You know when you watch a show, and you think to yourself “I love some of these characters… but my god this cast needs a culling.”
That’s how I felt watching The Expanse Season 4
Why? Well, I’ve listed the main storylines here:
Holden’s crew – Stuff’s always happening, tensions always there, this is great.
Bobby – This is pretty cool; she has a great, if somewhat illogical, arc.
Avasarala– Election campaign against… some other politician? no real stakes here.
Ashford – Marco Inaros is awesome, but nothing else here feels like it matters.
Two of these four plots lines aren’t in the books at all, unfortunately. Bobby’s is much better than the latte two because it’s adapted from a Novella, Gods of Risk. As for Avasarala and Ashford’s plotlines however, well them not being in the books…
…It really shows. All of the plot and jeopardy are on New Terra, with Holden and company, whereas the other storylines feel tacked on. I believe they don’t want these characters to leave the show between seasons; If they want Avasarala to have the same face in the next season, she needs to have scenes in this one. Otherwise she’ll have to be recast, like her husband, Arjun. Even if they don’t serve the overall story, or the plot, at all.
So, we have this odd situation where the main plot is driven, and the stakes are high, the villain is great and well-motivated. I’m always on the edge of my seat as to what’s gonna happen next, will all these settlers be wiped out? then we cut back to will Avasarala win the election? What? Who cares? Is her opponent evil? No, just ideologically different. Then why does it matter?
Then we have the station stuff, the Macro Inaros actor is fantastic, and he totally steals his big scene. Unfortunately, he’s only in a handful of scenes, and the rest of it is just Ashford and Drummer discussing how to deal with him being a pain in their ass. What are the stakes? Bad guy might do a bad thing again, maybe.
How could these two side plots be better?
Simple, give them the same villain.
Who should that be? It’s obvious, Inaros is the best part of both chapters, he also gives both chapters their only real sense of jeopardy. He can expand upon that
So how could we bring him into Avasarala trying to get elected?
Easy.
We have him try to get an Earth-side partner elected over Avasarala. First I thought maybe she finds this out early but can’t reveal it because of blackmail reasons. Then I realised it’d be even better, if she doesn’t and only we know the jeopardy she’s really in. That dials up the tension, as her actions are all taken sitting next to a time bomb. Suddenly her election’s stakes seem huge. A terrorist could become the president of earth by proxy? Those are some high stakes.
Because she didn’t know about it as well, she could effectively be her own enemy in this plot, maybe she continues making a deal with the puppet of some sort, or her husband convinces her to consider resignation. Logical for him, and her given the right circumstances, but disastrous in a way that only we know.
How do we combine them?
Across the solar system, Ashford and Drummer’s mission is the same: stop a terrorist. Only thing is this time he’s threating to become President of Earth. First, I thought, maybe he could push the colonisation agenda to link us thematically to the Rosinante crew’s jeopardy.
Then I realised we could directly link it in by having Inaros say he’s going to have his terrorist chums wipe out Holden over New Terra. There’re loads of plausible reasons for this, one being to help start a galactic war and capitalise on that chaos. So now instead of having one very driven plot and two unrelated events, we have three separate storylines dovetailing together.
Obviously, readers would know these things aren’t ultimately going to happen, but at least it gives them something more interesting to watch in the meanwhile, a story that twists and turns with the plot, rather than humming along in the background.
That’s me though, how did you think they could’ve improved Season 4 of The Expanse? What would you like to see in Season 5? Leave a comment down below and let me know.
p.s. I hid a secret pun in this article, leave a comment if you think you found it.
I came across a thread on Reddit where a new writer was asking for advice on how to improve and avoid mistakes. So here’s my advice to new writers.
You ever see someone get on a bike for the first time, and wheelie perfectly? Or someone bounce on a trampoline, and effortlessly backflip? Then why do you think creative writing is something where you can walk in and do well effortlessly?
This mentality of thinking the first thing you’ve ever written is probably… well…
You need to realise that it’s terrible.
No, scratch that.
It’s probably really, really terrible.
Fact. I’m sorry. Everyone I know wrote absolute garbage when they started. No matter what you say, there’s a small part of you that thinks what you’re writing is good. It’s not. Now for the good news…
This is the worst you’ll ever be at writing. In fact that last piece, you’re already a better writer than that. Congrats!
I’m just telling you all this now, so that when you get a critique from an outside perspective for the first time, you don’t give up.
When I got my first piece properly critiqued, it was destroyed. Massacred. Obliterated. Comments included things like;
I’m finding these long paragraphs of exposition on each character a little grating. I’d much rather see their character’s played out than be told about them, if that makes sense?
So I’m going to write the really annoying Show Don’t Tell thing here. This story become immediately more exiting if we learn everything through dialogue, action and their relationships
And a real gem
If it’s at the same time you don’t need the past tense “had”
It was taken apart because what I’d written deserved it. I tried to introduce 7 characters in my first chapter, I mixed up the present and past tense throughout, and I had huge info dumps littered throughout to try and educated the reader on my oh-so-brilliant world.
But it wasn’t a punishment. It may have felt a bit like it, but in truth it was a lesson. A whole series of lessons. Teaching me how to improve my grammar, my storytelling, and how to write for the reader. Most importantly, it taught me that I had a long way to go.
I like to believe that I’ve gotten better at writing since then. I almost certainly have, I have been writing quite a bit. But I never stop thinking that I can improve. None of us should, because our writing can always be better.
So to new writer, I say this. If you want to get better at you writing, there are a few short and simple things you can do.
Write regularly. Some people have absurd schedules, and insist on writing 1000 words a day. This is nonsense, but you do need to keep practising. Whatever pace suits you, but keep on writing.
Get outside criticism on your work. Your friends and family are always going to go gently on you. Put your pieces out there for critique for critique, or join a writers group. Just make sure whoever’s reading your work isn’t afraid to really lay into it, and that you get multiple perspectives. You don’t want to base criticism off of one persons thoughts.
Don’t give up. I’ve known lots of people who have decided that they either aren’t suited to writing, or aren’t willing to commit to improve. Writing can be incredibly fun, but only if you’re willing to put your pride to one side and take some heat.
I mean what I say. I love writing. But if you love writing, you have to be committed to improving. And to be committed to improving, you have to accept that there’s a lot you’re doing wrong.
No one walked into their first karate session a black belt. And none of us start writing as a New York Times bestseller. To get there, you’ve got to be ready to take the punches.
If you are, one day your writing won’t be terrible.
As with all things in life, the most important thing is not the how, but the why.
Giving
Why do we give critique?
To help make a piece the best it can be. The world needs art, and is better for it. If the piece is as good as it can be, then you’ve genuinely made the world a better place, in a small way.
It’s useful to imagine critiquing like this: You’re a make-up artist presented with a soon-to-be bride. You have to get her looking beautiful for her big day. But all you can do for the Bride, is guide. It’s not your job to criticise her, or break her down, but to ensure she can make herself look the best she possibly can.
Maybe that means you need to explain, step by step, why she’s applying eyeliner wrong. Maybe it means you need to tell her that the blue eye-shadow she loves will never suit her eyes. It’s not your job to protect her ego any more than you have to, so that she can keep going.
But if you can’t say a single positive thing about the piece, then you’re not coming from the right place. Critique is a small death. The death of what the writer thought the piece was, and that can be painful. You need to ease that pain, to give the writer a light at the end of the rewrites.
Knowing that you have 15 things to work on is overwhelming, knowing that you have 15 things to work on, but 1 thing you’ve done great, is encouraging.
Receiving
The problem with receiving critique is that you want to believe a lie.
Returning to our metaphor, you want to believe you’re great at makeup. You might have the best smoky eye in the world, but it doesn’t change the fact that your foundation sucks. So, you need to put your pride aside, and listen to the make-up artist telling you where you’re going wrong.
The lie pretends it exists as “This piece is good,” But in reality the lie is “I am good, because this piece is good.”
The reality is, so long as you are identified with the piece as it is now, you are closed to what it could be.
When you receive critique, if you feel anger, sadness or even shame, you’ve fallen into this trap.
The best way to receive critique is with detachment, and often with that comes laughter. As you know this is a step in a never-ending spiral upwards, towards the ultimate form of the piece. Receiving critique is literally the work of chiselling your masterpiece. Removing the jutting pieces of marble, step-by-step to reveal your David.
Even if you’ve spent five years on it, and there’s still 5 more years left, so what? It took Tolkien 17.
One last thing
Not all critique is good critique: Sometimes it’s mean-spirited or ill-advised.
Sometimes several people tell you something sucks, and you don’t feel attached to keeping it, but your gut still says cutting it is wrong. In these cases, You are the writer, so follow your gut, not someone else’s.
Even well-intentioned, but bad, critique can ruin a piece. They’re giving you an opinion, like a beta reader; treat it as that. it’s not gospel, it’s not necessarily right despite how certain they may be, it’s ultimately just an opinion. And if it feels mean-spirited, it probably is, so throw it out; no good critique ever came from anger.
Tl;dr – Really? You can’t take two minutes to be a better writer? Scroll up.
Choose a number, 1 to 5, and make a note of it. This will be your starting sentence. Then do the same twice more, keeping them in order. These will be your middle and last sentences.
E.g. Starting sentence: 3
Middle sentence: 5
Last sentence: 2
Then choose two seperate numbers, from 1 to 10. These will be your imagery.
Find the corresponding fragments from the lists below, and spend ten minutes trying to weave them into a piece of writing. Good luck!
Starting sentence
I was dressed in a completely inappropriate shade of pink.
As I stared at him, he blushed a violent shade of red.
My dad and I had never gotten along.
The dog was loose in the park, and I couldn’t find her.
Thinking back, I’d had plenty of reasons to be suspicious.
Middle sentence (Just somewhere in between the two other sentences)
Last night I cheated on my partner. And it wasn’t the first time.
I should never have gone to Morocco.
At this point, public humiliation was an old friend.
I’d have never guessed the key to it all was my old fedora.
I couldn’t believe I’d killed a crow.
Last sentence
The way she’d made tea.
I love it when a plan comes together.
I was going to regret this in the morning.
All in all, it was a rather tasteful funeral.
Destiny is a fickle thing.
Imagery (These don’t have to be incorporated literally – be creative!)
A crack in the pavement
The smell of my grandmother’s laundry
The warbling of birdsong
A gleaming Mercedes
The smell of a new book
The whistling of a kettle
An old battered notebook
The smell of freshly ground coffee
The ticking of an old grandfather clock
The stench of a strong french cheese
Some of our examples
As I stared at him, he blushed a violent shade of red. James had never done well with attention – the man would start shaking if he was talking to more than three people – so why he’d chosen to ride in this monstrosity, I had no idea. He’d turned up to my house in a gold plated Mercedes, it’s body gleaming in the sun. I could feel the eyes of my neighbours on me, as they snuck a glance at out of their windows. Truly, I should have been mortified, but at this point, public humiliation was an old friend.
“Get in,” I hissed at him, and we ducked inside the gaudy beast.
It’s interior stank of freshly ground coffee – James drank the stuff by the gallon – and we took off down the road like a peacock running through a poultry farm.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
“It’s my uncles.” He winced. “He wanted me to look after it, and I can’t just leave it on the driveway.”
“Is your uncle a fucking oil magnate?” I asked, incredulous.
“Something like that.” James sighed, and took a sip of his large Starbucks brew. “I gotta ask you. Please, please, could you look after it for me? I can’t stand the attention.”
Wow. Usually, my luck is for shit. But all things considered… this could be fun. Destiny really is a fickle thing.
My dad and I had never gotten along. Mainly ‘cause he was a prick. He was right about something though… I should never have gone to Morocco.
A nice little heist Keys said, steal a priceless old battered notebook, straight back home. It wasn’t quite like that of course. We stole it alight, but turns out the police in Morroco don’t play very fair. They shoot out our wheels and after flipping the car over a crack in the pavement, we ended up in a Moroccan prison.
For a country with such vehemently anti-gay laws, prison sure didn’t feel like a safe place to shower. So we didn’t, and the smell helped keep the gangs away too, after a while. All the gangs except Stinky Steve, he’d lost his nose in some far-off war, so he’d sidle up beside me in line and grin with that solitary tooth of his. He pushed and I pushed back, but one day I was in the shower, and everyone left. Except Stinky Steve. He smiled at me and said something a mix of romantic and threatening in Arabic. Then I did the last thing he expected…
I kissed him. He practically swooned in my arms out of pure shock, and with that I grabbed the tiny white tufts of hair he had, and smashed his skull open, chucks of his brain splattered across the room. I said goodbye, and invited Nasty Nick in, he always knew how to deal with a dead body. To my surprise, he buried him in a small hole, and said a prayer for his soul. All in all, it was a rather tasteful funeral.
If you’ve spent any amount of time trying to improve your writing skills, you will undoubtedly have come across the idea that every line should be significant.
New writers often rebuke this as pure nonsense. Arguing that great writing can carry the reader through inconsequential moments.
“Sure,” they say, “this shopping list from 2350 may seem boring, but I’ll write it so well that…”
This idea is particularly true with science fiction and fantasy writers, who sometimes value rich ideas above story. And to an extent, they’re right.
The advice comes from a very modern idea of how to tell a story. If you’ve read any classical literature, or indeed anything from the pre-war era, you’ll know older authors could ramble on at length on meaningless details. Dickens was renowned for rambling descriptions that bore very little significance to the story or reader, despite being well written.
So if Dickens and Tolkien and F. Scott Fitzgerald could all do it, we can clearly see the advice that every line must be important to the story is an exaggeration. There are plenty of examples of beautiful prose that could be cut with regards to character, world or plot, but still stand as examples of great writing. After all isn’t half the point of writing just making absurdly beautiful sentences anyway?
All that being said, it’s important for writers to appreciate how disciplined writing can result in great storytelling. After all, if we as writers can’t appreciate the importance of every sentence in our work, then why should we expect readers to?
One of my favourite examples is Marko Kloos’ Aftershocks. The introduction to the story is, theoretically, of little consequence; the main character isn’t being shot at, in a chase or meeting a wizard. He’s just looking out of a window. Yet in the very first paragraph of this book, we learn so much about Kloos’ world and the character talking, that it instantly hooks us into the story.
Needless to say, there are SPOILERS AHEAD
“Even from the windows of a prison, Rhodia was a beautiful place.
Aden liked to spend the half hour between breakfast and morning orders sitting in the central atrium by himself. From seven hundred meters up, the panoramic windows offered a stunning view of what seemed like most of the southern continent. The graceful and elegant arcologies of the capital rose into the sky in the distance, so tall that on some day their tops disappeared in the clouds. Beyond, the ocean shimmered, turquoise and blue. For variety, the Rhodians moved their POWs from one section of the detainment arcology to another every year, each time facing a different cardinal direction so every prisoner could have a change of scenery. Last year, Aden had a stunning view of the great snowcapped mountain range that divided the single continent of this planet. This year, it was the distant city, ocean and tranquil skies. He had been a prisoner of war for five years, but Aden still hadn’t quite made up his mind whether a beautiful prison was really better than an austere one.”
This paragraph’s an easy read. We don’t feel overwhelmed by information, as we’re simply being shown a scenic view. Yet the amount of information covertly conveyed is huge, and hooks us into the character and the word.
“Even from the windows of a prison, Rhodia was a beautiful place.”
It’s an amazing hook. The oxymoron – a beautiful prison – instantly yanks us in. This theme of harsh pragmatism combining with beautiful surroundings will form the basis for Aden’s story. Throughout the book he is presented with wonderful sights and opportunities, denied him, out of circumstance. The line serves its purpose in drawing the reader in, and sets the tone for the rest of the story.
“Aden liked to spend the half hour between breakfast and morning orders sitting in the central atrium by himself.”
This line continues the theme. We are presented with another contrast. We can see from the strict routine of prison life that Aden has very few rights. Indeed, “orders” implies a militaristic control to his confinement. And yet, he’s allowed free time, that he chooses to spend alone.
This sets up an idea of a society of excess and arrogance. They’re clearly taking the security of these prisoners seriously, but have the resources and time to allow them to wander off and do what they want. It also sets Aden apart from this society: he’s a loner. Not only is he in prison, but he’s choosing to isolate himself from his fellow inmates.
“From seven hundred meters up, the panoramic windows offered a stunning view of what seemed like most of the southern continent.”
This builds on the ideas of excess seeded in the previous line; these people give their prisoners panoramic views of the continent? However the height implies that this society may be suffering from major issues. Their prison is 700m in the air, presumably a skyscraper. This hints at either an enormous number of prisoners, or a lack of space to house them. The reference to ‘most of the southern continent’ being seen out one window confirms this: This society lacks territory.
“The graceful and elegant arcologies of the capital rose into the sky in the distance, so tall that on some day their tops disappeared in the clouds.”
This sentence ties together all the previous ideas; Rhodia is a society building incredibly tall arcologies, something only needed if you lack space. However despite the necessity of their actions, they’ve built them “graceful and elegant”. It’s a society with a overwhelming need for new land, but despite this, they still value beauty alongside pragmatism.
“Beyond, the ocean shimmered, turquoise and blue.”
This sentence, more than any other, seems of little significance. However, considering Aden is looking over half a continent here, the fact he can see the ocean is worrying. It really emphasises the lack of land, and brings the themes we’ve been juggling to a gentle rest.
“For variety, the Rhodians moved their POWs from one section of the detainment arcology to another every year, each time facing a different cardinal direction so every prisoner could have a change of scenery.”
Tying new ideas to Aden’s previous musings on the view, we are introduced to an important element: Aden is a prisoner of war. This informs us that Rhodia has been in a war, and Aden was on the other side. This is a war of significance, enough so that Rhodia created a system to manage loads of POWs for years.
We get another reminder of Rhodia’s lack of land – apparently they house their POWs within sight of their capital – and also their values as a civilisation – they afford POWs skyscraper accommodations with brilliant views, even taking the time to rotate them to avoid boredom.
“Last year, Aden had a stunning view of the great snowcapped mountain range that divided the single continent of this planet.”
Once again, pressing home the dire need for land on this planet. However, it also presses home the beauty of the planet. It was directly stated in the opening line, but now we’re realising that every view of Rhodia is beautiful. It hints at the base for the Rhodians prioritising beauty over pragmatism. Their world is a beautiful one, but a harsh world nonetheless, with little land suitable for life – a mountain range dissects the continent. You need to appreciate beauty in a harsh world to want to live here.
“This year, it was the distant city, ocean and tranquil skies.”
We understand from this list, and the previous sentence that Aden has been imprisoned here for years. This rotation of views is routine to him, as is prison life. We also understand that Rhodia is always beautiful. This is his reflection of the views from years of imprisonment, not just right now.
“He had been a prisoner of war for five years, but Aden still hadn’t quite made up his mind whether a beautiful prison was really better than an austere one.”
This closing sentence to the paragraph ties together the themes set before us, both for Aden as a character and for us as the reader. Aden has been imprisoned for a long time, long enough to have been imprisoned in both “austere” conditions and this new prison. However, on a personal level, he values his freedom as an individual too highly to consider this prison better than any other. This is the basis for his character, shown throughout the book. Free will above anything else.
It also gives us a glimpse at the conflicts prevalent throughout the book’s world. The Rhodian’s enemies, the Gretians, are a much harsher society, more befitting a traditional “evil empire”. They are the “austere” prison. But as we go through the story we can see that the beautiful and good Rhodians are in many ways just as bad. They may have beautiful cities, and a beautiful way of life, but to Aden, they press upon his liberties even more intrusively than his home world.
This one paragraph in the story manages to present all the key plot and character themes in less than two hundred words, disguised as a simple description of the POV’s surrounding. This is because Kloos makes sure that every sentence contributes to the reader’s understanding of the world. The discipline presented here hooks the reader in, and promises a world complex and intriguing.
It may not be poetry. In essence, it’s rather straightforward writing. But it’s brilliant storytelling.
The Fellowship Of Ink 