Nov 05 2008
Why Secret Origins are Usually Awful
Occasionally, an author will breathlessly offer some revelation about a character’s origin. (Luke and Leia are siblings! Sylar is actually a Petrelli!) Secret origin stories are rarely effective.
1. They are unnecessarily confusing. On top of everything else you want us to remember about your characters, you now want us to forget what you originally told us about your Luke being an only child. Including false or otherwise misleading information in a plotline may make the plot convoluted.
2. Why not just take out the secret? Let’s say you want to reveal some “epic” secret about your character. He’s actually hundreds of years old, or someone’s son, or really a god in disguise. Is there some compelling reason to hide this information? If this information were actually interesting, the character would interest us even if we knew this information about him upfront. That would also help resolve the confusion issue.
3. The “surprise” rarely adds intrigue. Strong mysteries are interesting because we know the question and can follow along as the heroes try to answer it. “Who is the killer?” is an interesting question. “Who is Luke’s sister?” is not because we get the answer before we know that the question exists. There’s no anticipation, or even a sense that the question matters. At best, a secret origin creates a “gotcha!” moment that comes out of the blue.
4. They are typically contrived. It’s pretty convenient that, of all the trillions of people in the galaxy, it happens to be Luke Skywalker that rescues Leia from the Empire. In your story, it will probably feel just as contrived that of all the millions of potential parents, your hero just happens to be the son of the villain. (Also, that’s criminally cliche. If you’re going down that path, at least make the hero the father? That would be marginally better).
5. They frequently lead to continuity errors. When you decide that your main character has a secret origin, it’s hard to anticipate and correct all of the resulting changes. For example, the original Star Wars movie was marketed as a romance between Luke and Leia. Uhh, yeah. That’s pretty creepy.
Here are some of the more common secret origin stories.
- One character is secretly related to another.
- One character is pretending to be something else, like a man posing as a woman or possibly an alien posing as a human.
- The character is far older than he seems. (“But, if you were at the Battle of Asalukakoala, that would mean you’re thousands of years old!” More importantly, it would mean that the character is insufferable).
- A character is a god posing as a mortal.
- One character is secretly posing as another.
Suppose a character is not a god posing as a mortal, but rather a god incarnated into a mortal body because he gave up a significant portion of his power to help save someone from death?
As long as readers (and ideally the other characters) know that, it should be OK.
In retrospect, I think this explains why I was so annoyed about Agent Orange keeping his being a mutant alligator a secret in “The Best Investigator in the World.” The secret doesn’t add anything, but it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity and makes it harder to visualize what’s going on.
Well, some characters know, others don’t. But it’s clearly imply-revealed at the end of the very first book.
(What I mean by imply-reveal is that it isn’t explicitly stated, but we see the character saying/doing/knowing something that only the god-mortal could say/do/know, so although I don’t come out say it, the reader knows. Kinda like when at the end of a movie you see the villain’s eyes or hand or something, or like when Starscream escaped in the end of Transformers. It’s not stated, but you know it happened.)
Is this too much?
Erm, maybe. I guess it depends on the context. Which characters know? If the main heroes know and the main villains don’t, my gut feeling is that the element of secrecy will probably be minor enough that it won’t confuse people.
A few factors that will add to the potential for confusion are how few people know and how long it takes them to learn it and whether the character lies about his background. Deception is surprisingly confusing.
…
Could I ask a clarifying question? When you say that you clearly imply-reveal his lineage at the end of the very first book, do you mean that you’re clarifying it for the characters or the readers? (The example you give with Starscream suggests it’s for the benefit of the audience rather than the characters). If that’s the case, it may be problematic if readers are in the dark for most of the book about something that the character has known all along. (My rule of thumb is that the readers are entitled to know everything that the point-of-view character knows).
Caveats
1: I’m not sure that he is the POV.
2: Readers will cut you a lot of slack if you offer an immediately observable reason for hiding the information. Just make sure that the readers know the question is out there (“who’s the killer?”, for example). The question can interest us even if we don’t know the answer immediately. But just suddenly dropping the answer out of the blue will not be interesting.
OK. Here goes.
The character in question is Headmaster Gabriel, who is in secret Auringel the Phoenix Lord.
two characters know from the beginning, Lupus Cane and Mesirturon the phoenix. Lupus knows because he’s Gabriel’s right hand man. Maesirturon knows because he’s Auringel’s brother. After Alex encounters Maesirturon, he is told that Auringel will find him and complete his training, and in fact Auingel has already found Alex. Here’s a quote:
[“So how will I find this Auringel?” Alex asked.
“Don’t worry, he will find you Alex. Indeed, I believe he already has.” Maesírturon replied.
...Maesirturon does the phoenix death/rebirth thing and comes back as a hawk-sized bird....
Alex later returned to the Academy with a strange red-gold hawk, which escaped no one’s notice, least of all that of Headmaster Gabriel, who, from a distance, watched Alex enter with the bird. He smiled knowingly. “Ah, Maesírturon. Your task is complete. Well done my brother, I can take it from here.” ]
You see? The question is known to the reader and the answer is known to the reader. The only person who doesn’t know is Alex & company. Alex later finds out.
Auringel is a god. He never lies, but the fact that he is in mortal form means there is potential (albeit small) for him to make mistakes.
There is a reason for so few people knowing this. Auringel is the only one powerful enough to destroy Valigroth. Thus, when he gave up his power and became mortal, Valigroth saw an opportunity to kill him. (Aslan-esque resurrection potential?) Thus it is imperative that Gabriel’s identity be kept secret. Alex is charged to tell no one. Gabriel created the Knights to protect the world, find the Emissary, and hold off Valigroth until his power was restored.
Auringel’s mortality is also the reason he will not be present at the “final battle that isnt truly final”, because too much is at stake for him to die (this also prevents deus ex machina). He will however offer spiritual support and guidance, maybe even appear in vision or temporarily merge with Alex.
At the end of the series Auringel will leave the known world in Alex’s care and go off to fight evil in other uncharted worlds. This poses a question that may be answered later. Alex is not immortal, so who will carry on after he’s gone? His children. Why is that problematic? Because his relationship with Amorelia failed and his love life is in a wreck.
Your thoughts?
Am I over the top?
Hmm. I’m leaning towards saying it’s OK.
Leaning? Is there anything problematic?
Gods in mortal bodies tend to be corny.
But I’m leaning towards saying it’s OK because it sounds like readers and the protagonist will know pretty early on that the character is (sort of) a god, so at least the element of secrecy won’t be much of a problem. Furthermore, the secret identity might be interesting because the hero may have to help the headmaster protect it. It may have dramatic potential.
What if the goddess is immortal but suffers the pains of mortal flesh? Would that be all right?
And how secret is a secret origin if it’s revealed at the beginning of the story and keeps on unfolding?
If the origin is revealed to the readers very early on, it’s probably less of an issue. Telling readers the truth up-front will reduce confusion and probably enhance the dramatic potential. For example, if the plot is about whether the god can maintain his human disguise, it’ll be a lot easier to understand what’s at stake if we understand what’s happening.
Well, I’m writing two separate stories that involve secret origins (or not-so-secret origins.) One is a novel, the other is a short story.
The novel involves the character gradually finding out that about her dad, who was a wolf that became human. (NOT a werewolf, though.) I’m debating about whether or not to go ahead with my plan and have it revealed that a wolf pack who wants to ally with the protagonist have killed her father (for being reckless with his magic) because I don’t want the wolves to appear as rabid killers, but more like soldiers who thought they were defending their lives and property by killing off Native Americans.
The short story is about a god hiding in exile in a desert town. The reason why she’s in exile is the main point of the story (as in she brings a bad omen on the town and needs to find out why). That could work, though, right?
I’m not sure.
–In the first novel, I’m not sure how you could foreshadow the reader in such a way that the wolf-to-human transformation wouldn’t be totally out of the blue. (You might like to watch Holly Lisle’s Case of the Exploding Cat here).
–With the first novel, I feel like there are talking animal concerns. Older readers often have problems taking talking animals seriously, and works with talking animals are almost always aimed at children (Bugs Bunny, Redwall, etc).
–I feel that the second concept is more workable. I’d recommend giving the origin upfront– I suspect that waiting will probably not turn out well. (“Gotcha! She’s been a god all along!”) As a rule of thumb, if a premise is interesting enough to write a book about, it’s usually interesting enough that readers will want to know it upfront.
First off, thank you for the advice.
In the novel the wolves talking are an integral part of the plot because they know things that the main characters don’t know. Is there a way to make them less cliched?