Your Plot Shouldn't Rely on Miscommunication

We've all seen this story before. Two characters (best friends, a couple, business partners, the arrangement doesn't matter) find themselves at odds over a rather small but embarrassing misunderstanding. Maybe the fiancé thinks her husband-to-be is cheating on her with his secretary due to suspicious-looking-but-innocent circumstantial evidence. Perhaps a co-owner of a business thinks his partner is undermining him, when in fact he's trying to save their bottom line. The list goes on and on, but whether it's a mystery, a detective story, or one of the dozens of romantic or comedic plots out there, we've all seen some version of this story.

And it's a very shaky foundation to build an entire novel on.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up, Becky!

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!

A 5-Minute Conversation Can't Carry a 200-Page Book

A common term for the situation in question is an idiot plot, best described as, "A plot that only happens because everyone involved is an idiot." After all, miscommunications happen in life, and people sometimes get the wrong idea about a situation. And when that happens there may be some immediate tension, and an awkward conversation that needs to be had to fix it.

The point, however, is that if you can fix a problem with a simple explanation, that really isn't something strong enough to hang your whole book on.

Okay, this is embarrassing, but I love you, so let me lay it all out for you...

Now, for clarity, this does not apply to situations where a person can't explain what's going on. For example, if you're writing a spy novel where part of the story is the spouse who's an intelligence operative keeping the nature of their work a secret (True Lies, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, etc.), that isn't the situation we're talking about. We're also not talking about situations where someone is deliberately lying, even if the reason they're lying is stupid. We're talking about a storyline where, rather than just asking what's going on and being honest with one another, characters just make assumptions, and cling to them no matter how obviously, ridiculously wrong they are.

As a subplot, or as a part of a larger story, you can get away with this. However, the miscommunication needs to facilitate a larger part of the plot. If it leaves someone emotionally vulnerable to make a poor decision before it can be explained, for example, then that is a functional use of this trope. But if the whole plot is, "I caught you in what looked like a compromising position with a co-worker/personal trainer/ex, and I left before you could explain things to me," that's not a load-bearing hook.

Especially if your whole cast has to keep making objectively dumber and dumber decisions to keep the charade going, instead of just laying out what happened over coffee and wrapping up the plot by chapter three.

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:

- My Facebook

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

Does Your Fantasy Story Really Need Archaisms?

No matter how long I've been a writer, it feels like there's always something new for me to discover. This week I found out about the term "archaisms," and while I've known what they are for some time, I didn't know there was a word for them until now.

If you're hearing this term for the first time, an archaism is a word, or a sense of a word, style, or speech of writing that belongs to a historical epoch beyond living memory, but which has somehow survived into a few practical settings or affairs. These are words that have fallen out of general use, but which may still show up in use in court, in a religious setting, or similar, niche places. Thou, thee, forsooth, troth, and other old-timey words all fall under the idea of archaisms.

And a lot of us, as fantasy authors, love using these... but should we?

Prithee... why doth thou query?

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!

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

Archaisms... Do We Really Need Them?

The major uses for archaisms in our fantasy fiction is that we use them as a way to try to make our settings and characters seem like they're part of another era. Whether it's old Thor comics where he speaks like someone out of Shakespeare, or dialogue in A Song of Ice and Fire where older forms of words are used to try to make the story really feel like it's from another era, we've all come across this use of language, and a lot of us choose to imitate it in our own worlds for the same purpose.

But... does using these really help our stories?

The thing about archaisms is that they're archaic, and even if they're well-known to you as the writer, that doesn't mean their original use is well-known to your audience. And even if it is something your audience is familiar with, archaisms can often act like stumbling blocks when someone is trying to grasp the meaning of your text... particularly if the rest of the story is written in a more colloquial style.

Or, put another way...

Have you ever been reading a novel, and come across a character with a really thick accent that's written phonetically? If it's one you're not familiar with, then it's going to completely stop you dead in your tracks to try to figure out what it is this character is saying. And if you manage to decode that character's speech, then you have to go through the same process every time another character has lines in your story, pretty soon readers are going to run out of the energy to care.

Archaisms are sort of like that. Because the best-case scenario when you use archaisms is that they'll sink into the background and provide a touch of flavor. However, they can often end up making your readers stop, blink, and tilt their heads as they try to figure out what it is this turn of phrase means in the context of your story. The other issue with archaisms in fantasy is that they can raise questions of why language developed the same in different worlds. While not every fantasy story is set in an alternate world, enough of them are that it could make your audience stop and ask why words with particular historical or literary context from our world is showing up in a place with dragons and wizards.

Does that mean you shouldn't use archaisms? No, it's your book, and you can do whatever the hell you want with it! But it's important to make these decisions deliberately. But the Literary Mercenary tip of the week is that if you want your setting to feel unique, you might want to consider creating terminology and language for your setting specifically, instead of trying to just port in terms from old plays, Romantic era poetry, or even nursery rhymes.

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:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Daily Motion 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!

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 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!

Avoid Marshmallow Dialogue to Improve Your Story

Sometimes I don't actually have anything to say when it comes time to talk about writing. I'll sit down in front of this page and feel like I've given every good piece of advice I have, talked about every issue that's irked me, and shared everything I have. When that happens I get online, and I start looking for what other people have had to say about writing problems, and their fixes for said issues.

This is how I discovered the term "marshmallow dialogue" over at Writers Digest, and it is the most perfect summary I've seen in a long time for an issue entirely too many of us struggle with.

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!

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

Puffy, Soft, and Sweet

Dialogue is one of the most important parts of your story, but despite its importance it is also a very easy aspect of a narrative to get wrong. Because while good dialogue can immediately draw a reader into the story, bad dialogue can leave them feeling glutted, confused, and less-than-entertained.

So how does one recognize marshmallow dialogue? Well, some of the signs are:

- Puffy: Marshmallow dialogue tends to take up a lot of room on the page, despite not saying much. It's mostly made up of hot air that just eats word count.

- Sweet: While not all dialogue has to be combative, there should be a back-and-forth when people are talking and sharing information. Generally speaking if characters are in agreement, and they aren't discussing anything of substance, it's probably a marshmallow.

- Samey: Imagine you've just eaten an entire bag of marshmallows. Now, did any one of them taste different than any of the others? Probably not... but that's a problem if each one of those marshmallows was supposed to be their own character with their own, distinct voice. If you can't tell who's talking by word choice, inflection, etc., then you might be crossing over into marshmallow territory.

As an example of what I mean, consider the dialogue in the above short story. While each speaker has their own, distinct voice when it comes to sound, there's also word choice, brevity, and no one is speaking just to fill the air. Every exchange between the characters shows us something about them, and either tells us something about their situation, or about their relationship to each other.

The thing to remember here is that there is no universal definition of good dialogue. However, we do know the traits of a marshmallow, so the key is to make sure that your story doesn't start looking too soft and sucrose in between the quotation marks.

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 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!

There Are 3 Rules For Writing A Novel... Problem is, No One Knows What The Hell They Are

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are."

- W. Somerset Maugham

Chances are good that if you're a writer you've been inundated with advice from the moment you picked up your pen or opened a word processor. Some of it may have come from more experienced writers, and a lot of it probably came from people who have no clue what the hell they're talking about. If you're a regular reader, you've probably cherry picked a few examples from this very blog.

As I so often say, though, writing is a lot like exercising. Everyone is different, and what works really well for one person may not work at all for someone else... but you've got to start somewhere if you're going to get those gains.

Exhale while you type. Trust me, it helps.

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!

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

Try Different Things To Find Your Groove

We've all heard the general rules for writing which we can usually agree on to one degree or another. Read a lot of books to ensure you're lubing your mental wheels. You can always edit a bad story, but you can't edit a blank page. If you have an idea while laying in bed, write it down, because you will not remember it tomorrow no matter what the sleep demons say.

Beyond that, though... well, things get squishy regarding what does and doesn't work.

Your mileage may vary.

For example, some people say you should set yourself a mandatory word count every day, and write till you hit it. Others say you should write first thing in the morning, because that's when you're fresh and have the best ideas. I've even advocated for writing short stories before one tackles a novel because it gets you more used to actually finishing things, and it acts as a kind of tutorial level for you as a writer.

That advice works for some people. For others it's like a ball and chain around their ankles.

Let's take that, "write in the morning," tip. Some people loathe mornings, for example. Or they already have early days with work, childcare, or other duties that simply cannot be moved to make room for writing. Some people are more awake and alert at night, finding the quiet of a sleeping house far more conductive to their work. Everyone is a unique individual who has their own life situation and personal preferences, so it's impossible for most advice to be universally applicable.

And that is okay. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer if something that works for your friend, your teacher, your mentor, or even a super successful author simply doesn't work for you. I do have one more piece of advice, though... try it. Whatever methods someone proposes, or advice that's worked for them, give it honest consideration before tossing it aside... provided it's possible for you to do so, of course.

Write first thing in the morning? Write late at night? Keep a tiny notebook in your pocket at all times? Storyboard your ideas? Go in with no plan and see where it takes you? Write to a specific word count? Write till you feel you're done? Try them all out, and see what gets you the best results, and what works with your life.

This applies no matter what stage of your writing career you're at. Especially since a lot of our habits can get set in over time, and we never take a moment to examine them. Sometimes we're carrying around baggage we don't actually need, and it pays to kick it off from time to time!

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 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!