The Conflict Of Material And Form

also ALSO-

I know the old "AFTG is badly written" jokes but hold the FUCK on for one goddamn second

I have been writing for almost 20 years. I got my college degree in English and the only reason my specialization wasn't creative writing is because I had bad time management skills and missed my chance to do my final creative writing workshop. I'm autistic and Storycrafting and Wordsmithing are my special interests. I understand writing pretty well.

AFTG opened my fucking eyes to a blind spot of the utter craftsmanship of writing sticky characters that infect you with brain worms, and here it is:

The Conflict of Material and Form

AKA the Character Creation version of Nature versus Nurture

"This isn't who I truly am. This is who I've had to become, what I've had to fashion myself into to survive. The original me is buried in there somewhere, if only you knew how to look. If only you knew to look beyond the mask."

Easily exemplified with our fave lil guys-

Neil Abram Josten:

Material: smartass with a smart mouth, attitude problem, cares about people deeply, sharp tongue to cut a bitch with, kinda feral, a lil unhinged, oblivious idiot

Form: quiet and hidden, liar liar pants of fire, run rabbit run, docile and tame, hyper-vigilant and hyper-observant

Andrew Joseph Minyard:

Material: caring, protective, strong sense of justice, gentle even, cares deeply, give me sugar or give me death, yearning

Form: cold, apathetic, ruthless and unforgiving, allow me to introduce you to my knife, regret? don't know her, i want nothing nothing nothing

Why am I using 'material and form' instead of 'nature and nurture'? Because I am a subscriber to "Characters are not meant to be real people; they are mirages of real people meant to encapsulate a function or idea that serves the story". But use whatever terms click with your noggin.

This isn't about 'want vs need'. This isn't about 'lie believed and truth learned'. This is about Presentation and Basic Action - how would this character react here? Which part are they reacting from?

With Material vs. Form, one isn't the 'true' version and the other the 'false' version of the character. They are both true and real in their own right. The Secret Sauce is that the Material and the Form fight 1v1! And regardless of which part wins, there will be consequences and rewards; so which rewards do we want and which consequences are we willing to suffer? And this fight happens beat by beat, scene by scene, plot point by plot point.

At one point in TFC Neil laments his inability to shut his fucking mouth because his Form of 'don't stand out dipshit' and his Material of 'initiate smartass.exe' are disagreeing with how to respond to his circumstances! It's that fucking meme "My healed and unhealed versions of myself deciding who is going to handle this situation" but as Storycraft!

Now, I don't think this is a new idea by any means. But sometimes to make the essence of an idea truly stick, it must be presented in multiple different ways until one triggers a "Eureka! By Jove! Aha!", and this was the way that truly made this concept stick for me. And why did it stick? Because AFTG is a labor of deep love and passion for Characters and all their complexity and inner machinations, and that depth of devotion had to manifest as some good ass writing somehow my homies in christ.

I have a collection of my favorite Storycrafting Wisdoms and one of them is effectively:

"Put Compelling Characters into a Compelling Situation and see what happens."

And Nora does Compelling Characters beautifully