Category: the end

            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.

            Okay, believe it or not, I’m actually somewhat ahead on ranty blog posts right now.  Three weeks ahead.  But I want to put it out there again that suggestions and requests are always welcome.  Or just general comments. 

            Without them I’ll just keep blabbing away about whatever comes to mind.

            For example…

             A few weeks back I blabbed on about art, especially the tendency in art stories to make characters as miserable as possible.  That idea bounced around in my head for a while.  The other day it hit another idea, and once they were next to each other I knew how to explain this.

            When we’re starting out as people, and as writers, we tend to look at things in very black and white terms.  Something is positive, or it’s negative.  Good or bad.  That’s it.  The idea of something being mostly good, despite having some bad in it, doesn’t tend to cross the mind as a first choice.  Or that a villain could be anything less than 100% evil.  White hats and black capes, right?

            I can be honest.  I used to do this a lot.  I think most writers do. It’s an experience thing.  None of us ever think we’re doing it—we’re all wise and worldly, after all—but the truth is it’s just a stage the majority of us go through as we’re learning to tell stories.

            If I had to make a guess, I think this is why a lot of these artistic stories tend to be so negative, especially the ones by beginning writers.  The only visible choices are all positive or all negative, and if they were all positive there’d be nothing for anyone to talk about. Soooo…

            The characters in these stories just have awful, pathetic lives.  They have bad jobs for low pay where they’re unappreciated and have horrible bosses.  They hang out with boring friends and have bad relationships and unenthusiastic, unfulfilling sex with barely-adequate partners.

            Sound familiar?

            While this can work on a very simple level, it’s just not a great representation of the real world.  Yes, the world is a messy place, full of compromises and mistakes and a lot of people trying to do the best they can, usually under less than ideal circumstances.  Bad things do happen to good people far too often, and some folks just never seem to get a break.

            However…
            There can be a lot of bad, yeah, but there’s also a lot of good.  Friends and family who help out.  Random sympathetic strangers.  Even just sheer luck. Sometimes—maybe just once or twice in our lives—we stumbled across just what we need at the exact moment we need it.

            The simple truth is, life is a mix.  It’s very rarely all good or all bad.  And that holds in fiction, too.  A good story is rarely going to be all of one or the other.  My characters need to succeed (we don’t want to be following losers), but success doesn’t always mean getting the sexy love interest, finding the treasure, or triumphantly winning the battle without physical or mental scars.

            Great example—we’ve all heard the story about the day Oprah gave everyone in her audience a luxury car, right?  Fantastic!  Nothing but positive there, right?

            Except…

            In the weeks to come, many of these people were begging her to take the cars back.  Seriously.  Did you know you have to pay taxes on big prizes like that?  What do you think the tax is on a $60,000 luxury car?  And do you want to guess at the minimum insurance payments?  The attempt to make all these lives better actually made many of them worse.

            You’ve probably heard similar stories about lottery winners.  At first they’re thrilled to win all that money—who wouldn’t be?  But then you hear stories about how people start to look at them differently and act differently. They’re no longer Yakko from work—they’re Yakko the multi-millionaire. And every time they don’t pick up the tab or don’t chip in or don’t offer to help, the looks change a little more.  Seriously, check it out—a huge number of lottery winners say it ruined their lives.
         Remember that classic story “The Monkey’s Paw,” where no matter what you wish for there’s always a negative twist to it?  Ursula K. LeGuin did the same thing in The Lathe of Heaven, about a man whose dreams shape reality.  And if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you may remember the Game of Rassilon, where those who win shall lose, and those who lose shall win.

            Alas, even with all these examples, it’s not always easy to see this.  Definitely not easy to write it.  Multi-layered success is a challenging thing, and—as I mentioned above—it takes a degree of experienceto pull it off.

            Simple experiment. Take your favorite book or movie.  Odds are it’s got a happy ending, right?  At least a mildly-positive one?

            Now—find the bad things.  What did it cost the protagonist to get to that happy ending?  Ruined relationships?  Compromised morals?  Lost job?  Property damage?  Bodily damage?  Maybe even a death or three?  I’m willing to bet there was a price.  Probably even a big one.

            Winning rarely comes without some losses.  Losing isn’t always the end of the world.  And my stories should reflect this.

            Next time… it’s Halloween.  Time to sit around the campfire and tell… well, some kind of scary story.  We’ll figure out what.

            Until then, go write.

            Many thanks for your patience. The past week has been an amazing ride for me, traveling up and down the west coast, meeting a few hundred people, and signing a few hundred books.  And losing a few hundred strands of hair…

            Also, if you took part in the pre-order promo for The Fold, word on the web is that galley copies are starting to land.  Hopefully you got one and can now use it as the teaching example it was always intended to be.

            But enough about me and my book.  Let’s talk about you and your book…

            A few weeks back I opened the floor for suggestions (it’s always open, but I just pointed out all the space on the dancefloor) and a good double-handful of ideas came in.  This week’s little rant comes from one of them.  And it’s a good topic I wish I’d thought of before.

            The question was about endings.  More specifically, chapter endings.  How do I find the right moment to end a chapter without it feeling either dragged out or cut off in mid thought?

            Clive Cussler (author of Raise the Titanic and many, many others) commented years back that chapters should be like potato chips.  Each one should be easy to digest and leave you wanting another one.  That was a great rule that stuck with me early on, and I’ve tried very hard to follow it ever since.

            So, here are a half dozen places in a story  I’d usually pick to end a chapter on.

A question—These moments make great chapter endings.  Sometimes the question’s asked out loud, sometimes it’s implied.  When a what/how/why moment comes up in my story, it’s going to make people want to turn the page in the hopes of learning the answer.  So that’s a great place to end a chapter.

            Keep in mind, though, this only works if there’s a real question and the reader doesn’t know the answer.  Whether or not the characters know is irrelevant (I’m the writer, I can make them go to the next chapter with very little effort).  If this question is already answered or the answer is painfully obvious, it’s not a great place to end.  If I’m writing the novelization of Jurassic World. “Wait, there are dinosaurs on this island?” isn’t a great stopping point.

A big reveal—The flipside of the above.  Getting a long-sought answer can be powerful, especially if it’s going to affect what happens next in my story.  Even if it’s not an answer, revealing a solid, key bit on information can give a moment a lot of weight and make it a great place to pause.  When I tell you “the dinosaurs have gotten loose,” that’s a big moment that’s going to change everything from here on in.

            Again, though, this one will only work for me if it’s an actual reveal.  Vague responses and fuzzy reasoning don’t make for good answers, in real life or in a novel.  Neither do answers we already know.  If I try to dramatically reveal that California is on the west coast of the U.S., that’s not going to do much for anyone.

A big twist—Similar to the reveal but not the same.  I’ve talked about the difference between mysteries and twists a few times in the past, so I won’t go into that again here.  A twist is a fantastic moment for me to end a chapter because it’s very nature means everything’s going to change.  My readers will go to the next chapter just to see the fallout from a good twist.

            I need to be very clear, though, on what a twist is and how it works in my story.  If I fumble it, either with my reveal or what I’m revealing, it’s not going to have any weight or ramifications. Which means my readers have no reason to turn the page. 

           

A big setback—Any story’s going to have its ups and downs. When my character gets his or her feet kicked out from under them, deliberately or accidentally, the reader wants to know how that character’s going to recover.  Are they going to stay down?  Fight back?  Come at

            The catch for this one (there’s a lot of catches on these, have you noticed?) is that I need to have either a good solid character or a really compelling plot for this to work.  If my reader doesn’t care about the stakes—either internal or external—they’re not going to care when my characters fail.

A big leap forward—The flipside to the setback.  When my characters find the hidden button, manage to make it past the security system, or get the power running to the velociraptor fences again, this is an achievement.  We can all pause for breath, and that’s a good time to roll things over into the next chapter.  There’s a natural break there, and I should take advantage of that existing rhythm.

            Again, though…I need strong characters or plot for this to work.  I also need to be aware of what’s going to be seen as a leap forward.  Sharpening a pencil or avoiding a sleeping guard are not big accomplishments, so my readers won’t feel that need to pause for a breath.

A cliffhanger—The classic.  I just stop right in the middle of things, right as the action is kicking into high gear.  My antagonist pulls the trigger, the T-Rex gets me cornered in the museum, or the zombies spin around when I accidentally step on a branch.  These are moments when the reader mustknow what happens next.  And if the next chapter is there, the reader will go to it.

            The catch here is that the reader needs to care about my characters.  If not, there’s no tension when I put said character into that dangerous spot.  It’s like me telling you someone’s in danger.  You care in a sort of abstract way, but how often are you going to ask a follow-up question?

            So, there’s six solid ways to end a chapter.  Each one’s got a slightly different flavor and works better in different situations.

            However, going over this list, there’s sort of a glaring issue, isn’t there?  What if my story doesn’t have any of these things?  What am I supposed to do if I’m a hundred or so pages in and I haven’t had a big setback, or a reveal, or asked any questions?

            Well, my first thought would be… why don’t I have any of these things?

            A while back I did a big block of posts about structure.  As I mentioned above, every story’s going to have ups and downs.  There will be unanswered questions, revealed answers, challenges, and successes.  It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a torrid period romance, a sci-fi space epic, or an apocalyptic horror novel.  Every story is going to have these moments. They’ll take different forms, but they will always be there.

            Y’see Timmy, if those moments aren’t there… well, my story has bigger issues than figuring out where chapter breaks should be.  In fact, this probably is part of the reason I can’t figure out where chapter breaks should go.  Without these highs and lows, my story’s just going to be a drab, monotone mess.  And it’s impossible to place breaks in something like that because it’s all the same.  There aren’t any landmarks that stand out.

            So I need to make sure I have something that can be broken up. And then I can break it up.

            Next time, I might offer a few quick tips on drafting.

            Until then, go write.

            Never say never…

            I wanted to blather on about quitting for a couple of minutes.  There comes a point in many endeavors when you realize you’re not getting ahead.  That all the time, effort, and enthusiasm that’s been expended on this project just isn’t enough. For one reason or another, I didn’t make the cut.  The team picked that skinny kid with the limp and the glasses over me.

            At which point, I need to make a choice.  Do I keep trying to get on this team? Do I continue throwing myself unto the breach?  Forging on despite all odds with the strength of my convictions?

            Or should I give up?

            Honestly?  After working at this writing thing on one level or another for a good chunk of my life…

            I think it’s time to quit.

            If I’ve spent the past decade trying to get any publisher in the world to just look at one of my book manuscripts, and they’re not interested… that’s a sign.  If I’ve spent thousands of dollars on screenwriting classes and books and contests over the past ten or twelve years, but I still don’t even have a toe in the door…I should consider saving my money this year.  When I submit a story to a hundred magazines, journals, and anthologies and get back a hundred rejections… I need to take that hint.

            I should quit.  Cut my losses.  Stop beating my head against the wall, demanding to be recognized, and move on.

            No, hold on.  Don’t leave yet.  Keep reading ‘till the end.

            What I’m getting at ties back to an idea I’ve talked about a few times here.  I need to be able to look at my own work honestly and objectively.  Knowing when to give up on a project is part of that.  After querying a hundred or so reps or editors and not getting a single nibble, I need to consider the fact the problem may not lay with them.  My writing may be perfect, it may be gold, it may be what everyone in America is dying for.  At the moment, though, for one reason or another, it’s not what those specific people—those, dare I say it, gatekeepers—are  looking for.  And, right or wrong,  they’re  the ones who make that decision. 

            Now… here’s that important part.

            I’m not saying I’m going to stop writing altogether.  This doesn’t mean I should never touch a keyboard again or that it’s time for me to forget the big leagues.  It’s just time to sit back and look at what I’ve done and how I’m doing things.  Maybe the problem is the characters.  Maybe it’s dialogue.  Perhaps even something as basic as an overwhelming number of typos.   Heck, it could just be my cover letter.  At the end of the day, something is holding me back, and that needs to stop happening.

            I’ve met people who wrote one novel way back in college and have spent the past twenty years sending it to agent after agent, publisher after publisher.  They haven’t changed a single word since they first set it down on paper.  They haven’t written anything else since (“Why should I write something else nobody’s going to pay me for?”).  They’ve just got that one novel going out again and again and again…

            Same thing in Hollywood.  People write a screenplay over a long weekend, never polish or revise it, but try to use it as a calling card for years.  I know of a guy on the contest circuits who pushed the same script for almost a decade.  He hasn’t done anything else in the meantime, just sent that same script to contest after contest, waiting for fame and fortune as if winning was a lottery and he had to keep playing his lucky numbers.

            Knowing when to quit and move on isn’t a weakness. It’s not a flaw in my approach.  It’s a strength.  It’s the only way I can grow and learn new things, because I won’t get any better if I keep rewriting the same manuscript again and again for decades.  Sometimes you just have to give up on something. 

            It took me almost eleven years to finish my first solid novel, The Suffering Map.  Not an idea, not a work in progress, not something I’ve been poking at.  A complete, polished book manuscript, first page to last page.  Beginning, middle,and end.  Yeah, that’s a long time, but close to a decade of that was the film industry convincing me to go work on screenplays instead.  It probably only took about two years of actual work.

            So, eleven years of on-again-off-again work, and then the querying.  Letter after letter, rejection after rejection.  Go through it again, create a new draft, and then start the letters again.  Some folks asked to see it (one or two of them were powerful, well-placed folks).  Many letters and emails were traded back and forth. 

            In the end, though, after almost a dozen very major revisions, all of them passed on it.  And then I realized, this was done. I’d been working on that book on and off since graduating from college.  It was time to expand my horizons and write something else. 

            And that something was an early draft of a book about a government teleportation project gone wrong.  Which I followed up with a book about superheroes fighting zombies.  And then a few things since then.

            If I’d stayed focused for years on that novel no one wanted to see, though, I wouldn’t’ve done any of it.  I’d still be back there at square one.  And my list of published credits wouldn’t be the size it is now.

            I’m not saying I’ll never go back to The Suffering Map.  Many writers will tell you if your screenplay or novel gets rejected, put it in the drawer and wait a few years.  I’m also not saying it will sell in a heartbeat if I decide to try again in five years.  For now, though, I’ve given up on it. 

            So the next time you’re frustrated by months and months of trying to find a home for your work… stop and really think about it.  Maybe it’s time to move on and try something different.  Something new.

            Because that next thing could be the big thing.

            Next time might be a bit delayed.  Sorry. But when it happens, let’s flip this around.

            Until then… go write.