Thread "Awright, last things first...(writer responses needed!)" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 11:06AM, Jun. 30, 2014

Story wise it has no connection to the other films, but the same three stars are in it and their characters have similar dynamics… War of the Roses is like the same characters in an alternate world, or what happened after the events in the other movies: the sad reality of happy ever after.
It's a great film!

Posted at 1:06PM, Jun. 30, 2014

I saw 'War of the Roses' on the movie channels not too long ago. It caught my eye because I was interested in the 'real' War of the Roses, a historical English conflict for the Throne between the houses of York: symbol - white rose, and Lancaster: red rose, and… Oh yeah, the internet exists - google it :) The movie… it ain't that, but it was pretty darn good, but… Kathleen Turner's character was just a little too mean for me to empathise with her.

Posted at 7:07AM, Jul. 1, 2014

usedbooks wrote:
I really hate when someone swoops in to save the day. :P It's such cheap/lazy writing.

Yeah lazy history too. Like the First day of Gettysburg (First Corps) July 1 1863) But you're right that's why it was lambasted and lampooned in Greek plays 2000 years ago as Deus ex machina. It's fun to spoof by making it so obvious and corny. DW Griffith used it in several of his films and it almost seemed like it was self-parody by how meldramatic and silly it was.

I like the Thermoplye ending instead, rescue? Bah. Everybody dies. Arrow in the face Leonidas? And that spare fleet wasn't riding to the rescue led by the Queen of Sparta at Salamis it was hidden around the corner as an ambush. Yeah that was lazy in 300 Rise of Empire.

Posted at 8:07AM, Jul. 1, 2014

"They all die in the end" is usally just as lazy and unimaginitive as Deus Ex Machina though. It's the way most kids end stories after they grow out of "happily ever after".
In Thermopyle it's history yes, but history from a certain perspective, things don't end at any point in reality, but they do from the perspective of the teller.
- (I know you know all that Bravo, I'm just framing my point here.)
So the point of the style of ending with the Thermopyle is to express the brave, heroic, doomed tragedy and sacrifice of the Spartans… in a really trite jingositic way. The Greeks were great at that sort of thing :D
- (That's not a critisim of your taste Bravo, just another way of looking at that story)

Admitedly I haven't read much Shakespere, but he uses the same trick in Romeo and Juliet AND Hamlet: In Romeo and Juliet the two lovers die in the end in what's supposed to be a touchingly tragic misunderstanding, but it's actually pretty farcical. Accidently killing yourself when you were pretending to kill yourself is funny, not sad… but that's beside the point; the death of the two main characters was a cheap shot to go for a "BIG" drama finish, it wasn't clever.
Hamlet is a far worse offender, the entire last act is pure farce with added Deus Ex Machina! People have all these clever plans to kill each other and in the end they ALL fuck it up and kill every single person in the secne mostly by accident (i.e. Deus Ex Machina). It's a very funny read, reminded me of Benny Hill.
The purpose of that ending was to show the utter futility of all the court scheming, of Hamlet's delayling and prevarication, acting too late and having all his plans and aspirations turn to shit because of it with the larger theme that death is inevitable no matter what we do or think… etc.
The only trouble was that the message was so cruedly delivered by the Michael Bay style finalle.

The Greeks and Shakespere weren't alone in the crude and unsubtle endings. That was very comon all over the world and especially in myths and legends. Going for the BIG tragic ending was very comon in old folk tales too (probably the origin of the "Oh Henry" style?), and it can make those sorts of tales very boring reading too actually if you read a whole lot in one go because you always know how they'll end up.

I have rambled, but I think the comon thread is that the art of storytelling has grown and improved as time has progressed. It's sometimes said that humanity has been telling the same few stories over and over for thousands of years, that might be true but we DO NOT tell them the same way. I'd argue that we're better now at the art -Not everyone obviously, but more of us than in the past and our best storytellers can easily match or exeede the best from history.

Posted at 9:07AM, Jul. 1, 2014

One big problem with the Tragedy style was the five act structure. The climax is often in act 3! Many like Hamlet could do with losing the last act. Exceptions are King Lear and Macbeth, those hold on till the last minute. Hamlet is a terrible contrived story but told so well you don't mind. The play's the thing. See it in a great performance and who cares about the silly story.
Go on youtube and find the 15 minute and 5 minute Hamlet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP33oxsyDKY

As for modern story tellers being so much better? Certainly they see farther and clearer but they are but midgets standing on the shoulders of giants.

With all the variations of mythical story telling for every everybody dies ending there is another happy one. The Helen of Troy tale is one example. There are as many variations as there are authors and she was often the empty vessel a writer would pour his opinions about women into. Even Shakespeare got a spate of happy ending rewrites in the 18th century. And several make more sense and are work better plotwise than the tragic endings. Dickens spoofed one in Nicholas Nickelby.

Posted at 11:07AM, Jul. 1, 2014

Good point about the "ending" being a matter of the narrator's framing (especially for stories based on factual events). I'm sure I've seen a number of movies that would have been much better if they had ended two scenes earlier.

What gets on my nerve are the cliffhanger endings that specifically set up a sequel. It's all well and good unless they don't actually make the sequel. At that point, you just look like an asshole.

Btw, most things I complain about are the endings that I myself use and someone bitched at me about them (usually my sister). The "coming to the rescue" bit I apparently did too often. So now I kill people off and let the bad guys win – and she's mad about THAT too. Sheesh. I'm just going to start Wayne's Worlding all my stories and let people pick an ending.

Posted at 10:07PM, Jul. 4, 2014

This is probably too late for the Quackcast, but:

I'm an iterator. I throw things down onto the page as they come to me, then go over them and figure out how they go together to make the greater story. This in turn, sparks new ideas for new bits - and often requiring me to go back and tweak what I wrote before. I won't necessarily vouch for this approach - it's part of the reason my comic is still stuck on it's title page despite having a rough outline of 8+ issues. -_- But it does make the story more holistic.

Starting with the ending is definitely a valid approach. I suspect it works best for plot-driven genres like thrillers and mysteries though. Anything more character-driven is, well, driven by your characters - and they quite often turn out to want to head in a different direction. My current comic is in the superhero genre which is somewhere in-between and I expect some tension between the two as I flesh out the characters more.

I would say the importance of the ending also depends a lot on the genre (as does what makes for a good ending). For an enjoyable character-driven drama, people are perfectly happy going "that was an awesome story, just ignore the last 5 minutes of it" but if a mystery has a nonsensical ending then the whole thing is ruined. Similarly if a plot is building up to a big ending then that ending needs to live up to it.

I'm going to perhaps be contentious and suggest that an ending can be completely unsurprising and still be good. IMO, it comes down to emotional investment - if you're invested in the characters then you want to take the journey with them, even if you can see where it's going to end. Sometimes seeing the end coming is even the reason you can't look away. O_O Like everything else, this depends a lot on genre - a thriller or a mystery needs to keep you guessing. A romance or coming-of-age drama doesn't if the characters are enthralling.

re: having someone "come to the rescue". That's one of the issues I'm working through in my comic script at the moment. My plot calls for it in a couple of places and I'm hoping I can do it justice. My suspicion is that it's probably fine if it's balanced and/or tied to some sort of escalation. For example: "The hero spends the story hunting down the villain, only to be captured by the villain. Then the cavalry ride in, capture the villain and rescue him" is bad, especially if there was zero foreshadowing that there was a cavalry.

"The hero spends the story hunting down the villain across wartorn lands, only to be captured by him. Then the cavalry ride in… engaged in a firefight with an Apache war party. The hero escapes in the chaos, the villain flees, and now the hero has to pursue him through the middle of a massive firefight." A lot better, IMO. The hero still hasn't been saved through his own actions, but the "saving" was of the "out of the frying pan, into the fire" variety so it works.

Alternately there's the "the cavalry ride in and free the hero, then get blown away by the villain with his gattling gun" approach. Again, the hero's out of the trap, but the stakes have just been raised - no more help is forthcoming and the villain's just revealed himself to be a lot more dangerous than we knew…

Banes wrote:
Whether it's ending an entire series, or a story arc, or chapter, what are your thoughts on endings?

How do you go about ending a story or chapter well? Is it hard for you? Do you write your endings first, or do you find your way there along with your characters?
Is the ending the most important, make-or-break part of a story?
What makes a good ending? What makes a terrible ending?
What are some examples of great endings? What are some not-so-great examples? What made them good? What made them suck?

Posted at 11:07AM, Jul. 5, 2014

Irrevenant, you made it! We just recorded parts 2 and 3 of this one.

Thanks to everybody for your thoughts and making this an epic Quackcast trilogy! We're gonna talk beginnings and middles at some point soon…I'll get to work on those posts straight away.