#Why was there never a golden compass 2 professional#

My complaint is that, not one nor two, but each and every plot element I can recall to mind either was an Unfired Gun or was a Deus Ex Machina. While normally this term is used to mean the writer uses an arbitrary mechanism to have the plot end well, the word is still apt in cases, such as here, where the writer uses an arbitrary mechanism to have the plot creak and lurch like Frankenstein’s monster stiffly from one disconnected event to the next. This second rule is a compliment to the first: If you need to have your character fire the gun in the Third Act, you cannot simply have a god lowered from the stage machinery and hand the gun to him. Guns that hang on walls and never go off are a distraction to the reader, a useless element, a protuberance. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t have been hanging there in the first place. If you establish in Act One that there is a gun hanging on the wall, by Act Three it absolutely must go off. The first is called the Gunrack Rule or Chekhov’s Gun Rule. There are two ways in which a plot can suck. If your plot has events and elements that don’t fit into the rest of the plot, if the plot is arbitrary, the spell is broken, artistic integrity flies out the window, and the reader is betrayed. The event seem to be inauthentic, inorganic, unnatural, and each thing that happens does not seem to be happening because of what the story requires, but merely because of what the author wants. If the events or plot elements appear out of nowhere and vanish with no consequence trailing after them, it is too much unlike life. The author can say what happens: but he cannot say, like a child playing a game, that it only happens because of his say-so. But they must follow the story-logic of make-believe. They do not need to follow the logic of real life cause-and-effect. They can be larger than life or smaller than life or true to life. The events need not be real, or even realistic. The basic ingredient of the magician’s cauldron, is, of course, verisimilitude. In telling a tale, a narrator is trying to cast a spell, to deceive the reader (with the reader’s cooperation, or course) into the illusion that the events being portrayed are unfolding before his eyes. In the first case, something come out of nowhere and in the second case, nothing comes of it.

#Why was there never a golden compass 2 professional#

In professional writing, we professionals say a PLOT SUCKS when the actions of the characters do not flow from causes previously established in the narrative, or when the reactions of following events do not reflect any consequences. Lest I use a technical terminology you non-writers cannot follow, allow me to explain. My big problem with Pullman is the two relating writing errors of (1) plot points introduced only when convenient and not before (2) no follow-through plot points set up but then simply forgotten. Let us merely grant this point to get it out of the way. I will merely take it for granted that the partisans defending this book can see the Emperor’s fine new clothes and I cannot because they are Enlightened and I am Benighted.

I am not claiming that there is not some deep meaning to the atheist message I am too shallow to see. His first book GOLDEN COMPASS is something that deserves its rewards, and he has a right to be proud of. I am not criticizing his skill as a writer. When I was an atheist, I read those books, I was on his side, and I was in his camp: and yet the third book bored me, because it made a mind-bogglingly simple error in plot. Pullman’s third book, AMBER SPYGLASS, miss the point so completely, that I think the point bears repeating. Several responses I have heard back on my criticism of Mr.