Tag: Fiction Writing Tips

Storytelling Class — Round and Flat Characters

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. This week, our topic was making characters.

We always start with two questions: What did we read, and what did we write over the past week?

What Did We Read?

The family had a day this week where just about everyone wrote some poetry, so Freya read everyone’s poems. At school, they’re reading “The One and Only Bob.” My wife is reading her “Wildwood” at bedtimes, and she’s still working through Harry Potter in her free time at school.

I read the remaining pile of Vertigo comics that my wife snagged for me at a garage sale. Last week, I read the first two volumes of Y: The Last Man, a critically acclaimed series that I found pretty uninteresting. This week I delved into two other popular comics series and enjoyed them both quite a bit. They were:

  • Fables: Legends in Exile (Vol. 1)
  • Fables: Fairest: Wide Awake (a side series, I guess?)
  • Unwritten (Vols. 1-4)

Fables is all about fairy tales come to life and magically transported to modern day New York, forced to shlub it up with us mundane people while keeping their magical identities hidden. The first volume is a murder mystery, with the Big Bad Wolf as detective. It doesn’t end with the most shocking twist, but it serves as a great framework to introduce some of the main characters and the world they inhabit. Moreover, I appreciate a short, self-contained little arc, since comics are so often sprawling arcs and cross-series tie-ins (something Marvel has now inflicted upon films).

Fables: Fairest: Wide Awake is another self-contained arc, but completely separate from the New York fables. This one tells the story of a few fables who come together by chance and end up in the sights of an evil fairy queen.

While I enjoyed the Fables books, I really fell in love with Unwritten. Of the random selection of series in this pile ‘o garage sale books, these were my favorites by far.

Unwritten is about a sad man named Tom Taylor, who just happens to have the same name as the main character in a series of wildly successful Harry-Potter-esque novels written by his father. The story starts with Tom making a pittance attending conventions and signing his father’s books, but he quickly gets pulled into a strange conspiracy that threatens his life. Odd occurrences start to stack up, and it looks like he might actually be the boy wizard from the books, and that the worlds of stories might be just as real as our own.

I liked these enough that I’m going to buy the other 7 volumes, and at some point I’ll probably write a separate post about them.

What Did We Write?

This week I wrote my usual blog posts and finished the rough draft of Razor Mountain Chapter 8.

Freya wrote another chapter of her story, Amber and Floria. She also wrote a poem for the ad-hoc family poem-fest.

Characters

The topic for this week was characters, specifically flat and round characters. These, like so many writing terms, end up being talked about as a sort of binary, but they’re really two ends of a spectrum.

  • Round, deep or complex characters are those with extensive back-story, with many and subtle personality traits.
  • Flat, shallow or simple characters are those with minimal back-story and little personality.

It should be obvious just from these definitions that there is a spectrum here, where characters can be more or less complex.

It might feel desirable to make every character as complex as possible, and this is generally a good instinct. However, it’s important to note that there are only so many pages in a book. Some characters will necessarily take up more of the story, and others will be inherently less important. So even if every single character is equally complex, they cannot be shown with equal depth in the text itself.

Round Characters

To make characters more round, figure out more details about their

  • Background
  • Personality
  • Strengths and weaknesses
  • Conflict (what’s their problem, and how do they intend to solve it?)
  • Growth (how do they change over the course of the story?)

Again, it’s fine to know more things about a character than you actually end up using on the page. Sometimes having a deep back-story allows you to hint at bits of their personality that don’t show through clearly, but still give the character a sense of being a complicated, living person.

Flat Characters

The flattest characters are usually purpose-built. They do something specific for the story. The danger with these kind of characters is that they look too much like a plot device and not enough like a real person.

For these characters, having a personality, goals and conflict are less important. In fact, they only matter in that they’re useful to make the character feel real for the short time they’re on the page. Sometimes, flat characters can be defined with a shorthand or handle: specific, interesting traits. These might be something physical, or a mannerism, an unusual mode of speech, or other memorable attributes.

Flat Can Be Okay

There’s a school of thought that says no characters should be flat, and especially not ones that are important to the story, but that’s not necessarily true. While we usually want the characters in the spotlight to be complex and interesting, there are certain types of stories and certain genres where relatively flat characters can be effective, even in a starring role.

In some comedy, especially cartoons and sitcoms, it’s common to see characters that are mostly static from episode to episode. These shows typically feature a problem at the start of the episode that is resolved by the end, which means that over time, the status quo is maintained. This allows an audience to “pop-in” to the show at any time, as long as they’re familiar with the characters. They don’t have to catch up on the two or three episodes they missed. When this works, it’s because the characters are largely treated as vehicles for a steady stream of jokes.

Similarly, in certain mystery stories, the detective protagonist may undergo surprisingly little character development. These stories are focused on the mystery: the clues, the false leads, the clever inferences, and the eventual satisfying conclusion. Again, the detective character becomes a vehicle, this time, for the mystery.

Some superhero comics are superlative examples of characters that can remain static and flat. I have a pet theory that superhero origin stories are almost always the most compelling, because the character has an arc in the origin story, but oftentimes becomes much more static after that, enslaved by a serial format that wants to keep selling issues indefinitely. (Of course, this is a gross generalization, but there are certainly examples you can point to.)

Point of View

For POV characters and narrators, who are the reader’s window into the story, having a deep understanding of the character is vital for understanding their voice. When the character is the POV or the narrator, their voice is the voice of the book (or at least the parts they are involved in). It affects what the reader sees and how the reader interprets almost everything.

Examples

As an example of the flat <==> round spectrum in action, Freya and I talked about one of my half-finished stories.

It takes place in a steampunk world where everyone can wield a tiny amount of magic via totemic items, but a rare few (called “hexes”) can wield greater magical power. The protagonist, Edward, is a hex and a former soldier and spy who once worked for the crown. After committing terrible atrocities in a world war, he quit and vowed to never take another life. He’s an emotional wreck thanks to the horrible things he’s done and seen, and he is constantly balancing his natural inquisitiveness and propensity for getting into big, violent trouble with his vow of pacifism.

Early in the story, he gets involved in a mystery and meets a man who calls himself Vociferous. Vociferous is huge. He claims to be a Hex, wears slightly absurd robes and works in a factory, supposedly casting spells as a part of the highly secretive manufacturing process. We quickly find out that Vociferous is a fraud, and not a hex at all. We find this out because Edward is a real hex who knows all about it.

Vociferous is a relatively flat character. We don’t find out much about his personality or past, we just know he’s faking it for money. He has a handful of characteristics to make him more interesting: his distinct look and strange name. His ultimate purpose is to give Edward good reason within the story to explain the way magic works (to another character, and to the reader).

Edward is a much more rounded character. The story follows his point of view. He has a backstory and history with other characters. He has friends and enemies. He has flaws and goals and challenges to overcome.

Next Time: Setting Goals

Next week is going to be a light class. We’re going to talk about goal-setting and growing as a writer.

Dialogue For Lonely Characters

I’m currently working my way through my serial novel, Razor Mountain. One of the challenges in the first part of the book is that the main character, Christopher, is trapped in the wilderness and completely alone. This idea of a character completely cut off from everyone else is not a new one. Disconnected characters can show up in different genres and styles of work, from the classic shipwrecked sailor to the lost astronaut to the post-apocalyptic horror survivor.

Humans are social creatures. Characters interact with one another, and this is a vital part of most stories. So when a character winds up completely alone, certain storytelling tools are removed from our authorial arsenals. Dialogue is a great way to externalize the internal feelings and thought processes of the character, and when they have no one to talk to, those feelings and thoughts are harder to get across.

Something I’ve been considering lately, dealing with my own disconnected character, are the ways to achieve some of the same effects of dialogue, even when the character doesn’t have anyone else to talk to. Here are a few forms of dialogue for lonely characters.

Inner Thoughts

The simplest answer is to get into the character’s head and view their thoughts directly. The character’s thoughts may be rendered in italics and written out in much the same way you’d write dialogue. That style can come off as pretty heavy-handed, and it isn’t as popular as it once was. Depending on your audience, your readers may or may not have much appetite for it.

A less in-your-face version of this is free indirect speech, where the character’s thoughts are described as a part of the narration. This can work in both a first-person and close third-person point of view, and gets the character’s thoughts across while giving the reader less of the feeling that they’re being internally verbalized within the character’s head.

Journals and Logs

I recently read The Martian, which is a master class in the use of many different viewpoints and narrative strategies. The protagonist, Mark Watney, is stranded alone on Mars and spends a large portion of the book with nobody to talk to.

The Martian makes liberal use of logs as a way for Watney to narrate these parts of the story (as well as a useful dramatic pacing device). Journals or formal logs are an opportunity for a character to describe what they’ve done, what they’re planning, and how they feel about it.

The obvious downside of journals and logs is that they have to make sense for the character and the story. For Watney, an astronaut, the use of logs make sense. However, he’s not going to stop and write a log entry in the middle of a frantic action sequence. If he’s going to describe that in a log, it will probably need to be after-the-fact.

Furry Friends and Mannequins

Humans are self-centered. We see ourselves in everything. We love to anthropomorphize animals, and will even anthropomorphize inanimate objects. A lonely character will often be all too happy to socialize with a dog, cat, or monkey if no human companions are available. Even if there isn’t a pet ready at hand, a character who is desperate enough may find an object to be their friend.

In the movie version of “I am Legend,” the protagonist, Robert Neville, has a dog that serves as his friend and companion. However, I thought the most interesting scenes in the movie are the ones involving the mannequins. Neville has posed them. He talks to them, and has even assigned them simple personalities. When he eventually finds them out of place, moved by some unknown person or force, he reacts as though they have betrayed him.

Similarly, the character Chuck Noland in Castaway is stranded on a desert island, where he eventually “befriends” a volleyball with a crude face painted on it. He names it Wilson, and is distraught when it is lost in an accident.

These strategies are interesting, but harder to pull off effectively. Most people are fairly understanding of a person who talks to their pets, but will start to wonder about the character when those conversations get serious, or the human seems to expect any meaningful communication back from the animal. A person who has too many serious conversations with inanimate objects will be seen as spiraling into delusion.

Sometimes, instead of looking outward for a conversational partner, we turn inward. Most of us have probably talked to ourselves here or there. Most of us don’t make a habit of it, however.

A character who talks to themselves now and then can seem relatively reasonable. A character who talks to themselves continuously tends to be seen similarly to the character who talks to the mannequins.

The Humor of the Situation

Injecting some levity into these conversations can help, as a way for the character to wink at the reader and say “Hey, I know this looks a little crazy…”

The fact of the matter is that humans are social. We need contact with other humans. A character who is completely alone for a significant amount of time, especially in a stressful situation, is reasonably likely to see their mental health deteriorate. That can be a dark place for the character to be, and a weight on the reader as well.

If the character can crack a joke here or there, do something silly or absurd, or even just blow off some steam as a way of acknowledging their frustrating situation, it can help to reset the mood, in a way that allows both character and reader to endure yet more suffering.

In The Martian, Mark Watney faces death on an almost daily basis, but he also complains about the bad TV shows and music left behind by his crew-mates. Those little jokes humanize him as much as his suffering and his ingenuity and determination.

Dialogue is Still King

It turns out your character doesn’t need friends to make compelling dialogue, but it sure does help. The options outlined here can help to fill the holes in the story when dialogue just isn’t possible for your disconnected character, but ultimately there’s no perfect substitute for the real thing.

Having to write a character who spends an extended amount of time alone has helped me to appreciate the powers of dialogue. Hopefully my protagonist, Christopher, will find his way back to civilization soon, if only so he’ll have someone to talk to.

Reblog: Green Herring: How to Camouflage a Villain in a Mystery Novel — Dimitri Vorontzov

When you’re writing a mystery, especially a classic murder mystery with a proper sneaky villain, one of the hardest things to do is keep the reader guessing. You don’t want your villain to be obviously evil, so the natural inclination is to make them appear as squeaky clean as possible. Of course, a savvy reader will instantly suspect the character who’s always helpful and nice. It’s a tough line to ride.

Dimitri Vorontzov coins the slightly silly term of “green herring” to suggest some solutions to this conundrum. It mostly comes down to treating your villain as a real character with flaws, good qualities, goals and conflicts. Even if some of those things turn out to be clever deceptions when the villain is revealed.

So, what’s more plausible than “a very good person?” That’s right: Essentially good, but flawed, imperfect person.

We can let such a character make dumb mistakes (which we may later reveal to be deliberate acts of sabotage); we can make him or her slightly selfish, or slightly dishonest (a tiny instance of dishonesty may prove their overall integrity); we can give that character some of the “seven deadly sins,” for example sloth or greed.

Anger works particularly well to prove the green herring character’s essential goodness, because when a good character is a little nasty, has a bit of an attitude problem—this sub-communicates that such a character is not hiding anything, not trying to come off as “nice.”

Check out the rest over at Writer’s Digest…

Storytelling Class — Nonlinear Structures

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. This week, our topic was nonlinear storytelling.

We always start with two questions: What did we read, and what did we write over the past week?

What Did We Read?

I read the usual fiction blogs, and got about half-way through both Chuck Wendig’s Damn Fine Story, and The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz.

Wendig’s book on storytelling is a very in-the-trenches guide to good storytelling structures that can be easily and immediately deployed in whatever story you’re currently writing. It has the exactly same zany energy that makes Wendig’s blog fun, and while it mostly covers tried-and-true ideas about story structure, it’s a good review and packed with useful pop-culture examples.

The Wes Anderson book is a collection of interviews, photos and other Anderson-esque artifacts documenting the director’s work from his Bottle Rocket debut up to Moonrise Kingdom. It looks like the book has become a series as Anderson continues to make movies, so I may have to check out the Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs volumes next.

I also finally finished reading The Lord of The Rings to the kids. Whew! It has been years since I read the whole thing, and I had forgotten a few things. It’s quite a series to read out loud.

What Did We Write?

I wrote my usual bloggery, and finished Razor Mountain chapter 7, which turned out to be a very long chapter. Freya didn’t write any fiction this week.

Nonlinear Stories

The main topic this week was nonlinear story structure. This was something that came up in our previous conversations that Freya wanted to know more about.

Linear stories show events happening in order. Nonlinear stories show at least some part of the story out-of-order from when it happened in relation to the other events. One could also argue that a story told in-order, but leaving some events out is also a form of nonlinear story structure.

Nonlinear structure is more effort for the reader to understand. Using too much of it, or not using it to good effect may end up frustrating the reader. If you’re going to use a nonlinear structure, do it purposefully.

Skipping Ahead

The simplest form of nonlinearity is skipping ahead. This is typically used to get past events that logically need to happen, but simply aren’t interesting enough for the reader to want to see them played out.

This can also sometimes be used to heighten excitement, often as part of a mystery, by leaving out some important event. In this case, it’s typically revealed later on, at the point when the revelation is most important. This can be dangerous because it can sometimes feel “unfair” to the reader that the knowledge was kept from them, especially if it was readily available to the characters.

Events Out of Order

A flashback is the most common way to show events out of order, inserting some previous events into the narrative near the point where they become relevant to the story’s “main” timeline. A flash-forward is a less common version of this, jumping ahead into the future to see some outcome that results from events in the story’s “main” timeline.

A frame story is a case where the bulk of the story is told as a flashback or “story within a story.” The recounting of the story is the “frame.” Examples of this are Scheherazade’s storytelling in the One Thousand and One Nights or the grandfather and grandson in The Princess Bride.

Parallel plots are often employed in stories with larger casts of characters, where individuals or groups have their own plots going at the same time. These stories will cover a certain amount of time for one character or group, then cut back to the start and show what happened during that period for the other character or group.

Events Disconnected

A more complicated nonlinear story may have many events out of their linear order.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind mostly consists of memories of a relationship, shown out of order. Memento follows a man with a brain injury that prevents him from forming long-term memories, starting with scenes at the beginning and end of the story, then going forward and backward in turns to eventually meet in the middle.

The video game Her Story tells a story through a series of interview clips, with the player able to discover different clips through play, and choosing the order to view them in.

Time Travel and Alternate Universes

Time travel stories almost always involve some nonlinear structures, and often complicate them with characters that go into the past and change the future, or muddle it with closed time loops where future characters participate in past events that contribute to the state of the future (their present).

Stories with alternate universes often use similar structures, with the added complication that similar events in different universes can have different outcomes, and at some point the alternate universes typically affect one another.

Homework

Freya and I both slacked and didn’t write anything for the previous class’s homework. This week, we’ll be playing catch-up. We’re both going to write something and either incorporate some non-linearity or use it to discuss beginnings, middles and ends.

Some of Freya’s ideas from our Ideas class were for homemade movies, so the next class topic will be script-writing 101. (I’ve never written a script before, so I’ll probably learn some things too!)

Storytelling Class — Beginnings, Middles and Ends

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. This week, our topic was beginnings, middles and ends.

We always start with two questions: what did we read and what did we write over the past week?

What Did We Read?

We each read a lot of things this week!

I read the usual fiction blogs, and a whole bunch of graphic novels from the library:

Freya read:

She also continued reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

(FYI – bookshop.org links are my affiliate links)

Freya really enjoyed the Iliad and the Odyssey, although she said she likes the Odyssey better. She enjoyed the cliffhangers in the Odyssey and the perspective shifting between Odysseus and Penelope.  She didn’t like the limited choice that Penelope seemed to have in the story, and I don’t blame her. We discussed the agency of women in ancient Greece and in our society today.

What Did We Write?

I wrote a few blog posts, and worked on Razor Mountain chapter 7. It’s going to be the longest chapter so far, by a significant margin.

Freya wrote her Ivan reading journal at school, and a 101-word story. She was inspired by my explanation of drabbles, and decided to write one herself! However, she tried to write it in a single draft, and had a hard time finding an ending at exactly 100 words. Hence the 101.

I explained that my process for drabbles is to write a first draft that’s relatively short, but captures the story that I want. Then I trim it down over several drafts until I get to exactly 100 words. Drabbles really force brutal cutting, and I explained that she was making it extra hard on herself by trying to do it all in one go.

Last Week’s Homework: Ten Story Ideas

Freya and I talked through some of the story ideas that we came up with for last week’s homework. She only came up with eight, but eighteen ideas is still a lot to get through, so I won’t go into great detail in this post.

Freya’s ideas included movie scripts and a series of Felix the Cat stories (no, a different Felix the Cat), as well as a story based solely on an interesting title. We got the idea that she often likes to start with a particular media or “shape” of story and figure out the details afterward, which is interesting, and different from the approach I usually take.

Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

The main topic for this class was beginnings, middles and ends.

We often split stories into three parts, because three parts feels good (the “rule of threes”) and because the beginning and end tend to have specific things that need to happen, and the middle holds everything together. A lot of talk about three act structure can also be said to be about beginnings, middles and ends.

Beginning (Act I)

Beginnings introduce the important characters, the setting (or world), the situation, and any overarching mysteries.

Beginnings often start with a “hook,” which is something exciting that draws the reader into the story long enough to get them…well…hooked.

The beginning typically includes an “inciting incident,” something that goes wrong or changes the status quo. This incident breaks normality, forcing the action of the story.

Middle (Act II)

In the middle, the characters pursue their goals and try to overcome the main conflict through try/fail cycles. They progress mysteries without completely solving them. Most of the interesting action in the story happens here, and this is usually the biggest chunk of the story.

How do the characters deal with their “broken normal?” Do they try to restore the old order, or make a new order?

Ending (Act III)

The ending should bring the story to a resolution. It may be “happily ever after,” or not. This is where big mysteries should finally be solved. It’s where big questions should finally be answered. Characters succeed or fail at their major goals, or change goals completely.

At the end, the main conflict should be over. The villain should be defeated (or at least no longer in opposition to the good guys).

The major characters will often be clearly changed or have learned something by this point. This is the time to highlight that.

The most important thing here is that the story feels resolved. Finished. The world and characters may go on, but the story is done and they’re moving past it.

Examples

We talked through some different ways you can delineate the three parts in some particular stories, including The Martian, The Lord of the Rings, and the Harry Potter series, as well as Freya’s own Felix the Cat story from last week’s class.

There aren’t hard-and-fast definitions for splitting up stories, so it’s up to each reader’s own interpretation where the transition from beginning to middle or middle to end occurs.

Series

Freya also asked about series such as books in a trilogy (or septology or whatever-logy) and episodes in a TV show.

Typically, each piece of the whole should have a beginning, middle and end, and work at least somewhat on its own. However, there may be larger arcs that span all the books, or a whole season, or only a few episodes. These larger arcs will also have their own beginning, middle and end.

On the other hand, some series, especially comedies, rely on a basic premise that remains the same. Each episode contains a beginning, middle and end. The characters resolve a problem and everything returns to baseline “normal,” ready for next week’s episode.

There are other, stranger ways that series can be handled, but I think this covers the majority. Maybe in a future class we’ll go into other, more unusual styles.

Homework

The homework for next class was to write another short 1-2 page story, thinking specifically about the beginning, middle and end, and what happens in each.

The Principle of Minimum Necessary Information

Have you ever read a bad fantasy book prologue? Maybe it starts with a creation myth, only to go into the history of entire countries and important figures. Finally, it narrows down to the time and place that the book actually focuses on, and you get to chapter one.

Either that, or you’ve already given up and closed the book, wondering how all of that history could possibly be relevant.

The truth is, it’s probably not. Prologues are always fraught with danger, and never more so than in speculative fiction, where the author naturally builds up a rich and complicated world and history as part of the process of creating the setting. When you’ve gone to the trouble to create all that wonderful stuff, it’s so tempting to put it on the page.

Even if every single thing in that history-dump prologue is important for the reader to know, chances are good that it’s not all vital for the reader to know at the start of chapter one. It violates the Principle of Minimum Necessary Information.

The Principle of Minimum Necessary Information suggests that you should give the reader information only if it matters the story, and ideally right when the reader needs it.

Information, Just in Time

The history-dump prologue gives the reader more information than they need, long before they need it. If that info does matter later on, there’s a good chance they’ve already forgotten it, since they lacked the context to understand it in the first place.

One option for exposition that often gets overlooked is to simply tell the reader what they need to know, in straight exposition, at the exact moment it’s relevant. Too much of this starts falling back into history lessons, distracting from the flow of the story, but little bits sprinkled here and there can add context without too much distraction.

She is three stories up, ensconced in brick and mortar, almost a monument, her seat near the window just above the sign that reads “Hoegbotton & Sons, Distributors.” Hoegbotton & Sons: the largest importer and exporter in all of lawless Ambergris, that oldest of cities names for the most valuable and secret part of the whale.

“Dradin, in Love” – Jeff VanderMeer

It will slow down the story to take these little detours, so be careful.

Multitasking

A more subtle option is multitasking. This is when the text serves more than one purpose at a time. A description of a character’s surroundings as they travel is part of the action as it happens, but it might also reveal some of the history of the place that will matter later.

In The Return of the King, when Pippin and Gandalf first arrive at Minas Tirith, the city is described in detail.

For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into the hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall was a gate. But the gates were not set in a line: the Great Gate in the City Wall was that the east point of th ecircuit, but the next faced half south, and the third half north, and so to and fro upwards; so that the paved way that climbed towards the Citadel turned first this way and then that across the face of the hill. And each time it passed the line of the Great Gate it went through an arched tunnel, piercing a vast pier of rock whose huge out-thrust bulk divided in two all the circles of the City save the first.

Tolkien isn’t afraid to spend a good page or two describing a landscape, and this description of the city goes on for several paragraphs, but it does serve double-duty. First and foremost, this is exactly the awe-inspiring view Pippin sees as he approaches this last great city of men in Middle Earth. However, this will also be the site of an epic battle, and one where Pippin and Gandalf will find themselves racing around under dire circumstances.

By describing the city in detail on Pippin’s first viewing, Tolkien captures the majesty of what he’s seeing in a relatively quiet moment. Later, in the rush of battle, when the pace is fast, we already understand the layout of the city. Tolkien doesn’t need to interrupt the action to describe the characters’ routes.

Clue the Reader In

Even further away from straight exposition are clues and hints. Some stories just contain ideas, events, or settings that are complicated, requiring (and deserving) extensive description. Instead of springing them on the reader all at once, it can pay to lay some groundwork.

By layering small clues here and there before the Big Event, the reader has less to take in when it arrives. This is akin to multitasking, but spread out in little bits beforehand. Once again, when done well, it’s seamless and the reader doesn’t even realize that they’re catching fragments of something that will be fully revealed further on.

Make it a Mystery

If a character has good reason to be missing the same knowledge as the reader, they can act as a reader-surrogate. In that case, the missing knowledge can be treated as a mystery. The story doesn’t need to be a mystery story, and the mystery itself doesn’t even have to be a major driving force in the story. It might only be a very minor goal of the character to find the answers to their questions.

The great thing about couching exposition in mystery is that it stops being a chore that has to be cleverly imparted to the reader without slowing down or distracting from the story. Instead, it becomes a little treat, a tiny reward for the reader and the character, when they find out what’s going on.

There’s a reason the outsider-as-a-proxy-for-the-reader is so often used: it’s a very effective way to impart information. Just be aware that this frequently-used pattern can easily become tropey. The mystery has to make sense within the story. If it’s shoehorned in as an excuse to throw some exposition-as-mystery at the reader, it can backfire horrendously.

Keep it to Yourself…For Now

What if you just don’t tell the reader?

No, seriously. Sometimes the reader just doesn’t need all the context for what’s happening. Yes, it’s going to be a little confusing. But if the story is compelling, the reader wants to keep reading. They’ll accept that they don’t understand something, at least for a while.

This “suspension of comprehension” can work, but it incurs a debt. The reader will be slightly confused while they keep reading. If that confusion is resolved by an explanation later on, the debt is paid. If more confusion is layered on, the debt grows. If it grows too high, the reader will decide that the story makes no sense and give up. Every reader is different, but most have their limits.

This is a tactic that readers of speculative fiction are more used to. Sci-fi and fantasy often involve elaborate worlds that are wildly different from the place we live, and readers of these genres understand that the setting will unfold over a large portion of the book, simply out of necessity. Readers of other genres may have less patience for this style of ongoing world-building. This is a case where the genre your story is marketed under can make a difference in reader expectations.

Principle, Not Law

Exposition sometimes get a bad rap. It’s easy to put in too much of it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used carefully and sparingly. Still, when you have a lot of info to get across, don’t just dump it on the page. Remember the Principle of Minimum Necessary Information. Give it to the reader when they need it.

Storytelling Class — Turning Ideas Into Stories

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. This week, our topic was how to turn ideas into stories.

We always start with two questions: what did we read and what did we write over the past week?

What Did We Read?

This week I read the graphic novel version of Dream Hunters and my usual blogs. I’m continuing to read The Lord of the Rings to the kids. The day has now been saved, and we just have to get through the final 100 pages of endings.

I picked up Dream Hunters from the library. I like anything by Gaiman, and although I read the original Dream Hunters illustrated story, that was years ago and I remembered almost nothing about it. This full-on graphic novel version was a great story with excellent art.

Freya was in the middle of rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in her free time, and The One and Only Ivan at school. We talked about an exciting part of Ivan, and how she likes action sequences more than lots of dialogue.

What Did We Write?

I wrote my usual blog posts, Razor Mountain chapter 6, and my “homework” short story for this class.

Freya wrote things for school, and her homework story for this class.

Last Week’s Homework

Our homework was to complete a story of two pages or less, as practice for finishing stories.

I wrote a drabble version of my microfiction story “No More Kings.” I like how drabbles force you to cut to the essence of a story (and usually force you to cut more than feels comfortable). But unlike microfiction, they actually feel like a complete tiny story that doesn’t require a gimmick to work.

Freya wrote a two-page story called Felix the Cat Goes to School. This has nothing to do with the cartoon character—it’s actually about a green-furred cat named after her little brother. (His favorite color is green.)

Turning Ideas Into Stories

Our main topic was discussing ways to turn ideas into full stories.

As an example of building up ideas into a story, I talked about a story I’m working on that’s still missing some pieces (like a clear ending). It started as a detective story in the vein of Sherlock Holmes, in a world where magic exists. Eventually, it transformed into something closer to a steampunk James-Bond-with-magic spy drama. It also expanded from something short story length into something novel-length. As I built up this story idea, I had to add in a magic system, a setting, and a background and personality for my main character. Each of these things changed what the story wanted to be.

1. Idea Journal and Brainstorming

I’m a big believer in having a writing journal. A place to keep story ideas is one of the most useful tools a writer can have. Sometimes the muse gifts us with ideas, and this journal gives us a safe place to keep them. However, it can also be useful to dedicate some writing time specifically to brainstorming story ideas.

I showed Freya my idea journal. I used to keep an actual, physical journal, but I switched to a OneNote journal that I can sync between my phone (for ideas on the go) and my computer (for writing time).

We also discussed brainstorming time. This doesn’t have to be time spent hunched over keyboard or journal. It can just as well be a walk in the woods or whatever other environment helps you think creatively, as long as it’s free from distractions.

2. Build Idea Combos

Cory Doctorow talks about story ideas coming out of a “super-saturated solution” of things that catch your interest. You can also think of ideas as the bits of dust in space that accrete into planets and stars. The basic idea behind these metaphors is that one idea—a character, setting, situation, etc. is usually not enough to sustain a story. Instead, each story is a mixture or combination of interesting ideas.

3. Fill In Missing Pieces

Most stories need a specific set of components: characters, setting, a source of tension, and so on. Sometimes fleshing out a story idea is a Mad-Libs-esque exercise in determining the “blanks” and filling them in.

This doesn’t have to be a hard commitment. It can be an experiment. If you know you need a setting to make the idea work, you can pick one you’re not sure about and try it out. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

4. Prompts, Challenges, and Games

Another way to expand your ideas is to mix and mingle them with outside influences. These might be writing prompts or challenges, or games/tools like Story Engine.

Next Week’s Homework

In keeping with the theme, we decided that next week’s homework will be to come up with ten story ideas. These don’t have to be fully fleshed out; they might be a single character or some other piece of a story. We can then talk about what other pieces it needs to become a functional story.

The past two class topics have come from Freya’s questions and thoughts in the previous class. This time, she had no strong opinions on what the next topic should be.

Luckily, I had a list of potential topics for us to consult. After some discussion, we decided that next week’s topic will be beginnings, middles, and ends.

Five Things I Learned From “Over the Garden Wall”

Over the Garden Wall is a strange show. It’s a cartoon mini-series of ten tiny episodes, less than twelve minutes each. It purposely evokes an old-fashioned style, and while it’s not afraid of a joke, the mood of the show is often one of slowly building horror.

The show is the story of two brothers, Wirt and Greg, who are lost and trying to find their way back home. Where exactly they are (in geography or time period) and where their home might be, are all left a little bit unclear. But that doesn’t stop them from continuing down the road, accompanied by a pet frog and a talking bluebird named Beatrice.

It is strange enough that it seems a small miracle that it was ever made. It’s the sort of thing that knows exactly what it wants to be, even though that doesn’t fit very neatly into television seasons or half-hour slots, or precisely-delineated viewership and advertising segments. I expect it’s the sort of thing that people mostly either love or hate, and I fall firmly into the first camp.

As usual, I’ll eschew a traditional review. Instead, I want to comb over this beautiful oddity to see what lessons we can learn from it, to improve our storytelling.

There may be some light spoilers here, but I’m going to try not to ruin the mystery for those who haven’t watched it. If you don’t want to be spoiled, go watch it first! It’s on Hulu, and only slightly longer than a movie.

1 – Succinctness is a Virtue

When I was a wee lad, I loved giant stories that spanned many volumes. I loved giant jRPGs that shipped on half a dozen discs. I loved TV shows that ran for the better part of a decade.

There are still examples of those things that I love, but now that I’m kind of an old guy and there are never quite enough hours in the day, I really, really appreciate things that fit greatness into a small package. I love a good short story or novella. I treasure a good miniseries or single season show.

Over the Garden Wall clocks in at under three hours in total. You can watch the whole thing in an evening, and you don’t even have to stay up late. And although each episode is quite short, each one is gratifyingly complete. Across the episodes, every major character has an arc, and the little mysteries build into big mysteries.

Even the twist ending (which could have been disastrous) is satisfying, layering additional meaning onto the episodes leading up to it. When I finished the series for the first time, the first thing I thought was, “oh man, I need to rewatch that to find all the things I didn’t pay enough attention to.”

It’s easy to make a big, messy, sprawling story. The real artistry is in crafting that story down into a svelte package where every single word is in exactly the right place, and even doing multiple things at once.

2 – Mood Matters

Over the Garden Wall is autumnal. And I don’t simply mean that it’s set during the fall, although it is. The backgrounds are scattered with orange leaves verging on brown. There are fields, ripe and ready for harvest. There are fall festivals and Halloween parties, and as the show goes on, the chill of winter descends over everything.

There’s also the music, which is original to the show but sounds decidedly old-fashioned. It’s sometimes jovial and silly, sometimes morose and melancholy. It hovers between major and minor keys. It captures the mood of Halloween, an old festival that has continued into modern times, stripped of its original meanings: a hint of the ancient and sacred, a hint of the otherworldly and evil, a hint of banal silliness.

Almost every single episode manages a difficult trick. Each one feels like a horror story, beginning with the mundane, leading into strangeness and rising dread. Then, in the end, that menace turns out to be overblown. Everything works out fine, but that dread lingers and grows as the episodes go on.

Autumn is the season of dying. The cold death of winter is on its way, and the plants and animals seek shelter and hope for the rebirth of spring. The show is keenly aware of this, and almost everything is built around these themes of fall, winter and spring, of death and rebirth.

An overarching mood or theme like this can elevate a story beyond the individual components.

3 – Don’t Explain Everything

The last two episodes of Over the Garden Wall come out of nowhere. At least I certainly didn’t see them coming. And yet, they’re a satisfying conclusion. They provide an explanation for what’s going on, and they provide the emotional closure that makes the whole thing feel complete.

What the ending doesn’t do is explain everything. Did everything literally happen? Or was some of it metaphorical? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, and we can each ponder and debate what we think really happened.

I know there are some folks who need to have every mystery wrapped up neatly with a bow, but…I don’t understand those people! Life in the real world is mysterious, and things often go unexplained. Hundreds of years of scientific exploration have only shown us how little we really know. Stories, like science, are a way to explore the universe.

By all means, resolve those big mysteries in your stories. Answer those burning questions. But when you get to the acknowledgements or let the credits roll, consider leaving one or two things open to interpretation. A little ambiguity can make a good story feel like it was just a little too big and too real to entirely fit onto the page.

4 – Comedy Enhances Tragedy Enhances Comedy

There are great dramas and great comedies, but I’ve always felt that the greatest works of art straddle the line between comedy and tragedy. There’s something magical about laughing at the start of a sentence and crying by the end of it.

Over the Garden Wall has some amazing jokes that have become a part of my daily conversations with my family. None of them bat an eye when I talk about burgling turts, call harmless lies “rock facts,” or mention horses who want to steal. But the show also has some relatable teenage angst, tear-jerking brotherly love, and even maybe some life-and-death stakes.

Just because you’re creating “serious art” doesn’t mean you can’t crack wise once in a while, and if you’re crafting a work of comedy you can still sneak in an emotional gut punch or two. In fact, those things can be even more effective thanks to that juxtaposition. The real world isn’t all good or all bad. It’s a mix of both. Stories that acknowledge that feel true.

5 – Wear Your Influences Proudly

Have you ever had a great idea for a story, only to realize it’s not your idea—it’s actually from a movie or book that you forgot about long ago? I have. It’s mortifying.

As artists, there’s an incredible pressure to create something unique and new, with your own voice. To be called derivative is an insult. But the fact is that each of us is a creative soup whose ingredients are all of our most beloved influences. The art and media that you consume inevitably influence the art and media that you create.

Over the Garden Wall emulates a turn-of-the-century style in its painted backgrounds (often with sweeping countryside or dark forest), its new-yet-old-timey music, and even in the mode of speech used by many of the characters. The animation evokes Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, and early Disney.

The show isn’t afraid to look, sound, or act like things that have come before. It pulls wholeheartedly from its inspirations. It wears its influences proudly. And wonderfully, by amalgamating all of these old influences with its modern writing, voice acting and processes, it manages to create something that feels unique and fresh.

Over the Garden Wall is a Modern Masterpiece

What can I say? I love this show. I love the mood that it puts me in, and I try to watch it every year around Halloween. I love how difficult it is to find any comparisons for it when I’m recommending it to people. I love that I keep finding little secrets hidden in the dialogue or visuals, even after multiple viewings.

If you haven’t watched it, go check it out. As I said in the intro, it’s on Hulu and only slightly longer than a movie. And I hope, like me, you get a little inspiration from it for your own creations.

“It’s a rock fact!”

Reblog: Writing Set-Up For the Big Reveal — Beem Weeks

Today I wanted to point you to a quick read about setting up a story with a big reveal at the end. I appreciate that this advice is just as applicable for writers like me, who like to outline, as to those who prefer exploratory writing.

Some writers swear by the outline. Other writers, those seat-of-the-pants types, have little time for such nonsense. The desire to get that story from head to page is much too urgent. I’m not going to rehash that old outline-versus-pantser argument. Writers will choose the one that works best for the individual and run with it.

What I’d like to share today is the set-up. This is where an outline really comes in handy, though it certainly isn’t necessary. Most writers know what the set-up entails. It’s those breadcrumbs sprinkled throughout the story that leads to the big reveal at the end.

Read the rest over at Story Empire…

Storytelling Class — Finishing Stories

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. In our first class, I asked her if she had any topics she wanted to cover. She said, she sometimes has trouble finishing stories, something that I think many of us can relate to. So this week, our topic was how to finish stories.

The Two Questions

Each class, I start with two questions: what did we read, and what did we write? Then we talk about how we felt about those things, and if we learned anything.

What Did We Read?

Freya has been reading a lot. She’s re-reading the Bone graphic novels and Harry Potter (currently on The Order of the Phoenix). At school, they’re reading The One and Only Ivan.

I had just finished The Martian. I’ve also been reading the ongoing bloggy adventures of Ela the Expert and Grace. I’m also in the midst of reading The Lord of the Rings to the kids. We just finished the Battle of Pelennor Fields.

I explained that I really appreciated the Martian as a great example of the try/fail cycle in action. Freya had a hard time thinking of specific things that she liked about the stories she had read. I suggested that when she reads, she occasionally try to think about what she likes or dislikes about what she’s reading. As a writer, this is a great way to learn from what you’re reading, and pick up new ideas and techniques.

What Did We Write?

Freya wrote about The One and Only Ivan in her writing journal at school. I wrote a chapter of Razor Mountain. In keeping with the theme of this week’s class, I’d been procrastinating getting that chapter done.

I also wrote four or five blog posts, including a reblog of Cory Doctorow’s “The Memex Method.” We talked about his idea that a blog can serve as an idea incubator, growing those ideas until they’re ready to be stories.

Freya said she often has fun ideas, but isn’t sure how to make them into a story. We talked briefly about saving those ideas in a file or journal, and how sometimes the key is to combine a couple different interesting ideas into a story. Turning ideas into stories is a big thing, so we decided this would be a good topic for a future class.

Finishing Stories

On to the main topic: what are some ways to finish stories when we’re having a hard time?

1. Write Shorter Things

As a general rule of thumb, the shorter the story, the less time and effort it takes to write. It’s harder to finish a novel than it is to finish a short story. That doesn’t mean that writing a short story is easy. It just means that if you want to try to finish more things, a good strategy is to write shorter stories.

2. Have a Plan

We talked a little about outlining vs. exploratory writing, and G.R.R.M.’s categorization of writers as gardeners and architects. I’m more of an architect, and Freya is more of a gardener. Either way, we all sometimes get stuck in the middle of a story because we don’t know what happens next. It can help to have some sort of plan. It doesn’t have to be a full outline. It may just be knowing the beginning and ending of the story, or knowing a handful of stepping-stones we want to land on.

3. Make a Schedule

A lot of writers are procrastinators. As the famous phrase goes, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” Sometimes what you really need is a reason to put butt in chair and pen in hand. Personally, I often find that the biggest effort of a writing session is to get myself to write the first sentence. As soon as I start, I remember what I love about the story, and the words flow.

One of the reasons I love having a blog is that it makes me write on a regular basis. If I want to post something every Monday and Friday, then I have to sit down and write something at least a couple times per week. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m working on other projects, but at least I’m writing.

4. Switch Back and Forth

Sometimes we just need variety in our lives. While there are a few authors who are content to write book after book in the same world, with the same characters, most authors I know have so many varied ideas that they’d like to explore that they’ll never have enough time to work on them all.

It can be incredibly refreshing to take a break from a project that you’re struggling on to work on something fresh and new. One of the oddities of human brains is that they’ll often solve problems in the background, when the conscious mind is focused on something else.

This is another great thing about having a blog. If I’m having a rough time working on a novel or story, I can always take a break to write something for the blog. I can switch from fiction to non-fiction, or from one story to another.

Of course, if you’re switching between things, you need to make sure you’re coming back to them. It’s not a helpful technique if you start ten things and finish none of them. Then you’re just telling yourself you’re taking a break, when you’re really serially abandoning writing projects.

5. Be Accountable to Someone

I’ll be honest. My ambitions are usually far bigger than my work ethic. I’d love to finish that novel, but dang it, there’s another Steam sale and I’ve gone and bought five new video games for $3 each. For a lot of us, our own internal motivations don’t always get the job done. Being accountable to something or someone beyond just ourselves can give us that motivating boost we need.

This is yet another place where having a blog helps me. If I know I have readers, it makes me want to keep writing for them. Even if, realistically, nobody is going to be terribly disappointed if I miss a week of posts, I still feel a little bit like I’m letting someone down.

A writing partner, writing group or class can also be a great motivator. Schedule a regular time with a helpful reader to go over new work, and you’ll suddenly be far more reluctant to show up with no new words in hand.

6. Set it Aside

This may not sound like a great way to finish things, but it can be, occasionally. Sometimes you start writing a story and it’s just…missing something. No amount of brainstorming or reworking seems to fix it. In that case, it may just be that you’re not ready to write that story. Maybe it’s missing some crucial idea that will pull everything together, and you haven’t thought of it yet.

If a story just isn’t working, you may need to set it aside. Again, your subconscious can keep struggling with that problem while your conscious does something else. The key is to keep coming back periodically. Re-read it every once in a while. Look through your idea journal and see if there’s something there that breathes new life into that old story. Eventually, inspiration may strike. If not, you’ve hopefully been more productive writing something else.

7. Check for Something Missing

Many stories don’t work because they’re missing something structurally. Make sure you have at least a main character who has a problem or wants something. A character without a goal is rarely interesting, and a goal without complications or road-blocks usually doesn’t make a very good story either.  There has to be a source of conflict or tension.

I told Freya a little bit about chapter five of Razor Mountain, and how it wasn’t very interesting until I added some conflict between God-Speaker and other members of the tribe. We also talked about the characters in the Harry Potter series, and how each of them has their own goals and challenges, even though Harry vs. Voldemort is the central conflict of the series.

Homework

First, we have the standard weekly homework: we need to be ready to answer the two questions, what did we read, and what did we write? How did we feel about it and what did we learn?

Second, we’re going to finish a story! Each of us will write a story two pages or less. This will help us practice some of the techniques we talked about: writing shorter things, making a schedule, and being accountable.

Next week, following Freya’s suggestion, we’ll look at ways of turning ideas into stories.