{"id":8237,"date":"2013-03-26T23:06:15","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T06:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=8237"},"modified":"2013-03-26T23:10:14","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T06:10:14","slug":"trope-tuesday-fridge-logic-fridge-horror-and-fridge-brilliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/trope-tuesday-fridge-logic-fridge-horror-and-fridge-brilliance\/","title":{"rendered":"Trope Tuesday: Fridge Logic, Fridge Horror, and Fridge Brilliance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"It's<\/a>
It’s amazing how many stories suddenly stop making sense from this point of view.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You know that moment after the end<\/a> of the show, when the credits are rolling and the glory of that crowning moment of awesome<\/a> is just beginning to fade?\u00a0 When you go to the fridge to get something to eat, and all of a sudden that gaping plot hole<\/a> or internal consistency<\/a> problem with the story hits you?\u00a0 Yeah, that’s fridge logic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The key, though, is that it’s not something you normally question while you’re reading the book or watching the show.\u00a0 While you’re in the story itself, the narrative is so compelling that you just don’t question it–that, or rule of cool<\/a> is in play.\u00a0 It’s only after the story is over that those questions start to arise.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t have to come from bad writing<\/a>.\u00a0 Sometimes, it’s a result of values dissonance<\/a>, especially for stories written in a different time or culture (although by no means is this phenomenon immune to bad writing<\/a>).\u00a0 Sometimes, it’s a result of a tomato surprise<\/a>, where a reveal of something the characters have known all along completely changes the audience’s understanding of the story (though certainly, this isn’t immune to bad writing<\/a> either).<\/p>\n

Not all fridge logic is bad.\u00a0 Fridge horror<\/a> happens when a story becomes even more terrifying the more you think about it.\u00a0 Some of the scariest horror stories have done this to me, as well as some that weren’t really intended to finish on downer endings<\/a> but kinda sorta did.\u00a0 Cracked.com did an interesting article<\/a> on six movies that went that way.<\/p>\n

But the best is when a story turns around and gives you fridge brilliance<\/a>–that moment when you realize that that thing that bothered you actually changes the nature of the story in a way that suddenly makes it your favorite.<\/p>\n

My favorite novel of all time, The Neverending Story<\/em>, totally did this to me.\u00a0 When I first read it in fourth grade, there were so many things that made the story awesome: the Temple of a Thousand Doors, the test of the three gates, the old man who is the exact opposite of the Childlike Empress in every way, and of course the signature phrase “but that is another story and shall be told another time.” But when I reread it in college, I realized that the real<\/em> story–the underlying story that brings everything together–isn’t about a loser kid having all sorts of adventures in a fantastic world, but about the power of storytelling itself, and how it can fill the world with love.<\/p>\n

Another moment of fridge brilliance came to me when I learned the story behind the writing of Legend<\/em>, my favorite novel by David Gemmell, my favorite fantasy writer.\u00a0 The book is about a hopeless battle that everyone knows cannot be won, and the people who decide to go and fight it anyway.\u00a0 That’s all well and good, except that David Gemmell wrote it immediately after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.\u00a0 The story of the battle itself was a metaphor for his own life, and his struggle with his own impending death.\u00a0 Lucky for all of us, after he finished writing it the doctor came back and told him that the first test was a false positive–that he was going to live after all.\u00a0 He then went on to write almost thirty more books, all of them off-the-charts awesome.<\/p>\n

So yeah, there you have it.\u00a0 These are more reader tropes than writer tropes, but as a writer it’s good to keep them in mind.\u00a0 Don’t be lazy, otherwise your fans will pick your stories apart (or if you have to leave a hole, be sure to hang a lampshade<\/a> on it).\u00a0 And if you find yourself smacking your forehead over something you’ve already written and published, see if you can’t revisit it in later books in the series and turn it into fridge brilliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know that moment after the end of the show, when the credits are rolling and the glory of that crowning moment of awesome is just beginning to fade?\u00a0 When you go to the fridge to get something to eat, and all of a sudden that gaping plot hole or internal consistency problem with the… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Fridge Logic, Fridge Horror, and Fridge Brilliance<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"It's amazing how much a story changes when you're staring half-bored at your fridge.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[113,222,632,242,599,641,565,626],"class_list":["post-8237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-gemmell","tag-endings","tag-michael-ende","tag-reading","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-trope-tuesday","tag-tropes-and-cliches","tag-tvtropes","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-28R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8237"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8243,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237\/revisions\/8243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}