Some people really hate to write outlines. I used to be one of those people.

Heck, maybe I still am. I’ve been finding all kinds of excuses not to work on the outline for my NaNoWriMo project, and we’re almost out of time.

For those discovery writers that really, really hate to outline, there is a compromise. I call it “The Flashlight Method.”

I used to think I invented this technique. When I drafted The Repossessed Ghost, I was still anti-outline, but I needed to know where I was going. After writing the first chapter, I took a moment to think about the story. I looked into the darkness, in the direction the story appeared to be going, and I jotted down some things I thought to be true. Then I kept writing. Every time I reached a point of imperfect knowledge about the next milestone, I’d stop and look again. That’s how I wrote 50,000 words of that story in 30 days.

Several times since then, I have described this approach of drafting as “The Flashlight Method.” It seems I’m not the first one to come up with this. Google shows other references.

Looking into what other people are calling The Flashlight Method, it seems to be a way of writing an outline, not a first draft.

The idea is basically the same, though. You focus on a smaller piece of the story and you write what you can. Whether you’re putting together the outline or writing the next part of your first draft, I’m not sure it matters.

Drafting this way comes with risks, of course. Without having a full plan, you might create a giraffe when you were trying to craft a horse. The shape of your story might be wacky and wildly disproportionate upon completion and when observed as a whole. But that’s okay. That’s what editing is for. You can’t edit a blank page, and the primary purpose of the first draft is to exist. In most cases, the first draft is the writer telling the story to themselves. Also, all first drafts are crap.

That’s really all there is to it. If you wind up drafting using this technique, or if this describes how you usually write, please let me know so we can compare notes!

Before I get too far into tonight’s topic, I want to talk a little bit about my stream on Tuesday night. [If you watch it from that link, it gets started at around the 4:30 mark]. I was going to guest on Michael’s regular Tuesday night stream, but he had to call it off. Since I was going him and talk about tips for having a successful NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d go ahead and stream it myself. And so I did!

The reason I streamed it when I did was because November is coming up on us very fast, and if I waited much longer to talk about NaNoWriMo, I’d be too late. The whole reason I’m writing all these posts in October is to help me have a successful NaNoWriMo, and along the way, maybe offer up some tools for other people to help them with their writing journey.

The point of this post to answer the question, “How much detail is too much detail when I’m trying to write a scene?” And here I’ve gone and started the whole thing with way more detail than is required to make that point. Does that mean the beginning of this post is bad writing, because it is too much detail? Or does that make it good writing, as it is an example of what it means to have too much detail?

The truth is, the answer depends on what your writing, and what era it is. If someone were to write like Tolkien today, they would likely be criticized for describing too much. Heavy descriptions provide immersion and richness to your world and to your story at the expense of pacing. These days, the common advice is to hook your reader from the beginning, and keep them on the edge of their seat, until it’s time to breathe.

When I was talking about audio books yesterday, I talked about how the reader is an active participant, filling in details that the writer never mentioned. It’s why the book will almost always be better than the movie. That partly answers the question about how much detail you should include in your stories. If you don’t give the reader room to participate, you’ve gone too far.

I have a tendency to not put in enough detail. In Synthetic Dreams, I definitely under-describe what the synthetic people look like. In Spin City, I don’t think I go quite far enough to let the reader know what it looks like to live in a spinning city on The Moon. And in The Repossessed Ghost, I choose not to give much of a description of the main character.

Something I have to watch for and correct in my revisions is the tendency to over-describe certain, specific details I want the reader to understand. I don’t trust myself to describe it well enough on the first pass, so I wind up going over it again in subsequent sentences, which is redundant and not as much fun for the reader.

The right amount of the detail is just enough to get the story to the reader, plus a little bit more for flavor. You want to convey the idea. The feel of a place, the impression of characters, and details that allow the reader to establish an emotional connection. At the same time, it’s important to paint with a lighter brush, so that the reader doesn’t grow bored or get distracted by details that aren’t necessarily that important.

Different genres make different demands on what should be thoroughly detailed, and what should be left to the imagination. If you’re writing an epic fantasy, you have more room to be more lavish with the detail. If you’re writing something tighter and lighter, your details need to be specific, light, and delivered exactly when they’re needed.

Short stories need to be extremely economical in the amount of details put on the page. Look at flash fiction, and how many details you can get away with there. All stories must function, and for them to be successful, the reader must receive the idea that the writer is sending. Too sparse and the reader is confused or frustrated. Too much, and they’re overwhelmed, bored, or distracted.

It all comes down to practice and experimentation. If you have a critique group or critique partner, you can get feedback from them and look for the times when they’re bored. A lot of times, boredom indicates places where you’ve slipped and left the exposition on, and the page is covered with dry information that is unattached to the action, or devoid of any emotional connection. If it isn’t exposition, it might be that you’ve gone too far with your descriptions.

When I was younger, I might have picked up a physical copy of Where the Red Fern Grows, but that’s not how I remember reading it. I remember sitting in class during elementary school. Every couple of days, the teacher would read to us, and in my mind, it feels like I read the book myself. I’m not sure I did, but the details of the story are vivid in my mind.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I love Audiobooks so much. I don’t have a problem reading with my own eyes, but there’s something very comforting about listening to someone read me a story.

The Good #1 — Convenience

Nostalgia aside, audiobooks are extremely convenient. When I was driving to work most days, 45 minutes each way, I could listen to audiobooks and feel like that time wasn’t completely wasted. I went through a bunch of audiobooks like that over the course of several years.

These days, it is really easy to get a subscription to Audible and essentially get a “free” book every month. I can download them to my phone and then listen to them wherever I am. That’s way more convenient than they were growing up. In the 80s and early 90s, audiobooks came on either a bunch of tapes or a CD or two. They were way more expensive back then, too.

The Bad #1 — “It’s Not Reading!”

Before sitting down to write this, Melissa and I had a firm but playful argument about whether or not listening to the book is the same as reading a book. Since this is my blog, I can definitively say that I’m right and she’s wrong, but maybe you share her opinion, in which case, you’re wrong, too.

I will acknowledge that there are differences between reading a book and having a book read to you. This whole post is to highlight some of those differences. Mostly, this specific item on the “con” side of audiobooks is that people seem to enjoy saying, “That’s not reading!” and I think the distinction is semantic and a little bit silly.

I’m writing this blog post, but my hands are nowhere near a pen or pencil. Is it still writing? Yes. And if I tell you that I recently finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, is it really so wrong if I say I read it, even though I listened to it via audiobook?

The Good #2 — A Good Reader

Sometimes, a really good reader can elevate the book. For example, I’m not sure I would have recieved the same level of enjoyment from The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher if I had not heard James Marsters reading it to me. Marsters brought voices and performance and gravitas to the material. I know that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much with a different reader because Ghost Story was originally read by someone else, and I didn’t like it. The reader was good, but he didn’t deliver the material the same way James Marsters did.

I’m listening to Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir right now, read by Ray Porter, and he’s doing a fantastic job. Looking back through my library on Audible, there are a lot of books I’ve enjoyed read by Ray Porter.

Also good, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, read by Bryan Cranston, and Artemis by Andy Weir, read by Rosario Dawson. Sometimes, celebrity readers can really deliver.

Another shoutout goes out to Mary Robinette Kowal, as she does audio book recordings professionally, for her stories as well as for others. Her readings of The Lady Astronaut books helped me get safely across Nevada a few years ago.

The Bad #2 — A Bad Reader

I will heap praise on good readers and call them out by name. On the flip side, I will acknowledge that there are bad readers, and rather than mention their names, I will just describe what I didn’t like about their readings.

There was a relatively long fantasy series I listened to several years ago, and I had a difficult time getting through one of the middle books because the reader had all of these weird mouth noises while they read. It sounded like they were tasting their tongue with every other sentence. Maybe they had a tongue piercing, or a saliva problem. I don’t know. I just didn’t want to hear it, and it was a huge, terrible distraction.

Then there was a reading of a very popular SciFi book, also part of a series, and it had two readers, a man and a woman. The man’s reading was passing, but the woman’s part was so, so bad. I will add some extra punction to the following so you can read what it sounded like: It’s like. She put. These pauses. Everywhere. That weren’t needed. And I just. Didn’t want. To listen to it.

There is yet another fantasy series that I tried listening to, but the reader kept mispronouncing some of the fantasy names. I know they were mispronouncing them because in the back of the books, there is an index which provides all of the pronunciations for the strange names and words that run all through the series. I read most of the books in the series in paperback, and was trying to finish it out by listening to them on audio while driving to work. The reading was mostly fine, but the odd pronunciations pulled me out and distracted me constantly.

The Good #3 — Multitasking

Some of this overlaps with the first point I made about convenience. In addition to being able to listen to a book while I drive (especially when driving long distances), I like to listen to audio books when I’m doing other things that don’t require a lot of my attention.

For example, I’ve been walking a lot lately. I have a route near my house which is right around 4 miles. During those long walks, I pop in an audiobook and ingest some stories while I’m getting healthier. Today it looked like rain, so I listened to more Project Hail Mary while I rode on the exercise bike.

Other people might be able to do more complex tasks while listening to a book. For myself, the tasks have to be relatively simple and thoughtless. I can’t program and listen to a book, and I don’t think I can cook while an audiobook is playing. I might be able to do some yardwork or other cleaning, but I haven’t tried.

I do like to be doing something else while listening to a book, so sometimes I will fire up Minecraft, dig deep into the ground, and listen to the story while I do some mindless mining.

The Bad #3 — Minor Inconveniences

There are a few nuisances, which I’ll lump together and list here.

You have to have some way to play an audiobook, and your device must have power. If you’re not in a position to play it aloud, you probably also need some headphones. This is all in contrast to books, which operate without batteries. You can’t read in the dark, but you can listen to an audiobook with your eyes closed, so this isn’t that much of a negative.

It’s easier to lose your place in an audiobook than it is to lose your place in a physical book. Rewinding and fast forwarding is not nearly as convenient as turning pages and skimming to find your place if your bookmark should fall out.

If you get momentarily distracted while physically reading, you can go back a couple of sentences and pick up the thread again. If you get momentarily distracted while listening to an audiobook, you have the rewind problem I just mentioned, which can be a real pain in the butt if you’re driving or doing something else that requires the use of your hands.

For some people, audiobooks are simply slower than reading a physical book.

Not all of the best books are on audio. For example, The Repossessed Ghost is not on audio, and based on the sales, it seems unlikely it ever will be. But I remain hopeful.

Final Point — Nuance

This is mostly a negative, but it’s possible to go the other way.

When talking about a book that has been adapted to a movie, the usual consensus is that the book is always better. The main reason for this is that you are an active participant in the tale and within your imagination, you make choice about the details. You imagine what the timbre of someone’s voice sounds like, even when the author gives no guidance. There are a million tiny details that you fill in without even thinking about it, making it a complete immersive experience.

On the big screen, these choices are taken away from you. You become a more passive participant in receiving the story.

That happens as well with audio books. The reader will make choices around inflection and voice acting, which is a reduction in the participation of the person listening to the story.

On the other hand, some people have poor reading comprehension, and the choices made by the audiobook performer can help deliver the story as it was intended to be received.

This one is a little bit of a mixed bag, and it’s also a very minor point.

Concluding Thoughts

I didn’t even mention that I’m at an age where I need reading glasses, and audiobooks let me enjoy a story without hardware on my face.

I like audiobooks. I think they’re groovy, and I seem to be able to retain the details of the stories in my mind almost as well as when I read them with my eyes. Additionally, audiobooks are helping me exercise more and become a healthier version of myself.

Audiobooks are good, regardless of whether or not you think of it as reading.

Believe it or not, when it comes to magic in Fantasy, the prevailing wisdom was to keep it mystical and mysterious. To spell it all out in a concrete rules system was considered gauche. Brandon Sanderson changed the conversation on magic systems, and now when I go to conventions, the script is flipped. It seems a lot of Fantasy writers focus heavily on the magic system as a major part of their world building.

Here are the Sanderson’s Laws:

The First Law: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.

The Second Law: Limitations are greater than Powers.

The Third Law: Expand what you already have before you add something new.

There are videos on it. There are videos of Sanderson talking about it himself. I see them more as guidelines than laws, and I think they’re fine.

They’re fine!

I have read a bunch of Sanderson books, and I think he’s a good writer. I enjoy his stories. I have talked with a lot of his fans, and I have spoken with a few people that are critical of his work. A common criticism goes along the lines of, “When I read [insert Sanderson title here], it’s like I can see the mana bars over the character’s head.”

If you have been following my posts, you may recall that I said that is specifically something I want to avoid when people read my stories, especially The Repossessed Ghost. So, it will come as no surprise to you that I don’t strictly follow Sanderson’s laws.

I suppose I have my own law which I follow, which I’m only just now putting into words. I didn’t come up with it while thinking about Sanderson’s laws, but it could be considered a simplification on his, and it is this:

Buhl’s Law: Anything in your story which is load-bearing must be established and clear.

I think that’s relatively easy to understand, but just to be sure, I will spell out the three different parts so that it makes even more sense.

What I mean by Load-Bearing: This fits with Sanderson’s First Law with regards to solving problems, but it’s not limited to that. If a villain changes their mind because of a thing, that is load-bearing. If it is part of the problem that the heroes are trying to solve, that is load-bearing. If it is pivotal in the reader’s experience, causing surprise or fear or delight or remorse, it is load-bearing.

Load-bearing story elements are foundational, so it should make sense why these parts of your story should be both established and clear. But what do I mean when I say that?

What I mean by Established: If something is established, it does not feel like it’s coming completely out of left field. A writer establishes a piece of their story through any number of means, and it doesn’t have to be glaring like a neon sign. It just has to be present enough in the reader’s mind so that when that story element comes back into focus is not jarring.

This is part of the solution to the deus ex machina problem.

Let’s try an example.

Sam and Frodo are in Mordor, and the weight of The One Ring has pulled Frodo down. He’s collapsed, completely exhausted, and Sam says, “I may not be able to carry the ring, but I can carry you.”

Before Sam can sling Frodo over his shoulders, Tom Bombadil pops out from behind a rock and says, “Bless you, wee lads. It looks like you’re in a bit of a pickle. Let me give you a hand.”

Tom then takes the ring from around Frodo’s neck, and with a little dance and a jig, skips up to the fire pit and lobs the ring in. Problem solved. The end.

This… this is not a satisfying end to this story. While it can be argued that Tom Bombadil was established earlier in the trilogy as being unaffected by the magic of The One Ring, and while it is also established that Tom is a magical creature able to pop in when you least expect it, Tom is not established as having any part in this conflict. As a reader, we haven’t seen Tom struggle with our heroes, evading orcs and giant spiders and all of the evils Middle Earth has dished out to our heroes.

To establish a story element is to not only present it, but weave it into the plot so that it is present in the reader’s mind at the right time.

What I mean by Clear: Again, Sanderson’s first law refers to the reader’s ability to understand the magic, and that can be part of this. But clarity does not have to mean complete, functional understanding. The people of the modern world do not have to know how electricity works in order to activate a light switch. They don’t have to know how the internal combustion engine of their car works in order to go for a drive. However, the functions of these objects is clear to us, just as we do not have to know how a gun functions, Chekov’s or otherwise.

Clarity can simply mean trust. When Gandalf performs magic, we don’t know how the magic works, but Gandalf is established as a character that is wise and powerful, and when the writer tells us that Gandalf is doing something mystical, we trust that Gandalf can do it.

In Conclusion…

If Sanderson’s laws help you craft a compelling story that is satisfying and coherent, and if you enjoying using his laws, then keep doing that! If you like my simplification, try using that, too.

The goal is to create escapism, entertainment, tell a story, move an emotion, teach a lesson… there are as many reasons for us to write our stories as there are for us to read those written by other people. If what you’re writing is delighting you and you’re readers, keep doing what’s working.

If you’re struggling to create the intellectual or emotional experience you imagine your story should deliver, you might want to look at how well you have established the most important parts of your story. And you should check to make sure those items are very clear and easy to understand.

My buddy Michael has been ruminating on relationships in stories, in all the different definitions, and I thought I would take a stab at the topic myself.

Let me begin with the punchline: Every aspect of a story can be described in terms of a relationship.

Writer to Reader

Writing is communication. Stephen King in On Writing describes it in mystical terms, as a kind of telepathy between the writer and the reader. I think there’s something to that. The writer takes the ideas in their mind, transposes their thoughts and words into some medium, and then the reader ingests those words and fills their mind and imagination with some approximation of what was in the writer’s brain. Sharing thoughts like that sounds like a kind of intimacy, and I think we take it for granted.

Taking a step back from the hyperbole, it can also be described as a one-way conversation. The writer is telling someone, perhaps many someones, a story. Just as you have a relationship between yourself and your conversation partners, so too is there a relationship between the writer and the reader.

I believe it helps to have some idea who the ideal reader of your book is. Michael and I have disagreed on this point a few times, but this time, I have some arguments to support my case.

When I write a story, the ideal reader is someone that reads English. My story might be translated into other languages, true, but there are idioms and metaphors woven into my stories that will likely have to be changed and reinterpreted in order for it to work for a non-English speaking readership. If The Repossessed Ghost were ever translated into French or German, those versions of my story would be different works, transformed to accommodate a different ideal reader.

Going further, when I wrote The Repossessed Ghost, I made other decisions that influence the best, target audience. It’s an urban fantasy set in the U.S., so the ideal reader is someone that is familiar with U.S. geography, especially New Orleans and Sacramento. Being an urban fantasy, there are certain tropes I use that would best be read by someone that already appreciates urban fantasy stories.

If we cut it down fine enough, I wrote The Repossessed Ghost for someone that likes the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. If you like Butcher’s stories, you will most likely enjoy The Repossessed Ghost. I wrote it with you in mind. I’m someone that has enjoyed those books, so I wrote it for me, too.

In starting off our conversation about relationships and stories, I think it’s only fair and correct to begin with the relationship between the writer and the reader, because if there was no relationship there, no story would ever be sold or read or heard. Even if I’m wrong on the other point, there is likely a commercial relationship, where the writer is acting as the supplier, and the reader is acting as the consumer.

Character versus Everything Else

The next level of relationships to touch on with regards to story is that of the characters within the story to… basically everything else. This gets pretty broad.

When I was younger, I remember being taught in English that there were 4 main types of conflict in literature. As I sat down to write this, I could remember 3 off the top of my head. They were all phrased as “man versus x” so I remembered them as “man versus self, man versus man, man versus nature” and I couldn’t remember the 4th.

I went Googling around and discovered that my information may be outdated. The number of conflict types has expanded. Depending on where you’re looking, there are either 6 or 7 types of conflict now.

• Character versus self
• Character versus character
• Character versus nature
• Character versus machine or technology
• Character versus society
• Character versus the supernatural

Those are the 6 that overlap. If you change that last one to “character versus a supernatural being” then the 7th becomes:

• Character versus destiny or fate

None of this is science. None of this is set in stone, and there are overlaps. In Dracula, you can classify that as “character versus a supernatural being”, or you can look at it as “character versus character.” Depending on how you read or interpret Jekyll and Hyde, it could be seen as a “character versus self”, “character versus nature”, “character versus technology”, or “character versus the supernatural” story. You could rewrite the story and lean into any of those types of conflicts and it would work.

Conflict is a relationship. It’s an adversarial relationship, but it’s a relationship nonetheless. It’s difficult for me to imagine a story I would enjoy that doesn’t involve some kind of conflict.

Stories describe change. Perhaps a secret 8th type of conflict is “character versus the status quo,” in that the character’s relationship with the present conditions are in conflict, and the change is either the character altering their status quo, or surrendering to it.

It is my belief that every aspect of a story can be described in relationship terms. Let’s break apart the original Star Wars.

Luke is in conflict with himself and his adoptive parents, in that he wants to be responsible and help with the moisture farm, but he also wants to get away and go on an adventure. Eventually, the Empire, looking for some escaped droids, takes the decision out of Luke’s hands. Luke and Obiwan run into Han, whose relationship with Jabba the Hutt has him in deep water, looking for a way to make some quick money.

I’m skipping stuff, but hopefully I’ve illustrated the point. Every single scene can be described in relationships. Every scene in my stories can be described in relationships. That’s what a scene is.

Writer versus Everything Else

I think I could write about this topic at greater length, but I’ll stop with one more relationship, which is the Writer versus Everything Else. I’m not going to rehash what I already said about the relationship between the writer and the reader. That one is very important, which is why I started with it. Possibly even more important, though, is the relationship between the writer and the story.

As a writer, I love my stories. And I hate them. Then I love them again. Then I worry over them, the way a parent might worry over their child. I work on my stories, the way a mechanic works on a car. I grow them, the way a farmer grows their crops. And I try to promote them, so that they might go out into the world and have their own relationships with other people.

The writer may have an agent. The writer works with publishers and editors and cover artists. The writer might even have fans! Though fans are usually readers, the writer-fan relationship is different because there isn’t necessarily a story separating them.

Without these other relationships, the writer might not ever see their story make it into the world.

In Conclusion

Every aspect of a story can be described in terms of relationships. They are all important, though admittedly, some are more important than others.

My original plan was to write the posts about zombies, dehumanization, the attractiveness of driven characters, then cap off that series of posts today with writing advice that unifies all of those ideas. The problem is that I basically already laid it out in those posts. There is good information there for writers, and a summary post would just be repeat information.

Also, not everyone that swings by is interested in writing advice. Sometimes, people just want to know what’s going on with me.

It turns out, I have quite a bit going on! Here are some updates, presented in increasing excitement level.

Exercise and Health

I’ve been walking about 4 miles every day for more than a week, except yesterday where I rested a little and only walked 2 miles. My legs haven’t been as sore, and I’m starting to feel more like I felt before I had Covid last year.

I haven’t needed to take any blood pressure medication in a couple of weeks, even after days where I had a bit more salt than I intended. My blood pressure hasn’t been fantastic, but it also hasn’t been at the kind of levels that make medical interns wonder if there’s something wrong with the equipment. Yesterday in the morning, my BP was 119/86. Honestly, not that bad.

I had lost some weight, and I’m still down, though I showed an increase in a couple pounds yesterday on the scale. I’m not too worried about that. I’ll keep exercising and watching what I eat. The weight will come off when it’s ready to, and I’ll keep focusing on getting healthier.

First Draft Finished!

Yesterday, after finishing my blog post, I went to a Starbucks and wrote until it closed. Then I came home, dawdled a little bit, and wrote some more. After so many months, I finally finished The Psychic on the Jury at just under 14,000 words. Depending on the definition you’re looking at, it’s still in the short story category. It’s a novelette. Not long enough to be considered a novella.

How is it? I don’t know. I need to read it to Melissa, which is my first step in revising it. Later today, after some more revisions, I’ll submit it to my critique group. We’re meeting on Saturday, so I’ll have some objective feedback then. I think there is some good stuff in it! I think it’s probably a good follow-up story to The Repossessed Ghost.

The goal was to finish it by this weekend so that I would have some time today to start the outline for the sequel novel. I’m on track for accomplishing that goal, so I don’t need to cancel my NaNoWriMo yet.

Publishing News!

You’re not supposed to talk about publishing deals until the contract is signed, right? Well, I signed the contract a couple of days ago, and One More for the Road will be published by Water Dragon Publishing soon! And, it looks like a friend of mine will be doing the cover, which I’m very excited about. We’re aiming to have the whole thing ready by Christmas, but that timeline might be a bit tight.

I’m really excited about this one. It’s a short story, so it’ll be a stand alone Dragon Gem. I wrote it for Melissa several Christmas’s ago, and I think it’s my second favorite story I’ve written. If I were to say it’s one of my stories, Melissa will correct me and say that it is her story, and it is. It was her idea, and I wrote it for her. And soon, everyone will be able to read it.

I think that’s it! I have a bunch of writing activities to perform today. I may rake some leaves, too. I’ve got a busy day, and it would be best spent not dawdling here.

While driving to L.A., I listened to the audio book version of Save the Cat. Not the one where it writes a novel, but the original, which is about how to write a screenplay that will make money. I’ve written about Save the Cat before, and I only bring it up now because the act of “saving the cat” is one of the ways in which a screenwriter can endear the audience to your protagonist. In the first act, have your character do something nice. It doesn’t have to literally be pulling a cat from a tree, the way Christopher Reeves’ Superman did in the original movie.

Today, I would like to submit unto my tens of readers the following idea: Characters that are driven and motivated are the characters we love more than any other characters put to page.

This is a bold statement, isn’t it? Do I have proof to back this up?

I sure hope so!

To talk about this, I will describe the idea fully. Next, we will look at a few examples, as well as some possible counter-examples. Then we’ll wrap with some kind of conclusion, which will hopefully tie this essay together. I may not have a plan going into this, but I’m certainly motivated to see it through to the end!

The Basic Idea

We are drawn to people that are highly motivated and active in pursuing their goals. It’s a quality of leaders that we value, but this applies to all sorts of people. It’s a piece of why it can be so satisfying watching someone perform a task with masterful skill. It is the main reason training montages work in film. It is a huge reason why we love to watch heists, even when we are otherwise opposed to breaking the law and stealing.

Let’s look at the “save the cat” act. We like animals, and we like people that are kind to animals. Is that all there is to it?

I think the motivation is important for the “save the cat” moment to be effective. Let’s start with the classic example, then let’s look at an example where the motivation is different.

Tony is a car thief. He’s professional, surly, and he’s just been called to meet up with a crew to pull off a job. As he steps out of his brownstone apartment, he runs into a little girl, his neighbor’s daughter. Her cheeks are wet with tears, and she is unable to speak her grievance. She just points at the nearest tree, where just a bit of fur and shining eyes can be seen in the canopy of leaves. Tony looks at his watch. Then he looks back at the girl. With a sigh, he pushes up his sleeves, pulls himself up the trunk, and manages to get a hand on the cat. The frightened animal fights, slashing Tony’s exposed skin in a series of red scratches, but Tony manages to get the cat down and into the arms of the little girl. The girl rushes into the nearby apartment without even a thanks, and as Tony resumes his walk to the subway, he looks at the scratches on his arm. Those might be a problem.

Not too bad, right? It’s a trick, but it works. We like Tony. He went out of his way to do a good deed, even when it was counter to his self-interest.

Let’s try another example.

Roger works in animal control. He’s professional, cheery, and he just happens to be driving down the street when he sees a little girl sitting on the steps in front of her brownstone apartments. She’s holding a leash, but not one for a dog. The business end is looped into a harness, probably for a smaller animal like a cat, and its empty on the sidewalk in front of her.

Roger pulls his van over, hits quick dial on his phone, then gets out and approaches the nearest tree.

“Hey boss,” Roger says. He doesn’t look at the little girl, but instead keeps his eyes pointed up, to wherever the animal might be. Even a housecat could be a danger if you don’t respect it with your attention. “Nah, the rottweiler wasn’t a problem. Got her in the back of the truck. Got another cat in a tree, though. Pulling it down, now.”

Roger shimmied up the tree, grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck, then hopped down. The little girl hopped up from where she was sitting, a huge grin on her face, but Roger hesitated. The animal had a collar. Didn’t appear to be injured or sick. Okay, no need to put it in the truck.

He handed the cat to the girl, watched to make sure she had it under control, then turned back to his truck. Less than five minutes, but the city always rounds up to the nearest quarter hour.

“Easy money,” Roger said to himself, before pulling away.

What do we think of Roger? He did the same thing as Tony, more or less, but we like Tony more, don’t we? Tony went out of his way to help a little girl. Roger was just doing his job.

I don’t think we hate Roger yet, but it was close. If he decided to put the cat in the back of the truck instead of giving it to the little girl, we would hate Roger. Depending on the condition of the rottweiler in the back of the van, and how Roger captured her, we might hate Roger. At this point, he’s just a guy doing his job, and we’re neither for nor against him.

Those were example of characters I made up on the spot. Let’s look back at some of the villains and heroes I mentioned earlier this month, and see what we think of them.

Assorted Examples

Here are the primary examples of driven characters we enjoy:

• Darth Vader
• Indiana Jones
• Killmonger from the movie Black Panther
• Mark Watney from the book The Martian

Why do we like Darth Vader so much? He’s got a cool suit, a powerful presence, and sometimes we identify with villains that scare us to make them less scary. Those things are all true. Also, Darth Vader is driven. He wants the plans to The Death Star, and he will force choke anyone that gets in his way. He wants to protect The Death Star, and he will blast any rebel ship that gets in his way. He isn’t just powerful. He is powerful and active. He’s making choices and doing things. He’ll even overthrow a galactic government if his estranged son will take his hand and join him in the dark side.

Why do we like Indiana Jones? He’s a bit of a scoundrel, and he looks good in that jacket and fedora. But also, he is driven, and will tell you in no uncertain terms that whatever artifact he’s pursuing belongs in a museum. He’s swinging over chasms with his whip, dodging pit traps, punching Nazis, and constantly putting his life at risk for the things he cares about.

Killmonger. Another villain that’s so driven that he might win us over, if not for killing his girlfriend when she becomes a liability. He will tell you all about some Wakanda artifacts and how they do not belong in a museum.

Mark Watney, alone on Mars, is highly motivated to stay alive. He’s alone, yet resourceful and intelligent, and he will actively science the shit out of his predicament and own it, rather than let it own him.

These are some easy examples that illustrate my point fairly well. What about some counter-examples? Here are two:

• Bilbo Baggins
• The Dude from The Big Lebowski

Bilbo is a reluctant hero, and he certainly does not seem particularly driven or motivated to join all those dwarves on an epic quest. Bilbo is an example of a character we like for other reasons, right?

I suggest that Bilbo is a highly motivated character. His goals just don’t align with those of the plot. He wants a comfortable home, like any good hobbit. He wants to enjoy some good food, a good pipe, and be comfortable in a home that he takes good care of. He also wants to be well-thought of, and it’s not until the dwarves talk about him behind closed doors, suggesting that he isn’t the one for the job, that Bilbo decides, out of Tookish pride, to go on his adventure.

Later, when he is under the mountain with Gollum, it’s his love of the comforts of home, specifically riddling, that sees him through that particular danger in the dark.

Now let’s talk about The Dude.

The Dude is laid back and a bit like Bilbo, in that he likes what he likes and just wants to do those things. He likes White Russians. He bowls. He does not like The Eagles. The Dude is thrown into situations outside his comfort zone, and is most likeable when he is active, like when he’s trying to get that rug back, which really tied the place together.

Why do we like The Dude? Because The Dude abides.

Concluding Thoughts

I’m not saying that being motivated or being driven is the only reason we like characters. As readers and consumers of media, we are mercurial and complicated.

As a writer, I find that my best characters are the ones that are motivated and driving the plot forward. Stories are boring when nothing is happening. When a character makes a decision and tries to see it through, the story gets exciting and draws us in.

In The Repossessed Ghost, my characters shine the most when they are most active. Before the story even begins, Mel steals a car to turn in as a repo. He makes decisions, and is an active participant in all the things going on around him.

I think I will close there. I am less than a thousand words from finishing a Mel Walker story that I’ve been working on all year. Once I’m finished with that, I’m going to spend my remaining writing time working on the outline for the next, full-length Mel Walker novel.

Wish me luck!

I touched on dehumanization a bit yesterday when I talked about zombies. Let’s talk about the broader topic of dehumanization in general, what it’s role is in stories, and why it is such a powerful tool in real life.

As I said yesterday, you can have your characters do grotesque violence to a zombie without losing the sympathy of your audience. You can do the same thing with robots, certain alien races, and any monster that is demonstrably evil or aesthetically unpleasing. That last part isn’t a joke or an exaggeration.

We like creatures that either look like us or are pretty. The average person will be delighted and fascinated to have a butterfly land on the back of their hand. That same person’s heartrate will race, and they might scream if you replace the butterfly with a particularly hairy moth.

The movie A.I. has a scene that demonstrates our bias when it comes to beings that look like us. David is an artificial boy that appears human, and after getting dumped in the woods by the mother-figure he loves the most, he finds himself in a violent anti-robot rally. Audiences sit in bleachers and cheer as various robots are dismembered, shot, burned, and destroyed in unnecessarily grotesque ways. Then David is up, and the crowd is horrified. The only thing different about David is his aesthetics, but it’s enough that the crowd sympathizes him, causing them to turn on the ones running the show.

Humanization, and dehumanization. You can have an army of robots chasing the plucky heroes, and you can show one of the heroes pick up a gun, squeeze off a few shots, and make robot’s head explode. If you add some comedic sounds, you can show this to children in a Disney cartoon. As soon as you change the robots to humans, however, you’ve earned an R rating.

Writers can lean into this, and go in either direction depending on their needs. I have already mentioned that if you want to keep your characters morally clean in the eyes of your readers, you can have them fight inhuman beings. If you want your villain to seem particularly objectionable, you can have them take the life of a person. If you give the person a name, maybe describe them as being a divorced father just trying to do their best for their daughter that they only see once a week… well, now your audience is ready to take up arms against the villain themselves.

It’s all about empathy and sympathy. You want your audience to empathize with the heroes, feeling what their feeling, fully immersing themselves in the experiences of the people starring in your story. You also want your audience to feel sympathy for the victims of the villains. That wasn’t just some random guard that died in the bank. That was Bill, and he was terrible at poker, but he still showed up every week with a smile and a case of beer. Unless you want the audience to experience something traumatic and horrifying, you don’t want them to sympathize with the alien your plucky hero just beheaded. Your story might be difficult to read, perhaps even inaccessible, if the audience is expected to empathize with someone that is doing horrific violence to beings that the audience simultaneously sympathizes with.

Dehumanization is the means by which you can strip away sympathy, transforming a person into something else. That’s not Roger. That’s a dirty Romulan spy that’s infiltrated our territory. That person over there? That’s an enemy. They’re a <insert slur here>. Effective propaganda uses language to pry people apart and separate human beings into us versus them. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. If you’re against us, you’re a villain. You’re scum, and you deserve what’s coming to you.

This is all very useful when world building, and when you want to make believable cults or political parties. Playing with empathy and sympathy is the surest way to get buy-in from your audience. It’s how fandoms rise, and it’s one of the ingredients required to make a fandom toxic. You can’t get the reaction that The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker received if your audience is not invested and passionate.

I play video games, and a couple of the ones I’m currently playing feature zombies. There is Project Zomboid, which I have mentioned a few times, and I really like. There is also Minecraft, probably still the most popular game in the world, and I get to play it with my son from time to time. If a person could make a living playing Minecraft, Chris would be a millionaire.

Zombies have cropped up in popular fiction for ages, perhaps as far back as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein if you play fast and loose with the definition of a zombie is. Why do we enjoy zombies in our fiction so much? What is their appeal?

To begin with, we enjoy the thrill and excitement of being frightened, and zombies start off deep in the uncanny valley. Before they take their first shambling step towards our heroes, we are put off by their wrongness. They shouldn’t be able to move. They are a perversion of the natural order. They were once human, and now they’re a monster. If it could happen to them, what’s to say it can’t happen to us?

There are a few different ways in which zombies are depicted. Usually, they are slow, shambling, mindless monsters, motivated to seek out and consume human brains. These are your Walking Dead variety of zombies, though I think they started to change them up in later seasons.

The Last of Us puts its own spin on zombies, though they’re still functionally the same as classic zombies. 28 Days Later featured fast-moving zombies. Then there are all of the Night of the Living Dead movies and spinoffs and movies and media inspired by those movies.

From a writer’s perspective, what is the utility of including zombies in our stories?

To start with, if you like zombie fiction, then you should write zombie fiction. Whatever story you’re working on, you should enjoy it. That’s the first and best reason a writer should write about zombies: self-interest.

Zombies can represent nature gone wrong. Fighting against the hordes of zombies can have the same sense of futility as fighting the wind. The zombies do not care about the feelings of the heroes. The zombies do what they do because they’re zombies, and they will cover the land, devouring people, the way an uncontrolled forest fire might rage on until all fuel is expended.

If you want to have your heroes commit acts of intense violence and still retain the sympathy of your audience, you can have them fight zombies. I’ll talk more about this particular feature of zombies in my post tomorrow. Zombies, robots, and bug-like aliens all fall into the kinds of enemies that can be slaughtered without upsetting the average reader too much.

As a writer, bear in mind that if you’re writing a story that involves the typical depiction of zombies, your zombies are not the antagonist. They aren’t really characters. They’re setting. They’re dangerous monsters forcing the heroes to act and react. They are obstacles in the way of the heroes, rather than villains working in opposition to the needs and wants of your protagonists.

You can change them up and give them personality if you really want a zombie antagonist. There are movies and stories that deviate from classic zombies, and they’re fine and entertaining, but they usually don’t function the way zombie stories function. iZombie treats it as a disease that can be managed, and I Am Legend is really doing something else, which I’ll stop describing since I almost spoiled the twist.

I am suggesting that a conventional zombie story is a story that would still function even if it didn’t have zombies in it. Let me know if you disagree.

As for me, I have included a brief appearance of zombies in a short story, but never actually written a zombie story. I enjoy them sometimes in video games, but not so much in my movies or books. My suspension of disbelief has a hard time accepting them, because just from a pure mechanical perspective, they shouldn’t work.

I have an idea for a short story featuring zombies, however. I’m not sure when I’m going to write it. The basic idea is that zombies exist, eternally shambling undead that want to eat brains. But since they’re not as healthy as regular folks, they’re not actually that difficult to contain. Instead of completely wiping the zombies out and destroying them for good, which is something we could easily do, we round them up and put them on treadmills. We use their weird, endless walking to generate electricity. In such a society, what might happen to someone that pisses off the wrong people? If I ever get around to writing this, I will call it Gray Energy.

I don’t hide the fact that the protagonist of The Repossessed Ghost started as a character I played in a roleplaying game. He changed between the time he was a character in someone else’s game and when I finally gave him his own story. In fact, it had been over a decade between those two events, and I wasn’t interested in writing a story that felt like a roleplaying game, if that makes sense. I didn’t jot down Mel’s stats or keep track of a mana bar or anything like that. I wanted my story to be a real story, and the fact that the character’s voice started in some other medium didn’t matter to me.

Some of the early feedback came from people that knew me as a gamer, and they kept saying that they could see the character being someone from a roleplaying game, and it made me want to pull out my hair.

In this age of Critical Role and Dimension 20, it’s probably not such a bad thing to have some association between an author’s story and a game they enjoy. Still, that’s not what I wanted with The Repossessed Ghost, and I think my story, in its released form, satisfies my requirements. If you have read it, please feel free to let me know if it made you think of a roleplaying game.

If you have not read it, let me recommend that you do, especially as the inciting incident takes place on Halloween.

Now that the book-pimping is out of the way, let’s talk about what roleplaying games do for me, and how they impact my writing.

I have talked before how reading and writing exercise the same muscles. Roleplaying games also exercise my writing muscles, but in a different way. To strain the analogy, reading is like cardio, while roleplaying games are like weight training.

When I get to play in a good game, I’m forced to focus on character voice in an improvisational setting. I consider my character’s wants, needs, and personality as I try to navigate someone else’s world, and I try to keep it entertaining not just for myself, but for everyone else at the table. A lot of these things I practice in a game setting are exceptionally valuable when making realistic characters as a writer.

As a player in a game, not only do I get to work on my own character skills, I get to see how other people develop their own characters. Some are better than others, but everyone has something you can learn, if you pay close enough attention. I remember one player that annoyed me at first with the way they always talked about their character in third person. After a while, I got into it and really dug what they were bringing to the scenes.

The only problem with roleplaying games as a writing exercise is that it’s really hard for me to find games I can readily play in. My friends have moved on. The twin demons of Scheduling and Responsibilities have laid waste to my gaming groups. What’s a lone player to do?

I play computer-based roleplaying games, watch for opportunities to join other games, and I write. I hope to find or maybe create another regular gaming group, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.