keith_bennett•1mo agoProlific Poster

Stop treating character arcs like they need a redemption or fall from grace

I saw three prompts this week where the whole conflict was just 'good guy turns bad' or 'bad guy turns good', and it's lazy writing because real people don't flip like a switch - they just make small decisions that add up, so why not try a prompt where the character stays the same but their situation changes around them instead?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan6581mo ago

You ever read that thing about how most people in history who did terrible stuff were just normal folks making small choices that snowballed? I saw this article about the Milgram experiment where regular people kept shocking someone because some guy in a lab coat told them to. That's the real horror right there, not some dramatic switch flip. Give me a story where a stay at home mom keeps being a stay at home mom but her whole town slowly turns into a cult around her. Or the guy who fixes copy machines at an office and everyone else starts treating him like a god because he's the only one who can unjam the thing on the third floor. That's how real life works, you don't change, everything else does around you.

foster.jordan1mo ago

Ha, I dunno man, is it really that deep? Like yeah the Milgram thing is creepy but most people just go to work and come home, they don't accidentally start a cult while making meatloaf. I feel like people online want everything to be this big scary metaphor for human nature but sometimes a copy machine is just a copy machine and the guy who fixes it just wants to go home at 5. The accountant thing would probably just be a guy who gets annoyed his coworkers are talking to him about lawn care, not some grand spiral into madness.

davidkim1mo ago

12 times this month I've seen prompts where a guy suddenly commits mass murder because his coffee was cold. Real people don't become villains because they stubbed their toe. Give me a story where the accountant keeps being an accountant but everyone around him slowly loses their minds. Or where the nice neighbor stays nice but suddenly everyone else becomes a conspiracy theorist about his lawn care routine. That's way more interesting than "he was a good man but then he watched his dog die and now he's evil.