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- Apr 1, 2019
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I've noticed in the average manga/manhua/manhwa (manguwa) when protagonists or side-characters make mistakes or overlook things that are clearly obvious to the reader, many readers will get frustrated by the character's actions and it ends up souring their view of the entire story.
To be honest, I also find the same thing when I’m reading manguwa. It really is quite frustrating when characters make mistakes, especially obvious ones.
In the end, most of my follows (that I actually look forward to) have the most straight-forward Mary Sues and Gary Stus you can get.
I think this is a bit different to typical written literature.
In graphic novels you want to show the reader things rather than telling them, but also because of this you don’t want to include descriptions about the character’s motives or feelings.
Rather than explaining the fact that Gary was hesitant to use his previously-explained special ability to breeze his way through some upcoming battle because there may be unintended casualties, you can just show how lively the area is just before Gary faces his adversaries.
Since you don’t like to degrade the intelligence of your potential readers, since previous clues alluded to Gary’s power being limited in its uses it should be obvious to the reader what Gary is thinking. Since you already showed how lively the area was, of course Gary would be thinking of that.
So it isn’t explained.
But the result is that several readers get angry at Gary using such roundabout methods to fight his adversaries, because he gets captured at the end of it anyway! If he had just carefully used his ability here and there, he would have gone through this whole ordeal without wasting everyone’s time.
Of course, the author’s intention was to show that Gary made a mistake in his judgement. Potentially he could have done it a better way, but he’s only human!
...Except, NOT.
Because his thoughts weren’t laid out on paper, the reader can’t engage with him.
“The art is good, but the author can’t write for shit.”
So why not just explain their thoughts?
True, you can, but here’s the thing: the readers have a literal image of what’s going on.
They don’t have to let their imaginations fill in the visuals, as graphic novels are all about the graphics. With this you also expose the readers to the same picture that the character is supposedly facing, which allows the readers to draw their own conclusions.
“The character clearly could have done this and this, it's blatantly obvious and you can see they could have done it.”
Unless the art is carefully crafted to absolutely make no mistake about it, sudden exposition just feels hollow.
Ultimately when characters make mistakes in manguwa it so often just seems like a way for the author to arbitrarily extend the story when everything was progressing smoothly beforehand.
With novel situations and/or great writing— more importantly, a clear translation of the character’s thoughts into image, sure, there are exemptions.
But in my opinion with picture-art being so expensive to make and the cost-cutting measures that get employed because of that, imperfect characters stain manguwa more than they add to them.
Thoughts?
To be honest, I also find the same thing when I’m reading manguwa. It really is quite frustrating when characters make mistakes, especially obvious ones.
In the end, most of my follows (that I actually look forward to) have the most straight-forward Mary Sues and Gary Stus you can get.
I think this is a bit different to typical written literature.
In graphic novels you want to show the reader things rather than telling them, but also because of this you don’t want to include descriptions about the character’s motives or feelings.
Rather than explaining the fact that Gary was hesitant to use his previously-explained special ability to breeze his way through some upcoming battle because there may be unintended casualties, you can just show how lively the area is just before Gary faces his adversaries.
Since you don’t like to degrade the intelligence of your potential readers, since previous clues alluded to Gary’s power being limited in its uses it should be obvious to the reader what Gary is thinking. Since you already showed how lively the area was, of course Gary would be thinking of that.
So it isn’t explained.
But the result is that several readers get angry at Gary using such roundabout methods to fight his adversaries, because he gets captured at the end of it anyway! If he had just carefully used his ability here and there, he would have gone through this whole ordeal without wasting everyone’s time.
Of course, the author’s intention was to show that Gary made a mistake in his judgement. Potentially he could have done it a better way, but he’s only human!
...Except, NOT.
Because his thoughts weren’t laid out on paper, the reader can’t engage with him.
“The art is good, but the author can’t write for shit.”
So why not just explain their thoughts?
True, you can, but here’s the thing: the readers have a literal image of what’s going on.
They don’t have to let their imaginations fill in the visuals, as graphic novels are all about the graphics. With this you also expose the readers to the same picture that the character is supposedly facing, which allows the readers to draw their own conclusions.
“The character clearly could have done this and this, it's blatantly obvious and you can see they could have done it.”
Unless the art is carefully crafted to absolutely make no mistake about it, sudden exposition just feels hollow.
Ultimately when characters make mistakes in manguwa it so often just seems like a way for the author to arbitrarily extend the story when everything was progressing smoothly beforehand.
With novel situations and/or great writing— more importantly, a clear translation of the character’s thoughts into image, sure, there are exemptions.
But in my opinion with picture-art being so expensive to make and the cost-cutting measures that get employed because of that, imperfect characters stain manguwa more than they add to them.
Thoughts?