If you need to build not only a person’s understanding of new physics but also how language works, how senses work, and lay an entirely new foundation, that’s a lot of work to get a person into the story you’re telling. The more familiar the elements, the faster they sink in.
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However. Weak storytellers who’ve not developed their skills believe tropes and archetypes are all that’s necessary for a story. They saturate the market with shallow repeats of the same dross over and over. Creative types overreact by proudly shunning any familiarity at all.
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You can check the shelves at your local collapsing bookstore to see what a system which abhors familiarity does to general appeal. Note the growing toy section in Barnes & Noble. Did you know they only stay afloat by selling store locations every year? Eventually they’ll run out
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Humans need familiar touchstones to feel immersed in a story without having to constantly pause and remember new facts. But how much familiarity? Too much and we become bored. More than that: Not enough depth creates lack of motivation to learn.
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Replying to @TheBrometheus
I'm going to break in here and go off in another direction with this too seldom asked question: "What are the mission critical attributes of the archetype?"
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Replying to @MishaBurnett @TheBrometheus
An archetype in fiction fulfils a particular narrative function. What are the tools that the character needs to fulfil that function? Let's take a Mentor, for example. Mentor does not mean "an old guy we kill off at the end of the first act."
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Replying to @MishaBurnett @TheBrometheus
A Mentor is "one who teaches another character a needed virtue." I am using "virtue" in the broad sense of a positive quality--it may be the virtue of skill, for example. The Mentor character should impart upon another character some positive quality.
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Replying to @MishaBurnett @TheBrometheus
That's the mission critical attribute--having something to teach. Being old, being enigmatic, having some "othering" characteristic such as ethnicity or belief system--those things are baggage, not innate.
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Replying to @MishaBurnett @TheBrometheus
Characteristics that are used as a signal that a character is a Mentor have taken the place of the core function. "Let's add in a weird old man and kill him off"--not because the character has any actual positive impact on the protagonist, but just because everybody does it.
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Replying to @MishaBurnett @TheBrometheus
Mathilda in "The Professional" and Miette in "The City Of Lost Children" are young girls who mentor adult men--because they give the main character something that he did not have prior to meeting them.
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I agree with what you’ve said here. I’ll also point out these are examples of blending archetypes. The film Logan used a similar character for similar purpose.
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