Notes on Plotting Grail Wars [a.k.a. "If Dan Brown had written Fate/Stay Night"]

[Zalgo Jenkins]

Only if I can figure out how to make the ideas worthwhile. Currently they're either a literal retread of FZ/FSN with different Servants, a First Grail War fic or a clusterfuck Apocrypha-like giant battle royale mess. But none have any worthwhile foundation or plot hook or mystery to build upon as yet.

So unless I crack that problem nothing is getting written, no matter how many inspiring guides I read :P

A few random thoughts follow:

The concept that really drives Brown's formula is a system of interlocking schemes and secrets. Canon FSN and FZ both have those as a large part of their architecture as well.

The Matous? They've (kinda) got a secret Grail. Also, Zouken's been worm-raping Sakura as part of his Evil Plot To Get The Grail. Shinji did the same, except with a different motive. A lot of this emerges as part of FSN's exposition, and could easily form part of the mystery there.

The Einzberns? They screwed up BIG TIME in War #3 with Avenger. Now they've shoved a homunculus lesser Grail into the War, and she's connected to Shirou's past. Unraveling her story -- and later, the schemes that produced Avenger -- takes up a lot of FSN. Ilya's and Shirou's situation also raises lots of questions about family, connections between parents and children, etc., so you've got some potential higher-concept fodder in there as well.

The Tohsakas? Well, Tokiomi weaved a lot of schemes into Grail War #4, none of which would have been apparent to a narrator limited to non-Tohsaka viewpoints. Tokiomi's approach to that War helped spawn Kirei. And doomed Sakura, (eventually) killed Aoi, turned Rin into a broken ball of depression, and a couple others. The mess that the Tohsakas made out of War #4 is something that a character could really dig into.

Kirei? Where to begin...? The guy has plans-within-plans-within-plans. He's also kept numerous secrets for a decade -- secrets that influenced all of the characters' lives. A hidden Servant. Orphans in the basement. The fire that shaped Shirou's personality. Rin's upbringing. Avenger's identity. Aoi getting strangled. And Nasu/Urobuchi wrapped them all in a philosophical question: what do you do when your personality and desires clash with what society expects of you?


So one potentially helpful first step for developing a mystery / hook: remember Grail Wars basically consist of seven or more and schemes colliding. And that the desire to hatch each scheme usually emerges from some individual's inner drives. Those drives can often be rephrased in universal terms (magus-ey duty vs. love of family for Tokiomi, the self vs. society for Kirei and Shirou, the way that winning became its own goal for the Einzberns, the dimensions of parent/child relationships for the Kiritsugu-Ilya-Shirou mess, the darker, parasitic sides of family life for the Matous, etc.)

The second step is to figure out how the character tried to satisfy his/her drives, either in the past or present. Usually through gaming the system and cheating. But cheating the system rarely works out as planned -- Avenger emerged from that process, and it's the canonical mystery of both FZ and FSN.

You don't need all of this, but it might kickstart something.

[Vagrant]

Just out of interest, what's your take on the roles for FZ?

I feel like depending on whether you pick Kiritsugu oe Waver for protag the others line up like so:

Evil Conspiracy: Tokiomi/Kirei/Gilgamesh
Pursuers: Kayneth (for Waver), Waver (for Kerry, although this is better stated as Iskandar chasing Saber)
Stepping Stones: Uryuu & Kariya
Game Master: Gilgamesh (although this is vague, since nobody really played out the clusterfuck that was FZ), no idea who'd be a suitable Game Master for Waver. Make it turn out that Zelretch/higher person in the MA bumped the catalyst Waver's way to let his theory be tested, since he has potential. Nothing to do with the war, all to do with Waver.

[Zalgo Jenkins]

Just out of interest, what's your take on the roles for FZ?

I feel like depending on whether you pick Kiritsugu oe Waver for protag the others line up like so:

Evil Conspiracy: Tokiomi/Kirei/Gilgamesh
Pursuers: Kayneth (for Waver), Waver (for Kerry, although this is better stated as Iskandar chasing Saber)
Stepping Stones: Uryuu & Kariya
Game Master: Gilgamesh (although this is vague, since nobody really played out the clusterfuck that was FZ), no idea who'd be a suitable Game Master for Waver. Make it turn out that Zelretch/higher person in the MA bumped the catalyst Waver's way to let his theory be tested, since he has potential. Nothing to do with the war, all to do with Waver.

My approach would be pretty close to yours.

The formula struggles with Fate Zero, partly because FZ was a "treasure hunt" that went horribly, horribly wrong. But you could do it a couple different ways.

If you want to stick to canon, my initial impression would be something like either --

OPTION 1: "Rote" Formula

Protagonists --> Saber and Kiritsugu [both experts; as a twist, they work together terribly.]
Stepping Stones --> Kayneth (or Kariya, but he's less likely), Uryuu
Evil Conspiracy --> The Matou, probably.
Pursuers --> Kirei / Team Tohsaka.
Game Master --> Gil, as long as you see Kirei as his pawn in the final stanzas.


Kirei gives Kiritsugu the willies since day 1. He puts pressure on him throughout. And while Gil is manipulating the "Pursuers" here rather than the Evil Conspiracy, the two are interchangeable. As Inferno demonstrated, the Game Master can emerge from any faction.

Notice that you can tell every Grail War from multiple angles. Brown's formula covers most of them in this case, but doesn't necessarily always cover them all. This is Kiritsugu's angle.

(Waver's arc doesn't appear if you tell it from Kiritsugu's perspective, and it doesn't need to appear for the story to work -- the FZ novel is 3-4 times longer than Da Vinci. Waver and Kiritsugu didn't really affect each other, so we needn't include Waver.)


OPTION 2: An Abstract Approach

Protagonists --> Kiritsugu and Saber, as before
Evil Conspiracy --> Probably the Matou, though Kariya doesn't match perfectly. Closer when you add Zouken.
Pursuers --> Team Tohsaka (Gil, Tokiomi, Kirei)
Stepping Stones --> Kayneth, Uryuu
The Game Master --> The cursed Grail


If you want to get a little philosophical about the whole thing, the corrupted Grail ruined the game. It gave Uryuu a Servant, and an outright evil one at that. It also chose Kirei as a Master, and he's basically the Grail in human form: an absolutely evil being who desires human suffering. Gil just gave Kirei the final push, and Gil came from the Grail as well. Calling the story "Fate" fits perfectly: from the moment Avenger entered the Chalice, the embodiment of evil was pulling the strings.

Assuming the sentient part of the Grail can watch the whole thing, the end GM portions might actually come from its POV.



You could probably do it other ways, and I haven't covered Waver, but that's my first try.

[Zalgo Jenkins]

Incidentally, if anybody's interested in writing "whodunit" stories, I could probably do one of these for the ~60k word mystery novels that Gardner wrote from the 1930s to 1970s.

Gardner's stories have the three virtues of being (1) much shorter than Brown's, (2) one of the best-selling series of all time up until the 1970s, and (3) much more explicit in their formula, since Gardner originally came from the pulps and tried throughout his life to design a "plot machine". (We have his notes and correspondence, since he died a few decades ago.)

I don't have a lot of time in the near future, but in a couple weeks I could probably get around to it if anybody's interested.

[FourthWall]

Go ahead and do it; the synthesis in and of itself is fascinating.