January 14, 2021

So. Much. Winning!

This is one of those posts some folks may feel the need to argue with. It’s a writing tip that’s going to feel obvious to some of you, and ridiculous to others, but I truly think a writer needs to follow if they want any measure of success.  And when I say “success” I refer to the classic definition—“making money off your material.”

If I want that kind of success, my hero has to win.

Fair warning, there’s going to be a couple spoilerscoming up. Kind of necessary if we’re going to talk about how things end for a character in a story. They’re for pretty big things I’m sure most everyone already knows the ending of, but there’s the warning just in case. If you’re way behind in your required reading or viewing, you may want to stop here.

Also, I’m using hero in the gender-blind sense. If it makes you feel better, feel free to swap in heroine or protagonist. I’m not against any of these terms or the characters they attach to, I’m just using hero because it’s short, and quick and I’m trying to stay focused on this instead of everything going on in the world. So for this post, I’m just talking about the hero.

And the hero wins.

Pretty much always.

Now, there’s a belief in some circles that having the hero of the story fail and die somehow improves the story. That it’s more dramatic. It’s the belief that having something depressing and random happen to my hero is more “honest” because life is often depressing and random. I think this ties back to the frequently-waved buzzwords realism and art. Art imitates life, so if I’m imitating life, I must be making art. That’s just logic. Right?

As I’ve mentioned once or thrice before, this kind of ending sucks.  It sucks because we all inherently know the hero is supposed to win, since we identify with the hero. If the hero loses, it means we lost. We’re losers, identifying with another loser. 

Believe it or not, this sort of statement doesn’t go over well with most people. I mean (as we’re currently seeing in the real world) people have a lot of trouble dealing with it when a character they’ve invested so much of themselves in doesn’t win.

Now, before people start scribbling down below (for any reason, although I’m sure at least one person already has), let me finish. 

I’m not saying every book has to end with happy smiles and people rolling around on piles of money in their new twelve-bedroom mansion.  My hero doesn’t need to defeat the cyborg werewolves, save the world, and fly off into the sunset with nymphomaniac heiress Margot Robbie in her private jet.

Truth is, the hero doesn’t necessarily need to enjoy winning. I just said they need to win. They may be damaged physically, emotionally, or both. In fact, if my hero ends up wounded or broken after all they’ve done, it just makes us identify with them a little more, doesn’t it?  

When they win like this, we often call it a pyrrhic victory. Maybe our hero solves the murder mystery, but loses their best friends in the process. She got revenge, but her lover’s still dead and now she’s a wanted criminal herself. He won the contest, but now his family’s humiliated and wants nothing to do with him. The team tried to save all the hostages but only half of them got out alive. As I mentioned above, victory isn’t an all-or-nothing thing, and my hero can still have a pile of losses even though they’ve succeeded in their main goals. A partial win is still a win.

Hell, the hero doesn’t even need to survive the storyin order to win.  There are plenty of characters in books and film who didn’t live to enjoy their victories. At the end of Rogue One (here’s that spoiler alert) our two surviving heroes are literally incinerated in the blast from the Death Star’s test firing. And note I say surviving heroes. The rest of their team has already suffered a series of brutal and violent ends. Nobody gets out of that movie. Same with Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame, cooked from the inside with a single snap of his fingers. 

And yet, in both of these examples, the heroes win.  No question about it.  Anyone who’s seen these stories will tell you the good guys won and the bad guys lost.

A key thing here is my character’s motive. What are they trying to do? Keep in mind, their stated goals and their actual goals might not always be the same. Phoebe may say she wants to date the head cheerleader, but what she’s really looking for is romantic love and companionship. Wakko may say he wants revenge, but what he really wants is justice. So they may fail at that obvious, stated goal (dating the cheerleader) or even a broader, more universal goal (keeping their left leg attached), but still succeed with their actual, motivating goal.

Now, I want to mention one other thing, because my friend Stephen Blackmoorebrought it up when I mentioned this theory of winning at the Writers Coffeehouse once. There are some stories (a lot in the noir genre, for example) where the hero doesn’t win. In fact, in some cases they fail completely, on all levels, and end up much worse off than they began. This can absolutely happen in stories. Great stories, some of which get a lot of praise and awards.

But…

I think if we named some stories where the hero fails in this complete way, we’d probably realize… they’re not all that well-known. And they’re probably read even less. Again, not saying they’re bad, but it is a much smaller niche of potential readers who’ll enjoy a story where the hero, well, doesn’t really accomplish anything. Even if it’s beautifully written. So there’s nothing wrong if those are the stories I want to write, but I should have my eyes open about how wide an appeal they’re going to have.

Y’see, Timmy… we encounter enough failure and losing in real life that most folks aren’t going to also enjoy it as entertainment. We want to see victories and success and heroic sacrifice because these are the things we dream of in our own lives, and we relate to those people because they’re the kind of people we wish we could be. Even if just for a little while.

So if I’m my plot ends with a massive failure or my hero dies for no reason… maybe it’s worth rethinking that.

Especially if I want to win.

Next time, I’d like to talk about Flashdance.

Until then, go write.

November 19, 2020 / 1 Comment

Shouldn’t Throw Stones

There’s an aphorism about writing I heard a while back—“get your character up a tree and throw rocks at them.” It’s one of those fun, quick statements with a lot of truth behind it. A complex idea boiled down to something simple.

There’s another one, part of Pixar’s rules of storytelling. “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.”  Because we’ve all seen that, right? The character who randomly finds the exact thing they need just when they need it.

Put these two together and my character’s picked the worst tree to climb up. Because it turns out that’s the rock-throwing tree! Since our town was founded, people have always thrown rocks up at that thing. The local little league uses that specific tree for pitching practice. Young couples throw rocks at that tree to see if they’ll live happily ever after. And they say if you throw rocks at it under a new moon, you can speak to a lost love one final time.

Okay, maybe going a bit overboard there. It’s kind of silly to believe this one tree has so many legends and habits and traditions of rock-throwing associated with it, right? Especially because some of them, you’ve got to wonder… why? How the heck did this become a thing? Why would all these people one day choose to throw rocks at this tree?

Which is what I wanted to talk about.

We’ve talked about the need for conflict before. If there’s no conflict—or an utterly minor, negligible conflict—I can’t have much of a plot. And without a plot, my characters are just kinda standing around without any. So this idea of throwing stones—of putting lots of obstacles between my character and their goal—is a solid one. We want our characters to have something to do, and we don’t want it to be easy for them to do it.

BUT…

Kind of like with the rock-throwing tree, we need to feel like there’s a reason behind this. If our character was stuck up in a tree and people just happened to randomly decide “hey, let’s throw rocks at that!”… we’d probably call foul. It’s just not terribly believable.

Okay, it might be believable once. Our minds will give a little leeway (especially in fiction) for a single bizarre coincidence. To quote the esteemed philosopher Elim Garak, however… I believe in coincidence. Coincidences happen every day. But I don’t trust  coincidences.

If I’m going to have a lot of rocks thrown at my character, I need some solid, in-story reason why they’re being thrown. Because after my characters lose their keys or forget the password or drop the flash drive or run into a third mugger… well, it starts to look less like coincidence and more like weak writing.

Because even coincidences have a reason behind them. Why this person showed up early. Why that battery isn’t charged. Why Dot forgot to bring the incredibly important goober that this entire mission hinges on.

Even when it’s less coincidence and more an active thing—if it’s the same mugger chasing my protagonist across the city and popping up again and again—I have to ask why. Why is Phoebe so obsessed with mugging Yakko? Why does she keep doing this? Or how does she keep ending up just where he is again and again and again. or why does Yakko keep ending up in places where he’s going to get mugged when it just happened to him the other day.

Get your character up that tree and throw stones at them. Throw boulders at them. And handfuls of loose gravel. But know, within the story, why they’re all getting thrown. Is there a real reason for it?

Or is the only person the reader sees throwing stones… me?

In other news, in case you missed it, the A2Q now has a table of contents, so you can find all of it quick and easy. Also, with everything going on in the world I made my usual Black Friday offer a little early this year, so if you’re someone who could use it, please get in touch with me.

Next time here on the ranty blog…

Holy crap, it’s Thanksgiving. How is this year moving so slow and so fast at the same time? The barriers have been shattered! All time is existing at once!

Seriously, though, unless someone’s got a specific, pressing question I’ll probably take the day off and maybe throw some Cyber-Monday gift ideas at you. And next time I’ll talk about binding agreements…

Until then, go write.

And throw some stones.

October 29, 2020

All Hallow’s Idiot

Halloween is so weird this year. One, because we’re all just exhausted from a year of isolation and stress and way too much death. I really hope none of that death has touched you and yours, but we’re kinda at the point where odds are it probably has. And if that’s the case, I’m so very sorry.

The other reason it’s weird is because we all understand it’s pretty much not happening. Trick or treating’s risky. Partying’s right out unless you’re an idiot.

Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about.

There’s a certain type of character who shows up a lot in horror, and for lack of a better term, we’ll call them the Idiot. They’re the one who simply refuses to believe zombies are real, even when three people have been killed. They’re convinced the aliens are benevolent and this is just a communications problem that can be worked out. Or maybe they’re convinced *cough*cough* the deadly virus is nothing to worry about. Probably one of the most famous Idiots is Mayor Vaughn from Jaws. On the off chance you haven’t seen the movie—and seriously, what the hell is wrong with you if that’s the case—when a great white shark appears off the coast of his small New England resort town, Vaughn ignores all the warnings he gets from the local police chief and a visiting scientist, refusing to close the beaches.

As you may have heard, this does not work out all that great for him. Or some of his constituents.

It’s worth pointing out most of the time the Idiot isn’t actually ignorant. They’re making a deliberate decision to ignore all this evidence they’ve been given. Maybe it’s because it goes against too many things they believe. Maybe their motivation’s more financial. Maybe it’s about power. But it’s almost always a decision made for personal reasons, not because of lack of actual information.

There’s a reason for that, and it’s one of the reasons these characters sometimes fumble. If someone comes running up to me and says there’s a zombie horde around the corner, I’m going to assume they’re either under the influence or maybe a bit unbalanced. Because zombies don’t exist. Me thinking they don’t exist is completely rational. If a storyteller tries to paint someone like me, in a real-world setting, as the Idiot… it’s not going to work that great.

But…

If there’ve been reports of zombie attacks for weeks, and I saw a zombie take down a guy in the Target parking lot two days ago, and now someone runs up and says there’s a zombie horde around the corner… Okay, now I’m in a bit of denial if I mock them. Because I’ve seen evidence of this already. Lots of evidence.

When an Idiot character doesn’t work, I think a lot of times it’s because of where they’re appearing in the story. There’s only a small window where this character really shines. Too soon in the chain of events, and—as I mentioned above—it makes sense I’m not going to believe in zombies. So being the Idiot early on doesn’t work. 

On the flipside,  if we’re two years into the zombie post-apocalypse, it’s kind of tough for readers to believe someone could still be in denial. Heck, how could they have survived this long? There’s a point where we’ve moved past “denial” and we need to be asking about head trauma and medications.

Y’see, Timmy, the Idiot only really works in that one sweet spot of the greater, overall story. After things could be rationally excused or ignored, but before things are, y’know, in flames. If I try to have this character outside that range, it’s going to be really tough to make it work.

Also worth noting the Idiot tends to be an authority figure. Not always, but I’d guess it’s more often than not. Police chief, military general, senior scientist, politician—these are all common Idiots (no pun intended). From a narrative point of view, this gives their decisions (or lack of decisions) more weight. A waiter deciding he’s going to ignore the CDC zombie guidelines when he makes decisions doesn’t have as much impact as, say, a governor or a senator who thinks they can be ignored.

Now, granted, there are times I’ll have a character in my story who’s just… an idiot (garden-variety, small “i”). There’s always going to be that person who firmly believes zombie vision is based on movement, who crouches down to pat the alien space cobra, or who thinks wearing a protective mask is more likely to get them sick than not wearing one. That’s just kind of the way people are in any society that’s taken off some Darwinian pressure. Some folks are just stupid and they do stupid things.

And while having this kind of annoying character can serve a purpose in the story, we shouldn’t get them confused with that deliberate, capital-letter type. An Idiot can stick around in my story for a while, but an actual idiot… well, readers generally don’t have the patience for them. Not to point fingers, but think how fast most Vince Vaughn characters get annoying. We don’t have patience for idiot (small i) characters because the nature of the story asks us to identify with characters. And really, why would anyone want to identify with an idiot?

But the Idiot… we may not like or agree with their motivations, but we can understand them. Mayor Vaughn in Jaws knows there’s a shark out there. He also knows shutting down the beaches could ruin his small town and it’ll definitely ruin him come the next election. So… he makes a stupid decision. A similar thing happens in my own book, Dead Moon, with Luna City’s mayor, Lana.

Do you have an Idiot in your story? Do they exist in that sweet spot? Or are they at a point where their stubborn denial is just coming across as unbelievable?

Next time… look, you’re telling me too much. Please stop. I don’t want to hear this. TMI.

Until then, go write.

June 3, 2020 / 1 Comment

Getting the Message

This post ended up being a bit more timely than I expected.
I wanted to talk a bit about having a message in my work. I’ve touched on this recently when I was talking about theme during the A2Q. I think there’s a bit of a difference between having a message and a theme, and I felt it was worth going over that.
However, with recent events in mind, I want to be clear right up front I’m talking about having a message while writing fiction. Messages exist in the world. A lot of them are good, and a lot of them need to be shouted from the rooftops. Right now, here in the United States, we’re suffering from a lot of chaos because some folks thought ignoring some messages for years would make them go away… and those folks are the ones who really needed to hear them.
But while we’re talking about fiction….

As I’ve mentioned before, theme is the underlying threads that tie plot and story together. It’s connective tissue that helps my book become more unified and complete. As such, it tends to be a subtle thing.

Messages, on the other hand, tend to be thick and clumsy. They can’t be missed or misinterpreted. They’re heavy, beat- you-over-the-head things.  Most of them have never even heard of subtlety, let alone been in the same room with it.

A kinda common thing is people who decide to write a book or screenplay about a message. Not with a message, mind you, but about a message. There’s an important difference there. When I’m more interested in the message than the story, things fall out of balance pretty quick. 

Here’s a simple test.  If my story or script has a message in it, at what point did the message come into it?  Did it grow naturally from the idea for a certain character or scene?  Or did this story start with the message, and then get fleshed out with minor things like characters, plot, and dialogue? Is this about telling a story… or pushing an agenda?
Let me give you a few examples.
If you’re of a certain age, you may remember a couple books and movies about the evil threat that is Dungeons & Dragons. We’ve all seen so many tales of the horrors of alcoholism and drug addiction. I remember some college writing class stories about innocents being “absorbed” by the industrial military complex only to discover they now had oil for blood (get it? Get it?). Hell, back when I read for screenplay contests, I was once presented with a script about the ghosts of aborted children-who-might-have-been haunting a clinic worker until she leads a crusade against the mustache-twirling, thoroughly evil doctors who ran the clinic.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with my story having a message. Most of the best stories do, on one level or another. Problems arise, however, if I approach things from the wrong end, like some of the folks I just mentioned did. 
When a writer starts with the message, everything else tends to get slaved to that singular idea. Characters tend to have awkward or unbelievable motivations because the story isn’t about what these folks would naturally, organically do. All their decisions, actions, and reactions are bent to reinforce the message. So they often come across as puppets that all enforce the idea.
In one of the examples above, no matter what your personal views on religion or gaming are, does anyone seriously think Satan is trying to get to kids through D&D? How is that possibly going to sound believable? All the crap going on in the world right now, and the devil’s big plan to recruit souls is rolling dice? Or reading books about a kid wizard who’s an adequate student at best and really should’ve ended up with Luna Lovegood, as was clearly the original plan.
But that’s besides the point.
Also, when the message dominates my writing, dialogue suffers. Characters spout out a lot of emphatic monologues, and they sound… forced. Insincere. They’re all just serving as a mouthpiece for my views and ideas—strictly for or against with no middle ground. This makes their words become stiff and on the nose. My characters can’t be there just to parrot my viewpoints on different matters. They need to have agencyor they’re going to come across as fake.
In some ways, we’ve all encountered this under the name of marketing. And while there are some really fantastic, sincere marketers out there, there are a lot of folks who are just… selling something. And they’re not doing it well.

We’ve all dealt with that, right? That godawful social media account that wants you to be safe at home but more importantly be safe at home eating Fauxritos, now available in sixteen flavors and four textures. Or that person who inserts themselves into every conversation or thread to tell you this is a heartbreaking and important moment in history, and it’s a lot like a moment in their book, which is available right now on Amazon for a sale price of just $3.99…

Y’see, Timmy, my story can have a message, but it can’t be about the message. That’s just a sales pitch. The message needs to serve the story, not the other way around. The story needs to be something my audience can believe in, with characters they can also believe in. We can all feel the insincerity radiating from those message-based books and movies, and it makes our skin crawl. Even if it’s a message we agree with.
And I don’t know about you, but that’s definitely not the message I want my writing to send.

Next time…

Seriously, I have no idea right now if there’ll be a next time. The country’s in a rapid downward spiral. At this rate, I could see everything that spreads subversive messages shut down this time next week. And I went and made messagea keyword for this.

It should hopefully go without saying—it shouldn’t need saying… Black Lives Matter.

Please be safe. Wear your masks. Take care of yourselves out there.
Go write.

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