Write Like A Sorcerer

just because it's an amazing movie that did really well doesn't mean it needs a sequel

just because it's a well loved classic tv show doesn't mean it needs to be remade anew

It was all just a show, anyway. They did it every year. They brought out a selection of criminals, and the Sorcerer who ruled us showed his power by bringing about their deaths by magic. Just to show, every year, what happened to anyone who crossed him.

There was a time, probably, when the people he executed really were rebels or assassins. In latter days he had to take what the dungeons offered. I was dragged up in chains between a pickpocket, sobbing in terror, and a man who’d killed another man in a brawl. There were few criminals of any note, by then. So instead of choosing the wickedest criminals, they chose based on appearance. The man who’d been in the brawl had a face like a clenched fist, and looked like a ruffian. The pickpocket, aging and with hands beginning to tremble, was a different kind of example. As was I.

“There aren’t many pretty ones, this year,” the man who chose me had said, examining me. “But this one will do. Not young, but not old, a woman, well-favoured enough for the gallows… what was her crime?”

The warder shrugged. “She tried to kill one of the sheriffs.”

The man looked down at me and I shrugged. “I hit him with a washing stick, because he tried to extort money from me, and he was a baby about it.” I refused to treat this as anything but pathetic, even after my sentencing. “I didn’t even break any bones.”

“Treason, then,” the man said, nodding. “Attacking the servants of the law. That will look well on the list. Send her.”

I had been debating ever since what to choose. Something quick? Something painless? I considered demanding that I suffer the attack I supposedly made on the sheriff, but then I realized the Sorcerer would only give me what the man had said I was going to do, and that was not a pleasant way to die. I had all but decided on something swift and relatively painless. Beheading with the sharpest of blades sounded good. It would be quick. 

Something always hurts. Remember that  sunlight illuminates the glitter of rocks embedded in the sidewalk. Eons of sediment, millennia of ingenuity, all giving you a place to step. 

After a while it becomes an unspoken reality of the post apocalyptic society that you Just Don’t fuck with the library. You don’t fight there, you don’t steal from it, you don’t allow harm to come to librarians when they have to leave the building for supplies. 

A surprising pocket of resistance to the chaos was a library. Six librarians, three custodial staff, a computer specialist, the head of children’s services, two clerks, and the barista from the coffee shop next door turned it into a haven. Initially, they had each come to the library to escape the destruction going on, but when the mob’s appetite turned to their small little sphere of peace, they stepped up and defended it.

Some windows were smashed and a small fire started in the book return box, but overall there was very little damage.

Between the 14 people, they were able to board up the broken windows, reinforce the remaining ones, secure the entrances, and rearrange the shelves based on medieval castles built for defence. The next time the mob struck out at them, them were ready.

They soon developed a reputation for being brutal and efficient at defending their territory–but also welcoming the weary. Troublemakers were dealt with harshly (and those who damage the books are lucky to leave alive), but for everyone else, the Library became a welcome respite.

Factions slowly rose from the ashes of civilization, forming small communities and governments, while the Library remained neutral. The 14 figured out how to grow enough food to sustain themselves, so they have no need to join any of the (often warring) factions.

The Library took over the trashed remains of the neighbouring buildings and converted them into sparse (but clean!) rooms that travellers could rent. They add a small medical wing–they can’t treat anything needing more than a splint and stitches, but having a neutral place to receive care is cherished.

The 14 take in apprentices and train them how to run the Library. Years go by and a small community of neutral businesses cluster around. A pawn shop, herbalist, and small electrical station become staples of the community, while other businesses (a tailor, a barber, and a florist, among others) are more transient.

The 14 are beginning to feel their age. It has been 24 years since they first defended the Library. The youngest of them is 46 and the eldest is 87. They all have families comprised of children, adoptees, proteges, and actual relatives from before the collapse. And they all think of each other as siblings.

The success of the Library has inspired others to try and reclaim the lost books and knowledge of libraries in other cities. Most haven’t lasted for more than a few years before being forced into a faction, or simply destroyed. All but the eldest member of the original 14 agree to strike out with a specially chosen group of people to help these fledgling libraries become the havens that the Library is.

Nothing is heard from these groups until, over five years later, a messenger appears wearing a tattered leather jacket with a large patch on the arm of a stack of three books, the words “Library Representative” wrapped protectively around the image. They hand the eldest of the 14 a letter. It’s the first inter-library loan request in almost 30 years.

**

As a lot of people aren’t familiar with plot creatures, I thought I’d shed some light on the members of the mental menagerie…

The Plot Bunny - Story ideas that come bounding in and start multiplying.

The Plot Chicken - They squawk, flap around, and shit everywhere, but when you actually need to do something with them, they scatter.

The Plot Sloth - Takes its sweet goddamned time turning into something useful.

The Plot Mule - When you mash two plots together and get something cool, but you can’t get a sequel out of it to save your life.

The Plot Cat - Lazy little bastards who take up your headspace, scare away all the other plot bunnies, but won’t actually do anything except lay there.

The Plottweiler - Barks loudly and viciously so you can’t ignore it, distracts you from everything else you want to write, but leaves you too paralyzed with fear to actually put words down.

The Plot Squirrel - Cute, distracting, full of nuts, and just TRY to keep up with that train of thought.

The Plot Bedbug - Shows up during the night, chews on you so you can’t sleep, and disappears in the daylight.

The Plot Tick - Burrows in, bleeds you dry, and leaves you with the creepy-crawlies. Mostly preys on horror writers.

The Plotroach - Totally unappealing, but so tenacious they’ll survive anything until you finally give up and write them.

The Plot Fin Whale - It’s a longfic, but a surprisingly fast-moving one that just flows right out of you.

The Plot Dragon - A gigantic pile of your most treasured tropes that probably don’t go that well when mixed together haphazardly like that but so shiny

The Plot Gryphon - A crossover.

The Plot Chimera - An especially ambitious crossover.

The Plot Hydra - WHERE ARE ALL THESE SUBPLOTS COMING FROM

The Plot Salmon - A love story that ends tragically.

The Plot Peryton - That deathfic you don’t want to write because you like that character and don’t want them to die but its shadow will be cast upon you until you give up and write it.

Water tight doors! You get a special training video on interacting with these correctly because they will literally cut you in half if you try and go through them while they’re closing!

Freezer vaults for food in the sub decks - you can only get into these with the correct code and they have very thick walls. Good luck if you get shut in one of these just after the last round of checks bucko

There are cameras everywhere…except in the crew cabin corridors. Also there are no windows down there because unless you’re an officer, you live below the waterline. Day and night have no meaning because everything is in the same slightly unsettling yellow light.

Don’t piss off the guys who deal with the rubbish. They have machines down there that can crush metal barrels

As well as morgues, cruise ships usually have one basic operating theatre with all the attendant horrifying equipment in it

One cigarette thrown carelessly in the wrong place WILL start a fire that will gut half the ship.

When we’re pitching side to side, the anchor swings out and then back in, striking the metal outer shell with a noise that shakes half the ship

People disappear overboard more often than you’d really want to be a thing

A lot of cruise ships now have theatres on board (usually towards the front) with all the potential for dark corners, creepy costumes and electrical calamities you could want.

"Did you... Did you think that I wouldn't be able to-to... You taught me how to shoot, how to defend myself. Did you think that I couldn't do it?"

"No. You've always been stronger than you realize. I knew you could kill, if you had no other choice. I just never wanted you to be in this kind of situation."

"...You couldn't protect me forever, [----]. Life isn't that kind."

"I know. You now have blood on your hands and I... I regret that I've made you more like me."

"And I love you still. This... This won't change that, not for me."

Please observe that I never once used the word “forgiveness” - although I should have, because the idea that forgiveness is a necessity for ceasing-to-be-a-sinner, and indeed that forgiveness is the primary goal, is itself christian.

I have at no point in the original post or in any of my further discussion of it said that the end goal, or even a significant feature of, a villain-to-hero arc was forgiveness.

Yet everyone who thinks this arc is indeed the only valid option phrases their arguments in terms like “Would you forgive someone who didn’t…”

Maybe I would - maybe I wouldn’t!  But I never said anything about forgiveness being a requirement!

And everyone who wants to tell me that Christians Don’t Think Like This, Actually, says it in terms of “But Jesus forgives everyone, all you have to do is repent and you will be forgiven.”  …okay great who says the characters need to be forgiven, why is it RELEVANT whether Jesus would forgive them or not - unless you’re operating in a Christian framework where God’s Forgiveness is a central feature of your belief system.

People who agree that yes, this is a culturally christian thing, and further believe that another form of arc would be superior, are saying “you should be able to just stop doing bad things and only do good things, and that should be enough for you to be forgiven” - okay you got the spirit but why do we have to be forgiven.

Forgiveness - as least as it is being used in this context - is someone else granting salvation to you.  It is someone else absolving you of your guilt.  It is you having shown someone else that you are worthy now, and them casting judgement upon you, and then agreeing that you are enough better than you were before.

Why does someone else get to sit in judgement and decide if you’re a good person now?  Who besides a god stands in that position of omniscience and moral superiority and moral infallibility?

What if a character chooses to end his life of villainy, anonymously transfer all his ill-gotten gains to those he harmed, and devote the rest of his life to curing cancer alone in a lab on a deserted island, finally releasing his cure anonymously on his deathbed.  No other character even has any idea this has happened; they all figure he just died or went into hiding.  No one has forgiven him.  Does that mean he’s still a villain?

What if all the other characters have hardened hearts for whatever reason, and no matter how much penance the ex-villain does, even if he only did one tiny bad act and then spent years in pain in punishment and then spent decades saving the world over and over at great personal cost, they will never, ever forgive him?  Does that mean he’s still a villain?

What if everyone he personally wronged died in an accident, he was the only survivor, it was that shock that caused his change of heart, so everybody he knows now loves him and knows him only as a hero, but the people he hurt can never forgive him?  Is he still a villain?

On the other side, if, say, a child continuously forgives their abusive parent, does that mean the parent isn’t a villain?

Forgiveness does not have a one to one correlation with goodness.  In either direction.

I am concerned that what people are doing is translating “…in order to be accepted back into the warmth of readers’ love” as “be forgiven by the readers” (which is not inaccurate, in terms of the christian framework) and then all agreeing that yes, that should indeed be the central goal of every villain-to-hero arc.  Which opens a WILD can of worms.

Because that means - We, as the readers, are in the position of gods to the characters, casting judgement upon them, looking into their hearts and deciding whether We will grant forgiveness to the characters for the wrongs they have done to others.

Like.  Aside from all the other implications.  At the point where you are granting someone forgiveness for something they did to someone else, something’s gone very wrong.  Assuming you’re not, in fact, actually yourself a deity.

But also for people to make translation of “…warmth of readers’ love” to “readers’ forgiveness” you have to already be assuming that we can’t love a character if we haven’t forgiven them for every wrong they’ve done.  And that wouldn’t even be true if they were a real person, and super duper isn’t true if they’re fictional.  I love my mother with all my heart.  I’ll also never forgive her for what she did to me and my brother.  Forgiveness and love are two separate emotional axes and one does not imply anything about the other.

bruce laying in the grass as his kids spray him with a hose from ten feet away: no go on I’m listening

harley in matching sunglasses:  o my god, not the blue prada sw-

The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.”

One possible solution I’ve thought about is reframing how you think about protagonists in the first place. Instead of focusing on why your protagonist is the only one who can fix the plot or counter the antagonist because of some inherent character trait, try thinking of how your protagonist is in the right place at the right time because of the combined efforts of many. Consider all the people that have come before that have made the protagonist’s journey possible. Some hypotheticals:

Why can the villain be defeated only now? Perhaps it is because some hero of the past made an attempt, chinking a weakness in the villain’s otherwise indestructible visage?

If your protagonist seeks a hidden knowledge to counter the evil despot, consider who has kept this knowledge. Who helped remember it? Who helped hide it even at fear of death?

Who built the powerful weapon that your protagonist wields? Who helped build/forge this weapon to make it so great? What line of technological development or technique went into its creation?

What acts of compassion or mercy from others allowed your protagonist to continue on when they otherwise most certainly would have failed?

To get an example that isn’t a hypothetical- consider how Star Wars expanded upon the “Many Bothans died to get us [the Death Star plans]” from simply a throwaway line to a valuable effort by a background group that made Luke’s effort against the Death Star possible. Perhaps you shouldn’t spend an entire movie’s length of time developing this background effort, but maybe have your protagonist encounter these inner workings along their journey instead of just paying them lip service.