The End... Or Is It?

I don't know if you can tell from that side but holy crap is the new Blogger a mess on this side.

I’ve been threatening to talk about endings for a while now. Shouldn’t be that big a deal, right? Easy topic.

One thing all of our books and stories and screenplays have in common is an ending. They’re going to be different for all of us, and for all of our different projects, but everyone of them has an end. Even if it’s part of a series, this discrete part of that overall story has concluded and another part will (hopefully) begin at some other time. Hopefully on the sooner side

Endings come in all shapes and sizes. They can be happy. They can be semi-positive. They can be ambiguous. They can be blunt. They can tease more potential story or be very, very clear this is the end. 

But one way or another... the story ends.

We don’t talk much about the fact that there are different types of endings. Not just in that happy-sad-ambiguous sense. In a structural, nuts and bolts sense. There’s also the type of ending where I think I might get to do another book someday, the ending where I know I’m going to get another book immediately, and the ending where I know that this is it, we’re done. Just to name a few.

Also, before I go much further, I’m going to toss around some terms here and I think some of them get used in very general, catch-all ways a lot of the time. Which I also think is what causes some of the issues I’m blathering on about. So some of my blathering may go against things you’ve been taught or picked up here and there.

That said, let’s lean into television for a moment. Yeah, I know most of you aren’t here for screenwriting, but I think this is a good, universal reference point. You should all understand what I’m talking about.

There’s a certain class of network show that tends to have what we might think of as a respawn point most of the time. No matter what’s happened, no matter what the characters have gone through, by the end of the episode they’re pretty much right back where they began—physically and emotionally. They’ve reset for new stories next week. We see this in a lot of sitcoms and even some one hour dramas.

There are also shows that have season arcs, with story elements that carry through from episode to episode. A lot of these end on dramatic revelations or beats that aren’t quite cliffhangers, but still compel the audience to think about what’s going to happen next.

What’s that? Why aren’t they cliffhangers? Good question. This is just my own musings, granted, but I think the big difference between a cliffhanger and a dramatic ending is where they compel us to pick things back up next time. What does the audience/reader need to see next? So it’s a structural, framing difference. If I’ve got a cliffhanger, the next chapter/episode/issue/book needs to begin right here, right at this moment where we left off. With a dramatic ending... the story can resume a little later. We’ve all seen this. “Three hours later, his mind was still reeling from this new information...”

Again, this is just my take, but I think it’s a take that hold up pretty well. And I’ve experienced the jarring results when someone sets up a cliffhanger, but then just treats it as a dramatic ending when the story resumes. Or doesn’t resume. Because if it doesn’t resume, that kinda kills the whole “needs to resume” aspect of it, doesn’t it?

I think it’s also worth noting that a lot of newer, bingeable content is created to be seen as one ongoing story. Each episode still has an ending, but they’re structured very deliberately to line right up with the next episode, more like act breaks than episode conclusions. These shows tend to have really powerful season finales, because that’s the ending that really matters—the one that makes us come back for next season.

And, as I mentioned above with books, there are the endings that imply the potential for more story if the opportunity arises (“hey, we don’t know if we’re renewed yet so just in case...”) and the ones that wrap everything up nice and tight. They all lived happily ever after.

Why am I blathering on about all of this?

Hopefully it’s clear that the type of ending I have—structurally--should give the reader a sense of what comes next. And what doesn’t come next. Again, this is an ending, which means... something should end.

That doesn’t mean I just stop typing. But I’ve seen that plenty of times in books and on some shows, and even a few movies. Things just... stop. The werewolves lunge down the street, our heroes raise their swords and shotguns to fight and wait why is the next page blank.

This is why I’ve been going back and forth with this for so many weeks. It’s tough to talk about endings because each one’s going to be unique to that story and that writer. I can’t say “Don’t do X” when X might be exactly what need to happen in your particular story. A lot of it is going to come down to each of us looking at our story with an honest, critical eye.

Let me toss this out, and then I’ll ramble on a little more. Have I actually ended my story? Or have I just stopped telling it? They’re not the same thing, and if I don’t realize that... well, that’s probably a bit or a red flag right there.

I think one thing we need to do, as writers, is make sure we’ve finished our stories. If my book is about a chosen one accepting his destiny and fighting the manifestation of pure evil... well, by the end of my book he should’ve accepted his destiny and fought the manifestation of pure evil. If my story is all about the school valedictorian desperately wanting to ask out the head cheerleader... at the end of the story she should’ve asked out the cheerleader. This is basic, three-act structure stuff. Once I’ve set up conflict, I need to resolve that conflict. If I don’t... I’ve kinda failed as a  storyteller. You remember what Chekov said about that phaser rifle hanging over the fireplace in act one, right?

Ahh, I see some hands and at least one scoffing shake of the head. Yes you did. I saw you. Let me slap down two provisos on this, not so much exceptions as places for a little more thought and that honest, critical eye I mentioned up above.

First, it’s not unusual for my protagonist’s stated goals to be different from the actual goals of the story. The valedictorian may think this is about asking out the cheerleader, but the book is more about her accepting who she is and gaining self confidence. Plus, she’s clearly supposed to be with the goth girl who paints all the drama club’s backdrops. So, yes, in this sense the resolution may not be the one the character hoped for or originally set out, but my story’s (hopefully) structured in a way that still makes this a cohesive whole.

Also, it’s not unusual for a story to veer off and for characters to suddenly find themselves with all new goals. Maybe the valedictorian had worked up her nerve, was approaching the cheerleader out in front of the school and oh holy crap! Cyborg werewolf kidnappers! They’ve got the cheerleader! And they’re going to infect her with lycanthropic nanites at midnight if the valedictorian doesn’t stop them! This is going to take all her computer and science skills, plus maybe some help from that goth girl who paints all the drama club’s backdrops...

Again, though, there should’ve maybe been a few tiny hints so this kidnapping wasn’t coming out of nowhere. Or didn’t happen in the back third of the book after 200 pages of high school drama and musings. It’s a goal that’s carried through the narrative and eventually achieved.

Second, there’s the possibility there’s more to this. Maybe my book’s part of a trilogy or an ongoing series. Maybe it’s in a shared universe and questions here are going to be answered over there. If the story’s going to continue on and spill over into other places, isn’t it normal that things won’t end yet?That questions will be left unanswered?

Well, yes and no. Sure, there may be three or four more books, or another season’s worth of episodes, or maybe a new issue in just a month. But that doesn’t change that this, the book I’m holding (or season I’m watching or what have you), is a single thing. Yes, The Hunger Games is a story of a ruling elite being overthrown by a rising rebellion, but book one (and two) are really the story of Katniss training for the arena and then surviving in the Games (again). If book one had ended with five people still alive in the arena, will she make it out, pick up book two in just ten months... well, you’re already laughing, aren’t you? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t’ve bothered with book two after an ending like that. I’d bet a few million other people wouldn’t’ve, either.

Y’see, Timmy, this one book still needs to stand on its own . It may have threads or whole subplots that continue on in other places, but this book still needs to be a self-contained thing. It has to hold some kind of story within itself. Yes, the series might be about finding the six, errr... seven... Eternity Crystals (copyright 2020, Peter Clines), but what’s happening in this part of that overall story? Are my heroes involved in a big heist to get the Chronos Crystal, even if they don’t fully realize what it is yet? Or has an old friend distracted them away from their quest to help rescue a cheerleader from cyborg werewolf kidnappers? What goals have I set for my characters to accomplish in this book?

Because if this book doesn’t have any goals for them... what are my characters accomplishing? They either don’t have goals, or they have goals that aren’t met. Either way... not an exiting read. And not likely to get a lot of folks to book two.

Again, every ending is going to be unique to every book by every author. But the one thing they should all have in common is that things need to be resolved. No resolution means my characters (and my readers) are just kind of left flailing and unfulfilled.

Ultimately, the thing I need to remember is that the end of my book is it. This is the last chance to amaze my reader. My final chance to shape their emotions, to lock down what they think about my book. Once they turn that last page, it’s all in their hands.

We talk about first impressions, but the last impression means something, too. It’s what people are going to walk away with. How many books or shows or movies have you enjoyed—maybe really enjoyed—and then the end just left you snarling in frustration?

And why are we usually frustrated? Because we didn’t get answers. Because ultimately nothing happened. Because we feel like we wasted our time.

Stick the landing. Nail your ending. Get that phaser rifle down from the fireplace and make sure it goes off.

Speaking of endings (shameless plug) if the end of the world is your kind of thing, my latest novel--Terminus –finally came out in ebook last week. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s kinda fun and fairly inexpensive. If you have checked it out and enjoyed it, reviews are always appreciated.

Next time... I’d like to talk about jargon a bit.

Until then, go write.

A2Q Part Twelve—Completion

Well. Here we are. One last time.

This is the final part of the A2Q, and I think this last topic is the thing that gets overlooked the most when people give out writing tips. In fact, a lot of writing advice dances quickly around it. Because it’s not a pleasant thing to think about.

That thing—the last part—is this.

Eventually you have to stop.

A lot of you've probably had someone tell you “writing is rewriting.” It’s one of those maxims that gets tossed around a lot. And it’s true. Sort of.

But the part they probably didn’t tell you is that rewriting is also a trap. It’s a rabbit hole you can fall down, working on draft after draft after draft. It becomes constant revisions, always finding something else to tweak, a better word to use, a more dramatic place to break those paragraphs in. It can keep you stuck in place, doing lots of work for smaller and smaller returns.

If you’ve ever followed any sort of exercise routine, you know that a key part of it is that you have to keep challenging yourself. You have to increase the weight or the reps. You have to run an extra mile, or get your time down by two minutes. If I keep doing the same thing again and again, the benefits of it begin to drop off. Eventually I plateau and I’m just here at this level. Not advancing in any way.

Weird as it may sound, writing is a lot like this. We need to keep pushing ourselves. To make our mental muscles flex and stretch and try new things. If we fall into a rut, we’re never going to accomplish anything.

I say this from experience. During the A2Q—and a bunch of other times here on the ranty blog—I’ve mentioned my first completed novel, The Suffering Map. It was my “just moved to California” novel and there’s a fair argument to be made that I spent close to twelve years working on it. Hell, most of those years were just the first draft (although, in all fairness, for almost seven of them I gave up on it and focused on screenwriting). There are nine different versions of it currently in my computer.

In the end, it got me some mild interest from a few agents. And that was it. Nothing else.

So around late 2006 I put it aside and started working on something new.

And this can be scary. It’s borderline terrifying to think we’re going to take this werewolf manuscript that we’ve been pouring all our great thoughts and clever ideas into for months (or years)—that we’ve put all this energy and effort into—and forget about it. It seems like a huge waste, doesn’t it? What was the point of doing all this if I’m just going to put it aside and move on?

Which is why sometimes... we embrace the trap. We might not admit it out loud, but sticking with this manuscript feels safe. Because stopping means we either need to risk rejection or admit it needs to get put away. Either of these can be a huge punch in the gut. But if I keep working on it, if I keep telling myself it’s just not quite ready yet... I can put off that moment.  I mean, it’ll happen soon, absolutely. As soon as I can do one more draft

And again, I’m saying this from experience. When I set The Suffering Map aside, I think I spent a week wondering if I was making a mistake. Should I give it one more look before filing it away? Maybe try one more submission? Was I giving up too soon?

But I finally embraced the truth. I’d done all I could with this particular manuscript, and it  wasn’t going to get any better. And neither was I. I needed to work with new characters in new situations. I had to follow some different paths, not the ones I’d walked back and forth on a dozen times and beaten down so nothing could grow there any more.

That’s where we are now with this book we’ve been writing. My werewolf book, your whatever-it-may-be book. I can’t tell you exactly when you’re going to reach this point, but it’s important to realize this point exists. Reaching it is good. It’s a normal part of the book-writing process—moving on to the next book.

What happens with this one? That’s going to be up to you. Maybe you’ll acknowledge it’s not quite ready yet, stash it away on a jump drive or in the cloud (maybe both, just to be safe) and move on. Maybe you’ll send it out to a dozen agents or publishers. Perhaps you’ll decide to publish it yourself. Again, it’s up to you to decide what’s right for you and your book.

Whatever the decision is, though, it’s time to say goodbye to this thing we’ve been working on and move on to something else. To let our brains shift into new patterns. Get them working on some different concepts, something new and exciting.

Because if we don’t, we’re just going to stall out.

And that, m’friends, is all I’ve got for you as far as how to write a book. How to take that tale out of your head and put it down on the page in the best way possible. Even at 110 pages on this end, I know it could’ve been a little denser in a few places. But I tried to keep this to easy-to-digest chunks and included links wherever I could. Plus, y’know... pandemic. And I was trying to finish an actual book of my own.

Anyway, I hope it was semi-educational and at least partially useful for some of you.

Next time... well, we’ll see what we’re all up for.

Until then, go write.

The Body on Page One

Welllllll... guess there’s no putting this off, is there? In the end, this is where every story leads in the long run. I’ve crafted a fantastic character with some wonderful nuances and habits, and a detailed backstory.  It’s a character every reader can picture in their minds and relate to on a personal level.

And it’s time to slit their throat. Or watch them die from an awful disease. Maybe even have a zombie horde devour them.

Killing characters in a story is a delicate thing.  I don’t mean this in some artsy, poetic way.  I mean it more in a “stitch up that major artery up before he bleeds out” way. It’s something that has to be done just right for it to work. And just like stitching up an artery, if I’m only going to do a quick, half-assed job with it... I mean, why even bother?

Here’s a couple of loose guidelines for killing someone...

First off, if I’m going to kill a character... well, I need a character, right?  A real character.  I can’t expect there to be a lot of emotional impact from the death of a paper-thin stereotype.  I mean, killing paper-thin stereotypes is cool if I just want to drive a body count, but it’s not going to drive a plot and it’s not going to motivate anyone on a personal level.  It’s not going to affect the reader, either.  I can’t create Phoebe on page fifty, kill her on page fifty-one, and think it’s going to have any emotional weight—with the other characters or my readers.

Second, this death needs to drive my  plot forward.  That’s what good story elements do, right?  They keep the narrative moving—not necessarily upward or into positive place, but forward.  Killing a character who’s well-developed but has no connection at all to the plot doesn’t really do anything.

We’ve probably all seen storytellers who create unconnected characters just to kill them off a few pages later.  The plot’s heading into act two and we pause to meet Phoebe.  She’s thirty-three, blond, likes to wear combat boots with everything from jeans to her little black dress to her bikini on the way to the beach.  She’s been seeing a great guy for a couple of months now and she really think there’s a good chance she’s going to get a promotion (and a raise) at her job with OH, she’s dead.  The zombies got her.  Now let’s go back to the plot for a few chapters before I take a moment to introduce you to Wakko.  He’s a college dropout who went to work for the park service.  He’s also been seeing a great guy for a couple of months now (not the same one as Phoebe) and he’s been thinking it may be time to give him a key so they OH, the zombies got Wakko, too.

This kind of thing works once.  Maybe twice.  But it gets old fast because we all understand these people, as columnist Rob Bricken once put it, are just collateral damage. The characters don't really do much and their deaths don’t actually accomplish anything in the story. They’re just narrative window dressing to make things look more serious instead of... y’know, actually making things more serious.

If I’m going to kill a character and have it mean something, it needs to have an actual affect on my story.  It should up the stakes, or be a new challenge for my characters as far as succeeding at one of their goals. If the big goal is to distribute the zombie cure that Dr. Carmichael designed, and we’re just waiting for her to arrive because she’s the only one who knows the formula, well suddenly it’s a big “oh CRAP” moment when we realize she’s Dr. Phoebe Carmichael who wears combat boots with everything. What are we going to do now??

Now, this leads into a Second-Point-One or maybe a little outline sub-A. It’s a very specific version of this we all want to watch out for. You may have heard of fridging. On the off chance you haven’t, it comes from an awful Green Lantern comic twenty-five years back where GL’s girlfriend was killed and stuffed in a refrigerator for him to find later. When we talk about someone getting fridged, it’s usually a woman, often a less-developed supporting character, who suffer a violent, horrific, and sometimes abusive end for no purpose except to be an inciting incident for the hero.  And maybe to let said hero get in some grief-filled, character-building monologues. Her death is all about him.

Don’t freak out. Not every female death is automatically a fridging. But it’s a good term to know and keep in mind if I’m going to fall back on the whole describe-and-die device, because it can slip into fridging very easily.

Third is that this death needs to fit in my story structurally.  I’ve mentioned before, the dramatic structure of a story needs to be a series of ups and downs.  There need to be slowly increasing challenges, which require greater efforts for my characters to overcome, and help build tension.  If I’m going to kill someone off, their death needs to fit within this general structure.

To go back to the example I just gave, if Phoebe’s the only one who knows the formula for the zombie cure, this could be horrible. In a good way. I’ve just dropped a huge, last-minute challenge between my characters and saving the day.

But if we got Phoebe to the bio-lab on page fifteen and the zombies pounced on page sixteen... that’s not going to come across as much of a challenge. We’ve got the whole book to figure it out, after all.  It’s definitely not going to have the same impact as her dying on page 300, because tension rises as my story progresses. I need to think about how much impact I want this death to have and where that means it needs to happen in my plot. Which is going to affect how I structure things. And why, yes, it is a juggling act, thanks for noticing.

Now, all of that being said...

Some writers claim killing characters is no big deal.  They almost brag about randomly ending lives in their stories. These folks have no qualms about killing characters because it tells their readers that nobody’s safe! Anything could happen! This is how real life works, which means it’s how art works!

I personally find this to be a really counterproductive and stupid approach. 

For a couple of reasons.

One is that we’re not talking about real life, we’re talking about fiction. Real life is chaotic and structureless and, yeah, people often die for no reasons at extremely inconvenient times. But in the stories I’m writing... I’m God. Every single thing that happens in my story is my choice.  My decision.  It’s part of my divine plan.  And if it isn’t part of my divine plan... well, why’s it in my story?

Which brings me to point two.  I just mentioned the juggling act a minute ago. If my characters are dying at random, that means their death isn’t advance any element of the story, which means my story doesn’t have any sort of dramatic structure to it. I mean, how can it have a structure if I’m just doing things randomly?

Plus, if I’m ninety pages in and Phoebe, my main character, is randomly tackled by zombies and maybe joins the hungry dead... well, what happens now?  Seriously. Did the story just end? Is Dot the main character now? If Dot’s the main character for pages 90 through 445... well, why did I spend those first ninety pages with Phoebe? Maybe I should’ve just started with Dot?

And that’s my third point.  Odds are a random, unstructured death just means failure.  One way or another, Phoebe’s blown it big time—even if it’s not her fault.  She died with her boots on but failed to reach her goals (she had goals because she was a real character, right...). Which means my readers just spent a hundred pages investing in someone who didn’t win.  On any level.  We’ve been identifying with a loser with crap luck (she must have crap luck—she just got randomly killed by zombies, right?). 

I don’t know about any of you, but that isn’t going to make me happy.

A good death (if there is such a thing) is going to have real characters. Their death is going to help drive the plot and create challenges.  And it’s going to happen at a point in the narrative that makes structural sense.  If I’ve got two out of three of those, I’m probably in good shape.  One out of three... maybe not so much.

And if I honestly don’t know if I’ve hit two or three of those points... well, maybe I should hold off on setting those zombies loose.

Next time, I’d like to talk about the next book.

Until then, go write.

The End Times

            Joyous Kwanzaa to all of you celebrating it.  If you’re more the Christmas type, I hope the day was happy and peaceful and Santa got you that one thing that’s been on your mind.  And I hope all of you are looking forward to the upcoming New Year.

            Speaking of which... as this year’s winding down I thought it’d be worth going over what got done this year.  I’ve mentioned before, I think, that sometimes people get a really disheartening idea of how much some authors produce on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis because they’ll catch somebody like Chuck Wendig or Victoria Schwab posting about a particularly productive day they had (or Jonathan Maberry posting about, y’know, a day that ends in Y...).  When you’re struggling to squeeze in a few hours a week, it can be kinda soul-crushing to see people who are writing five or six thousand words a day.

            So I thought I’d go over all my writing-related activities for the year.  Break down what got done and how long it took.  Keeping in mind, again, that this is my full-time job, so there’s some stuff I consider part of the writing job that might not actually involve writing a specific book.  As we shall see.

            Anyway...
            I wrote—and rewrote—a good chunk of a book called Dead Moon.  I started it seven years ago and it’s finally coming out in February through Audible.  I think it’s a much better, stronger book than it would’ve been if I’d written it back in 2011.  Partly because I’m a better writer (I like to think so, anyway), partly because I’m gotten to work with a lot of good editors over those seven years and they each pushed me to be a little sharper, a little better.

            As you’re reading this, I’m a little over 45,000 words into another book, one that ties together two previous ones I wrote.  Overall, it’s going smoothly so far, although I’ve lost about a week to the flu which led right into the holidays, and also a pulled back early this fall.  I’d wanted to be another 20-25,000 words along at this point, but I’m still happy where things are at.  I’m probably going to do a whole post on this one sometime in the spring, because it’s the first time I’ve really done a book start to finish from a full outline.

            Plus I’ve been working on an outline for my next book, too.  Still in the early days, fleshing out a few things, but I’m very excited about it.
            I wrote about fifty-five posts here at the ranty blog.  Yeah, the number down on the side bar is a little higher, but a couple of those posts were cartoons or memes or different con schedules.  I’m not sure how many, but enough that I should probably knock at least a dozen off that final number.

            Probably worth mentioning that this year I shut down another blog I'd had for a few years. It was mostly about my geeky toy soldier hobby and ways to save money with it.  Truth is, though, I just haven’t had time to put into those paperhammer projects that I used to.  Closing it down took a lot of stress and guilt off my shoulders for... well, not coming up with content for that blog.  So that’s probably something to remember, too.  There are times it’s worth it to stop writing.

            Also worth mentioning that this was a pretty appearance-heavy year for me.  I appeared at five different cons, if memory serves, plus a few speaking engagements.  Plus the Writers Coffeehouse, and now the Dystopian/Apocalyptic bookclub at The Last Bookstore.
            Finally, a ton of reading.  I didn’t get to read as much as I would’ve liked these past few years, so in 2018 I made it a point that I wanted to read a lot of novels from a variety of authors, and try to read at least one a week.  It was energizing and enlightening and I can’t recommend it enough.  Expand your horizons.  I’m currently in the middle of book 51 for the year, and might even get into 52 this weekend.

            (there was a pile of comics in there, too)

            And there’s that.  How this professional writer spent his time this year.  And keep in mind I still had time to binge Lost in Space, Sabrina, and 3Below while also keeping up with my CW shows and The Good Place.

            Oh, and move to another city.

            Almost forgot that part.

            What have you gotten done this year, writing-wise?  Did you hit your goals?  Get close?  Hopefully, if nothing else, it gave you a good sense of where your goals should be.  Did you push yourself too hard, or not hard enough?
            There is no right or wrong answer here.  The right speed for you is going to depend on what you want to get out of this and where you're hoping to go with it.  There's no reason for me--or for you-- to compare myself to anyone else. It just matters that I'm getting something done.

            Maybe think about that a bit as 2019 rolls closer.

            On which note, I’m going to try to get some work done before we lunge into 2019.  Hope the holiday shave been good to you and continue to be so.

            Next time, I’ll probably be giving my start of the year spiel.

            Until then... go write.    

The Happy Ending

            Oh, get your mind out of the gutter...

           Well, it’s been a brutal week on a couple levels. And it’s the holiday season, I think we can all use a little cheering up, don’t you?  So let’s talk about some good stuff.

            And I’ll start by talking about what happens in the grim, dark future...

            As I’ve mentioned once or thrice here, I’m a bit of a geek.  One of my biggest geekery hobbies by far is Warhammer 40K.  If you’re not familiar with the game, it takes place in the distant future (around the year 40,000—surprise!) where mankind has risen, fallen, risen, fallen again, risen one last time... and is now pretty much on the way out.  Not immediately. Not in our lifetime.  But the glory days are gone and the Empire of Man is well past middle aged and fighting to hang on to its driver's license, if you get my drift.

            When my lovely lady and I first started hanging out, she expressed interest in this silly toy soldiers game, and—being a geek—I immediately started telling her about the different armies and the massive back story and setting of the game.  And after a few hours of listening to stories of the waning Imperium, she finally laughed and said, “Why would anyone want to live in this world?  I’d just kill myself.”

            Which is a fair point.  To be honest, I hadn’t been fond of some of the earlier stories myself.  They were just bleak as hell. You may have heard the term “grimdark” used for some fiction.  It actually comes from this game.  That phrase I used up above, “in the grim, dark future”—that’s part of Warhammer 40K’s tagline.

            Of course, it’s not just the little toy soldiers.  The grimdark label ends up on a lot of things these days.  Urban fantasy stories.  Post-apocalypse stories.  Superhero stories.  And this isn’t just about genre books.  People try to do “serious” books all the time that are nothing but sadness, misery, and death.  There’s a common belief that making things gritty and dark, and edgy automatically makes them more “mature.”   I’ve mentioned once or thrice before how some writers think having bleak, depressing endings is artistic because it’s more “real.”

            I’m sure you can think of plenty of examples of this.

            The catch is, this gritifying of stories rarely works.  Usually making something grim and dark just makes it... well, grim and dark.  That’s it.  Seriously, check out bestselling books or big box-office movies.  The popular stuff almost always leans toward lighter and fun.  A lot of it has (gasp) happy endings.

            As another famous sci-fi icon once said, it’s not enough to live.  You have to have something to live for.

            Again, why would anyone want to live in my fictional world?  Seriously.  Take a moment and think about it.

            What saved the world of Warhammer 40K for me was the writing of folks like Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell.  They added a human element.  They told stories that involved jokes and drinking buddies and love and people just enjoying their lives.  Heck, Abnett had a whole subplot in one book about a toymaker saving his business by building wind-up robots.
            I’ve gotten a lot of praise for my Ex-Heroes series.  It’s a series that’s lasted through five book so far, and across six years. Long after when many people said zombies were... well, dead.  And I believe a lot of that praise and success comes from one simple thing.

            It’s a post-apocalyptic story, but it’s a hopeful one.  Yeah, things are overall awful, but the characters are actively trying to make life better.  They choose to move forward rather than do nothing or wallow in the past.  They laugh.  They love.  They play games.  They flirt.  They celebrate.  They have fun.  A lot of their life is stressful and difficult, but it’s not every-minute-every-hour-every-day stressful and difficult.

            And it’s important to see these other moments because now we know why the characters are going on.  We know what they’re living for.  Deadpool is a story about hopelessness and terminal diseases and bloody revenge, but it’s also a story where Wade and Vanessa pretty much screw each other silly for an entire year before he proposes with a Voltron ring

            Resist the urge to have nothing but grim darkness.  Don’t be scared about having a good thing or three happen in your story.  Don’t think you can’t have any light-hearted moments. 

            Believe in the happy ending!

            On which note, I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and (if it’s your holiday) a very Happy Christmas.

            Try and get a little writing in before then.

A Win-Lose Situation

            Okay, believe it or not, I’m actually somewhat ahead on ranty blog posts right now.  Three weeks ahead.  But I want to put it out there again that suggestions and requests are always welcome.  Or just general comments. 

            Without them I’ll just keep blabbing away about whatever comes to mind.

            For example...

             A few weeks back I blabbed on about art, especially the tendency in art stories to make characters as miserable as possible.  That idea bounced around in my head for a while.  The other day it hit another idea, and once they were next to each other I knew how to explain this.

            When we’re starting out as people, and as writers, we tend to look at things in very black and white terms.  Something is positive, or it’s negative.  Good or bad.  That’s it.  The idea of something being mostly good, despite having some bad in it, doesn’t tend to cross the mind as a first choice.  Or that a villain could be anything less than 100% evil.  White hats and black capes, right?

            I can be honest.  I used to do this a lot.  I think most writers do. It’s an experience thing.  None of us ever think we’re doing it—we’re all wise and worldly, after all—but the truth is it’s just a stage the majority of us go through as we’re learning to tell stories.

            If I had to make a guess, I think this is why a lot of these artistic stories tend to be so negative, especially the ones by beginning writers.  The only visible choices are all positive or all negative, and if they were all positive there’d be nothing for anyone to talk about. Soooo...

            The characters in these stories just have awful, pathetic lives.  They have bad jobs for low pay where they’re unappreciated and have horrible bosses.  They hang out with boring friends and have bad relationships and unenthusiastic, unfulfilling sex with barely-adequate partners.

            Sound familiar?

            While this can work on a very simple level, it’s just not a great representation of the real world.  Yes, the world is a messy place, full of compromises and mistakes and a lot of people trying to do the best they can, usually under less than ideal circumstances.  Bad things do happen to good people far too often, and some folks just never seem to get a break.

            However...
            There can be a lot of bad, yeah, but there’s also a lot of good.  Friends and family who help out.  Random sympathetic strangers.  Even just sheer luck. Sometimes—maybe just once or twice in our lives—we stumbled across just what we need at the exact moment we need it.

            The simple truth is, life is a mix.  It’s very rarely all good or all bad.  And that holds in fiction, too.  A good story is rarely going to be all of one or the other.  My characters need to succeed (we don’t want to be following losers), but success doesn’t always mean getting the sexy love interest, finding the treasure, or triumphantly winning the battle without physical or mental scars.

            Great example—we’ve all heard the story about the day Oprah gave everyone in her audience a luxury car, right?  Fantastic!  Nothing but positive there, right?

            Except...

            In the weeks to come, many of these people were begging her to take the cars back.  Seriously.  Did you know you have to pay taxes on big prizes like that?  What do you think the tax is on a $60,000 luxury car?  And do you want to guess at the minimum insurance payments?  The attempt to make all these lives better actually made many of them worse.

            You’ve probably heard similar stories about lottery winners.  At first they’re thrilled to win all that money—who wouldn’t be?  But then you hear stories about how people start to look at them differently and act differently. They’re no longer Yakko from work—they’re Yakko the multi-millionaire. And every time they don’t pick up the tab or don’t chip in or don’t offer to help, the looks change a little more.  Seriously, check it out—a huge number of lottery winners say it ruined their lives.
         Remember that classic story “The Monkey’s Paw,” where no matter what you wish for there’s always a negative twist to it?  Ursula K. LeGuin did the same thing in The Lathe of Heaven, about a man whose dreams shape reality.  And if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you may remember the Game of Rassilon, where those who win shall lose, and those who lose shall win.

            Alas, even with all these examples, it’s not always easy to see this.  Definitely not easy to write it.  Multi-layered success is a challenging thing, and—as I mentioned above—it takes a degree of experience to pull it off.

            Simple experiment. Take your favorite book or movie.  Odds are it’s got a happy ending, right?  At least a mildly-positive one?

            Now—find the bad things.  What did it cost the protagonist to get to that happy ending?  Ruined relationships?  Compromised morals?  Lost job?  Property damage?  Bodily damage?  Maybe even a death or three?  I’m willing to bet there was a price.  Probably even a big one.

            Winning rarely comes without some losses.  Losing isn’t always the end of the world.  And my stories should reflect this.

            Next time... it’s Halloween.  Time to sit around the campfire and tell... well, some kind of scary story.  We’ll figure out what.

            Until then, go write.

Another Chapter Comes to a Close...

            Many thanks for your patience. The past week has been an amazing ride for me, traveling up and down the west coast, meeting a few hundred people, and signing a few hundred books.  And losing a few hundred strands of hair...

            Also, if you took part in the pre-order promo for The Fold, word on the web is that galley copies are starting to land.  Hopefully you got one and can now use it as the teaching example it was always intended to be.

            But enough about me and my book.  Let’s talk about you and your book...

            A few weeks back I opened the floor for suggestions (it’s always open, but I just pointed out all the space on the dancefloor) and a good double-handful of ideas came in.  This week’s little rant comes from one of them.  And it’s a good topic I wish I’d thought of before.

            The question was about endings.  More specifically, chapter endings.  How do I find the right moment to end a chapter without it feeling either dragged out or cut off in mid thought?

            Clive Cussler (author of Raise the Titanic and many, many others) commented years back that chapters should be like potato chips.  Each one should be easy to digest and leave you wanting another one.  That was a great rule that stuck with me early on, and I’ve tried very hard to follow it ever since.

            So, here are a half dozen places in a story  I’d usually pick to end a chapter on.

A question—These moments make great chapter endings.  Sometimes the question’s asked out loud, sometimes it’s implied.  When a what/how/why moment comes up in my story, it’s going to make people want to turn the page in the hopes of learning the answer.  So that’s a great place to end a chapter.

            Keep in mind, though, this only works if there’s a real question and the reader doesn’t know the answer.  Whether or not the characters know is irrelevant (I’m the writer, I can make them go to the next chapter with very little effort).  If this question is already answered or the answer is painfully obvious, it’s not a great place to end.  If I’m writing the novelization of Jurassic World. “Wait, there are dinosaurs on this island?” isn’t a great stopping point.

A big reveal—The flipside of the above.  Getting a long-sought answer can be powerful, especially if it’s going to affect what happens next in my story.  Even if it’s not an answer, revealing a solid, key bit on information can give a moment a lot of weight and make it a great place to pause.  When I tell you “the dinosaurs have gotten loose,” that’s a big moment that’s going to change everything from here on in.

            Again, though, this one will only work for me if it’s an actual reveal.  Vague responses and fuzzy reasoning don’t make for good answers, in real life or in a novel.  Neither do answers we already know.  If I try to dramatically reveal that California is on the west coast of the U.S., that’s not going to do much for anyone.

A big twist—Similar to the reveal but not the same.  I’ve talked about the difference between mysteries and twists a few times in the past, so I won’t go into that again here.  A twist is a fantastic moment for me to end a chapter because it’s very nature means everything’s going to change.  My readers will go to the next chapter just to see the fallout from a good twist.

            I need to be very clear, though, on what a twist is and how it works in my story.  If I fumble it, either with my reveal or what I’m revealing, it’s not going to have any weight or ramifications. Which means my readers have no reason to turn the page. 

           

A big setback—Any story’s going to have its ups and downs. When my character gets his or her feet kicked out from under them, deliberately or accidentally, the reader wants to know how that character’s going to recover.  Are they going to stay down?  Fight back?  Come at

things from a new angle?  I need to turn to the next chapter and find out!

            The catch for this one (there’s a lot of catches on these, have you noticed?) is that I need to have either a good solid character or a really compelling plot for this to work.  If my reader doesn’t care about the stakes—either internal or external—they’re not going to care when my characters fail.

A big leap forward—The flipside to the setback.  When my characters find the hidden button, manage to make it past the security system, or get the power running to the velociraptor fences again, this is an achievement.  We can all pause for breath, and that’s a good time to roll things over into the next chapter.  There’s a natural break there, and I should take advantage of that existing rhythm.

            Again, though...I need strong characters or plot for this to work.  I also need to be aware of what’s going to be seen as a leap forward.  Sharpening a pencil or avoiding a sleeping guard are not big accomplishments, so my readers won’t feel that need to pause for a breath.

A cliffhanger—The classic.  I just stop right in the middle of things, right as the action is kicking into high gear.  My antagonist pulls the trigger, the T-Rex gets me cornered in the museum, or the zombies spin around when I accidentally step on a branch.  These are moments when the reader must know what happens next.  And if the next chapter is there, the reader will go to it.

            The catch here is that the reader needs to care about my characters.  If not, there’s no tension when I put said character into that dangerous spot.  It’s like me telling you someone’s in danger.  You care in a sort of abstract way, but how often are you going to ask a follow-up question?

            So, there’s six solid ways to end a chapter.  Each one’s got a slightly different flavor and works better in different situations.

            However, going over this list, there’s sort of a glaring issue, isn’t there?  What if my story doesn’t have any of these things?  What am I supposed to do if I’m a hundred or so pages in and I haven’t had a big setback, or a reveal, or asked any questions?

            Well, my first thought would be... why don’t I have any of these things?

            A while back I did a big block of posts about structure.  As I mentioned above, every story’s going to have ups and downs.  There will be unanswered questions, revealed answers, challenges, and successes.  It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a torrid period romance, a sci-fi space epic, or an apocalyptic horror novel.  Every story is going to have these moments. They’ll take different forms, but they will always be there.

            Y’see Timmy, if those moments aren’t there... well, my story has bigger issues than figuring out where chapter breaks should be.  In fact, this probably is part of the reason I can’t figure out where chapter breaks should go.  Without these highs and lows, my story’s just going to be a drab, monotone mess.  And it’s impossible to place breaks in something like that because it’s all the same.  There aren’t any landmarks that stand out.

            So I need to make sure I have something that can be broken up. And then I can break it up.

            Next time, I might offer a few quick tips on drafting.

            Until then, go write.

Quitters Prosper

            Never say never...

            I wanted to blather on about quitting for a couple of minutes.  There comes a point in many endeavors when you realize you’re not getting ahead.  That all the time, effort, and enthusiasm that’s been expended on this project just isn’t enough. For one reason or another, I didn’t make the cut.  The team picked that skinny kid with the limp and the glasses over me.

            At which point, I need to make a choice.  Do I keep trying to get on this team? Do I continue throwing myself unto the breach?  Forging on despite all odds with the strength of my convictions?

            Or should I give up?

            Honestly?  After working at this writing thing on one level or another for a good chunk of my life...

            I think it’s time to quit.

            If I’ve spent the past decade trying to get any publisher in the world to just look at one of my book manuscripts, and they’re not interested... that’s a sign.  If I’ve spent thousands of dollars on screenwriting classes and books and contests over the past ten or twelve years, but I still don’t even have a toe in the door...I should consider saving my money this year.  When I submit a story to a hundred magazines, journals, and anthologies and get back a hundred rejections... I need to take that hint.

            I should quit.  Cut my losses.  Stop beating my head against the wall, demanding to be recognized, and move on.

            No, hold on.  Don’t leave yet.  Keep reading ‘till the end.

            What I’m getting at ties back to an idea I’ve talked about a few times here.  I need to be able to look at my own work honestly and objectively.  Knowing when to give up on a project is part of that.  After querying a hundred or so reps or editors and not getting a single nibble, I need to consider the fact the problem may not lay with them.  My writing may be perfect, it may be gold, it may be what everyone in America is dying for.  At the moment, though, for one reason or another, it’s not what those specific people—those, dare I say it, gatekeepers—are  looking for.  And, right or wrong,  they’re  the ones who make that decision. 

            Now... here’s that important part.

            I’m not saying I’m going to stop writing altogether.  This doesn’t mean I should never touch a keyboard again or that it’s time for me to forget the big leagues.  It’s just time to sit back and look at what I’ve done and how I’m doing things.  Maybe the problem is the characters.  Maybe it’s dialogue.  Perhaps even something as basic as an overwhelming number of typos.   Heck, it could just be my cover letter.  At the end of the day, something is holding me back, and that needs to stop happening.

            I’ve met people who wrote one novel way back in college and have spent the past twenty years sending it to agent after agent, publisher after publisher.  They haven’t changed a single word since they first set it down on paper.  They haven’t written anything else since (“Why should I write something else nobody’s going to pay me for?”).  They’ve just got that one novel going out again and again and again...

            Same thing in Hollywood.  People write a screenplay over a long weekend, never polish or revise it, but try to use it as a calling card for years.  I know of a guy on the contest circuits who pushed the same script for almost a decade.  He hasn’t done anything else in the meantime, just sent that same script to contest after contest, waiting for fame and fortune as if winning was a lottery and he had to keep playing his lucky numbers.

            Knowing when to quit and move on isn’t a weakness. It’s not a flaw in my approach.  It’s a strength.  It’s the only way I can grow and learn new things, because I won’t get any better if I keep rewriting the same manuscript again and again for decades.  Sometimes you just have to give up on something. 

            It took me almost eleven years to finish my first solid novel, The Suffering Map.  Not an idea, not a work in progress, not something I’ve been poking at.  A complete, polished book manuscript, first page to last page.  Beginning, middle,and end.  Yeah, that’s a long time, but close to a decade of that was the film industry convincing me to go work on screenplays instead.  It probably only took about two years of actual work.

            So, eleven years of on-again-off-again work, and then the querying.  Letter after letter, rejection after rejection.  Go through it again, create a new draft, and then start the letters again.  Some folks asked to see it (one or two of them were powerful, well-placed folks).  Many letters and emails were traded back and forth. 

            In the end, though, after almost a dozen very major revisions, all of them passed on it.  And then I realized, this was done. I’d been working on that book on and off since graduating from college.  It was time to expand my horizons and write something else. 

            And that something was an early draft of a book about a government teleportation project gone wrong.  Which I followed up with a book about superheroes fighting zombies.  And then a few things since then.

            If I’d stayed focused for years on that novel no one wanted to see, though, I wouldn’t’ve done any of it.  I’d still be back there at square one.  And my list of published credits wouldn’t be the size it is now.

            I’m not saying I’ll never go back to The Suffering Map.  Many writers will tell you if your screenplay or novel gets rejected, put it in the drawer and wait a few years.  I’m also not saying it will sell in a heartbeat if I decide to try again in five years.  For now, though, I’ve given up on it. 

            So the next time you’re frustrated by months and months of trying to find a home for your work... stop and really think about it.  Maybe it’s time to move on and try something different.  Something new.

            Because that next thing could be the big thing.

            Next time might be a bit delayed.  Sorry. But when it happens, let’s flip this around.

            Until then... go write.

So Very Tired...

            Sorry for missing last week.  When I should’ve been posting this, I was at the San Diego Comic-Con, hanging out in the Geek & Sundry lounge and watching the Welcome to Night Vale panel (I even got to ask a question about writing).  And the G&S folks gave me a free copy of the Zombies: Keep Out! board game and a card game called Love Letters.   And Felicia Day smiled at me once as she walked past.

            Y’know, in retrospect, I’m not really sorry I missed last week.

            But I am finally caught up on my sleep. I was exhausted for a while there.

            Speaking of which...

            I write a series set in a post-apocalyptic world.  It was first put out by a small press that specializes in end-of-the-world fiction, and I’ve met a bunch of authors who work in that genre and related ones.  Needless to say, I’ve read a lot of these books and stories.  I’d have to guess close to a hundred in the past five years.

            I have seen a lot of people die on the page.

            I’ve characters die of disease or injury.  Seen them shot or stabbed.  Some have been crushed.  Many have been torn apart by zombies—both classic slow ones and the runners.  A few people have gone peacefully and with no pain... but not a lot of them. 

            On a semi-related note, for a long time there was a joke in comic circles that no one stayed dead except Bucky and Gwen Stacy (who’ve both been resurrected in recent years).  It’s one of the things that made some folks point to comics as low-brow, pulpy writing, because villains and heroes would always return with elaborate tales of how they’d avoided death... again.  The new term tossed about is death fatigue.  Readers are just plain bored with overhyped “deaths” that are reversed in twelve issues or less.

            What I’d like to blab on about this week is sympathy fatigue, also sometimes called compassion fatigue.  It’s a medical term that refers to when doctors, nurses, and caregivers have become so drained by the death and suffering they see that they just... well, can’t feel sympathetic anymore.  Constant exposure has desensitized them.  I had the (very awful) experience once of visiting the “death row” of an animal shelter, and the woman who mass-euthanised the cats and dogs admitted she didn’t even look at them anymore.

            Readers and audience members can feel sympathy fatigue, too.  After watching countless people die, the carnage just fades into a background hum.   It no longer carries any emotional weight.  How often have you watched a horror film with an audience and, after a certain point, people just start laughing? Characters on screen are stabbed, tortured, crushed, and decapitated, and you and your friends are giggling.  Maybe even cheering.

            How do I keep people from laughing?

            Let me get to that in a kind of roundabout way...

            A bad habit I’ve mentioned before is naming every character.  I think some time in the past an MFA professor or writing coach offered some advice about names and it went through a dozen iterations of the telephone game.  Now there’s a (thankfully small) school of thought that says every character should have a name.  That guy at the bus stop.  The cook behind the counter.  The woman in the leather jacket.

            When I give a character a name, I’m telling the reader that all these people are important.  There’s a reason she’s Phoebe and not “the blonde” or “the woman in the leather jacket.”  A name tells the reader to take note of this person because they’re going to affect the story.  If it turns out Phoebe has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, it means I’ve distracted the reader.  And distractions kill the flow of my story.

            When this idea gets mixed with death, it creates a pattern you’ve probably seen before in stories.  We’ll get introduced to a random person, be told a bunch of character stuff about them, and then, eight or nine pages later... they’ll die.  Usually their death will be connected to the larger threat, if not the larger story.  Giant ants, Ebola, vampires, terrorists--whatever the actual protagonists are dealing with, these poor folks will stumble across it and be wiped out.  In some books, this can happen four or five times.  Introduce a character, kill ‘em.  Introduce a character, kill ‘em.  Introduce a character, kill ‘em.  Introduce a character... well, you get the point.

            The idea here is that I’m showing my readers the widespread nature of the threat, or perhaps the ruthlessness of the killers.  And it should carry emotional weight because I spent a couple of pages making Phoebe or Wakko or Dot feel like real people.  From a mathematical, by-the-numbers viewpoint, this is all good, right?

            Catch is, though, my readers are going to notice this pattern really quick.  Just like they’ll notice that I’m naming background characters who have nothing to do with the plot, most readers will realize I’m just introducing characters to kill them off.  So they’ll stop investing in these characters as a way to save time and effort.  It’s a defense mechanism.  They just stop caring.

            And once the reader stops caring, well...

            Perhaps the worst thing this means is that once my readers have been conditioned by all the meaningless deaths, they’re going to be numb to the important ones.  One of my leads will make a heroic sacrifice or that jerk supporting character will finally get what’s coming to her, and my readers will gloss over it the same way they barely registered the last six or seven deaths.  My whole story gets lessened because I’ve lessened the impact of death.

            Don’t get me wrong.  It’s okay to have people die.  I’m a big fan of it.  But I can’t use cheap tricks to give these deaths weight.  I need to be aware of who my characters are and what their deaths are accomplishing within my story structure.  If I just need someone to die gruesomely to set the mood or tone, I don’t need to make them a major character—or to convince my readers he or she is a major character.  And if I’m going to kill off one of my major characters, her death shouldn’t read just like the nineteen deaths that came before it.

            Because when I kill off someone important, I want you to care.

            Next time, I’d like to offer you all a simple choice.

            Until then, go write.