The guide trope and why it's sidelined

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

The story may not be about the guide and they do have their places in stories. I'm just saying that authors need to utilize them fully if they are going to use them at all. Wasting them on only the info dumps (which can be done in an interesting way if the writer utilized them fully) isn't all they are good for. Take spiderman into the spider verse for example, Peter B. Parker is the reluctant hero guide for Miles but in the end is guided by Miles to be a better Spider-Man and husband. He was a guide that was fully utilized and there was great reward in it.

Then he's not a guide trope, he is more than a guide. What your really saying is why don't more authors make the character more than just a guide. that's why stories shouldn't use guides, cause that is a character limiter.

 

[georgelee5786]

Nero's

Fiddle?

 

[Lloyd]

Fiddle?

Diddle

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Why is it that when these characters are either, still useful to the story or are so interesting that it would hurt the story to remove them, the author will usually get rid of them?

Killing off a character you've only known for one chapter just doesn't have enough emotional impact.

 

[Paul__Michaels]

I thought the guide trope has become the system trope?

 

[LunaSoltaer]

If you have a fancy schmancy character who isnt the main character, especially if you have multiples, someone's getting shafted.

there is no way around it.

You only have so much page room for storytelling, and if you cheat the system by PoV hopping, then grats you sideline the main character.

There was reply up top saying that a guide is really a character limiter, but that holds for all tropes and traits. The blank character sheet is the most powerful because it can become anything.

The moment you give it form, however, you fix its shape.

Everyone loved the old Luke Skywalker but he will never, ever become anything other than a male man who has magic sword powers, a dead mom, a dad who was evil until the last second, and a robot that beeps at him every so often.

He will never be a woman, nor a medieval wizard, nor a police officer in downtown Chicago.

And that's fine. In fact, how his limitations interact with the world he's in Makes him cool as hell. (well until the sequel trilogy but thats Disney's fault.)

Guides do get overused because you have a world with a "unique" magic system (usually not that unique, and I say that as someone whose magic system I feel is a little more nuanced and distinct than most.). Authors need a way to share this detail with the reader so they can interact meaningfully with it without the reader going lol snore okay thats cool wheres the next Deus Ex Machina.

Guides handle this in the most direct fashion possible, especially with a protagonist who knows nothing of the system. (in fact that pairing is the most common for a reason)

Then people, much like in real life, forget that guides are people too.

And if they didn't, then guides wouldnt feel sidelined so often, huh?

(hell, even if the guide doesnt just blindly follow the MC it would be a plus)

 

[Representing_Tromba]

I thought the guide trope has become the system trope?

A system can be a guide but systems aren't necessarily guides unless used as one.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Nero's

 

[Representing_Tromba]

View attachment 17679

That's only a myth.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

What are your thoughts on the topic of guides and their tropes?

I kill everyone and everything that doesn't have plot relevance anymore (which is not a lot, all things considered.) They've served their purpose, now die for the MC's emotional growth!

 

[Beeteetee]

What about an ancient tome?

The tome only answers to the bound owner and only one owner at a time, the pages blank for each new owner, the book still has knowledge of everything written in it.

Naturally, that tome had a history of owners being murdered and eventually secreted away in paranoia of being murdered for ownership.

That book ended up in a tomb buried with the deceased amongst other knickknacks of sentimental items of the deceased and found in an archeology dig centuries later.

The way it works is that the book can only answer questions the writer bothered to think of and since the book only knows all that was written in it since it's birth - the more you write in it, the more the book is willing to write back of what it knows.

knowledge such as that soulbound items are actually souls of the condemned and criminals because the soul becomes... shattered into a infant soul - a dumb item, only following orders on the owner until it learns enough to become a near sentient item.

Anyhow, that tome had ancient spells and the old way of how magic is learned, more time consuming to learn but worth the powerful magic and offers suggestions of what to make or look based on what it knows.

I'm not sure if it counts as a guide?

 

[Representing_Tromba]

What about an ancient tome?

The tome only answers to the bound owner and only one owner at a time, the pages blank for each new owner, the book still has knowledge of everything written in it.

Naturally, that tome had a history of owners being murdered and eventually secreted away in paranoia of being murdered for ownership.

That book ended up in a tomb buried with the deceased amongst other knickknacks of sentimental items of the deceased and found in an archeology dig centuries later.

The way it works is that the book can only answer questions the writer bothered to think of and since the book only knows all that was written in it since it's birth - the more you write in it, the more the book is willing to write back of what it knows.

knowledge such as that soulbound items are actually souls of the condemned and criminals because the soul becomes... shattered into a infant soul - a dumb item, only following orders on the owner until it learns enough to become a near sentient item.

Anyhow, that tome had ancient spells and the old way of how magic is learned, more time consuming to learn but worth the powerful magic and offers suggestions of what to make or look based on what it knows.

I'm not sure if it counts as a guide?

A tome could be a guide but it would need to be sentient as I am strictly referring to guide characters. Guides that aren't sentient characters for the most part are just infodumps that you can choose to space out depending on how much you want the character to read at a time.

As for what you're describing, it sounds more like an AI than anything as it can't necessarily learn without being physically given information via writing in it. Kind of like a magical Alexa or Siri.

 

[Paul__Michaels]

A system can be a guide but systems aren't necessarily guides unless used as one.

Sorry I meant it as a joke. I should have put some of theses down

 

[sanitylimited]

A tome could be a guide but it would need to be sentient as I am strictly referring to guide characters. Guides that aren't sentient characters for the most part are just infodumps that you can choose to space out depending on how much you want the character to read at a time.

As for what you're describing, it sounds more like an AI than anything as it can't necessarily learn without being physically given information via writing in it. Kind of like a magical Alexa or Siri.

it sounds more like voldemorts diary in harry potter. (the 2nd book, chamber of secrets)

 

[TheTrinary]

The story isn't about the guide, now is it?

The author only put them in in order to orient the reader and info dump. But since we hate info dumps we want to get the guide out asap.

Thus, no story should use guides.

One of the recent books I've read and is honestly in my top fantasy stories of the decade is the Sword of Kaigen.

The "Guide" character in this book is the MC's mother. He's a very stereotypical fantasy protagonist. Amazing at everything he does, etc. But where it gets interseting is that the perspective of the book slowly shifts. It becomes more and more clear, and at one point explicity the case, that the main character is notthe generic MC, but the mother- aka guide.

It's a beautiful subversion and so, so rewarding.

 

[BearlyAlive]

The guide is one of the more important tropes, tho. It's pretty much synonymous with the mentor figure who is more or less synonymous with the inciting incident in more cases than not. But that's the trap most Guides seem to fall in, imo. They show a path and maybe show up again when the protagonists lose their path. They almost never represent the path the protagonists should take since that is the role of the main protagonist.

There's so much you can do with a "Guide" character:
-Evil mentor
-idiotic mentor
-Guiding the Guide
-Guide being the true final boss
-Guide actively working against the protagonists
-Guide being the mastermind behind some convoluted plot that could only work because the protagonists were "guided"
-Guide switching to another character archetype in a critical moment
-the Guide being more of a moral compass than a mentor figure
-not killing the mentor at the end of act I
-killing the mentor at the beginning of act II when nobody expects it
-Guide trying to kill the protagonist for valid reasons like being misguided
-Guide retiring in the countryside because they want a slow life only to get more action the the "protagonists" while more or less accidentally unveiling the truth of the world
-Guide being the actual POV character but the author making the reader forget that until a critical moment where the perceived protagonist betrays both the Guide and the readers expectations (or as I like to call it: the Baten Kaitos moment)
and most likely many more...

 

[T.K._Paradox]

The guide trope is like a really unfunny long-running joke.

Most author's use the guide to project a bunch of world building filler and several extremely obvious plot points.

Basically laying themselves out as a meter to artificially measure a character's (usually the main character's) success.

I believe this trope would be done much better if the guide introduced the world and many things that take up the world in a organic way and not just shoving a block of nonsense in the character's face as to show the audience what is going to happen next.

 

[RavenRunes]

I don't have a guide, but a goad. And he's secretly the MC. He just prefers the work to be done by others.