Use Structures, Don't Be Used By Procedures

# Own Your Structures! Don't Be Used By Procedures

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%red% -> **This essay explicitly mentions politics!** Politics—in the explicit sense of politics as the philosophy of *"Is there a reason you want to take away the iPad from an iPad kid? Where in the world did this reason to take way the iPad from the iPad kid came from?"*—which is hilariously, but also **unironically** more crucial for **character writing** and **worldbuilding** than any dead-end procedure for writing imposed by self-proclaimed best-sellers & marketers could; "marketers" being a fancy way of saying you see expression as something to commodify & sell<- %%

## Introduction

I felt the need to share this framework, because most fiction-writing 'guides' I've seen prescribe deterministic procedures and steps they must exactly follow to the T with their 'best-selling author' aura. As a result, up-and-coming authors wonder why they feel so defeated and discouraged from writing when the procedures of best-sellers dont work and is treated as holy, self-defeatingly equating merit with capital.

So, I'll be offering this fiction structure which doesn't prescribe an act structure to ham-fistedly force your arcs into for the sake of immediacy & immediate approval from othes. You write for yourself & know for yourself, we should be giving up-and-coming writers a structure and telling them to go utterly HAM with it—constructively & deconstructively, of course. Talk to others who can engage with your structure so you can make sense of your methods based on your own, unique purpose.


## A "Political" Structure for Fiction

Neither of these are fixed and bound by laws you've internalized and such—but, they are triaged; a hierarchy of sorts. The objects in a story can be part of the reality but can warp it's laws, the a character will go against the macropolitics like a political/social revolution. In most stories, the laws of reality remain static and micropolitics between characters are shaped and defined by macropolitics—structures of power and violence imposing goals it'll never achieve in it's existence & identities that forcibly give meaning to the characters:

* Micropolitics (legitimization of violent relationships, the forced removal of choice; between the characters and the motives & structures behind them)
* Macropolitics (the structures forcing the ideals that perpetuate the reasons behind the forced removal of choice by giving them a fixed ideal—it can drive a backstory and a motive for the characters)
* Reality (tangible, shared reality bound by deterministic laws and processes, such as tangible objects, falling after jumping or the forced removal of the range of choice of a character by authority)

As for reality—no one in the story but you, the author knows the precise, exact telos of it's laws—let alone the result of interacting & intersecting systems of power and violence. But, they can believe in fixed, idealized results such as communism. Through association and learning, they can construct their interpretation (ideal) of reality—but, you the author only know the truth in your fictional universe's reality. You know gravity is a thing, but a character you write might not believe in gravity as science knows it. In other words, the author is God. Our God may be the ultimate author of this universe—some food for thought

A McGuffin is an object in a story that isn't made as a result of & doesn't interact with power structures (macropolitics). But, it is otherwise treated with paramount importance in the micropolitics between the characters who aren't, but should've been influenced by the macropolitics that make the object seem realcso, the reader will see it as an unbelievable, impersonal object. *For example;* a well written currency can't be a McGuffin because it is like currency in our reality, you are forced to use it by structures of power: laws backed by state violence, banks issuing the currency, money being given value by society to quantify the value of labour that is being sold for profit.

## The Primacy Of Your Characters

One takeaway from the entire essay is the quirky personality & behaviours of the characters—because, yea; that is kind of the point. The personality of our characters is what we may have **passionately** written and brainstormed about *first* out of the egoistic passion & love we have for our characters—in a way, laying out it's ego. Personality can be the values, hobbies, behavior & overall quirks *unique* to the character that they may keep or discard out of their desire, or have internalized as a result of accepting the current structures behind their beliefs (i.e. privilege, burnout, fatalism) or their personal antithesis to the structures they oppose.

The omission of 'how 2 personality' in precarious, orderly steps is intentional, as I expect readers to be among those who have minds already buzzing with characters and scenarios—a desire to make them *real*. With mechanism and procedure, it becomes soulless—we lose why we make, share and nurture our characters. Your characters are paramount to *your own* enjoyment of *your own* imagination as you develop it into a story and immerse yourself in it like a metaphysical 'ice bucket challenge'. It is impossible to prescribe anything in that regard, when you should be performing some ownership over your OCs—it is through your desire to *realize* them that it may snowball into a story, a fictional world that is uniquely yours