Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Riding that flying sawblade of awesomeness

So when I was a kid, I used to have this daydream whenever we'd go on long drives.  I would stare out the window, and envision myself riding a flying sawblade that swept back and forth through the ditches, mowing down grass, power lines, fence posts, and so on.  It was awesome.

Then one day, it occurred to me that, if I was riding a spinning sawblade, I would be spinning too.  All this time, I'd been playing out the story as though I was facing straight ahead while the blade under me spun, ignoring the laws of physics.  I felt really stupid.

To recap:
Flying sawblade that I can ride on: Good
Ignoring the laws of physics: Bad

And that's exactly how it should be, especially with the oddities I read/write.  The audience is already giving you leeway with whatever weird premise you're telling them about.  They shouldn't have to swallow shoddy plot drivers so that you can 'guide' the story to the end.

I read a book once where the premise was that electricity and gunpowder stopped working one day.  Great concept, and I wanted to see what humanity would do.

Apparently, humanity would turn to cannibalism within weeks; while Renaissance Fair actors would take over the world because they know blacksmithing and how to make mead...I guess.

Seriously, that's what happened.

The guy who wrote that one had a clear goal: Turn Earth into Middle-Earth.  To that end, every person who had a medieval type hobby was automatically clearly better suited to survive.  And everyone else would just give up and eat other people.

This is my promise to you, my faithful  theoretical readers.  I will take my creations and put them in a jar, poke them with a stick, torment them like a malevolent god or small child with a magnifying glass over an ant hill, just to see what they'll do; but I will never make them act a certain way just to further my plot.  I would hate writing it more than anyone would hate reading it.

At the same time, I'm totally going to write a story about a guy that rides a flying sawblade...OF JUSTICE!

Just go with it.

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