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.

When I was young, the bookstore was more important to me than the toy store. I remember walking to The Bookworm and drooling over the spines of books filling the science fiction and fantasy sections. They were separate sections, and even back then, I preferred SF. When one of my parents was there with me, I’d usually get to leave a new book, probably by Heinlein though I did read other authors, too.

I spent afternoons and weekends reading. I played music and video games, too, but I could often be found sitting in a chair or lying on a bed with a book in my face, especially at night. I even had a special book lamp, which was wonderful because it illuminated the pages when the batteries were fresh. It was also terrible, because most books didn’t fit in it, and I accidentally ruined the covers of many paperbacks trying fit them in.

Reading was a huge part of my life when I was younger. These days, I don’t read nearly as much.

I want to, but it’s not as easy as it used to be. I have to wear reading glasses these days, and I usually just don’t have that much time. I do manage to read actual books from time to time. Most of the time, however, I listen to audiobooks, especially when I’m in the car. Since I haven’t been driving much the last few years, my book consumption has dropped. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to audio books while walking through the neighborhood.

Just today, I finally finished listening to Neuromancer. I’ll have a lot to say about that book, some other time.

What about other people? Are people still reading? How much time am I wasting trying to create books to entertain people, if people have moved on from books?

You can do your own research, and probably should. I did some Google searches and read a few articles from sources that seem reputable.

From what I can tell, we experienced a 9% decline in reading over the last decade. However, from 2022 to the present, readership increased enough to flatten out the curve. More and more people are doing like I am and listening to audio books more than reading physical or digital text, and the inclusion or exclusion of audio books may bias the numbers.

Some of the decline in readership has to do with the economy. People have less disposable income, and less time. Many younger people are having to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet.

Bookstores have been drying up, thanks to Amazon and online sales. We still have Barnes & Noble. There were a couple of years where it looked like we were going to lose them, too.

I have been told that there are more eager readers now than ever before. At the same time, we have economic difficulties, fewer local options for shopping for books, more diverse ways of consuming stories, and large publishers producing fewer books in some popular genres. Consolidation and questionable business decisions made in Big Publishing lead to fewer books by new authors, or at least the appearance of fewer books as the marketing money is reserved for the authors with established audiences.

To put it all together… there is still an audience of readers to please. The paths to reaching these readers is fraught at both ends. It has always taken a great deal of luck to make it. Now it seems like it takes a miracle.

So, I will keep writing.

Admit it. You looked at the title of this post and thought, “He’s going to talk about A.I., isn’t he?” Yes. But not right away. Let’s just chill out a moment. I’m not looking for an excuse to rant about large language models or anything like that. I really just want to focus on writing itself, and what it’ll look like in 5, 10, or maybe 20 years.

Before we jump ahead, let’s start in the past and move chronologically forward.

An Extremely Condensed History of Writing

If we go back far enough, we start with just verbal storytelling. Stories were memorized and recited, or embellished, and I have to imagine that some real doozies were distorted or forgotten over time.

Move forward a little bit and we start to actually writing things down. I imagine the invention of writing made it possible to create more complex narratives. Details could be preserved, and the thoughts and intentions of a storyteller could live on, long after the creator passed away. There’s still the problem of the material decaying over time, and ink fading, but we got better at that, too.

Many of the inventions around writing made it possible for more people to immortalize their thoughts and stories. Cheaper materials, better ink, better printing. Typewriters came along. Then computers. Then The Internet.

When I consider the evolution of writing from this perspective, I see a continuous trend of putting the power of words into the hands of more and more people. When we actually start thinking about the future of writing, we might be wise to consider this trend, and extrapolate along the lines of history.

Writing in the Present Day

The concerns of the past have been addressed, and writing today is more accessible than ever. If you prefer to write with pen and paper, we’ve got you covered. Pens are cheap these days. Companies literally give them away, emblazoned with their logo and corporate slogan. Some of these are nice pens, but even cheap ones last a long time and have good ink flow. And, even though there’s been a paper shortage in the printing industry, notebooks are relatively easy to come by. You can go as plain or as fancy with your notebook as you like.

This is how my friend Michael Gallowglas writes. On his blog, in his “A Day in the Life” post, every time he mentions writing, he’s doing so with specialized notebooks and multicolored pens. When he’s ready, he transposes his handwriting into a computer and uploads his words to wherever they need to go so that they’re not lost to the frailties of physical matter. One of the benefits of his approach is that even after his work has gone to print, he still has an artifact made with his hands, filled with his hard-earned words, scrawled out in his distinctive handwriting.

I start cramping and aching just thinking about it. I tend to use a custom-made split mechanical ergo keyboard I built myself, and that helps keep me from exacerbating the continuous pain I feel in my wrists. The pain has been there since my time in the Air Force, and while it’s never fully gone away, it usually doesn’t bother me unless I do something stupid.

I use Scrivener, though when I wrote The Repossessed Ghost, the first draft was done entirely in Word. When submitting my stories to my critique group, I compile it and copy it into Google Docs. My Scrivener files themselves go into the cloud, so not only can I write from different laptops or workstations without a fuss, I never have to worry about a simple hard drive failure wiping out all of my work.

The Crash of ’98 for me had nothing to do with Wall Street, but was instead the time my computer fell off my desk and wiped away all of the writing I had done up to the point.

The technology of today has made it easy for me to compose my stories into a medium that is indelible, yet malleable enough for me to edit and transform into whatever format is required for submissions. I don’t need to go to a special, dedicated place for writing, and I can bring it with me wherever I go. I have word processors, dictionaries, spell checks, thesauruses, grammar checkers, and baby name generators all at my disposal, as long as I have access to The Internet. There are podcasts and online classes to instruct, when such instructions are desired. I’m out of excuses, just like you are.

Writing in the Future — A.I.

Let’s get the bogeyman out of the way. I don’t believe that A.I. is going away. It will continue to get better over time, meaning the quality of the output will start to look more and more like the kind of fiction an author creates. Look at how far it has come with visual art. I see no reason it shouldn’t advance and produce written fiction that is both coherent and compelling.

I think A.I. and large language models will get more sophisticated and more prevalent, and I think writers will have a choice as to whether or not they incorporate them in their writing process. The recent results of the writer strike preclude writers getting replaced by A.I., and writers cannot be compelled to use A.I. to write in the movie or television industries, but if I read it correctly, it didn’t say that writers couldn’t voluntarily supplement their work with A.I.. I think there are still some legal kinks to work out, but that seems like something that will be solved before the next decade.

Before I move on from A.I., I want to drop this little analogy about how an A.I. writes. It’s like producing chicken nuggets. In the large language model, all sorts of writing, good and bad, are thrown into the mix and churned into indistinguishable word slurry. It is then shaped into something like looks like writing. It bears the familiar shape of writing, but it’s imitation information.

There is a book on Amazon today, fully generate by A.I., and it’s all about how to identify mushrooms. Don’t trust this book. The life you save may be your own.

Writing in the Future — Everything Else

Within the next 5 years, I don’t expect writing to look much different than it does today. Some other piece of software might come out that captivates the writing community and supplants Scrivener. That’s always a possibility.

Any day now, I expect a huge leap in technology involving speech-to-text. Michael has dabbled around some with this, and I know that’s how Kevin J. Anderson writes. I think Piper J. Drake also uses voice software, as she has wrist pain that is more debilitating than mine.

Our phones are capable of listening to us and turning our spoken words into text, but it isn’t awesome, and I keep wanting it to be. I want my digital assistant to actually assist me. Maybe we’ll have that in the next 5 to 10 years, and that could be an interesting game changer for writers.

I don’t think we’re particularly close to having ubiquitous thought-to-text interfaces. Following the lines of history, that feels like the next major leap to make storytelling even more accessible. Make it a waterproof wearable and people will never lose those killer ideas they have in the shower.

Imagine recording your dreams and then editing them into coherent stories.

For enough into the future, we will still be telling each other stories. But we might not be writing as we do now. We don’t practice storytelling the way we did a few thousand years ago, and our writing technology has advanced over what we had a few hundred years ago. We have eliminated most of the barriers to entry.

Perhaps the final barrier is the act of writing itself. Far enough in the future, storytelling might look completely different, and this act of scratching ink onto paper, or wiggling our digits over so many clackety keys, will seem archaic and primitive, like cave painting or chipping words into stone.

When I first put down this topic, I rubbed my hands together and laughed a maniacal laugh. I figured this would be a lot of fun.

Now I see that the word itself is packed with a lot of meanings, and I’m going to need to disambiguate a little bit if I want to say something actually true.

So, let’s start with the dictionary definition, according to Dr. Google:

noun: drama; plural noun: dramas

1.

• a play for theater, radio, or television.
  “a gritty urban drama about growing up in Harlem”
  Similar: play, show, piece, theatrical work, spectacle, dramatization, screenplay
• drama as a genre or style of literature.
  “Renaissance drama”

2.

• an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or set of circumstances.
  “a hostage drama”

I don’t think that helps much. The second definition is definitely in the ballpark, but I’m not sure it does enough to get at drama. When you think about the fallout that surrounds a particularly active Drama King or Queen, you aren’t usually considering the Renaissance.

Let me give an example of some drama that has captivated me recently. There is a very popular YouTuber that goes by the handle of SssniperWolf. Controversy has swirled around her for a very long time. I won’t go into her long and fraught history, but she currently produces content by creating reaction videos. She freeboots the product of smaller content creators, replays them for her 30+ million subscribers, and provides no real substance. It’s lazy, non-transformative, exploitive, and disgusting. If this were a play, show, theatrical work, etc., SssniperWolf would be our clearly defined villain.

Now enter on original YouTuber, Jacksfilms. He doesn’t have the same following as SssniperWolf, but he’s well known enough, and his content actually is original or transformative. For the last several months, he’s been shining a light on SssniperWolf’s content thievery by creating his own reaction videos to hers. He’s actually done a commendable job not resorting to personal attacks. He doesn’t talk about her looks. He calls out his viewers that bring up SssniperWolf’s controversial past. His message is, stop stealing, giving proper credit to the creators, and put in more effort so that your reaction videos are truly transformative and actually fair use. Again, if this were a work of fiction, we have our clearly defined hero.

Not all drama has to have heroes versus villains. If you watch shows like Survivor, sometimes all of the people involved are villains. The excitement and tension stems from watching events unfold, and seeing whether or not justice is served or not. Will the person that is lying and manipulating the people around them get called out, or will they slither their way into the the finale, lauded for their ability to “play the game.” Sometimes they get called out. Sometimes they walk home with a million dollars. While the drama is unfolding, we’re safe at home, saying things like, “I can’t believe they just did that.”

Going back to the SssniperWolf/Jacksfilms drama, I have watched for weeks as Jacksfilms, the underdog, has refined his criticism into a Bingo game, where the spaces are all the predictable things that occur in SssniperWolf’s videos. In the last few weeks, some of the people SssniperWolf has stolen from have come forward and put claims against the videos. SssniperWolf has reacted by editing some of the called-out videos, sloppily removing some of the stolen content.

Friday night, the drama went from a 6 or a 7 to an 11 when SssniperWolf posted to her 5 million Instagram followers a poll, asking whether she should go to Jacksfilms’ home. She showed up in the evening, filmed Jacksfilms’ house, posting his address to all of her followers.

This is called doxxing and is against the law. She crossed the line, weaponizing her large following to intimidate and threaten one of the people criticizing her content.

This is drama. And it’s almost impossible to look away.

I had no intention of writing about this when I put Drama in my topic list. I figured I would talk about the shows Melissa watches. She gets invested in unscripted programs like Married at First Site. It’s harmless fun, it keeps her entertained, and she shouldn’t be ashamed of drawing entertainment value from these shows. I may not like them, but she shouldn’t feel bad for indulging in the entertainment equivalent of fast food.

I was going to gently poke fun at these shows while dissecting them to determine what it is that makes audiences love them. All the while, I’m indulging in my own variety of unscripted drama, invested in it, wondering how it’s all going to end.

It’s the thrill of watching a train wreck, or a collapsing building, or some other disaster. We crane our necks as we drive by, safe in our little bubbles, curious how things are going to turn out.

I think we get invested because of our empathy, which is a good thing. We imagine ourselves in the situation. How would we react? Would we be able to climb out of the wreckage? Would we be able to make the marriage work if we just met at the altar? How would I react if someone with a huge following showed up outside my house and tried to endanger me and my family by weaponizing their followers?

That is the attractiveness of drama. It’s not enough that there is strife. We have to be able to relate to it. We have to be able to imagine ourselves in it. If it can generate an emotion inside our hearts, we will be hooked, and we will continue to show up for more.

There is probably a lesson there for how to make our stories more attractive to readers.

For most of a decade, I attended multiple writing conventions a year. I still attempt to attend as many events as I can, but what I get out of these conferences has changed over time. When I first started going, the panels were important to me, and I took diligent notes. Some of those notes are still floating around on this blog. Eventually, my note taking slowed down, and now I’m usually bored when I sit in on panels.

Did I stop learning? What’s the complicated answer?

The short answer, which is technically correct, is that we never stop learning to write. The language we are working in evolves over time. The way we express ourselves also changes.

But as my old friend used to say, that’s the Sunday school answer. That’s the obvious, boring answer that lacks nuance.

I believe there comes a point where the only way to continue to improve as a writer is to just sit down and do it. This is the point in our development where sitting and listening to people talk about writing isn’t going to move the needle much any more. It may inspire us or motivate us, and we might pick up some ideas to try, but none of that matters until we go and put pen to paper. Or hands on keyboards. You know what I mean.

Am I saying there that the value of workshops and other formats where writing is taught diminishes over time? I think so, yes. Everyone is different, so the point of diminishing returns will be different for various writers. Also, as we develop our skills as a writer, we will invariably hit multiple plateaus. Sometimes our egos will tell us we’ve plateaued, or mastered the subject when we haven’t.

My ego may have driven me to touch this subject in the first place, but I digress.

Let me see if I can find another way to describe what I’m talking about, and unwind my idea in a way that makes more sense. Let’s take me and a handful of astronauts that have never spent much time writing, put us all on a spaceship, and send us to Mars. During this trip, we are going to keep our spirits up by teaching each other different skills. I’m going to teach my shipmates how to write.

Initially, we will see fast progress. I’ll talk about using strong verbs. I will demonstrate how adjectives are delicious, but at the cost of pacing. We will talk about character voice, metaphors, plot structure, and several other topics that I have studied and practiced as a writer. For a little while, the astronauts will become better writers from my teaching along.

After a few million miles, one or more of them will have some breakthrough. The things they have been learning will lock into place. They will basically learn everything I have to teach them, and then the only way they’ll be able to improve is through practice. Sitting in a tiny vessel, hurtling through space with limited distractions, they’ll have plenty of time and opportunity to work on their craft. And they will improve, honing their voice and becoming better writers. They won’t progress as quickly as when they were first actively being taught. There won’t be anything left for me to say or do that will help them become better writers. They’ll just have to do the work on their own.

What happens when we get back to Earth and they find a better teach? From a place of both humility and reality, it will be a trivial matter for them to find a better writing teacher. Will they once again start to see rapid progress?

Probably. But the things they learned from me, they’ll have down. Perhaps Jennifer Brozek will teach them the lesson she taught me, which is that they can do more with less words just by trusting their readers a little bit more. They’ll see a huge improvement in their writing, and then hit another plateau.

Maybe Dan Wells will next teach them how to use Excel to manage their outlines, or give them a deeper understanding of story structures and how story structures can be used as a diagnostic tool when their stories aren’t quite working. Again, they’ll get another bump in improvement, and then plateau again.

With enough time and exposure to other experts, the frequency with which these astronaut-turned-writers improve their craft will flatten, because there is only so many ideas that can be taught. Attend enough classes and panels and conventions, and you start to hear the same things, over and over.

That is the long-winded, winding answer to the initial question. Yes, on a long enough timeline, we basically stop learning to write from other people, and can only improve through practice and direct application. And experimentation.

In Summary…

We don’t need to worry about the question of whether or not we stop learning to write from other people. We should keep an open mind, listen to what others have to say on the subject, and celebrate the times we do learn something new. We should also not worry too much when we hit certain plateaus. If you think you’ve hit a plateau, that means you’re at a point where you need to practice what you’ve learned more.

This has been Brian’s Excuses. I’m out of excuses. Now I need to go write.

Dragon Gems is the line of short fiction published by Water Dragon Publishing. These stories are not necessarily fantasy, and they do not have to have anything to do with gems or dragons. They are tonight’s victim topic, and if you’re in a hurry, I recommend skipping to the Deals on New and Old Releases section where I have some links to some special deals taking place right now.

Why Short Fiction Matters

Not every story needs to be a backbreaker. The scope does not always need to be epic. Unlike some things we can talk about, bigger isn’t always better when it comes to stories.

Short fiction is some of the best fiction out there. Go pick up This is How You Lose the Time War and see for yourself. Or Binti. Or The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Or Metamorphosis by Kafka. Or a whole bunch of Philip K. Dick’s fiction.

An argument can be made that short fiction is ideal for modern audiences because in a world of TikTok, microblogging, and YouTube shorts, people have shorter attention spans. Maybe there’s something to that, but short fiction has been around a lot longer than the internet.

Short fiction can deliver a satisfying, emotional experience in a very efficient way.

With regards to my writing, I have started six novels, completed three of them, and published The Repossessed Ghost this year. On the other hand, I have written and completed around a dozen or more short stories, novellas, and novelettes. It might be actually be closer to 20.

By the way, since it’s that time of year, you can read Halloween Harvest right on this site. I’m still really pleased with it. And I’ll also remind you that The Repossessed Ghost begins on a fateful Halloween night, and true to the title, involves ghosts. It might satisfy your Halloween craving without being particularly scary.

And, I may have some other nice news with regards to Dragon Gems and my own writing coming up, though it’s too soon to talk about now.

Dragon Gems Matter

For all the reasons I just applied to short fiction, Dragon Gems are a good thing. They are a lower commitment both in terms of time and money, allowing the reader to essentially try out some of the writers published by Water Dragon.

You can get the anthologies. You can also get individual releases. Short fiction in book form. Most of the time when looking for short fiction, you’re either going to find it in online magazines or anthologies. Water Dragon is actually producing short fiction as individual, bite-sized volumes. They’re incredible, and quite popular in any dealer’s room that happens to be hosting a Water Dragon table.

Deals on New and Old Releases

As of today, the Fall 2023 edition of the Dragon Gems anthology is available. Here is a page with links to all the different editions. And, in case you were wondering, it’s a complete coincidence that the day I chose for talking about Dragon Gems is the same day this anthology became available. It’s fate!

Also, for a limited time, digital editions of Winter 2023, Sprint 2023, and Summer 2023 are available for just $0.99. The non-digital editions also appear to be on sale on this page.

So, rush out and try some of this fiction. And if you have an opportunity to leave a comment, tell them I sent you. It won’t get you a discount or anything. I just think it’d be funny.

It would be really easy to bash on Elon Musk and the atrocious state of Twitter, which I will never refer to as “X.” If I went on such a rant, it would come from a place of deep emotion, because for a really long time, I loved Twitter. It felt like a constant afterparty I could wander through, sharing jokes and getting into light conversations with acquaintances. I met a lot of great writers through that medium, and I mourn its loss.

I’m not interested in hating on Elon, though. That’s not how I want to spend my time. And, to be fair, while I enjoyed the people I interacted with on Twitter, I have always kind of hated Twitter and social media in general. I called it The Great Mistake a couple of years ago, and I stand by that assessment.

And yet, here I am, logging into bunches of social media platforms every day. It’s junk food for the soul. It provides an illusion of connection and socialization. There is no real nutritional benefit to it, though, and in addition to the empty calories which fail to sustain me and keep me from loneliness, it is also bad for my heart as too often, it’s a source of fatty rage and diarrhetic existential dread.

I continue to connect to social media for two reasons. First, there are still people I want to stay connected with through those platforms. Second, I feel like it’s a requirement that I remain active in social media, as it’s one of the few avenues available to me to keep my stories visible to the public.

So, let’s go through the different social media platforms that I’m connected to, talk about the good, bad, and ugly, and maybe mention some of the ones I’m not connected to and why.

Twitter

I didn’t delete my account there, but I did delete all of my posts. I only log on to that platform now to check for direct messages. I will not be posting there again.

Twitter has gone through a lot of changes. The promotion of the subscription program makes people invisible when they eschew the 8 dollar badge. The badge program itself watered down identity, which opened avenues for impersonation. It is not an attractive platform for News Media at this point, and recent changes hide the text for links that go outside the site.

As far as I’m concerned, Twitter is dead. The only reason I haven’t deleted my account is because it’s my name, and if some miracle should occur and my books should take off, I don’t want someone impersonating me there. Impersonation on that platform is easier than its ever been.

It’s not a safe place. It actively allows the worst people to promote hate and bigotry, even in their advertisements. Oh, and the recent change in the terms and services describe how all the Twitter content will go into some new A.I., which is reason enough for me not to give Twitter any more of my words.

If you’re still on Twitter, do yourself a kindness and get off the platform as soon as you can.

Bluesky

The shattering of Twitter created an opportunity for bunches of other platforms to try and fill the gap. Bluesky is one of those younger platforms, and I’ve mostly been enjoying it. It satisfies the itch more than the other Twitter-clones, for some reason.

To get into Bluesky, you need an invite code. If you’re a friend of mine and you want an invite code, let me know. I have a few.

Bluesky is not perfect. It lacks some features Twitter had, and some of the bad habits developed during Twitter are still present on Bluesky. But, the culture there seems to be less about fixing on the hate and fanning the flames, and more about blocking and moving on. I appreciate that. You don’t snuff out a fire by giving it more oxygen. You can’t delegitimize hate speech by giving it more attention.

I’m not sure Bluesky will serve my author needs, but that might change over time.

Mastodon

I created an account on Mastodon many years ago, when it first popped up and Twitter already seemed like a terrible place. Mastodon is geekier and more challenging to engage with, mostly because it kind of looks like Twitter, and it smells like Twitter, but it’s underlying structure is quite a bit different.

Mastodon is not a monolithic service like Twitter or Facebook. It’s instead a whole bunch of little cities that have some interconnectivity. These cities have their own focuses, and their own culture. When you find one that suits you, you can join and you’re more likely to see other people that are within that city. At the same time, you can follow people that are in other cities.

There are fancy words like “federated” thrown around when dealing with Mastodon. It’s not quite as easy to use because of the underlying complexity, but since the different communities vary as much as they do, it’s easier to find one that you’re more likely to engage with than the platform as a whole.

People that love Mastodon really love Mastodon. I appreciate it, but I’m also not completely engaged with it. I have an account on The Wandering Shop, but very few followers.

Spoutible

If you have not heard of Spoutible, I don’t blame you. It’s one of the Twitter clones that popped up last year, I think, and it has the same look and feel as classic Twitter. Spoutible spends a lot of its time focused on what’s going on with Twitter, and how much Spoutible is better than Twitter. It is a jilted lover that is having a really hard time getting over its ex.

My presence there is even smaller than Mastodon. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll continue to log in. I don’t see it going the distance until it develops a unique voice of its own.

Facebook

I still hate Facebook. I’ve hated it for a long time, but I still go there because it’s the only way I stay in the lives of some family and some people I went to school with a long time ago.

I don’t post many original thoughts there, though I’ve been more engaged on that platform this last year. I don’t trust Zuckerberg and there is a lot about Facebook and Meta that make me upset, but at this point, I’m still logging on there and posting links to my blog.

Facebook Messenger is spyware, and I recommend that you take it off your phone if you have it installed. If you’re able to uninstall it.

We all should know by now that Facebook is generally evil, so I won’t spend any more time talking about that platform.

Reddit

I’m including Reddit here, even though it doesn’t quite fit the same mold as traditional social media. It’s mostly a place to go and follow specific topics of interest, and I enjoy it for what it is. I like the Cyberpunk and Valheim reddits. They’re fun. I should probably engage with more of the fiction reddits, but I don’t usually find that experience to be enjoyable, for some reason.

Not that long ago, Reddit changed some policies with regards to APIs, which impacted moderating, and basically made the place not good. It was a really big deal, and now I don’t see anyone talking about it. I don’t know if the changes were rolled back, or if the platform shrunk, or if people just accepted it.

I don’t spend as much time on Reddit as I used to, and I’ll probably continue to diminish my time spent there.

Instagram

I wound up with an Instagram account by accident many yeas ago, and I did absolutely nothing with it. Then I had a book coming out and it seemed like I should probably post some stuff there.

My distrust for it is the same distrust I have for Facebook. They’re the same company. But, begrudgingly, I have to admit that I’ve been having fun on Instagram lately.

Because I refuse to install any of the social media apps on my phone, I find it harder to use Instagram than most people. I have to move my pictures to my computer, then use the web app to upload my stuff. I will continue to do so, but because of the self-inflicted lack of convenience, I’ll never be super prolific on that platform.

Plus, don’t their terms of service have some draconian language about what they can do with the content posted there?

LinkedIn

This is another oddball, and I think the only reason I remain active on it is because I keep getting scouted on it, and sent emails. Everyday is another LinkedIn email or two, and I click in and check notifications.

I’m told that it’s possible to promote myself as an author there, but I’m not sure there would be much benefit to it. I don’t know.

LinkedIn is generally there to help people network and get a new job, right? I’m hoping to stay with Trimark until I can’t be a programmer anymore, so I’m not sure LinkedIn has much value to me. I haven’t posted any articles there, and I’ve only read a few, ones created and promoted by Trimark.

TikTok

I do not have an account on TikTok and I don’t use it. It’s another one that sort of demands the app on the phone, so it’s unlikely I’ll ever create a TikTok account and engage there. It’s possible that I’m making a mistake, because I hear that “BookTok” is a real thing.

I don’t know. It seems like a platform for a younger audience. I don’t think that the people enjoying TikTok are going to be particularly interested in short videos by an old like me.

Threads

Threads was Facebooks attempt at a Twitter clone, and it is tied heavily to one’s Instagram account. I would have checked it out, except there was no web client. Since I’m never going to install the app on my phone, I will never engage with Threads.

As I understand it, Threads had a tremendous intake of people, then immediately lost the vast majority of them. I don’t know anyone that is currently using Threads.

One of the interesting things about Threads was that they said they were going to be accessible through the Mastodon federation, which means I would eventually be able to follow some Threads users through my Mastodon account. I thought that was pretty cool.

Now, since it doesn’t seem like anyone is using the platform, I’m not sure federation even matters. I’m not sure if they’re still planning on developing that feature. So, Threads is effectively dead to me.

In Conclusion…

There’s not much else for me to say about social media that I haven’t said before. Across the board, it’s not healthy for any of us. It’s still The Great Mistake. I’m still engaged with a lot more of it than I like.

But what else am I going to do? Work on my stories?