If I can, I always like to read the book before I watch the film adaptation, and so last week, I picked up the science fiction classic Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I enjoyed the action-packed novel enough to read the second and third books in the series and found them to be troubled for the opposite reasons Ender's Game was great.
If you've seen the film Ender's Game (or are planning to) here's what makes the book worth reading, and what you can learn about it and the mistakes of the rest of the series.
What Is the Ender's Game Series?
If you haven't seen the previews, Ender's Game is a classic inter-planetary science fiction novel with a twist. Ender Wiggin is a genius who may be the only one who can save the human race from extinction at the hands of a frightening and technologically-superior alien race. The problem is that he's only six years old.
To save his species, Ender agrees to be taken from his family and enroll in Battle School, which is a bit like Hogwarts but in space. There, Ender goes through a long series of exciting challenges while experiencing plenty of conflict with his less talented, envious classmates. By the end of the novel, Ender becomes the great leader and warrior everyone thought he could be. The only cost was his childhood. It's a fun, moving book, if you like that sort of thing, and worthy of it's status in the genre.
The rest of the series, Speaker of the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, follow Ender as an adult, creating alliances with new species of aliens, saving humanity from a vicious virus, and finally setting down roots and creating a family out of the rubble of his childhood. It sounds exciting, but the books are problematical on the same basis that Ender's Game is so great.
3 Things You Can Learn from the Ender's Series
What can you learn from the successes of Ender's Game‘s and the failures of the rest of the series? Here are three things:
1. Cut Unnecessary Characters
Stephen Koch says in Writer's Workshop:
The warning sign of a story that is growing disorganized is likely to be too many characters, and the solution to that problem is likely to be the discovery of the one character—your protagonist—whose fate matters most.
For each character in your book, you have to do two things, 1) develop a unique personality, and 2) make the reader care about them.
Ender's Game was tightly bound with no extraneous characters, and because of that, we develop deep impressions of each character. We love and admire the good guys and despise the bad guys while respecting their brutal power.
However, by the third book, Xenocide, Card's cast grows so large that it becomes challenging to maintain the same level of characterization and depth of feeling. In fact, the rest of the series is flooded with interesting but non-essential characters that ultimately draw attention away from the story. Orson Scott Card is a pro, the author of more than 60 books. I'm not sure what he was thinking.
In your stories, don't be afraid to cut characters or merge them with other, more central characters. Nearly every time I edit a novel, I have to suggest this to the author. It's very normal. If you winnow your cast list to the most essential characters, your novel will be more powerful because of it.
2. Find Your Protagonist
As Stephen Koch says above, your protagonist centers your story and provides structure.
Ender's Game accomplishes this perfectly, centering the story clearly in a child prodigy who has the unique responsibility to save the world. It's classic bildungsroman, and while there are other important characters in Ender's Game, we know whose story it is.
But in the next novel, Speaker for the Dead, Card seems to begin to lose the structure, and by Xenocide, it's gone altogether. No longer able to rely on the simple bildungsroman structure, he seems to attempt to raise character after character to the limelight. Unfortunately, none of them can bear the full weight of the story. By Xenocide, the series is something of a mess.
Do you know who carries the weight of your story? If you don't, you need to keep searching for your protagonist.
3. Be Philosophical Without Being Preachy
Ender's Game is unique among alien vs. human science fiction novels in that it raises deep ethical questions about the nature of “the other.” The rest of the series continues the ethical questions, deepening and complicating them, challenging the reader to reflect on his or her own understanding of the other.
However, while in Ender's Game, the philosophy of the book was a subtle current, in the following novels, the ethical and philosophical questions seem to take over, with dozens of pages devoted just to arguing out different stances taken by the characters. It gets to the point where you wonder if you're reading a novel or a sermon.
I struggle with this because I'm very interested in philosophy and ethics. However, part of the discipline of being a creative writer is that the story must be the center. You can use story to raise philosophical questions, but philosophy itself doesn't make for very good stories.
Simplify Your Ambitions
Ender's Game, and the novels that follow, is an ambitious series, but sometimes ambition is the thing we need to be most wary of in our writing. Our ambition often challenges us to add more characters than we can handle, to try invent new story structures that become disorganized, and to insert more philosophy than our stories can bear.
In storytelling, more is not always better. The Ender's series proves that (share that on Twitter).
Instead, be ambitious for simplicity. After all, simplicity takes far more work.
Have you read or watched Ender's Game? What did you think?
PRACTICE
Write a story about a young boy facing overwhelming odds.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you're finished, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, be sure to give feedback for your other writers.
I, too, loved Ender’s Game (many years ago),Joe, and got bored with the sequels. I’ve gotten bored with all modern serieses after loving them (All 3 of Anne Perry’s, Vince Flynn’s, David Baldacci’s CAMEL CLUB), but love some earlier ones (e.g., Sherlock Holmes, Raymond Candler’s, both of Doc Smith’s, but not Tarzan. I clearly understand now why that is. Thanks for the analysis! My story is coming in 20 minutes.
Thanks Eric!
Great post Joe! I read Ender’s Game a number of years ago. Earlier this year I went back and read the rest of the series. Although I agree the rest of the books get a little disorganized and they are not nearly as powerful as the original, I still really enjoyed them.
One question though. I agree 100% with cutting unnecessary characters. Have you read any of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones on H.B.O. ) There are multiple protagonists, a huge number of characters, and the story is told from multiple viewpoints. But the books are incredibly compelling. To me it feels like an instance where more is better. Who knows maybe he started with 100 characters and had to cut it down to 50. Do you have any thoughts on the matter? How do you manage such a large cast?
Anyway love to hear your thoughts. I’ll put up my practice tonight.
I have the same thoughts on GoT. I think it’s a case of, “I’m not George RR Martin.” When you’re the old Obi Wan Kenobi of fantasy writing, you can pull off anything you want.
I know right. He just does some Jedi Writing Trick and pops out 500 pages of gripping prose. (After working on it for about 5 years)
Although I will admit the extremely long tangent with Brienne of Tarth got old for me after a while.
Ugh. Yeah. Maybe that story line will play a more important role in book 6 when it comes out in like 10 years.
Overall, I think ASOIAF works, because each character’s story could be its own engaging novel. Daenerys, Mother of Dragons. Jamie Lannister, Kingslayer. Cersei, the !@#$!@#. Arya, the Morbid Little Orphan that Could… They each have an amazing story in their own right. ASOIAF could be viewed more as a baroque interweaving of all these different characters’ stories than as a single story. That’s what makes George the master.
Actually, after waiting so long for the last book, I’ve decided to give up on the series after reading it. Master or not, it’s gotten to the point of waaaaaaaaay too many characters. The last book didn’t seem to make much progress, and then out of 5000 pages (ok, so I’m exaggerating) there are main characters who’ve had maybe a chapter devoted to them, if they at all made it in. It left me super frustrated. That to me was a book that only made it to publication because of who he is. IMHO
Good point, Rob. Martin’s story is an Epic, and with Epics the rules are slightly different. Perhaps Card was attempting to do the same with the next books, but it seems to me if you’re going to start a series with one story structure, you can’t change in the middle. I might be being too hard on him though.
“Louie vs. the Nazi Teacher”
Louie Greenberg was terrified of his 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Kenton. He was clear that Kenton hated him, had it in for him,and was committed to failing him, when English was Louie’s favorite subject, and he longed to be a professional Science FIction writer like his heroes, Robert Anson Heinlein and E.E. “Doc” Smith…
In his elementary school, Louie had written his first short story in 6th grade, and Mrs. Liebowitz had given it an ‘A’ and asked him to read it to the class. When he showed it Mr. Kenton, on the first day of school, the teacher had sneered at the first paragraph and tossed it into the wastebasket. Louie had flushed with anger and hurt, but said nothing.
When Louie told his parents that evening, his father said, “Kenton? That’s not a Jewish name. He must be an anti-semite.” (Mr. Greenberg pronounced it ‘ahnti-semitt’) It was 1946, and Louie’s parents, along with most Americans had just seen newsreels of GI’s liberating the walking skeletons from Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Little by little they also learned that Germans and other Nazi’s had murdered an incomprehensible six million Jews.
Now, every one of Kenton’s words, gestures or facial expressions occurred to Louie as hateful and potentially violent, and proof that he was never going to survive English 7, or maybe even live to grade 8.
(15 minutes are up.)
I like this premise. The transition to 1946 in the third paragraph was a little jarring for me. I thought the story was about the present up to that point. Maybe you can call out something earlier to tag it as the past. (Or maybe this is a fragment of a bigger story. 🙂 )
Wow, they have a series? See, I don’t watch TV so I didn’t know that. I am, however, reading my first Orson Scott Card novel – Ender’s Shadow- and I’m impressed! The book is engrossing and I can imagine the plot happening in the future, in real life. http://rouilliewilkerson.wordpress.com/
Just a book series, but a TV series would be fun, wouldn’t it? 🙂
I’ve heard great things about Ender’s Shadow. Enjoy!
Cordelia froze. Mrs. Hands, the sleek, black, genteel spider, had transformed from a piano teacher to a nightmare. Bits of web clogged mouths of her best friends, Lobelia and Joey. Sure, they were already zombies, but this couldn’t be good. Baby spiders were nesting in their brains. Marshy Addams looked up from his Chopin etude, and blandly commented, “Just give up, Cordy. It’s not so bad.” Cordelia had to think fast. Mrs. Hands, with her 8 legs, could move a lot
faster than a clumsy zombie girl, and Cordelia wasn’t sure how fast that web
could fly.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” hummed Mrs. Hands, her legs dancing to Marshy’s music,“When this is done, you’ll play piano like an angel.”
“I don’t want to play piano! I want my friends back,” said Cordelia. Mrs. Hands marched toward her, eyes glittering.
“This won’t hurt a bit. There aren’t any nerve endings inside your brain, so anything that happens there is completely painless,” said Mrs. Hands. She lunged for Cordelia. Cordelia dodged to the side, accidentally smashing Mrs. Hands’ front leg with her foot before tumbling to the ground in a heap. The chitin of Mrs. Hands’ leg cracked. Mrs. Hands’ eyes burst into flame, “This will keep me from the piano for at least a month, little girl. I was going to give you a chance to help my babies, but now I’m just going to bite off your head.” Cordelia was down with her back to the wall and nowhere to go. Mrs. Hands’ mandibles dripped venom. Cordelia’s head was lost in her mouth. Mrs. Hands shuddered violently, and Cordelia, barely breathing, rolled away. Mrs. Hands flopped over belly up, dead, Cordelia’s daisy crown hanging from a mandible.
“Pyrethrum daisies… I forgot about that. My teacher said we could use these to kill bugs, but I never really believed it. Here, I though daisy chains were useless. Now, what am I going to do about Lobelia, Joey, and Marshy?”
Cordelia froze. Mrs. Hands, the sleek, black, genteel spider, had transformed from a piano teacher to a nightmare. Bits of web clogged mouths of her best friends, Lobelia and Joey. Sure, they were already zombies, but this couldn’t be good. Baby spiders were nesting in their brains. Marshy Addams looked up from his Chopin etude, and murmured, “Just give up, Cordy. It’s not so bad.” Cordelia had to think fast. Mrs. Hands, with her 8 legs, could move a lot faster than a clumsy zombie girl, and Cordelia wasn’t sure how fast that web could fly.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” hummed Mrs. Hands, her legs dancing to Marshy’s music, When this is done, you’ll play piano like an angel.”
“I don’t want to play piano! I want my friends back,” said Cordelia. Mrs. Hands marched toward her, eyes glittering.
“This won’t hurt a bit. There aren’t any nerve endings inside your brain, so anything that happens there is completely painless,” said Mrs. Hands. She lunged for Cordelia. Cordelia dodged to the side, accidentally smashing Mrs. Hands’ front leg with her foot before tumbling to the ground in a heap. The chitin of Mrs. Hands’ leg cracked. Mrs. Hands’ eyes burst into flame, “This will keep me from the piano for at least a month, little girl. I was going to give you a chance to help my babies, but now I’m just going to bite off your head.” Cordelia was down with her back to the wall and nowhere to go. Mrs. Hands’ mandibles dripped venom. Cordelia’s head was lost in her mouth. Mrs. Hands shuddered violently, and Cordelia, barely breathing, rolled away. Mrs. Hands flopped over belly up, dead, Cordelia’s daisy crown hanging from a mandible.
“Pyrethrum daisies… I forgot about that. My teacher said we could use these to kill bugs, but I never really believed it. Now, what am I going to do about Lobelia, Joey, and Marshy?”
I love the drama or your writing, Stripe. That being said, I was a bit confused. I’ll accept that in this universe (dream?) a piano teacher turned into a spider. But how did Cordy get Mrs. Hands to eat the daises? Did I miss that?
Drat! This is an excerpt from a longer story–and not the part where I introduce everyone… Mrs. Hands was always a spider. She’s the giant black widow piano teacher. The kids are all zombies. Everyone in the town is a zombie… except Mrs. Hands and her beetle husband. The daisy chain was on Cordelia’s head, like a little crown. Thanks for your feedback. 🙂
So, I kind of disagree with this. I’m a huge fan of Ender’s Game and I avidly read the sequels, too. You make a good point that Ender’s Game is certainly the best in the series (with the possible exception of Ender’s Shadow, which tells the story of Bean, Ender’s friend, and overlaps with the events in Ender’s Game). I know Orson Scott Card’s ‘Enderverse’ can get very complicated, but I thought all the books were great. Have you read the ones he published after Xenocide and Children of the Mind that take place on Earth after the conclusion of Ender’s Game? I think one of them is called Shadow Puppets, if I remember correctly…
I can see what you’re saying here and I do think it’s good advice, however I didn’t find the problems in the second and third books in the “Ender’s” series the way you did. By the fourth it was getting a bit ponderous, but I got a lot out of the second and third books…
As Natalie mentions, the sequels to _Ender’s Game_ is not limited the trilogy of books that follows Ender. The Shadow Saga, which begins with _Ender’s Shadow_ and then follows the Battle School kids in their return to Earth is a much better set of sequels, and it is definitely worth the time to read. (I haven’t yet read the prequels about the Formic Wars, so I can’t comment on those.)
Unfortunately, your article above–especially the title and the content that you are encouraging to be tweeted–cast dispersions on the entire Enderverse of books. I don’t believe this was your intent–maybe you didn’t even know that there were other books–but it is definitely misleading.
The Shadow Saga is technically part of another series, but point taken. Thanks Dream. 🙂
Coincidentally, I’m grappling with this exact thing at present – my sequel has more characters, more points of view than before. Even my writing partner just asked, ‘where’s the protagonist?’ So yeah, I’m worried. I have gone ahead and named even incidental characters though so I’m wondering if I should go back and cut out all those names for a start…
I am not sure whether every novel needs to have one Protagonist (capital P). There are many types of stories that have two or more co-protagonists. Depending on the genre, what POV you are in, or what kind of story you are telling, “protagonist” could be defined and shaped in different ways.
Great, refreshing review. I was so disappointed in the film mostly b/c of bad acting and total lack of direction, but also because of useless characters, and even underplayed ones. Bean barely appeared at all. So disappointed!
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I greatly enjoyed Speaker for the Dead. It was a different kind of book — less action, for sure — and less tightly plotted, but still a very good book. I’m not sure if it was the best book to follow something like Ender’s Game, because you might expect a sequel to be in the same vein/type of novel as the first. On the other hand, it was a good book to follow Ender’s Game because it focused on Ender settling down and coming to terms with what he had done. It made sense, but you are right in that Ender’s Game is the more easily likeable and more easily digestible book. They won’t be making any blockbusters out of the sequels. They’re just a different beast. But I will disagree with you and say that that’s ok and that I didn’t mind. I have come to really, really dislike series that drag out the action just for the sake of continuing the series. This series didn’t do this — Card is many things, but he was smart in that he didn’t try to replicate Ender’s Game with every sequel he wrote.
I too enjoyed the Ender’s Game series as well as the Shadow series. While I enjoyed your post, I also disagree with some of your points.
As for cutting unnecessary characters, I had no trouble keeping track of the human characters and their personalities, but it was the piggies that I started to lose track of. It was not a big deal for me though because I just thought of them as having a similar personality unless Card went out of his way to describe a certain one. The number of humans on the other hand seemed necessary to me so that Card could pit as many contradicting personalities and philosophies against each other as possible.
When it comes to finding a protagonist, I dont agree that Card needed one solid protagonist. From experience, I believe that most stories have their definite protagonist(s), but I find this somewhat unrealistic. It is often unclear in reality who the protagonists are and it is also relative to who is telling the story. Since Card was focused on ethics and philosophy for the last three books of the series, it was important to show that no one individual had the right answer and that each character was striving towards what they thought was the best course of action, even if that made them seem to be the antagonist at times. So while you may say that Card started losing structure during the last three books, I believe that a more complex (and thus less clear) structure was necessary for books that were trying issues that, in my opinion, were a lot more complex than those that surfaced in Ender’s Game.
Lastly, I do agree quite a bit with your last point. Well I did not feel as though I was being force fed the philosophies, it did indeed seem preachy in certain places. In retrospect, it would be hard to write a book based entirely off ethics and philosophy without in-length discussions on the matter, especially when it was one of the major ways Card showed each character’s personality to the reader.
Regardless, thank you for your thoughts. It has been awhile since I read the books, but I remembered I liked them so I am definitely bias towards them haha.
Everyone´s tastes are different. I´m actually in the middle of Xenocide now so I can´t comment on the next books but this far I have to disagree with all your points.
While Ender´s Game was faster-paced, it wasn´t as compelling for me as Speaker for the Dead. Yes, Ender´s Game had lots of action and Ender´s character development was very interesting but by the end I felt it lacked something. Despite that I picked up Speaker for the Dead and there was the missing piece – philosophy! It didn´t feel like preaching to me at all. SftD touched my heart much more than EG. I´m pretty sure having lots of characters helped with that. And I haven´t had any trouble keeping track of them.
I waited 33 years to read Ender’s Game–as even then–at 18–it was only one of a hundred books recommended to me. When I first heard of it I was transfixed by Herbert’s Dune series. In the interim I followed the Star Wars saga only to become disappointed with its tiring narratives of power and betrayal. Such was my experience with the Dune franchise. But now I can say without hesitation that I will read the remainder of the Ender series. I will do so because I have not encountered a more compelling and believable story of the making of a messiah. That alone refuses to let me be deterred. Writing craft aside, Ender’s Game is also mind craft, or the story of a mind in formation. I’ll follow that more mature character even if I have to suffer through various shifts in perspective that burden Ender’s Game.