Take advice you disagree with · 3:43am May 1st, 2013
Sometimes it’s helpful to take advice that you don't agree with. Three examples:
Advice that makes you uneasy for reasons you don't understand
Three readers complained that Twilight was out-of-character in scene two of The Corpse Bride, making a bad decision because she was too emotional. I disagreed, but I rewrote that scene to instead have Rainbow be emotional, and have Twilight give a calm, rational, and ironically correct explanation (ironic because her tragedy came from not taking her own advice seriously).
I didn't have a good feeling about the rewrite, but I tried it anyway. All three readers were pleased by the revision, so I guess I didn’t botch addressing their objection. I liked the new ironic twist. But I still didn’t like the new version as much, and GhostOfHeraclitus [1], Cypher [2], and the Equestria Daily pre-reader all also wanted more emotion from Twilight there. Why didn’t my rewrite work?
– I wrote the story with a flat, matter-of-fact tone and pace that Twilight’s emotional outbursts contrasted nicely with, like sudden gusts of wind in a still November forest.
– In the first version, when Twilight kills Fluttershy, she commits the hubris of believing that she knows what is best for Fluttershy out of empathy, and we sympathize even as we see what a terrible thing she is doing. When she explains herself calmly, she’s just a twit with a theory. [3]
Pacing, and whatever you call the equivalent of pacing with regard to tone and mood, are things I don’t understand analytically. I learned explicitly why I had intuitively written the story the way I did. Their advice may or may not have been good, but I felt like it didn't fit somehow with the rest of the story. Going ahead and trying it out helped me understand why I felt that way.
Bad advice that means there is a problem
The first Equestria Daily pre-reader for Big Mac Reads Something Purple said that the writing was flat, and needed more description. I had written the first 500 words sparsely, because it was Big Mac, and I wanted him to be hiding his feelings inside, only able to speak them disguised as a story. There wasn’t much that I could do to create tension or drama before he began telling the story, so I hurried through the scene setting that up.
Nonetheless, I rewrote it to be more descriptive and resubmitted it. This time, the pre-reader said that the story was “Big Macintosh doing his best at not been particularly interesting.... What is the conflict?” He had, I think, completely missed the story.
Both times, the pre-reader was correct that there was something wrong with the story. I think the problem was that the conflict began in the story within the story, but Big Mac gave up almost instantly within that story when the CMC challenged him. That made it easy for that conflict to slip past the reader. And if that happened, the reader would never see the connection between the story that Big Mac told and what happened after he told it. Adding description only made the problem worse, because the lengthier opening buried the critical part of the story even deeper. But if I’d just said, “This is bad advice,” and dismissed it, I’ve never have realized what the problem was.
“Bad” advice that’s good
You can’t know for sure that advice is bad until you try it. The first EqD pre-reader for Moving On said that I had a tendency to summarize scenes that could have been dramatic. I wrote a lengthy justification of my summarizations. But then I rewrote one of them in detail. It worked much better. I looked at the other places where I had summarized, and saw that sometimes it was justified, but sometimes I was being lazy.
TL;DR
You can’t learn much by taking only advice that you think is good. You already understand the advice you think is good. Stuff you don’t know yet will probably sound like bad advice. Most advice is bad advice, but if you take some losses following advice that sounds bad, you might learn things you wouldn’t have thought of on your own. So take my advice.
(How much this advice generalizes beyond writing is left to the reader as an exercise.)
.
1. Whom you already know has a keen understanding of story.
2. Whom you may not know has a keen eye for subtle details of language and story.
3. That we sympathize with someone who does the wrong thing when carried away by emotion more than with someone who does the wrong thing due to faulty reasoning, probably proves that humans are broken. But it’s mostly true.
Did you change Corpse Bride back, or does it still have the less emotional Twilight?
(I may have more of an investment in that story due to my having been involved in it, even if only in a miniscule way.
)
Take Bad Advice.
Can't tell if good advice, or bad advice.
1046020 Either way, you should take it!
I haven't changed Corpse Bride back yet. Cypher gave me an extensive set of notes that will take time to implement.
That's great! Except... How the bloody hell am I supposed to get advice when nobody freaking comments?
I am rapidly, or perhaps not so rapidly, discovering the truth of this statement.
this makes so much sense.
I love the idea of learning from the failures of others, too. that's pretty awesome.
I can't take bad writing advice until I get time to write more.
Don't judge me!
I think this falls into the category of "What is Truth?" or more narrowly, "What is Good or Bad?" If I were to taste-test a liver casserole, I most probably would thumbs-down it even if it was the most delicious liver casserole on the planet, because I don't like liver. Our individual tastes differ enough that a small sub-set of tasters can give wacked-out results.
There is a certain danger in going back to re-write substantial parts of a story in order to please as many people as possible, and that is you can wind up producing McDonalds instead of the product I go to my local burger joint for (bacon, cheese, and a dozen other things bad for you, all dripping out the bun). Not that I believe BH will ever degrade his quality down to that level, for he wields a spatula with the artistry of Dillinger with a machine gun, but it's something I have to keep an eye out to avoid.
1046024
Well, I do prefer Twilight's original characterization. I think I liked the ending better though, with the addition of the sky began to burn. I liked the comparison between Twilight and Celestia as well.
I know I'm supposed to, like, "play it cool" and not consider it a big deal... but I squeaked and waved my hands like a child and my current Facebook status is "Bad Horse, you validate my entire life"
It's quite the exaggeration, certainly, but I'm honored by the mention nonetheless.
Your self-reflection here and in similar blog-posts (and maybe in the occasional allegorical story you Quickly write) improve all of us. Like, on an elemental level. Thank you.
Is the corollary to this "give bad advice"? If so, I think you should write a second-person Brony-in-Equestria x humanized Doctor Whooves gay clopfic.
…
Hang on a moment, I just remembered that my nemesis is taking commissions.
It sounds like you're saying it was bad advice because it was pointed out that Twilight was OOC. In order to make the story work with emotional impact, she had to be OOC. In a non-fanfiction story, you would simply change the character to make the story work. However, since this is fanfiction, complaints arise when you make a character OOC because you're supposed to be writing the character.
So, maybe the story simply doesn't work with the characters in the show, and would have been best as original fiction?
I believe I'm one of the reviewers who originally commented on the story. What you're saying is something I've seen in fanfiction writers for...gees, nearly ten years, I think? I've seen a lot of fantastic stories that simply shouldn't be fanfiction, or, at least not fanfiction in the fandom they're in. Characters being in-character is extremely important to me when I write, because I'm using someone else's creation. Writing them OOC feels insulting to the creator. Still, that's my opinion, and some people don't mind it.
I still think the story was very good, even if I don't think it was very MLP:FiM.
As for the other note about you not writing analytically, I totally get that. That was something I heard in a lot of my creative writing classes at my college. The problem comes from the fact that just because things feel right doesn't mean they are, and though many people will enjoy it on a pure emotional level, that doesn't mean there aren't still things wrong with it. For example, though this is a tad extreme, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. She believed that the story she wrote was a sweeping romance. For many, the tone and pacing did feel like a gothic style romance. However, anyone who applied the slightest bit of analysis to the work immediately noted that the story had many logical flaws. Like I said, this is an extreme example, as Meyer did everything wrong and you most certainly did not.
...On the one hand, it's nice that my advice left an impact. But you're missing the point if you think it was bad advice.
My problem wasn't that Twilight was breaking the story. It was that she wasn't herself. You're writing fanfiction, using characters with established personalities, and Twilight's reactions in that story didn't fit. You were writing a story and molding the characters to fit it, but that only works if you make the characters yourself. It doesn't work in fanfiction.
Was my advice bad? I don't know. I thought it was good, but I was more focused on how the characters felt than on whether it worked better that way. I can see your point, that it works better with Twilight being emotional, but that doesn't change the fact that she wouldn't react the way she did. It's not who the character is, and that's what I was focusing on. It wasn't that I didn't understand Twilight's choice in the original. I couldn't see myself making it, but I could see someone else making it; some people will put friendship over everything.
Twilight isn't those people.
That's the issue. That's all it is. We can argue back and forth on whether it's a better story with Twilight being OOC, but I don't care. I wasn't saying the story was bad because of that. I enjoyed it, even with Twilight OOC. I didn't really want you to rewrite it, and when you did, I liked the new scene because it was rewritten in such a way that I believed that Twilight would do what she did. I find fault with stories that are logically inconsistent. That doesn't in itself make a story bad, but I'm still going to point it out because it's still a flaw, and it's one that is important to me. I want a story to feel good, but I also want it to make sense.
In the end, the story probably does feel better the way it was originally, much the same as it felt better to Twilight, in the original, to save Fluttershy and damn the consequences. But just because something feels better doesn't make it right. It would make me feel better, short term, to give everyone in the world immortality, but that wouldn't make it right. It might feel better to free Fluttershy at the price of oblivion, but that doesn't make the sacrifice just. And maybe the story would feel better if Twilight was willing to break the world for a friend, but that doesn't make it what she would do.
I find myself in the curious position of having read corpse bride, but being utterly unsure of which version I've read. Twi didn't seem too OOC for me first time round, but given what you've said, that might not be enough to differentiate. Huh.
Advice, though, is something that you should never, ever just blindly take. Advice is there to make you think about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Whether a piece of advice is good or bad should be about how well it makes you question yourself, not how well it improves the final work.
In my mind, anyway.
1046025
Go to either /fic/ or WRITE and request a review. The comments you get from both should be sufficiently competent, but I'd suggest trying /fic/ first. WRITE's been a bit too positive as of late; /fic/'s got the edge on harsh honesty.
1046384
Every time someone gives a generic example of what they'd consider a bad story, I wind up really, really, really wanting to write it.
I am tempted.
1046432 Sorry, I didn't do justice to your opinion in my original post. I may be misinterpreting it. I think it's very in-character for her to lose her head and get emotional, but she'd probably do it in a neurotic panic rather than cold anger. I also think it's very in-character for her to make terrible decisions of just that type, focusing on the short term and on her immediate obligations rather than the big picture.
More precisely, I think there are some episodes, like Lesson Zero and Crystal Empire, where Twilight departs radically from the character previous shows established for her. That is, there are shows in canon that have Twilight act badly OOC, because the writers don't understand nerds, or because they decided a few laughs were worth breaking her character for.
(It bugs me that so many people say Lesson Zero is their favorite episode. It's a common destructive caricature of intellectuals as being impractical and stupid.)
1046419
Personally, the MLP fanfics that I have appreciated the most have been the ones that showed me a side of a character I didn't expect to see. The show's Blueblood is an irredeemable git, a cardboard cutout of a self-important buffoon, and yet The Best Night Ever singlehandedly gave me sympathy for someone I'm not supposed to like.
Also, a lot of the "so-and-so is OOC" that I hear in story comments seems to boil down to "your interpretation of the character disagrees with mine", in a show that often disagrees with itself. It's hard to take every single complaint seriously when, say, Alice gripes "Applejack puts family over everything else, look at 'Apple Family Reunion'!" and Bob gripes "Applejack doesn't particularly like her family, she simply abandoned the farm in 'The Last Roundup'!"[1] If "IC" is your golden standard, one of them has to be wrong. Personally, I could enjoy a story that presumed either, so long as the writing's good enough to sell it.
1046550
There are no bad genres, just painfully overplayed genres filled with bad writers churning out unoriginal and/or self-conflicting and/or weak ideas.
Also, they're all vampires and my OC Pokémon trainer named Harry-san saves Ponyville at the end.
--
[1] Edited to add: You know, it occurs to me that in "Magical Mystery Cure", we never see the other Apples while AJ is off failing at dressmaking. How did that even work? Did Pinkie become their sister for a while? Were they in the background of the Carousel Boutique being as useless as AJ was? Are they actually just figments of Applejack's imagination, because they were killed off in an offscreen accident right before "Applebuck Season" and she's hallucinating them to keep her company while trying to keep the farm running singlehoofedly? Oh, god, "Apple Family Reunion" is the SADDEST EPISODE EVER if it all takes place inside AJ's head. Wait, are the rest of the Mane Six hallucinating too? No … this is a land of magical talking ponies. Applejack's hallucinations are physically present. She's pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. AAAAAHHHH
1046876
I thought that "The Best Night Ever" started Blueblood out as the cardboard cutout he was in the show, and then expanded and developed him. I have no problems with characters being developed and changed over the course of the story. That makes a good story. I'm fine with a story that has alicorn Twilight being driven emotionless by the passage of time or something, as long as the reason for OOC-ness is justified.
As for the show contradicting itself, I don't think it does. When Applejack "abandons her family", she doesn't do it because she doesn't care about her family. She does it because she's ashamed, because she doesn't feel worthy of her family and friends. That fits in just fine with her character, a hardworking, proud pony.
If you want to argue that characters are subjective, I suppose you can, but where does the line go? Do you watch Twilight, see the "mysteries" she solves, which are obvious to adults, and decide that Twilight is an idiot in a world full of the mentally retarded? Hell, if you argue that the show isn't inconsistent, who cares about characters at all? Make them act however you like.
One of the reasons I watch the show, and I hear many bronies watch this show, is because of the characters. I thought it was because they were well-defined and consistent I can support that position with show evidence, which I'd be happy to do.
However, if you do want to go down the subjectivity path, feel free to tell me where the line is. after all, if you go with complete subjectivity, Bad Horse's post now becomes completely pointless as there is no "good" or "bad" advice. Hell there's no "good" or "bad" stories. It's all opinion. If that's the belief you hold, then there's really no point in continuing the conversation. Not that you're wrong, it's just that, at that point nothing I say will matter.
1046876 See for me, the Blueblood sympathy fic was The Colour You Bleed. Then again, the author outright said that was his goal; and I decided not to read The Best Night Ever based on someone's review and I'd already seen Groundhog Day.
I think "take bad advice" works better in writing, because if it's actually bad then all you've lost is time, and if you're serious you've learned something from it anyways. In other areas (ie, anything you can't do purely digitally/in your head), it's less effective, because you stand more to lose. Then again, you could be wrong, in which case you lose anyways...
)
(obligatory on-topic
1046788
I'm aware of your thoughts on those episodes. My original comment was in reference to one of them, and why I don't think her behavior in Crystal Empire and Keep Calm and Flutter On were proof that she wouldn't take risks, especially the latter, where she specifically defies Fluttershy's wishes towards Discord. What she does in that episode goes entirely against the tenets of friendship. In a way, it's heartless, but Twilight doesn't care because the safety of the world is more important than friendship. If it wasn't for that episode, I don't think I could have completely disagreed with your interpretation of her in your original version, because before then there wasn't a case where Twilight had been forced to make a decision against one of her friends. But that was one. Even more damning, it's specifically related to Discord. I simply can't believe that she would go so far the other way. You could have given reasons for her to make that choice in your story on an emotional basis, especially if she hadn't specifically said that the corpse wasn't even Fluttershy anymore, and that would have kept the sentiment of the scene without breaking character. But you didn't.
I like Lesson Zero because it is a parody of educational shows, and I did use it as the basis of my feeling that Twilight is capable of making a mistake. In that episode she plans to charm the CCC, knowing full well that once they DO start fighting over the toy, she is fully capable of taking it back and "solving" the problem by removing the spell. She planned to artificially induce a small fight with the intent to solve it and from that problem glean a lesson about not fighting friends. She doesn't plan on the toy getting taken and brainwashing the entire town, and when that happens, she loses both the time she needed and the ability to solve the issue. This is an issue of Twilight making a mistake because she didn't understand the ramifications of her actions, not deciding that causing a full-blown catastrophe was worth having a friendship lesson. But I will admit that it proves Twilight isn't perfect. The second version you put up fit that view, because it shows her believing (wrongly) that she isn't putting Equestria in danger. The fact that she is wrong then becomes irrelevant; all I need to believe to have it fit her character is for her to think that she's doing the right thing, not actually see her do it.
I understand your point that she acts differently from episode to episode, and I hear people use that as justification that "since the show used the character OOC, that means I can too!" But I disagree. Yes, some shows do that. They have characters that have several set personalities, or even no personality except what the current episode requires. And I'm not saying that FIM is perfect in that regard. But I would still argue, even then, that you should have the character fit at least one of their canon portrayals, or else why use that character at all? Why not write a new one?
...My main beef, Mr. Horse, is that you called my advice bad. It wasn't. Advice is only bad when it's either wrong or irrelevant. Twilight was out of character, in my view and the view of several others. The second version fixed the issues we had with her character. That was good advice on an individual character level. After you changed it, people wanted more emotion from her. That was good advice too, on a whole-story level. But you created a false dichotomy in saying that since she had more emotion before you changed it, one of the two stances had to be the correct one. That's not true. We three were right that her original actions were out of character for her, and the ED prereaders were right in saying that the scene lacked emotion from her after you changed it. Neither of us gave bad advice.
I don't mind being disagreed with, if you feel that Twilight would act irrationally in that case. I would have enjoyed the debate, and even if we never came to an agreement, I would at least understand and accept why you wrote it the way you did. What I mind is that you have said, in public, that my opinion is bad. Just because you said that bad advice can be helpful doesn't make it not an insult.
1047473 Twilight was out of character, in my view and the view of several others. The second version fixed the issues we had with her character. That was good advice on an individual character level. After you changed it, people wanted more emotion from her. That was good advice too, on a whole-story level. But you created a false dichotomy in saying that since she had more emotion before you changed it, one of the two stances had to be the correct one. That's not true. We three were right that her original actions were out of character for her, and the ED prereaders were right in saying that the scene lacked emotion from her after you changed it. Neither of us gave bad advice.
I still don't see Twilight as being OOC, given the circumstances, but you're right that I haven't got a sufficient justification for calling your advice bad, and it wasn't a very considerate thing to do anyway, regardless of whether it was bad or not. What was definitely bad was that I changed the story in a way so that the pieces didn't fit together anymore.
Sorry. I'll rewrite this post somehow to not say that.
1047547
Thank you. Like I said, if you want to disagree, I can't fault you on that, but I do maintain that it's a matter of opinion. And for what it's worth, it was an excellent story in any case and I enjoyed your thoughts on the subject.
Pfft. Bad Horse advising everyone to take Bad Advice. Clearly, he's in the pocket of the Bad Lobbyists, getting kickbacks for pushing their Bad Political Machine.
*ahem*
Like other commenters, I don't think bad advice should be taken. Blindly accepting or rejecting all feedback can be equally destructive. What's important is to understand why you and the commenter feel the way you do, (if you're really lucky to have found invested people) hold a dialogue with said person to reach the root of the issue, and then act with an informed decision. Heck, the example here in the comments with Echo Four is proof alone of this, as both sides are reaching a better understanding of the root issue.
I was extremely lucky to learn this lesson early on, in the form of a most belligerent commenter. He loyally read every chapter update... and posted a lengthy comment explaining why it was shit and why he was further considering unfollowing. I quickly discovered that most of his arguments boiled down to "I would have done it differently, therefore your a moran." His insight was extremely valuable. In posting my regular "I'm sorry you feel that way, but you're wrong" replies, I'd take the time to put exactly into words why he's wrong. Often I could, and that was good practice to analyze why I wrote the way I wrote. Other times, I realized that my justification was weak, nonexistant, or otherwise inferior to his counterargument. It basically got me into the habit of making my decisions with a grain of salt, and to carefully weigh options before committing,
and therefore to never update ever.In that vein, I like the idea touched upon here, of just trying it. Writing a draft with less emotional Twilight, or a draft where there aren't as many summaries. You don't need to publish it, necessarily, but it helps to see a concrete example. BH liked his logical!Twilight draft less than his emotional!Twilight draft, so by having them side-by-side, he can use that in the discussion with his editors as to why he prefers his version (and as seen here, a Third Option can then be suggested). Of course, writing multiple versions takes a lot of time, and again this only works if you have friends willing to debate heavily with you, but if you're blessed with both, it seems like it'd result in the most informed decisions.
Jumping to the OOC tangent for a bit: unless your fic is as episodic as physically possible, all characters are OOC. Hell, take Sunny Skies All Day Long, one of the poster-children of episodic fanfics. Is there anything in Celestia's canon characterization to suggest that she'd (spoilers btw?) like to pretend to be a normal mortal, living amongst her student's friends, as well as being really bad at it? None whatsoever! However, it is a very plausible interpretation and extension of the character, such that few-if-any people take issue with it. (Arguably, the most frequent complaint is that it's cliche: so popular that it's unoriginal!) With what we know of IC Celestia, and with a blurb on exposition at the start of the fic with Luna, this is enough for us the readers to suspend our disbelief and accept what PhantomFox does with the character.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the fic which has the surprise reveal at the end where it turned out Celestia had been possessed by Hitler's ghost all along. (Ah, the joys of being tasked to read low-viewcount fanfiction.) There's no explanation, no transition, no plausible support from canon... our brains reject it immediately. Sure, it can sometimes be fun to ponder "what if", or to attempt to use the Alternate Universe tag to skirt around the issue, but I'm with most others here in suggesting "use an original character, then".
So then, is what BH was trying to do in Corpse Bride with Twilight bad? (Disclaimer: It's still on my To Read list) Brace yourself for cop-out... it depends! There is canon evidence of Twilight acting on emotion instead of logic. (Lesson Zero is neither the first nor only example of it, and thus I don't consider this episode OOC for her, but that's a topic for another comment
) Is this canon evidence enough to fully justify her actions in the fic? Probably not, no. So then, it's all a matter of execution. Canon!Twilight is Point A, CorpseBride!Twilight is Point B. Is it effortless for the reader to connect the dots? Do we see the transformation itself? Is the transformation alluded to by others? ("She didn't used to be that way, you know.") Are we shown a way in which canon character quirks x, y, and z might lead this character to make decisions that led her charactization thusly? If done effectively, you've suspended disbelief and altered the character into what your story asks of them. If done ineffectively, you have "btw, there were nazi ghosts fyi".
1047112
Slow down. There's no need to leap off the subjectivity cliff; just because the show's well characterized doesn't mean that there can't be genuine disagreements about characterization. It's a TV show; people are complex (including ponies), and we're trying to deduce personality from a mere few hours' worth of dialogue snippets (written by different authors, no less). The AJ thing was the first thing that popped off the top of my head; there are plenty of examples of unsettled canon at the link.
Similarly, when someone makes an assertion like "Twilight wouldn't make a judgment based on emotion," the first thing I suspect is that there's something going on along the lines of the blind men arguing about the elephant. Quite possibly someone's just wrong, but I'm not going to assume that prima facie.
In other words,
1047606 This.
> Do you watch Twilight, see the "mysteries" she solves, which are obvious to adults, and decide that Twilight is an idiot in a world full of the mentally retarded?
Well, actually …
I join you in believing that that is not the intention of the show. Regardless, in the hands of a good fanfic writer, I would read the hell out of that story.
My own story Fugue State, in fact, is a romance drama about exactly that sort of ludicrous proposition taken seriously! MLP is an animated children's show, so of course the characters sometimes randomly burst out into musical numbers. I took that proposition with a straight face — what if the musical numbers reflect literal events, because this world of candy-colored talking magical ponies simply works differently from ours — and ran with it.
The thing is, because the show does present to us random musical numbers with no trace of irony, that interpretation is canon-compatible. It's most sensible to say "that's part of the stylization of the medium and it's just a storytelling device", sure, but sometimes it's by playing around in defiance of what "seems" most obvious that we get the most interesting insights.
Best,
H
1047711
I didn't man to say that. I just wanted to cut off the subjectivity thing before it gets too far. In my experience, people who bring it up tend to start using it for every argument I make, so nowadays I start out by immediately saying that, if they feel this way, I don't want to continue the discussion. Sorry if I came off a bit aggressive, I just hate when people do that to me and I waste loads of time talking to them.
Characters definitely have a certain level of subjectivity. after all, the characters don't elaborately explain their motives, so there's plenty of actions the characters take that debate parts of their character.
However, I would argue that Twilight was OOC in that story. If you want me to elaborate on why, I'd be happy too!
My problem was that this seemed to be an attempt at canon!Twilight. I was coming into the story expecting canon!Twilight. And, hey, I really liked this story! I really enjoyed reading it, and I've read it more than once. I liked it enough that I left it a review because I wanted to help improve it. Twilight being OOC was still a problem for me, and it removed me from the story. I couldn't get into it as much. I don't mind the, I don't know, "less emotional" Twilight. I don't need an extremely emotional Twilight acting extremely irrational for me to feel the story. In fact, I felt more strongly with her hen I understood her reasons better, and she was a bit calmer. I like subtlety, and a lot of dramatics I see here and on Equestria Daily (especially ED) seem ridiculously over the top and I can't take them seriously.
1047736 Fair enough. Peace out.