The shape of the solution

I am utterly stuck on this 'writing' thing. Some of it for the same reasons I'm stuck at everything else, but some of it...

The problem is bad guys. Antagonists. What are Our Heroes opposing?

And how do they deal with them?

I've been reading a bunch of urban fantasy in a row. They're all fantasy PI stories, where someone with magic deals with the interface of a magical world with a mundane one. And they're all stories that solve things with violence.
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See, that's where the whole paradigm breaks down: the shape of this thing seems to rely on some people being Good People. They do bad things, but it don't count, because they are Good. Frankly, this scares me. The book worlds don't have lawyers or trials worth the name, they just have Good People who Know Best. Only they're acting exactly the same as the Bad People, the ones who hide behind the laws and try and enforce them even against the Good People. The only way we know they're different is we're riding the point of view of the Good People, so we know all about their intent.

... there's no room in this for saying intent is worth bugger all. What if there are no Good People, only good acts? Entire genres break down.



And then there's the Bad People. The ones set up so they're a problem that can be solved by violence.

The main thing necessary for such people is that their crimes are all things they do and keep doing. If the person stops, well, the world gets better.

I've been reading a lot of news headlines lately, and it don't seem to me the world works that way much. ( Read more... )

It's not like the problem of leaders too eager for unwinnable wars is exactly obsolete, but it's not a thing that can be solved by taking out one or two people. Don't reckon it ever was. Kings, Queens, and governments, the interactions of power and people and law, they don't work the way the fantasy books set up. ( Read more... )

So I look at the stories I've been reading, and watching, and listening to, and I look at the blank page, and I just... can't believe in it. I can set up a world with problems I recognise and people I believe in, and then I can't find solutions that fit into the page or have a shape I know how to deal with. Or I can set up Good People vs Bad People, Fight! ... and they're hollow little puppet people playing out a poisonous lie.

There's stories I know how to write, nice tidy ones with a triumph at the end of them, and there's problems I've actually encountered, which I have to hope have solutions but they're not ones I can see from here.



I'd say I need better fiction, but I'm getting stuck on how to make better real lives, so...





So I guess yeah, I'm stuck on all the things for all the same reasons. Because there's all these problems, and they seem to be big problems like capitalism and kyriarchy and poverty and the way all this technological progress seems able to solve all the problems except access and distribution and how to get enough carers. And I can't see how to throw a metaphor on that and beat it by the end of the episode. Or make much progress on any of it in real life.

... and then the other set of problems...

There are stories in my head with a beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes they have vampires, and sometimes they have ghosts, and sometimes they have Sentinels. But what they're really about is how to go from abusive relationships, family and otherwise, to healthy ones.

The problem with writing any of those is depressing the hell out of myself while trying.