Writing Concept: the virtues of being wrong Also: JW Update · 8:28pm May 11th, 2016
Alright, so I am tagging Joker's Wild in this because I feel like this is a concept that could be useful for a lot of FOE stories. A short update before we begin, I have finished the major overhauls to the last section of chapter 3, and hopefully with edits we will be dropping that off to you by Joker's Wild's birthday. So far the word count is 11k, but it is a really good section and I am proud of how it is looking. My focus lately has been editing, since I've got such a back log on content. In the meantime, have a sketch of Calypto. It doesn't have all of his details, but it definitely has his spirit. 
So lets get started on this concept!
Look at this japanese bowl. That is a pretty nice bowl you might say. The thing that catches the eye is probably the veins of crawling along the body of it. How do they do something like that?
Simple. They broke it. This bowl had been broken and fused together with gold. It is the aesthetic style of wabi sabi, that revolves around championing the imperfections in design. It makes things unique. You see similar ideas in music such as jazz (the good kind). It is also present in daoist philosophy. Being wrong is one of the most right ways of handling things.
Being wrong is just so useful to the writing process. It is one of the best concepts to remember in the artistic process. I highly recommend allowing yourself and your characters to be wrong. That sounds like nonsense, so let me break it down. In real life, there is this pressure to be right all the time. We get blind to the idea that being wrong can help us out. I like to call it "Right-blindness". Har har~ Anyway, being wrong is on the path to being right it makes for a powerful dramatic tool for story telling. I have talked to many writers who when suggesting challenges or situations for characters, they tell me "Oh, they would never get into that." or "that isn't the sort of thing that they would do." While I understand some degree to which character influences how they handle things, this idea about characters being inflexible is really disheartening. One of the best things to do in a story is to figure out what would be the worst possible thing for a character, and make it happen. Make the character have to adapt. See how it breaks them, see how it makes them adapt, see how it makes them grow! If you want to have a character represent some idea or theme, be sure to test those ideas.
Here is the cool trick about being wrong, the characters don't know that they are wrong. Everybody thinks they are right. Everybody wants to tell you how your world is, and they just don't know. That said, you can't necessarily know what your own world looks like. Being wrong is an important step in becoming right. You can make a character have the strongest, most convincing belief in the whole world, and you can wrap the reader into thinking that it is really true. Then something changes, and it shakes their world. Now they have to adapt their philosophy, or keep trudging through with it. The idea of the revelation moment is so powerful in storytelling. The revelation is the moment when a character realizes that they have been looking at everything wrong. Maybe they didn't have it all wrong, maybe they just weren't looking at it the right way. You get to have lots of characters running around with little scraps of truth trying to figure everything out, and it isn't until someone collects the pieces that something works out.
Being wrong is a good way to build up character relationship too! Being wrong is a humbling process. It takes you off your high horse and makes you go "Huh... never thought of it that way." It makes us see each other as human. If a character can't learn from other characters then it makes interactions shallow. When you spend time with people, you pick up little bits of philosophy and habit from them. Those kinds of trade offs between characters can be really good in a story.
Conflict is the main drive of a story, and being wrong makes us so damn conflicted. Storytelling moves in ebbs and flows. Either it moves from incomplete to complete, or from complete to incomplete. Something it does one, then does the other. Being wrong is a useful tool in being able to create some of that. Let characters make mistakes, even in their general theme. That stuff is good for reflecting on how they handle things. Throw characters in situations they wouldn't be used to, and see how it shakes them up. Who knows? Maybe they will learn something they really need to know.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts on how being wrong can be helpful. What are your thoughts on the subject? Have you ever read a story with characters being wrong in the beginning and right in the end? Do you think this is hogwash? Tell me what you think.
excellent organic philosophy. one people should remember when making three-dimensional characters and introducing realistic psychoanalysis.
Hm, an interesting concept I think a lot of modern day stories suffer having the main character be right all the time. Hell even in fallout your character can never chose a wrong answer (except the Pit DLC). One thing I think the original FO:E has over it's sub fandom(exception of maybe heroes) is that in the later half of the story it began throwing the curve ball that maybe Little Pip and her friends are just as bad as the people they fight. There's her killing of the steel rangers at Bucklyn Cross whom just refuse to give up a water tailsman for Arbu, the decision of Maripony that killed the goddess but also hundreds of hellhound families, her treatment of hellhounds in general as monsters even though she's encounter good ones too, the way she brings down the enclave which causes thousands of deaths probably from the civil war that starts, and of course Abru. All these things challenge her view of things as well the reader as they say the main character may be wrong. That's a thing that only fallout 4 has come close to doing, even New Vegas has a almost happy ending for everyone.
The only story of the top of my that does the same is troy, it's a story that treats war as granting you gory and frame yet shows how stupid and pointless war is by showing all the heroes who died.
3938337 Thanks for the spoilers.
Anyway, I quite agree with you. But what you're talking about is a moral issue, in the original Fallout we see the world as bad, and LittlePip tries to make it better. Which is admirable, but is she really wrong? Because she did change the wasteland. She might not have made it any better but she did change it. In this case it is really difficult to label any action as wrong.
Maybe that is what the author is talking about; building an organic world that plays by its own rules so that you have to decide right and wrong for yourself and judge the character based on how they do so. Which helps build a connection to said character.
Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
Anyway; damn good blog post.
3939302
From a moral stand point, this is certainly a valid application of the main idea. People spend so much of the time caring about what is moral that it dominates a lot of stories. We miss out on a lot of interesting grey area because we can't accept a character doing something bad. One of the things I like about daoism (which has a lot of influence on JW) is that you have this denunciation of concrete ideas of good and evil. Things are what they are. If something works out, then it works out. If something doesn't work then it is hard to consider it good. It likes this idea that good and bad are part of the same coin, but in which most people only see one side and assume the other side is evil. Good? Bad? it is all the same in daoism because everything is connected.
It is definitely a big issue I see with a lot of novice FOE writers. They get this idea that a character's primary attribute of appeal has to be that they are a moral beacon. Good characters can be moral beacons, but you have to make sure that beneath that they are still a well developed character.
3938337
As far as I can remember New Vegas had lots of selfish or bittersweet endings. I don't remember a straight up good ending. Fallout 2 had a good ending... sort of, you still kill hundreds if not thousands of civilian enclave. I think there are more examples, but certainly there are limitations on how things work out.
I just wanted to say that morality isn't the only way to be wrong. Making a bad decision can be a nice way to be wrong. Slipping up in a situation that a character would normally be fine in can be something interesting and create dynamic scenarios and potentially lead to character development. Philosophically being wrong can lead to humbling moments and powerful growth. The main idea is to be brave and to not always think of characters as being complete from the beginning. Let them stumble so they can become their better form. Let them get scars.
3938302
Well, speaking that clear drying glue probably hadn't been invented yet, I imagine you might be write. Still, gold is a cool way to take something broken and make it awesome.