Joshua Unruh's Blog, page 5

Protagonist Powers

In yet another "Superman v. Batman" conversation on the internet, I was appalled at the sheer lack of scholarship that goes into this debate. Now, I know what you're thinking. Not everybody spends as much time preoccupied by these things as I do. And that's totally fair. In fact, I normally cut people a lot of slack for exactly that reason. It also makes me more aware of not sounding like a talking goat to experts on any given subject.

But in this case, I feel utterly justified. These were writers and they were making classic blunders that writers should know better than to make. I'm not going to link to the post because, honestly, I don't want to offend anyone over there even though, and I say this knowing how inflammatory it is, most of the statements were bone jarring stupid.

Hyperbole, you say? Let me demonstrate by paraphrasing a comment.

Superman is a less compelling character than Batman because he's overpowered. He has the powers to do whatever he wants but Batman is just a mere mortal.

People...no. Just...no.

I know it looks like a reasonable statement, and in the real world, it would be. But this is the world of Story. And in the world of Story, the Protagonist is almighty.

Protagonist Powers

Superman can fly, bullets bounce off him, he has super senses to solve crimes, he can freeze stuff with his breath, and burn stuff with his eyes. That's all really impressive stuff, I admit. Now let's contrast this with Batman.

Batman can fly (with a jet), bullets bounce off him (or his suit, or he's just magically not where they are), he has a super mind to solve crimes, he can pretty much do whatever makes any kind of reasonable sense with something from his utility belt (freezing and burning are easy).

In terms of Story, Batman and Superman (and Indiana Jones and James Bond and Captain America and Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and...you get the idea) have exactly the same power level. Because in adventure fiction, the hero is always in danger (although the definition of danger certainly changes depending on the hero), but he always overcomes the danger (in a way that makes sense for that hero) and wins in the end.

How do they manage this? They use their Protagonist Powers. And the protagonist's main power is, frankly, to overcome insurmountable odds and win by the time the author types the words THE END.

Sniper Rifles and Eye Rolls

When I insisted this was the case, another seemingly reasonable statement was made. It looked sorta like this.

Superman is always Superman, even when he's Clark Kent. When Batman is Bruce Wayne, he's vulnerable. Put each of them in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle, and only one of them is in danger.

There is all kinds of stuff wrong with this whole idea. The most basic one, the idea of identity, demonstrates a fundamental lack in understanding of both these characters. Neither one of them is fundamentally Superhero or Secret Identity. Both of them play roles in either set of clothes while  the Real Person lies somewhere in between.

But that's specifically about Superman and Batman. I'm talking about Protagonists. Once again, a fundamental underlying concept of Story is deeply neglected here. Neither of these fictional people is in any real danger if a sniper is pointing a rifle at them.

I'm not just being meta (although there is a meta aspect to it). These are Protagonists! They may be hurt by the bullet (and in this specific case, the definition of hurt is very different), but they will not be killed or even permanently injured.

Bruce Wayne will not be shot through the heart and instantly die because if he did, then there wouldn't be a Batman anymore and we cannot have that. But he will be scuffed up pretty good and the wound will slow him down significantly at a very inopportune moment, which is when he'll overcome and succeed.

Clark Kent will not be shot through the heart and instantly die because he is, in-fiction, bulletproof. Or at least his skin is. If Clark Kent is shot by a sniper rifle, then the world will know that he and Superman are one and the same. This will be psychologically scarring and the (psychic) wound will slow him down significantly at a very inopportune moment, which is when he'll overcome and succeed.

Notice the similarity there?

While the definitions of danger may vary wildly in-fiction, the Protagonist is nevertheless in danger. One is in danger of dying (though we don't actually ever think he really will) and the other is in danger of losing a part of his life big enough to feel like he's dying (though we don't actually think he really will).

Ignorance, Themes, and Tones

When people say they prefer Batman stories over Superman stories because of power levels, they are one of three things.

They are ignorant. And this is totally fine. Not everybody spends all day thinking about this stuff. But if you claim to, you better realize that what you're really saying is that writers have done a terrible job of convincing you that Superman is in danger.
They are talking about theme. Batman is a man who overcomes tragedy by fighting the force that ruined his life. That's a pretty amazing theme. Superman is a man who overcomes the fear of the unknown by using his gifts to make the world a better place. That's also a pretty amazing theme. But, as we are all jaded and cynical in this modern world, one theme is perceived as "sexier" than the other.
They are talking about tone.

Batman lives in a world of murky shadows where he is at least as scary as his villains who are all dangerously twisted and psychotic caricatures of the hero.

Superman lives in a bright world of sunshine and gee-whiz super science where he is a beacon of hope even against villains who would use their extraordinary gifts for greed and ego, thus becoming a caricature of the hero.

You may prefer one of these tones over the other, but that doesn't make the character who fits that tone better than the other. It doesn't make any story emulating Tone A instantly better than one emulating Tone B. It doesn't, in short, make Batman a fundamentally better character than Superman. It just means you prefer his tone.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

I just wanted to take a thousand words to make sure everyone understood what they were really talking about.

From Tabletop to Paperback – You’ll Love the Arc So Much You’ll Plotz

Since I am a writer and make magic with words (spell and spelling come from the same root, same with grammar and grimoire), then I am sort of a wizard. And a wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to. And he brings his blog posts with him. Finally, with no further preamble or nonsense, here is part two of Plots and Arcs.

The Good

In most traditional, GMful tabletop roleplaying games, the stuff we described in the previous post as Plot is actually happening all the time. It's the prime motivator of most sessions. There might be a Highly Visible Antagonist, but there might just as easily be a dragon nobody has ever heard of before sitting on top of a pile of treasure you want. A lot of very traditional RPGs have moved toward a place where your character's Arc matters, but a lot of them leave that up to you and mainly give you rules on how to kill things and take their stuff.

Because of that, this is where we gamers shine. When have you ever been able to get to the Dark Priest's enclave without passing through a troll-infested, haunted swamp? Or moved your mysterious and illegal cargo without outrunning an Imperial blockade? Or when as your decker cruised up to some sweet looking information and downloaded it without cracking the ICE?

What's more, all of this informs the Final Boss Encounter. Are you hurt? Are you tired? Did you use all your spells? Did some of your party die? All of these things impact heavily on how the end of your Plot happens.

"But wait," you might be saying, "you just called that the end of our Plot. What happened to the Arcs?"

Unfortunately, in most traditional, GMful tabletop games, Arcs are something that don't happen often or only do so when they've become the Plot.

The Bad

A lot of very entertaining RPGs are very Encounter based and Combat focused. That was actually the only way to play when I was a kid (at least as far as I knew in a relatively small city in northwestern Oklahoma before there was an internet to bring all the nerds together). But still, many of us had elaborate backstories for our characters because, since we read science fiction and fantasy novels, watched cartoons, and read comics book, that's how all our favorite heroes worked. Luke's dad was the big villain, Aragorn ran from his destiny and birthright, Superman was rocketed from his dying planet, you get the idea.

Clever and enterprising gamemasters would take this information and make it part of the game. You had to find and take revenge on your father's murderer, for instance. If that was your character, you were playing at least half an Arc. If it was the rest of the group, they were just playing more plot. Oh, maybe they had roleplaying reasons to do so since you were great compatriots and adventurers together, and that's totally great! But for play purposes, for most of the group, it was more plot.

Again, smart GMs moved that spotlight and looked for ways to shine it on different PCs. But even so, for the table it was Plot and for the spotlight character, it was half an Arc. Why half? Because it was just the stuff that happened without any emotional connection. Your hero found his father's killer, fought him in honorable combat, and won. You might take his stuff or make an enemy of whoever his boss was, and some of that would make a difference in the next Plot. But how did your hero feel about that win? Is he satisfied? Did it leave him unfulfilled? Is he still consumed with anger or has he discovered new found peace?

Even if you were an amazing player who really wanted to engage the fiction -- and did so, either in your own head or writing it all down for your fellow players to enjoy -- this was rarely reflected in the mechanics. The technology just wasn't there. If it didn't make you swing your sword harder or shoot your blaster straighter, it was "Fluff."*

And that can be a disconnect when you move to writing. Modern audiences are in love with character. They want the Plot to demonstrate the character's makeup and they want it to factor into or reflect his Arc, but the Story is effectively the Arc. We'd all be bored to tears without the Plot (because remember, it's the stuff that happens and makes the story exciting), but we're unsatisfied if we don't see how this is reflected in the character's emotions or worldview.

For the flip side of this coin, I submit to you without much comment Epics. Nobody cares how Beowful feels about things. Same for Achilles and Odysseus. They may have motivations that tie into their emotions and worldview, but there is no first person naval gazing going on there because audiences of antiquity wouldn't have cared.

Fluff is Story is Arc. That stuff that couldn't (until more recently; see the footnote) be reflected on your character sheet is the stuff that will make or break the resolution of your story. Gamers are amazing at Plot, and that's going to make the story exciting. The hobby may or may not have given a gamer-turned-writer the tools to manage the Arc, and that's where you make the resolution satisfying.

The Ugly

The Ugly is, as you may recall from part one, the Highly Visible Antagonist. Since the HVA is often directly tied to the Main Character (Darth and Luke, Sauron corrupted Aragorn's line, Humperdink stole Westley's girl) and is directly opposed to him/her, gamers can have a hard time getting a handle on what is and what is not a Highly Visible Antagonist. This is especially muddied when so many henchmen or situations feel like antagonists and are highly visible (high speed chases, bombs strapped to chest, dudes in white armor shooting lasers at you).

Don't get me wrong, guys, that's three fingers at least. I struggled and wrestled with this, found myself in arguments with my coach/publisher about it where I honestly didn't understand what I was doing wrong, and finally threw up my hands and waited for divine revelation. What I got instead of that was this post.

Because reading these two posts together, you can probably see why the HVA is such a difficult concept to grasp coming from a traditional tabletop background. A Story's Highly Visible Antagonist and its effect on the hero could not be reflected mechanically in a traditional game. You could make it happen, and I did at various times get those two things to connect, but it was not easy.

It took a special kind of GM and a special kind of player to first find each other in what has been a pretty niche hobby most of my life. Then they had to combine their forces to reflect the important emotional/story aspects of the PC in a way that, at best, ignored the rules and, at worst, openly defied them. Then they had to do it in a way that either swept up the rest of the group or, at the very least, didn't annoy the hell out of them.

Once I started playing a few Story Games (again, see the footnote) and started writing fiction with more regularity, I finally started to pull this together and understand why my highly visible antagonists weren't Highly Visible Antagonists. It's because most traditional, tabletop RPGs don't have a  Story Question for my HVA to yell "NO!" to. Without that, nothing rises above the level of  trying to kill the hero or make his life somehow miserable.

There it is! The Good, the Bad, and the cautionary Ugly! I've had another interesting technique swim into my vision this week that I'm calling Protagonist Powers. I'll be writing about that on Thursday, but next week I'll be back with From Tabletop to Paperback as we talk about Setting.

 

*Some modern roleplaying games, sometimes called Story Games, do an amazing job of representing the emotional state of your character. Margaret Weiss Productions's RPG based on the TV show Smallville is a stellar example of this. PCs in Smallville don't even have traditional stats, they have Relationships and Values. Lumpley Games's Dogs in the Vineyard strikes a strong balance between this by giving PCs more traditional stats, but also skills and abilities that are tied directly into your character's identity or backstory as well as relationships, all of which impact the rules with the same weight. Check these games out specifically  -- and a host of other Story Games --  if you want a little help with Arc at the table.

The Nicest Thing I Can Say – A Review of The Sixth Gun

Over the weekend I came down with an unpleasant cold with a side order of debilitating fever. It took me out of the game for the two days I'd set aside to write the second part of my ongoing how-to series. So that's still coming, but it's too rough to post today. Instead, I'm going to do a mini-review of a comic book series I recently discovered called The Sixth Gun. It gets my stamp of approval because it made me say the nicest thing I can say about any piece of fiction I read.

The Sixth Gun made me want to write.

Written by Cullen Bunn and set in a recently post-Civil War America, The Sixth Gun is a Weird Western tale of six evil guns with horrible magic powers. The weapons bond themselves to a single living person until that person dies at which point the next person to touch the gun becomes the new owner. My favorite part of Bunn's writing on this is how every character either wears a hat of pitch black or, at best, one of smoky, dirty gray.

Those pitch black hats are undead Civil War generals, his vain and vicious widow, and Civil War criminals willing to follow the aforementioned undead general. Seriously, how much do you love all of that? Evil magic guns, undead Confederate generals and their wicked crews? There is nothing in there not to fall into a swoon over.

The "heroes," though, are where this series shines. And they all wear hats of gray. As a fan of Noir, that couldn't make me happier. I love that. Drake Sinclair, a dandy gunfighter with a very shady past, never does anything for just one reason. But he does enough protective, "good guy" things that you can almost forget he's a self-interested bastard. Naturally, he's bonded to four of the six guns. He seems to hate that fact, but he also went in with eyes wide open so he must be up to something...

Most of Drake's protective moves are for Becky, a young girl who accidentally found herself bonded to the Sixth Gun which gives the gift of prophecy or insight. That sounds like a pretty great power, but at the same time, everyone is at pains to explain to Becky that the gun serves only its own interests, never the interests of its owner. Becky took up the gun without realizing what was happening to her, so she's as close to a victim as you get. But that doesn't mean she's pure as the driven snow.

Gord Cantrell is an ex-slave and leader of men with a wealth of occult knowledge. He seems interested in helping Drake and Becky manage the evil of the guns, but he's also got dangerous secrets lurking in his past that might suggest he's traded bits of himself for power and revenge before.

Standing in the middle are Kirby Hale, a handsome gunfighter/bounty hunter that strikes me as a sinister Brett Maverick, the Sword of Abraham, an evil-fighting order of Catholic priests who have fought the evil of the guns for millennia, and Asher Cobb, a mummy with the gift of prophecy, and Pinkerton detectives with a connection to the Knights Templar. These are the secondary characters, people! How amazing is that?

The art is equally amazing. Brian Hurtt drew some of my favorite books of all time including an arc on Queen & Country, Gotham Central, and unfortunately short-lived Hard Time. He's had to master the American West's deserts, the city, swamps, and bayous of New Orleans, prison camps, flashbacks to other times, Catholic missions all look beautiful and hideous or both at the same time.

Not to mention the fantastical creatures like ghosts, demons, thunderbirds, loa, golem-style zombies as well as the stock Western characters of gunfighter, thug, miner, codger, sheriff, and all the others you remember from Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly. The art works as both fantasy story, traditional Western, and murky Spaghetti Western.

The book is a tremendous read with 50 issues (bound together in three collections with a fourth on the way in November) and it deserves to be read by you. GO BUY IT! The first issue is free on Comixology and each "volume" is bundled together for $8.99. That's a tough deal to beat, but your local comic shop will hook you up if you prefer the dead tree version.

I couldn't recommend this series more. In fact, as I mentioned above, I have the nicest words I can say about it: It made me want to write. That'll be good news for you guys as well.

As longtime readers will recall, I have a Weird Western languishing unpublished. This is mostly because it was my first finished novel. For those of you that don't know the curse of the first novel, that means it is a horrible mess of a manuscript. It is such a mess, in fact, that it has been easier to just write new things than to fix it. Well, no more!

Hell Bent for Leather has demons and a gun full of blessed magic and a cowboy roped (see what I did there?) into a a larger world full of evil monsters and Devils that make deals for your best friend's soul. It also has a finished but unpolished sequel titled On Leather Wings with definitely non-sparkly vampire-type things.

I'm looking to polish Hell Bent and release it as a serialized novella via Amazon's new Serials project. That lets me fix it in smaller, bite-sized chunks and release it to you as I do so. That's super exciting to me and, I hope, to you guys also. So celebrate some Unruh-style Weird Western fun by reading Mr. Bunn's and Mr. Hurtt's supernatural rollercoaster ride across the Old West today!

Tomorrow (not literally) you can celebrate by buying mine. I won't be jealous in the meantime, I promise.

From Tabletop to Paperback – Plot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

For the beginning writer, the first part of talking about Plot is realizing what it does and does not mean. It's such a nebulous concept that it requires defining before we can even discuss it. For my purposes, Plot is not the big, over-arching story of the narrative. Plot is the stuff that happens in between bits of the big, over-arching story of the narrative. What people typically call plot is actually a (Story or Character) Arc that answers a Story Question. We'll talk more about establishing Story Questions later, but the basic definition is pretty self-explanatory: what's the question that this narrative will answer?

For example:

Will Harry Potter find the Sorcerer's Stone?
Will Luke Skywalker get to leave home and do exciting, galaxy-changing things?
Will the crew of Battlestar Galactica make it to safety and freedom on Earth?
Will Westley marry his true love, Buttercup?
Can Alice escape from Wonderland?

You'll note that most of those Story Questions are barely addressed throughout the narrative itself except in the barest sense. Alice not getting lost and keeping her head on her shoulders (literally) are necessary to escape Wonderland, but they don't immediately impact the question. Harry does find the Stone but it's almost a deus ex machina and it's the "year at school" that gets the majority of screen time.

I could come up with a hundred examples of this, but the bottom line is this. "Will they get to the forum?" is Arc, "the funny things that happen on the way to the forum" is Plot.

For example:

A mirror showing Harry's one true desire threatens to overwhelm him
Luke negotiates with a scruffy nerfherder of a freighter pilot to get off his home planet.
A terrorist from the prison ship wants to run for president.
Westley dies.
Alice apparently trips balls with a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

That's foundational, memorable, important stuff, but it doesn't actually answer the Story Question because it's Plot.
Scene Questions v. Story Questions

This doesn't mean that your Plot Heavy scenes (the smallest building block of the story) can't or don't feed into the Story Question. In the bar where Luke Skywalker will negotiate passage off his home planet, he's nearly killed because he doesn't understand the rules in this rougher world. That vignette throws a bigger question mark on the Story Question. Or in the Harry Potter example, the mirror tells us something amazingly fundamental about Harry's Character Arc while setting up the solution to the Question.

The whole story is tied together when these kinds of things happen in individual scenes. This is even, or perhaps especially, true if the reader doesn't realize it until the resolution. Never underestimate the power of a truly grand "AH-HA!" moment. What this does not mean, though, is that every single scene has to have some big payoff at the resolution. Nor is each scene forced to somehow inform the larger question. Sometimes the cigar (that's filled with poison to kill the person about to light it up) is just a (deathtrap) cigar.

You might think of these types of Scene Questions -- Questions like Will they be eaten by alligators? or Will she make it to work on time? or Will the first date be horribly awkward? -- as the bread in the meal that is your story. If done well, a flavorful bread can enhance the rest of the meal, pull the individual dishes together, thicken a light course into a full serving, and, lastly, sop up the plate at the end. New writers might call this filler, but that's how you can tell they're new. These are the things that make up a story.

Dots Are Great...But You Have to Connect Them

More on this in part two, but the good news is that gamers are actually already very good at Plot. Non-gamer new writers that don't fall into the fluff camp usually never even realize the meal they're cooking is incomplete without the warm, enticing loaf of Plot.

More than once, I've had a writer I'm coaching say something like, "I knew exactly where my story was going to go, so I started writing it. I'm halfway through my plot outline and the thing is coming up way way short. What should I do?"

When I took a look at the manuscripts in question, I discovered that the freight train of Arc had come a'roarin' in with a full head of steam and left no room for anything else. It was like somebody took the dots from a connect-the-dots puzzle and decided the whole thing would work better if you just piled the dots on top of one another.

But neither puzzles nor stories really work that way. You've got to spread those dots out, man! Put them in some kind of sensible order that gives the outline of a picture! Then, and this is pretty key, you get out a pencil and you actually fill in the lines to finish the picture! I know, I know. that just sounds crazy, right?

But it's exactly how your story should work. Your Arc gives you the dots, without which there's no pattern to follow. You can't live without the dots for certain, but it's the lines that actually turn the whole thing into a picture. The lines create the actual finished shape. And it's the shape of the thing that people are going to remember.

Highly Visible Antagonists

This next piece of advice has been a tough nut for me to crack personally. It's one of the few places my gaming experience actually got in the way of my storytelling. In the next part of Plot, I'll explain how to (hopefully) avoid all the painful time I've spent coming to understand this concept. Before we get there, though, I have to point out the Elephant in the Narrative Room: the Highly Visible Antagonist.

Your Arc must have a Highly Visible Antagonist. Just in case you aren't sure what this means, think about Sauron, Darth Vader, Lex Luthor, Prince Humperdink, Khan, Agent Smith, and a thousand other guys you could name. The HVA is the really obvious, in-your-face threat who kicks your whole story into motion. These are the guys who steal the McGuffin, kidnap the damsel, blow up the planet, try to kill all the good guys, or commit whatever dastardly plot they're getting up to.

Now, this is going to sound ridiculous, but this is actually a point I still struggle with. The most important thing to remember about this Antagonist is that he is Highly Visible. These guys loom over the narrative landscape. (Perhaps like some sort of all-seeing, burning eye at the top of a black tower or something...)

For contrast, let me demonstrate some antagonists that are not particularly visible. Storm Troopers are a good example. They're scary guys in armor and helmets just like Vader, but you don't see any of them crushing throats. Orcs are ugly as sin, but they're a near numberless horde. Deserts that try to kill you with thirst, or avalanches, high-speed chases, horrific first dates, voyages through stormy seas, multiple suitors, gunfights with henchmen...these are all antagonizing forces. But they're sub-antagonists to the HVA. They are scene antagonists, here today and gone tomorrow.

Now, to me, guys shooting at you are pretty damn highly visible. So are vast deserts with no food or water. That bomb strapped to your chest? That thing is pretty visible, right? But in terms of your narrative arc, these things are obviously not the Highly Visible Antagonist. They might be minions of the HVA (Storm Troopers and orcs), they might be between your hero and the Highly Visible Antagonist (the desert or high-speed chase), they might alienate the damsel you're supposed to be rescuing (horrific first date), but they are demonstrably not the Highly Visible Antagonist.

And this is the reason we make such a stark contrast between Arcs and Plot. You can move the Arc along with Plot, typically by using antagonists who are connected directly to the Highly Visible One. You can also simply make your hero's life interesting with antagonists who are not connected to the Highly Visible Antagonist while nevertheless being dangerous, deadly, embarrassing, or just getting in the way of the hero answering his Story Question.

And what, at the end of the day, is the main thing that separates a scene antagonist from its Highly Visible older brother? A scene antagonist wants the opposite of what the hero wants in that scene. But the Highly Visible Antagonist wants the answer to the Story Question to be a (usually) big, fat NO.

NO, Darth Vader doesn't want Luke Skywalker changing the galaxy for the better. NO, Sauron doesn't want the One Ring destroyed. NO, the Cylons don't want the Galactica to make it to Earth. NO, Voldemort doesn't want Harry to live long enough to graduate. NO, Humperdinck doesn't want Westley to marry Buttercup because he wants to marry her. NO, Agent Smith doesn't want Neo to do...whatever it was Neo was supposed to do.

Or, just to be clear, if the hero wants a no, then the Highly Visible Antagonist wants a YES. Those are just a bit rarer, though.

It's that vehement and direct opposition to the hero's Story Question that makes the Antagonist Highly Visible.

So, now that the foundation is laid, next time I'll explain how gamers are already in a great position to make use of Plot and pad their stories out into much more robust and exciting shapes. But I'll also point out, both for me personally and in a more general way, that our good habits at the tabletop can trip us up when we hit the keyboard.

From Tabletop to Paperback – Chargen Part 2

So last Thursday I talked about how hard it is to make good, three dimensional characters and how difficult it is for a lot of burgeoning writers. I also swore that I'd show you, the gamer with designs on writing fiction, how prepared you are to create exactly those kinds of characters. Trust me on this, if you've been playing RPGs for any length of time, you can do this and do it well. Here are a few of the keys to compelling characters and how rolling 3d6 over and over has already done the heavy lifting for you.

Larger Than Life Characters

Nobody ever rolled up a portly, balding middle manager at a small accounting firm in Cleveland for their adventuring party. Not unless the normalcy is meant to contrast with the living nightmares that are about to attack every corner of his nice, quiet, suburban life. Every character is hellbent on revenge, or a superhero, or a barbarian warrior destined to be king, or a keen-eyed wizard, or, at the very least, an attractive orphan who wants to delve deep into the earth in order to brave its dangers and come back with treasure.

What I'm trying to say is nobody sets out to play an average character. Even if their stats are just okay, good players are looking for ways to carve out their niche at the table. They're creating big personalities. They're just waiting for the moment they can say something like, "my character gambles a little...but he isn't very good at it." Whatever it is, you always always give your character some kind of interesting hook that sets them above the pile. The kind of thing that, when you mention it, makes your GM's eyes gleam devilishly.

Sometimes you have to do this because the system is generic. The player has to bring everything distinctive to the PC because the mechanics have a sameness. I found this to be true in most flavors of Dungeons & Dragons. There are three fighters in your party...so what is it that makes yours so special? An indie game that nods in the direction of Old School Dungeoneering, Sage Kobold's Dungeon World, deals with this by declaring that you are THE Fighter. Oh there are other people who wield swords, but none of them compare to your skill at arms. You're THE Magic User. There may be other conjurers and shamans, but your Arcane wisdom is supreme.

But whether it's in spite of the system or baked right in, whether it's epic fantasy, superheroes, cyberpunk revolutionaries, or swashbuckling pirates, you're already used to thinking of your RPG character as the center of the universe. His enemies join him in the center of the universe by virtue of being his enemies. This is an attitude you must apply to your story's characters.

Nuanced Characters

In this context, nuance is the myriad things I vaguely know about my characters that let me predict random facts like their favorite colors. It's the backgrounds, the towns they came from, the socioeconomic status they grew up in, the religion they belong to, the hundred million little things that you know because you know the top eight things about their lives before the adventure begins.

Nuance is knowing the interests and beliefs of your character that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Of course you know what god the paladin follows, but what about your fighter that grew up a dirt grubbing peasant? Does he still pay homage to the goddess of grain, or did he leave that behind when he left the farm? If you've ever been blindsided by your gamemaster with an unexpected question that you nevertheless were able to answer in-character without thinking because you just knew what you're character would do, then you're on the road to nuanced characters.

Flawed Characters

One danger that a lot of beginner writers fall into is protecting their characters. The knife isn't twisted as hard as it should be, the punches aren't as bruising, and the cherished character, usually the hero, walk around with a kind of plot armor protecting them from the worst the story has to offer. When you combine this with the "amoeba" syndrome," you stray into very lackluster territory even if you're command of language and story structure is otherwise good.

One symptom of that plot armor is forgetting that your characters need flaws. This isn't always protecting the characters. Sometimes it's just an added problem with not fleshing your characters out in the first place. But between these two beginner mistakes, you often wind up with unassailable heroes and indestructible villains. That's not only unrealistic (everybody has some flaws), but it winds up being boring and, ultimately, unrelatable.

Marvel v. DC (c. 1963)

This isn't an RPG example, but it's a great one that's near and dear to my heart. By the 1960s, superhero comics were selling again (after a massive lull throughout the 1950s). There was no Marvel Comics at this point, DC was the main game in town. For those of you not in the know, that's Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, et al. These guys were total whitebread; square-jawed heroes through and through. They were, each and every one, totally unflawed. Oh sure, there was Kryptonite for Superman and Green Lantern's ring didn't work on yellow objects, but those are Plot, not Character.

In comes young upstart publisher Marvel Comics. They decided to position themselves as the "world outside your window" superhero universe. That meant heroes and villains with actual, honest to goodness character flaws. Peter Parker is wracked by guilt, has an ailing aunt, is perpetually broke, and girls don't like him. The Thing is a dashing pilot now trapped in the body of a monster by his best friend. Mr. Fantastic is the best friend, so another wracked by guilt situation. Thor is so full of himself that he's kicked out of Asgard to learn humility. Iron Man is a drunk, Daredevil is a lawyer by day and vigilante by night. The X-Men protect people who hate and fear them.

These were heroes with feet of clay. Compared to the Distinguished Competition, these were heroes you could believe in because they were created in a lab to appeal to teenagers. Everything is louder than everything else in those early Marvel comics, and the flaws still somehow manage to be loudest of all. It was such a revolutionary idea that, by the mid 70s, DC had basically emulated the formula. They'd emulate it even harder when they restarted their entire line and shared universe in 1985.

Flaws, Drawbacks, Vices...Just Gimme the Points!

Just like I mentioned, new writers have trouble giving their characters flaws. Once they get over that hurdle, they tend to give all their characters the same flaw. Even veterans can fall prey to this (I'm looking at you, Wheel of Time and your perpetual gender idiocy). But it isn't enough to just give characters flaws, they have to be interesting flaws.

All of you already do this. You might have started doing it just because so many rules systems reward you with more positive stuff for taking negative stuff (Champions and Savage Worlds to name just two of thousands). Maybe your mind shifted when you realized that you could take an Enemy for points but then suddenly declared that he'd killed your character's father. Maybe you just thought you were clever taking schizophrenia and you ran into a GM who made your other personality the villain of the plot. Whatever it was,  at some point, you realized that your PC's flaws could also make her interesting.

If you haven't made this switch yet, try to do it consciously the next time you roll up a character. If you can convince your group to change systems, look for a rules that reward you for your flaws not just in chargen but also when these flaws come up in play. Better yet, when you bring them up. Then, and this is important, don't beat that drum until it breaks. Look for the best moment for your guy to be clumsy or greedy. Better yet, look for the worst moment.

Flaws With a Twist

Maybe characters aren't your strong suit. Maybe you've been perfectly happy to play a Fighter and the only difference between him and the other fighter you played is this one uses a halberd. If so, then you may find yourself falling into the beginner habits of not characterizing or over-protectiveness. Here's a favorite trick of mine that I like to use on my protagonists who are actually Big Damn Heroes and, therefore, pretty uniquely without flaws.

I create opportunities for their virtues and strengths to become vices and weaknesses. Maybe they're famous, so they have to rely on a secondary, and less skilled, character to infiltrate the villain's hideout. Perhaps they have a huge and supportive family, which they run into when pretending to be somebody else. They could have a vast capacity for violence, but they happen to indulge in it right in front of the news crew. Whatever it is, I spend a few scenes turning whatever I viewed as their greatest strength into their greatest weakness.

Characters That Tempt FATE

If you want some practice with good character building at the game table, I have a recommendation. The best for both making interesting characters whose strengths are also weaknesses is probably a FATE game, such as Spirit of the Century or The Dresden Files RPG. In FATE, characters have Aspects as part of their stat block. These Aspects are descriptive phrases that tell you things about the character. Harry Dresden is a Wizard Private Detective. I made a Tarzan type who was a Hairy Chested Love God. There's a million of these, your options are literally endless.

What's more, a lot of FATE systems walk you through your character's life history. So your first two Aspects have to do with your childhood, the next two have to do with your teen years, the next two are when you started adventuring, and the rest tie you to the other characters. So your PC might have Grown Up On the Streets, but then was taken in and Mentored by an Aging Hero. Aspects cannot help but force you to make more interesting, three dimensional characters.

Aspects usually help your character. You pay a Plot Point (an in-game currency without which you'll be a very poor hero indeed) to give yourself a boost where your background or high concept comes into play. Fairly obvious and straight forward. But to me, that's not the true joy of Aspects. The flip side of Aspects is when the GM actually pays you a Plot Point when he uses your Aspect as a complication.

Wizard Detectives get a Plot Point when they have to answer to the council of wizards. Hairy Chest Love Gods get a Plot Point when some important NPC's wife finds him irresistible. Characters with Family In Every Town get a Plot Point when Aunt Petunia wants to tell the King all about her embarrassing childhood stories.

Aspects are brilliant and a great way to practice the things that are going to make your story's characters come alive for your readers.

Next time, we'll talk about another area gamers don't typically have a problem with in stories: Plot! Also known as When Stuff Happens To Your Characters. See you then!

Saga of the Myth Reaver is LIVE!

Downfall, the first of two volumes in the Neo Noir/Norse mash-up Saga of the Myth Reaver, is available for purchase RIGHT NOW! And for one thin greenback! (That's a single dollar for the terminally unhip). Thrill to Nordic myths, gods, and monsters! Chill as a tragic hero does his best to make his way in the Nine Worlds! Cringe at the violence that's convinced my wife I need therapy!

All hyperbole aside, I'm really pleased with how this book turned out. It's exciting and unflinchingly violent and reasonably accurate with both Noir storytelling and Norse mythology. It's tantalizingly full of Norse myths yet explains everything you need to know about the subject to enjoy the story within the story. Please check it out and, if you enjoy it, throw me a little review love.

From Tabletop to Paperback – Chargen Part 1

Character generation. Almost all RPG rulebooks start with this, and it only makes sense. You can't really play the game without your character. But in addition to simple utilitarianism, what kind of character you can and do make will tell you a lot about what kind of game it is you're playing. Whether I say Dashing Swordsman, Scruffy Spacer, Zealous Inquisitor, or Helpful Wizard, I'm beginning to tell you things about the game and what it'll be about. Essentially, Characters can be the easiest gateway to Plot and Setting (but more on those later).

The Bare Bones

I have a pre-writing package. It's sort of a road map that I use to plan out a novel before I even start the actual writing of it. It's absolutely invaluable and I do not recommend starting a novel without it. For those of you keeping score, pre-writing is not cheating on National Novel Writing Month. In fact, it's encouraged! You can't get to where you're going if you don't have a route planned.

The pre-writing package was created by my coach and publisher, Aaron Pogue. You'll hear a lot about it as we go and, if we ever get around to reworking it for public consumption, we'll probably even make it available. It isn't a state secret, it's just a tool we use to get the story together before we get the story together.

There are all kinds of great sections in the pre-writing package like the Mock Table of Contents, the Scene List, the Story Question Worksheet. There's even a section for Characters. For main characters, Aaron suggests 300 words to describe them before the Big Event (that's the thing that kicks off the novel). That's not so bad if you've only got two main characters (the Hero and the Villain), but what if you're doing a Tolkien-esque traditional adventuring party with four, five, six, or even seven characters? At 300 words apiece, that can add up pretty fast for the novice writer.

As for secondary characters, Aaron suggests a hundred words apiece. That's enough to flesh them out and keep them from being flat and single dimensional. But what constitutes a secondary character? Depending on how liberally you define it, that could be dozens of characters, each one needing their own century of words.

Ligaments: Connecting the Bare Bones

You may be asking why it takes so many words to flesh out your characters. There are all kinds of reasons, but they all boil down to this: The more you know about your characters, both primary and secondary, the more smoothly you can integrate them into your story in a compelling way.

It isn't enough that each character has a distinct voice or interesting mannerisms (although they won't if you don't do the pre-writing). They can be menacing, clever, funny, or frightening, but if they're only a cog in your Story Engine with just enough teeth to move your plot ahead, then they aren't good characters. Flat characters might as well be just a rushing flood or an inspiring ray of sunshine.

Now, I'm not saying we need to know that the traffic cop your hero whizzes past in a high speed chase always wanted to own a boat and his favorite song is Barry Manilowe's "Mandy". That would be ridiculous because he's not a character, he's scenery. I don't need to know who laid the concrete in the street or which dog used the fire hydrant either. But your characters, the people who are going to impact your story in some way, they have to be fleshed out.

Think about guys like Sgt. Powell, the cop who talks to McClane all through Die Hard. Or Commissioner Gordon in Batman. Or even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet. That duo were bit players yet so well fleshed out they could be plugged into a totally different story where they were the protagonists! Those are strong characters!

Secondary characters like that are the work of master storytellers. If you hang with me, I'm going to demonstrate how you probably already unconsciously do this for your games.

But in the meantime, you're left with this: Your bare minimum word count just to flesh out your characters is anywhere from several hundred to several thousand words. Better oil up that keyboard.

Single Cell Characters

If it sounds like I'm being pessimistic about the character work, it's only because Aaron tends to be a bit pessimistic about it and he's rubbed off on me. I lack traditional classroom training in writing fiction, but Aaron recently finished his Master's in it. From what he tells me, a lot of people struggle to hit the hundred word mark on even their major characters with barely a line of text for secondary characters.

That boggles my mind. I can't imagine how anybody is able to take these blank slates and make any kind of story about them, let alone incorporate them in a smooth way. If you don't know what your main characters are like before the Big Event, how can you even be sure the Big Event will have an effect on them?

One answer is that they don't write a story where the Big Event effects the main characters. They write amoeba characters who only react to the Big Event. Why do I call them amoeba characters? Because amoebas are uninteresting single cells who never take an active role in their environment. They can only react.

If you put something nourishing near them, they'll move to eat it. But they'll never go hunting. If you put something threatening into the mix, the amoeba will fight or escape. But it won't take proactive measures to guard against danger.

The amoeba character is like this. It floats along the plot river reacting to whatever comes near enough to help or threaten it. But the amoeba character isn't interesting enough, it isn't "multi-cellular" enough, to take an active role. It eats the McGuffin and flees from the danger, then waits for the next plot morsel to come along.

That's Plot, guys, and it's important, but if you don't plug a fully realized person into it, it's just stuff that happens. It might become a series of interesting anecdotes, but it isn't a story.

No, I'm afraid you're stuck doing the hard work of figuring out who each of these people are and what they want. And (nearly) the only way to do that is to write about them. You keep adding words until they add up to a character.

My Scandalous Confession

I have to come clean with all of you right quick. Get ready, I'm about to bare my writer soul.

I never do the Character part of the pre-writing package.

Oh, I did when Aaron started coaching me. He assigned it, I wanted help with my writing, and I did the assignment to prove I was serious about improving. But the Character section was always the most tedious part. I hated doing it because I already knew all of these fictional people just as well as if I'd gone to high school with them. Half the time I could tell you a ridiculous factoid like her favorite color. Not because this was something I'd already written down or because it would be important to the story. No, it was because I could answer seven or eight questions about the character that would naturally lead to her wearing a lot of green.

The reason I'm able to do this without writing all those words is because I've been making fully realized characters at a breakneck pace pretty much since I was eleven years old. I used to do it with dice and rules, with pencils and character sheets. But I did it for so long and so often that those two dimensional numbers and words turned into character holograms in my head, three dimensional and in living color.

Because of my background as a gamer, I walk around with a cast of thousands in my head. And I keep adding to it as I go. In fact, at this point, it's probably a cast of tens of thousands. I make Eve and her three faces look like an underachiever. I just scroll through them until I find the one I need, like ties on one of those motorized tie racks.

Heck, at this point, I've got enough "spare parts" laying around that, if you tell me a little bit about your story or campaign idea, I can build a good character for you from scratch. Usually within a few minutes (depending on the rules). It's entirely second nature to me. And I bet it will be for you, too. Just like me, you've all spent years creating interesting characters for your various games. With a little focus and fine tuning, that instinct can become an endless array of living, breathing, fictional people just ready to appear in your novels. Come back Tuesday and I'll show you how.

From Tabletop to Paperback – Gamers Who Want To Be Writers

I've written a few posts on the subject of how being a gamer and gamemaster (that is, a lover of tabletop roleplaying games) has influenced my writing. In almost every single case, it's been a good influence, although I've often had to refocus the usual writing advice lens to make it so. The skills I use as a player and a gamemaster are, at times, so similar to the skills I employ as a writer that the places where they don't overlap can actually make the places where they do all the more confusing. Here's the beginning of a series of essays where I try to make the most sense out of this.

What is a Roleplaying Game?

A pen and paper role-playing game is a form of interactive story telling equipped with a rules system to resolve conflict. A role playing game is played by a group of players and a Game Master (GM). If you are a player, you create and control a character called a player character (PCs). If you are a Game Master, you create and control the plot and setting. The plot is the scenario that the GM presents to the players and...

Did you make it that far? I hope so, because I'm just kidding about that. If you're reading this, the odds are you already know what a roleplaying game is because you've already spent hundreds if not thousands of hours playing them. I just always hated the "What is an RPG?" section of every single rulebook I ever bought and wanted to have a little fun with you. Now for the real stuff.

The Pep Talk

If you're reading this, the odds are very good that you're part of a regular gaming group. This probably means that you meet weekly or bi-weekly to spend 3-6 hours living in a fantasy world you've co-created with a group of friends.

If this is the case, and you're used to regularly playing (that is, running your own, single player character) in a roleplaying game, and take the hobby somewhat seriously, then I have good news for you. The same amount of work, focused in a different direction, is all you need to write a novel.

If you're used to running a regular roleplaying game (that is, acting as the gamemaster for your particular group) and you take that role somewhat seriously, then I have great news for you. Writing a novel is likely less work than you're doing to get your regular game together.

But here's the first place that writing and gaming diverge. A lot of players and GMs, me included, don't prep all week between game sessions. If I'm diligent, I might do my prep a day or two in advance so it has time to settle in my head, I can look for weak spots, and generally tweak it so it has a more finished feel. But a lot of gamers don't think about the game until the afternoon before. Sadly, that's not really going to cut it as a novelist.

Every. Damn. Day.

You have to write every day. Yes, every single day.

I can already hear the whines. "Every day? Who has the time?" You do...if you're going to be a writer.

Okay, that said, here's confession time. I don't write every day. I write damn near every day, and the days I don't write usually have a pretty spectacular reason why I didn't. The beauty is, now that it's a habit, it doesn't even phase me to sit down and write something on a daily basis.

Let me head off the next whine before it even gets started. "But you're a professional writer, of course you have time to write every day."

Listen, I wasn't born a professional writer. Heck, I wasn't even born a very good one. The only reason I started out as even halfway decent is because I am an avid and voracious reader. (By the way, you also have to read a lot to be a good writer. If you aren't putting good stuff in, then good stuff isn't going to come out. Good writers are almost always good readers. More on that later.) I've had a few jobs where I got to write professionally. I've had a lot more jobs where I didn't. But when I decided to be serious about my writing, I had to set aside time every single day and write.

It's like anything else. If you practice that often, you cannot help but get better.

One more whine I expect to hear. "But if I have to do it everyday, then it isn't fun anymore. It'll be like my job."

You're damn right it will be. I once read that being a writer is like giving yourself homework every night for the rest of your life. It is exactly like that. And if you get published, it's like having homework that anywhere from dozens to hundreds of thousands of perfect strangers get to grade.

But don't worry! Not only will you get better, but if you get into the habit of writing every day, you also cannot help but finish writing the novel. And make no mistake, the first sign of a serious writer is finishing things.

Now, none of that means that this hypothetical, finished novel will be particularly readable. But that's where the good news for you as a writer comes in. Nobody, and I don't care if we're talking Stephen King, William Shakespeare, or the creepy guy down the block writing anti-government manifestos in his basement, nobody writes a perfect first draft. So don't worry about whether it's any good or not. Don't worry about that gaping plot hole in Act Two. Don't worry that the dialogue isn't snappy enough. You'll rewrite it and it'll get better.

The second sign of a serious writer is rewriting. Fixing troubled manuscripts is what we do.

Little Pebbles Start The Avalanche

Okay, back to writing every day. If you write a frankly tiny number of words, say two hundred a day, then you've got a novel-length manuscript in a year. If you write around 1,600 words a day, you've got a novel-length manuscript in a month. I know this because I've done it several times, usually in November during National Novel Writing Month.

As an aside, I can't recommend NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org) enough. Knowing that a host of other people, maybe even your friends and family, are joining you in the same massive, possibly quixotic endeavor has huge psychological value. If you don't think so, ask marathon runners. All those other people can't finish the race for them, but it sure helps knowing they're all there.

Okay, so that's all the tough stuff. You have to write every day, first drafts always suck, you have to finish things. But there was some good news in there also, like how few daily words it takes to make that novel happen. But wait, there's more!

The Best News I Have For Gamers Who Want To Write Fiction

If you've been gaming for a while, especially if you're a regular gamemaster, you're already good at most of the things fiction writers need to be good at.

Stop and think about that. You already have the skills necessary to write good fiction. I know this because I consistently shocked my writing coach, bestselling fantasy author Aaron Pogue (who also maintains a blog dedicated to helping new writers) with my grasp of Character, Plot, and Setting. When he started to ask how I understood these things when I obviously lacked formal training, my repeated answer mystified him.

"Oh that?" I'd say. "I do that at the table every week. Have dice, will travel, you know?"

You guys are the same way and I'm going to prove it with my next few posts on Character, Plot, and Setting. In fact, the odds are good that you're amazing at one or two of them. Rare gems might be especially talented at all three, but one or two strong suits is more likely.

If you need a boost, treat this like a Choose Your Own Adventure and skip to the one you're best at. When you've read that and see how instinctively you manage that aspect of fiction writing, then hopefully you'll be convinced that you've got a leg up on the others as well, even if they aren't your main strength.

Just because it's one of my favorites, I'm going to start with Character on Thursday. See you then!

31 Cookies!

Not long before August started, Courtney tweeted about a crazy plan to blog every day in August. I knew my August was already going to be insane, but something about this mad plan dug its way deep into my brain and got its hooks in. I asked her questions about structure. She had no answers. I asked her questions about topics. She had no answers. I asked her why I should even attempt this madness? For this, she had an answer.

"I'll bake you a cookie for every day you blog."

Thirty.

One.

Cookies.

Suckas.

Now, over on Courtney's blog she spent some time actually looking at her Google Analytics to see how blogging every day affected them. That is a really good idea and I wish I'd thought of it before now. Or that the woman who led me down this primrose path of pandemonium had, oh, I don't know, shared the one idea for a post I guarantee she had before we even started!

Truth is, I barely know how to use Google Analytics because I blog for me and if anybody else comes to look, I consider that a bonus. Also, I'm super lazy and it looks like a lot of information to sift through. Still, I'll get around to it at some point and see what, if anything, this month can teach me.

If nothing else, though, this month reminded me how much I actually enjoy blogging. Somehow, even though I "had to do it" everyday, this only felt like work a couple of times. I'm not going to promise a constant stream of daily posts, but I am going to promise more content much more often. Even if I have almost no idea what it'll be.

I say almost because I can tell you that a sample chapter of my Noir Viking Fantasy novel, Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall, will be available soon. Then the whole book ought to be available middle of next week. I also have a whole series of posts in mind that will help tabletop roleplayers apply those skills to writing fiction should they so desire. And hopefully those Analytics will tell me a tale of what it is the readership prefers via pageviews and traffic.

But all that is for September and beyond. Tonight, my friends, I thank you for taking notice of Blog Everyday in August and for joining me on this madcap adventure of other people's poetry, my own embarrassing stories, sample chapters, anecdotes, and my discomfort as I wrestled with the joys of human endeavor and the pains of human folly.

Hey! That sounded pretty good, if I do say so myself! I should be a writer or something...

Ladies and Gentlemen, Epic Recording Artists…REO Speedwagon!

Confession moment. Only I'm not remotely ashamed so I'm not sure it counts as any kind of confession. Regardless, here it is.

I pretty much love REO Speedwagon.

Now, I'll immediately insist that I prefer the early stuff to the ballad years. And, honestly, by the time Wheels Are Turnin' comes around, I've stopped caring. But, thanks to my dad, this band has put an indelible imprint on my brain.

The first concert I went to was REO. Cheap Trick and Foghat opened for them. I was in, like, 10th grade.

I still have the t-shirt. I wore it the other day. My chiropractor and I bonded over it. It was pretty great. And it led to me breaking out the REO tracks today to share with my boy. I was playing Take It On The Run for him that I remembered a tale from my youth.

You may recall this particular lyric from that song. (And if you don't then you have no soul.)

You're thinking of your white lies

You're putting on your bedroom eyes

You say you're coming home but you won't say when

When I was about ten or eleven years old, I realized I had no idea what bedroom eyes were. So, not realizing this might be a sensitive subject, I went to my mom, mostly because she was handy, and I asked her.

Her only response was a pregnant pause and a pointed look before she finally said, "Ask your father."

I'm going to be honest with you. As a concept, this did not excite me. I still wasn't sure what the deal was, but whenever I was told to "ask your father," I was probably going to be more confused than anything else once the explanation was over. Let me illustrate with a different story.

When I was around six, I asked where babies came from. My mom gave me the same pregnant pause and the same pointed look before she finally said, "Ask your father." So I went to ask my dad. I'm not sure what exactly happened or how long it took, but he answered my tiny, six-year-old question as though I were a college student. I'm pretty sure it took at least a half hour. I definitely remember the word ovum. My head swam.

So, you see, being told to ask my dad to explain an idiom was not an immediately encouraging suggestion. But, ever the dutiful son, I went.

"Pop, what are bedroom eyes?" I asked.

Similar pointed look and pregnant pause. "Why?"

"I was listening to REO and they said it. Mom told me to come ask you."

Look and pause are repeated. "Ask me when you're older."

And that was the last I heard on the subject. Well, Pop, I know you read the blog occasionally. I'm older now. Will you finally tell me?