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Loose Cannons can Lose Your Canon – WHEN Should You Shake Up Your Characters?

Why would a story that rips forward at light-speed pace take a whole first season for what seemed like ordinary short-term TV conflicts? When Babylon 5 does just that (with so much excitement to come), it makes me rethink why other stories protect their status quo so fiercely.

 

Medium and Message?

Sure, television. TV’s whole history has been shaped by coming into viewers’ homes night after night like some old friend—or at least a neighbor that gives that steadying sense of the familiar.

For decades it’s been easier to set up TV plotlines (and sell them) around a concept that can stir up conflict, laughs, or whatever else it wants and then end the episode with so little actually changed. At most the plan inches toward the season finale, and then next fall starts in with a new villain or Slightly Different Situation that moves through the same motions. I understand soap operas liked spreading their major arguments, seductions, and other big scenes out over two episodes so a viewer forced to miss one day can always feel they “saw” the big break-up, mostly.

It’s the model for classic TV… and not only TV.

On the bright side, it’s also called suspense. Done right, a story can hold our interest with just when something’s going to tear free and bring back that sense that anything could change. A show like Babylon 5 is more fun to watch with a few spoilers, knowing its first year’s “barely-contained hostility” won’t stay contained and won’t go back in the box afterward.

Or… Severus Snape.

One keystone of the Harry Potter books is the most vicious professor at Hogwarts, and his growing hostility to Harry and perhaps to the whole wizarding world. Every book we learn more about how much is driving him, but also how many other pressures are involved and we wonder if this will be the arc that actually unleashes him against our hero.

That and, we’re wondering the same thing about certain Dark Forces in the world at large.

(I’ll skip the spoilers here, for the few people who don’t know them. But if you don’t, or you think all you need is to hold your own in a Potter conversation or enjoy a few of the movies in passing… think again. Read the books, trust me.)

Plus, Snape reminds us, TV is only one place to find a semi-stable series. Any medium can use it, and most do.

So, can it work?

 

Holding Patterns Worth Holding

Basic storytelling would suggest, skip the waiting and start pushing the story forward hard. It’s easy to look at the big cable and Netflix hits and say, raise the stakes, forget the brakes.

But looking at those stories gives some powerful lessons on the other side.

  • Setup matters too. Change counts for more when we care about what’s changing. Remember the classic sin in horror, to start the killing before we’re rooting for anyone to survive. But Babylon 5’s traditional first season laid the groundwork that everything else tore up, and even Game of Thrones had one almost calm book/year before the heads started rolling.
  • If a character and plot arc aren’t moving yet, is there enough else to keep us busy? At its best, that means whole, worthwhile storylines that aren’t relying on how they “just might” trigger the Big Ominous or the Perfect Pairing. Harry Potter’s a perfect example—for all the hard-hitting arcs that take place, page by page it never runs out of sheer whimsy and variety.
  • No shortcuts. Snape is a pleasure to know because… well, he’s Snape. The sheer venom in him, and all the layers he gets, keep us going the way a major draw needs to. And delivering that is all the more vital because he doesn’t “do” anything for whole books.

If a slow-changing character isn’t written on a level that calls for an Alan Rickman to play him, he’s got nothing else to “carry his wait.”

But if it works… more of the fun reading Potter books is just knowing you’ve got three or four of them still ahead, and realizing Rowling is having too much fun with Snape to break the pattern too soon. It could be the best of all worlds: a busy story, simmering energy near the center, but trusting—hoping!—that part will drag on a little longer before messing with perfection.

 

Setting Up the Setup

Finally, it helps if the whole world of a story fits with why that arc isn’t moving yet.

Babylon 5 is an embassy, the classic place for enemies to “maintain hostility at the usual levels,” so we see why Londo and his empire don’t start their conquests without a push. (Plus, he and his people are a tired race, while his rival G’Kar is on the rise and angry, so more of the early gambits come from his side of the feud—more clarity!) Snape is an old-school British teacher, free to abuse the kids under him, up to a point.

That’s not only justification. It’s part of the whole concept of their stories. (C’mon, if you’re first hearing about a magic-school story, isn’t one of your first thoughts “Wow, how bad is a Teacher From Hell who can shoot hellfire?”)

–Or, imagine some of the early schemes Londo and G’Kar would get up to, if they were crime bosses instead of ambassadors; the peace wouldn’t last an episode! Or so many will-they-or-won’t-they couples that don’t have a reason besides sheer friction to ignore their supposed chemistry.

If a story wants a delaying tactic, those delays ought to work. Either find a better concept, take time to convince us that right now nobody wants change, or build that slow setup around just which characters there do have a reason to take their time. Make it believable.

Not just believable, it ought to glory in it! Of course a story here won’t be breaking out of its holding pattern too soon… and that pattern can be half the fun in itself.

 

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Babylon 5’s One Key to Character Arcs

One way.

There just might be one irresistible way to track and reveal how a character evolves—and make the most of how that arc drives the whole story.

In my last post, I said the key I found was setting up other characters as markers so we can follow a lead’s changes as compared to them. And, I dropped a fun little phrase we can ask our characters: “What do you want?”

On the one hand, asking that really can find the essence of what a character is. Especially, it can be the key to turning someone’s inner nature outward, where we can start matching that desire up against other characters that share the same goal. Or want some prize that puts them in our hero’s way. Or, they want the same thing and want all of it, or all the other degrees and combination of conflict that can come. (I’ve written about conflict types before, both a complex post and a simpler one, but so much of it does come down to What Do You Want.)

And on the other hand, that line is a catchphrase from a master class on storytelling: J. Michael Straczynski’s spectacular show Babylon 5.

After all, when a mysterious figure actually starts asking that question of a wildly varied cast, and then uses the answer one gives to start a galactic war..

 

Character Arcs – the Descent of Londo Mollari

Londo’s pretty much a clown. Just a washed-up, puffed-up alien ambassador who thinks his fading empire deserves more respect, and always scheming against his rival G’Kar from the world his empire had once enslaved. So when the smiling Mr. Morden asks “What do you want?” he growls “I want it all back, the way that it was!”

(You can watch his answer for yourself, here, including Morden’s reaction: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLijOyZ0GtN42ZtegVNYRV4aBRaTnZ0oVw)

Cue the star-spanning power grab.

But Babylon 5 isn’t about ships firing lasers (mostly). It’s about making us feel every step of the journey that Londo and others take. So if Londo wants his people to take power back from the other stellar empires, the story might chart his arc through characters like:

  1. The obvious enemy that he escalates his conflict with.
  2. Would-be peacekeepers who see he’s going to be trouble.
  3. An unlikely friend who’s seen sides of him that others never do.
  4. A confidante who stays near him but sees everything he’s losing…
  5. His people’s leaders that give him everything he wants. At a price.

Otherwise known as:

  1. G’Kar
  2. Commander Sheridan (and most of the human cast)
  3. “MIster GariBALDI!”
  4. Londo’s assistant Vir,
  5. and… well, a whole parade of backstabbing Centauri nobles, including the Emperor.

Brilliant.

Londo’s whole storyline is measured through his dwindling bonds with those people, in sequence. The further his goal of Centauri glory pulls at him, the more his conflicts with the earlier people of that list grow, and the more he’s dragged into the camp of the latter ones.

All because the first have the least in common with his goal, and the last ones have the most, at least in theory. And all the way Londo moves down that list, he (and we) can feel what he’s losing and what he’s risking to go on.

That’s the basic pattern of Londo’s arc, brought to excruciating life by how these people define it. That’s how simple it can be to pick stepping stones for a powerful story.

 

To B5 and Beyond – Crossing the Character Arcs

At least, that’s the basic pattern. Of course every step on Londo’s or any character’s journey is also another chance that they might see what’s coming and find the strength to pull back—but what would it cost them? Or, a writer could twist up something to change the pattern or someone’s place in it. A character could give up one goal for another, or find a way to reconcile them, or simply lose his reason to keep pushing. (Come on, fans will be talking for generations about Londo’s crazy friendship with Garibaldi, they can’t split those two up… can they?)

And a story would have more than one thread to tangle together. G’Kar has his own journey in their rivalry, and so do the shadowy forces Morden tempts Londo with, and I haven’t even mentioned their opposite number. Or almost anything about the human plotlines that actually are the series’s center, or the last seasons in the aftermath of all this…

–Trust me, Babylon 5 was Game of Thrones years before the first Game-move was ever played. And its people survived long enough to stand for something.

But any story can begin to build some of that power, with three steps:

  • Know a character’s goal.
  • Compare it to other characters, for who’s more in conflict with who.
  • Lay the plot out so that key character’s arc goes past the others, in a pattern of similarity and conflict.

Then twist that character’s course and combine it with the others.

 

Speaking of twists… One last thing about B5 is that its story didn’t twist, or even move, so much in the first season. (Yes, it did all of the above and more in four years, with one to spare just for setups.) Not the first season was weak, but it did have a whole different pace.

More like, say, the slower arc of Harry Potter’s Severus Snape.

 

Next time: To Arc or Not To Arc?

 

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Writing a Character Arc – Through Other Characters

If the heart of a story is the conflicts it puts a character through, and especially the choices he has to make… could there be a pattern underlying that to guide a plot into deeper insights and keep them clear all the way to the end? Working out my plans for The High Road’s sequels, I’ve found something that looks a lot like just that.

Looking at an unwritten book is enough to dizzy you with the possibilities. Maybe add more action, more scale, build the thunderstorms and the body count to a whole new level—or swing wider into the maneuvers people haven’t tried yet and just how different this hero’s options are? New characters unlike anything before (a hacker! there has to be one!). Or push back into people’s histories, with whole chapters crafting the perfect setup for someone?

Or, dig deeper. Take what a character thinks he is, and tear all of that apart until even he knows better.

A story can juggle all of the above—and the best ones do—but I’ve always found that last goal was the most inspiring. And the hardest.

After all, anyone can say their hero’s ultimately driven by guilt… or learns to put family over friends… or has to find his courage… We’ve all read books that picked a theme like that, and went through the motions until they fetched up on the ending they wanted. But what does it take to find what’s actually true for him, and develop it through a whole book into something worth reading?

And I don’t mean the Stephen King approach, not for how most of us work. I read The Shining in one frantic day when I thought I was going to be writing, but I’ve never wanted to build a story out of that kind of small, personal steps down someone’s journey. For us lesser writers it’s too easy to get lost, or bring the second ghost in two chapters early or not at all… no, I’d say most writers need at least a hint of how to know the story’s on track. Anything else could leave us as confused as our characters, and more terrified.

So, back to basics:

 

“What Do You Want?” (and does HE?)

A character starts with a need, I think we all know. A set of goals and desires, and they play out through the story. Like my character interviews show, my protagonist Mark started The High Road just trying to keep Angie out of danger (when he really should have known better; it’s Angie Dennard!), but in the later books he’s searching for some combination of safety, answers, vengeance, and something more.

And yet… chararacter means more than one person’s path. Another basic rule I’ve learned: absolutely anything in a story is stronger if I use one of the other characters to embody it.

Including that first character’s growth.

Allies? Yes they’re there to open doors the hero can’t on his own, but they’re also living reminders of how not only the hero but other people with different perspectives can still have that need in common.

Until. They. Don’t.

For one example from The High Road, Joe Dennard is a former cop; in fact he left the force out of guilt for what he did with the flying belt that Mark and Angie find. He’s quick to protect them, but he’s also all too aware of how dangerous the belt can be to use. And then there’s Kate, Angie’s mother, who won’t trust anyone she cares for with it. They may be on the same side, but with Mark and Angie ready to use the magic, it was always only a matter of time until one of them is pulled away from the rest. The more the struggle edges beyond sheer survival, the more the new goals might leave one of them behind, unwilling to keep up—or trying to push the others back from something only they fear.

The more I look at that model of writing, the better it seems. Bring characters together based on their shared needs… and then move on to where those needs stop overlapping, so that friends step away, or seeming enemies turn out to have a common bond after all. Define those layers of a person using other people.

Call them human milestones, living reference points… except that all those “other” characters, being people, have the delightful habit of having their own layers too, and those layers keep changing. Just keeping up with those changes from both sides can keep a story arc twisting through multiple dimensions. It works for the story of a marriage fraying; it works for Lord of the Rings teaming up hobbits with heroes; it’s (one reason) why the Marvel movies’ most believable and beloved villain is Thor’s brother Loki.

And it’s given me a few ideas.

  • In The High Road, Olivia Nolan often seems like a “second front” to the heroes’ struggle with their hidden enemy, but in Freefall she’s willing to work with them… but that doesn’t mean she’s drawn by the same sense of outrage that they have. And I doubt her motives are going to stand still either.

Even the contrast between someone’s background and the way they actually act can let them enter the story in motion, and start us wondering what other changes they have in store.

  • That’s half the fun of writing Sasha Lawrence now. When a character’s been so close to the enemy, the last thing anyone would expect is for her to be as innocent as she seems. But even Nolan has to believe her—sort of.

 

So, the best way to reveal a character is with another character, and their own history. And whenever the contrast between the two shows they aren’t so similar (so as different) as they seemed, that’s a discovery worth making, and a plot point aching to be used.

In the next post, I’ll go further, to what’s starting to look like the simplest, strongest tool for keeping all those character conflicts on track.

 

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The High Road’s Book Trailer

I love book trailers… but I hate videos, or at least how easily they can end up padding themselves out without a real reason for the extra minutes. So that puts me in a fun place now that the time’s here to get my own trailer for The High Road.

 

Training for the Trailer

You don’t have to be a writer to see the logic that makes a trailer. Of course that’s what a trailer is: taking the arcs and the sizzle of storytelling, and arranging them so someone can “know” the story in a minute. It’s distilling the tale.

And I do love that challenge. After all, Shadowed has completely different back-cover and inside-cover copy (“Paul lives in hiding… the one person who knows…” vs “Open your mind… take another look”) simply because I got into writing both. So how many plot points does a trailer need? How many words, to leave how many pauses in a timeframe?

But then making the video itself? No way I’d do that.

I’d either lose weeks learning the software and hating the result, or lose weeks learning the process and love it too much to ever finish. I always knew I’d start with the script and then work with an expert to get the final result. So instead I studied trailers like Joanna Penn’s advice at http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2015/03/02/book-trailers/ and http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2011/01/07/how-to-create-a-book-trailer/ and looked at what could work. Then I went shopping.

The result?

 

 

So what do you think? Do the skyline and cloud images, and how they alternate with fire and destruction, make the point about the joy of flying and the dangers Mark and Angie are in? Should more of the cityscapes have been at night (when most of the flying happens), or does the light/dark contrast work better on a visual level?

I think there’s a lot to like here.

Especially, I like that it keeps to 45 seconds instead of the two to three minutes of so many trailers—both book and movie. It always bugs me when a video fills up time with less inspired content, figuring that just making it visual means every second is earning its keep. (A lesson we writers are relearning with every line we write!) And a trailer isn’t like the recorded clips I’ve put up, for a fan who wants to follow a page of my writing with their own ears. No, it ought to hook, and re-hook, the viewer with every line.

 

Ahead on the Trailer Track

If you take another look at Joanna’s above, and compare, I think we did okay for our first time out. Similar lengths, and a lot of similar arcs and techniques.

Or there are longer, more detailed trailers out there, like for Hugh Howey’s classic Wool at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-ardca2IAg

Of course that one takes the leap to using custom-built images for every shot, from the View Outside to the computer readings… enough to make me pound my fists and wish for a bigger budget. But there’s no question the words and the images follow a story, the distillation of what we need to know about Jules’s world.

(On the other hand, Hugh himself has some thoughts about the art of trailer-making, and what might be shaking it up soon: http://www.hughhowey.com/this-is-only-the-beginning/ )

Or there’s the all-out cinematic approach, like some of Jim Butcher’s fans did for Skin Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8ZUvrIQWuY

That’s a full three minutes with actors, staged moments, and everything else it needs to convince us this Dresden Files book is a film out there (well, why isn’t it?). Shifting storms, characters set up to show their conflicts with each other in a few shouted words… or a burning subtitle to introduce their roles in the heist Harry gets trapped in.

(If anything, the last glimpses on the trailer might be too fan-centric. You need to know the other books to see why Michael Carpenter defending his home is such a big deal, and you need to have already read this one to appreciate how that moment’s not part of the caper but the dread aftermath. Still, how could they not have referenced a scene that got as wild as that one, even if they stayed clear of the real spoilers…)

It all gives me a lot to mull over. I think I’m getting the hang of picking the words to tell a story in trailer form… the next step could be to go further in matching images to the pieces.

  • Should there be more moments, more pieces of words and story elements along the way?
  • Or less? (For more oomph for each.)
  • Onscreen text instead of voiceovers? Or a mix, like some of Joanna’s?

And then there’s the other trailer. The one Ilona Andrews made to make fun of trailers themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMxG1ayUAOw

“Cheesy,” it calls them. There’s truth to that; book trailers try so hard to say so much quickly, they do have a bit of absurdity to them. Then again, even a parody like this has to know what it’s spoofing… and a good skewering does help me remember what matters. Like memorable moments that (should) string together to imply the story, good visuals or phrases that hook in their own right…

I won’t need quite so many cute kittens, though. Unless I could get a shot of a kitten touching someone and possessing him.

 

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Darth Vader Missed It and Dracula Never Tried – Character Plot Twists that Matter

What single choice could make a story? Sure, we writers have dozens of strengths we might weave into a tale, but could there be one clear decision that pushes it to a whole other level?

It’s been on my mind lately, now that The High Road is out and I’m looking at a mix of blank screens and early drafts for Freefall and Ground Zero. What would the perfect keystone, first step, heart of a story look like?

I’ve got plenty to start with. The first book left Mark starting to master his flying magic, while Angie is… in case you haven’t read it yet, let’s leave her status up in the air (there’s always a flying pun available somewhere). He’s gotten to know a bit about his enemy, and he has old and new allies and a plan for the future.

Lots of next steps for them. So many ways to chase their enemy, from tracking his history to digging deeper in their own magic to forcing him to fight on their terms. So many ways he can push back. I could dive into those strategies and not come out for a dozen books…

Then I worry about Dracula.

Straight-up Adventure (plot twists as action)

We all know the original story… if you haven’t read it, look up the plotline and see how much of it you know anyway from what’s passed into clichés ages ago: The hero walks into a castle not knowing it holds a vampire (“Enter freely and of your own will,”) and barely escapes with his life. The Count comes to London and begins stalking pretty girls for blood and pleasure. Van Helsing leads our heroes to chase him down.

And, it drew all that from (or created) the basic steps of what a vampire wants, what he can do, and what that gives a hero to track him and fight him with. The twists of the plot are mostly what new clue or weapon or new target for the monster’s evil are revealed, and which moves will fail at what cost. (Poor Lucy, playing the original “bit” part.)

It’s a fine book, to this day, from its sheer energy and how inventive it is with its concepts. (Turn a vampire’s influence on a girl against him, with hypnosis? Cool.)

But… it’s basic. The cast mostly go from semi-fearless vampire survivors to fearless vampire hunters, except for the designated victims. All its twists still settle into the same steady push forward.

When people talk about “plot-centered” rather than “character-centered” stories, this is what it comes down to. The characters here are still at the center, but nothing about them breaks them out of what the plot forces them to become—and that means, half of what the tale says to our own vicarious sharing in it is “If I were there, maybe I could fit in that mold too.” Not so many options, variations, or revelations about human nature there.

Lord of the Rings has some of the same focus. A hobbit and a ranger may not see the quest the same way, but they all follow the same plan; half the books’ surprises come down to who yields to the ring’s influence and which way the one wild card (Gollum) will jump.

Does that make either story weaker? Not at all, not when they both choose their own territories and use them so masterfully. But, just what are those tricks they don’t use?

Plot Twists – Under the Helmet?

For one thing, those tales aren’t just sticking to “old-fashioned” simple heroism as if it were the best anyone could do at the time. After all King Arthur’s tale is many centuries older, and Lancelot and Guinevere actually act on that “forbidden love” and bring the kingdom down.

(Come to think of it, Tolkien used Eowyn to hint that Aragorn just might go off-script in the same way… but only a small nod to it, since he’d barely showed us Arwen at all. The LOTR movies set up enough more that we could at least see the possibility.)

Or these days, Harry Dresden’s torn between so many overwhelming forces you wonder if any side he allies with will let him protect the innocents around him. And anyone in Game Of Thrones is struggling so hard to survive that there are no sides that last (let alone innocents).

So what makes the difference? What does one kind of story make do without, and others sink their roots into?

It might be Star Wars that has the answer, just from comparing its first two movies. The original New Hope played a grand simple storyline better than anyone ever had… and then Empire let Vader blow it all up with four words.

(Or, it would have blown it up except the movies only gave us the buildup to that one shock, and then Luke simply recovered and decided he could save Vader. On the other hand, that “simple” first movie gets its real high point not from Luke finding the power to make that shot but from Han riding to the rescue first. It’s a basic but clear thrill from seeing who stands where, and why.)

Call it the power of rooting the plot twist in the people. Dracula finds different directions to throw the same threat at us, but there’s nothing in its heroes to make us wonder how they’ll respond; Star Wars gives us a limited amount of the same. They’ve both got brilliant buildup with Dracula floating about and Yoda warning Luke what he’s not ready to face, but the hunters only fight harder and Luke flinches for a few scenes before he begins re-twisting the plot back into line. Compare that to Lancelot and Guinevere following through with their failings, or Dresden selling only a bit of his soul but having to do it again and again each book, and the Game of Thrones parade of all-too-real changes…

By these lights, there are three chances to build a harder-hitting tale:

Set up the twists. Use everything from background to atmosphere to misdirection to fill the characters and the reader with a driving need to survive the threat, destroy their enemy, complete their quest… and then spring how the key to that is nothing like what they thought. The simpler tales live and die on a few surprises and a smooth path along the way; Dracula mostly plays with how to fight and what other lives are in danger.

That might be enough. It might not.

[bctt tweet=”A simple vampire-chase story could use a #plot stake *from* the heart. #writetip” via=”no”]

More: twist a character against himself. The deeper changes build on how a character honestly could choose something above the same struggle he’s been on. (And that means, how we readers don’t have to be in a swordfight to have been pulled in some of the same two directions.) Lancelot convinces his fans that true love might be worth risking loyalty and everything he’s built. Game of Thrones does some of the same with every new chapter, and usually tears that apart too the next time around.

And:

[bctt tweet=”If your #writing’s dangers hit the hero as rarely as a Stormtrooper’s blaster, you don’t know what you’re missing.” via=”no”]

Most: twist until something breaks. Every plot change is a chance to tease a reader with how much the heroes could lose, or win—or it can follow through and make real, lasting changes nobody can forget. Lancelot did it. The Dresden Files does it halfway since Harry wriggles out of so many compromises, but each one he makes leads to so many more. And Star Wars blinked, since in the end Vader simply came around… but imagine how unsatisfying that scene would have been it hadn’t cost him his life instead.

(Then again, a bigger miss with Darth Vader might have been back in the “setup” category: The movies made him one of the most iconic evil figures of all time, with zero balancing hints that he could be redeemed except Luke’s faith, but they simply went there anyway. And that’s not counting the prequel movies, that couldn’t make us care what happened to that version of Anakin at all. In the next few years we’ll see how well “Episode VIII” and “IX” touch those bases…)

 

So, put the story on a course where the upcoming twists make the biggest difference. Have them make the deepest difference by using what honestly could turn a person away from their path. And sometimes, let them actually turn.

Intriguing….

 

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Action Stories, to Scale – Lessons from Netflix’s Daredevil

Devil may, devil may, devil may care

How many devils does Daredevil dare?

 

I’ve finally started watching the Netflix Daredevil series. For general storytelling fun, and especially for its action, it lives up to the hype.

(Or should that be “up to the hyper-senses?” I would have loved to compare Matt’s senses to Paul’s gift in my own Shadowed, but the show minimizes the fact that its hero has one actual superpower in the mix. But of course that Frank Miller-type grit means fists and courage are more than enough.)

 

Binge-sized Chapters

As a general storytelling lesson, Daredevil is a handy reminder of how many different lengths of tale and chapter a writer can build with.

A single comic book might take ten or fifteen minutes to read, though its storyline might take twice that if it were unpacked into a conventional short story. (All those thousand-word pictures do condense the experience.) Or a network TV adventure is forty-some minutes with your DVR, though it might actually be less than that to read. They’re all valid blocks at holding a fan’s interest and moving a story forward.

And they are about hooking us on the total story. Unlike a movie that sells itself as one complete arc, all those episodic forms are about settling the story enough now to satisfy us but bring us back in just a week or a month for the next installment. Which makes them subtly different from novel chapters, where the next step is always waiting on the next page, but the story’s so big it can explore more on the way and we probably don’t expect to finish it in one rush.

Like Daredevil. As a Netflix show, knowing the whole season is right there (and paid for) seems to give the creators a certain extra freedom to take their time. Every episode has its share of action, but otherwise the first takes the rest of its time making us comfortable with Matt and his law partner (and if you think a best friend named “Foggy” has to be stuck as comic relief, you’re only a little right) and what their first case opens up. More than network shows, more than cable, there’s a certain novel-like depth to each step along the way.

 

Fighting To Scale

When I was gearing up to start the show, my friend Ace Antonio Hall said it had some of the best fight scenes around. Since then, I’ve been thinking:

He didn’t say “action scenes,” let alone “effects,” he said fight scenes. And how many superhero or science-fiction stories are there where we still use that word? Where we don’t just enjoy the spectacle and (hopefully) the storytelling, we appreciate that those might be people squaring off?

I don’t mean that CGI kills visual action (hello, Lord of the Rings!), or that non-super battles are just better. True, it’s the low-powered fight choreography that’s been more likely to be completely right. But any kind of story just needs to get a handle on itself.

Scale matters. A great adventure defines just how tough its hero is at whatever he does, and brings that size of conflict to life to the point that we understand what’s daily suspense and what’s a step up for him. A hacker stealing a few files is not the same as trying to shut down a doomsday device that the whole world is watching. A human hero can’t wade through bullets with his only explanation that “I’m the hero.”

So I realize I’ve been waiting a long time to see a hero like Daredevil onscreen—especially in the thorough treatment a TV show allows. The first comics I really appreciated were Spider-Man and Daredevil, and I think it shows in my (super)world-view. From them I’ve built the sense that:

  • for Superman or the Avengers, walls are only there to punch through
  • for Spider-Man, walls are there to swing from to reach the door (then he rips that off its hinges)
  • for Daredevil, walls still have to lead to a regular door

In fact, I’m still in Season 1 of the show, where Matt doesn’t have any kind of grappling line yet, so he’s got nothing but plain parkour climbing and dropping to set up his battles. (Even Batman, the more famous “non-super super,” has enough gadgets to let him act like a true superhero whenever it’s cooler. For DD, no such luck.)

And it’s been a pleasure to see this kind of action. Matt Murdock in a fight is skilled and believable, but you can see he’s struggling with just one assassin; against two it really is all about knocking one away to deal with other fast. And unlike with Bats, taking on four or five crooks at a time doesn’t come off as something he’s eager for… though I wish those bigger showcase fights did work harder to spell out what a challenge it is for him to juggle that many threats. (Well, call it a nod to his comics history where he does it all the time; at least the show makes it look good.)

On the other hand, watch for the when moment the camera takes a slow pan around an alley from the inside of a car; who’s going to be lurking somewhere? is a body going to drop, and where? When something does trigger, it shows us this is a show where they know their options.

 

So… Know Your Foe

Call it a basic rule for writing action, or any other kind of opposition scene. We writers have to understand just how much the hero can do, and what the challenge can, and how many other complications still matter on that scale… and then use that.

If I take a hero’s enemy up to a new level, and the reader doesn’t know the difference, I’ve failed.

In a way it’s a counterpart to what I wrote about as the Tarzan Test. That idea is qualitative, and says the total story lives in the variety of its challenges, while this principle is about quantifying it. So it’s rarely good writing to fight a lion and then another lion, or to fight a lion with an elephant gun.

Or, we could think of it as simply matching the action and the size of the visual focus, whether it’s a film angle or a style of description. Campy swordfights use “Flynning” (Errol Flynn was a charismatic actor but no fencer), big sweeping movements just to fill the frame, but better action would know what small moves actually are faster and zoom in enough to let us appreciate them. –Or if the story were about Spidey swinging across the block or Superman zooming past a whole continent, pull the “camera” back and show us what that scale means.

Pick a size. Learn it, own it.

I’m glad Daredevil isn’t afraid to do just that.

(Extra: for a look at one aspect of action, some of the ways I learned to use the flying powers in The High Road, here’s a guest post I did this week on Janice Hardy’s Fiction University.)

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Character Interview with Angie Dennard (THE HIGH ROAD)

To celebrate the release of The High Road next week, here’s a character interview with its heroine. For its companion piece (also set around Chapter 4), see the Mark Petrie interview.

 

(Angie Dennard walks into the room and stops by the chair, but instead of sitting she leans against it and studies the author.)

Angie: What do you want to ask? How the gang came after my dad?

author: All of it. Including the flying belt.

Angie: So you know. (She shakes her head hard, tossing short red hair.) You know, and I never guessed!

author: Never?

Angie: Nothing like this! My family’s stories were about traveling, fighting, leading—they were brave people. But flying? And Dad never told me?

(Angie falls silent.)

author: Any guess why he didn’t?

Angie: I could try to, now. But he always fooled me. And yet Mark always thought he was hiding something, ever since we were kids together.

author: Kids? Let’s go back a bit. What can you tell me about yourself from before this started?

Angie: Not much to say, or I didn’t think so then. My mother left us; Dad was a police detective and then in security. I got out of school last year, and I’d just realized I really wanted to be a pilot when—(She stops, and smiles ruefully.) Yes, a pilot, and now we’ve got magic for flying. There must have been some hints about it in our history, and they stuck with me. And now the Blades are after us.

author: That’s it?

Angie: Pretty much. Nothing special, until now.

author: “Nothing special”? But all right, what about now? What will you do now that the Blades are after you?

Angie: Everything. Everything we can. We could use the belt against them, or just get out of town. We’re going to check with the police gang experts this afternoon. Someone has to have some answers.

author: You’re just… keeping your options open?

Angie: Of course. Right now we haven’t even talked to Dad about the belt. I know there’s no way to stand up to a whole street gang, but there’s always a way.

author: You just said there’s no way but there is a way.

Angie: I guess I did. I’m hoping there’s a change in some bit of it, so we have more to work with than some flying that Mark says he can barely control.

author: Mark says?

Angie: And it’s my family’s belt. But Mark was the one who stumbled into what it does. I haven’t even made it work—so far. (She smiles.)

author: And the Blades?

Angie: They’ve got a vendetta against Dad. He admitted it.

author: “Admitted”?

Angie: He shot up a summit between two gangs—he really did that, all because Mark and I almost walked into them. (She spins away and starts pacing around the room.) Was that thirty, forty dead bangers and cops and people just near them, and it’s partly my fault. But I tell myself he was the one who did it, and he hid it from me. After that I see why he didn’t tell me about the belt that let him get those shots. But what keeps eating me is, why are they after us now? That was years ago when we were kids. And it worked, nobody thought he did it because he was never close enough… except Mark was sure he would have if he had a way. But they left us in peace all that time—so how does it come out now?

author: If you had to guess…

Angie: I try not to. (She settles down in the chair.)

author: Oh?

Angie: Of course I’m made guesses. But I don’t know, and why think myself into a corner and miss what it really is? But… I can’t forget about the magic.

author: What about the magic?

Angie: It’s the biggest blank spot in all of this, isn’t it? Something about why my mother never told me, or her father being in the madhouse. There has to be more than that going on.

author: It sounds like you want there to be.

Angie: Alright, yes! I want there to be more than gangs and guns and my overprotective dad with a secret weapon so secret he won’t use it. But I’m hoping that’s all it is.

author: You want it to be bigger, but you hope it isn’t.

Angie: I have to. That’s one thing my mother did tell us last night: the last thing we want is attention. If the Blades knew about flying they’d hunt us forever, and so would everyone else who wanted a piece of it. What would we do then?

author: What would you do?

Angie: We don’t let it happen. We try not to use the belt until we know how it works. We don’t use it in daylight; we’ve been lucky there so far. We keep it under control, and I keep Dad and Mark safe.

author: So that’s what you want. To keep them safe.

Angie: Of course. The Blades almost killed Dad—and Mark and me too, when we got near it. Mark says Dad will keep putting himself in the line of fire every time I get near trouble, so I have to stay miles away from it. Or try to.

author: “Mark says”?

Angie: He puts it better than I do. We figured that out years ago: I always know what has to get done, and then he knows all the reasons why. And the times I’m wrong.

author: Wrong? Was this a time you were wrong?

Angie: I don’t know! He can give you all the reasons all we can do is not get killed. I keep thinking there has to be more to the magic—what else is out there? Why was it such a secret, even before Dad got it? It makes me take a whole other look at Mom leaving, and Dad working at the park her family had ties to. There’s so much we don’t know! We can’t be stupid, but there has to be more. Besides…

author: What?

Angie: Besides, they’re just punks. I’ve seen them try to catch us; they’ve got all the knives and guns, but they don’t think ahead. Or if something happens, you could count the heartbeats it takes most of them to move. We’ve dodged around them twice already.

author: You make it sound easy.

Angie: (laughs) I hear that from people sometimes. I think anything can sound easy. But there’s always a way.

 

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The High Road release – November 12th

“Don’t look down. Look up.”

In four weeks, on November 12th, you’ll be able to do just that. The High Road will be releasing on Amazon, Nook, iBooks, and… well, everywhere.

The High Road may have seemed more like a long road, to set that release. If you’ve been following this blog you’ll have noticed I’ve been putting it off for some time.

Part of that’s due to sending it through revision after revision. Scenes have been torn down, repurposed into whole other uses or just reshuffled, every time I thought I was done. The opening has gone from a glimpse of madness to a more wistful glimpse to a direct look at the action; the first major fight in the park got rewritten almost as soon as it was done, and so did the action in the alley, the hospital, the Long Night, the second park confrontation, the grand finale—

—Wow, I actually never worked it out before but I think every true fight or action scene got a whole new direction during one revision or another. Except one scene; let’s just say there’s one battle that could never have been sent to the junkyard or changed even a little. You’ll know that one when you come to it.

The other reason is that between revisions, I’ve been poring over the second book of the series. The wait after The High Road to get to Freefall should be much, much less, once you’re ready to follow more of Mark and Angie’s journey.

In the meantime, here’s a small hint from one of the characters, essentially the last thing he wrote. I don’t think it’s every urban fantasy that includes someone giving a warning like this:

 

Click to listen…

 

Don’t trust the words—you have to see deeper to claim what you are.

Don’t turn your back on the greedy—they’ll never stop wanting what they see.

Don’t look down—look up, when the wind howls or the road is blocked.

Don’t forget your friends—but anything I leave you, they can still take for themselves.

But don’t trust yourself—your instincts are the first thing you can lose.

And don’t trust me, for writing this warning. But, I wish I could let you see it.

 

Just which “words” are those, and what is it that friends could take? On November 12th, you can see for yourself.

Just keep an eye out for the owl. If you can.

 

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Finishing a book – thoughts

How does it feel to have a book completed, finally?

A bit déjà vu, for one thing.

  • A couple of springs ago I set down the last words “harder than the gate’s steel” and realized that was the last chapter of The High Road, that I’d actually pushed the story to the end.
  • And then early last year, the night a massive round of revisions came to an end with restructuring the climactic battle—and the agony of finding I was too worn out to write the last pages that Sunday night, and had to stop for some sleep (don’t judge) and sneak the rest in before work Monday.

So “finished” is a recurring thing. If you don’t know da Vinci’s rule “Never finished, only abandoned,” trust me, you will if you write.

Enlarging. Pushing Mark and Angie on their different journeys can fill the head with some odd things.

  • Trying to see the world like Angie does. It’s not that she’s fearless, but a problem looks different to someone who can’t see a problem without already getting a good-enough idea of what to do about it. It’s a rare knack, but the world might be a brighter place for all of us if we stopped losing those first seconds in confusion and outrage.
  • Remembering to make Mark talk to himself at odd moments. If that wasn’t part of his nature, the whole story might not have happened.

Coming home. Most of my life I’ve been dreaming of the certain kind of flying that goes in this book—not rocketing around freely but leaping or catching the wind. So looking back and seeing there’s finally a book of that sensation feels like I’m starting to pay my muse back for all the fun she’s given me.

Discouraging.

  • Good grief, I started this book years ago! I’ve proven I can write a chapter a week if I push myself, even working full-time, so why don’t I have the whole series done by now?
    • Well, half of it must have been that one chapter I started rewriting the moment I finished it, every time…
  • And I still can’t walk up to strangers and say, “Hi, I’m an author.” Maybe after a few more books.

Startling.

  • That cover. That cover, Mark dropping down along a skyscraper with power crackling around him… there’s nothing like opening up a jpeg and meeting the guy I’ve been bullying for so long.

Dissatisfying.

  • The book’s done, what am I supposed to do with my mornings and weekends now? Sure, there’s a stack of reading and an endless supply of TV I keep hearing about, but could you really just go back to taking in stories after so long creating them?
  • (Alright, that one isn’t quite true. I’ve still got the next book to build, so it’s only my evenings that are oddly free again. For now.)

 And then…

Humbling.

  • I’ve still got a few words of advice coming in from this author I know, so we’ll see…

 

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You Only Get One First Time – First Book equals Best Book?

Is the first book of a series the best book, or is it something else that that book has going?

It’s a question that’s been on my mind a lot, now that I’m nearing the end of the (looong) path to releasing The High Road, and giving my full attention to its followup. (That and, how I keep putting off the sequel to my other book, Shadowed, even though that idea’s been with me more than ten years longer.)

It happens so much. Again and again, I think we’ve all found that the story that launches a series has the purest sense of the hero finding herself… and the only “true” villain or opposition that does her justice… and all the related conflicts and relationships and revelations in what feels like their purest form.

Take Game of Thrones, the original novel. Yes, the “game” is playing on such a small, bloodless field compared to the craziness that’s coming. But there’s just something about watching that court work its way toward all hell breaking loose and still hoping someone there will turn things around; once GRR Martin proved all bets were off, the story felt wilder, deeper… but not the same.

Or Dragonflight. No matter how many books Anne McCaffrey set in Pern, there’s nothing like the sheer power of learning about her dragonriders (a brand new flavor of awesomesauce at the time, don’t forget) through the unstoppable young Lessa plus their whole world having to rediscover how much they need their dragons.

Call it a courtship, in a way. The best opening stories have some of the same intensity of meeting a person we have to keep around—everything’s new and obviously right, and most of what we discover is just finding even more layers of compatibilty. And it all builds to a joyous finale and and a happy honeymoon.

–Then again, it’s wouldn’t be much of a marriage if the fun really peaked there, would it? We expect a real keeper to go from obviously fascinating to whole new kinds of rightness the more we get to know them. Shouldn’t the author who’s reached me with one book be able to build that relationship better each time after that? For every unmatchable Dragonflight there’s a Hunger Games series with a Catching Fire that takes its original concept to a whole new level.

(And sometimes fizzles it all away on a book after that. Katniss was a lot more interesting around people that forced her to fight, not when they held her back and she let them.)

We’ve all heard the Hollywood mantra: a sequel should “do the same thing, only different.” By those lights, a better second book is nearly impossible—recreating the clean joy of the first while still mixing it up and getting just the right balance? But it does happen.

In fact, I think many of those “best first” books may not be the best to read, just the best ones to remember. They’re the ones with that easy-to-appreciate story arc, the one that starts with a relatable hero or an epic but easily-understandable situation, and moves on to grand victories or other changes the hero creates. Which means everything after that has to start from the less elemental conditions he’s already built, and probably has that as a constant reminder that the protagonist can win and grow when he needs to. Even if the later story’s more enjoyable, it’s hard to look back at it years later and dream of starting reading over on the plains of Rohan, when it would be easier to settle in with just a hobbit watching a birthday party and never knowing the Nine Riders are on the roads.

The first story is more approachable, not always more fun. Movies and TV can make it even clearer, with all the pressure the studio is under to build on a first film or season, when it doesn’t misfire. The first year of Buffy is unforgettable teenage adventure, but it’s the second that’s just unforgettable. Or the first Star Wars is still arguably the most purely fun thing ever filmed… but it took the twists in Empire Strikes Back to keep it from wearing out its welcome.

Hmm. I’ve got some Freefall to write…

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Photo by Allegory Malaprop

Flying Magic and More in The High Road

Sometimes life hands us a moment so odd, all we can do is run with it—pun intended, for this one. Because once I actually heard someone across the room say that as superpowers go, “what’s the use in only being able to fly halfway?” And I had to pause a busy day with my boardgaming friends to explain that I had a whole book about exploring how half-flying might be better than getting off the ground.

It’s a central part of The High Road: how many ways would gravity-controlling magic actually work… and what would it be like wearing that belt and starting to see how many barriers around you had just fallen away? And, which ones would be worth hopping over?

So, these are the main ways that my protagonist Mark Petrie explores what that magic can do. (For spoilers’ sake, I’ll concentrate on Mark, because my other star Angie Dennard’s history with the belt is… complicated.) But with each step you read, I hope you’ll ask yourself: what would you do with it?

 

Windrider Dreams

First of all, what the magic does is something less than true flying (though I’ve blogged about that too), and also more: it controls gravity. Meaning, it can reduce (or increase) something’s weight, but not “steer” gravity… as in, Mark can’t turn. Kate (Angie’s mother) sums it up in the short story Solo Flight:

Except for what the wind did to them, it let them move only three ways: lift up, drop down, or whichever way they jumped.

So Mark can leap sometimes a block or more, or float up and ride the wind, but once he floats up he’s limited to the wind except for shifting up and down. (Writing friends of mine say that makes him a human weather balloon, and that’s mostly true.)

–Why did I clip my heroes’ wings that way? The truth is, for most of my life I’ve had vivid dreams of flying—no surprise, with all the comics I’ve read—but they always came in that limited form. And I like the organic feeling of working with the wind or the rooftops instead of simply defying them.

“Flying” this way over the city only works with the air currents. And if you think about it, that makes Mark actually more vulnerable in the air than on the ground. After all, if something dangerous happens—and what are the odds of that?—his only moves are to shoot upward, or drop down, maybe all the way out of the sky to get something under his feet again and let him maneuver.

On the other hand, he can duck out of anything just by rocketing upward. Imagine that feeling, that there’s a whole other world in the sky just moments away… Mark has had moments where he truly hates to go indoors or anywhere that seals him in. Or when he’s been in danger in broad daylight and everything from the clouds to the voices of the passersby seems to be daring him to stop hiding the magic and just zoom away with a thought. It’s a seductive idea, especially for Mark and Angie at age 19.

And their story would have been so much simpler if The High Road had been set in a superhero world, or a supernatural one where magic was public knowledge. I’ve written before about the tradeoffs a writer has with “a Masquerade,” but this time my choice was simple. Most of the fun of flying is in simple freedom… but that also makes it maybe the most frustrating magic ever to try to hide, because using it puts you up where everyone can see you! And a challenge like that is one of the reasons I write.

Mark has had to learn how much safer flying is if nobody knows they should look up at all, and that starts by him only going up by night… as long as he’s very careful not to soar into power lines! And the storyline is open to possibilities that range from getting greater control of the magic, to sending him chasing things like carrier pigeons that can wing rings around him, to him and Angie wracking their brains for other ways to use it or maximize what it can do. And most of those do happen.

 

Half Flying, Full Control

Remember that conversation I stumbled into, about flying halfway? It’s one answer to the “look, up in the sky” problem.

Since the magic actually reduces Mark’s weight instead of jetting him around, he doesn’t have to be seen floating away. If Mark is up out of sight in the rooftops, he’s free to eat up distance with long bounds that move him faster than he could out in the wind—though he has to watch where he’s going a lot more than in the open air. And even down in a crowd, he can make a jump go a few extra feet, and nobody’s likely to see more than a lucky leap.

And running is nothing but short, fast jumps.

So if he can keep the balance of being just light enough and jumping just far enough, he can run in long strides that let the magic carry most of the weight. His best description of how it feels is

swinging on a rope while hopping along stepping-stones

It’s not a move that can go much faster than ordinary sprinting, since the point is not to jump too far and be seen bouncing up and down the street. But his muscles do less of the work, so it means he can run as fast as anyone and barely tire at all… as long as his supply of magic and his control hold out.

Then there are other uses. There’s a moment in the second book where he scurries up a wall’s drainpipe; cutting his weight makes any kind of movement easier.

But then, he doesn’t have to stop with his own weight.

 

World Made of Feathers (and Lead)

How do you get a night’s sleep if you think some thug just might break into your apartment? For Mark, it only takes a touch to make his bed light enough to lift over and block the door.

Reducing things’ weight means he really can carry almost anything that isn’t nailed down. (And it’s one more reason to keep the magic secret; otherwise everyone he’d ever met would want his help on their moving day.)

But, gravity lifting isn’t as much like superhuman strength as it seems: it doesn’t let Mark lift or hit any harder, only makes an object light enough that his own strength can move it. If he throws a boulder against a door, it won’t hit any harder than a big rocky pillow.

Then again, if he carries it high over the building’s roof and drops it…

And he has another weaponized option: the magic can’t add force to his muscles, but it can generate its own force by increasing something’s weight. Anyone Mark can reach, he can slam to the ground and pin there by making them too heavy to move. Use more power, and that weight increases to metal-bending, crushing levels—that’s one move he sometimes worries comes too easily when he’s angry enough. He knows he’s better off simply lifting a threat against a wall or pinning them to the floor in what looks like a simple act of strength.

(Meanwhile, the truly ruthless tactic would be to simply toss an enemy fifty feet up. Or let them keep on rising, so there’s no body to find.)

 

Imagine it. Walking through your home neighborhood, know there isn’t much around you that’s too heavy to move if you want it to enough, and that even something fastened down can be flattened with a touch. Or run clear across the city without tiring, or duck out of sight and shoot up to ride the night air or rule the rooftops.

Mark Petrie is no superhero; he struggles with everything from the belt’s power limits to his own very different motives. But gravity magic does have a few nods to the comics, with both flying and just maybe throwing cars around. Still, anyone with a gun would have him out-ranged, and he’s not bulletproof.

But come to think of it, how much kevlar could you wear if you didn’t feel the weight?

(Or, if an enemy tries to drive away from him, could he figure out how to attach some antigravity to a crossbow quarrel and shoot the car with a lightening bolt?)

 

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