If A Scream Is Not Heard, Does It Matter?

If a writer screams in the wood and no one can hear him, is it merely an auditory expression or a noise others can hear?

Writing is a weird profession. The origins of story-telling involve people around a campfire describing what had happened to them; at some point people figured out that they were not just limited to factual retellings and began telling actual stories. That is, our stories evolved as our mastery of language did; we went from “Thag killed tiger” to how the killing of the tiger was a metaphor for how the leader of the tribe over the hill needed to die and how Thag was going to do it.

However, then the audience participated in the telling, and the storyteller took cues from them. That is, even before he started telling his story he read the audience in order to determine what kind of story the audience was looking for and as he was telling the story he was observing the reaction to his story and adjusting it as he went: If the audience reacted well to sex and gore those were emphasized, if the jokes were a hit those would be made bawdier and more exaggerated.

That is, there was a link between the storyteller and the audience that made the storyteller a vital part of the community. This is why bards were considered “holy” and why a good storyteller can always get some free food, drinks, and shelter.

Ironically, the written word began an interesting evolution of storytelling. While it originally allowed for better communication between the writer and actors, eventually the writers realized that that they could write things down and thus have stories for later. In a literate society this meant that those stories became s valuable as gold; after all, this meant the stories could be read at any time rather than relying on the writer.

This would also result in the devaluation of the writer. Unlike in a pre-literate society where a storyteller was a living resource, a collection of the stories and history of the people, a writer was just another skill, an artisan who worked in words as opposed to clay or metal. He was no longer as valuable as that which he created.

As time went on the writer and his audience would be further separated. While the stories got better, as the stories became more elaborate and generally richer, there became a divide between the writers and the audience. The writer no longer needed the audience for input, and so they believed that they could writer whatever they wanted; writers were allowed to write whatever they wanted. This was not necessarily a bad thing; this meant that the writer could concentrate on writing and less on the audience. Thus, writing again experienced new levels but the writers forgot about the audience.

This means that we've hit a weird point writers have forgotten that we need an audience, just like any other artist. In fact, a lot of other artists have forgotten that writers are artists because of that separation. As writers we need to get back in touch with are audience, and thanks to social media we have that as an option. Writers have forgotten the value of feedback, and that can cause us to forget that what we're creating has value to society as a whole rather than to just us. With an audience we are not just an auditory sensation in the woods, but an actual noise that needs to be heard.

With an audience we are creating not just a mere work of art but adding to the wealth of our society. Because of that we need to remember that we need an audience of some sort and that we need to value that audience. After all, when we make noise we need to be heard and if we have no audience then we are just screaming to scream.

It's Not Mary Sue Stark!

A couple of clickbait sites decided to start up a fake controversy that Arya Stark is a Mary Sue. There are two basic problems with that: 1) The definition of “Mary Sue” is pretty vague, and 2) she doesn't match any of the definitions.

The major problem is that “Mary Sue” has become about useful a term as “anime”; seriously, try to get two animation fans to agree on what exactly “anime” is, and start with the question, “Is Avatar: The Last Airbender anime?” Trust me; the blades will come out at some point. The usual bit of history: “Mary Sue” started in Star Trek fanfiction as a term for the insert character that was the center of attention, and who happened to have the answer or skill for any crisis. That is, the author would insert an idealized version of herself into her Star Trek stories, and that version kicked butt.

Over time that definition has fluctuated, but there are several hallmarks of the “Mary Sue” character. While she isn't always an insert character, she does tend to be over-powered; she isn't just the master of one or two skills, but is master, or pretty close to it, of every important skill in the story she's in. She also has some sort of additional perk or three, such as virtually immune to prosecution, the power of flight, or some combination of the strongest traits in her world.

In short, she is one of the most powerful beings in whatever world she appears in.

She is also the emotional center of her universe. That is, she is usually the center of some sort of romantic triangle, is the most popular girl (or is working her way there), and somehow wields a lot of social power, be it because of her father, her popularity, or because she's the teacher's pet. The bottom line is that she is the center of her universe, either because she is just so interesting, she's the Chosen One, or she's basically the sole remaining goddess in an otherwise godless world.

In short, she's pretty powerful, solves all the problems just by showing up, and is surrounded by a lot of fake drama that wouldn't exist if she would just make a bloody decision.

That is so not Arya. She has one special talent: She can disguise herself perfectly as someone she kills. Sure, she can fight, but she is hardly even among Westeros' Top Twenty Warriors. Also, she isn't the series' Chosen One; she cold live or die and nothing would really change. She just isn't the center of her universe, and she's not exactly Miss Popularity; in fact she takes pains to stay out of the limelight. Heck, she only has one guy pining for her, and she put the kebosh on that as quickly as she could.

In short, Arya does not meet any of the qualifications for a Mary Sue character; heck, even if you define it as an insert character, that's Samwell Tarly's job. As such she's hardly a Mary Sue just because she killed a powerful enemy; that's just people trying to drive hits, and such people are a waste of your time.

Arya Stark and That Welcome Uncomfortable Feeling

Fans can be weird when it comes to their favorite characters. Arya Stark made love to Gendry on Game of Thrones and fans lost it. While it was sort of funny considering the usual amount of sex on the show, it did bring home just how emotionally invested people were in the character of Arya Stark. Keep in mind that people have been watching her since early adolescence, so to see Arya going full out with Gendry was discomforting, to say the least. It's not so much because of the setting, but Arya just wasn't seen as a sexual character before that scene; it just felt strange to see someone cross that final threshold into womanhood.

And that discomfort is something we need to strive for as writers. There are a number of things that characters do that cause us to feel uncomfortable, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Casting dark magic, having sex, even using an unexpected swear word; there are always going to be weird thresholds that the audience is not going to want to see crossed. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it just means that you have done your job as a writer and have established rules about how your world works, and that you've consistent with those rules. The discomfort of your audience is your reward and it can feel sort of nice.

That's sort of an important point. There are two ways to do character development: Deep end style and frog style. Too many writers have been taught that if you want to develop character you need to do it through crisis; nothing builds character like tossing the character into an emergency and see what happens, much like you would toss a kid into the deep end of a pool in order to teach them how to swim. The problem is that you can't do this all of them; throwing your characters into crisis after crisis gets boring and it makes your writing predictable. It also eliminates any point of reference, and those are necessary for suspension of disbelief.

On the other hand, there's frog style. If you heat a frog slowly in a pan of water it will never feel the rise in temperature; it becomes a major shock to realize that the frog dies from the heat when you saw it doing pretty well. Sometimes you need to have the character develop surely and slowly over a long period of time, and then force the audience to realize that the character has undergone a major personality change over time; the realization that a character has changed before your eyes can be all sorts of fun, especially when the audience has gotten used to a certain concept.

This is sort of where people are with Arya. While we've seen her become more than the frightened little girl of the first season, the changes have been so relatively gradual compared to the rest of the GoT cast; we've seen her mature and become a formidable warrior over the seasons. However, we forgot that she was also maturing and becoming a young woman in her own right. The sex scene was the culmination of a long character arc, and one that needed to happen so that the audience would finally see her as that powerful young woman instead of the girl; it was a necessary scene in order to put the finishing touches on that character.

It was an uncomfortable scene to watch not because we disliked the character, but because it forced us to accept that the character has undergone some major changes since her introduction, and some of us just weren't ready for it. Just like our real-world daughters and nieces, we didn't want to see her cross the threshold into womanhood; no one ever really wants to think about the sex life of teenagers but it's part of their growing up. And that's not a bad uncomfortable feeling...it's also something that we need to use in our own works more.

Controlling Pacing Through Art

One of the problems in comics is pacing. Unlike other media the writer has little direct control over the pacing but has to rely on the artist to change up the pacing. While there are numerous ways for the writer to tell the artist that pacing needs to be adjusted, the problem is that the conventions of the medium work against the writer, creating some artificial handicaps for the writer. By exploring these conventions we can make adjustments in the pacing, and thus making it easier to add suspense and urgency to the comic.

First off, one of the biggest problems is that the pages are usually the same length. In a movie or novel you can create suspense or urgency by reducing the length of scenes; by reducing the length of scenes a little bit over time the incremental reduction of the scenes can create an overall sense of urgency; you effectively quicken the pace of the audience's beats by quickening the scenes, and that creates a real nice sense of suspense. Because scenes are limited to half-pages or full-pages this is hard to simulate in comics; you just can't shorten scenes by a short amount each time to create suspense. Thus this neat trick is pretty much off the table for comics.

However, compare the difference in the length of cuts between a dramatic scene and an action scene in a movie; the more dramatic the scene the longer the cuts while the shorter cuts create a faster scene, making it perfect for action scenes. In comics this can be simulated by splitting the panels in two and simplifying the artwork to speed things up while larger panels of more complex artwork will slow things down. Even adding small Easter eggs and other details in the outlying areas, such as graffiti and sign names, can help slow things down.

You can also use word balloons to slow things down as well, but you want to try to avoid using this as much as possible. While it can be a great way to express character, it just comes off as cheap; even if the audience can't tell the specific trick it can come off as cheap on an instinctive level. The same applies to captions; it works but it comes off as just as sneaky. Nonetheless, if you need to slow things it is something worth doing as long as you don't do it a lot.

You can also split pages to help create urgency as well. The idea is to split the page vertically following different stories stories on each side. By creating parallels between the two actions, you then effective double the stakes by creating the illusion of a double or nothing situation; both actions must succeed or fail. Because of the raised stakes you can create some increased suspense. However, try to avoid raising the stakes through any other means; this way works because you naturally expect friends and allies to suffer equally while other means just come off as somewhat cheap.

Thus, while you need to be more subtle as well as work with the artist to adjust the pace and thus create suspense or urgency, it can be done. This can be a great tool to use but needs to used as subtly as possible in order to be effective; keep that in mind and you should be able to have some fun with the story's pacing.