john.cutting - Fortuna Saga

The Three Canticles on this site are intended to be fully standalone stories while also serving as segments of a greater story with some underlying themes that transverse literally millennia in the same universe. Writing these stories has forced me to think a lot of why sequels/prequels work and why they often fail. Failures are particularly interesting to think about because they are more instructive for would-be writers like myself. I can’t guarantee that I won’t fall victim to these failures as the story proceeds, but I believe an awareness of the pitfalls is useful. This most recent episode with Zel and Vitova is an example of the temptations and common pitfalls that I wish to avoid while writing Lost Noise.

Pitfall #1: Explaining things that don’t need explaining

Prequels are especially prone to this pitfall because this can be incredibly cool. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade does this particularly well with the opening scene that shows how Indiana got his iconic hat. Was this scene necessary to understand or advance the story of Indiana Jones? Absolutely not. If this question was never answered, fans wouldn’t be clamoring for a source or getting into great debates about the provenience of Indiana’s fedora. The hat is Indiana’s hat. That’s all we need, really. In the case of Indiana’s hat, this scene does a good job because it also introduces a source of narrative tension between Indiana and his father that we will explore later in the film. The story is neat, but what it adds to the story is what makes this scene work.

I feel this is precisely why this pitfall is so dangerous. It can be fun and engaging to add backstory to significant items or motifs in a story, but the scope of this must be narrow. This is easier to do for Indiana Jones partly because Indiana Jones movies are essentially serialized stories that can be watched in whatever order you please without difficulty (this website does not recognize Crystal Skull). Conversely, this exact same thing does not work well in the Star Wars prequels. Explaining that Anakin Skywalker built C3PO- and intertwining this fact with other important plot related events- makes the universe smaller (see pitfall #2 below), isn’t particularly interesting, does not expand on any of the greater themes of the series of this point, and rips open a bunch of plot holes that are big enough to skydive through before they are sloppily patched over two movies later.

“No one likes this.”

Most times, things are better left to the imagination of the audience. This is why horror films know to incorporate a Monster Delay because the persistent dread the audience gets from the idea and threat of the monster is much more meaningful than the monster itself. When the monster itself is finally revealed, the imagined dread collapses into a clearer reality, and the result is almost always less scary than what was in the audience’s head.

The same is true for these “fun facts” and connections that tend to crop up in prequels. If these connections don’t provide an expansion of a theme, a new perspective, or a critique of previous point, then the author should be cautious about adding them to a story because they usually collapse a universe of interesting possibilities into one that is clearer but much more boring.

In the Fortuna Saga, the Guides (magic users typically able to transport people and materiel over distance) are shown using giant glass balls as a way to contain a city that had fallen to the the enemy. These balls were never explained in Fortuna Saga because they didn’t need to be explained. The scene that introduces them adequately shows that they are stationed strategically around the city, the city has been at a stalemate for months, and it shows exactly how the Fortunans use them and what their vulnerabilities are. Going into a metaphysics exposition about it would only have detracted from the story at that point.

So, after saying all of that, why did I choose to include a metaphysics exposition about these glass balls over ten years after I wrote the first page with them? I thought about this a lot, but I ultimately decided that this was a good place to make a connection because the goal isn’t to finally explain what those glass balls actually did or where they came from. This wasn’t a plot hole that has been bothering me for years that I’m hoping to retroactively cover up (to be honest, I have and will continue to do that in other places in the story). More importantly, the connection isn’t a simply a connection to this one scene from Fortuna Saga. It also buttresses some of the larger themes and motifs of the Three Canticles. For example, consider some of the late-story dialogue between Arlia Janet and Jazira El-Vrijer about cycles of violence, escalation, and loss. In this way, I feel this call back/call forward adds some real-world examples of these motifs that we will continue to experience in Lost Noise and have already experienced in Fortuna Saga and Hymns of the Apostate.

Pitfall #2: The Universe Starts to Revolve Around a Lucky Few

Granted, this is a little bit easier to avoid for these Canticles because the timelines are centuries apart from each other, but the risk is always present. Sequels or prequels are fun because characters are already established and we can then move on to putting an interesting cast in a brand new situation to see what will happen. The risk here is that the universe will start to turn around these characters instead of the other way around.

Fans will actively push against the introduction of new characters or previously unrelated parts of the universe because they’ve already done the work of understanding the main character and the thin slice of the universe that they inhabit. It’s easier to frame anything new in terms of how it relates with the old, which is inherently self-limiting. “Who is this? It’s Indiana Jones’ new love interest.” “Him? Oh that’s Biff Tanen’s great grandfather who lived in the Old West and had the exact same personality and is played by the same actor.” “Mr. Bond, the Crown needs you to be the last line of defense in this mission that will decide the fate of the free world… why? Because there wouldn’t be a movie if a massive organization like MI6 had proper internal and external controls and competent people in charge to prevent situations from deteriorating to the point where everything relies on the actions of a single super spy… No, there will not be an internal investigation about the failures after you complete your mission, Mr. Bond. We need to set up the sequel.”

Ironically, a series of stories tend to get more myopic with the more time it spends in the a universe. Really compelling stories expand their universe as they go on. While this is tougher to do, it is magical when it is done well. To explain both good and bad examples, I’m going to pick on Star Wars again.

To oversimplify a cultural juggernaut, the original trilogy was a tale of a young man who was thrust into a much larger conflict that he didn’t quite understand at first. For this discussion, Luke Skywalker’s universe got bigger as he learned more about the truth of the Empire, the Force, the Rebels, and the relationships between his friends and family. The Empire Strikes Back is a masterclass in expanding a universe while also staying connected and expanding established characters. The emperor, Lando, and Yoda all have direct connections with previously established characters, yet they bring in new perspectives and depth to the universe as well.

Conversely, the universe of the prequels and subsequent films and TV shows typically make the universe much smaller because most events are framed around how they directly lead to the events of the original trilogy. In a galaxy of billions or trillions of characters, most characters we spend time with can be summed up in terms of how they are related to Darth Vader or Boba Fett. Even the Knights of the Old Republic games, set 5000 years before the events of a New Hope, can’t help but fall victim to this. You can find armor belonging to Cassus Fett- a famed bounty hunter. In the Star Wars universe, the Fett family have all been famous and feared bounty hunters throughout the galaxy for about as long as Stonehenge has existed on Earth. It’s absurd, and I’m glad that many Star Wars fans recognize this absurdity.

“My name is John Stonehenge, from the same family that has built every monument on Earth since forever. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”

For the Canticles, I have chosen to side-step this problem. Arlia Janet/Valens didn’t show up until halfway through Hymns of the Apostate and Ms. Blail is still absent from Lost Noise after 100+ pages into the story. This is intentional because I want to explore new aspects of this universe with different characters while also keeping the themes consistent. It’s hard to deconstruct or comment on a motif using characters with perspectives that we’ve already explored. Frankly, it’s not going to be interesting seeing what happens to Nyle, Balen, and Karen because we already know what happens to them. We don’t know what is going to happen to Zel, the Chieftess, Marie De Ralse, and the Xin Yun’s extended family, and I can’t wait to see where their decisions take them.

Nyle, Balen, and Karen will play a role in this story, of course, and we will see how they change throughout the events of Lost Noise. I am looking forward to sharing some aspects of their lives and personalities that we didn’t get in Fortuna Saga, and we’ve already seen some of this. However, I don’t expect to build a lot of narrative tension from their particular slices of the universe.

Many prequels try to tackle this issue by showing how a character became the character we already know. How did Anakin Skywalker become Darth Vader? These types of questions are usually dissatisfying because Anakin is simply less interesting than Darth Vader. Anakin follows a linear flight path from Chosen One to Fallen Hero. It was never a question of if he would choose the path he chose, and he is constrained by this poorly-structured narrative necessity for him to fall.

We never see any new side of Anakin. After dozens of additional hours from movies, TV shows, and cartoons expanding on the saga of Darth Vader, the throwaway line that Obi-wan said in Episode IV is sufficient. He was a good Jedi who succumbed to the temptation of the dark side and was lost.

It’s less interesting on the screen than Obi-wan made it sound.

Instead, I hope to expand on the world of Lost Noise and provide new context for why Nyle and his friends went the way that they did while hopefully building more tension about how those decisions impact and are impacted by the actions of the rest of the world. The world of Lost Noise does not exist to stuff Nyle into a hole. The world will hopefully feel much, much bigger than that.