Category Archives: General

I’m not dead yet!

holygrainotdeadThe reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Work/life balance has left me with little free time to contemplate words, and sadly, even less time to tell people about them. With the Raymond Carve contest coming to a close, I should have more free time this summer! Should being the key word.

Balancing between work and writing is difficult, but not impossible if writing is your passion. Since January, I’ve been inundated with proposal work often requiring more than a hundred hours a week. Business proposals are merely a more obscure form of fiction, after all, so I got to flex some writer muscles. I’ve also learned more about earned value management, radar systems, and hyper-spectral sensors than I wanted to know. Continue reading…

Don’t Write Like An MFA Student

Richard Hugo’s Triggering Town changed my life. Before I read it, I was a short Vietnamese woman with a lisp. OK, perhaps I exaggerated. Still, if you’re even remotely interested in creative writing, you owe it to yourself to read it. Were I emperor, I’d make it law that no author could receive a rejection without a copy of Triggering Town, and also a year’s supply of bacon. Perhaps this is why I am not emperor… I read Triggering Town as part of my MFA curriculum, and oddly enough there was a point of realization: the one piece of advice Hugo wrote which stuck with me the longest was a comment on teachers. Teachers teach how to write like them, they’re essentially implying the student should embody what they are. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – Liz Strout taught at Queens and I’d give popular parts of my anatomy to write half as well as she does. Still, the impact of an MFA program on a writer’s style cannot be overstated. After graduation, it was a year before I had anything published. During that time, I was writing an enormous amount of bad fiction. Luckily my MFA taught me to recognize my own inadequacies. I had to un-learn some of what I was taught.

This advice made me realize something I’d been fomenting over as a reader for Carve. An awful lot of MFA student fiction sounds the same. The tone is the same, usually dismally emotionally imagesHWYZE2CMrepressed with flowery prose. I’ve gotten so that I can spot a currently enrolled MFA student most of the time (let’s face it, there are exceptions to every rule). When I decided to write this topic up, I went through a few drafts that read just as bad as the fiction I was bashing. I think what it comes down to is a matter of teaching. Most fiction writers are taught to write what we know, a mantra codified in nearly every fiction class since the first stories were scrawled on cave walls with bat guano. If writers only wrote what they knew, the world would be filled with crappy stories about breakups and parking tickets. Granted, some really fantastic stories are written by authors who’ve had amazing life experiences, but for the majority of mortals, daily excitement is limited to the Barista spelling our name right when they scrawl on the coffee cup. I think the lesson should be: write what the limit of your imagination compels you to see. Otherwise it puts a whole new spin on Fight Club, and I’d like to think Chuck Palahniuk is not batshit crazy.

MFA fiction often reads like an over-produced song sounds. The story strikes very specific beats, usually with an overly dramatic opening in mid-conversation. I’ve often rallied against this, and I’ll say it again: I’m likely to reject any story that starts with a conversation because I think it does a disservice to the reader. Sure, there are examples where it’s worked, but there are far more examples where it doesn’t. You start mid-conversation, and you have to immediately back up and fill the reader in to what’s going on. Don’t do that.

MFA fiction themes tend to be centered around relationships, death, death and relationships, student problems, or some utterly bizarre and outlandish concept that no modern reader has been born who could possibly appreciate your story. These kind of stories can still work, but they need to be fresh and they almost never are. Think of the deluge of vampire fiction – nobody wants to read about sexy vampires anymore, and the re-imagined dark prince has also been done to death. Your bad breakup story, or your best friend killed story, they’ve also been done to death. If you’re going to write about an emotionally heavy topic, remember the simplest thing: the reader has no stake in your characters and won’t care unless you make them care. Your teary-eyed re-telling how your best friend was clipped by a train when you were eight is likely not going to be the celebrated fiction you think it is. I’m sorry you had such a traumatic childhood, but you really do need to distance yourself from the story before you can write about it well enough to make a reader want to stick with you. Most emotional stories simply don’t earn their ending, doubly so if it’s an abrupt ending. Take the time to make the reader care. If you’ve ever read Stephen King’s earlier works, they’re good stories because he makes us care about the characters before anything terrible happens to them.

MFA fiction tends to over-weigh prose with back story. I’m a huge advocate for back story, but mostly for the writer’s sake. If you know every detail about your character from their favorite ice-cream to the reason they hate watching reality TV, you’re doing something right. If you include all those details in your story, you’re missing the point. Detailed characters and plots are set dressing to the story. If you know your character is manic about getting a job, you don’t need to tell the reader. Write manic into your story and the context will be enough. Pair down your prose and cut the back story to a few well-placed lines. I honestly think this is a trend in modern times. Some of my favorite stories from the mid-nineteenth century were terribly overwritten. Modern readers will rarely stick with a story that lingers too long.

And lastly, I leave you with this tidbit: as a writer, the best advice we can give other writers is honesty. If your writer buddy reads your work and levies nothing but praise, they’re probably going to hit you up for a loan in the near future because nobody’s draft work is that good. If I critique a story for a stranger or a friend, I’m apt to tell you exactly how I feel – often how bad it is. I’ll also tell you what I think works, but it’s the broken parts we dwell on. As a writer, you can’t fixate on bad criticism. If your aunt Gertrude simply says your story sucks, you need to ask yourself why. If a reader’s reaction is honest, it can never be wrong.

How To Critique II

judgementkittyI spoke at length about critiquing recently, and I’d like to expound on some of the concepts I discussed. A good writer embraces the critique, which is not the same as accepting every opinion levied against your work. A critique is both an opinion and a fact; the opinion is what the reader feels when they read your work, and the fact is that their feelings are valid. Never apologize for feeling a certain way, and if a reader feels strongly regarding your work you should consider their criticism. Providing they can articulate why they felt the way they did. Nothing’s worse than “this sucks” without any clarification on why.

I’ve been fairly vocal about my dislike for Dan Brown. I think he’s a terrible writer. At the same time, he’s widely read (or was, at least), because readers found something compelling about his work. I could be a bitter egocentric person, convinced of my own superiority, and judge Dan Brown to be inferior and unworthy of my attention. While entertaining, that doesn’t help me become a better writer. Rather, I re-read DaVinci Code several times to fully identify what didn’t work (for me) and what did. That’s the key – identifying what works for me and what doesn’t work for me. DaVinci Code is easy to critique because, while the story is interesting, the characters and structure are rather terrible. The first thing I identified was Brown’s inability to fully realize his characters. In DaVinci Coded, nearly all of the characters become interchangeable trans-gender speakers. Take away dialogue tags, and it doesn’t matter who’s speaking because everyone sounds the same. That’s something I don’t want in my writing. I could keep picking apart the novel, but it’s just as important to recognize what works, and what makes the story compelling. The DaVinci Code is a wonderful mystery, complete with the crucial revelations at chapter conclusions which compel the reader to want more. It’s the mystery we want answered, not the characters. At the story’s conclusion, that same mystery resonates. Brown struck a chord between a believable mystery interwoven with historical fact and enough wonder to make readers question faith. That’s what sold DaVinci Code in droves, and that’s what Brown has infused in his other novels.

A good critique can identify your strengths as well as your weaknesses. When I write a critique, I try to be cognizant of what works for me and write a paragraph or two about it. It’s easy to identify what’s broken and what doesn’t work. Most readers will quickly spot plot holes, character flaws, spelling and grammar mistakes. While useful, that doesn’t paint a true picture of how a given story makes the reader feel, and as writers that’s crucial to understanding what works in your writing.

Think of your favorite novel, something you’ve identified as a great work of fiction. Challenge yourself to re-read that work and find a crucial flaw as well as the essence of what makes it a compelling read.

How to critique

laptopkittyWriting well requires mastering the fine art of critiquing and being critiqued. That means letting your aunt Gertrude read your work, and sitting through her long-winded soliloquy about why your protagonist should be more like your uncle and less like you. Criticism can bite, but it’s up to the writer to understand not only valid criticism, but to understand how to shape your work into a coherent and compelling story.

Often when we write, we start with a brilliant idea which gets muddled somewhere between the brain and the word processor at our fingertips. We re-read what we wrote yesterday and realize that the brilliant Shiraz-fueled writing session last night actually churned out five pages of mindless drivel focused on the protagonists need to find a clean bathroom. Nobody wants to read that. You need to know how to kill your darlings when required; knowing when and how doesn’t come easy. Before you ask, no I’m not talking about the Daniel Radcliffe movie, I’m referring to what Richard Hugo talked about in The Triggering Town, which should be required reading for anyone serious about writing.

Accepting criticism is a developed skill, right along with accepting rejection. When you write, you’re capturing ideas and shaping words to record the imagery and emotion you wish to convey. That kind of magic requires practice and skill and a lot of work. 10,000 hours or so of work, in fact. Accepting criticism is a developed skill, right along with critiquing someone else’s work. You can learn an awful lot by recognizing what’s wrong with someone else’s story. As a reader for Carve magazine, I end up reading through a few dozen short stories a month. Most are fairly underdeveloped, but the nugget of inspiration is visible. A few are finely tuned, but underachieve a clear focus. When the writing works, when the writer fully engages the reader, the words fall away and only the story remains.

To fully understand the editing process, start by reading. A lot. Read everything you can get your hands on. Read good and bad fiction, read genre, read romance even though you may hate it (“he thrust his manhood into her quivering mound of love pudding…”). Aside from getting enjoyment out of it, you’ll start to recognize the pattern published writer’s use in their work, you’ll start to recognize how stories are shaped and how scenes lead together in a long chain of narration that builds a compelling picture which fully engages the reader. I once critiqued the novel of a friend where nearly everything was working, but the single greatest flaw was the final quarter of the manuscript – the protagonist had a sudden and jarring revelation when there should’ve been seeds of inspiration laced throughout the novel. A single long flashback revealed a compelling past story which should’ve been at the front of the novel. Such things aren’t easy for the writer to notice, especially not in an early draft. The story can be good and still end up unbalanced.

Critiquing lets you practice the skills you’ll need to edit your own work. When you sit down with someone’s story, read through it once and let the surface story sink in a bit. You may recognize flaws early on, and you will want to mark them, but don’t just yet. Don’t distract yourself from the first reading. When finished, go back and identify the easy fixes – misused and misspelled words, grammar and punctuation issues, and also focus on the story itself. Is the imagery compelling? Are the characters clear? Is this the kind of story that sticks with you long after you’ve read it? Identifying what works in a good story is just as important as identifying what doesn’t. I like to write a paragraph or two in my critiques where I explain what I think the story is about. This accomplishes two things: for the writer, it lets them know if their intent was achieved. Just because we wanted to write a story about a man struggling with infidelity, we may have laced so much metaphor we ended up writing a story about a man who wants ice cream to melt in his mouth and any intended sexual innuendo may be lost on the reader. You can get mad at the reader and claim they just didn’t ‘get it’, and you could be right. But if ten readers give you the same general criticism, chances are nobody gets the story but you. And second, writing an explanation of the story helps identify exactly what worked, which you can use in your own writing.

Monster Fighting

godzilla-against-mechagodzilla-2A battle is raging, a fight between two behemoths who will wreck the consumer landscape. The war between Amazon and Hachette Books is diminished among greater headlines, and let’s face it, practically everyone is more interested in the Game of Thrones season finale. I cancelled my cable, so if anyone tells me what happens, I promise a gruesome and painful death possibly involving moldy gummy bears.

In one corner, we have Amazon. As a writer, I’m supposed to despise Amazon because of their shady business tactics and penchant for mowing over small press. In the other corner, we have Hachette books, publisher of great works from authors such as Malcom Gladwell and Richard Russo. At the core of the argument, as with most arguments, is money.

Amazon wants Hachette to re-negotiate the profit margin for selling the publishers books, wants the right to discount unsold books, and demands Hachette pay for advertising. Hachette thinks the current arrangement is just fine, thank you. Amazon’s defense, however, is more than just a firing shot across the bow. Amazon has conveniently cancelled pre-orders for any forthcoming Hachette titles, and although the digital bookstore insists already in-print Hachette books are just as available as they always were, searches simply don’t agree. When pressed, Amazon’s response for finding Hachette books is to simply shop for them elsewhere.

The battle between creators and retailers is as old as commerce itself, and about half as interesting. It’s easy to side with Hachette because Amazon is resorting to bullying tactics, and bullies are too cowardly to fight fairly. The truth is never so simple, and while I won’t argue that Amazon is abusing their power by affecting Hachette’s bottom line during the price negotiation, the big publishing house isn’t exactly innocent either. Hachette refused an offer to fund half of an author pool to mitigate the impact on authors through the dispute. Agreeing to the pool isn’t agreeing to any negotiating tactic, it’s simply agreeing that authors are unfairly affected by the issue, and Hachette’s refusal sounds more like sour grapes going off to the garden to eat worms.

George Packer’s article sums up Amazon nicely; an online retailer who didn’t mind excess inventory, Amazon was a boon when the publishing industry needed it most. While it’s easy to point at Amazon’s tactics as slimy and underhanded, the truth is they’re doing nothing other retail companies aren’t doing, forcing manufacturers to let retail sell for the lowest amount possible. The publishing industry is broken, and Amazon is taking advantage of that fact by forcing publishers like Hachette to the negotiating table. While Amazon isn’t the only game in town, they’re a force to be reckoned with.

While Amazon started as a bookseller, publishing was always a secondary goal to becoming a retail powerhouse. Achievement unlocked, Bezos. Books were a way to track purchasing habits and gain user information, which is the holy grail for any retail establishment. Amazon’s expansion into media, marketplace, and partnerships with other content providers like HBO has created a powerhouse that’s not nearly so easy to categorize. Bezos, like most tech dictators, knows how to focus the company on profit and how to build something consumers want.

Unfortunately for some, the publishing industry may suffer. The problem with the argument is, in my mind, that it masks the true problem. Publishing is broken and desperately needs a cleansing. Like the music industry, publishing has been slow to adopt electronic formats and has suffered. Amazon’s greatest achievement in the literary world may simply be the widespread adoption of the kindle. While there are better e-readers on the market, the kindle as an inexpensive device is pure genius. Problem is it’s only a small part of Amazon’s ecosystem. As a global retailer, Amazon wants its customers locked in. Buy an Amazon device and you shop in the Amazon marketplace, download Amazon goods and services, view Amazon-sponsored videos. It’s what made the iPhone so attractive; Steve Jobs recognized what could be accomplished by latching a consumer device to a marketplace of vetted applications and content, and that is the holy grail of retail in our modern age.

Structure of Story III

Spec_Ops_The_Line_coverIn the first article, I discussed plotting tools and how to captivate your audience by making them feel smart. The second article covered characterization and growth of your protagonist. In this third article, I’m going to cover the blending of plot and narration with secondary and tertiary characters.

Spec Ops: The Line is a first-person action game set during a fictitious conflict in the middle east. Before you groan, the game features a surprising amount of depth and some of the best character development in any media. Brendan Keogh has an excellent analysis of Spec Ops: The Line that you should probably read if you have any interest in such things.

In its purest form, Spec Ops is a retelling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Though possibly a bit closer to the Apocalypse Now version. In the game, a freakish sandstorm captures the city of Dubai. The city’s wealthy elite flee before the situation worsens, but the population of native and migrant workers is left to fend for themselves. The U.S. Army responds at the request of the UAE government, led by Colonel John Konrad, with the intention of aiding the mass evacuation before the city is completely cut off from the world.  If it worked, we wouldn’t have a game.

The player takes on the role of a special forces operative who enters the conflict six months later. Konrad and his infantry battalion have gone rogue, and it’s up to our hero (appropriately named Walker) to skirt the fine line between brutality and savior, finding a delicate balance between the insurgent survivors, remnants of the 33rd infantry, rogue CIA operatives, and an assortment of terror suspects.

What Spec Ops accomplishes that few other books, games, or movies have done successfully is to shift the audience’s sympathy throughout the game. The player is introduced to a brutal world of a collapsed city struggling for survival and infested with terrorists, but we quickly learn the terror suspects are simply survivors who’ve mistaken Walker and his team for members of Konrad’s brutal 33rd. The lost battalion had ensnared the city in an iron grip, punishing civilians and enlisted with death for the slightest infraction. As the game progresses, we learn that the 33rd also aren’t entirely to blame. From the game’s outset, Walker and his men started shooting first and the 33rd acted to preserve the civilian population.

Much of the story is relayed through dialogue between Walker (the player) and his two special-operations companions, Lugo and Adams. It’s through these secondary characters that the player is given insight into the world and allowed to dwell in the land of shoot-your-enemy. Spec Ops doesn’t give the player a choice with violence, which ends up being a choice in and of itself. By the game’s conclusion, we learn that Walker wasn’t entirely sane to begin with and the player’s entire view into the world of Spec Ops was through this unreliable narrator.

When structuring believable fiction, come to terms with the beliefs and ideals of your characters, particularly the ones which differ from your own. It’sspec-ops-the-line-white-phosphorus through these firmly-held ideals that characters enter into conflict, which not only serves the dramatic tension of your story but binds the reader to your character by making them rounded and complete. We come to understand Walker through his dialogue with his squad-mates, his actions in the game, and his observations from cut-scenes. In one pivotal moment, Walker and his men are pinned down by the 33rd. Angry that Konrad has convinced soldiers to kill one another, Walker decides to end the battle as quickly as possible by firing white phosphorous grenades into the entrenched enemy. During the next cut-scene, we see Walker and his men striding through the remains of both entrenched 33rd and cowering civilians. Walker comments that the 33rd weren’t trying to kill him, they were trying to protect civilians. By using white phosphorous, Walker (and by extension, the player) has committed an atrocious crime, killing innocent women and children simply because he didn’t want to engage in a long-running gun battle. Rather than lament his decision, as his men are want to do, Walker instead curses Konrad and the men at his side, claiming it was Konrad who forced his hand.

Leading your reader to a conclusion is extraordinarily difficult to do without being obtrusive. Most novels accomplish it through characterization, though not always successfully. Think of Jurassic Park’s Dr. Ian Malcolm. As a mechanism for Crichton to reveal the scientific aspects of his story, Malcolm also serves as a sounding board for the theme – the dangers of biotechnology and exponentially increasing scientific understanding with little regard for consequences. Spec Ops: The Line weaves the player/audience through a minefield of difficult subject matter, from the dangers of using chemical weapons on civilian populations to the ever-expanding role of military which often results in violence, all masterfully told through a protagonist who believes wholeheartedly in his convictions.

The Structure of Story II

DaVinciCodeWhat makes a good character? Certainly you’d want your protagonist to go through some kind of journey. Otherwise you’ll have the kind of short-sighted one-dimensional character that fits in a Dan Brown novel. I’m allowed to poke fun at Dan Brown – he’s laughing all the way to the bank. As interesting as his DaVinci Code novels may be, the characters are one-dimensional and ultimately underdeveloped. Try reading his work and transposing he for she. You’ll quickly find the characters are only there for window dressing, wrapped around a theological essay. His novels struck a chord because contemporary readers are interested in controversy and anything that pokes fun at the establishment from a relatively safe position. The world longs for characters who stick with us, transformative characters who make us examine our own lives. The best stories are filled with characters who feel like real people. It’s the characters who inhabit the story. The rest is window dressing.

Grand Theft Auto 4, despite what the mass media would claim is a murder simulator, tells the story of an immigrant searching for a better life. Nico Bellic comes to America after hearing his cousin tell stories of untold riches and easy women only to find his cousin is in debt and the only woman in his life is a cab-company secretary who has no interest in him. Nico, as an ex-Serbian army officer, finds the new city offers few opportunities for immigrants aside from illicit activities, and soon becomes involved in a number of illegal enterprises. From bank robberies to running drugs and assassinations, GTA IV embodies the story of the shattered American dream. While playing Nico Bellic, the player has few opportunities to gain money or status aside from illegal endeavors, and the story manages to latch together the difficulties of relationships. Nico’s dating life, for example, balances the need for money to impress his dates with the expected external image of success required of American life – you can’t go to a club dressed in shabby clothes and driving a hatchback, you need a sports car and a pressed suit. As the game progresses, Nico quickly compromises his principles to chase the ideal American dream, and eventually he’s forced to make the ultimate sacrifice – forced to choose between his love life or his cousin, Nico’s past comes back with a vengeance.

gta4GTAIV works brilliantly because Nico Bellic is a dynamic character. The player is drawn into the world because Nico, through his commentary during missions and cut-scenes, is constantly evolving. He balances his expectation of the easy living American Dream with the harsh reality of life on the streets. As the game opens, you get the sense that Nico wants to be an honest man, and even tries a few honest jobs before the loan sharks who threaten his cousin, Roman, show up. Faced with a moral decision, Nico sides with family. He’s from the old world where your family name and your reputation mean more than anything, and soon he finds himself pulling small crimes to clear the debt Roman owes.

Nico’s story works for two very important reasons. Rockstar Games understands the use of caricature, particularly emphasized with popular American culture. Nico, from the outset, is a tragic character. He cannot succeed. He regrets his involvement in the Serbian war, and though we never learn enough about his past, we learn enough to know he doesn’t want to become the murderous killer he was. But life in America isn’t so simple. To save his reputation and his cousin, Nico has to choose violence, and the price he pays is more than he expected.

Nico’s transformation is what makes GTAIV such an engrossing story, embodying what made cheesy 80’s action flicks worth watching. The iconic action hero who wants to be good is faced with an option that really isn’t an option. Kowtow to brutal authority, or forge your own path for honor and family. We know from the beginning which path Nico will choose, but the knowing doesn’t detract from the journey.

The Structure Of Story

pacman-2I’m going to talk about video games. If you’re Roger Ebert undead, or you’re of a similar mindset, you can tune out now. Video games as an art form are undergoing a renaissance of design and storytelling (iPhone Fart Simulator aside). For the fiction writer, there’s ample opportunity to deconstruct story into its most basic elements and study what’s working, all while battling dragons in a frozen Nordic landscape. Just as you read and critique a novel to understand how the story was shaped, there are some excellent video games that portray a narrative arc in its most essential elements.

It’s easy to argue that the video game as an interactive story has limited potential. With most games, your interaction primarily consists of listed pre-programmed options, or in the case of the first-person shooter, your interaction with the world is limited by the caliber of gun you’re aiming. The modern media consumer has transitioned, and the single greatest impact of our hyper-driven always on society is the shortened attention spa- Oh hey, cupcake wars marathon! It’s painfully apparent that fiction is competing with a number of storytelling methods, from movies and television to video games. As a writer, we should play to the strengths of creative fiction – the ability to weave a mental picture that pulls the reader further into the story. Video games tell stories through user-driven interaction, but still manage to convey compelling characterizations when done well. I’ll be examining the story components of three specific games: Gone Home, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Spec Ops: The Line. Spoiler alert – I’ll be ruining all three if you have any interest in playing them, and playing isn’t required for understanding. This first post will focus on Gone Home.

gonehomeGone Home tells the story of a young woman who returns home from a semester in Paris only to find the new house her parents and little sister have occupied is eerily empty. The story plays out like a first-person puzzle game with few puzzles to solve. You begin on the front porch of a mansion your parents have inherited from your uncle – your crazy cultist uncle who died under strange circumstances. The player navigates through the empty house while a storm rages outside. Story is conveyed through answering machine messages, diary entries, mixed tapes from the younger sister, and newspaper clippings sprinkled around the house. Though the gaming elements of Gone Home could be argued, at two to three hours of content it’s not a terribly long game and there aren’t any enemies to shoot or monsters to fight. The entire game consists of the player navigating a huge empty mansion searching for clues to where her parents and her sister have gone. Examining the storytelling elements reveals an underlying brilliance to Gone Home; having the player (the narrator) stumble on diary-entries of the younger sister proves an excellent method to reveal back story while still pulling the player (or reader) into the experience. The younger sister is in high school, experiencing all the troubles and tribulations of senior year and latent sexuality, eventually ghcassettelatching on to a girl in her class who’s chastised for being a lesbian. The sub-plot devolves quickly into an emotional struggle between conformity and self-discovery as the narrator’s sister finds herself facing a difficult choice: side with the popular kids and make friends, or follow the heart and chase a same-sex relationship. The sister chooses to follow her heart only to have it bruised when the girl she’s interested in joins the army and suppresses her emotional desire. Gone Home proves to be a compelling and engrossing coming-of-age tale set around a vaguely horror-themed haunted mansion, complete with newspaper clippings hinting at a darker history in the old house.

Gone Home achieves something most popular TV shows aim for: making the reader/viewer believe they’re smarter than the storyteller. If you can accomplish this in your fiction, it comes off as brilliant. Case in point: consider your favorite TV show. I’ll use the new modernized Sherlock as an example. sherlockSherlock Holmes is a brilliant detective who solves crimes through observation. In nearly every story, the observations are presented to the viewer with carefully scripted close-up scenes, often with an overlay of text as Sherlock examines the scene. The astute observer is often one step ahead of Sherlock, and it’s not by accident. The best television shows, particularly the mystery and suspense shows like Sherlock, hinge on the viewer being manipulated into believing they’re more intelligent than the protagonist. With Sherlock, the viewer is often shown hints – visual and textual – of clues. Sometimes it takes Sherlock and Watson a few minutes to absorb and digest these clues and take the viewer to the next scene. And more often than not, a careful viewer has derived the outcome and determined the course of action, often before the protagonist has a chance to voice the answer. The next crime is at location x! As a result, the viewer believes they’re more intelligent than Sherlock, and they’re instantly drawn into the story. It’s brilliant storytelling when it works.

When it doesn’t, you have CSI Miami.

Think about how you can achieve this in fiction, regardless of your genre. Good literary fiction leads the reader to a conclusion without beating them over the head, showing them an answer without outright spelling the conclusion. Genre fiction that works best does this very well. Nearly all mystery fiction relies on this element to achieve synchronicity with the reader – start a mystery, lead the reader to the answer, and have the protagonist arrive there half a second later. Regardless of the medium – TV, video game, or literary fiction, you achieve the same result: you make the reader feel as if they’re smarter than your protagonist, and as a result, more involved in your story.

Gone Home is dirt cheap and should appeal to even those who hate video games. It’s an exploration-based simulation that strives to achieve storytelling elements through atmospheric visualization and sound. It achieves this brilliantly by making the player think they’re smarter than the protagonist. At the core, that’s what good storytelling is about.

Don’t insult your readers – show them how smart they are. Trust them to understand. You won’t get it right the first time – that’s what your reading group is for. But when you achieve it, your story will succeed.

 

How The Porn Trolls Affect Your Digital Rights

train-wreckThe Prenda trials are like the Honey Boo Boo of law. It’s a train wreck you just can’t look away from. Sex, money, and slapstick keystone-caper lawyering all in one. The Firm began a few years back saving the world from digital scum who steal movies; they are protectors of fine and upstanding films such as Sexual Obsession and Church of Bootyism 2 (both of which have been snubbed by the motion picture academy, most likely because the principal dialogue consisted of long strings of vowels spoken in frantic guttural). The trick was to find people who downloaded said movies, send them a letter, and get paid. And by “find people” I mean “make a wild-ass guess based on bad logic.” They filed a few thousand “John Doe” lawsuits forcing service providers to cough up details on which freakishly perverted user had said IP address. Then they sent out the kind of carefully worded threatening letter no one wants to get: “You’re the perv who stole Church of Bootyism 2, pay $4,000 or we tell your boss, your mother, your grandmother, and that girl at Starbucks you keep flirting with.” I never received one of those letters, so I guessed at the wording.

Some of those people couldn’t possibly have downloaded Church of Bootyism 2 because they were busy watching Honey Boo Boo or they were dead. But most people, it seemed, copped to it because nobody wants to be caught explaining to their neighbor and their kids kindergarten teacher that Church of Bootyism 2 was just for research, and they didn’t enjoy it. Then US District Judge Otis Wright (who may look like the Incredible Hulk) said “This case doth reek of Church of Bootyism 2 lies” and started poking around. Turns out Prenda had been pulling off one of the ballsiest digital copyright maneuvers in years. The Prenda lawyers may have uploaded and shared Church of Bootyism 2 to begin with, only to track every download. They may not have been acting on behalf of the true copyright holder of Church of Bootyism 2. Oh, and one of the lawyers forged his neighbors signature on a filing for one of their shell companies. Seriously, folks, free entertainment doesn’t get much better than this.

While Prenda is a hilariously extreme example, the case has some bearing on writers and content creators. What fueled Prenda in the first place was the DMCA. Copyright law is tricky, and DMCA doesn’t make it any easier. Someone just needs to point a finger and cry foul without any real evidence, and content is usually taken down by the service provider. YouTube has a standing policy of killing content, and so do most hosting services. Big media has a standing policy of whining to the authorities like an overworked actor in Church of Bootyism 2 even when said content doesn’t belong to them, isn’t related, or isn’t infringing.

50shadesoflegoThere are two points to this: you may one day find yourself targeted wrongfully in a DMCA violation (or maybe rightfully, if you were such a fan of Church of Bootyism that you had to download the sequel), or you’re a content creator with something to steal. The law sides with the content creators. When you write a story (or make a video of your dog bringing you a beer) and post it online, it’s still yours even if you give it away. The internet is the oddest place the universe has ever known, like going to a store where they sell high-end bath towels next to 50-Shades Lego sets. It’s the wild west. It also means protecting your work is that much harder should someone like Prenda try to steal it and sue everybody who’s infringing, justified or not. This leaves service providers up the well known fecal tributary without proper means of locomotion. Hosting companies and service providers are required by law to take DMCA takedown notices seriously, but aren’t required to investigate because it’s not their job. Though it looks like the Prenda lawyers may end up in federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison, there still aren’t any laws in place to stop the next Prenda wannabe. Until copyright law is fixed, we’re stuck in this mess.

But there is some hope. Should you get one of those “Pay us or else” letters, bear in mind many judges are taking the stance that settlement is pretty much extortion. Do some homework on the legal letter. If it hasn’t been filed in your district, or if it was filed with dozens of other “John Doe’s”, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to be thrown out. And on the opposite side, should you be in the same boat as the director and writer (was there a writer?) of Church of Bootyism 2, there are methods of responding to a DMCA claim.

And if you don’t fall in either of those categories, you get to sit back and enjoy the ride. The truth is, I just wanted to make you all read the words Church of Bootyism 2 a bunch of times.

Writing in a Digital World

shodanYou do not own your ideas. Your thoughts, once committed to bytes, become part of the endless ether staining the screens of everyone with a monitor, an internet connection, a cell phone, a tablet, or even one of those smart TV’s with the fancy remotes that make browsing the internet feel like navigating with a bar of soap. Welcome to the world of the digital. You’ve been here for quite some time, you just didn’t know it. For centuries (if you’re a house fly, years if you’re a human) the digital divide has been looming over wordsmiths like a constantly evolving artificial intelligence, listening to everything we write, every thought we spill. OK, yes, that was a stretch. I just wanted an excuse to use a SHODAN graphic.

Authors like J.K. Rawlings have resisted the trend to publish digitally while others like Stephen King have embraced it. Regardless of the fear behind the decision, the truth is that every author should have the right to decide for themselves. However, once you go digital, your choice is made. As irrevocable as picking peppers for a pizza topping. You can try to remove them, but some flavor lingers, forever tainting your slices.

The idealists like to believe the internet exists for the free exchange of ideas. Let’s not forget the system was designed by DARPA to let generals exchange digital porn in the event of a nuclear attack. In the aftermath of Snowden’s revelation, we are reminded that the internet does not forget. As long as disk arrays exist without suffering cascade drive failures, information will persist, even those insane twitter feeds from people who post things that look like hitler.

As more journals and publications go digital, it’s wise for any writer to think of the bigger picture. E-publishing is unavoidable, and doesn’t have to be an enemy if you’re aware. While I’ve gone on record to say the number of e-publishing self-publishing success stories are far fewer than Amazon wants us to believe, success is certainly possible. Everyone who creates content, writers and musicians and even that guy who make toothpick sculptures, walks a fine line between value and availability. The biggest mistake the recording industry made was a failure to embrace digital. Technology outpaced availability, and .MP3’s were born along with Napster Bad, Money Good! The motion picture industry is undergoing the same challenges, but is embracing digital a bit more readily, if not entirely correctly.

E-books are a natural transition. With hundreds of millions of smart phones and PC’s, the world already has a wealth of readers along with the Kindles and Nooks and Sony readers flooding the market. For the short-story writer, your digital rights revert back to you once your work has been published. Even if published online, you are free to do with that short prose what you will, unless of course you’ve signed a contract giving away certain rights. It’s typical for most e-journals to retain digital rights for a year, and even when not requested, it’s often understood. The point of publishing great work is in getting the public to the journal’s web site, not necessarily driving the public to your site – hold off on putting that story up on your own site until sufficient time has passed. A year is good, or you could wait for the next Mayan apocalypse.