Life's Full of Expectations

Hello and welcome to part one of the three-part miniseries The Flaws You Expect with a Tragic Hero. Naturally, you read the introduction post for this miniseries so I don't have to backtrack and we can get to the meat of the conversation. We all have expectations of how the world works, like when you first fall in love, and of yourself. Unless that's just me; which I hope it's not. But what do expectations have to do with tragedy?

 There are elements in a tragedy that are expected. These are:

· The main character comes from a privileged background.

· They are successful in their field of expertise.

· Fate, to a point, has been good to them.

· They have a character flaw that leads towards their downfall.

· Fate continually has the main character fall farther from grace.

· It ends with the main characters' death.

My short examples come from a more traditional way of writing tragedies. Elements have changed of course since there are a number of ways to write a tragedy. These elements are so common that you come to expect them.

So, let’s dive deeper into the bullet points starting with the main character comes from a privileged background. In traditional tragedies, only those that fall from grace are worth the title of a tragic hero. That means everyone who is not rich cannot be a tragic figure. Bad things just naturally happen to everyday people. This changed when modern tragedies started shining a light on the terrible things that happen to everyday people. Tragic characters also tended to be males since they're the ones that hold the position of power. That does not mean that they're not any female characters in traditional tragedies, they're usually not the main character.

Next point is that the main character is successful in their field of expertise. In traditional tragedies, the main character may come from a military background. Or the main character can be a child of a rich merchant, a noble, or a king. Or the main character themselves holds this position. Because of their privileged background, the main character has access to a wealth of knowledge. What the character does with this knowledge leads them to their greatness.

Fate or destiny also has a role in tragedies.  Usually when all is going well for the main character fate is smiling brightly on them.  It is because of fate that the main character is fed with a golden spoon. Destiny made it so that the main character will be a legend on the battlefield. Fame and fortune are certain when fate is on their side. Because the heavens love the main character. The stars shine brighter because they were born. Too bad for that nasty flaw.

When the narrative of the story is supposed to be in favor of the main character it is because they have a character trait that is their saving grace. On the flip side, in a tragedy, the main character has a damning flaw which leads to their downfall. Now, to make a character realistic, a character needs flaws. If they don't have flaws then there is nothing with which they struggle with. A tragic flaw has to be able to be the downfall of the character and also something that can be identified by the readers. This flaw is something that the villain of the story usually possesses. But there's going to be an entire post talking about tragic flaws so this is going to have to be all you're getting for now.

Just as fate or destiny leads the main character to be born with riches or leads them to success, it also screws them over. Because fate also blessed the main character with their tragic flaw, so their downfall was always destined to happen. At least that's how it works out for the main character in tragedies. It is that feeling of betrayal from fate that gets at you. After all this character is great and stands on top and seeing their downfall is saddening.

Lastly is the main characters death. After their fall, it is only death that welcomes them with open arms. Well, not all tragedies end with the main character's death. But I can't think of one where someone didn't die. The death of the main character is supposed to make the readers feel something as well as learning something. What the reader learns depends on the author. But the death of the main character has to mean something to the story because you're killing them.

Now for a more modern tragic story, the main character doesn't have to come from a privileged background. They can be an everyday person. When the story comes from this angle the feeling of the story is about how cruel the world is to the main character or how it is rigged against the everyday person. The downfall isn't about the character falling from grace, but the emptiness that anyone can feel while living in a draining world.

The effects that both have are different for each person. A tragedy about an everyday person can make it harder for the reader to alienate themselves from the main character. On the other hand seeing a great person fall from grace is just as jarring but is more epic. But once you're at the top, the only way to fall down is with great dramatics. At least that's what I think because the ride down needs to be epic. But a normal main character has to have the dramatics that everyday life has to offer which makes their downfall sometimes hard to watch because that can very well be you or someone you know. The point, I think, of an everyday tragic character is that they could be you.

On that somber note, we end the first part of the three-part miniseries. Next up is The Worse Flaw is a Tragic Flaw! Be ready for it since that is the one I have been waiting to explain. Be sure to Google+ this post and follow up on the different posts that are up on my blog. Hope you come back again to have a good time with me and leave comments because I do read them.

Life as a Pirate

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The afternoon sun shines through a glassless window. A lightly dirty man wakes from the sunlight. Getting up from the cot he finds his clothes and takes a look at the woman he brought for the evening. He grins to himself seeing that he picked a good woman last night. Exciting out of the room the pirate makes his way to his favorite hell hole.

His walk towards the pub is relaxing. He picked pocket three drinks and flirts with a redhead who will be working this evening. Continuing down the dirt road he sees the ship Lost Faith. The ship is lovely against the blue sea and sky. He can't help but wonder what it would be like to be a part of her crew. He reaches the pub and orders a nice hot meal with a cool cup of water. Paying with the money he has stolen he makes his way to the beach.

Finding a shady spot the pirate takes a nap so he can be well-rested for this evening's pleasure. After all, that lovely redhead is working tonight. His eyelids slowly close and the hot afternoon air blankets him as he sleeps. 

The Flaws You Expect with a Tragic Hero

Back in 2015, I did a miniseries called A Drama with Comedy Ending in Tragedy. In the third part of the miniseries, I mentioned that I would come back to talk some more about the elements of tragedy. And this is the revisit to that topic. Now as I stated before in my previous mini-series, I'm coming from the viewpoint of a writer. That means I won't really be looking at the topics from there theater origins. The reasoning for this is because the mini-series do take more effort to produce than the writing prompts. (Which requires you to vote on.) This series will also be done in three parts.
They are:

• Life's Full of Expectations
• The Worse Flaw is a Tragic Flaw!
• A Great Hero is Destine to Suffer.

The conversation will contain how these elements that affect a tragic story: a rant about character development, and the emotions you want the reader to feel while reading the story. There's also going to be a brief history of a traditional tragic hero and a modern tragic hero. My personal feelings on how a hero should fall from grace. I also want to talk about how the ending of the story affects the author and the reader. Naturally, I don't want the conversation to get too dark because this blog isn't about heavy subjects but I have a strong feeling about the topic and it requires me to be serious. That doesn't mean we can't have fun with this little chat.

This is the end of the introduction to the next mini-series. Bye!

Trying Prompt Polls Again.

So if you are a new reader to my blog I would like to welcome you. When I first started this blog I had a different polls that the readers voted on so that I know want prompt you would like to read about. If you don't know what a prompt is look in the 2015 part of my blog archive for What are writing prompt? for an explanation. I stopped doing the polls because not all the votes where being counted which is annoying because some of the polls ended in a tie. So I'm bringing the polls back in the hope that it will work. Of course I expect for you to vote on the polls since polls are made to be voted on. To find the name of pervious prompts I've done, go to the tab name Prompts and there is a list of the different prompts. You can find all of them in the blog archive as well.

The prompts are:

1. Captain off Deck- Out at sea a ship and it's crew gets attack by a sea monster and the captain is nowhere to be found.
2. Life as a Pirate- Describe a perfect day for a pirate.
3. Create a list of thing that make me angry.- I believe that explains itself just fine.

Those are the three prompts. Since there's not any big holidays going on I hope to be able to do two prompts instead of just one this month. But I have to see how long it takes me to do this month's mini series. But that's something you need not worry about. I'm excited to start the polls again and I hope that all of you will take the time to vote for the one you like the most.

A New Year and Goals to Complete

It is the new year, which means everyone is going to set up goals that will possibly be forgotten about in a month or so. But that's okay we can still make a list of goals. Before we do that, I hope everyone had a good winter holiday. Mine was good, but I wish I was able to see more of my relatives during the holidays. Now with that out of the way, lets talk about new year resolutions.

1. I wish to continue this blog and improve it's quality.
2. To grow a bigger audience.
3. To keep busting out new topics to talk about with you, my dear readers.

So those are my three resolution for the blog. Please leave your new year resolution in the comment section because I do read the comments left by readers. This month is going to be interesting because I have a surprise for you! What it is you're going to have to wait and find out. But for now let's get back to the swing of things since we just got over the holiday madness.