Category: General Writing

Your Story as an RPG Campaign

Quan

One of my all time favorite comic books is Gold Digger by Fred Perry, published by Antarctic Press. It’s a fun, engaging story with amazing anime-styled art, constantly growing and evolving characters that pays heavy homage to 1980’s cartoons. In reading one of many insights from the creator, he mentioned that he plots his characters and stories as if his comic book were a tabletop Role Playing Game. That struck a chord with me. In fact, I think this can be a great mechanism for any writer looking to craft stories around their characters and worlds, especially if you’ve done a lot of character development and worldbuilding but can’t think of a story to tell about them.

How to play a tabletop RPG

If you’ve never played a Role Playing Game before, the set up is actually pretty simple. One person called the DungeonMaster creates a fictional world and scenarios within that world that the players, who are pretending to be characters with different backstories, personalities and abilities, respond to. And then the DungeonMaster progresses the scenario based on the players’ responses, and so on until either the players are killed or they accomplish their goal. It’s basically like an interactive campfire story, or even an improv script reading for actors in a movie. There are other details involved like determining levels and handling probabilities for success or failure of the player’s decisions, but at its core, interactive storytelling is what Role Playing Games are really about. And it doesn’t have to happen in just a high fantasy setting like the most popular RPG, Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve seen Role Playing games for Superspies, Superheroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lovecraftian Horror, and Feudal Japan. You can apply this model to any situation where people can assume roles. Heck, you could even argue that Monopoly is a form of Role-Playing Game, where you play the role of a real estate mogul.

You are the dungeon master

This applies to your storytelling in that You are in full control of the environment and everything that happens within it. The Dungeon Master is responsible for knowing the setting and parameters of the campaign. That includes everything from the place the adventure will be happening in and all the details of it, as well as the noteworthy elements of that place like its history and role within the rest of the world. The DM also needs to know about the denizens that inhabit that place, both major and minor. The DM needs to know how the world of this story works, and what the players can and can’t do within that world. This is you. It is your responsibility to set up the parameters for your characters and give them a world to operate in, goals to accomplish, obstacles to overcome and other people/animals/things to interact with. 

Also, as the DM, you are responsible to reacting to the decisions the players make within your campaign. Every action has a consequence, and you need to be thinking of how the environment reacts to your players’ actions. An RPG campaign is a constant dialogue between DM and players, with each reacting to each other to progress the story.

You are the players

Likewise, you also assume the role of the players. Each player in an RPG party creates his or her own character which may or may not be a reflection of the actual player. They act and react to the scenarios the Dungeon Master presents, and they gain experience in various areas in response to their decisions. When you write your characters, you are getting in their heads and making their decisions, reacting to the scenarios and challenges you placed for them as the Dungeon Master. So as a writer, you need to really thunk of how that character approaches that scenario. For my high fantasy story, I actually used the color pie from the popular game Magic: The Gathering to lay the foundation for my character’s personalities. And it is what I refer to when I need to figure out how they would act and react in general.

Actions and reactions

As I said earlier, the Role Playing Game campaign is a constant dialogue between Dungeon Master and Players, as well as a constant interaction between the players themselves. This is a dialogue you need to be cognizant of as you develop your story. Nothing in your story happens in a vacuum. The decisions your characters make in relation to the story have an effect on the environment, so that change must be reflected.  And as the situation changes and evolves in response to your characters, your characters have to respond to those changes. That interplay has to happen in a natural, organic way that progresses the story naturally. So on one hand you need to be intuned with your character’s personalities to know how they will react to various situations. But you also have to have an in-depth knowledge and familiarity with the environment your characters interact with.

Getting to know your characters

Even as the DungeonMaster has sourcebooks and reference materials to help them get a better understanding of the world an everything in it, the players have materials they can reference, also. They keep stat sheets listing their name, background, occupation, class, inventory, spells learned, weapons in hand, as well as the levels of experience they have in all necessary areas. This is valuable for a player knowing what they can and can’t do in response to the given situation. You might want to go this deep in developing your characters. It is a great way of knowing what your characters have available and what their true options are in any given situation. Keeping track of levels may help, too, because that shows just how well-versed and experienced your characters are in things they are trying to do, which greatly affects how successful they can be at it.

Variance and unpredictability

One thing RPGs feature that might be unfamiliar to you is the element of chance. Not every decision the players make is guaranteed to go as intended. The success or failure of many decisions is determined by a roll of dice or a coin flip, this creates a level of tension and unpredictability, and gives another variable the player and the DungeonMaster must react to. If you are ever in a situation where you don’t know what should happen next, perhaps you can adopt this method and let chance decide. Have your character decide to do something, and then roll the dice to see whether that decision gets the intended effect. And if the roll comes up not in favor of the decision, then you need to ask yourself what a failed decision looks like and how best to portray it.

If you are in need for some inspiration or something to jumpstart your storytelling, perhaps treating your story like a Role-Playing game might be that catalyst for you. It helps organize your ideas and plans into a cohesive narrative, and can help you truly visualize the story you want to tell, as well as all of the elements within. And who knows? It might even interest you in giving an actual Rope Playing Game like Dungeons & Dragons a try. Just don’t forget to bring your 6-sided dice.

How to Write a Trilogy

Quan

Trilogies are a holy grail in storytelling. They make any story larger and grander, and can create a real connection over time between the reader and the central characers. I’m in the process of writing my own trilogy, so I thought I’d do some digging into what makes trilogies work. I found a bunch of great advice on a bunch of other blogs, so I thought I’d share my findings with you, along with some of my own observations from writing my own trilogy.

  1. The first part of the story must be able to stand on its own merits. The Master & Commander series of books are quite popular, but when adapted for screen, never made it past the first movie (despite the movie being pretty damned good and making a lot of money). The lesson is that you cannot assume that your storyarc will make it to book two. Make sure your first story is strong and well-told and can work as a standalone story.
  2. Part two takes everything that worked about part one and ramps everything up, the stakes are higher, the character swings are bolder, and the consequences more severe. And part three is the closure where story arcs conclude and loose ends are tied up.
  3. Throughout the stories, there have to be details, thematic or otherwise, that tie the three stories together. Ideally, your reader should be able to sit and go through all three stories in one sitting and feel that they have read one complete narrative.
  4. To piggyback off of point one: each part of the trilogy has to work as a self-contained story within itself while at the same time advancing the overall narrative. You never know which story will be somebody’s jumping-on point, so you want to make sure they get a complete story in that one instance, whether they are reading part one or part three. At the same time, the most successful trilogies have a narrative thread that develops over the course of the series. It could be a plot arc or a character development arc, or even a setting/environmental arc. I’m a huge James Bond fan, and I love each of its 25+ movies, but the stories pitting him against Spectre and Ernst Starvo Blofeld resonate the most with me because the rivalry between the two is built and developed over the course of multiple stories (i.e. Dr, No through Diamonds are Forever was an excellent build, as was Casino Royale through Spectre). Likewise, the original Foundation Trilogy chronicled the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the Foundation over the course of many generations.

For me, a good trilogy is a prime example of the 3 act rule that I spoke of in earlier posts, just in a bigger package and working at a Meta level. To review, Magic: The Gathering Head of R&D Mark Rosewater (who also wrote episodes of Roseanne) described the process in three steps: 1) get your protagonist stuck up a tree. 2) throw rocks at them. 3) get your character down from the tree. This works withn the confines of a regular story, but it also works within a trilogy. The first story gets your character stuck up the tree. Even within your protagonist’s resolution of the story’s central plot, there are seeds planted which show that the greater problem has not been solved yet. Think Star Wars: yes, the Death Star was destroyed, but the Empire still rules the galaxy, and the big bad (Darth Vader) was still out there to create havoc in a future movie. The second story raises the stakes and truly puts the heroes in jeopardy of not completing their overall goal; like in Empire Strikes Back, where Luke and Company were dealt devastating blows by Vader, Palpatine and the Empire and the only central plot of the story was whether our heroes could survive it all and make it to the end of the movie. And the third story ties everything together and resolves everything, like in Return of the Jedi where Luke finally redeems his father and destroys the leader of the Empire…along with another Death Star.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind if you are planning a trilogy, but then there are added challenges if a story you originally hadn’t intended on expanding organically develops into something that needs more installments. Maybe your standalone story is so successful that your fans of your publisher demand a follow-up or two. Or maybe you have so much going on in your sequel that you can’t contain it all in one book. In those instances, the best thing to do is to do a deep dive into the world you created in book one. Pick out as many aspects of the settings, plots, subplots and characters that could be explored, and find an overall theme you can build an overarching narrative from that can carry multiple books.

So if you are hankering for a good narrative challenge, try taking one of your stories and expanding it into a 3-part saga. You might discover some new things about your world that will only serve to enhance your original idea.

How Storytelling Applies to Other Types of Writing

Quan

If you have been reading my blog regularly, you know that my main focus has been on improving as a storyteller. But also if you’ve read my author interviews, you would see that many of the authors I have interviewed wrote nonfiction books. There is much more to writing than just writing fiction. There are nonfiction writers, marketing writers, journalists, technical writers, essayists, and a plethora of other forms of writing that people engage in.

But I maintain that storytelling can be, and often is, a crucial aspect in all forms of writing, above and beyond just fiction.

Storytelling makes any writing more engaging

Anyone that has read a textbook for class or research knows that a lot of writing can be dry and uninteresting. It is a reason why a lot of people dread reading. A good story takes the reader on a journey where they follow how everything progresses over time. The way you write your piece can take your readers on that journey. The reader in now invested in the narrative you are presenting, and wondering how, or even if, the subject you are presenting can solve the problem you have created. Now your reader wants to know more about the subject you are writing about. They want to know the details because each detail you present could be part of the solution to the problem, or even present more problems that need to be resolved. It’s human nature: if you witness something begin that catches your attention, you will naturally want to see it through to its completion. You can use that to your advantage.

Benefits of adding a storytelling element to your writing

Making your writing piece into a story helps make your point more digestible. Your writing is no longer just a stream of facts statistics and ideas. There is a definitive, driving point to what you have written, and all of your supporting information now has a clear direction it is pointing in. If you are marketing, or writing to sell something, telling a story help the reader envision themselves in the situation where your product or service would be beneficial. That way they can better visualize the benefit your service or product will bring to them.

Creating a narrative.

The classic 3-act structure can be used in any setting. Simply, put, act one presents a problem, act two is the process of trying to solve the problem, and act there is the resolution of the problem. So now the question becomes how to compile your writings to fit this structure. Here is a simple, three-step way to do hat.

1. Find The Problem

Whatever you are writing about, whether it be advice you are giving, a product or service you are trying to promote, a theory you are trying to explain, or an explanation of how something works, it is in response to something that created a need for what you are writing about. Start by pinpointing where exactly that need was generated. This is the beginning of your story.

2. Find The Solution

Whatever conclusion you were going o write about, whether it actually solves your problem or not, is your solution in this context. It is the end of your story and the resolution for what you are setting up.

3. Find The Process

Now you have to figure out how to get from the genesis of your problem to its resolution. This is where all of your data, or historical references, or your selling points come into play. You actually have some creative liberty here with how you present the details, you can show how each of your points responds to different aspects of the problem. You could show how your solution initially responds to the problem, how the problem reacts (or present counter-arguments to your solutions), and how the solution responds to those responses, or a number of other ways of presenting the information. The most important thing is to show a progression where the problem you have pinpointed is resolved over time. This is the journey that you are taking you reader on.

If you can mold your non-creative writing project into a story narrative, you will make your writing more engaging and appealing to the reader, and they will be much more comfortable with reading what you wrote completely from beginning to end. Give it a try and see what you come up with.

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.

All About Beta Readers

Quan

Sometimes you need an extra set of eyes looking critically at your story. Even the best writers can become blind to their own flaws, especially if they have been closely working on a story for a lengthy amount of time. Beta readers are a cost-effective, efficient way to get an honest assessment of your story that can be a valuable resource.

Where to find them

There are a lot of great resources available to help you land beta readers. I personally got mine from Facebook. There are groups dedicated to beta reading that I am a part of (like this one). There are also groups for fans of specific genres where you can find beta readers if you ask real nicely.

In addition to that, I did some digging and found a few other great links where you can find beta readers. Check these out.

www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com

www.findbetareaders.com

www.betabooks.co

How to secure them

The best way to land a beta reader is to personally contact one and establish a rapport. Try to find out what types of stories they enjoy, and see if they would be interested in giving yours a try. You also might want to ask whether they would be open to reading your entire sorry, or if they only want the first few chapters.

If you have time to do some beta reading yourself, you can offer to exchange stories. There are a lot of writers that are also avid readers, and sometimes the best critiques you can get are from someone that also has experience with the craft of storytelling.

What to ask a beta reader for

When dealing with a Beta reader, keep in mind that this is a prime opportunity to troubleshoot any questionable issues in your story. If you have any parts of your narrative, plot, setting, character development, believability, or any other issue you are unsure about, this is a great opportunity to get that addressed. Ask your reader to focus on specific aspects that you need some opinions about.

When you don’t get any timely feedback

This is actually something I struggle with often. Beta readers are people, too, and they have lives and agendas that can take priority over reading your story and giving feedback. Or maybe they’re afraid of hurting your feelings if they don’t like your story. Either way, you have to be realistic in your expectations of when you get your feedback from your readers. That being said, it couldn’t hurt to check in with your beta reader every now and then to see if there has been any update on their critiques. Just don’t be a pest about it.

Are beta readers truly necessary?

Many of the top writers in the industry and some of the writers I have interviewed don’t use beta readers at all. They simply rely on their instincts and experience, and maybe their publisher’s content editor to help refine their stories. Personally, I think that is only a wise option for established writers that have the credentials of being successful authors. This is for guys that have sold books and lots of them. For the rest of us, I think it is a wiser option to find someone to look your story over and find flaws we may have missed.

Don’t take criticism personally

This is the most important part of getting critique: expect to get stuff said to you that you don’t want to hear. It’s part of the process. Don’t be so in love with your own writing that people can’t point out flaws. And those flaws may come in unexpected areas of your stories. Getting defensive when someone is doing YOU a favor in taking time to read your story and point out ways you can make it better defeats the purpose. Even when the reader comes off in a negative way, you can still gleam things from even a totally negative critique that you can use. Be courteous and thank them for taking the time to read your story and tell you what they think.

If you can get good beta readers, they will be a vital resource for helping you tell the absolute best story you can tell. Check out the links I provided and see if you can land one for your work.

Finding Time to Write

Quan

In one of my very first posts on this blog, I wrote about eliminating your excuses to not write. If you have something you want to write about, you should be writing. No one is going to tell your story for you. (Okay, you actually can pay a ghost writer to tell your story for you, but you still ought to be an active part of the process.). When I tell people I’m a novelist, I still hear people respond with “I’d like to write a book someday.” I ask them why not now, and they say they can’t find the time to.

I call BS on that.

People will make time to do the things they truly want to do. And unless you are truly writing or a living (like a technical writer or a Journalist), then writing will not be a natural part of your daily routine. Only full-time writers can write when they want, but they have to because it’s their job. You have to make time to write, just as you make time to binge watch TV shows or make time to rant on social media. There are plenty of ways to eke out time to get your ideas out, you just have to be committed enough to do it. Here are a few techniques I utilize.

Wake up an hour early or go to bed an hour later

Sometimes making time to write means literally making time. If your story is worth the hours of lost sleep, then those moments are perfect fodder for writing. Heck, for some, the creative juices flow best right before bedtime or right when they wake up anyway.

Write during your lunchbreak or downtime if you can

I admit I’ve snuck pieces of scrap paper onto the floor when I worked at factories. When the machines are down I’d jot a few quick notes down before picking up my broom to clean the area (Not something I recommend, though). Mostly if I had a long enough lunch break, I’d write ideas down then.

Jot down notes

This is something every writer should do. You should always keep a means of recording ideas handy at all time, whether it be a pen and some scratch paper, a note taking app on your phone, a notebook you carry around, or whatever. Inspiration can strike any time and anywhere under any circumstance, and when it happens you need to write it down, and yes, even jotting down notes counts as writing.

Vocal recorders

If you don’t have access to pen and scrap paper, or like me you find thumb-typing ideas onto the note app on your phone to be too tedious, you can always turn on your vocal recorder and dictate your ideas onto your phone. I personally haven’t tried this because I just like the feeling of writing or typing my ideas out better and it allows me more freedom to better organize my thoughts. But if it works for you, then go for it.

Email yourself

A good way to record ideas is to send them to yourself via email. You can write as much as you want, and they will always be in a place where you can retrieve them. I’ve done this plenty of time. In fact, I’ve backed up entire manuscript drafts be emailing them to myself. I actually trust that more than The Cloud.

Write instead of doing something else in your leisure time

Instead of watching the game, or going out partying, or hanging with the crew, or playing video games, or watching cat videos on YouTube, how about taking a half hour to write about what’s on your mind? You would be surprised at how must time you spend a day on mindless entertainment. That time can be spent writing. Or you can even multitask. Keep your laptop or tablet handy and type while you’re watching TV, or in between gaming sessions.

Write when you don’t feel like writing

This is a big one. Oftentimes you just don’t feel creative. It could be fatigue from the daily grind, or you’ve been through something particularly discouraging. The thing is, this is a perfect time to vent out your feelings of despair or frustration or fatigue. You can pour those negative feelings onto the paper, and into your stories. My negative feelings about my life at the time were the genesis of my book The Hand You’re Dealt. The emotions you get as my characters struggle with their careers and relationships are very, very real and were things that I was dealing with when I concocted the story.

Write when something major happens to get the feeling and reactions while they are fresh in your mind.

Likewise, when literally anything of importance happens in your life, that is a perfect opportunity to record it and put it into a story. Take note not only of what happened and why, but how everyone reacted to it, and how it made you feel personally, and even speculation what comes next. This is a great exercise to help develop your skill as a writer, and may provide material fr future stories.

JUST WRITE!

Like I said, if you really wanted to do it, you’d find a way. For writers, the ideas and revelations will churn inside us, nag at us constantly, and pretty much drive us insane if we don’t get them out of our heads and onto some recordable form. It’s an unexplainable thing that drives us. If you have that type of creative passion, you get everything I’m saying. If you don’t, then you won’t. But you can generate that passion by taking the time, even making the time, to cultivate that germ of an idea you’ve got until it consumes you like our ideas consume us. Even something as simple as writing a sentence a day counts. And there’s no better time to get started than RIGHT NOW.

So what are you waiting for?

Do Your Research

Quan

It is a very rare occasion where you as a writer are able to create a complete story based on just your own creativity and inherent knowledge. Whether it’s getting a more accurate setting, or more detailed historical knowledge, or being able to reference how certain things work, at some point in time, your story will require you to do some research. There are many, many ways to gain the information you’re going to need to properly write your story. But here are a few that I’ve utilized for some success.

Libraries

This is the oldest, and still one of the best, ways to get pertinent information on anything you want. There is just something about being in a library, where it’s quiet and you’re surrounded by books, that is conductive to the creative process. At least that’s how it was for me. I spent a great deal of time in the Library looking up African myths to use as the basis for The Leopard Man. Here you can find books about darned near anything, and you can be pretty sure that the information is vetted and can be verified.

Web Searching

I can attest that Search engines are your friend. A lot of information I’ve picked up for Godmode, Double Entry and The Hand You’re Dealt came from online sources. True, you may have to do some cross referencing and self-verification to make sure the information is 100% accurate, but it is worth it. And sometimes, it might even be better for your story in select circumstances if the information isn’t accurate. But Search engines like Google and Bing, and reference sites like Wikipedia are an extremely valuable resource for gathering pertinent information.

Interviews

If you can find someone that knows a thing or two about what you are trying to write about, then you should by all means get in contact with that person to pick their brain about it. There is nothing like getting information about a topic directly from an expert, or someone that was an eyewitness. They can offer personal insights and antec dotes that you might not be able to get from any other source. A very crucial moment in The Leopard Man came as the result of interviewing a lady about her experience in that same situation.

Observation

Yes, being nosy also counts as research. Oftentimes to get a feel for how people behave, you have to actually observe and take notes of people. Especially when you are trying to chronicle a culture of a particular region or group of people. You will be taking notes on speech patterns, slang, language, customs and body language. Pay attention to habits, and personality tics. There are also reference books like the one I have listed below that can give some great reference points for behavior.

Observing also extends beyond individuals. Watching groups of people behave can help, too. Groups behave differently than individuals, and there is a lot of interaction between people within groups. Heck, you can learn a lot even by just watching traffic at an intersection for a few minutes.

Touring Locales

When writing The Leopard Man, I wanted to have a major part of the book happen at Flint, MI’s Forest Park. Since I wanted everything to be accurate, I actually went to Forest Park, looked around, and mapped out a route through with the events in that scene transpire. I was able to take notes on all of the flora, fauna and landmarks, and record as many details as possible to make the scene that much more believable. This is the advantage of actually visiting a locale you want to use for your setting. Take as many notes of everything your five senses encounter as possible. You can use this to really put your readers where the story is at.

Researching History

Historical research can come in handy whether you’re writing historical fiction or not. Often times it helps to understand the whys and hows of certain elements of your stories. And your research into the history of that element can oftentimes reveal historical details that can be mined for new elements to your stories, or for new stories altogether.

Technical research

If your story has gadgets in it, then chances are the believability of your story will be aided by some explanation of how they work. And furthermore, if you have a better understanding of how a mechanism works, then you can more accurately write about it in your story. I honestly can’t remember the first time I fired a gun, so I actually consulted with a buddy of mine that was a gun enthusiast about what first-time gun users experience. He gave me a veritable treasure trove of technical information that proved to be very valuable for a crucial moment in my story.

Research for style and technique

Sometimes you will need to research for HOW you write more than for WHAT you are writing. If your story requires a particular writing style or a different voice, you will need to do some delving into how to pull that off believably. For a story I am currently seeking representation for, one of the minor characters speaks entirely in iambic pentameter. So to make sure I got the cadence of it correctly, that meant a lot of reading and rereading of Shakespeare, Milton and Browning.

Parsing the Data

Now that you’ve collected a bunch of data for your story, the next step is organizing it all and deciding what to use and when. A lot of that will come down to your instincts for your story. You will inherently know what information is useful and which isn’t. But creating an appendix for yourself is a good exercise because you can organize the information into a format where you can easily get to what you need when you need it. And from there it’s just a matter of integrating the information seamlessly into your story (something I wrote about earlier at this post).

These are a few of the techniques I’ve employed to get the information I needed for my stories. To be honest, the process of researching is a never-ending one, as you will always be on the lookout for new data you can integrate into your stories. But if it will lead to more believable, engaging stories, then I think it would be more than worth he effort.

Here is a cool reference book about facial expression and body language that I’ve used before.

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.

Asimov, Zelda and Grandfathering Continuity

Quan

One of the many past times I like to indulge in is playing classic video games. I am particularly fond of the Legend of Zelda series of open world adventure games. I enjoy that series and games like it for many reasons, chief of which is that the exploring scratches a problem-solving itch: it’s reassuring to know that problems and obstacles in life have solutions, just so long as you know where to look to find them.

But that’s not why I brought up Zelda.

The thing that ties Zelda into this blog is the lore, mythology and backstory running through the games. Over the course of 19 disparate games, which really had (for the most part) nothing in common aside from a guy named Link rescuing a girl named Zelda from a monster named Ganon (or Ganondorf, in some games), an epic, generation-spanning mythology was created with tons of fascinating twists and turns. What makes this even more fascinating is that most of these games were created in a vacuum, with seemingly little regard for the storyline of the games that came before it. Despite that, the masterminds at Nintendo were able to link (pardon the pun) every official Zelda game into a cohesive storyline that makes all of the games feel like one epic narrative.

So what does this have to with you as a writer?

If you ever find yourself with two stories that are only tangentally related, or aren’t really related at all, and you’re wondering if you can somehow tie them together, then Zelda proves that it is indeed possible. Sci-Fi legend Isaac Asimov did something similar when he found a way to link his three biggest book series (Robots, Galactic Empire and Foundation) together via his latter Foundation novels. So let’s break down how these two franchises did it.

1. Find common threads that connect your stories. If you look hard enough, you may find themes or tropes that your disparate stories have in common. With Zelda it’s simple: Link, Zelda and Ganon. Almost every Zelda story flows from this trio of characters. And the games that don’t feature all three have good reasons not to. Nintendo’s solution was to create a curse of reincarnation, where Ganon was fated to always reincarnate every generation or so, and there would always be a Zelda and a Link fated to oppose him. For Asimov, the natural evolution of his universe and the progression of mankind were what tied his worlds together. You could envision a scenario where a civilization that used sentient robots could find a way to expand into a galactic empire, and the Foundation concept could be seen as a natural evolution of the empirical concept. He even insinuated as much in the first two Foundation novels.

2. Pay attention to detail so you can explain inconsistencies and incompatibilities. Inconsistencies and incompatibilities are things that routinely plague dense continuities, timelines and universes. If something gets big enough or lasts long enough, you are bound to find stuff that doesn’t quite mesh together. This is a routine problem that plagues massive comic book-styled universes like with Marvel, DC and Magic: The Gathering. Asimov had this problem long after he passed, and his estate commissioned three of his friends and peers to write new books in the Foundation saga. Their goal was to fill in gaps, explain inconsistencies and modernize the mythology to gel with current technological trends (i.e. there was no such thing as the internet when the Foundation books were written, so now how does the internet fit in the psychohistory of the future? Their solution was a galaxy-wide web that crumbled into disrepair towards the beginning of the Foundation series) For Zelda, it was a matter of taking ideas and concepts that were hinted at in Link To The Past and Ocarina of Time (the two most foundational Zelda stories) and placing them in future games while expanding on their history and roles. The roles of the three goddesses (which started off as unspectacular gems Link quested for in Link To The Past) and the importance of the Master Sword (Which was really just one of a few sword upgrades in Link To The Past) was greatly expanded upon in future games.

3. Make a story that ties everything together. This is a simple and obvious way to link your stories. If you can craft a story explaining how everything links together, then you can help your readers connect the dots and see how everything ties together into one larger narrative. Origin stories can do a great amount of heavy lifting by showing how everything got its start. The Zelda franchise did this masterfully with Skyward Sword, which illustrated how all of the mythos that form the basis of Zelda originated, as well as creating the reincarnation vehicle that would carry the narrative from game to game and through various settings and scenarios. Asimov did the same thing with Prelude to Foundation, which firmly and definitively established that Foundation was set in the universe of the Galactic Empire books, while also including a key character from the Robot books to establish that those stories were also part of the narrative.

4. Decide what and what not to reference. Sometimes you’re going to run into elements that just won’t fit no matter how hard you try to explain them away. It’s at this point where you need to be judicious about what you reference and what you just retcon away or leave to the reader’s imagination. It’s okay to let some things be mysterious and let the reader ty to connect the dots in his or her own headcanon. The analyses, theories, conversations and debates among Zelda faithful about where things fit in the three distinct timelines that comprise the majority of Zelda games provide fuel for the fandom between games, and only serves to strengthen the franchise. Breath of the Wild claiming to have happened so far along in Zelda history that all previous games had faded into (pardon the pun) legend only added more fuel to the debates, with questions like “why did the merfolk-like Zora race evolve into the avian Rito race when the world was submerged in Wind Waker, only to show up alongside the Rito in Breath of the Wild?” Likewise, Asimov’s Robots/Empire/Foundation saga left a lot of unanswered questions that his successors tried to address in their Foundation books (with varying degrees of success).

5. Create a timeline. This was done masterfully with both Zelda and Foundation. And is often used when sorting out major events in large sagas. When you create a timeline of the events in all of your stories, you can easily show how events in one story lead to or influence events in other stories, and readers can see the progression of things and gleam the bigger overall picture. Zelda’s taking the three possible outcomes of Ocarina of Time and splitting them into three different timelines to fit games into was brilliant.

When done well, linking your disparate stories can breath new life into your older stories. Readers new to your mythology will have reasons to go check out your older material to see for themselves how it all connects. And the meta-narrative is great for building the brand of your saga. You might even be able to take themes and ideas established within your newly created continuity and mine them for new stories. The two novels I am seeking representation for as of this writing are separate and happen in seemingly unrelated universes, but I have snuck in Easter eggs and hints in both stories (and plan to in future stories as well) that more than hint that the two worlds are somehow connected.

You do run a risk of confusing your readers if you only haphazardly try to connect everything. So if you are going to go this route, make sure you do it with the utmost care.

This time I’m giving a double recommendation. This official Zelda compendium outlines the narrative that connects every official Zelda game from the very first Legend of Zelda all the way through a Link Between Worlds. And Asimov’s Prelude To Foundation provides the framework of that informs everything you read about in all of his Robot, Galactic Empire and Foundation novels. I strongly recommend both books as examples of what I’m writing about.

Zelda: Hyrule Historia on Amazon

Prelude to Foundation on Kindle

MORRISONING: Presenting Wild Ideas the Grant Morrison Way

Quan

In my list of top ten favorite comic book writers, Grant Morrison is in my top three, along with Fred Perry and Christopher Priest. There are very few projects his name is attached to that I won’t read or haven’t already read. I first became a fan of his with his epic run on JLA, and have devoured everything of his from his since, from his Invisibles book to his work on X-Men, Batman and Superman.

What I love about his style of writing is that he is able to concoct these wild, mind-blowing, larger-than-life concepts and ideas and make them seem not only feasible, but natural within the confines of the story. That is the true mark of a good storyteller, and it is one of the essential aspects of telling good stories in the genres of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Morrison has taken mundane police procedural tropes and expanded them to a cosmic scale in Green Lantern. He has taken some of the crazy, noncanon ideas of the campy Silver Age Batman and made them legit for today’s dark and gritty Batman…while also giving him a son! He has turned the core tenet of X-Men on its head by making Mutants trendy in the Marvel world and humans the endangered species. He gave the Justice League a grander, more epic rogues gallery and introduced the idea of the League being a new Pantheon. He told you that every conspiracy theory you heard of or were afraid of was real in Invisibles. He broke the fourth wall with Animal Man before Deadpool made breaking the fourth wall cool. He write a book about cyborg killer mechs piloted by household pets that just want to go home in We3. He quantified, populated and mapped 52 alternate realities in DC’s Multiversity. And this is just a small sampling of the ways he expanded the lexicon in his stories.

So the question is how can you introduce mind-blowing ideas and concepts into your stories that will wow the reader? Here are a few ways to do it:

1. TAKE THE FAMILIAR AND TWIST IT

Morrison Famously did this with his take on an alternate version of Wonder Woman. He wrote a version of Wonder Woman that is a stark contrast to the current “Warrior princess” iteration that has come to define her, and developed her as a more youthful, pacifist hero akin to how she was originally portrayed back in the 40s.

You can do this in your stories by taking a convention or idea that people have assumed goes one way, and portraying it in a totally different light. When your readers expect a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, give them a peanut butter and turnip sandwich instead.

2. NEW EXPLANATIONS FOR ACCEPTED CONVENTIONS

Morrison’s fascination for Superman knows no bounds, and at every opportunity he is reexamining and reinterpreting what makes the Man of Steel so iconic from different perspectives and angles. And with each examination – whether it be normalizing all of Superman’s wacky Silver age abilities in All-Star Superman or having him team of with 51 other versions of himself in Final Crisis, he comes up with different reasons why Superman is the one great constant of herodom.

This is where you have the opportunity to take something ordinary and make it fantastic. Take that peanut butter and jelly sandwich and convince people that the unique combination of peanuts and fruit is the secret elixir of enhanced knowledge if eaten in the right balance with some rare fruit you just found out about on Google at exactly noon Pacific time on Friday the 14th. Hey, it worked for the Da Vinci Code, right?

3. EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS A LIE

Morrison did this best with Batman and the X-Men. With both he introduced concepts that turned both franchises on their respective heads, that are still being used by creators years later. Making Batman a type of legacy character, first with Bruce being exiled through time and influencing entire generations, then with introducing a legit heir, letting his first protoge wear the cowl for an extended period of time, and having Bruce publicly acknowledge that he was funding Batman, broke many Bat-taboos and created new possibilities that have been mined for future stories. Likewise with the revelation that humans were the true endangered species in his New X-Men run, which also flipped the Wolverine-Jean Grey-Cyclops love triangle into a Jean Grey-Cyclops-Emma Frost love triangle, revealed an evil twin sister to Charles Xavier…and introduced the idea of secondary mutations.

You can do the same. Take some established convention, idea, genre or trope and invert it, and see what comes of it. The high fantasy manuscript I am seeking an agent or publisher for as of this post is a meta-critique of many conventions and tropes used in JRPG video games. And I am currently developing a new comic book series about a team of superheroes strictly forbidden from doing any actual crimefighting. So tell people that your Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich was not intended for human consumption.

4. MAKE THE WILD SEEM MUNDANE

This is basically the opposite of the first technique. Instead of making a normal convention fantastic, you take a fantastic concept and present it as normal. Crossgen Comics’ book “Mystic” was set on a modern world where magic was the source of energy rather than electricity. It is a weird concept to wrap one’s head around, but in the story it is presented as a perfectly normal, everyday thing. Doing this serves to make your wild ideas understandable and relatable to the reader, and you aren’t just hitting them over the head with some new concept that would stretch suspension of disbelief. And when you do this, you often don’t have to do a lot of explaining of your wild idea or how it works. It’s just something that is woven into the fabric of your setting from the start. The peanut butter in your peanut butter and jelly sandwich comes from a rare peanut plant that once granted eternal life but was diluted over the aeons into just a regular peanut.

5. GO BIG. THEN GO BIGGER.

Morrison’s biggest claim to fame is that he is the guy that takes a concept and blows them out to larger-than-life proportions. It has been a formula that has been done before Grant, but he was one of the few able to do it with a style and flair that added gravitas and made the concepts truly mind-blowing. It was his idea to send the Justice League one million months into the future to meet their future selves, in a mind-blowing, time twisting tale where the only way they could save the world from Superman’s future greatest enemy was to literally create that enemy in the past.

When coming up with your crazy ideas, ask yourself how outlandish or unbelievable you can get with your concepts. What is the most far-out, unbelievable problem your protagonists could find themselves up against? What is the weirdest, wildest situation they could find themselves in? Now ask yourself how they get out of it. Take the filters off. Take the limits off. Let your imagination go anywhere and everywhere. Then find a way to explain it and make it believable. (Doctor Who does this on a regular basis) Every bite of that peanut butter and jelly sandwich creates an infinite number of different realities where the jelly changes into different flavors as you bite it.

These are just a few ways you can incorporate mindblowing concepts into your stories.

Give them a try and see what kind of wild ideas you can bring into reality. And while you’re at it, go eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Here is a fascinating book from Morrison studying the idea of superheroes and linking them to modern mythology. It’s the basis of a lot of his wild ideas.