How do you guide a character into discovering a world? [closed]
Closed by System on Dec 6, 2017 at 23:52
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I'm writing a story about a creature that takes the shape of a human and travels seeing the world. This character has no clue about this new reality, as he had no body before this incarnation, and it needs a guide to teach him.
How should a guide be written so that it doesn't pull from the character, but follows and gives him a guidance.
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I believe the most powerful solution is that the presence of the guide develops your main character (the one you do not want 'pulled from.')
I believe the answer to this is through your main character's reactions to the guide, and through their relationship.
It doesn't matter what the guide is.
If it is books, he can have a relationship with the books. Perhaps: He doesn't know how to read. He can only read a little. He becomes frustrated, annoyed, that this is the only way he has to learn the world. Eventually, he learns to read, and learns to love books, and this development can be taken to comical or other extremes.
If it is a person, he can have a very realistic relationship, pulling on all the areas that human relationships have. Power plays, attraction, repulsion, conversation, lies, truths.
If it is a mythical creature, he can have other reactions and relational issues. He may feel he is going crazy. He may feel others like him (formless) have followed him and are trying to influence him.
If it is a computer intelligence, build off of Amadeus' answer, and create his reactions and relationship to the technology. This becomes additionally interesting in the context of SF's comment, because now there can be multiple relationships occurring. And more confusion.
Your question is how to avoid detracting from the character. The answer is to make your character's reactions and/or relationship to the guide the focus of what is being learned. Incidentally, this also helps get you past issues of 'info dump,' because as he is learning, you write about his reactions to the (provided) info, not solely the info itself.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31731. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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You can make the guide a computerized teacher or companion; which can be any size convenient to your story: very small (a patch on the skin) or a robot as large as a person.
The value of using a computer is that readers will accept it as plausible if it lets the MC get into danger, or if it does not provide answers because the MC is supposed to learn something on its own, or if it does not provide answers because it just does not know.
Think of it as a child with an iPhone-like device that responds to voice commands. Such devices (IRL) have no common sense or judgment about what is safe or dangerous, what is appropriate or illegal.
Your device can be similar. An iPhone might give you good directions for getting around New York City, but it isn't going to try and stop you from wandering into parts of NYC where you can get mugged and killed.
It would be far more difficult for a living being to plausibly fill the same role. In Star Wars, R2D2 does a similar thing for Luke Skywalker. When Luke veers off to go find Yoda, R2D2 is along for the ride, and they have a one-sided conversation (beeps and whistles on R2's side) that makes it clear R2D2 is intelligent but just a robot that does as it is told and will not refuse Luke's commands, even if R2 thinks it is wrong.
(Of course you don't have to make your robot argue at all if you don't want that.)
Readers expect living beings (with adult intellect, like R2) to not just argue but at times show emotions and have concern about the harm an innocent might do to themselves, other people, or valuable property.
So a living being with the knowledge to explain the world and humans to your MC to interfere with the MC as well. It is implausible for such a living being to just watch the MC walk into high danger, or do something that might harm another person, set a building on fire, etc.
For the modern reader (IRL) the most plausible highly intelligent but non-interfering guide would be a voice from a computerized information system and instructor. Which may or may not be attached to a robotic body, depending on the needs of your plot (R2D2 takes a few actions as a 'hacker' to rescue our heroes, for example.)
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