Writing Is A Bad Habit: Lazy River or Raging Torrent a.k.a. The Many Rights of Pacing

Pacing, pacing, pacing!  It’s one of the most vital elements to get right in a story and it’s one that I wind up commenting on often in my Starving Reviews.  The problem with reading my reviews to learn about pacing is that the ‘right’ pacing for any work is an elusive beast.  When I say in a review that the pacing was ‘sluggish’, that may mean something different depending on the book that I’m reviewing.

Pacing, maybe more than other core plot elements, is fluid.  You need to think of pacing as a river.  A river is water flowing down a channel.  You want a safe current down that river, but how much water you need to make that current depends on the channel that’s cut.  It also depends on what you want to do in that river.  Do you want to go white-water rafting or spend a lazy day fishing on the river bank?

To turn the comparison back into actual literary terms, the ‘right’ pacing for a particular piece is determined by theme, content, genre, and the plot itself.  Action pieces may call for a swift pace.  Introspective pieces may call for something steady and methodical.  It’s even quite likely that the pacing of a work will slow and speed, alongside the rises and falls of the dramatic curve.  This all serves to reinforce the other elements of the book and the all-important dramatic tension of the plot.  This is why pacing can be such a dominant force in whether a reader loves or hates a book.

So, when you put together your next work, pay attention to the ebbs and flows of your plot and use the pacing to help enhance and reinforce that plot.  The pace is the spine and the speed limit of your tale.  You need both to be just right to create the best works you can!

Questions, insights, or critiques?  Drop them in the comments below!  Until next time, good reading, good writing, and good luck!

Writing Is A Bad Habit: Life Isn’t Lived in Chapters! a.k.a. Non-standard Novel Structures

Let me start this off by saying a critical statement:

There is nothing wrong with the traditional chapter format for a book!

That’s important to say because some people think that any advocacy for new techniques and new formats in any sort of media is a condemnation of what has come in the past.  The normal chapter format is great and I’ve used it for the majority of my own writing.  That isn’t to say though that there isn’t merit in writing in a non-standard structure.

Take Dracula for example.  While there is a linear timeline, it is written and structured as a collection of journals, newspaper clippings, and other writings as opposed to a straight-forward narrative.  Likewise, a shifting, out-of-order timeline can turn conceptions of how the characters and plot develop on its head.  What about the book-within-a-book concept, utilizing in-universe fiction to inform us about the actual world and plot of the story?

Even something as simple as alternating viewpoints is a deviation from the standard narrative structure, especially if you use an approach of conflicting unreliable narrators.  Take inspiration from such famous narratives as the films Rashomon and The Usual Suspects.  There’s a wealth of options to explore in creating both a unique story AND a unique way to tell that story!

Think about what would work best for the plot, the characters, and the themes you want to explore in your works.  Never limit yourself to traditional narratives, but also never forget that they exist!  Sometimes, the old ways ARE the best!

Until next time, good reading, good writing, and good luck!

Writing Is A Bad Habit: No Bad Guy, No Problem a.k.a. Eschewing Traditional Antagonists

Stories thrive on conflict.  There’s conflict at the core of any novel, whether it’s immediately apparent on not.  Naturally, with the structure of conflict, we expect to find a protagonist and an antagonist, the typical dichotomy of opposing forces.  However, haven’t we all read stories and novels that we enjoy where there is no obvious antagonist, no dark lord, no cruel mastermind?  How can we explain the success of these tales if conflict is the core of a good tale?

Writing Is A Bad Habit: It’s Like Something Out of a Cheesy Novel! a.k.a. Lampshade Hanging

Last week, we talked about embracing tropes and archetypes, as well as a little bit about how to use them properly.  In the further past, we specifically spotlighted reconstruction and deconstruction as means to that end, but there are other ways to make tropes acceptable and endearing to your readers.  Get ready for some interior decorating, friends, as we hang some new lampshades on everything!

Writing Is A Bad Habit: Impress The Readers! a.k.a. Jotun Through a Writer’s Eyes

Jotun, from Thunder Lotus Games, is an amazing game, at least in my estimation.  Now, I’ve mentioned before that I believe that video games are great and everyone should play them, but that doesn’t mean that all video games, even great ones, are of value to analyze to help a writer on their way.  Jotun is not like most games though, so we are going to take a look at what it can teach us as writers today.  We’ll take a look at the characters, plot, pacing, and style.

Monday Musings: Inclusiveness, the Lifeblood of Creativity

Right, so the 2015 Hugos happened.  I was considering writing an article in greater specificity about what happened there, but there are far better sources of information out there than I.  Still the whole kerfluffle set my mind to musing which led to this article that wot is here now.

Variety is the spice of life, right?  It’s a hackneyed phrase, but it really is true.  If we continue in a rut or move through a continual unchanging cycle, life gets boring.  I don’t think that’s really something that can be debated, at least seriously.  The same thing connects into art and creativity.

Yes, you can create the same things continuously, using the same ideas you always have, but there are only so many configurations you can put those blocks into.  You might think this statement conflicts with some of my other articles about the core conflicts and the total number of plot lines out there and the like, but, as I also said in those articles, the way to innovate those core conflicts and plots is with new twists and new interpretations.  In other words, new ideas.  Variety.

How do we find this variety in thought and experience?  We include.  We welcome new points of view, new people, and new cultures.  This really heralds back to the terrors of the echo chamber.  Our creativity stagnates if all we listen to, all we read, all we experience comes from those with our same backgrounds and our same ideas.  To expand our creative bounds means stepping outside of our cultural bounds, to seek to understand the ‘other’.

So, if you don’t include others, don’t try to grasp the important of understanding, and never step outside of your comfort zone, expect your creativity to stifle and your writing to wilt.  We won’t even talk about the social and emotional complications.  The world is moving forward, slowly and lurchingly, to a state of equality and understanding.  I’d reserve yourself a ticket if you haven’t already.

Writing Is A Bad Habit: The Eight Deadly Words a.k.a. Creating Character Investment

“I don’t care what happens to these people.”

These eight deadly words comprise the sentence you never want your readers to utter.  It is the death knell of creative character-driven media of all kinds.  If the readers don’t care about your characters, they won’t care about your narrative either.  It’s important to note that ‘caring’ about characters does not always equate to ‘liking’ them.  A reader might like a character, but not be invested in them and, to flip it around, a reader might hate a character but be totally entranced by their actions.

So how do we combat this and avoid those eight words?  The first and most obvious step is character relatability.  Again, a relatable character doesn’t have to be liked or disliked, just understandable.  We’ve talked about this quite a bit, but it never hurts to reiterate this.  Characters need to have motivations, thoughts, and feelings that make sense.  If these things make sense to your audience, they will relate to the characters and, likely, become invested in them.  It’s the classic ‘we like what we understand’ thought in action.

There are other things we should do to create this needed investment.  Another way to create that ‘caring’ from the reader is to ensure that there is sufficient risk in the plot line, that there are stakes to the conflicts involved.  Not just stakes, but stakes that fit the conflict involved.  If there is no risk or stakes or drama connecting the plot and the characters, there’s no compelling reason for the reader to become invested in the plot, no matter how they feel about the characters.  Yes, you can have a fully character-driven scene or story, with no real tension from the plot, but that won’t sustain a full-length novel very well.

I think the ‘appropriate stakes to the conflict’ part is something that is often a stumbling block.  Not that you can’t sometimes overblow the stakes, hinging lives on a stand-up comedy routine as an example, but it’s usually best to keep them under wraps.  You especially can’t understate the stakes.  The stakes to a gunfight, for example, needs to, at the least, be the lives of the protagonists, if not more, otherwise there is no tension and no investment.  Risk, sacrifice, and threat are all vital to creating that investment we all desire, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or social.

What techniques and elements do you use to ensure that your readers care?  If you’re just a reader, what do you look for in the characters that you do invest it?  Let me know in the comments below!

Until next time, good reading, good writing, and good luck!

Writing Is A Bad Habit: A Fantastic Crash! a.k.a. A Writer’s Autopsy of Fantastic Four (2015)

Movies and books are sister media.  While there are distinct differences and certainly a need for different techniques, both involve the art of story-telling and you can draw considerable connections between the two.  That is especially true when looking at core story structure and characterization concepts.  This brings us to today’s topic: the newest Fantastic Four reboot movie by 20th Century Fox.

This won’t be a review.  No, this is more of a dissection.  We’ll cut into the main course of the plot and various elements of both that and the characters of the movie and see what is wrong with these things, then apply that knowledge to the art of writing.  For that reason, there will be no talk of the strength of the adaptation itself, no talk of the many known issues of the troubled production, and, unlike my Starving Reviews, there will be spoilers!  If you wish to see the movie yourself with a clear mind, do not proceed!

Writing Is A Bad Habit: A Long Row To Hoe a.k.a. Plotting and Pacing A Series

The book series is a popular thing these days.  For good reason, really, as many readers love to get invested into a fictional world and its inhabitants, so invested that they don’t want the stories to end at just one book.  You can see this same investment in other forms of media and it’s something television especially has made use of for decades now.  While we’ve talked about series writing in the past to some degree, today I’d like to talk specifically about the plot and pacing of a series as a whole.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the first hurdle is to decide just how serialized your series is.  If the project is lightly serialized or not serialized at all, there’s little need for long-term planning.  With each series book being so compartmentalized with no over-arching goal, you only need to worry about the plot of each book as you begin to write them, simply incorporating what changes in canon and characterization are needed from the previous volume.  In essence, each book is plotted and paced as their own entity with no need to worry about the overall ‘series’.

The more serialized your series is, the more you need to focus on the planning of the overall plot.  As our previous article talked about the story arc plotting of the individual ‘chapters’ of the serial, we are going to focus today on the health of the overall story of the serial.  Just as you can’t forsake individual books in the serial, you can also not let the plot or pace of any one book ruin the overall storyline.  It’s a symbiotic relationship, really, and you have to balance the needs of the book versus the needs of the serial.

The hardest part of the balance might be in the pacing of events.  Just as every book should follow a dramatic curve of events, the serial overall should follow that same curve, which can lead to interesting balancing acts.  How do you balance, for instance, a book’s rising action when that book lies squarely in the series as an area of falling action after the initial hook?  What about the ending of the first book of a serial where the denouement of it might fall into a section of the overall plot that should still be part of the rising action?

I’ve found the best way to resolve these inconsistencies is to think of the dramatic curve in terms of relative action.  If the dramatic arc of the entire serial is a much larger, grander curve than those of the books, any out-of-place dips or rises of individual volumes have proportionally less impact.  Think of them as small deviances on the larger plot curve instead of the more dramatic dips they would be on the curve of an individual book.  So, yes, a book set in the falling action region after the initial dramatic hook can still have its own rising action, just so long as it is relatively at a lower level of dramatic tension then what came before.

The real thing to watch for is to ensure that the overall dramatic tension, the ‘stakes’ if you will, never falls too far.  Remember, on your standard dramatic curve, you never dip below your starting point, even in a state of falling action.  The plot must continue to build, it just slows down and relaxes some from time to time to allow the reader to process and recover, as well as allow you, the author, to properly pace things.  What you want your plot dramatic curve to be, with that in mind, is the arcs of each of each book as one continual line, each with their own builds and drops and denouement, using the falling action and denouement of some volumes to bring the curve down enough to let the series overall have its ‘breathing space’, but never bringing the entire curve down lower than the last dip.

Now I wish I had any skill at art or the like, because I could really use a visual aid here!  I hope, though, that my overall point is clear.  The plotting and pacing of a serialized series is just the same as for a book, but on a much larger scale.  There is a strong relationship between the plotting of your books and your series, and you must work to balance both.  One cannot survive without the other!

Questions, comments, concerns?  Leave a comment below!  Want to see more and better content in the future?  Consider supporting me through Patreon or just buying my books!

Until next time, good reading, good writing, and good luck!

Writing Is A Bad Habit: Green Skin, Pointy Ears, Still Human? a.k.a. Depicting Aliens and Nonhumans

It is a common shortcut in writing genre fiction to make nonhuman characters look different, sure, but to be close, if not identical, to human in many of the intangible points.  Emotions, thought processes, and other mental/spiritual/emotional aspects tend to hew close to the human spectrum.  Oh, there may be minor differences, little quibbles here and there, with the occasional notable quirk, but the tendency of many writers is to stay close to the human experience.

In and of itself, this tendency isn’t necessarily bad and it’s certainly not a deal-breaker to me as a reader.  Knowing that the aliens in a piece are perhaps not so alien after all can give nonhuman characters a certain built-in level of relatability, not to mention such situations can offer the author a chance to explore a number of real-world social concerns, such as prejudice and racism, in a fantasy or science-fiction setting.  On top of that, we do tend to write best the things we understand most and most of us are far more familiar with humans than, say, the starfish people of Cyngus XII.

Still, there’s also a point to be made for taking the plunge, to make the effort to make the aliens or fantastical races in a book truly unique species.  The concept of cultural differences isn’t hard for most of us to deal with it as it runs along the lines of something familiar to us (the same political and social differences of different cultures here on Earth), but pushing deeper into trying to create a truly ‘alien’ outlook on the world is something quite hard to accomplish.  It’s one thing to take the human template and tweak it in one direction or another, but to try to wrap your head creatively around something completely different than the human psyche, that’s quite another.

When it is done well, however, it adds incredible depth and an added degree of immersion into the fictional world the author is creating.  Aliens being truly alien represent another mystery for your readers to unlock, and it simply makes more sense to them that something so far removed from our species should have real and possibly quite stark differences in how they think, feel, and react.  The problem lies in the fact that, when done poorly, it can simply be confusing and a waste of authorial time and energy.

Think about it: such a feat does basically add another extensive plot to your book, that being the introduction and exploration of this alien race or races.  Whether you want that or not, you have it, simply because you must explore this race in your book or else your readers will not have a point of reference or relatability with the alien characters you introduce.  Also, there’s the pitfall of introducing something alien, yes, but also uninteresting, at least in a dramatic sense.  If the alieness of a species is going to be part of the plot, it would be wise to weld that exploration of the race deeply into it.  After all, you have to spend the time to establish the race to your human readers!  You might as well spend that time wisely and integrate it into the larger plot, right?

If you’re a genre writer whose next work incorporates nonhuman species, take a moment to consider just how different from humanity they are and whether that level of difference works for your purposes and for your book.  Many approaches are valid, from ‘like us with a different skin color’ to ‘unfathomable cosmic entity’, so you have to tailor your approach to the alien with the needs of your works and the desires of your readers.

Got a thought, question, or input?  Drop a line in the comments below!

Until next time, good reading, good writing, and good luck!