I’m sure that sometimes it can seem like I’ve given up on writing entirely, but I promise, I’m still working hard at it. It takes a long time to put a book together, and putting words on page are only a fraction of the work that goes into it. Even when you’re writing fiction, there’s a whole lot of research involved, and a simple question can send you down into some really weird places.
I need to know how long it would take to properly clean and disassemble a gun, so I know how long the other character in the scene has to perform an action.
Turns out that time depends entirely on the kind of gun we’re talking about. It’s a trope at this point that a modern handgun can be disassembled and reassembled in a matter of seconds, typically while the petulant protagonist keeps eye contact with whoever just challenged them. But I’m not looking at a modern handgun, I’m looking at something significantly lower-tech than that.
So let’s look at rifles circa 1840.
Turns out that’s actually a turning point between flint-lock and modern weapons. And since our gun-wielding protagonist is lower-class, she’d probably be using an old gun rather than a shiny new one. So let’s look through the same database but back up a few decades, and search for guns in the first quarter of the 19th century.
I throw out the pistols and revolvers– I wanted this to be a rifle. Reading several paragraphs into the description of the first, I toss that one out as well: it’s a smooth-bore gun, meaning it’s about as accurate drunk as it is sober. I said this character is a pretty good shot, so that won’t do. Which leads me to this one:
Picture from Militaryfactory.com
A rifled barrel, a little more than twenty years old at the time, but one of the first models to use interchangeable parts (and therefore relatively inexpensive and fairly easy to disassemble and reassemble for cleaning). And then I can start the process of watching Youtube videos of gun collectors talking about their favorite antiques.
That’s where I find out that in a pinch, the rifle can be converted into a smaller (and less accurate) handgun, and that it had an adjustable trigger to make it a good gun for sharpshooters (relevant to another character). I also learned that the assembly of this gun requires a screwdriver, which would make it take significantly longer to assemble and disassemble than modern handguns. Plenty of time for the other character in the scene to get pretty far along his task.
And sure, I probably could have saved myself an hour or so of research by just making up a number and handwaving it as “it’s a fantasy story, don’t worry about it”, but from that I got a whole lot of detail that I never would have gotten otherwise.
It’s one of the things I really love about this job.
A well-respected bit of writing advice says you should limit the characters you introduce to your reader. Some have argued that you shouldn’t introduce more than five in the first chapter; others say you shouldn’t introduce more than two or three at any given time.
It’s good advice. Having worked in the food industry, I’m all too familiar with the consequences of being loaded with dozens of names and faces in a short period of time. Pretty soon even the distinctive, memorable ones start disappearing into the vague masses.
Pretty simple, right?
But while I was working on a post-apocalyptic story a few years back, I learned you can have the opposite problem. In this story, I had too few characters, which meant I had way too many. Continue reading “Characters: too many or too few?”→
Two women are sitting next to each other on a train. The first turns to the second and asks “So where are you from?”
The second sniffs. “I’m from a place where we do not end a sentence with a preposition.”
Ever the courteous conversationalist, the first corrects herself: “So where are you from, asshole?”
Grammar’s funny like that.
Almost nobody adheres to the joke’s preposition rule, because bending over backwards to avoid a preposition can make sentences ridiculously convoluted. Seriously, how could you possibly rephrase the opening question? “From whence do you hail?”
There’s nothing casual or friendly about that, unless you’re at a renfaire. So the first woman did the sensible thing and sacrificed the grammatical rule for the sake of her message.
Meaning can be more than clarity
When you understand a rule, you can break it in a way that leaves an impression on the reader.
Sentence fragments can indicate fragmented thought. Run-on sentences can convey anxiety. Particular errors can become hallmarks of a character’s voice. For example, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes famously begins with so many spelling and grammatical errors that it can seem nigh unintelligible, because throughout the story, the way Charly writes signals as much (if not more) to the audience as the content of his words. During the entire book, you can map his mental state by his writing style. The same can be said about Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, in which individual letters are systematically excised from the text throughout the novel. The more draconian the town’s laws become, the more convoluted the prose becomes.
If you’re tempted to use style in this way, though, keep three things in mind:
These flourishes are all deliberately placed by the writer
The reader’s attention is drawn to the dramatic flourishes and away from the text itself
The dramatic flourishes actively reinforce the most important part of the text
It’s important to beware, though. Get too bold with your style, and you may sacrifice the content of your words altogether.
Do you have any flourishes you favor? Know any good grammar jokes? Are there styles that drive you batty? Tell us in the comments!
The amazing thing about being a writer is that you learn to spot the ideas and ‘what if’s that other people would normally pass by. They’re everywhere, and they’re incredible. And they can also be incredibly frustrating. You can get incredibly intricate and detailed ideas in your head, but for the life of you, you can’t do anything about it. Creating a world is wonderful, but it’s just words on paper unless you have a story to take place within it.
So you’ve got an idea…
This afternoon I had a conversation this afternoon on the subject, so I’ll use that as an example: one character discovers that his friend doesn’t actually exist.
It’s a fantastic idea, and there’s a lot of directions you can go on the subject. So how do you shape that idea into a story?
Find the problem
At its core, every story is driven by some form of desire. Everyone wants something– a new bike, their crush to return their affections, the ability to live to see tomorrow, etc.
Every character is going to have a desire driving them– at least one, and often more.
Does the real friend want the unreal friend to find out about their non-existence?
Does the unreal friend feel threatened by their non-existence and want to feel more secure?
Does the real friend envy the unreal friend’s way of life? What about the other way around?
And so forth. There are nearly endless variations of things that your characters can want out of life.
Look for a solution
Once you figure out what each character wants, figure out how they’re going to go about pursuing that thing, and then have them pursue it. Plot is what happens when we watch them try, fail, try again, and possibly even succeed. Of course, they don’t have to succeed, and sometimes it’s for the best that they don’t. People don’t always want what’s best for them, and sometimes Character A getting what they want can have some nasty repercussions for Character B.
When that happens, or when Character A’s needs clash with Character B’s desires, that creates conflict, and that’s what the Western idea of story is built around.
Make sure the action is active
A general rule of thumb I’ve seen around: If the character can get over their internal by just sitting alone in a room and thinking really hard about it, then it wasn’t really a conflict. If a pair of characters can solve their conflict by just sitting down and having a conversation like actual adults, that wasn’t a conflict, either. Problems shouldn’t be solved by navel-gazing.
You can have issues be resolved through conversation and meditation, but the actual conflict will be whatever prevented those processes from happening in the first place.
If you’re a nerd, you know a nerd, or you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, you’ve probably seen some variation of the above image. It’s a chart of the standard Dungeons & Dragons character alignments, which goes by the theory that any given character can be charted a spectrum between good and evil, lawful and neutral.
And it works. Kinda. In theory.
Law and chaos aren’t that big of a discrepancy– on one side you have order and adherence to authority, and on the other you have rebellion and… well, chaos.
Not always. In fact, it’s easy to fall for the temptation to replace that simple ‘he was sad’ with something much longer and more flowery that, in the end, contains no more meaning than ‘he was sad’. Rather than turning a passive sentence active, you wind up with the dreaded purple prose.
The problem here is that people are thinking too much about the letter of the rule with the intention (if it doesn’t contain a single instance of ‘was’, it must be active, right?). So maybe it’s time to rethink states of being– that elusive thing that a character ‘is’ at any given moment.
When we think of emotion, we often think of it as a reaction.
I haven’t eaten all day, therefore I’m hungry.
Her book got a bad review, so she’s sad.
He’s angry because he was insulted.
That line of thinking may be accurate, but it’s also passive. It makes the person feeling those things into an object to be acted upon, rather than an active agent.
Instead I challenge you to rethink emotion and states of being– not as something a character is, but as a thing they want.
In the most recent Sims game, all the characters have states of being called moodlets– happy, sad, uncomfortable, angry, etc– each of which triggers certain desires. A Sim who’s feeling embarrassed might have a sudden urge to hide from the world in their bed; a Sim who’s feeling feeling flirty might want to hug someone; an angry Sim might want to insult someone, and so forth.
What it looks like:
So let’s take a plain emotion:
Bob is angry at Jim.
Translate it into a desire, and you have:
Bob wants to punch Jim in the face.
The fact that Bob’s angry at Jim still comes across, but without that pesky ‘is’. Of course, repeating ‘Bob wants’ every paragraph is boring. So you can take it a step further. Figuring out what the character wants makes it that much easier to find a physical expression of that desire:
Bob clenches his fist.
Some further examples:
Sue was disgusted.
Sue wanted to throw up.
Sue tasted vomit rising in her throat.
Or
Dave is hungry.
Dave wants a sandwich.
Dave’s stare keeps straying to Dana’s sandwich during their conversation.
“By the way, did you know they’re making Pacific Rim 2? Oh, and dinner’s ready.”
Cue five minutes of shouting and vague TV noises while Boxy shoots at zombies while some cheesy horror flick is playing on the second monitor, followed by:
“What?”
Seriously, that was last night’s pre-dinner conversation.
Real-life dialogue is… unique. It’s awkward, it’s choppy, it’s unfocused, it frequently meanders off-topic, it picks up on arbitrary unintelligible inside-jokes and half-finished conversations from earlier in the day/week/month/year, it’s full of filler words like ‘like’ and ‘um’.
In short, real dialogue is pretty much unintelligible.
In some cases, you get people who understand each other so well that their communication is might as well be another language to outside observers, full of codes and allusions and inside-jargon that’s unique to their in-group, even if it’s an in-group of two.
Linguistically and anthropologically, it’s absolutely fascinating.
As a general rule, though, dialogue shouldn’t require an advanced degree in anthropology and linguistics to figure out. In novels, dialogue is meant to convey information to the reader, so there are certain goals you should probably aim for:
A smooth flow from one subject to the next, and from one mood to the next
Clear language: even when using slang and dialect, it shouldn’t be a complete puzzle to figure out what your character is trying to say
Everything said in the dialogue should serve a purpose, so avoid filler topics and filler language
Of course, like all things in writing, those are guidelines more than hard rules. But when you deviate from the guidelines, make sure you do it with an understanding of why they’re in place and what you’re specifically gaining by going off that track.
Saturday was Free Comic Book Day. While I was making the rounds, I bought the first three issues of Loki: Agent of Asgard, and the new Amazing Spider-Man issue 1.
In medias… what now?
I’m a lifelong fan of Spider-Man. He was my first super hero; his was the first super hero movie I watched, and his were the first comics I read. But this first issue reminded me of why I had a hard time getting into American comics to begin with. It was the first issue– a bright shiny 001 on the front cover. But when I look into it, I find myself almost entirely lost, thrown in neck-deep into what looks like the middle of a very long and complicated story arc.
Er… sorry, I’ve been busy for the last few years and haven’t been able to keep up. What the heck is going on?
Fortunately, Peter is as confused about a lot of these developments as I am, and I can use his reactions to the situation to gauge how far this is from what he considers normal. The storytelling works in such a way that I can still follow along, but the entire time I feel like I’m missing something, and I won’t be able to feel like I’ve caught up until I’ve read the entirety of the plot arc that precedes this issue– or until I’ve been reading this series long enough that I’m acclimated to this new normal.
The story so far
On the other end of the spectrum is Loki. The first page is a Star Wars-esque page that succinctly explains the situation. A few pages later, he explains the powers he uses, so I clearly understand the rules of the situation. When other plot arcs are referenced, they’re labeled [See the Civil War saga!] which makes looking up what happened about a billion times easier.
(Full disclosure: The fact that the story opens on an attractive dude singing showtunes in the shower didn’t hurt my opinion of the book, either– in a medium that’s often brimming with cleavage, it’s nice to see fanservice aimed in my direction every once in a while.)
Getting to know you
A third approach is that taken by Ms. Marvel: we’re exposed to super-hero-saturated world Kamala Kahn lives in through background details while we’re shown a day in her life. The first few issues of her story have been focused on her origins, so the reader is introduced to the mechanics of her world and her powers at the same time that she does.
Back to writing
Fictional worlds are often large and complicated, and there’s always going to be a learning curve when it comes to figuring out a fictional character’s life and world. The further removed that they are from the reader’s daily life, the steeper that curve gets. And yes, if that curve gets too steep, some of your readers might fall off entirely.
The approach used in Spider-Man didn’t work that well for me– not because it’s bad, but because it didn’t mesh as well with my style of readership as other styles did. Most readers will have a preference about what kind of opening they like, whether it’s fast-paced and immersive, slow and guided, or something in between. Different approaches will work better with different worlds, with different narrators, and with different conflicts.
If you’re not sure if you’re starting the story the right way, try experimenting. Play around with different narrative styles– throw us in headfirst and only tell us the essential stuff, or give it to us piece by piece. Show it to readers (though preferably not to readers who already know what’s going on) and find what gets the best response. Sometimes you’ll find that you have to cut out a lot of explanations and background details over the course of exploring, but that’s all right. Even if those details are never used in the story, they’ll add even more depth to the world than it had before.
Actor Misha Collins portrays our unfortunate angel — Image from Wikimedia Commons
(Warning: Since this is about Supernatural and its approach to plot and characterization, there’ll be unmarked spoilers all the way up to Season 9.)
While I’m posting disclaimers, I should include another biggie: I really love Supernatural. It’s a fun show, I watch it every week, and Castiel is by far my favorite character.
That said, he’s also the character I would probably change the most dramatically if I was writing the show, if not cut him out entirely. And here’s why:
Same verse, same as the first
Castiel has a bit of a cycle: He trusts the wrong person, does bad things on their behalf thinking it’s For The Greater Good, is betrayed by said person, mucks everything up, and gets redeemed by the Winchesters (usually within an episode or so of them finding out about it). Somewhere along the way, he’ll be stripped of his (pick as many of you like):
Powers
Wings
Memories
Morality
Autonomy
Life
But only for a few episodes– just enough for a quick “DUN DUN DUN” and maybe some brief scenes of him adjusting to the new status quo. But before there’s any real chance to fully explore the complications and long-term consequences of this major change, it’s fixed… just in time for him to meet the next wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s gotten so common that I’m wondering why he doesn’t introduce himself with “Hello, I’m Castiel, and you’re probably going to betray me.”
I don’t know why the show is written the way it is– clearly people are aware of this cycle, since several times the characters have pointed out that it keeps happening to the poor guy– but this blog isn’t about picking apart other works. It’s about learning from them.
What we can learn from Castiel:
A character can be too powerful
I firmly believe that one of the reasons Castiel keeps getting nerfed is because he’s simply too powerful. The guy unsank the Titanic for an episode, for Chuck’s sake. Time, space, the laws of physics– none of these actually matter to this guy when he’s at full strength. It’s pretty awesome when his opponents play by the same rules, but not so much when you’re dealing with werewolves, vampires, and other puny mortals. For an added bonus, he’s not even the protagonist, which means that the real protagonists of the show– puny mortals that they are– keep getting overshadowed by their literal Deus Ex Machina best friend unless you depower him, turn him evil, or punt him out of the picture.
Characters have to learn from their experiences in order to be dynamic
The first time Cas went through the cycle, it was gut-wrenching. He lost his faith and went on a huge drinking binge, only to learn that it didn’t actually fix anything. He had to learn how to be useful with his knowledge, his ingenuity, and with puny human weapons like shotguns and molotov cocktails. He saw his friends in pain and need, and had to deal with the anger, blame and guilt of not being able to help them when he could have before. As a result, he had to completely re-evaluate his perspective, his loyalties, and the way he thought of himself.
Fast-forward four seasons. We’ve learned the hard way that every time he gets put in cosmic time out, he’s pulled back again. Rather than adjusting to a new way of life and learning from what happened, he gets a pat on the shoulder, an assurance that “we can fix this,” and a heaping helping of Winchester brand self-loathing. He doesn’t learn from these mistakes, because if he did, the same plot wouldn’t keep happening to him over and over again. In short, it drags character growth to a near halt. Rather than exploring the way a permanent change can affect relationship dynamics and approaches to old problems, we’re stuck in a sort of plot purgatory, reliving the same developments over and over again.
If you’re going to pull a game-changer, be willing to commit to it
I recently saw a post on Tumblr comparing the first three seasons of Supernatural to the recent seasons, calling the former a genuinely frightening horror series and the latter a “soap opera”. And as much as I recoiled from that statement when I read it, I can’t argue against it. As a viewer, it’s hard to take major developments seriously anymore. Death stops being a threat when Dean looks at his murderer and declares “When I get back, I’m gonna be pissed.” Death, possession, de-powering, even major psychotic breaks are fixed within half a season– which, while it doesn’t take away the fun of watching it happen, takes away the legitimate drama of those events and brings them into the realm of melodrama.
If you want your audience to take you seriously, you have to be willing to do the same to them. Don’t pull any punches. If we’re told that “this is going to change everything,” let it actually change everything.
Be careful of repeating yourself
One of the issue’s with Castiel’s character arc is that it keeps repeating itself so precisely. It’s one thing to repeat themes or motifs throughout a story, but if you recycle the same conflict or plot point over and over again, your audience will notice. Do it blatantly enough, and they may even get bored and move on.
If any of this is hard to remember, I can sum it all up in one simple point:
Chuck is God, the Status Quo is not
Don’t keep trying to drag the story back to its baseline. Don’t keep trying to turn a character back into who they used to be. Don’t keep tempting us with major changes and then bailing out at the last minute. Allow the story, the characters, and the situations to grow and change organically, without shoehorning them back into their old shape.
Your readers will thank you.
(Though if Supernatural is any indication, your characters might not.)
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