Why Most Writing Advice is Garbage

Posted by tonbird — December 20, 2012

[In hindsight, that I asked Tony to write this either makes me very wise or kind of a dick. Or both. Yeah, probably both.. nah, really, I\'m still leaning toward dick. -- Susie]

A little while back, Susie asked me if I would be interested in writing a post about “why most writing advice is garbage.” At first I thought, “But I write a lot of writing advice.” Then I thought that I read a lot of writing advice. And then I realized that most of it doesn’t really do anything for me.

Here are a few reasons to ignore most of the writing advice you find:

Some writers are better at writing writing advice than they are at writing fiction. When I first began taking my writing seriously, I got on the internet (this was in 1998, mind you) and found a site with tons of great writing advice. (I found it by searching Yahoo.) The author had so much to say, and I found her advice inspiring. I thought that she must certainly be one of the best authors ever, so I picked up one of her books. It was really awful, and I vowed never to read her books or writing advice after that.

Different sources can contradict each other. Stephen King says to write a book from the beginning to the end. James V. Smith says skip around. Chris Baty says get to the end within thirty days. Chuck Wendig says spend as much time as you need to. Who is right? All of them? None of them?

Nobody really follows advice anyway. Have you ever given someone advice before? Most people who ask me for advice end up doing the exact opposite of what I tell them. Maybe it’s because I give them bad advice, or maybe it’s because they know that my advice is not going to work for them. Whatever the reason, they generally just do what they’re going to do. Come to think of it, I generally do the same thing when I ask for advice. Why would writing advice be any different?

Many writers who give writing advice are not any more successful than you are. I’m a great example of this. I have written several articles with recommendations on how to improve your writing, but I have yet to have any fiction published. How do I know what’s good?

If writing advice is so awful, should you just ignore it? Maybe. But maybe not. Here’s my advice on taking writing advice.

You can’t go wrong with timeless writing cliches like, “Write what you know.”

Pay attention to what the writers you admire have to say. As a matter of common sense, the authors whose books you like will probably have the best advice on writing books that you can be proud of.

Take writing advice with a grain of salt. (Or a shot of whiskey.) Think about it before you try something. Is it honestly something you will be able to do? Will you actually benefit from it? Or is it just an idea that sounds cool but will waste your time? Ask yourself these questions.

Use what works for you. Ultimately, if you’re in a good groove and like what you’re doing, maybe you don’t need any advice. On the other hand, if you feel like your writing is stagnating, perhaps it will help to seek the mentorship or support of a fellow writer.

Bad advice may not be all that bad, either. if it inspires you or makes you want to write, whether to try it or to prove it wrong, it’s probably worth a try.

Do any readers have advice on taking advice? Please share with the rest of us in the comments. In the mean time, stay motivated and keep writing!

Reading Rage: Don’t Make Me Get Out My Red Pen

Posted by sj — December 13, 2012

126

Dear Self-Published Authors,

Can we chat for a sec? Here, pull up a chair and let me get you some tea. Tea is good for these types of discussions, right? I think so.

Listen. I think we need to have this talk because, quite frankly, many of you are doing this wrong.

No, I’m not talking about how you market yourself and your books (although Susie kind of has you covered in that department), I’m talking about the actual most important part of your book. Your book. Your writing.

Here’s the thing, self-pubs – by failing to properly proofread/edit/RE-READ your book, you’re not only failing your readers, you’re failing yourself as well.

I totally get that not everyone out there paid all the attention in English Class. I understand that you may not have had your very own copy of your Grammar Primer that you carried around with you everywhere because you just LOVED LANGUAGE SO MUCH. Really – I get it, swearsies.

My precioussssssssssss

I’d be willing to bet that you KNOW someone like that, though. I’d put good money on the fact that if you spend any amount of time on the internet AT ALL, you are acquainted with at least a handful of people that are complete and total grammar nerds.

“Oh, but most people don’t notice those things and if they do, they’re TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY!”

Okay, fine. Maybe not everyone will notice. Maybe. But enough people will. And those people that notice will likely either review your book, or just give up on you altogether. Because an author that doesn’t care enough about the experience his/her readers have, just doesn’t give a damn at all.

Someone calls typos to your attention? You are self-published, you can have that shit fixed and updated within an hour – for ebooks, anyway. To say that you “don’t have time” and that you’re “too busy” but you’ll “get around to it” is not only lazy, but disrespectful.

You don’t leave the house half dressed or looking like a cheap schlub, so why do you want to send your book out into the world that way?

“ZOMG, THE EDITORS WANT TO KILL MY BABY!”

Stop that shit. Seriously, you stop that right now. A good editor (even a halfway decent editor) doesn’t want to kill your baby, they want to help it be the best it can possibly be. Why don’t you? (And can we stop referring to books as babies? That’s just gross.) You may think you know what’s best for your book, but if your work is full of homonyms and slipped tenses and just straight up WRONG WORDS, you shouldn’t be hitting that publish button.

”I’m an INDIE! Indies don’t need to have their work polished! It ruins that whole INDIE VIBE!”

This totally works. It’s polished AND from (an) Indie. Technically.

Okay, now you’re just asking for a punch in the junk. Again, putting out something that hasn’t been read, re-read, stuck in a drawer (literal or figurative, name your hard drive “drawer” or something, I don’t care) for at least a month, then read again, rewritten and gone through several rounds of edits should NOT BE SOLD. I don’t care if you think you got exactly what you wanted on the first go ’round. Chances are really good that you didn’t. Or that there are areas that need to be clarified/expanded on/removed altogether. Giving yourself this distance from your work will make it better in the long run. Please trust me on this.

An example:

I used to follow the blog of a woman I had much in common with musically. We listened to a lot of the same music and even liked a lot of the same books. She was funny, and even though I thought her posts needed to be proofread sometimes, I still enjoyed much of what she had to say.

Then came the day that she announced she’d written and self-published a book of short stories.

“Whaaaa? She never mentioned that she’d been writing!” I said to myself.

Why had she never mentioned that she’d been writing? Because she had LITERALLY JUST STARTED. She wrote and published this book in less than two weeks. TWO WEEKS! I’m sorry, but that’s just unacceptable. Two weeks is not enough time to perform rewrites or give oneself any sort of distance at all. You can’t be impartial if only two weeks have passed.

It’s lazy, and it’s rude. Yes, rude. You expect people to PAY for something that you can’t be bothered with? No, I’m sorry.

I still followed her, though.

Until 3 weeks later, when she announced that she’d published both another book of short stories AND a novel. Both of which had been written in that same three week period.

Sorry, lady. I’m done. I don’t have time to read the blog of someone who shows zero respect toward potential readers (and CONSUMERS).

It’s that attitude right there that puts so many readers off of self-published work. That “I wrote it, what else do you want from me?” stance is HURTING so many of you.

We read to escape. We read to learn things. We read for enjoyment. We do NOT read to mentally correct your writing.

I mean, unless you’re paying us to do so, amirite? Why should we pay YOU for something that you haven’t dressed up in its Sunday Best?

This showed up under a search for Dressed Up Books. Might die laughing.

We shouldn’t. And we won’t. Or, at the very least I won’t – and not to sound like a posturing asshole, but I’m the kind of person you want reading your books. If I like something, I make sure the WHOLE WORLD knows. I shout it from the figurative rooftops. I tell everyone I know why they NEED TO read this book (I know, I know, I totally fail sneaky-fuckerism, but my method works for me). And isn’t that what you want? For people to be…y’know, reading your work?

TL;DR

I love self-published authors, as long as they go about self-publishing the right way. If you’ve published something yourself I WANT you to succeed. I want as many people to read your book as possible. Unfortunately, many of you are shooting yourselves in your collective feet by approaching the process so cavalierly. There’s a reason books can sometimes take years to come out in the world of the Big Guys. There’s a reason editors have jobs. There’s a reason people look down on a lot of you. Do us all a favour and proofread the hell out of your book to make sure it’s as strong as possible before sending it out. And if someone brings an error to your attention, thank them and take care of it straight away. People will respect and appreciate that. It shows that you CARE ABOUT your readers.

What do you guys think? Am I too picky, or do more self-published authors need to get out their own red pens? How much of a factor is this for you when deciding what to read? Let me know in the comments!

So, you want to charge more than 99 cents for your ebooks? Here’s how!

Posted by greengeekgirl — November 5, 2012

So, I was reading this article that someone linked on Twitter about what the 99 cent eBook price-point “means” or whatever to the future of self-publishing. If you know me at all, you know that I was eye-rolling pretty hard over some of the stuff in the article. Even the title itself is telling–indie authors question the price. Duh, of course they do. Everyone wants to get maximum payday from their work, amiright? But indie authors–you guys aren’t the ones buying the product. Do you see where it might get a little sticky if you start price-questioning?

Here’s the good news! You do have control over what people pay for your product, although it’s not in the way you might think.

One tactic I see overused (overused in that, it should never ever be used, ever) in trying to get readers to pay a “fair” price for self-published books is to tell us how hard indie authors work to put out a product, and that we should pay more because they spent a year writing it, made a monetary investment, poured their soul into it, etc. That their work is “worth” more because of that. Authors? The longer you continue to feel this way, the longer you will not get paid what you think you should be earning for your books. You might be protesting at me already for saying that, but I intend to show you why what I’m telling you is true.

The first thing you should never, ever forget: readers are not generous patrons of the arts, they are customers.

Writing books is a creative endeavor. Selling books is business. If you want to wear both hats, you need to know when to take one off and put the other on. When you’re marketing, you need to put on your business hat. If you forget this step, you’ll only stumble into earning a living writing by being lucky–do you want to leave it to luck?

One lady in the comments of the article I linked went off about how readers “should appreciate” how much time and effort went into writing a book. She made a point that we wouldn’t expect free lattes at Starbucks, why should we expect free content? Two things came to mind right off the bat: one is that, publishing is a multi-billion dollar business. We clearly do not “expect” free content, as those billions have to be coming from somewhere every year. The second thing that made me cringe when I read that is that, if Starbucks had taken her attitude of demanding that people “appreciate” their product and pay the price that they demand, they would have been long out of business by now.

Imagine when Starbucks was new, and you were used to getting coffee for less than a buck. You walk in and yow! A coffee with foamy milk was almost three dollars. Imagine if you’d asked the barista, “Hey, why is the coffee so much more here when I can get it for fifty cents down the street?” and the barista answered back, “Hey, man, I got up at four o’clock this morning to grind beans and brew coffee. I have to foam the milk every time someone orders one of these things. It’s worth that much because I have to put a ton of work into making that foamy coffee for you!” You might have been impressed with the amount of work that goes into it, but having never tried the coffee and not knowing anything about it, your real question wouldn’t really be answered–and that question is, “Why should I be paying more for something that I can get cheaper elsewhere?” The attitude probably would have turned you off completely to boot.

And remember, your customers have a lot of options because you have a lot of competition.

You, as an indie author, have an enormous amount of competition. In 2003, there were 300,000 books published. In 2011, there were three million books published. In 2012, that number could end up being as high as fifteen million, according to the number of ISBNs issued just this year. This is called market saturation, and it’s the real reason that you have a hard time making money off of your books. It’s not because your “entitled” customers want free content or don’t understand your blood-sweat-and-tears contribution to your work. There’s simply a glut of self-published fiction. Most of us do well to read fifty to a hundred books in a year, much less three million or more.

What that means for indie authors is that, if you randomly decide to charge more for a book just because you think it’s worth more, there are hundreds of thousands of competitors willing to step right in and take your sale. In the free market, competition is a major factor in determining what you can charge for a good or service. If you opened up a retail store and decided to charge twice what your competition charges just because you “feel” your goods are worth more, your store would go out of business. It’s the same idea with your books. You cannot charge based solely on what you think your book is worth and expect to do well. You cannot tell your customers that they “should” appreciate your work and pay based on that. They will go somewhere else.

How Starbucks got people to pay more for coffee.

Starbucks did not get to be where it is by just demanding that customers appreciate the quality of their product. Howard Schultz had a vision, and he knew it would be difficult to pull off in America because of the price point at which he would have to sell to be profitable and grow. He put a number of policies into practice that would help him achieve his vision:

top-notch customer service that was unlike anything most people had seen before
product consistency and insane(ly good) devotion to quality
great in-store ambiance
customer education about the product, such as where the beans come from and why they cost more (“arabica beans” wasn’t a major selling point outside of specialty markets before Starbucks made it a thing and told people why it’s better; now it’s everywhere)
sampling so that customers could try the product firsthand and know that it wasn’t the same Maxwell House that the diner served down the street (this is a HUGE one. It’s the quickest and best way to convince people of quality.)
specific customer service policies that would encourage brand loyalty and make both customers and employees feel like part of the “family” (remembering names, drinks, calling employees “partners” and allowing them to share the company with stock options, giving employees the tools to bond with customers to keep them coming back)
being innovative in corporate responsibility, such as giving even 20 hour per week employees health insurance and getting involved with various community and national volunteering or humanitarian projects, so that people would get warm fuzzies when they thought of Starbucks
encouraging customers to participate, taking ownership of their experience with customized beverages

All of these policies added value to Starbucks in the customers’ eyes so that the customers would feel A-OK about paying more for coffee. Starbucks didn’t just demand that the customers appreciate their product, they demonstrated why their product and company was superior and deserving of customer dollars. It’s the business version of “show, don’t tell.”

Self-published authors can do this, too. You can. But you have to start with the idea that you’re not entitled to a single sale just because you wrote a book. I’m sorry; I know that’s harsh, but it’s absolutely true. Once you get rid of the notion that you are entitled to make a living being a writer just because you wrote a book and published it online, you can start building your audience and reputation from the ground up.

Show us why your book is worth more than the thousands of other books that we could be buying.

Did you notice in the Starbucks list, I left off “buy great beans”? That was a given. Starbucks would have failed if they had crappy, second-rate coffee. (I know, some people hate the taste of their coffee–but they do use quality beans. It’s a matter of palate rather than quality.)

Writing a book that people want to read, that is a given. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be self-publishing.

You have to do more to stand out in a crowd of, literally, millions.

Adding value to your work goes beyond just writing a good book. It even goes beyond getting your book professionally edited and getting a professional cover design–right now, the lack of those things are huge issues in the self-publishing world, but you need to treat your book like these services are mandatory, or you will be behind the curve when innovations spring up to help separate the first draft manuscripts from the polished books. (They’re coming. They’re already in the works, even–I personally know people who are tackling this issue.) Once that happens, you will still need to separate yourself from the people that didn’t get left behind. You also still need to compete with traditionally-published books, which will nearly always be shined up good before they’re launched.

[Yes, I used "good" on purpose there. I'm from Kentucky, it's part of my DNA.]

Anything that makes your book different from other good books, or that makes it stand out, or that makes you stand out, tell us about it. If you can’t think of anything, that might be the underlying problem in not being able to get more for your ebooks. We pay more for branded items than off-brand items, so brand yourself and let us know who you are and what you do.

Remember that overnight success doesn’t happen.

You know The Bloggess, right? Blogger, author, “overnight success” (that took a decade)? Her book has been really successful, and she earned every bit of it by working her tail off, putting out free content, for years. That’s really the hard truth about becoming a writer and being successful enough to pay your bills: you’re going to give a lot up for free, or cheap, until you earn out your payday. When you self-publish, you’re skipping a huge advantage that traditional publishing has: a built-in audience. Distribution. Reader trust. You’re starting at, or close to, zero. Just like any other business, you’ll have to operate in the red for awhile until you build up your reputation and customer base. This isn’t anything surprising or abnormal–unfortunately, almost nobody gets to skip to the head of the line.

Case Study, or, how you can apply this in the real world.

Someone that sj and I both love is @ChuckWendig. He’s an author who has built himself an audience that most self-published authors dream of building. He has published fiction (some of it is through Angry Robot, not sure about all of it) and self-publishes books about writing. He also blogs at Terrible Minds.

Wendig may or may not have launched Terrible Minds with an eye toward adding value to himself as an author (I’m not a Wendig Expert), but that’s exactly what seems to have happened. By writing well about something that he’s passionate about, he draws in a lot of traffic; by writing well and putting it out there for anybody to read, he can more easily make conversions when it comes to sales because we already have proof that he can write. When you can become a fan of someone for free, you’re a lot more likely to open up your wallet when they put something out for sale. (In the Starbucks model, this is “sampling” and “customer education.”)

Wendig is also amazing at social media. He puts out great tweets that are share-able, which gets him more exposure; he also talks to people who talk to him, in a nice way that doesn’t make them angry. I’ve even had conversations with him where we disagree about stuff, and he was still super nice about it. He respects his readers and doesn’t expect things from them, or go off on rants about how shitty it is that they will only pay x amount for his books. This adds value to his brand, because a person is more likely to pay someone that they like for content. (In the Starbucks model, this is “customer service” and also general brand identity.)

Wendig also regularly engages his audience. He runs writing contests on his blog (in the Starbucks model, this would be under taking ownership/customizing one’s experience there) and asks for feedback. His audience is not just full of people that followed him through a promotion who tune him out when he puts out content; they’re participating. They’re turned on, so to speak. This undoubtedly helps his sales.

If you looked up Chuck Wendig on Amazon, you might notice that some of his non-fiction books sell for $2.99. If you look more closely, you’ll also see that these books are full of content that he has posted previously, for free, on his blog. Let me say that again: people are paying for content that they could read for free on his blog. He organized it by topic and made it available for e-readers, which is always good for convenience, but they didn’t need to buy them. They wanted to own the content because they friggin’ love his content.

Chuck Wendig didn’t write a book, kick back, and then put it out there and wonder why people weren’t buying it. He hustled his ass off to build an audience (whether he did it to build an audience or whether he hustled his ass off and the audience came, it amounts to the same); that audience, in turn, values Wendig enough to pay for content even when they can get it for free. And they value him enough to share him around to their friends and create new fans. He didn’t demand that they recognize his value, he demonstrated it over and over.

If you want to charge more than $.99 in a market where you have to compete with millions of other people, you need to figure out how to do that. Don’t tell us that you have value, go out and show us you have value.

Are you a self-published author? Have you found any self-published authors because they created an online presence? Do you have any tips for other authors that have worked for you? Do you like cake? Drop it all in the comments below!

Why Aspiring Authors Shouldn’t Major in English

Posted by tonbird — October 29, 2012

Do you want to be a writer when you grow up? I know I do. When I was in high school trying to decide on a college and a major, English seemed like the perfect subject to study. After all, English is the language I would be writing in, right? Looking back, I think I made a huge mistake.

This is exactly how my life went . . . oh, wait . . .

The major problem with majoring in English was that, although I gained some marketable skills from it, it did very little to prepare me for being a writer. Here are some of the reasons why I don’t think it’s a good idea for writers to major in English:

You already know English. If you can read this, chances are you already have native or near-native proficiency in English. Why would you spend tens of thousands of dollars on a program where you’re just going to learn more about a language you already know? Most programs don’t even spend much time on grammar or linguistics, so you’re not really gaining any arcane English knowledge that you couldn’t have picked up while you were in high school.
Writing classes are required for every major. For most four-year degrees, regardless of what you major in, you will be required to take a course in English composition. My upper-level English composition class had students from every major in it. Even at the most basic level of English 101, you will learn how to write an essay and you will learn correct grammar. Best of all, one of your required textbooks will be a grammar reference. Make sure you hold onto it; I still have mine.
You’re just going to read a lot of literature. If you want to be a writer, but you don’t already read as much as you possibly can, I want you to hit yourself. No, really. Go ahead. I’ll wait . . . Okay, as I was saying, if you want to be a writer, you probably already read all the time. Something has to inspire your desire to create worlds, right? The things you read will have a major impact on your writing style and the kinds of stories you will create. For me, I enjoyed reading great English literature from a variety of time periods, but as a writer, I find that those were not the kinds of stories that inspired me. I drew most of my inspiration from my leisure reading of speculative fiction–not from reading the classics.
Fortunately, there’s a whole book on the subject.
Studying other subjects gives you a different perspective to write from. I really enjoy reading a book with realistic details about careers, hobbies, and interests outside of my own scope. It provides a kind of escape from my own mundane life. I don’t know much about business, law, or science, but I think books that revolve around these topics are fascinating. Michael Crichton is a good example of a writer whose expertise in scientific fields translated into fascinating science fiction stories involving everything from biotech to mutant gorillas. All I’m saying is you don’t want to be the kid who writes about writers writing. Only Stephen King can get away with that; he breaks all the rules.
English programs don’t teach job skills or business sense. Let’s be honest: most writers are going to need a second job while they’re writing that bestseller. On a resume, you look about as smart as the French exchange student who got good grades in French. What’s more, in order to succeed as a writer, you’ll need to know how to be an effective communicator and an effective promoter. You would think that writing letters or e-mails and writing fiction go hand-in-hand, but they don’t.

I don’t necessarily want to discourage aspiring writers from majoring in English. Plenty of successful writers have been English majors. However, it’s important to realize that an English degree will leave gaps in your education and skill set. If I had to do it over, I would have picked a journalism or business major instead, and I would have also joined up with the school newspaper and a few other clubs that interested me. Get out and try some things that are outside of your comfort zone, because fiction writing is about characters overcoming conflict, and you won’t know about conflict until you’ve faced a challenge.

Maybe you’re planning to major in English anyway, or maybe you’ve already got an English degree. What was your experience with an education in English? Leave a comment!

Review: Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska

Posted by tonbird — October 28, 2012

Book: Accelerated

Author: Bronwen Hruska

Published: October 2, 2012 by Pegasus

First Lines: “Sean Benning had put in his time. He couldn’t risk being caught in another conversation about ERB percentiles and afterschool activities that cost more than he made in a month. Forty-five minutes was his limit.”

Rating: Sorry, but I didn’t like it.

(Electronic galley provided by Open Road Media)

When I first read the synopsis for this book, I thought it was something I could relate to: Sean is raising his son Toby on his own because his wife Ellie unexpectedly runs away, and the private school his in-laws pay for is pressuring him to medicate his kid for ADHD, even though he doesn’t see any of the symptoms. Great! The main character was a man, and I share (or have shared) at least a few of his problems.

My first impression after finishing Accelerated was, “It feels like I just read a Lifetime movie.” After I found the author’s bio, it turns out that she is a screenwriter who has written Lifetime movies. This was her first novel, and–all things considered–it was alright. That being said, it wasn’t really for me, and just in case the author (or any other author) is reading this, I’d like to provide some constructive feedback.

First, not everything about this story was bad. A few aspects were rather brilliant. I was impressed with the way the story wrapped up, and upon finishing, I felt like there were no loose ends or any parts left unresolved. More than once, I found myself in awe of how subtle details from earlier in the story came to have a big impact later on. All the plots and subplots wove together into a perfectly resolved ending.

I was also very interested in the topic: over-diagnosis and over-medication of students with “ADHD” who are just normal active children. <rant>One of my son’s teachers tried to get us to have him tested so she could get him on Ritalin, but I see the kid concentrate for hours at a time on his Lego creations, books, or movies. I felt like she was taking a lazy way out because she was too bad at her job to get my kid interested in what she was trying to teach him, and she didn’t have the basic sense of authority to make him sit down and do his work. I never had trouble getting him to do his homework.</rant> I identified with this topic, and it stirred up some strong feelings for me.

Of course, despite the good qualities, the story also had a few points where it could have been better.

My biggest problem with Accelerated was the characters. I never really liked Sean. He was a passive hero, with no special qualities or admirable traits. He loved his kid. Everybody loves their kids; that’s not really anything special. I felt like more of the problems in the story got solved by luck or outside help than by Sean’s actions. The only sacrifice he made was to risk getting fired from his crappy job that he hated. I would have liked to see him knowingly risk losing his art exhibition rather than have that happen to him unexpectedly as “bad shit happening to good people”. Likewise, I was annoyed by the fact that he slept with a married woman in the opening scene, and then later he slept with his girlfriend and his wife in the same day, but faced no consequences. That was a prime opportunity to introduce strong conflict.

A few of the other characters were weak as well. I would have liked to understand Ellie, the estranged wife, a little better. Why did she run away? Because she’s a psycho? That’s lame. She should have had a stronger motivation that actually made sense. It’s the same with Cheryl, the rich doctor’s wife whom Sean bangs in the bathroom at the PTA meeting. I can’t imagine why she would want to sleep with Sean in the first place, much less in a public setting. I would really have liked to see these characters’ motivations.

My next complaint is a bit nitpicky, but it’s a style issue. Several times the narrative spelled out what characters were thinking by their facial expressions and body language. The story is told in third-person limited point of view through Sean’s eyes, so I guess you can justify it, but that’s one of my pet peeves as a reader and writer. Here’s an example: “She tried reassuring him with a smile.” Instead of telling what she was trying to do with the smile, it would have been better to just describe the smile and let the reader interpret: “Her mouth smiled, but her eyes did not.” To use the writer’s advice cliche: Show rather than tell.

The last thing I’m going to address is the romance between Sean and Toby’s teacher Jess. In order for it to be appealing, I would have liked for the “forbidden” factor to be played up. It would have made that subplot much more interesting. But considering she was a teacher and he was a parent, their relationship was risky and entirely inappropriate. I never felt any of that danger. In order for it to be believable, it should have ended in flaming disaster. He was not even divorced yet, and their relationship was completely unprofessional, so there were all kinds of external forces that could have interfered, and it might have been even more interesting if one of them had been jealous or if they’d had something to fight over. If they had managed to overcome some of these problems in a believable way, then it would have meant more to the reader that they ended up staying together at the end.

So that is my critique of Accelerated. If you like sentimental stories about family and a bit of romance, or if you are interested in the ADHD issue, you may actually enjoy this book. If you’re a writer, I think there are some good lessons to be learned in plot construction, and some examples of what not to do with character and conflict.

Buy the book: (Powell’s or Amazon)

Poetry Inspiration: An Inauspicious Beginning

Posted by lucysfootball — September 28, 2012

This post, and two more, are part of a short series leading up to a blog tour that I put together for Amy. I asked her to write about her poetry inspirations, and how she came to be a poet in a time when people sometimes look at you a little funny when you tell them you’re a poet. (Then again, maybe they always looked at people a little funny for that?) So, over the next two Fridays, plus this one, we will have a poetry post from Amy. Yay poetry! Yay Amy! – Susie

Many years ago (and many and MANY a moon ago), I was going to be a doctor. I know, right? Please try to control your laughter. I went to college with every intention to major pre-med. No, I don’t know what I was thinking, either.

After a semester of science that nearly killed me (high school science, surprisingly, is quite a lot easier than college science! Well! Who knew!) I knew I had to change my major. I thought long and hard and made lists of what I loved in the world and the list boiled down to three things:

the ice cream in the college dining hall
theater
creative writing

You could have all the ice cream you wanted for like a DOLLAR. It was the BEST.

Since you can’t major in ice cream (well, I guess at some schools you can major in culinary arts, but I didn’t want to MAKE food, I wanted to EAT it, and that’s not a major – wait, is that a major? it isn’t, right?) I went for a double-major in the other two. Yes, it was slightly ill-advised, as neither of these things are something that puts food on your plate as an adult. Or, I suppose, ice cream in your bowl. But I didn’t like doing anything else. And I was 18. Like YOU didn’t make choices based on whims and fancies at 18.

Now, I went to a pretty liberal college. You had a lot of options, creative-writing wise. Your major was in creative writing, but you had a concentration: fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, poetry. (Some people were VERY driven and made up their own major, like “Nonfiction Playwriting Poetry” or something, but that seemed a little too hippy-crazy for me.) I’d tried a little bit of everything, here and there. But poetry was my love. It always had been, ever since I skipped ahead in our textbook in high school and discovered the (sadly, quite brief) poetry section. Just the basics, there – Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Shakespeare – but reading those poems on the sly while the rest of the class was sucking the life out of “A Rose for Emily” or “The Most Dangerous Game” gave me the most delicious thrill in the chest.

Even looking at this makes me a little nostalgic. And a little sad. They weren’t very good, these textbooks, you know?

I started writing poetry on my own, but it didn’t look much like the poetry in the books. It was such a release, though. It felt right for me, in a way that my stumbling fiction and playwriting didn’t. (I still wrote a hell of a nonfiction piece, though, if I do say so myself.) So when it came time to choose one of the concentrations, I dabbled in a playwriting class, I took a fiction class that was a lesson in humility (I’m really not very good at that at all, something the other students were all-too-eager to point out), but it was poetry that sucked me in and didn’t let go. And I was good at it. And I loved it. How often do you find something you’re good at, that you love? When that happens, you have to hold onto it with both hands. It’s almost a sin if you don’t.

The degree didn’t do me much good (other than to teach me how to workshop a poem, I suppose, and introduce me to some excellent poets, and how to self-edit, both my criticism of others and my own work) but surprisingly, I continued with the poetry. Why surprisingly? Well, I have the attention span of a toddler. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of things I’ve picked up and put down over the years. But poetry, for some reason, stayed with me. Even though it’s never been the cool kid at the writing table; even though it’s most definitely not the most commercial of them. Sometimes months will go by and nothing; sometimes everything will inspire me. I still love reading poetry; it still gives me that thrill in the chest to find the perfect poem that hits me in just the right way. I don’t think this is a whim I’ll get over like quilting or gardening. I think this one might be here to stay.

So, while most people have their a-ha moment where they realized I AM A POET, I had my complete and utter boredom in high school English class and reading ahead in the textbook, and discovering this whole new art form I’d never really looked at. When most people chose majors in college because they were thinking ahead for a career and such, I wasn’t as prescient and chose something I loved (whether or not that was a good idea, I still can’t tell you. Probably not, but at least I loved it.) Not a very impressive beginning for a poet, right?

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to talk about two poets that inspired me, as a poet, and choose one of their poems that really give me that thrill in the chest; that showed me that hey, what I was doing WAS real poetry, DID have worth; poets that helped me form the raw materials that I had into something a little less raw and a little more focused (I won’t be arrogant enough to say they honed it completely – are we ever right where we want to be, craft-wise? I don’t know about all the other writers out there, but me, personally, I know I’m not.) We’ve talked about poetry before, but it was kind of an overview: this one will be shorter and a little more concise. (I promise they’ll be shorter than this one. Promise, promise.) It’ll be kind of a peek behind the curtain and kind of a poetry post all rolled into one. And maybe you’ll find a poem you love, and maybe it’ll remind you of a poem you read, once, that you loved, that moved you. What else can we ask of words, than to move us and to transport us? My introduction to poetry might not have been very auspicious, but where it’s taken me is just where I want to be, and I’m happy to take you all along with me for a little while.

Stephen King Week: Tony’s Man Crush on Stephen King

Posted by tonbird — September 22, 2012

My mom used to read Stephen King’s horror stories, and I already knew who he was by the time I was learning to read sentences like, “The boys run. The girls see the boys.” I remember one evening when my dad was working second shift and my mom called me into the living room to watch The Creep Show with her on HBO. When “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” came on, she told me, “Look, Tony. That’s Stephen King.” I thought that he looked kinda funny.

A few years later, I had not only learned how to read, but I loved reading. What’s more, my third grade teacher was giving our class regular creative writing assignments. I enjoyed these assignments so much that I started writing my own stories.

On one particular evening, my dad called me into the dining room and had me sit at the table, my mom seated at his left. He held up several pages of sloppy third-grader handwriting torn from a yellow legal pad. “What is this all about?” he asked. I had left the story on the table, and he and Mom had read it. This particular masterpiece was my first attempt at writing horror. It was about a deformed monster who lived in the woods and killed people with a knife that some hunter had forgotten. I was picturing my dad’s military issue bolt knife when I wrote it.

My dad’s knife is unavailable for photography, but this is pretty much what it looks like.

I endured Dad’s lecture about how sick and wrong it was to write stories about violence and murder, and then after he left me ashamed and crying, my mom said to me, “You write like Stephen King.” I didn’t realize it until much later, but she had said it with pride and meant it as a compliment.

Years later, that I actually began reading my first Stephen King book. It was The Shining, a birthday gift from my best friend Eric. From the beginning of the book I was fascinated by the way small details made the characters so believable. It felt like King understood the things about people that we prefer to keep hidden. I never got to finish the book, though. My dad came into my room and confiscated it, handing me a Bible in its place.

My next attempt was ‘Salem’s Lot, which I had the good sense to read in secret. It is, to this day, the only story I’ve ever read about vampires that actually scared me. As with just about every Stephen King story I’ve ever read, I was drawn in by the characters and the way he wrote. Everything seemed real and believable, even though I know vampires aren’t real. (They’re not, are they?)

After that, I read as much King as I could. I got his short story collections, The Stand, The Eyes of the Dragon, and several others. I regret that it took me a while to start The Dark Tower books. Friends had been telling me for years, “You’ve got to read this. You’ve got to read this.” Dusty Old West stories had never interested me, so I was surprised when the series changed my life forever, ruining all other books for me.

But it’s more than just Stephen King’s books that I admire. I just finished rereading On Writing. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you may remember me telling my story of how I stopped writing (and started again). One of the things that got me writing again was reading On Writing.

The book is as much an autobiography (though he denies it in one of the forewords) as it is a manual for writing. The first part talks about how King began, going from his first stories as a child all the way up to establishing his career as a writer, and then he ends shortly after he talks about breaking his ties with substance abuse. The part about him quitting drinking was a bit of a surprise to me. I had just figured that all artists (writers included) were tortured addicts who needed the sauce to fuel their creativity. It turns out that Stephen King quit all of it, and it doesn’t seem to have affected his creativity.

There are plenty of fascinating anecdotes and useful tips that can guide an aspiring writer throughout the later chapters of On Writing. Up until this most recent read of it, I had forgotten how many lessons I had taken from the book before. King covers everything from when and where to write, how story ideas come to him, editing, and even how to break into the business. (This latter part predates the rise of social media, but the principles are still the same.) One of the best bits of advice (in my opinion) is on editing: get rid of unnecessary words, and try to cut your first draft down by 10%. Also, another great bit of advice is read a lot and write a lot. I repeat that advice to any poor sucker who thinks I know anything about writing, and now I remember where I got it.

In the last part of On Writing, King talks about his brush with death when he was struck by a van. He also wrote the van incident into a scene in the last book of The Dark Tower.

“I’d hit that.” – Blue Dodge Caravan

Oh, right. Did I mention, he made himself a character in one of his own books . . . and it wasn’t terrible. Actually, it was genius! When I saw that he put himself into Song of Susannah, and again in The Dark Tower, I thought, “This is going to be ridiculous. Authors shouldn’t write about themselves as characters!” But when I saw how he pulled it off, I was impressed. In both books, King makes fun of himself, depicting himself as a bumbling, cowardly fool. As the author, he shows no ego about being the creator of his fictional universe; he is merely the one who discovered a story that was already there. In On Writing he makes it clear that that’s how he feels about all of his stories.

There’s a lot about Stephen King for a person–especially a writer–to look up to. Whether it’s his talent and success as an author, or his strength to take back his life from booze and drugs, or simply that he survived getting hit by a van and then came back to write more amazing stories–Stephen King is pretty much my writer hero, and I want to be him when I grow up.

Reading Rage Tuesday: Where does fan fiction stop and stealing begin?

Posted by greengeekgirl — September 4, 2012

Photo not really related; I couldn’t find a topical one and I liked this one. SPACE PATROL

We’ve discussed fan fiction here in the comments before, and I have to be honest that I have mixed feelings about it. Oh, I understand the compulsion to write fan fiction, even to share it with communities of like-minded individuals. I think we all come to the altar of creativity having been led by the hands of the works that inspired us and touched us (sometimes in naughty places, as E.L. James might tell you). Some authors welcome fan fiction; they love that people are so pumped about reading their books that they want to spend more time with the characters. Others feel uneasy, or outright prohibit fan fiction (at least, prohibit it from being shared); while I think taking a hard line on fan fiction might come across as a bit dickish, I can wholly empathize with the authors. I think it would kind of be like hearing a woman ask your kids to call her “Mommy” and then play pretend family. I can imagine the frustration of having strangers take the characters that one has worked so hard to create and use them, for good or ill.

Still, I really have no qualms about the fan fiction universe–or at least, I didn’t. Maybe I don’t personally groove on it, but I tend to have a live-and-let-live attitude about a lot of things that I don’t personally dig. Sports, for example–sure, some aspects of sports tick me off, like having the entire city I live in freaking out during football season, or having my favorite shows put on hiatus to air the Olympics, but by and large, I don’t get my knickers in a twist about it. Fan fiction has been the same, until sj linked me this Kickstarter and I really started to ponder it.

The Kickstarter project, started by a gent named Adam VillaSenor and a group of Harry Potter fans, is a webseries called Sirius Black and the Secret Keeper. It’s a prequel to the Harry Potter series, set during the first war, focusing on Sirius as the main character. Sirius happens to be my personal favorite character in the HP universe; I howled when he died, so I completely understand and approve of the desire to expand on his backstory. I wouldn’t probably watch it, since I don’t do fan fiction, but I think it’s a neat idea and that a lot of people would probably enjoy it.

The thorn in my side about this is the Kickstarter.

VillaSenor set the original Kickstarter goal at $10,000, but in the text, the real goal is revealed to be $105,000. (The project failed funding, so they won’t be receiving any money at all.) They do claim in the notes that they will not be receiving a profit from this, but they don’t outline what the money will go toward specifically. If any of that KS money had gone to buy equipment that they kept afterward, like cameras or computer programs or even computer equipment, well, couldn’t one consider that having profited off of the series in assets gained? Would the actors be paid, and would that be considered profit made from the series? Could the rewards, some of which were tangible items based off of the Harry Potter universe, be considered to be “sold” and the money made from them profit? I tend to think of Kickstarter projects as being pre-sales a lot of the time, and I’m not sure that one could argue that the “rewards” are really different than selling items/services for a profit–the profit being the money left for the project after the last of the rewards has been shipped off. Troublesome. Either of those figures is quite a bit of scratch to be changing hands to produce a fan fiction web series, especially one that doesn’t even officially license the characters.

The case of E.L. James is a successful example of profitable fan fiction. The word around the blogosphere is that they didn’t change anything but the names and other Twilight-specific information when they published Fifty Shades; the concepts and characters were still directly ripped off of Twilight, tweaked just enough not to be sued, I suppose. Is this okay, to be profitable–and so wildly profitable–when the entire work is nakedly derivative of another person’s creative work? How many degrees of separation should one have from an original “inspiration” when publishing fan fiction?

I don’t like this, truly. It makes me uneasy, for several reasons. One, I see both of these projects as potentially being theft. I’m all for fans expressing themselves, but when money starts to change hands based on that expression, I think that steps have to be taken either to license the characters officially or make the work a unique creative work. The second thing that perturbs me is that E.L. James’s project was legitimized by being picked up by an actual publisher, despite the shady premise under which it came into being. I haven’t read the books and I may have this part wrong, but I’ve read in several places that “Edward” becoming “Christian” was a simple matter of search and replace; I, frankly, expect better of the publishing industry–especially as it’s the same industry taking measures to try to prevent piracy, including supporting highly questionable bills like SOPA and PIPA, not to mention making buying ebooks a pain in the ass because they insist on proprietary formats and DRM. Yet, when it comes to publishers making money? Sure, we can rip off Twilight; it’s hugely popular and we should take advantage. Fail.

Mind you, I think Twilight is garbage, but Meyer is still allowed proprietary rights over her own creation, even if I’d almost rather stab my eyeballs out than read it.

I think this is one reason I have become a proud supporter of small press books. I see publishers becoming more about trend and less about creativity; that’s their right, of course–they can run their businesses however they choose. I, on the other hand, choose to support presses that look for originality and quality above making a quick profit off of blatant derivation.

I’m still torn over the issue of fan fiction. As a fan, I don’t want to read it, even if the author officially sanctions it. Stephen King allowed a Dark Tower comic/graphic novel to be produced; I read the first two issues, but it didn’t seem right to me. King birthed the universe of the series in his head, and for me, he’s the gatekeeper of that world. Reading the auxiliary materials, I felt like I was watching a kid put on daddy’s tie and play dress-up, wearing shoes that were too big, their hands swallowed by shirt sleeves a tad too long. Unsanctioned fiction appeals even less to me in most cases; still, I don’t quite begrudge it . . . until money gets involved, and then, I’m peeved.

What do you guys think about fan fiction? Am I being too hard on it? Too easy? Do you read (or write) it? Talk to me in the comments!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Authors, you don’t need to yell “Fore!” to foreshadow.

Posted by greengeekgirl — August 21, 2012

The caption on Flickr for this image is “John Laing does murder to a golf ball.” JUST LIKE AUTHORS DO MURDER TO FORESHADOWING.

I touched on the topic of today’s Reading Rage a bit when I reviewed The Absolutist by John Boyne. And when I reviewed 11/22/63 by Stephen King. And (in a flattering way) when I reviewed Boleto by Alison Hagy. I realized after last week’s review of The Absolutist that clumsy foreshadowing seems to be a major pet peeve of mine.

Foreshadowing is a literary device; to foreshadow means to drop hints or indistinctly suggest future plot developments. (Wikipedia tells me that this can also be referred to as “adumbrating,” which is a cool word that means foreshadowing in a vague way, or to give a sketchy outline of something.) When done correctly, foreshadowing can create a fine sense of dread, foreboding, curiosity, excitement, lust, anticipation–all things that make you want to keep flipping pages until you get the big payoff, and then maybe have a cigarette.

This not-at-all creepy video with floating heads will explain more about how foreshadowing works.

Good foreshadowing will sometimes slip right by, unnoticed. Other times, it’s front and center, like the witches in Macbeth. (“Fair is foul, and foul is fair …”) What I find that good foreshadowing never is? Predictable and obvious, and I’ve been seeing a rash of both in books I’ve read recently.

There are times when predictable is good–in science, for example. In science, if you (and those who care to fact-check you) can test a hypothesis to the point where you can actually predict behavior based on your model, it becomes a theory–in other words, it’s considered true. Predictability in science is a win! Not so much in fiction, though, which is why people take spoilers so seriously. Would reading the sixth Harry Potter book have been such an emotional roller coaster if we already knew–SPOILERS–that Dumbledore dies, that Snape was a double agent? If Dumbledore had, before setting off with Harry to find the horcrux, visited Professor McGonagall (or whoever), and if Rowling had ended the chapter with “And it would be the last time she ever saw Dumbledore alive”–would we have felt that same punch in the gut when Snape 86′d him?

No. We wouldn’t have. We need that element of surprise to create the same emotional response to a story as we get in real life, where there are no spoilers to warn us about that car accident that’s about to happen, or that run of bad luck we’re about to have. There’s a fine line between foreshadowing and spoiling, and I’ve seen quite a few authors stepping over the lines in ways that didn’t sit well with me.

But Susie, you’re saying. Foreshadowing is hard. It must be hard if I’m doing it wrong. Can you help me? Can you help me foreshadow better?

Well, I can damn sure try.

A few ways to foreshadow without incurring my wrath:

Lay off predictions and forecasting. Imagine, if you will, a scenario where your BFF is a psychic. An actual psychic, not a “Psychic Friend.” Every time you hang out with your friend the psychic, she tells you everything that’s going to happen in advance. Sometimes, this would be really handy–”Make sure you don’t go immediately when the light turns green, someone’s going to run the light”–but I think, after awhile, it would get really annoying. “Your boss is going to bring in doughnuts tomorrow. Surprise!” “Your boyfriend is sending you flowers–roses, although I can’t see if they’re pink or read. Oh, bee tee dubs, he’s proposing.” “That waiter is going to drop all the plates he’s carrying in two minutes.” I would hate having a psychic friend if they couldn’t keep their predicting to themselves–nothing would ever be a surprise anymore, and that would suck.

Pretty sure I’d rather call the Psychic Friends network. At least they aren’t actual psychics.

Of course, if you have a character who is psychic, they would be making some sort of predictions. I think the trick here is to keep the predictions vague enough that they don’t highlight your intentions in bright neon. I just watched an episode of Northern Exposure that used this kind of prediction well; in the beginning, Maggie has a dream that she’s playing Clue with Joel. He’s anxious to leave because he has a plane to catch; Maggie doesn’t want him to go. At the end, he puts on a black fedora; Maggie warns him not to, but he puts it on anyway. This dream uses hints and symbols to create a sense of doom for Joel: they’re playing Clue, which centers around a dead body; the black fedora is supposed to symbolize the death of the person who wears it in a dream. They allude to the plane trip, but because of the context of the Maggie/Joel sexual tension, her begging him to stay comes off as more seductive than warning, especially since she’s wearing a tight red dress and bright red lipstick. Maggie wakes up, disturbed but not sure what the dream means; we feel the same until she has another dream later in the episode that gives us more clues.

Speaking of symbols, these also make good foreshadowing.

Using symbols in a novel can be tricky, of course–used clumsily, they seem hokey and forced. Symbols can, however, make for excellent foreshadowing–especially since they don’t allude directly to the events to come. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald creates an unsettled mood when Gatsby meets Daisy again for the first time:

“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand.

“I’m sorry about the clock,” he said.

… “It’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically.

I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.

The clock, in this case, is symbolic, nestled just before talk of how much time has passed since Daisy and Gatsby have seen each other. Gatsby’s righting the clock is also symbolic–not only does he want to “right” the time that has passed in which Daisy got away from him, his careful action also contrasts with the carelessness that Nick attributes to Tom and Daisy later. The word “smashed” is used again at the end, describing the events that resulted in Gatsby’s and Myrtle’s deaths: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Symbolic foreshadowing can be oh-so-subtle but still create the proper mood or mindset for the reader. The meeting doesn’t go smoothly, and Gatsby’s story ends in tragedy.

Use a smaller event to foreshadow a larger event.

This time, I think we’ll turn to Steinbeck. In Of Mice and Men, Lennie, the mentally-handicapped man that George travels with and cares for, is given a puppy, which he proceeds to pet to death. Later, when Curley’s wife offers to let Lennie stroke her hair, our stomachs tie up in knots–we know what happens when Lennie gets to stroke soft things. Things don’t end well for Curley’s wife–who also foreshadowed Lennie’s death in her own way. She is a poisonous character, flirting with the men one moment and threatening the lynch mob in the next; when Lennie is fully taken in by her sweeter side, we know that the lynch mob can’t be far behind.

Set the mood with atmosphere and tone.

While you may not want to open a book with “It was a dark and stormy night,” using the weather, the setting, and the general tone can help foreshadow without actually giving away plot details. In Japan, seasons are often used to represent the cycle of life; a professor told my Japanese culture class (ten years ago.. eep) that autumn was symbolically used as dying. Spring would obviously be (re)birth. If I wanted to write a story about death, I might put it at the end of summer, especially if it occurred after a long illness (a.k.a, a long, hot, miserable summer without air conditioning. ZOMG see what I did there? I TRANSFERRED FEELINGS TO SET A TONE.) If you don’t want to go quite so philosophical, use a little mood-lighting, or time of day, or an appropriate setting to get your point across.

Foreshadow early.

There’s no point in introducing foreshadowing late in the game. We’re practically on top of the event by this point, so we don’t need any hints–we just need to keep going to get there.

So, readers–have you read any books with obvious foreshadowing lately? Or books with awesome foreshadowing? Does bad foreshadowing take you out of a story? Would you add anything to my foreshadowing tips? Drop those comments like they’re hot!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Sorry, crappy characters, we’re voting you off the island.

Posted by greengeekgirl — August 14, 2012

Survival of the fittest and/or the most crazy.

Also? We might set your beards on fire.

Before I begin, I’d like to let you guys know that I have been named a finalist in BookRiot’s START HERE Write-In Giveaway. You can help me win! I mean, if you want. Just go to my entry page here and click the Facebook “like” button for the post. Thanks a million, friends!

One thing that can kill a book–even more than bad or no editing, a fuzzy plot, or fire–is a weak cast of characters. When written properly, a book’s characters drive it from beginning to end. The characters make readers fall in love, fall out of love, cry, get angry, or worry anxiously–all of which fuel the need to keep flipping the pages until we run out of pages entirely.

Because brilliant characters matter so much to a book’s success, it’s hardly surprising that writing characters could arguably be the toughest part of writing a novel. Anybody can whip up a sequence of events, really–and many of us probably have practice in doing just that on a daily basis. “See, the reason that your car is dented? I was driving very slowly and carefully down the street when some TOTAL MANIAC came barreling though going A HUNDRED MILES PER HOUR being chased by five cop cars. I pulled over to the side but I think one of them must have bumped the car. Why wasn’t there a car chase on the news? Um–hell, I don’t know, do I look like I edit the news? OKAY FINE, I hit a pole in the 7-Eleven parking lot.” (Some people are more successful at this than others.) Making a sequence of events come to life, though, requires characters with deep motivations and many-faceted personalities. Juggling motivation and action, along with character interaction and dialogue, can be tricky.

I know there are legions of writers out there desperate to know whether their characters pass muster, probably refreshing this page a hundred times a day to see when, oh when, I’m going to write about this. Don’t worry, though. I have a handy list of characters that, should they sneak into your latest creative work, should be immediately banished and probably also drawn and quartered, just to set an example for the others.

The protagonist without a face

Okay, so the protagonist probably has a literal face–eyes and nose and so forth, maybe even some teeth. Figuratively, though, he or she is faceless in that we don’t know anything about the character. We don’t know what the character stands for, what he or she cares about, who he or she loves; it seems, really, like the character is a crude vessel through which the plot–which is often unnecessarily complicated–unfolds. The author might graciously bestow table scraps upon us from time to time about the character’s history or thoughts, but rarely enough to make a complete meal. (This might be the number one reason that shitty novels get fed to dogs. What, you don’t do that?)

(NOTE: DO NOT FEED BOOKS TO DOGS, I WAS TOTALLY JOKING.)

Unless you’re writing a book about existential ennui, a protagonist like this is one of the worst possible things you can do to your story. As readers, we desperately need to connect with your protagonist in some way, whether we love her or hate her. If I don’t care about your main character, I can’t care about your book. It’s like trying to love a statue.

This doesn’t just apply to your main characters, either–unless you have a specific reason that a character needs to be “faceless” or mysterious, all of your characters should be round and developed, with clear motivation, even if they only have a tiny part in the book. In Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, SK creates a character of the man who, in real life, hit him with a van. (This series is so meta.) We don’t see his whole back story and we don’t spend a lot of time with him; we do find out enough about the character, though, to make his actions make perfect sense. Hell, we even find out enough about the character that we could extrapolate his behavior in other situations, if called upon to do so. He’s in the story briefly*, but his development makes him memorable and enriches the book itself.

*Of course, “briefly” in the Dark Tower series could mean several hundred pages.

The superfluous character

I’m going to use a TV example here. I know, this is about books, but the best example I can think of comes from TV. So, I guess you can imagine that it’s a series of books instead of a TV show OH WAIT IT IS A SHOW BASED ON BOOKS, so I might be covered. I haven’t read the books, so I have no idea if they’re at all similar, but yeah. Awesome. Technically still talking about books. Unf-unf-unf.

TOUCHDOWN
Also, I just figured out how to make animated gifs. I KNOW. I can make them ALL THE TIME NOW. I know you’re the most excited about this, too.

I am–or, I guess, was is the more accurate verb, since I haven’t watched it for awhile–a fan of the show Bones. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but I really liked the characters; I especially like the main character, Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, who shares a lot of my Aspie traits (despite not being an confirmed Aspie, much like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory–digressing!). A few seasons in, the show ~~took a dark turn~~ (as I re-read this, I realize how dumb this sounds since the whole premise of the show is solving grisly murders; I’m leaving this in so you can laugh at my idiocy) as Bones and FBI Agent Booth chase after a serial killer called Gormogon. They eventually discover that the killer has been training an apprentice who works in the lab with Dr. Brennan! GASP. The call was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE.

Everyone was pretty upset about the apprentice subplot because it meant that the character, Zack, was leaving the show. I have to admit, I was upset about it too, just because of that kneejerk “I hate change” thing that we humans go through from time to time. In hindsight, however, I can see that they made a wise decision in removing him from the show. The problem with Zack on the show was that he was a carbon copy of Dr. Brennan, but younger and less experienced: he, too, was a coldly logical genius with social/Aspergery issues who had the exact same career focus as Dr. Brennan. He practically needed to be a serial killer’s apprentice just to do something that Dr. Brennan hadn’t already done.

When you have two characters that are almost identical, you run the risk of being repetitive, if their arcs take the same paths, or of possibly cannibalizing character growth from each other as you strive to create unique circumstances for the two of them. (Heh, heh. Incidentally, that serial killer was also a cannibal, so I guess I kind of just made a pun. You probably had to be there.) If you make sure characters have enough differences between them, you won’t end up with a couple of half-assed characters that wither from lack of development.

The stagnant character

D’you ever read a book and, by the end of it, you wonder why certain characters never just manned up and took care of their shit? Or, barring that, didn’t go into a crazy downward spiral beyond salvation? It’s a little bit like listening to a married couple having an argument that you know they have had a hundred times just in the past week, or having a friend that whines about the same problems every single time you talk. Yes, that’s right. It’s absolutely obnoxious.

If nothing is happening to your character, your character probably should be 86′d–unless that character serves as a foil for your protagonist and you’re specifically highlighting how your protagonist has decided to act vs. the consequences of inaction. You could also use a “constant” character as an anchor–a mother, for example, who’s always got Sunday dinner on when her children come home from the big bad ugly world. These characters should be used in this capacity sparingly, though. If things aren’t changing, it means that repetition is occurring, and repetition is baaad, Groundhog Day notwithstanding. We can only re-read the same scene two or three times before we get the urge to swan dive off of the nearest building.

These characters don’t necessarily have to overcome their problems, either. Things just need to change to push your story along, or, swan dives.

Angels and devils

Did you know, there aren’t really any people who are 100% evil or 100% noble? And that even the most evil people you can think of had motivations besides, “Welp, I guess I’m gonna do this terrible thing because I am a harbinger of all things unholy”? The whole Good vs. Evil thing is so played out.

Let’s take the most evil motherfucker in recent history–Dan Brown. Wait, sorry, I meant Hitler. If one wanted to fictionalize Hitler, what’s a more compelling story–that he did all of the fucked-up things that he did because he was just “evil” and he just did things to be evil, or that he did all of the things that he did because he genuinely thought in his warped mind that it was the right thing to do and that he was a hero? I find the second (real) scenario far more chilling because it’s so damn humanizing. It’s easy enough to think of a time when you were wrong and convinced you were right . . . as soon as you do, boom–you have something in common with Hitler. Even if it’s not to scale, just being able to go there raises the hair on the backs of our necks.

Characters who are goody-two-shoes are, in my opinion, even worse. Oh, you’re gonna fight the powers of evil because it’s the right thing to do, are you? Is that your default autopilot setting? As we all learned in middle school when our teachers showed us poorly-produced videos about peer pressure, doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing is kind of really hard. There’s a reason that we ~~sane people~~ get inspired when we see someone stand up for what’s right. There’s a reason that Rosa Parks is a hero for something as seemingly simple as not giving up a bus seat. Deciding to do the right thing often comes after a long internal struggle, a war where morality, nobility, and conscience do battle with self-preservation, self-interest, and fear. That should be a major conflict for any “good” character, if not the central conflict; to leave that out would be to cheapen the whole idea of “good.”

Characters who only exist to make another character’s story arc more compelling

I know, this one is kind of advanced. Don’t be scared.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but there is a fine line between characters who only exist to further another character’s arc, and characters who only appear in a story to further another character’s arc. The difference lies in how the character is developed, rather than how much page time they receive or their purpose in a story. To illustrate the difference, I’m going to discuss everyone’s favorite trope, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Quick background if you’re not familiar: a Manic Pixie Dream Girl comes into a male protagonist’s life (or it could be a female, but it’s far more often male for this specific trope–females probably have our own trope for this) and fills it with joy and spontaneity and fun weirdness. If you saw the movies Garden State, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, or just about anything starring Zooey Deschanel, you’ve seen a MPDG. (The trope also appears in books–The Perks of Being a Wallflower, High Fidelity, and Norwegian Wood all feature MPDGs. Still on subject, woo!) One of the major dilemmas of this trope is that the MPDG often exists solely to help another character, generally a male love interest, make his sucky, doldrummy life better. To do this, she whips him into a chaotic, whimsical frenzy, usually just by being delightfully quirky.

The problem with this kind of character, whether it’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or another character that exists to spur on the protagonist’s development, is that they’re boring. Yes, boring, no matter how many times you write them screaming “PENIS!” in public places. I totally get that, if you have a protagonist, every other character in the story revolves around the protagonist to an extent just by virtue of the story being presented from a certain point of view. Those characters still need their own motivations for existing, though. The MPDG, for example, hasn’t lived her whole life waiting for you, the protagonist, to come along so she could change your life; without showing or having their own raison d’etre, the character becomes a cardboard cut-out of a real person. As I said before, it can be a fine line to walk. I think the key is that, even if the supporting cast are only mentioned in the story because they have affected the protagonist’s arc, the characters don’t only exist to further another character’s arc. They need their own motivations, desires, weaknesses, and histories.

Holy shit, I went through my stories and I had to delete every single character. This sucks.

I’m sorry. I am. It really is better this way, though.

What about you guys? What kinds of characters would you add to the list? Are there any you would take off? Do you have infuriating examples of any of these characters? Did you go vote for my entry here? COMMENTS ALL THE COMMENTS