The recent magic articles on Sanderson’s First and Second law has brought up a number of interesting discussions about internal-consistency and learning how to bend the rules we have created as writers without losing the trust or acceptance of our readers.
When you bend your own rules in an acceptable way cool things can happen but when you break your rules your fans turn on you. The most notable example of this in recent years is the Mass Effect 3 ending and how it turned one of the most loyal, dedicated and lucrative fandom’s into a vicious mob baying for everyone involved with the ME3 story to have their head displayed on a spike and used as a warning to other writers.
You may have never played a Mass Effect game but that doesn’t matter for the purpose of this lesson. If you want to know exactly how and why the writers and producers got Mass Effect 3 wrong and how you can avoid such a mistake then click on the play button below.
Note: It includes spoilers on all 3 games.
MrBtongue takes 39 minutes to educate you on the whole process and it’s one of the best video’s I’ve seen on Youtube in a long time. He simply and logically explains what Mass Effect did right and then how they destroyed it in the final ending while also interjecting humour expertly throughout. Every writer should watch this video!
Bend your rules, but don’t break them!
