Category: Storytelling

Starting Over

Quan

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

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

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

Find Your Core

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

Asking Why

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

Delve Into Your Backstories

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

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

Double-check Your Research

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

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

Try Something Different

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

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

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

Diversity and Representation in Storytelling

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

Using Language Tastefully to Identify Ethnicity/Culture

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

Being Authentic Without Being Offensive

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

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

Going Against Stereotype

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

Handling Ethnic Antagonists

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

Avoiding Tokenism or Diversity Just for its Own Sake.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

Invest the reader in the characters involved.

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

Go big, or go small.

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

The devil is in the details.

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

Let it breathe.

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

Read it over.

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

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

Snuff, by Terry Pratchett

Is Women in Refrigerators A Neccessary Evil?

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing Musical Stories via Concept Albums

Quan

I ‘m a bit of a music buff, and I’m a sucker for concept albums. Even in this single-dominated music world. I absolutely love it when an artist takes the time to craft together a cohesive, thematic music project where every song is interconnected and all of the parts combine to make a greater whole. Most of my favorite concept albums are stories, with each song being a chapter. I think this takes a lot of thought and planning, and not every artist can pull it off. And the better ones are really engaging, with a LOT of layers to them. I eat that stuff up. I even managed to put together my own concept album telling an action-packed story as my super-spy alter ego, Agent 008 ½.

For those of you that enjoy songwriting, or for you prose writers that have thought about getting into songwriting, This may be an interesting exercise to help stretch your writing muscles. Songwriting is a different animal than prose writing, and even to so extent poetry writing. You have a much more limited framework with which to get your point across, and your words have to fit a specific cadence and rhythm, which puts another limit of which words you can use and how many. You also have a length limit in that most songs usually follow a 3 verse structure broken up by choruses, refrains and bridges. And at some point in time music will be involved, so your song has to actually fit the music it is being written (or you have to craft or find music to fit the lyrics). Now take those challenges and multiply them by about 10, and try to make all of these songs fit together in a cohesive narrative. It is quite a puzzle to solve, but for those that are up to the challenge, it can be quite the rewarding experience.

So if you’re interested in writing a concept album, the question now becomes, “where do I start?” here is the process I went through when creating mine. Some concept albums are more thematic than linear (Secret Life of Plants by Stevie Wonder or Petsounds by The Beach Boys), but this article focuses more on albums that follow a narrative path.

  1. Consider the source. All concept albums tell a story of some sorts. So the first step is figuring out what story you want to tell. So take a deep look into your source material and parse out the most essential elements. For me, it was taking your typical James Bond movie and boiling it down to its most used tropes. Each of those tropes became a subject for a song.
  2. Figure out your format. What does each song represent in the context of your story? I treated my album like a musical novel. Each song was a chapter driving the narrative forward. But this is not the only approach you can take. For the Root’s Undun album, every song was a vague memory of a dying man, but with more emphasis on what he is thinking and feeling in that moment.
  3. Make a list. Now comes the simple part. List what each song is going to be about. Once you have enough songs listed to tell your story, then the real work begins.

After those steps, then it’s a matter of just writing the songs. It helps to have some music to write to or at least have a song format in mind. You might also want to cross check you songs to make sure details of your story stay consistent. I made sure to plant details in earlier songs that become crucial elements of latter songs (i.e. many of the gadgets mentioned in my Q-branch ode “The Quartermaster” are used a few songs later in “On the Run”). This helps make the project sound more like a compete project and not just a collection of loosely related songs.

Then there is the actual music. When searching for or composing the music, you want to make sure that the music is not only consistent from song to song, but that it also fits the overall mood you want to set with your lyrics. My concept album drew direct inspiration from the James Bond movie scores by the legendary composer John Barry (except with some Hip-Hop flair added).

Now, you don’t actually HAVE to put your lyrics to music. You could just make your concept album a collection of songs or poems. Essentially, you could say that the epic poems of The Illiad, The Odyssey and Hiawatha are concept albums that just haven’t been set to music. I even took my lyrics for my album and self-published them as an illustrated chapbook. But if you can put your story to music, it would enhance the narrative that much more. I would essentially be like recording a built-in audiobook.

For examples of good concept albums, here’s a list (in no particular order) of a bunch of my favorite concept albums:

  1. Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City, by Kendrick Lamar
  2. To Pimp a Butterfly, by Kendrick Lamar
  3. Undun, by The Roots
  4. 12 Reasons to Die parts 1 and 2, by Ghostface Killah
  5. American Gangster, by Jay-Z
  6. Disposable Arts by Masta Ace
  7. The Long, Hot Summer by Masta Ace
  8. Black Materia, by Mega Ran
  9. Language Arts, by Mega Ran
  10. River City Random, by Mega Ran
  11. Gotham Down vols. 1-3 by Jean Grae
  12. Love and Divorce, by Babyface and Toni Braxton
  13. Prince Among Thieves, by Prince Paul
  14. Deltron 2000, by Del the Funky Homosapien and Dan the Automator

Finally, since I’ve explained how I put my concept album together, aren’t you wondering how the final product came out? Give my album “You Only Die Once” a listen here, and if you like it, then download it.

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