Category: Characters

Everyone Has A Story

Quan

Writers are nosy. It’s just a fact. My wife often berates me for paying attention to the conversations of others. What she doesn’t understand is that it is part of my makeup as a storyteller to have an interest in the stories of others. One can never tell what tidbit of info will generate new inspiration for a new story, or a way to enhance an existing story. Many of the more interesting elements of stories that I have written have come from observing…or even flat out eavesdropping…others as they talk and interact.

A favorite scene from my book The Hand You’re Dealt came directly from watching people while waiting in line to sell my blood plasma at a clinic in Flint (Yes, that actually happened). The speech and body language of the people was so colorful, it would have been a waste to not use that material in a book. It also added the the authenticity of the region represented in the book, which helped with achieving the feeling of “city as character” I wrote about a bunch of months back.

Be Observant.

One of my all-time favorite TV shows was The Mentalist, about a Charlatan sleuth who’s main claim to fame is “reading” people. He can tell hidden details about people by the way they dress, the way they talk and the things they say, their body language and by other behavioral quirks that might escape the casual observer. These are techniques you can learn to employ. By being able to see beyond a person’s outward facade, you can gleam great details about that person’s life that you can mine for story details, or even full stories within themselves.

Be a good interviewer.

You don’t have to formally conduct interviews like I do in my monthly author interview series. But when talking to people about things they have experienced in their lives or are experiencing, be sure to ask them questions about it, and get to the core of what they are dealing with and how they are reacting to it. You’d be surprised ad what people will reveal about themselves and their world just by talking to you.

Always take notes.

You never know when you will see or hear something from somebody that will be worthy of inclusion into a story. So always keep a means of recording these moments handy. Most cell phones have access to vocal recorders you can use to record conversations or observations. In the absence of a phone, there are portable vocal recorders available for purchase, too. It is also good to keep a pen and notepad handy in case you can’t use a vocal recorder.

The key to collecting these little gold nuggets of information and inspiration is to always have you antennae up, and be ready for them to come at any time in any circumstance. And it does require a bit of training to be able to catch them. I advise taking a bit of time to just do people-watching. Go to a public place, have a seat, and just watch & observe the people there. And take notes on what you discover. You’ll be surprised at the cool tidbits of usable information you get from that.

Pros and Cons of Shared Universes

Quan

The Marvel Cinematic Universe was, and still is, a huge phenomenon in the world of entertainment. Never before had there been such a collection of disparate, interconnected standalone movies that all shared the same universe, which culminated in films that brought all of the franchises together. The formula was so successful that other studios sought to create their own shared universes, with not nearly as much success. But this innovation in film is just an iteration of something that had been done many times before in comic books and literature.

I define a shared universe as a collection of standalone story franchises that all interact and inhabit the same storyspace. This is different from an epic series with multiple books like Dune, or a franchise that creates multiple spinoffs like Star Trek. In a shared universe, each property can and often does work independently of any other entry into the franchise and is not dependent on familiarity with any other franchise for its own relevance. It’s like Nancy Drew having frequent team-up stories with the Hardy Boys: these are two well-established franchises that sometimes interact.

This was something that hadn’t been tried before at a major level in film, but shared universes are commonplace in literature and comic books. The most notable examples I can think of are the Marvel and DC comic book universes, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, The Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises, and the collection of worlds and characters that define the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering. This is a model that can be very lucrative at many levels if handled correctly. But can be disastrous if mishandled. So the question becomes whether this is a model you as a writer would want to pursue for your stories, as well as how to pull it off successfully.

WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT:

Cross promotion and marketing

Sometimes the best way to promote franshises is via other franchises. This is why successful TV shows often have “backdoor pilots,” which are episodes of the show specifically designed to spotlight a new cast of characters in hopes of sparking interest in a spinoff show. The familiarity of a property your audience is familiar with could be a great launching pad for a new property.

Franchising and branding possibilities

In many cases, the whole is very equal to the sum of its parts. Having a solid lineup of independent franchises compose your shared universe creates a feeling of community that your audience can relate to.

When one thinks of the Discworld, they probably think of their favorite book subseries like Commander Vimes & the Watch, but other series will also come to mind like the 3 Witches, Moist Von Lipwig, Rincewind & The Wizards, Susan Sto Helit, and Tiffany Aching. That familiarity only strengthens the brand of the Universe as a whole.

Building fanbases for characters and plot arcs

The added exposure of having franchises interconnected with other franchises allows for more of your audience to develop a connection with them. You can really build the fanbase of a franchise by tying it into a larger world. Likewise with plot arcs that resonate. Many of Magic: The Gatherinsg’s Planeswalker characters gained popularity and notoriety from interacting with their resident superteam The Gatewatch, as well as though the epic War of the Spark storyline.

Building a following

A shared Universe is a great way to build a following for multiple franchises at once. Your audience will take an interest in seeing what new characters and elements will be included in your universe, as well as how the established elements wold react to them.

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T DO IT

Connections can become overly convoluted and confusing

The more elements you add to a universe, the more potential there is for things to get confusing. It can become a puzzle figuring out how everything and everyone fits together and relates. In he 80s and 90s, DC Comics had to have two massive comic book events to clean up their convoluted issues: the first one dealing with their plethora of different versions of the same heroes and worlds (Crisis on Infinite Earths), and then one to fix their inconsistent historical timeline (Zero Hour). You have to keep careful track of each element you introduce into your universe, and that in itself comes with issues, as I will elaborate on in a couple of paragraphs.

Forcing your audience to follow everything

A big problem with shared universes is that a newbie may see all of the interconnected franchises and feel intimidated. If there is no real jumping on point, they will feel that they have missed too much to get on board, or that following all of the disparate stories just to see how they connect or so that they won’t be left in the dark when a story comes down the line that references the past is too intimidating. This was a problem that some people had with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Those films were rewards for longtime fans, but newcomers had a hard time figuring out what was going on and why.

Keeping track of all the details

Your bookkeeping gets way more extensive with a shared universe, because there are so many more story details to keep track of. Everything has to be consistent across franchises, especially in areas where they overlap. And fans of your shared universe will quickly cry foul if they find something that doesn’t line up correctly. It can be quite tedious to double check everything to make sure there are no discrepancies, especially if your universe consists of a lot of interacting franchises.

The story never ends

Another issue that might become a problem is the pressure to continue adding to your universe and keep it growing. It becomes increasingly harder to add a standalone story, because your readers will always ask what ramifications that story will have on the universe overall, and if any future changes in the universe will have an effect on what happened in that story. This is an area where the dreaded story retcon can come into play, where you literally change the events of your past stories ipso facto to better fit your current narrative. As a general rule, you want to avoid retcons unless there is truly no other way to make what you have now work within the current narrative.

Here are some offhand examples of well-done shared universes.

Marvel and DC comic universes

Marvel Cinematic Universe

DC TV Universe (BKA The Arrowverse)

Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

Magic: The Gathering Multiverse

The Glass Movie trilogy

The Law & Order series of TV shows

The Chicago shows series of TV shows

Th CSI series of TV shows.

In a future post I will offer some quick tips on creating your own shared universe, and ways to avoid certain pitfalls. I will also talk about how I approached creating a shared universe for two of my webcomics, The Seizure and Weekend Heroes.

Catch Them In The Feels: Adding Emotional Impact to a Scene

Quan

A staple of fiction is the tragic scene. It’s when something happens within a story that truly tugs at the heartstrings of the reader and gets them to feel the raw emotion of whatever is happening. You’ve seen it everywhere from movies to video games to comics and novels. Some entire franchises were built on these moments.

But generating that emotional response is a tricky thing to accomplish. it can be overdone and underdone. It can feel artificial or manipulative. It can lack the necessary punch or feel soulless. So the question is how do you as a writer craft together a moment that truly, naturally elicits an emotional response from the reader?

There are many ways to approach a moment with this intent. It does not always have to be something tragic. In Terry Pratchett’s Snuff, a young, delicate goblin girl does a gesture of kindness and trust for Samuel Vimes. The moment is handled with intimacy and tenderness, from the demure girl’s movements to her haunting, profound proclamations of hearts needing to give. The girl was portrayed as delicate, precious and fragile, with a big, trusting heart for the hero of the story. I know when I read it, I truly felt for this little goblin in a way I rarely felt for secondary characters, and I truly wanted Vimes to do the right thing for her. It was a mesmerizing scene.

I tried to accomplish something similar in The Hand You’re Dealt. The scene where Jay is feeling great about a recent job interview only to have his hopes crushed moments later was something I drew from real life experience. So it was easy to articulate his slow realization that his interview did not go as well as he thought, and all of his hopes and plans for the future were dashed in that moment. But I chose to portray that moment through the eyes of his girlfriend Tika, as she witnesses his dejection firsthand and feels helpless and unable to console him. She cares for him, so she emphasizes with his despair, and in that scene she literally cries the tears he is trying to hold back. After finishing the first draft of that scene, I read it to my wife, who is not a fan of my writing in any way, shape or form. But the scene actually brought a tear to her eye because it actually took her back to that very moment where she was at my side and something similar happened to me. (How that failed to make her more interested in reading my stories I will never know, but I digress).

So the question is how do you as a writer add just the right amount of pathos and emotional resonance to a scene, without overdoing it? How can you craft a scene that truly tugs at the heart strings?

Invest the reader in the characters involved.

You don’t want your emotional moments to feel cheap, or that you manipulated the reader. Things have to come naturally within the flow of the story. To achieve this you must take the time to establish your characters and make them relatable to the reader. Take the time to fully develop the characters involved and give them a true voice and some depth of personality throughout the story leading up to your big emotional event.

Go big, or go small.

Larger-than-life events of grand importance to the story can get emotive responses because of the stakes involved. The big moments in your story are big for a reason, and you can let the gravity of the moment reflect in your characters’ behaviors. But you can also get an emotional response in quieter, more intimate moments. When moments are more intimate, there is an inherent connection with the reader, almost a feeling that they are witnessing something that they really aren’t supposed to see. This adds to the resonance because it feels as if the story is truly letting its guard down and inviting the reader into its inner workings. With an intimate moment, there are no other distractions from the moment to dilute or water down its emotional impact.

The devil is in the details.

Body language, choice of words and actions, facial expression, vocal inflection, even cadence of speech and the inherent rhythm of the flow of action can all have an effect on how emotional a scene is. Something even as simple as the goblin girl’s key phrase “Hearts must give” evokes an emotive response. Even the smallest details can add to the emotional impact of a moment.

Let it breathe.

Don’t fall into the temptation of trying to tell the reader what to feel. Present the action of the scene, and if you can get into the heads of one or more of the characters, all the more better. But you don’t want to overdo it. When a reader feels they have been manipulated and forced to feel a certain way, that can take them out of the story. Make the moment feel organic, like it was a natural progression from what had happened leading up to it, and then let the moment create the resonance for itself.

Read it over.

Once you’ve finished your scene. Read it back over and let someone else read it (or like I did, read it aloud to somebody else). The best way to tell if it tugs at the reader’s heart strings is to literally see if it tugs at a reader’s heart strings. If somebody else is reading or hearing the scene, get feedback from them on how the scene makes them feel, if their feeling is logical and if the scene makes sense.

To illustrate my point, here is the Terry Pratchett book in question. Pratchett had a great way of getting you to emphasize with unlikely characters, and he does it again with the goblins in this book. Check out “Snuff.”

Snuff, by Terry Pratchett

Is Women in Refrigerators A Neccessary Evil?

Quan

Okay, I’m going to get a bit controversial with this post. I’m going to talk about a very touchy subject among writers and readers. I’m talking about Women in Refrigerators.

For those who don’t know, Women in Refrigerators, or “Fridging,” is when an established secondary character – usually a woman – is killed off or violated in a gruesome way, for the sole purpose of motivating your central protagonist. The phrase got its origins in one of my all-time favorite comic books, Green Lantern. In this particular issue the girlfriend of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner was assaulted by one of his enemies while he was away. She was brutally murdered and shoved into a refrigerator, all for the purpose of making Kyle mad. This incident brought to light a trope where a female character is seemingly needlessly victimized (usually in a gruesome way) for the sake of the protagonist’s motivation.

Why is Women in Refrigerators a bad thing? The biggest problem with fridging is that it takes an established, presumably well-developed character and reduces her (or him, in some cases) to nothing more than a plot device. It is really a disservice to the character to victimize them in such a way, and when a character’s death or violation is handled poorly, it can leave a very bad taste in the mouth of the reader. Add to that the larger social connotations of the fact that this primarily happens to women, and you are creating a very bad feeling for the reader which has very little to do with your actual story. The perception of women in society as needing the protection of men moreso than men needing protection is also part of why this trope has been used so much. It’s only in the last few decades (let’s say starting in the 1990s) that women have been consistently portrayed as not needing a man’s protection or presence. And most protagonists that have benefited from Women in Refrigerators have been men.

But let’s do a deep dive into this trope. There are reasons why this has become a storytelling staple.

First of all, it works. Readers can get more invested into the protagonist when someone he or she cares about is endangered. And the point of everything is to get the reader invested into the protagonist. WIF is not a new thing, and has been done since there were stories to tell. One can argue that the stories of Orpheus, Persephone and Hercules all had women fridged, You can also argue that women were fridged in the Shakespeare plays Othello, Hamlet, and King Lear. It’s been done umpteen times in Television and movies (Game of Thrones and Se7en, for example), and even in video games (Final Fantasy 7 comes to mind). And of course, the trope was first given a name through comics and has many, many examples of it (Gwen Stacy, Elektra and Barbara Gordon, for starters, and let’s throw in Sue Dibny too)

But let me point out that it’s not just women that can get fridged. Though they are the vast majority. For instance, in that very same Green Lantern comic book, Kyle’s gay friend was assaulted by homophobic bullies, and all it really served was to piss Kyle off and show how badass he can be. And in Magic The Gathering, a huge motivation for Gerrard’s decisions to kick off the Weatherlight saga came from his male elf friend Rofellos getting murdered. And as of this writing, Batman’s butler Alfred was just murdered for the sake of furthering a Batman story (although I’m quite sure he will be resurrected somehow sooner or later) Also, violating children is the big no-no in storytelling, but there are instances where even that was exploited to motivate the hero.

So why do I call this a necessary evil? I think that fridging an established character raises the stakes of the story more effectively than endangering a flat supporting character. And an actual violation adds way more urgency than just endangering the character. This also provides a venue (when done well) for exploration of the protagonist and their supporting cast ‘s psyches and reactions to the violation, which can provide some great character depth if handled properly. For a violation to have true meaning, the reader has to actually care about the character getting violated. So you have to establish them for that.

And yes, I am guilty of fridging characters in some of my stories. (beware – spoilers ahead) In The Leopard Man, Ashlynn’s best friend Tesenga was murdered in front of her while they were running from some criminals. I needed to show how dangerous her pursuers were and why getting caught by them was not an option, and also to introduce that possibility when she actually does get caught by them. In Double Entry, I hint at something bad happening to a close friend of Calloway, which would have served as his motivation if I had ever written that spinoff book starring him. I admit I fridged a couple of people in Godmode. Sylvia’s death didn’t really motivate Elijah because he could barely remember her by the time he found her corpse, but his coworker Mr. Snitsky was directly under his protection when he got killed (pretty gruesomely too, I may add). I did this to raise the stakes of Elijah’s situation, and show how dangerous the monsters really are. It also gave me an excuse to show off Elijah’s darker side and make him question whether he was the bigger monster than the creatures he was fighting.

But if Fridging is so bad, then how as a writer can you add that resonance yet avoid falling into the trope? That is tricky and there are no easy answers. There are some excellent solutions in this article (https://www.standoutbooks.com/fridging/ ) that I want to build on.

1. Have her fight back. Don’t let your character be a victim. Give her some agency and response to the issue she is dealing with. If your villain is going to violate her, then make him earn that victory. This way your character isn’t some hapless damsel in distress that couldn’t fend for herself. In a life-or-death situation, people will use anything and everything they can get their hands on to survive. Let your character do the same.

2.Make her more vital. John Wick went on a murderous rampage because someone killed his dog and stole his car. Don’t let your character be a pet or a possession. In addition to fleshing the character out, you must also establish that this character is a vital, important part of your protag’s life, both before and after the traumatic event. Let your protagonist, and even other supporting characters, depend on this person for important stuff. She has a more vital role than being there just to die and make the hero feel bad. This also can make the reader more attached to the character which creates more resonance when the tragic event happens.

3.Show how everyone ELSE is affected by what happens. When a recurring secondary character in the second MacGyver TV show was murdered by a serial killer, there was literally less than a quarter of a segment devoted to how MacGyver and his team felt about losing one of their valued coworkers. And there was no mention of her at all in subsequent episodes, despite the murderer appearing many times afterward as a recurring antagonist. This trivialized her death, and in effect trivialized her life. Your character has relationships and interactions with not only your protagonist, but everyone else in the story. Something bad happening to her will naturally have an effect on everyone she has interacted with. She is/was somebody’s friend, somebody’s sibling, somebody’s spouse, or somebody’s mother. There are emotional connections that need to be addressed.

4.Bring her back. Obviously if a character is dead, this is normally not an option. But in the case of another traumatic violation like rape or mutilation, don’t allow that character to remain in that traumatized state. Empower her to recover and come back from her trauma, maybe with some obvious physical and emotional scars, but restored to her place of importance in the story. Jack Ryan’s wife was forced into a traumatic car accident in Patriot Games, but she was not killed, and she was able to recover and encourage Jack to “go get em,” which provided him with all of the motivation he needed to get the job done without needlessly killing off his wife and children. And even if your character does die, there are ways to “bring her back” from that, too. You just have to be creative. You don’t have to let the villain have that victory over her.

5.Don’t do it to a woman. The perception of a fridging changes drastically with something as simple as doing it to a man instead of a woman. Consider having the traumatic event happen to one of your protagonist’s male supporting characters instead of the female one. There are a lot of layers that can be explored when it is a man that is violated and victimized. Especially with perceptions of male strength and the idea of toxic masculinity and machismo. In society, a man that can be overpowered and violated “like a woman” isn’t really considered a “man.” You can do some things with that to add some extra depth to your story.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head on ways you can get that same effect without using this trope. And if you disagree with any of this, feel free to call me out on my BS and explain any alternatives you can think of. All opinions and options Can make for great tools for writers to hone their craft, and that includes myself.

More on Writing The Final Battle

Quan

If you read my previous post about writing final battles, here are a few more thoughts about the process.

First things first. You’ve gotta give your final bad guys a weakness. There has to be a way to beat them, otherwise it defeats the purpose of your hero’s quest. I believe this is the whole reason for the whole silver/garlic shtick with our fanged and furry friends (if I ever decide to write my shelved Werewolf story idea “Hunter’s Moon”, I’m doing away with that weakness to silver. In my world, werewolves can be killed like any other living creature. but the catch is they are more cunning than average werewolves. these guys are still half human, after all. They can plan, set traps and use guns as well as hunt you down and rip your head off. I think that would be an interesting enemy to have to fight against). Otherwise these things are unstoppable monsters and there’s no point in fighting them. Your audience needs to see your heroine find a way, so you need to build one in. You can give some crazy backstory behind the weakness, but it has to be there.

Don’t think too big, even if your current story is one part of a larger narrative or storyarc. yes, this is part of a larger narrative, but this also has to work as a self-contained story. I’m going to again tell you what my publisher at Necro told me: there has to be a payoff. for Godmode, the problem was Elijah going through all this crap only to fail at saving anybody (Snitsky, Ith, his wife or his child). you have to reward the readers in some way for following your character through all of that hell. For a large story arc…Everything your protag has done so far culminates into this one moment, which is part of preparing her for the next moment in the next story, which is an even bigger moment. It’s part of the progression of the hero. And this isn’t literal. This is a matter of how you craft the story. By the time your heroine meets her last foe, you, the writer, will need to have given her the tools to give herself a fighting chance to win. If she doesn’t, then you failed her, and that part of the story’s not over until she at least has a chance to win.

Here’s an allegory: everything I have done in my career has prepared me for the job I have right now. Learning web design, Learning specific graphics programs like InDesign and Photoshop, Working in the publishing industry designing at newspapers, running my own magazine in college, writing for my college newspaper, including writing reviews and conducting interviews, learning to efficiently research stuff online, learning to get along with coworkers, understanding the editing process, even the clipart sites i used as a freelancer: all of that stuff has played a part in my success (so far) at my current dayjob. I once interviewed my now ex-brother in law for a featured article in the magazine, which draws upon another set of life experiences because him trusting me enough to ask him about his time in the Marines and his time as a police officer was not something that was built overnight. I’ve been preparing for that job my entire life.

That’s what I mean. everything your heroine has been through, the skills she picked up, the weapons she collected, the lessons she learned about handling certain situations and people, all of that was training and preparation for this. one. battle. I know there will be other final battles in the future, but if she can’t figure out how to win this one, there WON’T be any others. and that’s kinda the point.

If you haven’t watched the film Donnie Darko, I recommend you at least read some of the analyses of the movie. There are a bunch on Youtube. it’s a fascinating look at how this kid was led to be the savior of his world. long story short: he came across an unexplained artifact that created a tangent universe that was going to collapse on itself and destroy the real universe if he didn’t find out where that artifact came from and put it back. The people in this tangent universe are called “the manipulated dead” and they are all giving him clues and tools to save the world – even the ones antagonizing him, but he – and the audience – doesn’t know it. And since he was chosen, he also has some supernatural powers to help him complete the task. Nothing major, but just enough to get what needs to be done, done. and everything he does in the movie sets off sequences of events like dominoes falling, which leads right up to him doing what needs to be done, at the cost of his own life. Come to think of it, this is a similar phenomenon to how the video game Link’s Awakening progresses. Those are extreme examples, but that’s pretty much what every writer does with their protagonists, and what you’re doing with your heroine.

That’s why I asked what your protag has learned. There has to be some nuggets of knowledge she picked up in her story that will come in handy during this battle. same thing with her special abilities. She was granted those powers for a reason. This is the reason. Perhaps at some point of time, she learned of her enemies’ weakness, but it was unimportant factoid at the time. and of her blade fighting training, one of the techniques she learned is VERY effective on that particular weakspot. She learns from a previous battle to not to hold back, or to never turn her back on a defeated foe, or maybe she learns the secret to fighting off multiple foes by herself. I’m talking about very practical lessons she learned that she can use to win.

And if at all possible, avoid information dumps. they read too much like exposition. the intel she needs to win this battle should be learned throughout the story , not on the day before the final battle.

Hubris is a good weakness for your final boss to have. Some of Comicdom’s most powerful villains are usually stopped because they are too arrogant to think there are any flaws in their plans. For guys like Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom, their arrogance is literally their only real weakness. They often underestimate their foes, or do not thoroughly reinforce their plans, and end up leaving a loose thread, which, when pulled by the hero, makes the whole plan unravel.

Even if you’re writing a series of novels/movies and this will be one of many final battles, don’t fall into the trap of thinking too meta. you need to go micro with this moment. If your heroine doesn’t shine in this battle, there may not be any more final battles for her to engage in (story-wise or publication-wise). THIS battle – whichever one your heroine is in at the moment – is literally your heroine’s finest hour. Which means this foe needs to bring out the best of her. You have to make the opposition’s weapons formidable, but there has to be a way to overcome them built in that your heroine can exploit. The mithril armor and Sting don’t seem like much for Bilbo and Frodo, until they are in battle and that little glowing sword saves everyone’s lives. Think of your foe’s weapons and powers as opportunities for your heroine to show off HER abilities. it’s kind of like a dance, and you need to choreograph it.

Now look at the environment the battle is happening in. Your characters are not going to be fighting in an empty room, or even in a ring. There will be natural obstacles and weapons lying around which can help raise the stakes and the level of danger in the fight. A crumbling stronghold holds different obstacles than a sinking ship, which is different from a desolate battlefield or a dense jungle. The final battle in Kill Bill happened at a picnic table in a couple of lawn chairs in a suburban backyard. When you’re in a fight for your life, and you’re fighting for everything you hold dear, you’re going to utilize every advantage at your disposal. That’s why you need to give your final foe a built in weakness. And Your heroine needs to be the one to recognize it and be the first to exploit it.

Terry Pratchett example of this: Cohen the Barbarian is the world’s oldest Barbarian. before you laugh, remember that he has worked in a very deadly profession and lived to be a very old age. think about that, and THEN you can laugh. in any case, he’s in a Japanese-like world facing off against some samurai. The samurai want to show how skilled they are, so one pulls out a hankerchief, throws it in the air, and slices it into thirds while it is still in the air. Cohen is impressed, and now he wants to try it, so he pulls out a handkerchief and throws it in the air. while the samurai are all looking up at the handkerchief, he cuts all of their heads off. his quote? “You can show off, or you can fight. you can’t do both.”

Another way to enhance your final battle is with in-battle dialogue. this is the final battle. this is personal. there will be trash talked, and plenty of it. what are these guys saying to and about each other before the fight? during it? after it?

By the time you get to the final battle, there has to be more at stake than your protag’s survival. What exactly is she trying to do when all Hell breaks loose? what is she trying to do right at that moment within the framework of her overall quest in story. every good hero’s journey involves the quest. what is her quest for this leg of her journey? what is she trying to obtain or accomplish? And why is it so important for your final foe to stop her?

Regardless of what genre your story is in, a final battle is and should be heavy on the action. Doesn’t matter if it’s physical, verbal, or psychological: the pace of this confrontation has to be brisk and full of tension. There has to back a back and forth and ebb & flow to the momentum of the battle. it really is like a dance. or better yet, like a well choreographed pro wrestling match (I loves me some rasslin’). the best matches tell a story within themselves, have good, solid action of a hard fought battle, engage the crowd and get them cheering or booing and genuinely caring about the outcome, and make it hard to predict who is going to win or lose. Dances With Smurfs –er– Avatar actually nailed those aspects of the final battle.

Speaking of Avatar, why dontcha check that movie out again to see what I’m talking about?

Writing The Final Battle

Quan

Probably one of the most fun and challenging parts of writing Godmode was coming up with the final battle. My Content Editor is working on her latest novel, and came to me for some advice about the process of it. This is what I told her:

The final battle is the culmination of everything your story has been building up to. Basically, everything your protagonist has done, experienced and learned was in preparation for that one moment. and with it being a battle, it will be against a foe that will require everything that protagonist has learned to defeat.

Take an inventory of your heroine. What are her special abilities? What has she learned throughout the course of the story? What are the weapons at her disposal? What life lessons has she learned that will be of use during this conflict? What weaknesses can the foe still exploit? Why is it more important to your heroine personally to beat this foe than any previous one?

Now look at your villain, or whatever your final foe is. What are his special abilities and skills? What are his weapons and tools? What are his weaknesses? How far in advance would he have planned for this battle, or was he caught by surprise? Most mastermind-type villains are very hard to beat when they’ve had time to prepare – that can also apply to heroes, by the way. Heroes like Black Panther and Batman are dangerous despite their lack of superpowers because they are meticulous in scouting their opponents and preparing for them accordingly. Being mere mortals, they would get creamed in a fair fight against these demigods…so they make sure the fight is never fair. Or you can go the opposite route, with a foe that can adapt to any situation and turn it to his advantage (re: Captain America and James Bond. a villainous version would be Deathstroke the Terminator). Both types of foe present their own sets of challenges for the heroine. And finally, what are the stakes for the villain? Why is this a fight that he can’t just walk away from?

Your final foe has to be able to push your heroine to the absolute limit of her abilities and endurance. This has to be her most dangerous battle, the one she is in the greatest danger of not making it out alive from. So think about your villain’s abilities and weapons in this way: how will this ability or weapon test my heroine? What skills and knowledge will it force her to utilize? What happens to her-specifically- if she can’t overcome that particular ability or weapon? Godmode’s final monster battle was the amalgamation, a mishmash of a bunch of deadly animals, that had an answer for everything Elijah tried to do against it. To win, Elijah had to utilize the tools of his environment, tap into skills he had forgotten he had, and …most importantly…not lose control, because his rage mode would have surely gotten him killed.

Now look at the environment the battle is happening in. your characters are not going to be fighting in an empty room, or even in a ring. There will be natural obstacles and weapons lying around which can help raise the stakes and the level of danger in the fight.a crumbling stronghold holds different obstacles than a sinking ship, which is different from a desolate battlefield or a dense jungle. The final battle in Kill Bill happened at a picnic table in a couple of lawn chairs in a suburban backyard. When you’re in a fight for your life, and you’re fighting for everything you hold dear, you’re going to utilize every advantage at your disposal.

This is a formula similar to that in many video games. in most action and adventure-based games, you’ll have accumulated a lot of new weapons, techniques and abilities to get through the game, but to defeat the last boss, you’re going to need all of those skills and then some to find a way to win. Especially in JRPGs like the old Final Fantasy games. your characters could be leveled up to the max with the best weapons, but if you don’t wisely utilize your attacks, spells and items, you will still get your rear end handed to you.

This is the fight where your heroine reaches her full potential, so don’t be afraid to cut loose and go all out with the special effects and collateral damage. If you get stuck, blow something up. it worked for X1999 and Akira. Dragonball Z and The Matrix, too, for that matter. and Man of Steel. and Pacific Rim.

Another thing to consider is the personal element of this confrontation. How are the people involved connected? What kind of dialogue would they be having in the middle of this fight? What personal history or surprise revelations are going to be brought up? Remember that moment when Vader told Luke he was his father. That revelation was made even more powerful because Luke had already lost the battle, as well as his hand. It was demoralizing for him as a character, but planted seeds for the next phase of the story: how is Luke going to redeem his father? Inception’s final confrontation didn’t have a big fight, but it did have Cobb finally owning up to the truth about why his wife killed herself, and confronting that aspect of his psyche that had been sabotaging his efforts from day one.

As for the fallout…what is the purpose for your final battle anyway? What is your heroine trying to accomplish and why is the foe trying to stop it? And not in the meta “Save the world” sense, but very specifically: what exactly is your heroine trying to do, (press a button, deliver a message, drink a soda) and why exactly is this person or thing trying to stop her? Answer that question and you’ll answer what to write about. In the end, your heroine will either be able to do what she set out to do, or she won’t. It’s as simple as that. Start by writing that exact moment, and build off of that. I’ll even say that writing the aftermath might give you some clues as to what happens during the battle.

My example this time is a Final Battle that Wizards of the Coast had been building up to in 3 years’ worth of stories. In this novel all of their discordant threads come together and the heroes are put to the ultimate test.

Writing Believable Dialogue

Quan

One of the key elements of a good story is the dialogue between characters. Any story that has people interacting will show their conversations, and that is an important aspect in conveying an engaging, believable story. People can reveal a lot about themselves and their world through their dialogue. With good dialogue you can establish everything from character traits to plot elements to setting. You can tell the reader the what, why, how and where using just dialogue, and you can also use it to point out key details in the plot that you want readers to know. It is a versatile tool you have at your disposal that can convey a lot about your story when used well.

Writing good dialogue can be tricky. You want the conversation to flow naturally and sound authentic. You don’t want “talking heads” where it’s just two disembodied voices talking back and forth with nothing else happening (or do you? I’ve read some compelling stories that were nothing but two talking heads. I think this is the exception and not the rule, though). You want your people to sound like actual people with real personalities and quirks. So how can you do this?

I’ve been told that writing dialogue is one of my strengths. These are some of the techniques I use to handle it.

REAL LIFE INFLUENCE

Always listen to how people talk and converse. You will be surprised at how much you learn about how people talk just by listening to how people talk. Follow the ebb and flow of their conversation. Every dialogue has a rhythm and a poetry to it, regardless of who is talking or how they talk. Pay attention to that. You might also hear some cool antec dotes you can use in future stories. Some of the coolest dialogue from supporting characters in my book The Hand You’re Dealt came directly from people I was standing near while waiting to sell my blood plasma (Yes, that aspect of the story is quite autobiographical.)

BODY LANGUAGE

Body language and facial expression is also an important part of writing believable dialogue. People are twitchy, and nobody is just sitting perfectly still while talking. Take time to mention what their bodies and faces are doing while they are talking. You can convey a lot about what a character is thinking or feeling as they talk this way. Oftentimes, I will describe a character’s small action before they say something instead of using “he said.” Because it does a dual job of indicating who is talking while also giving some of that movement to the character. This also applies to giving a brief description of what is going through the POV character’s mind as they speak.

GRAMMAR

People don’t use proper grammar when they talk, not even English teachers. People talk in fragments, have unfinished thoughts, stumble over words, use incorrect phraseology, use filler words like um and uh, cut each other off and try to finish each other’s sentences. When writing dialogue, you want to utilize those quirks to make the conversation, and the characters, more believable. Save the soliloquies for Shakespeare.

SLANG

Pay attention to slang and local colloquialisms. If you’re writing a character from New York, that person is going to sound and talk quite differently than a person from Atlanta. Slang words and different pronunciations can be a great teller of where they are from and what their culture is, and in that instance you can be forgiven for intentional misspellings. I got into quite a few arguments with my Beta readers and editors over a New Yorker I put in The Hand You’re Dealt. They thought I misspelled one of his colloquialisms, and I had to repeatedly explain that he comes from a culture where People call each other “sun” (as in shining like the sun) instead of “son.” I got so tired of the fight I just switched to a different slang word.

Incorporating other languages can also be a key element in establishing a character. If a character comes from a unique culture, including a word or two from their native language will drive that point home. Just don’t overdo it: sprinkling in too many foreign words will make it blatant to the reader that you’re trying to make the character seem more ethnic.

THE WORD ‘SAID’

When writing dialogue, you tread a fine line when using the word “said.” You don’t want to overuse it, but at the same time, it can become quite obvious to readers when you are trying too hard to not use it. If you find yourself trying to come up with a new verb for talking every time you have somebody speak, then you are doing it too much, and you need to use “said” to give the reader a break. “Said” is usually an invisible word: the reader will read that and know what it means intrinsically without it interrupting the flow of the story. The key is to not use it ALL of the time lest you appear unimaginative. You also want to keep a lid on the flowery adjectives (which usually come right after you use the word “said”). Whatever you’re using that adjective to describe in what that character said should be self evident in whatever that character said and the actions and details around it. If you do that well, then the adjective becomes redundant.

TESTING IT OUT

Once you’ve written your dialogue, the next thing is to test it out. Don’t be afraid to read your dialogue out loud to see if everything sounds smooth and believable. Sometimes words and phrases that look good on paper (or your screen) won’t sound right when actually spoken, and that can be problematic if you want you dialogue to sound authentic.

These are some of the techniques I use when writing conversations. Give them a try and hopefully it will make your dialogue more memorable.

D’ya know who else excels at writing dialogue? Chuck Palahniuk! Check out this book from the creator of Fight Club and see for yourself.

Writing Your Batman Story

Quan

I’ve been told that every halfway decent writer has at least one good Batman story in them. I agree. Batman is a beloved character, and can be placed effectively in almost any type of story.

For instance: I wrote an alternate universe treatment with the bat family as counterterrorist agents instead of superheroes. Also, I want to write a trippy, futuristic Batman story, starring a grown-up Damien Wayne (Batman’s biological son and the current Robin) wearing the cape and cowl,  based entirely on Prince’s Batman soundtrack. Have you read his lyrics? Wow. It would be Damien going up against the Sadistic, hedonistic PARTYMAN to stop him from flooding Gotham with the deadly psychadelic drug “Lemon Crush.” I probably won’t ever actually write it, but it would be pretty darned cool.

I have a few more doozies in the vault. I would divulge what my treatments are, but I’m saving them in case DC ever comes calling.

Now, I wonder what YOUR Batman story would look like…

You might wonder just exactly how you can make a Batman story if you don’t normally write superheroes. This is where Batman’s versatility comes into play. So, beyond the usual superhero fare, Batman is also the World’s Greatest Detective and a master specialist in hand-to-hand combat. So if your writing forte leans toward Crime, Detective stories or procedurals, and even thrillers, Batman is a perfect character to build a story around, even without the superhero baggage.

Is steamy romance your thing?  Batman has gone through numerous relationships. He has been romantically involved with Vicki Vale, he has a love child by his arch-enemy Talia Al Ghul (instant baby mama drama!) and was recently left at the altar when he tried to marry Catwoman. There are even stories that have him hooking up with Wonder Woman, and one particularly creepy (for all the wrong reasons) tryst with Batgirl. You can play into the conflict between Batman’s mission and his need for intimacy.

Are you a Sci-Fi or fantasy writer? Batman’s gadgets and futuretech should be right up your alley, and Bats has even thrived in fantasy settings. He has literally fought Demons, Vampires, Zombies, and Sorcerers, and has been portrayed as a literal “Dark Knight” on multiple occasions.

Wanna do Horror? What can be more terrifying for a criminal than a being stalked by a man-sized bat in the darkness? You can also play into the mental illnesses of the bad guys (Hannibal Lecter has NOTHING on Batman’s rogues gallery) or how scary it can be for victims of the bad guys. One of the Bat villains LITERALLY specializes in inducing fear, in fact.

If family drama is your thing, you can’t get more dramatic than the Batman family. He is an orphan himself, and has raised no less than four young men who all have quirky personalities and issues with each other. Everyone connected to Batman has dealt with personal and even familial trauma, from Commissioner Gordon with his vigilante daughter and sociopathic son, to Harley Quinn’s abusive relationship with The Joker, to the complicated family tree of Ras Al Ghul, Talia and Damien Wayne.

Batman is also a master of disguise and an expert intel gatherer/saboteur, so espionage and political thrillers would also be a good fit for him. You can also cover political drama and conspiracy theories via The Court of Owls, or personal stories of trauma and recovery like when Batman’s protegee Dick Grayson (Nightwing) got shot in the head and went through a total personality change in his recovery from that. And Batman’s dry wit and gallows humor could lend themselves well to comedy writing. He was even put into a Japanese Samurai story to great effect. You can put Batman into literally any story scenario and have a basis for a compelling story.

A good Batman story is no different than a good Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple story. It’s just a good detective/crime/superhero/horror/thriller story, starring Bruce Wayne. Even if you don’t ever intend on approaching DC with your Batman story, you can still make one. Just replace Batman with an original character that has similar traits, or grab one in the public domain, and voila! Instant original story you don’t have to worry about getting sued over.

A simple way to get started is to take a story or trope within a genre you enjoy writing about, and simply ask yourself what would happen if it were Batman starring in the story instead of your usual protagonist. What would be different? What can and would Batman do differently than your usual protagonist in handling the situation? How would the circumstances of the situation react to him? Would any of is allies and enemies be involved? And then you just build from there.

Just to illustrate my point, here is a story where an evil, twisted version of Batman shows the real Bats different versions of himself in other lives, where his story plays out quite differently.

Writing Action Scenes

Quan

A good action scene is almost like a miniature story unto itself. I particularly enjoy writing action (I like writing dialogue too), and I have a pretty simple approach to it. Action is conflict, and conflict is the crux of what drives a narrative forward. 

I use a rather simple formula when mapping out and choreographing my action sequences. It’s really just a matter of figuring out your character’s immediate goal, then asking yourself what could possibly go wrong within the parameters of the setting and situation your character is in, and making that scenario happen. After that, you have your character react to the situation,  and then your situation reacts to your character’s action. This is one of the few instances where Murphy’s Law is your friend. 

Whatever the worst thing that can happen to your character is in that moment, make it happen. Then you have to figure out how your character can overcome that problem, after your character has overcome that small setback, make something else go wrong. Rinse, wash, and repeat until your character either works his or her way towards accomplishing their goal, or it becomes clearly evident that there is no way they can possibly, logically complete their task. Then you go inside that character’s head and record his or her thoughts and feelings during this whole sequence. That way you get to relay how high the stakes are in that character’s mind.

Keep your sentences relatively short, because that speeds of the pace of the story. Also, writing with some uptempo, aggressive music in the background helps set the mood too. The goal is to have your reader constantly thinking “Wow he’s in a tight spot! how’s he gonna get out of this?”

Let’s break down each step of this process.

1. Your character’s immediate goal. 

This does not have to be some large or grandiose goal. You’re writing a scene, not a book. The goal can be as simple as getting from one end of a room to another. Just ask yourself what the character needs to right now, and how do they intend to accomplish that goal.

2. What could possibly go wrong?

The key here is putting an obstacle in front of your character that will not only inconvenience them, but prevent the goal from being accomplished altogether. Remember that you’re writing drama here, so trivial obstacles won’t be enough to keep the reader’s attention. Go Big.

3. Make the worst case scenario happen.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Take into account the setting and situation so that your obstacle happens organically. You don’t want a dude trying to go to the store, and then have some aliens come out of nowhere shooting lasers at him if you didn’t set up that possibility earlier in the story. The obstacle has to be logical, and you have to be fair about it: there has to at least appear to be a solution to the obstacle that the character can get to, even if they have to do some thinking and problem solving to get to it. The guys that write MacGyver always made sure that whenever MacGyver needed to cobble something to get out of a fix, the necessary ingredients to do so were within reach.

4. What does your character do about it? And what is going through their mind as they do it?

Writing your character’s response is the crucial element of moving the narrative forward. Be sure to stay true to your character’s personality and mode of operation. A character that is a planner reacts differently from one that is used to thinking on their feet. You want to make sure the actions are consistent and fluid within the setting. Make sure everything flows.
The thoughts and emotions going through your character’s mind is also crucial. The reader wants to see how that person’s mind is working their way through the dilemma. That will give a lot of insight into your character’s personality and thought process. It also lets the reader know what the stakes are and how important it is to the character to figure out how to solve the obstacle.

5. Now what?

Now that your character has made their move and overcome that obstacle, the environment and situation have changed. Every action has a reaction, so this changed environment now creates a new challenge blocking your character’s path. What is that new challenge? Perhaps your heroine escapes from bondage only to now have to find her way out of the building she is being held in without being noticed by her captors. After she finds her way out of the building, now she has to figure out where she is and get some transportation to safety. What dangers are posed by the method of transportation she finds? And so on. This process repeats until either the goal is complete, or there is absolutely no way the goal can be completed.

EXAMPLE TIME: One of the scenes in Godmode features Elijah trying to escape a room full of minotaur-like creatures. His first obstacle in the maze of cubicles he finds himself in. So he has to navigate through that to find the exit. But his curiosity takes him to one experiment chamber, where he is then confronted by his second obstacle, the minotaurs. So his immediate goal of getting out of that room is met with the biggest thing that could go wrong at that moment, which was these savage beastmen looking to slaughter him. So how does Elijah react? He runs, zigzagging through the room, trying to find an exit, some refuge, or a way to fight them off. He finds the latter in the form of a dead security guard with his gun still in the holster. Now the goal is get to the gun before the minotaurs get to him. He reaches the gun…but wait, he can’t get the holster to unclasp so he can get the gun out. And the minotaurs are still coming. So what does he do to react to that? He rips the gun out of its holster and shoots at the minotaurs….and misses every single shot. Now what?

Incorporating this method should bring you some clear, concise action sequences for you to build around. Give it a try and see how well it works.

Oh and if you want to see my example in realtime, grab a copy of Godmode here.

Magic: The Gathering and the Art of World Building, Pt. 2

Quan

If you’ve read my previous post about how the card game Magic The Gathering uses its cards to build worlds, you know that I feel this could be a valuable tool to help a writer flesh out the setting of his or her story. I briefly explained how I did it, but now the question becomes “how can YOU do it?”

I have a few tips.

In MTG, the cards are elements of a world: flora and fauna, people, cultures, landmarks, important events, etc. Each card has its own mechanics that tie in not only to the game, but also to the element represented. For instance, if I were to make a card for one of my characters from my new manuscript Return of the Tyrant – an elf that is the last surviving elf in his world because he killed every other elf, it would be a creature card that destroyed every other elf in play and prohibited anyone from bringing any more elves out until that elf was destroyed. Now the card itself tells the elf’s story whenever you play it. To the makers of MTG, this is called “flavor.”
Each piece of flavor you add to a given element, whether it be a picture depicting the element, or some text explaining the element, or built into how the card works, deepens the story of the element and adds new dimension to your world.

Magic: The Gathering’s Color Pie

MTG’s foundation is a color-based system that defines every aspect of the game. there are five colors, each with its own personality and methodology, and that is the lens through which every aspect of the game is focused. (broadly: red=freedom and emotion, white=order and selflessness, black=selfishness and pragmatism, green=nature and balance, blue=intellect and invention) Each culture, creature, event and landmark is seen through the view of what color ethos it most closely represents. This actually makes defining the core aspects of worldbuilding elements easier because it gives you a base to develop around. If you have a culture of stoic warriors, you might want to lean them in the direction of a red-white combination, if you want some mad scientists, you make them red and blue or green and blue, and a mafia-like organization would be white and black. A cold, calculating manipulator could be blue-black, while a classic good guy could be monowhite.

Using a Game to Discover Your Story’s Theme

By using a game to develop your world, you can also detect broad thematic elements that can help you develop your story. Every world in Magic the Gathering has an overall theme, whether it be the adventure world aspect of Zendikar to the History-reverent world of Dominaria. once you discover the themes behind your world, you can use that as an aspect of your story. for Return of the Tyrant, the theme of extinction and lost civilization became prevalent as I was developing the cards in my game.

I’ve discovered two approaches to this method that work well. The first is what I call a Tourist mentality. You are a visitor to your world, and you are merely recording the stuff you observe as you travel through it. This is good for coming up with the people, animals, vegetation, landmarks, etc. that make up your world. The second is what I call the Historian’s mentality. Your job is to archive and describe in brief the histories and cultures that shape your world. This is how events, backstories and traditions get created…and often are good incubators for spinoff and follow-up stories.

Now, you don’t have to use MTG exclusively to do this. Any game can be used this way. even such classics as Monopoly and Chess. Or better yet, you can try your hand at inventing your own tie-in game. This would be a good idea because you now have a ready-made merchandise item once your book gets published.