(I did quite a few humorous drinking poems. Probably because I had a better tolerance back then. These days, I don’t drink much. Body doesn’t really like it and my anxiety issues get amplified, so it’s best for me to highly limit them. Maybe I’ll have a glass of whiskey after a rough week when I don’t have my son. Still, it’s fun to write poetry about it.)
On simple days
I have a beer
Whatever brand on sale
On hottest days
I have lemonade
Mostly made of rum
On days of chill
I suck down whiskey
To feel the phantom burn
On high class days
I drink mojitos
Because I like to say the word
On party days
I drink tequila
Straight without a care
On reminiscing days
I drink my vodka
The liquor of my heart
On days that I forget
I drink a shot of Jager
Then remember my dislike
On anniversary days
I settle for a wine
Though my palette has no sense
On St. Patrick’s day
I drink a Guinness
With a shot inside
On rarest days
I get my mead
Drinking like a glutton
To be clear, this is mostly about a main hero who is a student with a mentor. So, we’re not looking at general student characters, but those who are in the spotlight. They don’t even have to go to a school like Izuku Midoriya or Harry Potter. As long as they are learning, they are a student. Let’s get to it.
Give your student weak areas. In other words, there will be some things that they simply aren’t good at even after learning the basics. Think of real people. Most have their strong subjects and their weak subjects. It’s rare, and very unbelievable, for a person to be a master at everything they learn. I believe that’s what people call a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. Try to avoid that by having them be average at something or even terrible.
Show that they have some trouble learning things at first. While there are examples of the gifted student, a ‘speed of light’ learner tends to lead to a character who has no weak points. It also opens the door for them never making a mistake. If they’re so good at figuring out new subjects and skills then it’s hard to believe they will screw up even under pressure. They can work out of their difficulty, but it does help to show that they aren’t racing through their training.
Training montages . . . Sure. Do it if you need the training to go over an extended period of time, but don’t want to take away from the adventure. Just remember to how the characters appear different and remain aware of the passage of time, especially if some were separated.
The arrogant student has been done a lot. Readers do enjoy seeing characters learn humility and get dropped a few pegs. Yet, it doesn’t really have the same impact as it once did. At least, the arrogant student doesn’t hit the same way with people who have seen it time and time again. Try to come up with a variation. Maybe they develop arrogance during training or it isn’t to an extreme level. It could be associated with a specific skill too.
Never be afraid to have a student ask a question. Having them follow their teacher’s orders blindly can hurt their identity. They lose a level of independence and individuality, which is needed for a main hero. You don’t have to give them an answer either. If you need them to follow orders then they need to be pushed into that mindset unless this is how they start. Going that route means you will need to have them grow out of this personality quirk.
“I will do it my way!” Stop that. If the student could learn what they need their own way then they don’t need the teacher. Yes, they’ll earn respect or amazement, but it turns their teacher into an obstacle instead of an ally.
Whatever a student learns, needs to come in handy down the road. You also need to make it clear what they’re learning. It’s very tempting to do a time skip and then have them reveal skills as needed. As long as you can justify them learning it, you can say they did it. This tactic can work once or twice, but you can’t do much more without making it clear that you’re just making it up as you go along.
While it never sold well, I always enjoyed writing the Bedlam series. Maybe I’ll go back to it one day, but the last two volumes went blog only. Kind of hard to go back to publishing after that. Anyway, this excerpt is a blast from Chasing Bedlam, which is available as a $2.99 eBook and an $11 paperback.
I got to thinking about this topic while I was rewatching ‘My Hero Academia’. It was interesting to see how Midoriya (main character) interacted with his various teachers throughout the seasons. Each relationship helped him grow and was slightly different enough to keep them unique. This made me realize how often the teacher/student subplot is done on autopilot. What do I mean by that?
The most common relationship seems to be the serious and wise mentor with the determined student. If there is any alteration, it’s usually on the student side by making them either arrogant, a crybaby, or some other extreme. This is to create some kind of friction between the characters, which will be worked out in order for them to unite into the more traditional relationship. It’s been pretty standard in stories for decades since this is usually a subplot, minor part of the overall adventure. This is the early stages of the hero’s journey even if the teacher is around for the whole time. Eventually, the teacher falls into the background or dies.
I won’t lie because I used to enjoy these parts of a story and never really noticed how they were so similar. Sometimes even identical. It wasn’t until I was older that I wanted to see other versions of the teacher/student relationship. For example, a student who doesn’t want to be one, but has no choice and the teacher has faith in them. That would be Zenitsu and his teacher in ‘Demon Slayer’. There’s also the teacher who gave up on his student and calls him a failure. Found quite a few of those over the years. Not a lot of variety, but I’ll take what I can get.
Another use of the teacher/student relationship is the trope of the teacher dying, which inspires the student to become stronger. The good old ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’. While I get this idea and enjoy it, I’ve kind of fallen out of love with it. Mostly because I’ve seen so many stories where it happens early on. This makes one wonder how the student finished their training. In fact, this tends to result in a second teacher being needed. I’ve had issues with this because it makes the first teacher seem less important or even inept. This goes double for when the first teacher sacrifices himself in a way that didn’t really have to happen. A good reason why authors need to think before they kill a character.
Honestly, I’m looking this through the eyes of the adventure hero’s journey. For all I know, that can limit your choices. A teacher in an adventure/fantasy genre tends to be a warrior or wizard with vast experience. They’re typically wise, stern, and maybe come with a rough backstory that can connect to the new threat. Students in this genre usually go from barely functional with a special gift to amazing. So, you don’t see as much variety as you may expect when adventuring and questing are the core plots. Although, I think more recent years have expanded on this concept.
Maybe we really take this relationship for granted in our stories. It’s an easy way to explain a character gaining skills and knowledge. With a teacher, the audience gets an explanation and can see an example of what the hero can become. You don’t have the risk of a hero suddenly knowing something that they really shouldn’t. Using ‘self-taught’ as an explanation only goes so far, especially with combat since practicing and sparring with dummies is nothing like fighting a real person. Adding a teacher to the scenario eliminates most, if not all, of that risk and can make the training portion of a hero’s journey move faster.
What are your thoughts on the teacher/student relationship in fiction?
Well, it’s my 43rd birthday. I’ll be spending time with family, including seeing the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ movie with my son. Starting the day with an Easter egg hunt too. Plenty of fun to be had on this Sunday before I have to act my age and take a nap. Enjoy the funnies.
I thought I knew how I wanted to start this post, but my mind is shot. This is only the third day of Spring Break and I’m tired. In fact, I think I may be more exhausted than when I started. Can’t say I’m surprised because it’s been a busy week even with the last two days being off.
First, those last three days of work/school leading into break was utterly crazy. Not that I was surprised. It was also the end of the third quarter, which means everyone was scrambling to get work done. I faced this on two fronts. One was at work when I was in the Testing Center and handling a large flow of test takers. Really happy that those times were only the last two periods of my day while I spent the rest with our Life Skills kids. A little off there due to the schedule, but it was fine. The second front was as a parent with my son having to get a lot of work done. This . . . Had some issues that I found out about later and will have to consider for the future.
Of course, this left me too exhausted to write that final section of Darwin & the Demon Game chapter 11. I haven’t had a chance to even remotely tackle it since and I doubt I’ll get a chance until Tuesday evening. I’m going to have to extend my timetable given that 99% possibility and at least one day where I don’t have my son being taken by hanging out with people. I’m thinking I’ll only get 4 of 7 chapters done if I’m lucky. That means I won’t be finishing this book in April, but by mid/late May. I won’t start writing the next one until mid-July either.
June needs to be geared towards getting things ready for Do I Need to Use a Dragon? and the ensuing posts. The major step forward of mine this week was preparing the eBook and Paperback formats. I have everything set up on Amazon too. The ‘book is live’ post is ready to go once I get the Amazon links. This means I don’t have to scramble to piece everything together at the last minute. I have all of the June posts ready to go as well. Those will be teasers from the book while July is going to be posts revolving around the concept of advice, how to stuff, and general writing. I’d like to come up with similar topics for August, but I’m coming up blank. Anybody hear a good opinion or subject that authors are discussing?
Stepping away from the author side of life will clarify why I didn’t and won’t get very far there. We had the second night of Passover on Thursday, which meant family visiting. This meant no writing, but it’s when I got the formatting and publication stuff set up. The rest of the time my son is with me will be events. Yesterday was ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ and today is a friend’s son’s birthday gathering. Tomorrow is my 43rd birthday, which will involve setting up two Easter egg hunts and then going to see the ‘Super Mario Bros’ movie. Monday is the only day that my son and I have no plans, but we’re going to do something. Tuesday is our last day of break together. Needless to say, Darwin & the Demon Game can take a backseat to father/son time. My characters understand and I’m getting better at returning to them after extended breaks.
Backtracking a bit, but I would really recommend ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ to anyone who played the games. My son liked the movie, but I got an extra kick out of the nods to the game. Not just with the monsters, places, groups, spells, and characters. There were several times where my brain recognized a point where a player would make a mistake. Just that sense of ‘you read the situation wrong and now we have a bigger headache than before’, which appears in these types of games. The improvising in the face of danger was another nod since I’ve been in so many campaigns where a DM’s plans were undone by players using tools in unorthodox ways. Heck, Darwin Slepsnor was born from me getting far too much use out of a basic sleep spell. So, it was fun and I expect Mario to be the same.
Haven’t talked about television in a while. All I’ve done is finished watching ‘Leverage: Redemption’ season 2, which I enjoyed. Can’t think of what to watch next. Not that I’m able to get any me time because I keep letting my son stay up later than usual. So, we watch our father/son shows until he goes to bed. That gives me maybe 40 minutes to get myself ready for bed. Another part of Spring Break though. One day, he won’t want to spend this kind of time with me. Hopefully, we’ll be done with ‘One Piece’ and ‘Dragon Ball Z’ by then.
Next week is the full week of Spring Break, which means there aren’t going to be many plans. The goals will be simple:
Time with son.
Deal with birthday stuff.
Write more Darwin & the Demon Game.
Set up some July posts and come up with August topics.
Clothes shopping.
Biking and sleeping maintained.
Get pizza after Passover is done.
Puzzle time.
Figure out what to get with birthday giftcards and money. Torn between buying fun stuff (Legos, puzzles, The Witcher novel boxset, etc.) and adult stuff (Clothes, electric shaver, etc.) This is another reason why I’m ‘meh’ on birthdays. I never know what to get myself.
Maybe tinker with Phi Beta Files if I have free time, but not enough to write or blog.
Clearly, I’m busy and needed to throw some filler in here. I figure everyone else is busy too. I’d save these for Sunday, but that’s my birthday. At least on this blog, my birthday comes first. So, enjoy these Google Image funnies.
