Legion

A train wreck is something so horrible, so atrocious, so fascinating that you stop what you were doing in order to stare.

Warning: Spoilers

It took me a month to slog through the third book of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance cycle, Brisingr and not because I was working copious amounts of overtime or because I like sleeping. Although both are true, I was working overtime and liked sleeping just as much back when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released. It took me a little over 72 hours to finish Rowling’s book of about the same number of pages.

The sorry truth of the matter is, Brisingr is just simply a horrible book. There was nearly no plot to speak of, all the characters were flat and lifeless, and the prose was flowery and forgettable. The only redeeming factor was its train wreck value and even that didn’t last past a hundred pages. How would I qualify that opinion? Let’s review.

First thing’s first: Plot. Wait. What plot? There were less than a handful of plot points, climaxed by the “surprise twist” of Brom being Eragon’s father. This crowning revelation was essentially a long, boring, and tedious infodump. An author shouldn’t need to provide that much explanation, if the reader was sufficiently prepared beforehand to make the necessary logical connections themselves at the moment of the final unveiling. The shock value Paolini was undoubtedly going for in that supposed bombshell was utterly negated by poor reader preparation on his part which led to poor execution, making the entire twist come across as forced, contrived, and reminiscent of pounding a square peg into a round hole.

Disappointing [anti]climatic moment aside, between the four or five plot points in the 800-page monstrosity, there was filler. Endless paragraphs and pages, endless sentences and scenes of purple prose filler. The majority of chapters featuring Roran were nothing but pointless fight scenes that didn’t take Roran or reader anywhere (the rest were attempts at romance so cheesy I almost busted out crackers and wine). The majority of Eragon’s chapters were equally directionless. I couldn’t care less how many scenic spots there are in Alagaesia, but Paolini apparently felt the need to take Eragon and the reader on a tour of all of them one by one. Apparently to him, having people run around (literally) on a fictional landmass qualifies as storyline.

On a filler-related side note, why the hell would I want to read a chapter that was basically summarizing Japanese sword making techniques, Paolini? If I wanted to know about that I would go buy myself a damn book on the subject instead of reading yours. It’s the same with the action scenes. The problem is they’re just that: a string of battles thrown in for no good reason. If I wanted to be mindlessly taken from fight to fight, I would go play some brainless hack-and-slash video game rather than read your book.

In the end, the actual progress of the story was minimal and predictable. There wasn’t enough intricacy or complexity in the plot to begin with to warrant several hundred pages worth of words, and the characters do little to keep things interesting between the important parts. Plot rating: 2/10

Speaking of characters, if the characters had been more intriguing, more complex, more developed, just… MORE, I would have been a bit more forgiving about the number of pages and lack of plot to fill them.

Is it really too much to ask that Paolini’s characters have flaws? Giving Eragon a villain for a father was a feeble attempt, but an attempt nonetheless. In Brisingr even that pathetic effort has been wiped clean off the record. Now not only is Eragon perfect, but his family is perfect too. A perfect family as an extension for the perfect Gary Stu. Great.

Now, I could understand that as a self-insert, Paolini felt the need to make Eragon perfect but unfortunately the Mary Sue-itis doesn’t just apply to the once titular character. Saphira is now the perfect sidekick companion. Roran is now the perfect warrior and captain. Nasuada is the perfect rebel leader. Arya is the perfect woman/love-interest. They overcome all obstacles and odds against them with little trouble and everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya around the campfire on a weekly basis. The argument between Nasuada and Eragon in the chapter “Orders” is the closest the book comes to interpersonal conflict and even that doesn’t have any lasting effect on their relationship. So really, what’s the point in having the disagreement in the first place if it doesn’t change anything? There’s no conflict, internal or external (and if there is the semblance of it now and then, it’s fleeting and superficial). Without conflict, there’s nothing at stake to be lost or gained. With nothing being risked, there’s no tension. Without tension, the reader is left bored, distant, and apathetic.

The characters, the entire cast of them, fall flatter than ever in this third installment. They are more perfect than before, and it’s that very perfection that keeps readers from being able to empathize, or even care about their trials and tribulations, or what ultimately happens to them. When Oromis and Glaedr are killed, I was supposed to experience some sort of emotion like sadness, pity, or hell, even outrage. Something. ANYTHING. Instead there was nothing. I didn’t care about either of the all-knowing mentor characters, nor do I care enough about Eragon and Saphira to really appreciate the supposed depth of their loss that Paolini was attempting to convey. They’ll overcome that minor obstacle with as much ease (and perhaps another Deus ex) as they’ve overcome everything else, I have no doubt.

If there was one word needed to sum up all the characters in Brisingr, it would be “superficial”, and to more of an extent than in both Eragon and Eldest. I know, I didn’t think it was possible either. But rather than using this third installment to start developing the characters properly, Paolini chooses to do things like load them up with “moral quandaries”. The problem here with internal character conflict is the same as the issue with how Paolini handles external character conflict. These little moral dilemmas that confront the characters never get taken past inner thought or dialogue. Eragon and Roran may wax eloquent for pages and pages about the guilt and regret they feel over killing other humans but Paolini never lets that affect their capacity for it (two hundred in a row, anyone?). The characters’ conscience never actually impacts their actions so it renders all that moral philosophizing meaningless and shallow. The lack of proper follow-through to what could have been good starts, because of Paolini’s refusal to sully his characters, resulted in boring, uninspired, and thoroughly superficial characters. Character rating: 2/10

Alright, so the story is minimal and the characters are about as interesting as slabs of plywood sitting a lumberyard. What about the prose? The writing is, simply put, dreadful. It’s fancy, flowery, and forgettable. The narrative is loaded with unnecessary amounts of adjectives and the dialogue is essentially a compilation of fantasy-epic clichés borrowed from a hundred other authors. There wasn’t a single line in the entire 763 pages that struck me as eloquent, inspired, or original.

Some parts were dull, others were lifeless, and a LOT of it was rambling on and on about things that I couldn’t care less about, like dwarves and happy-glowy-floaty-orby-spirits. Even worse, Paolini’s verbal diarrhea hampered fight scenes by slowing down the action so much that I found myself falling asleep even at what were supposed to be fast-paced and exciting (or something like that) parts of the novel. In fact, the prose was constantly putting me to sleep no matter what type of scene it was. Thus the four weeks it took me to finally finish this lumbering beast of a book.

If Paolini had spent half the amount of time he used flipping through a thesaurus for adjectives to think through his characters and lay out plot lines, he might have actually had himself a good book. Long-winded writing style is fine if you’ve got the story and characters to back it. Instead, it’s plain that he chose quantity of words over the quality of everything else. The end result? A book nearly eight hundred pages long that doesn’t go anywhere. Prose rating: 3/10 (This would get a “2” as well, but I thought that an extra point should be awarded for sheer effort involved in digging up so many big, complicated words.)

Speaking critically, Brisingr is a failure of a fantasy novel. The plot was too few, too far between; the characters attained insta-godhood rather than grow, and the prose hindered more than helped. It was a cesspool of one irrelevant and pointless scene after another, drowning in its own length a third of the way through. At best it’s filler, at worst it’s plain crappy.

But even though it’s a horrible book in many, many ways, it was an AMAZINGLY horrible book. And I did manage to read all of it. Sometimes, I couldn’t STOP reading, it was so atrocious. Thus, Brisingr was a train wreck in all of its fiery glory. I laughed, I sighed, I raged, I facepalmed and headdesked and kept right on reading. In the end, Brisingr still had horrendous but morbidly attractive entertainment value and practical uses (ie: how NOT to write a novel, part three) that outlasts what is essentially a read-and-forget or don’t-read-at-all novel.

Comment [188]

It may be deceptive upon first glance, but critics of the Inheritance series know exactly what a “Paolinism” is. In the span of three books, starting in Eragon, continuing in Eldest and reaching new heights (or lows, arguably) in Brisingr, Paolini has attempted to shove down the throats of his readers an obscene amount of inconsistent, illogical, and ridiculous things.

Oh, I admit that in the realm of fantasy anything is possible. But just because readers open up a fantasy book giving an author the benefit of the doubt that doesn’t mean the term “fantasy” and the genre can be abused to the point that Paolini abuses it. If an author doesn’t explain to a degree WHY this or that breaks the rules of physics, logic, and common experience they will lose the trust of their readers. Belief will be suspended and then you get walls of text like this systematically ripping your work apart with so much pleasure it borders on cruelty.

The “fantastical” events Paolini has attempted to casually pass off to readers as possible and plausible, with little or no justification, had me screaming obscenities of my own and bashing my head against the surface of my desk more times than I can count. Only on Paolini’s little planet, in his own little galaxy located in a far off distant corner of the universe, does much of what happens in the Inheritance Cycle books make any sense at all. Yet he continues to shovel more of it faster and faster into the readers as the Cycle progresses.

Thus the term “Paolinism”. Properly defined, a Paolinism is “something that is ordinarily unacceptable (even in a fantasy story) that becomes true, logical, irrefutable, and believable in the Inheritance series without any justification other than Because Paolini Said So”. Remember this, kids and aspiring authors: Where truth, logic, and proper justification of fantastic elements fail in a novel, the following Paolinisms are applicable. Let’s review.

IN THE FOLLOWING SITUATIONS, WHAT WOULD PAOLINI DO?

Problem: “I’m writing an archetypal hero story and I need my teenage, farm boy protagonist[s] to become super powerful super quick so he/they can start defeating evil and being awesome ASAP! WWPD?”

Solution: Paolinism #1 states, “Swords are weapons that can be mastered within a few weeks.”

Proof: In a few weeks of diligently practicing swordplay for an hour or two every night Eragon can best a considerably older and more experienced Brom. Even Oromis, an elf several hundred years old and one of the highest ranked amongst the Dragon Riders of old says that he has naught to teach and that all is left is for Eragon to maintain his current level of skill. How is this feat of arms possible? Because Paolini Said So.

Furthermore, Paolinism #1.a, collateral to Paolinism #1 states, “Hammers, like swords, are weapons that can be mastered within a few weeks but unlike swords, without the need for training.”

Proof: Roran, also a farmboy with no previous fighting experience whatsoever, picks up a hammer and wields it so effectively that he is able to take down every trained, professional Imperial soldier he encounters. Unlike Eragon, there is no evidence that Roran himself trained (even semi-formally) in the use of bludgeoning weapons. He’s just that naturally skilled Because Paolini Said So.

And still furthermore, Paolinism #1.b, collateral to Paolinism #1 states, “All weapons are the same. As soon as one is mastered, any other weapon is instantly mastered as well.”

Proof: Eragon, in the first few chapters of Brisingr, shows that he is just as masterfully skilled with a staff as he is with a sword. He acquired the staff only a few days after losing Zar’roc and has never before been shown to wield a staff prior to the assault on Helgrind. Therefore, sword mastery is the equivalent of mastery of any other weapon. Roran, in his 193 killing spree (beat that Master Chief!) can wield a spear just as effectively as a hammer, if not more so. Therefore, if someone can wield a hammer, they can wield a spear too. Because Paolini Said So, it is so in the speshul world of Alagaësia.

Paolinism #2 states, “The acquisition of a warhorse means that the owner attains instant skill in mounted fighting.”

Proof: Roran, who again has his origins in farming, is given Snowfire, and because Snowfire is such a finely bred warhorse, Roran has no need to train for years and years and years (like real knights) in the art of fighting in armor on horseback. Yes, this makes complete sense to me, Because Paolini Said So.

Problem: “I want someone who isn’t speshul or cheating with magic to be amazing at fighting too! WWPD?”

Solution: Paolinism #3 states, “Any ordinary human can kill 200 trained soldiers in a row.”

Proof: Roran, an ordinary human who cannot wield magic, instead gets OVER 9,000 in Charisma, Military Tactics, Strength, Stamina, Endurance, and Toughness. Each. With them he unites a Varden company under his banner, then proceeds to improvise a strategy during a battle that allows him to single-handedly kill 193 men in a row. Roran has amazing charisma, is born rivaling the strategic genius of Sun Tzu, and there is no such thing as overly unrealistic when demonstrating the battle prowess of a protagonist, Because Paolini Said So.

Problem: “I want to show that my main protagonist’s liege lord and leader of the entire good-guy opposition party deserves her post and titles. WWPD?”

Solution: Paolinism #5 states, “Self-mutilation is the surest way of convincing your critics that you’re right for the job.”

Proof: Nasuada prevents the apparently delicate coalition that makes up the Varden from falling apart by cutting up her arms. She wins unanimous admiration, eternal loyalty, and forevermore the support of all factions of the Varden. Come to think of it, Paolini has always asserted that Nasuada maintained her leadership over the Varden because she was a cunning, clever, and charismatic woman who diligently thinks through every decision before she makes it. Then she goes and does something like ditching her not-so-Secret Service unit, causing them to look incompetent in front of everyone. But inconsistencies like that are made null and void by the previously rendered act of self-mutilation, Because Paolini Said So.

Paolinism #6 states, “The ideal leader is one who believes a disparate group of rebels are held together because all individuals acknowledge that their first and foremost priority is adherence to the law.”

Proof: Nasuada has Roran publicly flogged after he disobeys orders from a commanding officer, even though Roran’s actions gave them victory and saved Varden lives. On the surface it seems logical. Nasuada keeps respect, loyalty, and leadership of the Varden because she holds the law above the whims of all individuals, herself included.

There’s a myriad of problems with the way this situation unfolds but to point out the most relevant, Paolini forgets that while it’s nice to be idealistic, the individuals in the rebel coalitions aren’t in for it because they care about keeping things nice and equal according to the rules. They’re cooperating with each other because they hold the common goal of destroying the Empire. They are keeping Nasuada as their leader because they believe she can get the job done. So what is this crap about making adherence to military law more important than Empire ass-kicking? Rather than being outraged when a man gets punished for actually getting results, the Varden watch and are even more impressed with Nasuada. Apparently, that’s the way the Varden (and human nature, too) works, not because it makes any sense whatsoever, but Because Paolini Said So.

Problem: “HELP! My magic system is dependent on knowledge of a foreign language and my protagonist who needs to be a master spell caster doesn’t know it! WWPD?”

Solution: Paolinism #7 states, “Complete mastery in a foreign language can be attained within a matter of weeks and months.”

Proof: Eragon goes from knowing nothing about the ancient language in Eragon to fluent enough to be able to communicate effectively with it upon setting foot in Du Weldenvarden to complete poetic mastery after before the end of Eldest. Let’s not even talk about how Murtagh manages even greater mastery over the ancient language in a shorter amount of time. Academics estimates that even through the most intense programs, a minimum of a year and half of complete immersion in a foreign country with at least 3-6 months of study at home will be needed before FLUENCY in speaking and reading/writing can be achieved. Poetic mastery is not often achieved with even a lifetime of work by NATIVE speakers. But what do linguistic experts and personal experience of anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language know compared to the irrefutable “a few months, Because Paolini Said So”?

Problem: “My main protagonist is a Gary Stu! I realize this is Bad but I like his perfection and godliness so much I don’t want to make him a mere human being! WWPD?”

Solution: Paolinism #8 states, “The addition of inconsequential slip-ups and shallow moral quandaries will suffice in confusing readers enough that they can be tricked into believing that your Gary Stu has character flaws.”

Proof: This has already been brought up on numerous occasions on ImpishIdea but I might as well formally address it. The psychological impact of becoming a mass murderer was never addressed in the first or second books and when it finally is in the third, it’s not so much addressed as it is glossed over with fantasy clichés like “We have to kill because the Imperials are evil.” Wow, what an amazingly elegant solution to a complicated moral quandary, no?

As for mistakes, yes Eragon makes them. But unlike the kind of mistakes human beings make, Eragon’s mess-ups never have any sort of negative, irreversible, or disastrous consequences for others, his cause, and least of all himself. All of Eragon’s so-called “flaws” add no depth whatsoever to his character because they’re contrived, artificial, and included for the sole purpose of demonstrating after he fixed them that there is no godlier being in all of imaginary or real existence than Eragon. But Because Paolini Said So, pointless mistakes and a brief and fleeting semblance of a guilty conscience make Eragon not-a-Gary Stu.

Problem: “I want my antagonist to be a super evil overlord with power overwhelming. He also needs to be smart, cunning, and good at conquering and oppressing people. BUT I don’t want to have to actually have him make any in-person appearances in the first three books. How can I convince my readers of his multitalented evil genius in spite of that? WWPD?”

Solution: Paolinisms #9 and #10 state, respectively, “A bad guy is bad if I have enough of the good guys go around saying he’s bad” and “All plot snags that arise due to lack of forethought can be overcome using magic as a loophole.”

Proof: Galbatorix. He’s evil. He’s powerful. He singlehandedly led a movement that destroyed the most powerful good guy organization in Alagaesia, the Dragon Riders. He carved himself an Empire and ruled as a feared and hated tyrannical dictator for the better part of a century. All this was accomplished long before the start of the novels, so we readers are told through the mouthpieces of the good guy characters. Then constantly throughout the first two novels, we are told that Galbatorix is evil and must be overthrown because he killed dragons and elves, he burned libraries, he oppresses commoners, he forcefully conscripts peasants into the army, he makes a point of wallowing in wealth while everyone else suffers in abject poverty, and he lords over Alagaesia with an iron fist. Then we find out in Brisingr that he is doing all of the above while simultaneously locked in his tower, never bothering to make an appearance anywhere in person because he’s wholly distracted by pet projects like breaking the souls of dead dragons to his will. Great. This makes total sense, Because Paolini Said So.

Which brings me to Paolinism #10. Exactly how Galbatorix manages to keep control over his Empire is obviously something that wasn’t entirely thought through beforehand. Oops! But Paolini asserts anyway in the first and second books that Galbatorix manages to keep control by forcing the population (I assume this means peasants and foot soldiers) to swear allegiance to him in the ancient language.

Wow, what a nice loophole! Rather than having to really sit down and spend time thinking through the intricacies of how an unpopular monarch manages to keep his hold on a very, very populous empire, Paolini sidesteps this problem with his magical catch-all. Fine, fine, I’ll give him that. It’s fantasy story after all.

Just two rather massive problems.

1) Commoners are clearly not made to take an oath of allegiance to Galbatorix. Eragon and Roran (along with the entire town of Carvahall) rebels and flees to Surda. Then there’s Jeod and everyone else who were and are secretly working for the Varden from within the Empire too.

You would think that if it were as easy as teaching people a few phrases (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, ring a bell anyone?) to guarantee lifelong loyalty, after a hundred years as king Galbatorix would have implemented a system to make all his subjects swear binding oaths to him.

2) Soldiers aren’t made to swear oaths either, apparently. The Urgals were able to defect to the Varden. Even if the Urgals are a special case, by the end of Brisingr it’s clear that even human soldiers aren’t forced to swear fealty to him.

Take the soldiers of Feinster. They hate Galbatorix too and aren’t loyal to him, but they love their feudal lords, four of them, right down to this Lorana person. At this point, I naturally assumed puppet ruler. Good! Very good. It’s a classic tactic used by ruthless dictators that has historically shown encouraging results in keeping a native population freshly conquered under control. Except… puppet governments only work if they are actually loyal to the real ruler.

Look at Lady Lorana. Sure, she can’t take any action to defy Galbatorix but she has the option to not take action and defy him anyway. Last time I checked, that was basically the same thing. And it clearly proves that Lady Lorana isn’t really loyal to Galbatorix anyway. Four generations of puppets who Galbatorix never truly had under his control in charge of a major city. You would think that if Galbatorix was so awesome at discovering true names and too lazy to directly rule his people himself, he would at least install puppets who were under his complete control.

Well, so much for taking advantage of the magic loophole so far. But wait, there’s more. I haven’t gotten to the part about how Galbatorix manages to keep control of his important servants yet. Again, magic. Magic of the true names sort. By uncovering a person’s true name, Galbatorix can dominate them wholly and utterly and make them do whatever he wants. There are only two such people worth noting in the span of the series, Durza and Murtagh/Thorn.

Wait, Galbatorix control Durza? Never happened. Sure, Durza worked for Galbatorix but when Eragon was taken captive by Durza in the first book it was hinted that Durza had ambitions of his own. Ambitions that didn’t include staying a faithful servant of the king. Apparently, true names magic didn’t work for Shades. Or maybe Galbatorix just forgot to break into Durza’s mind and extract an oath or something. Right.

Then there’s Murtagh and Thorn, the only ones who have been shown to really be controlled by Galbatorix in this way. Or are they? Every time Murtagh encounters Eragon, he’s defying Galbatorix. The first time, at the end of Eldest he lets Eragon go by purposely ‘misinterpreting’ his orders. The second time they meet in Brisingr, Eragon and Murtagh have a long conversation about how Murtagh can change his true name to defy Galbatorix before they fight. When Murtagh fights Oromis, Murtagh is pissed first and foremost because Oromis didn’t help Murtagh defy Galbatorix. Not exactly the epitome of ‘loyal servant’ you’ve got there, Galby.

With so many failures as a monarch going on, which is dangerously indicative of the fact that Galbatorix clearly is just that inept (despite what Paolini constantly has good guys saying), how the hell does he hold onto his power and stay king for so long? No one knows. He just does. Because Paolini Said So.

TL;DR ENDNOTE

So there it is. Of course I’ve exaggerated to keep the reading light and humorous, but in essence all those “Problems” are storytelling issues that any author can be and most likely will be confronted with. The way in which Paolini decided to solve those problems, with “Paolinisms”, is unbelievably retarded. I only list ten of the most immediate examples that come to mind here, but the amount of unjustified ridiculousness riddling the Inheritance books that occur for no other reason than “Because Paolini Said So” is just amazing. If I wanted to get nit-picky or had Lord Snow’s patience to go through the books and list every single “Because Paolini Said So” moment, this article might become lengthier than the novels themselves.

For aspiring authors reading this and looking at the Inheritance series as a learning tool, remember that despite the fact that you’re writing fantasy, don’t abuse the genre’s nature and take for granted the reader’s willingness to suspend their disbelief for you. You don’t have to explain everything that’s reality-defying but neither can you patch gaping holes that an element or event your story creates in reader sensibility with “because the author says so”. Take care to avoid creating Paolinisms of your own.

For younger readers and Inheritance fans, this article is for you especially. I hope that I’ve demonstrated that the books aren’t the work of a prodigal genius, but one that just knows how to take advantage of his target market group: Young Adults. Paolini took shortcuts, slapped “for teens” on it, then hoped that his selected audience wouldn’t be bright enough to notice all the flaws, inconsistencies, and gaps in logic. Paolini and his publishers know that the majority of those who read and will subsequently enjoy Inheritance aren’t the ones who will be stopping to consider if what the author is saying actually makes sense or not then write an article about it. But don’t believe everything that happens in a story and accept it as credible just because The Author Said So. Make Paolini work for your respect and admiration, and his place among the greats of fantasy fiction he so often compares himself to.

Comment [35]

Series Introduction

It occurs to me that even though we often point out what is wrong with books like Brisingr, we never go as far as offering our readers better ways that the author could have gone about writing this or that aspect of the book. Since ImpishIdea is about improving your own writing by learning from the mistakes of others, this series won’t just say “NO UR DOING IT WRONG PAOLINI” it will also say, “This is what Paolini (read: an aspiring writer) should have done to make it right.”

Especially appropriate for the inaugural installment, I shall be discussing the much loved character of Murtagh. See, if there is so much that could be improved on for one of the high points of the Inheritance Cycle, imagine what I can do for the not-so-high points. Pretty damn appropriate, right? Let’s review.

Mistake #1

Murtagh is an archetype. He’s mysterious and misunderstood but has a heart of gold. The good news is the brooding hero archetype, being rather ill-defined compared to others, is one of the easiest for an author to escape from. The bad news is Paolini never succeeds in escaping it. The problem is Murtagh is never allowed to evolve into his own person. The moment he meets Eragon in the first book, he becomes a plot device. Paolini makes him a slave to it. Eragon needs to escape from Gil’ead, Murtagh is introduced to make it possible. Eragon needs to get to the Varden, Murtagh is the one who helps him despite the fact that it’s not in the interests of his own self-preservation. Eragon needs a rival to focus his attention on defeating, Murtagh is made a Rider. The list goes on and on. Murtagh’s wants and desires as his own person are always secondary to what is required of him by the plot.

Starting your characters out as archetypes is fine. As your story goes through revisions though, the characters need to grow out of them and into themselves. Murtagh is a minor character but he is still a human being. He shows an unusual amount of loyalty to Eragon. Why? He has been treated badly by the Varden before, on the account of his parentage, but he returns to them with Eragon anyway. How come? And why does he suddenly want to try at playing hero after meeting Eragon? These questions are just the basics.

To go beyond an archetype, what Paolini should have done was to find the reasons that made Murtagh tick, then have it reflect in everything he says and does. He needed to give Murtagh convictions, values, an outlook, and a viewpoint, then put all that into the page. Paolini presents Murtagh as a conflicted character, but that inner unrest is never explored, never tested, never brought to the surface. What Paolini ended up doing was just stringing Murtagh along into doing what his plot dictated. As a result, Murtagh remained an archetype, flat and one-dimensional, despite having the most potential out of the entire cast.

So much for Murtagh before Paolini screwed himself over.

Mistake #2

As we all know, Murtagh pretty much disappears after the first book. This is another mistake. I can only speculate, but my personal theory as to why Paolini chose to introduce Roran rather than continue with Murtagh is because he is incapable of writing from an antagonist’s point of view.

Whatever the reason, it’s clearly a BAD DECISION. While I admit the role Roran ultimately plays in the story won’t be determined until Book 4, that doesn’t change the fact that he has been completely irrelevant and unnecessary in Books 1, 2, and 3. Roran’s storyline is so self-contained that I can rip all his scenes out and not miss a beat as far as the main conflict is concerned. That means Roran has nothing to do with anything for three whole books. On the other hand, Murtagh’s situation as revealed at the end of Eldest has everything to do with the power struggle and clash of ideals central to the series. If it was Murtagh instead of Roran would I be able to skip his scenes and still keep up with the plot? I think not.

A well-planned series doesn’t contain fluff to fill a page count quota. It sticks to telling the story. A sub-plot tells its own story from another point of view, but it also needs to continuously contribute something significant to the main conflict. The story in Inheritance is Eragon’s fight against the tyrannical Galbatorix. If Paolini didn’t intend for Galbatorix to make an appearance, what he should have done was use Murtagh as his second POV character. Murtagh is the natural choice, being turned to the dark side Galbatorix’s most powerful servant and all. He would have provided readers with a glimpse into the other side of the thematic conflict. Murtagh would have enriched the story in ways that Roran never could. And that is what Paolini should have based his decision on, rather than whatever it was that made him pick Roran.

Mistake #3, #4, #5

HOWEVER. Here it is that we hit another problem. We already know that sticking with archetypes isn’t the most sophisticated way to write a write a story. But it’s doable. Just look at Eragon’s character for example. He has several thousand pages, four novels, and jeebus knows how much craptastic Internet fanfiction behind his name. But I digress.

Remember blocks of text ago when I said that Murtagh’s dark hero archetype is one of the easiest to escape from? Well, in Eldest and Brisingr Paolini has written Murtagh into another archetype: the reluctant villain, being forced to do evil. This one, due to the epic fail of the magical Ancient Language, is a corner that is less easy to get out of.

The facts:

1) Brainwashing is retarded.¹
2) “I have no choice” is retarded.²
3) A good bad guy is retarded.³

All three of which applies to Murtagh. Suddenly a character who was on the verge of coolness is now riding the short bus around Alagaësia.

The issue isn’t that they’ve have been used and overused. SSD has pointed out to me that the reason why they’ve become cliché is due to the fact that many authors have used them and used them well. I completely agree. The real problem is beginner writers who don’t know how develop characters properly use them as shortcuts. For the sake of clarity, let’s review separately:

It’s easy to say that someone has been brainwashed and that’s why they do evil things. A writer just slaps “brainwashed” onto a character and that excuses them from having to explain why their character is evil. It excuses a writer from having to explore their villain’s motives and persona. It excuses a writer from having to dig into a character’s background and mind frame. It excuses an author from having to tackle the question, “Why do good people do evil things?” (And certainly this is the case with Murtagh.) It’s an impossible question with no answer, but one of the great advantages of fiction is that authors can attempt to provide one through their characters nonetheless. In fact, it’s one of the best ways you can give your villains the depth they deserve.

Equally, the “I have no choice” line is a feeble excuse that automatically pardons an author from having to make their character bear the full weight of the consequences for actions and decisions. Murtagh had no choice in serving Galbatorix, so Paolini doesn’t need to think of reasons why Murtagh would want to defect and betray Eragon. It’s another example of Murtagh merely being used as a plot tool rather than treated as his own person, but it also reveals a large degree of laziness on Paolini’s part.

In an earlier age when reader’s taste for fiction was not so evolved or demanding, the use of “I had no choice” was perfectly acceptable. Most modern readers however, require more complexity in a character’s rationales and justifications. In the same way that we don’t want to see a deus ex machina (which used to be a very common and acceptable plot device in Greek theatre), we don’t want to see a character simply let off the hook after stating that they had no choice. Employing that line pardons the author from having to consider how a character’s decisions will weigh upon them then having to play it out in prose. A character’s decisions and the impact the author has those decisions make on both the character’s self and world makes the character come alive. It gives them weight and a degree of complexity that makes the character not just words on a page but a person you and I could perhaps know.

When a character is asked “Why are you doing this?” answering with “I have no choice” is an excuse, not an explanation of motives. Excuses have their place and use but ultimately isn’t satisfactory. Go ahead, have a character say “I have no choice” but don’t make the mistake Paolini did and stop there by throwing in a convenient magical Ancient Language caveat. A character can make his excuses, but there still remains the underlying reason WHY a character would make such an excuse in the first place. Taking the time, spending the brainpower to look and dig deeper into the whys and how comes is how an author develops a character.

A bad guy who is really a good guy is the classic reluctant villain archetype. Paolini’s mistake here is that he made this archetype character the de facto #1 villain (since Galbatorix doesn’t make a single in person appearance). Bad guys who are really good guys deep down have their uses, but they do not fill the role of an antagonist who provides the conflict that makes a story interesting. The value of a protagonist’s virtue is entirely dependent on the wickedness of the antagonist. And Murtagh, who isn’t really evil, makes a poor foil for Eragon’s supposed goodness. When they confront each other, it’s not some epic showdown between two fearsome Dragon Riders. It’s a BAAWfest interspersed with half-hearted swordplay. That’s because Eragon doesn’t have an antithesis to fight in Murtagh, which devalues his own role in the scene.

A story needs conflict to keep readers interested and conflict between characters is a great way to provide it. Hero vs. Reluctant Villain just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t have to be good vs. evil embodied in your characters, but make sure that when you pit two characters against each other, they are actually opposed to each other. It raises what the reader perceives is at stake and gives the clash of ideals the characters represent real value and meaning. It makes the reader feel involved in what they are reading; it makes them CARE about the outcome. As an author, if you can get the readers to care about the story you want to tell then you’ve got yourself a story worth telling.

Epilogue

Writers who are lazy will take all or any combination of easy ways out, and it shows—especially if the story is lengthy. But a reader’s tolerance for crap dwindles as the page count rises. There’s a reason why Murtagh in Eldest and Brisingr comes across not as sympathetic but forced. Murtagh never rises out of the just-another-archetype status, is given artificial reasons to play the Evil Dragon Rider, and he doesn’t succeed in filling the role of antagonist because he’s actually a good person. On the inside.

Maybe Paolini can’t do better, but you can. Don’t take shortcuts. Put thought and consideration into your bad guys. Give them real and tangible reasons for doing morally questionable things. Give them motivations of their own, let them make their own decisions, then have them live with what happens next. A character who makes their own decisions rather than having it forced on them by Fate (read: the author) is infinitely more complex, more intriguing, and comes across more naturally than any Murtagh. It doesn’t make them any less sympathetic, but it will make them more of a real person.

Bottom line with any character, major or minor: Remember that characters are people, not plot devices. People have emotions, desires, needs, ambitions, even dreams. And that’s only scratching at the surface. Everything a person does or doesn’t do is linked to a reason. Perhaps even many reasons working in conflict and combination. This is the kind of intricacy that makes your character as real as any person. And in the end, a character’s depth given to them by a carefully woven web of complexity is what readers will appreciate, not the ephemeral twinges of sympathy generated out of using shallow archetypes. Paolini really fell flat when it came to Murtagh, but that doesn’t mean you have to make the same mistakes.

Next installment, I’ll be hacking at one of the most inane elements of the series in the name of self-help writing advice: the magic system.

¹ “And what a vision it is, Eragon. You should hear him describe it, then you might not think so badly of him. Is it evil that he wants to unite Alagaësia under a single banner, eliminate the need for war, and restore the Rider?” (Eldest, 649)
fn2. “‘I had no choice,’ snarled Murtagh. ‘And after Thorn hatched for me, Galbatorix forced both of us to swear loyalty to him in the ancient language.” (Eldest, 647)
fn3. “‘I was ordered to try and capture you and Saphira.’ He paused. ‘I have tried… Make sure we don’t cross paths again.’ … ‘You’re doing the right thing,’ said Eragon.” (Eldest, 652)

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