I had great progress on the story yesterday, adding around 2500 words (and shaving two pages off what I had previously written). The story is now at the halfway mark, which actually comes right before the midpoint—since the second plot turn is essentially a moment of decision, rather than a scene unto itself, it just going to be folded into the finale. That means:

First Half: meet the characters, set the scene, introduce the conflict and villain.
Second Half: craft plan to defeat villain, plan fails, hero overcomes his personal problems and saves the day.

Writing the villain was great fun: he’s an old cowboy necromancer named Gideon Price, known to the town as just a criminal refugee who lives in the wilderness and comes into town every now and then to buys supplies and leer at women and creep people out. He arrives at the town social in our story because he’s preparing for an especially dark ritual that requires some sacrificial virgins. (“That’s what I love about Mormons: you have plenty of virgins, and you love getting them all together on one place.”) His character ended up being very verbal and irreverent, probably as a natural reaction to writing about a reverent, taciturn hero. He arrived at the social with a group of reanimated dead, though the people couldn’t tell that right off the bat; the hero just referred to them as “pale men,” and described how creepily they looked and moved.

I wanted to escalate the tension even further, so the first time a girl gets taken the bad guy pulls out a pistol and shoots one of the rescuers in the back. This ramped up the consequences very quickly and helped portray the townsfolk as innocent and helpless—they have guns of their own, but they left them outside in their wagons. They have nothing to fight back with…except the hero’s superpower.

The bad guy’s guns worked especially with the superpower. First of all, once he finally realizes the only way to survive is to turn into stone, the bad guy’s weapons are now suddenly useless—he fires at the hero, but the bullets bounce right off. It’s a fun hero moment, and we get to watch the hero smash some zombies and rescue one of the girls, and it looks like things are turning around. Then the villain gets an idea: instead of shooting at the hero he shoots at his mom, distracting the hero long enough for him and his zombie thugs to get away with the rest of the prisoners. It was a great way to follow our outline (ie, kill the mother) while showing that the hero is still vulnerable AND giving him a plausible excuse to blame himself for his mom’s death. I didn’t plan the pistols, but I had planned everything else and I knew what needed to happen, so when the pistols showed up I could fit them in easily.

You may ask why, if this guy’s a necromancer, he uses guns instead of magic. Three reasons: first, this is a western, and I need a gunslinger; when combining genres you have to balance each side’s needs carefully, and in this case I choose western over horror. Second, I don’t see necromancer’s as having a lot of combat powers—they can, but in this story they don’t. Magic necrosis-missiles or whatever would make his magic seem too easy, and I want the big ritual he’s planning to have the proper weight. Third, I wanted to keep the fight scene simple: I’m already introducing, in one scene, zombies and stone transformation, and if I get too much wilder than that it could be too much, especially in a short story. I toyed with giving the bullets magic effects, like having anyone he shoots rise from the dead, but that would mean his Mom would rise from the dead, which I think is too much—we already have the “I blame myself for killing her” trope, and using the “family member rises from the dead” trope wouldn’t be adding anything to the story, just repeating that same trope again when he has to kill his zombie Mom. In a short story, where space is at a premium, we definitely don’t need both, though honestly I’d hesitate to do it in a novel, too.

My one worry is that the hero’s transformation in this scene might be too heroic, which will make it hard to follow in his second, more climactic transformation later on. However, I never want to tone something down because it’s too awesome—I’d rather come up with something incredible for the second scene than de-cool-ify the first one.

Last night, after writing, I did something horrible to my back, and today I have medically instructed not to bend at the waist if at all possible. That means no chairs, which means no writing. I should be back into it tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to tell you how it goes.

Let’s start with a quick link to an interview I did with Fantasy Book Critic. It has some interesting background stuff, like my favorite authors and writing influences, but the thing you’ll really want to read are the hints for I Don’t Want to Kill You, the third John Cleaver book which comes out next Spring.

And now let’s talk about short story writing. Yesterday I finally had a chance to start work on The Mountain of the Lord, the “Mormons and Monsters” short story I talked about here and here. With a solid outline and some good brainstorming in place, I sat down to write with some specific things in mind:

1) No narrative exposition. I have a tendency to write myself into a story, letting the characters and the narrator explain everything about the background and setting, and I really wanted to avoid that as much as possible this time, so I forced myself to explain everything in dialogue, and even then to explain it as little as possible. If the characters don’t have a good reason to say it out loud, the reader doesn’t need to know it, and if the reader really, really does need to know it, the characters had better come up with a good reason to say it out loud. This, in practice, led to a more mysterious tone than I usually use, which I think is a good fit. It also resulted in a focus on atmosphere over setting, if that makes sense: the setting never gets described, but you can kind of pick it up because the characters, when not allowed to talk about the plot, end up talking about the kinds of things that are actually important to them: farming, religion, neighbors, etc.

2) Thematic names. Before writing I found a couple of good websites with lists of common pioneer names, and grabbed some iconic ones and wrote them all down on a list; whenever I needed to name a character, I just grabbed a first name and a surname off the list. Having these close at hand helped keep the writing fast, and also helped solidify the pioneer atmosphere.

3) While writing, I realized I wanted him to feel like he was constantly being judged, and yet I also wanted his powers to be a secret from most of the people in the town. This meant I had to solidify who knew about the powers (a small group), and how they knew, and what they thought. This changed a bit as time went on, so I’ll need to go back and fix the first scene or two to match what I eventually decided on.

4) Dialect. I really don’t want to start spelling words wrong, but the more I write the more I fall into a pioneer dialect and accent. I want to keep it all in word choice, though in this case that includes “ain’t,” and that opens the door for dropping the “g” from the end of gerunds, and if I decide to go down that road I need to be very careful not to go too far. It could get out of hand quickly, but if I keep it under control the dialogue will be far stronger than if I ignore dialect altogether.

5) Apparently I have a thing about mothers? I love my mom, she’s the best in the world, but for some reason I keep doing horrible things to the mothers of my protagonists–I’m going to assume the best of myself, which is that whenever I search for a way to really screw up a character my subconscious says “Hey! Mess with his mom! That’ll totally ruin him.” Anyway, this mom started as kind of a religious hardliner, to help establish some of his own religious zeal, but then when they got to the big town social and someone started telling the main character he didn’t belong, I realized how awesome it would be for this mom to step in and defend him: she’s a zealot, certainly, but she also loves her son and won’t stand for anyone attacking him. And then I thought how even more awesome it would be if the mentor character who dies were actually the mom. Sweet, that would totally break the protagonist in half! Especially if it were his fault. It’s looking like it’s going to happen in pinch 1 instead pinch 2, but it’s going to work really well; I just need to make sure pinch 2 is even worse. (Even worse than your mom dying because of something you did? That’s going to be an awesome pinch.)

I’m 13 pages into it, and the bad guy just showed up; I predict about 10 pages for the fight (because it needs to include the main character hulking out, which will involve a lot of internal stuff), and then we’ll need three more scenes: the town meeting to plan a rescue, the search through the wilderness that results in their capture, and the final showdown in the villain’s lair. Somewhere in there I need two solid scenes of soul-searching: one where the mentor teaches him that his power might be a gift from God, and one where he decides to risk everything and use his power (which will be even harder for him, now that he blames his power for his mother’s death). That puts the story at around 50-60 pages unless something changes, but I’m pretty sure something will change. That’s long for a short story, but not horrible. We’ll see how it goes.

The Writing for Charity event I’ve talked about before is coming up this weekend, so if you’re in Utah and want some hands-on writing advice from a group of internationally published writers and illustrators, with 100% of the proceeds going to buy books for underprivileged kids, sign up now!

Our goal is to give a book to every child in at least ten Utah schools, which will probably come out to around 6000 books. These will be signed and, where possible, hand-delivered. The books to be given out will be purchased at cost, so no one is making money here–it all goes to the kids.

In return for your financial support (ie, your registration fee), you’ll get a day of writing assistance including a massive author panel, a smaller panel with genre-specific authors, and an even smaller workshop group with hands-on advice and critique. We’ll have a break in the afternoon followed by a big evening event with some huge authors like Brandon Sanderson and Brandon Mull. It’s going to be awesome, and you totally want to come.

If you can’t make it in person but still want to help (or even if you can make it, but just want to help more and get some sweet stuff), we’re also holding a silent auction with some very cool items. I, for example, have offered the following:

Auction item: Get Fictionally Murdered by Dan Wells
Dan Wells, Utah’s premiere horror author, has dark needs that must be filled–the voices say that someone must die, and that lucky someone could be you! The winner of this auction will appear, by name, in one of Dan’s upcoming thrillers or horror novels, where he or she will be gruesomely, shockingly, and/or spectacularly murdered. (If you would prefer to offer up your neighbor/lawyer/mother-in-law, that can be arranged as well; the voices don’t care who, they just want blood!)

If you’ve always wanted to go out with a big, public bang, this is your chance. I just submitted the item this morning, so it might take a bit before it shows up on the website; be patient, and keep trying.

A few years ago Edgar Wright created one of the most brilliant movies I’ve ever seen, combining horror, humor, social commentary, and surprising character depth in Shaun of the Dead. It’s one of my very favorite movies, and I sat through most of it with my jaw on the floor, waiting for him to step wrong and being joyfully surprised over and over when every step was not only right, but better than I expected. Shaun’s morning walk to the local store; Shaun fighting off zombies with his record collection; the absolutely wrenching scene with Shaun and his mother. Here was a movie that was not afraid to do it all, to be horrifying one moment and hilarious the next, or–why not?–do both at the same time, while simultaneously saying something profound about the way people rely on each other, for better and for worse. It’s a great movie, and you should go out and rent it…tomorrow. Tonight, you need to go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

I was expecting Scott Pilgrim to be wacky and fun, and it was, but I wasn’t expecting much else: it stars Michael Cera, who’s been playing the same character since Arrested Development, and the trailers made it seem far more concerned with flashy weirdness than any kind of coherent story. It’s about a guy who meets a girl and has to defeat her seven evil exes, complete with rampant video game imagery, so I figured it would be an over-the-top adventure movie with some bright colors and cool effects and an excuse to look at Mary Elizabeth Winstead for a couple of hours. What more does a movie need? What I didn’t realize going in is that this movie was also made by Edgar Wright, and he’s still not content to do one, two, or even just three things at once. When an underground rock concert turned into a fight scene, and then the fight scene turned into a Bollywood musical, I was hooked; when the rock and the fights and the craziness started actually affecting people in real, personal ways, I was in love. This is not a just a movie about a guy fighting ridiculous bad guys to win the love of a girl, though there’s plenty of that; this is a movie about a guy who has to change himself, and grow up, and become the kind of person who deserves the girl’s love. It’s a movie about flawed people becoming better, told with manic energy through the lens of rock as a lifestyle and video games as a metaphor. It’s the most audacious, crazy, wonderful movie I’ve seen in ages, and twenty years ago–even ten years ago–the creators would have been burned as witches. Today, for an audience raised on rock and Nintendo and laugh tracks and a devastating social disconnect, it’s a revolution.

In my church I teach a class of young adult men–most of them between the ages of 21 and 30, most of them still in school, many of them blindsided by adulthood and drifting a little more aimlessly than they’d like to be. They’ve grown up being told what to do and when to do it, with parents and teachers and school counselors always at their backs, pointing them in the right direction and pushing them forward. It’s easy to do things in high school because what you’re supposed to do is always obvious: go to school, study this book, take this test, get this job, flip this burger. When you’re 16 you can drive; when you’re 18 you graduate. Then you move out on your own and suddenly you’re out of benchmarks–you don’t know what comes next because the next goal is up to you. Trying to teach some of these guys how to make their own decisions and stand on their own two feet is a lot harder than you’d think. So one day I was teaching the class, talking about why we have trials–the age-old question of why a loving god would make life so dang hard all the time–and I couldn’t find a simple way to explain it until suddenly I remembered World of Warcraft. I looked at the group.

“You guys play play video games, right?”

They nodded and mumbled and sat up straighter; now I was talking their language.

“So if you’re playing a game like Warcraft or Diablo or Final Fantasy or something, how do you get stronger? How do you get better and learn new things?”

“Experience points,” said one.

“Exactly,” I said, “and how do you earn experience points?”

“By fighting monsters.”

And then everything clicked. This group that wasn’t interested, and didn’t get it, suddenly understood exactly what I was talking about, in a way that made perfect sense to all of them: you don’t get experience points by sitting on your butt, you get experience points by going out in the world and doing things and fighting monsters and overcoming obstacles and challenging yourself. You become bigger and better and stronger and smarter by making choices and stretching your limits and putting yourself at risk. Scott Pilgrim is a great movie not just because it understands this, but because it presents it in precisely the terms that speak to its audience. The real challenges in life, and the real victories, are not the flying punches and the whirlwind kicks but the choices that get you there in the first place, and the friends you make along the way, and the things you learn about them and about yourself. Scott Pilgrim doesn’t level up when he beats that final bad guy, he levels up when he chooses to face that bad guy, and thus becomes the kind of man he needs to be in order to “win.” The thrill of the movie is in the kung fu, but the heart of the movie is in the characters who do it, and the reasons they do it, and ways they grow.

Just like Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a movie that isn’t afraid to do it all–to show you superpowered ninjas and bollywood hipster demon chicks and surprisingly frail, human characters, all at the same time.

I loved it.

Star Wars is one of the most popular IPs of all time, IP in this case referring to “Intellectual Property.” An intellectual property is a setting or story or character (or, more often than not, all three) that defines a certain world. Twilight is an IP, Harry Potter is an IP, the half-written story in the dusty corners of your hard drive is an IP–they are sets of created material that can be used and expanded to create other material. The Star Wars IP started with movies but has extended itself into toys, posters, collectibles, clothes, games, TV shows, other movies, breakfast cereals, dishes, comics, novels, and pretty much anything else you can possible imagine. They have Star Wars sleeping bags shaped like taun-tauns, for goodness sake–this is a well-represented IP. And as much money as the movies made, the IP itself, as licensed through other media, has made far, far more.

When you sell a book, what you are really selling is the right to publish that book in a certain format and market. This is why I was able to sell so many foreign rights to my serial killer series, because each new market I sell to is a separate deal with a separate contract and payment. Many publishers, especially in YA, try to retain world rights in the initial contract: i.e., they buy all foreign rights from you, up front, and then sell them to foreign publishers (or to foreign branches of their own publishers house) on their own. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but foreign rights can be very lucrative and it’s one of the big reasons you need an agent to make sure you’re getting a good deal.

When you write a book, however, you are also creating an IP, and that IP includes many rights of its own–you own your characters, your world, your magic system, your science-fictional technology, and so on. The Star Wars IP includes the Force, lightsabers, Yoda, and so on, and those are all elements that George Lucas can use and sell and adapt to other media. It includes a specific look and feel, such as the hair and costumes and wording, that are useful even when they aren’t sold: “Slave Leia” is the most popular costume at San Diego Comic Con every year, and while Lucas could (and presumably does) sell the costume through some outlet or another, the primary benefit for him is that a giant swarm of Slave Leias posing for photo ops helps advertise and popularize his IP without any extra effort from him.

My point here is that writers, especially in genre fiction, should think about their IPs when they write: can your book be adapted to a movie? A game? Can you sell action figures or jewelry or any other kind of merchandise? Do you have key characters or scenes or visuals that people will want to recreate through fan art or cosplay? You should never (in my humble, artistic opinion) allow materialism to obscure your art–tell the story you want to tell, in the best way you can–but if you can do that AND have some materialism on the side, you’ll make a lot more money and be able to produce a lot more art. Money, love it or hate it, is the inseparable companion of every artistic endeavor.

Which brings me back to Star Wars. It’s strange to consider it now, when we’re surrounded by five or six iterations of the Star Wars IP, but in the old days when I was lad all we had was the original series: a rebel alliance fought a desperate war against an overwhelming Empire. That was it–that’s all Star Wars was. Every toy, every game, every everything had to take place within that framework, and it got very tricky for the toy and game designers because, as you may be aware, that setting destroys itself in the third movie. The rebels win, the Empire goes down, and the entire status quo is uprooted and altered and will never be the same. If you’re trying to sell, say, a roleplaying game, your options are greatly restricted because you can no longer extend the IP–you either recreate it or ignore it. Your fans cant blow up the Death Star because somebody else already blew it up.

Brandon’s Mistborn IP suffers from a similar problem: the various game licenses that people have tried/are trying to create are hampered by the fact that the setting is drastically and irrevocably changed over the course of the series. The part people want to play around in–the part that makes a natural basis for a game–is the first part of the first book, where a group of magical thieves take down a dark tyrant. People who want to play in Brandon’s world must either ignore the second and third books, or play in an updated setting that isn’t exactly what they’re looking for. People still dress up in mistcloaks and wear allomancer vials to conventions and so on and so on, but the use of the IP is far more limited. He blew up his Death Star, cutting off a lot of potential licensing opportunities.

So what’s the solution here? I would never dream of suggesting that Brandon should tone down the sweeping changes in his series, because I think Mistborn has the coolest, most satisfying series resolution I’ve ever read–it is a stronger story, and a more beloved story, because he is willing to sacrifice his status quo. Brandon made the right choice for his story, but the lesson here is to recognize that it was, indeed, a choice, and as you write your own story you need to be aware of that.

Star Wars, of course, has found a way to have its cake and eat it too: it has divided itself into several discrete sections, representing portions of its own timeline, and now markets them as separate entities stemming from the same central IP. Whereas the rebel alliance used to be “the” story of the world, it is now merely “a” story in the world, flanked by the Old Republic, the prequel era, the New Jedi Order, and so on. Obviously not every IP can do that, but it’s a cool idea I suspect we’ll start seeing a lot more of.

Let’s take stock:

Extreme Makeover: Apocalypse Edition
I’m halfway through this book, which I love, and yet it is weird and long and vastly, wildly unrelated to my previously published books. It will take the rest of the year to finish, and there’s no guarantee I can sell it to anyone.

Project X
This is going very well; I spent today revising it, and can now send it in for review (pending my agent’s seal of approval, though so far she likes this even more than I do, so I don’t imagine that will be an issue). Then there’s nothing to do but wait and hope the Powers That Be like it.

Project Y
This the short story I’ve been working on, The Mountain of the Lord. Sometime this week I need to whip up a draft of this and see how it goes.

Project Z
Kind of a long term thing, but I’d like to get a proposal ready as soon as I can. I did not, alas, get a full outline finished last week like I planned, but I did get a pretty solid mental outline. For those keeping score at home, Project Z is the Nightbringer series I’ve mentioned before.

US Copyedits for IDWTKY
I finished the UK stuff, but now I need to do the US stuff. So far everything looks good–I got cover proofs in the mail today, and they’re pretty awesome. They used the Kirkus quote “Buy multiple copies where it won’t be banned” on the back cover, which tickles me many shades of pink. I’d like to switch out the front cover quote, but I don’t know if they’ll go for it. Either way, the copy edit is here and I have five days left to finish it, so everything else goes on the back burner for a while.

Pain of Glass
This is still being reviewed by a handful of editors. If they like it, hooray, we can move forward; if they don’t, I’ll need to do another revision, and I won’t have time for that for a while.

Various other irons in various other fires
I have a couple of other projects going on, but they’re all fairly far off and I don’t need to worry about them for now. Just know that they’re on the horizon and will eventually surface to steal even more of my time.

My work for the foreseeable future is as follows: Finish the copyedit, ideally by Friday morning, and spend Friday afternoon writing a draft of The Mountain of the Lord. Spend Monday on the Nightbringer proposal, and then dive back into EM:AE as long as I can before the Project X thing either happens (which means I drop everything and write it) or doesn’t happen (which means, honestly, that I might drop everything and write Nightbringer). EM:AE is awesome, but I have come to terms with the fact that it is, at heart, a vanity project, and I need to give precedence to projects that will actually pay my bills. I’ll work on it for now, and someday I’ll come back and finish it, but don’t feel heartbroken when I take a huge break in the middle to work on something else.

I’ve been surprised and kind of impressed with how much of a response I’ve gotten from my recent posts that dealt with politics and disillusionment and dystopias. These are big concerns for me, and I’m glad that they seem to be big concerns for you, too. I am not an especially political person, so don’t expect this to turn into a political blog—I can’t really discuss candidates or policies or anything like that, so I don’t try. What I can discuss, though, and what I believe in very strongly, is the importance of social rebellion, and the role of art as a catalyst for change.

What do I mean by rebellion? Not a blind rebellion against everything—well, not fully. I’m not enough of an anarchist to say that everything is bad and we need to rebel against all of it. But I do think that everything should be questioned, and rigorously, so that we know which things are worthy of rebellion. Several years ago, somewhere in the middle of the Bush administration, I started asking people a simple question: what would it take to get you to join a protest? This was a time when there were a lot of protests over various things, such as privacy and civil liberties and Guantanamo and so on. Some of those issues were things I felt very strongly about, and yet I didn’t actually join any of the protests, and I started to wonder why. I think that most people have a breaking point—or at least I sincerely hope they do—where they will look at the things their government or other leaders are doing and say “no, that’s where I draw the line, I have to do something about this.” And I don’t think that this point will ever be reached for most of us, but I want you to think about it; I want you to try to decide when and why you would make a stand. What if the government decides they can tap any phone line, for any reason? What if the government decides they WILL tap EVERY phone line? What if the government decides that certain words or phrases, overheard on those tapped phone lines, merit an immediate investigation? What if the government decides to just outlaw those words or phrases altogether?

I’m not saying that this will happen, but I’m asking you to think about it and decide where you’re going to put your foot down. Is it somewhere in my examples? Is it beyond them—is it before them? Is it another hot button issue, like military action or gun control or abortion or gay marriage or blah blah blah whatever? Imagine a scenario like in Little Brother by Cory Doctorow: a city is struck by a devastating terrorist attack and Homeland Security calls in the military, fully trained by foreign action in how to control a civilian populace, to lock that city down and find the terrorists. Would you approve of that? Would you disapprove? I honestly don’t care how you react, I just want a reaction—I want to know that something will break you out of complacency and prompt you to stand up and do something. Authority should ALWAYS be questioned, not because it is always wrong but because we, as “the people” should always be in charge of it. We should care enough about our lives and our nations and our fates that we stop taking things at face value and really think about them, and about where we are and where we’re going, and if we don’t like the answers we come up with we should do something about it.

One of my favorite short stories, and one of the most brilliant examples of socially conscious art, is The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Leguin. It’s not even really a story, just a description of a society—and not even a specific society, just a generically ideal one. She specifically wants you, as the reader, to imagine YOU’RE ideal society. And then she throws in a wrench so classic it isn’t even a spoiler to tell you what it is: this society, so perfect in every other way, functions as it does only because somewhere, in a grungy little house in a wretched little basement, a single child is kept in abhorrent conditions.

What do you do when you learn this? If this is your society, and everyone is happy and healthy and employed and life is wonderful for everyone but this one little child, is that worth it? Are you okay with it? Do you fight it? Do you change it? Do you accept it? If you do accept it, is that because you’ve thought about it and carefully decided that it’s the best way, or is it just because you’re lazy? If you change that society to save that one child, thus dooming everyone else to a less idyllic existence full of poverty and death and unhappiness, have you done a good thing or a bad thing? Have you created more or less happiness in the world? Do you really want to be responsible for ruining millions of lives? Can you live with yourself if you leave that child in hell?

The crux of the story comes, as the title suggests, in the ones who walk away—people who decide, for whatever reason, that they refuse to put up with their society, but that they aren’t going to change it either. Are they heroes for leaving, or villains for abandoning that child? I would humbly suggest that the ones who walk away from Omelas are the only party truly at fault here, because they are the ones who are ignoring the problem. Everyone else, even the people keeping the child in the basement, is making a decision about their lives and their culture and their society. They are analyzing the situation and doing something about it. It’s not enough to turn your back and walk away—somewhere, at some point, you have to make a decision, make a stand, and change the world.

When the first Battlestar: Galactica came out back in the day, the good guys were dashing heroes and the bad guys were nameless, faceless robots. It was a perfect Cold War metaphor, with two nations (one good and one evil) locked in war; it reflected the concerns and challenges of our time.

Today we live in a different age, when the cold war was over and we were faced, instead, with subtler enemies we couldn’t always identify: the man who wants to kill you isn’t a Russian general with his finger on a big red button, he’s your friendly neighbor who smiles and waves and is secretly part of a terrorist cell. Where we used to watch the horizon for a fleet of invading planes, today we watch our own planes with the knowledge that any passenger could suddenly turn on us and ram it into a building. The new Galactica reflected that, with Cylons who look exactly like us, and heroes who are frequently flawed and unheroic. The old series was about war and valiant survival, and the new one was about distrust and paranoia. And each series was perfect for the political and social climate that created it.

We always get the fiction we need, reflecting the things that are important to us, so: what is important to us now? Dystopia is bigger than it’s ever been, and I talked about that a few weeks ago—we live in a world in which people often feel unhappy, unsafe, and unsettled, so the challenges of Dystopia resonate with us.

Another huge genre right now is “heroic fantasy,” which is a gritty subset of fantasy represented by people like George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie, stemming from the early works of Robert E. Howard instead of the “epic fantasy” of J.R.R. Tolkien. Epic fantasy ruled for decades, but heroic fantasy is quickly taking over as the dominant archetype: the conflicts are often smaller (winning a war instead of saving the world, for example), the scale is more human, and the characters are more flawed. The line between hero and villain is usually much more blurred. Believe it or not, I see this as an extension of the same phenomenon that is producing our most popular genre of all, Paranormal Romance, because they share the same defining attribute: the people we use as our good guys used to be our bad guys. We have embraced the monster as a vital, even desirable part of our world—in this sense Stephanie Meyers is a part of the same literary heritage as, say, Glen Cook and the Black Company, and my own books fit right in. The world is darker now than it was, and the definitions of good and evil are changing. When the bad guy is your friendly neighbor, and the good guys are using torture on unconvicted, untried prisoners, a soulless, bloodsucking demon almost starts to make sense as a romantic lead. We identify with monsters, we see their side of things, and we see that their side includes more of us than we expected. This scares us, and we don’t know exactly how to deal with it; we get the fiction we need.

What are the issues that concern you today? What aspects of your life are being reflected in your media? What scares you about the world you live in, and why?

Lots of people are asking about the 7-Point System, especially about variations to it, so I figured a post on the subject was a good idea (also: easier than answering lots of different emails).

Here’s the simple answer to every question people have asked me: yes. Here’s the answer that actually makes sense: story structure systems in general, and this system in particular, don’t force stories to be a certain way, they describe the way stories already are. Take any story you want, study closely how it develops, and you’ll find all seven points, in perfect order. If the story becomes more complex, there might be multiple sets of seven points each (one for each character’s development, or for each subplot, etc.), but the seven point structure will still be there. There might be (in fact there almost certainly will be) scenes and events not included in the seven points, but the seven points will still be there. The seven point system is just a tool for crafting an effective story arc—like any tool, you can adapt it or tweak it or throw it out or use it any way you like.

So, for example, someone asked if you can have extra pinches or plot turns in a story. A plot turn primarily just represents a discovery or a decision, and a pinch is just anything bad that puts pressure on the characters, so yes, you can have as many as you want. They will not be, in my opinion, actual pinches or plot turns in terms of story structure—they won’t represent the same thing for the broader story arc—but you can and should have them, because a story that only has seven scenes or events is probably too short for anything other than a very short story.

Other people have asked if you can use the 7-point system for [insert genre here], and the answer is an unequivocal yes. Like I said, this system basically just describes the pre-existing patterns of storytelling, and can thus be applied to any story you want to tell. Applying it to something you think won’t fit, like a personal narrative or a non-fictional memoir, will actually help a ton because it will give you a strong sense of how to give your elements a sense of progress and an emotionally satisfying arc.

I’ve also had a few questions about series, and how the 7-point system can be applied to them. I’m actuall doing that right now with my Project Z, which is a proposal for a trilogy I intend to start next year. I already knew what my first book would be, but for purposes of the proposal I wanted to figure out the whole series. First I figured out what I wanted the story to be about (always the first step, at least for me), and then I brainstormed cool, exciting resolutions for each book, and then I brainstormed a resolution for the series as a whole. The trilogy will have it’s own 7-point structure, and each book will have it’s own 7-point structure that fits within it, so what I’m really telling is four stories (though the overall story and the third book story will merge together in a lot of ways).

Any more questions on this system? By which I mean, “any more questions on this system that can’t be answered with ‘this is a tool you can use however you want?’”

Yesterday I explained the premise of a short story I intend to write; today I’m going to turn that idea into an outline. You might want to read yesterday’s post if you haven’t already. You might also want to read my 7-Point Structure article, or watch the videos on YouTube, because I’ll be using that system extensively.

The first thing we need is a resolution, and I already talked a little about what I wanted that to be: my hero, who I’ve decided to call Silas, will come to terms with his powers and use them to defeat a necromancer. So we start with that:

Hook:
Plot turn 1:
Pinch 1:
Midpoint:
Pinch 2:
Plot turn 2:
Resolution: Silas defeats the necromancer and his minions

Next we need a hook, which is our starting state, and usually opposite from the end state. Since Silas ends in a position of power, we’ll start him weak:

Hook: Silas is an introverted outcast who thinks he’s cursed by God
Plot turn 1:
Pinch 1:
Midpoint:
Pinch 2:
Plot turn 2:
Resolution: Silas defeats the necromancer and his minions

The midpoint is the point at which he starts moving from reaction to action; when he moves away from his starting state and starts building toward the resolution. In this story, that point seems obvious:

Hook: Silas is an introverted outcast who thinks he’s cursed by God
Plot turn 1:
Pinch 1:
Midpoint: Silas learns that his powers are a gift from God, not a curse
Pinch 2:
Plot turn 2:
Resolution: Silas defeats the necromancer and his minions

This sets him up to use those powers at the end, but I worry that it comes too early, and I might want to save it for Plot turn 2. I’m not sure yet. Anyway, the next one we add is Plot turn 1, which is where we introduce the conflict. The hook already introduced the character conflict (“my powers are evil”), and in novel I might try to spread those out and maybe build two plot arcs, one for character and one for action. Here, for a short story, I’ll just leave it and let the first plot turn introduce the action plot:

Hook: Silas is an introverted outcast who thinks he’s cursed by God
Plot turn 1: The town is menaced by a necromancer.
Pinch 1:
Midpoint: Silas learns that his powers are a gift from God
Pinch 2:
Plot turn 2:
Resolution: Silas defeats the necromancer and his minions

So far so good, but now I have to deal with that tricky Plot turn 2 again. Plot turn 2 is where the heroes get the last piece of the puzzle they need in order to make the resolution happen. There are two ways to do this here: first, I could move the midpoint discovery up to Plot turn 2, and change the midpoint to something like “Silas joins a posse to hunt down the necromancer.” This keeps the superpower thing until the end, which could make it a nice surprise if I want one. The other option is to leave the midpoint as it is and make Plot turn 2 into something like “A friend gives Silas the encouragement he needs to use his powers and save the day.” This method introduces the superpowers earlier, which makes them more of a story element and less of a plot device. I kind of like this option, but we’ll need a good reason for Silas to require extra encouragement in the moment of crisis. I think his general insecurity will work here, coupled with his sense of secrecy—ooh! I just got a great idea! What if he’s determined to conceal his secret identity, but he gets captured and thrown in with the rest of the prisoners, so he can’t just hulk out while everyone’s watching. The prisoners find a way to help one person escape and go for help, and he insists that they choose him (maybe risking looking like a coward in the process). He slips out, turns into a giant stone guy, and comes back to beat up the bad guys.

Hook: Silas is an introverted outcast who thinks he’s cursed by God
Plot turn 1: The town is menaced by a necromancer.
Pinch 1:
Midpoint: Silas learns that his powers are a gift from God
Pinch 2:
Plot turn 2: Silas talks to the other prisoners and finds a way to escape
Resolution: Silas defeats the necromancer and his minions

At this point our pin he’s are already falling into place. Pinch 1 is where we apply pressure and force the characters into action; we’ll do this by having the necromancer attack the town and kidnap some people (for use in a sacrificial ritual, of course):

Hook: Silas is an introverted outcast who thinks he’s cursed by God
Plot turn 1: The town is menaced by a necromancer.
Pinch 1: The necromancer attacks and kidnaps some of Silas’s friends and/or family.
Midpoint: Silas learns that his powers are a gift from God
Pinch 2:
Plot turn 2: Silas talks to the other prisoners and finds a way to escape
Resolution: Silas defeats the necromancer and his minions

It occurs to me, seeing it written down that way, that the villain’s necromancy should be saved as a surprise until this Pinch; when we see or hear about him earlier, we’ll just make him unidentifiably spooky. Pinch 2, of course, will be the part when he gets captured, probably while trying to raid the necromancer’s lair to rescue the other prisoners. This means we should expand the midpoint a bit to include Silas joining the rescue team (which we actually considered earlier, and it turns out is a good idea):

Hook: Silas is an introverted outcast who thinks he’s cursed by God.
Plot turn 1: The town is menaced by a spooky bad guy.
Pinch 1: The necromancer attacks and kidnaps some of Silas’s friends and/or family.
Midpoint: Silas learns that his powers are a gift from God, and leaves with the posse to rescue the captives.
Pinch 2: The posse raids the necromancer’s lair but is ambushed and slaughtered, and The survivors are captured.
Plot turn 2: Silas talks to the other prisoners and finds a way to escape
Resolution: Silas defeats the necromancer and his minions

That’s a pretty good outline, and I think it will make a good story. Looking over it I note two things: first, it has no female characters, and it probably should. We can add in a love interest and say that she’s one of the people who gets captured, which will help raise our tension and personal stake in the story, but I don’t want to do a standard damsel in distress, so I’ll make her a crack shot—maybe the best shot in town—and give her a big role in the final fight, when she finally gets her hands on a gun. The other thing I notice about the story is a lack of interaction, but that’s an easy fix with both the girlfriend and a mentor character of some kind, who can a) give Silas religious advice, b) lead the posse, and c) die in the ambush when Silas is captured. It’s kind of a common archetype, but that’s good in a story like this because everything is so weird. A familiar archetype can help ground us in an otherwise wacky story.

Any thoughts or comments? Keep in mind that the story will include more than the seven scenes described in this skeletal outline, though probably not too many more since I want to keep it short. I’m predicting somewhere around 40 manuscript pages, but I could be way off. I’ll start actually writing it next week and we’ll see how much it changes: no plan, after all, survives contact with the enemy.