Try/Fail

Being a Better Writer: Taking the Lumps

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Hello readers! Welcome to another Monday! I know for many Monday is seen as a bit of a drag, being the start of the workweek and all that, but for me? Well, I always get to look forward to them because it means another Being a Better Writer post! And I kind of hope that in a way, a lot of you look forward to, if nothing else, at least this part of Monday because of BaBW.

Really quick, I do have some nice news, too, which also helps. Hunter/Hunted? Going into Beta. Look for a cover and a release date soon, fans! And Jungle? In Alpha, with a release planned for end of summer/early fall depending on the speed of editing. All I’ll say on that one is … dang. Rereading it and polishing it up, I’d forgotten how tense it got!

While I’m on the subject, Colony picked up two more Five-star reviews over the weekend across Goodreads and Amazon! Woo-hoo! One step closer to global domination!

Okay, got the news out of my system. So let’s talk about improving your writing. “Taking the Lumps?” What does that mean?

Well … interestingly enough, this is kind of, in a way, a related follow-up post to an incredibly popular BaBW post from two weeks ago on the Strong Female Protagonist. Not 100%, but … well, you’ll understand in a moment.

See, what inspired this post was a news article I read elsewhere on the internet. Well … read half of it. I started skimming when it got foolish, and then didn’t finish. Why? Because … it was bad. Terrible, actually.

I’ll give you the rundown. And, fair warning, it’s a bit of a socially charged article, which was the root of part of the overall problem with it. Just go with me for a moment.

The article was in effect a complaint piece. And half rage. And what it was complaining out—or at least, thought it was complaining about—was misogyny in a story series the author’s article followed.

Long story short, this was one of those “We want strong female characters articles” (and yes, this is putting it very simply and bluntly). The author really, really wanted all the male characters of this series stripped out and replaced by women characters.

Pitchforks down. Though that is a topic, really, all in and of itself, it’s not one we’re discussing today. Because in this case, they’d gotten their wish. The male characters had been sidelined, the female characters were the new leads … and the article writer was upset and offended.

Why? Because the female characters were suffering losses, injury, and even death, just as the male team had. And as the article writer felt, that was ‘misogynistic and sexist.’

Yeah, that’s why I stopped reading. It was a pretty dumb article. However hyperbolic it was, though, it was something that got me thinking, because the mentality behind it isn’t something that’s unusual or new. In fact, it’s been around for a long time. Regardless of the reasons we’re beholden to a set of characters, from gender to backstory to … well, any number of things that make a character appealing to us, there’s a constant we should never forget.

Struggle means risk. And risk can—and should—mean loss.

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Being a Better Writer: When Characters Fail

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Welcome back, readers, to another Monday Being a Better Writer post! Today we’ve got a request topic, one that hopefully I’ll be able to do justice to the satisfaction of the one who asked. In addition, it’s also one of the last topics left on Topic List IX! We’re close to Topic List X, and I’m glad, because I’ve already got some pretty neat topics on there to go over.

But that’s in the future. For the now, let’s get going on today’s topic: When Characters Fail.

I’ll admit, I bounced around a bit on topic titles for this one, and not without good reason. For a moment it was “Failing to Succeed,” and then almost became “Letting Characters Fail.” But finally, I settled on When Characters Fail, rather than on letting, and I think that distinction is important.

See, if we go into our characters failing with the mindset that we’re “letting” them fail (and in fact, are), then we might be approaching our story in the wrong way. Sure, we’re giving our characters the “try/fail” cycle that they need, and they’re going through it, but here’s the thing about “letting” them fail. When we “let” our characters fail, then they’re not the ones acting on the try/fail cycle. We as authors are. We’re looking at our story and going “Okay, you can fail here, this is a good spot for it,” and letting the failure happen where we decide it works, rather than simply letting the characters be free to fail when their own choices drop it on them.

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Being a Better Writer: The Try/Fail Cycle and the Evolving Story

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Sorry for the late post, guys. E3 stole some of my attention.

So, stop me if you’ve read this one before.

Hero enters the villain’s lair/stronghold/fortress/secret base/cave/space station. Hero immediately faces down a group of mooks.

Hero effortlessly defeats said mooks. Only to face down a trap. Hero also effortlessly defeats said trap—possibly before the trap can even spring. Hero continues forward, facing traps, mooks, plot twists, and minibosses, defeating each one in turn, without difficulty, before reaching the villain and the final confrontation. Hero emerges supreme and returns home victorious.

Now, I ask you … if you were reading that story, about how far into that “climactic” series of events would you get before coming to the conclusion that no matter what, the hero is going to emerge victorious every time? Granted, this was a pretty threadbare example, because I didn’t go into a lot of detail, but how many stories like that have we all read? A story where the hero goes into situation after situation, and by about halfway (or a quarter) into the book, we can already see exactly what’s going to happen because the hero always wins?

Now, I’m going to preface things with a caveat here: We know that the hero is going to win. Usually. 95% of the time, it’s a safe bet that the hero will emerge victorious in some fashion or another. But on the journey there? A hero who simply crushes all in their path doesn’t really make for an entertaining read because the reader always knows what is going to happen. If your hero fights mook after mook, takes down trap after trap, and comes out on top every time, well, even if your action is written in an incredibly well-done manner, you’re still going to start running into readers who just start skipping over things. Why?

Because they’ve gotten bored. Because the book becomes going to a sports match where the players and the audience already know who is going to win. It get predictable. The action loses its tension. A great fight simply becomes not so great because the reader already knows who is going to win: the hero.

Again, we accept that most of the time we assume this about the ending, but why would it matter during the story? The answer? Narrative tension.

Which is why today we’re going to talk about two things: the try/fail cycle, and the evolving story.

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