"When you have writer's block but you have a deadline"

For examples of masterful mid-series shakeups, watch Game of Thrones. For examples of terrible mid-series shakeups, watch Game of Thrones

Imagine if we could read TWA's "Best story ever" once it's finished. I feel like it would be maximum satire.

The original Predator is a great example of shake ups done well. It starts off just like any other 80's action movie before it takes a sudden left turn into Slasher territory. And then it zig zags into survival horror for the finale.

The whole section talking about the "true villain" twist just reminds me of "Somehow, Palpatine has returned"

The best method of doing this is to completely change your stories magic system with no warning or foreshadowing

"the characters cough off blood and suffer from no other symptoms." *I've been making fun of that since 1991, and no one's been listening to me!*

Outlawing love triangles is actually a really good idea for villains.

I like how the villain is recycled than thrown out. He’s still useful for a totally different story or reboot.

*Hero:* "Oh no, we were betrayed by the evil nobleman! It's clearly time to form a pro-democracy, pro-human rights rebel army! Our people may have no idea what either of those are, but they'll DEFINITELY fight to the death for it!" *Dumb Friend the Hero Ignores:* "Wait, aren't we all magically empowered warriors and mages, who would naturally hold ourselves higher than peasents? Why is our first instinct rallying the people, and not other magically empowered soldiers who might also be dissatisfied with the system?" *Hero, who is also WAY smarter than his dumb friend and also more attractive and not my self insert at all:* "Psh, that sounds work. I'll just train an entire new model army from scratch and overthrow the entire goverment."

I love how he gives legit advice but then goes "but why would I do that when I could..." It's just a really cool formatting.

I feel like there are so many thing to do like arcs or hero’s Journey that JP will be fine for a good long while

I feel like the video should have suddenly and inexplicably changed to actual writing advice part way through just for a mid-video shakeup.

What a shock for this series! I sure hope it's not done solely for the sake of subverting expectations because the author can't make a good narrative!

the series: *drastically shifts in the middle with no warning* the audience: Z A P P E R S

Please do an episode on the media's poor comprehension of hacking/hackers/computers.

The best way is to have so many shake ups in a short amount of time so no one can process how bad it is. Then let the pretentious overthinkers defend it as too deep for plebians to understand, only they who are the same level as the author can

Mid-Act shakes can actually work it’s just absolutely, never, ever, ever try to undo them. If you decide to disrupt what is familiar and then insist the audience go back to it you destroy the investment of you audience. I mean imagine if in Final Fantasy VII after you rescue Shinra HQ with Aerith and Red XIII you go right back to blowing up Reactors? Or if in Star Wars after you establish that the Jedi methodology is flawed, the Force doesn’t care about who your parents are and the bad guy is 100% irredeemable, for the final movie you had Jedis uncomplicated paragons again, make all the main characters the child of someone famous and gave the bad guy a sudden attack of conscience redeemed through true love’s kiss, or something? We’d all think they were hack lunatics!

A mid-series shake-up can be done well, but you must, *absolutely must* make sure to plant the seeds of it early on. Say, you've got a fantasy setting that has the heroes doing quests for an adventurer's guild. The big shake-up can involve the guild actually corrupted and fully under control of the demon lord and a tool he uses to keep adventurers from being able to effectively resist him, but to do so, you need to have multiple instances where the guild's "policies" actively hinder the heroes from doing their job. On the surface, it just seems like typical government bureaucracy getting in the way of people trying to do their jobs, something that people will take as a common complaint and not really think about. "Oh, you want to take this quest to protect this village you're fond of from a goblin invasion? Sorry, only adventurers of a certain rank can take this quest, and all the adventurers of that rank are out doing other things. I suppose you could do it off the books, but you'll get no rewards and may in fact get punished for violating guild regulations." Playing it like that makes the heroes look like the classic "Loose cannon cop who don't play by the rules but has a heart of gold" with a well-meaning but fumbling regulatory agency making things difficult, a common enough trope. Then, with the mid-series shake-up occurs, and it turns out thatvthe demon lord is actually in full control of the adventurers guild and has been using those rules and restrictions to hamper anyone's ability to resist his conquest of the world, it doesn't seem like it came out of nowhere, but rather that the seeds were sewn for this reveal all along, but the audience misread what those early signs had meant. You put one over on the audience by making them think the story is proceding along a certain path because of common tropes that they're used to, when in fact you were using the tropes they've been expecting to conceal the big twist that completely recontextualizes everything that has been happening in the story thus far. It didn't come out of nowhere, but rather was hiding in plain sight since the very start like a tiger in the reeds that had been stalking its prey for some time, just waiting for its chance to pounce. That is how big twists and mid-series shake-ups need to be done.

I love how the whole "character starts dying with the speed of the plot" part is a story of Cyberpunk 2077.

Season one of _Agents of SHIELD_ is probably the best one I can name. The show started out okay with the heroes investigating the Centipede stuff but that all changed with HYDRA. Then it changed from a "stop the badguy" show to a "who do we trust" spy thriller.

This reminds me of how ABC's *"Family Matters"* went from being a wholesome grounded sitcom about an African-American family living in Chicago, IL to a sci-fi themed sitcom centered on the family's mad scientist next-door neighbor with episodic plots about cloning, shrink rays, time travel, demonic ventriloquist dummies, DNA mutations, teleportation devices, and mind-reading powers.

I like ATLA’s approach to this (spoilers for obvious reasons). To me, the way the plot was going seemed simple. At the end of season 2, Zuko was at the end of his redemption arc and he would join forces with the main group. Azula would be defeated, the day of black sun would come and that’s when Aang would defeat Ozai. But then, the show pulled a fast one on me, and made it so that instead Zuko regressed right back to where he started. But what I love about this twist, and the fact that the fire nation basically took over the world, was that it wasn’t unrealistic. Zuko wanted his fathers respect back, so we took the opportunity to re-join the fire nation. However that didn’t destroy his redemption arc, in fact it made him a more sympathetic character as we see him come to terms with the bad things he’s done and how he made a huge mistake. The day of black sun was another, but smaller shake up, showing the audience just how deadly the fire nation was. The battle with fire lord ozai taking place on the day of Sozin‘s comet, when his power would be increased, just heightened the climactic finale of the show. If it had taken place on the day of black sun, it might’ve actually been anti-climactic because there be really no threat to fight.

“Then don’t worry! Just have all their menace and scheming vanish into the same void that KZfaq threw the dislike ratio into.” Too soon man..Too soon…

I have a story idea for a character who discovers he's going to die when he first coughs up blood... But the cause of his death will be a lung condition, which makes logical sense because he lives somewhere wet and rainy where mold abounds and such things are common, and also, the fact that his lungs are bleeding causes a bunch of other symptoms. Blood flowing down into his stomach ruins his appetite and makes him easily nauseous causing him to lose weight and be tired all the time, for example. Also, that's how the story begins. The shakeup is actually when a new friend learns about this right as he's on his deathbed, is super terrified, invests all their energy into trying to make him better, and accidentally releases healing powers so that he recovers. New Friend receives training to become a doctor and acts as the group medic in all further adventures. Anyone have examples of any other not-completely-stupid sickness arcs?

Don't forget that if you're writing a series and it seems like the audience, being comprised of hundreds of thousands if not _millions_ of individuals communicating together over the internet, has managed to guess where your story is going then you absolutely *must* change course immediately! No one enjoys a work of fiction for a satisfying and engaging story delivered confidently and professionally. They do it so that they can be shocked and surprised when something unexpected happens! If the audience figured out what you were planning to have happen you simply must make something else happen instead, lest they feel smart and savvy for having figured things out and get the satisfaction of seeing what was likely an interesting and well built-up development happen. You don't want that! You want them to be surprised and never see things coming, like shitty jump scares in a cheap shovelware horror video game! Just popping out to give a momentary startle after which the player goes back to being bored. You want that but for your story! :D

"coughing up blood and no other symptoms". You... I know the entire channel is showing such overused dumb tropes, but this one hit hard

I do really wish that RWBY had spent a little more time being a magic school show.

"Good thing the illness doesn't bother them during the action scenes" Oh so true 😅

I feel like most "monster of the week" series (shows or books) do this eventually, even when the new monsters/cases are more fun

Speaking as a Xenoblade fan, misdirection definitely worked in terms of distracting me from some of the major plot twists. Another strategy that was frequently used was double meanings. Granted, some people did predict some of the twists (one in particular near the end of the game), but, as far as I’m concerned, a logical yet predictable twist is far superior to a surprising, yet nonsensical twist (plus, plenty of people didn’t figure it out, so I say it works extremely well)

AoT is fantastic for this because it actually tries to take the audiences' mentality with it by basically being like "Oh yeah? THIS is what you were rooting for? Feel good now?"

The Good Place has an excellent example of a plot twist- based shakeup that is foreshadowed perfectly and opened the story to new directions.

Subtrope of Character death: Character Assassination. You know the Mentor Character? The Paragon? The Beloved Legacy Character? The Character fans fell in love with? Well it suddenly was just revealed that they have an unsavoury, scandalous past with tons of skeletons in their closet, and/or the timeskip didn't treat them too well and now they're powerless, depressed and cynical, and ready to generate a boatload of unnecessary drama as the main characters angst over this new information. Will the MC's ever reconcile the two diametrically opposed versions of this character? Probably not. That would require having a deeper understanding of that character, understanding how much that character means to your fans, and you actually caring about that character to begin with! Might as well abandon that character on the bench, or throw them in the trash OR kill them and have your MC's all but forget them by the next chapter!

Funny thing about that last point you make - the term cliffhanger is attributed to a writer who did exactly that - ended installment of his episodic series with a main character hanging from a cliff, being shot at and other dangers coming. It was because his bosses wanted to fire him after that installment and have someone else continue the story. They realized only he can get the protagonist out of this mess and reneved his contract. Next chapter of the story opens with "With an amazing feat of Willpower he overcame all obstacles".

“Making Wormtongue look subtle” is one of the most intense insults I have ever seen. I will now use it near-daily

🌈Everyone: "The bad guys are beating the good guys by hitting all their weak points and dodging their best attacks! Their only chance would be someone with a different set of skills and powers, like the completely unrelated guy they introduced five minutes ago... and here he is!" ⚡Zordon⚡: "Finally, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The sixth ranger is now one of us."

"Marvel's Agents of SHIELD" was the poster child for this. It started as a "Case of the Week" series, then one of the characters turns out to be evil, betrays the other characters, and the show went from episodic to serialized for the rest of the series. In the second season you get a Big Bad who was the man behind the Big Bad of the first season... and he dies midway through the season and the REAL season's villain shows up in the third to last episode. Then the traitor character, who was milling about during the second season with no real direction, comes back with a vengeance in the third season, dies halfway through, becomes possessed by an alien, and dies again. Then in the fourth season the agents deal with GHOSTS and team up with an android who falls in love with one of the characters, becomes human for him, and turns into the Big Bad when he rejects her. And we haven't gotten into the time travel crap that dominated the last three seasons...

Ah yes, running around at the end trading snark rather than actually doing anything... Also, love the villain stepping out of the shadows then faceplanting - bonus if this si the second, third or fourth time Or, as SG-1 did, having a previously killed villain just come back to be the main villain again (at least they lampsahded that)

"Burn down the old setting" - Check "Melodramatic tripe, can churn that out on the cheap" - Check "Plot twist out of thin air" - Check "Saturate the viewer with plot twist after plot twist" - Check "True villain reveal" - Check "Maybe it could be a previous villain becoming competent" - Check Have you been writing for Masters of the Universe Revelation? Also known as, "The Teela show - not actually starring Teela, but another character with the same name"?

This also sounds like when a sitcom becomes more dramatic like a soap opera as the series progresses.

Build-up is so important, but it can also be terrible if done incompetently. IE, Alm learning that he is Emperor Rudolph's son in Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia. The hints were so blatant that it was insane, including a villain refer to him as "Rudolph's pup" during the first half of the game. "wHaT dOeS tHaT eVeN mEaN..?", thought dense Alm and Friends. The reveal was treated as some emotional, totally unforeseen thing meanwhile I was sitting there with a complete poker face because how on Earth did the writers proofread their script and think "Great, that reveal will really resonate with the players"? It's as if they instead thought "As long as every other character expresses confusion, the audience can't possibly know."

While by no means perfect, Smallville was actually pretty good with midseries shakeups. Only exception was Season 4, which pretty much followed all of JP's advice here.

You know the Sponsorship Wars about to have a major shift of their own makes a good lot of sense. The knights are portrayed as humorous good guys, but…if the Sponsorships and Ads are taken out…that means JP’s channel loses one of the biggest advantages among other “Writing Tips” channels. The fact he doesn’t use normal obnoxious KZfaq ads and naturally morphs his normal sponsorships to match the story he’s trying to tell at the end of every episode. So…what happens if the knights are successful and kill the ads?……An episode about product placement in storytelling in a video littered with ads every thirty seconds?

The second book in my series takes a very sharp left turn from the first one, so I'll be sweating bullets the whole time I'm watching this 0_0

After watching a lot of Pretty Cure, I'd really like a TWA on magical girls. Would be fun.

Red vs blue's chorus trilogy plot twist is my undisputed champ for mid-series shale ups

“Burning down the setting” - the beginning of the end for RWBY.

A lesson that 90% of shounen manga authors desperately need to learn: we were enjoying your story *before* you pulled all this wacky bullshit on us.

Fringe, the TV show, had this - it was an X-Files clone for the first 1.5 seasons and suddenly realized it could be a unique series about two parallel worlds going to war with each other, more or less. I thought it was a good shake up.

A lot of the things in here make me think of the end of season 3 of RWBY

10:19 "Overly Long Hot Garbage Star Wars Take" praise be to the longman

This villain has been demonstrated to be exceptionally powerful and dangerous. They've nearly beaten the heros, so now it's time for them to stand still and wait for the heros to defeat them.

In "The Stand" by Stephen King, King just had the bad guy send a double-agent to the place where all the heroes were gathering and convince a third party to plant a bomb. The story then moves forward with the good guys that are left. Underdog status restored! According to King, he wrote scenes to explain where the bomb came from after he wrote the scene where the bomb goes off. However, those scenes were placed BEFORE the bombing in the final narrative so that the audience didn't feel like this was a totally random move on King's part. That's one advantage full novels have over episodic fiction. A writer can go back and write what happened 6 weeks earlier without resorting to a flashback episode.

JP's slow tonal descent from silly roleplaying to scathing sarcasm makes this series feel like a villain's origin story.

A terrible example is how RWBY suddenly went from a slice of life neo futuristic high school drama to a high fantasy whatever which kills off all of the foils and antagonists before they actually serve a purpose leaving only the hollow “big bad” that has long since lost their intimidated factor with no clear method to fight them head on.

Star Wars dumpster fire makes me sad. It’s ludicrous that production studios (esp Disney) think you can just replace the architect and author and keep making the same thing (or “better” in terms of ROI).

Do “super boss villains” terrible writing advice (super bosses like Thanos and Darkseid)

2:11 The eraser end should be on the sharp side of the scythe, symbolizing the author being the cause of the character's death. Overall, good video J.P.

I want a prequel story so I can read more about the rise of Noble McTragicDad, ruler of The Kingdom of Static Background Art.

The "Reveal the true villain by having them murder the main villain with minimal effort" approach has been done a few times. Warriors did this, but it really felt out of nowhere.

This series always inspires me to write. And then I actually start writing, and my will to write starts to dissipate.

"...dying at the speed of the plot." I love it.

Remember, the more you derail the plot, the better the plot is!

*me, after suffering through the Netflix Live Action **-Middle School Writer's Fanfic-** Series Finale* *sees TWA released a video* *reads title* ...Hmm...

Idk if I’ve just got RWBY on the mind but holy hell it feels like some of this is directed at it.

Diminishing returns on deaths is exactly the main problem Akame ga Kill suffers from! Now I know how to describe what annoys me about the deaths

Remember to always never bother to give context on why the Characters or power system change.

I think JP's reaching the middle of his "Best Story Ever".

I think that this is just RWBY's "plot" outline.

"Parental figures normally have big neon signs pointed at them labeled death" Me, who has a parental figure for the main character who doesnt die at the end of the story: huh.

Your comment about sudden deaths made me think of when my brother and I watched Moana. One moment, the grandmother character was dancing and singing about Moana being her self, and then that very night, she died. We were like "Well, fuck, that was sudden!" We rewatched the opening (the only time she's shown) to ensure we didn't miss something and nope, never is there any indication she was sick and she was absolutely fine during the song. They give zero reason as to her sudden change in health and she just dies to become a plot pusher, encouraging Moana on from the afterlife. It would be more poingnant if we'd gotten to see more of the grandmother or at the very least knew what killed her! Odd that none of Disney's thousand and one writers caught that, lol.

So, I see we're very close to episode 69. Could this mean we're also close to terrible writing advice for Erotica? A climax to our anticipation, if you will...

I'm way too fond of the "burning down the setting" option...🙃 One of my most favourite stories I ever wrote was some cute idol culture love story with a bit of mafia action on the side, that suddenly turned into parallel worlds sci fi ecological disaster teen rebel army resistance fighting, because why not. It wasn't even because I grew bored of the old setting, it was planned like that from the beginning 😅 I lost all my readers but had a blast writing it~

Halo 5... Halo 5... Halo 5... That mid-series shakeup was so bad, the writers RETROACTIVELY tried justifying the sudden plot twist via minor data drops to show How Cortana Was Evil All Along and that A Machine Rebellion Was Inevitable. Nevermind ruining a beautiful sendoff and having the opportunity RIGHT AT YOUR FREAKING PLATE, for developing a main character now being forced to be without his closest friend.

"Somehow, Palpatine returned" comes to mind, but so does the Timeless Child. WHY, CHIBNALL, WHY

I think Dragon Quest as a series does an amazing job at shakeups. From what I've played, DQ7 has one where the protagonists stop travelling to the past and have their once peaceful present ravaged by darkness, and DQ11 has an incredibly important landmark destroyed, changing the world forever. What I like about them is that you can feel the consequences of the change even after what caused the change had been dealt with.

8:47 That's one thing Across the Spiderverse did very badly. Like, they gave the Spot a stupid character arc where he becomes more competent, rather than pulling the competence out of nowhere like a good story would.

Terrible Writing Advice: *posts this video* RWBY: *I'll take your entire stock!*

9:16 What I'd give to throw KZfaq in that same void as well.

Every time i see a base of operation for the main character in a game or movie, I always expect the enemy smoking them out in a big emotional fashion.

When you're talking about the joke villain becoming a serious villain, it made me think of Ludo from Star vs the Forces of Evil. He's a joke villain in the first season, but during the second season they give him a really good character development arc, so he's a serious threat by the end.

This entire video reminds me hard of the season 3 of RWBY For a plethora of reasons, the series went from an episodic school adventure to a fantasy adventure series, with it's transition being a tournament arc They killed off 3 characters rather unceremoniously (the one who actually earned her death got it undercut by turning it into a trigger for a Deus Ex Machina) the tone got way dark without any build-up, and the entire familiar location ceased to be with only the occasional passing comment on it's destruction (and very few overarching ramifications) I won't call it shock for the sake of shock, because there were other reasons (their lead animator and original idea guy dying suddenly) but without context it really feels that way

I just realised. Avatar, the last airbender. Actually have a slight shift after the second season. They lose one of the main battles when the earthkingdom ends up being taken over the fire nation, Aang actually dies and gets his avatar state blocked leaving him way weaker, the group have to go into hiding now more than ever and the biggest tactical chance they had gets nearly destroyed thanks to all of this.

Man I came here to learn about mid series shakeups and all I got was a recap of RWBY volume 3

I DO kill one of my important characters in my second book, but not brutally. He's old, and he dies from cancer. It's just something that happens every day, but among his last words to his grandson--my protagonist--are, "Son, don't lose yourself." It's advice he's given my Jeremy on multiple occasions, but Jeremy takes it to heart and decides to learn where he really came from. His family are Seminole Indigenous, but TOTALLY divorced from their culture, because, historically, the Seminole were assimilated through systemic genocide, rather than through residential "schools". So Jeremy's thought process is, "But how can I lose myself if I don't even know who I am?" It's a big shake-up for his character and his general raison d'etre, but it's not a series-destroying kind of thing. I wan him to grow, not to suffer. He's a good boy.

If you want something with good mid series shakeups, I recommend watching Attack on Titan (or reading the manga). Don’t look anything up, because the story is intricately and beautifully layered. Season 1 is so, so different from Season 4. Seriously, don’t look it up. Watch it!

The best mid-story shakeup that I can remember is the one from Bloodborne. Nothing really changes in terms of gameplay, but in terms of narrative and lore, it’s one of the most impactful that comes to mind. Everything is hinted at since the beginning of the game, but it still somehow comes out of nowhere without managing to feel out of place or cheap.

... The mentor is dead, run through with the sword that the hero's childhood friend is currently impaled on. The killer is the sibling of either the friend or hero, and the love intrest of the other, or it was a love triangle or all three were siblings. The hero was forced to watch.

I had assumed that there would be a shakeup mid-episode, like getting taken over by the inner critic or something. I choose to believe that this is JP pulling a meta-shakeup.

One of my favorite anecdotes is of the time my friend had me watch Barry framing it as a "light-humored dark comedy" and I thought, alright, this could be fun. Then at the end of the first season, a bunch of people died and I was not prepared for a serious drama., so I stopped watching it. Later, he told me about Dirk Gently and framed it in the same way as before, and I said "As long as there isn't a room full of bodies 4 episodes in, I'll watch it." To which he said "I am 4 episodes in and it does not go that direction. You're good." And then watching episode 5 with him, the main character opens the door to a literal room full of dead bodies. I just gave my friend a look and he apologized so fast.

A favorite plot twist of mine is the Pink Diamond reveal. It had enough foreshadowing and evidence to be on the table, but not so much that it wasn't the only possibility. The was also a pre-plot-twist twist that prepped the audience for the twist by showing the lie that the world believes regarding this twist.

Tremors is an good example of a mid series shakeup done well. It starts off as a horror/mystery but once the mystery is solved it turns into an monster/action movie

I love terrible writing advice . It's cool how JP tries to balance the channel gimmick of giving bad advice and actually nesting in good advice .

So, right when he was explaining the basics of shake ups with the hunter example. I immediately thought of RWBY with the turn it had in vol 4 and went to hell.

11:21 honestly, this looks like a setup for an hilarios comedy.

Jak & Daxter - Fairly easy, platform video game with a small cast of characters and a mute protagonist appropriate for young children. Jak 2 - Teen-rated Grand Theft Auto style video game with an ensemble cast, an angry potty-mouth protagonist, and very difficult game play.

Your next video should be on climatic shake ups. This video made me think a lot about Harry Potter and the different effects of Cedric’s death (mid-series) and Dumbledoor’s death (at the climax).

The entire time I was thinking of The Walking Dead and how they literally killed off characters left and right solely because it was the mid-season finale or season finale. You could never get attached to anyone, side character arcs didn't matter, and when you finally lost a character you cared about to a horrible death, you were just tired and angry. I noped out after season 7/8.

As someone planning a major setting changeup that yanks the story from sword-and-sorcery into high fantasy, this video was extremely useful. Props.