Quest to Nowhere

The Basics of Narrative:

Now in the first part I sort of talked about things fairly generally, which really won’t fly with what I intend to discuss here. As such I need to establish something of a base for you, the reader, to understand what I’m talking about since not everyone has spent time learning how to write narrative works, and whatnot.

So what I aim to talk about in this part is the Act 2’s of webcomics with long running stories. What I mean by Act 2 is in reference to the 3 act system of writing used for movies, as well as TV, books, and video games (sometimes.) Act 1 is the introduction, where the reader learns about the characters and the world of the story. Act 2 is the main bit, where the characters do things (go on a quest, fight things, maybe just have tea.) Act 3 is the end bit, with the final conflict and resolution.

Now in long running story comics (webcomic, manga, and regular) what tends to happen is you start with Act 1, and then after introductions move into Act 2, but then you never move into Act 3. This is done for obvious reasons, since if you move into Act 3 you are basically resolving and ending the story. So not wanting it to end Act 2 is prolonged.

Open Ended or Close Ended:

If you want examples of this Act 2 business you can look at MegaTokyo, or 8-Bit Theater, or you can look at manga like Naruto, or One Piece, or pretty much any superhero comic, or even look at TV soap operas. But there is are differences amongst these, by which I mean that there are two different kinds of long form stories: the open ended, and the close ended.

Open ended stories are what you usually see soap operas, or superhero comics, where there is no pre-determined end, at least none that the reader/watcher is made aware of. For instance in a soap opera characters die or leave, and new characters show up, but the story always continues. There is no defined end state for the story.

Now with close ended stories there is an end state, and the reader/watcher is usually made aware of it. You can see this for example in manga like One Piece (Luffy becomes Pirate King/find One Piece,) or in a webcomic like the Wotch (Wotch fights/defeats great evil.) Now making the end state known doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how its going to end, it just sort of lets the reader generally know where the story is going.

Do’s and Don’ts:

My problem with prolonged Act 2’s is that after a while they can really drag on, and it can feel as though nothing is really happening of any significance either to the story as a whole, or to the characters. An example of this can be seen in the webcomic The Wotch.

I’m not going to get into detail about the story, but suffice to say that the story feels as though it has become stagnant. Although the characters are always doing something, overall it doesn’t seem as though there is any real development to be found in the characters, or in the story. Every so often there maybe something significant that seems to occur that moves the larger story forward, or changes/develops the characters a little more but for the most part these events occur but don’t seem to have much lasting impact on anything. And if there is any sort of development in a character it seems to be only called upon occasionally when it seems convenient to bring it up again to help validate some story element.

It’s basically bad writing, but I don’t think it would necessarily be as bad if the comic wasn’t a close ended story. Fairly early on in the comic the sort of ending battle against the great evil was alluded to, and over time it’s been hinted at or developed more and more, but generally that bit of the story seems to do more harm then good. This is because as readers we’ve been told this epic battle is eventually to happen, but it seems like its never going to. Because they have this end condition we want to see the story build to that, but it doesn’t seem like it wants to.

The End is only the Beginning:

I’m not saying here that having an extended Act 2 is a bad thing, but I think a lot of webcomic writers feel a need to drag their comics out as long as they can, and in doing so are actually hurting the story. Well maybe drag out isn’t the right wording, its more of a fear of Act 3. Which is the problem the Wotch seems to suffer from.

Dominic Deegan on the other hand is the the best example I can think of of a webcomic that does does the extended Act 2 story well. The comic starts with a major plot arc that ends with the title character saving the world, as one would expect. But the comic has continued even after this point that would normally be an end point for most stories.

Now this can also be a bad thing, since the story can feel forced or unnecessarily dragged on. Dominic Deegan gets around this by changing the focus of the story, to some extent. The story prior to this point was about Dominic, and telling his story. But after the end of this main arc Dominic becomes the central character in exploring the world of the Dominic Deegan comic.

Shifting the focus of the comic allows for more stories, and lots of different stories that weren’t explored during that original arc. In the case of Dominic Deegan it takes its time explaining some of the finer details of Dominic’s past that weren’t covered, but then it also introduces new characters and new locals which each have their own stories and histories that are/can be explored in the comic.

In effect what you want to do is go from Act 2 to Act 3, resolve the major plot points from Act 2, then spin Act 3 into a new Act 1, and continue from there. Now the reason you want to do all this is to keep the reader’s attention, delaying the inevitable doesn’t necessarily do this. Continuing to move the narrative forward however will, because it means that there is more you can potentially do as a writer once you free yourself from the constraints of your inevitable end.

So when doing a closed narrative story you want to have the Act 3, and then move to a open narrative. If you are in an open narrative, you may every so often want to have closed narrative arcs that you can use to build suspense, but generally you never want to truly define an end condition for the story until you know you want to really end it.

Standard End Bit

I’d like to hear what people think about this so leave a comment below, or email me at onegamersopinion [at] gmail [dot] com, with your questions/comments/feedback.

Not sure what I’m going to talk about next time, perhaps a little talk on Marketing/Finding your Audience.