86 Things I've Said on Twitter, Part 3

This is Part 3 in a continuing series of things I said on Twitter last week. Part 2 is found here. Today, there are ten items. Rock on.


I'm an editor. My job is to help you get your story/creation/thing into the best shape it can be. Not a "gatekeeper", unless YOU say so.

"Gatekeeper" as a buzzword cropped up a few years ago (at least as far as I can tell), to explain that in traditional publishing models you have to get your work past some literary Cerberus before your creation can hang out in the word-Underworld.

And this idea set up this them-vs-us sort of barrier, that whoever was a gatekeeper was an obstacle, some additional wall you had to climb or hoop you had to jump through.

Yes, there might be some old crusty guys still adhering to the old model of publishing, and they may very well be quite the gatekeepers, arbitrating and adjudicating whether or not your work is "good enough". But by and large, that model is on the decline.

I'm an editor. It says so on my business cards. I don't ever feel like a gatekeeper. I am an enabler. I help you get your creation into the best shape it can be, both so that it may later blow the socks off whatever gatekeeper in encounters, but also so that you can see that you're good at this, and that you tell good stories and that your stories deserve to be a part of the marketplace and pantheon of creations.

I'm no gatekeeper unless you make me out to be one. Approach me timidly, approach me coming from that place of "Oh John I hope I'm good enough to have you look at this." and watch me have no choice but to play that role for you, even if I don't want to. You are good enough to have me (or any editor) look at your work. You just are.

P.S. Please don't make me be a gatekeeper. It sucks.

If writing is important to you, if it's a thing you want to do or a thing you want to be called, why aren't you making time for it?

Far and away, the biggest complaint I hear is how people don't have time for writing. And they're quick to trot out a ton of reasons why - they have jobs, they have kids, they're tired, the phone kept ringing, etc etc. Some of these reasons are valid. Some are not. Usually when this statement gets made at me I point out that some of the reasons aren't valid and don't have as much weight as the person thinks they do.

And other times I ask the person to write out their schedule (in big blocks of hours), so that they can see where exactly they're spending their time, and to see that (for example) while the dishes run, that's 30 whole minutes where they just sort of sit on the couch. In those same thirty minutes, I bet they could write several paragraphs.

I wrote a whole blogpost about this - Making Time To Create.

If it's really and truly important to you, you'll make the time. Just like you make time for exercise or playing with your kids or tending your garden. Make time for what matters to you.

How long are you going to call yourself "new" at writing? When are you going to accept that you love it, and it's okay to succeed?

Next week, 60 workers are descending upon my home and installing nearly two dozen new windows. This has not only set off a great deal of anxiety (because, hey, new people) but also really rubbed my comfort level the wrong way. In order to give them access to the windows, I've had to move all my furniture and bookshelves. This gave me a chance to count my books on writing.

195.

There are three whole bookcases (the floor to ceiling kind) lined with books about how to write, how to plot, how to figure stuff out. And for a long time, I thought that I could find the "right" book that would tell me the perfect way to tell the best story from start to finish. I found a few that came close, but they didn't exactly  get me there.

Books are often aimed at new writers, or people about to become new writers, because they're hungry for advice. You know why there aren't so many books aimed at experienced writers? Because the experienced writers figured something out --

That you figure your own process out as you write. The act of doing the thing teaches you about the thing. In your own way. Tailored precisely for you. That's not something a book can teach.

How long are you going to chase the books? Sure there are great morsels of advice in those books, sure they might help you. But there's no substitute for sitting down and writing and discovering yourself by taking the action.

It's okay to be new at this. It's okay not to be new at this. It's okay to succeed. People want you to succeed (not all people, but that's for another time). You want you to succeed. So, get writing. And succeed. Book or no book.

You know what's great? An author excited about their work. You know what's not great? An author paralyzed by bad advice and fear.

Here's the other danger in books - some of them discourage people from writing by making the process sound scarier or confusing, when in fact, writing is just taking an idea out of your head, and painting it into other peoples' minds with words.

How can a book of bad advice get published you ask? A couple reasons: 1) If bad advice leads you to not get published, it makes it all the easier for other people to get published (smaller pool of applicants for a job) 2) Some people don't realize that their advice is bad, thinking so highly of themselves that what they spout is verbal gold, not verbal sludge. 3) Anyone can get anything published (see: whatever awful book you most recently suffered through).

Be excited about your work. Don't let yourself be dissuaded from your goal. Keep writing, keep going. You can do this. (I mean, unless you can't, but that's for another discussion.)

You can curse in your work. In your work, you're like Aladdin, showing us a world. Do whatever feels best for the story.

I have a client who loves to write arguments. They enjoy creating back-and-forth moments between characters. They love the tight exposition and the chemistry between people in those moments.

And then they write a line like this, "[Character A], you're a real lame-o."

When I flag this sentence as being both an eyesore and not indicative of tension, I ask "What's up with 'lame-o' and get told something to the effect of "I didn't think it was okay to curse."

It's totally okay to curse. It's okay to have sentence fragments. It's okay to do whatever you need to (short of totally wrecking grammar and punctuation) in order to give the reader the details they need to see this created experience the way you see it / the way you want them to see it.

Curse like a sailor. Kick ass. Take names. Do whatever feels best FOR THE STORY.

Rule #1 - Writing is the act of making decisions. The sky is blue until you say otherwise. Make choices. Own them. Go forward.

I teach this rule to as many of my clients as possible. This is the first thing I say to new writers. I usually say this three or four times during workshops.

How do you know what happens next in the story? You decide. How do you know where to start? You decide.

You're in charge. Make choices. Put your foot down. Go forward from that point. The only "wrong" choice is not to do anything at all.

Don't tell me you're only an author AFTER publication/sales. Are you writing? You're an author. Sure, you can love how other authors write, you can want to be like them. BUT YOU ARE AN AUTHOR TOO, AREN'T YOU? BE YOU!

There's a lot of focus on the end-goals of writing. Being published. Being "legit". Making tons of cash. Living the jet-setting high life. But you don't get the title of "author" after you write. You get the title AS you write.

This usually partners with another thought - that in order to be an author, you have to sound like an already established author, or you have to do whatever they do. Curse like a Wendig. Emote like a McGuire. Explain like a Hammett.

You don't. You have one job to do -- to write like a [whatever your name is].

That's what readers want. Not a clone. They want you. Your voice. Your way. Your words.

How much writing is "enough" for a day? You need at least one new word a day. Everything else is icing on cakes.

I'm a big fan of "two new pages a day". It works great for screenwriting. It makes short work of theater pieces. And in text, when you're double-spacing, two pages can fly by if it's a conversation. But that's my pace. That's a speed I figured out that works for me, given my schedule and how fast my fingers hit keys. Your speed may be totally different, and that's okay.

But don't conceive of writing as a race. It's no sprint. There's no bonus waiting for you if you write faster than the person to your left. Your pace is your pace, and at its heart, even one new word a day on the page gets you one step closer to being done. If you can get one more word, then the next words come all the easier. One word at a time. And if you can string several words together into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into pages, and pages into chapters...that's just awesome.

Worried about your "platform", your "presence" or [other buzzword here] ? JUST WRITE YOUR STORIES PLEASE. AND THEN TALK ABOUT THEM A LOT

Want to find the people to avoid at a mixer, cocktail hour or slightly douchey conference? Find the people who spout buzzwords more than pronouns. Your life as an author is not about your platform. Yes, you need a platform (read: website, social media presence) if you want to engage/interact with your audience, but it's just a set of tools to interact with people IN ADDITION TO writing. It's no measure of your quality as a person, nor a reflection on your work. And anyone who inflates your platform ahead of your writing needs a swift kick in the pants. And/or they're trying to sell you something.

So what do you do? You write. Then, in whatever media you're comfortable (me, I like Twitter, podcasts and blogposts) you talk about what you've written. Then you write more, then you talk more about it.

Buzzwords can suck it.

How do you make a scene more tense? Focus on big AND little details, but in tighter sentences.

You watch TV? Ever pay attention to the where the camera focuses? Sure it shows up close-ups on our favorite actors, and it shows cars on a road, but did you see how the camera focused on the picture of the character's wife on the wall when the guy was talking about missing her? It's showing us a detail that isn't the character, so that we learn more about the character. 

And that builds tension. See, tension isn't just what you build when you want to make the next scene more exciting. Tension is any built-up feeling. It could be comedy, like we're all waiting to laugh. It could be nervousness - will the spy get caught before she can escape? 

How that gets built in visual media is by the camera. In text, we have to go with sentences. Long sentences draw our eye across the page slower than short sentences. 

Compare:

He moved across the room with all determination and purpose, a skulking panther in fleece pajama pants and a grubby t-shirt. 

In his grubby shirt and pajamas, he skulked across the room with a purpose.

21 words versus 14. Shorter sentences have a greater punch, moving us from one thought to the next faster than the longer sentences, which consume time and energy to read. 

Also, what the sentence talks about gives us a clue about what to think about. A character who forever gets dumped upon and is weighed down by the world has a lot of power in their first, "No". 

During the scene where we're to be focused on what the character is feeling, try anchoring that feeling to something tangible. A mother's locket. A picture of a spouse. An image of their kids playing ball in the yard. The dog at their feet.  

The details that aren't expressly about the character say as much about the character's world and the character's place in it as the description of how the character felt at a particular time. 

Remember: You control what the reader pictures. You paint the images on the mental canvas, so what do you want to show us? Where should we pay attention?

Part 4 will be up next week (likely not Monday, maybe Tuesday). Happy writing. 

Fighting Sag

On this beautiful Friday morning, with the sun streaming into the office and the air nicely not so Dagobah swamp humid, let's talk about sag.

"Sag" is not just something reserved for lady chests or heavy tree limbs, it's also what will murder your writing if you let it. And this isn't just murder mafia-style where it shoots your manuscript once behind the ear. This is murder by asphyxiation. This is not a quick and easy murder. Sag will slowly, painfully and maliciously wrench the last moments of life out of your manuscript, and smile while doing it.

Sag's full name is "middle of novel sag" or "Second Act Sag", and today we're going to talk about what causes it and how to fix it.

As the name implies, sag happens when the momentum and pace of the story slow way down and the urge to turn the page and keep moving (as a reader) shrinks and shrinks until you ultimately start asking why you're even bothering to do it anymore. It generally happens in the second act, because that's the part of the story that's all about expansion: we met the characters and the plot in Act 1, now we get to see them develop and evolve before meeting for the climax and resolution in the third act.

The big problem is that expansion isn't all that exciting sometimes. While you're developing characters and making connections between plot points and furthering the story, some of that stuff makes a desert look damp. Yes, near the end of the expansion, there's some excitement built up as you get towards climax, but that's a very small segment of the expansion, and that comes AFTER some (often huge) swath of the middle of the book where "you felt penned in" and "couldn't really do anything too big because you were still in the second act".

But that's, frankly, stupid. There's no rule that says you can't have an exciting second act. The rules for climax state it just has to be the highest point of tension/action. But you can't really have a "highest point" without some other reference points for comparison, right?

So the first tool in your toolbox to fight sag is "Second Act High Points". Don't start thinking these high points are only physical encounters, they aren't. These are just moments where you shake up the complacency and status quo of the chapter(s) by putting in a scene or a few beats to make the reader sit up and take notice. Yes, sometimes that's a fight, but it could also be the discovery of clues in a mystery, a hero's internal conflict and resolve kicking in, yet another attack by the enemy's henchmen or something as simple as a phone call from one character to another. The point here is ACTION. Just like shaking up a YooHoo to get the chocolatey goodness off the bottom when it settles, so too does a Second Act High Point shake up and redistribute the interest, excitement, flavor and tension of the manuscript.

You could stop there, and walk away knowing that "Action beats Sag" but if you've been a regular reader of this blog, you know I've got more to share. Let's look at another slightly more complicated tool against sag.

Just like making a key from a mold you've kept in the back of your eyeshadow compact (I'm looking at you standard-spy-movie-trope), you can get a sense of something based on the impression it leaves in the space/things/clay around it. A more typical expression of this is in a widow, widower or someone who just lost a close loved one -- the absence of that person leaves an impact, and who/what that person was leaves an imprint on those left behind.

What we're dealing with here "Negative Space Impressions" also called "Silhouetting" if you want to use the slightly douchey arthouse term (which by the way is great for annoying college professors). You don't outright describe what the thing is, you describe the impression the thing leaves on the surroundings.

If I'm describing my house key in this way, I'm not talking about the ridges and angles of the key itself, I'm talking about the way the pins are lifted in the lock when I use it. If I'm describing a dead character, rather than give a lengthy physical description and segue into a totally lame flashback where the character will speak to me but never be as cool as the ghost of Hamlet's father or Obi Wan Kenobi, I'm talking about how I (the narrator in this case) perceive/remember (imperfectly) the lessons the character wanted to impart. So I'm humanizing myself, talking about a character's impression and advancing my character growth in one fell swoop.

Is that harder? Yes. Is it worth it in the end? Absolutely. Any situation where you walk away learning more about the character, the relationship(s) between the character and everything else in the world AND advancing character growth is absolutely worth it.

Are there only 2 ways to fight sag? Nope. But those two are a good start. Go forth, don't let the middle of your book fall into a flat, comatose state.

Happy writing. Enjoy your weekend.

The Nine-Step Checklist

We start today with a story from my youth.

I was about ten or maybe eleven and my family was heading down to our shore house for the month of July, which meant that my dad got use "The Checklist". As if he was prepping an Apollo moon launch, he made sure all the bags (I have a feeling we always overpacked, a trait I've inherited from him) were first staged in the living room the night before, and then loaded into the car just after breakfast while my mom packed the huge Igloo cooler with food  (I don't remember if we yet realized there was a grocery store ten minutes from the house, or maybe it wasn't built yet or something). The cooler would go in last, and we'd be all set to go. And then we'd be in the car, all buckled in, me with my books, dad behind the wheel, mom in the backseat with my brother and some cross-stitch. But we wouldn't leave.

My dad began the next stage of his checklist. He'd check his wallet, to make sure he had money. He'd check the front door (3 stiff pulls, practically slams) to make sure it was locked. He'd look in every first-floor window to make sure the lights were out. And then he'd start the questions, aimed mostly at my mother.

"Is the oven off?" (It wouldn't matter that this was late June/early July, and my mom hadn't likely baked anything since mid-May.)
"Did you lock the back door?" (No matter how she answered, he'd go check, meaning he'd open the front door, check the back door and then re-check the front on his way out.)
"Is the TV unplugged?" (This later became my responsibility when I was twelve. I remember getting this job because my wrists were narrow enough to slide behind the monster set and pull the plug out.)
"Is the freezer closed?" (In filling the cooler, my mom emptied the giant basement freezer, and would go so far as to defrost it if she got up early enough. Years later she started stacking things in front of the empty freezer in case it 'just popped open', but I think it was more to fuck with the old man.)

The answer to all these questions was, "Yes John." (A sentence to this day that makes my skin crawl.) And I was impatient - the beach was waiting! While this checking took maybe five minutes, it felt like it took hours, and I remember being incredibly frustrated with every slam-slam-slam of the front door and the sound of my father riffing through the stack of bills in his wallet. I don't know what he was expecting to find or not find, but I just wanted him to get the car moving.

I asked my dad once, "What's with all the checking?" And his answer was, "It's just what you have to do, to make sure you get everything together before you move forward." Now, the chances are great that I rolled my eyes while he answered my question, in fact I'm sure I even threw in a sigh for emphasis.

The sigh was my sign that I'd never be like that, that I'd be able to leave the house without the almost superstitious dance of pocket and door checks.

That sigh was way wrong. I might not check the door three times, but I've definitely caught myself a little freaked that maybe I didn't put my wallet in my pocket, or maybe I didn't put my credit card back in my wallet after dinner, or maybe I didn't shut the freezer door all the way six hours ago when I put that bag of ice in there. There's a little wrestling match in my head about whether or not I did or didn't do something, and usually it's resolved either by me going and checking or by whoever I'm with at the time reminding me I did.

Checklists are good tools, and you don't have to take them into Super-OCD land for them to be effective. Here now is my not-so-OCD checklist for your story or script or game, so that you can make sure everything's together before you move forward.

Act 1

Have you set the table? "Setting the table" means have you rolled out the three P's (Protagonist(s), Place(s), Plot), so that your readers (or players, if we're talking games) know who's doing what where and why.

What's the palette like? By the time we're well invested into the first Act of your creation, we should have a pretty firm grasp on the tone, feel, vibe and scale of the story. If you're writing about a save-the-universe sort of sci fi adventure, then I'd sort of expect the story to be a certain size and scope. Your word choice will tell me the "color" of the story: if your protagonists are fighting an uphill battle, if the world is "gritty", if the badguys are more intense, etc.

Is it clear what the next action will be? If you can't get an idea of what's next based on what just happened, (it doesn't have to be a directly linear idea, it can be somewhat inferred or logical) then what just happened wasn't enough. Or it's not done cooking. Or you need to spice it up a little. Insert your favorite food metaphor here.

Act 2

Are we seeing skills (gamers: the opportunity for skills)? By this point in the story, we should be seeing the protagonist doing what they do (and hopefully that means doing things different or better than how we do them) and how the results (successes AND failures) drive the plot forward (don't confuse "forward" for "success", failure IS an option that can transform and evolve characters).

Do the options you've created have purpose? "Options" is a broad term meaning the off-shoots of the main plot. This could be the suspects in a crime story, the different avenues or routes to take in a travelogue, the number of topics in your book of essays or anything that demonstrates that you just don't have a really simple plot that can be wrapped up in like six pages and you're just filling space and killing time.

How high is your climax? While you're still in the bulk of the book, and while you're still laying out the dominoes so they can topple later, it's a good time to start seeing how high this stack builds up so you know how far (and how fast) it will come tumbling down. The climax is the highest point in a story. The greatest moment of tension, the most intense scene(s), the most knockdown fight. If your story ratchets up the tension, emotion, action or stakes AFTER that, then that new scene is the climax. Map out your scenes, climb that ladder (I guess in a future post I'll have to talk about the climax ladder) and adjust accordingly.

Act 3

How are your loose ends? I know, a lot of writers want to be "edgy" or "creative" or "smart" and they lay out these intricate plots where you have to super-focus on some detail because it's the lynch pin of the whole book. And there's nothing worse than realizing that the detail that clinches the story is something you (or gamers, your players) overlooked because it didn't seem important at the time. Likewise, those characters you drop into a scene, just for the sake of the scene, they're only momentarily memorable. You're not breaking new ground in having that three-line-delivering guy from Chapter Six show back up in the end and play a bigger role. You don't need to tie EVERYTHING up in a nice (read: convenient) bow anymore than than you need to trim the number of loose ends down to the barest essentials. Just keep track of them. If you've got a few that don't go anywhere and sort of disappear, maybe they don't need to be there in the first place.

What's the resolution look like? So the climax happened. And now the story's emotional and action roller-coaster coasts back down to a normal range of possibilities. Here we can start to see things end both internally (the plot) and externally (the book is running out of pages), so what happens AFTER climax? You don't need to spend an equivalent amount of time bringing us back down to earth as you spent getting us into the heavens, but you do have to spend a little time so that we can catch our breath and start to organize ourselves to end the story. Again, mapping it out is CRUCIAL.

Is the door open or closed? The "door" here is whether or not you've explicitly or not created the possibility to revisit this world and these characters again. NOTE - I am not saying that all stories need to be serialized, I'm just asking you if this particular one is built for it. If the door is open, then we as readers are free to continue these adventures in our imagination, essentially taking the storytelling reins from you. If the door is closed, then we better be satisfied by how things wrapped up, else we'll just take the reins from you and pretend it didn't go down like that (I'm looking at you Sopranos, third Hunger Games book, Lost and the Mary Russell series).

That checklist will help you take your stories wherever they are, in whatever shape they're in, and help them go forward, so that you can too can go to your vacations (metaphoric and literal) fully confident that everything is awesome.

Happy writing. Enjoy your Cinco de Mayo.

See you Monday (now if there's no blog post on Monday, it's not because I partied too hard this weekend, it's because I know Monday is PACKED with work, some of which I can't yet talk about it.)

Writing/Gaming - New Faces, Same World

Good morning everyone.

Today's suggested blog topic comes from Jeremy Morgan, and for his suggestion, he gets my endless thanks, since he suggested the following topic:

 Inventing an interesting character in an existing setting. Writers working with canon and players doing backstory

Now before I get started on this, I need to disclaim something, just for the sake of balance and fairness.


I am not a fan of fan-fiction. I find it sort of like writing with training wheels on, because the person who wants to be a writer is playing around with other people's established pieces, moving them in different ways that may entirely be contrary to how the writer wanted things to play out. When this happens (I'm looking at you, shippers), you're basically lamenting that things didn't work out the way you wanted, so you're going to make it happen your way.


Here's the fundamental issue with that - you're not the original author. And that means a lot of things. You may lack the author's particular talent for stringing words together, you may lack knowledge the author has held back, you may even lack the necessary skill to write effectively and evocatively. But, you say, I make up for it by finally making sure that protagonist gets a kiss from the female sidekick. 


There's something to be said for having that tension and not paying it off. Tension aside, if you're taking characters and exploring space just as an exercise to write sexual words and images (I had no idea that so many characters from my beloved TV shows were into intense BDSM, by the way), then go masturbate or have some sex or something - you don't need to express YOUR urges through someone else's characters. 


As for creating backstory, again, I point to the very large truth that "Those aren't your characters" and "Sometimes, you're better off not knowing." Yes I get it, you feel this insatiable drive to know what happened during The Great Hiatus, or in the years before the Battle of Yavin, or just after the Verse finds out about Reavers....but that's not your sandbox. You have literally your choice of any other sandbox of your own design, you don't need to play it so safe by rocking out with that other guy's shovel and bucket. 

Okay, maybe yes, you can tell a better story than the prequels. But that's for another day. I've said my thing, let's talk how this gets done.

Gamers, you're going first.

Tables Are Freedom

Look, I don't know if you know this, but for the most part, we're not all gathered around your game table with your group whenever it is you play. You don't have to justify, rationalize or explain why you've elected to hack the Care Bears into Pathfinder or why you've bodged Operation Dumbo Drop with Risk Legacy and Settlers of Cattan.You did that, some of us won't get it, but you did it for your group for your reasons. Awesome. If people have a good time, more power to you.

To hack a game, you have to declare the constants, and give yourself a framework of what you're going to operate within. Maybe you'll take the time period from this game, the character creation system of that game and add the.....combat system from that third game. The beauty of this is that so long as you don't get the lofty idea that you can sell this idea and don't want to contend with the legal headaches, you're free and clear to do so.

There's just something about games that lends them to deconstruction for the sake of enjoyment. I think that's a conceit that writing doesn't have.

Now writers, let's get more critical.

The 4-Hack

Writers, here's my quick and dirty hacking trick. There are four main things you can change in a story:
* Characters
* Location
* Plot
* Time

Characters' traits can be changed. Where the story takes place can be changed. How the story proceeds can be changed. When the story occurs can be changed.

Here's the trick - if you change 1, the other 3 remain the same. If you change 2, the other 2 not only remain the same, but become reinforced. Don't change more than 2 if you want to consider keeping to whatever source material you have.

Let's look at some examples:

Hound of the Baskervilles (it's on my shelf)
Characters -- Holmes and Watson
Location -- The Moors
Plot -- There's a ghost dog and dead bodies
Time -- The Victorian Era

If we change the time and plot, we get the BBC's Sherlock. If we change the Location and the Time, it's practically indistinguishable from any other mystery pastiche.


Hamlet
Characters - Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern
Location - Danish Castle
Plot - Hamlet's dad is dead, his mother's a tart and he's a sad panda
Time - Ye Olde Times

Most often the Time gets changed, usually to something more modern. Occasionally this also means the location changes, often to a city like Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles or New York.

Now Jeremy's question though asks not about using existing characters, but creating his own within someone else's canon.

Character creation in fiction, Jeremy, happens the same way whether we're dropping that character into a world of our own design, or a world you snagged from someone else, but there are red flags.

1. If your character is better defined than the native characters, you're going to encounter dissonance and static from within the world, and the character is going to feel out of place and limited. -- Imagine Han Solo in....GI Joe. Or Indiana Jones in....the Teletubbies. Yes, I'm using extremist examples, but I'm hoping that it makes the point clear -- if one character is more/better defined than those around them, the others either feel flat or the defined character feels ostracized, put off and out of place (if you're going for a one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other vibe, then this might be the best road to take)

2. If you character's motivations exists outside the scope of the world's offerings, that character is going to feel out of place. Remember the Transformers cartoon, how they all wanted Energon cubes, and everybody knew it? Remember the Transformers movie where they...didn't want that, but suddenly everyone was just cool with sentient vehicle-aliens (who happen to look like Earth vehicles, which no one questioned)? For a character to pursue something that a world might not offer, you get a fish out of water (see....the most recent Thor or Captain America). The challenge there is to reconcile that desire and modify the character accordingly.

3. If the character is too insular, or too internally motivated, there's not as much room for growth as you think. Let's imagine you're making a miser.......Scrooge, for instance. If you look at Scrooge, and you identify the flaw "greed", then his only logical arc (the only way to grow the character) is along that 'greed' track. It would make very little sense for Scrooge to suddenly develop a need for thrills or crime-solving while he was being altruistic. Wrapping a character too tightly around one idea means that before you can introduce other concepts, you have to get loose from that first tether.

With canon as a timeline, you're hemming yourself into a chronology. If I want to tell a story about what occurs between Temple of Doom and Raiders of the Lost Ark, I am held to operating within those years.

And, on a side note, operating within that world and that time as well. It's the mid-1930s, Indy isn't about to Google up the info on some lost city, nor is he going to make dinner reservations via Open Table....

The Rules

Rule 1 - Understand that accepting a chronology may also mean you accept a location and all the mechanics/knowledge of that era (see above)
Rule 2- Understand that accepting a chronology and canon gives you fixed points (don't get all snippy with me Doctor Who fans, you know what I'm trying to say here), between which you operate. - So that story of what happens to Greg Smith, Harry Potter's unmentioned friend, can't too radically intersect with the events of Goblet of Fire...because Greg Smith isn't in Goblet of Fire.
Rule 3 - Understand that because of those fixed points, it is unrealistic and impractical to make radical changes to existing characters - let's say you want to give Luke Skywalker more lightsabers before Empire Strikes Back: Is he going to just lose them when the movie starts, or worse, forget that he even had them?

So Jeremy, your short answer is - it depends on how closely you want to hold onto canon and how much respect you want to pay it. If it's just a template, something to put a flavor in your mouth so you can create something new, that's okay, but at that point, you might as well develop your own thing entirely. If you hoist it up on the pedestal, then treat it with care, because someone worked really hard on it (unless you're going to redo the Star Wars prequels, at which point, go nuts) and they deserve some kudos.

Hope that helps.

Happy writing.

Forward Vs Lateral Movement

No, not football.

What I'm talking about today has both a writing/gaming component and a writing-lifestyle component. I'm not really sure where to start, so let's start with the broadest and work our way down. 

How's Your Life?

Lately, I've been doing two things differently -- I'm eating decadently (on a budget!) and paying for it afterward. I guess it's because I'm in my thirties now, so this shouldn't be a scientific breakthrough or great revelation for anyone, but I can't eat the same things or the same way I used to, say, ten years ago. 

I can eat pretty much anything I want, barring allergies, but not that doesn't mean, I'm discovering, that I should.  Big heavy meals weigh me down and put me in a fog. Meals that scream "Yeah I'm healthy, look how cruciferous I am!" often taste like lint and leave me ready to gnaw off someone's arm. I will even admit to getting way too freaked out that what I'm eating (which is seldom fried, seldom battered and seldom wrapped in other foodstuffs) is going to immediately kill me (thanks scare tactics of diets and nutrition, way to make me feel powerless). 

After one weekend where I ate far too much, I started taking stock of my food-life. Sure I'm getting the 8 glasses of water a day (sometimes more), and sure I'm avoiding too much junk food (because there just isn't any in the house), but I look over my life and see that I'm not in the best health. Forget the shape, forget muscles, I just want to be healthier. 

To that end, I'm making better food choices, eating regular portions, eating regularly and doing my best to stay hydrated. It's not a thorough diet plan, it's not a complete panic-inducing revamp of the food I eat. This is forward progress, I'm moving towards my goal.

Lateral progress was all that time I spent thinking about getting to the goal, but not taking any steps to get there - reading reviews, putting off going to the bookstore, listening to podcasts talk about the book, etc. 

This same question of lateral-vs-forward comes up every time I look at other things in my life.

My book -- GOAL: Finishing it

Forward Progress - Writing new pages

Lateral Progress - Buying/reading books about how to write those pages, watching movies and tv shows that demonstrate how scenes look, talking about writing pages.

The state of my office -- GOAL: Cleaning it

Forward Progress - Cleaning the desk off, filing papers away, throwing out/shredding what I don't need

Lateral Progress - Buying organizational racks, shelves and items to sort out things (while still leaving so many piles), thinking/feeling that I'll never make any headway

My income -- GOAL: Having more of it

Forward Progress - Being visible and helpful to others, finding clients, doing work, sending invoices

Lateral Progress - Bitching about how after I pay my bills I don't have much money left, scrounging up change out of laundry, swearing to never again buy stuff all week (see above)

See what I'm getting at? 

Sometimes, the lateral progress looks like forward progress, and for whatever reason, I guess because it's not difficult or changing the state of anything, it feels like I'm making progress to my goal. 

Forward progress isn't always fun. Forward progress on eating better means I have to amend my grocery lists, exercise some willpower and spend time actually cooking better things rather than settling. It takes work, but the goal is worth it, isn't it? So why not do it? That's the lesson I'm learning now. 

Forward and Lateral Around The Table And At The Desk

We revisit this idea of forward and lateral progress when we sit down to play a game. Board and card games aside, let's look at role-playing experiences. 

The Forward element is the plot of the campaign. Whether that's killing the dragon, solving the murder mystery, reaching level 10 or defeating the conspiracy against you, Forward comes in when the player(s) do things that bring them closer to resolving that goal. 

The Lateral element is a little trickier, since sometimes people will argue that the lateral movements are just as important as the Forward ones. For example, my brother and I spent WEEKS playing Final Fantasy X when it came out, maxing our characters' stats, acquiring all the items and weapons and basically lording over everything on the digital landscape. We didn't advance the plot too far while this was happening, because we were too busy in making it easier for that to happen.

You see, we had this idea in our heads that if we did all these side quests and branches off the main plot tree, the main plot would be easier. And while that's true (the items we got as rewards totally made the endgame simpler), it speaks to the underlying issue - we thought the endgame would be hard, and that we were too unprepared. 

As GMs we can offer players a lot of paths to follow, no matter the game system. We can give the paladin a sidequest to get a horse, we can tell the secret agents to spend some time protecting their family members from attack. Sometimes, the players jump at these actions because it's a break from the main story, or because it offers them a chance to be at the center of attention for a little while, but other times they take based on how it's sold to them.

If a side quest is sold with the same intensity as the main quest, you can't expect them to be able to make the distinction that one is superior to the other, and by extension, that they should or shouldn't throw their full weight of focus towards that new (and perceived important) goal. 

A lot of this has to do with how the hook is baited, and if the players are invested in their characters. A lot of this also has to do with the reward offered. Too great a reward, or if the reward is thought to be bigger, more immediate or more useful than the reward of the main plot, naturally the players are going to jump at it. How could they not?

Some games mechanize around this possibility by creating conditions that lead the hero(es) into side quests so that they gain material or knowledge they must apply to the main quest -- Link can't fight Ganon until he has all the pieces of the TriForce nor can Mario reach Bowser without first traversing the level(s) of the castle. 

Writers I didn't forget about you - many genres (detective in particular) hinge on the idea that the bigger case is related to the smaller case or its solution. Likewise, we can bog down protagonists with side quests that develop emotions or responsibilities or new character arcs outside of the change represented by the main plot. 

So What Can We Do?
Writers, it's time to face the possibility that you're going to finish your book. And that this book isn't going to be perfect, but it will be complete - with a plot and character development and all the trappings therein. Forget the idea that you have to X number of plots and subplots, that you have to have exactly this number of scenes that develop specifically this or that idea and that flashbacks all have to be a certain and specific length. Accept that you're going to finish the story, and it's going be a good thing, and it will get edited and become a better thing.

Gamers, take a good look at your players. (Designers, you take a look at your audience) There is a very good chance that they're not going to take the bait on many of the hooks you throw at them. The problem is that you don't know which hooks they'll take and which they won't, so you just have to keep putting them all out there. Sometimes they'll move laterally, sometimes they'll go forward. What you can do is offer them the best path forward (the most compelling, interesting, superlative story) and the most evocative path laterally (so that when they step off the plot, they're immersed in the flavor and the world(s) you've built).

Remember - this isn't a one-or-the-other, all-or-nothing prospect. You can do very well for yourself making steps forward while laying out side routes along the way. It's also not required that you sprint towards the finish line. We all want that end goal, we all want our work to be published, there's no reward for finishing ahead of other people, because the market(s) we're going into are wide enough to support all of us. Don't fall for that scarcity-trap. We can all "win" at this.

Happy writing

Writing/Gaming - Plot, Choice, & Characters

Over the weekend, I read a rather disappointing book about how to plot stories (I'm always looking for new theory and new ideas to incorporate into meetings, workshops, seminars and client opportunities), which I'm about to go give a one-star review to on Amazon, because not only did it take three chapters for the book to actually talk about HOW to plot something, but it's basic premise is one I completely disagree with:

"Plot is how the events in a story directly impact the main character."

Danger Will Robinson, danger. This way lies madness. Don't buy it. 

Here's what Plot is:
Plot is conflict.
Plot is the problem that causes the character to change (positively or negatively). 
Plot is the evolution of a premise (and premise is the thing that brought people to the story in the first place)

Here's what Plot isn't:
Plot IS NOT a series of impacts on a single character. (Plot has consequences far and wide, even if you're writing about a single character adrift in space)
Plot IS NOT the result of events happening (Plot is far too contiguous, interconnected and interdependent to just be a hodge-podge of "Oh by the way this happened")
Plot IS NOT passive. (Plot is a very active response to a changing (or possibly changing) environment)

What Plot boils down to is a choice in the face of a test. 


Plot answers the question -- "When this problem (we'll call it X) occurs in a created world, how does the world respond, in ways large and small?"

To this thinking, plot could be on the small scale: the bully in the classroom or it could go large scale: the appearance of malevolent aliens coming to enslave mankind through smartphone apps....or something.

But there's a problem, and like the song says, yo, I'll solve it. The "I" in this case are the characters, not just the singular (or possibly titular) protagonist but the whole cast of characters - everyone from the sidekick to the doubters to the assistants to the random people who inject realism in flavor-text paragraphs.

Gamers, I'm looking at you here - Plot is why you've got people around your table. What are they doing? How will they respond? Why are they compelled to act in this way or that? How loosely or closely you play potentiality, that is to say how much leeway you give your players, directly ties to the strength of your plot and the potential of that plot.

If it's a closed loop, or you're working on a small scale, then the plot's pretty linear -- the party assembles and puts a righteous hurting on the badguy of the week. A wider view shows the problem isn't just held to one instance of a certain badguy, or that taking out this baddie reveals a power vacuum that other nasties will rush to fill. The point here is -- think of the plot's consequences, both good and bad, and then see if the plot needs tweaks. And try for narrative options, rather than narrative solutions -- the players should be the ones patching the holes, not the NPCs.


Writers, this one's for you -- The resolution of the plot WILL/CAN/SHOULD change characters, for better of worse. The problem might be one of internal struggle, or physical injury or whatever (I am loathe to name options here, lest I suggest there can only be certain kinds of plots).

Yes the above quote that started this rant has implications that suggest we're going to find out what the consequences of decisions are, but that's not the plot. The plot is a freight train that intersects all the paths of all the characters - the injuries and damage of collisions isn't the plot, that's the consequence of plot.

The plot IS the decision AND the reactions, not just the impact. The proverbial explosion had to get there somehow, and that's part of the story.

When in doubt, give the characters/players/actors/participants choice, and trust their decisions (which is made easier if you've given them a core philosophy) to let them show you how they're responding (yes, it's an active process) to the challenge of the plot.

Note: I feel like this post got away from me, I may revisit this idea later in the week.

Happy writing.