When It All Comes Together

I've already mentioned that I favor an analysis of setup and payoff, rather than the shallow fad of trope recognition. Let's look at one way that dramatic tension favors multiple threads of setup and payoff.

• Governor Tarkin wants to use the Death Star to destroy the Rebellion.
• Luke Skywalker wants to join the Rebellion in the fight against the Empire.
• Princess Leia wants to deliver the plans into the hands of the Rebellion to stop the Death Star.
• Han Solo wants to earn a reward so he can pay off his debts.

At the climax of the film, three of these threads are unresolved, and one (Han's) is seemingly resolved, though not to the audience's satisfaction. Han Solo got his reward money, but we can tell that Luke would have preferred Han to be less mercenary, to stay and join in the fight.

A fifth thread is introduced:

• Darth Vader wants to defend the Death Star against the Rebel attack.

Then the climax of the film happens, and in about ten seconds of screen time, all five of these dramatic threads are resolved with the destruction of the Death Star. Tarkin is killed before achieving his goal; Vader's reason for defending the Death Star is taken away. Luke finally fulfills his objective to join the fight against the Empire. Leia's arc is resolved the moment the battle station is destroyed. Han's arc is improved upon when he finally returns to save the day, because he

It's a pretty textbook climax to a story: the near-perfect 

• Han Solo never returns; Luke blows up the Death Star anyway.
• Han Solo returns, but Luke is killed; Han blows up the Death Star.
• Luke is too late; Tarkin blows up Yavin IV and destroys the Rebellion.
• Tarkin blows up Yavin IV and 

It could have ended a lot of different ways, is what I'm getting at. All of the narrative threads could have come together in a myriad of different outcomes. I contend that it's the multitude of resolutions 

Let's look at another one.

In 

• Sauron wants to destroy the West.
• Gollum wants to recover the Ring.
• Aragorn (and Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas et al) wants to buy time for Frodo.
• Frodo wants to destroy the Ring.

At the moment of the destruction of the One Ring, all four of these threads are hanging. Then, with one single action — Gollum seizing the ring and falling over the cliff into the Cracks of Doom — all of the narrative conflict is resolved. Sauron's power is diminished and depleted by the Ring's destruction; Gollum recovers the Ring 

This makes for a satisfying climax to the story, because all of the major threads are resolved; in the novelization, we have a few minor elements to wrap up, such as the Scouring of the Shire, but for the most part we are past the downhill slope, shooting past the tip of the ramp, and ready to land. Nevertheless, all of the threads come together in a neat little bow in a very short space of time.

Notice in that summary that Frodo did nothing. He had no hand in the resolution of his own plot arc. He 

This, I feel, is why Frodo feels like such an empty, unfulfilled character at the end. Tolkien allowed Frodo's very mission to be stolen from him, and correctly painted him afterward as unhappy and incomplete. Yes, Frodo was susceptible to the temptations of the One Ring, so in some sense he is like an addict who needs his fix; but in another very important way, Frodo (the inheritor of the Red Book of Westmarch, Bilbo's story of the Ring) knows he is a failed character in an otherwise successful story.

Diversity in Fantasy

There is a recent trend toward inclusion and diversity in literature. In theater and film*, this can mean anything from minority- or women-led projects such as 

I welcome the idea that Idris Elba could be cast as James Bond. I think it's a bit ridiculous that Black actors struggle to find roles in Hollywood that don't cast them as thugs, criminals, or gangsters from the hood, a movie targeted with laserlike focus on Black audiences who would presumably sympathize with that experience (at least in the mercenary minds of the executives who greenlight such films).

When you start to develop social groups, you also have to consider how the inclusion of some members influences the inclusion of others. Our small group of foodie friends contain one woman who is 60+ years old; when we have larger gatherings, she often brings others of her acquaintance of a similar age. Likewise, if the social group contains someone who is gay, he'll likely have a companion; or if there's a woman who is Jewish, she may have married a Jewish man. The important thing is to be realistic and broadly diverse, because that's the reality we share.

**This is controversial. Playwright 

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Elves and Orcs: reinventing old tropes

I've already said how much I dislike tropes — not specific tropes, just the recent fad of playing Tropespotting as a substitute for literary analysis. Today I'm going to talk about reinventing them.

Since Tolkien, orcs have been given short shrift. In most depictions, orcs are cruel, barbarous, and irredeemably evil — a cannon-fodder race that the heroes can thoughtlessly slaughter in order to appear Manly and/or Powerful. Orcs are basically stuffed target dummies that the brave knights can mow down without having to dwell on the uncomfortable realization that they're mass murderers who kill dozens of sentient beings before breakfast. After all, it is common propaganda in warfare to be told to think of one's enemies as subhuman animals, unworthy of moral consideration, bereft of human rights, immune to all forms of humane treatment. Orcs are merely a personification of wartime propaganda, the enemy every reader can hate.

Tolkien did a great deal of work behind the scenes, as it were, building a society for his elves. After all, somebody had to write those moon-runes and craft the starlight-reflecting riddle on the Gate of Moria and build Rivendell and design all those boats at the Grey Havens and forge the Three Rings of Elvenkind and and write all the silly songs that they sing in the forest. You don't get those things from a race consisting of archer-warriors.

This explains why Gerene has such insecurities. The pressure to conform in elf culture, the burden of parental expectations, is incredibly high. Her mother decided what she would be, before Gerene was even born.

Oswell: character profile in Seer of the Sands

Fantasy stories love their wizards: Belgarath, Allanon, Dallben, Dumbledore. You might expand your list to include Prospero, Morgan LeFay, Merlin, and even Yoda. They seem to know everything and do anything that the plot demands of them, including die and come back to life (I got my eye on you, Gandalf).

There's a place for wizards like that, but it seems to me that this characterization is just a little bit ... lazy. Formulaic. Pre-packaged. In some ways unsatisfying. The trouble is that the wizard is

I wanted to do it differently. I wanted to have the wizard who

To begin with, I had to come up with a form of magic that at least I understood (even if I didn't plan to share the rationale immediately). In my world, magic works roughly like this:

1. Wizardry is unique to the caster; there are no magic words, no mystical gestures, and no special powders or arcane runes that work for every magic-user. Each wizard must design his or her own.
2. Wizards have an easier time focusing their magic when they enchant physical objects, usually some solid, finely decorated item with engraved pictures or filigreed letters that explain what the object does. Spontaneous magic, such as casting a 3rd-level D&D
3. Wizards tend to specialize in a limited number of areas, often just one. Once a wizard becomes known for a certain type of magic, it's very difficult to branch out into other fields. One wizard might specialize in water, another in weather, another in emotion or illusion or healing, and so on.
4. Magic takes effort, usually slightly more effort than doing the thing by hand.
5. Confidence is everything. When a wizard's spell fails him, it can fail so catastrophically that he can never cast spells ever again.

Now that you know that much about the magic in my world — it isn't necessary to know the

Oswell is a young and inexperienced wizard who breaks many of the rules above. He has plenty of raw power and he

These failures — catastrophes, really — have made Oswell who he is today. If he were the heroic type of wizard, he might have gracefully learned from his mistakes and discovered the true depths of his power and control. If he had been the villainous type of wizard, he might have cackled in glee at the pain and suffering of others, or shrugged off the fatalities caused by his own errors as research, or as necessary steps on the path to enlightenment.

Oswell isn't either of these types. He's just an ordinary person who thinks highly of himself, because he can do magic and others can't. When his magic leads him into catastrophe, he simply lies about it and runs away. Far away. And changes his name.

In other words, he conceals his many failures and moves on. He reinvents himself.

This happens to Oswell a lot, too. He's created — and fled from — a number of different aliases over his young life. He's been a caravan guard named Fargas Horsewrinkle, a traveling fortune-teller named Erasmus Ravenhound, and a hedge wizard named Lukanis the Adequate; he's been a tinker, a graverobber, and a highwayman; and when the story begins, he's calling himself Shenan Butterfrock ... dragon expert.

He's just the thing Kasmina needs in order to defeat the dragon Brickwing. At least, he'll say that to anybody who will listen.

Making a System of Magic

Most fantasy worlds have some kind of magic. The Southlands, the land of 

1. An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportionate to how well the reader understands said magic.
2. The limitations of a magic system are more interesting than its powers. What the magic 
3. Expand on what you have already before adding something new.

These rules are all well and good, for a certain kind of storytelling. However, I must take issue with them.

First, I don't think a system such as this is appropriate for all stories. It really depends upon the 

What about the other readers? What happened to magic that feels ... well, 

The second problem I have with the codification of rules is that we already 

In my opinion, there simply isn't any need to invent another set of rules which are functionally identical to the setup-payoff exchange. It's redundant. Restated as rules of dramatic tension, Sanderson's laws of magic would look like this:

1. To do a dramatic reveal and solve conflicts with X, first set up possibility X.
2. To preserve dramatic tension in the rest of your novel, set up the things that can't be solved with X.
3. Don't set up new things if you don't need them.

Rules 1 and 3 are essentially restatement of Chekhov's Gun. Rule 2 is a reminder that introducing unfamiliar elements to the reader requires a little bit of work to establish dramatic tension. Taken together, they're no different than the rules of standard drama.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think Sanderson's rules are 

I want a system of magic that can begin as a wondrous mystery, but then which can evolve into a known quantity, and then into an existential threat once its secrets are known. You can't get that if you're tied to the idea that everything must be understood by the reader throughout.

Gerene: character profile in The Seer of the Sands

Kasmina studies at the monastery of Theothol under the tutelage of monks and scholars that belong to The Order of Heaven's Vault. The Order's purpose is theological academia; they strive to piece together a true picture of the gods by unraveling all of the competing legends that evolved over the centuries. Kasmina has always been told she was a demigoddess, but she never knew her father; she isn't sure if he was truly a god, or what kind of god he might have been. Was he Redhammer, adept of the forge, as worshiped in the Westhold? Could he have been Lukan the Sage, angel of sorcery and the unseen from the Eastern Reach? Had her father been Avloth, the elven god of earthquakes? Or was he some undiscovered god of the ancient Arkenians, lost to modern eyes when that empire fell?

Kasmina: character profile in The Seer of the Sands

As a general rule, I don't base characters on people I know. Occasionally I'll borrow a physical habit or tic, or use a favorite word or phrase, but I don't try to build characters on that basis. Here's what I do instead.

First, it tells me that when the story begins, she's very confident. She rarely ever asks questions, because she's been trained not to; most people assume she already knows everything. She helps others, but her mother has raised her not to simply accept gifts; she always operates on the basis of fair transaction. Kasmina, therefore, is good-hearted and fair-minded, but there's never anybody around to answer 

• Kasmina has a peculiar insight into the hearts and minds of others. Although she isn't certain that this wisdom is divine, she does come to rely upon it. Therefore, she isn't very good at reading emotional cues from others; she never developed the need for that skill. She just always 
• Similarly, Kasmina often begins conversations in the middle. If someone comes to ask her about something, she won't engage in opening conversational gambits ("Hi, how are you today? Hey, I want to ask you something, is that okay?"). She already knows where the conversation is headed, so she'll cut to the chase. This often puts other people off their stride, especially when they think they're being clever and secretive.
• She always knows when people are lying to her. This makes her very bold about accusing others of dishonesty, and it's something she just can't abide. She doesn't like dishonest people; they're too much work. This means she's going to run into inevitable conflicts with others about their own private, personal histories, particularly with Galen Oswell, the devious would-be sorcerer of the group.

Basically, Kasmina's personality is based on a reasonable set of assumptions about her power, her perception, and her purpose to the story. She's 

Writing for an Audience

The paradox of modern publishing — and indeed, of most mass-released art forms — seems to be the quest for something that is fresh, new, and innovative; but also marketable and low-risk with a built-in audience; but also which will generate sales at minimum expense. It seems to be one of those "choose any two" scenarios.

• If it is 
• If it is 
• If it is fresh and 

The publishing world likes to see authors submit comp titles in its query letters. A comp title is a book (or list of books) similar in content, tone, and/or market demographic to the one the querying author has written. It shows the author has done a minimum of homework and has anticipated the needs of the target audience. A query letter is the author's initial pitch to a literary agent — why the agent should take a risk on this novel, at this time.

I sometimes observe that the

Ideally, of course, an agent would probably prefer to receive a query letter that provides a maximum of information density on the work in question. Something neither too long, nor too short, so the agent can spend as little time as possible deciding whether that project is right for the agency, and with a maximum of accuracy.* There's nothing

Why Some Tropes Fail

In this ongoing series of blog posts, I discuss why I dislike the recent fad of naming tropes, and how a model of setups and payoffs gives us a better way to discover why certain tropes often don't work, even when they sometimes do. (You should probably read those two entries first.)

Of the many tropes I often hear excoriated by readers and writers, several stand out. Let's examine some of them using the setups-and-payoffs model to see why these tropes so often fail.

The Mary Sue

The classic form of this trope is the character who is best at everything. She (or he, in the case of the Gary Stu) is younger, prettier, better, smarter, stronger, faster, and more beloved than everyone else in the cast, and she has no difficulty achieving anything. Tasks that befuddle and bewilder even the most seasoned veterans are child's play to her, and everybody is always constantly impressed by everything she does.

Diagnosis: all payoff, no setup.

The Mary Sue character often doesn't work because the reader is not given the opportunity to consider multiple potential overlapping outcomes. This happens because Mary Sue is so good at everything, there is always only one outcome: wildly improbable success. There may not be any intervening narrative time to allow other possibilities even to be contemplated. Instead, the author leaps directly for the happy ending, leaving the setup extrinsic to the story. I suspect the setup resides in the author's chosen audience — either the author herself, or some person whom the author hopes to please.

It's important to remember that the original Mary Sue was written as a parody of bad fan fiction, so there is purpose behind its badness.

Course of Treatment: needs a robust setup and some narrative space to develop tension

It's perfectly fine to have a character that is amazingly powerful and well-liked; the enduring popularity of Wonder Woman might be considered an example of a character that succeeds at this trope. She is powerful, wise, skilled, and almost impossible to defeat; but she can be defeated, on her own terms, and she must labor to overcome these defeats like any other hero. We might similarly consider Sherlock Holmes as a typical example of a Gary Stu.

Love at First Sight

Two lovers meet, their eyes lock across a crowded room. They fall instantly in love! Cue the sweaty love scene, the declarations of infatuation and adoration, and the inevitably overdone sequel.

Diagnosis: overdrawn at the setup bank.

When Love at First Sight fails, it's usually because the author tries to extract more payoff than the setup has warranted. Without doing the legwork to make the romance click, the author tries to squeeze maximum joy out of the presumed-perfect relationship.

Course of Treatment: minimum setup means minimum payoff; focus on something else.

Two of the best-loved works in all of fiction use Love at First Sight, and very effectively. You may scoff, but it's true.

In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo falls instantly in love with Juliet. However, Shakespeare is clever enough to provide just enough setup to make the rest of it work, and he's careful not to overdraw that balance. First, we learn the Capulets and Montagues are blood enemies. Then Romeo is introduced as a lovesick teenager (one strike) who's in love with a woman, Rosalind, that he can't have (two strikes); and his friends drag him to a ball to take his mind off things. He meets Juliet, a Capulet, and we're off. But ol' Billy Shakes doesn't let his payoff get too far out of hand. Romeo and Juliet spend almost no time playing lovey-dovey together, which means we aren't given too large a dose of syrupy joy. Instead, he focuses on the dramatic tension keeping them apart rather than the meager setup keeping them together. We never even get to see the happily-ever-after ending (because, spoiler alert, everybody dies at the end).

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Bennett falls instantly in love with Charles Bingley. Like Shakespeare, Austen is clever enough to provide no more payoff than the setup deserves; before long, Charles is whisked away from Longbourne to London by the machinations of Mr Darcy and his own sisters' interference. Jane Bennett must endure more setup, traveling to London in a pitiful attempt to reconnect with Bingley. Lizzie Bennett can only resolve Jane's romance with Bingley by untangling her own with Darcy: confronting him about his interference, declaring him not to be a gentleman, and so on. In other words, even though Austen has Jane and Bingley fall in love immediately and instantly, there's no payoff until Austen has given herself the time and space to add 50 more chapters worth of setup; and when the payoff comes, it's a simple declaration of marriage and we are rushed along to Lizzie's own denouement. In other words, Austen makes it work because she doesn't demand more payoff for Jane's romance than the setup deserves.

Let's do one more.

Woke Up and It Was All a Dream

The usual form of this trope, the one which so often fails, is the one where the author tries to deceive the reader. The author has taken the trouble to set up the protagonist with hopes, dreams, fears, and goals; and for a brief passage, the author tries to inveigle the reader into believing those hopes, dreams, fears, etc., are coming to pass. Then the author yanks out the carpet from beneath the reader with a shout of "Surprise! I was an unreliable narrator!"

Diagnosis: one setup, but asks for two payoffs; temporarily unreliable narrator

When this trope falls on its face, it's for a very simple reason. The author has built a single setup into the story, then tries to make it pay off twice. The reader gets to experience the catharsis of the first (false) payoff, but then the author demands the reader reinstate the prior level of dramatic tension without doing any additional work. This technique might have worked (and may still work) in a world with powerful social motivators that a) need no restatement and b) aren't specific to the character; for instance, a Victorian lady might have a nightmare about being caught alone with a gentleman. Presuming your readers are also 19th-century gentlewomen, they may not need additional reminders that this activity is verboten. But usually when we try to apply this trope, the audience will throw up their collective hands and shout "Cheap!"

The audience may also be negatively reacting to the use of unreliable narration, a gimmick in which the author abrogates his responsibility to clearly communicate what is actually happening. As the conduit for truth and reality in the fictional world, the author makes the reader dependent upon them. This particular trope asks that the reader permit, and then forgive, the author's deliberate transgression. It is not always easy to recover the reader's trust after that moment. (Note that the reader may react differently to this trope in a story where the unreliability of the narrator has been firmly established, although I can't say that I've ever seen it done.)

Course of Treatment: a) do not claim the false payoff; and/or b) re-establish the setup.

I have several examples of this trope being used successfully. Here I'll present only two of them.

The Princess Bride. In the film version, the Grandfather reads that the king has died, and Buttercup is forced to marry the rotten Prince (viz, Humperdinck). Buttercup is then confronted in the town square by a hideous crone who mocks her for not marrying the man she loves (viz, "Boo!").

The trope is made to work here because the Grandson instantly questions the narrative, long before the audience has an opportunity to do so. The dream sequence thus lampshaded, there is never any serious attempt to trick the audience into paying off the dramatic tension of the first setup (approximately "Buttercup loves Westley and wants to marry him"). Furthermore, the film goes a step beyond this: as soon as Buttercup awakes, she confronts the Prince, which re-establishes the original setup and even raises the stakes; now Buttercup is imprisoned. We leave with the original setup and dramatic tension not only intact, but escalated.

Pet Sematary. In the novel, Louis Creed has what he believes is a nightmare: a patient of his that died from a traumatic accident, Victor Pascow, visits him in the night. Pascow, horribly mutilated, embodies Creed's fear of death and his recent failure as a physician. Creed follows the zombie Pascow into the night, believing he is asleep, as Pascow takes him to the Micmac burial ground and warns him of its dangers When he awakes the next morning, he discovers his feet are covered in dirt and pine needles.

Here again the trope works, because Stephen King first convinces us that it is a dream, before convincing us in the reveal of Dr Creed's dirty feet that it was not; this is the reversal of the typical sequence of the classic trope. Also, the dream sequence is not a payoff for any future fear or desire of Creed's; it is a reminder of a past fear that came true. Last, the dream sequence is not a false payoff, because it is itself a setup; the zombie of Victor Pascow arrives only to deliver exposition.

Setup and Payoff in Dramatic Tension

I've already illustrated the reasons why I don't like using tropes as a metric of literary quality. Tropes don't tell us why a particular work succeeds or fails, because a trope is merely a pattern, not an indicator of quality. For example, one might notice that most blankets are approximately rectangular; this doesn't mean that rectangular blankets are overdone, or that any particular rectangular blanket is warm enough for your climate, or if the style of fabric will match your décor.

In order to fully examine why certain tropes frequently fail, we need another analytic method. We need something more robust than merely naming the superficial pattern.

I propose, as one method, the setup-and-payoff method of dramatic tension.

Consider Chekhov's Gun, the oft-rephrased statement of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov that goes roughly thus: if you hang a rifle on the wall in Act One, the audience will expect it to be fired by Act Three. One might also find the corollary statement that unnecessary elements are distracting and should be removed from a story.

It is a general statement of setup and payoff: that any given element bears with it an expectation of importance, of cathartic release. In every statement of exposition, we hang a rifle on the wall; in every chapter, we discharge some of them and hang others, until by the climax, the important ones have been discharged in its own way. Lest you deem this formulaic or predictable, remember that each rifle may be fired at any number of targets. We know the rifle will be fired, but not the direction of the bullet.

At its most basic level, storytelling is an act of setup and payoff. If I began a story with the basic sentence I pick up the ball and throw it to Joe, there are a number of potential outcomes. I might throw the ball badly; Joe might fail to catch it. The ball might be intercepted by another. If you consider the statement as a mathematical function, we might describe the set of potential solutions as a domain, or a possibility space.

I could enhance the story by adding context. We are playing baseball. Joe is the second baseman, and I am the catcher. It's the bottom of the eighth inning, and the game is tied. The runner on first takes off, his cleats throwing up clouds of infield dirt. At the same moment, the batter bunts the ball right in front of home plate. I pick up the ball and throw it to Joe . . . 

This expansion hangs a few more rifles on the wall. Now we have some expectation of the stakes that are riding on the outcome. However, the same possibility space still pertains: either I throw the ball badly, or I throw it well; and in the latter case, either Joe fields the throw in time, or he doesn't. Someone may intercept the ball, such as the pitcher or the shortstop. The reader (or the listener) keeps the possibility space open in his or her mind, awaiting the resolution — in other words, waiting for the payoff that aligns with the setup.

If each setup has multiple payoffs, then multiple setups begin to interact in combinatorial ways. The sum is greater than the whole of the parts. A novel becomes a very large possibility space, with hundreds of setups, each of which has multiple potential payoffs. The reader is asked to maintain this very large set of potential outcomes, and as the novel moves along, some possibilities close and further possibilities open up. As the novel approaches the end, the author forecloses on some possibilities and entertains others, diminishing the possibility space until only the novel's outcome remains.

If dramatic tension can be reduced to an examination of setups and payoffs, then we should next ask ourselves: what is a setup?

It's easy. A setup can be anything. It could be characterization or backstory; it can be something in the setting, or a piece of scenery in your world. It could be a prophecy given by the venerable wizard, or the declaration of impending victory by the gloating villain. Anything that makes the reader ask and then what happened? can be a setup. If you declare a character is a sexist, then the reader will expect a scene in which this trait pays off — the character's sexism causes something to happen, or prohibits another thing from happening. If you declare that only the Chosen One (ugh) can defeat the Dark Lord (double ugh, but okay), the reader will expect this will eventually happen.

Getting back to where we started: why do some tropes often fail, but sometimes work? It might be because the author didn't pay enough attention to setup and payoff. In my next entry, I discuss this further.

Tropespotting

I'm going to come right out and say it: I don't like tropes.

I know what you're probably thinking. A trope is a pattern; it is a superficial similarity of narrative content. How can I not like tropes?

Let me clarify. I don't like what the current fad (and it is a fad) of named tropes has done for our ability to engage in meaningful literary discourse. We have turned literary analysis into a parlor game of Tropespotting, in which we identify patterns of content. This turns many of us away from a deeper understanding of the themes and forces that underpin the tropes themselves. We have forgotten how to analyze why a trope works (when it works) or fails (when it fails).

I see this frequently in social media accounts from authors who post videos on YouTube. The Top Ten Tropes in Fantasy. Worst Tropes Ever. The romance tropes which the vlogger adores, despises, recommends, etc.

But I say: what's the use?

Consider the purpose of a label. We have a word like apple which suggests a category of things. All such things in that category have certain traits in common. In the Venn diagram of entailed meaning, an apple is a fist-sized fruit with white or whitish-yellow flesh and a thin, crispy skin of red, green or yellow; it has a stem end and a blossom end; it has a core containing seeds, which themselves contain a certain amount of potassium cyanide; it grows on trees, and it ripens in the fall. We can even create a sub-category of apple to denote its endless varietals: Granny Smith, Fuji, Braeburn, Red Delicious, Pink Lady. We can observe how each sub-category differs from the parent.

The label here is powerful and useful. I can say I like Honeycrisp apples, or obsesrve that Golden Delicious apples make good pies. I don't have to specify the quality of the apple; it is assumed that when I speak of eating an apple, I speak of an apple that is ready to be eaten. It is automatically entailed within the act of eating that we are contemplating a ripe, fully matured apple, one which has not spoiled, and not an apple in some other inedible condition. By using the label, we have narrowed our discussion to the characteristics unique to the varietal and excluded other factors.

Now note that when people talk of tropes, we do it differently.

Authors and book-bloggers might say I like this trope, but only if it's done well. Or they'll say I can't stand this trope, but sometimes it's really good and I just can't help myself. Or they'll say I always like this trope, even when the book is garbage.

What does that tell you about the trope label? To me, it says that the label isn't particularly useful for literary analysis.

As with apples, we try to use trope labels to discuss the set of all stories that contain the trope, but we fail. We can't always easily discuss whether the trope is good or bad, easy or difficult, or sophisticated or mundane, without bending over backward to qualify our likes and dislikes with an outside factor: writing quality. When used for literary analysis, the label fails its most basic purpose, that of grouping like things together.

When we use trope names in this way, in my opinion, we're talking about the wrong thing. It would be like discussing the comfort of different mattress by referencing their shapes, or the beauty of roses by their price — in other words, comparing superficial similarities rather than fundamental metrics of quality. We should be talking about why this trope usually fails, and how to make the trope succeed.

Instead, we've turned literary analysis into a game of Tropespotting, which is neither enlightening nor engaging — at least to me. You may feel free to disagree.

There is value to having names for tropes, because patterns of similarity do exist. Trope names are simple and soundbite-worthy in the Internet era. They allow us to easily recall other stories with similar structural elements. As a tool for deciding whether a story is good, I find that tropes fail. Returning to apple varietals, they are named for apples that are edible, but tropes are named for patterns that are discovered in both good and bad media. One might say one does not like a certain food — scallops, perhaps, or broccoli — but it might be more accurate (at least for most people) to say one has never had that food prepared in a way that satisfied.

Why create labels based on patterns found in bad literature, like "Mary Sue?" Why mix them together with the labels for patterns based on good literature? It would be like grouping the names of diseases in the same list as the names of medicines. What use is that?

Lastly, I feel that identifying tropes is not a difficult or useful skill to acquire. That's memorization and recognition of patterns. On the scale of Bloom's Taxonomy, recognizing a trope is the very lowest level of understanding — Knowledge, which is the memorization of facts, and Comprehension, which rises to the level of comparing facts. In order to analyze a book properly it takes higher levels of understanding: Application, Analysis, Evaluation. (Synthesis, not so much.) Why dumb down our discourse? 

So I don't like tropes, or at least not the parlor game version of same. When I send a dish back, I don't blame the ingredient; I blame the cook.

In my next entry, I discuss an alternative to tropespotting.

Banging Words Together

What's your process? I hear you ask. Technically, I don't hear you asking it, but since you've settled upon this blog, I assume you have some bare level of interest in the question. It's one of those questions that often interest readers (and new writers), because there is no single universal process for all stories and suitable for all writers. There are habits, there are superstitions, and there are tricks of the trade, but there are no algorithms by which one automates the process of banging words together. On occasion the author must venture forth and adventure off of the main road and into the literary wilderness.

Rather than dictate Universal Rules from On High, I'll tell you what my general tendencies are.

• I do a lot of planning . . . but not all of it. The hardest part about story planning and worldbuilding (which is a fertile topic on its own for another blog) is knowing when to stop. You can't always be certain what you're going to need before you've composed the story; this makes it almost inevitable that you're going to create more than you require — more background, more world, more plot, more characters, more scenes, more places. As I see it, you don't need much background in order to begin, and it's easier to spot the gaps as you go along if you haven't overbuilt. All I need is a sufficiently detailed overview in order to interpolate the necessary details. This habit stems from my many years of being GM (the game master or, as D&D calls it, the Dungeon Master) in tabletop role-playing games. When your players are unpredictable, over-planning is not your friend!* Thus, I find it much more valuable to be able to improvise plausible details using the broad strokes as a guideline.
• I plan so I know what the story's about. A writer friend told me many years ago that it isn't enough to know what happens. I need to know what the story is about on an emotional level. I build enough of a plan so I can see where the emotional connections lie. Otherwise I feel like I'm flying blind.

Woman on Painted Bridge isn't a story about a bisexual art gallery owner falling in love. It's about how we represent the truth. Titania conceals the truth about who she is by shifting, chameleon-like, to whatever label fits the social group. Avery conceals the truth about himself by retreating into a magical world he created in his paintings. By contrast, the character of Skye always says exactly what she's thinking, with no filter. Titania's business partner is honest and forthright, and her chosen activities — carpentry and surfing — are bound to the real world, with no nonsense.

The Unassassin (my current work in progress) isn't about a young woman and her cat who delve into the afterlife to find a new Emperor to put on the throne. It's about tradition versus innovation: how we stifle what could be when we cling too hard to what used to be. Khaizumai is the new generation, an 18-year-old woman who inherited her father's role as Imperial Unassassin, who does not see the point of following all the old traditions. Theizo, her father, is the man who insists on teaching her the proper way of doing things, based on ancient philosophies that have stood unchallenged for centuries.

• I keep a story bible. This means different things to different authors, but for me, it means a reference of all the details I don't want to keep in my head. This can cover a lot of ground. Generally, my planning goes into the story bible, but I also update the story bible as I go.
• Details about the world. When I built the Southlands in Seer of the Sands, I started by naming the countries A, B, C, D and E. Not very original, I know, but I had to start somewhere. I decided upon forms of government for each nation, named the important ruling figures, and established its capital. I decided how large each nation was, by way of comparison to some specific real-world region. The nation has to have a population, so I determined what its overall total population would be, its density, and the distribution of races — how many humans, elves, orcs, and so on. As I named each nation, I made sure to reflect its unique linguistic history in the mix of sounds I choose.
• Details about the characters. Although Scrivener has a place for tracking character details, I sometimes keep my notes in an Excel spreadsheet document rather than in a word processor so I can make use of multiple monitors, unlimited screen size and preformatted columns. Here I track each character's age, hair color and length, eye color, height, body type, and other story-specific details about them (name of horse; favorite phrases, sense of humor, likes and dislikes). If I'm writing along, I want an easy reference to which I can return when I need to know how I've described something that has appeared previously.
• Details about the character arcs, plot and story structure. I knew before I started writing the second chapter of Seer of the Sands that that the book would have 14 chapters, and I knew what would happen in each. I don't always do this, but when I do, it's useful to keep a record of that structure somewhere handy. It tells me that a certain character's most important moment is to be found in Chapter n, so I know I must work on escalating to that level in Chapter n – 1. If I think of a new scene, I can place it somewhere >n or <n depending on whether it escalates that moment or unwinds from it. 
• I read the story aloud to myself or someone else. This is the best way I know to do line editing and to clean up prose. When you read aloud to another, you're not permitted to skip words or skim over paragraphs that you're sick of looking at. There's no shortcut to reading aloud. It also gives you a sense of whether dialogue flows correctly, or whether there are missing scene transitions, stray punctuation marks, or any misspelled or overused words.
• I keep a glossary of names I've already used. I don't like to re-use names or over-emphasize names from a particular area of the alphabet. This is useful so I don't end up with several different orcs all named Dzgugh. It's happened.***
• I write exposition in the third person, then throw it away. Not actually delete it, mind you — I just set aside that exposition and let it serve to inform character dialogue. Exposition sounds better when a character says it, because then it's more than a series of dry, dull facts. It's a life experience; it's a trauma or a happy memory or a lesson somebody had to learn. Exposition given through the eyes of a character contains a point of view. Of course, before I can really write that expository dialogue, I first need to know what the truth is (or what will serve as the "truth" for story purposes).
• I'm always re-reading. You can't always catch problems on the first, second, or fifteenth pass. Keep reading your story, because you will find problems that you never found before.

* Overplanning in D&D means you could spend several days building an optional encounter in an old roadside ruin that lies on the direct road to the haunted wizard's tower**. Instead of investigating the tavern where the adventure begins and speaking to the old man who informs the players of the quest, the players instead start a bar brawl, burn down the tavern, slaughter the villagers, fight the night watch, and end up imprisoned in a desert town a thousand miles from the action. Instead of the game I had planned in the rain forest of a scenic sea coast, I'm forced to improvise a prison break in a desert town that I literally just invented sixty seconds ago.

** Which is either the tower of a haunted wizard, or the haunted tower of said wizard. Or, potentially, both. You never know when you start improvising.

*** No it hasn't. But it could happen.

Font of Ideas

One question that many prospective writers ask published authors is the old standby, the one which induces groans and much wailing and gnashing of teeth: where did you get the idea for this book?

I object to this question, largely on the grounds that it is the wrong question. What the questioner would like to know is how do you decide what to write about? but that is not the inquiry that has been forwarded. As phrased — and the question is often so phrased — this question mistakenly attributes the writing of a book to a single idea. The questioner has mistaken a book for a single, basic concept which is conjured, de novo, from thin air, like a butterfly from the hands of an illusionist; and the idea is then persuaded gently to flutter gently onto the page to the sounds of thunderous applause. In actuality, at least from my own perspective, a book is dozens of ideas, all hopefully working together.

Seer of the Sands began with several basic ideas, which I alluded to in the previous entry.

1. A non-human intelligence should be depicted as truly non-human.
2. Women in fantasy novels should not be treated so poorly.
3. A fantasy story should respect the concepts of time and distance.

With only those ideas on the table, I didn't have a story. My ideas were nothing more than a delimiting framework, or a set of constraints if you like. I could have used all the ideas at once, or separated them into individual works. They were compatible, but they were not interdependent.

I began by examining the kinds of non-human intelligence that I could improve upon, and I hit upon dragons. The typical storybook dragon was often depicted as a cruel, greedy human, sitting on a pile of gold, challenging knights and tormenting maidens for no good reason. Could I take the idea of dragons and make them seem alien and strange? Could I give dragons a set of motivations and actions that would seem almost impenetrable to the average human? And if I could, how could I?

As soon as I hit upon the idea of dragons, I knew I would have to decide what dragons were and what they could do. Did they all breathe fire? Did they all fly? Could they fly, given the limitations of physics? How intelligent were they? Did they have their own language? How much territory did a dragon require? Did they live alone, and if so, why would dragons need a human-style language? How long did they live? Could they be killed? Could one dragon kill another? How many dragons were there? What did dragons spend all their time doing? Did dragons get along with each other?

Any writer who is contemplating the inclusion of such iconic monsters in his or her story should ask these questions. It's part of the worldbuilding that is unique to your own tale. My answers would inform the kind of dragons I would write about, but it is very likely that another writer would come up with very different answers than I. However, this blog is neither the time nor place to reveal my conclusions about dragons; after all, I'd rather you bought the book.

Now I had my delimiting framework, and I knew that dragons would take a central role; also, I knew that a large part of my story would likely be to reveal that alien intelligence to the reader. My next set of questions began to unfold. Who would discern this alien intelligence and expose it to the reader? What kind of character could best uncover these secrets? Why has nobody yet discovered the truth about dragons in my world?

The answer to that last question was easy, because it was part of my delimiting structure in the initial idea set. The answer was Time. If dragons are long-lived creatures, I presumed that the short lives of mortals were not sufficient to tease out the various patterns in dragon behavior. Therefore, in order to unravel the mystery behind an alien dragon intelligence, I would need characters who lived a long time, or who could effectively pass on their secrets and wisdom across the centuries. This limited the kinds of characters I could choose, and I began to consider various ways that a mortal's span on Earth could stretch across many lifetimes.

Have you noticed the pattern yet?

A book is not a single idea. It is multiple ideas, examined separately and together. Each idea provokes a question: who, what kind, which one exactly, how many. Each answer is a new idea that fills in a gap, and provokes further questions.

Books, and ideas for books, do not spring from nothingness like fully-formed Athena from the forehead of Zeus. They are worked and shaped. An idea is beaten, bent, twisted, heated, steamed, curved, carved, cut, measured*, and finally attached. Where there are gaps, new ideas can be used to fill the holes. When an idea ceases to fit together with the others it is removed and worked again. There was never a single moment when I said, "Aha! I'm having an idea for a book, and this is what it's about." Instead, I had ideas, plural, which I jotted down in case I found a use for them. I worked them and turned them this way and that until they seemed to form a shape.

So don't ask an author for where they get their inspiration. Inspiration is not where the real magic is. Anyone can come up with an idea from thin air. It's the process of working those ideas until they become story-shaped that makes a book happen.

* One should always measure before one cuts, because — oh.