twig :>

I have been mulling something over for a while and have decided to share. As part of my job, I read a lot of fiction that's still in development. After a while, you start to see the same errors, misunderstandings and shortcuts crop up repeatedly with different creators and it gets me thinking what is the most elegant way possible I could explain the issues to someone wanting to improve? The one that comes up the most often and is the hardest to explain is: "Why don't people care about my characters and/or story". It's always a thorny problem and I think I have a workable answer that applies in most cases: A story is a series of revelations regarding compounding, unintentional consequences to character decisions. The further you stray from this, the less people care. It translates to: 1) characters have to make decisions otherwise there is no drama 2) Those decisions have to matter otherwise there are no stakes 2) The consequences have to interact with one another. A affects or causes B affects or causes C etc. otherwise there is no progression 3) There must be some unintended consequences otherwise there is no conflict 4) The consequences have to be revealed (even at least implied) otherwise there is no conclusion This works at the micro scale in terms of dialogue: The specific word/tone/movement a character uses affects how another character reacts in an unexpected or interesting way which in turn causes another reaction and these layer onto one another until a decision is reached and a consequence implied thereby completing the scene. It also works at the macro scale in terms of plot: The decisions characters made in a scene prompts/affects the characters and context of the scene that follows (even if we don't know it at first) and by the end those layered interactions have been revealed to us and we see the unexpected or interesting result.

tumblr might shit on the quality tho u might have to click on it

Also i should've said MAIN difference rather than differences bc i only list 1 whoops

i haven't been able to eat much of anything today so if anyone could possibly donate, i'd appreciate it.

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author is scared of me = terrified of ambiguity, uses excruciatingly precise language to avoid being misinterpreted, treats diversity as a box-ticking exercise, bends over backwards to explain itself when Literally No One Asked, all morally grey actions have to be immediately justified and resolved