Post #178 July 29 2019

“Serial Characters”

What do I mean by ‘serial characters?’  Think James Bond, Indiana Jones, Tom Swift, Jr., Lucy and Ricky Ricardo.  Or in the case of my series Tales of the Quantum Corps and Quantum Troopers, Johnny Winger.

Why bother with a continuing character in a continuing series?  Over and above the requirements and market expectations for series fiction, here are several advantages to creating and sustaining serial characters.

1. Audience familiarity.  After introducing your hero or heroine to the reading public, you can proceed on with your series of stories or episodes.  In the process of following these stories, your readers gain a growing sense of familiarity with the character, with their quirks and idiosyncracies (“shaken, not stirred…”).  Done well, a likeable and believable continuing character can be ‘invoked’ for the reader with a few well-chosen words, words that will trigger the reader’s memories of what this character has done before, and build a sort of expectation as to what they may do and how they may react in the current predicament.  This can make your writing efforts easier and more efficient.
2. Easier to explore different facets of character.  If you have built up, through a number of stories, a believable and likeable character, it’s a little easier to (carefully) nudge the character in different directions, in other words, to show different aspects of the character.  Put him or her in different predicaments and see what happens.  In my current series Time Jumpers, I am currently writing an episode in which one of the main characters goes AWOL from his ship.  I’ve tried to lay the ground work for this in earlier episodes, dealing with motivations, background, similar reactions but growing in intensity, until in this episode, my character takes a big (and possibly irrevocable) step.   This can be jarring to the reader and hard to believe, unless you do your homework ahead of time and provide the basis for this sudden change.  But done well, it can be revealing and very intriguing.
3. You don’t have to introduce new characters (or as many) all the time, in every episode.  With series characters, you have the same basic people but dropped into different pots of boiling water.  This can make writing series stories easier and more efficient.  You can and should introduce some new characters, maybe a new villain or two.  But sustaining a series character cuts out of lot of work you’d otherwise have to do.
4. You can have your series character refer back to previous episodes as a a way of illuminating what they are doing now.  “Remember, when we were on Tralfamidor, I did that quantum displacement trick?  Let’s try that here!”  It’s a shorthand way of triggering your readers’ memories and making use of their imaginative powers to help move the story along, usually a good practice for any storyteller.  The more (and more different) ways you can engage the reader’s imagination and memory, the better your story will be.
5. Offers an easier path to show character growth and change.  You have to do your homework.  For my main characters, I do extensive bios, chronological timelines and even a short psych workup.  This enables you to be consistent in portraying your character, which is vital in any series.  It may seem like formula fiction, and it is, to some extent.  But done well, this formula allows you to gently shove your character into situations and predicaments which will cause him or her to grow and change.  We all change every day of our lives.  In the fictional world of your character, this growth and change can seem much more powerful and immediate and impactful, if the character has become something of a ‘friend’ to your readers and then, when put into a new and threatening environment, must do something different to survive.  It need not be a physically threatening situation, either.  Sometimes, just emotionally threatening is enough.
    
   There are some pitfalls to doing series characters, however, over and above the requirements of series fiction.
    

1. Readers (and writers) may grow tired of the character.  This usually happens when you haven’t plotted out or outlined good storylines and situations to put your character in.  Or you haven’t attended to developing a well-rounded character ahead of time (do that bio!) so you can explore different aspects of his personality or background.  With these foundational tasks done and done right, you should have plenty of fictional and story possibilities to drag your well-meaning hero into…the poor guy.
2. You may be limited in story and character possibilities by what has gone before.  This is an occupational hazard for any series writer…how to keep the characters and stories fresh when it’s really just infinite variations on a single formula.  Again, do your homework.  I’m planning on bringing Johnny Winger and his quantum troopers back in 2020, in a new series entitled (fittingly) Quantum Troopers Return.  But to bring this off, I have to know what I did before in Quantum Troopers, and riff on that in hopefully inventive and interesting ways.  We’ll see. 

 

Writing series fiction and developing and sustaining serial characters is both challenging and potentially very rewarding for a writer with a bent to do this.  In order to bring it off well, though, it pays to know some of the best practices and thou shalt nots! involved in this line of work.

 The next post to The Word Shed takes us into August, specifically to August 5.  School will be starting around here soon and the end of summer is in sight.  With an eye on series fiction, let’s take a closer look at my upcoming series Quantum Troopers Return.

See you then.

Phil B.

Post #177 July 22 2019

“Essentials of Plot and Telling a Good Yarn”

In this post, I want to review some essentials of how I construct story plots and some of the critical elements that go into the making of a memorable story.  Most of this is Storytelling 101, but sometimes authors forget things, to their and their reader’s detriments.  Readers tend to reward poorly constructed and plotted stories with the ultimate insult…tossing the book before it’s finished.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short story/novelette called “In Plutonian Seas.”  One of the very first things I did when constructing a story was to flesh out just what happens, in rough chronological order.  Here’s an example, from this story:

1. Commander Joe Skellen on Trident’s command deck, dozing off after studying an unrolled printed copy of an ancient sea chart, when a sonar contact alarm goes off.  It’s some kind of wreckage, dead ahead. 
2. Exploratory submersible FCS Trident (Frontier Corps Ship) is cruising Pluto’s subsurface ocean.  There is a 4-person crew and Mission Commander Joe Skellen.  There is also a small research station in orbit around Pluto, to study it and its moons.  It’s called Fort Apache by the crews stationed there.
3. While underway, Trident encounters a submerged wreck at a great depth, near Trident’s crush depth.  Investigating, Skellen and his crew find that the wreckage is a very close facsimile of their own ship, complete with dead crewmember bodies, that closely resemble the crew of a previous subsurface mission on Europa that Skellen commanded…a mission that ended in near disaster.
4. What Trident’s crew doesn’t (yet) realize is that soon after they landed and were trundling across the icy surface of Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia prior to boring through the ice and diving into the ocean, their ship and crew were ‘infested’ by nanoscale robotic devices resembling ice mist…a form of indigenous life on Pluto that has heretofore been unknown to anyone.  The only evidence of anything unusual noticed by the crew was the onset of some severe headaches right after landing…the Bugs (as they come to be called by the crew) had penetrated the lander and began their infestation. 
5. And so forth…
    
   Right away, if I follow this outline (and it goes on for two pages like this), I’ve got a setting, a main character and a problem.  In fact, I’m one author who particularly likes dropping the reader right in the middle of the action, then backing up later to explain what’s going on.
    
   The website novel-writing-help.com offers a ten step process for constructing a plot that’s worth taking a look at.  Here’s an excerpt:
    

The Beginning

Broadly speaking, the beginning of a plot concerns dumping a problem on the leading character's shoulders and making them decide to take action to solve it. Although it is a little more complicated than that, of course. It involves these three steps...

• Step 1: Start With the Status Quo. We first meet the character in their ordinary world. Nothing has happened yet.
• Step 2: And Then Something Happens. The action kicks in when the status quo is disrupted (the boy meets the girl, the airplane develops engine trouble, etc.)
• Step 3: The Character Makes a Decision to Act. Before this, there may be a period of hesitation (e.g., the retired cop doesn't want to take on the new case. But eventually, they'll commit.
  The Tricky Middle
  If the start of a plot is all about making a character take action to solve a problem, the middle deals with the action itself - or, more precisely, a whole series of mini actions.

• Step 4: The First Mini Plot. Or the first small thing the character must achieve to succeed in their overall goal. Needless to say, it goes horribly wrong and leaves them in a worse position!
• Step 5: More Mini Plots. The character keeps pushing forward and experiences small victories and small setbacks. Overall, the tension rises as they get closer to the object of their quest.
• Step 6: Rock Bottom. The middle ends at a moment of disaster, when all is seemingly lost. This is the most intense point of the novel.
  The Ending
  The ending deals with the consequences of the action. And on the basis that fiction is so much neater than real life, it is also about tidying up the loose ends and leaving the audience satisfied.

• Step 7: Reaction. The character reacts emotionally to the devastating blow they have just received and the apparent death of their dream.
• Step 8: Rebirth. But they then experience a sort of epiphany, or a realization of where they have been going wrong and what they must now do to put it right. This is the point at which the character changes.
• Step 9: Seizing the Prize. Strengthened by their epiphany, the characters go on to fight the final battle... and win. Or in a twist on this, they can decide that they no longer want what they thought they did.
   
• Step 10: The New Status Quo. The conflict is over and all is well in the jungle again. Take this opportunity to tie any loose ends and highlight what has changed between the beginning and the end.
  While I’m not in full agreement with all these points, like No. 1, where you show the main character in their ordinary setting, as a general rule, these are good practices to follow. 
  Although the above excerpt is intended for novelists, most of these steps apply to shorter stories as well.  This is good story-telling practice.
  In my own case, after I have written a basic outline, much of my plot development consists of adding details to this same outline, grouping the details into likely chapters, then re-writing the entire outline in a series of what I called Chapter and Scene Details.  Here’s an excerpt from a novel in my series Tales of the Quantum Corps, to show how a plotted chapter in my finished outline would look:
  CHAPTER 2 (March 26, 2155) UNIFORCE Hqs, the Quartier-General, Paris
              General Lamar Quint is in the middle of composing a report to UNSAC about what Sentinel has detected beyond Pluto when an apparition appears in the corner of his office.  At first, Quint thinks he is imagining this, but the apparition grows into a recognizable human form.  It’s clearly a swarm that has somehow breached UNIFORCE security screens.  That alone is cause for concern and just as Quint is about to sound the alarm, the form becomes recognizably Johnny Winger…a blast from the past.  Winger was thought to have died on Europa in 2121, during the Jovian Hammer mission.  But here is a swarm likeness, an angel, showing up 34 years later.
              The angel appears real and insists it is Johnny Winger, in fact.  But Quint is dubious, to say the least.  The angel reports that Winger is alive and well and working as a spy and saboteur inside the mother swarm of the Old Ones, to prevent the Old Ones from destroying or absorbing Earth .   The angel wants to deliver some intel on the intentions of the Old Ones in the coming months, now that the mother swarm has reached the outer solar system.  Winger describes the Prime Key and what it will mean for Earth and all life on the planet, and also describes the Old Ones’ plans to build a forward base on Mercury and a ring to intercept much of the Sun’s output to facilitate their disassembly and absorption of the solar system.  He indicates that he has some room to maneuver inside the mother swarm and that he can do things to sabotage these plans.  But the intel needs to get to UNSAC and plans should be gotten underway to equip and launch an expedition to stop these efforts.
              Quint is dubious, thinking he’s dreaming or had too much to drink, but promises the angel that he’ll pass this intel on to UNSAC.  When and how can he be in contact in the future? The Winger angel says he’ll let Quint know; he’s running a grave risk doing even this much, but he has to do what he can to stop the Old Ones.  Then, the Winger angel disperses and Quint is left wondering if any of what happened actually happened.
              He goes upstairs to UNSAC’s suite and requests a meeting with Angelika Komar, the Security Affairs Commissioner.  Quint is shown into the UNSAC suite of offices and Komar offers him a drink.  Nighttime Paris is on display outside and they step out onto a veranda, protected by the faint veil of a nanobotic barrier.  Quint describes what has just happened.  Komar is doubtful and thinks Quint has imagined the whole scenario.  She tells Quint it’s either a trap laid by elements of the Old Ones or a stress reaction to all that’s going on.  “Sign yourself into sick bay tomorrow for a checkup, Lamar,” she orders.  “We need our top staff whole and hearty for the days ahead.”
              Quint leaves.  He thinks maybe UNSAC’s right.  “I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately.  And with what Sentinel is now reporting, anybody would be spooked.”
              He resolves to do as UNSAC has suggested and returns to his quarters, intending to take something to help him sleep. 
              As this is going on, Dana Polansky has arrived at the doorsteps of the Assimilationist church to find her daughter, whom she thought was caught in a MOBnet, nowhere in sight.  She goes into the church, asks some questions, receives noncommittal and evasive answers, and comes back outside with the dawning suspicion that Jana has already gone off somewhere and been assimilated.  But how to find her?  How to find out?  Dana is frantic.  She decides to follow the recorded footage of the dronecam.  Studying this, she finds that several people from the church have collapsed the MOBnet, rescued Jana and taken her inside the church.  The church claims not to know anything about her.  But the video evidence proves otherwise.
              Furious, determined to get to the bottom of this and rescue her daughter, Dana barges back inside the church.

  
  

  Spend time on your plot.  It can be tedious and hard work but when you have a well-developed outline that follows the storytelling practices above, you’ve done more than half the work. 
  
• The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 29, 2019.
• See you then.
  Phil B.
   

 

 

 

 

Post #176 July 15 2019

“Update on Downloads and a New Series Coming”

I just updated the most recent statistics on my ebook downloads from Smashwords.  Here are the numbers as of 7-1-19:

Total cumulative downloads from when I first went online = 32,876

Total downloads for 2019 = 14, 236

Downloads have been cooking along at about 65-70 a day most of this year.  Somebody out there is downloading and reading my stuff!

There is another set of statistics worth sharing.  These are cumulative downloads for certain ebook series among my titles, current as of 5-17-19:

Tales of the Quantum Corps = 7330

Farpool Stories = 4129

Time Jumpers = 489

Quantum Troopers (formerly Nanotroopers) = 13,091

 

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see which series has been most popular.  In fact, as if 5-17-19, Quantum Troopers alone had accounted for around 45% of all my downloads.  Which leads me to this announcement.  Some time in early 2020, a new series will arrive, entitled Quantum Troopers Return.  Yes, Johnny Winger and ANAD and all the heroes of 1^st ANAD Battalion are coming back in an all-new series.

Here are some details….

1. Quantum Troopers Return is a series of 25,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a quantum trooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.  This series continues the original serial stories of Quantum Troopers, Episodes 1-22 (formerly Nanotroopers).
2. Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 30,000 words in length.
3. A new episode will be available and uploaded every 4 weeks.
4. There will be 10 episodes.  The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.
5. Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc. 
6. The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Harmony’s efforts to use their nanorobotic ANAD systems for the cartel’s own nefarious and illegal purposes.
7. Uploads will be made to www.smashwords.com on approximately the schedule below:
    
   Episode # (*)   Title                                                     Approximate Upload Date
   1 (23)               ‘Fab Lords’                                                     2-7-20
   2 (24)               “Free Fall’                                                       3-6-20
   3 (25)               “Forbidden City”                                            4-3-20
   4 (26)               “Deep Encounter”                                           5-8-20
   5 (27)               “HAVOC”                                                      6-12-20
   6 (28)               “The Empty Quarter”                                      7-10-20
   7 (29)               “The Hellas Paradox”                                     8-14-20
   8 (30)               “Twist Pirates”                                                9-11-20
   9 (31)               “The Better Angels”                                       10-9-20
   10 (32)             “The Ship of Theseus”                                    11-13-20

 

(Note *: Episode numbers start with Episode 1 in this new series but the continuation of episode numbers from Quantum Troopers is also provided).

With the coming of a new series, I will have to figure out a way to dovetail the work with my larger science fiction novel Monument, which I hope to start this fall and which should be available in late summer/early fall of 2020. 

In any case, there is plenty coming up to keep me busy, as I am still writing episodes of my latest series Time Jumpers.  As of 7-1-19, titles in this series have been downloaded some 785 times since February 1.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 22, 2019.  See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

Post #175 July 8, 2019

“How Storytelling Became Writing”

It’s general knowledge that storytelling is as old as Man.  It began as an oral tradition, Og and Grog swapping tall tales around a campfire.  There was no writing in those ancient days.  Stories were created and passed down by word of mouth and the storyteller was as much a theatrical performer as anything else. 

Then writing came along.   Writing began as a way of keeping records.  What kind of records?  Commercial transactions.  Agricultural production…Og has brought ‘x’ number of crops to town for sale.  He sold 1/2 x, so we make a record of the sale for future use.  Legal and government transactions, decrees, laws and codes were also among the first things to be written down. 

But after a long time using their writing skills to record transactions, scribes (the first people to become skilled at writing) probably grew a little bored.  They began to adapt their writing skills to other uses, like telling lurid accounts of the great deeds of kings and gods.  These first stories were likely little more than written versions of the oral tales.  There were chronicles of the times, fables, proverbs and sayings, love letters, lyrics to songs and even epic poems, all of this transcribed from the oral storytellers and, over time, embellished with additional materials and using new literary techniques.   Thus, was born literature and the first use of writing as a medium for telling stories.

The legal codes of Hammurabi in the 18^th century BC were an early example. 

From these crude beginnings, scribes-turned-storytellers laid the foundations for some of the great archetypes of stories that we use even today.  This was the beginning of the epic story—a tale of a human being or beings who were larger than life, like Odysseus and Jason.  It was also the beginning of the myth, stories and tales to explain the mysteries of nature and life, to explain things we don’t understand. 

One of the earliest stories of this era was the tale of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian epic from about 2600 BC.  This story detailed what may well be a folk memory of a real king, who ruled a city called Uruk in this time. 

People, in other words, the audiences for stories, were deeply concerned in their time about the thoughts, and actions of the gods and the great heroes (maybe it isn’t really that different today). These were the themes of the first written tales, generally in cities around Mesopotamia. The affairs of the gods were of great importance to the lives of people in this era.

The earliest storytelling writers tried to penetrate the mysteries of life and offer explanations for them, explanations for storms, floods, eclipses, the death of kings, why some cities failed and some prospered.  They tried in their stories to sort out the rights and wrongs of life, and cope with the ever-present fear of death. 

Storytelling writers are still doing that today.  Our lives are infinitely more complex, but reading some of the earliest written stories, we still see and feel a kinship with the concerns and even writing techniques of the earliest scribes.  Techniques like how to build and keep an audience, how to convey a message or a moral.  In time, purely fictional heroes would supplant the heroes of the old oral epics.  Thus, instead of Gilgamesh, we have Captain Ahab.  Instead of Jason or Odysseus, we have Captain Kirk.  Instead of Hercules, we have Tarzan and Batman.

But the same concerns that drove the earliest scribes to record and eventually embellish what they were hearing persist to this day. 

Man is preeminently a storytelling animal. Our brains are wired that way.  We make sense of our world through stories.  Even Jesus Christ knew this, so he conveyed what the kingdom of God was like through countless stories and parables.

The next time you sit at your computer pondering how to get out of some plot complication, remember your scribal ancestors scratching away on a clay tablet, trying to figure out how to explain why the sun god disappeared in an eclipse yesterday. 

We owe more than we think to these earliest writers.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 15.  See you then.

Phil B.