Category: flow

Yeah, that’s right. Extra post on top of all the Tom Gauld cartoons I’ve been putting up. Because I’m having trouble focusing on my book, but I’ve been helping other people with theirs.

Hey, speaking of which, a friend of mine was having a point of view problem. Her novel’s in third person limited, but every now and then it would kind of drift out of her lead character’s point of view and settle with somebody else. Only to leap back to the protagonist a few paragraphs later. She knew it was there, but she just couldn’t get it right in her mind.

And as we were shooting emails back in forth, I had a sudden random thought on how to explain it. Which I shared with her. And will now share with you.

Third person POV is like one of your characters having a parrot on their shoulder.

No, stick with me, this is brilliant…

Let’s say our main character is a pirate captain we’ll call Bonnie. Bonnie has a parrot who rides around on her shoulder. That parrot is her story’s point of view. Really, he’s our point of view into the story.

The parrot’s close enough to her eye level that it sees what she sees and hears what she hears as she moves through the plot. It’s even close enough to Bonnie’s head that it can hear her thoughts. Yes, some parrots are telepathic at close range. Really. But only at close range, so it can’t hear anyone else’s thoughts, because it’s on Bonnie’s shoulder.

If people walk away from Bonnie, the parrot naturally has trouble hearing them. I mean, its hearing isn’t any better than her’s. It might even have trouble seeing them. Heck, they might walk out of the room or building or whatever and they’re just gone as far as the parrot’s concerned. And the same’s true if Bonnie walks or rides or sails her ship away from them. The parrot’s on her shoulder, so it loses sight of them.

Now, this isn’t to say the parrot can’t jump to someone else’s shoulder. It’s not chained to Bonnie or anything. But if it does leap over to someone else… well, it’ll be really clear it happened. There’s going to be flapping wings and flashes of color and maybe a squawk or two. Everybody is going to know if that parrot switches shoulders. We’ll have no question it happened, and we’re all going to know where it is now. And once it’s over there it’s going to be seeing and hearing the same things as them. And maybe their thoughts, too, because seriously… they can do that.

But also keep in mind… the parrot’s not going to switch shoulders for no reason. It’s gotten comfortable on Bonnie’s shoulder. It’s content. It’d need a really good reason to jump over to somebody else. And to jump back. We definitely don’t want it jumping here and there and back and forth ’cause—again—we’re all going to know if the parrot jumps to another shoulder. And I don’t want people focused on all that movement instead of what’s actually going on.

My point is, at any point in my narrative, I should be able to say “where’s the parrot” and know the answer. If the parrot is suddenly somewhere else, and I don’t know how it got there, I have a problem. Because we know it’s a big deal when it jumps to someone else’s shoulder. If we missed that movement… something went wrong.

Does all that make sense?

My third person POV should stick with my character, and we should know—without a shadow of a doubt—if it shifts to be with another character. Because I don’t want my readers to suddenly be lost, trying to figure out how and when the point of view—when we, the readers—jumped from Wakko over to Dot. That’s the kind of thing that breaks the flow. And breaking the flow is always bad.

Next time… more random thoughts on writing.

Until then go write.

I know the A2Q thing just got started, but I wanted to pause for a few moments to talk about action.

I’m a big believer that action—especially dynamic action–shouldn’t take much longer to read than it would take to happen. Swordfights, shootouts, fistfights, even sex scenes—all of these are events where we kind of expect people to get caught up in the moment and not focus too much on minutiae. When I’m telling these events as part of a story, it creates an odd situation where I want to advance the action, but I also need to explain what’s going on. It’s especially tough in first person narratives, but really it can happen anywhere.

An example I’ve used before is when a ninja leaps out of the shadows to attack me. On the one hand, I want to mention the mask and the gloves and the sash belt and those special shoes that ninjas wear. Plus maybe they’ve got weapons in their hands or tucked in their belt or strapped to their back. Maybe even cursed weapons with extra barbs or weird auras. And wait… is that long red hair? Is this ninja a woman? Holy crap, the robes are kinda loose but, yeah, I think she is.

Of course, during all this time… what’s the ninja doing? They leaped out of the shadows and… froze in the air? Are they waiting to punch or kick or maybe skewer me with their short sword or something like that?

Heck, did you even remember the ninja was in the process of attacking me while you read through all that description?

Which is the problem in these situations. Once I’m in an action moment, I’ve got to be careful about bringing it to a pause for descriptions of other characters, weapons, fighting techniques, heck sometimes even overly-describing the action itself. I can blow the rhythm and wreck the flow, knocking my readers out of the story right when I want them desperately turning pages.

And it’s not just descriptions that can do this. Another thing I’ve seen is people trying to do funny, snarky dialogue in the middle of action sequences. Sure, this can work to an extent, but when every other character is making one or two quips during every gunfight or car chase or building collapse, these events begin to stretch out. It doesn’t take long for them to start dragging.

Another common one is the sudden need to share information, either between characters or sometimes the narration relaying these facts directly to us, the audience. I think a lot of the time when this happens it’s the writer feeling the sudden need to remind the readers of something important. The potential double whammy here is this can be breaking the flow of my action and it may just be a bunch of noise that we already know and don’t need to be reminded of at this crucial moment.

The worst of all of these has to be the introspective moment. That point when the arrows are flying and plasma bolts are crashing around us and my character pauses to dwell on how fragile the connections are between all of us, and the series of decisions that unknowingly brought him to this moment. And this place. Of all the possible places he could’ve been right now. One different choice and maybe he’d be on a date with that cute barista, instead of here, pondering the threads of destiny…

Anyway, where were we. Right! Raw plasma exploding everywhere and whoa when did Wakko get fried? How’d I miss that?

Other popular introspective topics that can disrupt action may involve lost loves, found loves, children, aging parents, the ephemeral nature of beauty,  and a single raindrop, frozen in that moment of impact that so perfectly symbolizes the inevitability of death…

The real killer for all of this? Lots of stuff counts as action. There’ve been a few times I’ve mentioned that often-misunderstood chestnut, start with action. It doesn’t mean my book needs to begin with a ninja leaping from the shadows, it just means I need to start with something happening. With my characters doing something. Anything. And all those things that count as action are things I want to be careful about disrupting and slowing down.

Now, yeah, of course, there’s always going to be exceptions. There are lots of reasons why my character might have an unusual, unrelated thought in a moment of peak action, or why they might get distracted by that single raindrop. But I need to remember that exceptions are rare.

So don’t break the flow of your story by letting your action get bogged down.

And speaking of action and doing things… have I mentioned that my new book, Terminus, comes out next week? Like, one week from today. It’s an Audible exclusive, and if you wanted to preorder it now that’d help further convince the people who pay me that my books are a good investment. Which mean more books down the line. Which means we all win.

Next time here on the ranty blog, we continue with the next part of the A2Q, where I’m going to try to explain plots and how to put one together.

Until then, go write.

Oh, hey, have I mentioned Dead Moon lately? It’s out. It’s available. You should check it out if you haven’t already. It’s got zombies on the Moon, and you know you like zombies on the Moon.

But moving on…

I wanted to blather on about names a bit, because I read something a few weeks back that kinda went overboard with them. It’s a recurring issue, I think. Pretty sure I’ve talked about this before.

There was a school of thought a while back that every character should have a name. Every single character in my manuscript needs a proper, given name. I read through and I know the given name of the cabbie, the intern, the homeless guy at the freeway exit, the woman  ahead of the main character in line at Starbucks, the barista at Starbucks.  It doesn’t matter how important—or unimportant—they are to the story  They get a name.

I don’t know if this was something somebody was “teaching” somewhere or if it was just telephone-game advice run amok and gaining life and sentience and trying to conquer the internet. I saw this “rule” show up often on general writing forums and a LOT on screenwriting boards. Essentially, it makes things more real. Gives every character a little more dimension and life.

Thing is… this isn’t a rule. It’s just awful advice. I should never do this. Seriously.

Names are a form of shorthand—in real life and in fiction. It’s a quick label we slap on that collection of motivations, dialogue quirks, and physical descriptions we call the social-web-intersectionsthat are Wakko. But like any sort of shorthand or label, too many can get confusing. Two or three post-it notes around my computer can be helpful. Two or three hundred probably means I can’t see the screen and anything I need to remember is lost in the chaos.

That’s the other way names are shorthand. They let us know which characters are important. Yes, everyone’s important and special in real life, but within my story—within this fictional universe where I am a wise and powerful God who controls everything—are they really that important? Does some aspect of the story rely on my readers seeing them and noticing them and remembering them?

My personal rule is this–a character’s name in my manuscript should be what my main characters refer to them by.  If my main character doesn’t know their name, has no reason to, and never will… it’s a safe bet my readers don’t need to know it.  If they’re just “the cute barista” then odds are pretty good we, the readers, don’t need to keep all those quirks and descriptions in mind. We can devote that mental space to other things.

Lemme give you an example. A little indie arthouse film came out this summer called Avengers: Endgame. Not a lot of people saw it. On the off chance you were considering it sometime in the future, I’ll warn you that I’m going to drop a few spoilers in the next paragraph or three. Well, the same spoiler spread out across them. One point, discussed to some degree.

You may want to skip ahead, that’s what I’m getting at. Everyone else…

There are a lot of people in the final scenes of Endgame. Hundreds, maybe even thousands. That big battle? I mean, pretty much every superhero we’ve ever met. A bunch of sorcerers. Several tons of Asgardians (seriously, think of the bone density those people must have). And that’s just on our side. The big bad has two or three different alien armies, plus his little inner circle of specialists

So… what were their names?

I mean, sure there’s Cap and Tony, Thor and Hulk. Valkyrie, Captain Marvel, T’Challa, Shuri, Ant/Giant-Man, Wasp, Winter Soldier, and yeah, okay, there’s a bunch of them.  Plus all of Thanos’s people.  Proxima Midnight and Ebony Maw and….Urban Sprawl, I think, was the big guy? We never really got properly introduced to them, did we?

But what about everyone else? Can you name all the sorcerers who open portals? Any of the Asgardians who come through? That big space worm thing that Giant-Man slams into the ground? Surely they call it something, right?

Thing is, we don’t know. And we don’t need to know. Cap probably doesn’t know most of them past “more folks on our side” and “all of those things with Thanos.”

Hell, can you imagine if every one of those characters got a close up and a quick chance to introduce themselves? Seriously, how long would that take? How many would we actually remember? It’d be like speed-dating, except you’d know from the start a lot of them were going to die. Okay, so it’s a lot like speed dating. You get the point.

How about a non-spoilery version. I’m betting most of us here have worked some kind of basic retail/food service job at some point in our lives. Something where we had to deal with customers. I did both.  That said, how many of those customers can we name? Or if somehow this doesn’t apply, we’ve all been to a store or restaurant. Probably in the past two weeks. How many of the clerks or cashiers can you name? How many of the other customers?

And the reason we can’t name any of these people (Asgardians to waitstaff) is because they weren’t important to our personal story.  They weren’t relevant to the main plot (which was our lives, naturally). In the end, if my main character doesn’t know who someone is, there’s nothing wrong with just calling them the second mechanic or the doctor in the lab coat or even just the cute barista.

This isn’t to say we (or our characters) will never, ever come across someone who stands out but ultimately has no real effect on our story. Someone with an interesting name or appearance that elevates them a bit above the crowd. But those folks are the few and far between. They’re the exception, not the rule.

Y’see, Timmy, giving every character a name may feel like it’s showing how well-thought-out my world is, but in the long run it just breaks up the flow of my story.  It’s making my readers juggle pages and pages of potential characters instead of letting them focus on the ones that are actually going to be important.

Next time… we’re all going to get our revenge. Finally. It’s going to be glorious!

Until then… go write.

            First off, so very sorry post have been irregular here as of late. Believe I’ve mentioned I’m juggling a few things.  One of which is the con I’m at right now.

            But we’ll talk about that in a bit…

            This week I wanted to revisit an idea that I’ve brought up a couple of times over the past few months.  I’ve heard it called a few different things, but my preferred term has always been flow.  First heard it that way from a wonderful author and writing teacher named Drusilla Campbell, and it always stuck with me.

            The visual I’d like to put in your head for flow is traffic. Regular old automobile traffic.  I’m going to go out on a limb and guess most of you reading this can drive, and the few who don’t have still ridden in a car.  And hopefully most of you have been to a city, or at least on a highway of some kind.

            So… let’s talk about the flow of traffic.

            Living in Los Angeles (and before that San Diego, and before that the greater Boston area), I’m very used to highway traffic.  Sometimes, often late at night, the highway is clear and wide open.  There’s barely anyone on the road and you can pretty much fly.

            Of course, even if there aren’t many cars on the road, something big can still create a traffic jam.  Major construction or a big accident can condense things down to one lane, and suddenly that very open road is densely packed and moving at a crawl.

            During the day it can be even worse.  When there’s a million people on the road (no exaggeration here in LA) one small problem can slow everything down.  A large one can bring things to a crashing halt.  Hell, there’s a big hill on the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass and it always causes traffic slowdowns, both ways, up and down.  I’ve been in traffic jams so bad you could actually shut your car off, get out, and stretch your legs for a bit.

            There are places where the very structure and layout of the freeway just naturally causes traffic jams. There’s no way to avoid it the way things have been constructed.  I know a couple stretches where—for no reason—the road goes from six lanes to three.  And then back up to five.  That mile of three lanes… it’s almost always clogged.

            Traffic patterns can even get messed up when people just start looking at the wrong thing. We’ve all been in massive slowdowns that are simply caused by people staring at something on the side of the road. Or sometimes on the other side of the road.  A big accident in the northbound lane can make everybody in the southbound lane slow down to take a look.

            Sometimes it works great, though.  Those million people can be on the road and it’s fantastic.  Everything works.  I’ve had times when I’ve been looking at all the cars on the road, but then looked down to realize I’m almost doing sixty-five.  We’re all going at almost sixty-five, in perfect sync.  I was just caught up in everything and didn’t even realize what was actually going on.

            But that flow can get disrupted so easily.  Again, one car going really slow.  One closed lane.  One distraction over on the shoulder.

            What’s the point of this little visualization?

            Reading a story is a lot like traffic.  It has a flow.  When the flow’s great, we barely notice how fast things are going.  We just zoom along and suddenly realize we’ve read a hundred pages and it’s dark out and where the hell am I?  A book that you can’t put down has great flow.  A book that you should love but you just can’t get into… probably doesn’t.

            Here’s a few things that have the potential of causing a traffic jam in my story.

            A friend of mine has a book where the main character slips into sort of a fever dream.  She’s sick, she’s been medicated, and now she’s… a bit out of it.  And so the next two chapters of the book are in stage play format.  It becomes a bit more separated from reality for the reader and we understand it’s more surreal for the character as well.

            Compare this to another book I read recently when, for no reason, maybe 15-20% of a page would suddenly be in screenplay format.  Dialogue, prose, prose, slugline, dialogue, stage direction, prose, dialogue.  It jarred me out of an otherwise wonderful book every single time, and the author did it every four or five pages.  I looked for patterns and tried to figure out if there was a recurring motif, but couldn’t find anything.  I loved the story, but I kept getting knocked out if it.

            There’s nothing wrong with doing clever things.  It’s highly encouraged.  But I need to have a reason to do them, because my readers are going to assume there’s a reason I did it. That’s natural, isn’t it? I made the effort to put it in the book, so there must be a point to it.  Bruce Joel Rubin once mentioned that when we stop experiencing stories in our gut, we go into our head and start analyzing them.  That’s when the flow breaks.  When we stop reading and start drawing mental diagrams.

            I was reading this big sprawling generational family saga recently.  Not normally my kind of thing, but I’ve been trying to expand my reading umbrella lately.  And I’m overall glad I read it.

            But…

            One issue it had was that, by nature of being multigenerational, there were lots of people who were called “Dad,” and quite a few who were “Mom.”  And they were all Dad and Mom.  No “Pops” or “Papa” or “Daddy Dearest.”  No “Mum” or “Ma” or “Mother.”  Which got confusing because the book also jumped POV and timeframes a lot.  We might be in Yakko’s head for a chapter, then hop over to his granddaughter’s.  Which meant “Dad and Mom” is now referring to different people.  Some of them even had the same name, so there was a Yakko Jr. and a Yakko the III (fortunately grandpa had died)

            Anyway, what it amounted to was me going back to analyze the book every ten or fifteen pages to make sure the person behind this POV was who I thought they were.

            This is closely related to something else I’ve mentioned before—when lots of people have very similar names, especially when they all begin with the same letter.  We naturally lock on to that first letter to help keep things straight in our heads. If my story has a large cast featuring John, Jerry, Jacob, Jared, Justin, Jean, Jon, Jeri, Juan, Jenn, and Jess, people are (again) going to spend just as much time going backward to figure out who’s who as they are going forward to, well… read my story.

            We work with words.  That’s a simple fact of the job.  And nobody wants to use common words.  We want to work with amazing words.  Exciting, sexy, awe-inspiring words that people will remember years from now.  Decades from now, even.

            But here’s the thing to remember.  The words don’t really matter. The story matters. The characters matter.  The actual words are just a delivery device.  They’re how I’m telling you the story.  As a writer and a reader, I don’t want to be focused on the act of communication more than what’s being communicated.  The words should be almost invisible.

            And the truth is… the common words are going to be a lot less visible than the uncommon words. As readers—as people—we notice the uncommon. It stands out. And in many cases… it’s distracting. 

            This isn’t to say we can’t use uncommon or obscure words. There should be a reason for using them, though, and that reason shouldn’t just be me wanting to show off the obscure word I learned on Doctor Who a few months ago.  They shouldn’t be stumbling blocks for my reader.  Again, they should be adding to the story, not the delivery device.

            That’s just a few things.  I’ve mentioned some others before.  Flow is kind of tough to get too specific about because something that causes a small bump for me might be slamming you into a metaphorical wall.  Or vice versa.

            Y’see, Timmy, that’s the biggest lesson about flow.  It’s an empathy issue.  It’s about being able to put myself in someone else’s shoes—a lot of other people’s shoes—and make an honest assessment about things.  Will this reference trip people up?  Is this structure confusing?  Is it easy to keep all these characters straight?

            Because if I can’t be honest about my work, there’s a good chance I’m going to jam things up.

            And if that happens too often, to stick with our traffic metaphor… people will start looking for alternate routes.  

           Next time, I’d like to talk about that opening chapter.  You know what I mean.  The P word.  Although, fair warning, next time might not be for two weeks or so.

            Oh, and hey—I’m at Phoenix Comic Fest right now!  Are you reading this? You should come find me. I’m that guy typing on his phone. And also talking on panels and signing stuff and all that.  Come by and say hi.

            And then go write.