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Jan. 29th, 2007 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kippurbirdReading ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
limyaael's rants and came upon this in her rant about Teenage runaways:
3) Don’t dump all the problem-solving on the Helpful Stranger. You know the ones. They must have high-duty sensors that tell them when fantasy teens who would die in two seconds flat otherwise flee their guardians. Then they follow behind them, meet up with them, and wipe their noses and asses for the rest of the quest, until the climactic battle when Lord or Lady Clueless somehow defeats the Dark Lord.
Sure, your character has got to get help, unless we’re talking about the aforementioned nomad teenager, but that doesn’t mean that someone should pop out of nowhere and decide to help out of the goodness of his heart. It goes double if most people are suspicious of strangers (for whatever reason). It goes triple if the Helpful Stranger has no magic, destiny, or high-duty sensor, but somehow happens to know everything about the protagonist’s fate and bloodline anyway. This often comes from recognizing a piece of jewelry or the protagonist’s face. But then, no one else in the book seems to notice, including the clueless evil guys (whom I privately suspect are fantasy teens who for some reason never left home and got snatched up by the Dark Lord instead). It doesn’t work that way. Either it’s common enough knowledge that a total stranger would have a good chance of knowing it, or you make the Helpful Stranger not a real stranger. Chance meetings that turn strangers into the teen’s retainers are sickening.
Helpful Strangers will pick up after the teen, teach the teen cool things about the world, give the teen lessons in swordplay or magic (at which the teen will surpass them in a matter of days or months, never mind their years training in it), get angry but always apologize when the teenager turns out to be Right ™, and fight to the death for someone they met only a few days before. And they always show up before the character really suffers.
Here’s an idea: Introduce some suffering, and it helps me suffer the teenagers much better.
Hello, Brom.
limyaael's rants and came upon this in her rant about Teenage runaways:3) Don’t dump all the problem-solving on the Helpful Stranger. You know the ones. They must have high-duty sensors that tell them when fantasy teens who would die in two seconds flat otherwise flee their guardians. Then they follow behind them, meet up with them, and wipe their noses and asses for the rest of the quest, until the climactic battle when Lord or Lady Clueless somehow defeats the Dark Lord.
Sure, your character has got to get help, unless we’re talking about the aforementioned nomad teenager, but that doesn’t mean that someone should pop out of nowhere and decide to help out of the goodness of his heart. It goes double if most people are suspicious of strangers (for whatever reason). It goes triple if the Helpful Stranger has no magic, destiny, or high-duty sensor, but somehow happens to know everything about the protagonist’s fate and bloodline anyway. This often comes from recognizing a piece of jewelry or the protagonist’s face. But then, no one else in the book seems to notice, including the clueless evil guys (whom I privately suspect are fantasy teens who for some reason never left home and got snatched up by the Dark Lord instead). It doesn’t work that way. Either it’s common enough knowledge that a total stranger would have a good chance of knowing it, or you make the Helpful Stranger not a real stranger. Chance meetings that turn strangers into the teen’s retainers are sickening.
Helpful Strangers will pick up after the teen, teach the teen cool things about the world, give the teen lessons in swordplay or magic (at which the teen will surpass them in a matter of days or months, never mind their years training in it), get angry but always apologize when the teenager turns out to be Right ™, and fight to the death for someone they met only a few days before. And they always show up before the character really suffers.
Here’s an idea: Introduce some suffering, and it helps me suffer the teenagers much better.
Hello, Brom.
