Whenever Possible, Let Your Characters Solve Their Own Problems

Stories are full of conflicts. Whether it's soldiers on the battlefield, star-crossed lovers trying to make their relationship work, someone who is trying to win a big competition in order to win enough money to stop the local rec center from closing, we're here to see how our characters handle these conflicts. However, too often we end up letting the machine of the gods come down and save the day on the behalf of our characters.

It's why I wanted to say that, whenever possible, you should make sure that your characters are responsible for solving their own problems.

Eh, I'm sure lightning will strike the dark lord at the proper moment.

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Pull Yourself Up By Your Plot Hooks!

There are often a slew of factors involved in a story, and there are often circumstances outside of your protagonist(s) and their actions. However, the main thrust of today's post is about how the problems and conflicts in a story should be solved by the character, and the actions they take.

For example, let's say you're writing a coming-of-age story where your protagonist is in middle school, or maybe a freshman in high school. One of the problems they're facing is that they've become the target of a school bully, or maybe even a pack of them. Now, they might be the main antagonists, or they might merely be secondary threats that represent something your protagonist has to deal with. And maybe it comes down to a good, old-fashioned schoolyard brawl where the bully gets their nose bloodied (or broken). Maybe your protagonist lays a trap for them, scaring the pants off their bullies without actually hurting them. If there's an additional threat in the story, ranging from a haunted school to a serial killer targeting kids, your protagonist might actually save their bullies from danger, taking them from foes to friends in a rather big hurry.

Now imagine if your protagonist just told a teacher, and that teacher swooped in and reprimanded the bullies for their behavior. Or, worse, the bullies' parents just showed up right when things got tense and dragged them off with no provocation from our protagonist. These other characters just swooped in from out of nowhere to handle the problem for your lead who didn't do anything to fix it themselves, and as a result they've done nothing, but their problems have been fixed for them. Is that a satisfying resolution to the problem your protagonist was facing?

I have learned nothing, and accomplished nothing... away!

If you find that too many of the problems in your books are being solved by forces outside your protagonist's control, and without any input or effort from them, it may be time to reconsider the way your story is being told. Your protagonists don't have to single-handedly defeat armies, or solve everything with a fist fight, or always know the most obscure of facts that just so happen to be the bane of the enemy's existence, but their efforts should have some impact on the overall outcome of your story.

And if they're not... well, ask yourself why, and if the audience is going to be less-than-pleased that the character they've been following didn't actually fix anything themselves.

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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!

 

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Authors, You Can't Bootstrap Yourself to Success

We've all heard the phrase, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." More importantly, a lot of us are realizing how patently, utterly ridiculous it is. After all, it was intended to showcase how absurd it was that any one individual, merely by the dint of their own efforts, could lift themselves into the air just by tugging on their feet and wishing as hard as they could.

This is for all the authors out there who are trying to hoist themselves into success all by their lonesome, and for all the readers and potential readers who keep urging us on in these fruitless pursuits. Because, as I've said time and time again, authors are actually a relatively small part of this equation; to make the thing actually work, we need help.

Tug all you want, those ain't getting you off the ground.

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. 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!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

You Can Only Do So Much

Though it's become a phrase referring to hard work and independent effort, Useless Etymology points out that the idea of lifting yourself by your own bootstraps was first used as a textbook case of something physically impossible. As in you found it in a physics textbook asking why it simply could not be done. And when the term was first applied to one's socio-economic status, it was often a term used sarcastically. After all, if one person could just work harder and make themselves wealthy, then surely that's what everyone would do, isn't it?

The phrase became common around the time labor fought literal wars with capital. Just saying.

"But isn't that what authors do?" you might be asking. "You write stories, books, blogs, articles, etc., and the more of them you have out on the market the more money you make over time? So if you're not making enough money, all you need to do is sit down and write more stories?"

I thought that when I first started out, too. Unfortunately if that's what you're thinking then I'm going to have to disabuse you of the notion that the main factor in your success is your talent... because it usually isn't.

Because at the end of the day, you can pour blood, sweat, and tears into your keyboard and not earn a single red cent. It's also entirely possible for you to just fart out your random thoughts, and to be showered in money. It isn't fair, but you can't do anything about it until you understand why it happens.

The Process

Regular readers probably know this already, but for those who don't I'm going to go step by step through what it means to be an author. And I'm going to cover different kinds of projects so that I have as wide a focus as I can. All right? All right.

First and foremost, you start with an idea. Maybe it's a novel, a short story, or an article. You write it up, put it through editorial, and then when it's ready you find it a home. If you're going a traditional route then you might submit your book to a publishing house, or your short story to a magazine. If you're going non-traditional you might publish the book yourself, going through Amazon or a site like Vocal (incidentally, check out my full Vocal archive to see examples of this).

And then money?

Rarely, yes. Generally, no.

In the old days when publishing was much smaller, larger companies regularly gave authors advances on their work. You'd get a check that was basically to keep your bills paid until you started earning royalties, but if your book didn't sell that was likely the only money you were going to see from it... worse, if that book didn't sell, you were unlikely to get a second shot at the market because you didn't have a good history as a publishing risk. This practice still happens at bigger houses, but it's nowhere near as common as it once was.

If you're going with a smaller publisher, or you're self-publishing, you don't get an advance. If your book doesn't sell, you don't get paid. The same is true if you're writing an article, posting on a blog, etc. You might put in hours and hours of work, but you don't get paid when it goes up... and if the public doesn't come along, then you may not get paid at all. While there are still a few publishers out there that will pay you up-front for your work, typically to put it in a magazine or on their website, those are quite few and far between these days. Worse, the rates they offer haven't gone up much from what H.P. Lovecraft and his ilk earned back in the days of the pulps, so the sheer amount of work you'd need to get accepted just to maintain a poverty wage is absurd.

So How The Hell Do You Make a Living?

This is where we come back to the bootstrapping.

Because as an author, you could write a brilliant book, or tell a phenomenal story. You could repeat this process day-in and day-out, hammering your keyboard to bits and working your fingers till they bleed. You aren't going to be able to stay ahead of your bill collectors just doing that, though, because most publishers out there either want the content you're creating for nothing up-front (promising a share of the earnings as a royalty payment), or for a pittance to keep you going (half a cent per-word was great in 1910, but not so much in 2022).

You need the readers, because without them you're just screaming into the void.

They are the ones that ride and die for you.

Every time a reader buys a book, you earn a royalty. Every time they read an article it boosts your numbers, and gets you traffic on an article archive or blog. It is the readers who follow you on social media to help you overcome the inertia of the algorithm, and it is the readers who fund your Kickstarter, back your Patreon, and who help provide the cash so you can keep your bills paid to keep making the things they like.

In order for you to succeed as a creator, you should create the best product you can. You should share it as widely as you can, and try to help it get seen by the people who are going to love it. But you can't just publish another article, or write another book because you need more money as an author. There is just as much a chance that's going to be a massive waste of time, energy, and effort as it is another pay day.

What determines that is whether your audience is eager to pick up more of what you're laying down.

So if you're an author, understand that you need a coalition of folks who are ready, willing, and able to boost your signal when you drop fresh work. And if you're a reader who's wondering why that creator you like is slowing down, or isn't making as much as they used to, remember, we need literally thousands of you all working in concert to share our messages, leave reviews, buy our stuff, and contribute to our projects in order for us to just keep the lights on and the wolf at bay.

We need you... otherwise we're just standing there in the dark jerking on our bootstraps and wondering why we haven't become bestsellers yet.

For all the folks who want to help me (and other creators like me who are having just as tough a time), drop by my Amazon author page to buy a book, leave a review, and tell your friends about it when you're done. Or become a Patreon patron, leave a tip on my Linktree, or kick me a Ko-fi. Every little bit helps, and we really do need every penny if we want to keep the lights on at the end of the day.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

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!