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I kinda have a theme, but I wasn't consciously aware of it until I read your post.  Without getting to much into it, here's an example of what's hanging me up.  The lead character was an orphan who was raised in mines by dwarfs and has no idea where he came from.  He encounters a small group of his own people and goes away with them.  He has practical reasons of doing so (the plot pretty much drives him to do so) but on a personal level, he's motivated out of a desire to connect with his roots and find out more about his origins.  This group as a whole, in turn, is searching for a secret meeting place where supposedly dwells what's left of their people.  So the overall theme is finding "home" and belonging.  The central character's arc is complicated by the question of whether he is actually heading home, or leaving it by undertaking this journey.  The real tragedy is that he ends up betraying the group.  He's placed in a situation in which he's forced to do something that he knows is going to forever alienate him from the people that he spent so long searching for.  I can see the betrayal, how it happens, and the fallout from it.  But I don't know why it happens.  I've got to give this character a motivation for betraying his people, and its got to be something relatable to the reader.  We're supposed to sympathize with why he did what he did.  This is where I'm just spinning my wheels.  I don't know how to figure out why he betrays everyone.  I just know he has to because there's no story if he doesn't.  Of course I know that this is for me to figure out.  I'm not asking for suggestions or input.  I'm just confused on what strategy or thought process is supposed to lead me to an idea.  And the more I think about it, the more lost I get.

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This is a case of putting the plot before the horse, which happens sometimes.

You’ve got all the pieces there, you got a great thematic drive, you just need to find a reason he does this thing.

If he’s the hero, I’d say the betrayal comes as a mistake of some sort. Is he tricked? Is he doing something he thought was right, but backfired?

Dramatically speaking, being caught between one’s adopted people and their true people is a classic trope.

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This is a case of putting the plot before the horse, which happens sometimes.

Might be a really dumb question, but is this also what is known as plot driven?  As opposed to character driven?  I've never been able to fully wrap my head around the difference between plot driven stories and character driven ones. 

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If he’s the hero, I’d say the betrayal comes as a mistake of some sort. Is he tricked? Is he doing something he thought was right, but backfired?

I've got these questions at least somewhat figured out.  For a long while now I've been leaning toward the latter.  He idolized these people, and he feels let down.  He feels that they could, and should, be better than what he is seeing.  His betrayal was his way of trying to force them to take accountability for something that they had done (still don't have a clue what that is).  Kinda like how Wesley Crusher betrayed his friends in the TNG episode The First Duty.  I think I'm going for something like that.  Only the results here are far more devastating.  Or like how Bilbo betrays Thorin by handing the arkenstone over to the elves.  Intensions were good, but still kind of a crummy thing to do, betraying people who'd come to trust you and accept you like family.  I just have to figure out what these people did to warrant that kind of betrayal, and I'm feeling like this involves a huge chunk of the story that I haven't even begun to develop yet.  

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Plot driven vs character driven just refers to where the motivation to keep the narrative moving comes from.

Star Wars is plot driven— there’s always a Macguffin or situation leading the characters around. There’s character stuff, but it is triggered by situations contrived by the plot— example, Luke meeting Ben because he chased after R2.

If it were character driven Luke would have told Owen to suck it and gone off to see Ben of his own volition.

There other big difference is the final climax. If it’s an action scene, it’s likely plot driven. If it’s character driven it will be a more emotional confrontation.

If you do a good job, you do both and people in the internet fight over which it is.

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  • 5 months later...

I think I have my story!  Everything just fell into place.  Literally just now.  Everything fell into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  All the pieces were there.  I just could never see how they fit before.  I know how the hook is delivered in the opening "scene."   And the final "scene" compliments it nicely.  I know how and why the betrayal happens.  Tank, that advice on finding the right thematic drive made all the difference.  Once I did that, the characters just took over and kinda wrote the story themselves.  I still have things I need to develop further, but the big picture is there.  This was such an excruciating process.  I can't imagine doing this for a living.  I've been beating my head against a wall for so long, but the real progress came in flashes of insight.  I'm so excited right now!  

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On 11/14/2021 at 8:00 PM, Quetzalcoatl said:

I think I have my story!  Everything just fell into place.  Literally just now.  Everything fell into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  All the pieces were there.  I just could never see how they fit before.  I know how the hook is delivered in the opening "scene."   And the final "scene" compliments it nicely.  I know how and why the betrayal happens.  Tank, that advice on finding the right thematic drive made all the difference.  Once I did that, the characters just took over and kinda wrote the story themselves.  I still have things I need to develop further, but the big picture is there.  This was such an excruciating process.  I can't imagine doing this for a living.  I've been beating my head against a wall for so long, but the real progress came in flashes of insight.  I'm so excited right now!  

That's great!

This is generally how it always works for me, but my timeline is greatly condensed because I've just done it over and over so many times. It's that 10k hours of practice thing. My first scripts took almost a year to write as opposed to the weeks it takes me now. That's just practice.

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  • 6 months later...

So, I'm stuck on the ending.  It's funny because I always wanted to focus on the ending first.  My thinking was, how was I supposed to write anything else if I didn't know where it was all going?  But now, I have practically everything but the ending, and I'm stuck.  I don't know by what means I'm supposed to find a satisfactory resolution to everything I've done. If Vader had just stood there and watched Luke get fried and the rebels failed to bring down the DS shields and lost the battle, or if Frodo had been allowed to keep the ring, those would have been pretty sucky endings.  Without the right ending, isn't it all just a bunch of pointless events?  Isn't it the ending that determines whether or not it was all worth it? 

I just watched this video thinking it might help, but it's only left me more frustrated.  This video covers 6 questions supposedly needed to write a story, but doesn't get into how I'm supposed to go about finding the answers.  I have pretty satisfactory answers to all of them except "how does it end?"  Identifying the thematic drive helped with everything else.  Once I did that, things started flowing.  Is the thematic drive also supposed to inform me of the ending?  Because it's not helping with that.  I don't know how to find the pay off.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, with the knowledge that my script is never going to be anything more than a script hanging out on my computer, instead of finishing draft number 3, I think I'm going to try to turn it into more of a novel. That way, if I ever get it good enough to want to share with others, I can always self-publish and say "Hey, I wrote a book!"

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So here's what I'm thinking now regarding endings.  One of the ingredients should be a certain amount of irony?  There was a certain bit of irony in having Vader turn at the last minute and save his son.  There was also some irony in the one ring's corruption of its possessors leading to its own destruction.  I'm not saying that every story should end like an M. Night Shyamalan movie, but doesn't there have to be some kind of twist or surprise somewhere?  And if not, what exactly is the thing in an ending that provides the "payoff" for the story?  

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Endings have to be unexpected, twisty, and surprising-- but at the same time, they have to make perfect logical sense and have been set up., It's the hardest part, really. If you go too far out of the box, people will scream DUES EX MACHINA. If it's not out of the box enough, it's labelled as predictable.

I always find my endings by knowing what I want the status quo to be after the story ends. Like, what's the coda? Whether we see it or not, what does the hero have as a life AFTER the story is done. You have to know that. Then you look at the most extreme complicated situation you have them in at the end of the second act. They should be so far from that spot it's bananas.

Then you devise the chain of events needed plot/story wise to get them from where they are, to that end. What has to happen to get them there? That's your final act/ending. At some place in there, your hero has to make a choice or decision that either reflects the core theme of the story, or shows they have learned their big lesson. That gives the emotional payoff.

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Thanks.  That was helpful.

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I always find my endings by knowing what I want the status quo to be after the story ends. 

This is my big sticking point.  I can't even answer that question.  The story currently lacks a villian, and without that, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the status quo should look like at the end.  Originally, I just wanted to write your generic fantasy story.  And like most classic fantasy stories, it was about good vs evil.  But it turned into something else.  Now, there are no good guys or villians.  There's only two groups of people with different idiologies that clash, and the hero is caught in the middle.  He has loyalties to both sides.  But without good vs evil, his choices just seem kind of arbitrary to me.  His flipping sides could be seen as a culmination of the hero's journey, or it could be a fall.  I'm having a hard time knowing which it is, or why any of it is going to matter at the end of the day.  

 

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  • 1 month later...

Tank, I've found a lot of what you said in this thread about writing to be kind of abstract, mainly I guess because it isn't my thing and doesn't come naturally to me, but I saw the movie Vengence over the weekend, and I was able to identify all of the components in it you  talked about here.  Some were subtle, some weren't, but they were all there.  There was the initial hook, all the first act set-up, the lead character's major malfunction, the call to action, the twist where the big plan falls apart, all of it was there!  Having broken it all down, a lot of what you've said here is making more sense to me now.  For example, I had a hard time with this...

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 At some place in there, your hero has to make a choice or decision that either reflects the core theme of the story, or shows they have learned their big lesson. That gives the emotional payoff.

I get this now!  I've been thinking of an ending as a character learning some big lesson, but it doesn't have to be.  It could just be the hero doing something unexpected that drives home the theme.  For example, at the beginning of the movie, someone told BJ Novak's character that he thinks with his brain, but doesn't know how to think with his heart.  That's his major malfunction.  And then the rest of the film is him wrestling with his gut instincts.  That was the theme driving the whole story, gut vs brain.  Someone doesn't have to learn some big philosophical lesson in an ending.  It could just be a character discovering something new about themselves that reflects the theme, like how to trust your gut, or how to lock on to a target when you turned off your targeting computer.  I think I'm getting this!  

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It's funny-- none of it seems abstract to me, this is how I think and organize my thoughts. I've been doing it a long time now, so maybe it's just second nature.

But if you show me a spreadsheet with numbers i will get physically nervous and annoyed.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...

Has anyone here heard of ChatGPT? 

https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT

Basically, a high-powered chatbot that can, among other things, write fiction!  I can see this as a useful tool to help writer's block, although it could be abused to pass it off as original human writing.  I'd especially like to get a writer's perspective on this!

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All AI systems used to bypass creatives is a fuckin poison. Midjourney, Stable Defusion, and now Chat GPT are grotesque perversions of human thought and creativity. 

We thought that the arts would be the last thing AI take from us, turns out the arts are the first to go. 

It's a dark time to be an entertainment industry artist or writer. 

Thank fuck I only do oil painting and not digital.

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ChatGPT is interesting in that it can emulate a style and form really well. But it can’t be creative. You give it enough to work with it might seem like it’s doing something, but it can’t do subtext, it can’t do complex nested arcs, it can’t do irony, symbolism, anything else like that.

As a creative writer, it doesn’t scare me at all. But if I was a professor having to read term papers- woo buddy. That’s where it’s going to make an impact.

As for the visual art, I am torn. I’ve been a designer and photographer, but I could never draw as well as I liked. I got into Midjourney hard, and spent the last few months maki g an illustrated novel, which I have wanted to do for 20 years. I admittedly didn’t think it was unethical, but now I can’t even show what I’ve made without fear of being berated.

Commercial Illustrators should definitely be worried, but like ChatGPT, the lack of a soul makes doing anything narrative, like comics or sequences of illustrations with common elements, near impossible without feeding it visual references.

 

 

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I think the thing that is most alarming that these things are in their absolute infancy. Like, they're only going to get better. A lot better. Which is terrifying. 

About midjourney imaging stuff, unfortunately they all operate unethically. I see no problem with people using midjourney for their own purposes (despite my fears around the more use it gets the more it will learn and be updated), but using it to make 'art' which is intended for publish and or sales is outright wrong. Imaging AI is designed on plagiarism and there was no thought to code in any regard for artist copyright etc... I'm sure you know the whole argument...

I don't like the way these technologies were designed at the outset to replace the artist, not to be a tool. So that industry can completely disregard creative and take that part out of the financial equation. Design nearly always gets the shaft in the corporate world, so I mostly see these techs used nefariously and only see them becoming better at what they do.

There is a class action lawsuit being bought against midjourney (I think) and maybe stable diffusion too, by a handful of artists led by Karla Ortiz (who is amazing)

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Yeah I feel bad for using MJ at all now, but I did a lot more than just prompt. I fed it compositions I hacked together out of photos and my own bad drawings to fear compositions, had MJ give me a unified line art style, then did all the color and texture work myself… but I get the arguments for sure. In my case I have a novel of original stories that are fully mine and the actual work I’d want to sell.

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As a creative writer, it doesn’t scare me at all. But if I was a professor having to read term papers- woo buddy. That’s where it’s going to make an impact.

You know, I asked the professor who introduced me to ChatGPT that very question. He said that there are AI tools to detect AI writing.  I am not sure exactly how it works, but it detects the writing style and gives probability percentages of whether or not the writing is AI.   Also, there is the fact that AI does not provide citation, which is required by most professors. 

But that is all dependent on the professor in question, because having worked for a university as tech support, as well as being a student, I know there are professors who lack basic computing skills.  I had one who shunned using Canvas and still demanded papers be handed in in hardcopy form.  That professor retired, but there are many still like that.  And like Odine says, AI is only going to get better with time.  

And I just want to be clear, I was not advocating the use of AI to replace creative writing.  I was suggesting it as a tool like Google to help people with writing.  I, too, am against AI replacing creatives in any form, and I don't want to ever see AI writing or art in general being passed off as original human work.   I had only recently heard of ChatGPT and thought it would be an interesting discussion to hear from authors and artists to get your opinions on AI creating art. 

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  • 4 months later...

So….

on strike. Working on a few personal projects. I am planning to shoot a short scifi film. There’s a couple space shots and I was assuming I’d need to do them as cg. I talked to a few friends who do that sort of thing and it’s not cheap. I was on YouTube watching videos to see if I could teach myself— cause that is the sort of thing my ADHD brain does… but 3D software vexes me.

Anyway, happened upon a couple videos that showed that oddly,  doing it the old school way is actually easier than CG now. With a decent lighting set up, a mini dolly, a green screen, camera and model spaceship you can do what ILM did decades ago with a few clicks in after effects (which I DO know how to use.)

So obviously, I needed a spaceship. Off to some kitbashing tutorials, and a great one on “panelizing” by Adam Savage…

I decided to convert this old batplane toy my kid nabbed at a garage sale a decade ago k to a chunky armored spaceship.

So batplane, plus a lot of cut out pieces of styrene, parts from a macross valkryie armored fighter, a Russian fighter plane missile kit, another anime robot fighter plane, and a Space 1999 Eagle shuttle. Bunch of glue. Spray paint. 34737273 exacto knife blades.

Cost me maybe around $30 in supplies.

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