Dear Authors... Falling Action

okay so today we're doing another dear authors which if you're new to the series this is a series where readers chat with readers about what we like and don't like to see on books we pick a topic i post a community tab and then a whole bunch of people respond what they like to see and don't like to see i go through it all and then i try to bring to the table the most reoccurring most common sentiments that come up there's a whole playlist i'll link it up there and in the description today we're talking about falling action whether that be a big battle or war or a death or just some sort of traumatic event how the characters and the world process it i'm going to break this up into three sections one video we're going to talk about characters we're going to talk about world uh aftermath and we're going to talk about some general recommendations that i have for books that do really great falling action okay okay first characters i think authors sometimes forget falling action and they don't expand on it enough sometimes a character might have a severely traumatic ordeal and they feel bad about it for a few pages but then a big new problem rises up the main character goes i need to be strong and i have to move on and immediately goes on to that new problem i understand we need to move the plot but at the same time it just doesn't work like that you can't forget about something that just happened and move on so for this particular sentiment i imagine we're talking about something that hasn't happened at the end of the book but rather some sort of battle death terrible experience that happened mid-book and the characters are needing to plug on now there's nothing wrong with a character saying i have to be strong i have to move on because the next big event is happening yeah my friend just died but also that guy's swinging a sword at me maybe i shouldn't drop to my e my knees look up at the heavens and scream no my head might get chopped off i'm not talking about that and there's nothing there's nothing wrong with with saying i have to be strong i have to move on and then moving keep your feet going because you have to that's reality sometimes but there are ways to have a character do that and still experience the trauma of what's just happened maybe the character shoves it down says i have to keep moving they keep moving maybe it's swirling thoughts in their head they can't get it out of their head maybe they're trying to push it down but little moments throughout the rest of the book bring up that person that just died or that event that just happened in their mind and they're just hit with a whole new wave of pain that they then have to work through and keep moving we can see the struggle of the character that keeps moving yet keeps getting pounded again and again with the pain that they're trying to push past maybe they have to push on now but then in a few scenes we can see them being strong for everybody around them and and and standing up straight and showing no pain and then several scenes later when they're finally alone then they finally break down and sob and allow themselves to feel i don't want to negate the reality that sometimes characters do have to push on but there are ways to make them push on without completely erasing the pain that they should be feeling in the moment we talked about this in my video dear authors battles i think is what it was called or stabby stabby i think i actually ended up calling it but anyway we we talked about this a lot there so check that one out if you want to see more of this discussion but nothing pulls me out of a story like if a character just experienced something really huge and then they just keep walking and the rest of the the book they don't think about it again they don't talk about again they just keep going i will never relate to a character like that and for me one of the biggest pieces of me enjoying a book is relating to characters even if they're nothing like me their life experiences their journey is nothing like mine all i need to do is feel like they're real nothing will make me feel like a character isn't real like letting stuff like a death or some sort of traumatic experience slide right off their backs disassociating yourself from the enemy that you have to cut down is a realistic thing but it's also only so effective so even if a character is choosing to do that even if a character is choosing to dehumanize their enemy so that they can get through this there is still some sort of pain and and questioning and self-hatred that would leak through that wall because that wall is not perfect one of the things i wish authors did more of is showing how different people process the same trauma a because authors should show the aftermath of traumatic events more and have that mean something and b different people deal with traumas in different ways it would really be interesting to see the different coping mechanisms of characters having to deal with emotional strain of what just happened to them and it would also show the distinctions between side characters not everyone cries out and screams some people bottle things up one book that i think did this really well is a book that i just finished reading sort of kygon i still have it sitting here because i'm really bad about putting new books on my shelves this book is all about um falling action and was the inspiration for me wanting to talk about this today after i finished that book uh but there she did such a great job this author did such a great job at showing different people coping with horrible events in different ways i'm going to give some examples some characters like this writer said some characters might bottle things up and try not to show anyone their pain another character might break down and not be able to stand back up like it's a physical force weighing them down another character might need to process it constantly while another character might get angry and snappy and furious and want them to just stop don't talk about it don't think about it just move forward they're trying to push it down and then they lash out at the people around them because that's the way their grief is showing up for them in red seas under red skies which is book 2 in the gentleman bastard series and i will not spoil anything but in that book we kick off the book with one of the characters processing and grieving and dealing with the events of book one that character is wallowing that character is drinking heavily and completely given up they're trying to numb the pain and they've stopped fighting that is a really realistic response to terrible things that they've recently had to experience and it takes someone else essentially grabbing them and forcing them out of their room to make them move again because they'll never make themselves do it because they are so deep in a hole i completely agree with this commenter showing different characters whether they be side characters or main characters processing the same event in completely different ways makes that event feel that much more real and makes these characters feel that much more honest i hate when a character is acting really emotionally in one scene and killing someone for the first time but in the second third and hundredth time it's easy as cutting an apple show me what it does to someone when he or she has slaughtered dozens of people who probably have families and thought they were in the right as well i don't remember how this plays out that well because it's been so long but i do remember in the inheritance cycle that roran was that his name aragon's brother um did something like this he kept a count of his kill the first man that he killed the first person that he killed i don't remember if it was a man uh was very upsetting for him and his way of coping his way of dealing his way of of honoring the fact that these are human lives that he's having to take in this battle is by keeping count and not forgetting i may be inserting too much of this in my memory i don't really know how it plays out perfectly but as i remember it this was his way of processing and coping and this was a way of constantly drawing the readers back to the reality that this isn't some fake foe being cut down they're the bad guys we're the good guys no these are humans these are i guess they weren't always humans but these are living beings with people who care about them just like if he died people would mourn him and this was his reality that he was having to live in he had to defend the people he cared about by doing this but that didn't make it any easier i completely agree that while there may be some desensitation desensitization that is happening uh with having to cut down a bunch of different people while that's true it wouldn't happen instantly and it wouldn't happen easily and also even if there is some desensitization happening i'm not sure if i'm saying that right even if there is some of that happening there's still a way to illustrate that to still make it impactful maybe with that desensitizing the character is also becoming really hardened and it's affecting their relationships around them because they've had to harden themselves in order to desensitize and now that's negatively affecting their familial relations because now they've hardened themselves to their family as well we can see a really big change in a person that is having to go through these things and being able to see it in our fictional characters too only makes us feel that much stronger don't be hasty an interesting story is usually written so that the reader feels as if they are living the events alongside the characters so that they have so that they have to be given the same amount of time to process everything i've read pieces where the following action read more like an epilogue rather than a continuation and it made the endings happy or otherwise feel rushed and inorganic if a character just had an emotional breakdown or a gigantic bloody battle was just concluded then there will be some sort of lasting impact that has to be dealt with the author should take the time to show how much the character has changed by having them address those loose ends as a new fully realized person so i appreciate that this person uh addressed that it may still be a happy ending not every ending is going to be bittersweet or grim dark there may this may be a good happy ending at the end of whatever has happened we may not be talking about a big giant war that included the entire uh planet that we're on it may be something much much smaller that we're talking about and it's okay to have a happy ending not everything has to be grim dark or bittersweet but there still needs to be some something showing us that something happened here i think i think that i've i've read a lot of books where the author ends right after the climax like we've had the big event and now i need to wrap everything up show you that things are good maybe in an epilogue maybe in a 19 years later i need to show you that things are good so that you know that there was an ending and then i need to bounce i need to get out of there because they're afraid of boring the readers or losing the readers in the finale and it's definitely possible to make falling action last too long for readers at times that's really more of a preference thing some readers are going to like a ton of falling action some people some readers are going to like it more condensed so whatever works best for the story is the most important thing but ending right after the climax giving a sort of epilogue whether a literally literal epilogue or what feels like an epilogue of and here's how everything turned out by and running off the page is so unsatisfying i hate it so much i don't want to know that everybody is married and happy and has kids and has no trauma 19 years later i i want to believe that the story keeps happening after i close the book i want it to feel like the story is still moving even though i can't follow it anymore and i want to see that there's real impact here after what just happened on whatever level that may be it may not be great trauma it may just be we gotta clean up a mess now but whatever it is ending there at the big moment and then saying by the way everybody's happy and married and everyone's fine i hate it i hate it so hard now we're switching to world stuff in terms of war give us a small amount of time to live in the new world wars especially after final battles fundamentally change the world we've been reading through for the past book trilogy or series it doesn't have to be much just a few chapters that you could tie into the surviving characters all going home or settling into their new roles but give us that time to see the characters and the world they live in settle in before closing the curtains on the story it makes the war they just fought that much more impactful by getting a glimpse of what the outcome achieved i don't really have much to add on to this i think it was worded perfectly i think being able to see the reality of the world after the big event is so much more impactful if if at the end of a battle we're led to believe and then this person ascended to king and then all of the friends recovered and the whole kingdom was really happy with this switch that they didn't consent to yay i'm just not gonna it's gonna take away a lot of impact of what happened are there any rebel groups still alive that they still have to fight against are there any people subjects who were actually pretty okay with whatever it is that you just freed them from and now they feel like you're the one cap you're the one keeping them in captivity under your new reign are there any families that no longer have a home because your dragon burned down a city in order to save in order to kill the big bad how do they feel about it they feel pretty happy are you gonna do anything about it or just leave them homeless war affects more than just the hero and the villain and being able to see it makes it that much more real i said i didn't have much to add turns out i'm a liar i want to see the impact of the climax if there was war for example show the ruins and devastation show people mourning for their fallen comrades show how this has really affected everyone it'll make the climax seem like it's even higher stakes because of the wreckage left behind and makes the story more realistic but don't overdo it and get pages and pages of detail that's just boring again what is too much and what is not enough is subjective so whatever works for the story but i wanted to bring this one up too because uh that's also a really one thing that it reminded me of is the fact that a lot of times when it's a war within a country within a civilization within a kingdom a lot of times um the the characters the people that are the bad guys that are that our main guy is fighting a main person is fighting against they have family members who aren't necessarily bad but they're still furious that that the person that they loved is now dead they may think that that person had good intentions and isn't evil even though our main character thinks the opposite exploring these things makes it all feel more real and therefore more impactful and it doesn't have to go on for half the book it can but it doesn't have to it can be done in just a chapter or two just giving us a glimpse of these things having people arise and speak out and then having plans be made and then leaving the reader seeing wow there's a lot of cleaning up to do even after i've run out of pages and wondering what comes next in the story it's such a satisfying feeling to feel like the story isn't done just because you can't read it anymore i really don't like when the main big bad is defeated and the war is over just like that you mean to tell me that none of their supporters are still out there they're just gone wars don't always end when the main evil is defeated i think a good example of this is the lord of the rings when sauron is defeated and the hobbits go home and there is still conflict to be dealt with in the shire also the fact that even though the ring was destroyed it still affects frodo and he can never be the same so i'm gonna stop the world thing there because we're kind of saying the same thing in different ways but essentially showing what happened afterward and not just the lion king everything's green now and everybody's on the same side now but really showing what it looks like after a major event happens again it doesn't have to be a war we're kind of fixating on war because that's a common thing that ends a trilogy or a series but not just ending at the climax and showing where everyone is and what kind of new problems are arising from this new thing that's happening is really really valuable to the reader for allowing us to process what's just happened with the characters in the world and again being able to believe that the story goes on after we run out of pages i'm gonna end reading commenter's opinions with this one because i think it kind of summarizes a lot of what's been said really well i want the aftermath to raise even further questions left for the character and readers to ponder over i'm tired of seeing neat endings the battle is just partial victory our heroes have to overcome what comes next so again this just kind of summarizes what's been said really well to me i'm personally not a fan of really neat endings where we see that everything is okay now and all these problems that were arising don't worry they're fine now everybody's good everything's fine you can have a happy ending without without begging the reader to believe that there's no aftermath there are ways to make it real yet still not quite devastating but the biggest thing at least in my opinion is is letting the readers believe that this was a real event that happened whatever that event was whether it be mid-book or at the end of the book this is a real event that happened with real consequences and even if there's hope at the end of the tunnel even if there's hope that everything will be okay showing us that we're starting to be okay and there's there's a really happy light on the future while still giving us reality is also a really great reading experience i mean it it helps me a lot i like it a lot all right now i'm going to do recommendations and i'm not only doing fantasy even though this whole video kind of felt like it was very fantasy uh implied but i'm gonna give i'm gonna give recommendations of books where i really loved the falling action uh and at different levels whether it be really long following action falling action or something more condensed so for really long drawn out falling action we have the lord of the rings obviously you probably know about it we even already talked about it in the video but after the war is over we spent a lot of time with our characters back at the beginning in the shire and showing that even though the war is over we're not done fighting and things aren't all better all of a sudden i also think that tolkien did a great job of ending the story in a place that made me feel like oh there's more to come even though i don't get to follow this time which is just i think i've made it clear i love that sort of kygon is a book i don't want to spoil things but i will say that the falling action goes on for a very long time and maybe is the point of the book i mean it's not but maybe it is this is a book like i said this is the book that inspired this entire video after reading the falling action in this book reading the different ways different characters processed what was happening around them the ways that they handled it and just seeing how much they had to deal with what happened um i really really liked the way this author did it it was something very different from anything that i've ever read before and i think she did a great job for more um medium falling action i guess you could say something oh i should also mention i'm only talking about finished stories here so stories i'm not talking about like the stormlight archive or the gentleman bastards because those series aren't finished i'm only talking about we've gotten to the end so for a series that i think has kind of a good middle of the road ending for falling action i'm gonna say hero of ages because this series has a lot happening in that final battle and there's a lot to unpack and it's no shire it's no um it's not long and drawn out but it's also not abrupt and quick and i think that it gives us a good amount of time for the reader to process with the characters and to deal with it while also showing us that there is movement forward and that not only is there a lot of work to do but it's starting right now and the reader can look into the future and know that there is a future beyond them pet cemetery uh this is a book that has a lot of falling action because there are traumatic dramatic events happening all throughout the book there are different levels so this book is essentially i mean it's horror sort of it's pretty light horror but there are levels of grief that are really being explored in this book and we get to see that grief we get to see that traumatic event happen and then how that grief is processed by different characters on different levels and the whole book is just event dealing with trauma event dealing with trauma event dealing with trauma over and over and over again so i think this is a great book for that because i also think that stephen king does a great job of showing different characters reacting different ways having different levels of it and it lasting for different lengths of time sometimes they deal with the pain well sometimes they deal with it horribly and i love that last a book that kind of leaves you with i'm not okay all right all right here's what i'll say last is my dark vanessa which is literary fiction and it's about um it's it's about a 15 year old who gets into a relationship with a professor and it's essential it's essentially the trauma of statutory rape so mild spoilers for how this book ends skip this part skip to where i'm not holding up this book anymore if you don't if you don't want that but this book does a great job of leaving us at things are not better things are not even beginning to be better but we're at the beginning of the beginning we are we are at where i'm about to be able to maybe take my first step into eventually getting to okay and i love that book for this because this is a very real look into something very painful and real and it was a really honest ending of not rainbows and sunshine but i might i might get okay sometime and i'm ready to start moving in that direction it was just really honest and i really liked it so there you go those are some recommendations for falling action that i really appreciated on different levels whether it be a really really long falling action which i personally like some readers don't love or if it's something more quick more wrapped up fast while still being very satisfying maybe one of these will work out for you i personally am a huge fan of falling action anytime the ending of a book or a series is very abrupt i instantly don't like that ending i or if it's really clean i like a more honest whether it be devastatingly honest or hopeful yet honest i really really like that i'd love to continue chatting with you about it in the comments check out my patreon if you want to buddy read books with me have movie nights um get early access to videos there's lots of benefits there i post videos every tuesday through friday i'll see you again soon [Music] you

Channel: Merphy Napier | Manga

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Id: 3ZGRZRnuKwA

Length: 25min 38sec (1538 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021