Category: Plot

Your Hero Doesn’t Have to be the Hero!

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Your Story Adaptable for Stage and Screen

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

Break down your book into its core elements.

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

Your book synopsis as a movie outline

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

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

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

Action and Dialogue matters

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

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

Setting Up the Big Reveal

Quan

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

Setting up the twist: unexpected reveals are rarely that

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

Leaving clues vs. direct foreshadowing

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

Try not to be cheesy or hamfisted…or obvious!

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

How subtle is subtle?

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

Leaving Clues

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

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

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

Planting red herrings: Effective ways to honestly mislead

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

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

Use your Beta Readers

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

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

Creating Alternate Realities

Quan

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

One Event That Changes Everything

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

Start At the Ending.

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

The Butterfly Effect

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

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

Ripple Effects

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

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

Starting Over

Quan

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

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

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

Find Your Core

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

Asking Why

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

Delve Into Your Backstories

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

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

Double-check Your Research

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

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

Try Something Different

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

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

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

The Point of No Return

Quan

In every story, there will be a time where the Protagonist has gone too deep into the progression of the narrative to opt out or turn back. This is a moment where things have developed so far that all other options of dealing with the problem outlined at the outset of the story are no longer viable, and the only way the protagonist can get through the ordeal is to continue down the path he or she is travelling on. I call this moment The Point of No Return. Every story has it. This moment has to happen early in the story, but it doesn’t necessarily have to happen right at the beginning or even in the first chapter.

Wizards of the Coast head of R&D Mark Rosewater has a prefect description of the three-act story structure: Act 1: get your protagonist stuck up a tree. Act 2: throw rocks at them. Act 3: get your protagonist down from the tree. In the 3 act structure, the Point of No Return happens somewhere in Act 1. That is when your character is firmly stuck up the proverbial tree. Or, at least, has climbed so far up the tree that it is pointless to go back down.

The benefit of knowing where your point of no return lies is that you can fully focusing on enhancing hat singular moment, and making it truly stand out dramatically. The Point of No Return for your protagonist should also be the point of no return for your reader, as well. This is the moment where the reader should be fully invested in seeing the protagonist through to the outcome of the story. So you really want to make that moment grip the reader and stick in their minds, leaving them wondering what is going to happen next.

When determining when your point of no return is for your protagonist, take a look at your narrative overall. It would help if you already have a story outline or a chapter-by-chapter synopsis, but those are optional. Look at how the story progresses and ask yourself at what point does the proverbial “sh*t get real”? This should be at an early point in the story. Ask yourself at what point do your central characters lose the option of turning back or changing course? There should be a moment where the protagonist becomes kind of locked in to the path they are heading down. It could be a crucial decision they make early on, or a particular situation they find themselves in, or a moment where they take responsibility for something or someone, or when they cross a line that they wouldn’t have otherwise crossed. A story I am seeking representation for as of this writing literally has my protagonist at the edge of the “wrong side of town.” realizing that his idyllic way of life has forever been altered and the only way to get back to some semblance or normalcy is to see his predicament through to its conclusion. This moment happens at the end of act one, and is his Point of No Return.

In my stories, I tried to keep my point of no return towards the end of Act One, and I made it pretty obvious. In Godmode, it was when Elijah learned that his family was being held by Claudius Webster. That upped the ante and made it so that he could no longer afford the option of letting those monsters kill him. In Double Entry, that moment was when Melvin asked Dana if he could meet his estranged son. That took their interactions from purely business into something personal, and there was no way things could go back to the way they were now that he had made that intention known. For The Hand You’re Dealt, three were two points because there were two narratives being told concurrently. In the past, it was obviously when Tika and Jay shared their first kiss. But in the present, it was when Tika met her absentee father for the first time. I tried to make sure all of these moments had extra emotional impact, so that the reader will understand how that moment has changed everything.

I strongly recommend finding this singular moment in your story and emphasizing it. It will add to the drama of your story and help with keeping the reader engaged.

When Characters Hijack the Plot

Quan

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

But then you start actually writing.

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

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

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

Make the new arc a subplot

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

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

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

Change details about your characters to make them compliant.

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

extend the story.

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

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

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

Plotting the End of Your Story

Quan

If you were ever wondering how to end the story you are writing, I may have some ways to help. I had a couple of tricks for figuring out the endgame of a couple of books. For Double Entry, at the penultimate scene, I literally had my protag voice out how I was feeling. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, so I had him literally tell that to his love interest, and wrote her reaction. It came together well, allowed me another moment to let them bond, and reinforced some of the themes I had been pushing in the book. Having them talk also clarified how the primary antagonist was going to behave during the final confrontation. So sometimes if you don’t really know where a story is going, it’s okay to let your characters articulate your uncertainty or frustration. It might lead to some new insights.

The other trick was to envision what a follow-up to the story would look like. If/when your book gets a sequel, what are some of the themes and ideas you’d explore? Where would you take your most important characters? If someone dies, how would they be remembered in your sequel? How would the sequel make things worse for your hero or heroine? Now, with those ideas germinating in your head, grandfather your climax and denoument to set up those threads in your potential sequel. Maybe you want your protag hellbent on revenge against his arch-nemesis in the sequel…so maybe the bad guy needs to do something deserving of revenge at the end of your current book (just an example. I’ve been talking with people in my James Bond fangroups on Facebook on why many of us have On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as our favorite bond movie, so that’s on the brain). And this would work even if you don’t intend for the book to get a sequel. I specifically let Calloway (my main antagonist in Double Entry) get away because I liked the idea of doing a hardboiled action-crime follow-up that was a complete shift in tone and theme from Double Entry, where Calloway goes on a mission to undo the mess he made in DE, with predictably disastrous, violent results. I never wrote the sequel because that would require more knowledge of the inner workings of drug gangs in Portland, OR than I have the stomach to learn, but leaving the door open for that sequel is what helped me decide Calloway’s fate in Double Entry.

I’m also a proponent of “just follow you character around and see what happens.” The only issue with that is knowing when to stop following. Where is the jump-off point where you know the main character arc of the journey has been completed, and a new one is about to start? For that answer, you have to look at where the journey started. When did the central problem present itself, and has the problem been resolved? The jump-off point, and therefore the ending of that arc, is when the prevalent problem comes to its resolution. And as a writer, you should be able to tell when that moment happens.

These are just a few of my go-to techniques for finishing stories. Please comment with any that you may have come up with. Here’s a book from Wizards of the Coast that handled its ending particularly well.

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?