What Is Steampunk? (3) (Not My Guitar)

Congratulations!

(Notice that, even here, conflict generates interest.  The best thing about this photo is the cheesed-off little gargoyle-pixie in the bottom left.)

Basic Plot Failure: the Deus ex Machina

It is especially bad writing to have your protagonist win because someone else just makes him win at the end.  This is called a deus ex machina, which is fancy-pants talk for "someone or something else just makes your protagonist win".  Deus ex machina devices are surprisingly common, in literature high and low, popular and erudite, modern and pre-modern.  If your villain suddenly repents, for instance, your protagonist's old friend who has not been part of the story suddenly arrives to rescue him, or a phoenix shows up to save your protagonist by delivering to him a magical hat wrapped around a magical sword in his moment of need, you've got a deus ex machina.

Popularity doesn't make it right.  Your hero should succeed because of his own efforts.  Anything else is bad storytelling.

The Indiana Jones Rule

Other characters can have all kinds of luck, good, bad and ugly, but your main character, your protagonist, in all things that matter, can only have bad luck.  This follows from yesterday's post and foreshadows tomorrow's.

Basic Plot Failure: Passive Main Characters

The basic plot of a novel consists of a main character trying to accomplish some genre-appropriate task (save the kingdom, solve the crime, stop the bomb, overcome obstacles to love, whatever).  It follows that one basic way in which a novel can be bad is that its main character can be passive in its main plot, just experiencing things that happen to him or her.

This makes for a bad novel for two reasons.  First, it makes the main character unsympathetic (we'll talk more about sympathy another time, but, to foreshadow a bit, we sympathize more with characters who are active).  We don't care much about characters who don't care enough to do something.  Second, it makes the plot uninteresting, just a series of things-that-the-author-makes-happen-to-some-schlemiel.

Are there exceptions?  Maybe; we could argue.  But, in terms of film, if you think Forrest Gump or Being There were great movies (I have not read either underlying book), let me ask you this: were they great because of the plot?  Or were they great in spite of a weak plot?

Higher Justice

This is not a ballad, because it has a repeating chorus (it has no bridge).  It is, however, a narrative song, and it is filk, being a non-canonical adventure of Mike Mignola's great neo-pulp crimefighter, the Lobster.

(Heaven Bound Bob and Billy the Snake (sometimes Jimmy the Snake) are character names I have recycled through a few different songs, and that have found a hopefully final home in the annals of Francis Drollery, Ghost Crusader.)

Heaven Bound Bob and Billy the Snake
Work for the city, and they're both on the take
Helping Boss Hardin roll his northern shipments in
For once a week whisky, and Brooklyn bathtub gin
Well, there ain't no human plan
Without some fatal flaw


  They're getting that higher justice
  Higher justice
  The higher justice of the Lobster's claw


Boss Hardin has his tentacles all over this town
Half the city's beat cops, and every sidewalk clown
Lately his boys have been turning up dead
With funny little burn marks on the tops of their heads
And he asks himself
Is he still above the law?


  He's getting that higher justice
  Higher justice
  The higher justice of the Lobster's claw


Boss Hardin takes his secrets on a thirty story fall
The hunchback and the tarot reader tell the Lobster all
The warehouse down in Chelsea, the Nazi submarine
The fire of the angels, the Juggernaut machine
Watch out, Fritz--
You're gonna take in the jaw!


  Here comes that higher justice
  Higher justice
  The higher justice of the Lobster's claw


A warehouse full of Nazis, a pile of bleeding bones
Dancing girls in trances, bugs on ancient thrones
Hell breaks loose when the Lobster starts the Juggernaut to roll
And a ragged fiend leaps from the throne and comes groping for his soul
He shoves that Colt
In the demon's gaping maw


  He's dishing out higher justice
  Higher justice
  The higher justice of the Lobster's claw

Happy Birthday...

to E.J. Patten.

Story Monkeys, ho!