Writing: What Not To Do

Generally, one common tactic writers use to instruct others aspiring to their noble profession is to dispense sage-like advice upon us mortals, to give us guide lines such as "Provide depth in your worlds, give a meaningful history to your characters..." This is all well and good. However, there is yet another teaching tool at the dispense of the instructor, that is, to provide neophytes with what cannot be called anything other than the most abysmal writing ever. Invision provided us with a basic idea as to what makes good writing, I will elaborate, while discussing our negative examples, including epic failures such as "DragonLance: The Lost Histories: Volume VI 'The Dragons' and any other abomination that happens to fall in my path of puritanical purging.

Let's begin with some basics, my pupils.

1. Good and Evil: In the real world (That means where people aren't either Sith or Jedi for you Star Wars fans out there) there is something known as Moral Ambiguity. This quite magical quality is a result of the fundamental truth that no single individual on this planet (except for Jesus Christ for you Christians out there) was ever completely good, or completely evil. Also, since this applies to individuals, this applies to various groups in conflict. The idea that people are either good or evil is fundementally infantile. (If you want proof, just google "Object-relations theory") Note that in fairy tales (That is, children's stories) characters are generally all good or evil. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, since children reading George R. R. Martin (A writer who can show you the meaning of Moral Ambiguity) wouldn't be able to understand such a world. Children see the world often as either good or evil, it is part of being a child. But also, as children, we learn that people all have faults. When an author makes "perfect" characters, either perfectly evil, or perfectly good, this pulls us back to the days when we decided that mommy's breasts were good because we could get milk from them, and consequently mommy was good. We are taken back to a state of childishness, and not in a good way. While some level of Moral ambiguity is good, it is certainly just as bad to try and completely neutralize your characters. What this does is destroy sympathetic characterization, and it means that no reader will give a rat's rear what happens to your character, because he's a jerk anyway.

2. Characterization: People are part of the world, they have good and evil traits. They have histories, they have personalities, they have goals, and preferred means to achieve them. They have hopes, dreams, and fears. Forget this, and you can flush your aspirations of writing something even remotely respectable down the toilet. Writing is fundementally a deception, a clever puppet show on a handmade stage, where the author tries is best to make us forget we are reading words on a page. When your characters are essentially cardboard cutouts mounted on Popsicle sticks, YOU WILL FAIL!!! This isn't merely something that MAY happen, it is something that WILL happen. If you poke a sleeping dragon, you will die in some painful form or fashion (Unless you are Bilbo Baggins with a magic ring, in which case you will die of old age like the rest of us). While you can use cardboard characters with a child audience, as your readership matures, such parlor tricks will illicit vollies of tomatoes. (Or more accurately swarms of negative reviews) Characters are people. (whether they are Dragons, Aliens ((Or both at the same time) Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, or Amoebas) If you want an analogy that will be more fitting with the times, you can imagine a "Character Wal-Mart" with endless shelves of stock characters that can be bought cheaply (No effort put into it), yet are of extremely low quality. Example: Wise Magician Dude, $1.00 per unit, useful for infodumps, dying pointlessly, killing large numbers of enemies with deus ex machina, and anything your pathetic excuse for an imagination can think of. Now, of course, just because a character is wise, and happens to be wise in the ways of magic and such, doesn't imply that they are a bad character. The distinction between a GOOD WMD (lol) and a BAD WMD is that a bad one has no other significant aspects besides its being a WMD. Of course, for every rule, there are exceptions. Sometimes, a character can be used as a symbol of the author's idea of good and evil, an example being Jesus of Nazareth (or Howard Roark, or John Galt). However, none of these characters are without limitations, or struggles (Jesus had to die on a cross, suffer temptations like the rest of humanity, Roark was merely a great architect, and lacked super powers of any sort etc.)

With these ideas in mind, let's explore some tomato worthy literature.

My first exhibit for you students is the one mentioned in the beginning of the article. Dragon Lance: The Lost Histories: Volume VI (If you want to read the book for yourself, you can buy it here ((Or read an excerpt and get a taste) http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Dragonlance-Lost-Histories-Vol/dp/0786905131 )

This story is from the "Dragon Lance" universe, a fantasy world with which I am not acquainted. Most of my criticism is through the fields above, I do not hold any failures in worldbuilding against the author, the world was there for him, pre fabricated. (Although some of my criticism WILL be world building related since it will come through the other fields)

From page one, the author burns a path of destruction through Fantasy literature, leaving rich forests of character potential and ethical reflection in smoldering ruin. Let's begin with our main evil character: Crematia. We can already tell that she is evil, if not from her name (Which sounds like crematorium) from the fact that within the first few pages, she slaughters a bunch of furry innocent creatures. Not only that, but she decides to mix in infant sadism with hatchling hunger, and proceeds to commit acts that would make Voldemort and Galbatorix blush, if the former had the anatomical ability to do so. Crematia is evil. This is abundantly obvious, the author doesn't state it flatly, or imply it, he flings it in the reader's faces like a rabid monkey who had just downed a chili dog, adding an acidic sting to the warm, sickening sensation of scat on our faces. After this torture porno of a hatching, our mistress of death meets her maker, who happens to be teh ebul dark lord. (Note: Readers, the name of said dark lord is the Dark Queen. Why are all of the beginning evil characters female? I sense subtle sexism.) The Evil Dark Lord talks of Crematorium's Evil Dark Destiny to do Dark Evil Deeds for Dark Evil reasons (meaning pure sadism and the logic that "Mercy is Weakness" ((Yes, it is THAT corny). Pretty much, our cute cruel dragoness has a divine mission, which pretty much amounts to destroying everything good and pretty and naturey in the world. By this, I mean
that she is commissioned to destroy all that is "My Little Pony w/ Dragons" in the world. We will meet our draconic ponies later, for now, let us dwell on the fact that Crematorium has a few siblings, all apparently evil. Of course, to add to this fact, they are all one particular CLASS of evil beings who are ALL evil. If your intellects are worth respecting, you see the problems here.

Now of course, there must be an eternal balance of Good and Evil, so... in our next installment, we shall explorez teh Draconic Ponies and their adventures in what can only be termed as what happens when a 5 year old finds his mother's cocaine.

Copyright (C) Matty Lee, 2009.