How to write fiction

Does anyone play magic cards? p2

display of magic the gathering game cards

Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels.com

WHY?

Let’s start with the fact that, unlike movies, written words can only describe a single person’s action per line. True, there’s the AND and the BUT — plus variants— to junction two people’s actions making longer lines. However, Harry Dresden (one chap-one line) drinks the potion + (AND) Mr. Werewolf (one chap- one line) jumps over him. A line, a subject — a group of subjects is still a single subject when thinking the described actions belong to them as a single unit. All them jump, all them sing.

We might be able to invent simultaneous reading by using two text columns with Dresden’s actions in one and the werewolf’s actions in the other. Both columns starting with the same upper alignment. Still, the reader will have to read a column first and then the other. One chap, one action. This is an advantage of movie media. Multiple actions, multiple characters.

Physically impossible for novels.

COMIC AND ACTION

In comic, this physical impossible is possible until we trip with economy. And economy is key [ maybe not for comics as Batman, Marvel and such but a mangaka who draws a whole chapter to be published every Thursday knows what I am talking about]. The less detailed an scene is the easier to draw it. You can place as many characters as you want in page, so long you’re willing to draw a lot of details per page on your own or pay an assistant to do the backgrounds.

What about the billions of dollars used to pay extras [ or the CG] in a movie? Even in such case we close up  Danaerys/Grey worm/John Snow, not the unknown fighters. We want the dragon [oops I mean the lady]. In theater, the space and stage real time convention make it more difficult to have more extras. Maybe the Lion King has 20~30 dancers [anyone out there who has watched it can enlight little me musicals not adept, truly appreciated] . Dancers… Not antagonists.

EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT

So, there are ten thousand-bunch of Kermit galaxie chaps invading the Xy planet. Whom do we wish on screen? The hero we have been accompanying through boring life in the farm to knighthood or the mechanic of turn hiding in the storage ? Emotional investment will have us sympathizing with the mechanic in a short scene. Nonetheless, we want the hero. We want his duel against the father, the betraying lover, the evil king or whomever who can fight a good one. In alternated steps. At least until it is time to wrap it up.

Such is the info I can get in clear broth out of magic duels in a magic system. So far until I read something new.

Is your magic system to be one with a graveyard, monster zone, spell area and calculator? Are you giving your protagonist the chance to summon the five Exodia cards?

Please, teach me to play magic cards. Pasto kalo.

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