Being a Better Writer: The Worf Effect · 8:14pm Oct 16th, 2023
Welcome back writers to another installment of Being a Better Writer, where today we have a pretty cool subject to talk about. So I hope you’re ready.
But first, and really quick, if you haven’t seen it yet, you should check out this last week’s news post, which is all about Axtara – Magic and Mayhem. That’s right, the sequel to Banking and Finance is drawing near! You can check out that post here, and if you’re at all a fan of Axtara, well then by all means you should totally click that link.
All right, with that said (and for some of you, clicked) let’s talk about today’s topic. Which is an odd one. Sands, if you’ve never heard the name before—which would be surprising, but there are a lucky 10,000 every day—you’re probably wondering what on Earth the term “Worf” means, or maybe theroizing that it’s some kind of waffle or something.
Well, sadly for the waffle lovers, “Worf” isn’t that. No, Worf is a character, from the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation. A show which is well-beloved by many, many people. Which is probably one reason why it has so many tropes named after it, though those tropes did exist elsewhere before ST:TNG. It amassed a following, a cultural memory, that communicated with one another over the elements they saw in the show … and one of these became known colloquially as “The Worf Effect.”
Okay, so what is The Woft Effect? Well, to understand that, we do need to discuss who the character “Worf” was. Just a little. See, Worf in ST:TNG was the Chief of Security aboard the vessel on which he served (after a season or so, anyway). In other words, he was the general “muscle” of the team whenever the show needed a five-man band. Worf was the man with the phaser rifle, or the hand-to-hand combat skills, etc.
In other words, whenever the show needed to demonstrate the seriousness of the foe of the week, Worf was first in line to get his butt kicked.
And over time, it happened frequently enough that the name of the character became connected with the concept of “showing everyone how big and bad the new big bad is by having them kick the butt of the character most capable of fighting them.”
It also led to a host of other names and tropes as well, as a bunch of spin-offs, such as the hilariously named explanation for the loss of so many of these fights: “Worf had the Flu.” We’ll talk about that later.
But the thing is, if you’ve ever written a serial story, or a sequel, or introduced a new baddie, you’ve no doubt asked yourself the same question the writers of those TNG episodes did, which was “How do we show the audience that this character is an effective threat?” Because just telling the audience, while it’s something that can definitely work, isn’t always the best option (and needs to be done very carefully, often with other elements to “show” that the tell is legit).
So hit that jump, and let’s talk about working with The Worf Effect.
