the prequels, Ahsoka is an annoying child sidekick, the bad guys alternate between laughable incompetence and mustache-twirling evil, and Ziro the Hutt competes with Jar Jar Binks for the title of Star Wars’ worst alien.
The show gets better. Much better. Anakin matures into a far more interesting and tragic character than we ever get in the prequel films. Ahsoka becomes a fan favorite, first for her upbeat attitude in the face of long odds and then for her crushing disillusionment with the Jedi Order. The later seasons are some of Star Wars’ best storytelling, but we didn’t need the terrible first season to get there. Better writing and direction could have made the show a classic much earlier, and saying “it gets better later” doesn’t do anything for someone stuck reviewing one of Ziro’s inane criminal schemes.
At a smaller scale, writers miss the chance to make easy improvements because they think a later payoff is all that matters. If beta readers report that the protagonist isn’t sympathetic, that can be remedied by giving the character problems that aren’t their fault. But an author is less likely to do that if they think everything will be fine once the hero loses it all at the start of book two.
No One Thinks Unresolved Arcs Are Mistakes
Once we filter out the fan-rage interference, there’s a genuine fear among authors whenever a first book, season, or movie is critiqued: that they’ll be instantly judged for arcs that haven’t resolved yet. It’s easy to imagine readers throwing a book away in disgust because the murderer’s identity isn’t revealed in chapter one or abandoning a character halfway through their growth from naive farm kid to grizzled veteran.
Fortunately, this isn’t something to worry about, as it’s very easy to tell an unresolved arc from a story element that isn’t working. At the end of the novel A Game of Thrones, it’s clear that the political situation in Westeros remains an unresolved conflict. Through dialogue and narration, we see that the war has just started, so we know Martin didn’t forget to tie things up at the end. Nor are we expecting a resolution so early, because Martin already gave us a satisfying conclusion to the first book: the execution of Eddard Stark. That death signals the end of negotiation-based conflicts and the start of open war.
Compare that to something like the Eagle Problem* from The Fellowship of the Ring. This isn’t an unresolved arc; it’s just a situation where the characters ignore an obvious advantage. When the story’s main conflict is about heroes reaching a destination, and there are eagles who can carry people, readers will naturally wonder why the eagles don’t carry the heroes to their destination. Mordor doesn’t seem to have much in the way of air defenses, and the book is pretty clear that Gwaihir the Windlord holds Gandalf in high esteem.
Tolkien could certainly have offered an explanation in The Two Towers or Return of the King, but it would still have felt like a mistake in Fellowship. Something that obvious really needs to be addressed in the moment. As it happens, Tolkien didn’t offer such an explanation. In fact, by book three’s ending, the problem has only gotten worse. Not only is it obvious that the Great Eagles could easily sweep Nazgûl and Fellbeast alike from the sky, but we also see that they’re indeed willing to fly all the way to Mt. Doom. That’s exactly what they do when Frodo needs to be airlifted back to Gondor.
As long as an unresolved arc is clearly marked, readers and critics alike will easily pick up on it. That said, leaving things unresolved isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. If a story has no resolution at its end, that’s a problem worth criticizing, even if the next book resolves everything.
Likewise, if an author leaves too many things hanging, it’s reasonable to question whether any conclusion exists that could possibly resolve them all. You might remember how even in Lost’s first season, there were simply too many open mysteries to ever be satisfactorily explained. The Way of Kings has the same problem with its Parshendi. So much about the Parshendi doesn’t make sense that it’s difficult to imagine an uncontrived scenario for them, no matter how many books the series ends up having.
Character arcs are similar to external arcs. If a character ends the first book with unresolved issues, that won’t be a problem so long as it feels like some progress has been made. No one looks at a story like The Mandalorian and demands to know why the hero doesn’t start the first episode with healthy emotional bonds; we’re happy to watch him develop those over time. However, there is an important caveat for such arcs: a character has to be engaging at the beginning of their arc as well as the end. Audiences are happy to watch the protagonist develop over multiple books. They’re less happy when the protagonist starts off as an obnoxious bully and slowly transforms into someone who’s fun to read about.
Good Critique Requires Examining the First Installment
For storytellers to improve their craft, they need to accept critique, and they can’t wait until they’ve finished a series to get it. If they don’t polish up the first book, they’ll have trouble writing a great series in the first place.
This isn’t always easy to remember. The internet is full of superfans who will happily explain that any problem with their favorite story doesn’t count because it’s fixed in the sequel, but those do not represent most of the people who will read your book. When a story has that level of devotion, it’s usually because the author is already famous and successful, giving them room to make mistakes that most of us could never get away with.
Alternatively, sometimes an author is so good at one element of storytelling that fans assume everything else must be just as good. Someone who’s a master of character development surely wouldn’t add in dragons that don’t make any sense; it must be a deep worldbuilding mystery for part two! Needless to say, this level of skill isn’t something we can just assume we’ll have, either.
If a series can only be judged in its entirety, that would make critique absurdly impractical. Any series could protect itself from criticism just by being really long. Most critics don’t have the time to read a 14-book mega-series, so those stories would be unreasonably difficult to talk about.
That’s assuming they’re even complete. New books couldn’t be critiqued at all, since it takes several years at minimum to finish a series, to say nothing of series that never get finished at all. When would it be okay to critique an incomplete series? Do we have to wait until the author clearly abandons it or until they die? What if the publisher hires someone else to finish the series for them?
You can see how unworkable that paradigm is. It’s also unfair to series where the first installment is excellent but the rest goes downhill. Season one of Heroes is still good, despite what came after!
The bottom line is that stories are sold as separate products, even when they’re part of a series. If a book needs its sequel to be good, then why are they sold separately? We can all see how weird it would be if companies sold us half a smartphone, then made us wait two years to buy the other half.* Stories are the same way. If something about them isn’t working when first published, broadcast, or streamed, then that’s a problem, even if the sequel eventually fixes it.
P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
>The most practical issue is that audiences have no reason to push past boring or confusing parts of the story
YES! THIS!
Especially these days, when I can choose between slogging through your story in the hope that maybe it will somehow get so much better that this will have been worth it, or seeing who’s embarrassing themself on Twitter
Yes. If the first book in a series bores me, I will definitely not pay attention to book number two or three. There’s too much to read and too much to occupy myself with otherwise.
As I like to say, it doesn’t matter how amazing the second half of a story is if I can’t be bothered finishing the first half.
Yep. I have a huge backlog of books to read, so if a book doesn’t catch me in the first couple of chapters, I drop it and read another one instead.
Had that experience with the end of Supernatural’s pilot episode. (Spoilers). I really didn’t like it when that one brother’s girlfriend was just found hanging from the sealing. I’m not remembering their names off the top of my head.
This is such a mood. I remember a friend telling me Supernatural was really great back in 2014 and when I was unimpressed by the first couple episodes they said, “Don’t worry, it gets better in season 5!”
The worst part is that I watched all the way to season 5 and all the parts I hadn’t liked earlier were still there and exactly the same as before.
Thanks for providing a deeper explanation of how you view the ‘eagle problem’. Your analysis is actually closer my own than I’d thought; the problem isn’t that the characters didn’t take the eagles to Mordor, it’s that there’s no good explanation offered at any point for WHY they won’t take the eagles.
Do you think that a small discussion during the council of Elrond, where one character brings up the eagles and then it’s explained why they can’t take them, would suffice?
That would have been just fine, I think
As long as the explanation itself is at least halfway decent
The “eagle problem” is addressed in the supplementary material. It’s not outright stated, but not using the eagles 1) avoids the Nazgul, and 2) keep the Valar out of the fight. The former is explained by Sauron’s seeing stone–it would be impossible to keep the mission secret if they flew. The latter is the more important. Eagles aren’t independent entities in Tolkien’s works; they are servants of Manwe, and represent him taking a hand in the events of the world. The Valar realized that attempting to rule the world was a Bad Thing, and that they were supposed to let the elves and humans rule themselves, acting as guides not gods. Thus the Istari (the wizards) coming in the guise of old men, for example. The eagles not getting involved is an extension of that. The eagles getting involved at the end is an example of what Tolkien calls eucatastrophy–some extraordinary good thing that occurs to counter the general trend towards decay in his world (based on his view of the world in general).
As for why the eagles help Gandalf so frequently, remember that Gandalf is Maia. He’s from Valinor, on a mission from Manwe (until Moria, after which he was on a mission from someone further up the food chain). It’s more a professional courtesy than anything else.
I admit it’s not easy to wrap your head around all this, and it takes a fair bit of digging to really understand why Tolkien did what he did. He could have put a line in from Gandalf reminding everyone why the eagles won’t help, about the time he mentions that the folks in Valinor wouldn’t accept the Ring. And Tolkien liked to reference back to The Hobbit. But the information is there.
As for the Battle of the Black Gate, the eagles only saved anyone in the movie. In the books they arrived, but were irrelevant to the outcome. That battle was a ruse, a distraction; victory or failure was irrelevant (per “The Last Debate”). That it happened was the important thing as far as Aragorn and the rest were concerned; success and failure were irrelevant considerations, as the whole thing hinged on Frodo.
For the record, in the books as well as the movie, the Eagles arrive to save Aragorn and his force at the Black Gate. From Book VI, Chapter 4:
The Field of Cormallen
***
There came Gwaihir the Windlord, and Landroval his brother, greatest of all the Eagles of the North, mightiest of the descendants of old Thorondor, who built his eyries in the inaccessible peaks of the Encircling Mountains when Middle-earth was young. Behind them in long swift lines came all their vassals from the northern mountains, speeding on a gathering wind. Straight down upon the Nazgûl they bore, stooping suddenly out of the high airs, and the rush of their wide wings as they passed over was like a gale.
But the Nazgûl turned and fled, and vanished into Mordor’s shadows, hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower; and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them; and now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid.
***
So the idea that the Eagles aren’t willing to fight Sauron is simply untrue. Combined with their constant assistance of Gandalf, the Eagles are basically willing to do everything *except* the one thing that would most efficiently end the conflict. There’s no good way to explain this in the story, it’s simply a contrivance to get Tolkien the plot he wanted.
Which to be clear, is better than the alternative. It would be an incredibly boring book if the Eagles just zipped Frodo over to Mt. Doom and back again. The fix here is not setting up an easy solution that needs to be ignored in the first place.
“So the idea that the Eagles aren’t willing to fight Sauron is simply untrue.”
I didn’t say that the eagles aren’t willing to fight Sauron. I said that the intervention of the eagles was part of the eucatastrophy–the indirect intervention of the Valar in the affairs of Middle-Earth–and that ultimately this intervention was irrelevant, because victory and loss at that battle was irrelevant. The battle had to occur, but only to distract Sauron, so regarding the plot it didn’t matter. It only mattered for Tolkien’s over-arching theme (general decline in civilization with brief, bright periods that re-elevate it). Plus, again, the eagles aren’t free agents. They’re willing to help Gandalf because Manwe is willing to do so. They couldn’t fight Sauron until Manwe let them. That’s not a contrivance, it’s the central theme of at least half of The Silimarillion. Again, this is why the Istari were sent–because direct or indirect intervention by the Valar was contrary to the Music of Illuvator. The Children of Illuvator needed to be guided and helped, but emphatically not ruled, by the Valar.
You also misunderstand why the Nazgul left the battlefields. They didn’t fly away from the eagles, but rather TO Mount Doom. They weren’t retreating, they were trying to attack Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. That’s the moment when Sauron realized what was going on–the moment Frodo declared the Ring as his own and revealed himself–the moment Gollum clocked Sam on the head–the moment the entire plot to destroy the Ring is revealed to Sauron. Sauron called the Nazgul in a last, futile effort to thwart the real problem, realizing that he’d fallen for a clever ruse. If that hadn’t been the case, it’s unclear who would have won that fight. Why Tolkien had them come is an open question; for my part, I think it’s to reflect the Battle of the Five Armies (which would have been a much better example of the point you’re making, by the way; the only excuse for that is “It’s a children’s book”, which is no excuse at all).
Further: If you read the chapter after the Council of Elrond, you’ll see that the Fellowship was only one of many examples of a group sent from Imladris. The purpose of this was, in part, to confound Sauron, making it difficult if not impossible for him to identify where the Ring went at first. He knew it was in Elrond’s house, but not where it went after that. It’s a small part, easily missed, but really important to understanding why the Fellowship did what they did. (Remember, elf-lords went with those other parties–including Elrond’s sons–so it would be reasonable to think any one of them had the Ring.) Galadriel was adding her own plots to the mix, to confuse Sauron even more. If instead the Fellowship had been put on eagles and flown to Mount Doom, Sauron would have no doubts about where the Ring was, seeing it in his Seeing Stone, and all the forces of Mordor would have been after them. There would have been no hope for secrecy, and the only option would have been to fight their way through all the forces of Mordor–a fight they knew they couldn’t win. If nothing else the orcs would have covered Mount Doom with archers and shot down anything that flew over it. Plus, they’d have to get word to the eagles, which wouldn’t have been easy. Remember, the 14 day trek to Bombadil was considered too perilous to undertake, according to the Council of Elrond.
As for Cay Reet’s point: Tolkien wasn’t writing a modern fantasy book. He was writing a legendarium, in which understanding one book does require reading multiple others. His target audience was people who would dig into it. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, a giant nerd, obsessed with ancient Germanic and Celtic legends, and making his own. (This leads to some fun realizations–for example, the narrator of LOTR is not a reliable one, but it’s unclear to what extent. It also explains that weird preface and the nature of the appendixes.)
You don’t need to read the other stuff to understand Tolkien’s story. Again, there’s enough in LOTR to understand why the eagles weren’t an option. But the larger themes require understanding the broader story. LOTR is merely one war in a long history, and those larger themes, while present in LOTR, only really become clear when you read that larger story. And that’s entirely fair. It’s like an episode of Buffy–there’s stuff immediately relevant to the plot of the episode, then there’s stuff that only makes sense if you understand the arc of the entire season. You can enjoy the episode as a stand-alone work, but you get more out of it if you watch the entire season.
James, you are describing a plot contrivance. You’ve shifted the goal posts a couple of times now, so I’m gonna bow out.
Nah, he’s right. He’s not “shifting the goalposts,” he’s providing additional information about the story and construction of the narrative. Nor is this a “plot contrivance,” it’s just non-human actors behaving in ways that are sometimes mysterious and inscrutable to people. The Valar are not humans, they are deities—they can behave in ways that seem illogical or inconsistent without that being a storytelling “error,” unless you want to do a CinemaSins to all hitherto existing human mythologies. This is because such entities are often meant to be more representational than literal. The way they interact with the characters reflects some truth about correct human action, about the nature of the universe, about invisible forces like fate or karma, or about the gods themselves. Refusing to engage with these elements of stories renders your analysis powerless; it’s a common deficiency in the crowd that cut their literary teeth in such august forums as SpaceBattles versus threads and the comment sections of Nostalgia Critic videos.
The eagle problem should be solved in the novel, not in secondary material. No reader should have to read everything by an author to understand a plot point in one book.
While it’s technically possible to explain the Eagle Problem with enough text, I think this is an issue best fixed by changing the core situation. For example: if Gwaihir was the *only* great eagle, this would make a lot more sense. Even if he’s strong, he’s just one bird, he probably can’t defeat all of Mordor’s flying monsters, and it would be easy to see him coming.
This way Gandalf could still be saved by an eagle, and a single eagle could still retrieve Sam and Frodo from Mt. Doom. The only thing they’d have to change is the battle at the Black Gates, which isn’t even hard. We don’t need the eagles to save Aragorn and co, the forces of Mordor can simply lose their nerve and break when Sauron is killed.
Reigniting the question of why didn’t the eagles carry Frodo all the way to Mordor ? Oooooh boy, Oren really likes dangling a piece of fish in front of a horde of ravenous stray cats doesn’t he…
Sometimes you have to stand on the side of truth!
Gandalf can’t carry the ring, nor the the elves, nor Aragon, not even the dwarf. Can you tell us why the eagles would have been able to carry the ring without falling under it’s influence?
In the words of Samwise Gamgees “I can carry you.”
The Eagles wouldn’t be carrying the ring directly, they’d be carrying Frodo. There’s nothing to suggest the corruption transfers that way.
There might have been hints suggesting that you don’t need to directly touch the ring to be affected by it, though; both Boromir and Smegol (and maybe Faramir too? I’m not sure) were only in the vicinity of the ring, as far as I can remember, and they both ended up desiring it. And didn’t Galadriel desire the ring as well? That one might be unrelated, though.
Please tell me if I’m getting anything wrong; it’s been quite a while since I read the book or watched the films, so I might be remembering incorrectly.
You’re absolutely correct that the ring can tempt people in its vicinity, not just the bearer. But the instant “I’m evil now” effect only happens if you’re holding it. That’s why Gandalf can be in a party with Frodo, and why Aragorn can check Frodo for injuries, but neither of them can carry it.
LotR is an odd fit when you’re talking sequels (to say nothing of leading with a still from the films) because it was famously written to be one book. So The Two Towers and Return of the King aren’t sequels at all, they’re just later points in the narrative.
Not that this invalidates the Eagle Problem, it’s still a problem that doesn’t get resolved anywhere along the line. But it’s not a *sequel* problem, just a plain old plot hole.
Granted, it was originally published in three parts over slightly more than a year (due to paper restrictions at the time).
I think flaws are a bigger problem in a book than in a TV show. It seems pretty well understood that, because there are so many different people trying to work together, it always takes a while for a show to find its feet. I recently started rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the first two episodes are so weird and bad that I’m amazed Nick gave the show a chance. It’s a good thing they did, though: ATLA was a watershed moment in Western children’s television. Producers and publishers have tended to believe that American children aren’t sophisticated enough to handle things like big words or nuance or plots that take longer than 20 minutes to resolve, but ATLA showed that kids can appreciate serialized storytelling with morally complex characters and heavy concepts, as long as there’s fun stuff in it too. But you gotta get through a bunch of penguin sledding first.
Oof, yeah. I also came to the show well after it was over, and had a similar reaction. Season one in general was pretty rough with lots of aimless faffing about for heavy-handed morality lessons, which really bothered me with how at odds it was with the established stakes. I wouldn’t have kept watching if the word of mouth around the show wasn’t so glowing. I am of course glad that I did, but I’m a lot more critical of the show than most people (and apparently the only person on the planet who prefers Legend of Korra :P).
I also prefer LoK! In my experience, most people who didn’t take to AtLA like Korra while people who loved AtLA a lot dislike Korra.
My nieces and nephew who watched them back to back think they are both great shows and shouldn’t be compared.
I think without nostalgia and the comparison, Korra gets a lot better, but just because AtLA wasn’t for me doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.
ATLA is perhaps better-executed overall, but LOK gets a lot of points for its ambition. I only wish they had the budget to match that ambition. Plus I love the dieselpunk aesthetic, and Bolin is my favorite himbo. When the TTRPG comes out, the Korra era is the one I most want to play in.
Oh, boy, if you think producers deem American youth audience incapable of understanding those things, your should see the Brazilian ones. They dumb down almost every show/ movie.
As an example, in Disney’s latest Encanto, during Luisa’s song she references Hercules and Cerberus. Mind you, those are not some obscure piece of American pop culture, that foreigners wouldn’t grasp.
But I’m the dubbed version, she says something like “I’m nervous, like a hero who got tired in a horrendous fight”.
Not to mention how the rest of the music completely ignored the reason for her mental strain, just repeating over and over how she feels stressed out.
“Alternatively, sometimes an author is so good at one element of storytelling that fans assume everything else must be just as good.”
This puts me in mind of a similar bad faith defensive tactic I’ve seen a lot lately; the idea that because a story deliberately tackled a sensitive topic, that its execution of that topic is above criticism. Redemption arcs in general are hotbeds for this, with the most prominent example in recent fandom being discussions of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power regarding the character arc of Catra, and her relationship with Adora.
Critics of the show argue that Catra’s final season redemption is rushed and unearned, hinging on universal instant forgiveness that itself borders on everyone on the show spontaneously forgetting everything Catra has done throughout the previous four seasons. Further, that making her and Adora an official couple undercuts not only Adora’s personal growth, but all of the show’s themes about breaking out of cycles of abuse and building healthy relationships by writing Adora to fall in love with her abuser, and treating this as a happy ending.
Fans defend this by arguing that critics just don’t “get” that the show is about overcoming abuse, and abuse is complicated, so criticizing how Catra overcomes her abuse is invalid.
Which is basically arguing that the act of criticism itself is invalid, and then my brain hurts.
This article is very timely. It’s helped me realize that the first story in a series is something like setting first impressions when you meet someone. Out of curiosity, have people been known to defend series when the last book is bad?
Yes. Yes, they have
Another variation on this sort of problem is when the writer tries to subvert expectations over the course of the story by initially playing things completely straight. Anyone who wanted to see subverted expectations will never get there, because they would never read past the bit where it was played straight. Anyone who wants to see it played straight would just be disappointed.
If you don’t set up the correct expectation within your work early on, it won’t work. If your goal is to subvert expectations you need to establish this before you can do anything else, and you also need to follow through on what you have initially established. A good recent example of the former is shown with The Legend of Vox Machina in which the obvious heroic adventurers are killed off in the opening before we see the real heroes getting drunk before starting a barfight. The latter is shown brilliantly with Knives Out in which it sets up the expectation of being a mystery and then pivots to a crime movie before pivoting back to being a mystery for the climax.
People dont like to like bad stories, so they convince themselves that what they like is the best. People is also very good at lying themselves. Mix in taking any criticism as a personal attack and you have the definition of a fanboy.
Writing my book have broken my ability to enjoy mediocre media. Knowing how a good story is crafted (i.e to avoid doing things that make a bad story) allows me to see the patterns and, with a handful of exceptions, i end up bored or angry when i realize they are wasting my time.
I pushed through Agents of SHIELD in hope to it syncing with classic SHIELD from the comics, and after 7 seasons i was let down. Now i haunt the SHIELD subreddit to try to have explained what were the good parts i surelly did missed. Up to the date all i got was insults for criticizing bad writting. On the other hand they unanimously tell everyone that “it gets better after the first season”.
I actually do admit that I like some seriously bad stories (usually more bad in structure and, in the case of movies or TV series, some seriously bad acting). Besides, as an author, I do consume bad media and see where the creator went off.
Also different people are drawn to certain framing, plot elements, or structure.
Things can be good and not appeal to us personally. Something can be terrible, but other, well crafted elements that resonate with an individual might make it feel great.
I think being critical of media also requires some self reflection on personal biases. We all have them, but it is difficult to filter when discussing something you love or hate.
I tend to do the disctinction between Good/Bad and I Like/Don’t Like it. Self critic is scarce nowadays (or maybe i’m stockpilling all of them, as my novel is in perpetual rework for not being good enough).
What’s your novel about? I’d recommend reading through some Mythcreants articles on plotting, or whatever issue you’re facing with it. For example, if you’re having issues with coming up with a solid throughline, I would recommend reading some articles on that to start.
It’s an espionage urban fantasy set in the 90s. It’s the quest of the MC to avenge his father death (despite the protagonist not accepting it) and the quest of a friend of him to prevent him to get into an auto destructive spiral of blowing up parts of his nemesis’ criminal organization all while their country is on the verge of a civil war. Midway the book Magic appears, but i think is too late for an urban fantasy reader, and too jarring for an espionage reader so it’s not good enough yet.
I’m using a fractal “fish out of water” plot where the MC evolves from being a rookie in something to “master it” and then being a rookie on anything else (from veteran soldier to spy to wizard to mercenary on his own without a country backing him up) drived by his inability to reckon that his father might be dead, so as long as there is a slim chance for him to be alive, he could rescue him, no matter the price. Of course, this mindset makes him fall into a “with me or against me” phylosophy towards even close people.
All this talk about LotR makes me want to watch the movies again.
They’re good movies!
It sounds like the protagonist’s quest to try and find his father is the highest stakes plot you’ve got. I would go with that for your story. If he has to learn magic to solve that problem, that could certainly work.
Beyond that, I would contact Chris or Oren for help hammering out your ideas. Good luck, whatever you decide to do.
This site has been incredibly valuable on learn how to tackle my story. But i have yet a long way to go.
I feel that a so personal quest where the repercussions of his actions affect just him (which on one hand is desired, as he don’t want to put other in risk, and in the other hand taking risks to protect others is what he does for a living) lowers the stakes as failure just mean that the MC can die. Using a near-death experience as a turning point i think it robs from the stakes, so i need to come up with a villanous plan to expand the stakes to a wider scope. That means to make the plan important to my MC, cause he is blowing up human, weapons and narcotics trafficking operations just to hurt the villain, not from a high morale ground (he knows it is bad, but don’t pursue all criminals, just his nemesis, he will have time to hunt the rest later, this one is personal). A more gruesome crime from the villain won’t make the MC more determined to stop him, as he is already out for his blood.
Children, children, children, please… no more fighting about the eagles. The matter has already been satisfactorily explained. I turn your attention to the webcomic Oglaf (NSFW) and its installment titled “Ornithology” (SFW – but don’t go clicking next or previous).
In just a few delightfully illustrated panels, the entire matter is concisely and conclusively put to rest.
I believe posting hypertext links in comments is frowned upon (and glanced at askance) at Mythcreants, so I shall indulge in posting a transcript:
(we see Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins riding an eagle in flight)
Bilbo: “If you could call giant eagles all along why did we do all that [email protected]€#ing walking?”
Gandalf: “The eagles are a proud, majestic people, not to be summoned on a whim.”
(an eagle has two dwarves riding them and it plucks one off its back and eats him, much to the helpless horror of the other dwarf and Bilbo)
Gandalf: “Also, you don’t want to be riding one when it gets hungry.”
Bilbo: “Ha ha haaa! Land this baby! It’s [email protected]€#ing walk O’clock!”
End of Transcript
I trust this concludes the debate to every party’s enlightenment. :)
Fortunately, the debate around the eagles here on Mythcreants appears to have shifted from ‘there is no satisfactory explanation for why they didn’t take the eagles’ to ‘the book doesn’t offer an explanation for why they didn’t take the eagles’, the latter being my preferred take on the matter.
(I’m realizing that the above paragraph might sound a little pretentious.)