Joshua Unruh's Blog, page 3

Words Mean Things: The Superhero

We can all agree on what an airplane is, right? Wings, engines, has full flight capability. A fighter jet is a plane built specifically for speed and blowing things up. An airliner is a plane built specifically for moving people quickly and economically. They're both still basically airplanes. But is a car just an airplane with the wings removed? Obviously, the answer is no. You've taken away so many aspects of what makes an airplane an airplane that you've turned it into something else.

Genres are pretty fluid things. But while an individual genre is pretty malleable, they can be knocked all out of shape if you work hard enough at it. There's a moment when you strip the wings and jet engine from your genre, and it stops being an airplane and becomes a car.

You all followed that analogy, right? Okay, good, carry on.

Well, last week I came up on what we shall charitably call a dialogue about superheroes that resulted in me, as a writer and a fan, needing to know what actually makes a superhero story a superhero story. What are the absolute bare minimum requirements of the genre.

I've discussed before how superheroes are almost infinitely malleable. But while you can keep adding things to a superhero story and still (probably) have a superhero story, there must be a point where subtracting elements leaves you without one. Otherwise the words don't mean anything. So what are these bare minimum elements? I'm glad you asked!

First, a caveat. Although each of these elements is important, a story doesn't have to have every single one of them to be a superhero story. Neither do all the elements have to be of equal intensity. But you do require a quorum of these elements and at least a few of them turned up to 11. Otherwise your jet is just a car.

For instance, Batman has no super powers, but he's demonstrably a superhero. The Fantastic Four don't have secret identities, but they're also still squarely in the superhero genre. Sherlock Holmes and Doc Savage fight crime, but they are not superheroes.

Will there be fringe cases that could go either way? You betcha. But I think they're going to be the minority because I am aiming squarely for a baseline definition of superhero that makes sense with the history of the genre as well as pointing into the future of superhero characters.

Superheroes Must

Possess Super Powers - Superheroes must have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Concussive force fired from the eyes. The proportional strength and speed of a spider. Unbreakable knives popping out of knuckles. Titanic strength, flight, freeze breath, et al. Bottom line, the superhero is super.
Possess A Colorful Costumed Identity... - Superheroes wear costumes. You can call them uniforms or action suits if that makes you feel better. Whatever you name it, the superhero has a unique and visually striking outfit she wears when fighting crime (we'll get to that one) that could not possibly be confused for street clothes.
...Which Hides Their Civilian Identity - Only a handful of trusted associates or dedicated allies can know the true identity of our hero or heroine. Naturally, this brings with it the attendant hiding-a-double-life shenanigans.
Fight Crime... - Superheroes punch muggers, bank robbers, mobsters, terrorists, Nazis and whoever else is foolish enough to commit nefarious deeds in front of our hero.
...Which Also Cloaks Itself In Colorful Costumed Identities - Run-of-the-mill gunsels and fourth columnists are fine for a while, but eventually a superhero needs somebody who does evil as flamboyantly as the hero does good. Superheroes simply must have supervillains.
Battle Internal Conflicts Literalized Externally - This is admittedly a little more esoteric than I wanted to get for this list. Still, I've been convinced this entry is deserved. But what does this gobbledygook mean? I'll explain with two examples. Peter Parker's internal conflict is deciding what is the greatest good. On one side of town, his loving, ailing aunt needs the pills Peter holds. On the other side of town, the Scorpion is blowing things up and robbing banks. Peter is literally faced with the dilemma of having great power, yet not knowing where the greater responsibility lies. Or take a dying Superman who has always been empowered by solar energy literally facing his own mortality by fighting an evil computer in the shape of a sun.
Be Better People Than Us So As To Inspire Us - For some reason, I feel like this statement is going to be the most controversial. But it's also the one that most defines superheroes. Superheroes are selfless. They sacrifice to protect their fellow men and women. And while they are people (albeit fictional ones) and far from perfect, they are still heroes. I'm going to quote Chris Sims of Comics Alliance at length here for a minute.

...superheroes are a fundamentally optimistic proposition. They all descend from Superman, a character who’s built around the idea that this person with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men would use them exclusively for the benefit of others.

They have to be better people, because they serve to inspire us to be better people.

Optimism. Inspiration. Selflessness. An example of how to be better . I'm down with that stuff. Somewhere along the line it became cool to be cynical. Like, hoping for the future or having compassion for your fellow man became less important than how hip you are.

To hell with that noise! I want to be inspired! I want to be inspiring! And if optimism is the new counter-culture, then Superman is the most punk rock thing in the universe! It also means all those guys who think they're too cool for superheroes the way they ought to be are really just sad sacks who want to drag down an ideal. Good luck keeping a guy like this down. And me too, super powers or not.

PS: So that got a little crazy there at the end. But I still think this is a useful metric! Argue with me in the comments if you like. Especially on the seventh point. I mean, you're sad and you're wrong if you want to argue against that, but I still appreciate interesting conversation.

The Three Stages of Internet Pop Culture Conversations (And Why They’re Baloney Sandwich)

Believe it or not, I don’t get into a lot of conversations about my pop cultural loves via the internet. Oh, I IM or chat or Hangout or whatever often enough, but I don’t typically discuss these topics with semi-strangers via social media statuses and comments.

Well, I screwed up last week and actually did have a conversation about superheroes and how a currently “hot” creator doesn’t really get them. This was not all that interesting because I recognize that I’m almost always talking to people who haven’t thought about this as hard as I have. I also recognize this is incredibly pretentious to say, but facts is facts.

No, what was interesting was that I could have predicted the three stages of this conversation before I even started having it. And this leads me to believe that I can now do so for every pop culture conversation that has happened or will happen on the internet.

Just know that if you are the perpetrator of any of these things, you are at least kind of clueless and at worst an idiot. Act like ya know.

The Stages of Debate Denial

Stage 1 – Single Word or Phrase Rebuttals: If you have ever seen someone explain why they like, don’t like, or would have done something different with some piece of pop culture using several measurable and demonstrable points and responded with “Poppycock” or “Ridiculous” or “That’s where you’re wrong” while not responding to or even acknowledging their points, then you’ve initiated stage one. And nobody will thank you for it.Brevity may be the soul of wit, but brevity without wit is the soul of asshattery.


Stage 2 – Personal Taste Is A Poor Excuse For Making : Yes, we’re talking about arts and entertainment. Yes, there is absolutely an element of subjectivity to every piece of art and entertainment. Yes, personal taste factors heavily into both a creator’s choices and your enjoyment of those choices. Unfortunately, while the subjectivity of personal taste will cover a multitude of sins, it won’t cover an infinite number. Sometimes ideas are just bad or executions are just poor. These are rarely the work of an auteur who is just plain smarter than us plebeians. And if you’re only rebuttal to somebody’s well thought out points on subjective things is “well, that’s just your taste,” then I have bad news: You’re never going to make captain of the internet debate team.


Stage 3 – I Don't Buy "Then Just Don’t Buy It": Yes, obviously if I don’t like some piece of pop culture the natural response is to “vote with my dollars” by denying it my patronage. And that strategy would totally work, too, if only I could influence all my friends to do the same. And if all my friends were, in fact, the totality of North America. And even then, that’s not really anything like a guarantee that we’re going to avoid another Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, or Transformers movie. Guys, this “argument” is just stupid. I’m sure nobody has ever walked into a restaurant just to give it a shot or on the suggestion of a friend, then found it a horrible experience. Oh no, nobody could ever accidentally spend money on things they wouldn’t like. And not only is the effectiveness of this suggestion incredibly dubious on any given piece of work let alone a specific take on a character or concept, it also doesn’t address the core problems of the work in question. Whether or not it made a bajillion dollars – or whether I’m responsible for a handful of those dollars – does not address the core issues of “is it creative?” or “is it well executed?” or “is it a faithful adaptation of the source material?”

Well Yelling

Here’s the worst part of this whole thing: I’m yelling down the exact same well making this post as I did commenting on social media. I must enjoy this kind of thing, right? No, actually, I really don’t. I just have a slim sliver of the thinnest hope that somebody who does these things will happen upon this post and realize they aren’t making an argument or participating in a debate.

What they’re doing is trying to short circuit one. And that isn’t really enjoyable or useful to anybody.

So I choose to think of this post as throwing a penny into the wishing well rather than yelling down one. Anybody else got some coppers to pitch in?

Where’s Rory?

My friend and fellow YA author Heather Sutherlin has a crazy big problem. Rory, one of the characters from Seen, jumped into a portal. Now we don't know where Rory is. She could be anywhere in the world. She could be anywhere in all possible worlds! It's a big mystery and Heather kind of needs to get it sorted out because there are some other books in this series.

So, in order to help answer where Rory is, I'm chipping in to make sure you know where she is not.

First, I know that Rory is not in the secret headquarters of the Teenage Extranormal Emergency Network, better known as TEEN. We know this with absolute certainty because you have to be an active TEEN Agent to have access to the super secret headquarters. And TEEN isn't a real security and counter-terrorist agency anyway. It's totally made up to sell books like The Plundered Parent Protocol. So no matter how much TEEN Agents Elly Mourning, Hea Jung Noone, and Saturday  Knight might want to hang out with her, Rory can't be there.

I also assure you that Rory is not wandering ancient and mythic Scandinavia fighting monsters with Finn Styrrsson. That is because Rory is a young girl and not a man with the strength of thirty in each grip. Rory is, I'm sure, quite resourceful and capable, but she does not battle sea dragons or wolves the size of houses. She certainly doesn't murder elves by the score. Finn also probably uses much harsher language than Rory is used to. No, I'm afraid Rory is definitely not hanging out with the Myth Reaver.

But where's Rory? I can only point you to this handy spot to help narrow down where she isn't with a few other fine authors.

Good luck!

PS: You might start by reading Seen.

Through a portal, into another world, on an impossible quest...This wasn't how they planned to spend the summer.

Rory has no idea what's going on in the woods behind her house, but it's driving her crazy. On the last day of her senior year she finds herself caught up once again in the curious happenings of the forest and walks away without any of the answers she was hoping to find. To make matters worse, she is sent to visit a sick neighbor and instead finds the hottest guy she's ever seen. When she discovers his brother's incredible secret she falls further into her own chaos and into a fate she never could have imagined.

Jaron is just counting the days until the summer is over and he can get back to his real life. Stuck with his little brother on a tiny farm in rural Oklahoma is not exactly his idea of fun. But when Rory shows up on his doorstep with an armload of pie, he knows his summer has just taken a sharp turn into new territory. He never expected the adventure they would discover next or the quest that would change their lives forever.

The Miracle Monday That Wasn’t

I live in Oklahoma City. Way down in the southeast corner of it. I can stand on my roof and see Moore. Which means, if I had stood on my roof all night, I would have watched the constant flicker of spotlights and heard the thrum of helicopters as relief workers, police, and firefighters slowly transitioned from search and rescue to recovery.

Yesterday was Miracle Monday.

 

 

Miracle Monday is a little joke among Superman fans. It's a holiday of the future celebrated on the third Monday of May by people who commemorate the time Superman defeated Satan.

I love it when I get to write sentences like that.

I also love the idea of Miracle Monday. Especially the part where, for generations, nobody remembered exactly why they were celebrating. They just knew they had an overall feeling of good will and well being on that day. It took a time travelling journalism student to even figure out what event could be so good, so noble, so life affirming that all of humanity celebrates it on an instinctive level.

Naturally, I told people "Happy Miracle Monday!" both in person and via social media. Some of them even wished it back to me, although you could see them trying to figure out if they should know what I was talking about.

But that was all before three in the afternoon. It was around then that I piled myself, my six year old son, and two dogs into the storm shelter in my garage to wait and see if we'd still have a house a couple hours later.

Once we were underground, it wasn't very exciting. I spent most of the time listening to hail the size of tennis balls hitting the garage door, fielding texts and phone calls from concerned family and friends, and wondering about my wife's safety. Elijah and I split the rest of the time between keeping our minds off the storm with Candy Crush and watching the angry blob of red and purple drift across radar in spits and sputters caused by a thin bar of WiFi signal.

When we finally got the all clear, I wrestled the boy and the dogs back out of the shelter and turned on the news. I began to see the aftermath of a tornado that spanned an entire mile and rode nearly the exact same path of destruction that one of its brethren had on May 3, 1999.

I discovered that it hit an elementary school less than ten miles from my house. The source of my drinking water is a lake less than five miles away, and the same tornado knocked out the water purification plant there. Some large pieces of the playground equipment from a park my son and I often played at had landed on a friend's porch. A farm we visited on a school field trip simply isn't there anymore.

The most destructive storm in recorded history. Ruined homes. Debris thrown into other states. Collapsed schools. Students trapped under collapsed schools. Dead children.

All that tumbled into my mind alongside Miracle Monday and I had the most honest, most ridiculous, most childish thought of my adult life.

I wished for Superman to save us. I longed for a streak of bright blue and red with lungs powerful enough to blow this monster storm the other direction. In my mind's eye, I vividly saw children trapped in darkness, afraid and alone, suddenly bathed in light, blinking against it to see a mighty S stretched across a broad chest.

But my wish didn't come true. Not in the way I wanted it to in that moment. Instead, I had constant television coverage of neighborhoods and businesses I knew reduced to rubble. Lists of children waiting for their parents to drive down highways choked with traffic and detritus and rescue them. The tally of the dead climbing.

I turned it off eventually, overwhelmed and overloaded with the sheer awfulness of it. I hugged my son and tried to explain why his mother and I were so upset, how there were far too many parents that weren't going to be able to hug their kids tonight or ever again.

Since then, the relief efforts have been stunning. Children reunited with parents. Okies donating massive amounts of food, water, blankets, clothes, and other necessities to relief efforts. People working all night to do what they could before any other weather struck. I'm sure eventually some amazing and triumphant stories will come out of all this.

But right now...right now, it's just a Miracle Monday without any miracles. I'm left in a dark place where it's hard to see the light. My heart aches for all my neighbors with no place to lay their heads and the grieving parents with holes in their lives.

Though we dodged tragedy yesterday, my family has honestly been living through the most tumultuous year and a half of our lives. With no exaggeration, the last eighteen months have been physically dangerous, emotionally harrowing, mentally exhausting, and bank account draining.

Today, I do what I must. I'll count my blessings. I'll hug my family and remember how much emptier my life would be without them. Soon, I'll head out to buy water for relief workers. I'll give blood for the wounded. Most powerful of all, I'll pray...for me, for those afflicted, and for those delivered.

I'll remember that, while my childish wish didn't come true, I already have a Superman with a special day commemorating the moment he overcame Ultimate Evil. I'll celebrate that, while he didn't defeat the tornado for us yesterday, he did defeat death itself. I will forget about my less-than-miraculous Monday and his long, dark Friday.

I will affirm with word, deed, thought, and prayer that Sunday is coming. No, better than that. Miracle Sunday is here.

From Tabletop to Paperback – Prolegamena Part 3

Previously, I'd spent two posts walking the gamemaster (or self-aware career player) through the bare minimum steps of pre-writing and comparing to the prep work one usually does for a game. I'd left two items untouched, the Climax and Resolution. I'll elaborate on them now, then hopefully tie a bow of optimism on the whole thing.

The Climax

So if there's a Big Event at the beginning of your story or game that kicks everything off and lays out the Story Question, and the middle is all about refining that Question and denying the protagonist(s) any closure on it, then the Climax is where you finally answer the question.

Luke throws away his lightsaber and insists he'll never join the Emperor. The Ghostbusters commit to crossing the streams to save the world at the (theoretical) expense of their own lives. Jake and Elwood play a set and get the cash advance to bail out the orphanage. Marlowe figures out what happened to Regan, but he refuses to tell the General.

When planning game sessions, most GMs have a Climax in mind. Again, part of this is just prepping for the night's session of gaming. But additionally, if you've gone to all the effort of setting up this long chain of interconnected events, there needs to be a satisfying win, loss, or draw that says to the players, "that's it, you solved it or survived it, that part of the story is over."

Take a Chance on Me

Thanks to the whims of chance (that is, rolling dice), there are two main lessons that gaming can teach a GM about the Climax. One is, in my opinion, more positive and the other is more negative. We'll start with the happier but more difficult of the two.

Sometimes, players don't roll well enough, or the GM rolls very well, or some linchpin of the plan just goes south, and the heroes don't succeed. They might die, they might get captured, the person they're meant to save could flip to the dark side or get sacrificed or whatever.

I prefer stories where the answer to the Question is No. Or, even better, a "Yes, but..." that makes you wish it had just been a No. Years of experience at the gaming table combined with reams of Noir reading material left me with a firm grasp on how to answer No or Yes, but... in a way that others would find satisfying.

They may not be happy about it, but my players will be satisfied. That might mean the loss leads into the next adventure, or they might just recognize that their heroes went out in a blaze of glory. Whatever it is, when the dice force you to tell your players No or Yes, but... and you manage to do it in a particularly compelling way, then dissect it to see exactly what you did right. When you figure it out, take it to heart and do it again.

Game of (un)Chance

The more negative lesson -- although much easier to fix as a writer -- is when chance screws your table out of the chance at a Climax. In what the GM considers the middle of the story, the heroes have a mishap, or a random encounter table generates a bit too robust of a monster, or somebody fails a skill check in a way that leaves death or imprisonment as the only reasonable outcomes and you score the dreaded Total Party Kill (TPK).

There are ways to make this work at the table, but they take a lot of tapdancing for me if I want to leave the game's teeth in. I can hand wave it, I can fudge the damage, but if I do that and the players catch me, then they feel the game will just gum them but never bite.

The reason this is easy to fix as a writer is that you aren't rolling dice to see what happens in your story. Oh, you should make it difficult, painful, and all around terrible on your protagonists, but they don't die, aren't maimed, and don't piss in the king's favorite wine cup unless you want them to. And if you want them to, then it's easier to figure out how they're going to get out of it to progress towards that Climax.

The Resolution

As exciting and important as the Climax is, it doesn't really work without a Resolution. Blowing the Death Star up is great, but rolling the credits right away without the celebratory hugs and medals would just be weird and unsatisfying. Same thing in a different way when the Story Question's answer is in the negative. Double Indemnity doesn't work nearly as well without Keyes finding Neff recording his confession.

This can be tough at the game table. I can't tell you how many nights I am scrambling against the end of the night to get an action scene finished before everyone has to leave for the night. The last foe is vanquished and everyone starts to stand up and gather their books and dice. They had fun, but they're ready to go even though the storyteller in me wants have a moment to appreciate the victory.

This can be doubly difficult at the end of an arc. Everybody wants to know how much XP they get or what loot the Big Bad had upon her person or in her stronghold. For an RPG, these mechanical concerns are very, very important. But if part of what we're doing is telling a story together, so is the Resolution.

There aren't a lot of dice to roll, but it's still important for the city to throw a parade for the heroes, or for the kidnapped princess to kiss the hero that saved her, or for M to tell the 00s they kept the world from slipping over the brink. Sometimes I'll even write this section out in advance. I try not to read it verbatim, but a few choice phrases down on paper can give the moment just as much gravitas as when they rolled the final to-hit on the evil mastermind.

Same thing goes for your story or novel. You have to work very, very hard to write yourself to a spot where you don't need some kind of denouement. I did it once with my Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall, but even after all that work for the big punch ending, I felt the need for a very brief epilogue to bring it home. In fact, a good rule of thumb is allow one chapter as Resolution. Even if you use part of it to lead into a sequel, your readers will thank you with a warm feeling of a satisfyingly finished story.

Bringing It Home

So you've plotted your course and gone on the long, scenic drive of writing a story. It probably felt a lot like prepping for six months of games at a one go, but you've done it. Do you think it's time to sit down at the keyboard and start typing words?

Almost. We need to talk a bit about one more core concept (and a few bits of friendly advice after that. That core concept is Story Structure. Honestly, this can be a bit problematic to map to your gaming experience. Or rather, you do it in microcosm over and over, but now you're going to have to do it in macrocosm (sorta like your prep versus your pre-writing). Sound complicated? It is...a little. But it's nothing gamers don't already do, they just do it differently.

Come back next time and we'll talk about Story Structure. See you then!

From Tabletop to Paperback – Prolegamena Part 2

Full disclosure, this bit is definitely for the gamemasters more than the career players. That's okay, though, there's still good advice to be had, and it starts here.

Hey! Career players! Yeah, you guys who show up every week with a handful of dice, a bag of chips, and an inability to recall non-player character names. GM SOMETHING!

First, you'll give your usual, beleaguered GM a much deserved break. Second, it'll give you a new appreciation for her work. Thirdly, you might discover you have a talent for it. And, last but not least, it'll make this chapter much more useful.

The Blessing of Lonely Fun

You may recall we discussed the dangers of Lonely Fun, such as finding yourself so bogged down in the details of a fictional world that your players are in a straitjacket of playing through your plots. Or maybe there's just so much cultural information, they feel confused about what's acceptable and what's not. If your wandering adventurers are trying to figure out what hat to wear on this day of the week, you might be doing it wrong.

But when you shift from gamemaster to author, Lonely Fun can be your best friend. There are still dangers, of course, but they can become strengths with a little work. For instance...

Writing is a fairly solitary pursuit (although I'll talk about ways to ameliorate that in future posts), so getting used to working by yourself might be easier on you.
Even better, you'll discover that so much of the work you do as a GM directly ports over to Pre-writing.
Best yet, so very much more of your prep makes it into the final piece (which, as a long time GM myself, I find to be decidedly NOT the case at the game table).

But let's talk about the good news before the great news.

Mastering the Pre-Writing

Real quick, here's a recap of the bare minimum pre-writing you ought to do.

Story Question
Character List
Scene List
The Climax
The Resolution

Now let's break them down one at a time.

Story Question

The odds are, when you pitched the game you wanted to play to your group, you had an initial arc in mind. It might have been a "how we met and became a team" arc. Or it could be an "introduction to the world" arc (even if The World is just the seedy underbelly of the city they'll never leave). Maybe everybody is up to speed on the the world and it has a built in reason to start as a team, so you get to jump right into a proper arc. In that case, you probably want to hook them as hard and fast as you can with something that sets this game apart from other campaigns.

If you've done this as a gamemaster, you're already figuring out Story Questions. "Will they gel into a team in time to survive the danger?" is a solid Story Question, and used to great effect in the first Mission: Impossible movie. "How will the noobs handle an introduction to a larger world?" is also a good Question. Think about Starship Troopers or even Ghostbusters.

The "everyone's up to speed so hook 'em hard and fast" Story Question is a bit too nebulous for specific examples. But since every GM I know considers that the meat of the RPG sandwich, I probably don't have to give any. You're already thinking of your best campaigns and retroactively applying Story Questions to them.

See? You already do this all the time. You may not do it well, but that's because RPGs shouldn't be plotted as tightly as a novel and the Question can change quickly or without warning because of what your players do. That's fine! Specific Story Questions are still a place I struggle, but I'm getting better at them all the time. And my games are getting better as well.

Character List

Characters are both easier and harder when it comes to connecting GM skills with writer skills. The harder part is that, as a GM, you're used to your group handing you a pile of main characters. You don't have to make them up all by yourself! Finally, some work the GM doesn't have to do. Amiright?

Although coming up with characters isn't exactly a foreign concept to GMs, they just tend to be antagonists and secondary/supporting characters. Still, Batman & Robin aren't nearly as interesting without Jim Gordon and the Joker, so don't discount the importance of antagonists and supporting characters.

To switch gears, GMs grow very used to taking a disparate group of weirdos and figuring out how and why they would work together. Sometimes this is accomplished with world building (creating an organization or important NPC for the heroes to work for) and sometimes with plot (the heroes don't know why, but the same unseen group or person wants them all dead). This is where it gets easier as an author.

If you're creating a story where the Plot, the Character, and the Setting all lean on one another as I've discussed before, then your characters might be a disparate group of weirdos, only this time you've created them to be weird in ways that will make for interesting and exciting stories.

I don't have to sit with six character sheets in front of me and ponder how I'm going to get them to care about one another. Since I'm making the characters from scratch, I already know which ones will rub the others the wrong way, or who the group will think of as a dumb hick, or who is secretly somebody else's half-sibling.

This is one reason I've become a huge fan of group character generation in my games. But that hasn't always been the case, and my ability to tie together characters I didn't make up -- most of whom have personalities painted in only the broadest strokes -- makes doing that work on the front end a piece of cake.

The Scene List

In a lot of rules systems, such as Savage Worlds or Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, the threats have pretty detailed stat boxes. You can wing them (I certainly have), but it's better if you have them worked out, collected, and handy. Or you have to plan skill tests out ahead of time just to make sure you aren't caught flatfooted. Which skill will I allow for building a makeshift bridge? How many agility or athletic checks should it take to swim the raging river? That kind of thing.

While these are fairly rudimentary examples of it, this is what planning a scene list looks like. You may wind up not needing those stats or your players may go such a different direction that your skill tests never happen. But you still looked at the characters, their goals, and how they normally approach situations, then made an educated guess about how they would choose to approach this situation.

Those guesses naturally led to particular scenes, all of which are links in a chain to the resolution, and require things like stat blocks, skill sets, or at least some planning of locations and secondary characters who might be present.

That's all a scene list is. How will my characters move from the Big Event that sets their story in motion to the Climax that answers my Story Question? If the Big Event is A and the Climax is Z, then the scenes are B through Y.

Now, as a GM, I never like to have a combat that's just about killing something. The fight has to tie into protecting or rescuing someone or something, or it has to be the outcome of a difficult choice, or it has to be tied to something on a character sheet. Otherwise, it's just throwing dice around and doing math. Who cares?

Similarly, as a writer, I need to think in terms of Scene Questions. How is this scene moving my characters toward the Climax? In other words, how does answering this Scene's Question add a brick in the wall that will eventually answer my Story Question?

Now, like I said above, a lot of times, the scene prep I do as a GM is thrown right out the window. My guesses about how the players would react to a situation might have been educated, but they were still guesses. And guess can (often) go wrong.

The same thing can happen, to some extent, when I start writing my novel. Sometimes unexpected new ideas occur to me or a character's voice fleshes out and I realize she would NEVER do the thing I'd planned for her in the scene list.

That's okay, it happens! But if you know where your characters need to be after that SNAFU, then it's easier to replace the defective link in the chain with a newer, stronger one.

I'll talk more about how that happens and what to do about it after I discuss Climax and Resolution.

But this post is getting a bit long, so I'll save those two pre-writing items and the big wrap up for next time. See you then!

From Tabletop to Paperback: Prolegamena Part 1

Welcome back to From Tabletop to Paperback! Hopefully the first few posts showed you how the things you already do well as a gamer can serve you in your transition to writing fiction. I snuck a lot of good advice in there about Character, Setting, and Plot that you'll need to keep in mind as we roll forward. But now that you believe you can do the work, it's time for me to show you how to do the work.

  Pre-Writing aka the Writing You MUST Do Before You Write

You know when you were a kid and your mom stuck you with dish washing duty? And that was bad enough, right? But then she made you rinse the dishes first. And, seriously, she'd stand there and tap her toe to make sure that you rinsed them properly. Then you'd say something like, "Why am I washing the dishes before the dishwasher WASHES THE DISHES?!" Then your mom would say, "That's it, young man, you just bought yourself dish duty for the month." You'd bluster and declare your innocence while your dad just shook his head as if to say, "You'll learn one day, son."

Pre-Writing is exactly like that only you play the part of yourself and your Mom. And if you don't do it, Future You is playing the part of your Dad.

Novels are long*. They also take you a long time to write**. You also don't write them all in one go***. In between bouts of writing, you're likely to sleep, go to work, run a million errands, plan a birthday party, listen to music, watch TV and movies, read other novels, talk to myriad other human beings, have spiritual epiphanies...you get the idea.

Any one of these things could easily cause you to forget what you were writing. The fact that you could do all of them in between rounds of writing means you're going to spend a lot more time remembering what you were writing than you will actually writing.

Unless you do your map it out with Pre-Writing.

Mapping It All Out

I'm terrible at road trips. All I want to do is get from where I am to where I want to go as fast as possible. The intervening distance is an obstacle for me to overcome so I can enjoy the destination. The world invented the interstate for me.

The idea of meandering around looking at alligator farms and giant balls of twine and places that presidents allegedly slept sounds torturous****. It's a bunch of pointless hours in the car -- or, God forbid, the bus -- with people you swear you liked before your tenth hour of listening to road noise and their "travellin' mix" while looking at crap, oddities, and nonsense.

And writing your story will be exactly like this if you don't finish your Pre-Writing. You have to create character descriptions (choose your traveling companions), you must ask yourself a Story Question (Plot your destination), you have to craft a scene list (map your route), you have to plan for sequels to regroup after some of your scenes (where are the gas stations and bathrooms?). You might even want to have a writing coach standing by (GPS).

I didn't even mention clearing all this with your family (checking weather reports) or the backstory you write as a Prologue and then inevitably cut because nobody cares but you (packing clothes and toiletries). You have a lot of work to do before you get in the car.

Meandering about on vacation might be somebody's idea of a good time, but we've established that writing (if you want to do it well) is work. And I'm sure there have been and still are successful novelists who just start writing to see where the story takes them. But for every one of them, there are likely dozens, hundreds, thousands of unfinished novels stranded on the side of the road for lack of gas and a spare tire.

The Bare Minimum

I could probably write whole books on each one of these, but below you'll find the bare minimum Pre-Writing I believe you have to do, along with a brief description of what it is and why it's important.

Story Question: Remember, this is the crux of the book. This is the question to which the reader is reading to find the answer. Without this, you probably don't have a story.
Character List: Remember how we talked about the thousands of words you'd probably have to write in order for your main character(s), your antagonist(s), and your secondary character(s) to read like actual human beings with thoughts, wants, and desires? Yeah, that goes here.
Scene List: What's going to happen that drives your Characters toward answering the Story Question? Or what steps will they take to answer it? How does each step lead naturally to the next, and when do you need to take a sec to recap and make sure the reader is following?
The Climax: Sure, you know the answer to your Story Question, but how do you answer it?
The Resolution: What is the emotional impact you expect the Climax to have on your readers? Happiness? Depression? Smug satisfaction at a well-deserved comeuppance? Explain it in 3-5 sentences so you know what you're aiming for from the first words of your story.

Each of those items covers several sub-items, and I could go into painful detail on each of them. But if I did, that would be my process, not The Process. When it comes to Pre-Writing, there are always different strokes for different folks. Remember how I never fill out my character descriptions? Well, all the time I save there I wind up sinking into my Story Question.

You may have the same issue or a radically different one. That's the kind of thing you learn the more you write, and it's why I said I could go for a book on each one of those items. And maybe even a book on each of my sub items.

That's why this is the bare minimum. You have the essentials of your trip planned out when you've finished these. It doesn't mean you won't take a wrong turn or run out of gas along the way, but it does make those things a lot less likely.

Mastering the Game

Most of the time, I'm the GM for whatever group I play with. I've done various amounts of game prep ranging from full notebooks all the way down to three bullet points on a napkin. I've run games with rules you could fit on a single sheet up to systems with multiple compendia. I know a thing or two about game night preparation.

I can apply a lot of that wisdom to Pre-Writing, and I'll show you how next time. It's a worthwhile comparison because, as every GM knows, all that prep will never survive a run in with Player Characters unscathed. The same goes for your Pre-Writing and your story's characters, but if you're ready for that, then it isn't nearly as worrisome or scary.

See you next time for Prolegamena Part 2: Lonely Fun and the Pre-Writing Package.

*Well, at least 50,000 words. Which gets less long with every novel you write. Of course, you're going to write longer and longer novels, so my point stands.

**Well, NaNoWriMo will help you get that time down to a month, but that's still long in work-hours if nothing else.

***I'm sure somebody somewhere does, but they are a Mayor McCrazy of Crazytown.

****Remember, this is as long as I have a destination. I've actually dreamed for a while about a trip that is all about the trip and what you see on it rather than about going somewhere.

This Week’s Reason(s) Copyright* is Baloney Sandwich**

For a long time I've been thinking about a series of post called "This Week's Reason Copyright is Baloney Sandwich," but I've hesitated. I feared that the world wouldn't give me a weekly reason to get angry about intellectual property land grabs. Well, this week gave me not one but two and I decided that "This Week" didn't have to mean "Every Week." It will be interesting to see how many weeks out of the year I have these posts come 2014.

But anyway, now on with this week's cavalcade of BS.

Eyes Meet Roll

So Marvel (Disney) and DC (Time-Warner) filed a joint trademark on the word "super-hero." I for one am shocked, shocked, to hear that Disney and Time-Warner are stealing language and characters out of the public domain. There is absolutely no precedent for this!

Neither of these companies invented the term and they aren't the sole users of it. Adding a ™ to super-hero is a Jedi mind trick of BS even these two bastions of greed should be ashamed of.

Thanks to Boing Boing for my discovery of the story.

So GW Stands for "Goliath Wins"?

Games Workshop, creators of various Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 fantasy and sci-fi games, miniatures, novels, et al, sent a notice of trademark infringement to Amazon about a self-published book called Spots the Space Marine.

First, that trademark is complete BS because space marines have been a staple of science fiction for nearly as long as there has been science fiction. Space marines were here before GW and, in fact, the authors who went before GW made it possible for GW to create their own, admittedly unique take on the concept.

One with a legal bend will note that Games Workshop has a trademark on "space marine" in the areas of board games, parlor games, war games, hobby games, toy models and miniatures of buildings, scenery, figures, automobiles, vehicles, planes, trains and card games and paint, sold therewith.

So fiction isn't in that list. Which means that a big company sent a spurious notice of infringement to another big company to screw over a self-published author, and all over a term they didn't actually invent and that wouldn't have been useful to them without all the usages before they used it.

Friends of mine who buy Games Workshop stuff often tell me that GW hates them, yet they buy their stuff anyway. I give them a hard time about this, but now it's moved beyond bad customer service. They don't just hate their own customer base, guys, they now hate free expression. Free expression which made their success possible in the first place.

Yeah, sure, there are obviously no issues whatsoever with copyright and trademark. Nothing to see here, move along.

 

*A quick explanation of why I think copyright is institutionally BS, please see the video in this post.

**For the reasoning behind this term, please see this post.

A Quick Story of Initials

This is a short story about my son. Well, truthfully, it's more about his teacher, or at last how clever she is. We're all really big fans of her's here, my son, wife, and I. I hope this short story will explain a little of why.

As usual, though, I have to give a little background.

My son has been playing with language lately. Testing out words and rhymes and new usages. There have been some amazing inventions from him, but also some pushing of limits. He's said a few curse words (honestly, I have no idea where he might have heard them...), but I've nipped that in the bud.

Instead he's used non-curse words, like "eyeball" and "toilet," as curse words. (A very complicated spot for me since I don't want to discourage using new words even when I know exactly what he's up to.) But more than that, he's managed to skirt the edges of words I'd rather he not use but can't quite bring myself to come down on him about.

Case in point, he declares things are BS. He uses only the initials and his contextual usage is flawless. This makes it hard for me to get too upset about it. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know what the initials are supposed to stand for.

So he's been doing this language play at school as well. Again, I don't want to misrepresent this. Most of this is great learning potential and showing the world that -- surprise, surprise -- my son has great facility for language.

But then one day at school, he declared something to be BS.

The teacher glossed over it, but the other students had to know. "Teacher, teacher...what's BS?"

Without missing a beat, with nary a batted eyelid of hesitation, my son's fantastic kindergarten teacher responds, "Baloney Sandwich."

I have no idea if she invented that or heard it elsewhere and I'm the only one who doesn't know about it because I'm a heathen who will just say the dirty words. Either way, the wife and I love it so much we say it all the time now. My friend Jeff has started saying it to see how long before it comes back to him.

That's an inspired bit of teaching right there and an addition to my own vernacular that I can't get enough of. So thank you, Miss Awesometeacher!

Hopefully this has brought a smile to your face, dear reader. This knowledge will also help you understand an upcoming blog series title, so it's a doubly useful post! And that's...

 

Ignite OKC #4 Achievement Unlocked! Level Up!

In November I appeared at the Oklahoma Creativity Forum's after party, IgniteOKC. Along with several other speakers, I spoke for five minutes about a topic I was passionate about and tried to transfer some of that passion. There were no breaks in the five minutes and I'd prepared slides that moved forward every 20 seconds whether I liked it or not.

I have never had even one second of nervousness about public speaking...until the morning of Ignite. It scared me to death. But I did it anyway, and the video is finally available. I'm posting it here for all the world to see because I'm proud of it both professionally and personally.

Professionally, this is not only "why copyright is a damn mess" in a tight package, but it's the shortest pitch I can make for how the Consortium plans to play a whole different game. On the personal level, I'm a firm believer in doing things now and then that really scare you. Being more confident than I really have a right to be, I don't find enough things that really put a wobble in my knees. This did it, though, and I made it through.

I don't think I can stand to watch it, though. You guys do it for me. I'll be hiding over here.

PS: If you'd like to see some of the other talks from smart people (some of whom I'm lucky to have turned into friends since IgniteOKC), you can find the Youtube Channel with all the 2012 talks, as well as the past talks, here.