Four weeks ago, Lost in Translation looked at the 1998 adaptation of Godzilla.  To summarize the previous review, the 1998 adaptation had a good start, mirroring the original Gojira but fell apart with the monster reached Manhattan.  The other issue the adaptation had was that the titular monster didn’t look like the iconic Godzilla.  The planned reboot/remake trilogy turned into a short-lived animated series.  GINO* wasn’t disavowed, but Toho renamed the monster to “Zilla”.

Time passes, as it is wont to do.  Godzilla is too iconic to leave fallow.  Toho released a Godzilla movie a year from 1999 until 2004, then left the franchise to fallow for a decade.  A second wholly American production was started, becoming the 2014 adaptation, Godzilla.  To demonstrate that lessons were learned with the 1998 adaptation, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. released a theatrical poster with their Godzilla, looking like an update on the classic instead of a rebuild.

The adaptations starts with a montage of classified files, a mix of actual historical footage from the atomic tests and film from the fictional group, Monarch, implying that the testing at Bikini Atoll was to destroy a giant monster, code named “Godzilla”.  The film then picks up in the Philippines in 1999 as scientists converge on a pit mine collapse.  The bottom of the mine fell into a cavern.  Exploring the cave, the scientists, led by Ishiro Serizawa, played by Ken Watanabe, find fossils and two large spore-like objects.  One is dormant, possibly dead.  The other, though, has broken open.  A trail from the cavern, burrowing to the surface, leads to the ocean.

In Japan, at the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant, seismic sensors start going off, each event larger than the previous.  The plant prepares for a massive earthquake, but Joe Brody thinks the seismic readings are something else.  By the time the order to shut down the reactor is given, it’s too late.  The reactor enters meltdown.  In the depths of the reactor, Joe’s wife, Sandra was leading a team of technicians to try to shut the reactor down gracefully when the reactor core is breached.  Sandra’s team is unable to escape and is trapped when access to the core has to be shut to prevent a new Chernobyl.

Fifteen years later, US Navy Lieutenant Ford Brody, son of Joe and Sandra, returns from the Middle East to his family in San Francisco.  After the joyous reunion, Ford receives a call from the American consulate in Japan, informing him that his father has been arrested for violating the Janjira quarantine zone.  Ford flies to Tokyo to bail his father out.  Since Sandra’s death, Joe has been convinced that the cause of the reactor breech and meltdown was something other than an earthquake.  His proof, in the form of disks and papers, lies in his old home inside the quarentine zone.  Joe convinces Ford to go with him into the zone.

Inside the quarantine zone, nature is well on its way to retaking the abandoned city.  Plants overgrow cars and houses.  Two dogs run past Joe and Ford.  Joe checks his Geiger counter; there’s no appreciable radiation, contrary to official reports.  Joe removes his breathing mask and promptly fails to die an agonizing death.  At their old home, Joe recovers his proof, in time for him and his son to be arrested again.  Instead of going to jail, the Brodies are taken to the power plant.  Monarch scientists, including Serizawa, are on site.  Serizawa compares the seismic readings he’s getting from the plant with the results Joe has, confirming one of the scientist’s suspicions.  With the increased seismic activity, the secret kept within the Janjira facility emerges from the reactor core.  A giant monster, a Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism or MUTO, crawls out, destroying its containment and causing havoc as it releases an electromagnetic pulse.  The MUTO escapes, leaving Ford injured and Joe dying.

In the aftermath, Ford is brought up to speed, including the Monarch information shown at the start of the movie and the existence of a monster, Gojira, codenamed Godzilla, that the atomic bomb testing was meant to destroy.  The MUTO had caused the mine collapse in 1999 and had burrowed its way to the Janjira plant, where it chrysalized and fed off the radiation from the reactor core.  Serizawa postulates that both Gojira and the MUTO were from a previous age where the radiation levels were much higher.  With the use of atomic energy since the middle of the Twentieth Century, the MUTO was awakened and attracted by the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant.  Ford explains his father’s findings, that Joe believed that the odd seismic readings were a form of echolocation, sending a ping of sorts, and receiving an answer.

The US Navy, taking over from Monarch, tracks the MUTO to Hawaii.  The problem the Navy is having stems from the EMP disruption the MUTO puts out.  Too close, and all electronic circuits get fried.  It makes locating the MUTO difficult.  What does help is the loss of a Russian submarine whose beacon is picked up off Hawaii.  Ford is sent off the aircraft carrier to go home when the carrier is fifty kilometres off-shore from Honolulu.  A special forces team is sent to recover the Russian beacon on one of the islands.  The team, instead, finds the sub in the middle of the island’s jungle, along with the MUTO chewing on the sub’s nuclear reactor.

A new object appears on the carrier’s sonar.  Its arrival in Hawaii is preceded by a tsunami, flooding the streets of Honolulu.  The Navy engages the MUTO, but it sends out an EMP burst that not only disables fighter jets but shuts down Hololulu.  The second contact swims into visual range and under of the US fleet.  The alpha predator himself has arrived – Godzilla.  American troops try shooting Godzilla after he makes landfall, doing less damage than a mosquito does to a human.

The fight in Honolulu between Godzilla and the MUTO is short and indecisive, with the MUTO flying away.  The destruction in their wake, though, is on the scale of major earthquakes.  Ford finds an US Army unit to hook up with.  Godzilla returns to swimming after the MUTO, now with the US fleet as escorts.  A third contact is detected in the western US.  A question comes up, why would the MUTO call Godzilla if the latter is a predator.  The answer is, the MUTO wasn’t.  A check of the American nuclear waste storage in the deserts of Nevada discovers that what was once an underground vault is now open to the sky.  A second MUTO, wingless but similar to the first, walks through Las Vegas, leaving more destruction.  The difference in appearance leads Serizawa to hypothesize that the two MUTOs are the same species, just different sexes.  The seismic activity was the mating call and return of the monsters.  Tracking of both MUTOs and Godzilla shows a convergence in San Francisco.

The movie builds up to the battle royale, Godzilla against the two MUTOs.  At the same time, the movie remembers the human element.  Godzilla and the MUTOs are treated as acts of nature, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and destructive.  Through Serizawa, the idea of Godzilla as the defender of the Earth is brought up.  While Godzilla is the defender, humanity isn’t necessarily considered to be part of the balance.  It is human acts that awaken the MUTOs, the use of nuclear energy and the disposal of atomic waste attract the MUTOs.  It is only when Godzilla steps in as a force of nature on his own are the MUTOs defeated.

Viewers who want to see a monster versus monster battle will be disappointed in the movie.  The conflict is built over time, giving the audience glimpses of what the fight will be like at the end.  The filmmakers focus on the human element, the people affected by the destruction wrought.  While Godzilla in the adaptation isn’t a symbol of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he is symbolic of the damage being done to the planet, of the extreme weather causing powerful storms that leave coastal cities and even some inland cities powerless.

As an adaptation, the 2014 Godzilla calls back to the themes of the original Gojira, with the changes mentioned above.  The filmmakers add touches throughout the movie, harkening to other Godzilla movies.  The monster is referred to by Serizawa as Gojira, a TV news broadcast has the label “King of Monsters” below Godzilla as he swims back into the Pacific Ocean.  Godzilla looked like Godzilla, and several scenes had him standing in iconic poses, including when he used his atomic breath.  Just as important, Godzilla sounded like Godzilla; the improvement of sound effects augmented the monster’s voice.  The MUTOs, created for the adaptation, still fit within the Godzilla mythos.

Helping the adaptation is the avoidance of having the story set solely in the US.  The movie acknowledges the Japanese heritage of Godzilla, setting the first portion of the film in Japan.  Both Hawaii and San Francisco have large Japanese populations.  Care was taken to keep Godzilla in a heroic mold, even with the swath of destruction he left behind.  The biggest drawback, if it can be called such, is how long it takes to get a good view of the star attraction.  The movie acts as an origin story, introducing the audience to the director’s vision of Godzilla.

While success of a movie isn’t indicative of the success of adapting**, the age of the character, sixty years old as of 2014, is key in whether the audience accepts or disdains an adaptation.  In the case of the 2014 Godzilla, audiences accepted the character in the movie and, indeed, the movie itself, making the adaptation popular enough to justify a sequel.  The movie wasn’t written with a sequel hook, but Legendary Pictures has licensed several more characters from Toho, including King Ghidorah and Rodan.

Next week, Jack the Giant Slayer.

* GINO – Godzilla In Name Only.
** See also, Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

So we discussed the odds of things in your world, of knowing how likely things were. Now let’s talk the thing you’re writing the most, the odds you know but don’t realize you know, and the most important part of your world and he tales in it.

What’s normal.

In fact, I’m going to tell you that what your stories are about, your world everything about them, is about what’s normal. No matter how freaky your character, strange your plot, normal is what’s important.

And you need to know what’s Normal in your world.

The Importance Of Normal

Normal in your world is what is reliable and predictable. Gravity works, rain falls, and Dz’orgak the demon lord is made from the blood of the Fallen God which is why every ruby gem is his eye spying on your sins. Normal are those truths that your world rests on as sure as we rely on the sun rising.

Enormous amounts of worldbuilding and tales inside those worlds rely on a grounding of normal. Roadways that re reliable, swords made of metal, reproductive biology that ensure species go on, and so on are just normal – what you can count on so you can build a world of it, even if some may change Normal gives your world a foundation so it actually is something, and gives something for readers/gamers to understand and apprehend.

If there’s no sense of normal, then the world itself becomes meaningless. Now in a few cases this might be your point, but in general worldbuilding is about building – making something. Normal has to be assumed, a foundation must be there, or everything is meaningless.

Even if your world is weird to us, having a Normal means we can understand it, relate to it, and thus believe it and enjoy it. It just may be a rather odd normal.

Weird Needs Normal

This normalcy is important not just to provides believable world but to help people relate to what goes on it it – which often are anomalous events and characters.

Tales often deal with exceptions to the normal because stories are often about deviations from norms – I mean if there’s no deviation not much may actually happen to tell.  This deviation could be as big as a war among galaxies or as small as a quirky set of characters at a coffee shop who are weirdos. However the normal provides the grounding to tell you what the abnormal means.

Some characters specialize in the abnormal – the policeman who investigates crimes, the warrior who fights invaders, the psychologist who deals with insanity. There’s a reason we love stories with people like that – they’re interesting as something happens. They try to restore normal (or find a new one) and that’s what the story is about.

Normal lets you understand just what the abnormality you’re often writing about means.

Sort of the normal abnormal. If you don’t know normal, these anomalies become nonsensical or worse, “inappropriately normal.”

Going Away From Normal To Get Back To It

Knowing the Normal of your world is also important to understand events and thus stories that take place in it. Most people’s travails, most tales, most great wars and small quests, are either seeking a return to normal or a new normal. Normal is also a “goal” of people to get to, even if normal only exists in their head.

Now of course this normal may not be possible, or desirable, or realistic. The normal a character or a culture may seek could be a complete delusion. Which is important because there’s normal and normal if you get my drift . . . but that’s also part of the world and your tales.

The True Normal And A Character’s Normal

Knowing what’s normal in your setting helps you understand character motivations and expectations. The average, the reliable, the likely affect people, providing a ground for what happened or a contrast to their own crazy lives. Expectations of what is normal for characters – and often what they’re seeking – comes from their ideas of normal.

Characters may have an inaccurate ideal of normal. How many times in history have we seen people long to return to “normal,” when their idea of normal was a self-deceptive mix of nostalgia and ignorance? How many do we see now?

There’s normal and then there’s the normal in our heads. We need to understand what our characters expect to be normal – and what is really going on.

In fact, characters may just not understand normal or want to. If your universe is one of magic and a scientific civilization refuses to admit this, then you may know normal – but the characters don’t. That’s quite a tale to tell, yet the whole point is ignoring normalcy.

You need to know what’s normal. Your characters well may not – which of course is part of things you’d be writing on.

Their inaccurate ideas of normal may be common enough that their abnormality is rather normal.

Audiences And Normal

Your audience will almost immediately need a set of normal expectations to understand your work – often a tricky business when you’re creating a crazy world. As noted earlier, people have a natural sense of odds and likelihood – and in turn, of normalcy. They’re going to look for it right off the bat.

Audiences can usually sense if your world has some “normal” in it. We’re good at finding coherence in settings, and if your world doesn’t have rules and its own normal, people will pick up on it. They may not care, they may not need much “normal” to figure things out (magic works, wizards blow stuff up a lot might be enough), but they need something. If you don’t give that to them, the world will lack meaning to them.

It also gets a bit tricky to communicate your setting as people have to get it, while at the same time it’s rules may be a bit odd, and you don’t want to overexplain things on top of that.  That requires some careful writing of your tales, to avoid over-explaining or under-explaining the world you built.

This is ultimately where you, the world-builder, have to figure out what’s normal. Oh sure you’r not going to spell it out, but you need to know.

Knowing Normal

So how do you know your normal in your world?

I find, rather interestingly, we usually build “Normal” into our worlds by instinct. You can’t have a coherent setting without some rules and norms and so on. In fact, to try and make your setting weird enough for your goals you may have to actively make it stranger.

However, I think we’re helped in worldbuilding by being aware of normal and what’s normal. Much as when I discussed the odds, we should spend some time analyzing what is normal and expected in the world. Even if we never use it directly, it helps us build the world.

Here’s a quick guide to the Normals to look for

• The Reality Normal: What is the nature of reality. Hard science? Everything has magic in it? What does this mean for your setting (if anything). Sometimes this is boring as you say “actual physical laws, next.”
• The Setting Normal: What are the norms of your setting or settings. Drought or flood, many mountains or huge plans, and so on. This helps you build the setting, and understand how characters and cultures interact with it. If your setting has a lot of desert, the norm is “dry” and the norm also is going to be finding water.
• The Culture Normal: What is the normal for cultures characters are in, the expectations, ideas, and language. There will be both the “Norms” of the culture and the normal parts of the culture, what is expected and what is common. A culture may put great value on honesty, but may have sexism built into it that is common but rarely analyzed as it’s so regular.
• The Personal Normal: What are a characters own experiences, understandings, and so on – and how normal are they? A character may be utterly average (dare I say normal) with one outstanding trait. A characters’ experiences may differ radically from others – making them seem disconnected or perhaps making them wiser.

Note these norms are all going to play into each other. If you have a desert culture that values honesty but has the inbuilt assumption men are violent, a male character raised by water thieves as a calm master of disguise is going to really be something read. How many times will someone ask “are you sure he can keep calm pretending to be this guy?” and what plot points could you explore.

Think Normal

In doing worldbuilding, much as I note it helps to note odds and some of the math of your world, consider what’s normal. Definitely put it in your worldbuilding notes as a reminder for yourself so keep you grounded in what you do. It’ll remind you of what should happen – or remind you in what case it’s time for things to get abnormal.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

“In Michael Moorcock’s universe, a war is fought by two separate yet equally important groups: Law, which provides the fundamental capability of existence, and Chaos, which provides the ability for change and development. These are their stories.”

Awhile back I wrote a post with four moral dichotomies that were not so simple as “Good vs. Evil.” I mentioned that I would probably do an article specifically treating Order and Chaos and, what do you know, that day has come. (more…)

Been kind of quiet here – busy, had a bit of a cold, and general crazy.  Not too much to update folks on yet, though with the holidays coming up . . . well I do have my next generator plan queued up.  Something I’ve been kicking around for awhile.  Pretty much planning to hold the next “Deep” generator off for a bit.

So a Happy Thanksgiving where applicable and Happy Holidays to all.

 
– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

As seen since the beginning of Lost in Translation, getting an adaptation or a remake right takes a deft hand.  There are many ways to just miss being good, either through deliberately not taking the original work seriously enough or through misreading.  At the same time, what works for one remake might not work for another.  The grim, gritty Battlestar Galactica remake was widely accepted.  Going for a realistic Beverly Hillbillies would miss the point.

One element not in the control of production staff is fan expectations.  They can be managed, but word of mouth can make or break a movie with near-instantaneous reviews.  Pandering to the fans, though, may alienate the general audience.  Individual comics issues have sales in the tens of thousands, not enough to fill seats and make a profit.  Where repeated theatrical viewings were, if not the norm, possible, thanks to films being allowed to remain in theatres as long as they were drawing audiences, today, it’s rare for a movie to remain in theatres for two months.  DVD release dates are being set shortly after a movie opens.

This leaves the question: “What can be done to manage expectations?”  How can a studio ensure that fans don’t leave with a bad taste while still getting a general audience in?  Movie makers need to be aware of the general impression a work has outside fandom.  The 1989 Batman movie was facing such a problem.  Fans of the comic were well aware of the Denny O’Neill run that turned Batman into a noir costumed detective, with a grittier approach.  The general audience, however, was more aware of the Adam West Batman TV series, a camp comedy.  Add in the casting of Michael Keaton, primarily known for comedies, as Bruce Wayne, and disaster was looming.  With Tim Burton combining the aspects of both comic and TV series, Jack Nicholson as the Joker, and marketing that focused on the darker elements, Batman was successful at the box office.

The first means to manage expectations is the trailer.  The trailer is the first view of a movie an audience gets.  Well done trailers get sought out and spread over the Internet, increasing the dollar value of the advertising for no extra effort.  Through the use of music and selected shots from the movie, the trailer can give audiences a good idea of what to expect.  The first trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy showed the main characters being booked into prison, followed by the song, “Hooked on a Feeling”, implying that the heroes weren’t chisel-chinned upholders of the law and that the movie would be fun.  The box office returns show that audiences agreed.

The next means is to figure out what fans of the original work enjoyed about it.  Pandering to the fans is never a good idea.  Neither is flipping fans the bird.  The remake of Land of the Lost left fans with a bitter taste.  The original was a low-budget science-fiction series that managed to weave a coherent story, thanks to having science-fiction writers such as Larry Niven and Ben Bova contribute scripts.  The remake was a Will Farrell comedy vehicle.  The trailers, while they did show Farrell, didn’t quite show the level of humour of the movie.

Ultimately, though, it’s hard to read a potential audience.  Both the original Battlestar Galactica and the remake were about the search for Earth by survivors of the Thirteen Colonies.  The original had a far more optimistic approach, even with it showing problems with food, the dangers of relying on a small number of food-producing vessels, and the logistics of maintaining a fleet of civilians.  At the end of an episode, viewers had the feeling that the ragtag fleet would someday find Earth.  The new Galactica had rumours of main characters getting gender-flipped, which had fans in a minor uproar.  However, the miniseries showed what the remake was aiming for; a grittier, more realistic look at the problems the ragtag fleet would face.  Survival of humanity was never a given, even after the appearance of the Pegasus.  While the new characters weren’t like the originals, they fit better in the remake.  It just goes to show that a read on the fanbase is not the only aspect to look at.  Sometimes, current events plays a role.

With Hollywood studios risk-adverse to the point of needing instant hits with movie releases, especially blockbusters, maximizing the potential audience.  Adaptations come with a built-in audience, but that very same audience may not appreciate drastic changes.  Pandering is inevitable; keeping the existing fanbase happy means a quick, positive word of mouth on opening.  Pandering, though, doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie or a good adaptation.  Studios need to strive for more than just pleasing the fanbase, a fickle entity that may not appreciate even an accurate adaptation.

Next week, back to the reviews.

(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

I’m not quite Han Solo. You don’t have to tell me the odds, but I’d like a good sense of them when it comes to your world.  But I do look good in leather.

When we play a game or ready a story, intuitively, we need to know the odds. If it’s unlikely someone can survive a fight with ten well armed Knights of The Singularity, when they win it makes us wonder how. If someone is ethnically and racially different than we expect in a game world, the impact of that difference is felt if we understand just what it means. Likelihood – and lack of likelihood – is something that we need to understand to get what something means.

I think this is instinctive to humans, and even more so in people with a vague sense of math and probability. We’re always evaluating, re-evaluating, projecting, and understanding. When math is part of our lives, even moreso. Either way, it’s human.

So the odds need to be part of your world. If they’re not, then you may be in for some problems.  If you can’t express the chances of things happening, then your world isn’t going to make sense.  People won’t be able to grasp what’s going on as their natural ability to evaluate can’t find anything to hold on to in order to make sense of the world.

(Even if you do know the odds, you might not use them right)

Lets talk what the odds are in your world, how to use them – and how not to overuse them. (more…)

Thunderbirds are go!  Again!
A new Thunderbirds TV series is set to launch.  The show will forego Supermarionation for a mix of CGI and live-action models.  The debut is on the 50th anniversary of the original airdate of Thunderbirds.

Next Terminator movie a reboot.
According to Jay Courtney, who will play Kyle Reese, Terminator: Genisys is more of a reset than a reboot.  Other than Arnold Schwarzengger, an all-new cast will play the familiar roles.  Two sequels have already been scheduled.

Warner announces DC Comics movie line up.
Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice leads off the ten, but has been moved to avoid competing with Captain America 3 in 2016.  The other movies announced are Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League: Part One, The Flash, Aquaman, Shazam, Justice League: Part Two, Cyborg, and Green Lantern.  All should be released over the next six years.  Warner also announced a trilogy of films based on JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a text originally found at Hogwart’s.

Knights of the Dinner Table in post-production.
Knights of the Dinner Table, a comic about tabletop gamers, will have a live-action movie based on the strip.  The adaptation is in post-production and is looking for backers to help get the movie done.

Transporter: The Series started October 18.
Slipped past the radar here, but the new TV series based on the Jason Statham movies has aired on TNT.   François Berléand returns as Inspector Tarconi, while Statham’s character Frank Martin is now played by Chris Vance.  The series hopes to dig into why Frank got into his profession.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic movie confirmed.
Hasbro’s Allspark Pictures has the green light for an animated Friendship Is Magic movie.  Release date is expected to be in 2017.  Allspark is also producing the live-action Jem and the Holograms film, due out in 2015.

Dredd webseries has animated trailer.
Adi Shankar, producer of Dredd, has released a trailer for his “bootleg” animated series continuing where the movie left off.  The series will look at the Dark Judges arc of the comic.

John Carter of Mars rights return to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
The rights, formerly held by Disney, have returned to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.  The Disney film, John Carter, foundered in theatres with most problems traceable back to the studio, from a bland name to poor timing.  The rights are now available to anyone willing to pay.

Fox developing Archie series.
Riverdale will be a drama featuring the Archie Comics characters.  Greg Berlanti, of Arrow and The Flash, is on as producer while Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the creative mind behind such series as AfterLife with Archie, is writing for the series.  The series will look at the weirdnesses surrounding small towns and may not resemble the Riverdale you grew up with.  However, current readers may be familiar with the setting.  Archie Comics have taken risks in the past decade, including the horror series AfterLife with Archie, having Archie and Valerie becoming a couple, and not only introducing an openly gay character, Kevin Keller, but giving him his own title.

Riverdale may get weirder.
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, creative director of Archie Comics and writer of the new series, has compared Riverdale to a teen version of Twin Peaks.  He has hinted at an Afterlife with Archie episode as well.  Current continuity will be part of the series, too.  If the series survives the, “But this isn’t *my* Archie!” fallout, it’ll pull an audience just through sheer audacity.

Clerks 3 confirmed.
Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes will be back as Jay and Silent Bob in the sequel.  Shooting for the film will start June 2015.

The Six Million Dollar Man being remade.
To account for inflation, the name is being changed to The Six Billion Dollar Man.  Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg, the pair behind Lone Survivor, are taking on the project for Dimension Films.  The original Six Million Dollar Man was itself an adaptation of the book, Cyborg, by Martin Caidan, and ran from 1973, with several made-for-TV movies before becoming a regular series in 1974, until 1978.

Latest rumour in the Spider-verse has Aunt May getting a movie.
Sony is apparently mining out the Spider-Man license if this rumour is true.  Other rumours include a Venom movie, a Sinister Six movie, and Glass Ceiling, which involves the female characters from the Spider-verse coming together.  Of these, Venom seems more likely to gather an audience.  Then again, I’m not at Sony.

In more solid news, Evil Dead greenlit as a TV series.
Starz will air the Evil Dead TV series starting in 2015.  Sam Raimi will be the executive producer and will also write and direct the first give episodes.  Rob Tapert is on board as well as an executive producer.  Bruce Campbell will return as Ash, older but not necessarily wiser.  Groovy.

Jonathan Nolan adapting Foundation for HBO.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is being adapted as a TV series on HBO.  The epic series covers centuries over the course of the books, with the cast of characters changing over time.

Fifth Tremors movie in production.
The movie, expected out direct-to-video in 2016, will star Michael Gross, recreating his Burt Gummer character.  The original Tremors, starring Kevin Bacon, became a cult hit and has spawned three direct-to-video movies and a short-lived TV series.  The movie in production will see Graboids appearing in South Africa.

Movies cannot contain the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Thanks to the popularity of the film, Marvel will be adding an animated series and a new comic aimed at kids to the announced sequel.  How the animated series fits in with the cinematic Marvel universe is in dispute with the production staff of the sequel, but the series may just go with the team already together.

(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

Having discussed character goals, abilities, plans, actions, and results, let’s talk about the stakes characters fight for.

Oh, and how we screw it up.  And maybe how they screw it up, but that’s more “story” than “author messed it up.”

What Are We Fighting For?

Characters set out with certain goals and values and are trying to achieve something – even if that’s preventing something. They are, in short, fighting for something.  It may not seem like a conflict, but if it’s not something easy to do, it’s a conflict of some kind.

We, as readers, are drawn into the goals because the world is believable, the characters well written, the gameplay compelling, etc. When the stakes are well-realized, when they are understandable, they both draw us into the world and enhance the experience.  When stakes become our stakes, the goals our goals, the risk our risk, we’re truly involved – and the world we experience is truly alive.

If you’ve ever dodged in real life while playing an FPS or gotten angry at a fictional character, you know how compelling a world and its realization in fiction or media can be. The stakes are real.

Probably this is why we love viscerally. Even the worst film or story can make us sympathize with someone (no matter how poorly written) in a situation we relate to. We get humiliation or pain. Probably his is one reason authors and worldbuilders resort to blood, violence, sex, and fear too often – they’re visceral and have that chance to draw you in.

(Well visceral until you get tired of them).

So as you may guess, the Stakes are part of your world.  They’re what gives us a tale, what makes characters believable, and what gives us a gut-punch realization of “what’s going on.”

Well, We Are Fighting For It, Right?

The things that occur in your world, the challenges and risks, are born of your setting – just like the characters who deal with them. They are part of the weather or he culture or the divine or the infernal that you’ve created. What’s going on, what’s at risk, is part of your setting.

Well, it is if you do it right.

Action-reaction, results, risks, are all part of good worldbuilding.  You need to know what happens, what goes wrong, what results occur when things are done or aren’t done.  When you know how things “work” then in turn you can understand the stakes of what’s going on, how the characters feel, the results they want. – and what draws in your reader or player.  If your world isn’t properly defined, properly connected, it becomes unbelievable, the stakes are meaningless, there’s less visceral appeal, and suspension of disbelief gives up and goes and gets a coffee.

Ever read a story where the goals seemed lame, the risks trite or poorly-created, and the sense of what people are trying to do didn’t hold up? Or you’d seen it all before and felt like someone had brought in a Risky Stakes transplant from another story? The world wasn’t well designed, the stakes had no meaning, the characters had no meaning, and you were just there watching a pile of stuff.

You get the idea.

How you build your world sets the stakes for characters. Now that may seem obvious, but I find we get trapped in designing them or not even realizing them.  We stop building the world and start just throwing stuff into it.

Overdone Stakes

(Yes, lame joke preserved from original column).

One problem in worldbuilding is that after we start writing our world, or coding it, we need to keep people’s interest, so we raise the stakes ridiculously. You’re probably especially aware of it from bad media and some games, where the villain apparently has a magical backside that holds plot devices, or suddenly the enemies are a lot tougher for no good reason.  It’s just there to ramp up difficulty to maybe hold your attention.

This “ramp up”is often a natural result of increased competency on the part of the protagonists – as noted in last column, characters growing and applying themselves towards goal is part of any tale, and thus world. But we can way, way too easily fall into jacking up the difficulty level as it were to keep things going.

This is a risk because basically you throw out the laws of your world just to keep people’s attention. Now you might be able to keep it within setting constraints, but based on many things I’ve seen . . . I wouldn’t take the risk.

Now my answer to this is “just build a good world”, but there are traps we often fall into.  So to help you out, let me note a few common ways of raising the Stakes that we can do with out:

• The End Of The World As We Know It – And I’m Annoyed – Turning things into world-threatening crises when they weren’t, aren’t, and can’t be explained may keep attention but is really obvious and worldbreaking.
• The War Of Heaven And Hell And Good Taste – Sometimes stories wander into supernatural territory and next thing you know everyday stuff or even non-everyday stuff is a theological smackdown. That’s good if that’s your intent, but trying to get metaphysical just to keep interest can be quite lame.  You can also have the stakes raise to such ridiculous levels with pasted-on-morals that it might as well be a kind of Potemkin Apocalypse.
• The Last Best Extremely Contrived Hope – Another way people jack up the odds is creating a chosen one who’s the only person that can save things. THis is pretty much the aforementioned Idiot Plot or Planet of the Morons. And it’s unbelievable, worldbreaking, and annoying because it stands out (and it’s over done).
• The Destiny March of History – Suddenly, characters discover destiny, legacy, or something else that makes their struggles More Important. Meanwhile the audience doesn’t buy it.
• The Sudden Ramp-Up – Suddenly things are tougher . . . because.  Not due to cause-and-effect.  Not due to a master plan.  Just you ramp up the stakes with some plot device to keep interest.  Yes, it’s obvious.

Don’t jack up the stakes inappropriately. Don’t rip your world apart to wedge a piece of extra excitement in. It’ll break your system. And sure, some creators get away with it, but some don’t.

Do you want to take the risk?  Are your stakes worth it?

No, they’re not.  Build a good world.  If anything, just find the most exciting parts of it to tell.

In Closing

Know the Stakes people are fighting for and what they’re trying to do. Understand the results – but let them be part of your setting. Otherwise you risk mapping tropes or easy-outs to keep interest – and people will know.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

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(Originally posted at MuseHack.)

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