Why Revolutions are Hard to Write

look at this cork board stories Can Be Imagined like a bunch of points all connected by string pulling on each other tugging because characters and objects and places they're all connected they all relate to each other in some way creating tension as events unfold and and characters pull in different directions till eventually something snaps something breaks and A revolution is perfect for this kind of makeup you've got characters on opposite sides the regime versus the resistance but maybe you've got characters who believe in the regime and that it can be changed from within While others demand more radical methods I'm using hijack Peter you've got characters disagreeing over revolutionary methods and then everyone agrees on bringing down the regime but not what comes after a symbolic Hunger Games historically revolutions haven't always been a unified front of ideologies but often a tangled mess of the rich wanting power or workers wanting rights and Liberation uh foreign countries wanting concessions and agreements of politicians and Elites wanting more control of the system ideologues you know having visions of the future that are going to be difficult if not impossible to implement and maybe all the strings between these things are loose while they're fighting the regime while they have a common goal but once that's over these strings are going to get Tighter and Tighter and Tighter till eventually you've got your characters pulling in a thousand different directions and something comes apart so let's talk about revolutions [Music] foreign [Music] guess who's sponsoring this video me I am because all of you mean that I don't need anyone else for this video because I took all of the discussions we've had around writing and word building and put them into these easy to read easy to reference expanded on writing and World building books with thousands of extra words worth of detail and Analysis volume 1 and volume 2 are entirely different from one another and guess what volume 3 is coming later this year that's why you guys have been voting on the covers I love having all of you involved if you like these kind of discussions and haven't got them yet then I'd love for you to pick them up at the link down in the description below but I'm also an author I've been publishing fiction and poems with magazines for quite a while now and I would love to share them with you if you want to read some of my work they are linked down in the description below as well thank you for making so that I can sponsor my videos with my own work see I've been doing all these books and stories and revolution is a Trope right it's not a story by itself and when we're writing stories of Revolution we're really telling stories about struggle sacrifice Injustice in society how to organize ourselves wealth and power why people fight the exploration of feminine agency cycles of history the shape of tyranny and dangers of ideological utopian Pursuit and what the revolution is really about comes through in the story web you make where these threads of tension pull your characters is what your story is about Les Miserables which is not about the French Revolution but the 1832 June Rebellion is my favorite musical and it's not just about Revolution right you've got Valjean trying to redeem himself and pursuing him with this black and white morality asking what Justice Means and how the law can be unjust all coming to head when they confront each other and Belgian doesn't kill him and javer is left asking why what reason does he have to spare me is this tension between you know theme what jivia believes about the world this black and white morality and what Jean Valjean does in the story and it stretches and stretches till it gets too much and foreign snaps then there's all these characters stuck and squalor like Fontaine and eponine trying to get out but unable to till that eventually kills them too pulling these strings in such a way to expose how classism locks people into positions in life then when the revolution comes along and all of them die basically and pointlessly and achieve nothing empty chairs and it's because the stories about the gap between ideology and reality and how we can get caught up in it like Javier who was left questioning whether the criminals might actually have a point but if they do have a point then I'm the criminal and in the end the poor die because of rich people's greed and grante Aaron and harlas disagreeing on how to handle the revolution that's them pulling pulling these characters going in different directions then dying together this web is the Revolutionary story of Les Miserables it's what gives meaning to the story and it's why it hits home because it keeps stretching those things till eventually it snaps and we spend all this time in the story weaving these strings so we know where the emphasis and point of it is if you want your Revolution your story to explore something it has to come out here you know and importantly you actually may not realize what your story is exploring right let me explain how like part of the reason that some revolutionary why a dystopian novels kind of fall flat is that so many of their strings all return to basically a love triangle right or some other kind of like into character drama that doesn't have a huge amount to do with the themes that they were supposedly discussing these sort of triangles were often shallow but so much time was spent on them so many things were dependent on this point of tension connect to it via these strings that that was the point of the door that was a New Zealand accent would that was the point of the story look at what you're actually putting time into in your story what you're showing the reader what you're foreshadowing where the tension actually is because that's what your story will become no matter what you tell us a little scene at the end over in the corner here not really connected to the center with only a little tiny pluck the reverberations of which aren't felt throughout the rest of it well that matters less when you spend all of your time I'm stretching these plot points over here it's hard to talk about War and Peace of the same breath as divergent but we will and we're also going to talk about why the Hunger Games keeps getting better with time part one Injustice alienation and Desperation a lot of Revolution focused stories start one of two ways and this is not to say it's realistic but these are the story Frameworks we tend to return to over and over we find compelling one the 1984 way someone inside the system realizes the system is broken and wants to bring it down usually realizing a lot of what they've believed is a lie or two The Hunger Games someone disenfranchised by the system gets wrapped up in a revolution to bring it down But whichever it is I found that a lot of these stories the best ones really grounded themselves viscerally in those three things Injustice alienation and Desperation common reasons for people to join a cause Les Miserables shows Jean Valjean suffering at the iniquity of the justice system fontaine's desperation to give her a child being forced to sell herself in her here for pennies and there's this whole underclass of society who have been constantly alienated by the system for years and when you feel outside the system when you feel that your problems cannot be solved inside it there's this realization that you are not incorporated into the system then you have every motivation to change it simply telling me help help I'm being repressed but not show me how it affects people on a day-by-day level just doesn't work as well on a line by line level you've got to work at capturing emotions like desperation so have a listen to this from cormet McCarthy in the morning they went on desolate country a bar had nailed to a barn door ratty wisp of a tail inside the bar and three bodies hanging from the rafters dried and Dusty among the one slats of light there could be something here the boy said there could be some corn or something let's go the man said mostly award about their shoes that and food always food in an old badboard Smokehouse they found a ham gambled up in a high corner it looked like something fetched from a tomb so dried and drawn he cut into it with his knife deep red and salty meat inside rich and good they fried it that night over their fire thick slices of it and put the slices to simmer with a tin of beans McCarthy's writing is incredibly evocative he spends no time dwelling on any single instance of desperation because there is no time to feel it for these people as soon as we read one problem another is found only if they're horrifically disturbing images to be dropped in the middle a normal everyday thing for them stopping only to dwell on the food they find this is showing us hunger and Desperation from our character's perspective where their mind is really at where they have the bandwidth to think there's the Simplicity to his writing that doesn't even leave room for the normal horror you would feel this sort of writing helped helps us understand why change needs to happen now this is not a revolution story but this sort of writing could definitely appear in it you know those same feelings are being channeled it helps us understand the stakes that are at hand for the characters on a very personal everyday level and that is really important all the time one of the reasons a lot of why a dystopian Revolution stories don't work that well is because the Injustice or alienation just wasn't that convincing or it was really contrived because we're left asking who would even organize a society like this what is the point of it you're telling me that everyone has to wear a mask based on the size of their toes why whereas I know exactly what the Injustice is in a world like Les Miserables how that comes to be it channels familiar angers and feelings the scenes of Injustice desperation and alienation are often the inciting incident and these sorts of stories because they give characters on tense emotions that motivate them to act now again this is really about Revolution stories where our main character is the boss who's gonna go and you know fight it all out right the handmaid's tale is kind of an antidote to a lot of revolutionary writing and dystopian writing Alfred is the object of alienation Injustice and repression but Revolution isn't really presented as an option because the other side of revolutionary stories right you've got the stories where people rise up but the other side is stories of repression and the experiences of those under it of the victims Revolution happens around Alfred but she is not an agent in it lack of autonomy and choice is fundamental to the themes of the story to understanding what it means to be repressed and why Revolution is not an option for so many Edward's writing is full of Genius little turns of phrase that capture offer its desire to Rebel but inability to feel she can because of course we love to think that we would Rebel and we would fight for what's right that we are not offered but a lot of us would be and a really compelling way to explore the desperation and alienation and effects of your regime is to show why people don't Rebel put this in your story web and then you've got Alfred story narrowing in on her conflicts with a Serena Joy talking about how women are pitted against each other in in patriarchal systems put all these together and you've got a really tight bit of tension for why revolutions might be something that other people do that you just don't have the bandwidth for it exposes the optimistic hope that everyone can stand up for what they believe in when they can't part two Revolution as character arcs cataracts are the lenses through which we understand the tropes of our story and spoilers by the way for Dune and the full series skip to this point if you don't want to see them but it is actually a revolutionary story about the dangers of following radical Chosen One Messianic leaders even with the admirable goal of overthrowing the Imperial corrupt system Paula trades becomes a religious zealot consolidating power in himself and taking a marginalized group The Freeman and turning them into a conquering Force he got some fantastic Charisma rolls and is using them for all the wrong reasons Liberation easily becomes repression when you ruling becomes inevitably better than your enemy and so a tradis's desire for justice and peace and and forging the empire together into something better this desperation turns into something horrible utopian Visions can Galvanize a movement but they can also justify atrocities Paul's negative character Arc has slowed descent into tyranny shapes the meaning of the Revolution and the impact the story leaves on us it's a filter for us to understand and think about Revolution as a theme and as a real force in the world consider how your characters change across the story and how their change colors the meaning of revolution thematically positive arcs where characters grow into their heroism and learn the importance of individual action and societal change matter but War and Peace sees Natasha rastava start out with a romanticized view of the French Revolution till eventually she becomes more and more disillusioned and loses her innocence and understands the brutality of a revolution of the violence it entails that ideas and heroism and belief aren't enough and they're also not what is put through the fires of War but I hear you say but my Lord I object not all revolutionary stories say that and I would say correct young man see you've got to think about what conflict the characters actually face and what that says about the revolution just like how how the characters change will color the meaning of revolution right this is the framing of the revolution is pretty optimistic it's about a marginalized people rising up for Liberty equality and fraternity the main obstacle Eevee Encounters in the story is when V basically kidnaps and prisons and torches her to harden her into a revolutionary who never gives up I know that sounds bad it is bad you could call him an anti-hero it takes up a significant part of the plot but while she's imprisoned she is given these letters about the life of two women in love before the autocracy kicked in there's this juxtaposition of the dark reality she now faces and the colorful life this other girl lived and it gives Evie something to cling to so that she never gives in but the reason the story doesn't focus on how a revolution could be corrupted or the true violence required and how dark and and brutal it really is is because the story is so much more about the importance of individual action of sacrifice and individual resistance and The Virtue that is found in that it's about empathy for others there's an optimistic view of the world and Human Action in that the revolution isn't one with a bloody war and ugly consequences it's one with individual action the choices of one per person at a time human empathy those are the forces that overcome Injustice and alienation and Desperation that's the Thematic messaging of the film in The Hunger Games Candace and Peter have to contend with the power of a media narrative and propaganda how it frames The Narrative of Injustice in the world and in turn how it can be used to spark Revolution one of the things that I actually keep coming back to that I really appreciate in the series is how it frames the illegitimate anger of the oppressed that is mahogany that oppressed peoples are not allowed to exhibit anger and rage and Desperation because it's not polite it's not good Society manners you know and the rich and the powerful use that as an excuse to dismiss your concerns well if you're not going to be reasonable to talk about oh well I'm not going to listen am I this is sometimes called respectability politics so Peter understanding this figuring this out he rolled high on Deception pulls out an Ace card if it weren't for the baby this is something that does play by those rules but because of how Collins chose to present Revolution because of the obstacles to it that she gave Katniss and Peter we see how the poor and marginalized are forced to refine themselves for the rich and Powerful Revolution is about controlling a message you know the regime wants to convince people that these are just thugs destroying the streets and all that right but the revolution wants people to believe that they are a just Fighters fighting for Liberation and then there's character conflict on top of this stories thrive on failure we all know this they're what make the eventual successes meaningful right Candace failing to save her sister Prim in the end in the final book after volunteering to protect her in the first is a great subversion I I really like that because it brings her into conflict with Gail someone who played a role in the bombs that did kill her in the end there's this horrific redundancy to the revolution that says a lot manifesting realities about your revolution in character conflicts with real consequences brings it down to earth and you might be saying ah yes the love triangle at the heart of The Hunger Game string Gail and Peter and Kenneth but not really like that's there technically but it's really quite secondary and the conflict between the characters isn't so much about like them falling out of love or anything like that it's about disagreements over methods of Revolution and the conflicts that come out of that and the redundancy of her decision in the first book so Gail's character Arc of joining the revolution ties into Katniss's decision at the beginning which ties into the themes of the story and how as President Snow is not wasteful in his character development it's all very connected in an interesting way so yeah maybe two characters disagree on methods and that drives a wedge between between them or it even leads to betrayal maybe they disagree on what Society should look like after the revolution or their experiences in the war drive them apart with one becoming cynical and the other remaining an optimist or being inflicted with PTSD Revolution gives the opportunity for a ton of fascinating character Dynamics the leader faced with moral dilemmas the follower getting disillusioned the noble confronting their role in the horrors of before the Optimus made cynical the afraid turned hero so to bring it back to our story web it's not just about where these strings go and kind of how different things connect but how they change over time how different points of tension become related to certain characters or scenes or or plot points as characters change and it changes the nature of all that pulling because part of a story part of what makes it interesting is that the stuff that drives the story at the beginning the tensions that are there at the start are not necessarily the ones at the end a character might start out loyal to their Homeland but slowly become disgusted by it those strings changing right or the strings might stay the same throughout the book but grow more complex deeper and full of knots they're loyal to their country but they have to question who and what they're loyal to exactly is it the ideals the government or the people one figure out the strings of tension where they go and start and two figure out how they change how they grow more tense and where they get redirected then look at the meaning your readers will derive from this if you want your story to say something it'll come from the scenes that have the most time from the character conflict that you spend time on part three do revolutions need to be realistic writing revolutions is hard right because it is easy to dramatize Injustice and personal vendettas think the innocent girl shot by the police state a black and white narrative but less so Collective action and Logistics and international support even though I've find all of those fascinating all of which are fundamental to realistic revolutions go check out my video on on World building them in the dictator's dilemma that is a lot of information you'll find relevant collectively studies kind of point out these five things are critical to realistic revolutions and though Injustice is one of them Injustice tends to actually be a moral framework that gets attached to pre-existing Community instability economic social political with instability and opportunity being a far bigger motivator and often not for great reasons you know see Wagner's weird-ass coup that happened in Russia recently and then there's the question of what the hell is injustice people are going to disagree and you've seen how easy it is to convince large groups of people that someone deserved to be shot by the police because that is something that people believe for some reason Studies have shown villages in Vietnam were more likely to support once side or the other during the Civil War depending on whoever happened to be bombing them which you know fear we get caught up in ideological motivations when we're writing stories like this but most people just want to grill revolutions are a storm of complex factors that all come crashing together at once where pre-existing instability means choosing now between two different types of instability the status quo or the revolution but okay this is a big point for me and it's the point that you see in so many stories revolutions don't have to be realistic you don't need to get fixated on that they can be Mythic and inspiring and optimistic and they can use the aesthetic of Revolution or dystopia to talk about other things 1984 is a ridiculous world it is absurd it is baffling it doesn't make any sense it never made any sense that's the point of it right but that is intentional stories like Arcane or snow crash or Star Wars are meant to be Mythic and hopeful and legendary even if they explore real world things like sacrifice and found family and loyalty well snow crashes meant to be a horrifying and bizarre projection of human weirdness these are still stories about people in Revolt they can still be compelling and that's just fine it's awesome I love these stories well Arcane and Snow Crash list Star Wars but this does often manifest in the head of the snake fallacy ending with killing the person at the top like Emperor Palpatine brings down the whole system when in reality I mean it just Splinter into a mess of competing factions probably equally as bad it's one of those stories that even in those Mythic revolutions right people are getting a bit tired of it and they're kind of looks like you know you didn't put in that much effort not to mention it's often connected to the if I kill you I'll be just the same as you which is I mean obviously for the most part that's a terrible false equivalency still in these stories the biggest conflicts are about uh winning battles and resisting the the urge to the dark side and and giving inspirational speeches and inspiring others and and actually accessing and controlling your full Powers those will turn the tides of the war but people love this stuff right Doctor Who has been doing optimistic science fiction for like this for decades when someone doing the right thing in the face of tyranny can turn the tides of War and these sort of stories there is a power in that stories do not need to be realistic to hold meaning and they certainly don't need to be realistic to be compelling part 4 chaos and Revolution now of course revolutions they're all about Breaking Chains of Oppression and and establishing a new free liberal order right well in theory yes in practice see we have a romanticized view of Revolution especially those of us who grew up in the why a dystopian teen love triangle everyone is divided into arbitrary category zero or fiction a hero is plucked from the messes to overthrow the oppressive regime in the name of equality Liberty and fraternity with nothing than a schlocky determination and probably a dead sister or something the reality is though a lot of revolutions tend to be a lucky Collision of a lot of different groups at the same time whose interests are compatible in bringing down the existing regime but not necessarily in what comes after especially given revolutions attract well more radical politics but that is why a lot of stories focus on what comes after the revolution George R Martin famously said A Song of Ice and Fire after Robert's Rebellion that was the righteous Rebellion against the evil King who was murdering people and there was this final Mythic showdown between our hero and antagonist on the Trident it was cinematic Robert and rhaegar but that's because George R Martin was more interested in what came after how do you reorganize Society how do you keep it from falling back into chaos revolutions naturally attract radical religious economic ethnic ideologies and when the common enemy is gone those Clash I've already mentioned Dune but ursuluguen's the dispossessed is a fantastic look at a post-revolution world anaris is this Anarchist Society founded on supposedly a quality communal living Corporation but it struggles with sustainability with forging a cohesive identity for itself with isolation and trying to realize lies these ideas and our characters are forced to choose as they experience more of the flaws of these utopian ideas looking at that Gap that can develop between the aims of the Revolution and how to get there here's the thing Revolution isn't just something that happens once and then it's done it has to keep happening to adapt and be flexible and utopian ideas often aren't Revolution is a constant process full of growing pains not a single moment and you can use that to create tension between your characters famously Katniss chooses to kill prison and coin instead of President Snow because she fears coin will become a dictator starting another Hunger Games and you know what she was right autocracy is less complex a system than democracy so it's easier for autocracies to rise out of instability than democracies PS Brown's Red Rising does similar in exploring how revolutions can be poisoned by competing interests in the various factions of a post-revolution world thousands of Augustus and the sons of Aries all have ulterior mode is leading to devastating consequences Darrow our main character has to contend with them all what does it mean to remain moral in a post-revolution world how do you keep people feared and working and deal with chaos when you're finally in charge who do you blame and how do you manage it when the war tore the country apart and destroyed so much of its infrastructure that you no longer have what you need to build the society you promised what do you do about the groups who joined the revolution but for different promises for a trade deals you took support from you know foreign interests and how do you protect the rights of people who might have been previously oppressive and how do you deal with them there are costs to war physical psychological and sometimes no Victory heals all wounds one last really interesting point is that people will idealize the past even oppressive regimes because the reality is that every regime is good for someone and often more people than you think a 2019 poll found 59 of Russians felt the Soviet Union took care of Ordinary People 66 even regretted its dissolution an undemocratic regime that repressed over a dozen surrounding countries in 2011 56 percent of lithuanians felt their standard of living had fallen since the Soviet dissolution and even though a majority in almost every country except Russia believed the Soviet Union did more harm than good elderly people really did depend on the Soviet Union's very generous pension plan they worked to it their entire lives and suddenly gone they they grew up in that culture and it was taken from them separating one's identity from a critique of how that Society might have run can be really really difficult for a lot of people this again can create conflicts between your characters in that post-revolution world where people people feel some loyalty to how things might have been even if they kind of do understand the problems with it that's a really fascinating place to take your characters psychologically how do they reconcile their connection to a place to a job to a regime with what they find out it did or the things that maybe it did but there's not enough evidence or alternatively it might genuinely be morally ambiguous as to whether the regime was bad at all what are they Justified of themselves and what do they let go of all these questions and tensions can create a really interesting story web right in your revolutionary world and the best ones always know which ones to tangle and which ones to snap let's bring all this together in a summary but first go get my book I mean if you've made it this far into the video then this is the book for you if you only want to get one of them that's okay but I say get volume two I think it has a better selection of topics but I will say volume three coming later this year is going to be the best of them all I'm really happy with how it's turning out and I'll put it out to a vote but we'll be picking between these two kind of cover Concepts before I send it off to the artist to develop it more as said these have all of the writing and word building discussions I've had and More in more detail expanded analysis and I am astounded with how well it has sold like genuinely like 80 000 copies or something I expected 500 when I first published these thank you so much from the bottom of my heart and if you want to check out my writing I recommend reading two robots at the end of the world that was published with Utopia science fiction magazine I actually have my first poetry publication coming this month I've never really tried it that much but I wanted to give it a hand and yay thank you so much if you do there are links down below keeps Channel life keeps me having some faith in myself thank you so much on to the summary firstly revolutions are only as compelling as the reasons to lead them show the reader the Injustice alienation and Desperation on a personal level second the substance of your character arcs and conflicts will color the meaning and themes of the Revolution itself thirdly realistic revolutions are drawn from a complex mix of proximate socioeconomic instability alienation collapse the social order of elite infighting and Justice and international support some are harder to dramatize but can make your story more grounded fourthly stories don't need to be realistic to be meaningful or compelling revolutions are often Mythic however this can also lead to the head of the snake problem fifthly it can be equally important to show the reasons why people don't revolt and sickly many stories focus on what happens after the revolution in fighting the struggle to realize a utopian dream and the gap between ideals and execution all of this can create a fascinating story web so if you were to create your story and lay it out kind of like this what is in the center what points of tension which characters what characters are doing right what's in the middle what connects what's out on the edges and which of these strings do you tug on most stay nerdy and I'll see you in the future who is this man what sort of devil is he to have been caught in a trap and choose to let me go free it was his hour at last to put a seal on my face Wipe Out the past and watch me clean up the Slate all it would take was a flick of his knife Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life time to fall live in the dead of a thief then if I yield at the end of the chase I am the Lord and the Lord is not mocked I am Hospitality right back in his face there is nothing on Earth that we share it is either Val Jean nor Javier how can I not allow the man how do I how can I know allow this man hold dominion over me this desperate man that I have hunted oh my gosh

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 869,826

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, revolution, the hunger games, katniss, peeta, YA, rebellion, les mis, javert, valjean, dune, part 2, scene, writing, worldbuilding, war and peace, french revolution, napoleon, tips, editing, rebel, owaw, les miserables, catching fire, hunger game, tech, green, 21st

Id: O8tGBmyYirc

Length: 33min 25sec (2005 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023