Using The 5 Man Band In Your Stories

When your story has a main character, they are referred to as the protagonist of your story. A deuteragonist (a word a lot of us haven't heard a lot) is a term referring to a character who is secondary in a story. Sort of like how a superhero's sidekick is still an important character who contributes to the unfolding drama, but they aren't the one who's really in the spotlight. And for a lot of us, this is the traditional setup for our stories. We have our main character, a handful of support characters, the antagonists, and we're ready to roll!

But what about when you have multiple protagonists in a single story? Well, since they're all equally involved in the story, and they all have their own unique motivations and contributions, this is where you end up with a story about a team of individuals rather than any one person.

This is where we get into the 5 Man Band, which is a setup that I highly recommend you use for any team-based story you plan to tell.

Stay with me, and this will all make sense.

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!

Who Makes Up The Five Man Band?

If you're a fan of tabletop RPGs (or my sister blog, Improved Initiative), then you're likely already familiar with the idea of the 5 Man Band, as it's used in the construction of the "ideal" adventuring party. And if you read a lot of military fiction, the 5 Man Band is your basic fireteam of 4, with a medic thrown in as number 5 in a lot of stories. However, generally speaking, the roles filled in a 5 Man Band include:

- The Leader: The team leader, generally the center of the team

- The Lancer: The foil to the Leader, and often a rival or antagonistic friend or colleague

- The Heart: The emotional center of the team. Often a medic or healer of some variety.

- The Smart Guy: The brains of the operation, often a tech savant, wizard, etc.

- The Big Guy: The tank, the Big Guy is strong, tough, or sometimes both.

This setup is extremely useful for stories with multiple protagonists, and especially when you need to rapidly differentiate them from each other even if there's a great deal of similarities between them. For example, consider Kill Team Errant, featured in my Warhammer 40K story Blackest Knights, which you should read if you haven't.

Our team features:

- Cadmus: Leader

- Phobos: Lancer

- Chiron: Heart

- Daedalus: Smart Guy

- Garm: Big Guy

Now, every member of the Kill Team is a space marine wearing the same, blank, gray armor. However, there are a variety of clues to let the audience know which member of the team is meant to fill which role, and to slot everyone in place in short order (this is a short story, after all, and I don't have infinite word count). If you're looking for easy, quick-fix solutions for your own stories, consider some of the following:

Names

Every member of the team has an alias taken from mythology, and the legends these names refer to are meant both as a signifier of their skill set, but also as a clue to their role in the 5 Man Band.

Cadmus was an ancient hero, and a slayer of monsters, making him a proud Leader. Phobos was a minor god of fear, making him the dark shadow to the sergeant, filling the role of the Lancer. Chiron was the centaur who taught philosophy and medicine to the ancient heroes, marking him as the team's apothecary (space marine medic), but also as the moral compass and heart. Daedalus was one of the great, learned minds of mythology who built the Labyrinth of the minotaur, and Garm was the hound of Hel who would drag back any souls that attempted to escape that realm.

Armament/Equipment

Weapons and armor (as well as other equipment) always has a symbolic representation in stories, in addition to any practical use it has for the characters in question.

For example, Cadmus carries a power sword of fine craftsmanship. This weapon is prestigious, as befits a leader, and it's clear that he is skilled with it. It also speaks to command, as officers have carried swords as sidearms both practically and ceremonially for centuries. Phobos, by contrast, uses a combat knife and a bolt pistol. Both of these are nasty weapons meant for up-close-and-personal killings, and they tend to work more for an ambusher and slayer than for a soldier or a warrior. Chiron only seems to have backup weapons, though we find by the end of the story that he's a psyker, a power which is extremely common for the Heart in this particular setup. Daedalus focuses on his bolt rifle and explosives, both of which are custom tooled to his exacting specifications, and which require a highly technical mind to make the most of in his particular fighting style. And Garm is equipped with a power fist, which allows him to strike devastating blows with one hand, and a boarding shield, which exacerbates his toughness, and ability to soak up punishment.

Manner of Speech

Every member of the Kill Team speaks differently, but the cadence and rhythm of their speech, as well as the choice of what they talk about, says a lot about them.

Phobos is irreverent, and cruel, which is a perfect opposite to Cadmus who focuses on the team, their goals, and coordination. Chiron attempts to solve problems with his words, and he is concerned with the morality of the actions his companions take. Daedalus speaks in an almost mechanical way, implying he's far more comfortable with facts, figures, and programs than he is with organic interaction with other people. And Garm... well, Garm barely speaks at all. Not an uncommon trait for a Big Guy, as the strong, silent type is a trope for a reason.

Show Your Audience Who Is Who

We're always saying, "show, don't tell," when it comes to our stories, but when it comes to tropes like the 5 Man Band it's extremely important to focus on that rule. Mostly because the trope exists as a meta-conceit. It's not part of the world itself (most of the time, anyway), but rather it's a tool for us as writers, and our audience as readers, to find a comfortable foothold to easily understand the mold a story fits into.

And it's also important to remember that all of these positions are flexible in terms of how they present to the audience, the traits that they have, etc. Your Big Guy might actually be the shortest member of the team, but he posses potent power as a psychic, or he's so dense nothing can truly hurt him. Your heart might be a gruff, foul-mouthed, stern parental figure who, underneath it all, truly cares for those around them. Your smart guy might be a gym rat who biohacks himself into the body he wants, in addition to being a multi-doctorate scientist, and your leader could be dark and brooding with their lancer a chipper, upbeat sort who always pushes them to do the most heroic thing.

If you haven't played around with this trope before, I highly recommend it... and that goes double if you're planning on writing squad-based military fiction, or party-based fantasy stories. It really saves you, and your audience, a lot of work!

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!

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:

- 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!

Readers Love Comfort Zones ("I Want Something New That's Just Like Something Old")

I didn't realize until I was an adult that there's a significant portion of the reading public out there who will read the same books over and over again. This is not a habit I have, and while I will listen to a book more than once (if I like the voice actor), the reason for that was always because I needed something to fill the silence while I was cleaning, drawing, driving, or performing some other task. Devoting myself entirely to a text that stopped me from doing anything else while I was consuming it felt very strange to me if I already knew the story and where it was going, and what the ending was. Even today if I pick up a book I've forgotten about, I'll stop reading it as soon as I remember what the ending is, and how our protagonists get to it.

While re-reading favorite books is a fairly complex behavior, psychologically, as Men's Health points out, it's at least partially connected to comfort. It takes far more energy to consume new media rather than to simply put an old favorite movie or song on and follow the familiar beats, for example. It's also the sort of desire that leads to the consumption of fan fiction when someone runs out of the initial content from the original source.

So, with all that in mind, I think it's important for all of us writers to admit something. We're far more likely to succeed if we can give our readers a new story that feels like a story they already enjoy.

It tastes the same, but has a unique kick to it!

Before we get started, remember to sign up for my weekly newsletter if you want to stay on top of all my latest releases. If you want to help me keep the wheels turning and the lights on, consider becoming a Patreon patron. And lastly, to follow all my followables check out my Linktree!

Now then, let's get to it!

More of The Same, But Different!

If I had to pick a concern that a lot of writers and authors alike seem to have, it's worrying that their work is going to be too much like something that's already on the market. Someone writing a high fantasy trilogy may find that being compared to Tolkien puts a huge amount of pressure on their shoulders. Others may worry that their novel about a team of teenage superhumans is going to just be X-Men with a different color scheme. And I've seen some writers tie themselves in knots trying to find some way to avoid their stories about vampires being compared to everything from Dracula to The Strain.

So today I wanted to remind everyone out there of something very important; most readers aren't looking for some totally fresh, unique take. They're looking for something they already know, and already like, but presented in a way that might feel new to their palate.

Put a different way, there's always going to be those people who are looking to explore food in all its forms. A lot of people are going to want to try something new every now and again. But you're never going to go wrong with promising your audience a classic taste that they already know they like, even if your version of the burrito, cheeseburger, or pizza promises to have a zest that will make it their new favorite iteration of this staple.

Speaking of the same menu item prepared a hundred different ways...

As Alice Liddell points out, the entire romance genre (one of the most lucrative genres out there) is based on providing the same experience to readers in different ways. The ending is already something of a foregone conclusion, it's just the journey to get there. Anyone that's a fan of Warhammer 40,000 has seen how Games Workshop cannibalizes sci-fi and fantasy properties alike, ensuring that whether you want big stompy robots, heroic soldiers fighting alien wars, space wizards, or tech knights, they have covered every, possible base to appeal to an audience who loves everything from Alien and Terminator to Judge Dredd and Mechwarrior. There are dozens of Conan lookalikes slaying monsters and laying maidens in their pages, and probably hundreds of books that present new mysteries and adventures around Lovecraft's terrifying mythos.

It is a lot harder to sell a reader on something outside their experience or comfort zone than it is to get them to try a story that looks like something they already know and like. I say this both as someone who has sold books at cons and shows, as someone who's surveyed a lot of fellow authors, and as someone who's checked the buying habits of readers out there according to marketing data.

So, for all my fellow creators who are wringing their hands because they're worried people aren't going to like their book because it's too similar to this-or-that property in aesthetic, style, story beats, etc., just stop. As long as you've told a good story that's interesting to read, people are going to want it. Period.

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 cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel 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!

"Trope" Isn't a Bad Word

Over the past several years I've met a lot of writers and hopeful writers who have come to me for advice. Sometimes it's because I'm the only professional they know, or they heard me speak on a panel, or they read an article of mine and thought it was really insightful, so they want to get my thoughts on a story or idea of theirs. And there is a recurring theme among these conversations that I wanted to address this week; namely that so many newer writers seem particularly averse to anything considered a "trope" when it comes to their stories.

Bottom line here, you may as well tell me you want to be a mason, but you don't want to use any bricks in your construction. Every story is going to have tropes, because tropes are the mechanisms we use for telling stories.

And without gears, the plot won't turn.

Before we get started, remember to sign up for my weekly newsletter if you want to stay on top of all my latest releases. If you want to help me keep the wheels turning and the lights on, consider becoming a Patreon patron. And lastly, to follow all my followables check out my Linktree!

Now then, let's get to it!

Tropes, And How To Use Them

A trope, according to TV Tropes, is basically a kind of storytelling shorthand. It's a shortcut, a device, or a convention that, by putting it in your story, you can be reasonably sure your audience is going to recognize it. For example, if you're watching an old-timey Western, and a man rides in with a black hat and a black duster, you know he's the bad guy. The fellow in the white hat? That's the good guy. How do you know? Because this became storytelling shorthand, giving birth to the tropes Bad Guys Wear Black (or just Black Hat for short) and Good Guys Wear White (or White Hat).

For more color-coded tropes, see Disney Villain Green.

Now, not all tropes are created equal. There's a lot of tropes we don't use anymore because the sort of stories they're connected with are things we've moved past (or should have moved past) a long time ago. Consider, for example, the trope Mighty Whitey, which refers to a displaced white person who ends up living with native people of another region, and while there becomes their greatest champion, leader, what have you. Your Tarzan, your Phantom, and the list goes on. Or the trope Yellow Peril, used to refer to the xenophobic tendency of turning Asian crime bosses or syndicate leaders into racist caricatures. This is where you get characters like The Mandarin, Fu Manchu, a lot of H.P. Lovecraft villains, etc.

Some tropes are no longer in circulation for a good reason. However, a lot of the time when someone talks about how they want to avoid using tropes, what they actually mean is they want to avoid using cliches. Which is definitely something I can get behind... within reason.

What's The Difference?

A cliché is a phrase, a motif, or even a trope, that has become such a part of a particular genre or story type that its presence is expected. For example, nobody opens a horror story or a mystery with the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night," anymore unless they're being ironic. Calling your gelatinous monster from beyond the stars indescribable isn't something anyone does legitimately in most stories anymore either.

However, the thing to remember is that even cliches have power. They are a bedrock foundation of understanding. Even if your audience rolls their eyes as soon as they see it, they immediately know what you're trying to communicate to them. And the thing about cliches is that as long as you give them a new coat of paint, or just change the lighting in the room a little bit, they can become instantly new and unique once again.

For those looking for an example...

For example, take the cliché of The Indescribable Horror. This goes back to the early days of cosmic horror where the idea was that because the creatures were so alien that to gaze upon them confused and cracked the mind of those who saw them. They violated natural law, and the number of dimensions they could exist in, leaving onlookers unable to truly describe what they saw.

Unless executed with supreme skill, that is very difficult to pull off these days. However, you could interpret this cliché in a new and unique way, reinvigorating it and putting a new spin on it so that it seems novel once again.

What would that look like? Well, you could have a creature that literally stole words out of people's vocabulary, making them physically unable to describe it; the longer they look, the more words they lose. This creature's bizarre nature might make it impossible for people's memories to store accurate images of it, perhaps going so far as to cause brain damage and memory loss when it's seen. There are all sorts of different ways you could take Howard's refusal to actually tell us what half his bestiary looked like, and twist it into a new, unique, and dreadful form that would actually affect your audience again.

So, while it's all well and good to say you don't want to have any cliches in your work, remember that these are the lingua franca of storytelling even more than the bigger tool chest of tropes. You just need to use a little elbow grease, and spit polish them up a bit so they're fresh and unique for a reader who thinks they've seen it all. You don't have to do that, of course... but just because a trope is well known, or it's become a cliché, that doesn't meant you can no longer get any use out of it.

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 cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel 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!

The Red Right Hand (My Favorite Trope)

A lot of authors will tell you that all tropes are bad, and you should do your damnedest to scrape them out of every line of your manuscript. And while there are a lot of tropes that just aren't going to fly in today's literature (Mighty Whitey is one that comes to mind), there are a lot of them that are perfectly functional building blocks. And sure, the bricks might be recognizable, but it's what you actually do with them that determines whether your story is an artistic triumph, or a tumbledown structure ready to keel over in the first strong breeze.

With that said, I'd like to talk about one of my favorite tropes that I will probably never stop using in my own work... the Red Right Hand.

What Is a Red Right Hand?

The phrase Red Right Hand is generally traced back to Milton's infamous work Paradise Lost, where it refers to the vengeance of god. As the phrase has grown in popularity, it's generally come to refer to physical manifestations of a character's monstrous nature.

Note that the phrase is monstrous, and not villainous... not inherently, anyway. Because while there are plenty of Red Right Hand characters who are villains (Dr. Doom, the Phantom of The Opera, Blofeld, Two-Face, and the list goes on) there are heroic characters with this trait as well. The most obvious is Hellboy (given that the Right Hand of Doom is a literal red right hand), but he has some company on the roster. This trope is most commonly seen in folklore, where creatures who try to hide themselves using shapeshifting and glamours will always have some kind of tell. African myths of vampires who never smile to hide their metal teeth, or Japanese legends of kitsune whose heterochromia, fox tails, or unusual feet would give them away, etc. There's even the South American myths of the pink dolphins who change into men, always wearing white clothes and a white hat to hide their blowholes.

This trope's been around a long time, is what I'm saying.

Why I Love It

What appeals to me so much about the Red Right Hand is that it gives your audience a clue that something isn't right... and the more subtle you make it, the more fun it can be to look for.

Since you ask, I do have an example...

In my short story "The Price of Admission" in Noir Carnival, we're introduced to a harried young man who appears to be on death's door. He's desperately searching for the Crone's Carnival, and he needs something that lurks inside. He seems normal enough, until an overeager palm reader takes him by the wrist. He has a double set of palm lines, with one set far deeper than the other, and a lifeline that doesn't end. We also learn in that moment that even those in a place as secluded as the Carnival have heard of the Gemini, and they want no part of the dark road he's walking.

Since short stories only have so many words to make their point, readers quickly find out just what the Gemini is, and why he's come to the Carnival, but that one revelation gets the brain churning. What does it mean that his palm lines are so strange? Why are they so deep? Why do they call him the Gemini, like it's a title instead of a name?

This is the major advantage of the Red Right Hand as a trope. Whether you're using it for heroes or villains, anti-heroes, supporting cast, or anyone in between, it immediately engages the reader and has them wondering why. Why does the Phantom wear a mask? Why does a warlock having a single blue eye make people afraid of him? Why is that handsome man in the business suit always wearing one leather glove on his right hand?

It's a cheap way to immediately hook your audience, sure, but it gets the job done. Provided, of course, that you don't overuse it in any particular story. The Red Right Hand loses its potency if you're sprinkling it around all that often... make it special, and it will maintain its power to intrigue while keeping your reader turning the pages.

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!

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!

"Where Does The Poop Go?" is The Most Basic (and Ignored) World Building Question

When we sit down to build worlds, we tend to focus on the big, sexy topics. How does magic work in this strange, new world? What forces power the drives that let the Astro Navy reach the outer rims? How many social orders are there within this great dystopia, and what led to their savage struggles for dominance in the decaying world?

All of that stuff is important, no doubt. It's fun, it's engaging, and you're going to spend a lot of time on it. But there is another question you need to answer before you start writing. A question that a lot of us tend to ignore.

Where does the poop go?

Because until you know that, you don't know shit.

Why Does It Matter?

If you find yourself flabbergasted, asking why it is important to your story that you know where your world's bodily wastes go, chances are that it isn't. Unless you're pulling an It and having a monster who lives in the sewers, or you're going for a musketeer-style underground infiltration, it probably doesn't matter all that much to the narrative that you understand where all that excrement goes.

But from a world-building perspective, it is one of the most important questions. And it's far from the only one.

Okay, I'll bite... why?

How we deal with our waste is one of the fundamental questions of society. Do we have big, public engineering projects that deal with it (whether we're talking New York or ancient Rome, doesn't matter), or is it just a mad free-for-all where everyone just tosses it out the window? If the former, is the system old and crumbling (which could symbolize break-down in infrastructure), or is it well-maintained and sort of taken for granted? If the latter, does all this waste cause sickness? Or is civilization significantly far-out in the wilderness that you have plenty of room to fertilize the fields, as it were?

The way your world deals with poop is just one of the many nuts-and-bolts questions you should have the answer to. Even if that answer is, "It's set in 2011, so they have whatever modern sewer systems we're used to," you still need to have that answer.

This applies to all those niggling, homely questions you may not want to make time with, but which you still need to answer in order to give your world that bedrock foundation it needs. Questions about what people eat, what their hygiene is like, and if they put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us do. Questions about who trades with whom, what commodities are valuable, and how certain items made it to the other end of the world. Especially if your story isn't set in a world that has Amazon Prime shipping, and a massive global trade network that links one end of the planet to another.

The ho-hum, everyday matters need to be examined, and decided upon, just as much as the big, world-shattering ones that typically inspire you in the first place. Because you are going to nail down those big questions completely. But it's the bolt with the missing nut that's going to trip you up in chapter 12, and leave you shouting at your screen.

Every. Single. Time.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing post! Hopefully it got some wheels turning. If you've got a foundation question that you feel is just as important as where people poop in your world, then leave it in the comments below!

If you'd like to see some more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or head over to My Amazon Author Page, where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter! And if you'd like to support me, you can Buy Me A Ko-Fi, or go to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron today!

Authors, Remember, You Don't Have To Re-Invent The Wheel

If you're an author, then chances are you want your stories to stand out. You want to be thought of as new, unique, fresh, and different both from those who came before you, as well as from your contemporaries. Speaking as someone who enjoys experimenting with genre mash-ups, I get this feeling. However, I have a piece of advice I'd like to share for all the folks out there getting brain cramps from their mental gymnastics.

Don't try so hard to be different that you lose sight of what you're here to do.

Seriously, it's okay to use an old mold. You don't have to start from scratch.

Store Bought Is Just Fine

Have you ever tried to cook something from scratch? Whether you were baking a cake, or making your grandmother's old meatloaf, it was probably a great deal more difficult than using store bought ingredients, and just whipping them together. And sometimes that effort is really worth it. Sometimes, though, there's no way to tell the difference between homemade and store bought. Even if you put ten times as much sweat, effort, and swearing into doing it the hard way.

Writing is kind of like that.

Let's say, for example, you want to tell a high fantasy story. However, you want to stand apart from other entrants into the genre, so you do your best to scrape off all the serial numbers you can find. Traditional elves, dwarves, and orcs? Nope, they're gone. Then you go through the traditional bestiary, and you toss out all the dragons, ogres, trolls, unicorns, and other stuff. You flip the assumption of a human-centric world, and put a different creature at the top of the food chain. You make your own magic system, you add in non-medieval technological elements, and you put together a massive timeline of events for how your world got to be the way it is.

There's nothing wrong with any of these changes... provided they are in the service of your story, themes, and narrative. As soon as you start making changes just to be different, that's when you can end up cutting off your nose to spite your face.

And that won't get you anywhere.

As an example, say you choose to keep the basic archetypes of fantasy races (the long-lived ones, the not-quite-as-long-lived crafters and enchanters, the humans, the bigger, tougher humans who are a different color, and at least one race that's like humans, but tiny), but you rename them something specific for your world. Nothing says you can't, but you need to ask why you're putting in all that effort (and asking your readers to learn a bunch of new names and titles)? Is it because your creatures are already different enough from their store-bought variety that your readers would have trouble thinking of your red-skinned Marat as orcs, or your insectoid immortals as elves? Or is it just because you want to avoid as many familiar touch-stones as possible?

Changing something because it adds to your story, or because it supports the themes you're working with is good. Avoiding tropes that have become problematic, or even regressive, is great. However, refusing to use something because it might be considered a trope, or because someone else did something similar in their world so yours has to be different, is just punishing yourself for no reason. And worse, it's possible that if you don't use any trope, or have anything that feels familiar, your readers might feel lost instead of intrigued. So change responsibly, and make sure the changes you do make are always in the service of the story, world, and theme rather than out of a need to try treading fresh ground.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing advice. For folks who'd like more of my work, check out my Vocal archive. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support me, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or dropping me a tip over on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page.

Don't Put The Whole World On The Chopping Block

Think about the last time you were reading a book, and just as the third act really got going it was revealed that the villain's actions are going to destroy the entire world if they aren't stopped. Maybe it will actually destroy the whole planet, or maybe it will just result in the total collapse of all things that make life worth living in that world (the "but what if Sauron wins?" scenario), but the point is that the protagonist, everyone they know, and everyone they care for will be dead (or worse) if they don't succeed in their chosen course of action.

Can you remember a time where you were more bored?

After all, who would smash up that pristine real estate?

It seems counter-intuitive, but stay with me on this one. The idea behind raising the stakes is to ratchet up the tension in your story. You want your audience to be unable to look away while they contemplate everything that's riding on the protagonist's shoulders. Which is why if there's a bank robbery, they take hostages. It's why our love interest always gets a new partner just as our lead is working up the guts to say how they feel. You get the idea.

The problem with ending the world is that it's too big to contemplate, and thus it loses its impact.

That probably doesn't make much sense, but think of it this way. If someone offered you $10,000 to do something shady, that would be a sum of money most of us could understand in concrete terms. You may not have had that much money all at once before, but you know what you could buy with it, and about how far it would get you. Now say someone was going to pay you $10 million. Unless you move in some very specific circles, you don't have any idea what that's actually like. The sum might as well be $100 million, or $100 billion, because the numbers would have the same meaning to you. Because they got too big for you to have a concrete sense of what it all really means.

That's the reason why people who are dirt poor that win the lottery are back to being dirt poor in a handful of years, and it's the reason why threatening to blow up the entire world has no impact. The stakes are big, but we cannot honestly get a sense of them because they're too big.

Make It Smaller, And More Intimate

The key to making your stakes feel bigger is to give the audience something concrete. Something our mammalian brain can comprehend, and actually be shocked by. It's not a coincidence that in James Bond-style stories the villain always captures Bond's most recent love interest. Because sure, we get that every agent in the secret list will be compromised if Bond fails, but by putting this other character in the villain's clutches we've made things personal. Our audience has seen the budding romance, and in the books (as opposed to the movies) we know that if she dies, then a part of what makes Bond a person will die with her.

That isn't to say you can't make the stakes bigger; you just have to stop before it gets to that too-big moment. For instance, you could take what was a hunt between a detective and a terrorist cell, and turn it into a gas attack that could kill an entire neighborhood. Maybe even wipe out a small city. You could also take a cult that had threatened a region, and make their victory something that would allow them to overthrow an entire government. Will this effect the rest of the world? Absolutely. Will our protagonist die? Most likely. But there will be events that happen after their failure, and the fact that someone else could pick up the ball that they dropped makes the stakes feel more concrete.

I'll let Trope Talk hammer the point home.

So, to wrap up, there's nothing wrong with raising your stakes. And, if there are multiple worlds in your story, you could even pick off one or two of them as a consequence of failure. However, it's important not to go over that line if you want to keep your audience from losing their firm understanding of what's at risk. Because when you threaten to end it all if your protagonist fails, that almost guarantees their success. Especially if  you're planning out a series. You can't blow up the world if there are six books after this one, and that's not a statement you can walk back once you've said it out loud.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing piece. Hopefully it was helpful, and it got the wheels turning in your heads. If you'd like to see more of my work, consider checking out my Vocal archive. To keep up on all my latest updates, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support me, head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. Or just Buy Me A Coffee! Either way, there's a free book in it for you as thanks for your help.