Re-Scope

Over the last two weeks or so we've been re-watching the Avengers movies for the inevitable release of Avengers: Infinity War. A meme going around mapped out a calendar to watch one film each week to sync up with the culmination of Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU movies do quite a few things right; they have great characters, settings, plots (most of the time) but more importantly, they do something that no other film franchise had done before; create a simultaneous and connected film universe that sprawls other films, brands, and series. If you're here, you probably already knew that. The MCU is one of the most groundbreaking and intricate concepts that hits on a previous topic I wrote about; scope.

So, how does the MCU keep pulling these things off correctly? How do they continually up the stakes without letting the scope get beyond their reach 17 movies deep? The answer lies in the diversity of scope. My last post assumed that you knew what scope was – and that was presumptuous of me.

Scope is directly related to the size of the threat or obstacle in your plot. In that original post, my highlighted flaw was with Doctor Who and cited that many episodes over the last several years threaten not only the world, not just the galaxy or the universe but time and space itself. That's a vast scope, isn't it? And that's cool – it's exciting! That's a HUGE threat, and you can write a LOT about it! Here's the problem; audiences tend to want a bigger scope. Once you've threatened all of time, space, every dimension, every alternate universe; what do you have next? What's left for the next episode/movie/book? Not a lot.

The MCU is already (as of this writing) 17 films big. It also spans 5 seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., 2 seasons of Agent Carter, 2 seasons of Daredevil, and 1 season each of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher, and The Defenders spinoff. That's a lot of content to spread around. But, for the most part, the MCU continues to maintain its size and meaning in a lot of ways.

In my original post (here), I wrote a little about the MCU and its strengths and weaknesses in scope. Strength being that all the standalone Phase One movies were very personable and small in scope, which culminated in The Avengers which highlighted the  grand gesture that Marvel was trying to enact while not getting out of hand. The weakness being that Avengers: Age of Ultron didn't really follow that up in the proper scope. Age of Ultron felt much more personable (directly with Ultron being a villain created by Tony Stark) than grand.

So what is the diversity of scope? If scope is the size or obstacle, then diversity of scope is the pan of all the different threats in your story. Most stories have more than one story to follow; in Avengers one of the stories is to get and maintain control of the Hulk while the main story follows Loki and the Tesseract opening a portal to another world. The Hulk is quite the threat, but the size of that threat in this movie is small compared to Loki summoning an alien army.

Let's go back to the Phase One movies. These are all really personal stories about the four main Avengers. Thor follows the Asgardian as he screws up, gets banished from his home, and learns and grows while he struggles to find a way home. Yes, he's a god from another world. Yes, he has a magic hammer. Yes, a giant alien robot comes to Earth to try and kill him. That's a pretty large scope, right? Wrong! Thor only really interacts with a handful of people, his brother Loki doesn't really kill anyone, and that giant alien robot lands in a desert and barely makes it into a town that seems to have less than a thousand people. The world at large is never really threatened or in any kind of actual danger. The scope of the plot is relatively small.

The Avengers, on the other hand, provides a threat (Loki, again, but this time with new toys) capable of laying waste to the majority of downtown New York City and has a great potential for being a threat to the whole planet (enter Chitauri army). The scope is so large that six heroes are forced to come together to manage the threat. This makes the audience feel like there is a real threat. You've seen these characters and how strong, smart, and "super" they are – what force could feel like a threat to one, let alone six, of them?

A lot of you may be thinking; great! But you said the audience always wants bigger! We're 17 movies in and that's only film number 6! How did they maintain the rest? Well, as strange as it sounds, they didn't! This is the most interesting thing about the scope of the MCU. Think about this; after The Avengers was Iron Man 3 which saw Tony Stark explore part of his past. This is a more personal story. It has a bigger scope than Iron Man 2 (who's villain was from Stark's father's past) because it sees Tony struggling with the events of The Avengers. If Iron Man 3 had aliens invading again and upped the stakes from The Avengers why wouldn't Tony have called Cap and Thor back?

The MCU works because each movie is part of a series that's part of a bigger series. Iron Man 3 doesn't want to have bigger stakes than The Avengers. It wants to have bigger stakes than Iron Man 2 which allows it to cheat the audiences' expectations of "what's bigger scope?" This is a wild outcome, and something that seems to be exclusive to this "cinematic universe" format, but is great for storytelling.

Scope is one of my favorite aspects of stories, and it's something I put quite a bit of time and effort into in my work. It's easy to get lost in the story or to just put "cool scenes" in there. But it's important to me that the threat and the obstacles fit correctly into the story I'm trying to tell and the themes I put into my pages. It's fun to right small scope, personal stories that feel deeper and imposing – they're some of my favorites. In a future post, I'll talk about my all-time favorite type of scope.

Deconstructing Star Wars

The Last Jedi has been a controversial and dividing movie in a beautiful and meaningful series. It got quite a bit of love right out the gate with several media outlets calling it the best Star Wars movie of all time. Many lifelong fans are claiming to be done with the franchise with this, while others are saying it’s the definitive “best” movie. I don’t like dealing with absolutes, but I quite enjoyed the majority of Episode VIII.

Instead of reviewing Rian Johnson’s entry into the fantasy space mega opera, I’m going to use this division as a platform to talk about some other things. There are quite a few spoilers for the movie (which released just this past Friday) in here, so here’s your final warning to get out and come back later.

The Plan

Last November I made a commitment to dive into writing by publishing a book. Since then, I queried it around, went to a few writing conferences, got some feedback, shelved it for two months, came back and made some more changes, started a new project and moved my family to a new state for a new job.

I’ve learned quite a bit in the last year. I learned about biting off more than you can chew, expectations of the industry, expectations of authors, agents and publishers, etc. But it all boils down to that original goal. So, today I’m going to hit a major theme about me, about my writing style and about my goals.

I’m a planner. In more ways than writing, I plan a lot. I keep a regular Excel sheet for my family’s budget, I keep a Google calendar with various notes, projects and meetings that I work on (and a two separate Outlook calendars for work), but I also record because I see these plans as guidelines and understand that things change. In my day life, I work in the boardgame industry - and the same things happen. Most board games are printed in China, which means shipping, receiving, etc. all take time. And there are lots of hands on those products - so there is a lot of opportunity for something to go wrong no matter how well any company plans.

When it comes to my writing, I’m the same way. I typically start with a broad outline that makes sense, typically a “What if?” question. In previous blogs I spoke about my story the St. Howards Project about a group of kids in a boarding school with weird, fringe science things happening. Originally, this was a “What if Harry Potter was science fiction instead of fantasy?”. I usually mull this over and characters to it (I keep a backlog of interesting ideas for characters which I’ll get into another time).

Then I start to narrow that down, starting with the conflict. Who wants what? What stands in their way? What do the protagonist and the antagonist want? It’s crucial to me that those get answered together so that they’re linked in some way. If my protagonist wants X, then my antagonist should at least be interested in -X. Years ago, this would be superficial to me - I would give each character one want. This process now takes me a lot longer. Not only do I give each character more than one goal, but I also make those goals more defined. If I give someone three goals, I try to ask how they could be related. It helps make the characters deeper.

After that, I write down 15 - 20 different interesting events. They can be related, or even cause-and-effect of each other as long as each event is unique and interesting. If I were writing Wolverine, for example, one of my events might be that he dies while another is that he comes back to life. You can’t have one without the other, but they’re both unique and interesting.

This is where my outline really starts taking shape because I arrange those events in an order that I think makes sense, and my the structure of my novel starts to take shape. Using those points, I write down the things that should happen around them that could lead characters from one event to another. It’s important to note that things can move around a lot here because I’m seeing the story really for the first time. Characters may change, plot points might change or get moved. Around this time I also start taking extensive notes in the form of dictation. I open a Google doc on my drive home from work and just talk about my characters (and other key concepts like organizations).

Once the structure starts to look good I start outlining each scene. I write down what information needs conveyed, what characters will be on screen, what characters will be talked about, and what the scene changes about the story as a whole. I used to do all of this in an Excel sheet, with each sheet dividing up my acts. A sheet in the front collected a lot of the information together (including my expected word count). But I’ve started using Scrivener, and I use the notes, summary, characters and location sections to get more information.

After outlining each scene, I take a break. I’ll shelf the project. Sometimes for a week, but I’ve shelved some for a few months. I want to shake the honeymoon phase off, give myself some time away and then come back. When I sit back down with my outline, I start my first draft.

This is a part of my process, and it mimics a lot of my day-to-day life. Which is why I’ve started to lay down a more intricate plan for my writing career. Nothing quite so in-depth as my writing process, but instead of setting a goal to “publish a book” I’m going to break the plan down with realistic milestones.

The first step of that plan is to sign an agent by August 2018. That’s nine months. I have lots of existing projects that I’ll begin to polish up, as well as a project that I’ll be finishing the first draft of in January.

Life Happens

Life happens. It’s a concept that keeps returning. In September my family and I moved again. I took a position at Upper Deck to be in charge of their Entertainment Marketing, and with it came a move from Reno to the North County area, just north of San Diego. Since I left my Illinois home in October 2015, this is our third move to a different state.

When we first moved to Gainesville, Florida, I stopped writing completely. It was strange because my life suffered considerably. My two biggest passions, board games, and writing came to a full stop. The only time we played any games was when friends from Illinois came to visit us over Thanksgiving. We played a handful of games while they visited, but I didn’t write a single word while we lived there. And I worked in a bookstore.

In February 2016 we moved across the country, literally. We left Florida and stayed with family in Illinois for a few days before staying in Nashville for a week for training. We lived out of a hotel and had all our possessions packed into a Toyota Camry. Then we made a four-day journey from Nashville to Reno. My time in Reno was my biggest growth, no question. I got to bring board games into a career. I met lots of amazing people, but even more important I made some great friends. But more importantly, I learned a lot about myself and who I want to be. When we first moved to Reno, I wasn’t writing either. I knew in the back of my mind that I still needed to do it – but settling in, making friends, focusing on my job, all took priority. But a few months passed, and I couldn’t take it. June 2016 that changed and I started writing again, and it really ramped up in October of last year.

Writing has been a great hobby, but my commitment last year to see something published remains. It is no longer a hobby, but a career goal. Which is why I didn’t take even a single day off from writing after we moved to California. Now that I’m confident in my routine, I’m going to start posting more often. These posts may be random but usually will fit into one of two categories; writing/books and board games.

The Office Post Mortem

Last night Quinn and I stayed up until about 3am to finish the last 7 or 8 episodes of The Office. Overall, I really enjoyed it from beginning to end with a few highs and some lows. I’m going to breakdown a lot of my feelings by characters, or couples, because I think that’s where the show truly shines. The reality and dynamics of the characters is simply amazing in some places, and quite shallow in others.

The first pair I’m going to talk about, and the most important one in my opinion, is Jim and Pam. This couple started really strong, and I seriously felt for both of them. I sympathized with Pam being in a shitty, emotionally abusive relationship. I floundered with Jim as he wrestled with his feelings for her. By the time Jim confessed to her I was excited and completely submerged in their relationship. When Jim left for Stamford I was confused and frustrated - this isn’t explored nearly enough. The same is true for Pam who has an off-screen epiphany to break up with Roy. When Jim returns there’s a quick recovery to ask her out (the infamous “It’s a date” moment) which is really cute. Their wedding is a nice highlight and insight into the kind of couple they are - but their pregnancies feel like stories that could’ve had tension but are left flat. In fact, the next time Jim and Pam seem to have a real storyline is when the team is sent to open the Sabre store and Pam’s replacement (Cathy) attempts to seduce him. This is my biggest complaint about their whole story. The viewer is led to believe that this is a possibility and seems like shallow writing. We’ve been led to believe for eight years that Jim and Pam were meant to be together and have the most solid foundation of relationships. Interjecting a pseudo-story of an affair is lame. There was no tension, only the feeling of betrayal - and not from Jim and Pam but from me to the writers. Stories for couples can be more than an affair or the crippling tension of breaking trust. But, again, they make a quick save in the final season by introducing Jim’s investment and pursuit of his dream. This is the exact kind of story we deserve for married couples. Yes, there is tension. Yes, there is drama. But not of their faith and trust in one another - Pam clearly wants Jim to succeed, but there are huge risks involved in making these kinds of changes. The finale to their story is sweet, with Pam taking control and making the decision to go all-in on Jim’s dream.

Dwight was a very rough character. From the beginning I didn’t like him, but was confused on whether or not I was supposed to like him. A handful of times during the middle few seasons Dwight experiences some human growth which makes him somewhat more appealing, but this waffles back-and-forth with his constant and asinine feud with Jim. Admittedly, this is one of the things that makes me like Jim and makes me dislike Dwight. Him taking on roles of leadership always made me incredibly uncomfortable. Dwight is the kind of person who grovels for power and control and yet has no idea what to do with it. He doesn’t understand how to interact with people, which is exemplified in most episodes (especially in the first few seasons), and is expected to deal with people. Honestly I’m shocked at how he’s in a field that relies on human-to-human interaction with sales so much, and on top of that how he does so well. Each time the viewer sees Dwight on the phone with people he is either incredibly distracted, controlling, or hostile. Towards the end when he’s made Interim Manager and fires a weapon in the office I expected this to become much more of an issue than it was. Was he relieved of his station? Of course. I expected him to be fired, or demoted even further. Instead, a year later everyone seems to forget about this and he ends up manager of the branch. In that year, though, he does seem to grow a tremendous amount, finally partnering with Jim and putting his questionable hatred aside.

Angela, on the other hand, I loathe. And she’s written to be pretty obtrusive and hateable. However, there are several episodes that I feel like I was meant to feel sorry for her. In particular, the last several episodes. When the story of the Senator finally breaks and Angela is left homeless, I don’t feel sorry for her. Her situation sucked, but to be honest I’ve seen her be nothing but awful and cruel to the other people in the office for nine years. The first happiness I felt for her was when Dwight proposed. They are meant for each other, for sure, and I’m glad they found each other after all those years. And Dwight’s speech about how he would raise 100 of her babies from 100 other men was sweet in his own way - but that reflects more on how Dwight has grown as a character and not Angela. Her rebuttal of telling Dwight that Phillip is his, on the other hand, is the first relatable thing she’d ever said.

The most back-and-forth character I had feelings for was Michael. Many episodes I loved him. I related to him. I cheered for him. I was uncomfortable when Jan and him got together, I wanted to see him happy, but it was cringe-inducing to watch. But there were lots of times that I was angry or just plain fed up with him. Highlights include Scott’s Tots and the incredibly rude and poor way he treated Pam’s mother after the wedding. I was sad to see him go, but him choosing to move away with Holly was also one of the high points.

Andy. I think he changed the most through the show. To be honest, after the anger management bit in season three I didn’t care about him until Erin showed up. I loved their silly dynamic, mostly because it reminded me a lot of early Jim and Pam but more silly. Andy and Erin run through an interesting test of never loving one another at the same time. I think, on paper, this is absolutely adorable - up until the time they finally started dating in season eight. But Andy becomes a trash character and a trash person. When his parents money starts crumbling away, Andy steps up to bat and shows real maturity, which is a great way to show that he was a worthy choice of replacing Michael Scott. But that’s the end. Andy running away on a boat, stringing his peers, co-workers, friends, and girlfriend along while he drinks and sails across the world makes me hate him. I want to like the end of his story - abandoning your safety to pursue your dreams. I honestly wish I had the courage to do something like that. And for Andy, this says even more because he has had everything handed to him on a silver platter. This is exemplified to the max when Andy hires a marching band for Erin as this big, powerful gesture and then expects Erin to ask him out. So him abandoning his job speaks volumes at the levels of growth he should have, but Andy also seems incapable of growth.

Easily the most underrated character, until the end, is Toby. Michael’s hatred of him seemed to be a funny quirk of Michael, but ended up getting in the way of Toby ever actually developing a personality enough to be relatable. Toward the end, around the time Toby is called away for jury duty, Toby gets enough lines (finally) to be able to speak. There are other hints about Toby dropped here and there (he has a child, is divorced, etc.). When Nellie shows up in the office, though, is when Toby starts becoming well known and his inability to pick up social cues shines. This weird relationship he imagines with her is… weird. For someone in HR, I have to imagine that this is just a big no-no.

I cheered for Darryl quite a bit. He seemed to be a little manipulative, but never in a way that brought harm. I liked this a lot, and often in the pranks scheme of things, he seemed like the voice of reason. In the last season and in his relationship with Val I started to fall off the Darryl-train, but I am glad that he got to move higher up in the world and got a job that was much more fulfilling for him.

The other recurring characters (Phyllis, Meredith, Oscar, Kevin, and Stanley) I all enjoyed. Each had ups and downs, and if I had to pick a least favorite it would easily be Stanley because he had a very negative-nancy attitude that I didn’t enjoy. Towards the end Oscar started to easily become one of my favorite characters. He was grounded, likeable, smart, and honestly just seemed like a decent person. I do feel that none of these characters got served their due diligence though. I think all of them could’ve been something more if they were given an episode or two to focus on. I was hoping that toward the end, when Angela briefly moved in with Oscar, that we would see more of him outside the office and focus on something more of his (other than the Senator love triangle). There were 201 episodes of The Office, and these five characters were billed as Main characters for seasons 2 - 9 (the same amount of time as Angela), but weren’t utilized nearly as much or as effectively (in Oscar’s case).

Overall it was a wonderful show. Even Quinn, who was very resistant to watch the first season, enjoyed it after that. It was incredibly heartwarming and most of the characters felt real, if a little flat and uninteresting at times. It was not quite as good as Parks & Recreation in my opinion, because I’m much more connected to all the characters there.

Wonder Woman Spoilers Within...

Wonder Woman is so good. It might be the best DC movie of all time. Yes, I know it’s nerdy sacrilege to down talk how good The Dark Knight is, but Wonder Woman represents a lot more - and I’m not just talking about feminism, I’m talking about the potential for the DC universe and comic book movies as a whole.

Let’s break down what makes Wonder Woman good. First, Gal Gadot. Gal Gadot is Diana Prince in the same way that Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark. Gal Gadot was a good actress before this, if a little underrated. But as Wonder Woman, she hits a stride, she carries herself like Diana, talks like Diana, fights, walks, etc. just like you can imagine Wonder Woman doing. Gal Gadot is gentle, loving, compassionate but at the same time she is hard, assertive and fierce. Gal Gadot makes Wonder Woman jump off the screen.

Wonder Woman also stands for something. This goes back to a previous blog post where I discuss what superheroes are lacking these days; standing for something. I truly feel like Wonder Woman is a blessing because it teaches us that you can be fierce, hard but also loving and compassionate. Wonder Woman is a ferocious soldier, but she doesn’t fight for a war because she is entrenched in patriotism or loyalty to one side or the other; she has no concern of what her actions will do to the economy, she doesn’t care if the British win. She cares that the good guys win.

Patty Jenkins, director of Wonder Woman, also achieves a teaching that George R. R. Martin has been trying to say since 1996. Martin has gone on record as saying that A Song of Ice and Fire was written as a way to convey that evil is done through men - not some mysterious and all powerful dark lord. Wonder Woman has a beautiful and powerful moment between Gadot and the male lead discussing the choices of men. Perhaps there is no God of War influencing men and women, leading the armies and killing innocent. Perhaps men are inherently evil. Diana is so shook by this she refuses to believe. It’s later revealed that Ares is involved, but only as an accomplice; and to the British, not the Germans - showing Diana that men are the problem. And it’s done in such an elegant and powerful way that it leaves you wondering; if Ares was involved, why are there wars after World War 1?

Finally, and this may be a bit more technical, is that Wonder Woman is the first literary superhero movie that makes sense. What does that mean? In the world of entertainment, a lot of people perceive pieces of media as either commercial or as literary. Commercial pieces are made to appeal to as many audience members as possible, have serious moments, teachable moments, laughing moments, fighting moments - and they’re all tailored to a particular market. It’s made to pump out and make money. Think about James Patterson novels, the “next big” series that you’ll forget in five years or most comic books now.

The literary, on the other hand, are made slowly. With time and care. They usually cater to a specific market, teach a specific thing or have a specific meaning. Good literary writers can write about a specific thing and make it feel universal. This is largely the difference between the Marvel and DC films. Most of the Marvel films feel very commercial (that’s not a bad thing, just a different thing) while the DC films tried so hard to be literary - until now.

Congratulations Gal Gadot, Patty Jenkins and the rest of the cast and crew that worked on Wonder Woman. I look forward to seeing what comes next.

Scope, or How Little Should My Story Be?

Stories have a problem nowadays of being too big. This isn’t, inherently, a bad thing - but everyone is obsessed with being much bigger than they need to. Often, stories that are smaller in scope connect with people better and have a much heavier impact.

The biggest modern culprit of being “too big” is Doctor Who. The scope of the show has gone from making an audience care about a time-traveling alien with two hearts to throwing the pacifist into wars where the very foundation of all times and all realities are the stakes. The problem is that since it’s a successful show, and thus a successful product, the producers keep having to face the fact that those stakes need to be played up.

Upping the stakes is a common, and effective, way to keep an audience engaged from episode-to-episode. But there’s a point (all times and all realities, seriously?) where the stakes get too big, and your original stakes get lost. The purpose of the story, and the characters, get lost. Other stories have a plan to control or maintain their scope. Take the Marvel Cinematic Universe for example. Phase One was a great culmination of stakes. All the players had their own personal stories; Captain America and the Red Skull, Iron Man faced an enemy in his father’s company, and In Iron Man 2 dealt with some of the fallout from that and Thor faced his father, his maturity and his brother. Then we get to Avengers where they’re brought together to fight bits and pieces of all three of those things.

But the MCU faltered a bit at the end of Phase Two with Age of Ultron. One of the biggest problems in that movie is that it feels out of place, and the reason why is because it has a scope problem. Ultron isn’t really more dangerous or threatening in the movies. He doesn’t really bring anything more to the table. In fact, many of the standalone Phase Two movies are bigger in scope (Thor: Dark World) than Age of Ultron and even those movies suffer from that because the scope is off-kilter.

So far, Phase Three has wound those problems up. Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 are both fairly standalone, so their scope doesn’t necessarily hurt the rest of the MCU (the exception being the comparison of the first Guardians to the second). Even Captain America: Civil War was a downscaled scope, significantly more of a personal story than an Earth-threatening apocalypse - but that works because it integrated the scope of its surroundings. For as personal and small of a story as Civil War is, it makes sense to the characters and to the setting. It doesn’t need to be a huge monstrous threat to be a good story.

The final scope that I’m going to talk about is the unclear scope. For as many scope problems as Doctor Who has, the most important part of scope is the expectation. One of my favorite shows of all time, Lost, suffers from this. Many people had huge expectations about answers, mysteries, time travel, Smoke Monsters, etc. because that’s what the show presented. But the reality is that Lost is a show about people and their relationships. Yes, strange, crazy stuff happens to them - but the story isn’t about the stuff, it’s about the people.

People expected, and wanted, the scope to be massive and life-shattering, Earth-threatening and stuff like that. And, yes, they had that - but that wasn’t the story they were trying to tell.

Scope should be looked at as small, instead of large. How small can you make it while still having a deep impact? If you need a large scope for the story you’re trying to tell, the villain you’re trying to make real, or the characters you’re trying to relate - then do it. But try not to have a big scope for the sake of having a big scope.

Superheros And What They Stand For...

Superheroes used to stand for something. That isn’t to say that heroes don’t mean anything anymore, or that they don’t stand for anything. But it’s hidden under layers of marketing, 50+ years of continuity and an attempt to sell nostalgia instead of a true attempt to stand for something. Superheroes are often glorified commercialization now.

A recent conversation with another writer got me to thinking about what I loved about comics and superheroes as a kid and whether or not the fundamental joy is still there. And if it isn’t, why do I throw $30 or more a week at my local comic store (other than it being an awesome store)?

I like reading about superheroes because I like being a part of something. A lot of the stuff that I read is discussed with like minded individuals. I interact with lots of comic fans at my work (both co-workers and people I do business with), and so the conversations are great. I also belong to several comic-themed subreddits. I remember during Blackest Night there was so much conversation Wednesday nights and Thursdays when I was a kid after the comics hit the shelf. It was amazing to feel like you were part of something. This is the same joy I got from watching Lost live.

On top of that, a lot of the characters were relatable and allowed me to feel super by putting myself in their shoes. This is great for me, but a lot of people don’t feel this one is accurate. This is definitely a personal truth for me, and I recognize it’s not a universal truth. Clearly I can’t relate exactly to a space alien who’s invincible and recharges with the sun, but I did relate to growing up in a small town and learning a lot morals the same way that Clark did.

Most importantly, superheroes used to be deeper in the same way things like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Lost are deeper. On the surface, they’re very commercial products meant to sell their brand, just like comics. But they were always deeper. Lost isn’t just about this island with great mysteries and time travel and polar bears. Those are elements that help tell a story about a dozen broken people who get a second chance and how they deal with being put on an island. Just like Superman isn’t about an invincible man flying around the world beating up bad guys with no problem - Superman is about a man who struggles with his morals constantly, who tries to be a beacon of hope in a shitty world. Yea, Lex Luthor is a genius mastermind with a power suit and they have some good fights. But Lex Luthor is also a morally corrupt selfish politician who tries to manipulate people to get his way - that’s why he’s a good villain.

And that’s what a lot of comics now have lost. With 50+ years of continuity and storytelling, comic publishers are looking for hooks to sell characters that have been wrung dry. This means getting away from the moralistic tellings of old comic books and trying whatever’s new or “flashy”. And that creates a problem. If in your first arc the big threat is to the city, then your next arc has to be bigger - the thought is that if the stakes aren’t higher than your story isn’t growing. Eventually, you get to what I call the Doctor Who fallacy where your threat is so big it’s kind of ridiculous.

The reality is that a lot of the best comic stories are personal, or have an underlying moral or point instead of just saying “every timeline is at risk if we don’t X”!

I could go on about this, but instead this is where I’m going to talk about my next book. Right now I’m calling it Firestarter and it’s the start of a Young Adult Superhero series. The first draft is about halfway done. There’s a lot of superhero ideas still out there, and this series is going to capture a lot of those ideas while pairing them with interesting, modern themes that will hopefully reach a new generation of superhero fans!

Stephen King, Character and Endings

About 8 years ago I wrote a short story called Stephen King is the Anti-Christ. I wrote it on a cruise during my first honeymoon. I had brought one of his short story collections to read with me on the plane. The story came to me as sort of a meta-poke at King in his Dark Tower series and the book Misery. It was a story about an author who tried over and over again to get published and when it eventually happens he is drowned in popularity and keeps pumping out books at an unreal rate.

The catch is that the writer has sold his soul to the devil to become insanely popular, but now his books are coming true and coming to haunt him. At the end of the story the writer takes his place at the right hand of Satan to become the anti-Christ and begins writing the events from the Book of Revelations. It was a lot longer than most of my other short stories (about 40 pages), and the name of the character in the book wasn’t named Stephen King (admittedly it was something like Steve Krall).

I want to love Stephen King. I’ve read his On Writing a dozen times. I’ve read the books in The Dark Tower series a few times (except for The Wind Through the Keyhole and The Dark Tower, which I’ve only read once each). I still work my way through his other works, I follow him on Twitter and Facebook and I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am for his upcoming Hulu show Castle Rock.

But, if I’m being honest with myself, his writing varies so wildly that I find myself curious how he got so popular. So I’m going to dissect a lot of King elements, and I’m going to start with what he does best: unparalleled to anyone else in the industry, characters. For the most part, King can make some killer characters. They’re super deep and have these absolutely stellar conversations, ticks and backgrounds. There are a few exceptions (I’m lookin’ at you Wendy Torrence you boring old bat) but for the most part King crafts so many great and wonderful characters that you feel like you could know them.

What is King not good at? Info dumps. One of the reasons some of these characters are so well crafted is because King will often pause the main narrative to force feed you facts and histories. Often paragraphs at a time. A lot of his post-2000’s books minimize this, but it’s still present.

As a matter of fact The Shining is one of the biggest culprits of this and it takes thirteen chapters for the family to actually arrive at the hotel. That’s right, the first thirteen chapters are mostly comprised of Jack interviewing, coming home, talking to his wife briefly - and King telling you about his characters. Does this work? Yea, sure. It’s King, he can break the rules, right?

We were listening to The Shining on Audible on our way to a book signing (I hope you got out for Bookstore Day last weekend), and about 2 hours in I paused it and had a discussion with my wife. The crux of the conversation being: if King’s name wasn’t on this, would you still be reading it? The clear answer was no.

The last thing that King does that I’m going to talk about is something that I do. It’s something several agents that I’ve queried and submitted to have said I’m doing wrong, and it’s something I’m very mindful of. Head hopping. This is a term that writers (and agents, and editors and publishers) use when they refer to changing point of view in writing without some kind of break.

King is the king of head hopping. It can happen a dozen times or more per chapter and without any kind of word break (like a page break, switching chapter or anything) if poorly done it can leave the reader confused. I’ve been told this dozens of times in the last ten years. When asked what point of view, I used to always say ‘third person’, but after the first few times I changed to be more specific: ‘third person omniscient’. Omniscient points out that the piece of work doesn’t have a single narrator, but instead encompasses multiple narrators, that the narrator is all knowing somehow or (more commonly) the narration of the story is not limited to a single point of view.

And here’s the catch. Even after that change agents will still ask for my submission and be caught off guard, or turn me down based on the fact that there’s head hopping. I’ve been pretty upset by this, but I’ve also asked a few agents about this and had some really thorough discussions on this - some have been able to say that head hopping isn’t for them and it’s just a taste thing (which I respect), while others flounder with their response or just don’t answer at all.

So to wrap this long winded post up I want to share the only bit of advice that King has in On Writing that matters: not everything works for everyone, find what works for you and stick to it.

Hidden Information and Expectations

There are lots of tough moments in being a writer. In addition to struggling over word choice, sentence structure, etc. there are certain expectations that writers don’t necessarily know they’re supposed to follow, the most obvious one being word counts. Lots of genres have different agent and publisher expectations of word count. This information is readily available on the internet (through a few different outlets with a little wiggle room in answer). It’s not put in front of the author. Even in agent submission websites. They will say they’re looking for Science Fiction but the hidden information there is that they expect the manuscript to be between 90k and 125k. While a different website recommends a much narrower 100k to 115k words.

Another difficult thing for writers is removing work. Often writers will remove up to 50% of their original manuscript in order to get it to the goal, make things more fast paced, improve the flow of the manuscript or (literally) hundreds of other reasons. This is often referred to as “killing your darlings” because we’re a bunch of people who want to rub elbows and tell inside jokes.

This often comes after spending weeks or months writing a draft, reading it, making some minor changes, giving it to critique partners, etc. Then someone points out that “X doesn’t particularly make sense”. X happens to be something you peppered into your manuscript at the beginning, so you have to remove it or change it so it does make sense.

Sometimes, though, changing that element doesn’t work. You spend hours (or maybe days) talking with people about how to change that particular element and how you can make it work. Sometimes you need to just step back, look at the big picture, and kill your darlings. Save that element for a different project, or perhaps a sequel.

There’s a third option. Shelf the project. Make notes, so you don’t forget what you were trying to do. Put it on the shelf and wait. Wait a month. Three months. Do another project. Keep working. Pick up your problem project when you’re done. Yes, it means that the project will take longer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Director of Nintendo and designer of the Legend of Zelda games once said “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” The same is true about books (and most other media, I imagine).

Here’s the important part; for readers and authors alike: this is okay. Books can be delayed. There’s a huge taboo in the world of entertainment right now about the delay of things. About how long it takes George R. R. Martin to write the next A Song of Ice and Fire books. About how far pushed back the next season of Westworld is. These are fine.

We like this content because of its quality. When we give less time to creators to spend on a project, we’re sacrificing quality for instant gratification. It took years to make Game of Thrones, and even more to make A Clash of Kings. There were two years a piece between the first three books, five years between A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, and another six years before A Dance with Dragons! And it’s already been six years since then!

I have shelved a recent project. It broke my heart to do so. But the book will be better off in the long run because I did that. It was exhausting. I felt like a drug addict being walked in on while using. Like having all the puzzle pieces but not knowing the end result.

So a few weeks ago, I started something new.