Scribbled Fiction

Mentors in fiction always die. And I mean ALWAYS. Every single time, without fail. Never ever and I mean ever do they- Okay, I'm exaggerating. Occasionally a mentor will escape the slaughter, but 99.9% of the time they keel over dead. In short, the writers are like this: And yes, I did completely pause writing this post to make a meme to prove my point, but hey, who's pointing that out? But I'm not kidding. Gandalf, Brom, Tadashi, Batman, Grandma Tala, many, many parents *sob*... why did they have to die?? Short answer: They get in the way of the main character. I'm sorry. Slightly longer answer: The mentor is always more skilled than the main character in one way or another. Their ability to teach the main character is what makes them the mentor. So, anytime anything is too hard for the hero, BAM! you can hand all the heavy lifting to the mentor. It makes it too easy. So the mentor dies. How unfortunate. Another reason could be that the mentor event...

Today's post is a short piece of humor I came up with offhand, mainly because I knew I hadn't written a funny post in a while and I was kind of desperate to come up with something. So let the cliché jokes begin. Sure, I overuse this meme, but it works so well in humor posts. Recipe for a  Cliché Fantasy Novel  Makes 1 novel that critics will hate for years to come Prep Time: Could be months. Bake Time: Could be years. Total Time: Who knows? Ingredients: 1 elderly mentor who speaks in cryptic metaphor 1 1/2 idiotic sidekicks 1-2 villains out for revenge who are completely unconnected to the hero 3,000 miles of wooded landscape 1-2 oblivious monarchs 1 dozen horses 1 unnecessary love triangle 1 special item (possibly magical) This protagonist: Sure, it's technically meant for dystopian YA novels, but it applies to a lot of cliché protagonists Place the protagonist into your novel. Fold in mentor and special item and stir in other ingredient...

Allow me to start by saying: Really, they should. What's the point if they don't? I love to see how scary I can make mine(*ahem* admittedly to the point of scaring myself silly in the dark, but we're not mentioning that). And I'll tell you why. Villains should be scary because they're supposed to be like real-life bad guys. Do you think Attila the Hun or any of the historical gang bosses were hilarious, bumbling idiots? Yeah, no. They were not. They were terrifying people. And since fiction is meant to be just like real life, the bad guys should be as such. They should be terrifying. In my mind, your villains should either be someone you're scared of or someone you hate. If I had to choose, a scary villain is better than a loathsome villain, but if you can't make the readers fear them, at least make the readers hate them. And don't let them forget it. I'm not saying the villain can't be likable either. Villains like Loki are fan f...