Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Your Setting Needs To Be a Character in Your Story

Too often when we write we focus exclusively on our cast of characters, and what they're doing. However, we sometimes forget that for the story to really stick in the minds of the audience, it needs to have a setting. And not just any setting, but a vibrant setting that feels like it's part of the unfolding drama the audience is watching. Because without a strong setting, a story is like a sandwich without bread; messy, and unappealing.

Where is this place? And why is our story unfolding here?

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

Where The Hell is This Story Happening?


To illustrate this week's point, I want to tell a story about something I was asked to edit as a freelancer many years ago. I won't mention the title of the work, nor the name of the client (and it's entirely possible it was never even published), but I feel that one of the major mistakes this author made drives home this point.

The plot of this book was not at all uncommon. We had a kid from the suburbs who was on the cusp of turning 18, and hoping to flee an abusive situation. He ran away to the big city, and while he was there wound up on the streets. He met an older man with a penchant for taking care of strays, and the two of them formed a relationship.

We all know how this story goes.

There were a lot of things wrong with the nuts and bolts of this story when I got it, but one that I drew a big, red circle around was that it was never made clear what city our suburban teen was running away to, or what part of the country (there were enough earmarks to trig that this was America) he had grown up in. Even accounting for the fact that there was a truly cold winter in later chapters, that didn't narrow anything down. This still could have been New York, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Seattle, or even L.A. if it was a particularly bad year for the weather.

But every, single one of the cities I mentioned (to say nothing of places like London, Paris, Belfast, etc.) would have their own personalities, history, architecture, and setup to inform the story. Everything from the layout of the city, to what kinds of public transportation exist, the sorts of social services one can find, neighborhood cultures, and just the way people talk will be radically different from one place to another. And, for this particular example, the suburbs of these cities also have their own histories, personalities, etc. that should be a part of the character's makeup, to say nothing of the story itself.

Now, including those elements would have fixed one problem with this project, but it would have been a sizable, and obvious one. Because it's not enough to just say there are cars on the street, or tall buildings around you... that's a light sketch. Your audience needs you to paint the picture for them so they can really get immersed in this tale you're trying to tell.

And this goes double if you're story is set in a fantastical realm, or in the sci-fi future... because in those situations you can't even draw on the assumption that your audience may have visited a place like where you're story is set, or at least seen one on TV.

Support The Literary Mercenary


For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, consider checking out my show Tabletop Mercenary if you've ever thought about becoming a TTRPG creator, but you want a glimpse behind the curtain before you just jump into the deep end.




Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!


That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
 
And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on FacebookTumblrTwitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Friday, March 8, 2024

Authors, You Cannot Do Everything Yourself (And You Shouldn't Feel Like You Have To)

Authors are often the subject of a lot of mythmaking, and this can lead to problems when people actually try their hand at the profession because they're trying to live up to a standard that was never real in the first place. For example, most books are not, in fact, the sole genius of a single creator who acted in absolute isolation until they gave birth to this beautiful brain baby, giving this textual gift to the world!

No... most of us have help in some way, shape, or form to make our books the best they can be. So stop punishing yourself for not being able to do something alone when this profession has always been dependent on team effort.

Seriously... everybody needs somebody.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Let's Go Back To Walden Pond


One of the most romanticized versions of an author that I've come across is how people thought of Thoreau in regards to Walden Pond. Just a man, alone, out in the wilderness getting in touch with his inner creativity, and working to let it flow. It's held up as this idea of what being a writer should be, and of the sacrifice and isolation that the profession demands of people who create truly great work.

The problem is, like so many myths, it's bullshit.

While Thoreau was sitting out in the shack, which was on a friend's property, his mom was doing his laundry and making his lunches. He wasn't some literary genius who was out in nature, cut off from society while he struggled to realize his artistic vision... he was some guy who had a solid support structure who was given the time and permission to write.

And that's just one example.

Though this may not be the most direct example of what I'm talking about, the truth is that none of us are out here doing things all by our lonesome. Even if we're the ones putting the words on the page, there are usually a lot of other people who help get a book published and out to the masses. Maybe it's your friend that helps you work through plot holes, or your writers' group who gave you encouragement and assistance in cleaning up certain passages. It might be your beta readers who caught your historical inaccuracies, your editor who got rid of all your dangling participals, your cover artist, your layout person, your marketing planner... anyone who helped lend a hand or a shoulder to help you push this book up the hill!

Can you do some of these jobs yourself? Or might there be certain positions you don't need for your book? Sure, everyone's process is unique! However, successful books are rarely the product of a single set of fingerprints, and it's okay to admit that.

You aren't less of a writer because you paid an editor to look over your manuscript. It's normal for writers to commission their covers during self publishing, or to have their publisher create a book cover if they're being traditionally published. Most of us actively work with other people to help figure out some kind of promotion plan for our books, if not outright paying for a book tour to help us get the word out about what we're doing (assuming you don't have a publisher that's taking care of that for you).

No man is an island, and the authors who literally handle every, single aspect of a book by themselves are the exceptions that prove the rule. While there might be one name on the cover, the credits page inside, and the dedication, make it clear that most of us had a lot of help along the way... even if it was just someone doing our laundry and making us chicken sandwiches from time to time.

Support The Literary Mercenary


If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!




Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!


That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
 
And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on FacebookTumblrTwitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Cliches and Tropes: The Age Old "Squares and Rectangles" Setup

Writers strive to avoid using cliches whenever they can. This is generally a good practice, but something I've found throughout all my conversations with my fellow pen monkeys is that a lot of us have trouble telling the difference between a cliche and a good, old-fashioned trope.

It reminds me of the saying I heard back in math class; all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

Related, yes... but they aren't the same.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

Avoid Cliches, But Not Necessarily Tropes


Let's be real here, cliches are bad. Even the times they're acceptable (such as when they're being subverted as a way to examine how stories really function) are sort of the exceptions that prove the rule. When readers see a cliche, it often results in them sighing, and shaking their head. While different readers have different tolerance levels, too many cliches will drain their interest, and result in them putting your book down before they really get sucked in. Or, worse, if they're deep in your story and get hit with an unexpected cliche then it could take them out of the narrative entirely, and make them give up.

This is where that phrase I mentioned comes in. Modified, it would read, "All cliches are tropes, but not all tropes are cliches."

It's easy to tell the difference once you're familiar with them.

So what is the difference between the two? Well, a trope is a common or recurring device in literature, film, etc. that sets a mood, conveys a tone, or to make something feel familiar. For example, the harsh lighting and sharp shadows associated with film noir (to say nothing of the Venetian blinds) could be thought of as a genre trope. Alternatively, the trope Red Right Hand is where a character seems normal, but a single feature such as a mismatched eye, a twisted hand, etc. gives you a clue to their monstrous (or at least deeply hidden) nature. Tropes are, in many ways, the building blocks of a story. While some are clumsier than others (and some should be left by the wayside as times and conventions have changed), there is usually nothing inherently wrong with a trope as long as it isn't based in something objectionable (such as the Mighty Whitey trope, where a white guy goes to another culture and becomes better than anyone else at something associated with that culture).

Cliches, on the other hand, are like tropes that have been blown up, magnified, and sucked dry of the meaning and impact they once had. While cliches once had their own meaning and resonance, they've been used so often they've become a Flanderized version of themselves, to the point that no one can take them seriously. For example, the opening phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night," is a cliche. Not a story taking place on a night of bad weather, but that phrase specifically. Then there's the. "It was all a dream..." ending that will make readers pitch a book straight out the window of a moving car. Character descriptions being given via a mirror, chosen one narratives, and many other tropes all fall under cliche territory.

It's important to understand the difference between these two things, not just for the sake of clarity when discussing your book with fellow writers, agents, and publishers, but so that you know what tools you're using. Because for all the negative things I've already said about cliches, they are still tools you can use, if you choose to. It's important to ask if they're really the right tool, though, as they've been used for so long that these days they make a botched job of things unless you're really thinking outside the box, and use them in a new and different way.

Support The Literary Mercenary


For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, consider checking out my show Tabletop Mercenary if you've ever thought about becoming a TTRPG creator, but you want a glimpse behind the curtain before you just jump into the deep end.




Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!


That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
 
And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on FacebookTumblrTwitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

The Generative Aspect of A.I. Isn't The Problem... It's The Theft

Since the plagiarism software is still in the headlines (and many tech bros and corporations have attempted to force it to do jobs that it is objectively not capable of doing), I wanted to take this week's update to discuss something that I feel gets either overlooked in a lot of these discussions, or which some people are simply misunderstanding. However, it is not the "generative" part of these programs that's the issue; we've had the ability to do that for years. The problem is the theft, and the absolute lack of morals regarding what these programs are trained on in order to spit out their results.

Moral? Sorry, I thought you said MONEY, that's what I care about.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

It's Not What You Make, It's How You Learned To Make It


I first touched on this topic back in A.I. Started With Artists, But It's Coming For Authors, and there are some points I'd like to reiterate from that post. First and foremost, these programs are not intelligence, artificial or otherwise. They're just pattern-recognition software that sucks up data, and spits it back out at you. They're mimics that, more often than not, we anthropomorphisize so that we think they're smarter than they are. To reiterate, this is not a Terminator-style apocalypse; we are dealing with parrot programs that can do nothing except spit out various combinations of what's been put into them.

Which brings us to the second point. The reason people hate these programs is not because they're so much better than creators of all stripes. It's not because they, "allow anyone to make art/write a book," as so many out there claim when they get hate for using these programs. It's because they were fed stolen work to use as the basis for all of their creations. They are, quite literally, the product of theft. It's one of the main reasons the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that A.I. art cannot be copywritten.

Share these? With you? Why would I do that?

There are, for example, programs out there that don't use stolen material to train on, but which still generate results that can be used from what's in their database. For example, I recently talked about The Medieval Fantasy City Generator by Watabou, which is something that I've used for my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age TTRPG setting. I've generated dozens of maps of fantasy cities and towns using the push of a button, and then once I have a map I can fill in the details myself, and breathe life into the project. There have been generators for character names, random writing prompts, and more available for decades, and there are a lot of writers who've made use of those.

The generative aspect of these programs isn't the problem. If you were to take a generator and train it on public domain works like H.P. Lovecraft stories, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, or even paintings from Renaissance masters, no one would have a problem with that. Whether you used the results of these programs as inspiration for your own stories, or just to create cool cover art, you wouldn't be stealing work from anyone. You couldn't copyright anything created with the program, either, but if you're just using it for inspiration (or you don't care about making money) then that wouldn't be an issue.

But that's not how these programs are being used. Instead, businesses and corporations are stealing the work already created by artists, and they're being used to try to rip off those artists, authors, screen writers, etc. A classic example is Jane Friedman, who had to fight Amazon to have books with her name on them that were written by A.I. removed. Because if a business can pay nothing to get the material they're selling, and then make pure profit off of it, they're going to do that. Period. End of story.

So if you're wondering why so many creatives are angry at the proliferation of so-called A.I. programs, examine the source material that they're trained on. Because there are dozens upon dozens of prompts, machines, and engines that can spit out everything from fantasy cities to story prompts, but those which don't use material that was stolen from creatives don't generate any outrage.

When you're taking sides on an issue like this, look at who's on which side of the line. Then ask yourself if tech bros and corporations have ever been the good guys when it comes to situations like this.

Support The Literary Mercenary


If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!




Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!


That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
 
And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on FacebookTumblrTwitter, and now on Pinterest as well!