Tag Archives: plot

Broke the mold

I enjoyed television until a couple shows broke the mold. Then, many shows disappointed me because they became too predictable. The shows that changed the watching experience for me were Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. Both of these had me bought in, made me a fan, gave me characters I really enjoyed… then killed them off!

At first this was hard to accept. But then suddenly the show got better. At any moment a favourite cast member could be killed off.

I grew up on Scooby Doo, The Lone Ranger, Magnum PI, The 6 Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files, Starsky & Hutch Charlie’s Angels, Chips, Hawaii 5-0, The A-Team, the cartoon version of Spiderman, and many more shows that had similar formulas… the good guys always win in the end, and no matter how perilous, the star characters always survived.

As soon as this mold was broken, these shows, and the many series that followed them, seemed terribly simplistic. I mean, they were simplistic before these shows changed the formula, but having gone through the experience of a series with characters that could die at any moment, the old drama/suspense/mystery formula just ceased to be enjoyable.

In July I got into listening to a novel series called ‘The Grey Man’ by Mark Greaney. The Grey Man is a former spy who is a hired mercenary who only hunts bad guys, but is also targeted by the CIA, and his former colleagues.

I was really excited to see that a movie version came out, but it was painfully bad. I know that movies have to take liberties when moving from text to screen, but this movie had the Gray Man do many things that undermined his character. He didn’t work alone. He chose a dangerous hand-to-hand Hollywood ending battle over an easy kill. Essentially, for the sake of a few dramatic scenes, they ignored his true character and put him into the hero mold that most movies have… but it is precisely because he didn’t fit that mold that I and many others liked this character.

I really don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do I don’t want to see the same boring formula that has been used for years. I want to watch shows where the mold has been broken, and the story isn’t watered down to fit a cliche formula that no longer appeals to me… not that it ever really did, it’s just what was available.

Story plot

I’ve been enjoying Dune, by Frank Herbert, as an audiobook. It’s 20+ hours long and I’ve got about 3 hours left. It’s basically a messiah heroes journey and it’s very well written. This gave me an idea for a plot of a book or movie.

I’d call it ‘The Reluctant Messiah’. Basically it’s about 2 best friends, and one of them is the Chosen One. He doesn’t want to be, and the friend is jealous of him. For 2/3rds of the move the chosen one is the protagonist, we get to hear inside his head. We see things the friend doesn’t. Then something totally unexpected happens. The chosen one reluctantly goes up against a weak nemesis that he feels is below him and he is killed. The protagonist is gone and nothing is resolved.

The best friend now reluctantly picks up the reins and is forced to take over, but to this point there is not a single hint that this will happen. Now he gets his chance he has been jealous of, but totally doesn’t want it, and doesn’t feel ready for it, (he is actually the reluctant messiah).

Further, the reader is in full knowledge of things the new messiah should know, but doesn’t… because he wasn’t part of different aspects of the training involved while the reader was there, with the original messiah. So the reader has to watch this new messiah totally mess up the prophesies, and make almost fatal errors, with devastating collateral damage, on his way to saving the day in a totally different way. And thus the new messiah creates folklore that is absolutely nothing like the old folklore told at the start of the story.

The really novel thing here is going through 2/3rds of the book having absolutely no idea who the real protagonist is, and having the original protagonist die in a completely unexpected way before the climax of the story is close.

That’s the idea, I’d love to see someone pull it off.