Category: Style

Your Story as an RPG Campaign

Quan

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

How to play a tabletop RPG

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

You are the dungeon master

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

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

You are the players

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

Actions and reactions

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

Getting to know your characters

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

Variance and unpredictability

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

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

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.

How to Write a Trilogy

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

Interview with Jonis Agee

Quan

Jonis Agee is most likely the highest-profiled author I know. She is critically acclaimed, and has won more than her share of literary awards. She also has the distinction of being one of my creative writing teachers at the University of Michigan. I learned a ton about the craft of storytelling from her, and it is an honor to post her insights on her writing process here. Get more information about her and her books at her website jonisagee.com.

What inspires your writing?

This is a good question. I have to stop and think because it changes all the time, and it has changed over the years each time someone asks it. I always knew I would be a writer, even before I began to write. It just came to me that that would be my job. And it’s a great one! All kinds of things move me to write: it’s a form of talking to others, sharing things that move me, disturb me, fill me with happiness and beauty or outrage and a search for meaning and understanding. Each story, poem, or book I write is an investigation of something that is happening or has happened that I want to explore and address. My latest novel, The Bones of Paradise built up over fifteen years of thinking about and visiting the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre, for instance. When I was told the story of what generations of ranchers did to the oldest son to guarantee their legacy, I was moved by another form of injustice and found a way to yoke the stories together to build the novel. I am currently writing a novel set in the Missouri Ozarks during the Civil War and 1930 with the building of Bagnell Dam and the Lake of the Ozarks. It explores the ongoing issues of racial, social and economic tension and the injustices that have never been resolved there. My people are from that part of the country and I have spent a lifetime trying to understand them. I guess that’s what finally moves me: the urge to tell people’s stories, people who are historically forgotten or ignored, working people and people whose lives are troubled, people who rise above their circumstances and search for dignity and meaning, and people who go the opposite direction.

What is your process of developing characters?

I collect old, historical pictures, the kind you find in junk shops and antique stores. I look for the faces and scenes that seem to speak to me, and then I began to listen to the stories they might have to tell. Sometimes a character will appear before a picture, and Flannery O’Connor style, I will hear their voice speaking and begin to write their words and feel their world unfold around them, a scene or story that led up to the words they spoke. I quickly have to find out where a character is, specifically, what the place is in detail. I guess I’m pretty literal about place and setting. The minute I see them in a place, watch them move around, I begin to know them. I work to get them to take over the story, to let the unexpected happen. I love how Toni Morrison lets her characters do good and bad things, regardless of where they fall on the axis of morality, so I try to open myself and the characters to those other sides of themselves. If I have a character who seems too good to be true, they usually are, so I roughen them up by seeing what is petty, mean, small or hidden inside them. We all have those moments where we don’t do or say the right thing for a whole variety of reasons, and to make a complete portrait of a human being we need that aspect too. The same is true of characters who are so dark or evil that they’re wooden tropes. I will write from their point of view, trying to get them to reveal their own story of themselves, how they see the world and what they are, which can bring some deeper understanding to the character for the reader. Or I look for what they love, without reservation, what they love so wholeheartedly that they are briefly disarmed in the embrace of that creature or thing. In one novel I discovered that a bad man, a truly bad man, really loved his dog. I mean, he treated that dog as if it were a girlfriend or a brother he never had. It had a terrific life, and seeing that capacity for positive feeling in that bad man, made him more complex and interesting. Another thing I do to develop characters is figure out what their dreams, desires, fantasies, nightmares, fears, and histories are. That takes a long time, but it’s key to grasping what a person is. I noticed several years ago when I was writing South of Resurrection that I had this urge to explain my characters psychologically too much when I was writing, I kept getting stuck on the word “because” and it was a real problem because I don’t have an advanced degree in psychology. Also, I was using too much of the pop psychology that was bombarding the media. Most importantly, my characters were tipping over into types because they were simply the result of a designated trauma. I made a rule then, that freed both the characters and me the writer: I could not use the word “because.” Characters acted and felt certain things without me having to pause for long and simpleminded diagrams of their mental health. I discovered that it’s important to let characters simply act and suffer or enjoy the results of that action, that we don’t always know or need to know or can know the root cause of behavior, that is what makes us interesting and worthy of spending time with, I believe.

Did you Start with a story outline or did you make it up as you went along?

I wish I could outline my stories. It would make the writing go faster I think. But, no, I never outline. I’m just lazy enough that if I know how the story turns out, how and when the angles of change occur, then I get bored and don’t want to write the whole thing. I have to be surprised by the characters and the story. I often hear or see the opening, and then I go to work to figure out how this all started and what these people are going to do next.

How much research did you need for your story?

With the novels I do a lot of research, whether it’s concerning place or historical events and place. Always place has to be researched. For instance, I have to know what plants, trees, animals, birds, weather, sky, water, houses, economic issues, ethnic, racial, religions are in a place. I read histories of a place regardless of whether the novel is historical or not. If it is historical, for instance, The River Wife, set in the New Madrid area of Missouri, the New Madrid earthquake was the big inciting event for the novel. It was also the biggest earthquake in North America, with aftershocks lasting a year. The old town of New Madrid was taken by the Mississippi River then, and the land developed swamp and sand boils and bottomless springs. I spent time learning about earthquakes, the Civil War since a decisive battle over the control of the Mississippi River and war supplies occurred at New Madrid, cotton growing, the depression and prohibition, Hot Springs, Arkansas, and women’s rights in those periods. I had to learn about architecture of the time before the Civil War and Audubon who wandered in the region teaching young women to paint while he researched and drew birds. I read his letters, and he became a character in the novel. When I write historical novels, it usually takes me longer, say six years because the writing is slowed by research.

What researching methods did you use?

I go to the place where I am setting my novel usually. I drive around. I meet people, listen to their stories, how they see their world. I visit the historical museums in the little towns where I am going to put my story. I read a general history or two of the state or the region to get a sense of how the region developed. The Sand Hills of Nebraska where I have placed three of my novels, including the most recent, The Bones of Paradise, I did a great deal of research into the Lakota people who originally roamed the region until they were forced onto the reservations in South Dakota just over the Nebraska border. I spent time on Rosebud primarily but visited Pine Ridge too. I read a great deal, of course, about history, religion, and everyday life. Because the land itself is the source of every aspect of life out there, I had to research grasslands, cattle management such as diseases and the economics, and explore life in very small, isolated towns and ranches. I do a lot of just poking around to discover what stories are in a place, how the people there exist, how they get along and don’t. I read the small town weekly newspapers too. I used to look into the phone books to see what businesses were there, the names of people. That’s harder now, of course.

Did you draw on personal experience?

Always. That’s why I go to the place I’m writing about and put myself into the world, to see what it will send back. I have found scenes and plot lines and characters using this method. I sometimes draw on my own history. It’s impossible not to. But I don’t see myself as someone who writes autobiographically. I inhabit the worlds of my stories through my imagination. That’s what gives me the greatest pleasure, allows me to live a much broader and fuller life than I would otherwise. Reading and writing are absolutely linked in this way for me.

How did your publish?

I began writing as a poet, and my first published book was a long poem of ninety pages, with Truck Press, a small literary press. Then I turned to fiction and published two collections of stories with small literary presses, followed by my first novel which was published by what is now a division of Random House. All my novels have been published by large New York presses, and my last four short story collections have been published by Coffee House Press, which has grown to have a significant national presence as a literary, non profit press.

Why did you do it that way?

I didn’t plan it out this way. I actually got a literary agent when he was judging for the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Fiction. He liked my work. Many years later, when I had a novel, I won a Loft McKnight Fellowship in Fiction, and they printed a booklet of our fiction and sent it to Editors at big presses in New York. An editor, Jane von Mehren, liked my work, contacted me, and we sold her the novel I had been working on for eight years. She was my editor for the first five novels until she became a literary agent. The editor of my latest novel, Bones of Paradise published by William Morrow, was Jessica Williams, and she did an excellent job. Meanwhile, my short story collections seemed a better fit for Coffee House Press. They keep the books in print and give me the latitude I need to take risks with my writing and subject matter. It works for all of us.

How long did it take to land representation for your latest novel?

I sent novel drafts to my agent for about six months, and then she began to submit it. It took about a month or so to sell it to Jessica Williams at William Morrow. I try to wait until I think the novel is pretty much done before I send it to my agent, and then I make revisions as she suggests. My husband, writer Brent Spencer, is my first reader.

What advice would you have for writers looking to publish the way you published?   

For novels, find a good strong story with characters that readers want to care about even if they are not paragons of virtue. Write enough drafts that it doesn’t need a ton of work on revision. Query agents, friends, other writers with agents, etc. to get an agent if you are looking to publish commercially in New York.  Get help with a good query letter for agents. Don’t expect agents and editors to do the kind of editing you read about in the past. Everyone is overworked. If you are interested in smaller, literary presses, look at what they publish and check out their websites for submission guidelines. Again, have the book in final form.

Do you use beta readers? No.

How many revisions did it take to get a final draft of you most recent novel?

At least six. I usually write complete drafts and end up throwing some of them away, restarting, reconceiving, etc. I apologize to the trees of the world. I print out each version. Each draft is too long, especially early on…say 700 pages or so. I spend time at the end of the process cutting and compressing. That is the really painful part.

What are some of your methods for establishing a believable and immersive setting you stories? 

I look for the smallest parts after establishing the big frame of a setting. I think of those long sweeping shots of the opening of films, or of the close up camera shot that gradually pulls out. I try to find where dust is, in the air, on character clothing maybe, on tables, etc. I think about what fills interior spaces in terms of “stuff” and what accumulates that indicates our living in a place. I addressed some of the business of place earlier in my comments because it’s so important to me and my storytelling.

What are you writing now?

I’m just finishing a new collection of stories that are very different for me. They cross into fable, myth, fantasy, surrealism, you name it. They explore the intersections of realism and fable or myth that create reality.

As I noted above, I am also writing a new novel, which I hope to finish this year.

What is your advice to other writers?

Write. Read. Write some more. Enjoy your job! Seriously, if you are a writer, you were chosen as much as you chose it. Throw yourself and everything you have into it! Our village is relying on us to tell their stories.

Her latest novel is The Bones of Paradise. Go get your copy now!

Putting Your Spin on an Established Story Type

Quan

How often have you read a book, watched a movie or played a video game and thought to yourself “You know, if I had written this, I’d have the story go another way”? I go through that a lot. Most stories follow well-established sets of tropes and conventions. But what makes a story idea “new” or “fresh” is the unique twists and changes they put on a story to make it different from what has come before. There are different ways you can do this, and each way creates fertile ground for new, groundbreaking story ideas that you can tap into.

Inverting Expectations

One of my favorite movies is the Drew Barrymore film “Ever After.” it follows a popular trend in movies where they take classic story and retell it with more modern sensibilities and attitudes. In this case it was a more assertive, independent and empowered Cinderella that didn’t need a fairy godmother or a magic pumpkin to get the attention of the prince.

It has been done countless times in comic books, like in DC Comics’ “Tales from the Dark Multiverse,” where things go horribly wrong during iconic events in the DC universe’s history, and those stories play out entirely differently from their original counterparts, with much darker outcomes.

To take this approach you can simply take a well-used story trope, study how that archetype usually progresses, and then ask yourself what would happen if you changed a few key details. There are lots of variations on the classic “hero’s journey” story type because of this. Imagine taking the story archetype used in “Dances with Wolves,” “Fern Gully” and “Avatar” and changing a key plot point so that the story goes in an entirely different direction.

Adding New Elements

The popular card game Magic: the Gathering has a history of taking popular stories and putting their spin on it. Whether it be Gothic horror with their Innistrad storyline, or Arthurian legends and Grimm Fairy tales with their Eldraine Storyline, or Japanese mythology with their Kamigawa storyline, they make a habit of taking well-known story tropes in pop culture and using them as the basis for creating something both new and familiar. You can do the same thing, by taking that story archetype, keeping the framework as-is, but adding some new elements to make the story unique. What would happen if you took that Dances with Wolves story type and added a live film crew that broadcast the whole saga like a reality show, with a live audience?

Making Fundamental Changes.

Quentin Tarantino’s film “Hateful 8” is, at its core, a chamber mystery. A bunch of unique characters are locked into a room with a mystery to solve, where possibly one of them is the culprit. It is a classic type of storytelling mastered by writers like Agatha Christie. Tarantino, however, puts two unique spins on the trope by first placing the story in the Wild West, and secondly by not having anything particularly mystery-worthy happen until more than halfway through the movie. The mystery until that point is figuring out why these disparate people were brought together in the first place.

For this approach, find a classic story archetype and try altering different aspects of it. Change the locale or the time period. Change the protagonist or the villain. And then see how those changes affect the story. We’ve seen that Dances With Wolves story in the wild west, in a Brazillian rainforest, and in outer space. What if you set the story in a circus? And had a drag queen as the protagonist instead of the typical male?

You don’t have to have a total blank slate when you are trying to come up with a new story to write. It is perfectly acceptable to take well-use story types and make changes to it to make the story your own. Give it a try and see what you come up with.

All About Beta Readers

Quan

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

Where to find them

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

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

www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com

www.findbetareaders.com

www.betabooks.co

How to secure them

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

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

What to ask a beta reader for

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

When you don’t get any timely feedback

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

Are beta readers truly necessary?

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

Don’t take criticism personally

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

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

Finding You Audience

Quan

I once was talking with a friend of mine who is writing a series of YA fantasy novels. But it had become clearly evident that the books she was writing had subject matter that was much too mature for a YA audience.

Sometimes finding your audience is as simple as doing a bit of market research. Looking up your chose genre and the demographics it serves is a well-traveled way to finding out who you should be writing for. You can also go the reverse route. Pick a demographic you are interested in and look up what those people are into, then see if you can craft a story that caters to their interests.

Asking around helps, too. If you have an idea of what genre your story fits under, try joining some social media groups dedicated to that genre. Pay attention to what they are posting about, and ask plenty of questions. You can get a ey good sense of what is popular with that group. I am a member of a few groups dedicated to science fiction and fantasy from the African-American perspective. So I have a finger on the pulse of what that audience is reading. It’s also a good networking tool for when I need beta readers (but that’s a topic for a whole noter post).

Another way to find an audience is to follow an example. Researching other top-selling books that are in the same vein as your story and finding out information about who is reading those books can give you a good ballpark idea of who would be drawn to your story. For instance, There was a good ten-year period where YA books were ntrenched in the Hunger Games formulas. Everything from the Percy Jackson series to the Divergent series to the Maze Runner Series followed the ragtag team of teenagers with special abiliies saving a dystopian world from adult oppressors. But the formula worked and many of those series were successful.

Once your research is done, you need to do this exercise. Take some time and describe, in your own words, what the target audience is for your story. Write it down so you’ll have a reference to go back to. Write the age range, gender ratio, racial and cultural background, average income, usual places of residence, social-political leanings, and any other hard data you can find on your target. Write down any interests, hobbies, attitudes and opinions these people might have. You can even list some of the books, movies, games and TV shows they might be consuming.

Now, with that data written down, ask yourself how exactly does your story appeal to this group of people? And how can you further develop your story so that these people will find it even more appealing?

That is the more business-like way of approaching this topic. There is a more organic way to do it, also. Just write the damned story you want to write, and then try to see what kind of audience would buy it. It’s a tougher, less organized way of doing things, but it allows you the freedom to tell the exact story you want to tell without having to make compromises or concessions for the people you think might want to buy the book.

This method will require a lot more legwork, however. You will have to find similar stories and look into who is buying them. Maybe dissecting elements of your story and looking up who finds those elements interesting may help. Utilizing beta readers and asking them which elements of your story stand out or that appeal to them may work.

Whichever way you choose to do your research, It would be beneficial for you to make the effort to find out who exactly you want reading your stories. That way you can better focus your writing, and you’ll have a better target for the next step of the process once you’ve gotten published, which is marketing your story. Give it a try.

Pros and Cons of Shared Universes

Quan

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

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

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

WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT:

Cross promotion and marketing

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

Franchising and branding possibilities

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

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

Building fanbases for characters and plot arcs

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

Building a following

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

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T DO IT

Connections can become overly convoluted and confusing

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

Forcing your audience to follow everything

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

Keeping track of all the details

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

The story never ends

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

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

Marvel and DC comic universes

Marvel Cinematic Universe

DC TV Universe (BKA The Arrowverse)

Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

Magic: The Gathering Multiverse

The Glass Movie trilogy

The Law & Order series of TV shows

The Chicago shows series of TV shows

Th CSI series of TV shows.

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

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

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

Invest the reader in the characters involved.

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

Go big, or go small.

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

The devil is in the details.

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

Let it breathe.

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

Read it over.

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

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

Snuff, by Terry Pratchett

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.