On Violence in Writing Fantasy: Part One

Pictured: Potential violence in fantasy. And Sean Bean

So I've been considering the topic of violence while writing fantasy for some time now, though a more recent conversation with my father-in-law finally sparked it to the point where this blog post exists. Violence in fantasy novels is fairly commonplace, as it is part of that whole "swords and sorcery" appeal that draws people into fantasy in the first place. You could argue a fantasy novel without a swordfight really isn't a fantasy novel, as if it's some unspoken requirement. What I want to look at is two important questions: Why do we feel violence is necessary in fantasy, and How do we portray the violence to best help a manuscript or story progress?

For this first part in this multi-part blog post, here's a brief look into other mediums to see how they handle violence. We'll start with perhaps the easiest to explain: Video Games.

From Bloodforge, a game that released yesterday on Xbox 360

Video Games have become dependent on violence to even exist. From the very first time Mario stomped a Goomba flat to the throngs of 12-year-olds currently blasting each other to death in Call of Duty, video games have become completely desensitized to violence. In fact, they are all reliant on violence to even make a game. Name me a dozen games that don't use violence at all to tell a story. Modern games. Old adventure games don't count.

Journey is the only one that comes to mind, and perhaps the recently released Fez, both indie games. The point is: violence is so overblown in video games that they are glorifying in it. The bloodies, messiest games (like Bloodforge above, God of War, Dead Space, etc.) often do so because they sell better. Like the slogan "Sex Sells" in advertising, "Violence Sells" could be applicable to video games.

Because of this, any sort of emotional impact violence might have in the majority of video games is lost. How am I supposed to feel sad my companion died in Modern Warfare 3 if I spent the whole game gunning down hundreds of people? Why should I be sad in an JRPG when my one character dies when I've spent the whole game slaughtering people, animals, and anything that has XP attached? Nier is the only game I can think of that actually turned this idea of glorifying slaughter against the player through its story, which is probably why I feel the game is atrociously clever. It was a game with swords, blood, and killing that lured you into the traditional gaming mechanic of "kill everything that moves," then pulled a clever twist on you that I won't spoil here.

The point is this: video game violence has become completely meaningless in terms of story, for most games. Even story-centric ones like Mass Effect seem to lose and edge when somebody I know dies because I've just finished killing hundreds of people. Perhaps the worst culprit of this is Uncharted, which is essentially Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones was just killing random mercenaries instead of Nazies, and doing it by the hundreds. As he cracks jokes and laughs he looks like a psychopath to anybody not familiar to this blood-soaked medium, like the creators saw Indiana Jones but completely missed why we didn't think he was a raving loon: he didn't kill everything that moved. In fact, someone counted the murders across all four movies, and there's only around 20, tops. I do more than that in the first ten minutes of any video game I've picked up in the last six months.

So video games don't know how to use violence for anything other than glorification (as a majority, anyway) and appealing to males.

One of the few movies that portrays all violence as horrific as it actually is.

Movies and television, however, haven't pigeonholed themselves into the violence-centered showcase like video games have. But, to be honest, they aren't without their flaws. The main difference between movies and games (aside from the interactivity) is movies aren't afraid to make movies without violence. They can make romantic comedies. They can make family dramas that are powerful and without a single ounce of violence in them. They can make silly movies, odd movies, and art-house movies. Comedies and more can all be bereft of any form of physical violence whatsoever.

However, when you go down to the fantasy genre, you find movies can be just as guilty as anyone else in glorifying violence.

Let's take the example from the first picture: the Game of Thrones TV adaptation. It's worth noting there actually isn't a hefty amount of violence in the first book, compared to other fantasy novels. Most violence happens off-screen, is very brief, and clean. The book is more about being a mystery story set in a dark fantasy world, while we follow a family as their lives change and influence the world around them. Even the most powerful death in the book, which I will not spoil here, is not described at all. Even abstractly. It's a brilliant death, too, and far more harrowing because you don't even see it. 

And then we have the TV show. Aside from adding tons of sex to "spice up" when expository dialogue was needed, they also extremely ramped up the violence. A guy gets a knife stabbed through his eye. You see a man get his head ripped off in the first fifteen minutes, and another one beheaded shortly after. A guy rips out a man's throat and pulls his tongue out through it, on screen, unashamed. Glorifying violence much, HBO?

Khal Drogo will mess you up. 

Looking at other fantasy novels it doesn't get better. The Lord of the Rings adaptations were surprisingly faithful, but they still spent a whole lot of time watching our heroes slice up orcs. Scenes that were off-camera in the book were put into the movie simply because they were battle scenes. The original novels certainly had their share of battles, but they weren't important. What was important was the characters, and that was forgotten.

I can't end this without mentioning the Disney adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis knew very well that putting a battle in the middle of a children's book was a slippery slope; should you really be showing kids killing mythological creatures? He did the right thing and cut straight to the aftermath, glossing over it because it really wasn't important. We all knew the Narnian's would win, and what happened after was far more interesting. Of course, the movie adaptation completely ruined this, showing kids murdering tons of stuff on camera, unashamed. The rest of the movie was downright fantastic, extremely faithful, and actually quite touching. But the second that battle comes on I'm pulled out. Also, how the heck is that movie PG?

The point is that movies are just as guilty at glorifying violence as video games, if just not as frequent. I can't think of any fantasy movie off the top of my head that manages to get through their whole thing without a swordfight or somebody killing somebody else. While I think violence can be used in a powerful way (such as in A History of Violence), in the fantasy sub-genre of film it rarely is, ever. Star Wars is actually an excellent example for both good and bad (past movies vs prequels), but I'll get into that later.

Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn novels (the original trilogy) manage to have violence that is fun to read while not being gratuitous

Then we come to our current medium of choice, written books. While books certainly have been violent and gory, for the most part the majority of fantasy novels tend to tone it down substantially when compared to movies and video games. My personal theory on this matter is that the demographic that tends to enjoy graphic, gory violence tends to be males, usually in the age ranges of 13-25. It's also known that males (especially in this age range) tend to be most stimulated by anything when it is taken in visually (which is why pornographic videos tend to cater more towards males rather than females, etc.). Blood and guts in a video game or movie is easy to watch, digest, and get the violence "high" that is somewhat common with this generation of boys and men, while reading it doesn't quite do the same thing.

The point being that, if you want to argue which medium is the most "mature," the point would obviously go towards literature. It also has been around the longest, which one could use as the reasoning, but also there's that visual aspect that makes it different. Books also have the widest scope of the above mediums: they can be informative texts, artistic literary stories, romances, mysteries, fantasies...the list goes on. Unlike movies, however, you rarely find books that are violent just for the sake of being titivating (like the Saw or Hostel movies), nor do you find books overtly pornographic in nature (though the erotica genre could be argued for, but if you compared that with film pornography you'd see a massive distance, undoubtably due to target demographic).

The point is that with books much more is expected from the creators. In movies and video games you can get away with just adding tons of violence without purpose except to be "exciting." With books, that will come off as shallow or even boring. Long, overdrawn action scenes may be exciting for the author to write, but reading it might actually just be tiresome.

So we have our three mediums. In writing, how can we make violence be important?  How can it impact the reader? I'll try and go over this in the next couple of blog posts.

Two-Week Blitz: What I Learned

Me, at around 9:15 pm last night. 

So I'm honestly surprised I pulled this off. For a little background on the project (this might be a recap from previous blog posts...bear with me) I was writing A Straight Cut, my YA fantasy canyon book thingy, and something about it was bugging me. It probably just hit that "2/3 mark" blues that always happens with manuscripts, when you start wondering if things will actually come together and if you totally just wasted your time and creative vision. Yeah, that part of the manuscript.

Anyway, it was so bad I couldn't continue and my wordcount was suffering. Rather than slog through it and waste a month whining, I decided to just write something for fun. I'd been wanting to write a book about a half-vampire vampire hunter for a while (probably ever since I watched Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust like freaking ten years ago) so I put A Straight Cut aside, and with no planning or preparation or even a premise (minus a half-vampire vampire hunter) I dove into it.

Two weeks and 80,000 words later, here we are. A complete novel. And you'll have to take my word for it, but I don't think it's that awful. Rough, absolutely, and to be honest I doubt anybody would ever buy it. But for a silly, pulpy read that involves killing vampires along with crazy plot twists and just general B-movie weirdness, I think it works.

Anyway, the experience was actually quite a revelation to me, much like writing Harbinger in three months during the summer of 2009 was (geez, that was three years ago?). For Harbinger, it proved that the first book wasn't a fluke: I could actually write books if I put my mind to it. For Half...well, let me just go down the list.

And apologies in advance if this is long, but I'm hoping you'll be able to glean some helpful information from this regardless.

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I (and therefore you) can make time to write every day if we put it as a priority. 

This was a big one. As stated in previous posts, I had an extremely busy two weeks, and that isn't on the writing end. I worked 6 out of 7 days last week, not counting all the other crap I had to do, and most of my evenings were completely full. When I finally got around to plotting out chapters, my heart sank. I had to write a minimum of two every day, which would be anywhere from 4,000-8,000 words, on days where I was completely booked from 7 am to 10 pm. How on earth was I going to write?

However, because I was determined to accomplish this, I started putting other, less important things aside to give writing priority. I ignored my video game blog. I didn't watch any movies, GiantBomb (my favorite video game video site), YouTube, or do anything past skim my favorite time-wasting websites. I still engaged in social networking, but I've never been very religious on that stuff so it wasn't difficult. The big one was that I ignored the freaking unbelievable draw of Age of Empires Online, which has been consuming my life these past few days. I even bought a new game and got another one in the mail, games I'd been looking forward to for a while (Silent Hill HD Collection) that I still have not played. Until my writing goals were accomplished, it took first spot.

Strangely enough, even after only two weeks this started to become habit. Rather than going home from work looking forward to lounging around, playing games, wasting time, and then maybe writing, every day I came home knowing I had to write, and I was excited about it. Because I just kept doing it and bumped it up on the priority list, it was actually much more fun to go write than to play video games or waste time. It wasn't easy, and it took a few days to fully kick in, but once it did I was actually making excuses to write more. With Harbinger I learned that if I was dedicated I could write every day. With Half, I learned that I could enjoy and look forward to it, and that it really wasn't that hard to make time, even if it was just an hour an evening.

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Put book progress first, wordcount second. 

I've never been a planner. Even with Half, I only started plotting it about 1/3 of the way in, and it wasn't until the 2/3 mark that all the bits and pieces I'd been building up and randomly injecting into the story started to piece together to make the ending. But that's for another section; the point of this is chapter outlines.

I rarely use chapter outlines until I'm near the end of a book. This is mostly because I'm scared that outlining every chapter in my book will stifle the creativity of the story. Some of my best scenes and chapters were impromptu and entirely unplanned, the book taking me in a direction I didn't expect and myself as author just going along for the ride. So it's scary when everything feels so set in stone like that. 

With Half I had to do it because I didn't have time to wait for creativity to just randomly hit me mid-sentence. And, oddly enough, my wordcount worked better for it. When I had a chapter list (even if for 90% of the time the last act was just "whatever happens; who knows, maybe four chapters?") I had a clearcut goal to accomplish. Every chapter I finished felt good, like I could check it off a list as I continued my slow march towards completion. Since I had plot progress goals rather than just "write 2,000 words," my scenes were more streamlined right off the bat. Wordcount skyrocketed.

Did I still split chapters? You bet; some days I only had two chapters planned and four spawned out of it. But because I already had an end goal for the day (due to my rather lenient and vague outline) I would just plug forward until I accomplished it. It was a challenge, a mountain to climb, and in tandem with that my number of words a day went up as well. There were certainly days where my goal required only a few words, and then I had the satisfaction of having my evening free. It was weird; I didn't realize how much better this formula works for me, but it does. Having a blanket number can be helpful but also weak. Making actual percent progress in the plot feels like you are actually working towards something. Just food for thought.  

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Turn off the personal editor.

This is another big one, and one that is hard for lots of people (including me). My biggest issue with A Straight Cut is I hit a point where my internal editor (who is actually a pretty crappy editor, based on my editing abilities) would start screaming at me over every stupid word I'd put to page. And, retroactively, he kept harassing me about all my previous words, making me doubt my previous chapters. "Nobody will buy this!" He'd rave like the douchebag he is. "Who wants to read this crap? You took a good idea and squandered it!"

Half punched the editor in the face, for a few reasons. First, it's a freaking vampire book. I knew this was going to be a pulpy, silly romp when I started it. So who cares if nobody reads it? It was the same thing with The Ashen Destroyer, my Effulgent Corruption fanfic novella. I was writing for myself again, not for some perceived agent, editor, writing group, or audience. I was allowing myself to just get sucked into the story, to love the characters and do whatever crazy stuff I felt like doing. It felt great, and the editor could only bug me about sentence structure and stuff, and even then I had spellcheck turned off (so no red lines) so I would just write words and not stop to worry about it.

I think something a lot of prospective authors forget is the fact that nobody published actually has complete creative freedom. Sure, they can technically write what they want, but eventually that's going to have to go through a writing group, agent, editor, and eventually the harshest critics of all: the fans. Any author worth his or her salt doesn't want to spend the rest of his or her life cleaning the thing up in post, so s/he starts making sure their first drafts are a little better. Which, whether they like it or not, stifles creativity. I'm not saying this is a bad thing; it's a sign of becoming a better writer. But what I am saying is for some people this can be too much, and go too far. Not to cite any examples, but think of authors who take years upon years to just write the next manuscript in a series. Their self-editors are going nuts, and usually when the book comes out it is bland and less creative than the previous entries in the series. It's that damned self-editor, thinking he knows everything, when really he should be kept in check and only used if necessary.

Half was when I turned all my limitations off. It was my first book since Harbinger (and Lacrymosa before it) where I felt like I could just do whatever the hell I wanted and not care about the consequences. I think the book is stronger for it, and it certainly helped me enjoy the story more personally.

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You can fix it in post. Or in the middle. Or whenever. 

This kind of ties in with the last two, but it was really brought to the forefront when writing Half. I jumped into this thing headfirst not even knowing if the pool was full of water, jello, or radioactive scorpions. I knew the goal (the other side of the pool) but what I was swimming through to get there was a mystery. I just wrote anyway, thinking of stuff that would be cool and would eventually get me to the other side.

About 1/3 of the way through I figured it out, using what I'd established already to set up the second act of the book. Following that, at the 2/3 mark I completely changed my plans and decided to have the ending escalate in a completely different place, after a completely different incident, and with a totally new climax. Was my book ruined? Did I have to go back and rewrite everything?

Nope. I did have to go back and add a very small section in the middle of a chapter, as well as alter several bits of dialogue to provide proper foreshadowing, but it was about a thirty minute fix at most. Granted, since then I changed it again, so I still have to go back and make sure it is all tight, but the point is that you can fix stuff later. If you have an idea that is just marvelously amazing, just write it in and then fix it later. Granted, this won't work with any idea (it has to be within reason), but the point still stands. Don't stifle your creativity. It can always be fixed after you are done: just focus on getting to the end before examining the journey.

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Write what you love, and love it when you write. 

So this title is kind of hokey, but the point still stands: if you want to do this as a living, you have to enjoy it. Art isn't like an office job. In an office job, you can sort of not enjoy what you are doing but it's a grind. You aren't usually required to make something beautiful or artistic as a part of it (unless your office job is creating art, in which case you should probably still enjoy it or else you'll get static crap...like shovelware video games), you just do your time and go home. But with writing art, especially if you haven't sold a book, you'd better really like doing it. If it's painful or too difficult or you can't seem to find time for it, maybe you aren't cut out for it. Lots of people really want to write a book, but few people do, and fewer write a second. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but if you really love writing you'll keep doing it. You won't need money or fame or someone bossing you around to go out and do that thing you love. It's just what you do because that's who you are. Or you can grow to love it through practice.

Writing Half was stressful. Very stressful. My self-imposed deadline was killer and it sucked away all my free time. But looking back I had a total blast last week. It was a very hard week in terms of not-writing. I had tons of work, things went bad at work, I was stressed, and I had little time to do what I wanted. But I had something to look forward to after all that was done. I got to dive back into a silly story about a flippant vampire hunter who loved his job. I got to use my imagination to create whatever I wanted every single night, not worrying about what I or other people felt about it. It was fun and a journey, an adventure that only I got to go on with my characters. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, even with all the stress and pain.

So write because you love it, and you'll love your writing. Make it happen.

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There was certainly a bit more, but I think that will do for now. Point being that I am very glad I tried this, and gladder still I managed to pull it off. It was a very rewarding experience, and helped me get back into a writing mood for more "serious" projects (though I do plan on editing Half...and if anybody wants to read it I'll gladly send it your direction). 

That's it from me. I hope to start the Game of Thrones HBO series reviews tonight, so stay tuned!

Writing: That Moment

I finally hit that moment in A Straight Cut. You know the moment. When stuff starts clicking and you are really excited to keep writing the book. When a scene is just captivating and interesting and you are loving the characters and how everything is set up, and you can't wait yourself to see how it all resolves. Where everything building up to that point has been in preparation for that revelation, and now that you have it you realize things really do sort of fit together well, and you might actually just maybe in fact have a novel here under all these words.

That moment.

I know it happens differently for different people. Some people feel like that from the first chapter, the start of a new adventure in writing. Others it takes longer before it fully clicks, burning through many pages before finally "getting it." I know for me books have taken varying amounts of time before I love them (Death's Aria was quick, Paradise Seekers was instantaneous, Effulgent Corruption took nearly a whole Part, if not more). All the way up to it feels like you are treading water, just sort of writing but not getting anything out of it. Like you've been setting stuff up but you aren't sold on it yet.

Then it sells you, and you can finish the book.

It took A Straight Cut 30,000 words for me. I'm not saying anything before that was bad, I'm saying it didn't draw me in. Usually the whole "magic moment" happens when I discovery write a really good scene. When I know everything that's going to happen its hard for me to be excited. When characters surprise me or dialogue ends up being better or witter than expected, I get sucked in. And then I know the book is possible.

If I don't hit this point quick enough (or the early parts are super-sludgy), than the book can get dropped. Like what happened to Ringforger and what I'm worried has happened to Naught But Glass.

But yeah, that moment. It's great. I'm pumped to write now.

It's also countered by the inevitable "30,000 - 50,000 word 'I HATE MY BOOK' moment," which I swear every manuscript has once it hits that point (this isn't just me; I have proof in the form of other authors [published ones, even] confirming my theory :P), but we'll save that for when I hit it in A Straight Cut. Considering it took 30k for me to get to the "yay I love this book" moment, I'll give it around 75-90k for when I start hating its guts.

So that's it. I'm sorry I've been abandoning this blog, but my video game blog is thriving! That's been both good and bad; I started it as just a fun writing exercise, and now it's getting some insane amount of hits every day and it's only been a few months. I wrote 100 reviews for it already, though, so that's pretty good.

See you in the slump! :P

First Sentence/First Chapter Exercises

So here's a fun writing exercise you can try if you are feeling like you don't know what project to do next or just feel like you have a bunch of ideas bottled up, waiting to get out, but don't know how to best address them.

For this, you have two options. You can do a first chapter exercise (this is for when you have too many ideas), or a first sentence exercise (when you don't have enough). For both of these, doing them with a writing group all together makes it more fun, though it isn't necessary.

First Chapter Exercise is simple. Simply sit down and write a prologue or first chapter. Often the first thing I think of when I'm writing a book, after a premise, is how awesome a first chapter will be. So sit down one afternoon and write a couple! You have no commitments to these works; you are just trying to see if anything good comes from it.

I did this a year ago. From it I wrote a teen vampire first chapter, a chapter about a modern-day punk Harry Potter ripoff, a chapter about dogs vs cats but written like an overdrawn epic fantasy, and a story about a man called the Ragged One who dragged a sword across a desert world until the line in the sands connected.

If that last one sounds a bit familiar, it's because it was the direct inspiration for my current WIP, A Straight Cut. It was just a hop and skip from this line that covered the entire wasted earth to a canyon somehow forming from it, and making a world where this Ragged One is a being of mythology who split the earth open, allowing them to all live inside. This prologue chapter will not be in the actual book, but I still read it from time to time to draw inspiration.

Once you have all your chapters done, you can either decide to elaborate on the one you like best, or put them all aside. I put all mine aside for about a year and a half before picking Canyon Story back up.

First Sentence Exercises are more common. They also work better if someone picks a sentence for you. The idea is simple: You have a first sentence, and your goal is to write a first chapter based on it. For me, no planing was allowed; I went with whatever first came to mind. For others, they might have to plan a little before jumping headlong into it.

This is especially fun if you have a writing group, and give everybody an hour to write, and after you are finished you all compare the differences between what you gleaned from that first sentence. It's pretty fun!

I have a particular fondness for these because the entire Steelgods story started with a first sentence: "I never minded the Peacemakers, until they tried to kill me." Death's Aria's first sentence (which has since been changed) was originally a first sentence exercise that never got workshopped ("Tiasa wove across the strings or her violin as Death looked on, enjoying the melody." from the file "Violin Death Girl.docx"). I got a lot of other garbage ideas from this, like a Dresden Files knockoff and some other awful attempts, but as a whole they are great for getting creative juices flowing.




So try 'em out! You never know what you'll find buried inside that head of yours! 
 

100,000 words is a lot of words

What a hi-larious pun

Despite being really, really sick all day (I slept most of the day, and the times when I was awake were spent blowing my nose, hacking, wishing I was dead, or all of the above) I actually managed to do a lot of planning for the next part of The Ashen Destroyer (which happens when you spend most of the day rotating between lying on the couch, lying on the loveseat, lying on the recliner, and then repeating the cycle). So when I sat down to write tonight, I was going to just burn out my minimum of 500 and call it good, but instead I really got into the story (I think that hitting around 2,000 is my breaking point; after that it's really easy to just keep going) and churned out only a couple words shy of 5,000. Which is impressive in its own right (though it doesn't beat Death's Aria's 7200 words on January 28, or Where Gods and Mortal's Dance killer book-finishing blitz of doom that was around 15,000 words in a day), but what I feel is more important is the landmark goal it surpassed.

I made a goal at the beginning of the year to write every day, no matter what, in 2012. Even in this month and a half since then, it hasn't been easy. I've often been really busy, gone to cons, gotten sick, had other plans (I also will write one game review a day minimum, which takes time as well), and more, but I kept at it. I haven't missed a day yet, and my current daily average is ~2,100 words for the year.

The point of this is that, as of tonight, I have written a total of 100,000 new words in 2012. This is not counting any words on my game reviews blog, which I'd bet would add at least 10-20k to that number (I should total those up sometime, just for fun). This also doesn't count any editing that wasn't complete rewriting (aka, I counted rewriting/merging three chapters in Death's Aria, but didn't count the paragraph by paragraph changes I made when editing the rest of it). So yeah, in 47 days I wrote 100,000 words. Not too shabby.

Of course this is only the start. According to my brilliant math skills, if I keep up at this pace I'll churn out ~ 780,000 words in 2012. This beats my 2011 estimate of between 500,000 and 600,000 words (depending on how much of the Steelgods edit I count) which means I'm improving so we'll take it (assuming I can keep this up). My writing word count hasn't been as consistant this year as it was last year, with last year me running about 2000 words a day every day, while now it usually goes from between 1000-1500 every day followed by a massive spike of 5000-6000. So we'll see if I can smooth that out a little (aka write 5000 words every day! Yeah, that isn't going to happen unless I quit my job).

Since this is already a self indulgent post, I'm going to toot my own horn just a little more: initial alpha readers of Death's Aria are starting to give back feedback, and the consensus has been very positive. Granted, none of them are in my current writing group, who I'm certain will tear the whole thing to shreds, but having people say it's their favorite out of all my books is encouraging. As I said before, I wrote it after listening to the pigeon-holed Writing Excuses podcast in an attempt to mix up genres a little, and I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected. Current goal is to get feedback sometime early March, run some hard edits in March (while writing A Straight Cut) and then submit it in April. Hopefully that works as planned.

That's it from me, fellas. Thanks for tolerating me talking about myself for a whole blog post. :D

Abusing your characters

A google image search for "killing characters author" has like six pictures of George R. R. Martin. Makes sense. 

I'm pretty sure I posted on killing characters a while back, but I can't for the life of me find it, and most of my old posts were garbage anyway so it's probably for the best.

Anyway, at LTUE a member of my writing group pointed out that all my stories are depressing. Which isn't fair, it's just all the stories recently have been depressing. That's different.

Pat Rothfuss is frequently quoted for saying that "There are much worse things you can do to your characters aside from killing them." This is very true. We often see death as the "end all" for ruining a character's life, but in truth tormenting them can have a far greater impact. Like killing their family. Or ruining a hope or dream. Or setting stuff up to look like everything will end nicely and then having the worst possible thing happen.

I do this a lot. It's called drama, anonymous writing group buddy. Look into it (I'm kidding, obviously).

Anyway, George R. R. Martin is a great example of this, because often when people are killed they are probably better off for it, because crap just keeps getting worse for everybody else. Yeah, there are a few characters I think should have lived and who died unfairly (the injustice was more offensive than the actual death), but as a whole it's the ones that live that have the worst problems. It keeps the tension constant and staggering, which is also why I've started to burn out at A Feast for Crows (great title, sloooow book).

Also the tension of nobody being safe really keeps the reader on his or her toes. In a Brandon Sanderson novel I know that most of my main viewpoints will probably make it to the end, and the ones that don't will at least die with dignity. Martin doesn't do this. Many, many characters die dishonored, shamed, and unjustly. As Rothfuss said, there are worse things than killing them. Killing them without honor could be one of these.

So that was just my thought as I was writing The Ashen Destroyer. Now go make your characters' lives hell!

Breaking viewpoint to make artificial suspense

Pic Unrelated

My wife is an avid reader of just about everything (she reads lots more than I do), and lots of time I get to hear comments on the books she is reading. Last night after finishing a particular young adult fantasy novel (which I will not name here), she turned to me and said, "Don't ever, in your books, make it so a viewpoint character has an amazing plan to save the day and then somehow doesn't tell the reader."

The general idea is that at some point in the book, our viewpoint character concocts a brilliant scheme to solve the problem. However, since the author doesn't want to spoil the surprise of that scheme ahead of time, the viewpoint character somehow doesn't think about the details of the plan at all until it is taking place. Even when it is being executed, he or she doesn't bother thinking a single step ahead (at least, not where the reader can see) in order to keep the suspense up.

This is far more common than you'd think, which is stupid because I think it's crap.

I can understand sometimes breaking viewpoint for the sake of the story. It's jarring, and technically "bad" writing, but sometimes a scene demands it. But basically blocking the reader out of a certain area of a character's mind simply to build fake suspense? That's just absurd.

There are ways to pull it off. If a character says something like "I have a great plan!" and then you cut scene to when they are actually pulling off the plan, a reader might be willing to suspend their disbelief and admit the viewpoint character might have discussed it extensively off camera. However, the longer time has passed between the concocting of the plan and the actual execution, the thinner my disbelief is spread. It's cheap, and it happens quite a bit in YA books. So stop it.

#

On a completely unrelated note, Death's Aria is almost finished! Yay! I figured I have about six chapters left (we are going to say 6-8, giving my need to be wordy) before we can close the book on this one (hur hur hur). I'm excited to see it resolve, and have added a few twists that even my wife doesn't know about (mwahaha), so here's hoping it all fits together wonderfully.

And after re-reading the first chapters they aren't as bad as I remembered, but I might just have rose-tinted glasses. They still need some work, which will happen after I finish the book, but I'm going to try and get it out to alphas sometime next month.

And that was all he wrote.

On resolution

I'm technically nearing the end of Death's Aria. We've had our major battle, our character-defining conflict, and are in the process of resolving the aftermath of said conflict. That basically means we are at the middle of the Third Act, and should be tying everything off shortly.

I don't wanna.

I have a strange desire to make this book longer, to add one more conflict between the one that just ended and the final one. It's some weird idea I'm having that the book isn't "exciting" enough, when really the balance (if you just look at words dedicated to action vs not) is just fine. I don't really know why; the book is nearing 70k, and my estimate for the resolution will probably throw another 20k on there, which puts us at 90k (which is long for a YA novel). But something seems...missing, if I don't lengthen it. Maybe it's because I'm used to writing epic fantasy. Maybe it's because Gears of Anbar was stupid long for its genre. Who knows.

At any rate, we are reaching the end. My goal is to finish Death's Aria by the end of January. I have 11 days left, and if I push it I should be just fine. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Not much of an update; I've been continuing my two reviews a day on Nathan vs Video Games, as well as writing every day and doing life, so I've actually been quite busy. It's a good thing.

Here's an attempt at a not-spoiler segment.

“Simon,” Aria repeated, “remember what you said about the St. Matthew’s Passion? How you wanted to sing it? How did it go again? Maybe I can hum it for you.”

Simon gave a whimper; whether it was in response to Aria or his situation she didn’t know. Aria drew in a breath, her shoulders aching and chest burning, and started to hum the tune.

Steelgods September - Self Imposed Improvements

So my car issue might finally have reached it's resolution...or rather we made a decision but still have to finish it up. Which means I (hopefully) can finally put a full week of frustrations and general stress behind me and just accept whatever happens. While I'm still having difficulties transferring back from being stressed every second of every day to actually relaxing again, I'm glad this has finally reached some sort of resolution (even if it wasn't the one I was necessarily rooting for).

What does this have to do with writing? Nothing at all. I just felt like mentioning it.

Steelgods 1 has suffered immensely from my almost mental breakdown, but I'm still hoping to get most of the edits done ASAP. That will require three-ish chapters a day if I want it finished by the end of September, which actually might not be possible, but either way I'm going to try. I want to start my next book at the beginning of October (which currently has a basic premise and a few ideas but no title, actual plot, or magic system yet) and I'll need at least a couple of brainstorming days before I leap headlong into it.

I've been re-reading lots of comments on my previous books as well as current feedback for Effulgent Corruption and The Gears of Anbar. From all this I've been pinpointing things I can work on in my upcoming books. I've actually been doing this the entire time, but I felt it might be beneficial for me to actually write them down this time so that I remember. Some of these things are also things I've been working on for a while and apparently failing at, so they'll still get a mention.

- Decreased Melodrama - This is a big one for me. In attempts to make scenes more "powerful" and "emotional" I draw it out too far and instead beat the reader over the head with how I want them to feel. It's a big problem, the root of which probably has something to do with me distrusting my reader, but the point is that subtlety is both hard to accomplish but a masterful thing when you actually pull it off. This is going to be a major focus in my next dark fantasy novel.

 - A Focus on Voice - Voice is another big difficulty for me, at least based on most feedback I receive. I have an "author" voice, and I have a "Nathan" voice. One of these is good, one of these is funner to write than the other. I need to eliminate the "Nathan" voice (I have the Steelgods books to go all hog-wild with that) and instead try and refine it down to be a consistant tone.

 - Tactful Adult Themes - Another one I've been working on. This includes all types - violence, sex, language, etc. - but the one in particular I have issue with is violence. There's a time when violence can be used to evoke certain emotions, usually shock or horror or disgust. But when violence is overdrawn and overused it makes the reader desensitized and comes off as tasteless. This is actually another big one for me, as I enjoy writing detailed battle/fight scenes but really should be cutting down the content.

- Restraining My Overactive Imagination - This one isn't exactly what you think it is. I'm not saying I shouldn't brainstorm crazy things or invent interesting ideas; far from it. What this means is that, as Pat Rothfuss says frequently, "Everything must be in service to the story." Too often I find myself adding things because I think they'll be "cool," or "interesting." This is a darling that must be killed. It doesn't matter if my specific character as this great quirk; if it doesn't provide any service to the overarching narrative it is just a dead end. It doesn't matter if I think this section of dialogue is funny and entertaining, if it isn't adding to the plot it is just wasted words. I discovery write, which usually results in me adding tons of crap that should ever make it to a second draft. If I can find a way to identify the crap before actually committing to it in the rough, then I'll save myself a lot of time editing (as well as grief in the future when I look back and wonder what the heck I was thinking when I wrote it, and regretting showing people my rough drafts).

- Consistant and Proactive Characters - I've been doing better at both of these, I hope. And honesty, sometimes your main characters just aren't very proactive. Someone doesn't always have to take charge all the time; that doesn't happen in real life. But that doesn't mean I should let my characters slouch about, making half-assed attempts at being proactive before other characters take care of business (unless the plot directs it, which the Steelgods books do in certain instances). Characters need to press on and be interesting and compelling, not slothful. They also need to stay consistant, which is an issue that seems to plague my side characters more than main ones. This one is a bit harder, since I never think my characters are inconsistant, but when readers get a hold of it they are quick to tell me otherwise. So it's going to be tricky, but it's something I'll keep in mind. As was brought up in writing group today: what's the difference between a character you think is acting against their nature, and a character who is developing? How do you know this action is just a change in character rather than an inconsistency? I suppose that's the $10,000 question.


There are other things I've worked on in the past (eliminating modern dialogue and references, creating better act 2's of my books, keeping a pace consistant) but these are my current big issues. We'll see how well I can accomplish them with the next untitled novel.

Anbar August - You do not know a man until he has lost all that once defined him

Wrote a lot yesterday, so I'm going to say Gears is going well. I figured out the crucial tie in between "past" Cevan (aka the main story) and "future/epilogue" Cevan (aka after the world is destroyed) and I like it. I also figured out basically the last 2/3rds of the book.

The problem being I don't know what happens in the part directly following this one, but I suppose we'll get to it when it comes. This is discovery writing, after all (and warm-down writing from Effulgent Corruption).

My wife is rather adamant that I try and get this sold, and if not get it up on Kindle. While she's certainly a biased source, I'm glad she is enjoying it. I have a bad habit of ragging on my own work when it doesn't go exactly as planned, so any more motivation is helpful.

Speaking of my wife, it's our three year anniversary today! Yay! We survived three years of marriage! Only a bajillion more to go! :P

I've also been thinking of how Effulgent Corruption has changed my writing style. I'd assume it is fair to say any good author gets better after each book he/she writes, learning from that novel and applying these new tidbits to future books. It made me wonder what I'd learned from my own previous novels, and so now I'm going to discovery write what I think I learned. Again, this is for my own personal amusement, so bear with me.

Lacrymosa - The first big one is obviously that I could finish a book, even if it takes four years. The second was that I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was (Brandon Sanderson did a good job cutting me down to size in his class :P). I hadn't yet decided if this was what I wanted to do professionally, but it made it seem possible.

Harbinger - While Lacrymosa was the first book, Harbinger was the one that changed everything. I wrote every day for three months, recording my progress on LJ to make sure I stayed honest. I wrote an entire book over the summer. It was actually coherent, and completely discovery written. While Lacrymosa was extensively planned, Harbinger was not. It suffered from it, but it taught me I enjoy writing characters and dialogue spur of the moment rather than meticulously plotted in advance. It was also the weirdest book in terms of setting (wild west fantasy with angel-vampires that lived on a floating land mass above a western town that uses water for currency which RANGO TOTALLY RIPPED ME OFF)

Where Gods and Mortals Dance - A lot of my writing is me trying new things rather than doing the same thing over and over again. WGMD was the book where I tried to write a novel focusing more on politics and religion rather than a war or people killing each other. It was also the longest book I wrote, and the most interwoven at the time. Unfortunately, I didn't really have the skill to pull of the politics part, and because of it a lot of the novels seems disjointed and contrived. I still really like the story and the characters (this is the book the Useless God is in, which has become my email address and username) but it was still a mess. I think this book taught me about my limits, as well as how to do viewpoint right (thanks, writing group :P). It also was about the time I decided I could do this professionally, realized (after the fact) that I was doing a lot of dialogue wrong (modern slang, etc.), and really started feeling confident. If Harbinger was the turning point for my writing personally, WGMD was the turning point for me considering it a career.

Paradise Seekers - My first attempt at first-person since I was like...8. Also my first attempt at YA, with a book that was surprisingly not fantasy. This is the black sheep book out of them all, as everything else I've written was straight fantasy. It was also the most well-received (and well-read) out of all the books I've written. The biggest feat with this one was I wrote the entire novel in under a month. Like Harbinger proving I could write something quickly, Paradise Seekers only amplified that. I could write a YA novel in a month, and it could actually turn out pretty decently.

Might of the Steelgods - This book was me combining what I'd learned with Paradise Seekers with a more traditional fantasy setting (with lots of steampunk slipped in). It was also my first attempt to write a series, because I realized if I could write one book a month I could technically write a six book series in half a year. Steelgods currently suffers from having too steep a learning curve for YA (the world is complicated and not explained early on enough), but it also hasn't gone through a major edit yet, so it'll get addressed. I actually greatly prefer this book to Paradise Seekers, and I had a lot more fun with the characters. This was another "monther," and also my attempt to have a completely incompetent protagonist and still make him sympathetic. It was "fantasy lite" compared to previous books, and I really enjoyed writing it.

Effulgent Corruption - If Steelgods was fantasy lite, this was fantasy hardcore. It was the longest I ever spent on a book, especially considering I wrote nearly every day for seven months straight. I think I've spoken enough about this novel, but if I were to take just one thing it would be that I learned how to balance extensive planning with discovery writing. The book is certainly the most complex I've ever written, but figuring it all out was extremely helpful. There was no way I could have written this book sooner (I started it after writing Paradise Seekers, and abandoned it for Steelgods because I didn't feel ready), but I'm glad it is finally written.


So there is what goes on in my head. Of course other factors have had massive influence on me during this time as well, first and foremost being writing groups, working with professional authors, going to cons and panels, and increasing my reading habits. I just started re-reading Lacrymosa for fun and profit and found I couldn't. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I guess that means I've come a long way. Hopefully.

Anyway, here is some Gears for ya. I'm enjoying this warm-down writing. Now I have to figure out what I'm doing after that.

“So,” Figtront walked close to the flame, still holding the gunpowder in his fingers. “Alandra, our resident genius: what happens when I toss this into the fire?”

I felt a bit of spirit in me, just itching to get out. “What do you think happens?” I snapped. “It explodes.”

If Figtront was surprised by my sudden flash of zealousness he didn’t show it. Instead he pinched his fingers, dropped the gunpowder into the flame. It exploded with a boom that caused several of the girls (and even a few boys) to give out high pitched squeals. Figtront wiped his fingers on his raggedy suit and glowered over me.

“Of course it explodes, you ignoramus. What is that process called?”

“Uh…” I wasn’t sure. “Explode…ering?”

The laughter was less for ridicule this time, but it was clear the class knew the answer and was enjoying watching me fail. Figtront wiped a hand across his brow as if unable to believe what he was hearing.

“Steelgods on Earth, we should send you to a primary school,” he grumbled.


And here is some AWESOME MUSIC from Bastion. Great for writing stuff like this. :D

Quote of FOREVER

My friend Eric is a discovery writer and he hates it. He just sent me a ranting email with this gem in it, which I am going to put on a shirt and wear everywhere.

"Discovery writing stinks because I have these amazing ideas, like lions and tigers and cobras, and then I put them in a big box and wait for them to interact but instead they just sit there and sleep like at a zoo."

Follow up: I remembered what I was going to say.

Today, Steelgods crossed into 22k words (not bad for 8 days of work with school and work starting back up). But why this number is significant is thus: It's officially passed the total length of Effulgent Corruption thus far. And I was working on Effulgent Corruption for (in theory) two months.

Needless to say, there is a point to this.

I have to be properly motivated to function. As a child I was very into piano playing (I was pretty good, too, if I am allowed a moment to abandon humility). By the age of 12, I could probably play any song you presented to me. The problem was, I could only learn songs I liked. If my teacher picked a song, no matter how hard or easy, and I despised it, I couldn't do it. It would take months. But often I'd request extremely difficult pieces of music and learn them really fast. I still remember wanting to learn Rondo Alla Turka by Mozart when I was about 11 or 12. At that time, my hand wasn't even long enough to reach the full octave without straining. My piano teacher said I wasn't allowed to learn it, and assigned me something instead. I practiced like a crazy person, and learned the entire song in under a week. He came back the next week and I sat down, didn't even open the book, and started playing. Yeah, I was kind of an arrogant turd, but that isn't the point of the story (or maybe it is. You decide).

My point is that I do my best work when I want to do it. This is why writing as a career is something I really want to shoot for: it's something I love, and something I want to do. Within that, I need to really want to accomplish something in order for me to get a lot done.

I really wanted to finish my fifth full novel. I did want it to be Effulgent Corruption, but I also knew full well that Effulgent Corruption probably won't be my breakthrough novel. It's going to be much too long. I have a much better chance with WGMD, Paradise Seekers, or Steelgods. So, the motivation was lost. If I'm going to devote an undisclosed amount of my life and (essentially) career towards something, I'd like it to be worthwhile. Effulgent Corruption wasn't doing it for me, at this point in time.

Steelgods has, however. I know I have to keep it fast, fresh, and I'm not worry about it being rough. Since it isn't my "darling" like Effulgent Corruption has become, I'm not scared of breaking it. I am just rolling with the punches, taking mistakes and moving on rather than analyzing them to death. Plus, I have a deadline (I'm going to finish this book in September), so I have both a goal and a point when I know I'll be done with it. It makes for excellent motivation.

So, all in all, while I'm a bit disgusted with myself for wasting two good months I could have been writing (though I did edit Paradise Seekers and submit it to everybody and their mother, so it wasn't a complete waste), I'm glad I could learn this about myself. I don't plan on abandoning Effulgent Corruption, I just know to not dwell too long on something when I'm not going anywhere. I'm not saying I'm giving up on pushing through rough parts, far from it, but if I can only churn out 21k in two months, something is wrong. I just need to be able to recognize it early, so less time is wasted.

Along that note, I've decided my plans for my next few months of writing. Behold!

September: Write Might of the Steelgods. I'm well into that, and I'm going to finish it and not worry about anything else.
October: Revise WGMD completely. As in, have an Alpha reader manuscript ready. This is going to be a monumental amount of work, but I think by then I'll have let it sit enough to make these changes, and also I'll still be fresh with writing. I might take the first week in October off, though.
November: Depending on how long WGMD revisions take, it could take all of November too. Probably not, but it's possible. If it doesn't, I'm going to spend the rest of the month planning for Steelgods book 2, because...
December: "Devent December" (lame, I know, but that's the only thing in the book that also starts with a "d"). Write Steelgods Book 2 in a month. Good exercise, good warm up, getting me ready for....
January (I'll be done with school!): Brandon's class. I'm going to write Effulgent Corruption for that. If anything, it'll force me to write it. I'm not going back and editing the 21k I've written already; I'm just going to start where I left off. The goal is to do with it what I did with WGMD: get far enough along that I can either finish it during the semester, or slightly after. I'll also be job hunting. Joy.

After that, I'm not certain. Steelgods 3 needs to be written. The WGMD sequel, The Truth Behind His Voice is also sitting in limbo. Lacrymosa could be rewritten. Or I could have a new idea by then (I probably will), so maybe I'll run with that. We'll see.

This was a lot longer than I anticipated. I'm going to bed.

Add-on : Editing isn't THAT awful

Ok, so I bag on editing a lot because it bothers me, but really...it isn't that terrible. In fact, it's kinda therapeutic.
Let me clarify: Editing without other people's notes/feedback is totally hell. Often times, I know stuff is wrong, but have no idea what to do. Or, I glaze over crappy parts that need fixing, and dwell on stuff that just seems bad for me for some reason.
However, having an editor/alpha readers/etc. to critique and give feedback makes it LOTS easier. Is it time consuming? Yeah, sure. But its more of a...zen thing. I have a guideline, I just have to follow it. I don't have to draw in to my depths trying to figure out what the crap is wrong with this sentence...my notes will tell me where people got hung up.
Granted, Felipe made comments every freaking sentence, so I'll get back to you with my opinion in like a week. But still, helpful!

Also, I wrote a 3.5 page synopsis today. It's going to be impossible to trim that down...ok, not impossible, just really hard, so if someone demands it less than 3 pages I'll do that, if not we are stickin' with this.
Going to work my printer to the bone tonight. I need more envelopes. Big ones. FOR MY MANUSCRIPT.

Speaking of therapeutic things, submitting to agents is strangely not as stressful as I'd think. It's stressful to write the first "framework" query, the synopsis, etc, but personalizing queries and actually doing the sending is quite fun.
I'm fully prepared to get a butt-ton of rejection letters, but I'm not stressed. At least I'm doing it, and one of these days somebody will publish me. I'm just hoping it isn't like...myself. :P

Status Update: I'm not quite as big a failure as I was last week.

I've actually been writing this week. Yeah, I know, what the crap. I finally had a week without a test (though I have a quiz and a written assignment due Tuesday...I'll worry about that when I get to it), so I managed to spend the time writing.

I have a very easy writing goal currently: 1,500 words a day, and I've been keeping it. The reason for the low count is because 1. I'm just getting back in the groove and 2. Despite all my discovery writing praise, it does have that drawback: I haven't really planned what is happening, and that slows it down.

And that, truly, is what is keeping the word count down. Usually when I write, I have a goal: a scene, somewhere off in the future, that is totally awesome and I need to write to get to it. This motivates me, and I write the book from scene to scene (often times, better scenes creep in between, but it's the anticipation that drives me to write on). Currently, I have like two "pie in the sky" goals in Effulgent Corruption: The ending (that's a bit too far off), and the start of the next part (which is also a good 20k words off, minimum, plus each part is a different viewpoint character, so...). This is slowing me down. I need to do some minimal plotting, and once I have this part in "general gist" status, I'll be able to haul through it.

Yeah, I know, technically you could count that as "outlining," blah blah, shut up. I just made up a whole chapter and it ended up not terrible, so there you go (though this is pretty rough. It'll smooth up later, ala Paradise Seekers and Where Gods and Mortals Dance).

Speaking of which, now I will barf words about Effulgent Corruption that you may or may not care about. These are fun factoids that you can use to impress your friends and astound your enemies.

- It's my first attempt at writing an anti-hero. That's actually one of the main reasons I started writing it.
- It has three viewpoint characters, but unlike my other novels where it either switches between chapters or just sticks to one guy, this one will switch in parts. Plus, all the characters are a considerable distance away (though one made a cameo in the third chapter) and doing their own things, so you won't know how everything fits together until the end.
- The idea behind this is to create three distinct tales (and characters) that are interesting enough that you'll care about each of their stories. Also, their individual stories are good enough that you won't hate me for jumping to them right when you get into the previous guy's turn. In the end, all their stories intertwine in a pretty cool way, or they will, once I get to it.
- It tentatively has 8 parts, and I already gave them titles. The last two break the "one person per part" and bounce around, as it is when they start running into each other on a more serious basis.
- Important characters will die. This isn't much new news, however, because every book I've written some important person has croaked.
- It's going to be way too damn long. I'm shooting a 30k max for each part, but I can tell already this first one is going to be longer. Maybe they'll shorten, or maybe I'll combine parts 7 and 8 and cut it down. Not sure. Point being, this thing's gonna be big.
- It'll be standalone, but my intention is to make it a two book set. I have a very basic idea about the second book, but nothing past that (discovery writing!)
- This is probably my most planned world and least planned story of any of my books. Lacrymosa was overdone on both story and world planning. Harbinger I had the basic idea and basic world, but mostly had characters. WGMD I had the purpose of the story and characters, so it worked out. Paradise Seekers was just planned to death, no comment. I know way too many tidbits about Effulgent Corruption's world, and not nearly enough detail about its characters. This could prove bad, though through discovery writing I'm getting to know a few better.
- I have the coolest font yet for the title and chapter headings. Oh yeah.

That's it. For your bit from the book, I'm just going to throw the prospective part names at you. And the characters associated (not that this means anything)


1 The Yawning Maw (Drake)
2 The Burning City (Ciara)
3 Keeper of the Balance (Rook)
4 The Damned Slayer (Drake)
5 Forgotten (Ciara)
6 The Greatest Prize (Rook)
7 Miasa (Drake and Rook)
8 The Cost of Vengeance (Drake, Ciara, and Rook)

If you aren't the protagonist of a YA novel, you are an idiot.

Here's another rant, because they are fun and require less of my brain. The lack of brian usage, however, doesn't mean this is any less true. So, here we go.

I've read a lot of YA recently. The Maze Runner, Forest of Hands and Teeth, I Am Not a Serial Killer, The Hunger Games etc. My wife has also torn through a lot and talked with me about them (she just finished the Uglies "trilogy"), so I am well informed about that to. In all this, I have discovered a trend that actually sort of pisses me off in most modern YA novels. No, I'm not talking about "distopias," though those are certainly all the rage these days (next to vampire/monster teen romance novels). I'm taking about the fact that your protagonist always, no matter what seems to fall into one of these two categories:


1. Super genius who has the one key to saving the world and everything, and usually it's something everybody else overlooked. Also, everybody else is a moron.


2. A complete idiot who thinks she (it's usually a she) isn't popular, but for some reason boys won't leave her alone, except the one boy who she wants. She's also a totally dense idiot but somehow is completely special in every single way. It's like her very existence is an oxymoron. 

As you can guess, #1 usually ends up with distopians, and #2 ends up in those fluff romance monster crap. Let's focus on #1 first.

This is really starting to bug me to the point of making lots of YA unreadable. I'm perfectly fine with a protagonist being competent. Heck, I despise novels where the person the author decides to be the main character is, in fact, a nobody. Why are they the main character then? I don't to hear about Timmy Twoshoes who picks his nose and just can't save the world today.

So, we go the opposite direction completely. We have main characters who are insanely, ultra competent. So competent, in fact, that they can't possibly ever do anything wrong. They are super geniuses in everything they do, making it very easy for readers to Mary Sue all over them (more on that later).

But, even this isn't enough. What if somebody else in the world is almost as smart as them? Well, they've taken care of that problem: everybody else is a complete idiot. Sure, they may look like they can take care of themselves at first, but truthfully they are about as smart as brainless monkeys.

Example time!

In The Maze Runner, we have our main character, Thomas. He's thrown into some creepy maze place without any memories, a weird past, and a bunch of kids who are more "YMCA" than Lord of the Flies. Everybody's been in the maze for like two-three years, and they've been running the maze and writing maps of the ever-changing maze outside this whole time. However, in all this nobody has figured out anything minus basic survival tactics. Seriously, it's like none of them had ever been to school before (which is funny, considering the final plot twist).

But, never fear, retarded sub-characters: Your protagonist is here! Thomas immediately starts trying to figure out what's going on. At first the retarded side characters keep shutting him down  (everybody just tell him it "isn't important" or to "not ask questions," which was probably one of my biggest complaints about the book). Luckily, Thomas is like a rogue cop who plays by his own rules, so he goes off and just does whatever the crap he wants. Of course, the morons want to punish him, but they can't  because he's the protagonist. Within a week, Thomas cracks the code a group of 30+ geniuses have been working on for two years, solves a bunch of other riddles, uses the painful method of memory-unlocking for something useful rather than just going insane.

So, in the end, it's all about Thomas and how he fixed everything, and how everybody else sucked. Interesting? Sure. Realistic? Not even close.

Round two, a book that is also extremely popular: The Hunger Games books!

Ok, these things are super popular, so I might get some hate for this, but they totally have the #1 YA protagonist syndrome. Badly. The only difference is in this one, they add another character (Peeta) who is surprisingly as competent (if not more so) than Katniss (the main character). However, this doesn't stop the fact that it fits snugly in #1, and even lingers in #2 a little bit (mostly in the second book).

Katniss isn't anything to extraordinary, if the initial few chapters of the book are to be believed. She's good with a bow, can hunt well, and that is about it. So, when she gets selected for the Hunger Games (basically an arena where a bunch of kids run around killing each other), it doesn't seem like she has an enormous chance. Especially with like all the "pro" kids (called "careers") team up in one huge group to hunt down the rest of them. Basically, Katniss is screwed.

Except for some reason she isn't. Kat makes a friend (who quickly gets killed) and then is off on her own. She runs into Peeta again, but he's hurt, so she has to both take care of him and herself. And, huge surprise, the girl who we believed had no chance just can't die. Even with all the weird things that are suddenly thrown at her time and time again, she survives with hardly a scratch. In the final situation, she impulsively manages to pick the one option that can "beat" the games. Just like that. Like magic.


Book two (Catching Fire) starts with a switch from #1 to #2, mostly by throwing the "love triangle" thing in. Katniss doesn't think she's all that special, but the two boys in her life do. Suddenly, Peeta becomes the super, impossibly competent one, and Katniss gets thrown around by her emotions. This changes, of course, in the second half, but not by much. They go (small spoiler) back to the Hunger Games, but this time Katniss doesn't seem to do much of anything. Everybody else figures stuff out, and Katniss just sort of sits around until it's over. Occasionally she shows a flash of extreme competence, but usually she is just lead around. #2.

I can rattle off a few more like this. In the Uglies books, she starts a #2 and becomes a #1 right quick. In I Am Not A Serial Killer, he's very much a #1 (though Dan Wells manages to make us believe it is feasible). Ender's Game, with Ender in a school of geniuses but he is a super genius, is very much a #1. Until Ender's Shadow, where we learn Bean is the real super-genius (#1). Weird, he didn't come off like that when it was Ender's story...

Then you have Twilight, which is very much a #2 (until the 4th book, where's she's some weird hybrid between #1 and #2. She becomes a vampire but magically has no setbacks? What?). Forest of Hands and Teeth, very much a #2. Eragon books, so much a #1 (Mary Sue all up in that).

It's the YA syndrome! Everywhere!

Heck, even Paradise Seekers falls into this trap, somewhat. The difference being the other kids don't care about solving the puzzle, but that's just an excuse I'm using to justify my story. It's the same problem; Sam is a #1, and everybody else acts like idiots.

Somebody needs to fix this. Write a character that has flaws, but not a billion flaws. Write a character who is competent, but not freaking like a deity. Fix this, people.