New answers tagged setting
1
From your description I think, you are overthinking this: You are describing a very basic plot twist, in which one of the assumptions your characters made turned out to be false, changing the meaning of other established facts.
The fact that you are talking about magic is only tangential relevant. First and foremost you must make sure of three things:
1. ...
1
Finish what you start.
Your instincts are correct. The more weight you give an element, any element, the more readers are going to understand it as something that will be important later on.
But, that doesn't necessarily mean that if an element is important, then you're required to build a whole subplot around it and keep bringing it up again and again! ...
2
The Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency book might be a useful read, as it features a number of improbable but explainable events that were actually accomplished through "magical" means. To make this work:
The rational explanation was somewhat dubious. While theoretically possible, it wasn't reasonable. This was noted by characters and obvious to the ...
2
I think something that will be key to making your story work within your parameters, i.e., keeping your readers happy even with a 7th-inning paradigm shift, is to focus on the elemental genre of wonder.
What's that? "Elemental genre", which is a term coined by the writing-lessons-with-bestselling-authors podcast Writing Excuses, is a method of story ...
1
The best way to pull this off is that both the magical answer and mundane answer are plausible because the answer of "is it magic or scientifically explainable* doesn't matter as the result would be the same.
Consider the Climax of the Harry Potter series, where Harry is outwardly believed to be dead, meets the firmly established dead Dumbledoore, who gives ...
4
You need a major twist earlier in the story.
The promise to the reader is that there is a debate about the strange events, and that things don't always turn out as they appear. That makes your ending "fit" within the possibilities defined by the story.
Strange events have happened and have been scientifically explained, even though they may have been ...
4
Is there any possible way to do it right, without foreshadowing it so hard that the twist is moot?
I would say ... No. But you can write the story, without letting your MC agree to call it magic.
This is the way it is done in many stories; an MC is searching for something "scientific" and discovers it and calls it "new technology", even though it is ...
2
To my way of thinking this is basically "it was all a dream" redux. I say that because you're effectively saying ignore all the logic that went before it was important but its just not anymore. That's my two cents.
To do this well I would think you actually need to present this information earlier than the "final twist", somewhere in the second act, the ...
2
As I was trying to find my own answers, I thought for a while about changing my settings in order to satisfy the theme and characters. This wasn't working for my story because it was so difficult to find a new setting that could fulfill all the criteria needed for my plot, but in case this helps others, here are two ideas I had:
1) Unify the foreign ...
-1
I'm wondering whether your dilemma is perhaps the result of two problems, each of which can be tackled.
Have you researched what fascism actually means? Your description of the rebel country as "boasting a popular and charismatic leader [in] an authoritarian, fascist dictatorship, in which civil rights are suppressed somewhat and the state has most of the ...
8
Since it's an historical novel involving international politics, I'll assume that you can't change major events in the plot or Setting.
I'll try a Theme/Character example:
One setting (British Guiana) is talked about but never seen – except possibly in flashbacks. It represents something she's lost (childhood innocence? her family status?) and something he ...
1
Q. How to portray the downfall of [SYSTEM]?
A. Show it.
There are basically two steps:
first some worldbuilding
second the writing
A note on worldbuilding.
I'll just say: before even showing it, and before thinking of what could possibly replace it, you need to clarify to yourself what is the logical believable series of events that would bring an end ...
2
Successful in the sense that it is the only viable solution. In this world, democracy has failed as an institution, with the various powers unable to come together in unity and oppose the invaders.
That seems highly improbable; it seems you are saying that people that believe in "democracy" would rather die by alien invasion than fight. In WW II, millions ...
1
There are dozens of ways to handle this. The question for you is, how do you want to compare democracy to fascism? Is efficiency the key metric? Is resilience to changing conditions the key metric? How about personal freedom and growth? Compliance with moral and religious teachings? Do you believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely? Or perhaps you ...
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