McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
hook, hold, and payoff
The Deposed King:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on November 16, 2013, 11:19:00 PM ---Have you been looking back through my off-topic posts or something ?
Nah, but on the other hand, I'd rather have something sincere and heartfelt that I could disagree with in almost every particular and enjoy anyway (see, most of Daniel Keys Moran's work, for example; I am entirely on the side of the antagonists in the Tale of the Continuing Time) rather than something that's trying to avoid controversy and ends up being insipid or worse, raising blatant questions about its set-up that it falls short of answering.
Ideally, one could hope to get around this by depicting characters with strongly-held beliefs but writing them in such a way as to show the negatives as well as the positives. This is however difficult and there are many readers who won't get it anyway because of, sfaict being absolutely convinced that if someone is presented as a hero/protagonist we are therefore meant to find them sympathetic. (As witness a goodly fraction of my on-topic posts; my personal read on the DF is that Jim is doing an amazing job of critiquing the values Harry espouses, without haryr himself being remotely aware of that.)
Meh. Good vs. Evil is easy and has been done thousands of times. Good vs. Other Incompatible Good, now that's interesting. (Also heartbreaking.)
OK, if you're defining hook that broadly, I can't disagree with you; it's the notion that every book needs to start with an action-scene-type hook specifically ("Ford Prefect hit the ground running") that doesn't work for me.
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1
Haven't been going back through off topic posts. I just pulled what I thought were two random cultural/political positions that generally (but perhaps not always, cause hey its a big world) wouldn't go together and threw them out there.
2-3&4?
Its not so much that I would avoid heart felt positions or water things down until they aren't keenly felt but I don't think it has to be controversial. For instance my MC in my Spineward Sectors series starts out as an Anti-Monarchy, Prince, and with his culture's default Bias/raging-Hate-on for all things AI. Over the course of the series, due to the actions of the Parliament and Elected Sector Assembly he is forced to embrase the Feudal-Monarchist model to a certain extent while at the same time becoming disenchanted with the Democratic/Representative Elected model due to all the times they keep stabbing him in the back. But his unthinking knee jerk 'Rage against the Machine' anti-AI bias runs head long into Real Politic concerns when it comes time to deal with the Droids.
I think that by showing the flaws in both Monarchy and Democracy and then having our character pushed in the direction of the Monarchy side, I can get in the weeds a little bit as our guy agonizes over the 'ideal world' he'd like to live in and the actual world of corrupted elected leaders he has to deal with. This lets me have a political argument that bypasses most all of the hot button issues of the day by introduce a generally discarded paradim.
And at the same time I get to show what unthinking bias, even built on a well deserved and wholly earned basis can look like, when it comes to the Human Race's former and overthrown AI Overlords. Then after we get a few looks at some anti-machine bigots we will eventually get to deal with some very much non-AI but very intelligent Droids most of whom deserve our anger (for other reasons) and some of whom do not. And thus our biases and bigotries will be tested, exposed, counted and measured, yet at no time am I really running the risk of po-oing my fan base by hitting them where they live. Anyone with the intelligence to see what unthought out extreme positions can give you. Meaning at the very least big blind spots and anyone who wants to ignore the politics can have a good ride as we smash the bad guys and make a few smart decisions and maneuvers to help us out later on. Without having to feel preached at, or as if I am foisting some kind of political, social or whatever position on them as we go along.
4
Its almost always about good versus evil, if only because there are very few individuals who don't think of themselves or what they're doing as good and their opponents as bad (if not actively evil). So I would say to have 'your characters' portray themselves to themselves and others as anything other than good and their opponents (at least initially) as anything other than wrong/bad/or-evil to be a flaw. That's not to say that the other side is evil or that our side is good. That's where you as a writer get to introduce nuance, context and in the process of giving the depth expose some of the flaws in our MC's thinking and positions. I will say a lot of people are looking for a good time when they read books and that to give them a morally conflicted hero who's not sure if he's doing the right thing or is on the right side and wonders if his opponents are just as good as he is, might not be as satisfying a read. I mean honestly its hard to have a good time, blowing up your enemies, saving the day in the nick of time by stopping your base from exploding or whatever else, if the reader is looking at it wondering if our guy/gal shouldn't have lost.
Now in writing this I have perhaps exposed a bias for a Star Wars, Star Trek, Dresden Files etc fun romp with action in it. But there you go.
5
On the Hook: I would say that if you can do 'better' or even 'almost as good' as an action lead in and if that's what you love to write you should by all means write it that way. On the other hand if your books are suffering because of your lead in hook is flat or off putting or just isn't selling your book to your audience and you've been avoiding putting an action hook in up to this point then....
The Deposed King
Sully:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on November 16, 2013, 11:19:00 PM ---Meh. Good vs. Evil is easy and has been done thousands of times. Good vs. Other Incompatible Good, now that's interesting. (Also heartbreaking.)
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Book suggestions for that?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Sully on November 17, 2013, 02:04:17 AM ---Book suggestions for that?
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Off the top of my head, I am finding it hard to think of genre books that manage to get two opposed sides equally sympathetic and have them both be nice, though I have a feeling I'll remember better examples when I am less exhausted. MilSF-ish with two fairly equally sympathetic sides, there's always CS Friedman's In Conquest Born, though I've not read it in long enough that I may be misremembering.
I also have a feeling I have read historicals that did this rather well, but again, been writing for the past nine hours, brain blanking.
(ETA: facepalm: how could I forget The Armageddon Rag ? "On Armageddon day, both armies will think they fight for Good. And both of them will be wrong.")
(ETA2: facepalm x2 combo: much much better example than any of the above, forget I said any of that; Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series. The Star Fraction is the anarchist one, The Stone Canal is the capitalist one, The Cassini Division is the communist one, and The Sky Road is the anti-civilisation back-to-barbarianism one; taken together, none of those political positions get exalted over or subjugated to any of the others. These are brilliant, razor-sharp, highly political books from someone with a lot of experience of political organisation on the ground, and I cannot recommend them highly enough; they are currently available in two omnibus editions called Fractions and Divisions. They can be read in any order so long as you read The Sky Road last; my experience with US readers is that The Star Fraction tends to be a mite less accessible than the others due to being thoroughly steeped in UK anarcho-leftie stuff. There is one subset of folks that get a raw deal throughout that series, which it would be a drastic spoiler to specify, but in his unrelated much later standalone The Night Sessions he remedies this.)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: The Deposed King on November 17, 2013, 12:24:23 AM ---1
Haven't been going back through off topic posts. I just pulled what I thought were two random cultural/political positions that generally (but perhaps not always, cause hey its a big world) wouldn't go together and threw them out there.
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Fair enough; wasn't sure whether that was specifically targeted friendly teasing or not, as social democracy is as close as a readily definable mainstream political position comes to where I come from, and I'm also fairly out about being actively polyamorous.
--- Quote ---I think that by showing the flaws in both Monarchy and Democracy and then having our character pushed in the direction of the Monarchy side, I can get in the weeds a little bit as our guy agonizes over the 'ideal world' he'd like to live in and the actual world of corrupted elected leaders he has to deal with. This lets me have a political argument that bypasses most all of the hot button issues of the day by introduce a generally discarded paradim.
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That last's the kind of thing that I might not be too confident of if considering potential sales in the bits of the non-US anglophone world that are constitutional monarchies, which are a lot of them, and where that is betimes quite an emotive issue from more than one direction. (If you're not familiar with it, I would commend wikipedia's article on "23-F" to your attention.)
--- Quote --- Anyone with the intelligence to see what unthought out extreme positions can give you. Meaning at the very least big blind spots and anyone who wants to ignore the politics can have a good ride as we smash the bad guys and make a few smart decisions and maneuvers to help us out later on. Without having to feel preached at, or as if I am foisting some kind of political, social or whatever position on them as we go along.
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I don't think a book having a political position has to translate into being preachy, though. Preachy isn't to my mind an issue of having overt politics or not, just a failure mode of bad writing.
--- Quote ---Its almost always about good versus evil, if only because there are very few individuals who don't think of themselves or what they're doing as good and their opponents as bad (if not actively evil).
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I've not actually found this to be true; both IME of RL politics in situations where the concept of "loyal opposition" is well understood, on one hand, and on the other, with a regrettably high number of abusive scumbags who have consciously adopted positions functionally equivalent to "Evil be thou my good" and have actively engaged and delighted in doing things they make no pretence are anything other than evil. Both of which are types of character one does not see that much of in fiction.
--- Quote ---Now in writing this I have perhaps exposed a bias for a Star Wars, Star Trek, Dresden Files etc fun romp with action in it. But there you go.
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Fair enough, and that's not generally my cup of tea (well, modulo that I am of the opinion Jim's critiquing that sort of story at least as much as he's retelling it); plenty of room out there for all sorts of stories.
--- Quote --- On the other hand if your books are suffering because of your lead in hook is flat or off putting or just isn't selling your book to your audience and you've been avoiding putting an action hook in up to this point then....
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This would be one of these places where I am pretty sure going with my gut feeling is not sensible to generalise, because to me personally, action scenes, in the sense of swordfights or firefights or what not, are ineffably and irreducibly boring as hell; give me friends caring for each other, respecting each other, and flirting with each other, otoh, and I'm hooked.
The Deposed King:
--- Quote from: Sully on November 17, 2013, 02:04:17 AM ---Book suggestions for that?
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David Weber pulled... well not quite a 180, call it a 165, in his Honor Harrington series vis-a-vis the 'Peeps'. They started out as these evil dastards. Then he tried to make them all warm and fuzzy after the counter-counter revolution went down. Never purchased shares in the 'peeps' are no longer bad and are now reformed business but that's clearly what he's been writing.
The Deposed King
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