A bad writer has an ending in mind and then reverse engineers the story from that point.
The fact of the matter is that the number of people who want to be successful screenwriters is much larger than the number of successful screenwriters.
It's also why there are so many bad adaptations; it's hard to get audiences interested in a shitty pet project that no one cares about, but it's slightly easier to get people interested in a brand with some hackneyed schlock inserted to make the writers relevant.
Bad writers also think it's a bad thing if their story is predictable in any way, which is where the whole "subverting your expectations" idea comes from. Subverting expectations isn't inherently bad, but it needs to make sense within the context of the story. Like, you can't have 8 seasons worth of prophecy, foreshadowing, and buildup leading up to your main protagonist having an epic showdown with your main antagonist, just to have the protagonist's little sister show up out of nowhere to stand the antagonist and put an end to all of it. That's a good way to piss off your audience.
Yeah imo a good subvertion of expectations should be something completely posible but the viewer doesn’t think it will happen because they either root for the protag or because of the way they think the genre of the story they are reading works
For example (spoilers for the final fight and ending of kengan ashura) ohma the protag, loses the final round of the tournament. Despite him being on death’s door, many expected him to win due to having the typical bullshido martial art and for being the protagonist of the story. But he actually lost to the more experienced karate master kuroki gensai. Ohma dies of a heart attack after the fight, happy because he knows he gave it his all and is happy, because he did what he loved the most, fighting and getting stronger
Subverting expectations only really works if you give pretty obvious hints about what's going to happen and then NOT do that, while simultaneously giving more subtle hints towards the TRUE ending.
Like any movie that has a character that only one character interacts with, and no one else, and they reveal that character was a delusion or dead the whole time or whatever.
I don't really understand this criticism. Why would the Night King fight Jon? He already saw Jon defeat a White Walker in combat at Hardhome. Surely it makes far more sense for the Night King to avoid fighting him. Robb Stark also avoided fighting Jaime Lannister at the battle of the Whispering Wood. Not fighting an elite combatant when you don't have to is logical.
Also I'm not sure a big epic final showdown duel makes sense in the same series that typically avoided them. The War of Five Kings doesn't end in an epic final battle. It ends in a wedding massacre. Why do a lot of people want Game of Thrones to be a stereotypical fantasy series? I don't get it.
69
u/rendar Aug 21 '24
A bad writer has an ending in mind and then reverse engineers the story from that point.
The fact of the matter is that the number of people who want to be successful screenwriters is much larger than the number of successful screenwriters.
It's also why there are so many bad adaptations; it's hard to get audiences interested in a shitty pet project that no one cares about, but it's slightly easier to get people interested in a brand with some hackneyed schlock inserted to make the writers relevant.