2024-09-18 - Planning Stories
A lot of modern stories kind of suck. Specifically manga, the endings tend to be disappointing. I think it's largely a lack of planning. Themes are really important in stories. It's not just, "what's the moral" but more, "what's the story about." From a high level. As in, what's the point of it, what is it trying to convey. For example, if a story is about heroism, or what the author views as heroism, it's important to actually reference this theme throughout the story so there's some consistency and the point gets across. I do not believe that stories are purely for recreation. From the earliest times of humanity, stories were used as lessons, teaching, or warnings. Not necessarily morality, but more they were trying to convey something. So when you have a story about the big bad wolf, it's not really a story about how lying is a morally bad thing to do, but moreso that if you lie too much people won't believe you when you tell the truth, therefore it's not advantageous to lie frequently if you want to be taken seriously. The best stories have very strong themes and stick to them. Other stories, which can be for recreation, don't really need to have a theme. For example, comedies are meant just to elicit a reaction out of you - humor - they don't need to have a "point." One of my favorite series, Overlord, isn't really a story with a "point" it is just a black comedy and a minor political drama. But I digress, what I'm trying to say here is that a story needs a good theme, and that theme needs to be decided from the start. If you write your story and change your theme half way through, readers are going to get whiplash as they see the story advocating or pushing one idea then doing a sudden shift towards another. Let's do some bad examples of themes. I think Shingeki no Kyojin, or Attack on Titan, is a perfect modern example of this. To me the theme of the story is very obvious up until the last arc when it's shifted entirely. By the end, I couldn't tell you what the point of the story was. There's a lot of problems with the final arc of AoT but the theme is the most egregiously terrible part. Obvious spoilers here, but throughout the series the main character Eren's entire driving goal is freedom, for himself and his people. In the end, his goal changes for no particular reason and he lets himself lose for the sake of his friends. I guess that desire for freedom wasn't so strong that he'd be willing to take it from his friends, despite being willing to genocide the entire rest of the planet. So the obvious discrepancy here is what the story is trying to say. What was it trying to say prior to the last arc? I think it was supposed to be a warning about nationalism, but that's a very surface level look at the story. On a deeper level it's showcasing relative morality and what people are willing to do to fight for themselves. It is advocating the pursuit of freedom. The islanders are willing to risk death by titans for the sake of freedom and exploration, the scout brigade's whole purpose was to strive for freedom. They main landers were driven by inner conflicts but also fear of the islanders, so they decide to try to wipe them out. Both sides are fighting for themselves, and neither side is right. There's a cycle of violence going on and the only options seem to be peace or total annihilation of the other side. This was a fine stage to set for the story, but then when you get to the ending you have Eren attempting the total annihilation strategy and he just... gives up. The most driven character in the series. So, is the story really about freedom, drive, motivation, and what people are willing to do? I couldn't say, because it seemed like the ending was supposed to be about love or something? And then the epilogue has the whole cycle repeat and it was meaningless. I might have done a poor job explaining this but I hope my inability to properly do so helps exemplify how confusing the themes were in this series. I could tell you what it was "about" and what the "point" was prior to the final arc but at the end, I just don't know what to say. The reason why this series is like this would of course be, as I said earlier, poor planning. The reason AoT ended in such a bad way is that I think up until the rumbling (the final arc), the whole series WAS planned. The foreshadowing was just too perfect, the story and reveals flowed elegantly and each point logically lead to the next. It was as if after the beautiful scenes where Eren takes on the founder's form and we see ymir's backstory, that everything after there was just kind of improvised. I firmly believe that's what happened, that chapters 1-123 were planned and then everything after the author was just winging it. I think there's a couple reasons why this happens. First off, manga is not written like any other kind of story. If you were writing a book, you'd plan what you write and then start writing. It wouldn't be a multi year ordeal where you have to come up with a chapter each week/month. You'd write until you were done and that would be that. In a movie, you write the whole movie before you start. You wouldn't start filming a movie without at least having some idea how it would end. I know sometimes movie endings are changed but there was always something planned out begin with, it's not like they had no idea what they would do. But with something like manga, it's very easy to fall into the trap of this. Manga often run for multiple years, chapters coming out weekly or monthly. The author has a lot of time to think about the story, and importantly to change it. But a lot of authors seemingly just write their pilot chapters and start the concept without knowing how it will end. Things like shonen are the biggest offenders of this usually because of their length. Do you think the guy who made one piece planned out the 1000+ chapters that have been written, back decades ago when it first started? Definitely not. Shonen arcs are largely made up as they go. That's also why the power scaling gets so out of hand but that's a separate topic for another blog. The main point is that because of the time over which manga is written, they are often made up as they go. However, improvisation isn't an inherently bad thing. A good actor or comedian can come up with material on the fly, improvising lines and jokes that are nearly on the same quality as pre-written material. But, they need to be good. The average actor or person can't do oscar worthy acting just on improv. Similarly, the average author cannot write masterpiece tier storytelling on the fly. It can happen but the author needs to be good beforehand. Some TV shows are like this in fact, with very good writers they can still manage to come up with some excellent stories. For instance, Breaking Bad (at least from what my sibling told me) was largely written as they went on. They would write characters into corners, and have to think of realistic ways to get them out. But this isn't a testament to that style of writing being good, it's more a testament to the writers being good enough to pull that style off. The average hollywood writer would write complete garbage if they tried this. It's a skill only people at the top can use effectively, like how a skilled gunman can quickly draw and fire accurately, and a novice can fire accurately but it would take some time to put themselves in position and aim, instead of doing it immediately on impulse. Modern stories often disappoint me. I think the story landscape would be better if authors realized they should plan a very strong story first, and add all the middle details later. Too many authors seem obsessed with just making their concepts and putting them on paper without knowing how they're going to make the story good. If you don't want to write a theme, make a comedy for god's sake.