Thoughts on Andor So Far

Why I don’t like Andor’s inciting incident (but I still think it’s fine)

It’s because it wasn’t precipitated by the protagonist’s choices. It was technically but only partially. On the “technically” side, it wouldn’t have happened if Andor didn’t go that club looking for his sister. But on the “partially” side, if he didn’t just so happen to arrive right after the corpo thugs. Who just happened to be in a bad mood, or are perpetually in a bad mood. And just happened to turn it into a confrontation with Andor. This diffuses the protagonist’s agency by introducing these incidental dependencies.

And sure, nothing can happen without some incidental dependencies but the point is to minimize them and maximize the protagonist’s agency as the driving force in the plot. It’s not bad, it just could be better.

Maybe if the host was coming out to greet the two corpo thugs and Andor intercepts her, thinking he can get quick answers about his sister, and now that he’s this close, he gets a little impatient and reckless. This makes his action the direct cause for the thugs annoyance and motivation to target Andor for harassment.

Same thing with the climax of this scene. The other goon just happens to die in the struggle. It didn’t happen as a direct result of Andor’s choices. And there wasn’t any build up to it.

So to raise the stakes of the scene up to this point maybe have Andor successfully reduce the chance of arrest by offering a bribe. The guards take his money but they also want to rough him up a bit to teach him a lesson, which Andor takes at first. But the goons keep going, so Andor begins to resist and protect himself, which causes them to become more aggressive. The closer thug even reaches for his weapon, which Andor grabs. He struggles with the thug but the thug pins him with his weapon at Andor’s throat. The other thug encourages him to shoot Andor.

Now Andor’s life is on the line, not just his money and his arrest. So at this point Andor acts reflexively, using all of his skills and strength to wrest the weapon from the thug and shoot him with it. He quickly aims at the other thug who was now trying to get his weapon out, and yells at him to stop. The thug tries to negotiate. He details the lie he’ll tell to cover up the incident while Andor looks at the corpse. He is clearly struggling with his options. The thug can see which way Andor is leaning though, and pleads for his life. Andor looks away as he pulls the trigger.

With this, Andor feels forced with the first thug, killing him in self-defense, a choice that was precipitated by him initially defending himself. And you can still establish the flawed protagonist thread when he murders the second thug. This involves the protagonist’s agency in nearly every step up to this point in the plot. The only incidental dependency being the corpo thugs being at the brothel, or whatever it was, when Andor arrived.

Again, it’s just a matter of asking how to incorporate more of the protagonist’s agency in as many aspects of the story as reasonably possible. And from an edit/revision perspective, it introduces only minor changes to the plot with a little longer confrontation scene.

And I’m not trying to claim my suggested revisions would make these scenes or the overall story measurably better, necessarily, but I do think it would make for a tighter dramatic structure. And of course it could be anything else more clever writers could think of as well.

The other initial problems I have with Andor, the jealous boyfriend and the flashbacks, have some overlap with this issue but I can’t really say how successful the first one is until I see how it’s resolved. The flashback issue is just plain bad. I might get into these later.