Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

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Tag: writing (page 12 of 33)

Stuff About Writing

February 14, 2012 / 40 Comments

25 Things You Should Know About Protagonists

Ahh, the protagonist. The main motherfucker. The top dog. The mover-and-shaker of your story. Feels like it’s time to crack open the protagonist’s ribcage and get a good long look at his still-beating heart.

Another list of 25, incoming. Check your six, and please enjoy.

1. Prime Mover

The protagonist is the prime mover of the story. He shapes the tale and is in turn reshaped himself. If you can remove the character from the story and the story still happens in the same way, then what you’ve written is not a protagonist so much as “some schmoe who wanders through events like an old person lost at the mall.” Activity over passivity. The character should act upon the world, not merely react to the world. Put differently: the character is driving the car; the car is not driving the character.

2. Yo Yo Yo It’s MC Protag In The House, Motherfizzuckers

Generally, the “main character” and “protagonist” are the same — that isn’t an automatic, however. A main character can be the narrator telling the story of a protagonist. But, unless you’re a particularly talented writer, that’s probably going suck a bucket of bubbly hippo spit.

3. Wuzza Wooza Hero Buzza Booza Quest?

Yes, blah blah blah, your protagonist is a “hero” going on a “quest.” Strike this language from your vocabulary, at least at the outset. It’s not that these terms are wildly inappropriate — given certain modes of genre-writing, they are the hats the protagonist will wear. But for now, let’s pretend that a protagonist is more complicated and nuanced and sophisticated than the overly-simplistic “hero going on a quest” allows. Even characters existing in a fantasy realm or fighting, I dunno, space bees in space, should all be written as real people with real goals and real problems. Real people are not heroes. Real people do not go on quests. Let the audience call the protag a questing hero. You should dig deeper.

4. Replace The ‘K’ With A ‘V’

The old saying is that the protagonist should be likable. That we should want to go out and grab a beer with him and paint our nails and giggle as we rub our genitals together. Put that out of your head. Forget likable. Likable is not a meaningful quality. The audience says that, but they don’t mean it — otherwise, they wouldn’t be interested in the likes of Tony Soprano. Or Don Draper. Or Lisbeth Salander. (It’s harder to pull off an unlikable female protagonist, but that’s because we’re a fucked-up society who embraces flawed men but not flawed women.) Instead of likable, aim for livable. Meaning, we need to find this character compelling enough to live with them for the duration of the tale. I don’t want to get a beer with Lisbeth Salander any more than I want to get a beer with a Bengal tiger. But I’m happy to watch do their thing.

5. The Worst Crime You Can Commit. . .

…is create a boring protagonist. I’d rather loathe the protagonist than be bored by him. If your character has all the personality of chewed-up cardboard, I’m out, I’m done, I’m hitting the eject button. And don’t try any of those excuses — “But the world is exciting! The plot is zing! Bang! Boom!” No, no, no. You take those excuses and cram them in your pee-pee hole on the end of a rusty ramrod. The protagonist is why we stick around. This is the problem with the Everyman protagonist, by the way — recognize instead that we’re not all John Q. Who-Gives-A-Shit and that the Everyman is a false notion and embrace what makes each person interesting as opposed to what makes us all one slack-jawed superorganism.

6. Combat Landing

I need to know who your protagonist is right out of the gate. Don’t fuck around. It’s like a combat landing — drop hard and fast out of the atmosphere. From the first five pages of your book or five minutes of your script, I need to know why I care about your protagonist. Dally not, word-herder.

7. The Ability To Act Upon The World

I want to read about a character who can do something. I don’t want to read about some dude who has no marketable skills — “I’m really good at watching Wheel of Fortune drunk” is not a compelling reason for me to stick around. I don’t care if he’s a ninja, a lawyer, a detective, a doctor, a boat captain, or Captain Doctor Detective Stormshadow, Esquire — I want to know he is in some way capable. Who wants to read about an incapable ninny? (Be advised, however: capable is not the same as perfect.)

8. Standard Questions May Apply

The four cardinal questions: Who is she? What does she want? What conflicts and/or fears are standing in her way? And what is at stake (stakes as in, what will be won or lost) if she fails?

9. The Three Beats Of Doctor Protagonist

At the bare minimum, track the protagonist’s character arc by plotting three beats — these beats indicate change (positive or negative) in that character. Werner goes from self-destructive –> loses everything –> turns life around. Roy-Anne goes from cloistered farm-girl –> dragged along on crazy adventure –> world-wise but cynical. Bobo the Hobo has an arc of homeless otter whisperer –> half-robot hobo-machine –> destroys world in staticky burst of cybernetic rage. … okay, maybe not that last one. Point is, track the way the character changes for the better and/or the worse across the swath of the story.

10. Change Is More Interesting Than Stasis

Storytelling is the narrative accounting of how one thing becomes another. It is a fictional accounting of a change of state. The protagonist is the arbiter of this change and without change, we have a narrative structure that’s basically just a straight line with a period at the end of it. In your story, either the world changes the protagonist or the protagonist changes the world. But something must change.

11. The Two Faces Of Change

A protagonist either changes gradually over time as he encounters new events and other characters or he changes dramatically in response to a dramatic situation. The degree of change must match the degree of the events that urge that change — you can’t have a protagonist whose girlfriend breaks up with him and next thing you know he’s throwing babies into the shark tank at the local aquarium. “NOBODY LOVES ME NOW I HATE BABIES RAAAAR.” You must seek out believability by way of consistency — and, when consistency breaks, empathy. A protagonist who suffers trauma changes drastically because we expect and allow that change. We must accept it. To some degree we must even expect it.

12. Are You An Innie Or An Outie?

The protagonist tends to have an inner story and an outer story. The internal tracks the protagonist’s emotional, mental, and spiritual state, where the external story tracks the character’s actions and movements and corporeal health. The external story is obvious because, duh, it’s external. The internal story is hidden on purpose — exposing it to the light makes it feel twee, cloying, artificial. This is how we are as humans: our physical lives are plainly seen but our inner existence is guarded, concealed, hush-hush. The two stories also don’t need to go the same way: a character who karate-kicks all the villains to death reaches a positive outcome in his external story, but his internal story may be one of guilt and strife over the violence caused by his karate-wielding death-hands.

13. The Necessity Of That One Ass-Kicking Moment

We want to see the protagonist do something awesome. Sure, it can be some rad-ass karate bullshit, but it can just as easily be him telling off his villainous mother, or graduating high school when the odds were stacked against him, or saving a baby penguin from the slashing knife of a serial killer. A small version of that moment can come early (the Blake Snyder “Save the Cat” beat), but toward the final act of the story we need to see this again — crank the volume knob to Maximum Awesome.

14. The D&D Alignment Chart Is Not The Worst Thing In The World

This is overly simplistic, but bear with me — the D&D alignment chart (see this one for THE WIRE) can help get you started in terms of determining the shape of your protagonist’s actions. Does the character lean more lawful, or more chaotic? Is she neutral, or does she take sides on either side of the moral spectrum? WILL SHE DO BATTLE WITH THE CATOBLEPAS, OR THE DREAD MIND FLAYERS? Okay, maybe not so much with the Monster Manual stuff, but I think you get the idea.

15. Know Which Way The Character Will Jump

Some authors will go deep into a protagonist’s history and chart every breakfast she had since she was but a snot-glazed toddler. Do that if you’d like, but in my experience it’s best to dig deeper into the choices the character might make. In other words: know what way the protag’ll jump in any given situation. Who she was should work backward from who she is — at least, for you, the writer. Knowing how she’ll behave and what choices she’ll make will inform the history necessary for the protag to have gotten to this point. By the way, “protag” is short-hand for “protagonist.” All the kids are using it. Just yesterday a 12-year-old was like, “Hey, what up, Protag!” Or maybe I have wrong. Maybe he was like, “Hey, what up, you old bearded asshole!” Same thing. To-may-to to-mah-to.

16. Painting With Shadow: The Power Of The Antagonist

The antagonist opposes the protagonist not just once but throughout. In this way the antagonist helps define the protagonist in the same way you invoke a shape by coloring in everything but that shape. Note that the antagonist needn’t be another character — it traditionally is, yes, but any persistent conflict can be truly antagonistic. A looming house foreclosure, a cancer diagnosis, a tornado made of biting squirrels.

17. Lube Up For The Protagonist Gangbang

Yes, Virginia, you can have multiple protagonists. Multiple “main” characters just assumes that you have several characters pushing and pulling on the story. Any ensemble piece or story with strong multiple-POV characters could be said to have several protagonists. They should get equal time and have equal effect on the world lest they be demoted to the cast of supporting characters. AKA, “People who might get eaten by alligators or dispatched by Klingons somewhere in the story.”

18. Time To Practice Your Most Insidious Laugh

I like Moo-hoo-ha-HA-HA-HAHAHAHA — start slow and quiet and then go loud and fast. Which is also how I masturbate, just in case you were wondering. And you were. Anyway. My point here is, you have to hurt your protagonist. You really do. You have to be willing to cut them to the marrow physically, emotionally, spiritually — you know the protag well enough to know what and where his most vulnerable tickle spots pressure points are. This works because you’ve drawn a connection between the audience and the protagonist. The audience cares — or, at least, wants to remain compelled by the character’s journey. By fucking with the protagonist, you’re fucking with the audience. Which makes you sort of a dick, so, way to go. No wonder nobody liked you in high school. Jeez.

19. Fake-Out, Sucker

You can have a “false protagonist.” You set up one character as a protagonist, the audience buys into it, then you switch it. Often by killing that false protagonist and revealing the real one. It’s kind of a dick move but we’ve already established that you’re a dick. The key is to be an effective dick. Or something.

20. Theme & Character: Car Crash, Or Pubic Braid? You Decide!

The protagonist interacts with theme in one of two ways: intersection or interweaving. At an intersection, the protagonist crashes head-on into the theme in a perpendicular 20-car-pile-up. The protagonist is at odds with the theme and rails against it, eventually overcoming it, overturning it, or succumbing to it and proving it out. Or, the protagonist and theme are interwoven together, wherein each reflects the other.

21. The Definition Of “Mary-Sue”

You will find multiple definitions of a “Mary-Sue” (the male version is called “No Gnews is Good Gnews with Gary Gnu”) — what you need to know is that your protagonist should not be a pap, waffling, twee stand-in for your most perfect ideals. An unconflicted, untroubled, unrealistic icon of flawless goody-two-shoedness is a shitballs protagonist no matter what you call her. So, don’t do that.

22. We Love Characters For Their Imperfections

We want characters who have flaws. Flaws are interesting. We like to watch flaws. Maybe we see them as representative of our own damaged goods? Maybe we just like to watch awful stuff, like when a conversion van full of bees drives into a Kodiak bear stuffed with explosives and sticky honey. Further, flaws offer a practical component: they make for the source of excellent conflict — and, in fact, represent a nearly-perfect internal self-generating conflict because the flaw forces the protagonist to act as his own antagonist. HOLY POOPFIRE DID I BLOW YOUR MIND? Ahem. Sorry. Some protagonists are subject to a “fatal flaw,” which is a tragic-in-the-truest-sense weakness that forever threatens to undo all the good that the protagonist has done. My fatal flaw is writing POOPFIRE in all caps. And doing heroin. Mmm, heroin.

23. Discover The Sadness

That sounds like a new Sarah McLachlan song, doesn’t it? Anyway. I’ve posited this before and I’ll posit it again: sadness lingers at the nucleus of every story. It may not be dominant or prominent but it’s there — and I think you can find the same thing inside the protagonist. Every protagonist should be wounded in some way; the wound may be a small but potent one or it may be the all-consuming spiritual equivalent of a sucking chest wound, but it should be present. In this wound grows sadness, and by digging for this griefstruck little pearl and unearthing it you will expose a critical part of the protagonist’s makeup.

24. Find Yourself Inside The Protagonist

I don’t mean that literally, of course. (Sexy as it may sound.) I mean that, to discover what lies at the heart of your protagonist you should endeavor to find some shared human experience, some critical emotional core sample that is a match betwixt the both of you. It can be anything, of course — “We’re both orphans! We both have anger issues! We both enjoy have enjoy having cocaine snorted off our perineums by drunken diner waitresses!” — but it helps to channel a bit of yourself into the main character. If only so you create that sense of empathy needed to grok the protagonist’s motives, fears, and goals.

25. The Superglue Of Shared Story

And therein lies the secret. When we respond to a protagonist it’s because we see a bit of Our Story in Her Story. That’s the glue that affixes us to the character, that makes us want to cling to him or her like a cuddly little marmoset. The protagonist can be wildly different from us as long we can see in him some aspect of shared human experience, some piece of driftwood bobbing in the great big chaotic ocean that is that protagonist’s persona. (This is, I’d argue, why we respond to Luke Skywalker but not to Anakin — it’s easier to see ourselves in Luke than his father.) Don’t keep the protagonist at arm’s length by giving her traits and experiences understood by only a small subset of the audience. That’s not to say the protag cannot be a serial killer, alien, or star fighter pilot — it just means that some part of that character’s makeup must reach across the abyss between story and audience in order to create common ground.


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February 13, 2012 / 67 Comments

Is Free A Price We Can Pay?

It seems that every book these days — or, at least, every self-published book — is popping up free for a short period of time, an act driven by inclusion in the exclusive Amazon KDP Select program.

I did it with SHOTGUN GRAVY, as you may have seen. To report back on the experiment, the novella has once more gone back to its two or three sales a day mark. The sales basically went like this: after going free for just over a day, the novella moved around 5200 copies. Then, after the promo ended, I sold (daily): 70, 4, 89, 48, 36, 13, then it we’re back to the two or three sales per day. During the time SG spiked, my other e-books mysteriously dipped for a couple days but then raged back strong thereafter. During that stretch, it netted be about 20 new reviews. So, I’m willing to call it a success.

And I’m not yet sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

The results were a good thing. But it’s the ramifications of those results that has me feeling wibbly-wobbly.

Here’s where I’m a bit troubled.

First, the fact we’re now seeing a new type of authorial self-promotion (my book is free! hurry up and not pay for it!) is troubling if only because I fear we’re just contributing to the overall noise — and it’s noise that spreads an intrinsic notion about the value of our work, which is to say, it maybe ain’t worth that much. This noise also helps to set up expectation: “If I wait around long enough, this book might just show up free for a couple days.” So, where before readers were becoming trained to wait for a sale — “Oh, now the book is $2.99 instead of $4.99, or now just a buck” — they’re instead waiting for it to cost them absolutely zero.

Second, the boost in sales that comes out of this process is effectively a cheat. It’s an exploit like you’d find in a multiplayer game. It’s not based on human word-of-mouth, it’s based on a programmatic exploitation of Amazon’s recommendation system — a system that is inscrutable and unpredictable. Amazon may intend for it to work that way so, in this sense it’s not strictly an exploit — but my point is that it’s based on an algorithm of recommendations rather than actual recommendations. Moreover, if that algorithm becomes dominated by this mode of juggling books to the top, then those books that are not participating may have a harder time finding a place in that already-unknowable and potentially-overcrowded recommendation system. Right? So, not only is this “free product exploit to boost sales” trick creating a potential ecosystem of lowered expectations in a story’s value (because a buck wasn’t cheap enough!), it’s also enforcing a programmatic ecosystem where if your book does not participate, it doesn’t get to play in the Reindeer Games with all the other once-free books.

Third, we’re reinforcing the notion that Amazon is the 800-lb. gorilla in the room — except now, Amazon is becoming the 800-lb. mecha-gorilla in the room (now with rapid-fire gatling gun arms!). I already sell minimally on the Nook and most authors I talk to have the same experience. On the one hand, that coffin’s already got eight nails in it. On the other hand, if our aggregated Amazon exclusivity hammers in that ninth and final nail, that means Barnes & Noble officially fails to be a competitor (which is as much their fault as anybody’s, to be clear). And a book publishing ecosystem that loses both of its main players (in Borders and B&N) is a troubled one. Up until this point, Amazon has been very author-friendly. Outside a few little stumbles and bumbles, they’re pretty good to authors and offer a genuine benefit. Amazon has changed publishing and how authors reach audiences. But, Amazon is a company. I hold no illusions that they do this to be warm and fuzzy. They’re making friends with authors so as to shank publishers in the kidneys. What happens when bookstores and publishers finally die, gurgling in their own lung-blood? Will authors continue to get a great deal in that ecosystem? Self-publishers who scream and cry about publisher monopoly plainly do not understand monopolies. Amazon has the ability to become just such a monopoly.

Let me be clear — I used the promotion, it worked, and I’m fairly happy with the results. I’m not knocking it nor am I knocking any who seek to access that exploit. You do what you have to do. If your unknown book is now known due to this process, then that’s a clear win.

My fear is that it’s a win in the short term. But that there may be harm in the long-term.

(As a sidenote, if you’ve nabbed a free book from an author and then read that book, you should do something to pay the author back: leave a review or buy other books by that author. It’s only fair.)

Curious to hear your thoughts — I’m not settled on any of this (how can you be, with the ground moving so swiftly beneath our feet?), and for all I know this represents just another step toward an authorial Renaissance. On the other hand, I worry we’re cutting out one middle-man for another, except this one is a faceless insane Amazon algorithm that lives in the dark and seeks to undo all existence with his cybernetic Hands-of-Atropos. Snip, snip.

You tell me. Have you tried the free thing either as author or reader? How’d it work for you? What are your thoughts and fears over all this? Talk it out. Curious to unpack this, see where authors of all stripes stand.

Oh! One more thing:

If you’re a self-published author, you know that one of the hardest things to come by is data.

So, go fill out this self-publishing survey. Please?

February 7, 2012 / 144 Comments

25 Reasons That Writers Are Bug-Fuck Nuts

It seems like a good time for a spiritual successor to my earlier “Beware of Writer” posts — this time, jacked into the popular “25 Things” format here that all you cats and kittens seem to like. Plus, it’s sometimes good to speak to the non-writers out there, let ’em know why we get that spooky glint in our eyes once in a while. You wanna know why we’re a little wacky? I gotcher 25 reasons right here.

1. We Destroy Our Imaginary Friends

Authors invent people. Out of thin air. They reach into the moist and dewy folds of the invisible thought vagina and from that squishy space birth people who have never existed, and who will never exist. We give ourselves — and by proxy, the audience — reasons to care about these people. They become our imaginary friends. Then we take our imaginary friends and fuck them over ten ways till Tuesday. “This is Dave. We all like Dave. Good hair. Nice teeth. We can all relate to Dave. Uh-oh! Dave’s wife just left him. Stole the kids. And now he’s being hunted by a serial killer from the moon! HA HA HA HA SUCK A DICK DAVE.”

2. We Specialize In Creative Ways To Die

We’re basically murderers who just don’t have the balls to actually go out and kill some motherfuckers. It’s not just stories about aliens chomping on people’s guts or thugs stabbing other thugs — books and films and comic books are showcases for every form of misery and doom one could imagine. Once in a while you’ll be walking along and suddenly a thought will strike you: “I wonder if I could work it into a story where some dude gets his guts vacuumed out his boothole by an out-of-control Roomba. I bet I could. Time to murder some non-existent humans. To the writermobile!”

3. Behold The Bad News Boner

It’s not just murder. It’s all kinds of bad news. Bus crash! Small town swallowed by avalanche! Exploding nuns! Deadly form of herpes escapes lab on the back of a carnivorous shark-llama hybrid! Oh noes! Bad news! Yay! I want to rub it all over my body like a cream or unguent! I want to wear its stink and huff the stench of cataclysm and catstrophe to get me jacked up for my next story! Exclamation points! Can’t stop!

4. “I Was Once Born With A Tail!”

We are trained to be gifted liars. Anybody who writes fiction — or works for Fox News — is tasked with the job of convincing others that Things That Are Absolutely Not True are, in fact, Totally Fucking True. Our entire job is predicated on being good at spinning a complicated web of deception. Truth? Bo-ring. Lies? High-five! Lies make Story Jesus giggle as if you’re tickling his tummy. I imagine all writers have those moments where they’re sitting around their office, pantsless, an empty whiskey bottle spinning idly at their feet — they rub their eyes and mutter, “I don’t know what’s real and what’s fake anymore.” Then the writer hops on his rocket unicorn and goes to buy a cat-burger from the fish-faced Atlantean fellow down on Bumbershoot Street. See? The lies just fall out of me. Like chewing gum from a dead man’s mouth.

5. Quiet Loners

Whenever they find some whackaloon with a collection of severed heads in his freezer, they always trot out the neighbors and you get that classic line: “He was always so quiet.” And the assumption becomes, oh, that seemingly nice-and-quiet chap next door needed his quiet time because he was too busy with his hobby of decapitating dudes. On the other hand: hey, maybe him being quiet and alone all the time made him crazy. Maybe you spend too long cooped up with yourself the carpet starts moving and the wallpaper shifts and the room starts to whisper, You know what would be awesome? A sweet-ass collection of severed heads. Get on that. This is probably a good time to remind you that writers happen to spend a lot of time alone and cooped up with themselves. Just, uhh, putting that out there. What, this old thing? Just a hacksaw.

6. The Grotto Of Insanity

Our office spaces soon begin to reflect our quiet and lonely — and inevitably crazy — lifestyle. Teetering towers of books that threaten to crush us. Pens laying everywhere (and if you’re me, half of them are chewed on, the toxic ink and plastics long settled into my body). Over there, a plate of what may have once been a burrito but now looks like a brain made of fungus. Next to it, a small handgun. Next to that, a dead pigeon. Underneath the desk, a noisy pile of Red Bull cans, liquor bottles, and ammunition casings. Behind us, a cabinet full of freeze-dried severed heads. Our offices inevitably turn into wombs, that is, if wombs were responsible for birthing the raw stuff of crazy into the world.

7. The Nexus Of Madness Is Atop Our Wibbly-Wobbly Necks

If you think our offices are the domicile of the insane, you should see the inside of our heads. It’s the asylum from 12 Monkeys all up in these motherfuckers. And we live here all the goddamn time. No escape!

8. Creativity Is Seen As A Commodity Of The Lazy And Insane

You tell most people what you do and you get this look — it’s a look that perfectly contains a tempest of information, a tangle of thoughts (and none of them good). You get a mixture of, Oh, he’s one of those, or, Look, another hipster-slacker-socialist-asshole stealing all our precious unemployment, or, He doesn’t look like he’s starving so he must have a trust fund keeping him alive, or, Ugh, that’s not a real job. Swamp logger, that’s a real job. Writer’s just something you say when you like to smoke drugs all day. It’s really quite disheartening. You get those looks often enough it starts to crack your egg a little bit, dontcha know?

9. The Love-Me Hate-Me Two-Step

Here, then, is the critical dichotomy of our process: we have to love an idea so much we’re willing to spend the great deal of time shoveling it into the world, and then we have to switch gears and learn to hate the thing we just created in order to improve it. We puff up our ego, then lance it with a hot pin. It’s like giving birth to a child who you love with all your heart until you throw him out into the icy woods with a note pinned to his chest reading: this is how you learn to survive, you little turd. Writers are the tragedy and comedy masks whirling about, trading places again and again. And it’s all a bit barmy, innit?

10. Caffeine Poisoning

Writers drink so much caffeine that eventually the synapses start to break down like wires chewed by starving squirrels. And then those starving squirrels make a ratty nest of old leaves and smelly yarn inside our heads. We end up as gutted automatons piloted by a tribe of twitchy squirrels. Metaphorically.

11. Alcohol Poisoning

Coffee, then liquor, then coffee, then liquor. Okay, yes, I know, not every writer is a pickled booze-sponge, but some drink enough for all, I suspect. All that booze affects the liver and just as the liver is kind of the bouncer for the human body, detoxing all that bad voodoo, Plato felt that another function of the liver was to keep in check a human’s darkest emotions. Meaning, the liver’s purpose was to bottle up all the crazy. And what do writers do? OBLITERATE THE LIVER WITH DRINK. Be free, little crazies! Be free!

12. “I Got A Bad Case Of The Penmonkeys, Man”

We’re addicts for our wordsmithy. Over time, it just happens. One day you’ve been writing so long that when a day comes you don’t put words to paper it feels like that space between your heart and your guts is filled with a cluster of bitey eels that want out, and the only way to give them egress is to start writing again. We’re word-junkies, man. Ink-slingers. Fiction fiends. The only cure is another taste of that sweet story.

13. Control Freaks With Nothing To Control

Inside our stories, we’re gods among mortals — our hands are on all the buttons and switches. Outside our stories, we control a big bag of Dick Butkus. We don’t control publisher advances, book placement, trends, reviews, or that weird little deranged robot that computes the Amazon recommendation algorithms.

14. Crazy Money!

Yeah, by “crazy money” I don’t mean “money in such quantity it’s totally awesome,” but rather, “money that arrives in wildly inconsistent sums and on a madman’s schedule.” You hit this point where, okay, you have to learn to survive from January to March on this royalty check of $7.53, and then in March you’re supposed to get like, ten grand or something, but then that ten grand doesn’t show up until June, and when you get it you forget you need to buy groceries and instead buy like, a Wave Runner instead. Yeah. See? Nutty.

15. Books Books I Love Books Books Books Mmm Books

The one thing that e-readers have robbed from us is the ability to throw all the books we own into a room and roll around on them, naked. I mean, okay, sure, I can do that with an e-reader, but eventually someone’s going to pick it up and be like, “Is this a testicle-print on my Kindle?” What I’m saying is, some people hoard clothing, cats, fast food containers, ninja weapons, exotic primates — but writers hoard books. And eventually all those books — each a storehouse of utter unreality — bleeds into our brains via creative osmosis. Either that or they fall on us, crushing our weak little writer bodies beneath.

16. We Are Distracted For A Reason

It’s not new to suggest that writers are easily distracted: we’ve all gotten lost in an endless labyrinth of cat videos (and at the center of that labyrinth is a cat dressed like a minotaur, and he’s all like I CAN HAZ COW HED OH NOES THESEUS and — dang, LOLcats jokes just don’t cut it anymore, do they?). But here’s why we’re easily distracted: because our brains know it’s bad for us to stare at a screen full of tiny words all day. Our brain is telling us to look at something — anything — other than those tiny little ant-like words. It is unnatural to stare at words in this way. It nibbles holes in our gray matter.

17. The Internet Is Full Of Ragehate, And We Dive In, Headfirst

Once upon a time, authors would get reviews that were insightful, incisive critiques — “The author’s masterful use of language is sadly handicapped by a plot whose events fail to properly resolve.” Now we have to put up with internet vitriol like you’d find on the likes of a YouTube video where a guy gets hit in the nuts with a tricycle: “THIS BOOK IS FUKKIN STUPID IT BLOWS GIRAFFES THE AWTHOR IS A TARDCART.” And then they probably call you a racial or sexual epithet. It’s like asking for insightful criticism during a Call of Duty match on Xbox Live. It does little good for one’s sanity.

18. The English Language Makes As Much Sense As Snivel Bliff Fleekum Hork

Okay, this one is a little biased toward those writing in the English tongue, but seriously, trying to know all the rules in and around the composition of the English language will give you a goddamn nosebleed. Looking at all the rules — and then memorizing all the bizarre-o exceptions — makes you want to go back to the days of communicating with clicks and burps. Related: Brian Regan knows the real “I-before-E” rule.

19. At Some Point We Tried Really Hard To Understand The Publishing Industry

Predicting trends, imagining advances, contemplating the agency model, trying to figure out why anybody would publish any book by Billy Ray Cyrus ever — all this does is plunge your mind into the roiling black soup of unmitigated chaos. You can tell the moment any author’s sanity snapped, because it goes like this: “My book’s been out on submission for seven years, and now they’re publishing a book of scat marks written by that greasy orangutan, Snooki?” Listen hard enough, you hear a *plink* — that’s the sound of the little pubic hair holding the last vestiges of that author’s sanity together.

20. That Might Be Scurvy

No, that’s not the latest spin-off band by They Might Be Giants — it’s because we don’t have enough money for food and health insurance and because we didn’t eat a couple oranges now we’re losing our teeth and fingernails and turning into some raving froth-mouthed version of the Brundlefly.

21. Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me? Me!

It is in our makeup to be desperate for attention. We write our books, our films, our articles, and we’re not writing them so that we can just read them back to ourselves and have a jolly good laugh. We want you to read them, too. And you. And you! And you over there, hiding behind the shrubs. The more attention we get, the more successful we become — or, at least, feel. The ironic part is, many aren’t comfortable with that attention and yet seek it like junkies. Which, you guessed it, makes us a wee smidgen bit crazy.

22. Amazon Rankings

Click. Clickity-click. Refresh refresh. “Did my ranking go up? Or down? Or up? Or down? It stayed the same. What does that mean? Did I sell enough to stay afloat? Are the rankings broken? How often do they update? Is my book doing better than that other book? Is that good? Or bad? My finger is getting a blister. MY ENTIRE SELF-WORTH IS PINNED TO THIS GODDAMN NUMBER. *sob*” Click. Click. Refresh refresh.

23. The Idea Plague

Ask a writer: “Where do you get your ideas from?” And the writer will reply: “How do you make yours stop?” Then he’ll bat at his hair as if it’s on fire. I can’t walk ten feet without thinking of a new novel or script idea. It’s an idea that will almost certainly never yield fruit — which means I’m essentially committing an act of literary Onanism. So much idea-seed spilled on the floor. Infertile and inert. And smells like Clorox.

24. We Hang Out With Other Writers

Crazy people hanging out with other crazy people just creates a crazy people feedback loop where the crazy recirculates again and again like a bad stink in an old car. Crazy begets crazy begets crazy.

25. It’s Cool-Cool To Be Cray-Cray

Most writers aren’t actually crazy — but we certainly feel that way sometimes and furthermore, a helluva lot of our authorial forebears were definitely a bit, ahhh, unstable (Hemingway! Hunter S. Thompson! Emily Dickinson! Sylvia Plath!). As such, we’re cast into a realm where it’s okay, even expected, that our creative pursuits mark us on the charts between “a little bit eccentric” and “crazier than a shithouse chimp.”


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The newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Only a buck: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

The epic mega-book: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

February 6, 2012 / 75 Comments

Tunes For The Penmonkey

I don’t tend to listen to much music while writing. Editing, sometimes — or, maybe during prep. But during writing, I like things quiet. Chill. Shhhhh.

But! But, I’ve been playing with music a little bit — not so much during the writing but before it to get pumped up and “in the mood” and then at punctuated points during the actual process.

Which makes me want to ask you people:

Do you listen to music when you write?

What do you listen to?

A deeper, more granular question would be:

Given that different music is valuable to different writing moods or to writing different scenes, what do you like to write when working on certain types of scenes? Say, when you’re writing action? Or drama? Or sex? Or ACTION DRAMA SEX? (That will be the name of my memoir, by the way. Look for it in the year 2034. Provided we all survive the Hyperborean Sharkpocalypse of 2032.)

So.

You.

Music.

Writing.

What’s the score?

Pun not intended until now.

January 31, 2012 / 72 Comments

25 Things You Should Know About Story Structure

The other day, I asked where lots of folks had problems with their stories. “Plot” and “structure” came up a lot (and I feel your pain). Hence, here we are with 25 things you might wanna know about narrative structure.

1. Every Story Has Structure

Whether you put it there or not, no story goes from start to finish without structure. Structure is either something you design as a storyteller or something that just happens. Sometimes the structure is the right one. Sometimes it’s the wrong one. (You’ll know it’s wrong because the story will suddenly feel like it’s got a dick growing out of its forehead. “Something’s off,” you’ll say. And the story will respond, “Maybe it’s the swinging forehead dick?”) If you have a good gut for a story, then you will intuit a strong structure as you go. If your instincts aren’t that sharp, it helps to design the story’s structure before moving forward.

2. Think Of It As Story Architecture

Structure serves story; story does not serve structure. A cathedral is built toward certain considerations: the beauty of God, the presence of God’s story, the need for acoustics, the accommodation of seating, the sacrificial altar, the DJ booth, and so on. You design a structure to highlight the type of story you’re telling. Using a non-linear structure in a mystery story is so that you maximize on the uncertainty and use the rejiggered narrative to create suspense. Structure has purpose. Structure is where art and craft collide.

3. The Two Essential Pieces

Most stories have at their core two critical components: The Fuck Up, and Trying To Fix The Fuck Up. Something goes wrong or something changes — a divorce, the Apocalypse, a lost child, someone puts ALF back on the air — and then one or several characters strive to fix that which has gone wrong. (In effect, reversing or correcting — or sometimes exploring — the narrative change of state.) Maybe they succeed. Maybe they fail. Maybe they achieve a Pyrrhic victory where they succeed but not without significant cost. What this really reveals are the most critical components to structural storytelling: a conflict is essential as is the character agency to correct that conflict. Without those, your structure is naught but a straight line. A straight line is the most boring construction a story can take. Aim for any shape but straight.

4. Said Differently, From Order To Chaos

Storytelling is the push-and-pull of order and chaos, the horny tumble and tangle of limbs as each struggles to overcome the other. Signal moves up and down, transitioning from a clear frequency to an inky squiggle of chaotic uncertainty which in turn reveals the structure. And that structure highlights the up-and-down and push-and-pull. The flat lines of order give way to the ascent (or more properly, descent) into chaos.

5. Narrative Measurement

I have explained this before, but fuck it, you’re duct-taped to that chair nice and tight and I know you can’t squirm away HA HA HA: narrative, like all things, can be measured. You don’t have to measure it, same as you don’t have to measure that fish you caught or the fishing rod that caught it (insert your own keenly-veiled sexual metaphor here!). If you do measure, know that beats make scenes, scenes make sequences, sequences make acts, and between each act is a turn of sorts, a shifting of the story’s hips, cocking this way, or that. Ignore it if you like, but if you’re building a house, you might want to know what a brick looks like.

6. Sliced In Thrice Nicely With My Knife

You could argue that all stories fall into three acts — and, in filmmaking, if they don’t fall that way they’re damn well pushed. Act One is the Set-Up (first 25%), Act Two is the Confrontation (next 50%), Act Three is the Resolution (final 25%). It’s an imperfect description and damn sure not the only description, and in the grand scheme of things you could, if you chose, distill it down to beginning, middle, and end.

7. Microcosmos

Whatever structure you give to a story is also a structure you can give to an individual act. In this way, each act is like a story within a story with its own ups and downs and conflicts and resolutions. As an act closes the tale told there either evolves or transforms entirely to manifest new aspects of the tale. For an example, look to the stages of our lives: child to teen to adult to doddering Depends-wearing gadabout (or at least that’s how I hope my own final arc plays out). While we remain the same person through such life changes, our story grows and shifts and becomes something else. Thus is the way a story’s acts flow into one another.

8. Complexity Breeds Complexity

The more complicated your story, the more acts that story is likely to feature — it’s like how you get gremlins wet, they just make more goddamn gremlins? Like that. A bigger, stranger, crazier story is likely to demand a bigger, crazier, stranger structure. Reason a film tends to only have three acts is because a film is around 100 minutes long — and because audiences crave the comfort of simplicity for a number of reasons good and bad. Shakespeare, for instance, rocked a five-act structure.

9. Omne Trium Perfectum

That’s Latin for, “I’m sorry, there are two girls in my bathroom.” *checks notes* No, wait, that can’t be right. Oh! Oh. Here it is. Loosely translated, “Every set of three is complete.” Even if you ignore all other structural components, this is a good one to keep an eye on — the Rule of Threes suggests that all aspects of your story should have at least three beats. Anything that has any value or importance should be touched on three times and, further, evolve a little bit each time. Every character arc, ever act, every scene, every setting, every motif or theme, needs you the storyteller to call it back at least three times.

10. The Power Of The Pivot

The story must from time to time pivot — as the saying goes, the tiger must change his panties. *checks notes* Damnit, who wrote these? Stripes. Stripes. The tiger must change his stripes. Jesus. This is true of characters, too. Or the world and its rules. Change is a critical element to storytelling, but you cannot change aspects wildly and completely. It must be gradual and believable, moving only a single phase shift over, the way water becomes ice — it’s an expected and believable shift. It’s why I prefer to think of this and call it a pivot. That word intimates a turn of the body, not a dizzying backflip. Pivot points will mark those narrative moments when your structure turns and things change. When one act becomes another, for instance, that is when the story pivots for the audience. This could mean an evolution of conflict, a revelation of new information, a major character life change. Any major shift in the story will do.

11. Escalations And Reversals

Again, if you don’t care much about formal structure, just tune your intestinal frequency to these two ideas: first, the story must escalate, or in all-caps-speak, SHIT GOTTA GET DOUBLE-BIG FUCKED UP YO; second, the story must feature occasional reversals where One State (order, victory, hope) becomes the Opposite State (chaos, loss, despair), or in all-caps-speak, YO BRO THE STORY SWITCHED IT AND FLIPPED IT AND BOGGLED MY SHIT SON. Dang, if I could write a novel in all caps, I would.

12. Why The Ejaculatory Arc Works

We’ll talk a wee bit more about Freytag and his arcing glob of narrative jizz (it was Douglas Rushkoff who I first heard use the term “male ejaculatory arc” to describe the standard structural shape of modern narrative) in just a moment, but the reason this general shape works is because it reveals escalation — things grow worse or more complicated or more intense as the tale moves forward. A story in the reverse would be anti-climactic, which is I guess to say, like an ejaculation on rewind.

13. The Arc As Microstructure

Hard time thinking about plotlines or subplots or act structures? Think instead of how a story comprises a number of smaller and larger arcs — an arc just being a component of your story that begins and ends (or, even better, rises and falls). Characters, themes, events, settings — these can have arcs. Some fill a whole story, some are just little belt loops popping up here and there. Some arcs begin where others end. Many overlap, rubbing elbows or shoulders or other filthier parts. Television is a great place to study arcs (and if I may suggest a show: Justified, on FX). Comic books, too.

14. For Every Story, A Structure

Every story demands a different structure. No universal structure exists. It’s why that mopey old saw about there being only seven plots or some bullshit is, well, bullshit. If you distill them down to their barest (and in many ways most meaningless) essence, sure, that’s true. But the art is in the arrangement. The structure you build around the plot to support the story is where the elegance lies.

15. I’m Talking Motherfucking Freytag, Y’all

One structure you can look at: Freytag’s Pyramid. Or Triangle. Or Pubic Thatch. Whatever you care to call it. Gustav Freytag said, Mein Gott, all diesen plottenheimer schmeckt der same to meinein mouthenpartsen. Translated, every story features five key structural beats mirroring five acts: Exposition (introduce characters and world) –> Rising Action (conflict creates tension) –> Climax (confrontation leads to a major change) –> Falling Action (conflict resolves) –> Denouement (dangly bits are all tied-up or trimmed away). It is, like all structural explorations, equal parts “useful” and “a garbage scow set aflame.” Not every plot fits. Further, modern storytelling (which usually trims five acts to three) pushes that climax further toward the end, which means the falling action and denouement get squished, as if between two Sumo wrestlers.

16. From Five To Seven

Behold, a rough seven-act structure: Intro (duh) –> Problem or Attack (duh) –> Initial Struggle (character first tussles with source of conflict) –> Complications (conflict worsens, deepens, changes) –> Failed Attempts (oops, that didn’t work) –> Major Crisis (holy goatfucker shitbomb, everything’s gone pear-shaped) –> Climax and Resolution (duh). Not a bad look at the way many modern stories play out.

17. Ain’t Nothin’ But An Aristotle Thang

Two words: anagnorisis and peripeteia. Both from Aristotle’s theory of tragedy (and two words that if you get in Scrabble, you automatically win a balloon ride or something). Anagnorisis is a discovery made by a character. Peripeteia is a dramatic change (either positive or negative) within the story. Each feeds into the other in the same way I spoke of order and chaos earlier — a character’s discovery may lead to a change in fortune, or a change in fortune may lead to a new discovery. These two things tumble around and around like a pair of hedgehogs battling one another in a washing machine until finally they reach catastrophe, which in Aristotelian terms is what closes the story — either the character wins or is defeated by the conflict or by himself (and in true tragic form, the character often defeats himself).

18. The Monomyth: Storytelling Epiphany Or Sublime Bullshit — You Decide!

Ever since Star Wars hit, a lot has been made of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey — AKA, “The Monomyth.” It is neither The Best Thing Since Blowjobs or The Worst Thing To Happen To Modern Fiction. It’s just a thing — one more structural consideration you can choose to use or toss in the medical waste bin at your local health clinic. While it’s got a lot of extra fiddly bits, the Monomyth can be distilled as: Departure (hero leaves normalcy and comfort on an adventure spurred by some call to action) –> Initiation (hero meets trials and tribulations both personal and impersonal) –> Return (hero comes back to the world changed and brings with him boons for his buddies). It’s got 17 total steps (or 8, if you want the distilled version). Want to examine its application? Fuck George Lucas. Seek James Joyce.

19. The Morphology Of The Folk-Tale

I do not have the space or the time in this list to explore all 31 of Vladimir Propp’s structural steps which are meant to explicate the narrative nature of folk-tales (Russian folk-takes in particular). I mean, dang, I got shit to do. Like eat a sandwich. Or stare at the floor. Or gloomily masturbate. It’s a very specific rendering of narrative structure, but it could be enlightening in some fashion. I’ll trust your Google-Fu to get started.

20. Did You See Last Night’s Episode?

And no, by “episode” I do not mean, “that time when Chuck went apeshit at Arby’s and started slathering his nude goblin body in Horsey Sauce.” Different kind of episode. No, here I mean episode-as-narrative-structure. Television and comic books tend to be episodic, with any serialized elements packaged away as story arcs (noted earlier). Episodic storytelling tends to chop up each tale in neatly-packaged plot pieces, with each piece theoretically resolving by its end and then together forming a larger story. Generally, television works on acts separated out by commercial breaks. Episodic narrative may make your story feel more manageable — but, at the same time, placing an episodic structure inside a non-episodic format (say, a novel or a film) is likely to feel artificial and/or inauthentic.

21. My Porn Director Name Will Be “Therefore Butts”

Click here and get schooled by the South Park guys. The key thing they’re getting across with this is that scenes and events in storytelling don’t happen independently of one another. There must exist a chain of cause and effect, of action and opposite reaction, of consequence. Dominoes do not fall separate from one another. They fall against one another. Embroider that profound shit on a throw pillow.

22. From Aperitif To Digestif

Fuck you, I like food metaphors. So, here’s one — consider how the structure of a seven-course meal works in terms of storytelling. You start with a Aperitif (guests become acquainted over a drink) and progress through a series of dishes meant to both embody the meal and challenge the palate, with certain contextual shifts in taste (sorbet and/or cheese) to punctuate larger events. Dessert rolls along as kind of a climactic moment and then coffee and the digestif appear to give one final strong dose of taste-punching goodness in order to help the eater digest the meal he just consumed. You could chart it on a graph and it might look similar to narrative structure. Then again, maybe I’m just hungry.

23. You Can’t Structuralize Me, Man

Non-linear storytelling would seem to have a non-traditional structure, and that’s true, to a point. But what you’ll ultimately find is that, while the plot events may bounce around like a meth-cranked dormouse, the structure that occurs is still one that you can identify. (Which tells us that plot and narrative structure are there to complement one another but are not actually the same thing.)

24. Tend To Your Organic Story Garden, You Goddamn Hippie

Writing without structure is a challenge equivalent to writing with structure — if you do it right, you get something that feels organic and unexpected. If you do it poorly, you’ll end up with the storytelling equivalent of the Winchester House: doors that never open, stairways that end in walls, rooms that serve little purpose. If one method’s not working? Duh, try the other. Which leads me to…

25. The Final Word

If the application of structure helps you tell a better tale: use it. If you find it artificial and it only hampers your efforts: kick it in the mouth and chuck it down an open manhole cover. This stuff isn’t here to oppress you — it’s a tool for when you need it and invisible when you don’t. Some stories will call for the strong spine of structure. Some stories need to be altogether hazier, stranger, less pin-down-able. Just know that if you’re having some trouble grasping how the plot moves from one piece to another, it might be time to take a gander at borrowing from the many structural storytelling examples that exist. Either that, or maybe you need to eat a baggie of magic mushrooms or something. Your call.


Like this post? Want more just like it? Try these books:

The newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Only a buck: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

The epic mega-book: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

January 25, 2012 / 96 Comments

Your Penmonkey Report Card

So, last night, I was working on edits for Mockingbird, the sequel to the upcoming Blackbirds, and generally speaking, I enjoy revisions. While at times they make me want to pound my head against a desk until it’s the consistency of rice pudding, that’s still oddly a good feeling — like, the way way that tonguing your sensitive gums somehow hurts but also feels awesome at the same time? I dunno. Shut up.

Point is, as I go through the draft — and this is true of a lot of my drafts — I become aware of my deficiencies and trouble spots as a writer. I know my problem isn’t really going to be in the editing — I turn in pretty clean copy. Minimal typos, grammar in good order outside stylistic concerns, etc. I think I stay on point with character pretty well and I think pacing and suspense and theme are all well-handled.

Really, my problem is plot.

Plot is tricky li’l sumbitch. It just… it squirms away. Like an oiled up ferret. And the hell of it is, soon as you find one of those plot threads that needs to change or get cut you find that it shows up everywhere in the draft — and suddenly it’s like tearing out weeds. You can’t just pop out the tap-root. This fucker’s got shoots and runners and tendrils everywhere.

So, anyway, that brings me around to a question:

What’s your deficiency? I ask because, well, I’m curious. But also because it’ll help me focus future blog posts. Where do you run into problems? It can be something technical, something more abstract and story-based, or something that has to do with all the vagaries of the writer’s life. Hit me with your best shot. Take a good long look at your writing and your writing process.

Where could you use work? I don’t mean just a little bit, but like, if you were some kind of Sinister Penmonkey Supervillain, what would be your greatest weakness, your vulnerability?

Lob ’em at me.

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