29 -9-22

I think when it comes to story telling the most important ingredient is the characters, more so than the plot, unless the plot itself is exceptional, so the characters don’t matter as much, the kind of stories with twist endings or huge reveals. Jaws is a good example of a simple story made great by the three main characters and their interactions; I love it. Another is One flew over the Coocoo’s Nest, a whole cast of great characters; there doesn’t even need to be much happening for it to be entertaining because the cast are so good.

That said, it makes me wonder how so many expensive, large-scale movies are made these days that are just terrible. I know it’s just business for the production companies, but it’s so frustrating. We watched Wrath of the Titans the other night. I know it’s a few years old now, but it was poor. I Know it’s a sequel to Clash of the Titans, which I also thought was poor; and that was a remake of an old stop motion movie, which was better than both new films. It’s frustrating because there are great stories out there to be told, like most people I love a bit of Greek mythology, all mythology in fact. It’s just a shame when they screw it up.

One of my favourite aspects of a good story is comradery. People working together to win the day is great. Lord of the Rings is a fantastic example. I tend to lean more to this kind of story than the Chosen One arc, with just one person doing everything. I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan (although I do like it), but I think it does a good job of mixing the Chosen One story with lots of comradery.                                                                           Joe Abercrombie does a great job of the comradery thing as well. Any of his books I’ve read really make the stories a team effort, even if it doesn’t always end well. I think this very theme is the driving force behind For those who do not Die.                      I’m a sucker for a trio of characters (or more), battling against the odds, without contrived twists and betrayals. I don’t like when a story forces a backstabbing within a group of heroes just to try add more weight, or when all the characters except the hero have to be killed off, because the writers couldn’t be bothered, or hadn’t the time to let them live.

I think any books, comics, games, movies and tv shows with this kind of strong friendship between multiple protagonists, whether it’s conscious or subconscious, would be my biggest influence. The more I think about it even now, the more I think Jaws is one of my biggest. I Hope to keep this theme going forward with the books.    I also hope to have a short story uploaded to the site soon. It’s set in the same world, but not connected. It might be of interest to anyone who enjoys a short fantasy tale.

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