Year: 2025

This is one of those posts where I’ve sort of come up with a new way to look at something I’ve blathered on about before. A different way to think about things, if you will. And it kind of ties into a few different things I’ve talked about recently, which may be what sparked it in my mind.

Stick with me, okay.

A while back (a long while, really), I had a couple posts that talked about the whole “starting with action” thing. And as we broke it down, one of the issues that came up was that a lot of things are technically actions. Getting a drink from the kitchen. Doing laundry. Taking a shower. Sleeping. Breathing. Heck, sitting here at my desk typing this out is me performing actions.

But we understand none of these actions really count as the big Actions we mean when we’re talking about “starting with action.” I hope most of us do, anyway. I also hope we know better than to take “starting with action” too literally. I just linked to a couple of other posts about that, just in case.

Anyway…

One of the major things that separates these actions (and often conflicts) from more notable ones is consequences. Or, as we sometimes call them in the literary world, the stakes. What happens if I do (or don’t do) this thing. If I ask the cheerleader out, what happens? If I don’t enter the six numbers into the computer every two hours, what happens? If I make a sandwich for lunch because my beloved ate the last of the leftover pizza, what happens?

Now I can toss out these hypotheticals all day, and I’m sure any of you reading this could fill the comments with clever ways me not getting pizza for lunch is the worst thing ever. You’re a creative bunch. There’s probably a dozen possible ways we could come up with where not getting pizza could mean the end of my life—or the end of all life as we know it!

But we don’t want to talk about random potential stories. We want to talk about this story. This one right here. The one I wrote. Or you wrote. Or maybe the one we’re reading or watching.

So in broad terms, let’s talk about a few ways things could play out and the possible consequences we could be facing…

One— nothing happens. My character does (or doesn’t do) the thing and… that’s it. No fallout. No notable changes. We can’t even really tell the thing happened (or again, didn’t happen).

Y’know what, just for all our combined sanity, from here on I’m just going to say “do the thing” because you all understand that not doing the thing/ the thing not happening is also part of that decision/action process. You all get that right? Okay, cool.

If nothing happens or changes, then this particular choice or action probably isn’t really important within my story. Plot-wise or story-wise. And if it’s not important to my plot or my story, well…

Two–something happens, but it doesn’t effect me or anyone else in any way. It’s a “consequence” in the sense of cause and effect, but in a narrative/ plot/ story sense it’s still nothing. My character goes too fast while they’re trying to fix up the Surf Shop and gets paint on one of the windows! So they have to sponge it off! And then they keep going!

A while back I mentioned the idea of episodic storytelling structure, where every action or conflict gets resolved and puts us… right back where we were before. There’s no real evidence of forward motion or character development or.. anything. Really, this is the same thing as my last point, it’s just that I’m trying to make it look like something has happened in that breathing-counts-as-action way. There was a “consequence” from my actions, but effectively nothing’s happened.

Three – something happens, but it don’t effect me, or anyone else in a way that anyone could see as a negative. I have to ask the cheerleader out in front of her friends, but if she says no I get a million dollars and a date with a swimsuit model. Why? Who knows. Just how these things work sometimes. Our investigation did reveal toxic waste dumping all through our neighborhood, but somehow it acted like airborne chemotherapy and cured everyone’s cancer!

Yeah, I know, this all sounds silly. And I wouldn’t bring it up except I’ve seen it so many times. Someone’s forced to make a “tough choice” except every possible outcome is… well, a positive. It’s like if I’m disarming a bomb and if I cut the red wire it deactivates instantly but if I cut the blue wire it deactivates and tells me the mad bomber’s name. And, for some reason, a date with a different swimsuit model. So there are “consequences” and they do move the story along, but they only move it in one way. There’s no downside or risk to taking these actions. There’s no “or else…” Characters may try to act like one option’s a negative, but it’s clear to the reader that nothing bad’s happened.

Four – something happens, and it’s going to leave a mark. Physically. Emotionally. Maybe both. Yakko’s finally going to ask the cheerleader out and she’s either going to say yes or no. Or possible say no in a way that humiliates him in front of the entire school. Except, crap, this is during a game so there’s actually two schools here today. Maybe… maybe it’s not worth asking her? I mean, he’s only been pining after her since sixth grade. Or heck, maybe he was going to finally ask her out but that’s when the space ninjas attacked! Is he going after them or not? That teleportation arch isn’t going to stay open forever…

Weird how this fourth option is the only one that seems to have anything compelling about it…

I’ve talked once or thrice before about how making choices is how characters work their way through a plot. The decisions they make—or refuse to make—shape their story. But if there’s no pressure for my characters to make any of these choices, one way or another—no real consequences to face—we all sort of instinctively understand they’re just not that meaningful. They’re not going to make my characters rethink their strategies, conquer their fears, or change their priorities.

Y’see Timmy, we all understand that if the characters aren’t going to face any consequences for the choices they make—if there are no stakes—it doesn’t matter if they make those choices or not. Their decisions are irrelevant in the big scheme of things.

To be clear, I’m not saying every single thing a character does should have world-shaking ramifications, for them or the world. People need to eat sandwiches and take showers and, well, breathe. But I should be aware of which decisions do and don’t have real stakes, and give them the appropriate weight in my story.

Because if my characters aren’t making any relevant decisions in my story… well… there’s probably going to be consequences for that.

Next time, I’d like to talk about what we call that thing. No, the other thing. Yeah, that one.

Until then, go write.

I mentioned revisiting older topics last week and so now, rising out of the past—just when you were sure it was gone for good and there’s no way it was ever coming back…

I’d like to talk about revenge stories.

I think most folks love a good revenge story. Emphasis on most. Emphasis on good. When they’re done right they’re tons of fun, I think because we get a certain vicarious thrill from seeing someone get what they deserve. It could be a career-ending demotion. Maybe it’s getting embarrassed in front of the whole school. Perhaps it’s learning they’ve been left penniless by someone pulling a phenomenal heist.

And, yes, sometimes it’s them getting hunted across the tundra by somebody with a truly impressive collection of swords and pistols.

Now, this is just my opinion as a consumer of stories and occasional dabbler in the craft, but I think a good revenge story is a balancing act. Not too much of that. Just enough of those. A really solid foundation that can support all of it. If one of these things is off, my whole story can, well, become unbalanced. And once I’m off balance, it doesn’t take much for me fall over.

And we’ve all seen those, right? The revenge story that just seems kind of flat? Or maybe a bit… excessive? Possibly even a bit confusing?

So let’s go over four points I think a good revenge tale needs if it’s going to work. Again, just my own observations, and it’s always possible to find some exceptions, but I feel like these are four pretty solid points and I’ve yet to see them proven wrong since I came up with them.

With all that said… shall we embark on our path of vengeance against those who wronged us?

Well, actually, that’s a great lead-in to my first point. Has something happened that calls for revenge? I mean, there’s lots of bad things in the world but do they require me dedicating myself to balancing the scales of justice? A restaurant got my chimichanga order wrong once—does that require revenge? What about the person back in LA who broke into my car (well, jimmied the lock without causing any damage) but ultimately just stole a handful of change from the center tray. Maybe sixty cents, tops. Is that vendetta-worthy? Hunting that guy down doesn’t really seem worth it, right?

Some things absolutely call for revenge, but a lot of stuff just… doesn’t. A revenge story is a bit like a redemption arc this way. I need to have a sense of how my readers are going to see that initial incident. Will they agree it’s something that requires vengeance? Or are they going to think my characters are overreacting?

Which leads nicely to my second point. Is the character heading out to get revenge the one who should be getting revenge? It’s not unusual for one family member to avenge another, or for someone to avenge their dear friend or beloved. But as the relationships grow more tenuous, the motivation for my revenge story gets murkier. I may be a good customer, but I don’t expect the folks at my local sushi place to swear vengeance if something happened to me. I’ve chatted with the mail carrier a few times and she seems nice, but I’m probably not going to be carrying out a blood oath in her name.

Heck, I’m not even sure I know her name. Should I be the guy making that blood oath? I mean, if I should, it seems like a lot of other people should too…

Revenge is a personal thing. In its own way, it’s intimate. Personally, I’d say it needs to be a family thing. And yes, this can take the broader definition where my characters consider their best friends or teammates as family.

My third point is, to me, one of the most important parts of a revenge story. Simply put, the people my character’s getting revenge against must know why this is happening. If the team that killed my character’s family is being hunted down and killed one by one, but they don’t know why this is happening or who’s doing it… I mean, from their point of view how’s that different from a random killing spree? It might as well be Jason Voorhees out there.

I feel that a big part of a good revenge story is that it’s kind of symbiotic. It’s a relationship between the revenger and the revengee, so to speak, and relationships need to go both way (we can all agree one sided relationships are really weird, right?). So yes, we want Dot to get her revenge, but we also want Wakko to know why she’s doing all this. Why she’s coming after him. Why she’s been ruining his life. He needs that moment of understanding, one way or another—even if he just laughs it off (“…You’re the girl! And you’ve been looking for me all these years just to screw up now? Hah!”).

The reason for this is we understand—as readers and writers, consciously or not—that if Yakko doesn’t know why this is happening, he’s just a victim. He’s not an innocent victim, sure, but he’s still just a victim. He’s someone things are happening to for no reason. It’s the difference between someone seeing their house burn down and someone knowing why their house was set on fire.

Which leads nicely to my fourth and final point. Revenge can be a messy business. Very messy. Often reputations are shattered, blood is spilled, property is destroyed. And we’re all cool with that. We like seeing people getting what’s coming to them. Maybe even with a little interest.

And that’s where it gets tricky. In a revenge story, it’s easy to go a little too far with the reputation shattering and the blood spilling and the property damage. And when I do, that’s when my characters stop being the hero and becomes monsters in their own right. Yes, Phoebe embarrassed Yakko in front of his friends and deserves to be taken down a notch, but holy crap now she’s naked in front of the whole school. And they’re all taking photos! That’s going to cause years of emotional trauma. And okay, Wakko’s getting revenge on the drunk driver who killed his daughter by… wait, he’s killing all the guy’s pets and children right in front of him? WTAF?

This shift is something I’ve talked about before. When those scales tip the other way, our mood’s going to shift, too. We stop feeling good about the revenge and we start feeling sympathy for the people getting revenge exacted on them. Suddenly they’re the victim and my hero’s become, well, the villain. Which, understandably, alters everything. The whole tone of my story will change, and a lot of things will be questioned. Not in a good way. Which, I mean, if that’s my intent, cool (digging two graves and all that). But if it’s not…

Y’see Timmy, a revenge story should be all about the characters. That’s how I see it, anyway. Why are they seeking revenge? How are they doing it? Are they managing to walk that fine line between being a hero and being a monster? Or have they fallen off it…?

Speaking of which, next time, I’d like to talk about the consequences of my actions.

Until then… go write.

This week is one of those things I talk about a lot, but I don’t think I’ve really, y’know, talked about it in a while now. Possibly a long while. So I figured, hey, nobody’s made a request, why don’t I update something so I’m not always linking back to ten year old blog posts…

Also, heads up, just to keep things easy, for this post I’m going to be referring to our assembled manuscript as a book or the book or your/my book. I’m going to be talking about story a lot, and I don’t want to cause any confusion between a story (the thing we wrote) and story (the literary device we’ll be talking about). Make sense?

Anyway, let’s talk about plot and story, shall we?

I’m a big believer that the vast majority of good books, movies, television episodes, comic books, short stories—any tale we want to tell, in whatever format we want to tell it in—has two major parts. These are plot and story. Our plot is the events and moments going on outside my characters. Our story is all the events and moments that are going on inside my characters.

(There’s also theme, which is sort of where these two thing interact, but that’s a little bigger and tougher and gives some people scary flashbacks to high school English class, so I’m just going to skip it for now. If you want to read a little bit about theme, I talked about it a while back during the A2Q. But for now—just plot and story)

Also worth noting depending on who your literary professors/ favorite writing coaches are, you may have heard different names for these. Maybe Russian ones or something. If you want to use those that’s fine. We’re talking about art, everyone has their own way of talking about it. If you care, I first heard this put this way many years back when I got to talk with screenwriter/ director Shane Black, and that’s when it really clicked for me, and that’s how I usually explain it.

So when we’re talking about plot and story, plot is everything going on outside of my character. All the external events, challenges, obstacles, and goals in my book. Just to be clear, something that’s ended up inside my body –a brain-control chip, a virus, a bomb where my left lung is supposed to be, a little space worm that crawled into my ear—is still an external threat. External means outside of my characters as people, not as skinbags filled with bone and muscle

An easy way to think of plot is it’s almost always about something my character wants, and they’re trying to do something to get that thing. That may sound kind of huge and vague because, well, it is. My characters could want any number or type of things, and there could be any number/type of things between them. Save Uncle Ricky’s Surf Shop. Ask Wakko out on a date. Stop the invading demons from Otherworld. Throw the best darned Christmas show this town’s ever seen and save our little theater! Or maybe even just getting home.

Also, make note of that bit I just mentioned. Trying to do something. Plot tends to be active. It’s my characters to achieve a goal. If they’re not doing anything (or anything challenging) it’s probably not plot.

Which brings us to story, which is the flipside of plot. Story is all my character’s internal desires and doubts and needs and struggles. It’s what motivates them and what they need to overcome if they don’t want to get left behind (or trampled) by the plot. You may have seen something here or there about how there’s really only seven plots (or six or nine or whatever). There is a small bit of truth to that. But the reason there are millions of different books is because of story. If I drop two different characters into the same situation, I’m going to get different results, because they’re going to approach things… well, differently. If Steve Rogers gets the super soldier formula, things go one way. If Peggy Carter gets it, they go a different way. To quote Javier Grillo-Marxuach (who’s made, like, half the sci-fi/ fantasy shows you’ve loved in the past decade) —“Plot gets you into a scene, character gets you out.”

And this is because characters aren’t all going to do the same thing in a given situation. Who they are affects how they react to different obstacles and how they choose to overcome them (or maybe just avoid them). Uncle Ricky may have just given up, but Yakko would try to save the Surf Shop by taking out a second mortgage (despite the horrible interest rates), Wakko might hold a bikini car wash, and Dot may finally try to find the lost treasure of that old pirate captain, Jacques Le Maudit.

Another important note. While plot tends to be active, story tends to be reactive. All that internal stuff doesn’t change unless some outside influence makes it change. Essentially, some plot runs face-first into my characters and story dictates how they react to that plot. Maybe they react exactly the way we’d expect… but maybe they also step out of their comfort zone (willingly or not) and do something else. And then the plot keeps running into them again and again and—for better or for worse—they’re forced to take more steps. So the plot’s constantly nudging my characters to grow and change. We enjoy the plot, but what we get invested in is the story. We want to see these characters move out of their comfort zones and adapt to deal with whatever the plot’s hitting them with.

There’s probably some technical term for that but I can’t remember it.

Now, there are definitely books (and movies and tv shows and more) that are light on story and heavier on plot. And vice-versa. And some of them are very successful. But I really believe we can feel it when that balance gets thrown off in a book, when one of these two elements gets more weight than the other. We’ve all seen a movie that’s just pure plot where the characters dodge killer androids and punch Nazis and barely grow or change at all. They’re all essentially the same at the end as they were at the beginning. And I’m sure we’ve all seen or read something where… well, nothing happens. Characters just sit around pontificating on the nature of power, the unfairness of life, the chemical origins of love or, y’know, some other kind of navel-gazily topic. Because there’s no plot nudging them to do anything else.

Y’see, Timmy, I know that’s a bit polarizing for some folks, but I really do believe every good book should have a plot and a story. They can overlap. They can intertwine. But if I’m missing one or the other, no matter how many rationalizations I want to make… my work’s probably going to be lacking.

And my audience is going to be able to tell.

Next time… well, we talked about redemption a few weeks back. maybe it’s worth talking about it’s angry sibling. Revenge.

Until then… go write.

Many thanks for your patience after a very fun but also kind of exhausting SDCC week. I saw some fantastic things, got to talk with some fantastic people, picked up a few great exclusives, and overall had a wonderful time. But yeah… all set to not do anything for a week or so now.

Except some book stuff.

And staying caught up on the ranty blog.

There’s a concept you may have heard of (or some variation of) that we’ll call compressed storytelling. As the name implies, some events are compressed or eliminated so I can focus on others, usually with the goal of keeping my story from getting much larger than it needs to be. Alfred Hitchcock—director, storyteller, partner of the Three Investigators—once said that drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out. That’s also a good way to sum up compressed storytelling.

Most short-form type of storytelling—movies, episodic television, comic books, short stories—are usually compressed to some degree or another. If you think about it, in the vast majority of cases, I can’t turn in a three hour script for an episode of Strange New Worlds or a ninety page script for a comic book. Either of these will get my submission tossed immediately. Ugly truth is, this holds for novels, too. They have an upper limit (for a few reasons) and if my first novel is a thousand pages long it’s probably not going to find a home anywhere.

Also, it sounds kind of obvious, but compressing the story builds pressure. It increases tension for the reader and knocks the stakes up a bit. There’s a big difference between having two months to raise the money to save Uncle Ricky’s Surf Shop and only having two days to do it. Likewise, if I’m telling the story of those two weeks in three hundred pages or six hundred pages… one’s probably not going to feel quite as urgent, even though they’re telling the same story.

Another way to think of it is compressed storytelling is the idea that we can skim over a lot of events and time without it affecting our story. In fact, often things work a lot better without it. I’m actually dealing with this right now—trying to figure out how much I can cut from a draft while keeping the story and the tone intact.

Plus, let’s be honest. As it is, we don’t need to see everything. We all know this. If it’s day one and our heroine’s wearing a red shirt and on day two it’s a blue shirt, we don’t need a chapter where she changes clothes to understand what’s happened. Or even a page. Odds are we don’t need to bring it up at all.

Now, we could call the flipside of this decompressed storytelling. It’s when I take my time and include everything. And I mean everything. Every single fact and detail and random thought, whether they’re relevant to the story or not. If we’re going to believe that Hitchcock quote up above, this is when we add all the boring parts back in. And this is often done in the name of art and drama.

Y’see, Timmy, the problem here is that decompressing the story takes the pressure off my characters. When I pause to describe all the different aliens in the bar, it means the pacing in my story has slowed way down. If my characters have time to sit around discussing Phoebe’s string of failed relationships (again) then it’s hard for me to say all that other stuff going on is that urgent. I can’t tell you it’s life or death important that Wakko and Yakko reach Washington before noon tomorrow, but then have ten pages of them stopping for lunch, chatting with the waitress, considering today’s specials, discussing franchise restaurants vs small town diners, and then describing each exquisite bite of that club sandwich in vivid detail. Also, why are they in the diner? Were they going somewhere to do… something?

And yeah, of course there will be exceptions. Good characters will have a weird conversational segue or two… but not thirty of them. That one person walking by might deserve an extra-long look because they’re so creepy or sexy or suspicious… but not every pedestrian we pass. We want to know what Yakko is doing while he’s waiting for the kidnapper to call, but we probably don’t need to keep track of how many times he absently scratches his butt.

Okay, moment of brutal honesty. In my experience, some writers fall back on this sort of decompressed storytelling because… well, they don’t actually have much story to tell. I can’t make my novel lean and tight, because if I did it’d only be three chapters long. So I fill it up with segues and character moments and drawn out descriptions.

The excuse is that I’m being “literary.” I’m raising the bar and writing at a higher level than the rest of you. All you people who keep skimming over those introspective monologues and exquisite details and beautiful language in favor of things like “plot” and “action”… all of you are the real problem here.

Again, there’s always a place for these things, like I said before. But if my writing is all one or all the other, though—completely stripped down or not stripped down in the slightest—maybe I should pause for a moment and look at this from both directions. Do I actually have a story and a plot? Are my characters dynamic and trying to resolve a conflict? Or am I using decompressed storytelling to hide the lack of these things behind a lot of flowery language and drawn out, irrelevant dialogue?

Are my characters fleshed out? Is my setting well established? Am I skimming past plot points as fast as I can so nobody has time to notice I don’t actually have any…?

If any of this rings a little too true… maybe it’s time to adjust the pressure a bit.

Next time, I’d like to share a few thoughts about getting into (and out of) trouble.

Until then, go write.