How to Write Flawed Characters

Nobody's perfect. We all have flaws, and those flaws can take a thousand different forms. In many ways it's our flaws that make us who we are, providing the shading and contrast that throws our positive qualities into a starker relief. Flaws give people depth and character, which is why if you want the populace of your stories to stand out they need to have flaws as well.

The problem for many authors comes in deciding just how to execute those flaws; specifically in how to take the characters you've created and to give them flaws that are real and meaningful, instead of purely cosmetic. Since this is not an easy process The Literary Mercenary has put together a simple guide that will help you distress your characters in ways that make them more believable.

Step #1: Give Your Characters Flaws That Make Sense

Let's start with an example; we'll call him Chris. Chris is a big, handsome young man who comes from a supporting home, and who has a long record of personal achievement. He makes good grades, achieves positions of leadership in sports, always has a smile for his classmates, and refuses to sit by while anyone gets bullied. So what's his damage? Well... he has a crippling lack of self confidence.

Okay... why?

It eventually got bad enough that he had to have a horse carry him everywhere.

Barring some secret past being revealed, the elements for this flaw aren't present. A young man who has done nothing but succeeded in his endeavors, and who is supported and valued should have, if anything, an over-inflated sense of confidence. After all, he's led the team to three championships while maintaining his place on the honor roll... what could possibly get in his way?

If you really wanted this flaw though, you could plant it in fertile soil by altering the character's background. For instance, say that Chris's mother and father divorced when he was 10 or so, but for those first 10 years nothing Chris did was ever really good enough for his dad. Good grades were ridiculed, praise from coaches sneered at, and Chris was constantly told how weak and stupid he was. Even if his mother re-married, and Chris's step dad was supportive and proud of his new son's achievements there are going to be scars from that earlier period. While he has the skills and the drive, Chris might be pushing himself to try and prove that his dad was wrong even while he's secretly afraid he might be right.

Put another way it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for your character to be deathly afraid of dogs if he's never seen one before. If you want to sell a flaw you have to make it make sense.

Note: A huge list of character flaws can be found right here on TV Tropes.

Step #2: Give Them Flaws That Will Matter

Detective Lieutenant Larry Stone is a hard-nosed homicide cop who takes no shit and gets the job done. He's tough as nails, can quote every subsection of the city's law book, and he has an unimpeachable record as a lawman.

But he's sexually impotent.

And he's really pissed about it.

If you're wondering how Larry being unable to have sex affects his ability to catch murderers then you're already on the right track. While not every flaw a character has will be center stage all the time, for those flaws to matter they actually have to get in the way of something the character is trying to accomplish. Otherwise it fades into the background, an unimportant footnote we can easily forget about because it isn't germane to the story we're telling.

I'll give you a good example.

There's a novel I'd love to write based off of White Wolf's (or Onyx Path as I believe they're known now) tabletop roleplaying game Promethean. In this game you play an artificially created being who must struggle to find humanity. There are several varieties, but one is the Wretched, known more colloquially as the Frankensteins. Enter Adolph Simmons, a 7'6" monster assembled from the best and the brightest of Ryker's Island, and brought to life in the electric chair by his maker. Escaping after his birth the giant swum to shore and faded into the alleys of Hell's Kitchen. Years go by and there are rumors of a creature called The Butcher of Hell's Kitchen, a favorite in the tabloids for his supposedly gruesome murders of criminals in the area surrounding Our Lady of Sorrows.

It's all rumors and smoke, until children start going missing from the orphanage run by said church. The self-proclaimed guardian of those unwanted youths, Simms has to find where they've gone and who's taking them. The problem is that while he possesses unparalleled supernatural strength, he isn't very smart. He has no training as an investigator, and this makes his efforts clumsy at best, brutal at worst.

This fiercely loyal monster could solve any problem with his hands if it came to a fight, but when he has to use his brain his biggest strength has been stripped away and he has to overcome one of his weaknesses. That's how character flaws add to your story.

Step #3: Flaws Are Not Strengths. They're Flaws

At this point in the list I don't have the energy to pull out rare examples or hidden gems from master authors. Instead I'm just going to go for the low-hanging fruit and use one of the many things wrong with Twilight to make this point.

This was a dead horse a while back... I guess there's one or two whacks left...

Let me draw your attention to the collection of character flaws that is the book's main object (being a protagonist would imply she took effort to achieve something). Among her many other flaws Bella Swan suffers from extreme co-dependency, being left dejected and unable to think or act for months when her abusive significant other abandons her. Rather than struggling to remember how to be independent (as one assumes she was before she was part of a couple) her complete inability to function outside of a relationship (no matter how unhealthy it was) is shown in a positive, romantic light. As if by refusing to put her life together, and actively setting the remnants of it on fire, is supposed to be a statement of great love.

Here's another example for you: Batman.

I've written about Batman's character mistakes before (the article is here, by the by), but he's the easiest example of the emotionally damaged archetype to hold up. A normal person who lost his parents in a mugging would grieve for them, and he would grow up with a sense of just how easily life can end. He would see how prevalent crime can be, and he might even be motivated to try and fight against it in his parents' memory. Perhaps he'd become a cop, or campaign for change to clean up the streets. Perhaps he'd look for ways to help those who have to deal with grief. The idea of dedicating one's life to more than a decade of training, and then several more decades of donning body armor and prowling the streets, breaking bones and smashing teeth is the act of a crazy person. When real people have done this (check out The Real Superhero Project for some real-world vigilantes who started their careers in a dark place) it's been met with abject horror. Yet when we take utter insanity and dress it up in a set of fictional tights we see Batman's dedication and drive as assets rather than a fanatical devotion spurred by someone unable to cope with a traumatic event.

Step #4: Scale Is Everything

So you've got your character, flaws and all. You've figured out what events left scars, and how he or she healed from them to become the person they are today. Before you decide you're done though you need to stop and take a look at the scale of the flaw, and compare it to the scale of the results.

And then the lemur burned down the zoo. Because reasons.

Creating flaws whose results are extreme happens all the time with villains (and I covered some of it in Under The Black Hat: Writing Believable Bad Guys). I personally call this Dr. Doom syndrome. For those of you who don't read comics Victor Von Doom is the sovereign ruler of a small kingdom called Latveria in Marvel Comics. As a young prince Doom traveled to America for his education (where we presume he earned a doctorate). While he was in the lab working on what we can only assume was his thesis there was an accident. The accident marred Victor's face, and he sought some way to repair the damage. After medicine and magic failed him he forged an iron mask, and encased himself in a suit of highly advanced armor which he is rarely seen without.

The reason I use this example is that in some versions of the origin Doom's face is marred, but it's far from a horror. A small scar was all it took to send him on a world-wide quest to restore what he viewed as perfection, and in the end he encased himself in a suit of armor that put Tony Stark's most cutting-edge Mark line to shame.

Yes the comic was trying to evoke both The Phantom of The Opera and The Man in The Iron Mask for the purpose of mystery. We never see Doom's face, so we don't know if it's a terrifying ruin, or if it just has a slight imperfection along the cheek. The point is that even if he was disfigured why the armor? Why an iron mask? Why seclude himself completely except for when he pursues his own ends? The story reads more like a myth than a character study, and as a result the actions are grand, sweeping, and ultimately kind of shallow.

Ask Yourself If Real People Are Broken Like This

Art imitates life, and vice versa. Even if you're putting your characters into a completely unreal scenario (farmer abducted by aliens becomes intergalactic gladiator), the ways in which the human psyche breaks and heals are fairly finite. Coping mechanisms are kind of universal, and someone dealing with the stress of completely Earth-bound wars may develop the same sorts of tics and triggers as those who've fought in alien gore pits. All you need is to find a situation similar to the one you're setting up, and ask how real people turn out in that sort of situation. If you can follow that blueprint then the flaws your characters develop are going to feel as real and organic as any person your readers have ever met.

As always thanks for stopping in, and if you'd like to support me and my work drop in on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page and become a patron! As little as $1 a month can be enough to keep me going and the content coming. Also if you're worried about missing any of my updates make sure you're following me on Facebook and Tumblr!

How to Get Writing Jobs

I'd like to apologize to my regular readers for taking last week off. You see I was busy being kicked into the gutter by Google, and the boot prints haven't quite worn off yet. The full account of what happened (and the rather bloody financial shape it left me in) can be found at this post right here, and I would encourage all readers to please check it out and help out if you can.

Now then, I'd like to talk to you all about the secret to getting writing jobs.

What is a Writing Job?

While the name should be pretty straightforward I'm going to clarify the types of jobs I'm talking about here. I don't mean getting a book published, or starting your own blog. I am not referring to joining a website where you can put up whatever content you want either, since that is essentially you getting up on a platform and trying to gather your own audience. What I am talking about are "traditional" writing jobs; where your employer pays you a fee to create content according to his or her needs.

Rocking it old school.

The advantages to traditional writing jobs are pretty obvious. They provide you a steady source of income, you have something resembling job security (or at least you know how much money a given project is worth), you can put the job on your resume, and you may even manage to get a reference for future jobs out of an employer.

In short you get all of those things that you don't get as someone who's independently employed, for lack of a better term. Not only that, but you can still run your own projects on the side while paying rent.

Step One: Tune Up

Before you even think about looking for a writing job you need to make sure you've taken a whetstone to your craft, and your words are sharp enough to shave with. If you were trying to get a gig as a lead guitarist you wouldn't leave the basement until you could shred your potential employer's face off; being a writer isn't much different.

This is actually how I write most of my editorials.

Once you've got your voice, style, and rhythm down you need to compose a couple of sample pieces. While it's more impressive if these samples have been published (it doesn't matter where, just so long as they've been published by someone), publication isn't always a necessity. You should have at least three completed pieces to hand out as samples, but the bigger a variety you have the better.

Step Two: Kick In The Door

I've had a fair number of writing jobs, both traditional and non. I've written for two college newspapers, two local newspapers, I've contributed to a now-defunct magazine called College Gentleman, run blogs on a steampunk website, been a columnist at Kobold Quarterly, edited stories for Jupiter Gardens Press, and I've contributed content for Paizo publishing's Pathfinder roleplaying game. While those jobs sound like they're all over the board (because they are), I got each and every one of them with the same, tried and true method.

I would like a job, please.

When you get a traditional, non-writing job there's a formula you follow. You fill out an application, submit it to a manager, wait for an interview, and hope you get a call back telling you when to start. When it comes to writing jobs, even "traditional" ones, things tend to be a little faster and a whole lot dirtier. As such the best way for you to get the job you want is to take the initiative, and kick in the door. Most of the time your future employer will be shocked by the splintered wood hanging off the hinges, and impressed by your initiative. If you're asked to submit some samples, then you have a more than fighting chance of getting the job.

This isn't just tough talk either; getting a job as a writer is largely in how you present yourself. If you show up with a ready portfolio, an eye-catching business card, and a firm handshake then prospective employers will mark you as someone to try out. You probably won't receive a contract and a corner office on the spot, but you might get picked up as a stringer for a newspaper, a pinch hitter for a magazine, or you'll be asked to submit a smaller section of a bigger project in a game booklet. Once your employer sees how you respond to pressure, how you work with a team, and how your quality stands up, you can expect to see more work come your way along with a potential for that full time gig and retirement package.

Just remember that you want to seem enthusiastic, sincere, and qualified. If you're sending an email then be sure you've read it a dozen times, and that you've made it very clear what you want and why you should be given a chance. If you're showing up to an event like a job fair, a convention, etc. then you want to make sure you've got copies of your resume, plenty of business cards, and that you've practiced how to pitch yourself without sounding like you're pitching yourself. In short you want to sell your future boss on the idea that you will be a valuable asset to have on speed dial.

Step Three: Repeat

I'd like to say there's a big secret to getting steady work as a writer, because if I could I'd have a best selling book on the market and I'd never have to work again. Sadly being a writer is a lot like being a sculptor or a painter; some of us land cushy jobs where we can skate by with plenty of time and effort for other projects, and most of us end up patching together a collection of odd jobs and pennies to pay rent.

A lot of us do things we aren't exactly proud of.

The difference between the writer who has enough work to pay for insurance, a new car, and the occasional cheese burger on the weekend is not usually a matter of talent or skill, though. It's usually decided by who is willing to get back up and come out swinging in the next round. If one job prospect doesn't work out you thank them for the consideration, and move on to the next company. You go to the next convention, the next job fair, the next publishers' event, and you dive in with a sharp smile and a business card in hand.

Most people think it's the fastest or the strongest fighter who's left standing at the end of the day. More often than not though it's the person who refuses to go down.

On that note, for those who'd like to help support me and The Literary Mercenary, please consider checking out my Patreon page and becoming a patron.

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How To Make Money With Your Blog By Selling Swag

The unfortunate truth of being a writer is that the amount of money you make is directly connected to what you sell. Whether it's ad clicks on your blog, subscriptions to you through kindle, garden variety book sales, or something else entirely the formula is pretty simple; more sales = a bigger check.

This will be on the test. Show all your work.

Unfortunately for a lot of writers out there it's impossible to make a living wage from words alone. We don't have a big company setting up a book tour, nor do we have reporters dogging us to know when the next book is coming out. If we're truly fortunate we have at least a few fans that will show up to shake our hands at conventions, and maybe buy a book off of us.

Maybe.

So how do you rake in the cash to pay your rent, put food on your kids and a table in your mouth (or however it's supposed to go)? Corporations call it expansion into a new and engaging product line. The rest of us call it selling swag.

Can You Self-Publish Your Own Swag?

For those of you who haven't read up on self publishing and how it changed writing as a profession (bear with me this is relevant), here's a quick explanation of how it works. An author writes a book, formats it, designs a cover and goes through all of the steps that would normally be done by a publisher. The manuscript is then submitted to a service like Amazon's Create Space, and it creates ebooks, and print-on-demand books. Ebooks as we all know are electronic books that can be read on an ereader, laptop, smartphone, etc., whereas print-on-demand books are physical, traditional books that are not printed up and bound until someone orders them. For every copy that's sold, authors get a royalty cut.

The reason this works is because authors don't have to pay to print huge amounts of books and store them somewhere to be sold, only making a profit once the stock has been emptied. If no one buys copies then there's no demand, and therefore no printing, which means that the author incurs no loss of funds. If the book sells well then the author rakes in the cash, and if the book doesn't move the author's out nothing but time and effort (along with any marketing budget).

So what's your point?

The point is that you can do this with more than books.

Whether you want to create key chains or bumper stickers, messenger bags, tee shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs or any of a dozen other products you can get them made with the same print-on-demand system you would a book.

Here's How

Step one is to find a website that offers this kind of setup, like Cafe Press or Zazzle. Once you've become a member and poked around at the tools the next step is to come up with a product design. For instance, say I wanted a black tee shirt with a white silhouette of a man in a beret holding a red garotte wire between his hands with the phrase Kill Your Darlings under it and spattered across the back in red letters The Literary Mercenary. All I would need to do is design that image and upload it.

Seriously though, do you guys want me to do that?

Once an image is uploaded all that's left to do is to create a product page. Once the product is saved it will appear on your store. For every product that you sell you get a cut, and if you create something popular then it's quite likely word will get out fast about that clever sticker or brutal tee shirt. Hell, enough people start wearing and carrying your swag they might even decide to buy a book or two while they're at it.

Some Tips For Running a Store

It's important to remember that even if your store is there to help support your writing and book sales that you've got to put a lot of time and work into making it float. You've got to keep putting out new designs, you've got to publicize your products, and you need to do your absolute best to give the people what they want.

In short you're now running a whole creative industry, rather than just writing books.

 

As if this shit isn't hard enough already.

Can it work? Sure it can! It's very possible for you to hit the right turn of phrase, the right image, or the right product to shoot you up harder than a test-your-strength weight on body builder night. As with everything else though, there's no guarantee. Your store might start netting you hundreds of sales a month, giving you a nice, cushy pad to your bank account. It could also sit vacant and empty as Jerusalem's Lot.

It all depends on you.

Other Ways to Make Money From Your Blog

In the interest of simplicity I've gone through The Literary Mercenary and collected all of my other entries about how to make money off your blog in one, easy-to-find spot. Just click right here, and you'll get access to the whole list.

That said, do you guys want to see me open a store for The Literary Mercenary and Improved Initiative? Because I will, if you do.

Once again, thanks for stopping by! If you want to get all of my updates just plug your email into the box on the upper right, or follow me on Facebook and Tumblr. If you'd like to keep the Literary Mercenary going then tell your family, tell your friends, drop a tip in the "Shakespeare Gotta Get Paid, Son" box on the top right, or check out my Patreon page and become a patron today!

Show Don't Tell: The Case For Story-Showers Vs. Storytellers

I've seen some terrible shit as an editor. Stories with plot holes big enough to accommodate a longshoreman's forearms, characters so shallow they had "no diving" tattooed on their foreheads, and honest-to-gods villain monologues have all made their way across my desk. If I had to pick the one thing that keeps coming back like a monster movie slasher though, it's writers who didn't get the "show, don't tell" memo. Rather than just complain about a problem though, I want to try and help writers of all levels stop being storytellers, and start being story-showers.

So, let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

Yes my map is a circle. Yes it still has a beginning.

What Does "Show, Don't Tell" Even Mean?

I have no idea who first coined this phrase, and the Internet has let me down on discovering the origin. However, famous writers as venerable as Ernest Hemmingway and as recent as Chuck Palahniuk have endorsed the advice. One of Hemmingway's most famous quotes regarding the advice of "show, don't tell" uses an ice berg as a metaphor. It goes like this:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

This confuses a lot of people, but what big-daddy H is laying down is pretty simple to pick up. He's saying that if a writer needs to tell the reader every little thing, then that often represents a failure of communication. Story-showing uses words to craft a scene which the reader can take in, and draw the proper conclusions from.

What Does That Look Like?

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm not going to write that many, but an example will probably help. So, here, take a look at this image.

A look. Singular.

If someone were to describe this in the storytelling method, it might look like this:

The dancer was sexy.

You can replace "sexy" with whatever subjective word you want, point is that you are telling the reader how to feel about her appearance. You are, in essence, deciding how the reader is supposed to react and dictating accordingly.

Now, a description written in the story-showing style might look more like this;

She was music made flesh. Every sensuous curve gyrated, striking the bells on her hips and ankles in time with the plucking strings. Her smile was slow and wicked, like the sickle-grin of a Cheshire Cat. She swayed, and all eyes followed her hypnotic grace.

All right, maybe the second passage is laying it on a little thick, but look at the differences in context and in what the reader sees. In the first example words like "sexy" and "dancer" aren't very helpful to conveying the image to the reader. One reader might find women with large breasts and broad hips sexy, while another prefers slender, more athletic women. Some readers won't find women sexually attractive at all. Some people will think of ballet dancers, others of strippers, and still others will think of flash mobs or club dancers. By showing the audience the scene, by spending the time to draw out the details without just telling the audience what to feel, a story is greatly improved.

The Difference Between the Two

Some writers might be tearing out their hair, and angrily demanding of the screen if they're just supposed to never make statements about what's happening in their stories. If, to be considered good story-showers, they have to work purely in innuendo and couched terms in order to try to get from A to B.

No. No you do not. That isn't what I'm saying at all.

Then what DO we do?!

What you do need to do is to ask whether you are showing the audience what's happening, or if you're simply making the decision for the reader. For instance, you could say "John's car was a beat-up old rust bucket with peeling paint, but it was all he could afford and it still ran," or you could say "John drove an old '69 Gremlin, with mismatched doors and more primer than paint." By naming the car, you didn't tell your audience how to feel about a situation. You simply provided a detail to help set the scene. That is a "good" use of telling.

A "bad" use of telling would be to say something like "Jim was a real asshole." How do we know that? Subjective descriptions, whether positive or negative, should not be used in description. Dialogue is fine, because dialogue is where characters express their opinions. However, if you want readers to figure out Jim's disposition then you need to show him in a negative light. Have him telling racist jokes, blowing cigar smoke in people's faces, making threats, shoulder-checking people in the hallway; whatever it is that Jim does to make him dislikable, show that. The audience will get the picture you want them to get quickly enough, and you won't have to actually tell them.

One Last Thing...

Every story is going to have a certain amount of telling in it. Sometimes there's really no efficient way to get important data to the reader except to just tell them about it. That said though, it is best to let the readers draw their own conclusions whenever possible.

Nowhere is this more true than with characters' thoughts and feelings.

Except in some, extreme circumstances.

Sometimes writers can get away with this. First person stories, particularly gritty, noir style stories, are renowned for feeding us exactly what a character is thinking and feeling. We let it pass because we are supposed to be riding around in that person's head. If we are not jacked into that person's inner Twitter though, then you should not be giving us the play-by-play of feelings and thoughts.

This mistake happens a lot. It's most common when writers want to convey important feelings to an audience. Love between two leads, hatred between rivals, etc. It's tempting to use words like "angrily" to modify speech, or to just say "hate was written all over her face." Your writing doesn't have a broken leg, and it doesn't need a crutch. Roll up your sleeves and shape the important stuff with the same dedication you do all your other writing. Give us facial expressions, body language, word choice, and all of the other nuance that you have at your disposal to make us hang on your description. Draw readers in, and they'll never want to leave. Tell them how to feel, and they'll slam your cover hard enough to billow your dust jacket.


I hope all my readers, those who write and those who don't, found this week's update useful. If you'd like to keep the Literary Mercenary going, then drop some change in our donation cup in the upper right hand corner. Or, if you're a patron of the arts, check out my Patreon account here and pledge today! As always if you want to stay plugged into my latest, follow me on Facebook and Tumblr to get my updates before anyone else does. Remember, around here, we deal in red.

Patreon.com: Bringing Patronage Into the 21st Century

Artists come in a myriad of mediums. Some of us work in watercolors, while others dabble in dance. Authors and poets make pictures with words, while photographers and filmmakers work to capture events as they unfold. From stone and wood to clay and sound it seems that artists can and will shape absolutely anything. For all our differences though, there is one thing that brings us together.

Most of us are broke.

I'm sorry my friend, but it was you or me.

Yes there are some of us out there who make a decent living as professionals. There are even a fortunate few of us who "made it"; the Stephen Kings, Madonnas, and Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. On the other hand, a majority of us have to hustle at art fairs and conventions, post endlessly to social media, and wheedle our way into interviews with local newspapers and television stations to get the word out about what we do. We hand sell a few books here, get a few Google AdSense clicks there, but more often than not we have to patch the holes in our budgets with part time jobs, holiday gift money, and tax return checks.

For those of you wondering if there's a better way, there is. It's called Patreon.

What the Hell is That?

All right, quick history lesson. From the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, and even into what most people would consider the modern era, the landed gentry owned pretty much everything. The kings, dukes, lords, barons, dons, and associated titled people owned all the land, bore all the titles, kept pretty much all of the valuables, and more or less ran the show. Commoners worked the land, made goods, and supported the upper class. So not much has changed, really.

Pictured: the Medieval 1%

There was an invention created around this time called patronage (the idea existed before then, but they called it something else). The word patron stretches back to the year 1300, and it comes from Old French. It meant a lord or protector, and soon after it was used to mean a benefactor. So if an artist had a patron it meant that a lord or lady was footing the bill for daily bread, ensuring said artist could focus on creating better and better art.

This notion never really died out. Wealthy people, endowments, not-for-profit organizations, and dozens of others have continued to donate money as patrons of the arts for centuries. The problem is that there's a lot of artists, and there are only so many rich people.

That's where Patreon.com comes into the picture. It gives everyone the ability to become patrons of their favorite artists.

How Does That Work?

All right, I'll give you a concrete example for this one. As my regular readers know, I'm an author (and I have the Goodreads page to prove it). I write primarily short stories, and I've been featured in half a dozen anthologies now. Because I am not swimming in royalty monies, I started this blog as a way to increase my reach, and perhaps earn some advertising cash. I don't charge any kind of membership to read my blog, and even if 10,000 readers come through every day there's no guarantee that I'll make a single red cent off them.

That's why I opened up my own Patreon account here. This page is sort of like an ongoing Kickstarter. The difference is that I'm not asking people to give me a boat load of money to write a novel, put together a new video game, or make a movie. I'm asking people to leave me little donations (say $1 a month) to cover my expenses so that I can keep producing useful, engaging content on The Literary Mercenary, and over on my gaming blog Improved Initiative. If someone wanted to help support me they would go to my Patreon page, and pledge a certain amount of money for every new blog I put up. If that someone was concerned about his or her monthly budget, then my mysterious benefactor could put a cap on the generosity. Someone might be willing to give me $1 per blog, but they can only spare $5 a month to help me out. I'd accept that, and say thank you for being a loyal reader and supporter.

Spread the Wealth

No, really, we kind of need you to.

Patreon is specifically geared toward people who need their fans to help them make a living, and who aren't shy about asking for a small donation to free up their time and energies to create more content. If you're willing to drop your change into a barista's jar, or to leave a couple bucks on the lid for the piano man, then why not toss some cash to your favorite Youtube actor, BlogSpot blogger, or Spotify singer? Seriously, why not?

If you're a creative type looking to make some scratch off of what you provide to your fans, stop on by Patreon.com today and ask them to help support you. The worst they can say is no.


As always, thanks for dropping in and seeing what I have to say. I am the Literary Mercenary, and I deal in red. Even if you don't have any change to spare, feel free to check out my Facebook page, or to mainline me over at Tumblr.

Beyond the Purple: Dealing With Purple Prose in Your Fiction

Books are a unique kind of magic. They use words, sometimes written by people thousands of miles away and decades in their graves, to reach into the hearts and minds of readers to tell stories. The best books will run their fingers through the readers' minds, and play merry hell along their heart strings before grabbing hold of their collective guts and yanking. Good books do this by creating realism, using beautiful language, and many times through particularly vivid imagery.

Bad books, on the other hand, tend to fall victim to the disease of purple prose.

What is "Purple Prose"?

A three-lobed burning eye.

Generally speaking purple prose refers to a style of writing that is far too flowery and overdramatic. It's characterized by unnecessarily complex words, long running metaphors, and multiple spurts of description all in the same sentence. Purple prose, like pornography, is often tough to define. Most writers know it when they see it, though. So for that reason, here's an example.

"Jack stepped forward, punching Rob in the face."

This is normal prose. It's simple, straightforward, and it lets the reader know exactly what happened. It might be a little bland, but sometimes that's the sacrifice a story has to make to get the point across.

"Jack brought his right fist down, smashing Rob with a hammer-blow to the back of the head."

This is a little more vivid, and it gets the blood flowing. It's more specific as to the type of blow, where it landed, and the amount of force behind it. It's edging toward pulpy wording, but it's meant to excite the reader. This kind of language is typically good for action scenes.

"The blond giant snarled, the war cry of a lion, before swinging a mighty blow at his enemy that left his opponent staggering, reeling, blood spattering from his nose and mouth like a crimson rain."

Ummm... what? Because you read the previous two incarnations of this sentence you can take a guess what's happening. However, in this throbbing, turgid third sentence we have no names to describe who is doing what. There's entirely too much symbolism and description packed in, and the whole thing has become one big mess. That is typically what people mean when they're talking about purple prose.

Kill Your Darlings

With the strictest of prejudice.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Coach originally gave this fantastic, three-word piece of advice. It's since been repeated by William Faulkner, and it was the constant refrain of Stephen King's book "On Writing". These and other writers have fully endorsed pen monkeys the world over putting all of the pulsing purple prose they want on the page. Writers just need to delete it once they've gotten all that purple out of their systems. No matter how proud you are of a sentence, a turn of phrase, or a really great metaphor, you might still need to drown it in the Editorial River.

How Much Purple is Too Much?

Just give me a goddamn checklist already!

One person's purple prose is another's vivid imagery. It's why there are still arguments about whether authors like H.P. Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard were literary geniuses, or pulp-magazine hacks. As with so much else in writing it's largely up to the writer, the editor, and the beta readers to come to an understanding over how much purple is too much. It often comes down to personal style, the genre someone is writing in, and a dozen other factors.

That said, there are some things writers need to watch out for to make sure they don't bruise their language too badly.

#1: Does it Make Sense?

Whenever you finish writing something, leave it for a few days. A week if you have the time before a deadline. During that time start a different project, read a new book, watch a movie, and then come back to your story. It will shock you how many phrases or descriptions you used that were brilliant at the time, which completely snap the thread of your narrative and leave you asking "what the hell does that even mean?"

#2: Does it Fit With Everything Else?

Have you ever been reading a story or article, and right in the middle the writer gets really erudite for no reason? That happens a lot in purple prose. It feels like the author learned a new word, and wanted a chance to show off that he or she knew it. If you're writing about high school kids chances are you should use the word "backpack" or "messenger bag" instead of "valise". By the same token, if you've been using very straightforward prose for everything, don't start slapping a bunch of metaphors and similes down on the page.

#3: Does it Add Something?

Perhaps the most important question concerning pulsing prose is whether or not it adds to the story. In a fight scene or a love scene this kind of language might be used to increase a reader's pace, and to get the blood pumping. In a chase scene, or a confrontation with a squamous monstrosity, getting a little purple might churn readers' stomachs, or make sweat pop out on their foreheads. But if a writer is using this kind of language to describe getting ready for work in the morning, catching the city bus, or going out to get a newspaper then it can quickly become boring. Much like exclamation points, writers shouldn't go beyond the purple too often. Doing so will reduce the power this kind of prose possesses.


As always I hope that my readers found this installment of the Literary Mercenary helpful. If you want to plug in and follow all of my updates then drop by my Facebook or Tumblr pages. If you're curious about my own published work, stop on by my Goodreads page and show me some love. Lastly, if you'd like to support the Literary Mercenary then please share the blog with your friends and family. Or drop a few cents into the tip jar on the top right of the page. Or both. That would be good too.

In Thunder Forged: A Bad Books Review

Up until this point I've been holding very steadily to the "one update per week" rule I set out with. However, sometimes a thing happens and I have the option to either write a post about it (and warn all you fine, writerly and readerly sorts out there), or sit at my desk chewing pig iron into nails. I'm opting for the former, as I don't have dental insurance. So, with that said, this is the first example of what might be a recurring theme; a series called Good Books, Bad Books

What's it All About?

Anyone can tell you if a book is good or bad, but that isn't my job. My job is to tell you why the book is good or bad, and to point out why writers reading this should go forth and either do or not do, depending on what's being thrown onto the chopping block. And while I was originally planning to start this off on a sunnier note by examining something that blew me away, sadly I picked up a book that sent me into a barking fit by page 180 or so. So, without further ado, I present the first of our Bad Books...

In Thunder Forged: Book One of the Fall of Llael

For those of you reading this who don't know me personally, I am a huge fan of tabletop role playing games. I find them a great exercise in creativity, and a fun way to strop my own character-creation and storytelling skills. When I came across a book at my local library that was set in the Iron Kingdoms (the strange, half-breed child of vicious high-fantasy and brutal steam-driven sci-fi), I was intrigued.

Yes that's a steampunk mech. Why do you think I read it?

At first everything looked fine. In the middle of a war between Cygnar and Khador, an alchemical formula is discovered that could end the war overnight for one side or the other. When someone gets greedy and puts the formula up to the highest bidder though, it becomes a race to see which of the two countries can snatch the prize first, and possibly win the war in one, fell swoop. The story follows a small irregular unit, a trio of storm knights, and an undercover operative as they all try to play their part in the drama on the international stage of the steampunk fantasy world made famous by the Warmachine game produced by Privateer Press.

And Then it Started Going Wrong

"In Thunder Forged" is set in a pre-created world. That's great for the author, because it means there's a lot less heavy lifting when it comes to world building. In fact, if the author is a fan of the game world, it's entirely possible to crack open the rule books and create characters that not only fit thematically, but which could be played in the world. Everything from the types of weapons available, to the rules of magic, to which county is ruled by whom have all be set up. That's great; it's still your job to engage us with it. Ari Marmell doesn't do this; not for characters, not for countries, and not for the cities in which the story is supposed to be happening.

What Does That Mean?

I mean that there's no soul in these characters. Benwynne Bracewall, the tough-as-nails sergeant, comes across as a blank wall of stereotype. Ditto goes for Corporal Gaust, the gunmage. He's just another life-on-the-edge gunslinger with a bit of sorcery thrown in; nothing ever edges him out of this archetype, or defines him within it in any meaningful way. The cities don't fare any better; readers are treated to visual descriptions, but no smells, feels, etc. The people of one city are described as colorful, and a little overblown, but that's so vague as to be useless. The emotions felt by the characters vary between muted melodrama and barely even mentioned, as if they really are pawns whose players forgot to role play them for a scene or two and just described their actions. It's even frighteningly easy to completely forget this story takes place during the winter.

Self-Interruption

This can be forgiven in small doses, but by the triple digits it was making me wince. Self-interruption was popularized in the "Twilight" series, and it's pretty obvious when it happens in this book. Bracewall is particularly prone to it, with trains of thought like, "they weren't doing that- not yet at least, thank Morrow- but it was only a matter of time."

What's the Big Deal?

Once or twice, this can be forgiven. However, when it happens on a near constant basis it makes characters seem scatter-brained and stupid. It interrupts the story to throw in completely unnecessary comments that we don't need to know, and which are distracting. It's kind of like the plot train is running over cows, and after a while the spectacle of dead cows becomes more interesting than whatever destination the train is rushing toward. Also, exclamation points belong in dialog. Nowhere else. Ever.

Adequate Action Isn't Enough

This book is, when you get down to the core of it, military fantasy. That's a fun genre, and it's a sandbox I've personally played in (check out my Paizo story The Irregulars, still available for free if you're curious). With fantasies of steam-driven war machines and ensorcelled bullets flying, I pushed nearly to page 200. What I found was plenty of action, and plenty of intrigue, but it was adequate at best, and boring at worst.

Huh?

The action scenes fell victim to the same oversight as the descriptions. While it's possible to follow what's happening, and you can very easily tell who did what, there's no soul to the combat. I pushed right past entire squads being reduced to red stains while fighting yawns, and didn't even feel a stir in my hair when the lightning lances were deployed. The scenes were adequate, but they failed to rouse my blood even a ripple. That failure, combined with the use of colloquial modern words, the constant dashes of self-interruption, and the flat out telling of a story rather than showing us the events that transpired, made me quit at the bicentennial mark.

I wanted to like this book. I wanted it to be worth the high star ratings I've seen, and I wanted to be able to compare it to some of the books put out by Paizo's "Pathfinder Tales". As it stands though, "In Thunder Forged" is a bland, tasteless bowl of oatmeal. It will distract you on a plane, and fill your imagination with enough calories, but there are some seriously crunchy bits in the bottom, and the whole thing tastes pretty badly burned overall. All in all, as much as I love the Iron Kingdoms, I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone read this book.


As always, thanks for stopping in and staying a spell. Do you want to see more Good Books, Bad Books? If so, leave me a comment or two below and I'll be happy to dig back through my lists and find those who either did it right, or who did it quite wrong. For those who want to keep up with myself as an author, feel free to poke me over on Facebook, or to get a mainline feed follow me on Tumblr. If you're really curious about my own contributions to fiction (and you're wondering what gives me the right to criticize other authors) head over to my Goodreads author page. To support The Literary Mercenary, just spread the word, buy a book, or remember that this blog runs on Google AdSense. We do love our ads 'round these parts.