I’m definitely not saying/ assuming that you are wrong on this point (most likely you are right for some readers, and wrong for some others), but part of my theory of how to write the character comes in part from Harry in MoR who definitely begins as being extremely who he is.
A priori I don’t see any reason to think that a textbooky novelization of a set of philosophical ideas will be worse if I have the MC start with that set of beliefs than if I have him develop them over time. I went through four different outline concepts while planning out this novel, and this resonated more strongly with me than the ones that were more focused on the MC being the one who gradually turns into an EA.
I guess the question should be to test how people respond to the charater and opening on average (but it probably shouldn’t be random people, but fantasy readers who are inclined to be interested in EA in the first place).
Perhaps I could run some sort of mechanical turk or similar survey of a hundred or so people and ask questions about whether they find this preachy/ etc.
Or does anyone know good reddit subthreads to post this to, to see if people who are not part of the community react negatively to this as overly preachy?
“Having the protagonist get all these magic powers and saying that what he was most excited about was being able to help more people isn’t something the reader is likely to connect to.”
Do you mean that you didn’t connect to this, or that you are guessing that EA naive or semi-naive readers won’t connect? -- in the latter case I think that falls very much under the heading of a theory that should be tested, and if this novel doesn’t work, the next author ought to try a different approach (and if this novel does work, the next novel ought to have a different approach anyways, because fiction is anti-inductive).
Regarding sterility perhaps that feeling points to something that can be improved in a straightforward way. Can you maybe try to draw out what you mean by it in more detail? That might spark some creative thought I can use.
An important part of HPMoR is that a substantial fraction of Harry’s earlier behavior is later revealed to be unhelpful and prideful and to have overall made the world substantially worse. I think a good chunk of Harry’s most arrogant/defiant behavior is at least partially intended as a warning, not as an example to follow.
I also think Harry currently reads quite different from your protagonist. I don’t expect to see sentences like “Harry strongly believed in X”. Instead I expect to just see what consideration Harry’s beliefs generate, and then separately Harry often talks to other characters in the world about his beliefs, but in those contexts he has natural in-story reasons to explain the relevant concepts (like, he truly has things to gain by and it makes sense that he would explain the scientific method to Malfoy, and it makes sense that he explains various biases to Hermione while they are trying to research how magic works). I think a key thing that bothers me about the current version is that it feels like the sentences that explain the concepts are not naturally thoughts that the character would think at that time. It feels similar to one of those standard bad fantasy-novel opening scene where one character for some reason explains how the whole world works to another character that presumably knows all this (“Oh hello Bartholomew, my brother and third cousin who I met while we were galloping across the fields of Galeia during the first annual summer festival that we celebrate every year to appease the big sun gods. It is good to see you this morning”).
An important part of HPMoR is that a substantial fraction of Harry’s earlier behavior is later revealed to be unhelpful and prideful and to have overall made the world substantially worse.
This was not my impression. I recall rationality mistakes he makes, and somewhere near the end, an overall takeaway that’s somewhat like “you generally won’t apply rationality properly unless you’ve also gotten practical experience”. But all of those indicate that his rationality wasn’t enough. I don’t recall any revelation indicating that he was going into the wrong direction, was too arrogant, or anything of the sort.
Maybe the one exception is that he was too rude to Dumbledore specifically, but this seems too narrow to warrant that overall description.
The whole initial scene with Neville where he protects him from the bullies and uses the pies and the time turner is pretty quickly revealed to be a pretty rash and irrational things to do that hurt Neville more than it helped him
The whole initial confrontation with Snape is something Harry later reflects on as super reckless and rash that gave up both a lot of his strategic advantage in the form of the time turner, and very needlessly escalated a conflict for the sake of his own pride
A lot of Harry’s harshest and most arrogant tendencies are revealed to be the result of Tom Riddle’s mind being imprinted on him. That’s why he is so paranoid about losing people, and find it’s hard to trust people, and lies to people a good amount.
The whole thing where he lied to Malfoy about how he related to Hermione blows up in his face
In the last chapter he realizes that he likely would have destroyed the whole universe by doing something dumb like reverting vow of secrecy for magic, opening up the world to crazy things like people transfiguring a single up-quark. At least Harry’s take at the end of the book is that if Quirrel hadn’t forced him to take a vow not to risk destroying the world, he would have likely almost immediately done so.
The whole ark with Hermione is primarily about Harry learning how to healthily relate to other people in a non-controlling way. The last chapter makes this pretty clear.
That chapter where Dumbledore tries to get Harry to understand the need to be strategic and that losing Hermione isn’t worth losing the whole war over, and Harry responds with a bunch of dumb stuff about “replacement cost” and tells Dumbledore how he is an idiot I think is pretty clearly trying to show a bunch of facets of irrationality and arrogance in Harry.
More broadly, I think Dumbledore as a character is first portrayed as kind of an antithesis to Harry with little merit, but is later revealed to have been the primary positive force in the whole story, I think in parts to show the need for the kinds of virtues that Dumbledore has, in contrast and addition to the virtues that Harry has.
To be clear, overall the book is not like “all of these cognitive patterns have no merits”. I think the book tries to say that Harry has a lot of important components that are necessary to actually do important things, but that he is frequently reckless and clueless about how to apply them, and frequently bumps into both other people and the world in ways that is quite dangerous and reckless.
This seems to be a consistent (and not really surprising) point of criticism. I’ll soon try rewriting the first chapter somewhat to see if I can make a version which works better. Though I suspect that the book is inevitably going to have somewhat of a preachy feeling, in part simply because I’m not as good of a writer as EY.
Do you mean that you didn’t connect to this, or that you are guessing that EA naive or semi-naive readers won’t connect?
I meant that I personally didn’t connect with it, and I’m already pretty sold on much (but not all) of EA.
Regarding sterility perhaps that feeling points to something that can be improved in a straightforward way. Can you maybe try to draw out what you mean by it in more detail?
It sort of feels like the author is a perfect EA machine who exists only to maximize total utility. I’m not getting much in the way of feelings or emotions from him.
Also BTW is there a reason the text switches from 3rd person to 1st person after the prologue?
“It sort of feels like the author is a perfect EA machine who exists only to maximize total utility. I’m not getting much in the way of feelings or emotions from him.”
Do you think you’d find him more relatable and emotional if I strongly emphasized how he is afraid of dying again?
Though maybe trying to bring out points of joy might work better, but that could also make him seem more like what you are talking about.
I’m not really sure, sorry. It’s much easier for me to notice how the story is making me feel than actually working out why, or how to change it… I guess that’s why writing books is harder than reading them 😂
Anyway not meaning to criticize here—you’ve done a fair better job than I could have. Just trying to help here a bit.
I was just checking if you might have introspective knowledge about how you’d respond to that :P, also I think I may have been trying to demonstrate that I am in fact paying attention to and thinking about the criticisms—the important thing is in fact that X didn’t work for you (and didn’t work for several other people in the same way). Isn’t there some saying about product development that when the customer tells you that it isn’t working, they are right. When they tell you how to fix it, they have no idea what they usually don’t know what they are talking about?
The too preachy feeling definitely is something to soften out and try fiddling with.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with Yair’s assessment (in the sense that I felt differently to Yair, not that I’m doubting their feelings on the matter) - there are plenty of much shallower xianxia characters out there. I agree with other people that Isaac adjusts to his circumstances pretty quickly, but I can let that go for the sake of the story, because the character freaking out about the obvious impossibility of all of this doesn’t really add much, especially because your intended audience seems to be somewhat familiar with cultivation novels and isekai already.
I’m definitely not saying/ assuming that you are wrong on this point (most likely you are right for some readers, and wrong for some others), but part of my theory of how to write the character comes in part from Harry in MoR who definitely begins as being extremely who he is.
A priori I don’t see any reason to think that a textbooky novelization of a set of philosophical ideas will be worse if I have the MC start with that set of beliefs than if I have him develop them over time. I went through four different outline concepts while planning out this novel, and this resonated more strongly with me than the ones that were more focused on the MC being the one who gradually turns into an EA.
I guess the question should be to test how people respond to the charater and opening on average (but it probably shouldn’t be random people, but fantasy readers who are inclined to be interested in EA in the first place).
Perhaps I could run some sort of mechanical turk or similar survey of a hundred or so people and ask questions about whether they find this preachy/ etc.
Or does anyone know good reddit subthreads to post this to, to see if people who are not part of the community react negatively to this as overly preachy?
“Having the protagonist get all these magic powers and saying that what he was most excited about was being able to help more people isn’t something the reader is likely to connect to.”
Do you mean that you didn’t connect to this, or that you are guessing that EA naive or semi-naive readers won’t connect? -- in the latter case I think that falls very much under the heading of a theory that should be tested, and if this novel doesn’t work, the next author ought to try a different approach (and if this novel does work, the next novel ought to have a different approach anyways, because fiction is anti-inductive).
Regarding sterility perhaps that feeling points to something that can be improved in a straightforward way. Can you maybe try to draw out what you mean by it in more detail? That might spark some creative thought I can use.
An important part of HPMoR is that a substantial fraction of Harry’s earlier behavior is later revealed to be unhelpful and prideful and to have overall made the world substantially worse. I think a good chunk of Harry’s most arrogant/defiant behavior is at least partially intended as a warning, not as an example to follow.
I also think Harry currently reads quite different from your protagonist. I don’t expect to see sentences like “Harry strongly believed in X”. Instead I expect to just see what consideration Harry’s beliefs generate, and then separately Harry often talks to other characters in the world about his beliefs, but in those contexts he has natural in-story reasons to explain the relevant concepts (like, he truly has things to gain by and it makes sense that he would explain the scientific method to Malfoy, and it makes sense that he explains various biases to Hermione while they are trying to research how magic works). I think a key thing that bothers me about the current version is that it feels like the sentences that explain the concepts are not naturally thoughts that the character would think at that time. It feels similar to one of those standard bad fantasy-novel opening scene where one character for some reason explains how the whole world works to another character that presumably knows all this (“Oh hello Bartholomew, my brother and third cousin who I met while we were galloping across the fields of Galeia during the first annual summer festival that we celebrate every year to appease the big sun gods. It is good to see you this morning”).
This was not my impression. I recall rationality mistakes he makes, and somewhere near the end, an overall takeaway that’s somewhat like “you generally won’t apply rationality properly unless you’ve also gotten practical experience”. But all of those indicate that his rationality wasn’t enough. I don’t recall any revelation indicating that he was going into the wrong direction, was too arrogant, or anything of the sort.
Maybe the one exception is that he was too rude to Dumbledore specifically, but this seems too narrow to warrant that overall description.
Could be wrong, of course. Do you have examples?
Yeah, here are some examples in spoiler blocks:
The whole initial scene with Neville where he protects him from the bullies and uses the pies and the time turner is pretty quickly revealed to be a pretty rash and irrational things to do that hurt Neville more than it helped him
The whole initial confrontation with Snape is something Harry later reflects on as super reckless and rash that gave up both a lot of his strategic advantage in the form of the time turner, and very needlessly escalated a conflict for the sake of his own pride
A lot of Harry’s harshest and most arrogant tendencies are revealed to be the result of Tom Riddle’s mind being imprinted on him. That’s why he is so paranoid about losing people, and find it’s hard to trust people, and lies to people a good amount.
The whole thing where he lied to Malfoy about how he related to Hermione blows up in his face
In the last chapter he realizes that he likely would have destroyed the whole universe by doing something dumb like reverting vow of secrecy for magic, opening up the world to crazy things like people transfiguring a single up-quark. At least Harry’s take at the end of the book is that if Quirrel hadn’t forced him to take a vow not to risk destroying the world, he would have likely almost immediately done so.
The whole ark with Hermione is primarily about Harry learning how to healthily relate to other people in a non-controlling way. The last chapter makes this pretty clear.
That chapter where Dumbledore tries to get Harry to understand the need to be strategic and that losing Hermione isn’t worth losing the whole war over, and Harry responds with a bunch of dumb stuff about “replacement cost” and tells Dumbledore how he is an idiot I think is pretty clearly trying to show a bunch of facets of irrationality and arrogance in Harry.
More broadly, I think Dumbledore as a character is first portrayed as kind of an antithesis to Harry with little merit, but is later revealed to have been the primary positive force in the whole story, I think in parts to show the need for the kinds of virtues that Dumbledore has, in contrast and addition to the virtues that Harry has.
To be clear, overall the book is not like “all of these cognitive patterns have no merits”. I think the book tries to say that Harry has a lot of important components that are necessary to actually do important things, but that he is frequently reckless and clueless about how to apply them, and frequently bumps into both other people and the world in ways that is quite dangerous and reckless.
Thanks for taking the effort to write this up. I was definitely wrong.
This seems to be a consistent (and not really surprising) point of criticism. I’ll soon try rewriting the first chapter somewhat to see if I can make a version which works better. Though I suspect that the book is inevitably going to have somewhat of a preachy feeling, in part simply because I’m not as good of a writer as EY.
I meant that I personally didn’t connect with it, and I’m already pretty sold on much (but not all) of EA.
It sort of feels like the author is a perfect EA machine who exists only to maximize total utility. I’m not getting much in the way of feelings or emotions from him.
Also BTW is there a reason the text switches from 3rd person to 1st person after the prologue?
“It sort of feels like the author is a perfect EA machine who exists only to maximize total utility. I’m not getting much in the way of feelings or emotions from him.”
Do you think you’d find him more relatable and emotional if I strongly emphasized how he is afraid of dying again?
Though maybe trying to bring out points of joy might work better, but that could also make him seem more like what you are talking about.
I’m not really sure, sorry. It’s much easier for me to notice how the story is making me feel than actually working out why, or how to change it… I guess that’s why writing books is harder than reading them 😂
Anyway not meaning to criticize here—you’ve done a fair better job than I could have. Just trying to help here a bit.
I was just checking if you might have introspective knowledge about how you’d respond to that :P, also I think I may have been trying to demonstrate that I am in fact paying attention to and thinking about the criticisms—the important thing is in fact that X didn’t work for you (and didn’t work for several other people in the same way). Isn’t there some saying about product development that when the customer tells you that it isn’t working, they are right. When they tell you how to fix it, they have no idea what they usually don’t know what they are talking about?
The too preachy feeling definitely is something to soften out and try fiddling with.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with Yair’s assessment (in the sense that I felt differently to Yair, not that I’m doubting their feelings on the matter) - there are plenty of much shallower xianxia characters out there. I agree with other people that Isaac adjusts to his circumstances pretty quickly, but I can let that go for the sake of the story, because the character freaking out about the obvious impossibility of all of this doesn’t really add much, especially because your intended audience seems to be somewhat familiar with cultivation novels and isekai already.