Sorry for missing last week.  Just had a couple of those jumbled days where I kept getting called away for other things.  And while I had a topic for this week, it never quite gelled the way I wanted it to in my head.  Although four or five others did, so I’m set for a while here.

            (topic suggestions are always welcome in the comments, though)

            Anyway…

            I wanted to talk a bit today about godlike characters.  Not just in the sense of robes and brilliant auras and hurling thunderbolts.  Sometimes it’s that rugged, locked-and-loaded man or maybe the tall, super-competent blonde.  Really, it’s anyone who is, for one reason or another, way beyond the level of every other character in the story.

            Which really means they’re out of everyone’s league.

            Quick segue.

            One thing that I see come up in discussions of different open-play, MMPORG type games is a balance between players.  For purposes of this discussion, it’s when the overall population of the game has hit a level where it’s essentially unable to support new players.  If everybody’s level 72, it makes it tough for anybody to interact at level one. All those 72’s are using their bigger, badder gear to go on bigger, badder missions, where they’ll face bigger, badder monsters and get even rewarded with even… well, you get the point.

            Meanwhile, I’m over here in the goblin village, poking at things with a knife and hoping I can get my dagger skill up to 65%…

            And if we actually have to fight each other?  Well, I don’t have a prayer.  I mean, we can argue that statistically there’s a chance, but really… there’s no chance.  And from the 72’s point of view, I mean, can we even call it a wasted three seconds?  Yeah, there may be some jerks who just like beating up the noobs, but for everyone else… yeah, this gets to be kind of boring, right?

            See where I’m going with this?

            Stories need this kind of balance, too.  We want characters to have a chance at achieving their goals, but we also don’t want it to be easy.  If the story leans too far one way or the other, it just gets dull.  For everyone.

            F’r example… 

            If my antagonistis all-powerful, my hero never has a chance.  That’s boring as hell.  There might be a few dramatic moments, if the writer really knows what they’re doing, but probably not.  We all know how it’s going to end, and if we know where it’s going… well, then this is all just noise.
            Plus, it’s discouraging.  We identify with the heroes.  That’s why we’re reading.  And to see someone we identify with get beaten down again and again by an opponent we absolutely know they can’t beat…

            Well, it doesn’t make for a lot of repeat reads, let’s say that.

            Keep in mind, too, my antagonist doesn’t have to be a seven foot-tall somebody in body armor and a chrome skull mask.  The high school mean girl, the abusive drill sergeant, even society in general– any of these can be the antagonist.  And, again, if there’s no chance whatsoever of beating the antagonist, my story isn’t going to hold most people’s interest.

            I’ll also point out that beating the antagonist doesn’t always mean bringing about their ultimate, final defeat.  But as far as our immediate story’s concerned, the bad guy needs to have a chance to succeed at their immediate goals.  No chance means no interest.

            Now, as I hinted above, the flipside of this is also true.  If my main character has absolutely no chance of ever being stopped or hindered in any way, that’s not very interesting either.  I’ve talked about this once or thrice before.  When Yakko can effortlessly deal with anything the antagonist, nature, or the universe itself throws at him, it gets boring really fast.  If Dot’s prepared and trained for everything, to the point there’s little or no chance of failure, that means there’s no challenge.  And no challenge means… well…
            An analogy I’ve mentioned before is me getting a glass of Diet Pepsi.  Not exactly something epic stories are built around.  You’re not going to see teams of people stealing ships, racing down city streets, or forming Fellowships around me as we undertake the great adventure of going to the kitchen and opening the fridge.  Because it’s mundane.  It’s easy. There’s absolutely no challenge in it.

            Even if something might be challenging for us, personally, it doesn’t mean we want to watch someone else do it with no effort.  I’m pretty sure if a zombie plague ever descended on the world, I’d be one of those folks gone in the first week or two.  But I don’t have any interest in reading three hundred pages of someone who walks through the undead apocalypse like it’s a guided tour.  Yeah, no matter how colorful the descriptions are of zombies being blown apart.
            Y’see, Timmy, if there’s no challenge—because either my protagonist or antagonist are too powerful—it means there’s not much of a plot.  As I’ve mentioned before, no plot makes it really tough to have a story.  And you may have noticed there’s not a big market for high-stakes character descriptions.
            I also want to toss out one other downside to nigh-omnipotent characters. Gods are boring as hell.  Seriously.  They’re tough to relate to, and if people can’t relate to my characters, they’re probably not going to make any investment in them.  Good characters have needs and desires and flaws, but godlike powers tend to nullify most of those things. 

            Even if it’s not actual powers, it can be dull.  When you have characters who can do anything and succeed at anything… it just gets boring fast.  We like reading about problems, not about potential problems that were planned for and avoided.

            True fact—one I worked very hard at.  My Ex-Heroesbooks have a super-competent character named Stealth.  She’s their version of Batman.  Every book in the series has at least one example of her demonstrating how she’s hyper-trained and/or four steps ahead of everyone else.

            But…

            Every book also has at least one example of something getting past her. Something she didn’t catch or didn’t think of or somebody else figures out first.  She’s world’s greatest detective, but she’s still fallible.  She not perfect.

            If you’ve got a powerful, competent character in one of your stories, take another look at them.  Do they need to be that strong?  Would they be more interesting if there were two or three scenarios they hadn’t been planning for over the past six months?  Isn’t your story going to be a bit more interesting if success and failure both seem like viable outcomes?

            I think it would. 

            But that’s just me.

            Next time I want to talk about something a little more campy.

            And maybe update the FAQ.

            Until then… go write.

            Sound of Music reference for the WIN!!!!  

            Okay, maybe not

            So I’ve been thinking about what would make a good first topic for the start of the year.  Which made me think of a topic that comes up a lot at the Coffeehouse or at different con discussions.  And that topic is “how should I start my book?”

            Now, right up front, here’s the catch.

            I can’t tell you.

            I mean, it’s not like it’s a secret and I want to make you beg or pay for it.  I can’t tell you because I don’t know.  Nobody knows how your book needs to begin except you.  It’s because every writer is different and every story is different.  We each have our own styles and preferences, and each story has its own needs and narratives.

            Heck, even if we’re telling the same story it’s going to be different.  If I told you to write a modern take on Frankenstein (the monster, not the scientist) you’d be telling a different story than me and we’d both be telling a different story than her and a much different story than him.  I mean… seriously, what the heck is that guy doing?  That’s a seriously weird take on Frankenstein.

            But the point is, even though we’d all be telling more or less the same story, we’d also be telling very different stories.  I might decide to start with the lightning storm, the night the monster awakens, but your version might start with Victor in medical school and shemight decide to begin with the event that inspires Victor to create the monster.  All of these are completely valid ways to begin a narrative about Frankenstein.

            And this is why nobody else can tell me how to begin my story.  There are so many elements to consider, it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to know but me.  You and I could talk for an hour about your story, and I might get a vague sense of where it should start.  But that vague estimate is still based off a very limited amount of information, and it only applies to that one specific story.

            So… yeah.  I can’t tell you where to start.  Sorry.

            BUT…

            (you didn’t think I’d leave you hanging like that, did you?)

            I can offer you a few general ideas of what you should and shouldn’t use as starting points.  Not things specific to a story, but things specific to storytelling.  As a wise man once said, the code’s more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.

            I’ve talked about a lot of these things before, so be prepared for links.

            So, when I consider how to start my story…

            DO start with action.  I’ve talked about this one before, so I won’t go into too much detail here.  “Starting with action” often gets misunderstood as “my manuscript needs to begin with a ninja stopping a hostage situation on a high-speed train with his explosive throwing stars.”  This is, of course, a really weird way to begin a romantic fantasy novel, but people try to do it anyway.

            All starting with action means is that I need something to happen.  Being fired from my job (or written up, or promoted) is action.  Getting beaten up (or asked out) by the quarterback in high school is something happening.  Buying groceries is something happening.

            And, yes, so is having a ninja stop a hostage situation with explosive throwing stars.

            DON’T start with someone writing their novel or screenplay.  Seriously, don’t.  Yes, technically, it’s someone doing something, but it’s a minimal, inactive something that involves one character sitting alone at a desk.  Plus, it’s an opening every editor, agent, and producer has seen at least a thousand times.  Seriously.  One thousand times, minimum.  I don’t want to begin with something everyone’s already bored of seeing.

            DO start with something relevant.  Relevant to this story.  Relevant by at least a third of the way into the story.  An opening scene that makes no sense until the end of my book is an opening scene that makes no sense (and we’re going to forget).  Which means we don’t need it.

            My opening pages should hook the reader right into my story.  They should pay off soon, and that payoff should draw them in even further.  The goal is always to draw them in, not to push them away or hold them at arm’s length.  If I’m trying to distance the reader in the first chapter… that’s not going to work out well.

            

            DON’T start by killing everyone.  Nine times out of ten, if every character from chapter one is dead by the end of chapter two, it means chapter three is where my story really starts.  No matter how cool chapter one and two were.

            A lot of folks stumble into this trap.  They “start with action” (see above) by having a bunch of nameless, unimportant people get killed by some threat, and then they introduce their actual charactersand get on with the story.  Which tells right me there that those opening bits are just more wasted pages.

            DO be aware that the story started long before page one.  There were events in my protagonist’s (and antagonist’s) life that made them the person they are now.  They already have relationships and jobs and histories. We all instinctively understand and acknowledge this (Clive Barker wrote a beautiful introduction about this idea in his book Weaveworld).

            Right from the start, I need to keep in mind that my characters are in this world.  They’ve been there for a while.  It doesn’t surprise them or catch them off guard.  Neither does the existence of their siblings, lovers, employers, or their own body parts.  If my opening is my protagonist expositing about her apartment, her girlfriend, her own body, or the dual nature of this amazing futuristic world she lives in, my readers are going to be rolling their eyes.

            And that’s a few things to keep in mind when deciding how to start my story.  Again, these are just guidelines, but… y’know, guidelines exist for a reason.  I should think long and hard before ignoring them and declaring that my story’s the exception they don’t apply to. 

            Because odds are… it’s not.

            Oh, in other news for SoCal folks, this Sunday is both the Writers Coffeehouse (at Dark Delicacies in Burbank) and the dystopian book club We’re All Gonna Die (at the Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles).  Please stop by and hang out.  Although for the book club, you may want to pick up the book first…
            Next time, I’d like to talk about something really powerful.

            Until then, go write.