Environmental Storytelling (A Study In Subtly Interacting With Your Audience)

The warrior entered the ancient chamber. The wind sang across the stones, and the light from his lantern danced across carvings from an age forgotten by history. Figures descended into the Earth carrying fire and steel, and never emerged again. Something cracked beneath his step, and he looked down. The brittle bones of an armored skeleton were spread across the floor. The dead warrior lay on their belly, one arm outstretched toward mouth of the chamber, and the sky beyond. The living warrior strode past, continuing deeper.

He found more bones. More broken armor and shattered weapons. All of them had their faces turned back toward the sun, their arms grasping for something they would never again feel.

If you've listened to any discourse about film, video games, or even art in general, then chances are you've heard of the concept of environmental storytelling. While it's more challenging to do in writing prose, that doesn't mean this concept can't be useful... especially if you're someone who has had a problem with showing rather than telling your audience what you want them to see.

When details can be important, but you want that importance to be subtle.

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When The Environment Adds To The Narrative

The idea behind environmental storytelling is that aspects of the environment that your reader (or viewer, or player) enters contribute to their understanding of what is going on without you explaining what it means directly.

As an example, take the introductory passage above. The presence of the warriors who came before is a bit of creep to add to the scene, yes, but all of the corpses appear to have been trying to escape from the end of the tunnel. Does that mean the monster down there allowed them to leave, but only once they were too wounded to be a threat? Is there a poisoned air in the cavern below that takes a while to kill those exposed to it? Or were these warriors meant to be human sacrifices, and those who tried to leave were killed by guards above?

We don't know... but just stating this detail as a fact puts it into the reader's mind. It shows them something about the environment, but without explaining the meaning (in the moment, at least). This primes the reader to be looking for an explanation, or to seek out something to make the earlier passage make sense. As such, they're going to be paying close attention as they look for further clues.

Everything is part of the environment... everything.

Another example is something that would make sense in the world of gaming... where the environment is something players have to actively interact with to understand the unfolding narrative.

Say that in the palace there is a small shrine near the Hall of Kings. A headless statue of a huge man sits with its hands out as if to hold a blade, but there is no sword there. A plaque simply reads, "In memory of the Lion Prince." Who is this? What does it mean? Well, we don't know, but again, that's added to the ongoing narrative as something that exists in this world. Then as the characters travel and explore the world further, they find an order of knights who all wear stylized helms in the shape of roaring lions. It is tradition for these knights to never remove their helms, or to let others gaze upon their faces. As the narrative goes on, a player may find that a particular sword has been handed down among the masters of this order... a sword of huge size that was purportedly wielded by their founder, who came from the West bearing many wounds. Those who see this sword may note that it is made of the same star steel carried by the royal family of the nation their quest began in to this very day. This implies, even if the narrative doesn't outright state it, that the Lion Prince left the land he was born to, traveled far to the East, and became the head of an order of warriors who adopted his heraldry, fighting style, and personal honor code.

Now, in a game, this could be left in the background as an Easter egg for players to discover if they wish to. But in a film, a novel, and so on, the mystery of the missing prince (and any possible legacy he may have left behind) should be part of the story you're trying to tell. It doesn't necessarily need to be the A plot of your book, but a strong B or C plot is probably a good idea.

A Light Touch Goes A Long Way

Environmental storytelling places a lot of trust in your audience. It expects them to be curious, to analyze what they read or see, and to dig down beneath the surface and connect dots. However, not everyone is going to pick up what you're laying down, which is why it's important to have a character to summarize important points once revelations happen, or events are set in motion.

A good way to think about environmental storytelling is to consider it in terms of a mystery. All the clues should be there in the text, and present for your reader to pick up on. Whether it's pry marks around a lock, or a spat of mud high on a wall where it shouldn't be, or a bruise on a body that hints at foul play or secret abuse, the clues to figure out what happened should be on the page for your readers to see as they follow along with the detective. And when the scene happens where everyone is brought into the drawing room, and the detective reveals the mystery, the audience can follow the clues (and understand the meaning) as they're laid out.

The difference is that with environmental storytelling in general, your reader might be the only one trying to deduce what's happening. Still, the clues need to be present, because that is how you get active readers to follow your breadcrumbs!

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

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- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

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- 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 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 Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

It's Luck, Not Talent, That Makes You Successful As A Creator

The one question everyone wants to know when it comes to being a creator is, "How do you make it?" There are panels dedicated to it at conventions, it's the question that comes up in every interview, and it's something people endlessly speculate on. What does an artist have to do in order to reach that level where they're famous or rich enough that they never have to work a day job again? Do they dedicate themselves body and soul to the craft? Do they make a deal with the devil? Is there some secret formula that lets you hack social media in order to reach your audience and become successful?

Well, I've been doing this professionally for more than 12 years now. I've talked to a lot of people, been to the panels, listened to the interviews, and there is a single thread that runs through every, single one of them. You have to be lucky.

That's it.

So roll the dice... or don't. But you can't win if you don't play.

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! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

An Echoing Refrain

The first time I ran into this was when I was in my mid-20s working as a reporter for a small local paper and trying to break into fiction as a writer. I was given the opportunity to interview a local author of cozy mysteries and romances, and I jumped at the chance. At best, I figured that if I made a good impression maybe she could help me out. At worst, maybe she could give me a few pointers. And when I got to the question where I asked her how one got a publishing deal with a major company (she'd started off with Viking, if memory serves), she just shrugged and gave me an answer that boiled down to, "Right place, right time."

In short, yes, she'd written a romance manuscript. She'd worked really hard on it, done all the editing, cleaned it up nice, etc., but the major reason she got that first book in was it just so happened to be the kind of romance the company was looking for in that very moment. If she'd submitted it a few months earlier, or a few months later, they probably wouldn't have taken it.

She kept writing books, kept doing the work, kept trying to keep her place... but she had no idea why her books sold or didn't sell. No clue what would work. In short, she lucked out, and was doing her best to stay in the position that luck had gotten her by keeping her momentum as a writer going.

All right... well... that's an anomaly, right?

That was kind of a disappointing answer, but I did my best to take it in stride, and to ask other writers I met along the way how they managed to find success. A handful of writers who started later in life told me they just wrote while living off retirement, and they were able to finally write something that caught on with an audience. Others mentioned that their book's themes just happened to coincide with some trend that put a lot of attention on them. A few writers talked about how the success of someone else's book spilled over onto them, and they rode someone else's coattails.

And then I started looking around, watching trends, and comparing notes. There are a lot of big YouTubers out there right now (Markiplier is one that comes to mind) who got in early-ish on the platform, but who happened to catch on with over-the-top reactions, particularly to scary games and scary content. There are authors who became the subject of BookTok reviews, and it blew up their name and signal without their knowledge or understanding. Chuck Tingle was basically nominated as part of the Sad Puppies scandal, and while I won't say he didn't have a fan base before his name got dragged into that shit show, it definitely catapulted him into the faces of a lot of people who would never have seen his work otherwise, much less bought a copy of a book like Scary Stories to Tingle Your Butt: 7 Tales of Gay Terror.

That is a real book. Seriously, go check it out!

This point was driven home to me once again while listening to this interview with the monster creator Trevor Henderson. Now, you might not know him by name, but you're likely familiar with his most infamous creation Siren Head. A monster artist whose work speaks for itself, he is one of the more influential creators of Internet-based horror, and he currently creates so many scary things that it can seem hard to follow.

But when he made Siren Head he was working a retail job and just trying to squeeze money out of art. He was working hard (he mentions in the interview that he'd come home from shifts and force himself to draw even though he was exhausted), improving his craft, and making interesting things... but his fame came from an outside source. A video game designer came across Siren Head, and asked to use it in his game. Trevor agreed, as long as he was mentioned... and that game showed up on Markiplier's YouTube channel, to bring things full circle. This led to an explosion of popularity for the monster, and a big audience of people who were now aware of Trevor's work, as well as the designer who made the game. And that spring-boarded the two of them in a very big way. But it took 3 years between him finishing that creature's art, and it just exploding onto the scene like that.

Also, shoutout to The Wrong Station's YouTube channel. Go subscribe, and listen to them on Spotify or something. Their show is a LOT of fun!

Now, what I'm not saying is that any of the people I have mentioned, either obliquely or by name, didn't work hard. I'm not saying they don't have talent, or that they haven't refined their craft to create the best things they can. That is always the take away that people have when they reach this point, and it's because there's a very specific lie that so many people believe, and you believing this lie actively harms all of us.

Do you want to know what it is? It's the belief that talent and hard work are rewarded.

You can work as hard as possible, and you can make amazing art that deserves to be seen, and everyone who picks it up devours it, thoroughly enjoying every part of this thing you made... but if your signal doesn't grow via word of mouth, and no one lets a big enough audience find out about it, you won't sell copies, get views, or increase your subscriber count. And on the flip side, someone can write absolute drek, create the most low-effort music, or just crap out a few images, and if those things happen to strike a nerve with a current trend, if they become a subject of Internet conversation, or if you happen to be related to, dating, or already a minor celebrity for some other reason, you'll go gangbusters.

If you're a creator, get that lie out of your head right now, because it's going to convince you that if you just work harder, write more, etc., that eventually you have to succeed. Marketing and creating aren't the same thing, and you can't assume the quality of your work will grant you some kind of special dispensation that will spontaneously get you noticed by the public.

And if you're not a creator, you also need to get this lie out of your head because we're depending on you. You are literally the ones who decide whether we succeed or not.

You Have The Power, Here

I've said this before, and I sometimes feel like a broken record, but I'm going to keep saying this until people get it. Artists do not have any power to make ourselves succeed. Yes we can write books, make videos, draw things, and yes we can try to leverage social media to get attention, but we ultimately cannot force ourselves to be successful just by working harder.

The only thing that helps creators succeed is you. The audience. The people we are making things for.

If you don't cheer, we die.

I've used the gladiator metaphor since the beginning of this blog, and it's apt. Because gladiators who got famous were showered in money, they got endorsement deals, they have goddamn merch you could buy at their matches. But the fighters who didn't have that following? Who didn't get the cheers? They got nothing. Didn't matter how good the show they put on was if no one was paying to see it, no one was betting on them, and no one was paying attention.

Your cheers matter... but in this digital age we're living in, they can take a lot of different forms.

If you just want to turn the wheels and help the creators you love get numbers, and get noticed, do the following:

- Read/Watch/Listen to Their Content: The more reads an article gets, the more views a video or podcast episode gets, etc., the more likely the algorithm will push it out to other people. So consume the content (especially the free stuff), and share it on social media platforms to boost the signal.

- Subscribe and Follow: This dialed-in audience is a big factor in who sees us, hears about us, etc. If you have a million subscribers on YouTube, Facebook, etc., the algorithm treats your stuff very differently than if you just have 1,000. Fill the seats, make the arena look full, because it helps us!

- Leave Comments, Reviews, and Ratings: If you're watching a video, hit the Like button. If you're listening on Spotify, leave a 5 star review. If you bought a book, leave a rating and review. The more of this stuff we get, you guessed it, the more likely we are to be seen by others.

- Buy Our Merch: Whether you're buying books, TTRPG supplements, tee shirts, or just using the discount code we get from a sponsor, all of that puts money in our pockets... but more importantly, again, when the numbers go up, the algorithms, sponsors, etc., treat us better. If I get a top-selling book on Amazon, Drive Thru RPG, etc., those sites are going to tell everyone about it because they want more sales... and the numbers to become a bestseller are so, so much smaller than you think...

Again, I'm not saying you have a moral obligation to support all creators. I'm not saying you should spend more than you can afford just to boost someone's signal. I'm just explaining how the machinery works. If you want a creator to succeed (any creator), then pull the levers I just described. Pull as many of them as you can, as often as you can. If you can afford to buy books, buy them. If you can't, don't. But consume all the free stuff, check in on social media, hit the buttons, make the comments, follow all the followables, etc.

If you cheer, we rise. If you don't cheer, we die in obscurity. This isn't even a metaphor... it's literally how the industry works. Period.

And the only way any of us get famous is if our audience grows so big, and so loud, that the wider world finds out about us and what we do. So please... raise your voice, and be that noise.

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- 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.

Getting It All On The Page (It's Harder Than You Think)

Writing a book seems simple. "You just sit down at a typewriter and bleed," as the old gem goes. However, sometimes we end up losing things in the translation from the slurry of brain sauce, to the electrical impulses in our fingers, and things that we know about our story just end up omitted by accident. Sometimes this can be funny, like when you forget an adjective and end up with a line like, "She had skin. That was certainly a plus." Other times, though, you end up leaving critical character development, plot points, or connections you want your reader to make on the cutting room floor.

Now, ideally, you're going to catch these things during editing... but are you going to trust your brain? The soggy organ that screwed up the translation in the first place?

Because sometimes you really can't trust yourself

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!

How To Double Check Your Map

Now, first and foremost, you need to edit your manuscript. It's the part of the job that all writers hate (except for that weirdo Geoff... we don't talk about him), but we have to do it. Once you've finished your draft, and left it in a drawer to percolate for a bit, you take it out and read it over, fixing as many obvious gaps as possible. Then you read it over and do the same a second time. Generally I stop self-editing after the third pass... but even I'm aware that I don't catch all my errors in just three little sweeps.

Shoutout to Alice The Author, who inspired this week's topic. Got check out her YouTube channel, and subscribe if you haven't yet!

And speaking of Alice (who self-identifies with this week's issue), she recommends two major strategies for catching as many missing bits of omitted story as possible after you've gone through and filled in all the holes you could catch on your own. First, hand your manuscript off to someone else (these people are typically referred to as beta readers). Make sure this person will give you honest feedback, and that you make sure they know you want to hear where any problems are, or where things don't make sense, or feel underdeveloped. They don't necessarily have to have any specific skill set or life experience, but people who are familiar with stories and their construction are always a plus. This is how you get feedback like, "This character seems like he's being a jerk for no reason... and this insult that he threw out made very little sense." Feedback which reveals you forgot to put in the background to explain a character's difficult home life and uncertain financial situation, along with personal insecurities that would put those story beats into perspective.

The second method is actually a lot harder for most people, because it can make you feel kind of silly. However, reading your manuscript out-loud makes it way more obvious when you've got a problem. I can personally attest to this, as there are some errors I didn't catch in my vignettes until I went to record them for the audio drama. For instance, in Paying Your Dues, which opens the supplement 100 Body Mods and Augmentations For A Sci Fi Game, I used two different names for the head of the newly-formed dockers' union. I fixed that in the audio, but it took me until that point to catch it!

Now, if you're somebody who feels a bit silly, I recommend using the Rubber Ducky Method. I wrote about this in another post, but the short version is that you put a small plushie, or a rubber duck, down on your desk and read to them as if you're explaining the story to someone else. This gives you a ritual and a purpose, and you can't just stop, because the point of the exercise is that you're trying to present your story to an outside perspective.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. Every writer is different, and we're all going to find things that work for us, or don't work for us. As such, it's best to use a layered strategy when it comes to your editing, giving yourself maximum potential coverage from mistakes getting through. Because some errors might get through your first two rounds of self-editing. Some more of them might get caught by your beta readers, with each one bringing a different perspective. Still more of them will get caught by a read-aloud session. Hopefully the few that remain will get caught by your actual editor, and then your manuscript will be clean and perfect by the time it gets into your readers' hands.

It probably won't be... but at the very least you'll probably have all the context, transitions, and lore you want to be there if you're diligent in making sure no one lets you leave anything out.

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- 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 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 Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!