An interesting article/series on writing

Hello all!
I just came across this, and thought it had some really insightful explanations of the sort of thing I look for in fics:
http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/level1intelligent

(referring to a scene from the second Hobbit movie where Thorin behaves in a particularly stupid way)

We could say that these strange creatures lack a certain sort of awareness. The scriptwriter wants us to be yelling at movie!Thorin, “No! You fool! Don’t do that!” but it does not occur to the scriptwriter that Thorin might yell this at himself, that Thorin might detect his own idiocy the way we see it plain upon the screen. Movie-Thorin has no little voice in his own head to yell these things at him, the way that you or I are the little voices in our own heads. We could call movie-Thorin a Hollywood Zombie, or H-Zombie for short.

Specifically, I love characters who, even if they're not necessarily explicitly genre savvy, at least behave like they're acting like people rather than hollow shells who do whatever is convenient for the plot. Shoutout to Hoopy McGee here, as he's the author that best exemplifies this trait, to me -- I was consistently impressed by the way all of the characters in his stories (even the villains) acted in reasonable fashions from their own perspectives. I'd highly recommend Project: Sunflower for that reason.

If you found the "Level 1 intelligent characters" article interesting, you might like the rest of the series:
http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/

coandco

Comments

[Hoopy McGee]

Shoutout to Hoopy McGee here

D'aww, thanks

I see that sometimes in movies/TV/books, and it really drives me crazy. I mean, granted, sometimes people will do something silly/stupid by impulse, but after the impulse runs out there's usually that moment of "Oh, crap... what did I just do?" They don't usually just keep on going.