Due to the fickle nature of aging hard drives, I’m playing Dragon Age: Origins again, in an attempt to reconstruct the history lost before firing up Dragon Age II. I know I can choose from one of the pre-determined backgrounds BioWare included in their new fantasy role-playing game, but one of the things I’ve always liked about BioWare’s games is the ways in which the things we as players do matter to future titles. That, and their well-written, well-rounded characters.
In an age where graphical hardware is pushed to its limits and gaming action is kept as repetable and generic as possible to maximize repeat success and profit, it’s heartening to see games that take their subjects and characters seriously, as a nuanced narrative rather than a brainless distraction. Games like Dragon Age also free characters from rails, allowing the player to modify the storylines of those around them as well as their own with means outside of violence.
I’m not saying that a game like Call of Duty can’t have well-written, well-rounded characters. It’s just been my experience that allowing the player a measure of freedom in their interaction with the characters around them creates more opportunities for those characters to develop. Character growth can be difficult to depict in video games, outside of numerical stat increases, and when it’s done well it can be inspiring for those looking to grow characters in more traditional means of telling stories.
Most works with which we toil as storytellers have a cast of characters in support of the protagonist. Assuming these characters have at least a passing resemblance to human beings, they should be affected by the events that take place in the story. They should be shocked, shaken, disturbed and disgusted by things. They should celebrate with each other when goals are achieved, and mourn when loved ones are lost. I think it’s vitally important that these things, mentioned even in passing, will help make the story in question more palpable for the audience, drawing them in deeper and delivering a more fulfilling experience.
I griped previously about the length of Dragon Age: Origins and yet here I am playing it again, end to end, with nary a complaint. It’s partially because I’m something of a completionist with this stuff, and partially because I feel I know the characters well and want to spend time with them. Even so, I’ve learned more about them this time around, and I’m curious how some of their interactions play out amongst each other. By letting the characters have breathing room, and including a variety of reactions and suggestions instead of leaving them entirely blank, BioWare deepens what could have been a somewhat generic MMO-styled RPG into a truly memorable storytelling experience.
I hear Dragon Age II is different in some regards. As long as the characters are good, I’ll be willing to forgive some stylistic changes.
When I was young, I thought all writers did was write. Someone like Heinlein, Niven or King just sat down, wrote out a masterpiece and bam, instant cash prizes. I probably don’t have to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. Good writers go through a lot more than that. There are quite a few steps between a nascent author and the bookstore shelf or e-market. The environment is changing and some of those routes diverge, but they all start with good writing, and that means more than your first draft.
It’s shit, by the way.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Writing a first draft from beginning to end with something substantive in the middle is not an achievement to sneeze at. Plenty of people don’t get that far. I’m just saying don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back. The first draft is just the first step, which is how journeys of a thousand miles begin. And trust me, if you seek an audience for your writing outside of your mother, it’s going to be a long haul.
The proofreading and editing follow the first draft immediately. When I say ‘immediately’, though, I don’t mean in terms of time. Don’t finish your draft and then begin tearing it to shreds. Give it time. Like a fresh-baked loaf of bread, you’ll want to let it set for a bit to firm up, then start carving it up while it’s still warm – while the work is still fresh in your head.
At this point you might even want to pass it off to someone else. Maybe you have a friend who knows their grammar. Or you can hire someone to rake your work over the coals. It’s a harrowing thought, your newly-formed creation in uncaring hands. It can feel that way, sure, but if you do enough research, maybe shop around a little, you’ll find someone to work with who is not uncaring, who wants your work to succeed as much as you do, and is interested in making it the best it can be, even if it means telling you how bad it is in places.
This won’t be your last editorial experience, either. Boxers go for rounds with one another until one of them is knocked out. College baskeetball teams take the month of March to put themselves through a grueling tournament, the winner having played at least six games in very short succession before being crowned champion. So it is with editing. You need to keep hammering at the work, the way a smith does with the heated metal under his care, to make something more useful, more profitable, perhaps even elegant. Eventually, after several drafts, you’ll come to a point where you look at the work and, while you might still see some flaws, it feels like something a stranger would actually enjoy reading.
You still aren’t done.
Now you need to get it out to the public. You need to query an agent. Follow up on a pitch. Respond to a request. You might even be putting it up in a Kindle store or on iTunes. However you want to get it in front of strange eyeballs, that’s what you need to do now.
Before we move on to that, though, take a look back at that first draft. Let yourself laugh at the circumstances of the changes – how the dynamics shifted due to an edit, how much better the work is without a certain line, etc – and how they came to be. Again, you’ve gotten a lot further than most, and now you have a better chance of making something happen just by virtue of your writing. Your work is out there, waiting to be discovered.
It’s when the work gets picked up by someone with interest and enthusiasm that your next step, your true test, begins.
Not historically accurate, but Balian’s got a good arc, too.
The hero is introduced to us in a relatable fashion. He may be flawed, but his heart or his mind is in the right place for the journey about to take place. It begins when he is presented with a dramatic question. His journey takes him through the wilds unknown both without and within, and in pursuit of the answer to the dramatic question he will learn something about himself. By story’s end, he has not only answered the dramatic question, he has changed, grown or even evolved.
This is your standard character arc, the sort of thing Campbell explores in detail and tale after tale emulates. The protagonist can be male or female, young or old, initially naive or villainous, but an arc like this keeps the character from stagnating. It takes the reader as well as the character from beginning to end without making things too boring.
This is remarkable to us, I think, because it’s rare for us to have this sort of coherency in our own lives.
Stories begin and end around us every day. If all of these starts presented the sort of dramatic questions we remember from our favorite tales, Seth Godin wouldn’t have needed to write Poke the Box[1]. Unfortunately, not every day or situation launches a clear arc that leads to significant change, be it in ourselves or the world around us. When those changes do come, it’s only in retrospect that we trace the journey and know in full what we’ve learned and how to use that knowledge in the future.
Campbellian arcs show us the potential of the human spirit. Take a look at Luke Skywalker, or Harry Potter, or Frodo Baggins, or John McClaine, or Marty McFly… quite a few of the heroes we enjoy reading about or watching follow these patterns. In each instance, the characters grow beyond their origins to achieve something greater, either for themselves or beyond themselves. It’s a tried, true and oft repeated pattern because not only does it work, but it also inspire.
This doesn’t mean that said arcs can’t be played with. Relating this sort of growth to modern characters can be difficult and can require modification or outright subversion, e.g. the characters in Clerks. Plots can also twist and play with our expectations – see Memento or The Sixth Sense. Finally, a writer might take a character on this arc and push them in another direction, throwing their journey into conflict with itself, the way Scott Pilgrim must confront his immature behavior to overcome the obstacles before him.
I know I just threw a lot of examples at you, but I’m sure you can come up with more. That’s what the comments are for, folks. Fill ’em up.
1. Yes, I know, I harp on this a lot, but it’s a really good book if you’ve got a creative mind and want to make a living with what that mind provides you. Read my Amazon review here.
There’s a picture of me out there, and I wish I could post it here with these words. It’s of me, at around 8 years old, proudly showing off my Transformers backpack. Optimus Prime, in all of his 80s glory, is ready to stand up and protect my books and Trapper Keepers from anybody trying to subvert my freedom, which is the right of all sentient beings. I knew Prime wasn’t real, but I believed his philosophy to be true.
As you can imagine, I got bullied as a kid.
My peers made fun of me. I actually got beat up once. I probably caused concern from my parents at more than one point. Somewhere along the way I tried to dial down the behavior that was causing such strife, in the name of fitting in. I never really did, and the behavior remains to this day. At this point, it probably isn’t going anywhere.
These days, though, I wonder why ‘fitting in’ is such a big deal.
The people who we remember, the ones we admire, aren’t people who fit in. Galileo, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, Nikola Tesla, Rosa Parks, Issac Asmiov, Gary Gygax – these are people who refused to fit into the molds cast by the world around them. They sought change. They embraced their natures. And we love them for it.
Why do we demand so much less of ourselves? Are we just lazy?
Let’s face it, fitting in it easy. It requires almost no effort. Just do what everybody else around you is doing. Buzz in time with the rest of the swarm. Contribute to the overall productivity that will bluesky that turnkey solution. There is no ‘i’ in team.
Because they’re all hanging out in imagination. Innovation. Initiative. Plenty of ‘i’s there.
The problem is that imaginative, innovative people might not always channel that energy effectively. There are lots of mixed signals out there that can muck up one’s internal compass. We look for immediate payoffs. Benefits with minimum investment. Bigger bang for our bucks. To get them, we settle. We compromise. We take the safe road.
There isn’t anything wrong with this, in and of itself. It’s good to have certainty. Especially if you’re in a situation where you need to concern yourself with the wellbeing of others as well as yourself, you need to find a middle ground between dangling by your fingertips and keeping your feet on the ground. The nice thing about not being alone in this is the potential for someone to watch out for you, or you for them, as you make your way towards that goal, inch by inch, one foothold at a time.
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time building LEGOs. And not always with instructions. In fact, I probably spent more time digging my fingers into the big plastic bin, fishing out blocks and assembling them by the blueprints in my head rather than going by established plans. Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that sort of initiative. I started doing what other people did and were successful at, rather than seeking my own path. I followed well-trod trails around the mountain, rather than looking up and figuring out how I’m going to get all the way up that thing. I’d take a few steps up the incline but then back down when it got hard, because those trails are much easier to follow.
I forgot what it meant to be a kid while still occasionally acting like one.
I’d lament lost time but not consider how better to spend it. I’d rage against my situation and take no steps to change it. I’d experience rejection and loss without using the motivation it was handing me. Kids at their best don’t just cry over scraped knees. They let the pain out, wipe their faces and get up to try again.
At some point, if you’re on top of things and really want to hold onto that initiative, you’ll fail enough that you’ll realize why you’re failing, and instead will begin to succeed. You can’t get there without failing, though. Learning to ride a bike means falling a few times. Ditto traversing the monkey bars. The first few sandcastles you build are going to crumble before your eyes, possibly before you even finish. What matters isn’t necessarily the scrapes, the bruises, the wipeouts. What matters is what we do after they happen.
It’s okay to fail. It’s okay not to fit in. We have to find a way to make the most of those failures, to make not fitting in matter. When we do, the successes mean more, not just because of the failures that lead to it but because we can take full ownership of it. We had the crazy idea. We stuggled to make it come to life. We were aware that we’d get odd looks and skepticism. We got to the finish line anyway, and something new and exciting is the result.
That’s reason enough to abandon the set paths. It’s why we remember those luminaries I mentioned. And it’s why, at this point, I’m probably never going to ‘grow up’.
It’s Hebrew for “pause and consider.” In case you haven’t noticed, some of my recent posts here have been concerned with things other than fancies about dragons, review of movies or ruminations on the written word. I’m entering a period of my life that feels transitionary, and rather than simply get shoved around by circumstances, I’ve been trying to find ways to forge my own path through the storm, to wrest some sort of order out of the chaos, even if it’s a matter of “too little too late.”
I haven’t been all that effective as yet, so it’s time to pause and consider.
I’m pausing to consider just who the hell I think I am.
Writer
I’ve been published two and two-half times.
Yes, I know, that makes three, but what’d you expect? I’m an English major, not a mathlete.
My first real short story, the first one that had teeth and weight and actually meant something on its own without relying on being fanfiction or entirely derivative, found a place in a horror anthology. One of the pitches I sent towards the Escapist landed in the editor’s mitt and bam, I got paid for being a nerd. Huzzah!
I’ve contributed as a writer to others’ projects twice so far, and while my part in Maschien Zeit was far less than half since my only contribution to the game’s actual design was in playtesting, the amount to which I put myself into the other collaboration makes up for it.
So, on average, so far I’ve gotten published once a decade.
Considering some poor slobs never get published at all, that’s not too shabby.
Blogger
This blog is about change.
I know that I post about some scattershot things at times, it might seem. But the process of alchemy is a process of change. Every day I encounter something that I thought worked but doesn’t, or I find a part of my life isn’t what it was yesterday, or there’s something new to see… it’s all about change.
Even ICFN deals with change. I’ve changed formats, microphones, ways to get the audience involved. And watching a movie can change you, even if it’s just a moment of introspection or dire sorrow or jumping for joy. A good story does that, and a bad story should. I examine the whys and wherefores, and yes, sometimes I parrot some of the ramblings of other critics, but we all had to start somewhere.
If you’re still around after some of my more amateur stabs at being a critic, thank you.
Selah.
Editor
Criticisms are editorials. By looking at works like movies, books and games from the stance of a critic rather than a rank-and-file audience member, I see what changed since the last attempt at that style of story, what could change to make it better, And if I were to go into said story with those changes in mind?
I’d be editing.
I don’t have formal, on-the-job, business-and-resume-friendly training for it. I’m not going to get huge piles of cash shoveled in my direction for it. But it’s a skill I feel I need to cultivate. The better I get at editing, the higher the probability that whatever I end up submitting to a magazine, anthology, agent or Kindle store won’t be an absolute pile of dogshit.
It’s also closer to writing than programming is.
Programmer
I may have given the impression in a previous post that I’ve fallen out of love with programming. That isn’t the case. What gets my alchemist’s robes in a knot is reactionary programming. Bug fixes. Code rot. Sudden new demands made by folks who think a swish and flick is all that’s needed while a programmer says ‘pagerankium leviosa!’ to make their business the next smash hit on Google.
And yes, it’s lev-i-OH-sah, not lev-i-oh-SAH.
I know it’s part and parcel of most programming jobs when they’re being handled by a development department or a design shop, but I’ve gotten to a point in my life that I shouldn’t have to shrug my shoulders and accept a situation as given or unchangeable. Remember, this is all about change. Hopefully, most of that change will be for the better. Some things will work, others won’t. And there will be times you don’t know how effective a change is going to be until some time after the change is made. But the important thing is not the mistake in and of itself.
It’s what we learn from the mistake, and how we move forward and past it, that matters.
Selah.
Slacker
Nobody’s perfect.
I’m not going to pretend that there’s anything positive about my lethargy. I’m a sponge for media. I consume books, drink films, inhale the fumes of gaming and exhale a thousand tiny ideas that evaporate before my eyes. I accomplish nothing of value while I do this.
Except for learning about what’s out there already. Who’s already playing in my sandbox? Do I find merit in what’s been done? Do I think I can do better? How would I approach X or portray Y?
It doesn’t even happen, necessarily, as I’m soaking in whatever it is that’s drowning out the doldrums of the day. It can strike me later, in bed or in transit or over a bowl of Shreddies. That experience was awesome. That line sounded forced. That plot point made no sense. Those characters shouldn’t have behaved in that manner based on what we know. That reveal corrects that previous mistake or answers a hanging question, but what about that other thing, and what happens now?
A body at rest remains at rest but the mind might not necessarily be resting.
Ergo Sum
‘Therefore I am.’ I can’t think of a better way to sum up the preceding. I know it’s been ramblier than usual and some of it might not make a whole lot of sense to everybody. The thing is, though, it doesn’t necessarily have to make sense.
We often don’t understand what happens to us and those around us as it happens. We can grasp the basics of the situation, draw from previous experience and education, and act accordingly. It’s only in the aftermath that we piece things together, make connections, really understand those events. And that only happens if we take the time to pause, and consider.
Days may come when you feel overwhelmed. Things seem out of control. The world is simply moving too fast, or maybe it isn’t moving fast enough. Our impulse can be to speed up, to react more quickly, to make snap decisions – to panic. I do it. I’ll probably do it again.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. If we stop and think, just for a moment, things change. When we pause and consider, the situation clarifies. The storm calms. We regain our grasp of who we are, look across the Shadow to who we want to be, and when the moment is right, we catch a glimpse of the elusive path between the now and the what could be.
