Emma Stewart Writes

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Tag: characters

Fallout’s Inciting Incidents

April 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments
Fallout the whole story fallouts inciting incidents how to start a story

How To Start A Story

Today we’re going to look at Fallout’s inciting incidents, and how to motivate players and characters to follow the plot. The most important part of the beginning is the ‘inciting incident’. An event that sets your protagonist on the road to the main plotline. These can be major or minor events, but they have to trigger a change for your protagonist.

You can begin your story before, during or after this incident, but it’s important to at least tell the reader that it happened. In video games, this is usually handled via an introductory cutscene. In the early days of videogames, the backstory was often included in the game manual. Of course this is less common now, so the game has to give you the backstory.

So we’ll start at the beginning and work through the games in chronological order. Of course, we have to note that the series itself has a rather major inciting incident. The bombs. The nuclear war happened on the 23rd of October, 2077, wiping out 90% of life on the surface. A large number of people survived in underground Vaults. So bear this in mind, as it matters to every Fallout story we will be examining.

Fallout – The Water Chip

The first Fallout game came out in 1997. You begin with creating your character, known as “the Vault Dweller”, from Vault 13 located in southern California to the west of Shady Sands, a small town that would go on to be the capital of the New California Republic (NCR). The Vault is designed to support up to a thousand people, and will remain sealed for 200 years, to study the effects of prolonged isolation. It was supplied with an extra G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) instead of extra water chips, which were sent to Vault 8.

In 2161, the Vault’s water purification chip started to malfunction leading the Overseer of the Vault to send people out into the wasteland to find a replacement, to no avail. The overseer chooses your character for this job. On the 5th of December 2161, the Vault Dweller leaves their Vault for the wasteland.

At that point, the Vault has only 150 days of water reserves, which does put a time limit on success for the Vault Dweller. The game does implement this time limit as well, although you can extend the time limit through your actions in the Wasteland.

Motivation?

So what is the motivation? Vaults are generally safe and secure, if there’s no horrific experiment going on. The limited living space means that everyone needs to contribute to the community to ensure their survival. Your character has lived their whole life in this Vault, and may well have friends and family, but they want to help their Vault. Water is essential for life, after all, and in a radioactive wasteland, water purification is vital. So it makes sense to keep looking for a replacement water chip, to save their community, doesn’t it?

Fallout 2 – Finding the Garden of Eden

Fallout 2 takes place 80 years after the first game, in a village called Arroyo, in Oregon. Arroyo is suffering from a famine and a drought. The village was founded by the Vault Dweller, after they were exiled from Vault 13 due to spending too much time outside. A serious drought in 2241 leads the village elder to ask your character, the Chosen One to find a G.E.C.K. The Chosen One is a direct descendant of the Vault Dweller.

The G.E.C.K. is a terraforming device that is capable of sustaining life in the wasteland, including seed, soil supplements, a cold fusion power-generator, matter-energy replicators, atmospheric chemical stabilisers and water purifiers. Each vault has two as standard (in the West Coast, at least) and the Elder believes that only a G.E.C.K. can save the village of Arroyo from starvation.

Motivation?

Again, your character’s motivation is very similar to Fallout’s protagonist. Your people are suffering from a shortage of an essential resource and are relying on you finding the one thing that could save them. It’s all about the preservation of life, and saving your community. Pretty motivating reasons to embark on this quest.

Fallout 3 – Following in Daddy’s Footsteps

Like Fallout, you start off as a vault dweller, but we’re on the East Coast of the USA, near Washington DC. You live in Vault 101, and you have a kind of prologue in this one, building your character through experiencing various events of your childhood. The game does actually start with your birth, and your mother dies shortly after. The protagonist is referred to as the Lone Wanderer.

So, it’s just you and your dad, living in the Vault. Your father is the Vault’s doctor. One day, when you’re about 19 or so, your friend Amata wakes you up to tell you that the Vault’s security are looking for you because your father has left the vault. Vault 101 was to remain sealed forever. The experiment was to study the role of the overseer in a completely isolated community.

Despite this, the Vault has opened a few times. The Vault did not have a G.E.C.K. but it was designed to be self-sustaining indefinitely. You have no idea why your dad left the vault, but after learning security are after you,  you end up escaping the vault to go and find him.

Like previous Fallouts, you are leaving the safety of your home in search of something important. In this case, your only living family. He leaves a note with his friend Jonas, who you find dead during your escape. The note tells you not to follow him, and he hopes the Overseer will blame him entirely. That isn’t what happens though.

Motivation?

So what is your motivation here? You’ve left your home, given no real choice in that, so it’s only logical you would pursue the only person you know, your father. What else would you do? Fallout 3 is the series first open-world game, so you can absolutely find plenty to do other than follow the main story, but it’s only by searching for your dad that you’ll get into the nitty gritty of the main story, and learn about Project Purity and the major players.

Fallout New Vegas: They Went That-a-way!

Back to the west, this time we’re in Nevada, the Mojave wasteland. A desert with a brightly lit and bustling city now known as New Vegas. New Vegas is still Vegas, with casinos, exotic dancers and a bunch of reformed tribals running the place, with Mr House overseeing it all. The year is 2281, four years after the events of Fallout 3.

You are the Courier, employed by the Mojave Express to deliver a Platinum Chip to the Strip. On route, a man in a snappy suit kidnaps you, aided by some Great Khans. Benny steals the chip, shoots you in the head and buries you in a shallow grave.

Certainly, an interesting way to start a video game by killing the main character in the opening cutscene! Okay, not quite, a cheerful cowboy robot finds you and takes you to the local doctor for treatment. You are under contract to retrieve your lost package and deliver it to the client. That means you need to find this man, so you begin to follow his trail, asking people you meet along the way if they’ve seen him.

In the background of all of this, seemingly unrelated to your situation, there’s obviously going to be a battle coming between the NCR and Caesar’s Legion. There’s talk of political issues in NCR’s home territory, but everyone wants control of Hoover Dam and the electricity it can provide. But first, you need to find Benny.

Motivation?

So, what’s your motivation here? Well, there’s two things. The first is your contract for the job. It’s pretty clear that if the package is stolen from you, you must get it back and ensure it gets delivered, and your employer will take no responsibility for any injuries, loss of life or costs of this. If you don’t complete the delivery, you won’t get paid, but you may also be hunted by mercenaries to recover the debt. You need money to live, after all.

The other motivation is personal revenge. Being robbed and shot in the head is pretty unpleasant, one assumes, and it’s perfectly reasonable to be angry about it. So, perhaps you want revenge on Benny for doing this to you. Or maybe you want to understand why he did it. If you’re playing as a female character, perhaps you found this whole experience a turn-on? Not judging, I promise, but sleeping with Benny is absolutely an option when you do track him down, for a female character.

Fallout 4: Out of Time

Fallout 4 is next and we’re back on the East Coast, namely the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or just the Commonwealth. Boston is an important city in the history of the US, as well as being home of several major universities. Nearby Salem is famous too. Interestingly, this game has a prologue set on the day the bombs fell. The protagonist has a set backstory, an army veteran for the male, or a lawyer for the female.

You begin the game in a cosy family home, taking care of your infant son, Shaun, when the bombs come and force you to the Vault, Vault 111. Where you’re all cryogenically frozen. At some point, you are defrosted to witness someone in a hazmat suit and a grizzled merc take your baby and shoot your spouse. You’re then refrozen, for an unknown period of time, but likely 60 or so years, then defrosted again.

Motivation?

Everyone else in the Vault is dead, leaving you, the Sole Survivor, to get out of the Vault and go off in search of your missing child. That’s your motivation, revenge for your dead spouse, and to find your kidnapped child. Which makes sense, and the game tries really, really hard to evoke some emotions about this whole situation.

For me, it kind of falls flat, we know so little about our spouse, and it’s hard to feel a strong connection to a baby that can’t even talk, when you’ve spent basically no time living in this version of the world. The voice acting is a bit overdone, especially the male protagonist, and by the time you get to the point of finding the mercenary, even they have all but stopped talking about Shaun. The opening of Fallout 4 is probably the least effective at highlighting the inciting incident and making the player want to follow the story, but don’t let that put you off, it does get much better once you get into the meat of the story, I promise.

Who Did It Best?

So, who did it best? I think for me, Fallout 3 and New Vegas pulled it off the best. Fallout 3, you’re kind of forced to leave the Vault. I remember in my first playthrough, I really wanted to know why my dad left the Vault. So I followed along to get some answers.

My first time playing Fallout New Vegas, the opening was quite a shock. It was definitely a bold choice, having your main character be shot at point blank range like that. So again, I wanted answers. Why did Benny feel the need to kill me, when he’d already stolen what he wanted from me? What was so special about the Platinum Chip?

I haven’t played 1 and 2 as much, the games are so old now, it takes a bit of work to get them to run on newer machines, and I haven’t managed to set them up on my new PC yet. But I do feel the inciting incidents set up the games pretty well, to get you into the story.

What I didn’t like

For me, Fallout 4 is the weakest in this regard. My first playthrough, I felt the urgency when the report of the bombs falling came through and the rush to the Vault. I wasn’t surprised by the cryopods in the Vault, but it sets up the twist with Shaun. You don’t know how much time has passed. After learning that, I found it quite difficult to really care that much about him. So it doesn’t work as well to motivate me to find this baby. There’s settlements to help, farms to build, raiders to kill, settlements to help and of course settlements to help. Yeah, I know, it’s an old meme, but Preston Garvey is really pushy about his radiant quests, that never end. You get sidetracked and distracted.

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear other people’s perspectives on it. I am going to hold off talking about the TV series on Prime for now, just to avoid spoilers since it’s so new. But I loved it, and I’m rewatching it as I write this. So once it’s been out a while, I’ll definitely talk about it.

Thanks For Reading!

Thanks for reading, congratulations for making it to the end of this long post about Fallout’s inciting incidents. I hope it was interesting. I am going through Fallout New Vegas on my Youtube channel and analysing the story in depth, so if you’d like to join me on there to hear me talk about the games, you can find it here.

Mary Sue Syndrome

July 31, 2023 / / 0 Comments

What is Mary Sue Syndrome?

The term ‘Mary Sue’ is one that has been used to describe a character archetype that is too perfect. It originated in the Star Trek fandom in a parody fanfiction. It is an archetype that is especially common in fanfiction. Essentially it is a character, usually the primary protagonist, who has amazing skills, is extremely attractive, has unique abilities and no weaknesses. They have no real flaws, any flaws mentioned are usually meaningless and inconsequential.

The archetype is generally considered a ‘self-insertion’, a character that represents an idealised version of the author themselves. It’s common for them to be female. Although you do see male characters too, often named Marty Stu or Gary Stu. Again, this is a generalisation but they are often written by adolescent authors, especially in fanfiction, as a way to insert oneself into a fictional world.

What is Wrong About a Mary Sue?

These characters are a sign of poor quality writing, and most people don’t like reading them. There’s a number of reasons for this. For starters, these characters are perfect, unique and all powerful. They have no real weaknesses, win every fight easily and can pass any challenge with little difficulty. If they have flaws at all, they tend to be pointless things, like being too trusting or being too modest despite being so brilliant at everything. It’s boring to read.

One of the reasons that many characters are loved is because of their flaws and weaknesses, and the character development they go through during the story where they overcome these things. You can’t learn and grow, if you’re already perfect. When the challenges posted by the plot are so easily overcome, there’s no tension or excitement. It becomes predictable, when the Mary Sue can just pull a ‘deus ex machina’ out of thin air for every potential issue.

Unique and Special Appearance

Their appearance is incredibly beautiful and otherworldly, unique and often with unusual eye or hair colours and an elaborately overdesigned outfit. Everyone else will see how beautiful she is but her, because she is so modest and shy. The descriptions are on another level as well, often falling into what is termed ‘purple prose’. Excessive descriptions with minute details, paragraphs of adjectives to the point where it becomes tedious to read.

You can spot these situations easily, as only the Sue will merit this kind of description. Other characters will be lucky to get more than two lines to describe how they look. All the other characters are mundane and average, with little to set them apart. Any physical flaws will only enhance her beauty, or remind her of her Dark and Traumatic Past (which they always have but are rarely actually affected by).

How to Spot a Sue in the Wild

You’re probably already sighing and rolling your eyes at some of the points I’ve made. That tells me you’ve read this kind of thing before, and certainly if you’ve read fan fiction at any point, you will have seen it. You’ve probably written it at some point, let’s face it, most of us have. It’s fun, to insert yourself into your favourite fictional world and interact with all the characters you know and love. Well, it’s fun for you. It’s probably not as interesting for other people to read.

Even so, there’s plenty of characters in pop culture that could be considered Mary Sues. It is often a matter of opinion and debate. Many people will cite Bella from Twilight, Anastasia from Fifty Shades of Grey and James Bond as clear examples. Personally, I can agree with that. Anastasia goes out of her way to be described as plain, boring and unremarkable, yet this millionaire tycoon with a skewed view of a BDSM relationship is enthralled by her.

Obviously, plenty of people enjoy these stories and these characters, and that’s okay. It’s not to my tastes, but it’s not up to me to judge other people for what they like. Some characters Sue statuses are hotly debated online, like Rey from the Star Wars sequels or Arya Stark in Game of Thrones (TV) being the big hero in the end, when it was set up for Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen.

Not Every Self-Insert is a Mary Sue

This is an important fact to remember. Not every author self-insertion is automatically a Mary Sue, or a bad thing. The point is that most people will want a bit of realism, even with the protagonist of a story. People who are realistic are easier to relate to. We want to be able to cheer when they succeed, but also sympathise when they fail. People like to read characters that are like them, in essence, not perfect. Most of us struggle to see our positive traits and tend to focus on the negative things about ourselves. Seeing characters overcoming these negative traits reminds us that we can do the same. The key is balance.

This is absolutely a matter of opinion in some cases, and realistically some genres almost require your protagonist to have some Mary Sue like qualities: look at Superman and many other comic book heroes. Superman has all the superpowers, strength, speed, ability to fly, invulnerable, laser eyes, and whatnot, including the ability to apparently fool everyone by putting on a pair of glasses. We do want to read about protagonists who are interesting, and a bit above average in some ways.

Further Reading

There is a lot of information out there about this trope, and a lot of discussion. So I’ll share a few links where you can read more. One of the best known fanfiction examples is ‘My Immortal’, a notorious Harry Potter fanfiction. I’m still convinced it is a parody of the entire trope, but who knows.

  • TV Tropes: an extremely thorough analysis of the Mary Sue trope, the variations and examples.
  • The Original Mary Sue Litmus Test: a test produced by Dr Merlin way back in 1997 for evaluating your own characters. This isn’t new!
  • PPC Wiki Litmus Tests: a whole list of litmus tests, some adapted for specific fandoms.
  • My Immortal Wikipedia Page: all about the infamous ‘My Immortal’ HP fic, it is possible to find it online although the original posting on fanfiction.net is no longer there. It’s quite… something. I read it in its entirety back in the day.
  • My posts on Characters: introducing your characters and when your characters develop a mind of their own. More to come soon!
  • Finally, my post on cliches, which often come into play when we’re talking about Mary Sues.

So, hopefully you found that interesting, there’s a lot to read on the subject and a lot of debates and discussions to be found online. Keep an eye on the blog as I will be covering more topics in characterisation and writing characters going forward. Subscribe below to get notified whenever new posts are up. Follow me on my social media channels for more little bits and if you want to talk about working with me on your writing, drop me a line! Until next time!

Characters Have a Mind of Their Own

July 21, 2023 / / 0 Comments

So, you’ve got your book idea and you’ve started writing it. You’ve produced an outline and set up your plot, you’ve gotten to know your characters and how they are going to develop throughout your story. Great. But for some reason, your characters have developed a mind of their own.

What if they decide to do something different though? Does this happen to anyone else, or just me? It’s something I have dealt with a lot over the years, from my early days writing fanfiction to now. My characters, especially the well developed ones, seem to have a mind of their own. They do their own thing, sometimes reacting differently to what I expected.

It’s not unusual. Even if you are an avid plotter, someone who likes to have everything planned out before you start writing your story. Once I get into the zone and the words are flowing, things can change unexpectedly. The question is, do you go with it? Or do you try to force things back to your plan.

Can you be too rigid?

I would say yes. Your outline is just that, the outline. Having a plan and knowing the ending is a good thing, but as you go you might deviate from your original plan. No matter how much planning you’ve done for your characters, how much you’ve already developed them, sometimes you can’t really be sure how they will be affected by the events of the story. When you are writing your first draft, you are still getting to know your characters, and how they go through the storyline. If a new direction is flowing freely, I would say go with it.

Remember you can always change it later when you are editing, if it doesn’t quite work. If it works, stick with it. Trying to force it back to your original plan could make it awkward to read, or it could result in your characters responses feeling out of character or unrealistic. If you force it, it could feel forced and your reader will pick up on that. It can jar them and bring them out of your written world.

What if the plotline takes off on its own?

This can happen too. Your plot starts off in line with what you had planned, but partway through a scene, a new idea comes to you. Again, I think it’s worth going with the flow in this case too. It depends on your writing process and how you like to work. Some people can jump around the timeline, writing scenes wherever their inspiration takes them. Others prefer to stick to writing start to finish and in order.

If you have an outline, keep it. Don’t remove anything from it, add your new ideas if you like. This means that when it comes to your first revision of your writing, you will be able to see how it fits with the overall story and if you still have your original outline, you will be able to assess if your new idea works better or if your original plan is the better option. Then you can rewrite or insert scenes to suit it.

What should you do when your characters take on a mind of their own?

Go with the flow is my advice. Even if you are a thorough plotter and you like to have a clear and detailed outline for your writing, it’s okay to deviate from that at times, if that makes more sense. Writing fiction is like any other form of creative work, you don’t want to stifle your creativity too much by sticking rigidly to rules and plans. Sometimes you are telling your characters what to do, sometimes they are telling you what they are going to do. It’s part of being an author, having all these little voices in your head as you write. At least I hope it’s something others experience, is it just me?

For more on characters, see this tag here: characters. I plan to cover a lot more on this subject in the next few weeks, from avoiding Mary Sue Syndrome to how to develop well rounded characters.

Introducing your characters

July 14, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Introducing Your Characters

So you’ve got your characters and you are ready to start introducing them. Great! Where do you start? A lot of newer writers can fall into a trap when it comes to making the first introduction of their characters, especially the main character. Starting off your first page with a huge infodump of every detail about your main protagonist logically makes sense, but is it interesting to your reader? No, probably not.

Part of the fun of reading a story is learning about the characters as they go through the plot, picking up details along the way and watching them grow through their development arc. You want your reader to get enough information to be intrigued and want to learn more, but there needs to be more for them to learn later in the book so that they will want to read further. So here’s a few pitfalls that new writers can fall into.

Infodumping

It can be tempting to just write a few paragraphs about your character. Listing all the details of their appearance, followed by a list of their traits and skills. It’s like you’re writing their CV or a dating profile. It is too much detail at once, and can be overwhelming for your reader. To start off, we need to know their name, a little bit about who they are and what they are doing. Their personality traits and flaws can be revealed as you go, how they respond to situations and people will reveal this in an organic way. How they face challenges and work to overcome them to achieve their end goal will tell your reader the kind of person your character is.

The character should be changing with the story, they learn and grow, their experiences will shape their personality. The beginning of the story and flashbacks can show who they are at the start. Your reader wants to follow them as they go through these experiences and see who they become by the ending. That’s difficult to do if you dump it all at the start. It’s a journey of discovery, for your characters and for your reader.

The Mirror Monologue

This is a common trope and one that rarely works well. Your character wakes up in the morning and goes to the mirror to get ready for their day. They spend time looking at their reflection and having a long internal monologue about what they look like. The thing is, people don’t really do this in real life. They know what they look like already and they won’t mentally list every feature every day. It’s not realistic to do this.

What do you look at when you look in the mirror? Take some time and really think about what you look at and what you focus on. Maybe you like the way your hair is styled, or you don’t like your eyebrows. Perhaps your outfit makes you feel confident, or you’re unhappy with the colour of your shirt. We know our appearance in the mirror, so in real life we focus on things that we like or don’t like. We won’t think about every part of our bodies and every feature. Especially when it comes to body parts.

Gender Issues and Descriptions

This is particularly an issue with writing about women, I have seen excerpts where a female character spends two paragraphs describing the shape and size of her own breasts. It’s quite jarring to read, because most of us do not think about ourselves in that way. We don’t really notice the weight of our breasts as we walk, because we’re used to them. We don’t try to decide which fruit accurately represents their size and shape. It’s just not a thing that women do. We might think about how a certain bra or top makes them look, or if a top is too low cut. I imagine there is an equivalent of this for male characters, but I cannot comment on the real life experience of that, and it is much more common with female characters.

When you are dealing with characters who are outside the binary genders, it may be different. Again, I haven’t lived this experience so it’s difficult to really know how it might be. What I have learned from trans friends and trans creators online is that part of the reason someone does transition, whether this is medically, surgically or by using clothing and make-up to change their appearance, is to better reflect who they really are.

If you are planning to write a trans or non-binary character but you don’t identify as such yourself, it is worth finding someone who has lived experience that is willing to give you some advice and feedback to ensure that you are accurately representing them and not feeding into misconceptions or misunderstandings. Obviously, each individual is different, and it is usually better not to write about such characters if you don’t understand what they might feel and experience. Especially if you’re not willing to learn and be respectful.

How To Introduce Your Characters Better

You obviously need to introduce your characters and describe them to some degree. You need your reader to be interested. So here’s how to tackle it in a way that will get the job done well!

  • Everything you mention at the start will be considered important by your reader so mention the key aspects first.
  • Pick the most notable or memorable details of their appearance and highlight those. What makes them distinctive and memorable.
  • Don’t make the descriptions too complex and go easy with the adjectives. One or two for each feature is plenty. The reader will use their imagination for the rest.
  • Their behaviours should reflect their personality traits. This is where ‘Show, don’t tell’ comes into play. An outgoing person is likely to be talkative and willing to engage with strangers.
  • Describing behaviours, clothing, accessories and surroundings can give insight into your characters background as well as their personality. A messy workspace could indicate laziness or a lack of care about being tidy. Sleeping on a tatty old mattress on the floor of a rundown apartment will show that your character is in financial hardship.

Inclusivity and Stereotyping

  • Be mindful of unintended racial bias and harmful incorrect stereotypes. It is easy to get this wrong. Even if it is not done on purpose, aspects of characters can end up causing harm. Ensure your language and word choice is appropriate and inclusive. If you want to include a character who is a different race from you, or has another aspect that you don’t, it is very important to make sure you know how to handle it properly. That means research, listening to people who are living that experience and making sure your language reflects it accurately. If in doubt, leave it out.
  • If you are using real world contemporary characters, it might be better to be more ambiguous with race and leave it up to reader interpretation. This is clearly still relevant given the discussions around Disney’s live action “The Little Mermaid” remake and the casting of a POC in the lead role.
  • Representation matters, and everyone should be able to see themselves reflected in media, whether it is books, films, video games or comics.

I hope this helps you out in nailing those introductions. Happy writing! As always, I love to hear what people think and encourage respectful discussions in the comments below. If you are unsure about how you are introducing your characters in your writing, get in touch and I will be happy to help you out!

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