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Author: Professor Noone

When the Bad Guys Win But It’s Not a Downer

Posted on May 26, 2019May 26, 2019 by Professor Noone

Quick disclaimer: I’m on my second read of the novels, and not yet to the Red Wedding again, so I’m going to be looking just at the ending of A Game of Thrones (the book). Everyone with even passing knowledge of the series knows about the dramatic and shocking event at the end of AGoT…

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What Makes For A Badass

Posted on May 24, 2019June 6, 2019 by Professor Noone

Arya leaping from the shadows to shank the Night King was not badass. But why not? Plenty of people have lobbed well-founded criticisms at that moment: The Night King was Jon’s adversary, not hers; her ninja skills leveling up was out of nowhere; the Night King’s invasion ended way too quickly; you can’t just retcon…

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The Potatoes and Vodka of Westeros

Posted on May 21, 2019May 21, 2019 by Professor Noone

In Faking Shapely Fiction, Michael Byers splits written descriptions into two camps: potatoes and vodka. Potatoes are the tangible, observable facts of a scene, while vodka is the meaning the narrator distills from them. For example, a scene from The Great Gatsby when Nick first meets Jordan Baker, vodka in italics: The only completely stationary…

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The Novella is the Right Form for Cobra Kai

Posted on May 20, 2019May 20, 2019 by Professor Noone

This will be the first in a short series of posts where I’m breaking down just why Cobra Kai’s Season 1 was so good (I haven’t seen Season 2 yet, we’re using it to fill the break between GoT and Stranger Things). It’s also the summer, I’m done grading papers and instead of responding to…

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What Makes an Ending Work

Posted on May 20, 2019May 20, 2019 by Professor Noone

Any writer that asks “How should this series end?” has already gotten it wrong. The same is true for any other medium. “How should this movie end?” or “How should this novel end?” These questions miss the point, and there’s a far more important question that needs to be asked instead: How Should This Story…

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Where the Red Wedding Fits into the Greater Story

Posted on May 16, 2019May 16, 2019 by Professor Noone

In light of the Game of Thrones TV series coming to its end, and the book series entering (eventually) into its final stage, some folks are starting to ask what I think is a really interesting question: Just what was the purpose of the War of the Five Kings, and specifically the Red Wedding? I’ll…

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How to Avoid Contrived Story Beats

Posted on May 14, 2019May 15, 2019 by Professor Noone

While many authors talk about letting the characters drive the narrative and just following wherever they take the story, it’s common for them to also have a specific place they want the story to go. For Game of Thrones, we can identify a few of these landmark events where the story needs to get to:…

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Giving a Story Importance

Posted on May 13, 2019May 13, 2019 by Professor Noone

Often when a movie or TV show fails, it leaves the audience wondering “What was the point of all that?” This can happen for a number of reasons, but one of the most common is that the story wasn’t worth telling in the first place. When it comes to understanding any audience disappointment in the…

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How to Raise the Stakes

Posted on May 12, 2019May 12, 2019 by Professor Noone

Something a lot of TV series and film franchises miss the mark on is how to raise the stakes from one season or film to the next. They instinctively go towards having another “boss” to fight leading to a final showdown with the Final Boss, or creating some sort of Bigger Bad leading up to…

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What Makes Ambiguity Work

Posted on May 11, 2019May 11, 2019 by Professor Noone

Just like episode 8.3, this post won’t be about Jon Snow. What I want to discuss in this post is one thing that made Arya’s defeat of the Night King so controversial. I’m not arguing here about whether or not it was bad, but instead focusing on why there is so much disagreement and how…

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