Category: real

December 21, 2017 / 3 Comments

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 Abnettand 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.
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December 15, 2017

Family Tree

            Ugh.  Completely missed last week.  So very sorry.  I was trying to get a pile of outlines done. 
            Yeah, I know.  Me doing outlines. The world really has turned upside down.
            So, a few weeks back and I asked about possible topics and I got one request that seemed… well, it could be very relevant.  I’ll know in a couple hours, but I won’t say anything.
            Most of us are related to someone.  It’s really rare for someone to have no relations. So rare that it’s usually a major issue—for someone to have no parents or grandparents, no siblings or cousins. It’s almost off-putting, isn’t it?
            Likewise, most of our characters are going to be related to someone. Because our characters are realistic, relatable people.  And again, if we’re introduced to a character with no family at all… it usually says something about them, doesn’t it?
            Over the past ten or fifteen years, maybe, it’s become a big thing to have notable relations. Everybody is someone’s daughter, the brother of that guy, or the second-cousin of her mother-in-law.  Historical figures, mythological figures, other fictional characters.  How often have we seen a character who’s descended from this line or heir to that empire?
            Now, there are some plusses to me doing this sort of thing.  The quickest one is that it’s an easy connection to previous stories and can save me some worldbuilding.  Just by telling you my next book is about King Arthur’s secret daughter, I’ve established a timeframe, the general world, some potential history,
            Plus—it can be a bit of fan service—which isn’t always a bad thing.  If you’re a comic book fan, you may be familiar with the Huntress.  In a simpler time, the Huntress was living proof that Batman and Catwoman hooked up (something we now just kind of take for granted).  So her parentage was very important to her character.
            Which is kind of the big point with this sort of thing.  If I’m going to bring up these relations… well, there should be a reason for it.  If I decide to bring up Wakko’s uncle and tell you he was the guy who invented lasers, yeah, it’s neat, but so what?  Likewise, if my peasant Dot is secretly the illegitimate daughter of the king, this better be a story about bloodlines and inheritance.  Because if it isn’t… well, why does it matter that she’s the illegitimate daughter? Why did I waste precious time and word count telling you this?
            I’m stressing this because there’s also a bit of a trap with this device, and I think the trap is what people tend to think of when they gripe about this sort of thing.
            Y’see, Timmy, sometimes this relationship to another person is all the character development someone gets.  Characters get defined by their relationships to other characters rather than by actual, active traits of their own.  Or the relationship’s a stopping point—once we know this, we don’t really need to know anything else.  They cease developing at that point because… hey, look who his mom is.  What else could you possibly need to know about him?
            I’ve seen this happen a lot.  If I had to guess, I’d say at least a third of the time when I’ve seen a big “relative reveal,” that’s pretty much it for character development.
            And I’d guess another, somewhat overlapping third of the time, the relation’s completely irrelevant to the story.
            That overlap’s a bad place to be.
            Just sayin’.
            So don’t be scared of giving your characters a family.  Even ancestors, if it comes to that.  Just make sure there’s a reason for it in the story you’re telling.
            Next time…
            Okay, I still feel bad about missing last week, so I’m going to try to make next week a twofer.  Tune in Tuesday and we’ll talk about getting feedback from your (former) friends and how to avoid being disowned when you give it.
            Until then… go write.
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August 31, 2017

Virtual Reality

            So, recovery is going nicely, for those who care.  My brain’s been working a lot better. I can actually eat food again (only went seventeen days without). It’s all sorts of fun.
            Also, today’s the last day to sign up for a free galley copy of Paradox Bound. Head over to the PRH website and do that.  Only takes a minute.
            Anyway, I haven’t prattled on about characters in a while, so I figure we’re due…
            I may have mentioned once or twice before that characters are key to a successful story.  Non-stop action with flat stereotypes can be diverting in a film for a little while, but in a book (and in a good movie) characters are my bedrock.  If a reader doesn’t have someone they like, someone they can relate to, a story can be dead in the water by page five.
            One of the best ways to deal with this is reality. Let’s be honest, we love characters who feel real, even when they’re Jedi or Hufflepuffs or Inhumans or Amazons. Their dialogue, their reactions, their approach to things.  The goal is to make our characters—and our stories—seem as real as possible.
            Now, there are some common ways we all try to do this when they’re starting out.  I say “try” because all three are based off a simple misunderstanding of why certain aspects of characters work.  Let’s go over what they are, the problems with each one, and how you can work around it.
            The first method is for me to describe these characters in amazing detail.  I’ll introduce you to Wakko and tell you his hair color, eye color, height, and weight.  Then I’ll give you descriptions of his hairstyle, body type, the shape of his face, all his tattoos (even the ones we can’t see).  There’s a list of his measurements and shoe size.  In the next few sentences we get the name of his aftershave, the personal grooming tools he uses, and the make of his watch (yeah, he still wears a watch).  I describe Wakko in such exacting detail there’s no way you can picture him any way except how I envisioned him. And once that picture’s firmly in mind, they’ll seem as real as anyone else you know.
            The second way is for me to give pages and pages of backstory on the character.  I’ll scribble out lengthy flashbacks to Wakko’s first day of high school, his first job, his first fight, the first time he was dumped.  Maybe he’ll randomly start talking to friends, family, or complete strangers about the last time he went to the gym, the last time he had sex (that cute woman from the bar, whatshername with the hair…), the day he finally started working at ConHugeCo International, or the day he realized all he really wanted was to tell stories through interpretive dance.  Heck, sometimes these revelations won’t even be a flashback or dialogue–they’ll just be straight text in the narrative.
            The third way people try to do this is the least common.  But it happens enough I feel the need to mention it…
            Real people have quirks.  We sometimes speak in odd ways, do nonsensical things, and go against our best interests.  We have blind spots.  Sometimes we even up and die in awful, unexpected ways (statistically, most people do at least once in their life).  It’s the way we’re wired.  We’ve all seen people do things like this.  We’ve all been the people doing these things. 
            The logic here is if the writer has the characters act illogically, they’re acting more real.  If Wakko’s a bundle of weird and quirky behaviors, then he has to be believable.  It’s almost like I’m  daring my readers—“Real people do this, so how can you  say Wakko doesn’t seem real when he’s doing it?”
            Heck, if Wakko randomly gets hit by a car in the last few pages, that’s so much like life it almost counts as art, doesn’t it…?
            Now…
            Let’s talk about why these methods usually don’t work.
            The  problem with the first method, using tons of details to describe my character, is that it breaks the flow of my story.  The story and plot come to a screeching halt while I have this big infodump.  I mean, if you look back up there, I bet you started skimming just while reading the list of potential descriptions of Wakko, didn’t you?  If a list of general examples can’t hold people’s attention, what’s going to happen when it’s a list of specifics two or three times as long?
            The other catch to this method is something I’ve mentioned before.  A lot of the time, readers form their own mental images of what a character looks like.  For example, if you look over the past few paragraphs you’ll see I haven’t actually described Wakko at all, but—even if you don’t get the reference—at this point you’ve probably got some mental image of him when I use his name, don’t you? 
            If you know what this character looks like with nodescription, then isn’t two pages of description… kinda excessive?
            In a similar vein—when we’re talking about the second method–I can add in a dozen pages of personal trivia and anecdotes and it’s still not going to make a character seem real.  More likely, the story’s going to suffer from the same expositional infodump I mentioned above, and it’s going to come to a crashing halt again.  The problem is relevance.  While there’s no question these past events shaped Wakko’s life and the person he is today, my readers are going to wonder what do they have to do with this story.  No matter how good a particular element might be, if it doesn’t relate to the tale I’m telling it’s just noise.
            The problem with the third method, quirkiness and randomness, is that fiction’s held to a much higher standard than real life.  People do illogical, unbelievable things all the time in real life… but life isn’t scripted.  When I pick up a book, I know there’s a writer behind it.  There shouldn’t be any real randomness, because every word on the page was deliberately chosen.  And that means any apparent randomness has to be serving an actual purpose in the story.  Because if it’s not, well… why is it there?
            So, with all that being said… is there any way to make these three methods work? I mean, yeah, there’s always an exception to everything, but are these methods overall useless or what?
            The big trick to all of these, as I mentioned above, is relevance.  Like adjectives or adverbs, if character elements aren’t serving a purpose they shouldn’t be there.  Strip away all the noise and clutter and just give the reader what they need.
            For example…
            Let me tell you a quick little story…
            Wakko lives in a one room, roach-infested apartment, always buys groceries at the 99 Cent store, and almost all of his wardrobe is meticulously chosen from the racks of the Salvation Army.  He always has the latest iPhone, though, and an immaculate beard.
            And I’ve just told you a lot about him, haven’t I?  More than just the words on the page, too.  You’ve got a sense of who Wakko is and where his priorities are.  Maybe even a mental image of him.  All in just three lines.
            See, I don’t need a lot of details, just the rightdetails.  Did I need to tell you about Wakko’s thigh tattoo or how tall he is for that little character sketch to work?  I just need to pick the right details to create the image and imply the person I wanted you to see.
            Even the randomness issue is easy to deal with when you look at it in this light.  It’s okay for seemingly random things to happen in my story.  Key word—seemingly.  At the end of the day, I’m god in this world, and these events are happening for a reason which benefits my story. 
            My new book, Paradox Bound, recently got a review from Publishers Weekly (a starred review, he said with glee), and one of the thing they specifically mentioned was how great it was that so many seemingly early, minor things I’d added for flavor came around to be important plot points.  They all seem like random details and events at first, but each one ends up driving the plot and character development in a certain way and in a specific direction. 
            That’s the kind of “randomness” we want in our stories—the kind that serves our purpose as writers.  In the same way, we don’t want our characters to be “real,” but to make them virtually real.
            So make your characters real.  But really make them real
            Next time… well, I’ve chosen something interesting (and a bit frustrating) for next time
            Until then, go write.
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March 17, 2016 / 5 Comments

All Purpose

            I’m sorry this is a bit late.  Well, four  weeks late.  That’s not a bit, that’s crazy-late.  I’m in the final weeks for this manuscript and I’m really trying to make it fantastic.  That’s pretty much been my main focus the past month or so, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
            Hey, speaking of which…
            One of the most common things that makes a character unbelievable is when they have no purpose for their actions.  We’ve all seen it.  The guy who decides to pick a fight over something petty in the middle of a crisis.  The person in charge who continues to ignore someone with key information.  The spouse who’s just a jerk.  The ninja who attacks for no reason.
            Nothing knocks a reader out of a story faster than people just randomly doing stuff.  There’s a simple reason for this.  In the real world, when people do things for no reason, they’re usually considered to be insane.  Not an interesting insane, either, but the “lame motivational excuse” insane.  If I run into a  burning house to save a baby or a dog, I’m going to be considered a hero whether I make it out or not.  If I run into the flaming house just because it’s there, I’m going to be considered an idiot.

           People need a reason to do things.  Real reasons.  Reasons that jibe with their background and their personality and with basic rules of behavior.  That’s why you’ve heard of people motivating horses with a carrot on a stick but not with a t-bone steak on a stick—horses like veggies, not meat.  In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s completely understandable that Belloq wants to open the Ark before taking it to Germany, and believable that the Nazi officers would feel uncomfortable about performing a “Jewish ceremony.”  This fits with Belloq’s smarmy background and it makes sense—historically, even—that the officers would be a bit by disturbed by what needs to be done to open the Ark.

            So here’s a challenge for you—try to picture that scene reversed.  Imagine if, at that point in the film, the Nazi colonel was insistent on performing the ceremony and Belloq said “no, no, I really think we should just take it to der Fuhrer and let him deal with it…”  It wouldn’t make any sense, would it?
            In the big scheme of things, most people’s motivations tend to be simple.  If you’ve ever seen a procedural show, they often talk about the common motives for murder.  Love, money, revenge—they’re very basic ideas.  The unspoken motive for the investigators on these shows is justice, or perhaps closure.  In Raiders, Belloq is looking for glory and maybe a bit of power (I think it’s safe to say he was secretly hoping he’d get all the benefits of that “hotline to God”).  Indy wants to stop the Nazis and save the Ark for a museum.  The Nazis want to obey the orders from their commander.
            In the book I’m working on right now, a major motive for the main character is infatuation.  It’s why he takes the actions he does that kick off the story.  But not very far in, fear and survival become big motivators for him.  His actions might not always be rational, mind you, but his actions fit who he is and what he thinks he can accomplish.
            Now, sometimes the story needs people to act a certain way.  It’s been plotted out and the characters need to do this now so that can happen later.  What some writers don’t seem to get is that this need doesn’t make a character’s actions more believable or forgivable.
            The reader has to be able to relate to my character’s purpose for doing things.  While characters might have very true and proper motivations within the context of their tale, those motivations still need to be interpreted by the chosen audience.  This is especially important for stories set in different cultures (Japan, for example, or India under the caste system) or perhaps in entirely fictitious ones (Barsoom, Diagon Alley, or the grim darkness of the future).  It’s common to hit this wall when the writer knows their chosen setting too well, or maybe had to build it from the ground up.  To me, it’s completely clear and understandable why a Thark warrior would act this way—why waste time going over it, right?  To you, though… this may not be so clear.
            Let me toss out one other thought about motivations.  Up top I gave a list of situations that many of us have probably dealt with.  The random aggressive person.  The jerk spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend.  The willfully ignorant boss.   These people really exist.  Hell, I had that higher-up boss for two years at one point.
            But…
            As I’ve said here many times, reality is not a story point.  It’s not part of a character sketch, either.  Once I put that boss into a story, my readers are going to expect there’s a purpose to him being there.  That there’s an actual reason for his behavior.  And if there isn’t… that’s on me as the writer.
            Look at the characters in your story.  Follow them for a few pages.  Can you explain their actions with one or two simple words?  Are they words most people will know?  Do these words relate to the character and not my outline?
            Then you’ve probably got some very driven characters.
            I’m not sure I’ll be able to post anything next week because I’m a “special guest” at WonderCon here in Los Angeles.  And I’ll be in the last two weeks before this new book is due.
            Or maybe I’ll just stop making excuses and write something.
            Until then… well, hopefully you feel motivated to go write.
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