We’re halfway through Blogtober and some of these entries are getting a little dry. Tonight and tomorrow should be a bit better because I’m going to get personal. I’m going to talk about some major weaknesses in my writing that I’ve struggled to overcome.

Have I already Talked About This?

Coming into tonight’s topic, I had this nagging feeling I’m repeating myself. Sure enough, there’s quite a few posts where I mention passive voice.

Last year, I talked about The Repossessed Ghost and how the early draft dripped with cowardly passive voice.

In another post last year regarding self-care, I dropped a mention about passive voice. As a writing sin, I needed to learn to forgive myself.

On Melissa’s birthday in 2016, I wrote extensively about passive voice and again, how it made The Repossessed Ghost weaker. Tonight we’re going to revisit some of the points raised in this early post.

In this post in 2015 and in this post in 2014, I mention passive voice… again in reference to The Repossessed Ghost, my writing style, and how every writer needs an editor.

Suffice it to say, passive voice has been on my mind for the last 5 years. I still notice it in my work and correct for it as quickly as I can. I still hear it in other people’s work, which saps away some of my enjoyment.

Why Do I Write in Passive Voice?

The reason most writers fall into passive voice is a lack of confidence. For some reason, it feels safe.

For me, it’s a little bit lazy, too. When you’re only using linking verbs to glue your sentence together, you don’t have to think quite as hard.

If you use passive voice, I don’t think you are a lazy person, and I don’t think you necessarily lack confidence. Like so many other aspects of writing which gets labeled a mistake or problem, passive voice is just another tool in the toolbox. Passive voice gets overused or used incorrectly, like picking up a hammer to drive in a screw.

What the Hell even IS Passive Voice?!?

Passive voice is when a sentence is constructed to put the emphasis on the action or the object, rather than the subject. Here are some examples:

The screen was where Chris stared.

The driveway was where Melissa parked the car.

The corpse was on the couch.

Two of these examples are laughably bad. Chris stared at the screen, and Melissa parked the car in the driveway. Chris and Melissa deserve more emphasis than the screen or the driveway.

The third example isn’t as bad, because the emphasis is where it belongs: on the corpse. Who cares about the furniture when there’s a rotting body in the house? “The couch contained the corpse” is not better, unless you’re writing macabre comedy. If I needed to change the original sentence, I’d leave the emphasis on the corpse and choose a better verb.

Parting Thoughts

Tonight’s writing tip, like all of the rest this month, is about helping the writer improve their craft by being intentional with their words. One of the hardest parts of writing is accurately conveying your vision in words. When we first start writing, we approach the craft with clumsy sketches that fail to capture the imagination. As we grow, we learn to paint our stories with a more deft hand. Our perspective on the craft improves, and with it, the degree of nuance we can incorporate on the page.

Overcoming unintentional passive voice is an important first step for many writers. I spent years writing with passive voice, unaware how much greater my stories could be if I proceeded with more confidence, choosing stronger verbs, and placing the emphasis in each sentence where it belongs.

Your challenge tonight, should you decide to play along, is find something you’ve already written and read it closely. Look for places where you use the word “was” or “is” and identify the subject, action, and object. Is the emphasis where it belongs? Is the sentence as strong as it can be? Try rewriting the sentence and see how it feels.

I keep telling myself before writing these posts that it’s going to be short and sweet. Then I proceed to write 1000 to 1500 words on a subject I didn’t think I’d be able to stretch beyond a couple of paragraphs.

Tonight, on this 14th day of Blogtober, will be different! I rarely write stories containing multiple viewpoint characters, so how much could I have to say on the subject?

Multiple POVs Increase Word Count

While talking to a pro about calculating projected word count for a story, they gave me some formula that involved the number of plot threads, locations, and POV characters. I don’t remember the details of the formula, but for every POV character added, you wind up adding an extra 10%, or 10,000 words. Something along those lines.

It makes sense, because each POV requires additional space in order to provide a unique voice and perspective. Building a personality for the reader to inhabit takes time, and that translates into inflated word count.

Multiple POVs Add Perspective

When you take the time to build out another set of eyes to view the story, you wind up creating additional context for the narrative. In one of the recent prompts, I recommended you write a piece of flash fiction first told from the perspective of a baker, then the same piece of flash from the perspective of Batman. With multiple POVs, you don’t have to choose which one you like best.

Changing Perspectives Slow the Story Down

Slowing the story down isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something you should be aware of when you change gears. The reader is fully engaged in the character one moment. The next, the reader is hearing a different voice, probably in a different location. It takes time to reorient.

If you shift POVs very often, the experience can be exhausting or confusing for the reader. Some writers attempt to change perspectives mid-chapter or even mid-scene. If you can pull it off, more power to you. I can’t recommend it, though. In my opinion, rapid or sudden shifts break immersion.

The Benefits of a Single POV

The primary benefit of a single POV for me is consistency in the voice. I find writing with a single character’s perspective easier, simply because I don’t have to relearn how to “speak” like the other characters again.

Additionally, a single POV can lead to a greater depth of reader immersion. It makes logical sense. If you write a 300 page story, using a different character and voice on each page, you only have a single page per character, so you don’t have time to go deeper. Writer that same 300 page story from the perspective of one character, and you can luxuriate in their thoughts.

You can go deeper with a single character, but it is not guaranteed. You have to be willing to explore and flesh them out, which presents its own unique challenges.

What About Third-Person Omniscient?

Third-person omni is not as fashionable as it once was. John Scalzi still utilizes third-person omni. The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glenn Cook is either third-person omni, or a distance third-person limited. One can find these stories, but that style is more common when looking at stories that came out during the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s.

Third-person omni has more in common with first person than third, in that the story is being delivered by one voice, the voice of the narrator. The narrator may or may not be a character within the world, but that doesn’t matter. They provide a consistent voice and perspective, sometimes at odds with what’s going on in the story. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a good example of this.

Parting Thoughts

My current work-in-progress, Synthetic Dreams, is a tight third-person limited, told using two POVs. It’s the first novel I’ve attempted using multiple POVs, and I think it works for this story. The differences between my characters are wide, which allows me to explore the unique and interesting aspects of the world in a natural and satisfying way.

Some stories work better with a single POV, and some stories are allowed to breathe by using multiple POVs. It’s up to you. Some experimentation may be in order.

So that’s the obvious prompt tonight. Experiment with different POVs. Write a few hundred words using a style you’re less accustomed to using and see how it feels.

Oh! Here’s another mission, should you choose to accept it. Find a book written using multiple POVs, and pay close attention to their transitions. Does it flow from one character to the other seamlessly, or is it jarring? Are there mini cliffhangers present when we end time with one character, preparing to move on to another?

I want to be brief today, because I’m a little bit behind on some of my other writing goals and I want to make sure I have time to catch up. Today we’re going to talk about story ideas. Half of this essay will be applicable to writers, and half will offer some insight to everyone else.

Writers Already Have Ideas

Let’s address the non-writers first.

Sometimes when I first meet someone and let them know I’m a writer, they say something along the lines of, “Oh, you know what you should write? I have this idea…” Sometimes my well-meaning coworkers do the same.

For anyone that’s ever offered me something like this, let me first say thanks. I appreciate the thought and the intention. But I also have to say that I can’t use your idea, for a few reasons.

First, it’s yours. The idea formed in your head, and you have the vision of it. YOU should write it! Anyone can write. Pick up a pen or keyboard and just start. You might enjoy the process.

You might also learn through experience my next point, which is: there’s more to writing than transforming an idea into prose. The idea is the smallest part of the writing process. It’s the cheapest. When you get into characterization, descriptions, pacing, themes, show versus tell, emotional impact… honestly, a writer sometimes has to just forget the idea for a little while, just to have room in their brain to handle everything else that goes into a story.

Also, the idea you present to a writer might not be in their wheelhouse. If I message one of my romance writer friends a few thoughts on a whiz-bang action thriller set in the stars, with a focus on faster-than-light travel… you get the idea. The romance writer is going to smile and nod, then promptly forget my suggestion because they’ve got plenty of ideas they’re already excited about.

Writer’s Block isn’t a Lack of Ideas

I’m not going to get too much into writer’s block right now because I’m planning on talking about it on the 23rd of this month.

Writer’s block isn’t about not having ideas. The writer already has ideas. Lots of them. Writing prompts and ideas are everywhere. Read the news, people watch, go for a walk, visit a museum… ideas, or the seeds of ideas, or literally all around you right now.

If a writer is struggling to produce, it’s not because they don’t have anything to write about. It’s because there’s something else interfering with the writing process. They have the idea already. They’re just struggling to develop the idea on the page.

Story Ideas are not Precious

If it isn’t obvious from what I’ve already said, I’ll make it clear: story ideas are cheap, plentiful, and common, and not something to be hoarded like a dragon squatting over a treasure pile.

There are writers that are known for being Big Idea writers, like Asimov and Bradbury, but I believe the ideas aren’t the reason we remember them. Their ability to develop the ideas and present them on the page is the what made them great writers.

I have seen and spoken with writers that talk about their story ideas like they’re prospectors protecting their claim. They get a gleam in their eye, smile a coy smile, and talk about how they don’t want to share their ideas because someone might steal it.

Maybe you’re like that. Maybe you don’t want to share your ideas for other reasons. So be it! I just want to be clear that the idea itself is not as precious as you are. There may not be any new story ideas left. We might all be rehashing the same material over and over. And yet, we enjoy still enjoy stories, sometimes returning over and over again to the same idea.

The experience of a story is not made unique by the idea itself. It is made precious, special, accessible, and enjoyable by the writer. They develop the idea. They put themselves into it with their words and their voice. And we connect to the writer, sharing in the meal they’ve served up, the same meal we may have consumed over and over again, but never quite prepared the same way.

Parting Thoughts

I have a lot of story ideas. I get new ideas all the time, and I’m excited to develop them. However, life is precious and short. I will not live long enough to see all of my ideas put to paper.

Today’s exercise is designed to help convince you that you’re more precious than the story idea. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a friend and write some flash fiction together. The prompt is that your character has just left a coffee shop and they’ve found a problem with their vehicle. You and your partner are to keep the idea under 250 words. Exchange stories with your partner and see a singular, simple idea can yield such different results.

It is Saturday, Blogtober 12th, and it’s time to get into the most delicious, horrifying, exhilarating, startling, freeing, thrilling, edifying aspect of writing: descriptions.

Adjectives are Delicious

Two years ago, I wrote an essay about adjectives, their role in a story, and how marketers learned how adjectives don’t have to make sense to be effective. It’s a damn fine post, and I don’t want to repeat myself too much today.

One of the things I will repeat is that adjectives work as magnifiers. When you tack more than one onto an object, the descriptions are multiplicative rather than additive. You can have a zombie, which is scary, or you can have a slavering, oozing, shambling, undead corpse, gnashing its gray-green teeth as it raises its desiccated, malformed hands in the direction of your brain-case. (Hi Ned!)

Adjectives and other descriptors like that are wonderful, but you pay for them with slower pacing. Sticking with the magnifying analogy, a telescope lets you see distant details, bringing objects into clearer focus. However, you wouldn’t want to run a marathon with a pair of telescopes strapped to your face.

Descriptions Reveal Character

When the writer paints a picture with their words, the reader is shown three different entities: the subject being described, the character doing the describing, and the writer themselves.

The subject of the description is the most obvious. When describing a warrior, the scars lining their face inform the reader that this is an individual that’s seen hard combat. The callouses on the farmer’s hands, the lines under the librarian’s eyes, the bruise flowering on the barista’s forearm… these are all details that raise or answer questions. We want the reader asking questions, because that’s how they stay engaged.

We also want to make sure the details we’re including are pertinent to the story. The barista might be wearing a green apron and new running shoes, but if the character isn’t running or spilling things on themselves, we don’t need to bother the reader with that information. They’ll fill in those details on their own. The bruise on their forearm is unique. Is this person in an abusive relationship? Do they run the streets as a vigilante when they’re not brewing coffee? What the hell happened to them? It’s an interesting detail, but if it doesn’t answer a question about the world or a character, and if we’re not going to answer the questions raised by its presence, it isn’t serving the story.

That brings us to the character doing the describing. If we’re moving through the story in first person or a tight third person, the details described tell us information about the point-of-view character. If our perspective character is a cop or a nurse, they will notice the bruise on the barista’s arm for a reason. If our main character sells shoes, they might notice the type of sneakers the server is wearing. In this case, it doesn’t matter if the barista goes running in a scene later. It doesn’t matter if the server shows up again in the story at all. The detail we included while describing the barista tells us something about the main character, which is that they notice people’s feet. If you’re doing your job right, that detail will be important later on.

The third entity revealed in the descriptions is the writer. This is not necessarily useful or even accurate information, but it’s interesting. For example, you might guess from this post that I’m writing from a Starbucks. Details of my environment are bleeding through into my examples.

As a writer, you have absolute control over who you’re describing in your stories, and who is doing the describing. You don’t have as much control over how much of yourself is revealed. If it’s true that there are no new stories, that we’re all just revisiting the same ideas over and over, then authorial voice is the most unique part of your story, and your voice will reveal something about you.

Parting Thoughts

So what’s the point of talking about all of this? Intention. Knowing what descriptors do to your story allows the writer to intentionally evoke different reactions while crafting their story. They can increase or decrease the pace by removing or adding more details. They can highlight aspects of a character being described by being precise in which descriptions they include. The writer can get deeper into the main character’s head and voice by choosing which aspects the main character reveals.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write a piece of flash fiction. Write it in either first person or third person from the perspective of a pastry chef. After you’ve done that, rewrite the same story, but instead of a culinary artist, your main character is Batman.

Melissa and I went out for dinner last night. As we’re enjoying our meal, I told her about my blog posts the last couple of nights, and how they’re part of a limited three-part series. How to Write a Fight Scene and How to Write Dialog were the first two parts.

“What’s the third part?” Melissa asked.

“How to Write Humor.”

“You write humor?”

Comedy, By Way of Change of Status

My introduction is an example of humor through change of a character’s status. In this case, Melissa and I started at roughly equal status, a couple enjoying a meal together. By way of stating I’m writing essays on various aspects of writing, including humor, I’m elevating my status slightly, implying that I’m worthy to write on these subjects.

Melissa’s question at the end drags my status back down. It cuts me off at the knees, and through some alchemy which is completely spoiled by me explaining the joke, we made humor.

This isn’t my favorite approach to comedy, simply because someone has to be the butt of the joke for it to work. It’s punch comedy, and depending on who the victim is, it can punch down.

Howard Taylor did a presentation on this kind of comedy on Writing Excuses Retreat 2018. That’s how I learned about this kind of comedy. Not through Howard making fun of me. It was through his teaching. Howard’s never made of me. He hasn’t. Really.

Comedy, By Way of Absurdity

I like absurdity more than status changes, but it’s harder to pull off. For absurdity to work, the reader’s frame of mind needs to be properly coaxed into the right place so that the absurdity will amuse rather than annoy.

Absurdity is a young man getting into his car on a hot summer day, starting the ignition, and pulling onto the road. He reaches for the A/C controls, flips it to max, and an icy gale funnels out the vents, freezing him into a solid block of ice, still clinging to the steering wheel.

Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett were masters at absurdist comedy. The world building and the tone made for fertile soil for their type of zany to flourish.

Comedy, By Way of Vulgarity

This is tropical storm Melissa.

Melissa is tea-bagging the East Coast. The thrust of this storm is obvious. Melissa is coming in hard and fast, and we have to hope it pulls out before it does too much damage.

That’s comedy by way of vulgarity.

Anything with the power to offend us, such as the profane, also has the power to make us laugh. Poop jokes, fart jokes, jokes about sex… there isn’t much distance between upsetting us and tickling our funny bone.

Ha ha. I said “bone.”

Comedy, By Way of Word Play

Puns and limericks fall into the category of humor via word play. Puns used to be held in much higher regard than they are today. When a good pun lands, it can still make me smile, but they’re not my favorite. I’m not going to punish you all by making you read any lame ones here.

Comedy, By Way of Upsetting Expectations

A man named Joe goes into a bar in New York, situated at the top of a sky scraper. After he gets his drink, another man in a suit sitting next to a window calls out to him.

“Hey buddy, do you know about the wind currents up here?”

“What’s that?” Joe asks.

“As the wind whips between the buildings, it creates a powerful updraft. You can step out right now and the wind is so strong, you won’t even fall.”

“No way!”

“I’ll show you!”

The man in the suit opens the window, steps out, and sure enough, floats in the air.

“I’ve got to try this!” Joe says. He puts down his glass, steps out the window, and promptly plummets to his death.

The man in the suit floats back in the window, picks up Joe’s glass, and takes a drink.

The bartender says, “You know what? You’re a real dick when you’re drunk, Superman.”

Jokes work when they mess with your expectations. There is a surprise at the end, and the surprise has to make sense with everything that came before it. The whole story has to hold together otherwise it has no power to amuse or entertain at all.

This is the kind of humor I like to include in my stories. I like clever twists that change the perspective on everything that came before.

Parting Thoughts

It’s easy to get humor wrong. There are a lot of moving parts to comedy, including timing, delivery, word choice… I’ve only scratched the surface with some high level details, and I’m in too big a hurry tonight to provide more humorous examples.

Jokes are hard. Making something genuinely funny takes a lot of practice and hard work. While some people have a naturally quick wit and good instincts on how to lay out a joke, most of us have to really work at it in order to get the comedy to land.

Your assignment tonight: watch a stand-up comedian. Pay attention to how they deliver the jokes. They usually use all of the things I’ve touched on. Status changes, absurdity, word play… it’s all present in a comedian’s routine. Pay special attention to the way they use planting and payoff in order to subvert and mess with expectations.

Well hey there, partner! It sure is nice to see ya! Hope yer ready to talk about dialog, ‘cuz I’m about to git right into it!

Ahem.

Today is the 10th day of Blogtober. We’re about a third of the way through the month and we’re showing no signs of slowing. I hope you’ve enjoyed these posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them! The experience has challenged me to unpack what I know about writing, or what I think I know, and the act of expressing these tips in essay form has served to reinforce guiding principles.

Dearest reader, I must confess that as the cold hand of winter draws ever closer, as the sun’s dominion over the heavens grows weaker, and the bitter, ever-changing Moon reigns through the lengthening darkness of night, some of these posts grow more vexing to write. And so it is my dearest hope that you will bear with me as I make my way through these words, for this treatise on dialog, I fear, will be the most challenging yet.

Voice

The key to good dialog is voice. Different people speak differently, their dialects divided by region, upbringing, age, affluence, and physical factors. A well-educated character might be more inclined to speak with longer words, eschewing the monosyllabic for complex diction and phrases meant to make them sound haughty or superior. A fella that didn’t maybe quite finish school, on the other hand, maybe might talk with smaller words that ain’t quite so clean.

Once your character has a strong voice within your mind, writing their dialog is easy. The characters will tell you what they want to say, and it’s your job as a writer to capture it as truthfully as you can. Truth in this case refers to staying true to the character, and not necessarily the content of your character’s speech.

In a medium that allows you to physically hear the different voices, such as movies or audiobooks, a different voice can be conveyed by altering the pitch and placement of the sound. On the page, you have two main tools available to capture the distinctness of each voice: the description and the content.

The description is the prose surrounding the text, and is the lesser of these two tools. It is you as a writer telling the reader what the character sounds like. This is where you can describe slurred words, a crisp British accent, the sing-song soft consonants of a Selas, the rumbling basso, the breathy rasp, the hoarse shout… you get the idea. You don’t have to (and you shouldn’t) do a lot of descriptions of the voice, and you should be wary of repeating yourself unless it’s for a purpose. That’s why this part of describing voice isn’t as important or as powerful as the words of the character themselves.

Since I started writing this post, I’ve demonstrated a few times how I can change my voice just by changing the content. I didn’t need to use dialog tags or any sort of description to the change the voice. I just did it, and you (more than likely) heard it.

The content of a character’s speech includes the verbs, nouns, adjectives, all of which shape the rhythm and delivery of the speech. Some people speak in language which isn’t as pristine, dropping punctuation, adding or removing articles in whatever way they see fit. This is the means by which you will be able to express your characters’ differing voices. If you do it right, you won’t even need to use dialog attributions.

Natural Speech

I usually think I do a decent job at writing dialog. Sometimes my critique group disabuses me of the notion, but then I forget their criticisms and I go back to feeling like I’m Quentin Tarantino.

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m not as great at dialog as I think I am. How would I improve? What can I do to make my dialog feel more natural?

The first thing I’d tell myself is go do some people watching. Sit in a coffee shop, and let people’s conversations wash over me. The idea isn’t to spy or eavesdrop. I’m not interested in the specifics of what they’re talking about. I’m only interested in the way they talk. The modulations of the voices in the conversation. It’s like a dance, rising and falling and swooping.

People ask questions they already know the answer to. People reuse phrases they’re comfortable with. People fill the empty air with banality to make themselves and the people they’re with feel more comfortable. They approach important subjects then veer away, like carrion swooping over an uncertain carcass.

If I were giving myself advice, I’d tell myself to listen to the different approaches men and women take when talking about a subject. I don’t mean to stereotype or reinforce the binary, but in American society, the most common male approach to conversation is more direct, with a focus on fixing any perceived problems. The most common female approach is to share and empathize.

It’s important to remember that when writing dialog, the writer should try to emulate natural speech without actually being natural speech. When humans talk to each other in real life, they repeat themselves. They have a lot of “uhms” and “ahs” and other weird mouth noises dropped in to provide space for them to collect their thoughts.

Also, movie characters are usually way wittier than real people. Fictional characters quip like stand-up comedians. You can do this in your stories, and it will be entertaining, but it may not be realistic. Decide what kind of tone you’re going for before making all of your characters comedy geniuses.

Parting Thoughts

I have heard it said that dialog is one of those parts of writing that people either understand intuitively, or they don’t understand at all. I don’t fully agree with this sentiment. While there are some people that seem to have a natural talent for writing how people speak, anyone can write good dialog with enough practice.

Your exercise tonight: imagine two characters locked in some place and forced to talk. All of the details are up to you. Maybe it’s two strangers trapped in an elevator. Maybe it’s two friends in a car on a road trip. All of the detals are up to you. The caveat to this exercise is that you can only use dialog to convey the message and characterization.

It’s Wednesday evening, the 9th day of Blogtober, and we’re going to talk about how to write a fight scene.

I’m going to keep this post short and to the point. I have opinions and a little bit of experience writing fight scenes, but as with all of the other posts this month, I’m not an authority or an expert. These are just the tips and ideas that guide me.

Clarity

The most important quality you can give your fight scene is clarity. If the reader struggles to imagine what’s going on in the scene, they will be pulled out of the story and a potentially powerful moment is lost.

Some readers skip fight scenes. They are used to being bored by them. Whenever your reader starts to skim, you’ve lost the game. The communication channel is broken. They will not pick up what you’re receiving.

The key to clarity is specificity. Be precise with your language. Include interesting details that help ground the reader in the moment and paint the best picture of what is going on. Sweat dripping into the eyes of the hero, the roughness of the leather hilt against the farmer’s calloused hands… include experiential, specific details that are important to the moment. If you keep it clear, the reader will stick around and see it through.

Consistency

This goes hand in hand with clarity. If the heroine is left handed, keep the weapon in their left hand unless there is a compelling reason for her to switch. Keep in mind that it puts their shield on the other side, and changes the dynamic of the fight if they’re up against someone that’s right handed.

If someone gets shot in the leg, remember the wound when they turn to flee, or when they try to scale the wall, or when they go to lift their best friend and carry them off the battlefield.

What I’m trying to say is that the details are important. As the fight scene goes on, you will have more and more to keep track of. When you drop a detail or get it wrong, your readers will notice and it will pull them out of the story. Again, the communication channel is broken and you lose the game. They might skim, or they might put the book down. Stay clear and consistent, and your readers will have less reason to give up on your story.

Accuracy

This is related to consistency, but it goes further than that. If you’re writing a story about someone using a gun, do the research to make sure you get the caliber right. If you’re writing about a knight tilting in a joust, do the research to get the details correct.

The accuracy of a fight scene depends on the world building and the research of the writer. If the world draws from our world, more research is required. Even when working on secondary world fantasy, the writer needs to know the rules of the world.

This is not to say that all details going into a fight scene have to be real-world accurate. There is nothing accurate about a lightsaber. A plasma weapon like that would generate so much heat that it would set everyone in the same room on fire as soon as the Jedi flipped it on. We forgive these inaccuracies in the physics, however, because it’s so much cooler and more fun to be able to have a lightsaber in the story than it is to be completely true to real-world physics.

The portrayal of the lightsaber adheres to the accuracy of the world building, which helps us get into it. If a character ever picked up a lightsaber and started shooting it a blaster, we would not find it as cool because it would no longer be an “accurate” portrayal of how that weapon works.

Pacing

Fight scenes — action scenes in general — are the places in your story where the characters are in danger. These are the scenes where hearts are racing, adrenaline is pumping through people’s veins, and things are moving. Ideally, the reader’s heart should race and their breathing should be impacted when they’re reading these kinds of scenes.

How do you get that kind of reaction out of a reader?

If they’re skimming, they’re bored and not invested. This is the opposite reaction that you want, so start with making sure your language is clear, and the details are consistent and accurate.

After that, consider the structure of your sentences. I am now writing a long, detailed, informational sentence that has a lot of commas and a lot of parts, that’s pulling you across the page in a ponderous way and stressing you out because I’m not giving you much of a chance to breathe and also, you’re having to try and remember SO MUCH since I started the sentence, that you might just give up and start skimming.

Don’t do that.

Include the necessary details and keep your descriptions brief. Consider making your sentences shorter. Frags are okay. People glide through short sentences. Do more with less. Simplify.

Your fight scenes need the visceral details for clarity, but not so many details as to bog down the pacing.

Common writing advice is to avoid adverbs. When you’re writing action scenes, adjectives are not your friend. Adjectives have a tendency to slow the pace of your story. Adjectives are wonderful, and make the details in your prose pop and leap off the page. In a fight scene, adjectives become the course, sticky mud clinging to your hero’s black leather combat boots, sucking them down when they’re trying to trudge to the other side of the battlefield.

Use adjectives. Just make sure to read over your sentences to see how easy they are to read.

Emotion

It is exceedingly important that your readers are emotionally invested in at least one participant involved in your fight scene. If the reader doesn’t care about the characters, they’re not going to care about the scene, and they will skim or put down the book.

The purpose of a fight scene is to alter the emotional state of your characters. Your hero should be in a different emotional state at the end of the scene than they were at the beginning. Perhaps they see themselves as over-matched at the beginning, scared of their opponent that looks so much bigger and more prepared than they are. On the other side of the fight, they should feel euphoric for vanquishing their foe. Or they should feel sad about the friends they lost along the way. Or they should feel grateful, or shocked, or… they should feel something.

The character needs to feel something so the reader will feel something.

If the fight is trivial to the character, and plays out as trivial, it doesn’t need to be treated like a fight scene. Unless it’s extremely cool, it probably shouldn’t be in the story.

Just remember that “cool” is subjective, and what is cool to the writer may not be that cool to the reader. If you want to improve your chances of keeping the reader engaged, reach them on an emotional level through the emotions of the characters.

Parting Thoughts

Much of what I’ve written about fight scenes apply to the rest of the story, too. Clarity, accuracy, emotion, and consistency will serve your story in nearly every situation.

My stories don’t usually have a lot of fight scenes. There is action, but it’s spread throughout the story, with lots of chapters in the middle to allow the reader (and the characters) chance to breathe. Overusing the fight scene will reduce its efficacy, and runs the danger of making the reader bored.

Remember that if you do it right, you will produce a physical reaction in the reader. You will alter the rate at which their heart is beating, and you will impact their breathing. This can be tiring, and is one of the reasons some readers start skimming when they get to a fight scene.

If you have not written a fight scene before, give it a try. Your prompt tonight is: your hero is trying to get across a bridge, and their adversary doesn’t want to let them across unless they pay a “tax.” The adversary could be a troll, a bandit, or a dirty cop. If your hero doesn’t get across the bridge, someone they love will die. And your hero doesn’t have the means to pay the tax, even if they wanted to.

Welcome to Day 8 of Blogtober! Before I launch into today’s complicated topic, I have to say I’m a little disappointed more people didn’t read yesterday’s. It focuses on writer’s getting to their heart of themselves in order to make deeper, greater stories.

Now let’s get into terms.

Internality

If my editing software is to be believed, “Internality” isn’t even a word. Maybe it isn’t? Let’s define it so that it has value for the purposes of our writing.

I first started hearing the term from a couple of people in my writer’s group that primarily write YA. They wanted more internality from my character, and they wanted me to stop using so much distancing language.

After that, the term came up in talking with M. Todd Gallowglas. From his perspective, internality has more to do with the experience of the character. What did the Scotch taste like to the character, and how did that affect them?

For purposes of this essay, internality refers to the emotions, thoughts, and personal experience of the character in the moment of the story.

Show vs Tell

“Show, don’t tell” is probably the most common advice a writer will hear these days. It means that, rather than flat out stating how a character feels or what is going on in their heart or head, the writer should draw it out with descriptions and subtext.

Let’s try an example. We’ll write a couple of paragraphs about John sitting in a waiting room, about to receive some news. This is the “Tell” example:

John waited impatiently. He wondered if the doctor kept him waiting on purpose. When the doctor finally appeared with the news, John felt relieved.

I’m not a fan of this paragraph. I’ve seen many like it in manuscripts and while it’s brief, it is unimaginative, flat, and boring.

Here is the “Show” example:

John sat on the edge of his seat, his teeth gnashing at the corner of his thumbnail. Dull pain throbbed from a finger on his other hand where he chewed the nail down to the quick. His eyes darted up to the clock, fixating on the minute hand. When the minute rolled into the next with a ponderous click, John sprung to his feet and paced the short distance between the bench seats. His hand went to his mouth to mar another fingernail.

“Mr. Smith?”

John turned at the sound of the voice. An older woman in a lab coat carrying a clipboard stood at the entrance of the waiting room. At the sight of her, the wind rushed out of John’s lungs in a ragged sigh.

I like this quite a bit more. It’s longer, but it’s also personal. We’ve all been John. His impatience is palpable. We don’t know what kind of news he’s waiting for, but we’re more invested in waiting with him because we have an easier time seeing through his eyes.

That is the difference between Show vs Tell. It isn’t just about being more verbose. It’s about choosing details which convey emotion and imparts meaning to the scene.

Internality vs Tell

One of my friends asked the question, “If there is a demand for more internality, how does that relate to the idea of ‘show don’t tell’ when so much of what is being asked for looks like ‘tell’?”

The answer is that you can show internality.

Looking back at the examples above, the “tell” example contains internality. We know what’s going on inside the character’s head because it’s very explicit. In fact, that’s pretty much all that is in that paragraph.

We get the exact same internality in the “show” example. In both, John is waiting impatiently, but we experience it through him chewing his nails and watching the clock. As a reader, we know that time feels slow and sluggish for John. There’s a dread filling his mind, and he has nothing to occupy him from it.

A Confession

I struggle a little bit with the idea of internality as described in this essay, and I only recently discovered that it’s a problem. In my early drafts, I tend to use distancing language.

You may be like me. Look for all the places where you use the word “have.” Ask yourself if the word needs to be there. If you use “have” quite a bit, you may be doing what I do and putting distance between yourself and the character.

Adding the internality, getting deeper into the heads of my characters, is something I look for during revision. If you’re using distancing language in your early drafts like I do, it’s okay. Do whatever you need to in order to finish a draft. Just remember to look for this during revisions and your story will be fine.

Parting Thoughts

Sometimes, the struggle to become a better writer doesn’t seem fair. Just when you think you know what your doing with one aspect of the craft, another concept is thrown into the mix. It’s like getting the hang of juggling, and someone just out of eyesight keeps throwing more objects into the air for you to catch. Sometimes those objects are sharp and pointy.

My recommendation is to master “show, don’t tell” first before worrying too much about internality. When you get better at showing the characters, the scene, the action, the nuance, everything you write becomes much more engaging.

You don’t have to juggle everything all at once.

Your exercise tonight: go back through something you’ve recently written and look for places where you can make a scene more experiential. Ask yourself if you can put the reader even deeper within the head of a character. Or, if you prefer to write something new, take my example as a prompt and write a couple of paragraphs about your own character in a waiting room.

For the last two days, I’ve been talking about genre. In somewhat subtle terms, I stated that genre is not that important. The first goal of the writer should be to write the best story they can. Genre provides shorthand for communication of certain ideas and story beats to the reader, but if a novel were a meal, genre would be the garnish.

Today I want to talk about the heart of the story. Let’s take a step back and look at story from a high level. Let’s talk about why your story is important, and why are uniquely qualified to write it.

But first, let me say something that sounds controversial.

The Plot Does Not Matter

Wow, it felt really good typing that, but I’m not sure I’ve earned your trust enough to just throw it out there without some support. So let’s break this apart.

Plot is the manipulation of the characters through the story. It is the journey, the trials, the tribulations, the dips and turns and peaks and valleys that take the reader from the first page to the last. The plot should make sense, and it should be coherent.

However, the plot is not the story.

You can take a perfectly good book, perhaps your favorite novel, and start cutting out all the parts that are not plot related. You can delete the descriptions, the dialog, the details of the action, chopping finer and finer until all you have left is plot. After boiling away everything that isn’t plot, what remains is an outline.

Outlines can be interesting, but they aren’t stories. People aren’t waiting with baited breath to read the next outline from their favorite author.

This is one of the places where Stephen King and I agree, though indirectly. In On Writing, King looks at plot as a clumsy tool, only to be used as a last resort. His stories have plots, but the plots are found along the way through discovery writing. He primarily takes a character or a group of characters, puts them in a situation, and then watches them get out.

I believe a good story has a plot, but what that plot is doesn’t matter. It could be anything. How you arrive at your plot depends on your style, and I’ve detailed a couple of approaches this month already.

I’ve already stated my point. When you sit down to write what matters, don’t worry about the plot.

What Matters?

There are as many different answers to this question as there are writers. The answer I will provide, the main point of this essay, is this:

Whatever matters to you, that’s what matters to the story. It is personal.

The best way I can make this clear is to tell you what matters to me.

Love is vital. It is the heart of my religion, and if I could make a wish and change the world, I would fill it with more love. I include all varieties of love in this statement.

Faith is important to me, though not as important as love. I grapple with my own faith, and characters defined in part by their faith resonate with me. This does not necessarily have to be a religion or spirituality.

These are two core principles that define me, Brian C. E. Buhl. Remove either from my being and I cease to be me. That doesn’t mean that’s all I am, and every word out of my mouth isn’t in reference to those two ideas. However, the shape of my life is steered by love, faith, and a number of other principles that define me.

So What?

Writing what matters to you guarantees that the stories you write will hold your interest. Novels require a tremendous time commitment. It doesn’t take much to slow a writer down or knock them off track. However, if what they’re writing is deeply personal to them, they are more likely to weather the hard times and see the story through to its end.

You don’t have to intentionally set out to write some deep treatise on one of your core principles. In fact, if you don’t think about it at all, the things that matter to you are going to show up in your stories regardless of your intentions.

Different writers have different ideas that follow them from story to story, whether they intend to include them or not. Referencing On Writing again, King talks about this while talking about themes. The themes in your story can be placed intentionally, or they can show up on their own.

How is this Useful?

Good heavens my section titles are snarky today.

I already mentioned one of the ways this is helpful information, in that if a writer knows what they care about, they can look for it in the stories their writing, and it will help them be more invested and get them through the draft. This is important all by itself.

Where this is most useful is in the quality of the story. When the writer is passionate about the ideas in their story, it translates to the reader.

When you write what matters, it is easier to write what is true. Your truth may be different than everyone else’s truth, but it will still transmit.

I don’t want to sound too mystical about this. In On Writing, King describes writing as telepathy, and while I don’t think he’s wrong, I also don’t think it’s particularly helpful to cloak writing in the language of magic or the supernatural. Writing is a learned skill, and even if we don’t know how to write a best seller every time we put pen to paper, there are methodologies and practices which improve your writing more often than hurt it.

A Few Words on Representation

If you come from a disadvantaged identity, whatever that may be, consider that as a core principle you can lean on in your writing. It’s part of what the Own Voices movement is about. That may be an aspect of your life that you routinely hide. Write what you like, but your life experience and your voice may be exactly what the world needs. It will give comfort to those facing the same challenges you’re facing, and it will give perspective to the rest.

If you’re a cis white male like me, you can write about the cis white male experience, if you like. That particular flavor of voice and life experience will most likely come across in your writing whether you want it to or not, and you will find an audience. However, you probably have more to say, just like I do. Focusing on a larger truth, a more interesting subject, will help set you apart from the rest and make your stories fresh.

Parting Thoughts

The tag line on my blog is “Write Something Good.”

If my primary goal was to make my prose spotless, easy to edit and easy to consume, my tagline would be “Write Something Well.” The difference between a good story and a story that is well written is important to me. I strive to craft my stories to the best of my ability so that they are well written, but that’s not why I write.

I want my stories to get into the heads of readers and make them think. If I’ve done my job correctly, my stories should resonate and change perspectives.

My wish is to add more love in the world, and I want to do that through my books.

Here is your exercise: Look at something you’ve written and ask yourself why the story is important to you. What is it you said in your story that lines up with your core principles? What are the themes that keep showing up over and over in your stories?

It’s day 6 of Blogtober, and today I’m going to talk about fantasy as a genre. I admit I am not quite as comfortable writing about fantasy as I am about science fiction. Yesterday’s post was easy. Today, I need to work harder to provide useful and cogent thoughts on the subject, which in its own way, is a reflection of the genre itself. But we’ll get to that.

Why am I Talking about Fantasy?

Nanowrimo is next month. The project I’ve decided to work on for November is a new fantasy novel about a band of adventurers reanimated from stone and sent on a quest to save the province from an oppressive force preparing an invasion at the border. Our heroes know how to swing swords, shoot arrows, and cast spells, but they don’t remember how they became encased in stone in the first place. Along the way, they will discover who they really are, the nature of power, and who it is that’s been pulling their strings for so long.

I read fantasy, though not as much as I read science fiction. I believe many of the skills needed to construct an entertaining and believable world in scifi applies directly to fantasy.

I have completed an urban fantasy novel as well as several fantasy short stories. My experiences allow me to talk about the genre, though again, I am not an authority or an educator. I’m just a writer with interest and strong opinions.

Defining Fantasy

I’m tempted to copy/paste what I wrote yesterday. Science fiction and fantasy are both genres, and genre itself is not particularly useful as a writing tool. Genre informs the publisher and the marketer in how to sell the book. Genre sets up the reader’s expectations on what they’re about to read. As a writing tool, it tells the writer what details they can skip when introducing strange or unusual elements. Dragons, unicorns, elves, mermaids… genre allows the writer to slot these ideas without a lot of prep work or fanfare. But what’s the damage if a skilled writer takes the time to fully present the awe and majesty of one of these fantastical beings?

I want to define fantasy without relation to science fiction, and I’m struggling. Fantasy is so broad it is nearly all-encompassing of all fiction. That is not a useful definition, and not what people think about when talking about fantasy as a genre.

Fantasy is Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha books, it’s Ilona Andrew’s Kate Daniels series, it’s Emma Newman’s Splitworld novels, it’s An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir, it’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke. Arguments can be made that N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series and Ann McAffrey’s Pern novels are fantasy. Those stories have many of the hallmarks of fantasy, and feel like fantasy most of the time, even if the authors said the books are SciFi.

Of course, fantasy is also Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, Brandon Sanderson’s multiple series, and the books by J. R. R. Tolkien. But you probably don’t need me to mention those guys.

What Sets Fantasy Apart from Science Fiction?

Both genres are about wonder and spectacle. Usually, SciFi deals in the realm of possibility while fantasy is filled with the mystical. In general terms, if you use a tool or methodology to solve a problem in the plot of SciFi, it must adhere to the laws of science. If it does not, then you’ve written a fantasy.

On the surface, it sounds like fantasy is easier to write than science fiction, but I find the opposite to be the case. If I want to know how to make simulated gravity work on The Moon, I can do some research and some math and come up with a solution. It may be improbable, but it’s possible and supportable. I can rely on the already written rules of reality to support my story. In fantasy, if I come up with a magical solution to a problem, I have to establish the rules of that magic and define reality itself. That is a lot more work, necessary in order to make a more satisfying and compelling environment.

How to Write Fantasy

The first goal should be to write a good story, regardless of the genre. That means compelling characters, relationships, emotion, truth, and passion — the ingredients to all great narratives. Writing a good fantasy means doing all of that plus world building, which is the main ingredient that turns your tale into a fantasy.

When it comes to the nuts and bolts of writing fantasy, there are other, better resources online. Brandon Sanderson’s take on magic systems, for example, is complete and compelling. I’m not interested in parroting those resources or retreading that ground. Instead, I will just touch on two high-level topics I keep in mind while writing fantasy: consistency and cost.

When looking at the fantastical element of your story, the reader will be dissatisfied if the writer is inconsistent. Brandon Sanderson defines the rules to his systems thoroughly and exhaustively, and sticks with those rules while making them integral to the plot. Tolkien, on the other hand, uses magic in a more poetic fashion, and we trust that it all works because we trust Gandalf. Both approaches are wildly divergent from each other, but since the writers are consistent in the way they use magic, the stories work.

The idea of cost is a little bit more granular, and could also be described as consequences. Cost and consequence in fantasy usually refers to magic systems, but it could be any exploitation of a resource in order to achieve a goal. Unicorn blood can cure any wound, but the cured lives a half-life, a cursed existence. Pegasus can carry a hero across vast distances very quickly, but you must win the trust of the mythic beast, and there are very few of them. The sorcerer’s pen never runs out of ink, because it uses the blood of the writer to fuel it.

The cost of a magical solution doesn’t necessarily have to be obvious, but it should be present. If you do not have consequences, you do not have tension. If you have no intention of having consequences in the narrative, then you should consider how the free and abundant resource impacts the world at large. If there is no cost, the consequences are that the writer will need to work this alternative science or technology into the world building.

Parting Thoughts

Almost everything I said about SciFi yesterday applies to fantasy today. The goal of the writer is to create a great story first and foremost, which means developing compelling characters, interesting environments, inevitable but surprising twists, and emotional journeys. The tools you use to craft a good SciFi story are applicable when writing a fantasy.

Research helps ground a fantasy story when describing the elements that exist in the real world, such as horses, blacksmithing, sword fighting, and masonry. If you spend the time getting those details right, the reader will trust you when you launch into the aspects of your world that can’t exist.

The primary distinction between fantasy and other genres is the aesthetics and the feel. This doesn’t have to be based on European history, though that is common.

If you haven’t written a fantasy story, give it a try. Here’s your prompt: a mischievous character down on their luck and nearly out of money finds a magic wand. What does the magic wand do? How will they use it to improve their situation? Who is the rightful owner of the magic wand, and how will your character deal with them?

Thank you for following along along! Tomorrow we’ll talk about Writing What Matters, a topic which transcends all genres.