Welcome back writers! As work continues getting Axtara – Magic and Mischief (I still miss Mayhem, but we’ll be getting a BaBW post on that next week) that hasn’t stopped Being a Better Writer from delivering!

Oh, but if you’re a fan of Axtara and weren’t around last Friday (or you’re brand new to the site), don’t neglect to check out Part One of A Trial For a Dragon, a free short story set in the Axtara universe starring Axtara’s older brother. A dragon becoming a banker is one thing, but what about a dragon becoming a wizard? You can check out the short here, and if you’ve stumbled across this post months (or even years) after the fact, read the rest of it by following the comment links!

That’s pretty much it as far as news is concerned. At this point Beta Reading/Editing is underway, and next up will be a cover … So you’re all caught up—

Wait, almost. Just a quick reminder to Patreon Supporters that you only have until the release of Axtara – Magic and Mischief to vote for the next book to come out! You can do that here!

Okay, that’s the news. Let’s talk writing. I’m sure a few of you writing vets have looked at the title and thought “Well, that seems pretty straightforward, but I must admit that today’s post is one that comes about due to a perceptive shift I’ve witnessed taking place over the last several years. A shift that, in the last six months especially I’ve seen on display more and more across various internet forums and even in reviews for books.

Because recently, one of the most common strikes I’ve seen leveled at characters in movies, books, and games, is that they’re failing. No, not as characters, but in their goals until the climax arrives.

Let me give you a direct example, one of the more memorable ones that, because it bugged me, stuck in my mind, and was one of the inspirations for this post: 2023’s Super Mario Bros. movie. Look, I’ll be the first to say the movie doesn’t shy from what it is: non-offensive child-friendly entertainment that’s greatest achievement, previously unmatched by Hollywood, was actually representing the property it was based on (which, for Hollywood, is like a lawyer refunding cash: a blank look followed by “I don’t know what those words mean).

But I was really interested in some of the criticism leveled against the movie, in particular the accusation that whole elements of the story were “a waste because the characters failed.”

In particular, if you’ve seen the film, the recruitment of the Kong army. Critics across the web will note that a good portion of the movie is spent on the recruitment of the Kong army, which includes Mario trying a training course—and failing, the critics either ignoring or forgetting that he does actually succeed at the course eventually—to show that he deserves to go along for the recruitment pitch, having to face a challenge to “prove” they can handle the army … and then the army is beaten anyway by the antagonist in a big battle sequence.

These critics argue that because the army failed, it’s a waste of storytelling time. That it shouldn’t have been in the story at all because due to the failure, the story didn’t move forward.

And these critics are not alone, nor are they just unhappy with Super Mario Bros. It seems any story that comes out these days—or even an older story—is increasingly being viewed with this lens. “Oh, the characters had this plan and it didn’t work out? That’s bad storytelling. It’s a waste of the audience’s time and attention. It’s padding to lengthen things out. It’s boring.”

Or my personal “favorite” accusation, that it’s “woke.” Which is about as empty and hollow a criticism as I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some doozies.

However, with this criticism becoming more and more frequent, it’s been leveled at books and written stories as much as anything else. I’ve seen people post about famous books decrying them because ‘So-and-so waffled around not being able to face the big bad for two-hundred pages and getting beat. What a waste of my time. No one should read this as it doesn’t respect the reader’s time.’

Worse, I’ve started to see newbie advice handed out by these critics that such scenes should be cut or removed from stories. Advice given on writing forums that young writers should not include scenes or story elements where the characters fail because “This doesn’t move the story forward, therefore it is bad” (and lest you think this is hyperbole, I’ve see variations of that exact statement several times in the last month).

And while I can see where that advice is coming from, and how that conclusion has been reached, I’ve just got to say it, in as straightforward a manner as I can: It’s just plain wrong.

So hit the jump, and let’s break down this new bit of “advice” that’s circling the writing circles.

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Okay, so here’s what I think the problem is: This advice is rooted in good intentions. There’s a kernel of truth to it. However, it’s been applied incorrectly, and the result is a disastrous bit of advice that is definitely not something writers young or old should be aiming at.

The kernel there is that everything in a story should serve the story somehow. Note that I did not say serve to move the story forward, because that’s one part that’s been misconstrued. It’s correct, yes … but being applied incorrectly.

Yes, anything written in your story should serve to move the story forward. But that’s not just talking about story momentum, ie, where the characters are going. There’s more to a story than that.

See, if we take this rule and apply it as some critics do, IE only write things that move the plot forward … what happens to our setting? Well, we’re only allowed to include descriptive elements by way of directly impacting that plot. Setting? Background? Character description? Nope, can’t include those unless they’re moving that plot toward the big confrontation.

Obviously this is being applied incorrectly, but that is something that can happen when critics who’ve never actually done the creative part start handing out advice on it based on limited things they’ve heard. The idea that your writing should be streamlined only to what moves the story toward a climax? It’s just wrong.

Even in the hands of a great writer capable of sliding as much detail as possible into action elements moving the story toward a climax, what would result would be nearly a play-by-play of a scene, a sequence of events bereft of pacing or even grounding for the audience to familiarize themselves with.

But the audience needs that grounding! We need that opening, that establishes the world and the characters we’re going to interact with. All your writing should serve to move the story forward, yes, but those who espouse this with a “toward the climax only” mentality miss that there are multiple avenues to moving a story forward.

It’s like … a jet getting ready for takeoff. You don’t just slam the throttle wide as soon as the passengers are loaded. First you taxi away from the gate. You select a runway direction based on wind and windspeed. You set flaps. And more. Then you throttle up.

Writing is the same. We don’t just slam the throttle forward and leap for the climax. We welcome our reader on board. We get them settled in their seat. We taxi for the runway. We get our setup taken care of, and then we punch the throttle. Not all the way down, either, but to the right level for the acceleration the audience is ready for.

That is what is meant by the rule of “everything you write should serve the story.” It means setting up our locale. Making sure our reader understands our world, and what’s at stake. That they understand our characters and know what they look like. What drives them. Why the antagonist is bad news. Etc.

Writing should serve the story in some capacity, but that doesn’t mean a breakneck sprint for the finale.

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Okay, that’s almost felt like a tangent. I would have called it one if not for it being part of the problem statement we’re discussing today. Because now that we’ve got that kernel of truth expanded upon, let’s go back to this idea that ‘everything in the story needs to move toward the climax, and that’s why characters shouldn’t be failing, failing means putting off the climax and is therefore a waste of the audience’s time.’

Well, with what we’ve discussed above, it’s pretty clear that those making this statement aren’t interpreting “everything in the story needs to move forward” properly. So that undercuts a significant portion of the claim. But now, let’s dive into the meat of it. This idea that “characters shouldn’t fail, failing means putting off the climax.”

I’ll admit I’ve really been racking my brain trying to figure out what’s been pushing the mindset here. Maybe a shortened attention span? The sort of thing that would see a reader in the old days just flip to and read the end of a book in the bookstore to avoid all that other “stuff?”

I don’t know, but what I do know is failure is important to characters in our stories. Just as it’s important for us in the real world. Which is why reflecting that is important as well.

Okay, we’ve got two bit ideas there, so let’s divide and conquer. Why is failure important to characters in our stories?

Funnily enough, the first answer I’ll give you is that there are enough important reasons I waffled on which to explain first. So I’m not giving these any weight over the other, but I say this so that you readers can understand just how vital the concept of failure is.

So I’ll start with how failure is important to character growth and development. Which … Look, characters need to grow. Characters have to progress. Characters that don’t are static and unchanging. In other words, they don’t feel real, but like caricatures or cutouts of what the real world is like.

Furthermore, stories are about progression and growth. They’re not just about “beating the protagonist.” They are indeed about the journey along the way. A journey that should come with the characters exemplifying the try/fail cycle, wherein the try to achieve something but don’t succeed, or only partially succeed, but overall learn something in the process.

Our characters need to learn and grow. They need to try something and lose, then try again and succeed. Or try something else that pushes them in a new direction, one maybe they’ve never gone before.

Trying and failing isn’t “poor storytelling.” It’s an avenue for our characters to learn things about themselves, the world, or really anything. A way to find new strengths, leave their comfort zones, decide what really makes them tick … I could go on. There are millions of ways our characters can react to failure, and all of them are important. Figuring out the specific ones that apply to your character? Well, that’s up to you as the writer. But your characters should struggle and push to grown and learn, failing and succeeding rather than just always succeeding.

But that’s not the only reason we want characters to fail. Pacing is an important part of any story, to the degree that the site has a tag for it we’ve discussed it so often. But always succeeding? That makes for a poorly paced story because very quickly the reader realizes that there’s no sense of tension to be had. Character moves in a direction, character succeeds. There’s not a lot of movement in there for characters to struggle, because even if they do they cannot fail.

Think of the pacing of your story like a roller coaster. The ideal roller coaster isn’t one that just goes down, or just goes up. It gives you mixtures of down and up at differing, irregular intervals. Irregular and differing because then our minds can’t find a pattern to the ride, and each curve and twist feels fresh and unexpected.

Pacing a story is like laying out a roller coaster. We want to give our readers slow moments to breath, but also moments of rising action or falling despair. We want ups and downs that aren’t set in a pattern that’s too recognizable, both because life often isn’t that way, but also because we don’t want to fall into a situation where we can see it all coming too easily.

A story that progresses in a straight line to the finale is like a roller coaster that only has two pieces to it: One that goes up, and another that goes down. And then that’s the ride. But a story with failure, where our characters try something and succeed? That’s the coaster going up, settling into a dive, and then jerking to the side as things go wrong.

Failure gives us—and our readers, and our audience—down time. Time to reflect. Time to discover.

Let your characters be wrong. Let them make a bad call, or posit a false theory and follow through on it (another movie that the critics who discuss our topic today despised for this was The Batman, in which a young Batman several times makes errors with clues because he’s only been the Batman for a year, and is still getting the hang of things) only to learn that they were off and need to re-evaluate.

Our characters failing, or getting something wrong, isn’t “the story not going anywhere.” It’s just the story not taking a straight line to the end, but one that includes moments of reflection, or disappointment, or even sadness. It’s one that gives our audience time to say “Oh” and think on what’s happened. It’s one that gives our characters the moment to say “I lost … how can I avoid that next time?”

Character failure can be vital to our story for other reasons as well. It can signal a change in the plot, flipping something that was established on its head. Take one of the more famous examples of this with “I am your father.” Not only does the protagonist of that story fail at what he set out to do—in the climax, no less—but the information he learns from that failure flips the story and our protagonist’s goals on their head. It’d be a lot harder to present that information and flip everything if the protagonist had just shown up and suceeded.

Failure can be (and really should be) a plot element as much as it is one of pacing or character development. Big or small, a failure can expand and strengthen our narrative rather than weaken it. A failure can take our story into unexpected locations or locales.

Let’s take another famous example from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship fails. The ring drives wedges between the group, and Frodo decides to split and depart on his own even as other events further separate those he leaves behind. That’s a failure.

And yet look what comes of it. The entmarch. Rohan. All elements that wouldn’t have been seen by the reader or experienced by the characters if the Fellowship of the Ring hadn’t failed in what it set out to do.

It failing doesn’t make the time spent at Rivendell and the journey from there a waste of storytelling. It just marks a shift in the plot as the group splits and begins journeying all over Middle-Earth. In the meantime, everything that came before that split is still part of the characters and the journey.

Think of all that would have been missed from The Lord of the Rings if the Fellowship had just succeeded. Bam, gone straight to Mordor. No mines of Moria. No Gandalf leaving the party like a boss. No Riders of Rohan. No battle at Minis Tirith … does that sound like a great story?

The Fellowship of the Ring failed so that the story could move onto greater tales of adventure, with greater stakes and greater triumphs. Oh, and those characters definitely had failings later on too. Trusting Golem over Samwise, anyone?

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I hope by now I’ve made my point clear: Failure is required, both in life and in fiction! It’s part of who we are. Failure big and small is what we learn from. It takes us to new places, teaches us new skills, and grants us new insight. Characters and plots that lack failure lack so much in addition that failure brings, from growth to pacing to surprise.

Let your characters fail. Now, as a final caution, don’t just do the inverse of having them always succeed and have them always fail. Life is ups and downs. So our story should be. Our characters should succeed too. Or have success come with failure, intermingled. Keep it fresh.

But don’t cut failure out of your story or your characters. Don’t trust those critics on the internet that say failure is a waste of their time. Their advice? It’s a waste of your time.

Going back to what we spoke of in the opening, with Super Mario Bros, one of the reasons the “failure” works is because from the get-go the audience is told by all the characters “This is the only way we see victory.” So when it is effortless brushed aside by the antagonist, the characters failing, the audience’s natural response is “Well what can they do to win now?”

This being a family-friendly Mario movie, of course, the characters win anyway, but not without pushing themselves to try things they’d never done before. It’s simple, yes, and few would expect that the Mario Bros. Movie would end like The Empire Strikes Back, but it still allows for more variation and flexibility in pacing and plot than “Mario goes around saving the day without missing a beat.”

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So let your characters fail. Build failure into your storyline. Let them be aware of their shortcomings, struggling or working to overcome them. Use failures to control the pacing of your story, or to take your adventure in unexpected directions.

And remember, it’s not just about the destination, but the journey. If our characters struggle to achieve something for a third of the book and then realize they were completely wrong, those actions “all for nothing,” is it a waste? Only if our characters haven’t learned or grown from the experience.

Let them fail. Let them grow. Don’t shy away from failure in fiction. Embrace it.

Good luck. Now get writing!

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