Writing 101: the plot must have something at stake

Meanwhile, Frodo, while still somewhere in Hollin, steps behind Bill the Pony, gets kicked in the head, and dies! Sauron the Great trips and falls down the stairs of Barad Dur! Gandalf survives the fight with the Balrog, but is killed by peanut allergy when eating a PBJ given him by Galadriel! James Bond gets venereal disease and dies! James Kirk is disintegrated  in a Transporter accident while beaming down to the corner store for milk!

No, sir, the idea of God dying because He slips on a banana peel is only interesting to those people already filled with such hate and contempt for the whole idea of God that even making Him an impressive bad guy is beyond the reach of their stunted imaginations. Such a lame and pointless death would perhaps, if done right, make a good joke. It would make a good ironic comedy. You can do it in something like HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. You can’t do it in an adventure fantasy we’re supposed to take seriously.

Mr. Pullman’s hatred blinded him to the needs of drama. Only readers already in the same frame of mind will find the scene rewarding or interesting to read. A good writer can reach readers not of his party, faction, or religion, because a good writer will reach toward certain eternal ideas, or at least long-lasting conventions, that any readership can appreciate.

If your characters are trying to kill God, then you are writing a Jack the Giant Killer story, except in this case, the Giant is an all-powerful super-being. If Jack climbs up the beanstalk and the Giant dies in the bathtub slipping on the soap, there is no drama, no story, no nothing.

If on the other hand, the Great God is simply a hoax, like the God in GATHER DARKNESS by Fritz Leiber, the drama involved is in (1) having the heroes discover the fraud or (2) having the heroes reveal the fraud to a disbelieving and shocked public.

We have seen STAR TREK do this plot a million times and do it right! The thing the cute sixties babe in a space bikini was worshipping as a god turns out to be a computer, and after Kirk destroys it by means of the Cretan Paradox (or whatever), she is always staring up at the stars misty-eyed and promising that she will join the march of progress and one day inherit the stars.  In Pullman there was no set-up and no pay off. 

Here is what I mean by pay-off. In TARTUFFE, when the hypocrite is revealed, the father suddenly understands how deeply he has been deceived. He repents his folly and learns betters. Who at all in His Dark Materials repents and learns better?

 Simple question for anyone: name the main character in “His Dark Materials” who had a vested interest or something at stake in God’s identity? If neither Asriel nor his daughter nor her boyfriend nor the race of four-wheeled creatures is a devout-but-deceived worshiper of the Evil God, it makes no difference to the plot or any character in it that the Evil God turns out to be a drooling old man in a coffin. Second question: name someone who suffered at the hands of Evil God who rejoiced when He died? If Sauron the Great has never done anything ON STAGE to anyone, no one cares if he does by falling out of his wheelchair. It does not change anything. No one has any vested interest in the Evil God’s life or death.

 A brain-dead villain drooling a wheelchair is pathetic. Having a ‘hero’ come into his hospital room and shut off his life support is hardly the battle between the Archangel Michael and the Prince of Hell we were promised.

 Mr. Pullman says he set about to write the anti-Narnia, to do right and wholesomely (by the Pullmanic idea of wholesomeness, i.e. what we would call crude and sexual) what Mr. Lewis did wrong and unwholesomeness (by the Pullmanic idea of unwholesomeness, i.e. sexually repressed, politically incorrect, etc.) But he does not follow the dramatic path of Narnia. Consider: in order to do an anti-Narnia, Lyra, as the anti-Lucy, would have to have discovered early on that Mrs. Coulter (the anti-White Witch) was right and The Authority (anti-Aslan) was the cruel usurper; her beloved but deceived comrade-in-arms  Will Parry (anti-Edmund) should have betrayed her to the Authority, requiring her to both save and forgive him, a dire process involving the Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time … or the Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time. There should have been loss and forgiveness, sorrow and hope, mighty battles on earth in among the stars, and, in the end, something should have been different. Instead, Lyra goes off to school, trying to learn how to do something she had been doing for three books, and promising to build the New Voter-Friendly Version of Heaven starting at her school. The world is not improved or changed by the change in the rulership of all reality.

The drama should have turned on the point of God’s identity. When God turns out to be an evil demiurge who deceives rather than creates worlds, Will Parry should be at least as shocked as the guys in STAR TREK who find out Landru is only a computer. The revelation should have meant something to someone.