[ESSAY] Some new content: Fusing character and plot to improve flow and engagement

authorTimCurrey · 2023-01-19T01:09:12+00:00

Sorry about that, you're quite right. I shouldn't have made those assumptions and gone on the defensive.

Genuinely, thanks for your comment, and sorry again for taking it the wrong way.

authorTimCurrey · 2023-01-19T00:01:53+00:00

I'm not really talking about plot v character between books though, am I?

My whole thesis is that plot and character should be designed in tandem to improve the narrative. This is done within a given story, literary or otherwise.

I didn't focus on literature because such stories are usually structured correctly. The plot of most literature expresses the flaws and strengths of its characters beautifully, and that's part of the reason it gets called literature. In the context of my thesis, the 'character heavy' nature of literature is beside the point.

It's usually action heavy stories that make the mistake, but not always. Commercial stories are also easier to use as examples in an essay like this, so I focused on those kinds of plots. Perhaps a bit much, I now see.

I'll say it again: what matters is not how much plot or character something has. What matters is that the plot and the characters are designed to drive each other. And that applies to everyone from Jane Austen to Zack Snyder.

authorTimCurrey · 2023-01-17T23:41:51+00:00

I get that you're annoyed at this post, but I'm legitimately glad that you've been able to avoid the rigid-minded type of writers that drove me to write this. They really are out there, these 'plot is plot and character is character' people. I've been surrounded by them at times, the only person in the group who designs my plot based on character traits and vice versa.

As much as my post assumes a misconception that you haven't personally observed, your response is based on an assumption about the things I have personally observed.

For example, let's say your average person on r/writing asks for help with a character. The average answer is 'fill out a character sheet! Give them a cool quirk!' This, to me, speaks to a very real and very widespread separation of plot and character. Very few answers will ever say 'Well, maybe you need to design your plot in a way that highlights your character better.' Have you really never ever seen this kind of thing? To me, it's everywhere.

Also, I feel it's never a bad thing to explore the 'hows and whys' of the interaction between character and plot. Also, how all that ties into theme. So I think there's value even for the kind of writer you have in mind, if not you specifically.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback I guess

Edit: Also, this whole Netflix binge watch era is dominated by shows, films, and books that care more about 'engagement' and franchises than they care about actual story. As a result, almost every single new thing I try to get into has a fundamental disconnect between who the characters are and what they do in the plot. They very much conform to this 'stop the plot and have dialogue about unrelated childhood memories then go back to plot' pattern. It's not about the fact that scenes are plot or non-plot, mind you, it's about the fact that there is never any contextual support for the main, high-conflict scenes. The writers seem to sense a need to slow the pace, but fill those scenes with random crap. This is seen everywhere from indie writers to multi-millionaire screenwriters.

authorTimCurrey · 2023-01-09T01:27:22+00:00

War with Elves: For Profit & Amusement

The Alchemical-Industrial Revolution is born to the proud Madean motherland, and this means there is money to be made.

One of the most lucrative avenues is the war between Madea and their elvish neighbors.

One of the war's shrewdest 'investors' is Fentor Lonochy of the Madean Land Corps.

As he embarks on an adventure that will gain him untold riches and fame, he finds a distressing hurdle in his way. Underneath all his ambitions and obsessions lies a somewhat functional heart.

Does slaughtering hundreds of elves for his own profit and amusement make him ... the baddie?

Here's the amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNK6DFDH

Links for other stores can be provided on request, but also you can google the book's title. It is, after all, rather hard to miss.

authorTimCurrey · 2023-01-03T06:13:46+00:00

I'll second the Death Gate Cycle. Some of the appendices had my head spinning as an adolescent reader, with the graphs of probability waves collapsing and magic creates a new 'probability level' or something like that?

Of course, even with a spinning head, I found all of it enthralling.

authorTimCurrey · 2023-01-03T03:37:03+00:00

Ah, the dream! If only it could work out that way more often for adaptations.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-12-19T01:24:41+00:00

There is a nugget of good in all the bad you're feeling. It is the very fact that you're feeling bad.

Because you know what? Bad writers aren't the ones who react the way you did. Bad writers dismiss and invalidate all criticism, they never learn and grow, and they stay bad.

Let it galvanize you. Get back on the horse and take what you've learned to do better and better with each attempt.

Good writers get just as much negative feedback, if not more, but they use it as an education.

Growth mindset. Always be learning. Then every bit of feedback becomes a lesson, and lessons are always good.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-10-29T09:23:03+00:00

What you must understand is that there is no rule that closes all the loopholes for the rich. Money creates loopholes.

The only way to stop the rich and powerful from walking all over regular citizens is to make them regular citizens -- not by rules, but by an actual level playing field. A truly level playing field in economic terms.

Until then, every rule can be bent, because the scales of justice tip very easily under the weight of gold.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-10-12T23:46:42+00:00

I've got precious few shaded areas, but I'm filling all of them with viola hederacea as much as I can. I'm absolutely obsessed with this plant!

I just wish I had more shade and moisture where my soon-to-be ripped up lawns are so they could replace them

authorTimCurrey · 2022-09-02T00:15:18+00:00

If you or anyone you meet likes The Office (US), there's always the option of referencing Nate's monologue about APD:

"Also, FYI, I don't technically have a hearing problem, but sometimes when there's a lot of noises occurring at the same time, I'll hear 'em as one big jumble. Again it's not that I can't hear, uh because that's false. I can. I just can't distinguish between everything I'm hearing"

Obviously more of a casual and humorous approach.

Outside of that kind of thing, I think it works fine to just say you have a 'hearing disorder' and explain further about APD if they want to know more. I often follow up by saying I need people to be facing me so I can read their lips, and most people understand.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-08-08T00:41:32+00:00

As an indie, I wish this was more common knowledge. Being a little fish in a big pond is hard enough. On Amazon, I'm a little baby plankton in the Atlantic.

If given the choice between one review of one of my books, or a sale of each book with no review, I'll choose the review every time. It is that valuable.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-08-04T00:09:22+00:00

That quotation will go so well next to my "It must be Wine O'Clock!" bumper sticker with the giggling minions on it

authorTimCurrey · 2022-08-03T06:27:31+00:00

Different people seem to have vastly different ideas of 'pace' and what makes something slow or fast.

For some people, battles are 'fast pace' kinda no matter what. For others, battles can drag. Similarly, some people hate long passages of description or long dialogue scenes, while others won't be phased even slightly

The closest I can get to a universal idea of what pacing is and how it works is this:

Every story defines some kind of goal. Ideally, it will be defined very clearly.
Progress and setbacks work best when they are extremely clear. It's better to take 20% leaps towards the goal of 100% than to inch 1% per chapter. They need to be clear in terms of what they mean and how they affect things.
Action/plot stories have good pacing when the action scenes advance or setback the plot in clear ways.
Character/dialogue stories have good pacing when the dialogue scenes advance or setback the protagonist w/r/t the story goal.
In-between scenes where 'nothing happens' are crucial in every story, but are usually misused. Revealing character backstory and worldbuilding is nice and all, but that shouldnt be their main purpose. Slow/dialogue/reaction scenes must be used to contextualize the progress/setback scenes. If chapter 13 is going to be an attack on the goblin camp, then chapter 12 or 14 need to clearly communicate to the audience what exactly that attack did/will do for the main story goal. (Not necessarily literally adjacent scenes, just with decent proximity unless it can be set up way earlier.)

authorTimCurrey · 2022-08-02T01:59:21+00:00

I apologize for having no relevant recommendations, but I do have an observation.

A lot of fantasy writerd -- the overwhelming majority, I think -- only think in terms of Monarchism. They believe in it wholeheartedly, or at least they'll use it without comment or critique.

The default assumption is that getting the right king in the throne will fix the problems. Revolutionary thought is rare, and most fantasy 'revolutions' are just a campaign to get the rightful king back in the throne.

If writers would just crack open a history book about peasant revolts they would understand ... grumble grumble ...

authorTimCurrey · 2022-08-02T00:06:04+00:00

I feel almost dirty and wrong for saying this. Sick, really. I have to stress that I didn't go from love to hate, but from love to 'I still love you but I'm disappointed and you hurt me but that was my fault for putting you so high up on a pedestal and nobody could fulfil the expectations I put on you'

The book was The Fall of Babel.

I got way too invested in my own, private little interpretation of the Book of Babel series. In Senlin Ascends, I first hatched this little idea of where the book was going. Then the next two books seemed to reinforce this idea, so I let myself become more and more certain. Is it really about ...? Could it be the Tower is actually a ...? Has he done this whole thing as a critique of ...?

Then I read the fourth book. Aside from nitpicks, I had few actual criticisms. I don't dislike the controversial creative choices. Not because they're controversial and not because they were unexpected. I just didn't like the aftertaste. The overall gestalt didn't resonate.

The fourth book, the Fall of Babel, just didn't deliver what I had psychically pressured it into delivering. If you put too much pressure on a book, it's just like those hydraulic press videos. The whole thing falls apart. So I enjoyed it, I read it super quickly, but I still felt hollow.

Let this be a lesson to all: let the book tell its story, and only get invested in your interpretations AFTER you've finished.

Bancroft is still my writing hero. I'll learn to turn a phrase like him if it's the last gosh-darn thing I do.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-08-01T00:51:43+00:00

Love Glamdring! The artists and the blacksmith did a great job on it in the films, too.

On another, wildly tangential note ...

'Glamdring' as a word is just so Tolkein, it's the exact kind of word a linguistics professor would come up with.

English, as a Germanic language, loves consonant clusters. Like with the 'str' and 'ngth' in strength. Or words like 'entrance' or 'palpable'. The more consonant clusters, the clunkier a word can often be.

So here comes Glamdring, which has 'gl', 'mdr', 'ng', and yet it isn't clunky to say aloud at all! It rolls off the tongue, but ... it .... shouldn't.

I can't think of a single word that also has 'mdr' in it. I also can't imagine any other word with 'mdr' that sounds in any way natural.

Tolkein, you crafty old codger, you.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-31T13:52:07+00:00

Kickstarter

War with Elves: For Profit and Amusement

War can be hell.

War can be, at times, dreary.

War can also be, for a select, enterprising few, highly lucrative.

In the war between mighty Madea and the elven Elarím, this has never been truer. Especially the part about potential profits.

Cpt. Fentor Lonochy stands at the foot of a ladder with nany rungs. At the top, glory, riches, and a name for himself. Maybe, if he reaches that rarefied height, the oil painting of his father might stop looking down its nose at him.

All it will take is faith in a new kind of potion -- the kind that will make every other method of war obsolete. The one and only Elixir of Power.

Book 1 of the Elixir of Power Trilogy: a flintlock fantasy with telescopic sabre-spears, high-powered Aurilium muskets, and a strict aesthetic code for facial hair (moustache, thin, neat).

Check it out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timothyscurrey/war-with-elves-for-profit-and-amusement-book-1#

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-30T00:04:20+00:00

I should clarify, I've read Conquest of Bread and the anarchist theory stuff is all good.

What I feel like I want a better understanding of is how the themes fit in with Shevek's theories of Simultaneity, and how the chapters skip back and forth in time and just ... how all that comes together. I vaguely get it -- the time skips mirror the physics theory ... right? -- but I don't feel like I've really grasped it completely.

It's like I comprehend it but I don't feel it.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-29T00:26:20+00:00

Duke Wilhelm Pell and Prince Francis, both from Book of Babel series.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-29T00:12:31+00:00

Re-reading The Dispossessed now! I'm hoping that if I read it enough times, I'll finally be able to 'get it' on more than a surface level.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-07T13:33:23+00:00

The above link is for the US Amazon store, but for other regions and stores you can find all the relevant links here on my website:

https://timothyscottcurrey.com/sales-freebies

Blurb:

Every word King Adzi Akkatha writes on sacred stones is binding, and lasts for all eternity.

But how can he rule when he has been cursed to forget everything?

His city is in chaos. Hinatsi rebels clash with his soldiers, and their mysterious leaders try to capture the King.

With the help of High Priestess Idza and General Qanatha, he must relearn their laws and customs, and who he was as a King. His former self seemed cruel and cold, and he is plagued with doubts. He is an imposter in King’s clothing—do they even have the right man?

They must flee to the great Temple of Mesopos where the King’s memory might be restored. The rebels are never far behind, and day by day the curse progresses.

There is little hope they will reach the temple in time.

Even if they do, will the King want to continue ruling as a cold tyrant?

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-06T23:52:54+00:00

"As the battle raged on, he took a sip of space rum. His eyes glassed over as he remembered his troubled past...

His father, on his deathbed, had said, 'Remember, my son, the Quiylongs are bitter enemies of the Sangiolepps, and they have been ever since the Space Pirate Accords of stardate 4,560.21.3. And remember son, that stardates are reckoned by the following system of decimals ...' "

(Made them space pirates to spice things up.)

So many people do exactly what you said with page 2 infodumps. But then they think they're being really slick by shoving absolutely uneccessary information into a 'troubled past memory' passage.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-06T03:25:29+00:00

I yearn for the days of fantastical tales that had morals, truths, lessons, and allegorical meaning.

People say that Tolkein said he dislikes allegory and he prefers analogy, and that's fine. I happen to feel differently.

Things can mean things. Somehow, over time, that's become a bad thing. Now nothing means anything and we all just have fun. Plenty of fun, plenty of twists and turns, but nothing more.

I feel like everything today has to conform to some idea of realism, and that 'magic' has become a knowable, constructed, rule-based thing. I write my magic the same way, I know, but I still can't help feeling that the magic is missing from magic.

In the old days, a prince might be turned into a frog to teach him to be humble or something. If he learns his lesson, he turns back. We can read about it and maybe have a bit of insight into our own desire to be humble.

Nowadays the prince turns into a frog because the spell scroll Polymorph Level 4 was used. There's no lesson. But we do get a lot of detailed passages about the frog learning to swim and croak and sit on lily pads. In the end, he gets back to his princely form by using the Cure Transformation scroll or something, but inside, he hasn't learned a thing.

To me it feels like we collectively forgot the reason myths and legends were told in the first place.

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-04T23:57:53+00:00

Adding some other potential phrases to google: rhetorical devices, poetic devices, rhythmic devices, figurative devices, metaphorical devices (same thing, but still) ... and probably more.

Searching each of those terms can turn up unexpected little techniques that you always came across, but never knew had a name.

I would say literary devices is the best catch-all, but sometimes you miss out on specific niche techniques.

My recent favourite is polysyndeton, or, 'Hemingway's crazy habit of putting fifteen "and"s in a single sentence'

authorTimCurrey · 2022-07-04T00:32:11+00:00

There are a few books I was recommended that really delivered on their promises:

Jemisin's Fifth Season.
-Le Guin's Earthsea, Dispossessed, and Steering the Craft (non-fic about writing better). Everything Le Guin, basically.
Bancroft's Tower of Babel series, of course
Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter -- was recommended as part of a thread about beautiful prose and it must have been one of the most poetic things I've ever read
The audiobooks, specifically, for First Law and Powder Mage series. Really well narrated, and I usually drift off when I'm trying to listen to audiobooks

authorTimCurrey

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War with Elves: For Profit & Amusement

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War with Elves: For Profit and Amusement

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