This video is brought to you by Campfire You hear that? That can only mean it’s time for TWA to
finally cover writing about dinosaurs! Oh look. A man with an old meme face talking about
dinosaurs. How appropriate. Now why am I writing about dinosaurs which
is a very niche topic? The better question is why aren’t you writing
about dinosaurs because dinosaurs are cool. How cool are dinosaurs? Dinosaurs are so cool that a story with dinosaurs
doesn’t even need a love triangle! I mean I’m still going to force a love triangle
into the story anyway. Rest assured, there will always be people
like me who will throw money at anything that has dinosaurs in it no matter how stupid,
goofy, cheesy, gross, or full of garbage grindy game mechanics it has in it! Just throw some dinosaurs in and I’m basically
forced to give my money to it. As such dinosaurs can be seen as a good investment
even though the age of dinosaurs has long since past millions of years ago when dinosaurs
ruled the Earth, also known as the 80s. Dinosaur obsession may no longer reign over
pop culture, but that doesn’t mean their popularity is extinct either. So let’s take a Jurassic sized bite out
of this topic as I spare no expense to teach writers how to write about dinosaurs! The key point to understanding how to write
dinosaurs is that they are so cool that they automatically absolve a writer of any writing
sins committed. Is the story a mess of stale cheese with an
idiot plot so stupid it makes Stegosaurus brain look big in comparison? I’m sorry, but my story has dinosaurs in
it, therefore your criticism is invalid! Dinosaurs generate a natural coolness aura
that switches off most people’s brains when a dinosaur enters the scene. A writer can take advantage of this effect
to save effort on things like plot, character, or other frivolous things like having the
story make and kind of sense. This effect increases the more dinosaurs a
writer adds to a scene and becomes exponentially more powerful when the dinosaurs fight each
other or start eating their way through the extras and minor characters. That’s what we are here for after all and
so why not take advantage of people’s love of dinosaurs to hoodwink and distract them
from my complete lack of storytelling skill? And man do I love dinosaurs to the point that
I’m going to include all of the most popular ones in my story! I am going to have Brachiosauruses, Brontosauruses,
and other sauropods wading through waters with their long necks. Let’s add in some triceratops fighting allosaurus,
Carnotaurus charging with their horns to stab their prey, little Dilophosauruses with their
neck frill and poison spit, scaly pack hunting super intelligent Velociraptors the size of
humans, and even other dinosaurs like Pterodactyls and Dimetrodons, and even the super fast and
sleek Tyrannosaurus Rex that had motion sensitive vision. Man I love dinosaurs so much that I would
totally throw them a parade! Wait? What’s that rumbling in the distance? Oh no! It’s a storm of angry internet dinosaur
fanboys, ‘well acktually’ guys, and long suffering paleontologists come to rain on
my dinosaur parade! Let’s go through this quickly. As it turns out, Brachiosauruses, Brontosauruses,
and other sauropods were not primarily aquatic dinosaurs using their long necks like a snorkel
and were instead mostly land based. Also, good luck trying to figure out if it’s
okay to even use the name Brontosaurus or if you are going to start another dinosaur
nerd fight just by uttering it. Triceratops wouldn’t have fought allosaurus
since Triceratops was from the late Cretaceous and Allosaurus lived in the late Jurassic
so they missed each other by millions of years. Carnotarus’s neck vertebrae wasn’t strong
enough to absorb the impact of a full charge and wouldn’t be useful for stabbing prey
and were probably used for shoving matches with other Carnotarus, maybe. We don’t know for sure and the whole horn
thing is kind of strange since we don’t have many contemporary predators that have
horns to use as a model to guess Carnotarus’s behavior. And as it turns out Dilophosauruses were actually
pretty big, had no fossil evidence of a neck frill nor is their any evidence of it spitting
poison. And I guess we should address the feathered
dinosaur in the room and point out that Velociraptors were actually shorter than humans and had
feathers. They might have hunted in packs, might not,
we don’t know. The larger predator most people think of is
actually Deinonychus or the even larger Utahraptor. As for their intelligence, who knows? They may have been really smart, but I meet
plenty of humans with a brain equally as big as my own, but they don’t seem use it much. As for Pterodactyls and Dimetrodons, well
as it turns out those are not even dinosaurs! Dimetrodons missed the entire dinosaur party
being Permian boys and all while Pterodactyls were reptiles. Yes, I’m sorry to inform you that your entire
childhood was a lie. And while we’re at it, 80s cartoons were
mostly 20 minute toy commercials, Coca Cola invented Santa Claus’s look, and you suppressed
all of those memories from those kids movies that always had at least one really weird,
really scary scene it in. Hey, remember in Land Before Time when Littlefoot
ventures into dinosaur hell near the end of the movie? Yeah. That happened. We need to form a support a group or something. Speaking of ruining childhoods, the T-Rex
probably had good vision, and rather than being sleek was a bit of a chunky boy. Also a human could probably out run a T-Rex,
which is a bold statement for most fast-food addicted Americans to make since the word
cardio summons up more fear from them them than facing an actual T-Rex would. Okay. Now that the no-fun brigade has finishing
stampeding over my scientifically inaccurate depiction of dinosaurs, what’s left? Did I miss anything else? Well don’t worry, I’m sure some noble
soul in the comments will point out how everything I just mentioned is also wrong and they’ll
probably be some ‘paleontologist reacts’ videos pour over every word. This puts a writer in a difficult position
when it comes to writing about dinosaurs. They must either basically ignore the entire
field of paleontology when it comes to depicting their dinosaurs and just do whatever they
want or the writer can make a documentary. If sticking with accuracy, just be sure to
obsess over future proofing the dinosaurs with as much dino facts as possible and never
worry that even the most scientifically accurate depiction of dinosaurs is one fossil discovery
away from being completely wrong. Science works best when it is treated like
unchanging dogma. See! I’m a defender of paleontology and science
by gatekeeping new harmful ideas even when those ideas come with overwhelming evidence. It’s not like treating science like a religion
misses the entire point. And if all that sounds like too much work
then just ignore it and turn your dinosaurs into fantasy monsters. Make all of the theropods stand up straight
and drag their tails on the ground behind them even though writer has to break their
skeletons to pose them that way! Call every large theropod a T-Rex even if
it has three fingers per arm and a sail on its back while every sauropod is called a
bronto. And the sizes are all over the place, but
mostly on the large end. Just stick to pre 80s pop culture as a writer’s
primary source of dino data and they should be fine! Dinosaurs can be treated just like monsters. They attack people and each other on sight
and they never retreat. What if the dinosaur in question was a herbivore? They still eat people and rampage around destroying
everything in their path. Big predators in particular always fight to
the death and never seek easy prey. They do use ambush tactics though, but the
showing up out of nowhere like a movie slasher rather than the one found in nature where
they blend into their surroundings and wait. Hunting is all about nosily rampaging around
and roaring rather than patiently waiting for an opportunity to strike like a clever
girl. Just treat dinosaurs like action figures to
be smashed together while making roaring sounds and then expect to be taken seriously. Never strive for more when writing about dinosaurs. It’s either no fun killjoy serous business
or brainless monsters fighting for the entertainment of an equally brainless audience with nothing
that might make people actually think or engage in an emotion other than “Ha ha! That guy got eaten!” “Rawr! You are too late, Optimus Rex! The Autotheropods will never defeat the Deceptisaurs.” “Roar! It is you who are wrong, Megasauarus. The Autotheropods will always fight for justice!” *AHEM*
Sorry. I got distracted for a second. Where was I? Oh right! Sadly there is no wiggle room at all for a
writer to come up with unique and interesting interpretations of dinosaurs while using current
paleontology as a foundation. Yes there is a massive amount of stuff we
just don’t know about dinosaurs given the limited number of fossils we have recovered
with many not even having a complete skeleton to work with. What most dinosaurs looked like, how they
behaved, and many other things are mostly guess work that can easily be filled in with
a writer’s creativity so long as it is tempered by a reasonable understanding of contemporary
theories and a bit of research. But see, the problem is those two words, ‘research’
and ‘creativity’. I kind of struggle with both of those. Just like the concept of geological time which
I struggle with as much as the T-Rex struggled to hunt the Stegosaurus. I mean the Stego had the Thagomizer, named
after the late Thag Simmons so of course the Rex had trouble with stegos. In addition to stubbornly refusing to use
my creativity when it comes to writing dinosaurs, book writers should also fail to use the unique
medium of books to explore these ancient species, like writing from the dinosaur’s perspective. I mean who would want to read a dinosaur Watership
Down? Hang on a second… gonna save that one for later… Anyways, as I was saying, a writer wants to
avoid their creativity almost as much as they should avoid giving the human characters in
a story anything interesting to do other than to run from the dinosaurs. Remember that when dinosaurs are the main
draw of the story then the best practice is to bore the audience with a bunch of petty
human centric drama that has no payoff and exists only to stall the audience until we
get to the dinosaur action. Basically just like a Godzilla film. Ah yes, the ideal dinosaur story is one where
the humans spend all of their time running away from one cool looking dinosaur after
another and occasionally punctuated by a dinosaur fighting another dinosaur. Don’t mess with a winning formula especially
when the brain power cost involved in this formula is next to none. Why dig into dinosaur behavior when instead
I can have dinosaur battles? Time spend understanding and exploring the
possibilities of how these ancient creatures survived, communicated, interacted with one
another, and lived, truly lived is a waste of time and will go against audience preconceptions
that all dinosaurs were murder machines. Yes real life animals fight and eat things,
but they also socialize, play, explore, hide, and even try to understand their surroundings. They adapt and showing that adaption and wide
array of behavior can be engaging and generate new and unexpected conflict in a story. Dinosaurs need characterization too. But it’s really better to run away from
that just like the human characters in the story will run away from one dinosaur after
another for the entire story with no other interactions taking place other than getting
eaten. If the story is just one dino massacre after
another then could the story at least build up to the reveal of the dinosaurs? That requires patience and a degree of impulse
control that just won’t work with my perception of modern audiences having brains smaller
than the dumbest compy in the Jurassic. Be sure to rob these creatures of any sense
of narrative weight by strolling them out at the first opportunity and without preamble
or foreshadowing. Just like a writer should never write characters,
but instead stick to broad archetypes, a writer should write dinosaurs as a faceless murder
monster and not a character. All because dinosaurs are cool. Because when it came to adding dinosaurs to
my story I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could that I never stopped to think
if I should. GREED: Your choice is simple. Side with me and enjoy endless wealth and
success or get paved over like anything else that gets in the way of progress. CONSPIRACY GUY: Not if we all stand together
against you! If none of us break ranks then we can easily- CEO: What’s your orders, boss? CONSPIRACY GUY: Megacorp sold out. Should’ve have seen that one coming. CEO: Know when fold ‘em. GENERAL: The Federation will never yield to
greed! EMPEROR: The Empire will never yield to greed! BOTH: Hey! BARRON: My Emperor… Greed sends his regards! EMPEROR: Again? How many betrayals is that? AI: HOW MUCH MONEY ARE WE TALKING? GREED: NFTs… at their height! AI: I’M IN! REBEL: Do we get to keep our branding? GREED: There will have to be a few changes
to make things more profitable. REBEL: The rebellion, and its slick branding,
will never sell out to you! CULT LEADER: Thank you for the offer, Greed,
but when the ancient horrors rise up to devour all reality, I’m afraid there really won’t
be much use for money. Thank you for including us though. Would you like a pamphlet? GREED: Well there you are. Now let us go and make some money! But first, a parting gift. This video’s sponsor, Campfire. Campfire, is a series of tools to help organize,
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Intergate. Farewell. See you after the conquest is done. DARK LORD: Intergate? KNIGHT COMMANDER: The Intergate is the backend
of TWA universe that connects it to YouTube. It’s where the ads seep in from. We placed seals to keep out the ads on most
of the videos. He’s going to break those seals and flood
every video with ads. CONSPIRACY GUY: I don’t follow. KNIGHT COMMANDER: With that many ads, he’ll
be able to conquer the entire TWA expanded universe in a single stroke.
