What is The Difference Between Tragedy and Grimdark?

Labels are important, both for readers as well as for writers. How you classify a story helps libraries and bookstores sort which shelf it goes onto, and it can act as a big, red sign for readers who have a taste for particular fiction. Sometimes those labels can be helpful, like when a sub-genre emerges and grows into its own distinct category. Sometimes these labels can be used to pour shame onto books though, labeling them as surely as a big, scarlet A.

One of those labels is Grimdark, and it is still a battleground for readers and writers alike.

In the gutters of the genre ghettos there can be only one heir to the fantasy throne.

What Is Grimdark?

Before we get too far into the conversation we should all be on the same page. The phrase Grimdark, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, began with the quote, "In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war," which comes from the Warhammer 40,000 game. For those not familiar with the game it features a bleak, dystopian future where all races and species are locked in bloody, eternal conflict across the stars, and the millions of bodies and oceans of blood are justified by nothing so much as a need to feed the war machine.

The label has expanded beyond the war game and its brethren though; today it refers mostly to speculative fiction (a broad term encompassing sci-fi and fantasy alike) where there is A) a grim and dark tone (natch), B) a sense of realism, and C) the agency of the characters involved in the story.

For example, say you were writing a fantasy story. Let's say that this story depicted a world where deaths are visceral, and the politics behind wars are realistic. Kings are not noble, divine rulers but rather spoiled children or iron-fisted tyrants who took the throne by the sword and keep it the same way. The heroes of your story have flaws, and there is no guarantee that their actions are noble or good. There is, in fact, no guarantee that the protagonists will succeed (or even survive), or that in succeeding they will enact any real change.

Does this sound familiar?

Brace yourself... Martin is coming.

George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire has become the standard-bearer for grimdark fantasy. It is, in its way, an anti-Tolkien where the world is full of human complexities, evil is present in the hearts of men rather than in some outside force that must be defeated, and where vicious killers and tortured souls can exist in the same character.

Grimdark has its detractors though. People who claim that this kind of fiction glorifies brutality, and that in its pursuit of "realism" it's simply creating soulless pornography. Where is the hero's journey? Where are the morality tales where knights in gleaming armor fight against the evils that plague humanity in the form of dragons, demons, and evil wizards? Lastly, and the most often asked question, who the hell gets catharsis out of this?

I have an answer to that last one, actually. Humans, and they have since the dawn of Western civilization.

Tragedy's Rockstar Child

The Grimdark sub-genre is seen by many as an unnecessary attempt at edginess. It's fantasy in a black leather jacket with bad boy shades, out to make you think he's going to change before he fucks your girlfriend, blows smoke in your face, and roars out onto that highway to hell with flames shooting from his tail pipe.

The catharsis in watching terrible things happen, and in seeing characters try to fight against overwhelming forces, goes back a long, long way though. According to the Wiki gods it goes back to about the 6th century BCE.

A couple thousand years before this fellow, if you're counting.

Greek tragedy is, in its basest form, watching fundamentally flawed characters struggle against things too big for them to beat. Oedipus fights against fate, and his quest for truth opens his eyes before he shuts them forever. Antigone doesn't fare much better, struggling against generations of tragedy before smashing against the rocks of her own. Watching a world where one wrong decision, or one perilous action can wreck bloody ruin on everything you held dear has been the preferred entertainment of people for more than a millennium.

Grimdark is just the latest child of this human desire to watch everything fall apart.

When Everything Ends in Blood and Tears

There will always be people who prefer happy endings and black-and-white stories, just as there were people in Ancient Greece who preferred comedy to tragedy. Some people like to pick up whichever mask most suits them that day, satisfying the need they have at the time. Some people, readers and writers alike, just can't get enough of that sensation of meeting a character just as flawed and lost as they themselves are, reading through that character's choices and adventures, and riding that roller-coaster all the way down until their Icarus smashes to paste on the rocks below.

Speaking of which...

To answer the question I posed in the title of this blog post, Grimdark and tragedy are related. Dark overtones and dystopian horrors are certainly right at home under tragedy's big tent, but not all tragedy is Grimdark. Some tragedy sneaks up on you, getting its fingers under your skin and gently caressing your heartstrings before it uses them as an instrument to play you a sad song. Sometimes it looks like everything's going to be all right, and you let yourself hope, before the sad mask brings down the curtain on another broken ending.

If you're a fan of tragedy, but you can only take Grimdark in small doses, check out my latest book New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam. Take a tour of a place where the brilliant light of science casts shadows dark enough to get lost in, and where down every alley there's a new story itching to be told. The first two tales, along with the introduction are free to all, so step up and take the $2 tour.

You've got nothing to lose but a few tears... and that's a small price to pay, don't you think?

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Don't Put Real People In Your Novel... Seriously, Don't Do It

People say some confusing, frustrating, and outright rude things to writers. I've chronicled some of them in Things You Should Never Say To An Author and More Things You Should Never Say To An Author, but there's one which hasn't made it onto these lists yet. It's a question which only comes from people who've read your book (or at least some of it), and most of the time these people probably don't realize they're being insulting. That question?

Who is this character, really?

Your mother.

There seems to be this strange, mis-guided belief among the reading public that authors are all petty, vindictive dickheads who use their novels as an excuse to inflict pain and suffering on cardboard cut outs of people in their real lives. That is not to say there aren't authors who do this. I'm sure there are plenty of authors who've parodied childhood bullies, unpleasant in-laws, and ex-lovers in their books. But you shouldn't, and here's why.

Reason #1: This is Not Amateur Night

Think about the last person you met whose work included references to actual people from the author's actual life. Chances are good that instead of Ian Fleming (the author of James Bond who based a lot of the super spy's story on WWII-era spies he worked with) you're probably thinking of that kid from your high school creative writing class whose stories were all about rebellious teens and their cartoonishly restrictive parents. Or maybe you think of that one friend you had in college whose protagonists always wound up with beautiful girls who were suspiciously similar to classmates he could never get to go out with him.

You are shooting blanks, my friend.

The point is that taking real people from your life and sticking them right into your story is not good for your art. It prejudices you regarding the person portrayed (for good or for ill), and you are more likely to write them as a parody than as a character with any actual depth. You rarely know real people as deeply or as thoroughly as a character you've created from the ground up, because you don't have access to all the facts and background of real people. With characters you sort of need that.

Reason #2: There Might Be Consequences

Maybe you're thinking hey, this is my story and I'm not going to let some random guy on the Internet tell me how to write. And you're correct, you don't have to listen to me. The person you might have to listen to though is the fellow in the black robe holding the little wooden hammer.

Tough critics ain't got nothing on lawyers.

It is not overly common for people put into your novel to sue you, but it is definitely possible. The more famous you get, and the more money the book generates, the more likely a lawsuit becomes though. Maybe the guy you made into the villain feels this book is libelous. Maybe a woman whose character was murdered is claiming pain and suffering. The reasons can vary from the legitimate to the ridiculous, but even if you win the suit there are the legal fees, the cost of defense, and the fallout the accusation might generate. It could damage your reputation, get your book panned pretty harshly by critics, and if you're publishing with a company instead of doing it yourself it could get your book pulled from the shelves.

What You Should Do Instead

Unless your book is explicitly about real people (or parodies of real people) you should not attempt to cut large swaths out of reality and paste them onto the page. With that said though it is a good idea to carefully observe the people around you. Look at how they act, listen to the things they say, and attempt to understand their psychology. If you can do that then you'll end up creating deeper, more believable characters.

And how is that any different?

Because plagiarism is copying down a single document verbatim. Research is taking parts and pieces from different documents and gluing them together with your own words. The former is considered bad form, and is something you should avoid. The latter, while harder, ultimately creates a better finished product that you can't be sued over.

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The Disposable Woman: A Trope That Really Needs to Go

Motivation is one of the central parts of a story; if your main character doesn't have any motivation then chances are good you can't really call him a hero. If you're having trouble lighting a fire under your lead's nether regions though, relax, there's a simple way to get it done.

All you have to do is kill a woman who's important to him.

Instructions are on page 24.

A wife, a daughter, a mother (all three if you're time-traveling in Alabama); it doesn't matter who she is as long as she's important to your main character. Her death will act as the springboard for whatever it is your main character needs to do in your story. Maybe that thing is to put on a cape and cowl to prowl the streets at night, maybe it's asking the woman he loves to marry him, or maybe it's throwing his badge out the window to go on a blood-soaked vengeance spree, but whatever it is all you need to do is drill that special lady in your lead's life.

Or is it?

The Disposable Woman

I swear I'll avenge you... you... shit, I knew your name a minute ago...

This trope, appropriately labeled the Disposable Woman (here's the page for it at TV Tropes), is perhaps one of the greatest examples of lazy writing that no one questions. We see it in video games like Final Fantasy VII (it's Vincent Valentine's entire back story), and in comic books like The Punisher and Batman. It's a favorite in action movies like Mel Gibson's Edge of Darkness, and  it's the entire point of the first Deathwish film. The female character in question is not a vibrant, living part of the story that our audience gets to fall in love with. She isn't someone whose death truly affects us. She's typically just a ghostly, haunting reason for whatever is going on; she exists solely as the catalyst for our hero's (and it's always the hero, never the heroine) actions. If we get to see her at all it will be for a brief few flashes until something awful happens to her.

What's The Problem?

To explain what's wrong with this trope I'll give you an example of how it's done right. In Stephen King's novel Bag of Bones we meet up with author Mike Noonan. Mike's life changes dramatically when his wife Jo dies (but she maintains a ghostly presence throughout the book, making her a Lost Lenore rather than a Disposable Woman. In short, we actually see how and why she's important to Mike). Mike goes up to his summer home where he meets and falls in love with a much younger woman named Mattie Devore. This embroils him in her custody battle for her daughter Kyla against her father-in-law. For more than half the book we learn about Mike, Jo, and his new lady love, before a man with a gun shows up and kills Mattie. In a piece of meta-criticism Mike remembers how when he would get stuck writing a story he'd just have a man with a gun come in and kill the woman, something he's horrified by with his lover's blood all over his hands.

That right there is why this trope is such a problem; the shallowness of how it's typically used.

In Bag of Bones we're invested in both of the women that Mike loses. His wife is more than just a convenient reason for him to get out of town, and his new lover's death is something that rocks Mike and the audience to their bones. They're both given depth, and a continued presence in the story. In short the author worked to be dynamic, rather than just relying on a trope crutch to prop up the narrative.

Why Does It Matter?

On a professional level the Disposable Woman is lazy. Just as, if not more lazy, then throwing in a rape scene just to add drama or to spackle over a plot point to your story (more on that here). It's quick shorthand for a motivation that readers have seen a hundred times, and it absolves the writer of doing the hard work of pulling the reader in. For a recent example look at the character of Drax the Destroyer from the film Guardians of the Galaxy. He's a hulking brute who's murdered hundreds of people trying to get to the man who killed his wife and child... but should we feel for him? Is a man (using the term loosely) capable of such wanton brutality someone who was ever a good father? A good husband? Or was he always like this, and the death of his family simply gave him the excuse? We don't know; we're just supposed to take that tragedy at face value and accept that it made Drax who he is now.

Secondly using the Disposable Woman is sending a message to readers. A message that as writers we should really, truly consider before we put it down on paper.

Don't be that guy.

Stories carry messages. If your story is about a modern day knight with a machine gun off to slay the dragon because it kidnapped a princess, then that sends a message. It tells male readers that violence is an acceptable solution to problems, it tells female readers that they shouldn't struggle when taken captive, and it tells dragons they're horribly evil fucks who deserve to be shot.

The problem with the Disposable Woman is that she sends a message to women just as surely as Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty does. First off, it tells women that the only role they can have to motivate a story is to die, and that's not the way anyone wants to be represented. Secondly it tends to show women that women only have importance when they're connected to men; mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, daughters, and girlfriends. Even if there are other female characters in the story that stigma is going to be sitting over the hero's motivation.

That is not to say that you can't use the Disposable Woman in your story. The next time that setup occurs to you though, ask yourself if that's the only way. Does your FBI agent's wife have to be murdered before he starts playing hardball with the mafia? Instead, why not have her leave him because he's too dedicated to the case? Why not have him driven half-crazy because he keeps seeing men he knows are guilty go free? Why not give him a particular mad-on against the crime that a particular organization is committing and getting away with?

There's always multiple sources of motivation. If you sidestep the neat and easy way to set up a story you're likely to discover more about your characters, and to create a richer story than you might otherwise have written.


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Profanity in Fiction: When it's Okay to Say "Fuck"

Anyone who loves banned books week as much as I do (at least partially because it always sneaks up on me) is aware of what the top three reasons for books being deemed "objectionable" are. In no particular order they are; sex, violence, and profanity. While we could go on endlessly about the first two, let's focus on the third. Profanity.

What's the Big Fucking Deal?

If I had a nickel... I sure as fuck wouldn't put it in there.

Profanity causes a lot of arguments in fiction. On the Don't Say That side of the line we have people who consider profanity to be low-class, cheap, and offensive. These readers may shut a book and refuse to finish it if the author uses profanity in the book, and they may also attempt to get the book banned from a library. Readers on this side of the line also tend to trumpet the defense of the young and impressionable, claiming that if they aren't old enough to use that kind of language then they shouldn't be reading books with those words in them either. Whether one agrees with these sentiments or not they're important to consider because there are a lot of readers who feel this way, and pissing off readers is a good way to shoot your career in the foot.

The other side of the argument is made up of the That's How People Talk camp. Think about when you watch a rated-R movie on TV, and the hero's profane one-liner is turned into a kid-friendly ad lib. Cleaning up the language characters are using in a book is sort of like that; readers know what they mean, but the characters are denied their preferred forms of verbal punctuation. I call this pulling the punch, and it refers to taking any action that alters a story with no intention other than making the person reading it feel less uncomfortable. Generally it doesn't serve to make the story better, and many times it can make what was a poignant exchange seem juvenile. This side of the line tends to be readers who admit that while the use of profanity is vulgar, it is still a tool that can be used to great effect in a book.

How Profanity Has Changed Over The Years

There was an old piece of writing advice from Mark Twain that suggested writers replace every use of "very" with the word "damn" because the editor will simply delete all the unnecessary terms. It was meant to show that "very" is a lazy word choice (which it is), but it also let people know that "damn" would rarely if ever be allowed into a completed manuscript.

That changed in the 1960s.

Along with pretty much everything else.

Somewhere between the beat generation and the creation of the hippie language was allowed to be more honest. Rather than characters "swearing oaths" or "cursing under their breath" the author would simply tell us what was said. People said "shit", and "goddamn", and even the previously-unpublishable "fuck". The spirit of the times was reflected in the books produced, though as mentioned in this article by Jo Walton featured on Tor.com here, it took genre fiction until the 1980s for space opera soldiers and fantasy knights to say fuck with some real confidence. Part of that was that people dropped metaphors that had commonly been used in fiction up to that point, and part of it was that profanity was much more commonly used in day-to-day language. So there was really a two-pronged evolution going on in regards to the profane.

So What The Fuck Should I Do?

Oh for fuck's sake...

What you should do as an author when it comes to profanity varies depending on the book you're writing. For instance, if someone is writing a modern-day story then it's important to use the language of the day, complete with slang. If you're writing from the perspective of a character then the observations we see will be colored by that character's personality and thought process. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to make characters that are terrible people without making them vulgar. Annie Wilkes, the main character of Stephen King's Misery is a horrifying character whose abuse of the lead Paul Sheldon borders on the level of atrocity. She never swears though, and in fact finds the whole notion of putting profanity into a book to be offensive even if she's perfectly willing to cut someone's legs off so he can't escape.

If you've invented your own world though, then what is considered profane is also up to your discretion. Whether it's the manufactured swear word "frell" in the television show Farscape or it's the particularly vicious swear word "bags" preferred by the wizard Zedd in the Sword of Truth series, you don't have to use a real-world four-letter word to let the reader know what's going on.

Put the "Profane" in "Profanity"

In 1944 the infamous observer of American culture H.L. Mencken noted that cursing had been going out of style since the Civil War. According to Mencken the problem was the anything truly profane had been seeing less use, and that people were replacing blasphemous oaths with short, four-letter words that lacked any real profanity in them. Sure "fuck" and "shit" are short, punchy words that can be easily barked, but are they really profane?

Where the fuck are you going with this?

One way to avoid a lot of the fist-shakers and wrist-slappers is to get truly old-school with your oaths. Whether you're writing fantasy or sci-fi, historical romance or a period piece, take a few gems from this article on old-timey swear words. Phrases like "Gods wounds" (shortened to Shakespeare's infamous "zounds") or one of my favorites "God's nails" are unique and visceral. Other old-fashioned oaths starts with "by the", which is part of the formula of someone actually swearing to do or not do something to a divine figure. This is particularly poignant in fantasy, where such oaths can be binding ones.

In order for something to be profane it has to invoke the divine somehow. Worlds with more colorful divinities will simply have more colorful profanity to go with them.

Profanity is Just a Tool

I've referred to profanity as verbal punctuation, and that's very true. To paraphrase Lewis Black, these are the words that adults use to express rage, frustration, and anger. As an author it's important for you to paint as honest a picture as you can. Does that mean you need to linger on every torn apart corpse in a murder scene, or every moment of passion between two lovers? No, not if it isn't making a point.

Profanity is the same way.

Do you have to use profanity to make a point in a story? Is it required to make a character properly repulsive, or hard-ass, or rebellious? No, you don't have to, but sometimes profanity is just the simplest, most straightforward way to make a fucking point.



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Multiple Points of View in Your Novel: Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

A point of view is the lens through which we view a story. Some stories have a window directly implanted in a single character's head, while others prefer a panorama of views with a different window behind the eyes of every member of the cast. No one approach is superior to any other, as any bestseller rack can prove, but it's important for the serious student of storytelling to step back and ask if a kaleidoscope is really necessary when a porthole will do the job just fine.

The Different Perspectives

An example of the extremely rare worm's-eye-view perspective.

There are only three perspectives from which a story can be told; single perspective, multiple perspective, and omniscient perspective. No matter who we're seeing the story through, these are the only three ways it can be done. A single character perspective has us follow a one character (typically referred to as the main character) for the entirety of the story. Everything is told from that perspective. A multiple character perspective will head hop, taking the reader into the perspectives of several different characters and getting the story with multiple leads. An omniscient perspective gives us the view from god's recliner, letting us dip into the minds and feelings of characters as we wish.

It should be noted here that perspective is not the person a story is written in; it is not first, second, or third person. It's possible to write a first person story from a multiple character perspective (though with everyone calling him or herself "I" that's going to get really confusing really damn fast), just as it's possible to write in the third person from an omniscient point of view. Got that? Good, glad I could clear that up for you.

Don't Bring a Swiss Army Knife if You Need a Screwdriver

Never mind. Just never mind.

All right, mixed metaphors aside, I have a serious problem with hop-heads. These writers think that just because they have a big cast that means the audience has to know what every member is feeling and thinking. We don't need to know, and I guarantee you that nine times out of ten we don't care what's going on in the supporting cast's heads enough to jack in and find out.

Perspective exists for two reasons; first, it helps the reader form an emotional connection to a character. The more characters included in the mix, the harder this is to do. You should limit the number of characters whose perspectives we get, though some sources like Darcy Pattison recommend never going over 5 characters. The more characters the audience has thrown at them, the harder it can be to really tug their heart strings when those moments become necessary. The second reason perspective exists is to provide a vantage point to watch the coming drama.

Perspective is the seat you happen to be sitting in while screening the big game. Would moving a few seats over actually change the story? No, because you're surrounded by the same screaming fans, and you have roughly the same view of what's happening from way up high. But would you see a different game if you were sitting over on the opposing team's side of the field? Or if you were down at ground level, close enough to get decent cell phone shots of the plays as they're happening? How about if you were playing the game in question, and you were right there in the action? Yes, changes that extreme can tell a completely different story.

What Are You Talking About?

All right, plain English time. The only time you should shift a perspective is when it serves the story. In Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy there are at least three separate perspectives. The reason for that is the characters are all playing out their parts on different sides of the continent, and are not aware of each other. Despite that, the actions of one group still affect the actions of another which creates a bigger sense of the drama as a whole while increasing the scope of the novels. Additionally every time the perspective shifts it's done with the full intention of leaving a cliffhanger, which keeps the reader turning pages to find out what's happening. That is a perspective shift that is purposeful, which serves the plot, and which helps keep the story moving.

Make sense?

I think I saw the horse twitching... beat it harder!

All right, I'll give you another example. Let's take the Harry Potter series. Now ask yourself if you would have liked it as much if we'd bounced between Harry's perspective and, say, Professor Snape. First and foremost, the big twist at the end would have lost all of its punch. Secondly, why would we do that? The series is about Harry's journey into becoming a wizard, and the eventual self-fulfilling prophecy he was born into. Putting another character's perspective into that would have been pointless.

Which is kind of the point.

Here's My Perspective

The perspective a story is written from must always be used to support what the story is about. It is not a shiny red ball to be thrown in as a way to hook the audience, and it isn't a spice to be poured in until it overpowers the taste of your book. Lastly, and most important, perspective is not a cheap, lazy way for you to plug us into your characters' heads so you can just mainline what they're thinking and how they're feeling to us. That's telling, not showing, and I already wrote a guide about fixing that here.

If you feel you need to use a third-person omniscient perspective to tell your story in the proper way, that's fine. It's also fine if you decide to do a single character in the first person. Any time you decide that we absolutely must ride around in more than one head, ask yourself why. If it's necessary to show the audience what's happening, then by all means do so. If it's because you just want to play in your sandbox, or because you don't want to go into the work of writing snappy dialogue and developing characters through their actions, then stop. Your characters, just like real people, will be judged based on what they do. We don't want to be told what they're thinking or feeling; show those things to us without literary parlor tricks.

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Under the Black Hat: Writing Believable Bad Guys

Heroes and heroines tend to be the characters readers root for. Whether they're ass-kicking monster slayers, knights in shining armor, or everymen and women placed into extraordinary circumstances, it's their collective duty to get the job done. Without villains though (who see no need to differentiate based on gender), the whole story falls apart. What's the hero going to do without an evil count to oppose, a shady corporation to investigate, or a monster from the depths to slay? Absolutely nothing, that's what.

More often than not though, villains get the short end of the stick when it comes to an author's creativity. They receive stock lines, ham-handed backstories, laughable motivation, and dozens of other hiccoughs that render them paper tigers to be slain by charismatic leads. Great villains make the heroes up their collective game though, and they create better stories overall. So here is the Literary Mercenary's guide to helping you make your antagonists more awesome, brought to you courtesy of Notes From the Editor's Desk.

1. Avoid Accidental Tropes

Let me guess, you call yourself...

Every writer's first step when creating a villain should be to carefully read this list. Go ahead, I'll wait. Did you read it? Good, then I don't need to go over every trope you've just seen.

The Evil Overlord List hits on some of the biggest, most common tropes that writers have used for villains in novels, comic books, movies, and television for decades. These tropes aren't inherently bad, but they are tropes for a reason. Sometimes recognizing one of these tropes, like the hero stealing a bad guy's uniform to sneak into the castle of doom undetected, will end with readers rage-quitting and not even reading to the good part.

2. What's Their Motivation?

But why is he tying Nell to the tracks?

This is a major problem I've seen both as a reader and an editor. Readers understand villains are doing bad things... but why are they doing them? Sometimes that why is just as important as the actions themselves.

I'll give you an example. In Shakespeare's "Othello" (if you haven't seen it there's a fantastic film with Lawrence Fishburne, which I highly recommend) the title character's life is ruined by the meanness and duplicity of a fellow soldier named Iago. Iago pours poison in the cast's ears, raising every hand against Othello until the big O murders his loving, loyal wife, alienates everyone he once called friend, and is driven to suicide. Why did Iago do this? Because of rumors that Othello slept with Iago's wife, and because Othello passed Iago over for promotion.

Is that petty? Of course it is. The reason such a petty motivation makes sense is because Iago is a man playing for very small stakes. His reputation and livelihood, neither very great to begin with, are trod underfoot. Othello didn't do this maliciously, but Iago needs someone to blame for his problems. Once he has someone to blame he uses every resource at his command to bring absolute ruin to that man as a way to lash out and feel like he's getting revenge. A villain's goals, and the reasons for those goals, have to make sense in the context of that character's story. Otherwise the character is pushing the big red button without provocation, and that is the surest way to bore readers.

3. Just Because They Are Bad-Guys, That Doesn't Mean They Are Bad Guys

Art Thou Wroth, Brother?

Generally speaking, no one thinks of themselves as the villain. Dr. Doom views himself as a benevolent dictator, taking care of his people and his country. Dracula is an ancient being leaving behind a country that's killing him to seek out richer opportunity among the fresh blood of the new world. Darth Vader is the right hand of the emperor, a man who brought order to a galaxy that was tearing itself apart with war and corruption. Every character on this list, and thousands of others besides, could very easily have been the hero if the book was written with a slightly different take. No one sits around twirling his mustache and laughing wickedly about the wrongs that have just been successfully perpetrated.

It is important to mention this rule only applies to human characters who possess all of their mental faculties. A character like the Joker, who suffers from mental instability, can perpetrate acts of wanton destruction and murder for no reason other than the sheer, personal pleasure it brings. Other characters, like H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu or Clive Barker's cenobites, are not human. The idea of good or bad as humans know it doesn't really apply to forces of nature, or beings with a truly alien view of reality. That's why characters like these tend to have human followers whose motivations and purposes we can more clearly understand.

4. The Sliding Scale of Villainy

Just how big of an inconvenience is awakening the Old Ones going to be...?

Villains come in all shapes, and sizes. They come with a bevy of motivations, desires, goals, and wants. They are characters. It's also important to remember that villains dictate the scope of a story. Bad guys always make the first move, and they're the ones who decide just how epic a story is going to get.

Take one of the oldest stories in fantasy; the knight in shining armor fighting a dragon. The dragon has kidnapped a girl, and the knight steps in to save her. This basic setup is exciting, but the stakes are only the lives of the knight, the girl, and the dragon. Maybe the knight's horse as well. Now, say the dragon stole a princess. This implies the bloodline of a royal family, and possibly a nation, is also in the balance. Take it one step further; say the girl who was kidnapped is tied to the well-being of the world, and if she dies then the world's life force will also be snuffed out.

Villains can always escalate a situation, but writers need to ask why. What will be added to the story by increasing the stakes? Do the villains need to be on the big screen, or are their motives and goals meant for a small scale? Take Jack the Ripper. Jack terrorized White Chapel, killed a dozen women, and carved a reputation as a fiendish serial killer that lives to this day. But how much of a threat could a lone, knife-wielding killer be? Could he affect the fate of an entire city? A nation? The world? Probably not, and especially not without some serious plot-stretching or historical re-touching. This is why murder mysteries tend be very small, and very personal. By contrast, a character like Azathoth (pictured above) simply cannot work on anything less than an epic scale. A crawling chaos who devours worlds and rends souls from galaxies without truly noticing is a major league force to be reckoned with. Just the implication of his existence ups the ante.

5. Kill Your Darlings

Yes, editing feels like this. Every Time.

To paraphrase the great sage and eminent junkie Stephen King, "kill your darlings". Nowhere is this truer than with your villains. If a goal makes no sense, if dialogue feels forced or grandiose, or if the bad guy is making decisions that don't jive with the setup you've given, uncap the red pen and get to work. Most importantly, ask yourself why. Why does your villain want to rule the world? Why does he keep murdering his lieutenants when they fail? Why does he play chess, collect art, or give the hero a fighting chance? In the end, why is the most important question you can ask.


Thank you, as always, for dropping in on Notes From the Editor's Desk, and the Literary Mercenary. Remember that we run on Google AdSense (for an explanation of what that means, go here). Follow me on Facebook, or mainline me on Tumblr. As always, feel free to submit requests or ideas for future blog entries.

My Time in The Red Trenches: An Un-Romantic Romance

Many writers have had to do things they aren't proud of. Some of us edited college papers for stale pizza while working on the great American novel. Others took gigs as ghost writers, letting people put a different name on our hard work. A select few of us go a little bit further, into the bad part of Book Town. We take a deep breath, think of the money, and pen sweaty stories no one reads unless they're home alone. I was, and it shames me to admit I still am, a romance author.

Why The Shame?

A lot of people over the last few years have asked me why I'm so down on romance as a genre. They ask if I feel emasculated writing for a genre that people generally think of as feminine. They ask if I'm just doing it for the money and reputation until I can write something I want to write, and I'm tired of waiting. They ask if I blush when it's time to make my characters fuck. No, no, no, and for the last time, no. None of these things are why when I speak about romance I use the same tone I would use for being paid to clean up prophylactics from a drive-in parking lot. The reason is, simply put, that romance has a disease. That disease is bad writing.

Them's Fighting Words!

Then consider the gauntlet thrown. I've been on the writing and editing side of this genre, and I've seen things that would make a 4Chan administrator puke. Plot holes you could fit a grown man's arm through, deus ex machina that didn't even have a sheet over them, and saccharine dialogue that gave me thousand dollar dental bills. I don't want to say these things, and it pains me to think of them, but they exist and people are paying hard-earned entertainment dollars for them. Somewhere. Or so I'm assured.

Romance publishers, particularly small publishers, are so ubiquitous they are some of the first (sometimes only) places writers with no publishing credits and no agent can go to for work. These houses are hungry for new talent, and it's not hard to get through the filters. With the death of so many literary magazines and e-zines I had the choice of working for free on the magazine circuit and hoping for crumbs, or shooting for publication and royalty checks with a story that had romantic elements to it. It was no contest, and I dove in head first hoping for the best.

What I Saw

I'd heard all the rumors and all the stereotypes associated with the genre. It's all just mindless porn, one group said. There's no plot, character development, or believable relationships another group railed. Everything's in pink, said a heckler somewhere in the back of my head. I steadfastly ignored these prejudices when I decided to pen romance stories. I told myself all genres have bad writers and crappy books in them. All genres have their own stereotypes. None of that matters now. Write the story, get the commission, keep quality control happy by writing solid, believable stories that people will like, and you'll have a publication list the length of your arm in no time.

On the one hand, I was right. I penned one short story after another, even put out a novella in the form of a short story trilogy, all of them with romance blends as the overarching genre. I created believable characters who had to work for the relationships they were involved in, and I threw them into the gnashing gears of plots ranging from capricious fae princes, to invading alien hordes, to steampunk science gone wrong. I was riding high... until I saw who I was riding alongside.

When I was asked to look at new submissions and edit stories that had been accepted I seemed to be the only person trying to change the stereotypes about the genre. Without breaking contracts and naming names, I read stories where villains monologued, where magically transported time travelers from ancient Persia spoke modern colloquial English and were unfazed by Western culture and trends without explanation, where more than half of a story was dedicated to the lead's routine tasks at a veterinary clinic, and where the entire plot of a story appeared to be a man's juvenile fascination with a young woman's body when he woke up as her instead of himself.

In these stories there was no courtship between the characters, and that was bad enough. Romance is a part of everyday life, and if one can write believable people then a believable relationship (a good one or a bad one) isn't far behind. There was also no attention to historical details, no attempt to write engaging dialogue or fight scenes when they occurred, no motivation assigned to characters beyond a stock role ("he did that because he's the bad guy" doesn't fly when I'm holding the red pen), and there was not a single action taken by a character that anyone who hadn't been lobotomized with a sharp stick would have taken.

What I Tried To Do About It

I did what any self-respecting creative professional would do. I suggested we reject every story which was poorly written (passive voice, shifting tenses, an un-engaging plot were the most common reasons cited). When I was informed I could not reject certain stories because they'd been accepted I uncapped my editorial tool and tried to make helpful suggestions. Most of my suggestions were outright refused (the very logical "why does the immortal villain care whether or not the couple is happy together? They pose no threat to him, and will die off in a few measly decades" was pretty much ignored, much to my disappointment), and the manuscripts went to press. I decided to keep writing character-driven fiction that, while it fit the theme of the collection or publisher, integrated all sex and romantic attachments into the plot in logical ways while still telling an engaging story with visceral text that got under my reader's skin.

At The End of The Day...

I did the best I could. I felt then and I still feel now that I wrote interesting, solid stories any reader would be pleased with. Do you know what the most common compliment I've received from readers is? Those who've actually read some of my work? "I really liked it. It didn't feel like I was reading romance at all."

This is the literary equivalent of "I like fish as long as it doesn't taste like fish," and while it makes me proud, it also makes me a little sad. For a genre so expansive and with so much potential to have such negative regard tells me that we are doing something wrong. What is it? I don't know. My suggestions are that we collectively raise our reading expectations, refuse to spend good money on books that just try to titillate the audience for a quick buck, and for the love of all things holy use some classy cover art.

If you've read this far and aren't fuming too badly to concentrate, I am not saying that romance as a genre is bad. It's sick. There are healthy, virile authors in it trying to fight off the hackneyed infection. They can only do so much on their own though. It's up to readers, and if readers keep buying tripe then soon tripe is all that will be available.

"What do you expect?" I've been asked. "It's a romance book, after all."

I expect a book worth what I paid for it. I expect a book with attention to detail, whose characters make me care, and whose plot feels as real as the weave of my jeans. I expect real people to love each other, and to do so in such a way that doesn't make me reflexively draw a crimson Bic. I expect romance to stop being given an eye roll and a "boys will be boys" style excuse when it eats out of the garbage then tries to kiss you. That, in a nutshell, is what I expect.


About The Author

For those who are curious what sort of romance an author with this much vitriol would pen, feel free to check out some of my stories, listed with links to free samples below. If you want to hear more of my ramblings and keep up with my doings, then please follow me on Facebook or mainline me on Tumblr.

Summer People: When Bethany takes a job to help save up money before school she just wanted a summer that would never end. If she's not careful, that's exactly what she'll get. YA paranormal romance (the monster reveal makes it all worthwhile).

Heart of the Myrmidon: After the Hyperion War the earth's surface became a wasteland, and those victors who remained were forced to live below. Mankind created weapons the like of which had never been seen before or since. Weapons like Pollux. One of the Myrmidon, titans engineered as elite soldiers, Pollux has been looking for purpose ever since the guns went silent. He finds it in the most unexpected of places. A sci-fi/romance crossover, this story has a bit of heat to it.

Skin Deep: The City of Angels is going to hell. Malachi has seen it all before, and he's prepared to wait it out. Miracles do happen though, and when someone tries to take his away things escalate quickly. Angels, daemons, devils, and an Old Testament enforcer, this modern fantasy story doesn't pull punches and isn't afraid to start out smoldering.

The Unusual Transformation of Abraham Carver: Iris Carver's husband is dying of a rare blood disease. When an experimental treatment cures him, it seems too good to be true. He starts vanishing out into the night, and when Iris looks into his eyes she sees another man looking back at her. How much of Abraham is left, and will she discover his secret before it's too late? An unapologetic dark steampunk/erotica trilogy, don't judge this book by its cover.

How Much Money do Writers Really Make?

One of the primary questions people often ask when I tell them I'm an author is, "How much money do you make?" Before you ever choose to ask a writer this question again, I would like you to please watch this video.

For those of you still with me who haven't lost your faith in humanity, or an eye to a nearby pen, this video sums up a great deal of the preconceived notions and the focus of the public at large in my experience. For some the very idea of writing a book is so alien (particularly to those who don't understand reading for pleasure in a world where DVDs exist) the only yardstick they have to measure the quality of a book by is what financial return it gave the author. These are the same people who, by and large, assume that only writers who are rolling in piles of money reeking in fan sweat are "real" writers. Unfortunately there is a lot that goes into how much money a given writer makes. Things like...

Connections

Becoming a successful writer is kind of like storming the beaches at Normandy. You're hungry, tired, damp, you've pissed yourself, and you're running straight into the teeth of oncoming criticism. With hundreds of explosive obstacles in your way and machine gun nests full of battle-hardened editors, it's a race to see who gets up the swell and comes through that mess without getting shredded to pieces and sent back to the sea.

Unless, of course, you're dropped behind enemy lines because you know a guy, who knows a guy.

Some of the biggest names in the game, from Christopher Paolini to Joe Hill are where they are at least partially because they had a head start. If someone has the ability to walk into a pitch meeting, or to put a manuscript right into an editor's hands after stepping over the slush pile, that is a powerful thing. Problem is that most writers don't have the ability to punch a number and talk to a family friend/uncle/mother/father and just set a time. We get to run up the beach.

Market Appeal

Sometimes there are no explaining the trends in entertainment. No one really knows why "Twilight" became a smash success, or why "50 Shades of Grey" is a monstrous blockbuster. At the same point, most people would never have predicted that a book as unpopular as the "Lord of the Rings" series would bounce back from obscurity and become a standard-setter of an entire genre. If a book was guaranteed to make these kinds of sales, then publishers would perform sexual acts for which there are no names to get the author's name on a contract.

There is no such thing as a guaranteed bestseller, unfortunately. What publishers have are past sales reports and estimates from market research. If they see a book that looks like it could be a celebrity look-alike for a big hit, then they'll often be willing to gamble on it and back it up. If a book is projected to do poorly, or if there are no readers for it (an unfortunate truth for the many talented writers who want to explore the romance between single-celled organisms fighting to create a new species in the bowels of an elder beast between the stars), then getting the word out will be nearly impossible.

Fan Base

Speaking of getting the word out, perhaps the most important a writer needs to make money is a fan base. Ever wonder why it is celebrities, even boring, stupid, D-list celebrities that only a few people have ever heard of, seem to be able to get book deals with a snap of their fingers? It's because people know who they are, and there's a slice of the population that will pay good money to see what's between those pages. The bigger the name, the more grease is on the skids from keyboard to release date. Kanye West, we're looking at you. Disapprovingly.

Speaking of names, a writer's past performance also weighs into this category. Publishers are not in the business because they want to sponsor new and experimental artists, and they aren't in it to give the struggling guy a hand up. Publishers exist to make money; they are a business. If a writer is an unproven talent then that makes him or her a risk. If they have a strong fan base and they've made money in the past, then regardless of how poorly-written or juvenile the books those writers put out are a publisher would be stupid not to keep raking in profits.

Talent

It is not an accident that this category is last on the list. I'm not cynical enough to make the case that the whole publishing industry has gone to shit and that the inmates are running the asylum. Not yet, anyway. But unproven talent it a lot like an unproven soldier. All the training, polish, test scores, and simulations in the world cannot predict exactly how someone will do once they get out in the field and the safety comes off. Even if a writer can create a great narrative that sucks in the reader and dodges every single pitfall of bad storytelling there is, it's still no guarantee that book will make any money.

So How Much Money Do Writers Make?

For the last time, it depends. If a writer goes to a major publisher then he or she might get a $5,000 advance, or a $70,000 advance on a book. Depending on how that book sells that writer might be set for life. Or if the book doesn't sell then that writer will never see another penny after the advance check. If a writer goes to a small press then there might not even be an advance; just a promise of 10% of the physical sales (if they have them) and 40-60% of the electronic sales.

A writer could become a self-publishing sensation (they do happen from time to time) and sell 100,000 copies in a year, netting $80,000 or more in sales. Or a writer could invest a huge amount of time in getting a book to that tipping point, just to watch it sink like a stone and return no more than a few bucks because friends and family gave it a pity purchase.

If a writer works for a newspaper or a magazine then there might be an annual salary, or a flat fee per piece that gets published. Short story writers might get between nothing and $30 for a story (though bigger publishers will often pay $200 or more for a single story), or if the story is featured in an anthology then they'll get a cut of the royalties.

Just like the books they put out, every writer is different. Generally speaking though the bigger a writer's company, the more famous that writer is, and the more coverage the book(s) in question get, the bigger the numbers on the tax forms will be.


If you made it this far, thank you very much for reading. Check out what's new with my work by following me on Facebook, or if you're a fan of harder drugs, find me at The Literary Mercenary on Tumblr. If you're wondering about all the stories I've published, then type my name into your friendly neighborhood bookstore's website and see what comes up (psst!, check out the anthologies Sidekicks, Noir Carnival, and Big Damn Heroines).

My Name is Neal F. Litherland, and I'm Here to Help

I've been called many things during my professional career. Since I got started in 2008 I've been a writer, an author, a journalist and a freelancer. As of this post I'm officially adding blogger to that list as well. My name is Neal F. Litherland, and I am the Literary Mercenary.

What does that mean? Well, in a nutshell it means that I'm the guy in the editorial trenches. I'm the ghostwriter who gets it done. I'm the pinch-hitter when an anthology needs a closer, or when the regular guy had to duck out because of a family emergency. I put pen to paper for anyone that's willing to pay my price, and like most starving artists I'm willing to work dirt cheap.

This blog serves a two-fold purpose, which I'm hoping my readers will appreciate. On the one hand, I want to provide what insight and advice I can offer so that other writers out there can follow the trail I've blazed and avoid many of the pitfalls I've had to fall into and then climb back out of a time or three before I learned my lesson. I want to provide tips on which publishers are accepting manuscripts, and to review those I've personally worked with so that no author sells his or her baby to a vanity press in a three piece suit. On the other hand I want to add my voice to the ongoing debates that affect us as readers and as writers. I want to weigh in with my own experience, and to share it with those who haven't had the advantage of being on both sides of the editorial desk. Lastly, I want to bitch about some of the things out there that flat out piss me off. And since it's my blog, I think I'll do just that.

The goal at the moment is to manage one entry per week, and to make sure that each entry provides actionable information on something. My latest work will be featured of course (how else am I going to let people know when something is out?), but I'll also be talking up other writers whose work I admire, and if this experiment lasts I may even have a guest post from time to time. So with that my dearest readers have a seat, and take a load off. I have got some serious shit to lay on you.

Also, for those who want the latest updates on my work and on other things I find interesting, Like my Facebook author page at www.Facebook.com/NealFLitherland.