Category: Characters

Writing Jerks

Quan

I admit it: many of my protagonists start their respective stories as not-very-likable people. Melvin is a deadbeat dad in Double Entry, Elijah is a corporate ladder-climbing @$$hole who mistreats his wife in Godmode, and Jay is an immature college kid that knows very little about how to act around women in The Hand You’re Dealt. And that’s before you throw in my so-called heroes for my recently finished high fantasy story, who all have feet of clay in some way, shape or form, and my protag from my urban fantasy story who is about as blatant a jerk as I’ve ever written. So this begs the question of why I choose to go this route so often when I’m writing my stories. 

Personally, I think Jerks are just more fun to write. They have less filters, and are free to do the things that normal people wouldn’t do. That gives you a lot of leeway as a writer. A jerk can say whatever he or she wants because they don’t care who they offend. You can unleash all of the meanest, snarkiest, most sarcastic quips in their voice. They can exhibit the most selfish, disrespectful behavior, the stuff you know deep down you would love to do if you could get away with it. You can let your imagination run wild, thinking up new and creative ways for your character to be an @$$hole. It can actually be a bit cathartic.

But I learned the hard way that you can’t just make a character act like a jerk just for its own sake. Especially a protagonist. Writing Bad Meets Evil taught me that the reader will find the character’s behavior reprehensible, but without any true connection to the reader, the bad behavior will ring hollow, and quickly lose the reader’s interest. There must be a reason and a methodology to your protagonist being that way, otherwise the reader won’t buy into it.

I once wrote a comic book story about a supervillain called Badside for an Art class. I was trying to push the envelope of what I could do in the class, and the story was pretty vulgar and offensive. And by “pretty” I mean “I’m sure my teacher and most of my classmates lost quite a bit of respect for me when they saw that.” It’s not something I’m proud of or even claim in my body of work. It was from the perspective of the villain, and I portrayed him as a truly despicable character with perverted obsessions like pornography and torture and stuff like that. I’m honestly embarrassed that I submitted it for my peers to critique. I tried to justify it at the time as an exploration into the nature of evil. One of my classmates gave a real astute critique of that, saying he needed some more depth and even a counterbalance to the evil of this character. Other wise the story is (and I quote) “look at all this Evil, now don’t you feel dirty.” And if that’s all the story has to offer, then the story is a failure. It was a real lesson in storytelling…that I totally ignored when I wrote Bad Meets Evil (which is why it is no surprise that book is unpublishable).

So with that in mind, what are some elements of making an unlikable protagonist interesting enough for readers to want to follow them?

Possibility of redemption

The best stories are about the progression of the protagonist’s character (or the lack of which). And a storytelling staple is of having a jerk protagonist grow and change into a better person over the course of the story. They encounter things in the story that make them reconsider their behavior and attitudes, and by the end of the story their behavior is much more positive and reflective of the trials they endured. It’s tried-and-true trope, and readers often look for it when reading stories about an unlikable protagonist. What would it take to make this person want to change and be a better person? So to pull this off, you need to plant at least a seed which shows that the protag is capable of change. Maybe have a glimmer of positive behavior in the midst of all the jerkishness.

Possibility of comeuppance

Sometimes the appeal of a Jerk is waiting to see if they get What’s Coming To Them. A straight-to-D VD movie I saw called “Bad Lieutenant” starring Nic Cage played into that. A lot of the BS he started was starting to collapse around him and he was scrambling to find a way out without giving up his lascivious behavior. What kept me interested was seeing how his comeuppance would play out. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. He got away with everything, and I was rather pissed off to see that. But the narrative gripped me to watch until the end to find out. Once again, the key to pulling this off is planting seeds and elements in the story to make this plausible. Your jerk needs a counterbalance and an antagonist of some kind keeping them in check or working to ensure they pay for their misdeeds. Your Jean Valjean needs a Javert.

Interesting personality quirks

An unlikeable character can often grip a reader on the sheer strength of their unique personality. This means they have some redeeming qualities. Perhaps they are charismatic, or are profoundly intelligent, or have some other notable talent or quirk that makes you want to know more about them despite their selfish tendencies. The Talented Mr. Ripley fits into this category. He is the bad guy in his own story, but his character is very charismatic and draws people to him, so you are compelled to follow him around. Your character development is key in taking this approach. Introducing details and quirks, and truly fleshing your protag out to make them unique and complex can help make them compelling on their own and have readers rolling with their jerkish behavior.

Interesting supporting characters

You can also define your jerk by how the people around them generally react to them. Do they put up with the jerkish behavior, or do they hold them accountable? Do they even encourage and welcome the jerkish behavior, or find it somehow endearing? How do they respond to the jerk and how does that dictate what the jerk does in response to that? Focusing on how the Jerk affects everyone around him helps humanize your supporting characters and flesh out your world, so this may be a great approach to incorporate into your story.

Key interactions

There will be moments in your story where your character will face a crossroads of how they respond to situations. They can either continue their jerkish ways, or they can start doing something better. Or those moments will tease them finally getting what’s coming to them and the question is whether they can get out of that in that moment. You really want to highlight these moments and add extra drama to them, because they are crucial to keeping the reader engaged and interested in seeing which way your protag develops. I admit Bad Meets Evil didn’t have nearly enough of these moments. My despicable characters were never given an opportunity to change their behavior, and I put off their comeuppance until the end of the book, which by then was way too late.

Backstories and  motivations might help

An interesting backstory explaining why your protagonist acts like an @$$hole won’t save a bad story or a poorly developed character. But it can enhance a good one, and give the reader some context behind why your protagonist acts the way they act. Elijah was bullied as a child by both his peers and his parents, and responded by becoming retaliatory. He spent time in juvenile hall where he learned how to be vindictive, and that behavior was encouraged when he entered the workforce. I’ve been told that the progression of Elijah’s character in his backstory was actually the strongest element of Godmode. If you can create a compelling scenario explaining why your protag is such a jerk, then along with your other elements, that can make your character more compelling. Especially if you’re teasing the possibility of redemption.

So not only is it possible to write a story starring an unlikable character, there are many ways to do it effectively. My advice is to read up on a few stories with jerks as protagonists like Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth Series, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Alain Mabanckou’s African Psycho. Hopefully these tips can help you get in touch with your inner @$$hole, and bring your jerk to life.

Your Hero Doesn’t Have to be the Hero!

Quan

The vast majority of stories are told from the perspective of the altruistic (even if flawed) hero facing the odds to accomplish whatever goal he or she has n mind. They may stumble and fall, but it is clear that particular lead character is the one you as a reader should be rooting for to solve their problem and succeed. This is a tried and true method of storytelling, and it obviously works. Having a likable, relatable character makes it easier for readers to get invested in the story because they genuinely want to see if their protagonist can overcome the obstacles put in their way. Even tragic heroes that are doomed to fail have some redeeming qualities that readers can get behind.

But what if I told you there was another viable way to approach the story? What if you told the story with the villain as a protagonist? Or with a companion to the actual hero as the protagonist? These are storytelling approaches that have also been done, and done well. Ahab was the hero of Moby Dick, but the story was told through the eyes of his first mate Ishmael. The legendary exploits of Sherlock Holmes were told trough the eyes of his trusty sidekick Watson. And L. Ron Hubbard’s epic sci-fi saga Mission Earth was told almost entirely with the central villain of the story, Soltan Gris, as the point-of-view protagonist. It can be done.

Writing the story from a different perspective allows you to add new nuances to our story. Watching the story through only the hero’s eyes can be like watching with blinders, and you don’t really get to see what is going on beyond what the hero is paying attention to. But if you tell the story through someone else’s eyes, you can point out details about your hero, the situation and the world your characters populate that the hero will miss. A supporting character can see your hero’s more vulnerable moments, faults and foibles better than the hero, and may be in a position to comment on it. Telling the story through the antagonists eyes allows you to poke holes in the logic and idealism that drives you hero to try to complete their mission, and also might serve to humanize the villain and make him more relatable. Telling the story from the perspective of an everyman passer-by or a random person caught up in the crossfire of he story adds a different, more detached viewpoint, that can focus on the realtime consequences of the hero’s actions and how they affect everyone else that isn’t directly involved with the events transpiring. In a recent Magic: The Gathering story set on an ancient Egypt-themed world, a series of short stories were dedicated to chronicling the average people of that world caught up in the middle of an epic struggle between the heroes of the story (The Gatewatch, a collection of powerful mages dedicated to protecting the multiverse) and an army of undead warriors and evil gods led by the ancient elder dragon Nicol Bolas. By reading the events of the story through their eyes, you can get a very real and relatable sense of the stakes of this battle and how it really affects the world the battle is taking place on.

The first thing you want to do is take a look at the basic framework of or story and ask yourself who is involved in it. Obviously your typical protagonist will be there, but usually the protagonist isn’t alone in their journey. Who else is in the story, and how can they offer a different perspective on what is happening?

Or maybe the hero’s journey isn’t the most interesting aspect of the story. Have you taken a deep dive int your villain or antagonist, and followed their story? What if that was the more fascinating tale? The protagonist of The Talented Mr. Ripley series is charismatic, likable and relatable. He is also a liar, manipulator and cold-blooded murderer who will doublecross and destroy anybody in his way to get what he wants. And for many of his books, there is nobody else hat can match how despicable he is to make him come of as more sympathetic or heroic. He is no antihero. He is clearly the villain of his own story, but what he does and how he does is is an engaging read because readers are actively wondering if he is going to actually get away with everything he is doing, and who – if anyone – will be the one to finally stop him. That is a formula that can work for you, if handled properly. There is a reason why iconic villains like Darth Vader, The Joker, Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom often get to be the protagonists of comic books. Even the villain is a hero in his own mind.

I am currently working on a series of fantasy stories where the actual hero of the entire saga only makes brief cameo appearances, and the reader doesn’t realize that the protagonists I’ve been telling the story though aren’t the real heroes of the story until the very end. Unreliable narrators make for very engaging protagonists. You can really play with tat, and mess with reader expectations, by portraying a less-than-noble protagonist in a noble light. It can really add some depth to your story and keep the reader guessing.

So when you start writing your next story, take a look at all of the characters involved, and consider experimenting with who you tell the story through. You might get a more engaging story by telling it through someone else’s eyes and voice.

The Art of The Spinoff

Quan

There will come a time when, while writing a story, you will create a supporting character that will resonate either with you the writer or with your audience, more than you expected. Or maybe you will start a subplot arc or thread in your story that has potential but you just won’t have enough space in your story to explore it fully.

So what do you do with that breakout supporting character or that unresolved subplot? Spin it off into a new story, of course! Spinoffs are a great, organic way to expand the world of your stories, and are the most convenient way to create those shared universes I wrote about in a previous post. Having a different character interact with your setting, or expanding on a story element within that setting helps a lot with world-building and can make your universe more immersive and engaging.

The most organic way to create the shared universe

If you’re looking for that holy grail of franchising – the shared universe – then spinoffs are the most organic way to it. Everything you create in your spinoff is a direct offshoot of your original story, which adds more relevance to the original. You can, at any time, have characters and other elements from the original story make an appearance in your spinoffs, which creates that inter-connectivity of the two stories. Pratchett often had Commander Vimes from his Watch series of stories make cameo appearances in his other stories, just as a reminder that the new stories do indeed tie into the older ones.

How to tell if something or someone is spinoff worthy

Unanswered questions, dangling plotlines and unexplored character beats can be a great catalyst for developing a spinoff. If your story finishes and you as a writer, or your beta readers are asking about any plot development you may have inadvertently left dangling, that can be excellent fodder for your spinoff story. Also, take a look at your secondary characters. Examine how you’ve developed them and how they performed during your main story. Did any of them stand out in any way to make readers interested in following them around? You could also go the opposite route and look at some of your more obscure, underdeveloped characters and consider giving them their own story to flesh them out more.

Backdoor pilots and how to do one

A backdoor pilot is pretty exclusive to Television. It’s where they take an episode of an established show and devote the entire episode to new or minor characters in hopes that they will spark an interest in getting their own show. You can actually do something similar in your story by taking a chapter (or a few) and devoting it to the character you think is worthy of a spinoff. Make that person or plot the focus while still tying into the overall narrative, and you can build interest in that element to warrant its own story. I did something like that in a story I am currently seeking representation for. The epilogue of my story features some of my background characters, being put into situations that can be explored in future novels.

When a spinoff is not a good idea

The key to having a successful spinoff is first having that offshoot character or idea be interesting. And the first gauge of that is you. If you don’t find that element compelling, then why waste time trying to make it compelling for your readers? The big franchise IP is the holy grail of storytelling, but you don’t want to get caught up in trying to create extra properties for the sake of creating them. If the idea isn’t interesting to you, don’t feel obligated to develop it. Find another element that does interest you and work on that.

Let the world dictate the spinoff

For added insight, I spoke to my good friend Anne Zoelle about the process she went through in creating her spinoff books to the Masquerading the Marquess book she wrote as Anne Mallory. Here is what she told me:

“When I was writing my first book, the story plot demanded a character that both of the main characters knew—someone whose presence could bind them together as well as cause tension between them. The character who fit that slot turned out to be a very fun one to write—and from his first sentence of dialogue I knew he was getting his own book. So while I wouldn’t say that I planned a book for him right from the get go, as soon as he was on the page, I knew he was going to be a future hero. 🙂

“There was also another element that pushed toward a series as the writing continued on that first book. The backstory for the hero contained a trio of men who worked together as spies for the Crown—who were allies in society and out. That backstory ultimately bloomed into three connected books—one for each of the men.

“I think when it comes down to why writing or reading a series can be so fun, it’s that it’s interesting to have characters who aren’t islands—who have lives outside the main storyline. In order to keep stories tight, though, that might mean the extended cast has a central thread or goal that defines the series. That thread can simply be a club, brothers/sisters/family, a knitting circle, soldiers/team, etc.—but finding common elements that extend your characters into other, future character’s lives is a way to extend your story world outward while still keeping the main threads focused. It can deepen the characterization elements in the characters in your current story and give them lives outside the current story threads.”

To see how she applied that, check out her first three novels here.

Making Your Story Adaptable for Stage and Screen

Quan

I had picked up a cheap DVD at the dollar store a while back. It was “Blast” starring Eddie Griffin and Vivica Fox. It was a decent flick, nothing spectacular, but it wasn’t horrible, either. What surprised me was that the movie was based on a book.

Being a book writer, it always raises an eyebrow when a novel gets optioned for a movie or TV show. And it’s not just the holy grail franchises like “Twilight”, “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, “Da Vinci Code”, “Bourne”, or “Harry Potter”. Even lesser-known properties like “Virgin Suicides”, and the short-lived (but AWESOME) TV show “FlashForward” are based on books. Heck, even nonfiction how-to books like “Think Like A Man” got movie treatments.

So I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering how to get a piece of that action.

There’s a lot about getting your story optioned that is out of your control. You have to find a connected literary agent that can get your story in front of movie execs or people with enough power to make stuff like that happen. You have to have a studio actually interested in your story. And then there’s negotiating a fair deal, and hoping the guys adapting your story for screen don’t butcher your creation to the point where it’s not recognizable (Think the movie version of “I Robot” vs. the book). And that’s if the story actually makes it to film – many optioned properties get lost in the development process and never actually get made into movies or TV shows.

But one thing you CAN control about the process is making your story easily translatable for television and movies. This way you story becomes more attractive to would-be producers and film execs, because they can see an easy path to getting the story in the format that will make them the most money.

Break down your book into its core elements.

Remember, movies are visual mediums, and you don’t have more than a few hours (which translate into about 150 specially formatted pages) to tell a complete story. So your story needs to get to the point and stay there. First and foremost, you need to know the core elements of your story: The central characters, the central conflict, and the setting. Most films and television episodes are plot-driven, which means you want to make sure the plot that moves your story forward is strong and engaging. With characters, you want your main characters to have strong, definable characteristics that the actors portraying the role can build around. This doesn’t mean you eschew nuance and subtlety completely, but you want to make sure that your character’s defining traits are front and center and inform most of their behavior. The setting should be well defined, enough so that your readers (and a potential producer) can visualize where everything is happening.

Your book synopsis as a movie outline

After you find these core elements, then you want to build the skeleton of you story, or find the skeleton in your existing story. Most publishers and agents require a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of your story for submission anyway, so now is a good time to put one together. Write a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of your story, and then go back and filter out the details that are least vital to the plot. Look your outline over and then determine if the plot is strong enough to carry onscreen (or stage, if you want your story to be adapted into a play). These scenes are the ones that need the most of your attention when you write your final story. They need to stand out, engage and keep the narrative moving forward.

The plot points also need to drive home the central conflict of your story. Who is you protagonist, what are they up against, and what is at stake. These elements need to be front and center throughout your story. Ultimately, you want to be able to explain the biggest elements of your story in one sentence.

With those elements established, then you can go back in and build everything else on top of that, while still keeping everything pointing towards your core elements. Just about every story I write is intended to be adaptable. Godmode was built as a sci-fi horror story, but there is heavy action and character development moments to establish Elijah and his supporting characters, along with ever-raising stakes that escalate from simple survival, to protecting people near him, to rescuing his wife and child from a nemesis that was a former friend.

Action and Dialogue matters

Since movies are a visual medium that moves in realtime, you do not really have the luxury of delving deep into aspects that cannot be visually represented on the screen/stage. So inner thoughts, explanations of how stuff works, lengthy descriptions of history and settings, while still useful and essential to your story, all take a backseat to strong dialogue and action (and by action I don’t just mean shooting, fighting and blowing stuff up. By action I mean stuff happening and moving the plot forward). So you want to make sure your characters are talking or communicating to each other in some way, shape or form, and that they are interacting with their environment.

As long as you have a strong core to your story, and your story is moving and engaging, then moviemakers should be able to see how they can bring your story to the screen. Now it’s just a matter of finding a moviemaker willing to give your story a chance. Go for it.

Creating a Sourcebook for Your World

Quan

Sometimes, when writing a story, your world gets so big that it gets hard to keep track of everything that is happening in it. You can introduce so many different elements, settings, threads and characters that telling a cohesive story that stays faithful to everything you’ve established becomes a challenge. This is especially true when you’re writing a story that needs multiple installments or sequels. I faced that problem with a story I am currently seeking representation for as of this post. I have already started writing a follow-up book, and in writing it I realized I had set up a lot of concepts in the first book that I need to flesh out before writing the second. When that happens, You might want to compile a reference source that explains everything about your world that you can come back to when you’re stuck. This is usually called a story bible, or a sourcebook.

RPG elements

The best known sourcebooks are from tabletop Role Playing Games. The Dungeon master needs source material to create the scenarios for the other players to operate in, so he uses books full of material that references locations, landmarks, magic systems, races and cultures, along with key characters and any other details about that scenario that the Dungeon master may need. Armed with this information, they can then create adventures for the other players to get involved in, and be prepared for any action or reaction the players may exhibit during the game. You can apply this same principle to your story. In essence, you are both the Dungeon master and the players, and you want to be armed with as much information as you can generate to craft the most cohesive story you can make.

Elements of sourcebooks

Many, many years ago Lloyd Brown wrote an excellent article on developing Sourcebooks for tabletop Role-Playing Games (You can read it here https://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/free09jun05.html ). Let’s take the elements he introduced and expand them for a broader range of world-building.

The Tone

In creating your sourcebook, you want to establish what the overall mood or ambiance of your world is. Is your world dark and foreboding? Paranoid and suspicious? Bright and optimistic? Grand and regal? Satirical and Tongue-in-cheek? What is the overall tone that you want your readers to feel as they engage your settings? Take some time to describe how this world feels.

The Places

Landmarks and important locales are a defining element of Role Playing games as they present backdrops for the players to romp through. This is also true for general fiction. Take some time to describe and explain the most important places of your setting How they are built, what important events occur there, and what importance they have to the overall world. If you can even map out the locations, whether its a map of their interior or an exterior map of where they are in relation to the rest of the world, that will also be a great help.

The History

The original article says it best: “Give a background on the setting’s history, explaining how it got to where it is now. If it’s a fictional setting, you might start with a creation myth and work from there. If it’s an alternate history setting, where your history deviates from real-world history is a good starting point. For science fiction games, background elements usually include Earth’s exploration of space and first contact with aliens.”

To elaborate on that, any element or concept that has any importance in the story should have a history attached to it, explaining how it came to be in your setting and what led to its importance. And any detail of your story that deviates from real-word sensibilities will also need to have some backstory attached to it. And don’t forget to make sure all of your histories and backstories work well together, to help avoid conflicts.

The People

Explaining how the people live in your world is paramount to your story. You want to delve into the different races, classes and cultures and how they operate within your word, as well as how they interact with each other. Use every tool at your disposal, from describing art styles and rituals, to traditions, dress styles and cuisine. You can even mention their language tics and music. Anything that will help you as a writer and the reader get a clearer picture of how the people in your world live and breathe will help, and the more, the better.

You might also want to add some details about your most oft-used characters. It could be a great reference for both you and the reader as you continue depicting the situations those characters get themselves into and out of.

The Religions

Religion and faith play a heavy role in how the real world operates, so it must have a place in your world, too. Even the lack of a central religion in itself is a tenement of belief. Take time to explain the roles religion has with your people, places, culture and history. Who do your people believe in? How do they express those beliefs? What landmarks and rituals do they associate with those beliefs? How do these beliefs affect the way the world is run, and how different cultures deal with each other? These can have a profound effect on your story, so you might want to take some time to flesh these details out.

Mythology counts in this category, too. The fantastic creation myths and legends of pantheons and history explaining how cultures see the world is also fair game for delving into.

The Tech

This wasn’t covered in the original article, but it really should have been. If your world has any element that operates outside of the norms of the real world, you need to explain how those aspects work. It could be explaining how magic works in your high fantasy setting, or explaining what vampires and werewolves can and can’t do in your horror story, and definitely explaining how the outlandish, futuristic gadgets work in you sci-fi or espionage story. Having a concrete set of rules for how these important elements work grounds your story and makes it easier to stay consistent the more you write about it.

The Secrets

Your setting will have loads of secrets waiting for your characters to explore and discover. The more prominent ones that have a direct effect on your story will probably need to be fleshed out if they haven’t already been covered in the previous topics. Take the time to really delve into the who, what, where, why and how of these secrets, and possibly explain why they are secrets to begin with.

Referencing

While some of the more well-known story franchises have been known to publish their sourcebooks, it is really more for your own personal reference and understanding of the world you are creating. So be sure to keep your sourcebook handy while writing so that you can come back to it whenever you need to check the accuracy or consistency of something you are writing. And be sure to keep your sourcebook flexible. You will be introducing new ideas, concepts, places and people constantly to your world, so you need to be able to update your sourcebook as needed.

You will find having a convenient reference source for the world you are creating to be a valuable resource, and it may even prompt you to do more deep exploration of how your wold works, which will in turn add more material to your sourcebook that you can mine for stories. I am constantly adding new ideas and concepts for the high fantasy trilogy I am currently writing, and most of those new concepts, landmarks, people, histories and ideas are built upon stuff I had added to the sourcebook long ago. Take some time aside to develop this, and your stories will be better for it in the long run.

Setting Up the Big Reveal

Quan

The Big Plot Twist is a staple of storytelling. Everyone uses it in any form of storytelling medium. It is a great way of progressing a story forward, and it keeps readers guessing as to what will happen next. Oftentimes, a major plot twist could make a reader totally rethink everything that has come before it and put the entire story into a new perspective. The most famous example I can think of is M. Knight Shaymalan and the twist endings that he is notorious for in movies such as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. In those movies, he saves the major plot twist for the end of the film, but in reality you can place these big reveals anywhere in the story and get a similar impact.

Setting up the twist: unexpected reveals are rarely that

When plotting a big plot twist or reveal, you want to make sure it is not something sprung on the reader for nothing more than shock value. You want it to occur organically within the progression of the story, and it has to make sense within the context of the narrative. And there are ways to do that. The trick is to have plot twists the reader won’t see coming, but at the same time they could have seen coming if they had been paying better attention leading up to the plot twist.

Leaving clues vs. direct foreshadowing

This issue is a matter of how subtle you want to be in letting your reader know a change to the plot is coming. With more subtle hints, you can still have that moment of surprise for casual readers, but you also will have a reward for more astute readers or those who are reading your book for a second time.

Try not to be cheesy or hamfisted…or obvious!

Part of the fun in partaking in a story for the first time is trying to outguess the author, and trying to figure out where the story is going or what is going to happen next before it actually happens. Making the clues, omens and foreshadowing too obvious ruins all of that. So try to avoid instances that scream “BIG PLOT TWIST COMING” like characters directly referencing stuff that will come into play later on, or blatantly display character traits that will affect the story late on. You want to be careful not to spoonfeed your reader or insult their intelligence.

How subtle is subtle?

At the same time, you don’t want to try to be too clever and go over the heads of your readers. Obscure references that don’t really fit the context of your setting or characters can make your story come off as pretentious. And that’s providing that the reader understands your clues to begin with. Make sure your setup actually makes sense.

Leaving Clues

There are ways you can foreshadow your big plot reveal to avoid making the reader feel bamboozled.

Your clues can be behavioral (In The Hand You’re Dealt, Tika’s explosive temper is established early, and it greatly affects events that happen later on), environmental (in Leopard Man, Ashlynn and Barter visit a landmark early in the story that plays a crucial role in the story’s climax), vocal (in Godmode, bible-thumping Ithaca warns Elijah about the consequences of his behavior with a bible verse early that plays out later in the story), and/or antecdotal. You can even hint at upcoming events in the names of characters and landmarks (Elijah and the company he works for – B.A.A.L. – are in reference to an epic Bible showdown between the prophet Elijah and the worshipers of the pagan god Baal). The key is planting small details that subtly point towards events that will happen later.

Now, you also don’t want to get so into adding clues that you detract from the other, more important elements of the story. It’s a lot like setting up a mystery. Knowing the truth before hand, you need to leave some breadcrumbs so readers can have an idea of what you have in store for them.

Planting red herrings: Effective ways to honestly mislead

If you are familiar with storytelling cliches and tropes, you can use those to your advantage, and swerve the reader with misleading clues and false foreshadowing. You can use accepted norms in your chosen story genre to lead your readers into thinking the story will follow the usual formula for that type of story. Then your big reveal turns everything on its head, and catches the reader totally offguard.

Even with this, though, you need to be fair. While you’re planting the obvious clues to lead the reader down the wrong way of thinking about your story, you still need to plant some more subtle hints at the way your plot is really going. Or better yet, you could craft your clues and foreshadowing in a way that they can be interpreted either way.

Use your Beta Readers

This is an element where your beta readers and content editor can really be a big help. Be sure to specifically ask them if there were any plot twists or big reveals that caught them off guard or that they didn’t see coming. And also ask them if there were plot twists they saw coming a mile away. And ask them to explain how those revelations made them feel about the story as a whole. You can use their reactions to gauge how effective your big plot twist is, as well as how effectively you set it up.

If done effectively, your big plot reveal can be a great hook to keep your readers guessing, and more importantly, to keep your readers reading. Setting it up properly can encourage multiple readings of your story, which in turn can further endear your readers to you and your writing. So be sure to make the time to set everything up effectively.

Creating Alternate Realities

Quan

Alternate realities and parallel earths has been a staple of storytelling since HG Wells’ The Time Machine. There is something intriguing about asking “What if” and exploring possibilities of what would the possibilities be if something that happened, instead happened differently. Exploring these possibilities can make for some very compelling stories if handled correctly.

One Event That Changes Everything

One of the fantasy stories I am seeking publication for deals with an “alternate present” which is a normal, modern world that had a singular event in the past change the course of history. Perhaps you can introduce a new circumstance into the world you’ve created, which alters the world and creates a new set of circumstances.

Start At the Ending.

Another approach is creating your alternate reality and highlighting the current differences from your original world, then going back and explaining how those changes came about. This is a good option when you already have ideas for how your alternate reality will be portrayed. Just go ahead and preset the ideas you have, then go back and explain how everything came to be later.

The Butterfly Effect

Sometimes creating an alternate reality is as simple as taking a decision one of your characters made and asking yourself what would ave happened had they made a different choice. This has been the basis for many alternate timeline stories from Marvel and DC.

An easy way to do this is to take a decision or action that was taken in the story and have your character do something else, maybe even the exact opposite of the action. That will create the catalyst for your world to change.

Ripple Effects

However you choose to approach your new alternate world, it would behoove you to do a deep dive into your new status quo and truly flesh o the details o how that world operates an how people operate within it. I advise creating a bible or appendix explaining as many details about your world as you can muster up. This will serve as the reference point for your world and establish the new rules and parameters of that reality that you will abide by as you craft your story. How is the flora and fauna changed in your new reality? How are economics and politics affected? How do people live and coexist?

Whether it be the goatee-clad evil alternate Star Trek characters, or the many alternate Earths in the Marvel and DC universes, exploring alternate realities is a great way to come up with and develop new story ideas.

Starting Over

Quan

So you’ve just finished writing your epic manuscript. It is your masterpiece; the story you’ve been born to tell, that you have poured all of your heart and soul into for months, if not years, on end. You’ve carefully chosen every word and phrase, and did a ton of research to make sure the story was authentic. In your mind, it is perfect.

Then you hand the story you are so proud of over to your beta readers or your content editor to look over. And they shred it. They find massive, gaping plot holes, or serious believability issues, or huge flaws in your character development, or serious inconsistencies with your setting, or technical/historical inaccuracies. Or even worse, all of the above. Nothing short of a complete overhaul is what you need to make your beloved story publishable. And the story is too dear to you for you to discard, so that means you’ve basically going to have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. So how do you go about handling that?

I’ve had a few instances like that, where I had to take my idea back to the drawing board after someone I was pitching my ideas to swiss cheesed a number of my concepts and characters. So here are some of the approaches I took.

Find Your Core

You really want to start by getting to the heart of your story. What is your story really about? What is the driving conflict and theme? Oftentimes, problems arise when your story drifts too far away from its central themes and conflicts. Examine your characters and the world they exist in. You should be able to summarize the essentials of your setting and each character in a sentence or two. Boil everything down to this core and start rebuilding from there.

Asking Why

When finding your core, the best way to develop things is to look at the tenements you are building your story around and asking why they have to be that way. Why is your heroine so cynical? Why does your villain want so badly to execute his nefarious plot? Why is that landmark in your setting so meaningful to the narrative? Come up with answers to those questions, and then ask them again of your new answers. Get to the bottom of why your most important elements are so important, and use that as the basis of your retelling of your story.

Delve Into Your Backstories

sometimes the best way to fix what is going to be in your story is to delve into the details that won’t be in your story. Your backstories give flesh to the skeletons you have of your setting, plot and characters, and give you reference points to use when developing your story. Take the elements you plan on introducing and the concepts that might need some explaining, and explain them: where they came from, how they got to be the way they are, and what effect they have on the rest of the world and characters. Be cognizant of inconsistencies and stuff that flat-out doesn’t make sense within the context of the story you want to tell.

It might even get to the point where you need to create an entire story bible or sourcebook to explain everything that is going on in your wold and with your characters. I plan to address the ins and outs o creating one in a future blog post.

Double-check Your Research

There may be instances where your critics poke holes into the accuracy of some of your story elements. When this happens, then its time to delve deeper into your research. New information is constantly being added for just about any topic, and perhaps some of the information you gathered at the time has been further developed, or even refuted. So it would be prudent to do a double-check to make sure that the information you gathered is still accurate and relevant. Make sure your facts are straight and that they apply properly to the story you are telling.

And this research includes the overall criticisms from your beta readers and content editors. Take a second look at what they had to say about your story elements and see if you can address those critisisms directly in your rewrite. In addition to the negative stuff also pay attention to the stuff they liked or that really caught their attention. These are elements you want to build on and prominently feature.

Try Something Different

Sometimes the best approach is to take your core ideas and simply build something new out of them. Both fantasy stories I am currently seeking representation for as of his post had instances were I had to do that. My urban fantasy thriller Needle of the Southside came about from a failed sci-fi/fantasy hybrid epic I was writing in the same vein as Final Fantasy 7’s narrative. While bouncing ideas off of my content editor, she found a ton of questionable plot and setting issues with the story as I was planning it (I actually had thumbnailed a 4-issue comic book about the story at the time). So I had to scrap the story and restart the narrative. In doing that, the core story elements, along with her insights, led me in an entirely new direction for the story.

Likewise with the fantasy epic I wrote called Return of the Tyrant. There were a ton of plot elements and adventures I had planned for the heroes of my story, but while talking about my ideas with my content editor (we bounce story ideas off of each other often), she found that many of my ideas would be problematic to execute in a first novel, if at all. So I heeded her advice and put those ideas on the shelf for further development, but that left a void in what I had planned for he first book. So I had to craft new adventures, which meant introducing new characters and settings, which took the story in an entirely new direction from what I had originally planned. The adventures I originally had in mind can still be used, but I will now have to adapt them to fit the new direction the story is going in for future follow-up books.

Starting over can be a frustrating, daunting task. But if you are up to the challenge, you can take the remnants of what didn’t work, and truly craft something memorable, which will be many, many times better and more engaging than what you had originally come up with. So don’t be afraid of the process.

Diversity and Representation in Storytelling

Quan

As an African-American storyteller, it is important to me to properly and respectfully address the issue of diversity and rresentation in all of my stories. I personally don’t feel I’m seeing enough of certain grops of people represented in stories (my own group included), so I try to make sure to accurately and respectfully include characers representing those groups in many of my stories.

A white male has no problem with representation because he will always be represented. For those who aren’t white, and for those who aren’t male, that is not always the case. 

So for the rest of us, it does feel good to see a character we can dircetly relate to portrayed in a non-stereotypical manner. Until recently, that was a bit of a rarity. 

I’ve been playing Magic: The Gathering since its early “Chronicles” expansion, and I was giddy when they devoted a major set to a tropical, African-inspired environment with dark-skinned characters. As an African-American, it was something I rarely saw and was something I could identify with. We can find things we relate to in really any character regardless of gender, race, religion, etc. But there is a more personal connection when you feel underrepresented or misrepresented and you see a character that is a direct reflection of your identity shown in a positive (non-stereotypical) way.

Here are a few issues I’ve identified when dealing with this in storytelling, and a perspective on how to approach them.

Using Language Tastefully to Identify Ethnicity/Culture

The way a character talks can give away a lot about their culture and background. Everything from tone of voice to their pet phrases, accent, and even the way they speak profanities can help identify their culture. One of my tricks when I write ethnic characters is have them say certain words or phrases in their “other” language. This is mostly to remind my readers of their ethnicity. But just like with all of these tips, be cautious of overkill. Having language doing the heavy lifting can come off as patronizing to your readers.

Being Authentic Without Being Offensive

There is a fine line between adding elements of a particular culture to make them identifiable, and stereotyping. That is something you want to be very cognizant of. A small element here and there, maybe a cultural tic or a particular feature would be enough to give away what that character’s background is would be enough. Sometimes even just a name can be enough. If you give your character a surname like Martinez or Rodriguez, most readers will assume the character is Latin. Likewise, if your surname is something like Valenti or Castagnacci, then the reader will assume they have Italian roots. But doing too much insults the reader’s intelligence.

If you know certain physical features that can be identified with a certain background, you can utilize those, too. But you really should go to this well sparingly. Maybe one or two mentions about bodily features tops. Especially skin color. You should only need to mention once about a character’s complexion for the reader to be able to get the visual.

Going Against Stereotype

In the grand scheme of things, having your characters buck accepted stereotypes is a good thing for a number of reasons. It challenges the reader’s preconceptions and prejudices, and helps make your character unique and memorable. If you, knowing that Asian characters are typically presented as genial and ultra-smart, want to create an Asian character that is a bit clueless, it should be within your right to do so. But I advise developing your un-stereotypical character and fully understanding why they don’t act the way readers would expect them to act, so you can portray them more authentically.

Handling Ethnic Antagonists

probably the toughest aspect of developing ethnic characters is making one that is the bad guy. The temptation is to lean in to their ethnic identifiers, or to place them in roles that are typically identified with their ethnicity (i.e. the Latino druglord, or the sheisty Jewish lawyer). But you can avoid that by taking time to truly develop your characters and fleshing them out the same way you would flesh out any villain. Preferably in a way where their villainy or villainous attitude is not inherently tied to their ethnicity or culture.

Avoiding Tokenism or Diversity Just for its Own Sake.

Many underrepresented groups feel slighted despite seeing “one of their own” in a story, because it is obvious that that character was put there as a “tolken” character.

The key to avoiding this is to make the character’s culture and background an integral part of the narrative. Having your character and your world be well-developed is the key to that. If there are aspects of your world where your unique character can exist as a part of the culture, then you create more authenticity and your character is less likely to stand out like a sore thumb.

This will also solve the problem of including characters of other races and cultures just so you can say you did it. That can come off as very disingenuous and patronizing, so making the characters and their backgrounds an integral part of the story is vital.

There are a few ideas I thought up to help you address the issue as you create your stories. I am sure there are other, better ways out there to handle it. But being cognizant of how sensitive an issue it can be and how important it is for you to get it right is a definite step in the right direction. And it doesn’t hurt to get outside opinions, either. There are plenty of groups on places like Facebook (like this one) that pay close attention to how various ethnicities and cultures are portrayed in stories. It couldn’t hurt to get their input on your story, too.

When Characters Hijack the Plot

Quan

If you are a writer that prefers to know exactly what is going to happen in your story before you start writing, then I assume you spend a lot of time outlining and hammering out your plot. You know exactly where your characters are going to go, what they are going to do, and how they are going to do it. You know all of the major plot twists beforehand, as well as how your characters should react to them. You have everything set up neatly and ready to go.

But then you start actually writing.

What happens when you write your characters and develop them within the story, and their development takes you in an entirely different direction? Or what happens when you introduce a new supporting character, and whatever that character wants to do totally derails your carefully planned and outlined plot?

Instances like these are what I consider “hijacking” the plot of your story. The characters’ personalities, histories, goals and makeup dictate a different reaction than what you had originally planned, and it almost mandates you taking the story in an entirely different direction. It’s like in many episodes of The Simpsons, where the episode starts off seeming to be about one story element, but then something gets introduced which changes the plot of the episode drastically and makes the rest of the show about resolving the new development.

How you resolve this really depends on how flexible you are as a writer. For some writers, the plot outline is just a bare framework or suggestion of how things probably should go maybe, and if any element comes around to change things, they are perfectly okay with going with the flow. There are inherent issues that can come from that, but they are willing to deal with that. At the other extreme, there are writers that are determined, or obligated (in the case of ghostwriters or people under contract for franchises), to stick to their original plot outline no matter what. These writers now have to face the possibility of forcing their characters to act against their true nature for the sake of following the plot. There are also dangers with this approach, too. Chances are if you’ve faced this issue, you fall somewhere in the middle. Here are a few options on how you can handle it.

Make the new arc a subplot

You can take this new direction your character wants to go in, and make it a side story that you visit as a break from your main plot. This can actually add more depth to your core story as it allows room fr character development and exploration you might not be able to get to within your main plot. And it will be even better if you can tie this new side story back into the central plot.

Make it into a spinoff, and finish the core plot with new characters

If what this character wants to do is totally out of the realm of your originally story, you could just make a separate book dealing with that story. And if that character simply is no longer a good fit for the plot you have in mind, then you’ll have to create new characters that are better suited to your original story. In that case, you will need to create your character with the needs of the plot built into their makeup and backstory.

Change details about your characters to make them compliant.

If you really don’t want to craft an entirely new story around your characters’ new developments, you could just modify and tweak your character’s personality and backstory to be more compliant with your plot. This is actually something I’d recommend against. Once your characters discover their voice and perspective, I believe it would be a disservice to try to neuter or change their voice for the sake of a plot. Interesting plots are great for one story, but memorable characters can be utilized for multiple stories on end.

extend the story.

My solution with my story was that my characters would go off on this wild side adventure, and after that was resolved, then they still had to deal with their original problem. But now they were armed with more experience, new allies, new skills and a better understanding of the world around them. Of course, this meant that the story would take more than one book to be completed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, by the way.

So these are different methods and approaches you can take when your characters start pushing you in directions you hadn’t intended, and start taking you away from the plot you had so carefully planned. It’s nothing of panic over, and happens often when you take time to truly develop characters. But there are ways for you to b true to both your characters and your plot, and if handled correctly, can add that much more depth to your overall narrative.