Category: Style

Asimov, Zelda and Grandfathering Continuity

Quan

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

But that’s not why I brought up Zelda.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zelda: Hyrule Historia on Amazon

Prelude to Foundation on Kindle

MORRISONING: Presenting Wild Ideas the Grant Morrison Way

Quan

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

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

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

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

1. TAKE THE FAMILIAR AND TWIST IT

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

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

2. NEW EXPLANATIONS FOR ACCEPTED CONVENTIONS

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

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

3. EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS A LIE

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

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

4. MAKE THE WILD SEEM MUNDANE

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

5. GO BIG. THEN GO BIGGER.

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Warren Elliss…

Quan

Just for laughs, here is an open letter I wrote to Sci-fi & comic book writer Warren Ellis back in 2001 on the evolution of the comics industry. Let’s see if my opinion then holds up to what the industry is like today…

Hey, Warren (and anyone else reading this).

Just finished a couple of your essay books, namely COME IN ALONE and FROM THE DESK. Brilliant stuff, and I agree with nearly all of it. I love reading up on creator’s opinions on the industry and on the craft. As an aspiring writer and lover of comics myself, I always gain new insights from what you all have to say, whether I agree with it or not. Comics were the reason I started writing and drawing, and it led me to a Graphic Design degree and three finished novels I’m seeking publication for (Okay, one was already published, but by a vanity house. I got suckered into thinking they were legit, so that doesn’t count).

Like I said, I agree a lot with what you say about diversifying the comics market past the superhero, and I think the industry takes stabs at it periodically, with mixed results. I remember the brief time that fantasy comics like Tellos and Battle Chasers were all the rage, and that was followed by the boom of crime comics such as 100 Bullets, Powers and Losers. And then there were the 80’s licensed comics, which were big for a little bit (actually they DID bring back the Micronauts like a lot of these geex were begging for, but ironically, nobody bought it). And now Marvel’s trying on the sneak to bring back romance comics (at least, it seems that way to me).

I try when I can to support new comics ideas and independent publishers. If the premise on a book is intriguing enough, or if the buzz on a book is big enough, and I can afford it, then I’ll add a non-Marvel/DC/Image/DHP book to my usual pulls (currently Fred Perry’s GoldDigger, New Avengers, Joesph Linsner’s Dawn and The Green Lantern Corps). I want to be one of the geex telling the world “I told you so” when the next Ninja Turtles or The Crow or Road To Perdition becomes a worldwide phenomenon. I loved telling the movie geex drooling over Frank’s awesome SIN CITY flick that “the books were better.”

I am blessed to have also dealt with comics shops that heavily support books that are alternatives to the superhero, also (too bad the majority of them are out of business now). The one I currently get my books from is big into that. They display their independent stuff right next to their mainstream stuff, and the staff talks with the customers and encourages them often to try some of the non Marvel/DC stuff. Also, when people come in and request specific books they often order a few copies for others to try out, too. They were big supporters of Alias (that umbrella publisher of various indie studios) and a lot of people who frequent that store gave Alias a chance. Ditto with Antarctic, Crossgen (RIP), Devil’s Due and Dreamwave (also RIP). I do wish they’d carry more Oni, but I’m splitting hairs.

I think the industry has taken a shift towards some of the things you’ve been preaching about. Publishers are now expanding their book marketing way beyond the comic store crowd, and I’m seeing Marvel comics in supermarkets next to the magazines. The Graphic novels section in the bookstores is constantly growing, and there’s been a big push to get readers buying commix in new and unique ways. The cross pollination of commix into other media (Video Games and Movies, most notably) hasn’t hurt. Publishers are now also realizing the selling power a well-known or highly reputed creator has. I think that’s part of why Bendis and Millar write 75% of the Marvel Universe (with Claremont getting the other 25%), why Johns writes roughly 75% of the DCU, and why Jim Lee draws damn near every cover for DC. I think it’s only a matter of time before we get that Powerpuff Girls book written by Johns and illustrated by Lee, BTW.

In my hometown, surprisingly enough, the biggest and best place for quality comix has been the library, with its ever-increasing collection of graphic novels and TPBs. It’s the latest trend in libraries, apparently. They stockpile these things and hope it draws in more young readers (or in my town’s case, it gets the all the brats hanging out at the library after school waiting for the bus or surfing blackplanet.com on the library’s computers to actually pick up a book while they’re there). And only half of the books they get are of the Superhero, Marvel/DC variety. True, a bunch of it is manga, but I’ve also used the library to pick up lots of great Graphic Novels and trade paperbacks I wouldn’t been able to afford by myself – stuff like Little White Mouse, Blankets and Persepolis. I recommend stuff to them all of the time, and they go out and get it. One time, they even had all of their American Splendor Books on display next to the DVD of the movie!

That all being said, I still love the Marvel/DC superheroes and make no apologies for it. At their best they are iconic, excellently designed characters who use their unique abilities to solve unique problems, mostly in spectacular and creative ways. To me, superheroes speak to the ability in everyone to find a way, to overcome and to make things happen. It’s great to see these heroes put to the ultimate test in so many different ways, to see them pushed to their breaking point and beyond, to see how they make it through and whether or not they compromise their principles in the process. These guys are metaphors of aspects of the human condition, the everyday trials and tribulations we all go through except with the volume turned up 100-fold, the stakes incredibly higher and the clothes tighter and stretchier (unless you’re Brittney Spears or Lil Kim, in which case that last point is debatable). It’s great entertainment, when handled with intelligence, creativity and integrity. In my opinion, the principles in superhero stories are prevalent in all great stories. James Bond is a superhero. Hari Seldon from the Foundation series is a superhero. La Femme Nikita is a Superhero. Stone Cold Steve Austin is a superhero. The CSI guys are portrayed in a superheroic light, as has been George W. Bush at times. In fact, I even believe that King David and Jesus Christ are superheroes! No one can tell me that the feats of the great people in the Bible aren’t comparable to today’s superhero stories (I’m also unapologetically Christian).

I agree that it’s ridiculous how superheroes dominate the industry, but I still believe there is a place for good superhero stories. I’ll read a good Green Lantern comic (the Kyle Rayner one) just as quickly as I’ll read an issue of Scud the Disposable Assassin. I love the vast ensemble cast of GoldDigger as much as I love watching how the disparate personalities in New Avengers try to coexist. I enjoy the epic, widespread, unpredictable mayhem in Infinite Crisis as much as I enjoy the terse, understated, controlled action in Usagi Yojimbo. I respect Bone as much as I respect Astro City. I just wish I was filthy stinking rich, so I could buy every single book that I want to read and support. I also wish I was rich so I could pay these ridiculous gas prices, but that’s another rant altogether.

But don’t mind me. I’m just a ranting and raving comic book geek who’s only real wish is to see more well-written, quality black characters in comic books. (God bless Grant for putting two of us in 7 Soldiers. How much you want to bet he kills one of them off?) Hopefully someday you’ll be mentioning me in one of your essays in the same breath as your other writing buddies like Grant, Mark Waid and Garth Ennis.

Take care, and keep writing the cutting edge stuff.

To everyone else: Ellis has written a TON of awesome stories, both in comic book and prose form. This one is by far my favorite.

Writing The Final Battle

Quan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now Leaving: Your Comfort Zone

Quan

If you’ve looked at the body of my writing work, I think it would be hard to pigeonhole me into any particular genre of fiction. I’ve written comic books, Young Adult novels, Business Melodrama, Science Fiction and Survival Horror. I just published a literary love story, and I wrote a crime novel that will never see print. And right now I’m seeking an agent for both a high fantasy epic and a thriller with some elements of high fantasy. I never gave much thought into what motivates me to switch genres and styles of storytelling. I could say I just go where the story takes me, but that would be too simple.

Truth be told, every story I’ve written has been a challenge to myself in some way, shape or form. I get inspired by books I read, TV shows I watch and movies and video games I enjoy. And these stories inspire me to tell my own. I often ask myself “wouldn’t it be cool if I could write XXX kind of story?” and being the impulsive guy I am, it doesn’t take me long to hash out some ideas for that genre and style.

For the Thriller I just wrote, it started off as a prequel to an epic urban high fantasy series I’m planning. But as I was writing it, I didn’t really know how the story was going to get from its beginning to the point where my saga started. I’m usually a big “plot” guy, and I’ll spend a lot of time outlining the plot points and twists, creating a roadmap for where I want the story to go. But this time, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time pre-planning my story, and I really just wanted to start writing. So that’s exactly what I did. I only had a handful of vague plot points in mind when I started writing this story. I had two or three events I wanted to build up to, and I had a general idea of how I wanted it to end, but I left myself completely open with this story. I just created some characters, created a world for those characters to inhabit, and put the central character in a dire predicament. I then just followed that character around in this setting, observing his actions, getting inside his head to find out what he’s thinking and feeling as he does what he does, and writing everything down. This style of storytelling is counter-intuitive to every other book I’ve written, and it was uncharted territory for me. It was kind of scary. But it was also thrilling to be “winging it” and basically making the story up as I go along. And I turned out great; “Needle of the Southside” may be my strongest story yet, and I already have a ton of material in motion to take a similar journey in its follow-up book.

I believe the only way to truly improve as a storyteller it to challenge yourself and step out of your comfort zone. Even successful writers (actually, ESPECIALLY successful writers) can get complacent and fall into a rut, telling the same types of stories in the same style over and over again. This is why Steven King will take a break from writing horror to write stories like The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, Dark Tower and The Stand. It gives one a chance to freshen up, and learn new things about ones self as a writer and storyteller.

So my challenge to you is simple. Try something different. If you’re used to writing modern fantasy (especially if your Vampires glitter and your Werewolves are emo), take a stab at writing a crime story. If rustic heartland romances are your thing, take a shot at writing a political thriller. If you write historical fiction, then maybe you can shift from the past to the future and write some hard Science Fiction. And you can even stretch your muscles stylistically, like switching from the female protagonists you always write to a male one, or switching from Third person to First person (or the even bigger challenge of Second person), or switching from writing in past tense to present tense. In doing so you might broaden your horizons and discover some new things about your voice that you never knew you had before.

You don’t even have to commit to a whole book of it if you don’t want to. Maybe just a short story, or a simple scene just to see what it would feel like and read like in your new style or genre. And whatever you don’t finish you could just put in your writer’s vault for future idea mining. This would be a great way to improve your storytelling acumen.

Judy Blume is one of my favorite children’s authors. The Fudge series of books is legendary. But did you know she writes books for adults, too? Give this one a try.

Writing to Music

Quan

When I write my stories, I often like to listen to music. For some, listening to music while they work is just a way to help them calm down or focus. But I use music for a different purpose, and I’m quite sure many other writers do the same. For me, music provides an ample way to set mood and tone for the stories I write. It’s very similar to how music plays an integral role in movies: a good soundtrack that fits the story stirs up emotions and feelings that really drive home the theme of the action in the story at that moment. So if that principle works when I’m watching a movie or playing a video game, then I figure it will also work when creating these stories.

For instance, I had an extensive list of songs and artists I listened to while writing my Sci-fi horror novel Godmode. It was an eclectic mix of artists ranging from Portishead to Linkin Park to Evanescence to composers Robyn Miller, Hidekai Kobayashi & Fumie Kumatani to even the French electronica group Air. Since all of these artists have distinct sounds, I use their music for different aspects of my story.

If I wanted my scene to feel creepy and ominous, I played Robyn Miller’s Riven Soundtrack. For something just as creepy but more menacing, I’d play Portishead’s Third. If I wanted some pathos and raw emotion, Evanescence’s “Like You” was a perfect fit. And for action, I listened to heavy doses of Hidekai Kobayashi & Fumie Kumatani’s Phantasy Star Online Soundtrack. That music made for some epic sci-fi fighting, especially for some of the larger, more high-stakes monster fights. I also listened to the more aggressive songs by Evanescence and Linkin Park.

For the Fantasy Thriller I just finished writing, I wanted an epic, blockbuster action feel, so my background music of choice was the Inception soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. I listened to the faster-paced tracks while I wrote the action scenes, and everything else for, well, everything else. I also have an epic, high-fantasy kung-fu story I want to write, and for that I would listen to a mix of traditional Asian music and grand, sweeping Lord Of The Rings-styled adventure music.

When choosing the perfect writing music, first consider what you’re writing about. What is the setting of the story, and what kind of mood are you trying to set up? What is happening in the story, and what plot points within that scene are you trying to emphasize? Once you’ve figured that out, then it’s a matter of finding appropriate music that fits that mood, setting and action. Also keep in mind that even within those criteria, different songs you write to will create different moods. A sweeping love theme by John Williams will work differently from an intimate love song by Adele, even though you could use either for the same scene; and an epic action song from John Barry’s James Bond soundtracks has a different feel than an aggressive heavy metal song from Metallica.

Also, when writing to music, if you can write fast enough to keep up with the song, then do so. It will help you to capture the mood and the feelings that the music evokes. And once you are finished with your scene, always go back and read it over to your music. This way you can tell if you’ve managed to capture the mood the way you originally intended.

Give it a try! Who knows: when your book is optioned for a motion picture, maybe the producers will get soundtrack music similar to what you used to write it to.