How Long Did It Take...

I’d already planned this week’s topic and then the writing discourse, as some call it, veered toward length anyway. So call it happy coincidence. Or serendipity.

Okay, granted, they were talking about how long a manuscript should be, and we’ve talked about that here before. It’s old news, right? This week, when I’m talking about length, I wanted to talk about time. How long some of this takes.

I’ve blathered on before about how easy it is to follow your favorite writers on social media these days. So many of them are active to some degree on one platform or another. And they toss out advice and updates about their work. Plus, we can find authors at our own level, people who are going through the same struggles and frustrations.

Not surprisingly, we end up comparing ourselves to these other folks. Yeah, there’s dozens of reasons not to, but we can’t help ourselves. It’s human nature. We’re curious how we measure up. Has she written more than me? Does he write faster than me? How did their career take off so much faster than mine?

And a lot of the time, the answers to these questions are a bit intimidating. Maybe even discouraging. I mean, I’ve been working on this book for over a year now and she just pumped one out in eight weeks? What the hell? I know other writers aren’t my competition but seriously... how am I supposed to compete with that?

So the point I wanted to make is that... well, art’s a little subjective. It’s not like a construction project where we can say we broke ground last May and people are moving in this month. A lot of the starting and stopping points of art can be a little fuzzy. And some people... well, play with that fuzz. So to speak.

Like, we’ve talked before about how long it takes to write a book. Some folks consider the starting point when they started outlining. Some consider it when the idea first struck them. And others say they started writing when they typed Chapter One.

Let’s consider my first published novel-- Ex-Heroes. When did I start writing it? Well, I made up a lot of the characters before I hit high school, so that was the early ‘80s. I jotted down my first rough notes in the summer of 2006, but I didn’t start actively working on it until mid-2008. So when did I start? Depending on how you want to look at it, we could say it took twenty-five years or about six months to write.

That’s not even considering most traditionally-published novels go through an editing process that can be a few months, and it might be even more months before the book’s actually out there in the world. So when are we saying the book’s done? When I turn it in? When the publishers edits are done? When the layouts are locked and it goes to print?

Or how about this one--a common yardstick people like to look at. How long was it from when you started writing until your first novel? But again, both of those points are kind of debatable. Yeah, I sold Ex-Heroes in late 2008, but it didn’t actually come out until early 2010. And there were a couple novels before it, but they didn't sell. The first full novel that I actually completed was started in early ‘93 and finished in 2001... but then I spent about three years editing and rewriting. So when was my “first” novel?

And when did I start writing? When I was eight and blocking out original Star Wars stories in my Kenner Death Star playset? When I started using my mom’s massive electric typewriter? When I first started submitting stuff? When I started writing the first novel I actually finished? When I quit my film job to start writing full time? When I quit that job to start writing fiction full time? Any of these is a valid starting point, but they cover about thirty years.

Hopefully you see what I’m getting at. I can easily—and truthfully—say I started writing anytime between 1979 and 2010 and give solid justifications for why that’s the point I chose. Likewise, I can manipulate how long it took to go from “starting to work” to “first sold novel” and make it look really fast or really slow. I mean, we’ve talked once or thrice about the overnight success with a decade or more of work behind them.

And there’s a lot of reasons people might give these different figures. It could be a marketing thing. It might just be what they think counts as actual “writing.” Maybe it’s a deliberate attempt to fudge the numbers to try to make themselves look more impressive. It might be how some MFA professor taught them to do it and they’ve never shaken that particular habit.

My point is... don’t worry about these numbers. I shouldn’t worry abut how long it took to write my book. I don’t have to freak out because it feels like my career hasn’t taken off yet. My speed is my speed. Yeah, we’re all going to compare ourselves to other people’s numbers, but just remember... those numbers may have a bit of range to them.

Next time...

Actually, before I talk about next time—if you happen to be of the reviewing type and have access to NetGalley, my new novel The Broken Room is now there and can be requested. For the rest of you... holy crap, only eighteen more days!

Anyway, next time let’s talk about... the unknown.

(cue spooky music)

Until then, go write.

TMI

So, hey... anything interesting going on in the world?

I kinda touched on this a month or so back, but since we’re all suffering from a bit of information overload right now, I thought it’d be a good topic to talk about. I mean, we’re all familiar with this feeling, right? Dealing with that person who just feels the need to tell us a little too much about things. Seriously, I get that Wakko’s excited about having a kid but do we need that many details about how the child was conceived? No, I completely understand why you thought she couldn’t get pregnant while she had her no y’know what, let’s just stop there.

Actually, let me stay here for another paragraph or three so I can tell you a porn story.

Years ago I was mildly obsessed with a little Canadian show called The X-Files. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It was kind of famous for bold storytelling choices. Multi-part stories and arcs. Realistic lighting. And some bold tricks for getting around the standards and practices rules for what you could show on television. As someone working on a television show at the time, I was amazed by some of the things they did. Especially one time when a recurring character killed a man by pistol-whipping him until he dropped to his knees, pressing the gun against the man’s head, and blowing his brain out.

Of course, we didn’t actually see this. Seeing something like that on broadcast television in the early 90s was strictly verboten, as Kurt Wagner would say. So the X-Files had Mr. X drag the nameless thug around a corner and we saw all this action the same way Mulder did, playing out on the walls as shadows and half-muffled sounds. You can probably picture it in your mind, even if you haven’t seen it. They showed less and did so much more.

The next day at work I was lamenting to my boss, Brad, that we never did anything this cool. Our little martial arts show was kind of... blunt. In the sense that sledgehammers are blunt. Brad just shrugged and said “It’s because all we do here is porn. Doesn’t matter what kind of show it is. Porn is when you show everything. That’s all anyone here knows how to do.”

That was many, many years ago, but I’ve always remembered it. I mean, porn really is the ultimate TMI situation, isn’t it? It’s pretty clear those two (or three) people went off to the poolhouse to have sex, but in porn we see... well, all of it. Every minute. From multiple angles.

Sometimes... our writing leans into porn. I’m not talking about sex, but like Brad said, we start showing everything.  We explain things that don’t need to be explained. Sometimes with far too much detail. A distracting amount of detail. Can you imagine if Ant-Man & The Wasp had a ten minute scene explaining how Pym particles work? Or how Hope controls her wings? Not only would it slow thing to a crawl and break the flow, but I bet anyone with even a thin grasp of science and physics would be able to punch a dozen holes in it.

But there’s another aspect to TMI as well. Experiencing a story is a personal thing. We’re reading it, but we’re feeling it in our gut and filling in a lot of details ourselves. As writers, we try to guide (and maybe even manipulate) how readers imagine things, but in the end a lot of it’s going to be very individual. If you’ve ever read a Jack Reacher book, you’re probably not picturing Tom Cruise, but you’re also not picturing the same person I am. The way I picture Danielle in the Ex-Heroes books probably isn’t the same way you picture her, and I probably don’t envision Veek from the Threshold books the same way you do.

So when I start describing too much, things stop meshing in my reader’s mind. I’m breaking the flow again. I’m repeating “six foot blonde” again and again while you’ve already decided Phoebe should be a brunette.

And there’s another way too much information hinders things. In the bigger, overall world of the story, we like having space to wonder and imagine. Especially in speculative fiction. We enjoy filling in some of the blanks ourselves.

For example, when I was a little kid growing up on Star Wars, I assumed the Rebellion was poor (like me) and couldn’t afford to buy cool new ships to fight the Empire. So most of what they had—the X-wings and Y-wings—was essentially kitbashed stuff they cobbled together. They had the basic instructions and diagrams, and they just made the ships out of whatever parts they had (which is why they all had little differences). Heck, I was so convinced of this, I assumed when the Rebellion started using A-wings in Return of the Jedi they were retrofitted snowspeeder hulls, now with airtight canopies and stronger engines. 

Was I right? It didn’t matter—the story had space for me to fill things in on my own. Which is a big part of what I loved about it. Sometimes, leaving things unanswered and unexplained is good. It leaves room for my reader (or my audience) to fill things in on their own and create their own mythology.

Not to mention, it gets harder to tell stories. A good story is about things we don’t know. It’s about the characters (and us) learning and experiencing new things. But the more I know about a character or event, the harder it is to tell a really strong story about them. All the information’s already out there. People give Disney a lot of crap for wiping the Star Wars slate clean and starting over, but the simple truth is it opened up tons of storytelling opportunities. Most of the great Star Wars stories of the past eight years couldn’t’ve been told before, because all those spaces had been filled up and sanded smooth. There were no gaps of knowledge left to fill in.

This can be tough, the idea of not explaining things. There’s a lot of empathy needed. I really need to understand what information my readers will want to know, what they’ll enjoy figuring out for themselves, and when they’ll be fine with nothing more than a handwave explanation of me saying “the flux capacitor is what makes time travel possible.”

It’s also tough because—like with research—sometimes we’ve worked out a really cool explanation or some ironclad reasoning, and we want to share it. We want people to see how clever it is and how well we thought it out. We want them to know we’ve thought of everything.

And let’s be very honest with each other... sometimes we want to fill pages. Nothing wrong with that. Filling pages is kind of the job. I mean, pretty much the first 100 pages of The Fold is scientists and engineers talking about how their little project works. But I’ve also never explained how the Cerberus armor works in the Ex-Heroes books or how Barry turns into Zzzap. And nobody’s complained yet.

Y’see, Timmy, I shouldn’t be scared about not explaining things. Look at some of the explanations and descriptions in your book. It might be new information, but is it necessary information? Does the story need it or does it maybe run a little smoother without it?

Next time... I’d like to talk about how we start things.

Yeah, I know. Great post to do halfway through NaNoWriMo.

Until then, wear your mask, wash your hands, and go write.

On the Third Day...

I got a request from Rhyen, which is great because I still haven’t really hammered those ideas on endings or comedy quite into shape. So that’s still some stuff for the future. Or, y’know, somebody else could ask something.

Anyway...

Rhyen wanted to know about worldbuilding. Not just “our world, but with secret werewolves” but full-on, hardcore fantasy worlds, sci-fi worlds, and so on. How (and when) do you come up with histories, cultures, and all that other stuff?

Y’know what? Let’s make this post super-active rather than me blathering away. Right here, right now, let’s look at werewolf world. The other version of it where everybody knows werewolves are real.

Now, I know, we said we were going to do more hardcore settings but just go with me for a minute.

I’ve mentioned Charlie Jane Anders once or thrice before, and her little note that there’s no such thing as “a world just like ours, except...” because any noteworthy “except” is going to change everything. If there really were werewolves and everybody knew about them, so much would be different in the world. Tons of things.

Don’t believe me? Let’s go over a few things real quick. Just off the top of my head...

Here’s an easy change. There probably wouldn’t be any silver coins. In WereWorld anything with even a scrap of silver would’ve been gathered up and turned into anti-werewolf weapons or defenses. The government would be treating silver like uranium. 

Which, hey... how would warfare be different? Forget atom bombs... imagine if the Manhattan Project involved deliberately infecting a hundred or so troops with lycanthropy and then dropping them all on Nagasaki and Hiroshima on the night of the full moon. A hundred unstoppable killing machines running wild in each city. That’s a terror weapon, right there. And of course, if the Japanese capture two or three alive, now they’ve got their own werewolves.

But now without the US pouring all that money into nuclear warfare and missile programs... where does it all go? Infrastructure? Social programs? Schools? Would there be a Cold War? A Bay of Pigs? And if the Soviet Union leaned into werewolf warfare... what kind of arms races would there be? Would the USSR have financially collapsed?

And we haven’t even talked about dating or sex in WereWorld. Hunting laws? Home security? Profiling? Legal issues—if I kill someone as a werewolf, am I legally responsible? Is it murder, which requires a degree of forethought, since the werewolf’s essentially an animal (or is it?)?

And all of these assume we just “discovered” werewolves somehow back in the early 1940s. What if it was even earlier? How would global exploration and trade have gone differently five hundred years ago if every twenty-nine days  one of your crew members might kill everyone on the ship? How different would the world map look right now?

Again, this is all off the top of my head. Seriously, I’ve spent maybe ten minutes on this. But I’ve completely rewritten the world, just by being aware that things would inevitably change in this situation.

So, with that in mind...

Creating a setting, any setting, is a lot like creating a character. I want to know them backwards and forwards. It’s fantastic if I have lots and lots of factoids about them easily on hand (you may remember that back before we all took the pandemic plunge, I talked about characters and their underwear choices).

I’ve mentioned character sketches once or thrice before, and I think worldbuilding can be approached the same way. We come up with the bare basics and then we start fleshing it out by asking questions and maybe following a few paths to their logical outcome. Like I did up above with WereWorld.

Or let’s do something even more divorced from our world. Let’s say it’s going to be a fantasy world, maybe one with some gearpunk elements. So, easy one—is there actual magic in this fantasy world? Is it kind of rare or very common? Does it need components? Are they rare or common? Do people have spell-component gardens the way we might have an herb garden?

How about the gear-tech? How precise is it? Do you need mathematically perfect brass gears or do lots of people carve wooden ones after dinner? What do they use for power? Springs? Counterweights? Two or three big guys turning a crank?

Does magic dominate the gear-tech, or vice versa? Is one notably newer than the other? Does either have detractors, vocal or secretive? Are magic and/or gear-tech novelties or parts of everyday life? Do they ever cross-pollinate, so to speak? Are they expensive or so common everyone has access to some aspect of them?

Considering all of this, now... is this mostly an agrarian world? Are more people farmers? Hunters? Are there gearpunk tractors or crossbows? Magic millstones or knives that can skin anything? And if none of this ever filters down to the common folk... how do they feel about that?

Has the magic or gear-tech made travel easier? Are people still isolated in villages or are there much bigger cities, made possible because of these advances? Do people know more about the world?

Heck, how fantasy is this world? Are there supernatural or mythological creatures? Are they common? Domesticated? Are there things we know or all-new creatures? Does the farmer have a six-legged hexox dragging his plow? Are there gods? Demons? How do they feel about humans playing with magic and gear-tech?

Or heck... is it even humans? Is this about magical halflings or gearpunk elves? I just pictured a gearpunk lizardman and that seemed pretty cool.

If you’ve answered a lot of those questions, I bet you’ve got the beginnings of a pretty solid world in your head. And probably spun off a question or three of your own. Enough so that you can start setting up your plot.

And one thing to keep in mind—just like with characters, this might change as I go along. As the story grows and progresses, I might change a lot. I might add even more. It’s an ongoing process. Halfway through my outline or my first draft, I might realize I need to address currency. And, hey,  maybe this world has a really crappy exchange rate, so it matters if you’re getting paid with glowing quartz or brass gear-coins.

Again, the world is here to serve the story. You’re going to change and tweak it as you go. Maybe all the way up to your last draft. And just like with characters, you’ll keep coming up with cool little details and anecdotes.

Now... there’s three key things to remember...

First, I know I talk about editing things down a lot, but we can all breathe a small sigh of relief here. If I’ve got a story set in another world—a drastically different world—most editors are going to give me a little bit of leeway, word-count wise. They understand I’ll need a few extra pages to explain why Yakko is riding a gearpunk tractor powered by magical crystals.

This doesn’t mean I can go crazy listing details. Or that I can be really blunt with them. No pausing for two pages to randomly describe the wooden sun-and-planet gears in Yakko’s trailer. Or the long history of the mining guild that provides those magic crystals. One more time—say it with me—the world is here to serve the story. It’s okay to have a little extra flavor here and there, but I shouldn’t lose track of what my book is actually about.

Which brings me to my second point. Whenever I create a character, there’s a lot of things about them that are never going to come up in the book. Or maybe they come up, but they’re never explained. I might have tons of rich backstory and weird little details, but a lot of it just never becomes relevant.

For example, in the Threshold books, I know a ton of things about Veek. I know why she’s abrasive with most people. Why she likes wearing men’s suits and ties over women’s power suits. Heck, I made a note of when/how she lost her virginity. But the truth is, none of this has been relevant to any of the books she’s been in. It’s stuff I know, and it helps me make her feel more three dimensional on the page, but ultimately... it’s all kind of irrelevant if it doesn’t have anything to do with this book—with the plot I’m telling and the character’s arc through that plot.

Worldbuilding is the same way. No matter how fantastic or amazing the details of this world might be, they only matter if they’re going to have some kind of impact. While it may be very interesting how this society ended up with a hexadecimal/base sixteen number system, do we need to know any of that history for this story? Yes, WereWorld does have eleven continents and there’s a fascinating story behind it... which has nothing to do with this book.

And even then, I’d argue that if there’s no real reason for something to be different... maybe it shouldn’t be. I think one thing that confuses some people is they see this rich, historied world that the story’s set in and forget the world only exists to serve the story, not the other way around. If you look back at my A2Q discussion about the world Phoebe and Luna live in, I made choices based on what would be interesting for the plot and story, not what would make for an interesting world.

So I shouldn’t be coming up with (and using) new things just to come up with new, different things. I mean George RR Martin just uses leagues for distance in worldbuiding heavyweight A Song of Fire and Ice (perhaps better known by it’s Hollywood stage name, Game of Thrones). It sounds good, a little archaic, and he doesn’t have to waste half a page explaining what hekkrets are.

Or heck, here’s another example... any of you remember that old 70’s indie movie, Star Wars? There’s a great scene where Ben and his would-be-protégé are trying to hire a ship from some lowlife smuggler. And Ben tells him “We can pay you two thousand now plus fifteen... when we reach Alderaan.” Remember that?

So... two thousand what?

No, no, no. Don’t run to novelisations or books or articles that retconned this. Right there in the movie you watched... two thousand what?

Truth is, it doesn’t say and it doesn’t matter. For this story, the type of currency’s irrelevant. I don’t care if it’s Imperial credits or Old Republic scrip or gold-press latinum or Jawa skulls. Okay, I might care if it’s Jawa skulls because WTF Kenobi why do you have two thousand of these laying around?! What the hell have you been up to out in your little desert hut?

Anyway... no, all we need to know is that two thousand is a good amount (judging off everyone’s reactions) and fifteen more makes it a very good amount. Past that, we just don’t need to know why Solo wants all these Jawa skulls Kenobi’s collected. It’s not important. The dialogue’s solid and sounds believable, which is far more important that a brief segue to explain the various types of Galactic currency and their exchange rates.

This brings me to my third and final point.

Worldbuilding is, in my opinion, a really easy trap to fall into. Because worldbuilding is fun. Seriously. That question game we played up above? We can do that for weeks with worldbuilding. Months. Maybe even years. My world is going to be so huge and so complex with so many races and creeds and economies and social structures and seriously we can spend so much time doing this instead of...

Y’know, actually writing the story.

And that’s how I generally approach worldbuilding. You may need to change this approach a bit, depending on your own story and the kid of setting you want for it, but hopefully this’ll get you a little further down that path. Or help you find your own path.

Next time... endings.

Maybe.

Until then, go write.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

            A couple folks have asked me questions related to marketing over the past few weeks, so I thought it’d be worth going over a couple things about this.
            There’s a wonderful Richard Matheson quote that Jonathan Maberry related to me a few years back.  If you’ve gone to either of the SoCal Writers Coffeehouses and listened to us speak (well, Jonathan speaks, I kinda babble on a lot until I run out of breath), you’ve probably heard it three or four times.  Writing is art, publishing is the business of selling as many copies of that art as possible.

            Marketing, big surprise, is part of publishing.  It’s a very necessary part of publishing, whether I’m doing it myself, with a small press, or I’m the favorite author at a Big Five imprint.  It’s how people discover I’ve got something to sell.

            Marketing can take a lot of forms.  It’s everything from me posting the new cover on Twitter to your book being plastered on the side of a bus.  It’s the copy on the back of the book and me summing it up in two lines for you at a convention.

            But the sole point of it, in all these examples, is to sell books.

            And sometimes... this can create some conflicts with the art side.

            As we move forward here, I’m sure some folks may try to read into this.  It isn’t a subtweet or an angry rant.  I’m not calling anyone out or absolving anyone of blame or any of that.  I’m just tossing out some facts.  Publishing is a business, and if I want to be successful in that business (and avoid a ton of stress), it helps to understand how it works.

            Also, I know there’s a fine line between marketing and publicity and I always mess it up, so please forgive me if I weave back and forth across that line once or thrice here.  I don’t think I’m ever going to end up in the other lane, but we may hear those bumpy lane divider once or thrice.

            Okay, so, if marketing is getting people to buy my book, how do I do that?  I can tell them the genre and see if it’s something they like.  Maybe the type of characters I use.  I can point out other books like it, or other storylines it may tie into.  I can even offer little summaries or excerpts to tease potential readers with.  Doesn’t this sound like a creepy/sexy/amazing/funny story?  You saw the dragon, right?  You know you like dragons.  And this one’s got a lightsaber.  Trust me, The Jedi of Krynn is the book you've been waiting your whole life for.

            But seriously...

            One of the big challenges here—the conflict between art and business—is how much do we tell?  How do we find that fine line between getting the sale and keeping the book enjoyable?  Tell too much and now all the book’s punch is already out there.  Don’t tell enough and... well, maybe nobody reads it at all.

            Do I mention every character in the book, even if some are supposed to be surprises?  Should I mention the big twist?  Should I hint at it?  Heck, sometimes even just naming the genre can be a bit of a spoiler.  And every spoiler saps a little bit of the story’s power... which lessens the chances for word-of-mouth sales.  Now my cool novel is just kind of a bland book with no real surprises in it.
            Sometimes what seem like simples questions can cause marketing headaches.  For example...

            (Some minor MCU spoilers coming at you)

            Does Ant Man & The Wasp tie into Avengers: Infinity War? 

            Simple question, right?  But how do you answer it?  If I say no, there's a bunch of people who might skip it. Plus, I’m lying, which people will then call me out for and complain about.  If I say yes, people complain because... well, 99.5% of the film doesn’t tie in at all.  And that last half a percent... well, if I’m saying yes, I’m kinda spoiling that super-powerful reveal, aren’t I?  There really isn’t a good way to answer it.
            Of course, even not answering it at all can cause problems, because then people will speculate around that sort of “negative space” left by the non-answer.  They’ll read into things, make assumptions, and develop expectations.  And these expectations will either be correct, in which case...  well, they’re acting like spoilers again.  Or they’re incorrect, and now people are upset because the expectations they went in with aren't being met, no matter what the actual story is (or how good it is).

            There’s another angle here, too.  One you’ve probably heard before.  People like series.  They like them a lot, if you look at sales records. To be honest, publishers like them, too.  Editors love to see a new book with series potential.  And spin off potential.  And tie-in potential.

            But here’s another catch.  People want to know how all this stuff fits together.  They want to know if something is canon or set on Earth-23 or Earth 15 but still canon or does this involve Wakko before or after his cybernetic upgrades?  Because let’s face it—there’s no point reading any of the stories before he became bionic, right?  Why even bother?

            So when things don’t fall into a neat A-B-C, 1-2-3 pattern, it’s not unusual for marketing to just... well, kind of wing it.  Like, okay, how would you number the Star Wars films (or all the novelizations and spin off books)?  By the order they came out?  That won’t make much sense.  By the order they fit in the story?  That means A New Hope: Episode IV is actually movie six.   And how does that work if they do a new prequel story?  Do we re-number everything?  Do we just number some things but not others?  I saw the novelization of Rogue One listed once as Star Wars: Book 18, and I have no clue what that’s supposed to mean.

            Sure, we could leave them unnumbered but... well, that could cost sales, too.  Some folks don’t like reading a series until it’s done, and if I don’t say it’s a trilogy or whatever, well... maybe they’ll never pick it up at all.  So I probably need some kind of designation if I want these to sell, right?

            Or do I?

            Plus... sometimes explaining where things fit in can be a spoiler.  We thought this story was in the future, but it’s actually in the past.  We thought it was here on Earth but it’s actually on the mirror-universe world of Urth.  And that puts us back at... well, what do we tell?  How do we keep the book enjoyable while also getting people to buy it?

            It’s a mess.  Seriously.  And everyone’s clawing their way through trying to find a balance that preserves the art but still serves the business.  Everyone knows you can’t pick one over the other, but every single book (or movie or television show) becomes a new attempt at finding that balance point.  The guidelines we use for my book won’t work for yours. 

            And it doesn’t help when some folks, deliberately or not, muddle things even more.  We’ll play up the mention of that character or the appearance of that plot thread. I’ve seen things described as romances because of one thin subplot, or spiritual because someone prays at some point (I won’t tell you what they were praying for...)  I’ve mentioned before how for a while any book or movie with a somehow-superhuman character was billed as a superhero story.  These are the things that make people grumble about marketing, and make marketing folks grumble about people who just follow buzzwords.

            Anyway...

            I just thought it was worth tossing this out.  Mostly because a few folks have complained long and hard about the marketing for Dead Moon.  I’ve tried to address some of these things for, oh, eight or nine months now but... well, as I’ve been saying, some complaints are inevitable, no matter what. 

            But also partly because, like I said in the beginning, this is stuff worth knowing and thinking about.

            And I’m sure there will be some more thoughts down in the comments.

            Next time—like, tomorrow—some thoughts on dialogue.

            Until then, go write.

A Quick Sketch

            December.  How the hell is it December already?

           Some of you may remember way back at the dawn of the ranty blog, when this site had a completely different format.  A bit more block o’text.  Then it updated and we could have fancy things like indents.  Every now and then I’ll find myself referring back to something from the before-time, and I take that as a good sign this is a topic I could revisit

            And sometimes it’s very relevant.  These past few months, I’ve seen a lot of examples of storytellers who didn’t know that much about their characters (or didn’t express it).  And some others who knew way too much about said characters and decided to communicate it all.  Every single life-experience, thought, and item of clothing.
            Character sketches are one of those things that come up a lot when people talk about storytelling.  Novelists and screenwriters talk about them, but in a variety of ways.  Sometimes very indy films are even called character sketches.  So it’s understandable the term could cause confusion, especially when some folks talk about them as if they’re some vital, necessary thing.

            In a visual-artistic sense, a sketch usually isn’t a finished work.  It’s when I use a few quick lines and textures to suggest an image rather than forming a complete image.  It’s inherently incomplete, but also implies something more than itself.

            In a similar sense, a character sketch shouldn’t be an exhaustive list that covers every possible detail of this person’s existence.  It’s supposed to give me, the writer, a sense of the character I can refer back to as a guideline.  It’s notes about how they talk, how they move, what they like, and what they hate. 

            Like a fair number of the things I ramble on about her, a character sketch is going to be something that’s unique to each author.  Probably to each character, as well.  Some characters may need pages of exhaustive notes.  Others may only need a line or two.  And with a few, I may never need to write a single note because I have them perfectly in my mind.

            For example
            In the book I’m working on right now, I sketched out a short paragraph about most of the characters.  I knew Chase was still struggling in the year since he’d lost his family and just not sure what to do with his life—he’d lost his purpose.  I knew Murdoch’s trying to figure out if he could leave his family.  One of the key things I knew about Katanga is that his real name’s Leslie, but he knew how much passengers got a kick out of calling him Katanga because of the Indiana Jones reference.  And Anne...

            Well, Anne’s been in my head for almost seven years, itching to tell her story.  I didn’t need to write down a single word for her. 
            So, what is a character sketch?  It’s whatever works for you.  I’ve found one of the easiest ways to create one, though, is just to ask questions.  Not only does this help me get various answers about someone, it also generally leads to other questions about them that develop the character more.

            For example... let’s talk about Phoebe.

            Also, weird as it may sound after all the times I’ve used it here, this new book is the first time I’ve ever had a character named Phoebe.  And she isn’t remotely what you’d think of when you hear the name Phoebe.  She is... very different.

            So let’s talk about our characters.  I’m going to be answering for Phoebe, but you should pick one from something you’re working on right now.  I’m going to throw out a list of questions.  Answer as you see fit... 

Where did they grow up?

Do they get along with their family?
What was their first job?

Did they go to college? 
Did they live at college?

Did they finish college?

Republican or Democrat?
How many languages do they speak?
What languages?

What do they do for a living?

What do they want to be doing for a living?

Do they brush and floss regularly?

Do they have any hobbies or collections?
Are they religious?

Do they go to church?
Where do they live?

Where do they want to live?

How do they swear? Like a prude?  Like a sailor? 

How old were they when they had their first drink?

When they first had sex?
Do they smoke?

Have they ever done drugs?
Do they work out?

What kind of car do they drive?

What kind of car do they want to drive?

Do they have pets?
What did they name their pets?

            If I can answer even half of those questions, that’s a ton of useful information about this character and their background.  Plus, as you probably noticed, each answer implies other facets of their personality.  Knowing all of this is going to give me a much better insight into how they talk and react to the people and world around them and also how they’ll probably react when things change abruptly for them.

            Now, let me jump back to that analogy of artistic sketches and touch on another point.  There’s another art term you may have heard called negative space.  It’s when I define shapes by the areas around them rather than by the shapes themselves.  Think of the hole in a wall when a cartoon character runs through it.

            Sometimes that’s how some writers try to define their characters.  They’ll explain this character’s not like those foolish civilians or those dumb idiots or those freakin’ Hollywood elites.  Thing is... this doesn’t actually tell me who anyone is.
            Y’see, Timmy, the problem with defining by negatives is that it isn't actually defining something, it's just eliminating one option.  If I tell you the shirt I’m wearing right now doesn’t have a Star Wars logo on it...  I mean, that’s accurate, yeah, but does it really tell you anything useful?  If I’m asking you to picture "a shirt without a Star Wars logo," I’m pretty sure I could get a hundred different responses in the comments and almost guarantee none of them will be what I’m actually wearing.

            Okay, yeah, no way I’ll ever get a hundred responses here.

            I need to actually define my characters.  Who they are. What they think.  Vagueness can be used to great effect, but more often than not it just shows that I don’t know this stuff.  Phoebe (to fall back on my latest creation) is just going to be a formless, unrelatable thing that does whatever the plot needs at the given moment

            And one last point, an idea I’ve mentioned once or thrice before.  Just because I come up with stuff for a character sketch doesn’t mean I need to use it in my work.  Oh, I’ll use all of it to help round out the characters and their history in my head, but just because I came up with a background element doesn’t mean I need to use it. 

            Y’see, Timmy (yep, a double Y’see Timmy—it’s Timmception), an all-too-common mistake is when people come up with all these elaborate backstories and then feel the need to squeeze every single detail of them into the actual manuscript.  A character sketch is for the writer, not the reader.  I know a ton of details about Murdoch and Anne’s past together, and a huge amount about Chase’s screw-ups... but a lot of this isn’t going to be relevant to my book.  And if it isn’t relevant in any way... well, I might want to  think thrice about making space for it.

            Maybe keep that in mind.
           Next time, I’d like to talk a bit about holiday movies and triangles.  And it might be a little early cause I’ve got a thing.

            Oh, and please don’t forget—if you’d like an autographed book, there’s one more week to order them through Dark Delicacies.  All details in that earlier holiday post.

            Until then, go write.

This Saturday...

            Hey, if you happen to live in the rough vicinity of Lubbock, Texas, I’m going to be there this weekend.  I’m doing a signing Saturday afternoon, and giving a little speech that night about writing and literacy to help promote... well, writing and literacy. 

            First, somewhere around 1:30 I’ll be at Barnes & Noble in the South Plains Mall.  They’re having a Star Wars day, so this is just going to be a little quiet, off-to-the-side thing.  I’ll probably be there for about an hour, so if you want to stop by, chat for a bit, and maybe get something signed... that’d be cool.

            Then that night I’ll be joining the folks from Literacy Lubbock for dinner, drinks, and a speech from me—

            —oh crap I need to write a speech—

            —a speech from me which’ll probably be me babbling away about cooking and supercomputers and old Seinfeld episodes.  Which will all circle back around to literacy in a very brilliant and impressive way.  It’s $35 a head, but it all goes to a good cause.  Plus you get to hang out afterwards and laugh about my rambling speech.

            So...  Lubbock.  Saturday.  Hope to see some of you there.

Elementary

            Many thanks to all of you who tossed some new topic ideas at me (here and on Twitter).  I think this might fill up all the slots I had for the rest of the year.  I may even take some time to rethink my upcoming plans.

            Anyway, for now, the potential Sherlock Holmes idea stuck in my head, so let me babble about that for a minute or three.

            There’s a pair of terms that have been floating around for a bit now—Watsonian and Doylist.  On the off chance you don’t get the reference, the terms come from Dr. John (or Joan) Watson, constant companion to Sherlock Holmes, and also to their creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  When we use these terms, we’re saying there’s two ways to look at any story element.  The in-story reason for this happening, and the author’s reason for this happening.  They’re often very different, but they’re both very important.

            For example...

            Why did Sherlock Holmes die in “The Final Problem,” plunging to his death at Reichenbach Falls?  Well, from Watson’s point of view, Holmes sacrificed himself because it was the only way to stop Moriarty.  The two evenly-matched men fight, and while Holmes dies, Moriarty’s now-leaderless criminal empire will crumble.  A net win for society. 

            From Doyle’s point of view, though, he was just sick of writing Sherlock Holmes stories.  He was making money off them, yeah, but he wanted to move on and start writing more serious, important stuff about, well... ghosts and fairies.  No, seriously.  So he killed Holmes off and tried (unsuccessfully) to move on.

            Yeah, don’t be the person pointing out Doyle later retconned the death.  When he wrote this story, Holmes was dead.  Toast.  Joined the choir invisible.

            Of course, this principal doesn’t just apply to Sherlock Holmes stories.  If you look at most stories, the elements break down into these two categories.

            --Why did Han Solo get frozen in carbonite?  The Watsonian reason is that Vader wanted to test the carbon-freezing process and Boba Fett wanted to collect on Solo’s sizeable bounty.  The Doylist reason is that Harrison Ford wasn’t sure he wanted to come back to play Solo again, so George Lucas needed an ending that could explain Solo’s potential absence but also contain the possibility of bringing him back.

            --Why did the Twelfth Doctor regenerate?  Watsonian reason—he was shot by the Cybermen and managed to hold off his regeneration briefly before transforming into the Thirteenth Doctor.  Doylist—Peter Capaldi was leaving the series, as was showrunner Stephen Moffat, and the new team decided to cast Jodie Whittaker.
            Here’s one of my own—Why does Ex-Patriots begin with a Fourth of July fireworks show?  Well, from a Watsonian point of view, the citizens of the Mount are celebrating.  It’s the Fourth, but it’s also one of their first major holidays since things have (for them) kinda stabilized after the zombocalypse.  So they’re partying hard.

            From a Doylist point of view, though... this opening lets me start with action.  There’s a lot going on.  It gives me a chance to re-introduce our four main heroes. It also lets be immediately bring up the idea of nations and patriotism, which are key themes in the book.  Heck, because this was one of those very rare times where I knew there’d be another book in the series, this was also a setup for a plot thread in Ex-Communication.
            This all makes sense, yes?

            Why are we talking about it?

            I think it’s really important to remember these distinctions when we’re talking about writing.  To be more specific, when we’re talking about aspects of writing.  If we’re discussing dialogue or characters or settings, we should be clear if this is an in-world discussion or an authorial discussion.  Are we talking about things as they relate to the characters, or as they relate to the author (and the audience)?

            “Authorial”?   Ooooh, don’t I sound all clever...

            For example, once or thrice I’ve mentioned my belief that all good, successful characters have three common traits—they’re believable, they’re relatable, and they’re likable.  But I’ve seen some pushback on this.  I’ve had people online and in person argue that characters don’t need to be likable.  Characters just need to be fascinating or compelling or... well, look.  They don’t need to be likable.

            Here’s the thing.  In a Watsonian sense—I agree with this.  I mean, I’ve said this myself lots of times (pretty much every time I talk about these traits).  Likable doesn’t mean we want a character to marry into our family and they always have a kind word to say.  Within the story, there are tons of popular protagonists who aren’t remotely likable.  Who are kind of awful, really.  There’s not a version of Hannibal Lecter—books, movies, or television—that most of us would want to have a private dinner with.  We probably couldn’t count the number of books and movies that have hit men or assassins as their main characters.  And to bring us back around, most modern interpretations of Sherlock Holmes rightly point out that the guy’s an abrasive, condescending ass. 

            (...and that’s with the people he likes.)

            But in a Doylist sense, viewed from outside... we kinda like these people.  We admire Lecter’s twisted ethics.  We envy the ultra-competent man or woman of action.  And it’s kind of pleasant to watch Holmes point out what’s sitting right in front of everyone’s face.  That separation of fiction, the thin sheath that keeps us from absolutely immersing into the story, lets us enjoy these characters in ways we couldn’t in real life.

            I mean if we didn’t like them as readers, why would we keep reading about them?  Who’d torture themselves like that.  Hell, why would we keep writing about them if we didn’t like them?  I can’t imagine sitting down and working for months on a story about a character I didn’t enjoy on some level.

            This holds for so a lot of aspects of writing.  I’ve mentioned before that realistic dialogue in fiction is different from the actual conversations we have with each other in the real world.  Other characters might not get my protagonist, but the reader should be able to relate to them.  And I’m never going to be able build any sort of tension if I don’t understand the difference between what my readers know and what my character knows.

            Y’see, Timmy, when I’m taking in advice I need to be clear if we’re talking about things in a Watsonian or Doylist sense.  And when I see advice from other writers, I should stop and think about how they mean it.  Are they talking about the actual pace of events in the timeline of the story, or the pacing in the narrative?  Are they talking about the motives of the characters or the writer?

            In the future, I’m going to try to be better about this, too.

            Next time...

            Well, thanks to some of you, I’ve got next time all planed out in advance.

            Until then... go write.

Choo-Choo-Choose You II: The Last Starfighter

            I posted a link to last week’s rant over on my Facebook fan page, and somebody asked a question about it.  And I started answering there, but then I realized it’d be better over here. And then (as I was scrawling my response in the comment section) I realized it’d work even better as a quickie Tuesday post.

            So... the question.

            I'm curious how you view Alex Rogan's arc in "The Last Starfighter". It seems to violate your rule about chosen ones not getting invested in the other world. As a character arc, it was pretty believable to me, 

            A fair point.  I tried to make this clear, but I can see where it might not be.  Two points from Ravenclaw for that one.
            Okay, I hate that I have to refer to this but...

            (shudder)

            In his various musings on story, Joseph Campbell has a step—“rejecting the call.” At first glance it seems like it’s a rebuttal of my “not getting invested” point, but it's not. Y'see, rejecting the call happens much earlier in the plot. In The Matrix, for example, it's Neo refusing to trust Morpheus when they first talk on the phone (and getting arrested). In The Force Awakens, it's Rey insisting she can't leave Jakku and has to stay behind. And here, in The Last Starfighter, it's Alex learning about aliens, the KoDan Armada, the head-crushing bad guy, and saying “nope, nope, nope—take me home!”

            But really, how long does that refusal last?  In any of these cases? Alex is home for all of... what, an hour?  Two?—before he realizes he has to go back.

            One of the thing about investment is that it takes time. In-story it takes even more time.  When a plot dives head-first into action on page one, it doesn’t mean much because we don’t know who these people are. And how often do we roll our eyes when a story tries to convince us of “love at first sight”...?

            When someone refuses to get invested and walks away, that happens later in the story.  In the particularly bad movie that sparked that rant, the chosen one walked away over an hour into the movie.  Within the movie, weeks had passed, weeks of people training this guy as the chosen one.

            In a way, this is a lot like the difference between saving the cat and patting the dog.  The isolated acts themselves look very much the same, but they’re different because of when they happen in my story and what they’re trying to accomplish.  Refusing the call is a character thing.  It’s a believable response to being shown a bigger world, or a bigger destiny, and it helps ground our suddenly-overwhelmed protagonist and make them more believable.

            But refusing to be invested is just a cheap attempt to build tension.  It undercuts any character growth that’s happened and makes the reader/audience question if this character can really be trusted. Which really sucks if the character is my long-heralded chosen one protagonist.

            In short, it makes my story worse.

            Next time, character stuff. For real.

            And, hey—two weeks from today I’ll be at Borderlands in San Francisco with my brand-shiny-new second hardcover, Paradox Bound. Give ‘em a call, reserve a copy, and come say “hi!”

            Until then, go write.

A Trick in Three Acts

             Very sorry I missed last week.  Last month was copyedits, this time I got layouts back for my next book (Paradox Bound, out this September, available everywhere somewhat-adequate books are sold) and spent my days going through it line by line and making notes.  Far too many notes, if you ask my editor.

            But we’re all here now.  Soooooo... let’s talk about magic tricks.

            Most people tend to think of magic tricks as kind of a bam done thing.  I pull your chosen card out of the deck or out from beneath your drink or out of your own shirt pocket.  I cut the lady in half without killing her.  Then I make the other lady float on air. 

            The truth is, though, well-done magic tricks almost always have a very specific set of steps.  There’s a casual set-up.  There’s a moment of confusion.  And then there’s the big surprise that makes the audience ask “How did you do that?!” 

            Think about it. When I do a card trick, the first part is actually showing you the deck of cards—a totally normal, regular deck of cards, right?  And then, after you pick a card, it vanishes from the deck... waaaaait a minute.  How’d I manage that, right?  And then when I reach over and pull the card out of your sleeve, or point it out sitting face-up under your own drink, right there in front of you the whole time... the crowd goes wild.

            And if you like, you can hear Michael Caine explain all of that in the trailer for a fantastic, underappreciated Christopher Nolan movie.

            So... why are we talking about magic tricks?

            A common term that gets thrown around a lot is three-act structure.  If you’ve been poking at this storytelling thing  for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard it from someone.  Doesn’t matter if you’re working on novels, screenplays, short stories, or even magic tricks—I’d be willing to bet late night Jack-in-the-Box money that you’ve come across this term or had it pushed at you.

            I’m a big believer in three-act structure. I think a good number of flawed stories can tie their problems back to it. Or to a lack of it.

            I also believe three act-structure gets misunderstood a lot.  And I think there are a lot of gurus and producers out there pushing “three act structure” who... well, don’t have any clue what they’re talking about.  We’ll get to that in a little bit.

            Oh, one other thing.  It’s important to note that three-act structure doesn’t really fit in with the other story structures I’ve talked about in the past—linear, dramatic, and narrative.  It’s kind of a different thing in the way a car can be an automatic and a rifle can be an automatic, but they’re not the same kind of automatic.

            Okay, so here we go...

            Any sort of storytelling has a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

            That’s three act structure.

            No, seriously. That’s pretty much it.

            If we want to go into a little more detail... every kind of story needs these three stages.  I’m not talking about page count, but the way my story develops.  If it’s done right, any reader can tell you when these parts begin and end in my story.

            In fiction we can even hang a name on each of these three acts.  We call them establishing the norm, introducing conflict, and then resolution.  You’ve probably heard of these, too.  I’ve talked about them here before, but let’s do a quick sum up.

            Establishing the norm is just that—showing how things normally are.  This is when my characters go to work, pay bills, spend time with their loved ones, and so on. It’s when we often find them at their most relatable.

            Remember that everybody has a “usual day.”  For Rey, a usual day means scavenging parts from middle-of-nowhere wrecks on a middle-of-nowhere planet.   For Steve Rogers, a usual day means going for a morning jog, meeting up with a coworker, and then dealing with some international terrorists who’ve seized a ship on the high seas. If my characters don’t have a normal day, they can’t have an abnormal day, a day when they’re thrown out of their element and have to impress us somehow.

            Introducing conflict means something is knocking my characters out of their comfortable little world and forcing them to take some sort of action.  The new manager says they have to pay all their back rent by the end of the month.  A dying stranger shoves a magic amulet into their hands.  Turns out that one night stand is going to have nine months of consequences followed by eighteen years of repercussions.  Or maybe some little droid shows up claiming it has information it has to get to the resistance, followed by a lot of people with guns who want said droid.

            Note that this can happen more than once in my story.  If my character keeps getting pushed further and further out of his or her comfort zone... that’s great.

            Also worth noting that conflict has to cause, well, conflict.  If I introduce something that doesn’t bother my protagonist, or takes no real effort to deal with... that’s just boring.  If it’s boring to them, it’s going to be boring to my audience.
            Resolution is, big surprise, when things come to an end. Usually because my protagonist has taken some action and made things come to an end.  It’s when answers are made known, hidden things get revealed, and plot threads all come together.

            Word of warning—if I’m submitting to contests or trying to catch the attention of an agent or editor, ending my story with “to be continued” immediately costs me at least twenty points in whatever grading system they’re using (so hope it isn’t a ten-point one).  If I’m doing this, my story doesn’t actually have a resolution.  It might even mean that I—the writer—don’t have a resolution for it.  And since this third step is an important part of the story, well...

            Look if I stop at mixing the cake and don’t take that last step, I can’t be surprised if most people don’t want to eat it, right?

            Or that some of it call it “sludge” instead of “cake”...

            That brings up another point.     Y’see, Timmy, a story that doesn’t have these three parts has a sort of... meandering quality to it.  Characters either do nothing or do tons of stuff without any real motivation to it. 

            This generally comes from writers only having one or two parts of a story.  Maybe they had a great opening and a cool middle, but didn’t quite know how to end it.  Or they came up with a cool opening and a clever end, but never figured out how those two acts would connect.  I’ve even seen a few folks write a very cool opening... and nothing else.  There was a great set up and then the story sort of spiraled off into... nowhere.

            Okay a few last notes. I’ll try to be quick.

            First, there are still a few little caveats to this, of course.   Many stories start in the middle and take a bit before they go back and explain the beginning.  In medias res some folks like to call it.  Other  stories start at the very end, and use the ending as a frame for the whole story. All of this is fine, and I’m sure all of us could list off a ton of great examples of books and movies that do this.
            What we need to remember, though, is all these stories still have a beginning, a middle, and an end, even if they’ve been juggled around a bit in their tellings.  As I’ve mentioned before, the narrative structure of a story doesn’t change the linear structure.  The events have a definitive starting point.  The characters have a baseline the audience sees them at.  There’s a progression brought about by conflict and changes resulting from the conflict.  And it all leads to a definitive conclusion. 

            Like the examples I mentioned above, I’ve seen stories that try to come in on the action, on the conflict. Thing is, they never go back to explain how these events began.  The story’s left flailing without that first act, wondering what set off these events and why the character’s invested in stopping them (or helping them along).

            Second thing, which I promised at the top, is some of the nonsense that gets spread about three act structure.  I see a lot of folks try to argue that all these acts have very specific lengths--you have to be done with this by page sixteen, this must happen by page twenty-three, that must be revealed by page forty-two.  That’s just nonsense, and it’s easy to find hundreds of examples that prove it’s nonsense.

            I think a lot of this comes from people who want to quantify stories somehow.  They want to be able to create a marketable formula of “how to make a bestseller,” and that’s just not possible.  Every story is going to have its own pace, and altering that pace at arbitrary points isn’t going to make it appeal to more people.

            I’ve also seen some people who try to argue for six act structure, seven act structure, or some other number. They justify this by pointing out that television shows often have four or five acts.  Sometimes a teaser and a closing, too.

            I think these arguments come from misunderstanding what three-act structure really is.  These particular gurus are trying to tie it back to those larger, more expansive structures I mentioned earlier.  Television shows do have multiple acts, yes, but that’s structuring for a format, not for a story.  I know a bunch of television writers, and none of them think that their scripts have a beginning, a middle, another middle, one more middle, and then an end.

            Now, all of this leads us to a question some of you have probably been wondering about since I started this little rant.  What’s so important about three-act structure? Why do we need it?

            The big reason is because a beginning, middle, and end in my plot usually means we’ve had character growth in our story.  You may have heard me mention one or thrice that good writing is about good characters.  As readers, we want to see who they start off as, what changes them, and how the change affects them in the long run.  That change is a real response that grew out of his or her experiences. 

            When that happens, readers stop thinking about these creations of mine as characters and start thinking of them as people.

            Next time, since I’ve just waded through a ton of tweaks and edits... I thought we could talk a bit about tweaks and editing.

            Until then, go write.