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Speaking as more of a reader than a writer, I get that "too easy" impression when the protagonists "win" every encounter -- that is, they accomplish their objectives or at the very least are not forced to back off. If they are presented with obstacles that they can't quickly overcome, that force them to change their plans and to take clearly non-optimal "paths", then I start believing that their lives are not too easy. With action scenes, I guess one way to think about it is like a tabletop roleplaying game. Your characters have skills, and they may be very good at them, but they still have to make a skill check to use those skills. Just because your protagonist is a star track athlete doesn't mean they can successfully hurdle over oncoming cars 100% of the time. In a fight, combatants may be stronger, faster, or more skilled -- "there's always someone better" after all. In other words, competence does not require perfect execution every time. Not only that, there may be factors in play that the protagonist simply doesn't know about, like an antagonist who isn't acting alone, turning the protagonists' planned ambush into a pitched battle. Having your main characters learn important new information that throws their plans into disarray, while they're in a stressful situation, should do a good job of making their lives seem difficult. 
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Sep 8, 2016 19:48
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magnificent7 posted:Tell me how to make Lovecraft work in a contemporary tale. You might want to read the Laundry Files series, in particular the first book, The Atrocity Archives. They're sort of James Bond crossed with Lovecraft by way of Snow Crash. Spoilers for the first book's climax if you don't want to read the entire thing: The protagonists are lured into an adjacent dimension where the Nazis summoned an "ice giant" to help them win World War II. The giant is actually some entropy-eating, universe-spanning entity that the author never even tries to describe except in abstract, but it went on to bring that universe to a "cold death" -- everything except for the dying remnants of the solar system has been eaten, and even the light from the sun is being red-shifted as the giant extracts energy from it. The protagonists then have to deal with a) the fact that it's now consuming their heat, the signal from their radios, etc., and b) the nuclear bomb they brought with them that would give the giant enough power to cross over into our dimension if it exploded...and it's on a timer that can't be shut off. I guess one way to think of it is that you can use Lovecraftian horrors as a kind of "terrain" that needs to be navigated. The ancient undying horror doesn't really care about you, but if you have to do things in its vicinity then it may well end up killing you. It may also have goals that are counter to your own goal (viz. surviving). Sort of like if Galactus decided to visit your planet.
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Sep 18, 2016 19:51
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:It seems hard to find a sweet spot on this sort of thing when you've got a close pov with a single protagonist. Just because it's first person doesn't mean we need to know every thought that goes through the person's head. Their later actions can demonstrate that they've been thinking about things "behind the scenes". Zelazny's first five Amber books are first-person and full of conspiracies and backstabbings and so on; the protagonist is a canny rear end in a top hat who manages to figure a lot out (but not of course everything). And the books still move pretty drat quickly and don't feel the need to go into detail about anything that isn't immediately relevant to the plot.
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Nov 9, 2016 18:24
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magnificent7 posted:So, is Utopian Fiction a thing anymore? I know dystopian fiction is super popular, I suppose because it wasn't that easy to imagine. But now, something something trump/brexit/isis/climate change/mad cow/pissgate. Iain M Banks' Culture novels feature a non-flawed utopia; at least, while the utopia still has actual people in it (as opposed to e.g. implausible perfectly selfless angels), everyone's happy with their lot, and not because they've been drugged, mind-controlled, etc. either. The focus isn't generally on the Culture as a culture/society, but rather on their interactions with other, less-utopic civilizations. Or sometimes the focus is on the gigantic AIs that make the human-level utopic civilization possible; while the AIs generally get along there are disagreements that can have potentially huge ramifications, so it's not really a utopia for them. I guess the AIs make the Culture sort of like Omelas, in that the society is only really stable because there are AI guardians that are willing to sacrifice their own happiness to preserve the utopia. And then you start getting into interesting philosophical domains: the Culture creates these AIs whose skillsets are optimized towards performing certain tasks (including warfare) on behalf of the utopia. Banks makes it clear that every AI is given the choice of either doing their intended job or just being another citizen in the Culture, but that doesn't change that the AIs are specifically "bred" with certain goals in mind. EDIT: to address the sociopath/antisocial issue: the Culture, being significantly post-singularity, has basically perfect genemodding and psychological analysis. If we accept that sociopathy is some combination of genetic and environmental factors, then in the Culture you literally can't get the genetic precursors (they've been identified and excised ages ago), and the environment is too "soft/friendly" to provoke antisocial behaviors. There is one asocial character in one of the books, who is basically extraordinarily introverted and who refuses all offers to "fix" him. They find him a hermitage in a remote location where he happily lives out the rest of his life away from everyone else. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 11, 2017 19:50
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HIJK posted:But doesn't that mean it isn't actually a utopia? "Utopia" isn't necessarily a strictly-defined term; it's loosely used to refer to any "ideal society". That doesn't demand that everyone be happy all the time or that there be no conflict, but it usually implicitly indicates that there is no "underclass" and that conflict between members of the utopia isn't existential.
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Jan 12, 2017 17:28
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