Step 28: The rule of cool

I want my stories to be cool man. This is a prime objective of mine. The fantasy one and the YA one at least. Not commentary on human nature, but the kinda thing that makes you annoyingly pester friends to check out because 'you'll see'. 

Credit to: https://red-flare.tumblr.com/post/91978765647/too-kawaii-to-live-too-sugoi-to-die-by-red-flare

Part of the reason I want to write stories, and this extends to when I run RPG sessions, is that I really hate it when a story disappoints.

Let's call it 'The Lost effect'.

That failed payoff after a build-up towards an inevitable reveal- what is the smoke monster, who are the hidden Cylons, how did he meet the mother, what's Ichigo's Bankai (okay that one worked for me), who made the wormhole, and then...bam. 

bam

They milked our attention for all it's worth then said it was 'angels.' 

I hate that shit. A lot of people do. But really, I'm the kind of asshole that hates it so much I'm driven to make reveals as crazy good as possible. I need epic twists. I will probably underdeliver in this department, but generally, my rule of cool is that given several premises, as set up by the story, and given several possible outcomes, the real outcome must hew as closely as possible to the coolest outcome.

How to example?

In an RPG I ran recently, there was a plaque on a pedestal, with a sign that effectively said 'for the love of god don't read the plaque'.

Reading a plaque in some fucked up evil half-tiger-wizard's museum turned out to be a plaque with the name of a ruler of Hell, an entity of almost godlike power, and knowing his true-name written in reality warping hellspeak, which takes thirty seconds to say out loud, gives you total control over the Duke. So he tries to break space and time to erase the memory / kill the player who read it. The set ups been there forever, it was all plausible.

It was just a plaque with some writing on with warnings that effectively went 'please don't do it. Fuck I wouldn't even do it.'

None of that might have made sense to you, I realise. Unless you're one of my players. 

But still! A plaque! That one delivered.

Which is why, if it were me, the clone wars would have been a war between regular folks, led by Jedi, using cloning technology to bring back the dead so it just went on forever, until the Empire was founded because the only way to break the stalemate was to be more brutal than anyone expected, militarising an entire economy and banning all cloning tech, moving to a fascist 'Humans First' approach. I don't know, I just made that up, but I think it's better than the abomination that resulted. Ever since I heard that throw-away line "He fought in the clone wars..." In A New Hope, I was imagining something truly epic would result. Not 'we cloned a guy ten million times, because they had a lot of droids, so then they named the war after the victors, who were clones.' 

It's like calling WW2 The Tank Wars.

I am the kinda jackass who walked away pissed off from all these letdowns, and decided I'll make my own damn stories and they won't disappoint! I probably won't nail this from the get go, but it's a good motive! 

I think.

I wrote 3.5k today, did some world building and researched homing pigeons and desert survival. Was fun man. Something gave, and it's been a good day with relatively smooth writing.

I also ended up teaching some teens the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. Not entirely sure how we got onto that. I had to look it up in class- I had some vague idea, but it's a good test of your knowledge if you can't teach it, and I tell the kids if I don't know something, then we all watch a video or I read about and explain the thing. 

Since one of them was writing a story, and another an empathic piece from Of Mice and Men, where they have to imagine what it's like to be a character, I tried to relate the concepts to storytelling, and in doing so found how to articulate the rule of cool.

I may have mistaught the subject, as, to be frank, this was not philosophy and these guys were like 13, but as I understood it simply, deductive reasoning involves having premises and reaching reasonable conclusion based on those premises.

A: Bob was killed in his bedroom at 7 pm with a spork. B: John and Sara were both in the house from 5-8pm. C: John was allergic to sporks.

Ergo, Sara probably killed John.

Inductive is you begin with a premise: C John was allergic to sporks, and then you create a theory that explains the premise. 

Maybe John was constantly stabbed with sporks as a child. Or the manufacturing of sporks involves an allergen that 2% of the population is sensitive to. Or something else, cuz that example sucks.

You get the idea.

The Rule Of Cool is what our brainses do (or mine does at least) when we're trying to figure out what will happen next, like wtf the smoke monster is. 

Inductive reasoning- the smoke monster makes steam engine sounds (sort of), displays electrical activity (or at least generates light), acts like an animal- Ergo, the smoke monster is some kind of high-tech cloud-based creature, like a swarm of microbots or nanotechnology or something.

OH wait its a supernatural...thingy?

This sucks because the world seemed grounded in reality. "Magic shit happens." Was not a premise in season 1. Why the fuck are you invoking Faraday and EM spectrums and magnetic anomalies if you wanna go full magic!

Deductive reasoning involves those wonderful reveals that are so satisfying because they fit our deductions. The obvious examples are mysteries and crime stories, but there's an offshoot- 'the chessplayer' trope in anime. The video below comes from episode one of a kinda cool Mecha Anime. Mecha anime is one of my guilty pleasures that I have a very low threshold for quality required. If you plan on watching the series, well it's obviously a spoiler, but otherwise the basic idea is that a bunch of guys with ridiculously overpowered mechs (with some kind of invulnerable energy shield) are fighting guys with like, basic mechs that have guns and can move- almost hard science style mechs...anyhow it's awesome.

The genius kid uses deductive reasoning in real time and we all get to play along. Just like Sherlock, or Kira from Death Note. How can you destroy the energy shield mech when it's literally invulnerable!

What's my point?

Be aware of the premises put forth. Every premise is a promise you have made to the reader. Living up to good inductive reasoning, to epic inductive reasoning can make a great story.

Being aware of likely theories and then putting a real spin on them's a twist.

It's all about the premises. Deductive reasoning helps me a tonne with storytelling. Rather than 'making shit happen', if events follow based on the previous premises, the story makes more sense.

This is all theoretical, and it's late and these posts are not my best attempt at articulate, but I do hope to deliver on some of the cool, when it comes to the fantasy novel at least.