Personal Code of Storytelling

Ford Prefect had a moral code in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's fifth and until very recently final book, Mostly Harmless. (Rant tomorrow on ...And Another Thing.) The code goes something like this.

1. Never pay for your own drinks.
2. Never be cruel to any animal except geese.
3. Never bite the hand that feeds you (gentle nibbling okay).

I have a code about fiction.

1. Perfect heroes are boring.

2. Flawed heroes cannot obtain perfectly happy endings.

3. Perfectly happy endings are boring.

4. I would rather have a Bolivian Army Ending than a Deus Ex Machina.

5. Villains must die at the end of their first appearance (Big Bads of TV and book series are exempt from this rule. Leaving a film villain or minor villain alive at the end is obvious sequel-milking and must stop at once. Besides, Luke could have gotten some serious pathos if he found out Vader was his father after he already killed him).

6. Villains may defect and fight for good, but they may not become capital-H Heroes.

7. "Destroy the enemy superweapon" is not an acceptable plot line. They'll just build a new one.

8. "Destroy the enemy's mysical power source" is only acceptable as a plot line if you are JRR Tolkein.

9. You are not JRR Tolkein. (Hello, Mrs. Rowling)

10. You are not Joss Whedon. Nor are you Quentin Tarantino. Therefore you cannot write brilliant dialogue. And you will not have a rabid and devout geek/slacker following who swear that you can do no wrong.

11. You are not George Lucas. This is a good thing. (See #2, 3, 5 and 7.)

12. Making the same movie again and marketing it as a sequel is wrong. (Looking at Lucas again.)

13. Making the same movie again and marketing it as something completely different is very wrong. (Hello, Mr. Cameron.)

14. A sequel, in the very rare event that one is allowed to be made, must actually advance the plot. (Hello, Mr. Bond.)

15. Homages are okay. A story full of homages to different things is okay. A story that is nothing but homages to one other story is fanfiction.

16. Anyone who charges for fanfiction must be put to death.

17. No-one who gets their start writing fanfiction may write for the official continuation of the story about which they wrote their fanfiction. (Naming no names, I'm sure at least one of the Nu Who writers is guilty of this.)

18. No-one who gets their start directing music videos may direct anything but Art movies. "Style over substance" is not a good thing in drama (Hello Zack Snyder, I'm sure we'll meet again).

19. No, you may not reboot a franchise. That's called "cashing in on someone else's idea." It's also called "making the fanboys suffer continuity attacks." Come up with an original idea. (The Dark Knight was awesome. I just wish it didn't have to rely so much on already-established characters.)

20. Picking up an abandoned franchise where it left off is more acceptable, if only because Doctor Who did it so well.

21. No film series may last longer than three films. This means we wouldn't have Star Trek VI, but it also means no Star Wars prequels. We would have Star Trek: First Contact because of rule #23.

22. No television show/novel series may last longer than five seasons/books.

23. Exception to rules 21 and 22: if it changes scope dramatically (i.e. new writers, directors, cast, or focus) every three films/five years/books, it may continue indefinitely.

24. Any character who kills scores of innocents (innocents here meaning a faceless crowd of characters who are not actively evil), even for the greater good, is not a Hero. (Alan Moore you are guilty as hell of this.)

25. Blowing up New York before 9/11 was funny (Independence Day). Blowing up New York after 9/11 (and displaying the World Trade Center prominently in the skyline) is wrong. (Hello Zack Snyder. And no, I don't care that Watchmen is set in 1985. You made the movie after 9/11.)

26. And if you do nuke an American city, the guy who does it sure as hell doesn't walk (Hello Snyder/Moore again).

27. And if you do include the line "I did it thirty-five minutes ago" in your story, set it up right! (Moore did it right, Snyder not by a long shot.)

28. Slow-motion fighting was clever in The Matrix. But there was a purpose to it (for the lunkheads: to show that we're not in normal reality. This is why we never saw bullet-time outside of the Matrix). Way to devalue it, every single action flick since.

29. Vampires are not (healthy) romantic interests.

30. Unresolved sexual tension is not an acceptable main plot. Especially for a sequel.