12 KiB
[D] An example of a story with lots of exposition and a cunning plan... that's completely non-rational. Characters should solve problems through the intelligent application of their, not your, knowledge and resources.
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Author: u/neshalchanderman *
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Score: 5
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Created: 2016-06-23T08:29:55
Post:
Comments:
u/neshalchanderman [+14] (7 minutes later)
You need to learn up to your charachter, not bring your charachter down to your (assumed amateur) knowledge on a topic.
If you wish to write a super murderer, you need to research police procedure. If dna evidence is your out, then you need to research how forensic scientists collect and detectives use this evidence.
u/nickofnight [+14] (59 minutes later)
Hey! Author of it here. Thanks for the feedback!
I will be honest, this was just a 10 minute story I wrote on my phone. It just happened to get some upvotes. If it were for a book or even a longer story, I would have done more research. I love court room dramas, Making a Murderer had me hooked pretty recently, but I didn't want to bog this down with details as it was just meant to be a moment in the head of a psycho. This wasn't meant to be fact based rational fiction. If you are interested, I did go for a more in-keeping-with-the-character ending on my sub (/r/nickofnight), and it's a little more realistic.
But if it makes a good piece to analyse on this sub, then I am glad I could help :)
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+7] Godric Gryffindor (10 hours later)
I didn't see anything wrong with the original.
u/nickofnight [+3] (10 hours later)
Thanks! I guess it was just a little out of character that some guy who plans in such detail then 'hopes' the police kill the guy. Was more fun though.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (a day later)
For what it's worth, I liked the original but thought the updated version was even better.
u/nickofnight [+3] (a day later)
Thanks! That means a lot actually :)
u/neshalchanderman [+9] (2 hours later)
No knock on you or your story. It was just an example to illustrate a point I've wanted to make for a while.
btw rational is a genre (see the sidebar). Non-rational meant not in the rational genre not poorly written.
u/nickofnight [+8] (2 hours later)
Hey no problem, honestly, and I am glad it helps illustrate it. Plus you helped me find this sub which I had never heard of but have now subbed to :)
u/neshalchanderman [+9] (2 hours later)
Happy to have you! Enjoy :)
u/VivaLaPandaReddit [+3] (7 hours later)
Lots to read here! If you have the time check out: Unsong Mother of Learning Glimwarden And of course HPMoR
u/nickofnight [+2] (9 hours later)
Thank you for the recommendations, I will be sure to check them out.
u/chaosmosis [+2] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
I recommend Mother of Learning most heavily, of the ones on that list. HPMOR is polarizing and in my opinion its quality varies a lot. I haven't read Glimwarden. Unsong is the author's first novel length work of fiction, and although I like it, it is unpolished and lacks direction. In contrast, Mother of Learning is consistently interesting. It is also very long, and not nearly complete yet.
For a (relatively) quick introduction to the genre, I think the best you'll find is The Metropolitan Man.
A lot of this subreddit is fanfiction, by the way. But some of it is still pretty good.
u/eaglejarl [+7] (5 hours later)
My knowledge is apparently lacking as well -- on the surface this seems plausible. I'd be a little surprised if the MC didn't leave some other DNA, but since his plan is based around forging DNA evidence it's not entirely unbelievable that he prepared such that he didn't leave any.
What don't I know?
u/neshalchanderman [+9] (9 hours later)
sperm <> ejaculate
The sperm you buy isn't the stuff you ejaculate - it's 'washed' to prevent cramping when injected. While there are people who presumably would sell you ejaculate - this has been tried though usually via purchase of used condoms from prostitutes - the method has dubious provenance.
There's reasonably strong safeguards against. Not perfect but reasonably strong.
tagging /u/dspeyer
Forensic services do test/look out for contamination and transferance. (Lab guides assume a clean sample. Crime scene processing guides do not. You actually need to qualify/ be approved to process a crime scene.) You'd have issues with temperature, degradation, the presence of latex (or powder) from the condom, the lack of presence of epithelial dna from the sperm donor (also the nagging problem that what you purchased could be traced back to the dna profile of a dead person or might not even be human or contain spermatazoa), the presence of the victims dna on the attackers clothing, splatter patterns, gunshot residue or hand marks which tie to the attacker.
DNA also means little. It can place you at a scene but it doesn't mean much. 'I was at the scene your honor, I had sex with the victim, but when I left she was still alive' is a frequent and often adequate defence against the presence of dna at a rape/murder trial. Specifically it's not super evidence which overrides eyewitness testimony.
DNA also isn't automatically exculpatory. That's a myth. The jury would be instructed along the following lines: it's possible for the attacker not to leave dna behind and it's possible for non-attackers to leave dna behind.
If the other evidence is strong this stuff isn't going to prevent the attacker's convinction.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (10 hours later)
Ah, interesting. Cool, thanks for explaining.
Out of curiosity, are you a CSI yourself or did you research this for writing / some other purpose? (If you don't mind me asking, that is?)
u/vallar57 [+5] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (38 minutes later)
Sorry, what do you mean? Is that story good or bad in your opinion? What are it's mistakes?
u/waylandertheslayer [+18] (2 hours later)
It seems OP's point is about the genre, not quality, of the story (as in, the rational genre is about in-universe sensible conclusions and clever strategies, not out-of-universe correct decisions made by the in-universe character).
As far as I can tell, his argument goes like this:
People sometimes consider 'rational' to mean 'correct', or 'best chance of being correct'
This should be the case for the character, given what the character knows from their subjective view of a fictional world - as in, given what they know, they try their best to win or succeed.
Using out-of-character knowledge, that the author knows but the character couldn't be expected to know, is bad (like metagaming in tabletop roleplaying) but so is:
Assuming that there is no in-universe knowledge that the author doesn't know of (e.g. I don't understand how electromagetism works, so I ignore that it can destroy data storage devices in-universe), if that makes sense. I'm struggling to adequately describe what I think OP means here - I keep wanting to link Universal Fire but I'm not sure exactly why. It's the inverse of the point above, where instead of having extra information flow into the world in a way that doesn't follow any of the already introduced rules, we have information or rules that are removed or disappear with no good (in-universe) reason.
That's the impression I got so far, but I could be wrong. Either way, I think it's a valid point to make - rational protagonists try to win, but they don't necessarily succeed, or even succeed often. They just need to maximise their chance of winning, and bad luck or low starting probabilities of success can make it all in vain. Reaching in from outside to have them make unrealistic decisions given what they know that nevertheless work well because of information they don't have is not part of the rational genre.
u/vallar57 [+3] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (11 hours later)
Ah, I fully agree with that point. Though, OP would have done better job making it by listing story's faults in the post)
Btw, making a character smarter than the author / making it know more than the author is incredibly hard. How do you think authors should make such characters?
u/waylandertheslayer [+3] (12 hours later)
There's a link in the sidebar (Yudkowsky's guide to writing rationalist fiction) that would help you. Specifically his guide to 'Level 2 Intelligent Characters' has a few pieces of advice for stuff like that, although the whole thing is worth reading. My favourite, though, is simply time. If you have several days worth of thought, you will normally produce something clever that definitely would make a character seem very intelligent if they (in-story) come up with it in two minutes.
u/GaBeRockKing [+4] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (14 hours later)
I like to crowdsource character choices, and compress time. A character twice as smart as me still isn't going to think of something better in two minutes than I did in two hours.
You'll notice that most stories, even rational ones, have charachters reach mostly correct conclusions on unreasonably fast timeframes. Normally we just skip over that, but if you specifically point it out people will realize it is out of the ordinary.
u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (5 hours later)
Authorial knowledge should not be used to augment a character's reasoning, nor should a lack of authorial knowledge get in the way of a character's reasoning.
Or, to put it another way, a character should know exactly as much as expected (given their background, memories, etc.) and their behaviour and reasoning should align with this.
u/blazinghand [+5] Chaos Undivided (23 hours later)
Context: This story had a different ending at the time that /u/neshalchanderman probably read it. The ending went like this:
CRACK
Fuck, the front window! Shit, it's the husband! Maybe I can run him over and claim self defence!
"You're dead! I know it was you!"
CRACK
Oh shit oh shit, the ignition won't catch!
"Got you, you piece of human excrement. This is for Elise and every other life you have taken and ruined!"
I feel a sharp object penetrate me between my ribs. So, this is what it feels like.
The reason some people in this thread appear to be talking past each other is, some people read a story in which the protag died because he was rational but only had his own knowledge and resources, and some people read a story in which the protag lived because he used the author's knowledge and resources.
u/electrace [+1] (a day later)
This explains a lot.
Seems like the original story is actually more rational than the current version.
u/Dwood15 [+3] (6 hours later)
Give me a breakdown of what you're thinking here.
u/electrace [+1] (6 hours later)
If I had to guess, it would be that the murderer couldn't have possibly predicted that the husband would try to kill him.
Even if he could have, there is no way that he could have predicted exactly how the husband was going to try to kill him. He easily could have shot the murderer on the courthouse steps, or followed his car home and kill him there, or set up a car bomb.
The author knew how he was going to do it, so the murderer ended up planning for that particular scenario, which would have been impossible to reliably predict beforehand.