A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 57

It's Emperor Mollusk Month!!

It's strange, but I don't often talk about the business of writing.  Especially my own business.  Like all novelologist, I am basically a small business owner.  I create a product, partner with a publisher, and together, we bring that product to the fine folks out there.  It might be a bit mercantile to use the term "product", but there's nothing weird about it.  My books are a product, something to be bought and consumed.  I don't write them for my own pleasure.  Not primarily.  Primarily, I write to earn a paycheck.  I do like writing.  Heck, I love it.  But it doesn't change the fact that if you didn't pay me to do it, I'd probably not do it.  I'm fortunate to make a living doing something I enjoy, and that's something I remind myself of every day.

I write this blog, brilliant as it occasionally is, goofy as it often can be, because I want people to buy my books.  I probably wouldn't blog just to blog.  I realize there are a lot of people who do just that, and I see nothing wrong with it.  But I'm here on the internet to remind people that I'm here and to encourage folks to buy my books.

Yet I don't often say this:

Please, buy my books!

I don't care which format you prefer, hardcover, mass market, or e-book.  It's your call.  But buy them because I can't make a living if you don't.

Yes, I'm sure that soon I will get a comment from someone who says I just wrote two posts about copyright / trademark law being too extensive and how I don't think piracy is a horrible problem.  And I stand by those posts.  I don't want  you to pirate my books.  I want you to buy it.  And you probably should because it's easy to buy and there's very little excuse not to.  Though I'm sure they will be pirated, and I'm sure I'll lose some sales because of that.  But piracy isn't going to kill my career.  I just don't believe that.

Without getting into the dry numbers, I've hit a sales plateau recently.  I have my loyal fans, but growing past that has proven difficult.  I can get people to buy my books.  But I have trouble getting return business sometimes.  My own theory is that this is due to the truly standalone nature of my novels.  It's a competitive market and when people buy books, they tend to go with something reliable.  I wouldn't call that playing it safe.  I just think that with so many choices, people will generally aim for something they can count on, with characters and worlds they are at least partially familiar with.

That's a problem with my books.  Not only are they not part of a series, they're also not even set in the same universes.  This incompatibility means that when someone picks up one of my books, they are taking a chance.  For those of you who take that chance, I can only express my unending gratitude.  I know there are plenty of choices out there, and I appreciate your willingness to take a chance on the new worlds and characters I create.  Your support is the foundation for any success I get, and I love you for it.  Seriously, if you need a kidney or something, let me know.

But for everyone else out there, for those who are only have a passing familiarity with my work who might just be visiting this website out of curiosity, this is a great time to encourage and inspire you to take that chance, to buy my space squid supervillain story.  EMPEROR MOLLUSK VERSUS THE SINISTER BRAIN is due out on March 5th, and I want it to sell like hotcakes.  Better than hotcakes!  I want it to sell so many copies that I am indicted by environmentalists for cutting down too many trees and the internet becomes known as the Aleenet because it's primary use will be to support all the fan clubs who love the book.

So I'm exercising my power as a world-renown(ish) novelologist, I am declaring February to be EMPEROR MOLLUSK MONTH!! I know it's also Black History Month (which I very much support), but it can be two things, right?

In the coming weeks, prepare yourself for a whole lot of stuff on Emperor Mollusk and his universe.  I'm going to approach this from a Mass Effect perspective, meaning that you are going to learn not just about the story I've written, but the universe it takes place in.  I'll also be writing about the story, about the inspirations that helped create it, and about the characters themselves.  My hope is that by the end of the month, you'll be salivating to read this book.  You'll see it not just as a novel, but as a doorway into a world of fantastic adventure, deep thoughts, and cool characters.  Kind of like Narnia, but with more rayguns and giant robot fights.

Stay tuned, gang.  I promise you won't be disappointed.

Keelah Se'lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

 

Copywrong, part 2

My last post about copyright / trademark law brought in a surprising amount of traffic.  It's a complicated issue, and too often, people seem to think that copyright / trademark should be an All or Nothing affair.  Either you should own the rights to something you created forever.  Or you should never own them.  This is often the criticism thrown back at me when I suggest that copyright / trademark is too restrictive and encourages cultural stagnation.

"Don't you make money off of your ideas thanks to copyright?" someone will inevitably ask.

Yes, I do.  And I think I should be able to.  I just don't think copyright / trademark should be nearly as long as it is.  And I certainly think that after the original creator is long dead, it's not unreasonable to allow intellectual property to hit the public domain.  In fact, I think it should be well before that point.  Twenty or thirty years after original publication, at most.  If an artist can't create another successful idea / story / character in that space of time, I have a hard time being sympathetic.  Not because creativity is easy.  But because I don't approve of the notion that someone can do something really well once (or get really lucky once) and then coast along for the rest of their life.

Anyway, it's a false dilemma.  If J.K. Rowling lost the rights to Harry Potter right this moment, it's not like she would go to the poor house.  She's would still be obscenely wealthy.  Even if all her royalties stopped rolling in, she'd still be set for life.  As well as for the life of her children and grandchildren.

Granted, most creators are not as successful as Rowling.  But it's my opinion that the artist should create, not just rest on their laurels.  If I were a file clerk, I couldn't alphabetize all the information, reorganize it in a wonderful new system, and then just sit back and collect a paycheck for the rest of my life.  People might congratulate me on my great job and even give me a bonus if they were feeling especially generous.  But they wouldn't sit around for the next thirty years telling me what a great job I did that one time and that I was a filing genius.

That said, I'm perfectly willing to accept lifetime copyright / trademark.  It might not be the best system, but no one can complain if someone profits from their creativity.  I'm even for copyright lasting a decade or two after the creator's death, so that their family has a window to profit from it.  It seems a bit excessive to me, but not unreasonable.

But what I'm against is someone who is not the original creator, someone (or something) who owns a license, profiting from an idea that they had very little to do with.  Granted, this isn't always clear cut.  Batman achieved part of his popularity in no small part to the efforts of DC Comics.  At the same time, the comic book company was mostly there as a distribution network, not as a creative element.  Comic book companies (and companies in general) are pretty lousy at creativity.  They tell stories that sell comics, not good stories.  They are beholden to their bottom line, and that's nothing to be ashamed about, but it's a lousy motivation for creativity.

But, and I really need to emphasis this again, copyright / trademark is important.  Done correctly, it rewards creativity and artistic expression and encourages more of it.  Done incorrectly, all it does is discourage those things.

If I can allow myself to be a pretentious artist for a bit (if I haven't already been too much of one at this point), art should be about more than making money.  Most art anyway.  I have no problem with a bit of soulless art, a little attempt to cash in.  I don't care if someone wants to earn a few bucks by "selling out".  But when even your cultural touchstones have sold out, where is there left to go?

We see it already in our culture.  It seems like more than ever, we have sequels and series and licensed properties.  And some people bemoan this, but the fact of the matter is that these things make money.  There's no reason for a corporation to take a chance as long as their is more profit to be had in sticking to the same old thing.  If J.K. Rowling kept writing Harry Potter books, people would still buy them.  At this stage, it wouldn't even matter much about the quality because it's a habit.  And I have little doubt that the publisher would be very happy with this.  It is Rowling herself who has decided there is a limit to the number of stories she can tell about Harry and his universe.

For me, the worst idea is the notion the "constant reader", that fan who consumes without question, who willingly surrenders their own judgment.  Not that I expect my fans to turn their backs on me if they read a book they don't like.  But three or four books they don't like?  That's different.  And I'd hate for someone to buy any books (mine included) out of a strange sense of obligation rather than because they think they'll enjoy it.

When I was a steady comic book purchaser, I used to see folks who would buy any comic with Character X on its cover or written by Writer Y.  There was nothing wrong with that, but often, I'd see a dissatisfied customer come back.  They might love Character X, but that doesn't mean they're going to love everything with him / her in it.  And even though you might love a writer most of the time, sometimes, they aren't just going to do it for you.

Yes, even me.  I admit it.  It's fine with me if you like some of my books more than others.  Heck, if you end up hating one, I can't hold it against you.  And while I'd like to think one bad story wouldn't put a reader off of my work, I would also like to hope that if you've read every book I've written and hated all of them that you would be smart enough to stop torturing yourself out of some misguided hope that I'm going to win you over.  (Although if you want to keep buying them and hating them, I can live with it.)

It's easy to blame the corporation or the customer or anyone and everyone.  But it's a complicated problem.  Consumers often like the same ol' thing.  It's okay to admit that.  Corporations like money.  It's okay to admit that too.  And if these are only your concerns, then there's nothing wrong with copyright / trademark as it stands.

But I like creativity.  I like encouraging it.  A world where everything is a sequel, where we re-release films in repackaged form because it's easier and safer than trying something different, that world bothers me.  It's a world without discovery, a place where finding something new and unexpected is harder and harder.

And that world is a sadder place.

Keelah Se'lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Copywrong

It's time to admit that the concept of copyright has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

In theory, copyright is there to protect artists and creators, to allow them to make money off their work, and to encourage creativity.  In practice, it just leads to stagnation and to corporations profiting off of characters they simply are fortunate enough to own.

As usual, I'll go to a comic book example.  DC owns the characters of Batman and Superman.  Nobody working at DC created these characters.  They are simply inherited property, held by a giant corporate machine.  DC profits because decades ago, an employee created some cool characters and then DC claimed those characters as its own.  End of story.

The system is simply broken.

While the struggle against cultural stagnation is nothing new, the fact of the matter is that when you pass a character or an idea to an immortal corporation, real growth and change is difficult, if not impossible.  Because people create, but corporations own.  And that's the real dilemma we face today.  Is ownership more important than work?

It could be argued that what keeps Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. fresh is the creative people behind them.  Even if these people didn't create these characters, there are still talented and capable writers and artists who keep the characters alive and kicking.  But even then, these folks are still employees, still subject to the whim of executives.  If the order comes down to kill character X or resurrect character Z, then this will happen.  And this will be decided by someone who is less interested in telling a good story than in increasing sales.

There's nothing wrong with commercial success, nor with striving for it.  But if it's all about sales, then there's no reason to develop any new characters, new ideas.  And the thing about characters, about franchises, is that they don't ever really go bad.  Not often anyway.  And hardly ever do they have an expiration date.

Certainly, not every character is timeless and a character or a concept might have a great appeal for a limited time.  But some ideas and characters are so transcendent that they can stick around for a really, really long time.  Batman is a great example.  While he's had his ups and downs, he has never really disappeared from the public consciousness.  That's because he's pretty damn flexible as a concept.  You can do goofy Batman stories, dark Batman stories, sci fi Batman stories, noir Batman stories, and so on.  While he hasn't always been a cash cow, he is certainly unlikely to be replaced anytime soon.  He's a product without an expiration date, one that can be repackaged and sold over and over again.  This isn't so bad if his creator and owner is mortal.  But once that owner is an immortal corporation, you end up with a real desire not to innovate.  If you doubt me, I can only point out that DC has created a new version that starts with his origin all over again.  Because we haven't seen that enough.

This is a big reason why I can't get behind the re-release of Star Wars in 3D.  It's not a new product.  It's the same old product reprocessed to appear new so that a corporation can make more money.  George Lucas too, I suppose.  Basically, it's a foolproof moneymaking scheme because it requires minimal investment and is guaranteed to cash in.  But it, frankly, amazes me that we continue to fall for it.

Nobody who created Mickey Mouse has anything to do with him today.  He's a corporate shill, a face to put on a T-shirt.  And while that's always been part of why he existed, it shouldn't be the ONLY reason he exists.

I'll admit that I'm skeptical that self-publishing is the amazing revolution it often claims to be.  At this stage, it's still working out the kinks.  I'm hopeful that it will figure the stuff that corporations excel at: namely distribution and marketing, two areas where self-pub rarely can compete against established corporate structures.  If that can ever work itself out, then creator owned works have a better chance.  But that's a ways off.

As a novelologist, I'm lucky.  Though I moved publishers, I still control my characters.  I could write another GIL'S ALL FRIGHT DINER if I chose.  Or a sequel to THE AUTOMATIC DETECTIVE.  Though Tor owns the rights to publication of the original stories, I own the characters and settings.  Tor can't publish those stories without me getting royalties.  Not that Tor has ever exhibited any hostility toward giving me my fair share.  They've always been accommodating and genial.

On the other hand, if they owned my characters, you probably would've seen a sequel by now.  That might be a good thing if you want a sequel, but it certainly wouldn't be for me.  Not financially.  And probably not creatively either.

It all comes down to financial incentives.  Corporations are, first and foremost, about making money.  And you can make money by taking chances, but why bother when you can also make money with minimal time and investment?  If corporations were genuinely people, they'd be motivated by a desire to be better, to challenge themselves.  But they are NOT people.  They are vast, soulless financial machines that want to make a profit.  And while a desire to profit is not bad, it certainly isn't good when it's your soul motivation.

So what does it all add up to?  I can't honestly say.  It's easy to demonize corporations.  Usually, it's justified.  An unbridled lust for profit, unconstrained by any conscience, is just about the most dangerous thing around.  Add to that the near unlimited financial power available to many a corporation (or even some individuals) and you run into a serious problem.

We can't change copyright law, but we can demand better.  I'm not against Star Wars.  I'm against Star Wars being repackaged and resold to us without any real effort.  I'm not against Batman stories.  I'm just against Batman stories that don't need to be told anymore.  And I'm not against Spider-Man movies.  I'm just against another lazy and heartless effort created mostly so a corporation can meet a contractual obligation to keep a second corporation from getting those rights.

We can do better.  We can demand better.  Copyright might belong to the corporations, but creativity should belong to the people.

Keelah se'lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The Fall and Redemption of The Panda King

Just the other day, someone asked me what I do for a living.  I usually respond with "Writer".  It's accurate, but kind of vague at the same time.  Technically, I'm a novelist, but it just sounds so damn weird to use that word.  You'd think after seven years, I'd be used to the title.  But it's a little like introducing my wife as "My Wife".  It just doesn't sound right.  I'm sure I'll get used to it.  Eventually.

So not to post anything more about Mass Effect, but while replaying the game recently, I was struck that it's been a while since I've been so immersed in a game and its universe.  In fact, there's only one series of video games that has garnered my devotion to its characters.

Sly Cooper.

I might be the only one to draw this comparison, but that's what makes it worth drawing.  On the surface, Sly Cooper and Mass Effect are very different games.  One revolves around funny anthropomorphic animals and their criminal misadventures.  The other is an epic space saga about saving the universe.  One has a predetermined storyline.  One is far more flexible in how it can unfold.  Yet both games succeed in probably the most important manner possible for good writing.

Both games create memorable characters with distinct personalities.  Both games are also about the psychological journeys of their heroes and supporting cast.  And both games do a solid job of integrating gameplay into their narrative.

If you're unfamiliar with the Sly Cooper games, Sly is a raccoon who comes from a family of thieves.  His family steals only from criminals though.  Think of them as a long line of Robin Hoods.  Sly himself is an orphan.  His parents were killed by a gang of rival criminals.

Yep, killed.  Sly has some pretty dark stuff going on.

Raised in an orphanage, Sly and his childhood friends, Benton and Murray, grow up to carry on the family tradition.  In the first Sly game, which is mostly an action platformer ala Crash Bandicoot, you're tracking down the gang that killed his parents and shutting them down.  It's a solid game, though the series really doesn't hit its stride until Sly Cooper 2.  This is more of a free roaming game where you complete various missions as you sneak around and prepare to commit elaborate heists.  The levels aren't huge, and it's not so much a sandbox game as an elaborate playground.  Half of the fun is scaling vines, pickpocketing guards, or otherwise discovering treasures to take back to your lair.

Meanwhile, a story is unfolding, and we learn a lot about Sly's relationship with his friends as well as his enemies.

Special mention should be made of how much effort is put into Sly's enemies.  They aren't just one-dimensional characters.  My favorite is The Panda King, who is a major character in the first and third game.

The Panda King was part of the gang that killed Sly's parents.  But in the third game, part of the master plan involves recruiting the King to Sly's new gang.  Needless to say, Sly isn't too happy about this, and who could blame him?  But somehow, the game manages to make the King sympathetic.  He starts out as a noble villain who eventually finds redemption.  And he and Sly come to an uneasy friendship.  It says something about the game that this turn of events, so implausible, come across as natural and believable.

The Panda King is like Darth Vader, but with a more believable story arc.  Mostly because Darth Vader never exhibits any positive traits through the original Star Wars films, and his moment of redemption just comes from nowhere.  He's followed the Emperor blindly throughout the story, and then, suddenly he decides not to.  But there's no justification for it other than the shallow excuse that the Emperor is killing his son.

Of course, this is somewhat of a problem in Star Wars for Luke as well.  He really has no reason to seek the redemption of his estranged and evil father.  In fact, until he learns that Darth Vader is his father, he has absolutely no sympathy for the guy and would happily see him destroyed.  The moral of Star Wars seems to be that it's okay to destroy bad guys as long as you aren't related to them.  But if you are related, it's okay to risk the lives of billions in pursuit of their redemption.

It's a pretty crappy moral.

On the other hand, the redemption of the Panda King is far more nuanced and believable.  To begin with, the Panda King starts out as honorable, even if only following his own code.  Still, when we first meet him again in the third Sly game, he's a tortured soul, tormented by all the things he's done as well as his own inability to protect his family.  As the story progresses, we see him go from a broken warrior to an inspired hero.  Inspired by the company he keeps.

On the surface, it might seem a little ridiculous, but the basic framework is there.  One of my favorite moments is when the King must help Murray save his van.  The van is very important to Murray, like family.  As you rain fireworks down on bad guys trying to stop Murray, the King finds himself admiring Murray's conviction and absolute commitment to protecting what he loves.  And in the end, the King thinks how it was a conviction he lacked, even toward protecting his own family.

So it's a scene about a hippo rescuing a van, but it's also about the lengths we can go to for those things that really matter to us.  And while it should be ridiculous, I've always found it inspiring.  Whenever I get down, I think about Murray and the Panda King and that van.  Because that's what it's all about.  It's about putting yourself at risk for what truly matters and about supporting each other when those things are in danger.

I won't get into the other characters, though there's plenty to discuss.  Jean Bison, the villainous unfrozen lumberjack who "would've been a hero a hundred years ago as he tamed the wilderness, but was an environmental disaster today."  The team dynamic between Sly, Benton, and Murray.  The quest for family, both old and new.  The nature of obsession.  And the power of friendship and cooperation.

Also, you get to fight a giant octopus with fireworks in the third game.

The Sly Cooper games are far more cartoon-ish than Mass Effect, but it doesn't change the fact that there's some rock solid writing and characterization going on there.  And I realize just how much I like these games, and how I'm happy to consider them an important influence in my writing.  They're fun games, well worth checking out.  And if you're a writer looking for how to do it right, it's definitely worth taking notes while you play.

Keelah Sel'ai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The SOPA Post

Today, a large chunk of the internet is protesting SOPA by blacking out their sites.  It's an interesting tactic as on the surface it seems like Rosa Parks sitting in the back of the bus to protest having to sit in the back of the bus.  But really, when you think about it, it's about the only way to draw attention to this issue.  Especially since most sites have helpful links to pertinent sites, so it does actually make sense.

That said, I'm not going to black out this site.  Instead, I'd like to go ahead and talk about SOPA, piracy, and how these things pertain to me and my perspective on them.  It's a topic I've written on before, but it's worth exploring again because even if SOPA is put down (which it probably will be) this subject will come up again.  And again.  And again.

As I've mentioned previously, I think the specter of online piracy is greatly exaggerated.  There's no doubt it happens, and that it happens a lot.  While googling my own name and books on the internet (which I do fairly regularly), I've stumbled across more than one site that has pirated versions of my books.  It doesn't fill me with joy to see that, but at the same time, I still get paid to write.  So obviously, it's not killing my career.

I'm not endorsing piracy here.  If you can afford to buy my books, you should.  If you can't afford it, find a public library that has them.  Or borrow them from a friend.  And if none of those options are available to you, I'm still not for piracy because, as much as it pains me to admit this, my books are not worth committing crimes to obtain.  Even minor ones.

But piracy will happen, and I'm less concerned with how people obtain my books than I am with people discovering my work.  If someone pirates a copy of one of my books and then goes on to buy others, I won't feel too bad about it.  The goal of publishing is "to make public".  That's the whole point of it.

On the other end, I don't like when someone suggests that anyone who puts their work on the internet is volunteering to be pirated.  It's a dangerous philosophy that suggests the only way to protect a creative work is to hide it away where no one can see it.  That's a paradox.  You don't become a successful artist by hiding your work.  And if someone decides to sell their book in electronic format, this shouldn't be seen as the go sign to steal that book because you don't have to push them down and rifle through their pockets.

I have no patience for those who think of casual piracy as no big deal.  Nor do I have much for those who act as if it's the end of the world.  It is a big deal, but it isn't the end of the world.

Really, I believe piracy bothers corporations not because of the money it costs them in illegally downloaded copies.  It bothers them because of the money it costs in legitimate sales.  Corporations and artists want exposure.  They just want to control that exposure as much as possible.

The music industry, for instance, used to make a lot of money selling people albums they didn't want.  Not the whole thing, anyway.  Maybe they only want one or two songs off that album, but you still had to buy the whole thing.  And that translated into extra profit.  Then people gained the ability to download individual songs.  The music industry was hurt by this because no longer were you required to spend extra money on extra content you didn't even want.  Now, you could pick and choose.  You could enjoy the stuff you loved without having to purchase the stuff you didn't.

It hurt the entire music industry business model.  The response from the music industry wasn't one of adaptation, but of an effort to preserve the status quo.  Corporations will only reluctantly abandon a successful business model, and that's not to be criticized.  But things change, and you have to change with it.  The music industry eventually did.  It adapted because it had to.

Really, the corporate structure is wanting to have its cake and eat it too.  It wants readily available sales without the downside.  It's not just corporations either.  I've seen some self-published authors decry piracy as if it is destroying their career.  And I get where that comes from.  But without the internet, without e-books, without modern distribution, most self-pubbed writers wouldn't have a career to be destroyed in the first place.

If piracy destroyed careers, then public libraries would've made novelology a dead art long ago.  And if someone is making a billion dollars a year and complaining that they aren't making enough, it's hard for me to be sympathetic.  And while I can certainly empathize with the smaller artist who struggles against piracy, it still comes down to nobody has every truly been hurt by getting more exposure.  There isn't a book / movie / TV show out there that is popular in piracy that isn't also popular in legitimate sales.  If media were truly being undermined by electronic piracy, then why do movies still get made, books still get written, etc.?

I can't speak for everyone, of course, but these are just my thoughts on a complicated issue.  Hope they make some kind of sense.

Keelah Se'lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The Mass Effect Effect

Wow.  Been a while.  Guess I've just been busy.  Between writing and the holidays and playing Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, my schedule is pretty damn full.  But seeing how A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is tomorrow, I figured I should take a moment to confirm that I'm still alive and kicking.

Can I say how much I love the Mass Effect games?  Seriously, I adore them.  Not only are they fun games, but it's great to enjoy an original universe.  There's just so much to like here.  What I love best though is that the game seriously avoids the Planet of Hats phenomenon.  One of the most difficult elements of fantasy / sci fi is to not end up portraying all the members of an alien race or culture as one-dimensional.  Whether it's aloof elves, logical vulcans, or gruff dwarves, the tendency in fiction is to give all the human characters nuance and subtle differences while pretty much assuming that every romulan is a scheming jerk and every dwarf loves fighting and booze.

But in the Mass Effect universe, this is averted pretty hard.  The alien characters you run into exhibit a wide variety of personalities, and there's every indication that every alien culture, just like human culture, is full of its own sub-cultures and attitudes.  The war-like Krogan are perhaps the most one-dimensional in their portrayal, but even then, they tend to have a wide range of philosophies and personalities.  And even the sinister geth, a race of evil robots, aren't quite so one-dimensionally evil as you might first assume.  About the only genuinely "evil" race in the game are the Reapers, but even they are portrayed as just so utterly inhuman and different as to view every other species as merely lower animals.

It's the kind of writing you just don't see very often.  I just hope that it's not an anomaly but a future trend.

The other thing about Mass Effect that amazes me is that the game becomes the game you want to play.  It is a truly interactive storytelling medium.  It's like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, but with no wrong answers, no bad decisions.  You can't lose because you pick the wrong door or you say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  You can only alter the story into something else.  That it does this so seamlessly is astounding to me.

My own character, Zala Shepherd, is a female Vanguard with dark skin and a no-nonsense approach.  She is deliberately not super attractive because I thought it'd be cool to play a hero you just don't see in many other games.  I ended up with a woman who is of vaguely Indian descent who charges in, guns blazing.  Her personality has evolved into a strong-willed, ethical warrior who believes in preserving life of all types and doing the right thing whenever possible.  But she's also no sucker and will do what needs to be done, make the tough choices, when required of her.

She is such a real and vibrant character to me that it seems unbelievable that someone could play Mass Effect and have an entirely different experience.  It's like picking up a book or watching a movie and having it adjust itself to you and your desires.  It's both amazing and bizarre.  While talking to a friend of mine about the game, it was like we were  playing two different games.  The framework remains the same, but the execution is everything.

It's a shame that Bioware went on to make the Star Wars MMO because, while I have no interest in Star Wars, I would play a Mass Effect MMO in a heartbeat.  About the only thing that could top a tauren would be a chance to be a Krogan.  Or a Turian.  Or a Salarian.  Or a Quarian.  Well, heck, I'd even play a human if I had to.  That's how much I love Mass Effect.

But enough about that.  You're not here to read my endorsement of a game that everyone already knows about.  Let's talk about A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!!

It's tomorrow, but you already knew that.

As is tradition, this is the day when you get friends and family together, play a board game or two, watch a monster movie OR a superhero movie, and then push my books on people.  You can buy the books.  Or you loan them.  Or tweet about them.  Or blog.  Or just mention how awesome they are to strangers on the street.  Whatever works best for you.  The great thing about A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is that there's no wrong way to celebrate.  Just as long as you take a moment to remember how cool I am and how much I've given to you.

And all I ask for in return is your unfettered adoration and a paycheck every now and then.  Now, isn't that reasonable of me?

Keelah Se'lai, everybody.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Thoughts on Unlimited Media

Hey, gang. Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything. Been having some serious computer difficulties lately and been busy with projects too. I'm writing this on my wife's iPad.

It's like I'm living in the future.

I say that a lot in my real life, and it's only partly a joke. If you think about it, we are living in a science fiction universe. This has always been true. Time and technology marches on and things we take for granted would be absolute magic for people of a different era. But technology moves so fast these days that the time from barely dreamt concept to everyday application can be startling. Especially in electronics.

This is both amazing and troubling. We are, at our hearts, the same primitive beasts who beat each other with clubs. Considering how slowly we evolve biologically and how rapidly our world has begun to change societally, you have to wonder how we'll cope with it.

One of the ideas that most troubles me is a new version of "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Only this dilemma isn't about food, but media. We are able to satisfy our particular media appetites to our ultimate indulgence. This is such a new development, I don't think we know how to handle it.

My wife has a habit of watching entire seasons of TV shows in a few days. As far as I can tell, this is normal now. Being old school, I tend not to enjoy doing this. It makes me realize just how different my wife and I are about stuff like this.

But it is a big question. How do you value something that is, more or less, unlimited? Value almost always springs from scarcity. As an older guy, I came from a time when media was a limited resource. If I wanted to watch The A-Team, but Simon & Simon was on the other channel, I had to make a choice. I couldn't watch both. Coming from slightly before VCRs hit the scene, I couldn't tape the runner up. The best I could do was wait for rerun season, and hope to catch it then.

Now, I can watch anything I want. I can carry a thousand and one books in a portable device. I can go to websites and obsess with other fans about any show, book, movie, fetish, etc. I imagine. The only limitation right now (provided I have the minimal financial resources to pay for it, though many do not) is my own mortality. There are only so many hours in the day, after all.

I've noticed this among most of my friends. I find myself more selective in my media than they are. I tend not to be as forgiving. I won't watch things that don't win me over fairly quickly. Most of my friends will give a show four or five episodes. And if these shows have one or two good moments during those episodes, it's more than enough.

This isn't meant as a judgment. Given the nature of modern media, my old habits can seem quaint, almost silly. When I say that I found a comic book boring or that a TV show was okay, but not good enough to keep me watching, most people seem puzzled by this. And I can't truly blame them.

But today's media feast has made me more picky, not less. In a world where I can partake of anything I desire, why settle for something I deem only "okay"? But it seems the other way to most.

Keep in mind, this is the observation of one guy, who obviously is coming from a different viewpoint. I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise.

Still, I think the world would be better if we were all a little more choosey. And I believe we do ourselves a disservice by indulging our appetites to the point of gluttony, by devouring more as a matter of habit than desire.

If I can indulge my own point without subtlety, I think in a world where the only thing limiting our appetites is our own judgment, we have to accept our own responsibility. They might publish a dozen Spider-Man comics a week. You don't have to read them all. You don't have to watch a whole season of a TV show before deciding if you like it. And you can be a fan of something without being a devoted superfan.

Yeah, it's kind of weird to say that in this day and age. After all, every canceled TV show, every obscure character, every weird movie, has a devoted following at this point. Obsessive fandom isn't unusual now. It's expected.

I realize this is a bit of a contradaction. I'm suggesting that we are both too obsessive of our media while also being somehow undemanding of it. But I'm not so sure these are opposing values. Perhaps in a world with unlimited access, we are less concerned with what we obsess over than just obsessing over SOMETHING.

I don't have the answers. I'm not even sure what the question is. But I hadn't posted in a while so I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Thanks for reading.

Oh, and just in case you need reminding, A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is coming (Jan 12). Not that you need reminding, I'm sure.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The Event Horizon of Boring

Having seen the recent Batman movie trailer, I have to say this film looks like a stone cold bummer.  I realize I stand on the wrong side (culturally) of this struggle, but I just didn't care for The Dark Knight at all.  It struck me as a combination of the worst elements of superheroes, realism, and melodrama.  I won't try to convince you of this, dear reader.  You most likely already know how you feel about this subject.

Still, the new Batman film looks like it's even more unpleasant, more full of itself.  If this is what passes for "great" superhero films, I guess you can count me out.  I'd much rather watch Green Lantern fight giant yellow fear monsters or Captain America punch Nazis than have to sit through a movie that is this determined to be mature and intelligent.

In a recent episode of The Office, a character classified the music group The Black Eyed Peas as "Pop for people who don't like pop, Rap for people who don't like rap, Rock for people who don't like rock."  While I kind of see where he's coming from, I'm not going to bash the Peas.  They clearly have appeal, even if I don't really get it.  Not that I dislike them.  Just put me as resolutely neutral.

But it does have me wondering about the evolution of genre and media.  I've long felt that the comic book superhero genre has run into this problem.  It seems like most writers and fans would rather read stories about talking, brutality, and gray-and-gray morality than about good guys punching out evil.  I wrote an article for SF Signal a while back suggesting that comics have trouble maintaining their audience because they don't have enough punching and alien invasions and would much rather devote themselves to obscure continuity nods and some strange integration of realism in universes populated by wizards and flying robots.

Honestly, I'm not so sure I'm right about that.

If The Dark Knight Rises scores as much popularity and commercial success as its predecessor, it'll just be one more giant step toward superhero movies that take all the fun out of superheroics.  And I believe it's very possible this will be the future.  Comic book superheroes are relentlessly boring and steadfastly unpleasant at this point.  So why shouldn't movies eventually follow?

In a way, it could be the very same pattern established with comic book superhero history.  Stories like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns came along and redefined expectations for a generation now in charge of writing superheroes.  And what we've gotten is more of the same, an often slavish devotion to recreating and imitating these groundbreaking stories to the point that if a comic book superhero doesn't have swearing, hints of sexual violence, and some gore, it's considered a "kid's comic" by most of the audience.

If The Dark Knight Rises has the same affect on up and coming filmmakers, we can look forward to more of this in the future.  And while I'm in the minority in thinking of The Dark Knight as one of the worst superhero films ever, I still can't imagine a world where people will flock to see film after film that makes superheroics depressing.

But aren't we kind of already there?  How many shows on television are about bad people?  How much of our entertainment is devoted to the most unpleasant aspects of who we are?  From Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead to Mad Men, we seem more and more like a culture more-than-happy to wallow in the darkness of our natures.  And put me down as someone who doesn't like it.

This is not to suggest that these shows are bad.  Taste is such a subjective thing.  Still, whenever I bemoan not having a show I can watch on television, someone will inevitably bring up something like these as examples of how intelligent and deep television can be.  I don't mean to imply that these shows aren't intelligent and deep.  I'm just wondering why this is more and more our ONLY version of intelligent entertainment.

It's why my favorite superhero flick remains The Incredibles.  It's a beautiful and thoughtful film about what it means to be a hero and a villain, about family, about our own desires versus the desires of the society, and of everything that makes being human both transcendent and difficult.  It's also has two amazing giant robot fights.  It's a movie that is about people AND about superheroes, not just about people with some superhero stuff tacked on as a concession.

Part of me assumes that this is merely a phase that we're going through.  Culture follows trends, and trends rarely stick around forever.  I can weather boring Batman and unlikable protagonists for a few years.  But another part of me worries that there's no going back.  Once you cross that bridge where a man in a batsuit who fights crime is no longer fun, you have passed the event horizon and there's only one way to go.  Darker and grimmer and grimdarker until eventually, all our stories are about drug dealers who eat babies and feel miserable while doing it.

There's a way to things, a certain natural order that seems to pop up.  For example, men's names can become women's names over time.  Eventually, those names stop being men's names all together.  Men's names can become women's names, but it is NEVER the reverse.

I worry that the FUN to BORING path is similarly irreversible.  Once the Joker shot Barbara Gordon, he signaled the beginning of a brave new world, one we can never escape.  My only solace is that as long as Batman: The Brave and the Bold exists, there's always hope for tomorrow.

What?  Canceled?

Oh, well, never mind then.  Game over.

Congratulations, boring Batman.  You win.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Fanciful Liars

Human beings are extremely gullible.

I know this because I make a living trading on that gullibility.

Technically, I'm a fiction novelologist, but that's just a fancy way of saying I lie for a living.  I make stuff up, create characters that have never existed, invent situations that are purely fantasy, and if I do it right, the reader will go along with it, even knowing it's all artifice, smoke and shadows.  The only reason I'm not considered a liar is because it's clearly established from the beginning that I am going to tell you lies, but those lies are fun and enticing and somehow rewarding enough you don't mind.

Perhaps gullibility is the wrong word.  Gullibility implies stupidity.  Or at least naivety.  It assumes that the gullible are dumb because they simply don't know better or are simply incapable of recognizing deception.  It's a loaded word with too much negative baggage.  So let's abandon it for something less inherently insulting.

Let's say humans are fanciful instead, prone to flights of fancy, eager to believe anything that appeals to them emotionally.  That's not so bad, is it?  And it is undeniably true.

Fiction is all about this emotional manipulation.  And make no mistake, manipulation is exactly what it is.  Without it, where would fiction be?

Imagine your favorite stories, your favorite characters.  Now imagine them . . . different.  Imagine Batman dressed like a bear, fighting crime in Cleveland.  Imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a grizzled old fat guy who is chosen to kill monsters.  Imagine if the hobbits were actually orcs who loved drinking blood rather than eating mushrooms.  Imagine if nobody died at the end of Million Dollar Baby or if everybody died at the end of Grease.  Imagine every single story ever written ending with a sudden alien invasion.  Just ALIENS from the sky out of nowhere.

All the above examples are fictional.  They aren't real.  They exist purely in the realm of imagination and as such, any of those things could be the case.  But most would either alter or destroy the appeal of the work.  Why?  Because the emotional appeal is destroyed with it.

It's not, as most might assume, because it violates the reality of the stories.  Stories have no reality.  They are only limited by their creator's imaginations.  Ask a child to tell you a story and reality will soon fall to the wayside in favor of whatever cool idea that pops in their head.  As we get older, we begin placing limits on stories because it helps to keep them focused.  But those limits aren't so much based on reality as on hitting that emotional sweet spot for us.  It's in striking that sweet spot that a story succeeds or fails.

If a story or character can fill a need then the audience will forgive it almost anything.  But if it stops fulfilling that need, then nothing can be forgiven.

This is why aliens don't invade Desperate Housewives.  It's not for the sake of realism.  It's because the moment those aliens appeared, all the fans of the show would have a visceral negative response.  That isn't what people watch that show for, and so, the emotional shock would throw everything out the window.

But to be clear, aliens could invade this or any show.  Or everyone on Hawaii 5-0 could become telepathic.  Or CSI could become a show about people who fight morlocks.  The only thing preventing this is the good sense of the creators who understand that this sudden change would destroy the good will of the audience.

At the end of the day though, all stories are fake and we willingly believe the ones we like anyway, even as we mock the ones that don't speak to us.  I'll admit I don't usually get Academy Award winning movies.  They just seem so artificial and ridiculous to me.  But then I realize I'm a guy who wrote a novel about a squid from Neptune who conquers the universe with superscience.  It's ridiculous, all right.  But what isn't?

This is why, though I'm not a fan, I usually don't mock Twilight.  Regardless of whether it speaks to me, it speaks to a lot of people.  It'd be unfair to dismiss those people's emotional response, even as I realize that all of Twilight's sins (it' stilted writing, its overblown romance, its unsubtle versions of good and evil) are all things that are found in John Carter of Mars books.  And damn it, I love John Carter of Mars.

It's almost as if we are all blind to our own emotional needs, our own hot buttons (both good and bad).  If not blind, at least willingly oblivious.

Whenever I watch a ghost hunting show and someone says, "I felt really scared so I knew there had to be a ghost there", I think to myself, "I almost cried during Wall-E, despite knowing that none of the characters were real.  What does that prove?"

Yeah, I almost cried.  I don't cry.  But I can come close.

Fiction is proof that not only are we human beings fanciful, but we are easily manipulated by that.  It's like the cheat code to hack into our brains.  Find the right emotional cue and ninety percent of the work is done.  It's not exactly a secret.  Politicians, salesmen, and undisguised liars such as myself have been doing it since the dawn of time.

The only amazing thing is how so few people have ever caught on to it.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Martinez On: Characters

Just the other day, Feeosh at Twitter asked:

Hey A Lee, I was wondering what your methods are in character creation? Where do you start when you're in the 1st stages?

Ah, a writing question.  Yes, aside from who would win in fight between Tarzan and anyone (short answer: Tarzan) and why giant fightin' robots are awesome, this is probably the only subject where I'm comfortable calling myself an authority.  Novelology is my bread and butter.

There are a handful of questions I get over and over again, and this ranks among them.  Everyone has their own technique, and to be clear, my advice here is entirely built on what works for me.  It might not work for you.  And that's okay.

That said, I'll say that the hardest part of writing a story for me isn't the creating characters.  Possibly because I feel most writers work way too hard on it.  At the end of the day, most readers aren't going to care where your character comes from or what their favorite flavor of ice cream is.  The readers might think they want to know this, but they are wrong.

Just take a look at any prequel or after the fact origin story given to a character.  They are almost always disappointing.  Darth Vader was infinitely more interesting before we found out he was a petulant child.  Wolverine was a badass until we learned that his name was Jimmy and he couldn't figure out anything better to do over a hundred years than fight in an endless string of wars.  And do we really learn anything special about Indiana Jones by discovering where he got that scar on his chin?

This is only an opinion.  I'm sure you can find plenty who disagree, but I stand by the assertion that most characters work fine as a handful of simple traits with the simplest backstory available.  Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered.  He grows up to be a determined detective crimefighter.  Krypton blows up.  Superman comes to Earth and fights giant robots for justice.  James Bond is a suave superspy.  Wonder Woman is an Amazon warrior.  Scrooge McDuck is a greedy adventurer.  And so on and so on and so on.

Really, if you can't summarize your characters in three or four words, you're probably doing it wrong.

There are exceptions.  Characters can certainly be too shallow, but in my experience, most novelologists (aspiring or otherwise) work way too hard rather than taking it easy.  My standard advice for all writers is to only work as hard as you have to.  Writing a story is difficult.  Don't make it more difficult by putting extra pressure on yourself.

So how do I create characters?

I start with the most basic elements and go from there.  A great character can usually be summarized in three or four words.  Really, everything beyond that is just window dressing.  And too many character traits just end up confusing everything or being contradictory.  I've used these examples before but I think they really do illustrate the point.

Batman: Driven, Intelligent, Mysterious

Superman: Noble, Powerful, Friendly

Catwoman: Thief, Rebel, Playful

Joker: Jolly, Sadistic, Mad

These are all comic book superheroes, but this what makes them work so well.  They are characters that are so easy to grasp that they can be shared and passed on with ease.  You could just as easily apply this rule to a thousand and one other classic characters.

What's NOT important (though many writers seem to forget this) is the backstory.  It's true that Batman's actions are defined by the death of his parents, but at the same time, it's not information we ever really need to know to understand Batman.  If a writer knows Batman is driven to fight crime and determined to save Gotham City, then WHY is a lot less important than people realize.  Most Batman stories don't talk about his dead parents.  Just as most Superman stories don't talk about Krypton.  These elements are so immersed in pop culture that most readers are already well aware of them, but even if this wasn't true, it wouldn't matter.

We think knowing Bruce Wayne's tragic backstory makes him more real to us, but it's his actions in the current story that do that.  I'm not suggesting that backstory is a bad thing, but in ninety-nine percent of all stories, it ends up being irrelevant.

Classic examples abound:

Sam Spade has no backstory.  Long John Silver has no backstory.  Wolverine for the longest time had no backstory.  Most fiction characters don't have much in the way of background because they just don't need it.  Time devoted to backstory is time that could be devoted to the present story, which is almost always infinitely more important than anything in the past.

Okay, so this is rambling on and just to be sure I've answered the original question clearly:

How do I create a character?

Think of a very simple character and drop them in an interesting situation and see what happens.  And that's it.  That's the entire secret of my character creation process.

Inevitably, as the story continues, the character will take on more life and nuance.  But initially, having any character be defined by one or two adjectives is more than enough.  Readers don't want to know everything about a character in the first ten pages, and neither do I.  As often as not, I'm discovering things about the characters at about the same time the reader is.  Maybe because I tend not to use complicated outlines or do a lot of prep work on my books.  I'd rather just jump right in and see what happens.

I do have to go back and clean things up a bit once the story is finished.  And it's not unusual for the characters at the end of the story to not fit with the idea of the character at the beginning of the story.  In which case, going back and making a character more consistent is part of the magic of editing.  It's something as simple as removing a line of dialogue that sounded good when you first wrote it, but three hundred pages later, it just doesn't sound like something that character would have ever said.  Or perhaps the character is taller than first envisioned or some other triviality.

But ultimately, novelology is a business of adjustments and adaptation.  Never be afraid to NOT know everything about a character, a scene, an idea.  Because if you like it enough to keep writing it, it will eventually make sense.  The pieces will fit together.  The characters will grow into vibrant, living creatures.

That's how I do it anyway.  I'm not saying that will work for you, but I always like to point out that most novels do not spring spontaneously into existence from a writer's head.  They are works of time and discovery.  It's only with practice (and judicious editing) that they seem otherwise.

Hope that helps.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee