Good morning folks. Or afternoon/evening.
I’m in the especially mean and cranky mood today, so take it into account when reading this post.
Today I wanted to discuss some plot lines, and common mistakes writers do, when working with these plotlines.
@Jade.epi brought up an interesting subject - intros, so I’ll dig into it at first.
Intros
First of all - I love intros
Now, what I consider to be an intro to the story.
I don’t consider the chain of splashes and splash-like-warning-overlays-sequence as an intro.
Splashes are splashes. They are important, I won’t argue. But when you make a chain of splashes and warnings as an over-30-seconds-sequence… Readers will cringe, after the 1st/2nd episode. What might work, is to put long sequence in the first episode, then make them much shorter in upcoming series.
There is one story called “Lovely One”, the one in the featured stories. It does exactly it. Long-ass splash sequence. Usually when I start the new chapter, and I know it has this long “intro”, I just put my phone away for a minute, cause it bores me to death. Once I actually fell asleep in this situation.
Now to the real intros
Why I love intros? Cause I love getting an “I’m-watching-a-movie” feeling while reading a story. This is the reason why I love intros and hate author’s introductions.
I distinguish two kinds of intros (write in the comments if you think there are more).
Cover Intro
The simplest you can do. Just upload cover as a background, add some cool text overlays, small animation and voila - you have a decent short intro. The only problem I see sometimes with these intros is the low-artistic quality of covers.
Animated-Intros
So it’s a chain of characters-actions + use of overlays, to show the atmosphere of the series.
I didn’t actually see this kind of intros until maybe Summer of 2018.
If you saw “My Physcho” story - writer uses an animated intro.
If you want you can check intro for my story below, and share, would you find it annoying to see it every episode?
The intro to my story is around 30-35 seconds.
While going through proofreading I was asking people, would they find it annoying to see it every episode. No one said yes, but again, there weren’t many people, so maybe I was just lucky.
As a middle ground, taking into account that part of readers will find it annoying, I could’ve added the choice to skip the intro or watch it.
Why I didn’t do it? Few reasons.
First one is simple pride. I was making it for 3 or 4 days, so I will make you watch it 
Second. As I said earlier, I love getting an “I’m-watching-a-movie” feeling while reading a story. And when doing my stories, I want the reader to have the same feeling.
I personally consider animated intros to be far less annoying than splash-warning-intros because although they are repetitive, they have some action, which might be entertaining (depending on the intro).
Now to the more serious subjects, that has nothing to do with the directing, but all with the plot and its execution.
Common problem which may be present in every kind of plot.
I call it “I don’t know what I’m writing about, but it seems to be cool, so who cares”
Why did I stop reading stories about gangs, police officers, prison guards and many more?
Because most of the writers have no idea what these subjects are about.
Here are some things I noticed in recent story reviews I made, that instantly caught my attention and made me a) dislike the story and b) look more closely into other unrealistic details.
- Combining prison and police station facilities.
The author wanted the MC to be able to talk to prisoners, as well working at the police station. Who needs realism, when you can adjust it to fit your plot much easier, amirite? - MC changes 7 (!) foster houses and was abused in every foster family.
OK. You want your character to be miserable. But put some logic into it, don’t go with the most absurd option.
I don’t say you have to be a prison guard or a criminal, or a foster kid to write about these subjects. Not at all. But if you really care about your story, and want it to be suitable not only for people who might be underage, and may not have this knowledge about certain things at the moment but also for an older audience - do research on the subject. How you can do research? Forums with real people describing their job routine, movies, thematic TV series, even Wikipedia. It may be exhausting. But this research might give you additional ideas on how to execute your plot more interesting.
Now, this applies not only to certain jobs but also to certain character’s personalities.
Let’s begin with one of my favorite type of character - PHYCHO.
I will put a quote from my recent review, where the author tried to show MC as a psycho.
I love psychos. But I don’t think you have a clear understanding what psychos are like. There are so many interesting sociopath characters in movies and TV series - Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal series, Killgrave in Jessica Jones (excellent sociopath villain), Joker, Loki in Avengers. All of them are villains - but they are very likable. Because they have some sort of motives, even if these motives are crazy, they have them, and they have this charming side. This is what MC lacks. And it’s hard to read when you don’t like MC. She just goes around talking trash, laughing and telling how she loves killing. I think you should watch some examples of how the psycho villain might look like, and then rework your concept.
Now, this is actually a very complicated character concept, if you’re not studying psychiatry, but it’s still possible.
It’s important to understand how to show your character not only to show it realistic but to create an interesting character. MC doesn’t necessarily have to be good, but it has to be interesting.
There is a difference between psychopath and sociopath.
DISCLAIMER A little education moment.
Psychopathy is mostly a congenital issue, that mostly has to do with the genetic problems or problems with the brain development.
I would say that psychopath is the smart sociopath. They can build visually strong relationships, get friends and family. From the outside, they look pretty normal, even charming. But mostly they aren’t able to build an emotional connection with anyone. That means they won’t feel sorry for the bad things that they do. They just aren’t able to be sympathetic. But they tend to do everything, to keep this “normal” facade, and if intervened in criminal activity - they are doing their best to keep a low profile.
Some popular culture psychopath references - Dexter (“Dexter” TV series), Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho” movie), Hannibal Lecter (“Hannibal” TV series). If you saw them, you might’ve noticed, that while sticking to their “bad side”, they do everything they can to keep their life visually ordinary. And note that psychopaths don’t necessarily kill people. As an example - Sherlock Holmes (Benadryl Cunningscratch TV series), which is discussable.
Now a bit about sociopaths.
Sociopathic behavior mostly is the result of a traumatic childhood experience, physical, emotional or sexual violence. While just like psychopaths, a sociopath has problems with building an emotional connection, they can build it with certain people. Another thing that distinguishes a psychopath from a sociopath is that sociopath have problems with emotion control. When performing a crime, they act impulsively and thoughtlessly. They are easy to anger, to freak out, which is fraught with a flash of violence.
It doesn’t mean that their behavior is completely chaotic and lacks any reason. It all depends on the cause of sociopathy. To explore this question, I advise you to read some specific books or articles, as I’m not able to provide correct information further than this.
Some popular culture sociopath references - Joker (“Batman” movie), Alex (“Clockwork Orange” book and movie), Joffrey Baratheon (“Game of Thrones” TV series), Killgrave (“Jessica Jones” TV series).
To summarize this type of character use in the stories.
You can use both of these types as an MC or Love Interest.
Just remember about these differences, and build thoughtful character picture.
This turned out to be longer and more specific than I intended to do. Also a bit chaotic, but I hope it was useful, at least for some of you.
Tomorrow I will continue on the character development subject.