Category: relevance

            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.

            December.  How the hell is it December already?

           Some of you may remember way back at the dawn of the ranty blog, when this site had a completely different format.  A bit more block o’text.  Then it updated and we could have fancy things like indents.  Every now and then I’ll find myself referring back to something from the before-time, and I take that as a good sign this is a topic I could revisit

            And sometimes it’s very relevant.  These past few months, I’ve seen a lot of examples of storytellers who didn’t know that much about their characters (or didn’t express it).  And some others who knew way too much about said characters and decided to communicate it all.  Every single life-experience, thought, and item of clothing.
            Character sketches are one of those things that come up a lot when people talk about storytelling.  Novelists and screenwriters talk about them, but in a variety of ways.  Sometimes very indy films are even called character sketches.  So it’s understandable the term could cause confusion, especially when some folks talk about them as if they’re some vital, necessary thing.

            In a visual-artistic sense, a sketch usually isn’t a finished work.  It’s when I use a few quick lines and textures to suggest an image rather than forming a complete image.  It’s inherently incomplete, but also implies something more than itself.

            In a similar sense, a character sketch shouldn’t be an exhaustive list that covers every possible detail of this person’s existence.  It’s supposed to give me, the writer, a sense of the character I can refer back to as a guideline.  It’s notes about how they talk, how they move, what they like, and what they hate. 

            Like a fair number of the things I ramble on about her, a character sketch is going to be something that’s unique to each author.  Probably to each character, as well.  Some characters may need pages of exhaustive notes.  Others may only need a line or two.  And with a few, I may never need to write a single note because I have them perfectly in my mind.

            For example
            In the book I’m working on right now, I sketched out a short paragraph about most of the characters.  I knew Chase was still struggling in the year since he’d lost his family and just not sure what to do with his life—he’d lost his purpose.  I knew Murdoch’s trying to figure out if he could leave his family.  One of the key things I knew about Katangais that his real name’s Leslie, but he knew how much passengers got a kick out of calling him Katangabecause of the Indiana Jones reference.  And Anne…

            Well, Anne’s been in my head for almost seven years, itching to tell her story.  I didn’t need to write down a single word for her. 
            So, what is a character sketch?  It’s whatever works for you.  I’ve found one of the easiest ways to create one, though, is just to ask questions.  Not only does this help me get various answers about someone, it also generally leads to other questions about them that develop the character more.

            For example… let’s talk about Phoebe.

            Also, weird as it may sound after all the times I’ve used it here, this new book is the first time I’ve ever had a character named Phoebe.  And she isn’t remotely what you’d think of when you hear the name Phoebe.  She is… very different.

            So let’s talk about our characters.  I’m going to be answering for Phoebe, but you should pick one from something you’re working on right now.  I’m going to throw out a list of questions.  Answer as you see fit… 

Where did they grow up?

Do they get along with their family?
What was their first job?

Did they go to college? 
Did they live at college?

Did they finish college?

Republican or Democrat?
How many languages do they speak?
What languages?

What do they do for a living?

What do they want to be doing for a living?

Do they brush and floss regularly?

Do they have any hobbies or collections?
Are they religious?

Do they go to church?
Where do they live?

Where do they want to live?

How do they swear? Like a prude?  Like a sailor? 

How old were they when they had their first drink?

When they first had sex?
Do they smoke?

Have they ever done drugs?
Do they work out?

What kind of car do they drive?

What kind of car do they want to drive?

Do they have pets?
What did they name their pets?

            If I can answer even half of those questions, that’s a ton of useful information about this character and their background.  Plus, as you probably noticed, each answer implies other facets of their personality.  Knowing all of this is going to give me a much better insight into how they talk and react to the people and world around them and also how they’ll probably react when things change abruptly for them.

            Now, let me jump back to that analogy of artistic sketches and touch on another point.  There’s another art term you may have heard called negative space.  It’s when I define shapes by the areas around them rather than by the shapes themselves.  Think of the hole in a wall when a cartoon character runs through it.

            Sometimes that’s how some writers try to define their characters.  They’ll explain this character’s not like those foolish civilians or those dumb idiots or those freakin’ Hollywoodelites.  Thing is… this doesn’t actually tell me who anyone is.
            Y’see, Timmy, the problem with defining by negatives is that it isn’t actually defining something, it’s just eliminating one option.  If I tell you the shirt I’m wearing right now doesn’t have a Star Wars logo on it…  I mean, that’s accurate, yeah, but does it really tell you anything useful?  If I’m asking you to picture “a shirt without a Star Wars logo,” I’m pretty sure I could get a hundred different responses in the comments and almost guarantee none of them will be what I’m actually wearing.

            Okay, yeah, no way I’ll ever get a hundred responses here.

            I need to actually define my characters.  Who they are. What they think.  Vagueness can be used to great effect, but more often than not it just shows that I don’t know this stuff.  Phoebe (to fall back on my latest creation) is just going to be a formless, unrelatable thing that does whatever the plot needs at the given moment

            And one last point, an idea I’ve mentioned once or thrice before.  Just because I come up with stuff for a character sketch doesn’t mean I need to use it in my work.  Oh, I’ll use all of it to help round out the characters and their history in my head, but just because I came up with a background element doesn’t mean I need to use it. 

            Y’see, Timmy (yep, a double Y’see Timmy—it’s Timmception), an all-too-common mistake is when people come up with all these elaborate backstories and then feel the need to squeeze every single detail of them into the actual manuscript.  A character sketch is for the writer, not the reader.  I know a ton of details about Murdoch and Anne’s past together, and a huge amount about Chase’s screw-ups… but a lot of this isn’t going to be relevant to my book.  And if it isn’t relevant in any way… well, I might want to  think thrice about making space for it.

            Maybe keep that in mind.
           Next time, I’d like to talk a bit about holiday movies and triangles.  And it might be a little early cause I’ve got a thing.

            Oh, and please don’t forget—if you’d like an autographed book, there’s one more week to order them through Dark Delicacies.  All details in that earlier holiday post.

            Until then, go write.

            Despite the title, you might like this little rant…

            We talked about characters for a while at the Writers Coffeehouse this past Sunday.  Mostly about my long-standing (but sometimes contentious)  three necessary character traits.  And I figured I’d already threatened all of you with a character post, so we could spin off in a slightly different direction here…
            I can’t have a story without characters, right?  Should be obvious.  Oh, sure, I’ve seen one or two clever pieces that are just elaborate settings with no actual people in them, but I’m going to say 999,999 times out of a million no characters means no plot, no story, no nothing.  They don’t need to be human.  They don’t even need to be alive.  But if my reader doesn’t have someone to focus, I’m going nowhere fast. 

            For all of us, the goal’s to create characters that seem alive on the page.  People a reader can identify with and picture in their mind.  Characters will make or break my writing, which means they deserve attention. 

            A mistake I see again and again and again, however, is writers who give their characters too much attention.  Their writing becomes all about character and not about anything else.  These characters never get off the page because… well, they get buried alive there.

            A couple of good rules-of-thumb.  As always, your mileage may vary, but these seem to be pretty solid and common, in my experience.

            I shouldn’t describe characters in exacting physical detail.  I’ve mentioned this before.  We, the audience, don’t need to know someone’s precise height, weight, waist, inseam, shoe size, cup size, hair color, eye color, or how much of what they shave and how often.  We really don’t need to be told the exact tie pattern he’s wearing, where her skirt hits her thigh, if he likes boxers or briefs, if she likes thongs over bikinis, how many fillings either of them have, the name of her first pet, the state his parents grew up in, how they both did on that third grade geography test, and precisely what they had at the restaurant last night for dinner–including condiments.

            I don’t need any of that in my writing.  I promise.  Because these sort of long descriptions bring things to a grinding halt.  The longer the description, the louder the squeal of brakes. And the harder the crash. 

            When I do this, I’m doing an infodump.  I’m throwing out a pile of information at a time the reader wants action and forward motion (which is—for the record—always).  It’s wonderful to know that, as Phoebe steps out into the street, everyone notices her D & G bag, Yves St.Laurent jacket,  eel-skin boots, platinum wedding band with matching engagement ring (not to mention the size of that rock—three carats, easy), the small St.Christopher’s medallion she wears outside her emerald-green satin blouse, her meticulous eyeliner, and her $300 hairdo that’s starting to sag, giving her one loose strand that hangs loose over her face in a kind of sexy way as she puffs and swipes at it with her free hand.

            You know what’s far, far more interesting than all of that, though?  Why’s Phoebe stepping into the street?  Is it a crosswalk?  Is she getting into a limo?  Throwing herself in front of a bus?  She’s been frozen there in mid-movement while the writer (in this case, me) prattles on about her clothes and hair.  Heck, after all that description, did you even remember she was outside?

            There’s another simple reason to not spend time on physical descriptions, whether I’m writing a novel or a screenplay.  Silly as it sounds… I don’t have much say in what this character looks like.  When we read, we all form our own mental images, and they’re usually pretty different from the ones written out.  An example I’ve mentioned before, from Dan Abnett’s excellent Ravenor books, is the  character of Kara Swole, who I always picture like my friend Penny from college.  Their descriptions don’t really match up (well, they’re both female gymnasts, but that’s about it) yet this is how I picture Kara as I read each chapter.  Something just clicked in my mind and that’s what she looks like.
            But my Kara probably doesn’t look like your Kara.  If you read the books, maybe you picture her more like Melissa Benoist.  Or Zazie Beetz.  Or that cashier at the grocery store you were kinda crushing on.

            So extensive, super-elaborate physical descriptions are probably going to be a waste of everyone’s time.  I should use broad strokes and only fill in details where I really need to.  Pick three or four good descriptive words for the character (not their clothes), and stick with them.  Their dialogue and actions will bring them to life and my readers will fill in the rest. 

            In the novel I’m finishing up right now, one of the main characters is a tall, dark skinned woman with frizzy hair who wears the same uniform/jumpsuit as everyone else.  You’ve got her in mind just off that, don’t you?  Without anything else.  Yeah, a hundred people are going to interpret that description a hundred different ways, but you’ve got a solid image in your head, yes?  Which means I’m now free to go talk about her new Caretaker job on the Moon and how it goes horribly wrong when that meteor hits out at Hades Cemetery and the dead start to rise and hey this is already more interesting than a long list of personal details, isn’t it?

            Now, as far as the mental/ emotional/ historical side of my character goes, if this stuff is important, of course it should be included.  If my romantic lead has lost everyone he’s ever cared about, if my adventurous heroine suffered from asthma as a child, or if a knowledge of rural New England history will be critical to resolving this mystery, then there’s a chance these things need to be in my writing.

            However, there’s a good rule of thumb for all of this stuff, too (so many thumbs).  Is it critical to what’s going on within these pages?   My audience is going to assume if I’m giving all this information, it’s because they need this information.   After my fourth or fifth exhaustive description of a given character’s childhood traumas, college love life, or medical history, my reader’s going to make the natural assumption none of this is going anywhere and start skimming.  First they’ll skim paragraphs, then pages, and then over the bookshelf or television listings to see what else could be filling this time…

            Now, there’s an argument to be made that any event in someone’s past affects their present and every single decision shapes a person’s life to some degree.  As a wise man once said, we are the sum of our memories.  Thus, anything I choose to include is relevant to the story on some level, right? 

            Well… sort of.  A point I’ve tried to hammer home many, many times before—this is not real life.  No one wants to read about a character’s personal or family history that doesn’t have any bearing on what they’re experiencing right now.

            Again, for example…

            When I was five years old I saw my dog, Flip, get hit by a car in Maine.  That same year I got stabbed in the eye with a pair of sewing scissors.  I got my heart horribly broken junior year of college, to the point that several friends thought I might kill myself.   A year after graduating from UMass, I decided to move to California on a whim, quit my job on the spot, and spent two weeks quietly terrified that I’d made the worst decision of my life.

            All formative event that still affects me to this day?  Absolutely. 

            Do they have anything to do with the tips, rules, and suggestions I post here? 

            Not really. 

            But they build character, right?  They all expand the vast tapestry of my life. They tell everyone here a little bit about me and make me more human.

            So what? 

            I’ve got an actual story, don’t I?   I don’t want to waste your time with stuff that has no bearing on the writing advice you’re here for.  If I want to focus on one thread in the tapestry of my life, I should choose one that shows them how my life relates to this.  

            I’ll tell you about how annoyed barely-a-teenager me was when a doctor casually told me that writing wasn’t “a real job.”  I can explain how thrilled high school-senior-me was when I got a personal letter from Tom DeFalco rejecting my Marvel Comics story but including some tips, a Marvel submission guide, and a full copy of one of his Thor scripts for reference.  I can give you the wonderful visual of me in a panicky, cold sweat sitting outside Ron Moore’s office, waiting to pitch a few Deep Space Nine stories I’d come up with.  And maybe I can break the rule of threeand finish it off with the story of financially-desperate megetting an offer to write some bonus material for Audible just when I reallyneeded the money.

            See?  That’s all relevant.  You’re reading that and saying “Wow, this guy’s been serious about writing for a while now, hasn’t he?”

            That’s the kind of stuff I need to put in my writing.  The relevant description and backstory.  The stuff that matters to the story I’m telling.

            And you’ve forgotten my dog’s name, haven’t you?  No, don’t worry about it.  He’ll always be important to me, but I understand why he’s not important to you. Especially in this context.  

            No, really, I do.

            Build fantastic characters.  But don’t build unnecessary stuff. Or, at least, don’t put it in your story.

            Next time… well, I’m on a deadline so you may just get something quick from me.  or maybe a guest post.  We’ll see.

            Until then… go write.

            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.