Thus, what may be the most honest movie of all time, coming soon to a theatre near you. Snakes on a Plane. Snakes. Plane. Samuel L. Jackson. What is this movie about? It's Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane, dammit!

Brilliant. Doesn't even pretend. It's just Snakes. On. A. Plane.

Posted January 11, 2006 12:49 PM by Erik V. Olson

In technical plot theory, that's what we call a wind-up toy.

Posted January 11, 2006 12:54 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Maybe, but then this one ranks right up there with Nunzilla.

Posted January 11, 2006 12:56 PM by Erik V. Olson

Ah, that WAS a great cover by Alex Ross, wasn't it? Great story too.

The best comic-books do deal in a believable way with why the villain has those incredibly convoluted plans to off the good guys. Why doesn't Dr. Doom just shoot the Fantastic Four? Because he thinks it's a crude way of dealing with them, one worthy only of inferiors. And his hatred of Reed Richards is all about who is the Best Man.

Posted January 11, 2006 1:04 PM by Serge

Please pardon the blogwhoring, Teresa, but I disagree with you re: Twister.

Posted January 11, 2006 1:06 PM by Chris Clarke

How about the movie Point Break, as an example of ridiculous plot being merely excuse for action?

Posted January 11, 2006 1:29 PM by Erik Nelson

What about Jodie Foster's Flight Plan? That was one stupid movie with an unbelievable explanation for What-Is-Really-Going-On, one where the villains relied on many unlikely things happening one after the other right on cue.

And there is what also called the idiot plot. Speed is a painful example of it: if the cop had flashed his badge at the bus driver instead of pummeling the bus's door, the driver would have stopped before the detonator could be triggered.

Posted January 11, 2006 1:45 PM by Serge

Chris Clarke, having read - well, skimmed - your essay, I am irresistably inclined to doubt the veracity of your statement here.

Posted January 11, 2006 1:50 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I was so excited for a second that there might be a film of "The Warlock in Spite of Himself". It was my favourite book when I was 12. Oh, well.

Posted January 11, 2006 1:56 PM by Synedrian

Oh, and one might wonder why, in North by Northwest, James Mason tries to kill Cary Grant by getting him drunk, then by using a cropduster? But I don't mind - in this specific case of what is probably one of my favorite movies.

Posted January 11, 2006 2:00 PM by Serge

Huh! That is a powerful explanation for why bad genere movies take hold of a subculture, and then suddenly evaporate. Er...okay, that assertion is going to be hard to illustrate, but here goes:

Back in the day, before Peter Jackson did LOTR, my friends and I loved watching certain movies precisely because of the Good Parts Version (tm) effect. We all dearly wanted to see the Tolkien movie-in-our-head, and so we'd do things like rent Taras Bulba* for the scenes of the Cossacks thundering across the plain for the sake of getting the idea of what the charge of the Rhohirrim would be like.

We'd watch less, ah, watchable fare, like Excalibur, or Highlander, or pretty much anything with magic and swords in it, too, but frankly, I don't think many of us really cared for those as stories, but as materiel. We never expected to get what we really wanted, and many of us were kind of disappointed when we did.

I wonder now if the buying/watching habits of otaku like us actually led to studios thinking we wanted such cruft as, say, the Dungeons and Dragons movie** (or Daredevil, Punisher, Superman II-IV, Star Trek:Nemesis, etc.) Oh dear. Are we repsonsible for the junk that has been thrust out there?!?

*Not an actual bad movie. Told you this would be hard to illustrate. Until I did a quick google, I had no idea that it was based on a story by Nikolai Gogol.
**Hey, it has Tom Baker in it! I'll have to rent that!

Posted January 11, 2006 2:09 PM by rhandir

Mostly agree with all this, but I just wanted to comment on the subtext of Speed. For me it was a parable of generational conflict '90s-style, with Dennis Hopper as a crazed baby-boomer with a strong sense of entitlement ("This is about money due me!"). Keanu Reeves, on the other hand, is a representative Generation X-er with no sense of entitlement to speak of, not too bright, and an object of contempt for boomers such as Hopper ("Do not attempt to grow a brain!"), but a survivor who gets the job done by whatever means necessary and/or available.

Obviously the explosions and such are the reason Speed got made, but the generational subtext (which I bet was the responsibility of uncredited script doctor Joss Whedon) is why it's one of my favorite action movies, and I bet I'm not the only one who remembers it this way.

Posted January 11, 2006 2:11 PM by Rob T.

Sounds like someone's been reading the slush pile.

Posted January 11, 2006 2:13 PM by Scott H

My advice is: try to run your plot as a roleplaying game and watch as your players by-pass your carefully convoluted storyline with the simple "don't drown him in a pool filled with ill-tempered sea bass with lasers, just shoot him" shortcut. Of course, this sometimes works out the other way round when, no matter how many heavy-handed hints and clues you leave them, they insist on following up that red herring to the bitter and disappointing end.

Posted January 11, 2006 2:52 PM by Simstim

Simstim, I once made an elaborate plan, with characters and everything, for all the things the players would encounter on the road to the city they were travelling to...expecting to play the whole adventure on the road, with most of it taking place at an inn on the way. Inn With A Problem; Solution Provides An Insight; NPC Owes Them A Favor, you know the drill.

They decided to turn into giant eagles and fly to the city.

Now, I was an inexperienced GM at that time, so I just said "Oh, well, then we can't play. I thought you were walking and I prepared a walking adventure." They walked, which was better than I deserved.

What I should have done was either a) come up with some reason they couldn't fly, which would have been heavy-handed but wouldn't have broken the frame like I did; or better, b) had them fly over the inn and see something irresistably interesting, to get them involved in the situation there. Later I learned how to do things like that.

Or I could have combined the two: "OK, you're flying, and it starts to rain. Then pour. Then zicker. You really can't see anything ahead, but there's a shapeless blur below you that just MIGHT be...an inn."

Later they just teleported everywhere, but by then I had stopped writing R66 adventures.

Posted January 11, 2006 3:06 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I wonder now if the buying/watching habits of otaku like us actually led to studios thinking we wanted such cruft as, say, the Dungeons and Dragons movie** (or Daredevil, Punisher, Superman II-IV, Star Trek:Nemesis, etc.) Oh dear. Are we repsonsible for the junk that has been thrust out there?!?

I think the cruft is just the 90% effect, combined with the human tendency to overhunt things into extinction.

After "X-men", the surprise wasn't "Constantine" or "Punisher", the surprise was "Spider-man", and [this may be an irrational love of mine] "Hellboy".

Posted January 11, 2006 3:07 PM by Sandy B.

With the RPG thing, Simstim, the problem is, sometimes you get "Underworld."

Posted January 11, 2006 3:09 PM by Sandy B.

I loved Underworld! Finally, a complex enough plot to hold my interest. The ending was disappointing, of course...and Scott Speedman as the Savior Of Us All was kinda miscast, to put it mildly. But I loved the whole tone of it, and the subtext of it, and the way it was shot.

Posted January 11, 2006 3:16 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

They decided to turn into giant eagles and fly to the city

Funny you should mention giant eagles, Xopher. During the Holidays, my wife and I were watching our DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring. When we got to the part where Gandalf escapes from Saruman's Tower with the aid of a supsersized eagle, I turned to Sue and said:

"Why didn't Gandalf use one of those to fly Frodo straight to Mount Doom?"

What was the body count because they took the long way?

Posted January 11, 2006 3:31 PM by Serge

Serge: Not sneaky enough.

Posted January 11, 2006 3:34 PM by Harry Connolly

As noted examples abound that are actually making good money. Wonder what's in it for the reader?

Speaking of economic plausibility, it’s long been a staple notion in science fiction that in the future, we’ll move people to other planets to solve the population problem here at home. I had been reading sf for over 20 years before a friend pointed out to me that, unless you have basically free energy, that’s ridiculous.

Marching Morons?

Wasn't there a long ago When World's Collide variation in which the government promised a one chance in ten of survival? The gimmick was that a ticket to ride the escape fleet was 1 in 10 chance but the escape fleet was expected to fail 9 out of 10 ships - typical government kidding on the square.

Sort of begs the question of what is the population problem - many stories have been on the get rid of dissidents and do some good based on the Australian model or on a suicide mission model depending on what's selling. Given access to low earth orbit for the energy cost it's about as cheap to send folks out at escape velocity as to move them from the slums of England to Australia. It's the Alderson drive that's implausible more than the energy. Granted a census that decimates may be the better story and I've read only one of those.

One of the points of reading science fiction for me YMMV is to enjoy a discussion of alternatives so impossible as to be immediately rejected out of hand in the real world. That is after the model of brainstorming many things are accepted uncritically as a starting point and then looked at seriously despite impossibility. In my experience this works better in a magazine format - e.g. Alien Rulers although obviously a very respectable publisher eventually did the expansion in Triple Detente - talk about a massive perhaps unsustainable conspiracy.

Economic implausibility - from Monte Cristo to Gully Foyle without the IRS audit?

The shelves are full of Alien Space Bats made it possible for me to write this Marty Sue in many volumes where Pennsic replaces the dreams of space for both writer and reader. Must be selling or maybe just imitating works that sold?

As has been noted many times many places it is quite possible to classify much genre fiction by the implausibility - the had I but.... known....told..... schools of crime drama and all the variations.

Of course implausibility may be the appeal - consider the shared universe stories from the Stratemeyer syndicate to Thieves' World - the teenage girl who had a loyal chum, an engaging boyfriend and a roadster of her own in the depresssion was pretty implausible right there let alone the cases.

I'd suspect Neil Gaiman could make me believe I Lucifer on the screen if I can get from the little girl Sergeant O'Donnell met in 1942 to Modesty Blaise.

Posted January 11, 2006 3:37 PM by Clark E Myers

'and [this may be an irrational love of mine] "Hellboy". '

I'll say, other than the opening sequence which really had me thinking it was all gonna be good.

Posted January 11, 2006 3:41 PM by bryan

Not sneaky enough, Harry? I guess Gandalf IS a nasty son of a b*tch.

I noticed another such 'oops' moment in the first Indiana Jones movie. That plane was going to take the Ark straight to Hitler, right? If Indy hadn't interfered with that, Adolf would have opened the Ark himself and we remember what happened when the Nazis did just that on that island...

Posted January 11, 2006 3:44 PM by Serge

Eagles weren't strong minded enough to be a ring bearer.

Been asked and answered in much greater detail than why wouldn't a winged balrog take down the eagle who, disguised as a flying reptile carrying a ring wraith, was transporting the ring.

Posted January 11, 2006 3:49 PM by Clark E Myers

Nah, Clark...

Posted January 11, 2006 3:55 PM by Serge

Xopher:

Not to get all comic store conversation on you here, but . .. hmm. I seem to have painted myself into a conversational corner there.

My opinion varies dramatically from yours. I felt Underworld greatly resembled a White Wolf game run by a 13-year-old, and opined that I could have done better, AS a 13-year-old. I respect Kate Beckinsale's dupa in its valiant attempt to carry the entire movie, but I feel there was just too much dumb for any two glutes to overcome.

Posted January 11, 2006 4:02 PM by Sandy B.

More from the Dept of Callous Manipulators... Why didn't Glinda tell Dorothy right away the truth about how to go home? As a result of information withheld, Dorothy almost got killed by the Wicked Witch. Scarecrow got partially incinerated. I know, I know, she had to go thru the Hero's Journey and all that crap...

Posted January 11, 2006 4:03 PM by Serge

"I noticed another such 'oops' moment in the first Indiana Jones movie"

I don't remember any explicit delineation of what would happen when the ark was opened combined with everyone totally believing the supernatural theories behind such a delineation.

In other words, not an 'oops' , more a 'darn, if only we'd known'.

Posted January 11, 2006 4:14 PM by bryan

Serge:

1) Giant laser-eye-in-the-sky.

2) Giant eagle vs. Nazgul. Nazgul 1, Eagle 0.

But I'll grant you Indiana Jones. I had a similar problem with the Tomb Raider movie--if she'd destroyed the first plot coupon she found, she wouldn't have had to worry about the bad guys putting them all together and gaining absolute power.

Posted January 11, 2006 4:18 PM by Ashni

Agreed, bryan...

The first plot coupon, Ashni? What was the movie about? The quest for Ultimate Power by Wal-Mart?

Posted January 11, 2006 4:22 PM by Serge

Plot coupons are usually exchanged for a credibility bill at the end of the story, IMO.

Actually, harking back to TNH's closing comments on the cool bits and the need for good supporting structure, this might explain why I've been having problems with some books lately that ought to make my sensawunda gland go ding (David Marusek's "Counting Heads", for instance -- I stalled out a hundred pages from the end -- and China Mieville's oeuvre, which I ought to love, but don't). It's the opposite of the pulp adventure yarn with furniture straight out of central casting but a tightly tuned standard plot -- spend too much time on the exotica and you end up with lots of brilliant designer furniture all over the set, but no actors.

Hmm.

Posted January 11, 2006 4:46 PM by Charlie Stross

Charlie, I've just read Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. The plot coupons are more than enough to cover the credibility bill. I'm looking forward to the next one (the one due in a couple of years)!

Posted January 11, 2006 4:50 PM by P J Evans

I thought trading in accumulated plot coupons was how you got your denouement.

Posted January 11, 2006 5:03 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Not so much taking a position as suggesting that particular question has been asked and answered and answered and answered. Moreover many of the regulars here (not me I don't much care about much of anything) have a strong preference that particular movie(s) never be mentioned.

The power of the ring over Eagles
... At first it seemed sensible but then I thought it would not work - 1. Sauron would
have seen the Eagle+ring bearer coming miles away and stopped them. ...
Sep 15 2003, 7:56 am by Michael Graf - 19 messages - 12 authors

I hate the eagles!!!
... In this context, why would Elrond et al trust an Eagle with the Ring? But
then, even if we assume the Eagles would undertake this ...
Jan 8 2004, 7:19 pm by Caeruleo - 316 messages - 62 authors

Dangers of Eagle flight
... So, quite possibly there is danger that an Eagle would take the ring away
from Frodo even if an Eagle is only carrying Frodo. There ...
Aug 30 2003, 6:12 pm by Yuk Tang - 252 messages - 55 authors

A simpler way of destroying the ring...
... it is difficult to see how any army could distract Sauron from Gandalf, a hobbit
with the One Ring, and an army of elves on Giant Eagles flying straight for ...
Jan 13 2002, 10:43 pm by Nystulc - 44 messages - 28 authors

Rings and Eagles
On a slightly different angle, would an eagle be corrupted by the ring?
If he's the one wearing it I don't see why not. But if he ...
Apr 17 2000, 8:42 pm by Carl Blondin - 11 messages - 8 authors

Eagles and the Ring
... Why *not* use the Eagles to fly the Ring to Mount Doom? ... Doom, and you end up with
the Dark Lord of the Air, as the Eagle seizes the Ring for itself. ...
Dec 12 1995, 11:32 am by Tony Zbaraschuk - 29 messages - 23 authors

eagles and the one ring
... near the end. If that's so, why not have one eagle fly Frodo and the ring
to the mountain to destroy the ring. A friend told me ...
Nov 14 1997, 8:44 pm by Jason Gibbs - 3 messages - 3 authors

Eagles - Repost
... Gandalf on another eagle 5- Fly to mount doom as fast and high as possible 6- Once
over mount doom dive in for the crack of Doom 7- Throw the damn ring 8- Get ...
Jan 8 2004, 5:35 pm by Al Jackson - 19 messages - 7 authors

I hate the eagles!!!
... A good number of the Nazgul would have to be in a defensive perimeter around
Mordor/Orodruin in order to have a good chance of stopping a ring-bearing eagle. ...
Jan 8 2004, 2:53 pm by Chris Wright - 45 messages - 11 authors

Eagles dive bombing ring i
Why didn't the eagle's dive bomb the ring into the fire Well who is to say that
the Eagle carrying the ring wouldnt fall under its power? Agreed. ...
Mar 11 1997, 2:59 am by Kjetil Dahl-Hansen - 9 messages - 8 authors

Lord of the Rings - story so far - POSSIBLE SPOILERS
... Now raise them mightily in the air so Frodo has none, zero, null, nil, empty, zilch,
hold-in-the-Ring chance of escape, and turn Boromir into an eagle. ...
rec.arts.sf.written - Jan 9 2003, 8:55 am by k...@hplb.hpl.hp.com - 113 messages - 60 authors

LOTR movie opening narration.
... Gandalf escapes from Saruman's tower by riding on the back of an eagle, so why
doesn't he just ride the eagle to Mordor and drop the ring into Mt. Doom? ...
rec.arts.sf.written - Jan 11 2002, 9:32 pm by Doug - 143 messages - 59 authors

Posted January 11, 2006 5:07 PM by Clark E Myers

I think the reason I don't like China Mieville is that all his characters are scumbags, dunderheads, or both. And if he has a marginally likeable character, she has a giant beetle for a head or something.

Also, he's a member of the Brian Aldiss school of "everything's bad, everyone deserves to be miserable, and guess what? they are" school of writing. Too depressing for words.

Posted January 11, 2006 5:09 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

my son is rereading A Song of Ice and Fire before beginning Vol 4 of the opus. Last night, he looked up about halfway through Game of Kings to say, "That scene was so good. (It's one involving Arya being chased into hiding into some forgotten dark tunnels, he said) If I ever write a book, I want to put a scene like that in it." Somehow seems to fit w/in the general subject matter of this thread.

Posted January 11, 2006 5:13 PM by hrc

HRC: Just so.

General: Plot coupons (and the less-well-known plot vouchers) were invented by Nick Lowe (only not the one you're probably thinking of) in an essay called "The Well-Tempered Plot Device," Ansible 46, 1986.

Posted January 11, 2006 5:44 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

As someone who couldn't write a novel to save my life (every time I try out an extended story in my head the exposition/action ratio gets out of hand and I go 'nah!') I'd like to ask the pro's a question: how do you balance the demands of plot, exposition, dialogue and action in a way that satisfies *you* as a writer and that you find intuitively salable? Or is that an unanswerable question?

Posted January 11, 2006 5:50 PM by Fledgist

Tolkien says a few things about the Eagles himself in his Letters, after seeing the script for an early movie treatment -- they were supposed to be a deus ex machina, used very sparingly (a magic three times is just enough), and not "as common as busses." Besides, the same arguments that apply to giving the Ring to Tom Bombadil would apply -- would they care? Is it enough of their fight that they should risk themselves? Perhaps they are serving in the fight in a different way that does not come into the story we know? Besides all the other reasons advanced above. Ahem. Yes, please leave the abomin-- I mean movies out of it.

Posted January 11, 2006 5:53 PM by Janet Croft

I've often thought: "The middle in a book is often where it gets bogged down and the plot starts to creak. So why not just get rid of the middle?"

Well, why not?

The Italian semiotician/writer Umberto Eco wrote an essay about the necessity of having boring segments in porno movies, between the sex scenes.
Eco explained that each "boring" bit is necessary to give the voyeur a chance to relax before the next "good part". A porno movie consisting of ONLY sex scenes would be too tiresome.

Can the same be applied to literature? Actually, I'm not so sure. Yet, I can't understand why most new novels are so long, when everybody complains they are short on time.

Hypothesis: Today's book-reader is so stressed out from the overload of modern life, she needs to slog through 100 pages of boredom just to wind down enough to appreciate the Good Parts. It's the light salad before the big steak.

In other words, the boring parts are to fiction what the boring parts are to pornography.
;-)

Posted January 11, 2006 6:11 PM by A.R.Yngve

I thought a good reason for the eagles not going into Mordor was pretty simple... Middle Earth does have bows (considering the description of Bard's bow, possibly longbows), and there are a lot of soft spots on an eagle, unlike a dragon. This does make an assumption that they couldn't fly high enough to be out of range at all times, but considering the mountains and walls and other obstacles that raise the level of the troops on the ground, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable.

Hobbits, unlike eagles, are small, compact, and good at hiding in tight places, and therefore less likely to be shot at.

Posted January 11, 2006 6:18 PM by Renatus

I don't see stopping the Ark to Hitler as an oops, so much as a need.

Jones doesn't know what the Ark will do when opened, and that makes a big difference.

He might think it would be a disaster if it was anyone buta member of the Tribe of Levites who opened it, but then again, Hitler might have one of those handy (whether such a Levite, in the employ of Hitler would still be able to handle the Ark is a whole 'nother question), but he can't be certain.

In the absence of such certainty, the only reasonable choice is to keep Hitler from gaining the Ark.

TK

Posted January 11, 2006 6:22 PM by Terry Karney

One of the main problems with the eagle solution has been elegantly expressed here - in cartoon form, no less.

Posted January 11, 2006 6:30 PM by Bez Thomas

"...the descendants of old Thorondor, whose wings spanned thirty fathoms and who built his eyries in the Encircling Mountains in the days when the world was young."

One of a number of things in The Hobbit which, like the description of Elrond, doesn't seem to stick to anyone's attention.

The eagles are the Eagles of the Lords of the West; they are embodied spirits, all right, but not moral agents in the same sense that the Children of Iluvatar -- Dwarves and Elves and Men -- are, because they're people-of-the-Valar spirits, pre-existing and not part of the creation of the world.

So they'll help out Gandalf when he asks, and otherwise they watch. Trying to remove the ring with eagles would be much the same as trying to remove it by taking it over the sea to the Uttermost West; a refusal of moral responsibility, and so doomed, in Tolkien Middle-Earth, to horrible failure.

Even in the First Age, mostly what the eagles did was watch. Of the three exceptions -- the recovery of the body of Fingolfin, the delivery of Húrin and Huor to Gondolin, and the battle with the flying dragons at the end of the War of Wrath -- the first is a result of sacrificial valiancy of a very great degree, the second is a significant link in a chain of disaster, and the third is acting under orders from on high, or at least Taniquetil. (They are, after all, Manwë's eagles.)

Posted January 11, 2006 6:36 PM by Graydon

More from the Dept of Callous Manipulators... Why didn't Glinda tell Dorothy right away the truth about how to go home?

Having just finished reading the whole thing, into a live mic yet, I can answer that.

That wasn't Glinda at the beginning. That was the Good Witch of the North. She didn't know what the charm was on the shoes, just that there was one.

Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, knows lots more stuff, but the roads between the Quadlings and the rest of Oz, um, weren't.

Blame Hollywood yet again.

Posted January 11, 2006 6:38 PM by pericat

Plot coupons. Explanation is about halfway through the essay.

A shorter explanation by Neil Gaiman, with clowns.

Couldn't they have sent the ark to Hitler afterwards? It's not like anyone was going to report the results of the first try back to him.

Posted January 11, 2006 6:43 PM by Ashni

The "plots" of the ULTIMA fantasy games were largely plot coupon collection. That and hewing a swath.

* * *

Back before MMORPGs, there were play-by-mail games.

Several of these had . . . plot coupons.

Well, not in the fictional sense. But when your tribe / empire / etc. found a magical artifact, or exotic beast, or met up with someone who had important knowledge, or contacted the opposition underground on Sirius VI, you got in your turn-results envelope a little slip of paper. You redeemed it when you used the artifact, sold it, etc.

Posted January 11, 2006 6:51 PM by Stefan Jones

"My opinion varies dramatically from yours. I felt Underworld greatly resembled a White Wolf game run by a 13-year-old,"

So did White Wolf - they sued Sony because the plot of the movie was clearly derivative of piece of Nancy Collins-penned World of Darkness short fiction. Sony laughed at them, until WW introduced a tape of a Comic-Con panel the Underworld crew had participated in - where they talked about how much they drew on White Wolf books for mood and inspiration. The case was settled out-of-court - nobody's talking (NDAs), but it looks like WW got paid.

So yeah - the reason that the movie seemed like a cheesy World of Darkness campaign module is because it very likely DID start life as a cheesy World of Darkness campaign module.

Posted January 11, 2006 6:55 PM by FMguru

plots that hinge on people taking implausibly inefficient approaches to achieving a goal.

Straight away I thought of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Why doesn't Voldemort's minion just turn Harry's toothbrush into a Portkey on the first night of term, instead of waiting out the best part of a year to Portkeyify an object there's only a one in four chance Harry will touch? Other than so Harry gets to do Cool Stuff like fight a dragon?

Posted January 11, 2006 7:11 PM by Eleanor

The Italian semiotician/writer Umberto Eco wrote an essay about the necessity of having boring segments in porno movies, between the sex scenes. Eco explained that each "boring" bit is necessary to give the voyeur a chance to relax before the next "good part". A porno movie consisting of ONLY sex scenes would be too tiresome.

This is hardly original, except in being willing to apply it to porn.

It may be a lesson all authors needs to learn. Moss Hart's autobiography, Act One tells how he finally turned his not-good-enough work (closed in into a hit based on somebody's remark that it was the noisiest play they'd seen; he dropped some of the unrelenting comedy (and spectacular -- a massive nightclub set was dumped) for some down time in the third act. The result was Once in a Lifetime, which may be terribly creaky now but was a huge hit when it opened.

TNH: I thought trading in accumulated plot coupons was how you got your denouement.

That's the nice way of putting it; considering the work to which the term is usually applied, somebody said that when the characters collect enough plot coupons they can buy their way out of the story.

Posted January 11, 2006 7:24 PM by CHip

>"Yay, cool parts. Love the cool parts. But the other stuff, the supporting and explaining and incluing material, has to be just as good, even if it’s not what’s remembered."

I question "has to." Yes, it's nice for intelligent perceptive discriminating people like all of you if it *is* just as good, if one can make an interesting story about people doing things easily, economically and efficiently. That's certainly a challenge for any writer.

And yet the success of all the examples you cite, including Harry Potter, indicates correctly that for plebs like me the good parts are all that is required, and the support structure just needs to be there. We can supply all the rationalisation required, because we really are quite inventive in our plebbish way. We don't let our brains get in the way of an enjoyable experience for which we have paid, thus wasting the money. We don't get bogged down in questions like the old eagles chestnut and miss the point of the story, which is the journey.

One day all stories will be written by masters of their craft, and the good parts will be sustained by a support structure beyond compare, with every part slotting into every other part smoothly and efficiently, every action and plot point justified and necessary, the whole thing a marvel of construction. And plebs like me will still read the thing for the good parts, and the fact that the support structure is there at all will still be enough for us. Sorry if that seems depressing.

Posted January 11, 2006 7:41 PM by Zander

Teresa wrote:

> General: Plot coupons (and the less-well-known plot vouchers) were invented by Nick Lowe (only not the one you're probably thinking of) in an essay called "The Well-Tempered Plot Device," Ansible 46, 1986.

Has Nick Lowe's stuff ever been collected anywhere - either on paper or a web page?

My reading order for Interzone used to be:
- Nick Lowe film review
- David Langford (until he spoiled it all by being available online)
- any interviews
- fiction, if I was in the mood

Posted January 11, 2006 8:04 PM by Steve Taylor

hy didn't Glinda tell Dorothy right away the truth about how to go home? As a result of information withheld, Dorothy almost got killed by the Wicked Witch. Scarecrow got partially incinerated.

I have to disagree a bit with pericat's answer here. I think the reason that Dorothy had to go on her journey, is because right after she got the silver slippers, it wouldn't have worked. Because she didn't WANT to go home yet. She'd just escaped Kansas--a Kansas that Baum spends the first chapter describing as REALLY BORING.

Why would she want to go home to Auntie Em yet?

Posted January 11, 2006 8:07 PM by Michelle K

In response to A.R.Yngve: I've always thought the "dull" musical numbers in the Marx Brothers movies were there to give your ribs a chance to relax.

Posted January 11, 2006 8:12 PM by theophylact

A thought on readers/viewers being willing to fill in the gaps in a story, forgive a few slipups, and just generally get on with waiting for the good bits -

I've recently gone back to reading rec.arts.sf.written after a couple of years away, and I see they're still maintaining the tradition of the bi-annual _Cold Equations_ flamewar, in which everybody gets together to pick holes in a harmless little story about how the universe is a nasty uncaring place.

I'm certainly not saying the story doesn't have a generous serve of plot holes, but I'm fascinated by how hard some people work to deny the story, rather than to work with it, as is so common.

I'm sure there's a potential masters thesis hiding in there somewhere.

Posted January 11, 2006 8:19 PM by Steve Taylor

I liked the article a lot. Writers are notoriously sloppy when it comes to this type of thing. At the same time, the faults he mentions may not really matter depending on the type of fiction and the style. Or, the weakness actually becomes a strength of the piece by the end.

But I liked the article because it reminded me of the way Nabokov taught fiction. He would deal with the technical issues in a famous work--whether Kafka meant a cockroach or a beetle in Metamorphosis, for example--and make it quite clear that all of these technical choices, all of these "little" things make a big difference in the ultimate success of certain kinds of stories and novels.

JeffV

Posted January 11, 2006 8:54 PM by Jeff VanderMeer

Hypothesis: Today's book-reader is so stressed out from the overload of modern life, she needs to slog through 100 pages of boredom just to wind down enough to appreciate the Good Parts. It's the light salad before the big steak.

I had a similar theory, until I read The Historian, which was great, even the boring parts, up until the fifth geezer archivist with a slightly different copy of the Cursed Book. That there were still approximately 8 million pages to go after that (OK, only 300) but they included a fruitless side trip to Bulgaria to track down the provenance of a couplet from a folk ballad that proves, without doubt! That Dracula did indeed sleep there, sometime in the fifteenth century.

Oh, and Star Wars. I want a good parts version, but will very likely have to wait until lucus is long dead and I’m an old, and bitter man.

Posted January 11, 2006 9:00 PM by Keith Kisser

The "plots" of the ULTIMA fantasy games were largely plot coupon collection. That and hewing a swath.

Most of the computing power available to the CRPGs of the time went into putting some immobile on the screen and straining to do the math of the combat engine. There were games (some of them pretty good) that came with printed books of descriptive text; you would be instructed to read graf 143 to find out what was in a room, because there wasn't enough memory to store all that text. Interaction with characters was generally limited to hearing a very brief tale about how they needed an [Eldritch Veeblefetzer,] which was in the possession of a [Fuliginous Myrmidon,] who lived in a [Psychedelic Shack.] Getting there would involve your 8-bit character crossing green terrain (forest), brown terrain (wasteland), black terrain (caves) and sometimes blue terrain (wet), fighting randomly generated hostiles all the way, in order to bring back the Thing, for which you would be rewarded with some experience points, a nifty goon-basher, and directions to the next dispatch office. Technical sophistication has made it possible to have somewhat more complex conversations, and something like a recognizable storyline (even branching storylines, which some designers lived in terror of, but wow, is that another story). And now we have online, which makes it possible for actual live people to have interactions with you, like killing you and taking your stuff to sell on eBay. Books are way behind in this department, except maybe for books about becoming a rich internet businessperson (or a rich novelist) overnight.

I don't necessarily see the Plot Coupon as the problem; as LeGuin said, there are always going to be quests over sea and through dark forests, and which sounds better as a motivation for being exposed to tiger prawns and rye-crazed moose:

"At the end of your journey lies fabulous wealth and power, and vengeance on those who have wronged you!"

or

"At the end of your journey you'll feel a lot better about yourself."

Don't answer at once, think about it for a few chapters. The point being that the story (the force of nature) is about what happens to the characters, good, bad, hench, and comic-relief. The plot (the mechanical device) is just the excuse for being up to your keister in Heavily Armed Objectivist Space Bats in the first place.

Posted January 11, 2006 9:50 PM by John M. Ford

Simstim wrote:
My advice is: try to run your plot as a roleplaying game and watch as your players by-pass your carefully convoluted storyline with the simple "don't drown him in a pool filled with ill-tempered sea bass with lasers, just shoot him" shortcut. Of course, this sometimes works out the other way round when, no matter how many heavy-handed hints and clues you leave them, they insist on following up that red herring to the bitter and disappointing end.

Simstim, is that "ill-tempered sea bass with lasers" suggestion an Austin Powers reference of sorts? ^^ It sounds similar to Dr. Evil's plan to destroy Austin and Vanessa in the first film. Idiot didn't even tie them to the pole before closing the door on them... >_>

I often hit the kind of wall you mentioned (characters ignoring the planned plot) while roleplaying with my friends. Granted it's a writing roleplay and not a game, but the principle is the same. We still plan out a plot and characters (image, history, the whole works), then let them run with that plot. We usually hit the wall of them wanting to go their own way somewhere further down the line.

If it happens, we sometimes force the characters to follow the pre-planned plot if it's necessary to fill in plot holes and stuff. They may not thank us for it, but sometimes it has to be done. ¬¬ If the plot the characters want to follow goes a better way, or the planned plot isn't necessary, then we follow the characters's lead. ^_^ It all depends on how everything goes, and where the other roleplayers take the story before it's our turn again.

Posted January 11, 2006 10:07 PM by Jennifer

(I have to predelate this, I've realized. I wrote it smiling, because it's something I've always thought was funny. Upon further thought, and as I've written it, I've realized it could be construed as somewhat chauvinistic, and is definitely a bit sophomoric [for what it's worth, I think the latter is necessary, on occasion, and if it comes off as the former, I apologize])
Ah, the good parts. My favorite reference to the good parts is Elmore Leonard: "I leave out all the boring bits."

David Spade did a routine years ago about bad made-for-video movies that had been adapted for television. The sole excuse for these movies to exist was basically a bad montage to a lycra-inspired power ballad, and a requisite boob shot somewhere in the movie.
Generally, when the movies were edited for television, Spade riffs, what would happen was, the characters would make a Great Big Deal about going to the BoobFest: "It's gonna be awesome! They're gonna be so hawt! We're all gonna get laid." Interlaced, of course, with various shots of sufficiently... well, slutty women, basically preparing for said BoobFest. Showers shot in such a way that the women could've been bathing in swimsuits and the viewer wouldn't have been able to tell. Candid conversations filled with... well, innuendo is more subtle than what passed for dialogue.
Much would be made, and then the male characters would pack their coolers and head out to the BoobFest.

-cut to commercial-

After which, the male characters would be piling, again, into their vehicle of choice. Their coolers would be empty, and they'd be cheering about what a success the BoobFest had been.
(which completely proves the "show, don't tell," rule)
So the entire reason the movies had existed would be negated, and you'd be left with wall-to-wall crap.

I also thought that was funny. To the point that my writing philosophy, for a very long time, was wall-to-wall-boobs. That was my motto to live by (I'm a male in my mid-twenties. If I'm not the demographic for boobs, there isn't one. Well. Besides nursing infants, of course).

My motto, or whathaveyou, for what little one exists, has since matured, at least a little bit. I got some great feedback from Will Shetterly early last year (I know he reads sometimes, so thanks again, Will!, if you're reading) that has helped a lot, and it's not so much...
Well, I had sacrificed a lot to maintain a breakneck pacing. It's more developed now.

This last bit to say that I think Eco is somewhat right, but I think it's more than just about breaks between sex scenes, or musical numbers between laughs. I think that really, what one must strive for in a novel, is altering the tone and mood throughout. There is always some comedy in tragedy, of course, and it doesn't all have to break readers' necks with pace. Sometimes the scenes that let readers catch their breaths, too, are the ones that take their breath most away.
Well. I think so anyway.

Posted January 11, 2006 10:35 PM by Will Entrekin

Jennifer: yep, it was an attempted reference to the first AP film.

Posted January 11, 2006 10:40 PM by Simstim

That was definitely one of the stupidest things Dr. Evil did, but he did make sure that Austin would be around to annoy him for two more films by doing so.

Posted January 11, 2006 11:15 PM by Jennifer

Xopher: O.K., I can't let this slide--My review of Underworld. Now I just need to figure out if I'm going to see the follow-up: it's one of the few things that I've written for my weblog that got any sort of response, but I'm not sure it got enough of a response to make it worth spending two hours of my life on the sequel.

Posted January 11, 2006 11:15 PM by Bruce E. Durocher II

In re eagles: That question doesn't really bother me. My hindbrain seems to've decided all on its own that since eagles don't partake of original sin, the ring is no business of theirs. I expect that means my hindbrain also believes that Tom Bombadil is in a prelapsarian state of innocence.

Fledgist: I balance those demands by being an essayist.

Yngve, I wouldn't say there's ever a need for boring passages in novels, but you do need some smoother, quieter passages. If everything's climax and crisis, nothing is.

Zander, nobody here's going to call you a pleb. We're all genre scum together.

"Yay, cool parts. Love the cool parts. But the other stuff, the supporting and explaining and incluing material, has to be just as good, even if it’s not what’s remembered."

I question "has to." Yes, it's nice for intelligent perceptive discriminating people like all of you if it *is* just as good, if one can make an interesting story about people doing things easily, economically and efficiently. That's certainly a challenge for any writer.

And yet the success of all the examples you cite, including Harry Potter, indicates correctly that for plebs like me the good parts are all that is required, and the support structure just needs to be there. We can supply all the rationalisation required, because we really are quite inventive in our plebbish way. We don't let our brains get in the way of an enjoyable experience for which we have paid, thus wasting the money. We don't get bogged down in questions like the old eagles chestnut and miss the point of the story, which is the journey.

What kind of snots do you think we are?

My biggest problems with Rowling are that the rules of Quidditch don't work, and that by now Ravensclaw and Hufflepuff ought to be in despair, seeing as how nothing they do is ever as important as the Gryffindor/Slytherin rivalry. Those aren't exactly big objections. Oh, and Voldemort could accomplish most of his aims just by having one of his minions sneak into Hogwarts with a Thompson submachine gun -- but then, I think the same thing about the X-Men's mansion.

Please notice that all the people discussing eagles in Tolkien have the kind of close-grained knowledge of those books that can only come from multiple re-readings. That's love and appreciation you hear talking, not nitpickery. Same goes for their comments about Rowling. "Why didn't they just put a portakey spell on his toothbrush?" isn't a critical mandarin's question; it's a fan's.

We do this stuff all the time. I enjoyed the hell out of the Alvin Maker series, even though it would have made more sense for Alvin to reach out and change the kid's caul than to change the kid when the slavehunters came through. Same goes for Neuromancer, even though a simple deadman's switch would have been enough to protect him from black ice.

This is another important principle of the reading transaction. If you've got the readers on your side, they'll forgive you innumerable sins and fill in the potholes in your roads besides. We make the book happen in our heads when we read, and correct for errors while we're doing it.

When I say the supporting material has to be good, I mean it has to be thoughtful, logical, and well-constructed so that readers like you don't have their fun spoiled by that niggling sense that this fictional universe isn't as well thought through as it should be.

Posted January 11, 2006 11:23 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

My favorite example of plotting exploding on the authors has to do with a field I don't even know the name of: it's the online games where folks search for clues from websites, physical evidence, et cetera. (Think of "I Love Bees" and "The Beast" as examples.) There was a privately funded game of this type a year or so ago (unlike Microsoft's massively funded "I Love Bees") where the organizers had spent ages carefully setting up websites with clues leading to other websites, stegged data files, the whole nine yards--and one of the players managed to jump to endgame within a couple of weeks, leaving nobody interested in all the clever clues that had been bypassed. After all that work I'm sure the organizers were biting through trees...

Posted January 11, 2006 11:30 PM by Bruce E. Durocher II

I find life is much easier if when you read Rowling's works you don't mentally transpose Quidditch with 43-Man Squamish. Also, do not think of a white elephant.

Posted January 11, 2006 11:38 PM by Bruce E. Durocher II

Hey, I remember 43-Man Squamish! I am sure I read that one in the magazine.

Posted January 11, 2006 11:58 PM by Clifton Royston

Bruce, I'm morally certain you don't want to hear about Harry Potter and the Bridges of Pokemon County, wherein the true nature of the Golden Snitch is revealed.

Posted January 12, 2006 12:04 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I still have the 300+ page detritus of the novel I (with great hubris) tried to write in high school. It's a gigantic ever-expanding plot complication. If I'd ever completed it it would have taken 10 cubic feet of paper to fulfill every plot complication that I launched. It gives me something that's a "yikes!" to look at.

Posted January 12, 2006 12:08 AM by Paula Helm Murray

Teresa: *cracks up laughing* I semi-want to read that book! Now I'm wondering if the Golden Snitch contains a robotic flying Pokemon... *ponders*

Posted January 12, 2006 12:15 AM by Jennifer

I've always thought the "dull" musical numbers in the Marx Brothers movies were there to give your ribs a chance to relax.

That may very well be an actual effect, but I don't think it's intentional. It's more probable that, in the early MGM films, Irving Thalberg was trying to make them more like what audiences expected from a "comedy;" a romance, heroes and villains, and musical interludes.* The Paramount pictures weren't big hits -- as everybody knows, Duck Soup was enough of a flop when released that the studio let the boys go -- but now they're usually considered superior to all the MGMs but Opera and Races. (I don't disagree with this.)

*I did an essay Once Long Ago on what A Night at the Opera would have been like had it been a conventional, Marxless MGM film of the period, and for comparison's sake what Warners might have done with the same material. It's actually pretty easy to do, down to picking stars, story elements, and some crew, if you know the studio-system films of the time.

Posted January 12, 2006 12:27 AM by John M. Ford

Bruce, I'm morally certain you don't want to hear about Harry Potter and the Bridges of Pokemon County, wherein the true nature of the Golden Snitch is revealed.

Posted January 12, 2006 1:47 AM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Yngve, I wouldn't say there's ever a need for boring passages in novels, but you do need some smoother, quieter passages. If everything's climax and crisis, nothing is.

Bill Martell, a smart guy who writes scripts for low-budget films, says that he gives his scripts a primary genre and a secondary genre.

The primary is thriller or horror or whatever. The secondary is usually a romance, but it could be a whodunit or a coming of age or a troubled marriage story. All the high points of the script come out of the primary genre. All the lower points of the script that space out the exciting high points and give the viewer a lull advance the story in the secondary genre.

It's a pretty interesting idea.

Posted January 12, 2006 1:58 AM by Harry Connolly

FMguru writes: So yeah - the reason that the movie seemed like a cheesy World of Darkness campaign module is because it very likely DID start life as a cheesy World of Darkness campaign module.

About when Underworld went into production, one of my friends completed a screenplay that amounted to a very, very loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with the Montagues and Capulets as vampires and werewolves. Talk about a wind-up toy, but I liked it. It was sweet and wonderful and dark and thrilling. And, yeah— she reengineered the ending to be less of a tragedy and more of a modern romance, but it was still good.

I would have much rather seen my friend's screenplay made into a Kate Beckinsale vehicle. She was, of course, mightily frustrated that Underworld made her screenplay basically unmarketable.

Posted January 12, 2006 2:15 AM by j h woodyatt

Speaking of Nick Lowe, he turned up recently in the Times Literary Supplement. Not many TLS reviews of retellings of Greek myth make reference to H.P. Lovecraft, S.P. Somtow, and Gromit.

Posted January 12, 2006 3:38 AM by Dave Langford

" but then, I think the same thing about the X-Men's mansion.
"
The X-Men world is based on mutant powers trumping Thompson submachine guns 9,999 times out of 10,000.

Posted January 12, 2006 4:04 AM by bryan

Serge - I delurked just to post a link to this Bob the Angry Flower cartoon.

Posted January 12, 2006 4:08 AM by Matt Freestone

"A porno movie consisting of ONLY sex scenes would be too tiresome."
This theory has since been disproven by the internet.

Posted January 12, 2006 4:09 AM by bryan

Bez - sorry, didn't spot you'd beaten me to it.

Posted January 12, 2006 4:37 AM by Matt Freestone

I've run RPGs before, and after the first two minor disasters (everyone had fun but nothing went anywhere) I developed my own technique for GMing.

Don't plan anything specifically. Have a few of the most likely scenarios vaguely sketched, but basically leave the player to do whatever they feel like. This sometimes led to "talk amongst yourselves" segments of up to 15 minutes while I pulled stuff out of nowhere, but was generally fairly succesfull.

It also taught me a lot about "obvious" hints and solutions. No matter how genre savvy they are there are times when people won't take the hint. There will be times when the psychic NPC will be sitting in the floor, rocking and saying "we shouldn't be here, they're coming" and people will stalwartly refuse to leave.

Even when they are playing a game and should be able to get some perspective people will also make emotionally screwed-up decisions. There are times when the emotionally unavailable jerk will leave the player, and the perfect, devoted lover will ask that person to run away and the player will stay and wait for the jerk.

Character development isn't always gradual or explicable. There will be many, many times when a previously meek and naive player will turn suddenly, and with little justification, to murder.

That's part of why I love RP. It can be a good general rubric for a natural, human level of sensibility. Not deus-ex-machina, Sue-grade wise nor Horror-movie-victim foolish.

Posted January 12, 2006 4:40 AM by Leah Miller

The Good-Parts effect is probably why I prefer to remember the Star Wars movies than watch them.

Posted January 12, 2006 5:24 AM by neotoma

David Langford: The things I learn under your tutelage! I had not the slightest idea about Graves and his metamyth. Good heavens!

Posted January 12, 2006 5:31 AM by Dave Luckett

This reminded me of the wry denouement of Interface by Stephen Bury (Neal Stephenson's pseudoynm) where the one who has worked out the conspiracy explains it to people but no-one believes him because it is so far-fetched.

I must re-read that - sometimes I feel like the Cy Ogle of weblogging.

Posted January 12, 2006 5:44 AM by Kevin Marks

"The primary is thriller or horror or whatever. The secondary is usually a romance, but it could be a whodunit or a coming of age or a troubled marriage story. All the high points of the script come out of the primary genre. All the lower points of the script that space out the exciting high points and give the viewer a lull advance the story in the secondary genre."

I've got to remember that rule. Thanks for the link to Martell's site.

Teresa suggested that a submachine gun could greatly simplify the plots of Harry Potter and X-men stories. True. But then you also get Arnold Schwarzenegger's spoof of HAMLET (as in the film The Last Action Hero)... or Indiana Jones shooting the big swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"When you've got a machine gun, all plot problems start to look like targets."
;-)

Posted January 12, 2006 5:53 AM by A.R.Yngve

I've played with Thompson submachine guns, and I can see how keeping one around could put you in a "reach out and touch" frame of mind.

Dave, thanks for the link to the TLS essay: a nice piece of work. I hope he had as much fun writing the Lovecraft-and-Somtow paragraph as it sounds like.

Posted January 12, 2006 7:24 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

What have you got against artifacts? I have pleanty of artifacts that I love dearly, sho 'nuff. I suppose next you'll be starting in on fossils? Ammonites aren't fond of criticism, mind you.

I never saw Twister, but I do think that the Tornado Edit of Talula by Tori Amos is the better version.

Posted January 12, 2006 7:26 AM by xelf

Regarding the good old why-didn't-they-use-the-Eagles chestnut, I'm reminded to once again link to the unparalleled Tolkien Sarcasm Page at the Flying Moose of Nargothrond, where the reader is invited to contemplate even finer hairline cracks in the matter of Middle-earth:

"If, as is likely, a bacterium had landed on the inner surface of the Ring, would the Ring corrupt it into an evil bacterium? Would it be invisible to other bacteria? Would its life stretch out and become an unending weariness? Would it use its increased strength and stature to rule over other bacteria? Would it fight to keep other bacteria from adhering to the Ring? Would it still evolve genetically, or would it instead become a Bacteria-wraith?"

Posted January 12, 2006 7:39 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

It also taught me a lot about "obvious" hints and solutions. No matter how genre savvy they are there are times when people won't take the hint. There will be times when the psychic NPC will be sitting in the floor, rocking and saying "we shouldn't be here, they're coming" and people will stalwartly refuse to leave.

Been there, done that. Character thought it was much smarter to set up some serious hardware (anything up to and including an old TigerII tank) and produce a crossfire to obliterate the demons as they came out of the temporary gates of hell two abreast than try to face them later. Yeah, we all died. So did almost all the demons (at least before we ran out of ammo...).

Posted January 12, 2006 7:59 AM by Francis

" The real innovation is earlier: Selene draws twin '45's and spins on the floor while firing her guns until she shoots a toilet-paper like circular perforation around her so she and her chosen section of floor can drop to the next level. Without reloading. Through an apparent stone floor. Now that's something you didn't see in The Piano."

But did see in Olivier Gruner's Nemesis.

I'm sorry to keep beating down Underworld, but when a reasonably straight male says "How many times are we going to have to see Kate Beckinsale's ass stomp through the Vamp Orgy Frat Mansion?" * you're not succeeding as a filmmaker.

*two or three. They may have reused footage.

As far as X-Men and tommyguns: I can think of at least four X-men who can get shot until the gun jams (which is probably around 20 bullets), and then put that gun where the sun shineth not.

Posted January 12, 2006 8:50 AM by Sandy B.

I've recently gone back to reading rec.arts.sf.written after a couple of years away, and I see they're still maintaining the tradition of the bi-annual _Cold Equations_ flamewar, in which everybody gets together to pick holes in a harmless little story about how the universe is a nasty uncaring place.

I'm certainly not saying the story doesn't have a generous serve of plot holes, but I'm fascinated by how hard some people work to deny the story, rather than to work with it, as is so common.

I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I get picky about Cold Equations is because it's this close *holds up fingers a quarter-inch apart* to being a really great story. And then you realize that the girl died for bureaucratic idiocy, and it all falls apart. As I read somewhere, a sign reading "No Admittance" is only guaranteed to work on 19th-century Germans...

Posted January 12, 2006 8:53 AM by Carrie S.

By the bye, is this where I confess to having liked both Daredevil and Constantine? Though the latter was pretty clearly an Elseworld (lessee...not blond, American, et multi cetera).

I loathed Underworld, though. It would have been better, IMO, if it had been a White Wolf movie. As it was, one could watch them dancing around all the WW terms they really wanted to use, but couldn't.

Posted January 12, 2006 9:11 AM by Carrie S.

Er, Carrie, care to enlighten me? Why does the girl in "The Cold Equations" die for bureaucratic idiocy? (Been a few years since I read it)

Posted January 12, 2006 9:27 AM by ajay

"As far as X-Men and tommyguns: I can think of at least four X-men who can get shot until the gun jams (which is probably around 20 bullets), and then put that gun where the sun shineth not."

X-men strategies for dealing with tommy guns:

Wolverine: Get shot a bit, get pissed off, kill tommy guy user. That guy sure overreacts to every little scratch he gets.

Nightcrawler: teleport behind tommy gun user, coldcock.

Cyclops: shoot bullets out of the air with wide angle wide beams, shoot tommy gun user.

Beast: I guess if someone actually managed to shoot him he'd be in trouble.

Iceman: SuperThick ICESHIELD TM

Colossus: Bullet's bounce off, knocks wall down on top of tommy gun user, feels angst.

Rogue: Bullet's bounce off, but look more dangerous than with Colossus because she's not made of metal. Beats up tommy gun user, calls tommy gun user sugah.

Jean Grey as Phoenix: Destroy universe

Jean Grey: Stop bullets with telekinetic powers.

Kitty Pryde: bullets go through her but not in the normal way, don't cause any damage.

Professor X: notices you are within a couple miles of house with tommy gun, sends everyone else to kick your ass.

Storm: Will Hurrican force winds stop a tommy gun?

Gambit: Wow, what a lucky guy, none of those bullets ended up hitting him. what are the odds?

Well I'm sorry but if Teresa was the evil minion of someone like Apocalypse, and suggested sneaking in a tommy gun to take care of the X-Men I'm going to assume there would be some sort of survival of the fittest scenario taking place immediately after the suggestion, with Apocalypse doing the standard megalomaniacal villain rant to show how crazy and badass he truly is.

Basically the way to take care of the X-Men is to counter them with a force they are not prepared to deal with, and that force is magic (as has lately been aptly demonstrated), this is why, my lord Apocalypse, that I suggest we build a dimensional portal to another earth where Magic is still rife and trick the X-Men into entering this portal, the magical champions of that earth will easily destroy our enemies.

Apocalypse: Excellent done, minion! And where do this other world's champions reside?

Evil Minion ME: A little boarding school for the magically gifted called Hogwarts, oh mighty one.

Apocalypse: good.

I depart. Apocalypse stands looking out over the world from his newest impressive floating space fortress. He has a bewildered look upon his face.

Apocalypse: "Tommy Gun?!?"

Posted January 12, 2006 9:44 AM by bryan

Patrick: No, because bacteria don't have will. At least, I don't think so, and I'm better at atthropomorphism than anyone I know.

The RPG thing: how to deal with players who do "let's turn into giant eagles and skip the plot" thing is the thing it really is possible for a writer to learn from roleplaying and which translates well. It's a pacing thing as well as a plot thing. So, in fact, is the infrastructure "boring connective tissue" stuff. Nobody talks enough about pacing. I think it's really interesting, and also very useful to consider.

Posted January 12, 2006 9:53 AM by Jo Walton

the answer to
'Why does the girl in "The Cold Equations" die for bureaucratic idiocy? '

is indicated by

'As I read somewhere, a sign reading "No Admittance" is only guaranteed to work on 19th-century Germans...'

Posted January 12, 2006 9:59 AM by bryan

Carrie S. Says
By the bye, is this where I confess to having liked [...] Daredevil
I bought this cheap on DVD last month. It's not as bad as I'd been lead to believe, I liked most of it except the bits with Colin Farrell.

Farrell, I sincerely believe, is some kind of anti-talent where not only is he very bad indeed but he manages to bring down the performances of the other much better actors (Pacino, Sam Jackson) he works with. The fact that he's just a marginally better-looking version of every second Irish barman I've ever met doesn't help either.

Posted January 12, 2006 10:07 AM by Paul Herzberg

The portkey problem always bugged me in Goblet of Fire also, but I then figured no one's ever been shown using a portkey to get into or out of Hogwarts. So there's probably a security spell of some sort that prevents portkeys from functioning in Hogwarts & the grounds. The maze might have had a workaround to that problem -- maybe it wasn't technically part of Hogwarts.
I guess that's just points out the difference between a good book and a bad one -- in a good book the readers will fan-wank the plot-holes to make sense. In a bad one the plotholes will be the excuse to throw the book against the wall.

Posted January 12, 2006 10:08 AM by mayakda

Ajay: It has been said far more completely than I can manage here on this page (incidentally the source of the Germans quote, I notice), and in greater detail on this page.

I have been trying intermittently to rewrite the darn thing so it still upon reflection makes the point Godwin wanted it to make. This may be hubris on my part.

Posted January 12, 2006 10:12 AM by Carrie S.

I think Colin Farrell is a very dedicated actor. You may not like his off-duty Dublin barman character, but the fact that he's been doing it 24-7 for several years is impressive.

Posted January 12, 2006 10:22 AM by Niall McAuley

I think Colin Farrell is a very dedicated actor. You may not like his off-duty Dublin barman character, but the fact that he's been doing it 24-7 for several years is impressive.

So, is there a risk that watching Colin Ferrell causes liver damage? Ought not Public CItizen look into this, with a possible eye on having the INS send his back whence he came?

Posted January 12, 2006 10:28 AM by fidelio

I know I've been struggling for several years with "cool ideas in search of a plot" (the ideas just got cooler, and might at last be pointing toward a viable plot). Is that better than instantaneous plot generation from A to Z, as some writers claim to do? Dunno, but it's another example of that human trait of blundering around constructing images and stories out of everything we see -- bright stars, Orion, myth of Orion, etc.

As a reader and reviewer my disbelief suspends or reasserts itself at widely different points depending on the book. Since I don't get to see much SF, I'll happily accept wormholes, FTL and other chestnuts as long as the story is clever and compelling. With medievalesque fantasy I tend to nitpick more and get grumpy when Order Is Restored at Last -- unless the writer is really good. [Fannish obsession with games, films or comics is a foreign country to this fuddy-duddy.]

Some plots can be beautifully linear, some wondrously baroque, some delightfully cheesy, depending on the reader's taste. Is there some gold standard that could satisfy all of this site's sophisticated bloggers? Unlikely. But it's sure fun to talk about!

Posted January 12, 2006 10:28 AM by Faren Miller

Plot is the trail you take over the Plane of Attention.

Since this is a collaboration -- the writer constructs variously indications of appropriate direction, blazes trees, game trails, and so on until one reaches the paved highway between high concrete walls of the least subtle of fiction -- the reader doesn't have to, quite, stick to the path the writer expected. People who really like the work will wind up trying to get under or behind the mountains in the distance, or through the doors that never open, or into the seasons never seen.

The writer gets to provide weather, and verdure, and diverse other amusements, but it's the terrain of thence-to-this that sets what can be seen, as well as what is.

That's what I use instead of an understanding of plot; if the terrain is steep, you-as-reader will eventually need a breather. If you-as-reader get heaved off too many cliffs, you shall grow bewildered and disinterested, no matter how lovely the fleeting scenery that rises as you plummet.

The downside of the excess of geography is thinking of odd associations as places, variously difficult to reach -- even if neither Sauron's lettuce nor the leisure suit goat are places I would wish to go, the desire to know how to get there is real.

Posted January 12, 2006 10:41 AM by Graydon

"The portkey problem always bugged me in Goblet of Fire also, but I then figured no one's ever been shown using a portkey to get into or out of Hogwarts."

Book 5 or 6 does explicitly mention that Hogwarts has very strong spells preventing unauthorized teleportation. An important subplot of Book 6 involves Draco Malfoy finding a way around this, and another subplot is about sixth-year students learning how to apparate (clear analogy to driver's ed), which requires deactivating the spells in a certain corner of the great hall for a certain period of time, so students can practice.

My favorite Quidditch glitch has to do with size of the crowd at the game. There are only about 280 students at Hogwarts (7 years x 4 houses x 10 students per year/house) and it's set in an isolated village, so how do the stands fill up with cheering throngs for each intramural match?

Posted January 12, 2006 10:58 AM by FMguru

That's a glitch I hadn't though about, but the one that still bothers me more is that, as written, the rules are too unbalanced for it to be a workable team sport.

As for "The Cold Equations", I tend to think that the story it should have been is Arthur C. Clarke's "Breaking Strain".

Posted January 12, 2006 11:10 AM by Matt Austern

I had no idea the graduating class at Hogwarts was so small. . . How big is a throng, anyway? I'd think that you could get a pretty good throng out of a couple hundred people.

Posted January 12, 2006 11:19 AM by Sandy B.

Mr. Ford, nobody needs an excuse for being up to his keister in Heavily Armed Objectivist Space Bats.

Posted January 12, 2006 11:53 AM by elizabeth bear

TNH wrote:
"... Oh, and Voldemort could accomplish most of his aims just by having one of his minions sneak into Hogwarts with a Thompson submachine gun -- but then, I think the same thing about the X-Men's mansion."

Hmmm. Somehow I think that JKR has maybe thought of this (or something like it); perhaps she just hadn't included a situation where it could be tested. Personally, I had thought a couple of times of the Bk7 denouement of the Harry/Voldemort conflict ending with a scene straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark - After listening to another Voldemort harangue (I'm gonna kill you, you can't stop me, etc.), Harry just pulls out a Glock and empties it into Voldemort.

Not original, I admit, but an oddly satifying mental image.

Posted January 12, 2006 12:35 PM by Scott

Re: "The Cold Equations:"

More than that, I think these readers are tripping on the story's considerable jolt of machismo. It's a commonplace that our civilization is soft and sentimental. It's less remarked that soft and sentimental people-- particularly the chair-bound geek variant-- often idolize brutality. The actual inhabitants of barbarian eras don't necessarily share this feeling; they often took pains to appear as refined and cultured people.

Just so. I often find myself thinking those things when I'm arguing with a particular variety of impassioned net personality.

Moreover, when arguing with that variety of Passionate Net Tough Guy, I often find myself thinking: You're saying that because, in this society, you're a loser, and you think that in some other society you would not be.

But then again I am notoriously mean-spirited.

I am a creature of civilization and I know it. I am a tough guy in cyberspace, not so much in hand-to-hand combat. When the big comet hits the Earth and civilization falls, the roving cannibal barbarian armies will find me at my desk, waiting for the power to come on so I can finish posting a flame to some butthead who richly deserves it.

Gotta run now, I'm late for my 9:30 am puppy-torturing tutorial.

Posted January 12, 2006 12:39 PM by Mitch Wagner