Episode 661 - Steaks... stakes
Nov 13, 2023
Stakes are a part of a story. What does a character want? What means the most to the character? What are they after, what do they care about? Stakes can be really subjective like that and they can also be objective and more universal like death, debt, a threat to a home, nation, planet or even the universe. The most important thing though is that you can communicate the value of those stakes to the audience! It doesn't actually matter WHAT the stakes are as long as the audience understands that they're important.
Topics and Show Notes
Sooooo so many writers seem to have zero idea about that. One idea is that you need to “raise the stakes” in order to get the audience to be more invested, which certainly works but what a bad writer will always do is just crudely add onto the objective stakes: “Ten people were in danger but NOW it's 500! But wait… now it's 6000. OMG, now it's a million! Oh wow, the fate of the known universe hangs in the balance!”. The truth is that at a certain point it loses value, we just can't relate very well to bigger and bigger numbers and the “known universe” is an empty concept to most people. To really raise the stakes you have to pick things that the audience CAN care about and/or show that it's really affecting the characters in a way the audience can symbathise with.
If you write it correctly, a character losing their favourite pen can be a tragedy of earth shaking proportions and them needing to get it back can be an epic tale of redemption and self discovery without them ever leaving their office.
The idea here was inspired by Banes' newspost on the Marvel films. They're a great case in point, the higher they make the stakes the less we care. The first Avengers movie was a lot of fun till the end when they were trying to save New York city, fighting hoards of meaningless CGI blobs: “raising the stakes” didn't make things more interesting. It was more engaging when they were talking and just fighting Loki because these were stakes we could more easily relate to. It's a pattern that repeats in a lot of marvel movies and TV shows. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong.
How do YOU approach stakes?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by I wont Marry the General as the Dragon Lords only Daughter - A dense, layered palace of a tune here, it sounds like the theme to a major Hollywood film. We have a lot of body, depth and power to this sound. All electronic. You can just imagine mysterious opening scenes, titles fading into view and flicking of screen as you wait in anticipation for the story to begin.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Inspired by Banes' newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/nov/08/mcu-scraps-do-overs-and-to-reboot-or-not-to-reboot/
Featured comic:
Adkien - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/nov/06/featured-comic-adkien/
Featured music:
I wont Marry the General as the Dragon Lords only Daughter - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/I_wont_Marry_the_General_as_the_Dragon_Lords_only_Daughter/ - by ShriekingMagpie, rated A.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 660 - The Multiverse
Nov 6, 2023
Multiverses are really popular in fiction right now, eg. Dr Strange into the mouth of Madness, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Flash, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Rick and Morty, and The Loki TV series (which I love). So what is a multiverse and why is it used? Basically when multiple universes coexist at the same time, either there are a few and they're widely different or they are infinite and every possibility exists. In the real world the idea of multiple universes is purely theoretical and a relatively minor part of various quantum physics theories, while in fiction it's an important tool for mashing together separate IPs that wouldn't normally fit together and also telling interesting stories with parallel elements and “what-if” scenarios.
Episode 659 - Happy Halloween 2023
Oct 30, 2023
Happy Halloween! The time of spookiness and ghosts. Spooks messed up the cast so the sound quality is really bad I'm afraid, I tried to do what I could to fix it though. This week Banes, I, and Tantz are chatting about Halloween and related subjects like scary movies and things. I personally only like comedy horror, or whacky horror films where things are taken too far so I don't identify with the characters and feel bad because of it. I find I identify with characters in film far too much (if it's realistic), the genre doesn't matter, it can be comedy, horror, murder mystery, romance whatever, so that means if the tone is too tragic and depressing it usually makes me feel extremely down. For that reason a lot of horror doesn't appeal to me unless I can distance myself from the characters somehow. So comedy helps, or if it's super-over-the-top and whacky like The Nun.
Episode 658 - Marvelous musicals
Oct 23, 2023
We're chatting about the subject of musicals for this particular Quackcast. You might think this has nothing to do with webcomics but webcomic musicals popup from time to time, like The Black Parade on DD by Ashlee S.
Episode 657 - The art of the tease
Oct 16, 2023
The art of the tease is what we're talking about here. It's something Banes and I work with on Bottomless Waitress and it's what you see in a lot of raunchy comedies, you also see it in other applications too, like in a slasher thriller where it's teased that a character will become a victim but they never do. My fave application though is the traditional sex comedy where there's never anything explicit even though that is the thing you're always led to expect is just around the corner. The art is to keep people hanging on with the internal expectation of seeing something, while never actually delivering on it and yet not pissing them off.
Episode 656 - Character Growth 2, Indiana Jones
Oct 8, 2023
This Quackcast is a sequel to our Quackcast last week on alternative character growth, but instead of Star Wars this time we decided on Indiana Jones. It's a really interesting creative writing exercise, we think up a better, more interesting way of of growing and continuing an established character and their adventures.
Episode 655 - Alternative Character growth
Oct 2, 2023
Last week we focused on character growth VS tropes to run characters but Tantz had the idea to look at alternative growth for characters who did NOT grow well (after the original trilogy). So in this Quackcast we apply that to various Star Wars characters. Tantz tackles an alternative path and form for Anikin and Darth Vader, re-imagining them as two separate people. I tackle Han Solo and Princess Leia, thinking of them both as a happy couple who adventure and travel together in the Millennium falcon. Banes imagines Boba Fet as the head of a crime family!
Episode 654 - tropes vs character growth
Sep 25, 2023
Today we're chatting about characters who're mainly based on tropes VS those that grow. You see this difference quite clearly in a lot of British comedy VS American comedy where characters are set up in certain ways, e.g. the nerd, the sassy one, the mature one etc- in British stuff they tend to revert to type, which is their most important trait, while in American stuff they tend to change and grow based on interactions and experiences. There are MANY exceptions though and one way isn't inherently better than the other.
