I’m all epic-ed out

So yesterday was not a good day for me. I spent most of the day sleeping on the couch, and I was only up for a few hours at a time before dropping again. During one of the times I was upright, I checked Twitter and found several followers had RTed ads for a book that just the elevator pitch had me ready to snap. The villain was described as having the power to destroy stars.

I’m rubbing my forehead now, because I want you to ponder this. If your villain can blow up the sun, why in the fuck would they bother chasing your Mary Sue hero around? Why not just blow up the sun? Boom, done. No risk of getting killed by the hero, because the hero and all their friends are dead. But of course the villain didn’t bother reading the guide for megalomaniacs to see where their plan sucks a dick.

I’ve just about given up on reading any story where the scale approaches saving the whole world, but now I’m seeing some writers trying to up the scale to the whole solar system. This is lazy writing. It’s like “Well gee, I can’t think up a story that’s interesting. Might as well threaten the whole world to make the hero look good.” Most of the time, this choice to go for a global scale story is sacrificing character development for the sake of plot devices. The hero is ultimate good, the villain is evil, and there’s no need to examine either character’s underlying motivations because they don’t have any.

I’m not opposed to saving the world every once in a while, but in spec-fic, this is turning into a go-to trend for writers who want an easy route to The End. It’s a glut of people stuck in creative ruts, and it’s getting tired. I’m even seeing teen romances crank up the epic scale, sacrificing their romance story for the sake of saving the world, and it’s not worth it to read the books. Why bother reading cardboard cutouts spewing stereotypical lines when there’s nothing new or creative to keep me hooked in?

I wish I could say this was only a problem with new writers, or that it’s only a problem with certain indies. But this is popping up in work from the big publishers, and it’s showing up in the stories of writers who I know have better skills than this. Maybe it’s a sign of creative burnout. Maybe this is the result of people forcing themselves to write every day, so they crank out ANYTHING to keep the word count up for the day. I don’t know.

What I do know is, increasing the scale of the plot hurts the most vital aspect of any story, character development. I want to see more villains that have stronger motivations for their evil plots. I want to see heroes who have a reason to be good. Or failing that, at least give a better explanation of how they get sucked into the role of hero. Don’t just hand me another black VS white plot, because I’m rage quitting these things faster than a preteen in a Madden game at half-time.

I’m really not saying writers can never go for the save the world angle, and one of my stories coming out will involve a global scale plot. But if every story you write cranks the tension to eleventy by threatening the whole world, you need to slow down your writing output and examine your motivations for writing. Are you interested in telling readers about your characters at all? Or can any of your books be swapped for each other with only a new set of names applied to the same roles? Because if I can take all your books and describe the same plot, but with different character names, that’s not good.

Just put more effort into your art, please. If your plot starts heading to a fate of the world scale, step back and look around to see if there’s some other way to tell the story. If you still can’t avoid threatening the world, at the very least, make the villain more fleshed out. And for the love of God, don’t tell me they can blow up the sun, but choose to chase around one person on a planet they could easily atomize. Because that’s neither creative, nor believable. And literally, I’m not buying that.