My good friend Harry Markov shot me this link awhile ago. All right, technically he shot the link to twitter in general and thus to everyone who cared to read it, but scientific fact has proven that I am at least as important as everyone on twitter, so it might as well have been to me. Anyway, it pretty much summarizes what I feel is the best way to approach characters: let their motives shape their actions, let their actions drive the story.
If you’re at all interested in writing, you should take a look at it (as you should take a look at everything writing related ever). If you’re at all interested in writing fantasy, you might want to consider reading on, as today’s post is chiefly about that very subject (imagine that!)
Today we discuss…motive. Specifically, motives in fantasy settings. And more specific than that, the bad ones. Ladies…gentlemen…today we talk about…
Sam Sykes’ Top Five Worst Motives in Fantasy Settings EVER
5. The Gods Will It or “Thou Shalt Kick Ass”
A lot of fantasy (mine included) are rife with the divine. Nearly every fantasy setting has a godly presence: singular or multiple, benevolent or destructive, and just about each and every one of them wants their followers to do something. If you’re fortunate enough to be a peasant, they might ask you to live well and occasionally donate to the local temple. If you’ve got the rotten luck to be the hero, your mission tends to be less of the “say your prayers” persuasion and more of the “kill this evil son of a bitch and all his minions.” More than a little often, this particular message is delivered straight from the godly horse’s mouth, with the god frequently coming down from on high to tell the hero, in no unclear terms, that this is his duty and he better get it done or the world will explode or something like that.
Why is this bad, then? The world, as we know it, is rife with divine conflict and religious warfare has been the conflict du jour for millions of jours running now. And, in those terms, it becomes a more relatable, more ambiguous conflict because no one can really say who’s right: all sides have done some pretty shady stuff and most of our requests to heaven don’t warrant someone coming down and giving a very clear, certain answer.
The problem arises when the Gods are clearly defined as good or evil deities and their missions are defined as just. After that, there’s no room for argument. You either do the will of the gods or you’re against them. And if you’re against the gods, you’re against creation. And if you’re against creation, you’re basically the villain so you’re probably going to die. When gods are enigmatic and ill-defined, with their own agendas, their “will” becomes more complex via the nature of their interaction. If their commands are open to interpretation via vague visions or potentially corrupt priests, then the conflict gains another dimension and it’s another thing for the reader to worry about and thus gain a stake in.
If you sort of explain away events as “Gods will it,” the depth of the reaction usually boils down to: “oh, okay, then.”
4. Ancestral Revenge or “Hello, my name is ____. You killed my ____.”
This one might be hard to swallow. Revenge is one of the classic motivators, along with money and love. Some of the greatest stories ever told have revenge at their core. It’s one of those lengthy, broad emotions that we’ll probably never have too much to say about. So why is it on this list?
Revenge is at its best when its personal. When the character has a stake in their vengeance, so do we. A personal vengeance also means a clouded vengeance, one that might be affected by the characters’ emotions, and thus becomes less clear. The ambiguity adds tension, which adds reader involvement. The problem arises when revenge becomes impersonal, spanning centuries, generations and people. At this point, the reader no longer has any stake in the conflict because it’s hard to see how the character does.
If a man watches his wife die and he wants her killer dead, that’s personal. If a man knows his father died by another man and he wants that man dead, that’s still pretty fresh. If a man’s great grandfather was knifed in an alleyway and buried in a shallow grave by a nameless person, that’s stretching it. If a man’s best friend’s cousin’s bike was stolen by a shadowy man in black once a long time ago, the reader has probably already checked out mentally.
3. The Immutable Laws of Evil or “Four-Legs Good, Two-Legs Bad”
You might notice a common theme with these issues, that being that each one decreases ambiguity and thus decreases tension. The more certain a conflict is, the more certain its outcome and the less we have to invest in it. This particular motive is a prime example.
Orcs have been a staple of fantasy villains for awhile. They’re big, they’re ugly, they’re brutish, they’re clumsy, they’re stupid. They’re everything we’re not supposed to be. And, above all else, they’re evil. They are always evil. They will always do the worst thing imaginable. They will always be the villain. They can never change, ever. Thusly, when a horde of orcs shows up at the doorstep of the hero, you probably know what’s going to happen already.
This is the problem with immutable morality: there’s nothing to guess at. There’s no reason that orc might be sympathetic, because he’s always evil. We have no stake in what the orc does because we know what he’s made of. Likewise, we have no stake in what the hero does (assuming he acknowledges that his goal in life is to kill orcs without regret) because we know what his motives are right off the bat. And since we know the orcs are evil, we probably know that the hero is going to end up wiping them off his boots at the end of the story. We won’t feel bad for them because they’re evil, but we won’t feel good for the hero because…well, he was going to do that anyway, wasn’t he?
The old adage about the scorpion and the swan is apt here. If “evil” is the nature of something, it becomes harder to understand why they’re doing it and thus, harder to relate to and, thus, harder to care about.
2. The Chosen One or “Because I’m Too Awesome Not To”
There are all kinds of heroes out there: flawed ones, simple ones, tall ones, short ones, ones who are bad at their job and then there are the ones that can’t help being spectacular. These are the heroes that do nothing adequately, they excel. They don’t fight the dragon, they make shoes out of him and start a footwear empire. They don’t save the kingdom, they kill the corrupt adviser and the impotent monarch immediately yields his throne over. They don’t save the princess, they bring down the tower she was being held in, claw through the rubble with their bare hands and impregnate her with a glance and a charming smile. They are perfect. They are excellent. They are boring.
You might think I have a grudge against the kind of hero who is selfless, encouraging and genuinely wants to do right by himself, his companions and the world. Not at all; I love that kind of guy, sometimes more than I love the practical, sometimes heartless protagonist who takes the easiest way out. We naturally sympathize with the good guy because we know he’s got an uphill struggle ahead of him. Someone cold and practical could probably pump the dragon’s lair full of gas, killing the beast and the princess both, but the good guy has to do it the hard way because he’s the good guy.
Where the problem comes in is when everything goes the good guy’s way. It’s a lot like number three on the list, but in the sense that the flaw is on the hero, not the villain. This is the sort of motive that breeds very little stake because the hero doesn’t even have to try. There’s a challenge ahead? He overcomes it easily. There’s a rare honor at the end? He’s always the first to obtain it. Someone doesn’t like him? They’re obviously evil and stupid and ugly, so who gives a crap?
And why does he do it all? Because he knows he can. And so do we. So…what’s the point?
And my favorite terrible motive of all time is…
1. Prophecy or “Destined to Do What Now?”
This is a pretty big cliche in fantasy because it’s very, very easy. In one prophecy, you have an entire story! There’s a setting (“in the twelfth age of the lands of men,”) there’s an antagonist (“the people shall dwell in darkness and in despair,”) and there’s a protagonist (“yea, until the boy who wears the trousers of spun gold descends from heaven and smites the wicked man who drank the orange juice that I had specifically written my name on.”) And hey, there’s the resolution! Sweet! Add a few fight scenes and you’ve got a fantasy novel!
This particular motivation provides everything and negates everything. There’s the setting, which we don’t get to explore. There’s the antagonist, which we know is evil because the prophecy says so. There’s the protagonist, which we know is in the right for the same reason. And now we know how it ends, too. True, the journey is going to be fun, but the experience rings a little hollow. Prophecies are basically ancient spoilers, they tell you how it’s all going to end before you even start. Even if the hero has to overcome great odds, the trip seems a little more meaningless, because wasn’t he just going to wind up there, anyway?
There’s a reason people enjoy spouting Nostradamus’ weird predictions: prophecy forsakes personal responsibility and allows you to gloat, saying “I told you so” when the world ends. Granted, this might be desirable in real life, but in books? It’s hardly entertaining to know that anything the hero does is justified because, hey, prophecy.
And that’s my list.
You might be more than a little irritated at this point. I’m sure if you tore through my book, you could probably find a few instances of these in my own writing. Before you do that, though, I urge you to consider the number one rule of all writing.
So you’ve got Chosen Ones following Prophecies handed down by the Gods because the Orcs killed their Father.
WRITE IT ANYWAY.
A man who does the will of the Gods is still interesting if the Gods are interesting themselves. Just look at Greek mythology!
Even if a guy’s quest for revenge has spanned a hundred generations, the fact that he’s clinging to it says something about him that’s very interesting.
The orcs might all be evil in reality, but what happens if the hero isn’t convinced of that?
When the Chosen One fails, it’s all the more cataclysmic.
And anyone can write a prophecy…especially liars.
There are no rules when it comes to writing, save that you need to be aware of them when you finally break them. These motives are cliched for a reason: they’re popular and they’re fun. But the fun is what you do with them yourself. By the end of the book, no one’s going to give a shit whether you used one or one hundred cliches. They’re just going to like what you did there.
The only limitation is your imagination.
And with a line that cheesy, you’d expect me to fly away on a rainbow into a sparkling sunset. I’m going to do just that, too, but not because you wanted me to.
