Pictures of You Book Three, Bishop Street

The third book in the Pictures of You series is now live to the internet! This book, Bishop Street, will be the longest in the series, coming in at around 300 pages, the length of the first two books combined, and will take roughly two years to complete. Due to its length, Bishop Street will be broken down into four parts, the first being Summer. Any guesses on what the other three will be called?

The second announcement is that Pictures of You is now in colour! That’s right, vivid technicolor brought to you by fancy computerized gadgetry! In addition to the new pages being produced in colour, I’ve been going back through the archive and colouring the first two books as well, posting them a chapter at a time. It’s going to be quite a task, but as of this writing, I’m a little more than halfway through Book One so we’re hoping it’ll be done quickly.

Which brings us to the third bit of news.  With the increased workload the colouring adds, we’ve had to ease up on the update schedule…but just a little.Instead of posting new pages every two days, we’re going to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. That means just one less page per two-week cycle, or 26 fewer a year. Nothing drastic, you can untie the noose from the rafters.

If you’re not already a reader, check out Pictures of You and meet the best friends you’ll ever lose.

The following is the sixth in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

You’re going to hate this part.

Like the devil, Review is known by many names. Revision, rewriting, editing…whatever you call it, you have to do it, and the reason is simple. You aren’t good enough not to. No one is. Some of you out there might be fans of Jack Kerouac and chanting his mantra, first words, best words, but it just ain’t so. Even you disagree and have no intention on ever rewriting a thing you write, you will still benefit from Review. How? Well, Review is more than just rewriting, it’s about examining your work and seeing how to make it better, whether it’s how to improve a specific story or how to improve your writing in general. Let’s look at The Big Red Pen, Critics, Criticism and Critique, Mentors and Fellowships, Rewrites, Re-Rewrites and The Final Draft.

The Big Red Pen

The first thing you’re going to want to do is read your work, preferably in a printed form with a Big Red Pen* in hand, circling mistakes and making notes in the margins as you go. This let’s you make changes later instead of interrupting the flow of reading by stopping to fix typos and plot holes. So what are you looking for? Well, simply put, everything that I talked about in the Composition tutorial…Spelling and Grammar, Story Flow, the whole bit. You’re making sure your story is clear and cohesive, making sure you’ve said what you want to say, that you haven’t included things that don’t belong or left out things that should be there. You’ve certainly had bad days while you were writing it where the words seemed to fall onto the page with all the grace and finesse of sandwich meat. This is your time to clean that up. Make sure it makes sense, make sure it reads well and make sure the words are your best effort.

*Red ink is the easiest to spot on white paper. You can be cute or artsy and use something else if you want, but when you go back later to make your changes, you don’t want to miss anything so make sure whatever you use will be easy to find. Your Review isn’t an art project, it’s to help you write better.

Critics, Criticism and Critique

One of the things I want to do in this tutorial is help you understand why Critique is such a good thing. No one is so good at what they do that they can’t improve, and no one is so skilled to do it without an outside perspective. Keep in mind, you’re very close to this work and you’ve imagined more about the story than you’ve put on the page. That creates the possibility (or probability) that you’ve left things out that you should have included. Maybe there’s a giant biologically engineered cat creature and you’ve neglected to explain where it came from. Likewise, there may be subtle or even not so subtle problems with your writing style that you can’t see. Having a third party give you feedback is the best, sometimes only way to spot them.

I’m one of the fortunate individuals who loves getting qualified Critique of my work, and if you’re serious about becoming a better writer you’ll do your best to love it too. It might help to tell the story of how I came to love being Critiqued.

When I was a young author in high school, I was convinced to join the school’s Writers Club. I was hesitant to join since I knew it was largely a poetry circle and I had no desire to hear the fumbling recitations of teen angst wrapped in a gauze of hormonal pretension. Too harsh? Well, a friend convinced me to join and at my second or third meeting, it was time for me to get the feedback on the short story I’d submitted for consideration the week before. Most of the students hmmed and hahed about this thing or the other, none of which really amounted to much. I sat there listening to the feeble interpretations of what story element meant what and thinking how they didn’t understand it at all when the faculty head that oversaw our meetings spoke up. It was unusual, since he rarely had much to say, he usually just sat there and let us Critique each other. I was more shocked when he proceeded to tear my precious short story into figurative shreds of fine dust. I mean, he went through it and roasted me good. Then he said something very key…he told me I had the talent to make it better by knowing these things.

That’s when I realized he was investing the effort in pointing these things out to me because he thought I could grow as a writer by fixing them. He wasn’t doing it with the others. That night, I rewrote the whole thing and I’ll be darned if he wasn’t right. If someone is going to take the time to pick apart every piece of your work and tell you how you can improve it, it means they have confidence that you can improve it. Let me state again, they have confidence in your ability to write well, even if you’re not doing very well right now. That’s a good thing.

Think of a Critique as a test run for your readers, a sort of contained focus group. Now, the problem with focus groups, why they have a bad reputation in artistic circles, is that they’re often too broad and indiscriminate…common folk who may not be entirely qualified to judge what they’re judging. This is why it’s important to select your Critics carefully, find people whose opinions you value and whose assessment will be honest. It does you no good to hand the work to your mother who might not be a reader of the genre you write and is likely to sugar coat a response to spare your feelings. Conversely, it’s not good to hand it someone who is particularly negative and will just point out everything that’s wrong, some of which probably aren’t. That’s just Criticism.

Criticism, as I’m choosing to define it for the purpose of this tutorial, is a generally negative attack. They don’t like this, they don’t like that, the work is bad and you should be ashamed for making it. You suck and so does everything you write. I could say a lot about being open to the negative feedback, and it’s good to be. I could say a lot about the problem being your perception if all feedback sounds like that to you, and for some it will*. There is also an unavoidable amount of feedback that is in no way constructive. A good Critique is one that has both positive and negative feedback, meaning it lets you know not only what you’re doing wrong, but also what you’re doing right.

To all new authors, I say get your work into the hands of as many qualified Critics as possible, and consider everything they have to offer you. Whether they go at it with their own Big Red Pen or if their feedback is more general, ask them to be thorough and honest. Not everything they say will be good advice, and some of it will conflict, but even when you evaluate the bad advice you’ll gain a better understanding of your strengths.

*If all the feedback you get is or sounds like negative Criticism, then there’s an issue. Either you’re too sensitive and can’t deal with the reality of Critique or you just lack the skills for what you’re doing. In either case, as difficult as it might be to face, writing might not be for you.

Mentors and Fellowships

It’s always good to have goals and ideals for how you want to write, and in keeping with that it’s often good to have someone to look up to, a level to which you can aspire. A Mentor is someone who is accomplished or knowledgeable in your field, at least in your eyes, whose work you enjoy and respect and who has an interest in helping you improve. Mentors are like the old grey wizard who walks with you and points the way when you lose direction, gives you advice and feedback and lets you in on the secrets no one else is telling you. Mentors are invaluable, if only to act as a model for who and how you want to be, in more than just your craft. I would urge everyone to find someone like this in their lives.

Another way to get reliable feedback is through Fellowship, meaning a group of like-minded people who share common goals and similar levels of skill. This is different from Mentoring in that no one person sits above any other, acting more like a round table where learning is mutual. I’ve been fortunate enough to have belonged to a number of Fellowships (as I am currently with my fellow Squids as well as with others) and I can say unabashedly that my work would not be what it is without each one.

Fellowship allows you to have your work Critiqued by people who are equally qualified, and also offers you a look at their work to help illustrate the strengths and weaknesses in your work as reflected in theirs. It also brings a level of inspiration and healthy competition, as when a Fellowship is functioning well, everyone becomes and stays eager to produce and share new work. It isn’t easy to find a group such as this (and one shouldn’t be forced or maintained if it isn’t working to everyone’s benefit,) but when you do find people with whom you communicate well and whose work you respect it will help you more than you know.

Rewrites

You’ve got red ink all over white pages, perhaps several copies of white pages. Now it’s time to make those red marks go away. It’s not easy to do Rewrites, as it requires you to reimagine your story, sometimes from the ground up. Rewrites can be as simple as changing some dialogue and reworking scenes to flow better or as complicated as a complete overhaul starting from the basic Concept (It may seem odd, but the best works I’ve written are the ones in which I’ve started over from scratch on the Third or Fourth Drafts.) It helps to have a process in place to do this, at least until you get the hang of doing Rewrites. While I’ve modified it over the years, the process I used when I was starting out went something like this:

• Spelling and Grammar – Find all the typos, mistakes and poor word choices and change them. These are quick and easy and helps get you in the right frame of mind. You should be doing this before you give your manuscript out for Critique.
• Dialogue – If dialogue is choppy or incomplete or just needs adjusting, do it now. This gets you a little more focused on changing what’s being said by, not just in your story.
• Scene Changes – Chances are you’ve either left necessary scenes out or written some that aren’t needed, or maybe just paced them wrong. Be aware of how changing a single scene can affect the rest of the story and make those changes when needed.
• Characters – Consider the notes on your story’s players, whether some are weak or cliché or too perfect or we don’t see enough of them. You’re going to need to adjust them, and this requires a more intricate revision. You may need to rework an entire section where they appear, or in some cases the entire story to facilitate these changes. Whatever you need to do to make the story function around these changes, you need to make sure the story still flows.
• Plot Changes – If there’s a problem with the overall Plot, anything from an inadequate Inciting Force to a confusing Climax or something more pervasive, make these adjustments. Again, be aware of how changing one aspect of the Plot will affect the story as a whole.
• Concept Changes – If you feel like the very core of the story isn’t working, you may need to start over. As horrifying as this can be, you have to go back to the first step and reimagine your Concept, rework your Tableau, restructure your Plot and rethink your Technique. This will lead to a Complete Rewrite.
• Complete Rewrite – It might happen, for whatever reason, that you have to do the whole thing again. Maybe you’ve changed your Concept, maybe you want to change the Characters or maybe you just want to try a different Voice. Rather than trying to salvage what you’ve already written, you might need to write it all over from the first word. Keep your older versions handy, though, and refer to whichever elements you feel you got right the first time. Keep in mind you’re still building on the work you’ve done…you’re not writing a second book, you’re just writing the first one again.

Re-Rewrites

You’ve made some radical changes to your story, reworked it and done major Rewrites. Now it’s time to do it again. Take that new manuscript in hand with your Big Red Pen and have a read. Circle the typos. Cross out the bad scenes. Change your protagonist’s gender. Hand it around to people whose opinions you trust and let them do the same. If you can still find things you think need to be changed, or if your second round of Critique still brings back significant notes, you’ll need to go through your Rewrite process once more. It can be painful, but remember why you’re doing this…to develop your skills and write the best story you can write.

The Final Draft

When you finish writing your manuscript (or script as the case may be), what you have is called the First Draft. That’s a big accomplishment, something very few people ever do. Whether you never touch it again or make a Second Draft or Third or Ninth (which I’ve done) you are now in an exclusive club. The bigger accomplishment, though, is the Final Draft at which you stop making changes and decide to let your story continue its existence in whatever form it’s taken. It’s often said that stories aren’t finished, they’re abandoned, and as cliché as it might be, it’s true. Writing is a mercurial thing and as such we could go on tweaking and editing and reworking it until we die, as some do. At some point, though, a good writer will decide that the work is good enough and step away from it, resisting whatever urge is in you to make more changes. It is possible, and in fact very easy, to over-edit and tweak out the personality and meaning in your work.

I find that the best way to make sure your Final Draft is the Final Draft is to leave it alone for a while. Don’t read it, don’t let anyone else read it, and for god’s sake don’t let anyone Critique it. Like a good chili, it’s best when it’s had a chance to settle. If you do leave it alone for a while and still can’t resist the impulse to make more changes, then it probably wasn’t the Final Draft. Even though I break this rule myself, until you have a clear understanding of when your own work is done you should avoid making changes after you decide to put the story down.

And then you’re done. Yep, that’s it, you’ve reached the end of your writing journey. Sure, there’s lots to do after you’ve done your Final Draft, like Solicitation, Production, Distribution, Advertising, Self-Promotion and so forth, but that’s not writing, that’s business, and it’s for a different tutorial. For now, kick back and enjoy the fruits of your hard work. Bear in mind that there is no part of this series that is absolute, and as you grow as a writer you will find yourself straying more and more from the lessons you’ve learned here.

This series wasn’t designed to give hard and fast rules for how to write well, but instead is meant as a guideline you can use to think about how you can write better. The rules by which you write and the rules by which everyone writes aren’t the same, and the difference between them is what distinguishes you from other writers. After all, a good writer knows how to follow the rules and a great writer knows how to break them, but you have to know the rules to know which ones you can break and you have to be good before you can be great.

Good luck!

The following is the fifth in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

You have all of your parts laid out before you. Your Concept is solid, your Tableau is set, you’ve worked out your Plot and you know the Technique you’re going to use. Now comes the hard part…Composition. Oh boy, now you actually have the write this thing! Well, believe it or not, this is the simplest part of the process. You know what you have to say and how you’re going to say it, you know who does what and when, you know how long you want it to be…if you’ve done a good job with the first four parts, then all you have to now is put the words on the page. In this tutorial, I’ll talk a little about the actual mechanics of writing, how to view the various stages of writing your story, and I’ll also look at Writer’s Block and some ways to avoid it.

First, let’s look at the more mechanical side of Composition with Spelling and Grammar, Vocabulary, Word Choices, Chapters and Things To Avoid…Generally.

Spelling and Grammar

Never lie to yourself, Spelling and Grammar are important. I can’t describe how important these are. If you take nothing else from these tutorials, please believe that these proper skills can make or break you. Pour Spelling is perhaps the best way to make yourself seem unprofessional. The best example I can give is the mistake in the last sentence. Did you notice it? Spellcheckers don’t notice when you use the wrong word if you’ve used an actual word, and no one should ever rely on them. Likewise with Grammar, people will notice if yours is poor. This isn’t to say your Grammar has to be flawless, there is a marked difference between proper Grammar and the kind of grammar that is acceptable in conversation, and ending your sentence with a preposition isn’t the end of the world. In fact, sometimes using perfect Grammar can hurt the story depending on how you’ve chosen to tell it. Still, the better your Grammar (including punctuation) is, the better your writing will be.

Vocabulary

As with Spelling and Grammar, Vocabulary is also very important and for many of the same reasons, but also for another. If your story takes place on a boat, how many times do you think you can use the word boat before the reader gets tired of it? Having a broader vocabulary will help you find alternatives…ship, vessel, seafarer, or more specific terms like yacht, catamaran or sloop. In addition to this are word choices, the words you use will have a great impact on how the reader takes the story, and they should always reflect the choices you’ve already made as to your story’s Voice. If your story is light, then the words you choose should reflect this, while if your story is dark and grave, the Vocabulary should be part of what demonstrates it.

Word Choices

It’s hard to know what rules to follow when dealing with something so subjective as actually writing your sentences, but this is the meat of what you’re doing, so it deserves attention. The first thing is that one sentence should lead into another with a certain fluidity, much like your Scenes. Each one should build on the last and progress the ideas you’re trying to relay.

Things To Avoid…Generally

The following is a list of things that are not rules you can’t break, but if you do them you should be sure that they’re done with purpose and to make a point.

• The infamous Run-on Sentence can be difficult to spot as a writer. I know I have been guilty of it more times than I’d care to admit, probably in these tutorials. A sentence isn’t a Run-on Sentence just because it’s long, though, as some would have you believe. A Run-on Sentence is one that offers one thought and then fails to end, instead making a protracted and awkward stretch into a second idea, one with at least a cursory connection to the first idea but which should indeed be in its own sentence, and a Run-on Sentence could be made into two or more sentences just by changing a comma to a period, and often could serve as their own paragraph. Yes, like that.
• The not so infamous Run-on Paragraph is another danger, though I’m not going to bother exemplifying it…I don’t have the room. Paragraph should be like a sentences, each one offering an idea and creating a flow from one to the next, and they should end when that idea is complete. Run-on Paragraphs are exactly what you’d think, paragraphs that go on too long and have too much going on in them. Again, not all long paragraphs are Run-on Paragraphs, and in fact I have seen paragraphs that were more than a page long and were right to be so.
• This sentence is a Non-sequitur. Actually, it’s not. A Non-sequitur is a break in the literary or conversational flow, a sudden and unheralded change of topic or idea, usually before a thought is complete. Spelling is very, very important! Alright, that one was a Non-sequitur. They can be used very effectively, but they should be used with equal rarity.

Next, once you begin writing longhand, let’s look at the various components that make up your story…Chapters, Introduction, Story Flow, Climax and Denouement…and how you should confront them.

Chapters

In the same way you look at sentences and paragraphs and paragraphs as conveying an individual idea in each one, Chapters should be divided into small stories that contain an individual thematic nature. You should already have spent some time evaluating these sequences while constructing your Episodes during the Plotting, and you should have a sense of how your Chapters will be structured while evaluating your Technique. Be careful, though, not to break a scene’s tension by ending them too soon, too early or in a wholly inappropriate place in the narrative. It’s generally good to end a Chapter with either a new twist in the story, a resolution to an ongoing idea or, even better, both. Refer back to your notes on Episodes often as you write, these are your most effective tools in setting the framework for your Chapters.

Introduction

This is a simple one, right? Wrong. Most writers will tell you that the beginning of a story is the hardest to write, and the reason is not hard to understand. The Introduction has a lot of jobs to perform and not long to do it. First and foremost, you have to begin the story, which begs the question how and where does the story begin? If you’ve done a good job constructing your Concept and Tableau, you’ll know more of the story than you’re actually going to tell, so at what point in the lives of the characters do you let the reader start watching? Does it begin with the Rebels stealing the secret plans or will you skip straight to The Empire chasing them down? This then begs the question of what characters do we get to meet when the story opens, and how long until we’ve met them all? The story’s beginning is also your chance to catch a reader’s attention and let them know there is something in the work that makes them want to keep going. While this doesn’t have to be dynamic or action-packed, it should be an indicator of what’s to come, be it through foreshadowing or just plain old excitement.

Story Flow

Once the story is moving along, it’s important to set a pace and keep it. This harkens back to the Progression I talked about in the Technique tutorial, but here you need to maintain it in words as well as sequence. Having an even and consistent pace is vital to keeping the reader interested as you begin to unfold the events that bridge Introduction and Climax. There’s going to be a lot of information and activity to come, and you need to make sure you’re not doling out too much exposition and not enough activity at any given time, or vice versa. You don’t want the story moving too slowly and the reader growing bored, nor too fast and the reader getting confused. Even the most action-packed story needs to pause for a breath now and then.

Climax

Ooh, the good part. This is the pay off of the story, the reason you’ve written it and the reason people are reading it, so don’t sell it short. The same rules of Story Flow apply, you need to keep the pace steady and consistent, but here you’re going to want to step it up a bit, build the tension…but be careful not to throw it into overdrive. A sudden shift in the pace will jar the reader, and while they won’t put the story down necessarily, they might not enjoy the ride. Think about a piece of music that rises to a crescendo versus one that just blasts loud noise at you suddenly. As you get closer to the Climax, you should be increasing the energy with which you write, signalling more and more what’s to come without giving it away. Most importantly, though, make it clear what’s happening. There is a level at which you can allow the reader to infer, but you should never be vague at this point.

There is a type of Climax that I want to address specifically, and that is something called deus ex machina, which means god out of the machine. This is when the Climax is brought about by an external force, like a god or an unexpected cavalry, and it happens without significant precursor or any kind of set-up.* Most of the time, though not all, this kind of Climax seems convenient and uninspired…usually because it is. Deus ex machina is very hard to pull off and is rarely an appropriate way to end a story. I recommend against it strongly.

*If you’ve laid the ground early in the story for an external force to show up, like sending a character off to find the cavalry or having a specific point of calling on a god to help, this is not deus ex machina.

Denouement

Okay, the story’s over, let’s all go home…hey, but wait! What happened to the guy with the hat? Did he get the girl and find his dog? The Denouement or Resolution is where everything slows down (including your pacing) and, usually, settles into the status quo. The reader has invested time into this story and these characters and they’re going to want to know where their future will take them, so give it to them. Your Denouement can be short and slightly cryptic if you choose, or it can be longer and detailed, but be careful. Too little information can leave the reader dissatisfied (as with a certain boy wizard story I could name but won’t) and too much can feel like you’re starting a new story altogether.

Finally in this tutorial, I want to take a look at one more important element of writing your story. It’s going to happen. I don’t care who you are or what you’re writing, at some point you’ll catch this dreaded disease: Writer’s Block. Your story is sitting there unfinished, perhaps unstarted, maybe even abandoned in the middle of a word. It’s a crushing feeling when you can’t/won’t/don’t want to write and it is the single biggest factor in failed writing. There are innumerable causes of Writer’s Block but sadly fewer cures. Here, I’ll talk a bit about tools you can use to prevent it, Patience, Determination and Writing Time, as well as How To Fight Writer’s Block when it comes along.

Patience

One of the most important personal aspects of writing is Patience. Writing is not an art form that is accomplished quickly and the rewards of it take even longer, which is not to mention the intricacies of detail or possible research that will require countless hours of your life. There is very little instant gratification like there can be with visual art or music, and every writer must be aware of this and prepare themselves for the long haul. Writing can be boring and thankless sometimes, and working under those conditions can (and will) become tedious. This is the brutality of writing, and if you don’t have Patience, chances are you’re in for a rough time.

Dedication

When I say Dedication, I don’t mean that page before the book begins with a pithy platitude that really just serves as an inside nod that nobody really cares about. I mean Dedication, devotion to your craft, the will, drive and determination to stick to the project and see it finished. I’ve already written in detail about Dedication in another essay (which I suggest reading) entitled Are You Serious? and as I’ve said there, I can’t overstate its importance. Dedication is the difference between people who want to write and people who write.

Writing Time

This is the most common piece of advice I give, and I’m afraid that it’s the least heeded. If you have trouble making time for writing, be it through time management or lack of inspiration, the solution is simple…schedule yourself time to write. However long and however often you decide, and be realistic, don’t schedule so much that you can’t meet it or so little that you’re barely doing it, make that the time you devote to writing. You don’t have to write during your Writing Time, but you can’t do anything else. No television, no computer games, no eating, no cleaning your room, no talking on the phone or texting…nothing. If you’re not writing during this time, you are staring at a blank wall.

How To Fight Writer’s Block

Sadly, there is no truly reliable way to get past Writer’s Block except time, and even that fails some authors. The best way to get back into the swing of the words, though, is to get the inspiration flowing again. Here are just a few ways to help you along, and each one of these methods has helped me many times.

• Write The End First - It’s not always a good idea to start out this way, but generally if you lose your way and referring to your notes isn’t helping, I’ve found that writing the ending can help. It reminds you where you’re going and you can figure out better how to get there.
• Write Something Else – Our projects can overwhelm us sometimes. Now and then, we need to focus on something else for a bit to rinse the mental palate. Working on another project or even just scribbling down nonsense can act like a glass of refreshing water.
• Back Up and Try Again – You’ve written yourself into a corner and you don’t know how to go forward. Maybe somewhere along the way, you took a wrong turn and you need to retrace your steps, find the place where you went wrong and try moving ahead from that point.
• Read What You Have – If you’ve lost the motivation to write, looking back at what you’ve written might jog your creative impulses.
• Take A Break – The best way to fight Writer’s Block is time, and sometimes nothing else is going to work. If you keep trying to get the words moving again and the ideas are still stalled somewhere between your brain and your fingers, maybe it’s time to let it sit for a while. It happens that you get too wrapped up in the work and words bottleneck, or maybe you’re just not happy with the way things are going but don’t know how to fix it. Take A Break. Most of the time, stepping away from the project can clear your mind and when you look at it again, you look at it with fresh eyes. Before you do, though, you should set a time limit so that your short break doesn’t become abandonment.

There you go! Now you should be well-armed to write your masterpiece and ready for some of the obstacles that will come along. Sound easy? Sound complicated? Well, it’s both, and that’s the beauty of working with words. Now that you’re actually writing that brilliant idea that’s been swimming in your head all this time, the only thing left is to undo it all when you begin your Review.

The following is the fourth in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

Okay, Technique…this one might have some people scratching their heads. To be honest, I scratch my own when I think about it sometimes too. Consider your work so far, Concept, Tableau and Plot as a song that you’ve written, and consider the next step, Composition as the playing of that song, then Technique is the equipment through which you’ll play it. The kind of instrument, the amplifier, your posture and so on. In writing an effective story, you’ll want to pay attention to your choices in Media, Chapters, Voice, Language and Tense. Technique is a subtle influence that frames your story and defines how your story will be told. It’s an important yet undervalued step that can help writing shine when done right or ruin it when done wrong.

As you read this tutorial in particular, it might help to remember something that might not occur to you…even this tutorial has been written with these things in mind.

Media

Writing is the base model for many different kinds of artistic work, including but not limited to prose, comic books, webcomics, playwriting (for stage) and screenwriting (for television, video and/or film). Each of these Media has different strengths and weaknesses, as well as different rules and guidelines with its own Techniques for writing them*. As a result, how you write your story will be influenced dramatically by the Medium in which you decide to work. Prose, for example, is wildly different from a comic script…in prose you can depict much more detail and emotion while script allows you to get across information in a more concise structure. Many of these also allow (or demand) collaboration on varying levels, and therefor require you to write in a manner that is both informative of your intended story but provides for interpretation by your collaborators.

Another important aspect of Media is that a story which works in prose will not always work as a script. For that matter, stage plays will not always translate well to the screen. Have you ever read a fantastic book only to see it butchered by Hollywood? Or Dark Horse? Consider the story you have crafted and ensure that the Media you choose is appropriate to the story you’re trying to tell. Understanding the unique needs of your chosen Medium is essential in telling your story well.

*I don’t have the space here to discuss the finer points of the various writing Media and the distinctions between them, as they are myriad. Look for another tutorial on this subject in the future, or for more immediate information visit your local search engine.

Chapters

For lack of a better term, this is the segments into which your story is divided. Are you writing a comic with 24 pages in each of four issues? Are you writing a graphic novel or a webcomic with more relaxed page counts? Are you writing a sitcom with a specific allowance for time and commercial breaks? Are you writing a series of tutorials on how to write a better story? It’s good to know how long your story sections will be and how many of them you’ll have before you start writing. It provides a stronger parameter for the Composition and gives you a good series of milestones to reach, and I’ll discuss this more in the next tutorial. See? That’s how Chapters work!

Voice

Essentially, this is the perspective from which your story is told. Whether it’s a secondary character or a god-like other party or even a story comprised only of dialogue and no narration, someone is telling your story. No matter how you tell your story, you will choose a voice, even if you don’t realize it. Most new authors tend to use a default Third Person narrative, or perhaps tell their tale from the view of the protagonist, but often it escapes us that there are other choices, and each of them has benefits and limitations.

• First Person – This is the protagonist (or antagonist) of your story, someone who experiences the events firsthand. This narrative style provides a closer connection with the events and the players in the story, and can make the story seem more real, but it can also restrict the narrator’s ability to relay certain information…if he or she didn’t see it, how do they know it happened? First person is best used in a story of personal journey or experience.
• Second Person – Second Person narration is rare and hard to write, but it is an option. Essentially, it relates the events in a story as happening to the reader. You move quickly up the stairs as the sound of footsteps follows behind you. Your heart races as you think “Where can I hide?” It’s used chiefly in Choose-Your-Adventure stories and is very effective in certain works, but it requires characterization that is very generic (the reader will have difficulty reading themselves with personality traits they lack) and limits the kinds of stories you can tell with it.
• Third Person Perspective – Whenever a secondary character in the story, a non-protagonist (or non-antagonist) is the narrator, this is Third Person Perspective. When done right, it can read much like you are saying to the reader Hey, let me tell you about this guy I knew once… The problem with this style is that it limits your narrator’s level of information more than any other. I recommend against this style, even with more accomplished writers, but there are stories in which it is the better choice.
• Third Person Omniscient – By far the most common style of narration, Third Person Omniscient is exactly that…a third party who knows everything. You know what the hero is thinking, you know what the villain is thinking, you know what the secondary characters are thinking, and you know every single action that takes place among them. This narrator can be an overseeing god or one of the characters who knows more than they would. The reason this style is most common is that it is the easiest to write with, but it lacks the personal connection of the others.
• Combinations – Many stories will have more than one narrative voice, and this can work very well in adding a dynamism, but it is tricky. A story with variable timelines would do well with more than one narrative style, but a story following a single protagonist on a single journey might not. Not every story is a good candidate for multiple narratives, and I tend to caution newer authors against it. As with my notes on Natural Progression in the Plot tutorial, it’s vital to make sure the Voices are complimentary.

Language

Language is tied very closely to Voice and is more than just the tongue in which the words are written. Think back to our examination of Characters in the second tutorial, looking at Demeanour and Speech Pattern. Your narrator will have these things as much as any character, and a good writer will understand the parameters of what the narrator and the narration will say. If your narrator is a young girl, the Language will usually be somewhat flowery and sweet, so using a lot of technical terminology would be inappropriate. Conversely, a dark and sinister villain telling the story wouldn’t describe something as being ‘delightful’…at least, not without a sneer. The personality of your narration should always inform your word choices, and the more you pay attention to this detail, the more coherent your narrative will be.

Tense

Also known as Past, Present and Future, you’ll need to decide if your story is happening as it is being told or if it’s already happened (or, for the more adventurous among you, if it hasn’t happened yet!) This sounds simple, and it is, but be careful. It’s a common error to switch Tenses without noticing during Composition. That doesn’t mean you have to use only one Tense or another when you write, but it does mean that when you alter tenses it should be meaningful and done with purpose. As with your Voice, it is possible and common to employ more than one tense, but different Tenses require their own considerations of Voice.

And there you go. Once you’ve decided upon your Technique, you have the tools you need to start your Composition.

The following is the third in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

Once you have your basic storyline down and you have a richer understanding of the people and places in it, it’s time to start focusing on pulling the story into a clearer, more detailed picture as we look at writing an effective Plot. The importance of having a concise and fully realized Plot cannot be overstated; if Theme is the vehicle driving the story and Tableau is the driver, then Plot is the road on which it drives, from Point A to Point Z and all stops in between. If an author doesn’t do a good job of mapping out where the story is going, how long it will take to get there and the markers it must hit on the way, then it becomes a meandering and directionless journey. Your readers don’t have to know where it’s going, in fact it’s better if they don’t. But they have to know that you do or they won’t follow you for long.

In constructing your Plot, there’s a lot to consider…so much that I could probably do another series of tutorials on that alone, but for now I’ll try to cover the major points you’ll need to know and the elements that many fledgling authors neglect. It’s worth saying that there is no such thing as the right way to plot a story, but there are indeed many ways to avoid doing it the wrong way.

Every writer has their own method of plotting, but there are certain elements that are common among most if not all of them. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll break it down into two sections. In the first, I’ll address quickly the uniformity of Plot, and in the second I’ll look more in depth at the process I use as a model of how the plotting process can be done.

First, let’s address the basics: Inciting Force, Action, Climax, and Resolution.

Inciting Force

Why is all of this happening? It’s all well and good to want to write a story about a great train-hopping trip across the country, but without an inciting reason for the characters deciding to hit the rails, the story is hollow. A bus driver becomes a doctor…why? Jimmy climbs a mountain…why would he do that? Everything needs a reason, whether it is detailed or not. You should always know why your story is happening. Otherwise no one will believe you and no one will care. Luke Skywalker didn’t just hop the first ship to Dagobah, he had a reason. Your Inciting Force can be commonplace* or surreal, but it should always be important to the characters. Nothing should ever happen just because. Consider as well that there can be many Inciting Forces, but be cautious not to overwhelm the reader with them.

*While Inciting Forces can be commonplace, they should never be mundane.

Action

This is the body of the story, the Point A, Point B, Point C, what happens and in what order. Whatever journey the characters are on as a result of the Inciting force takes place here. Action will be the bulk of your story and is the most variable element of plot. What you do and say here, along with the Climax, will largely define the story you are telling and is what will distinguish your work from every other written piece. I’ll elaborate on this in a moment.

Climax

Often, this is the point in the story where all of the action comes to a head and the Inciting Force is answered, when the mission is accomplished, where goals are met…or not! The mark of good writing is in building suspense so the reader doesn’t always know how the story will end, and a good writer will know when the story demands a happy ending or something else. In addition, your story can have more than one Climax, and can in fact contain many smaller ones along the way. In Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, we can see one definite Climax when the ring is destroyed, but consider along the way as the balrog is defeated, as Saruman is toppled and when Minas Tirith is saved. These are all small Climaxes to what I call Episodes, which I’ll address further.

Resolution

Also known as Denouement, Resolution is exactly that…the resolution of the story, what happens as a result of Action and Climax. Everything that happens along the course of your story will have consequences, and you must be careful to resolve them, or if not resolved then be mindful of why. Illustrate the world in which your characters will live after their journey is done. If the ending is happy, let’s see the picket fence. If it isn’t, show us how the characters react to their failure. Tie up your loose ends!

Now that you have the basic fundamentals of Plot, what is left is the nuance, the variables. As I’ve said, there are innumerable ways to plot your story, some authors choose to plot meticulously while others plot loosely and allow themselves freedom to construct the details during Composition. For new writers, I always recommend the former, meticulous plotting. This doesn’t restrict you from constructing the details as you write, and in fact every writer should, and it provides a clearer path with which to work. The following is an approximation of the process I use*, Markers, Episodes, Chronology and The Story in Rough.

*This process works for me, but I advise all writers to explore their own .

Markers

Make a list of the major points you want to include in the story, be they specific acts or lines of dialogue you want to use or generic scenes. If you want one character to say “That’s what apples cost these days!” while flinging a hammer at a guy in a monkey suit, jot it down. If you want someone to be wearing a fake moustache but don’t know why, jot it down. From important elements in the storyline to trivial aspects in the background, make a list and keep adding to it. These are your Markers, like an artist will decide their colour pallate before they begin painting, you too will decide what ingredients your story will have. You’re not limited to these, mind you, and you’ll probably scratch more than a few of them off before you’re done, but this list serves as a guideline of where you want to go.

Episodes

After you have your list of Markers, you can begin grouping things that can happen together or consecutively. In this step, you don’t need to pay attention to continuity or what causes what, but focus instead on building the individual Scenes. This is the scene where Jack finds the steel chest in the jungle. This is the scene where the squirrels run through the kitchen. This is the scene where old man Clements throws the hammers. They don’t have to be in order as long as you have a clear picture of what’s happening in each one.

Helpful hint: Write each of your Markers down on its own index card. You can add notes for each at the bottom to help keep track of how you want to use them, or if they are connected to other Markers. You can then organize the index cards into Episodes. You will probably find that you are thinking of more Markers as you organize them, and this way makes it easier to fit them in, and if you need to move Markers from one Episode to another, simply pull out the card. If you have cards left over when your Episodes are constructed, you can reconsider whether those story elements should be included.

Progression and Chronology

Every event in your story should always lead into or be led into by another event, it should have a smooth narrative. Once your Episodes are put together, you need to make sure there is a natural Progression, that the story you are telling builds on itself. This is especially true if the narrative style you choose includes flashbacks or follows more than one main character, or any other kind of split narrative. It’s generally poor form to create a flow of suspense or anticipation and then diverge into a point of low suspense. Of course, this is not always true, and in fact doing this properly can heighten the suspense to great effect. To do it properly, however, you need to pay attention to how it fits in.

As an example, the big car chase is on and the hero is in hot pursuit of the villain over the countryside, knuckles are white and teeth are clenched! Cut to an old farm hand walking his cow to the barn on a lazy, sunny afternoon. He takes off his cap and wipes his forehead with his sleeve as he looks up at the clear blue sky. What’s next? Does the farmer notice the two cars speeding down the road and watch as they pass his farmhouse? Or do the cars smash violently through his field, narrowly missing the farmer and his cow and sending debris and chaos into the scene? Be mindful of how your story flows.

The other side of this coin is the Chronology, or timeline of your story. This is not only a case of knowing what is historically accurate for your story (King Arthur never told his knights to git r dun), but also making sure the events in your story are in in order, and that the timeline within your story is appropriate. Again, this is especially important in stories with split narrative or where time is a variable. If your story is set in 2009 and your character has been a cop for 15 years, make sure you don’t mention him going to see The Matrix in high school. When your band of ragtag WWII soldiers is done fighting the Japanese, they won’t be shipping off to fight the Nazis. If Jimmy loses his pocket knife in the third chapter, he shouldn’t have it again in chapter 12. More than one might ever realize, but these details can be the difference between an enjoyable read and the loss of the reader’s suspension of disbelief.

The Story in Rough

This should be the last step in putting together your plot, assembling everything you’ve done in proper order. Once you’ve turned your Markers into Episodes and you have a good Progression and the Chronology is sound, it’s time to assemble them all together and write out The Story in Rough. Some authors will believe that they can keep the episodes straight in their heads, or even refer to their notes when they progress to Composition, and this may even be true, but I will always always always advise people to make the effort to delineate their full Plot. Whether it be in point form or in longhand prose description, be it handwritten or typed, seeing how your story moves from start to finish will not only affix it in your head, but will also offer insight into how a reader will experience the finished product. I suggest doing it on a computer, as it lets you make changes easily as you need to…which you will. Having your Plot worked out in sequence will also help you focus on the next steps in the process.

Congratulations, you have your Plot! Or, at least, the rough version of it. You will find yourself making adjustments in the next steps as the needs of your process require them, but what you have now is the blueprint. You can refer to this as you begin to compose and see where you’re going, or going wrong.

While forging bravely through the wild and dangerous world of webcomics, one is sometimes called upon to create characters. While this is a daunting - some might say impossible - task, we writers and artists leap into the fray with deranged abandon, laying about us with the twin cudgels of creativity and inspiration until all of our foes lie broken before our majesty. It is a great burden to be asked to create a character, for we must call upon dark and terrible arts to uncover this, the most jealously guarded secret of the webcomic lords.

Creating a character is like creating life. Do not take this task lightly, for when you dream up a new character to put to use in your story, you are a god, creating new life to populate your creation. Just as the Bible says that God created Adam and Eve, you must first craft a Protagonist around whom your world will be constructed. Then, as Lucifer was cast from Heaven, you shall create an Antagonist. Finally, you will create a bunch of other characters that nobody really cares about, much like most of that other stuff in the Bible.

The Protagonist

Every good story has a single, primary protagonist on whom the reader’s attention rests. It’s okay for the story to occasionally center on other characters, but this protagonist in particular is the Main Character, and should therefore be the main focus of the story. Some stories boast multiple Main Characters, attempting to weave different plotlines together into a beautiful tapestry of drama and intrigue. This is a mistake! Any attempt to divide your efforts among multiple, equally-important protagonists will always end in a disastrous failure. Your story will be terrible and everyone will hate you.

The Main Character should be unique and exceptional, because nobody is going to bother with a story in which a fat baker makes bread or an unremarkable Russian noblewoman has an affair or something. He needs a special gimmick that’s never been done before, the better to grab the reader’s attention. Perhaps he is a master of his style of swordsmanship? Can he use mystical arts to perform amazing feats of speed and strength? Is he a plucky underdog who prevails through guts, determination, and fiery courage? The best answer, of course, is, “all of these.” The more special your protagonist is, the more special your story is! Always remember this helpful tip.

Your readers will identify with the protagonist. They will envision themselves in his shoes, doing whatever it is that he does. For this reason, you must ensure that he possesses qualities that some of your readers are likely to have. You could try making him somewhat shy in social situations, or perhaps he loves reading webcomics and dreams of making his own some day. Remember, though: the Main Character must be unique and exceptional! He should serve as a stand-in for the readers, allowing them to experience adventures and excitement in the guise of a devastatingly attractive renegade with a strong sense of justice.

The Antagonist

Once your Protagonist has been created, you need an Antagonist for him to face! You will note that “antagonist” sounds a little like “Anti-Protagonist,” which is fortunate, as that is exactly what an antagonist is. The Antagonist’s purpose is to rival the Protagonist at every turn, providing a “bad guy” for the readers to hate. He should either be driven by a need for revenge over some terrible injustice inflicted upon him, or caught in a moral dilemma which forces him to carry out his evil deeds. This forces the readers to reconsider their shallow ideas of morality, transfiguring them into much more intellectually flexible people through the healing power of webcomics.

The Antagonist can be approached in one of two ways. The easiest and best way is to make him a very simple character, since he exists mainly as an enemy for the Protagonist to defeat. It is okay if many of his decisions go completely unexplained, as he is a Bad Guy and Bad Guys do evil stuff just because they are so very bad (or driven by a lust for revenge, as noted above). The other option is to make him a very deep and complex character. This is a poor idea, as it takes attention away from your Protagonist. Nobody actually likes learning about a villain’s complex and intricate motivations, and whenever someone writes about them it’s just because he is a pretentious jerk.

The Supporting Cast

Now that the Protagonist and Antagonist have been created, you need other, lesser characters to populate the world around them. The main character needs a love interest and a motley gang of misfits to run around with, while the villain needs faceless goons and a traitorous lieutenant.

When designing a supporting character, simply think of what the character “is.” For example, the main character’s love interest is just that: “love interest.” You can think up his or her name later! For now, you know that a love interest should be lovely and interesting, so you decide that the character should be devastatingly attractive and also royalty from an exotic land. Hot damn, you’re halfway done already! See how easy this is? As another example, a villain’s “faceless goon” should be intimidating but featureless. For this reason, you decide that the villain employs a private army of ninjas, because ninjas are scary and wear masks. This method is used by all the pro writers, and the sooner you master it, the sooner you will be on your way to character-building greatness!

Details: Appearance

Once you’ve established the storyline characteristics of each character, it’s time to move on to their appearances. A character’s appearance is hugely important, since the reader will be looking at or imagining the character all the time.

Obviously the protagonist should be attractive, because nobody cares about a fantastically ugly man defeating evil with his inner beauty and finding acceptance. However, there are various other elements of physical appearance to consider, such as hair and eye colour, hair style, the character’s style of dress, his or her height and build.

If your protagonist is female and has an unusually large bosom, you should cleverly avoid making your female readers feel inadequate by occasionally posting links to comics with even bustier protagonists and then going off on rants about how demeaning and childish their creators are. If she is fairly flat, you should go to great lengths to have other characters compliment her on her sexy and petite figure, proving that small girls are beautiful too. Your readers will appreciate this kind of intellectual honesty, and will respect your wisdom in holding up society’s silly foibles to be examined in the noble medium of webcomics.

There is one exception to this advice: it is considered very forward-thinking and high-minded to make the protagonist very busty as a symbol of female empowerment and the liberation of the fairer sex. If you choose to do this, anyone who makes derogatory comments like, “why does every female character in your comic have DD breasts?” or, “that is not how boobs work, have you ever actually seen a woman?” is a sexist bigot.

The Antagonist should be either alluring or intimidating, depending on the qualities you want the Protagonist to show while fighting him. He can either be attractive and dangerous, so that the main character proves his strength of will by overcoming him, or huge and mighty, so that the main character proves how powerful he is by defeating him. Any other kind of appearance is to be avoided like the plague, as it complicates the moment, detracting from the sense of triumph that the reader feels when the Protagonist prevails against the evil Antagonist.

As a note, it is always okay to give a female Antagonist an extremely large bosom, because then she represents the excesses of our image-obsessed culture, and her defeat at the Protagonist’s hands symbolizes the triumph of individuality and inner beauty. If anyone comments negatively on the Antagonist’s bust size, you are within your rights to condescendingly explain that it’s ignorant to criticize something when you just don’t understand the symbolism.

When it comes to the supporting cast, simply use the same method that you used to create them! The words, “traitorous lieutenant” are very nasty-sounding and have a military ring, so make the lieutenant a tall, muscular, heavily-scarred man in a military uniform. If you can’t come up with anything using this method, just assign a single distinguishing characteristic, such as “has an ugly moustache” or “is fat” to each supporting character. It’s not a good idea to spend more than five minutes coming up with a single supporting character’s appearance. You have better things to do with your time!

Details: Personality

A good writer knows that a character’s personality is invisible, and therefore doesn’t need to be described in detail. It’s always best to keep things simple: just write a short list of a character’s most interesting personality traits. The Protagonist should have the most detailed and interesting personality, while the Antagonist’s should be simple and easy to understand. The supporting cast doesn’t really need any kind of personality, because they’re just in the story to give the Protagonist people to interact with and be better than.

To show you that I mean business, here are two example characters:

Sir Magnus Lightbeard (Protagonist)

- seems like an outcast but is actually a nice guy when you get to know him
- will never hit a woman
- has a fierce sense of justice and will never back down in the face of evil
- never breaks his word
- is a badass

Lord Jerkhammer (Antagonist)

- executes his minions when they fail him, and also sometimes when they don’t
- hits everyone he ever meets, just so they know who’s boss
- has a fierce sense of injustice and will never back down from a chance to be a dick to someone
- makes lots of promises just so that he can break them later and then laugh
- is bad, and an ass

As you can see, Sir Magnus Lightbeard and Lord Jerkhammer both have very rich and interesting personalities without being boring, stuffy, overly-philosophical weenies. Writing up a summary like this takes no longer than ten minutes, leaving you free to do important things, like describing the intricate engravings on the Protagonist’s sword in excruciating detail.

In Closing

That’s everything you need to know! You now have the experience required to create truly fascinating heroes and villains. Armed with this knowledge, it is only a matter of time before you take the webcomics community by storm. Your daring protagonists will trounce their way into the hearts of your readers, while your evil antagonists go down in infamy. If you follow the advice provided here, you will have people clamouring for updates year round, desperate to know what happens next in the gripping saga of Jimmy Sprogan, Swordfighting IT Specialist.

Where Monsters Dwell is a really neat show and has some really cool contests going on right now, so go check out their archives, or listen to them live every Wednesday at wheremonstersdwell.ca!

You’ve been working on that story for years–you’ve rewritten it, you’ve taken it to places for critique, you’ve rewritten it again. But something isn’t right. Maybe the people you asked for critique didn’t like it, or maybe you can’t figure out how to fill a particularly large plot-hole. Perhaps you’ve taken a step back and decided that your concept is all wrong or that your characters are unbelievable or unlikeable, or both, again. You feel like you’ve been working on this story forever, and yet you’re no closer to actually making it into a comic than you were on day one. So what can you do? The answer is simple:

Kill your baby. Or at least send it on a nice vacation.

When you work on a comic for a long time, you start to become attached. You love your characters like you’d love your children, and you become very set on the scenes, ideas and conflicts that you first imagined them in during character creation. The following statement may come as a shock, but, some of those initial ideas and scenes and conflicts will be bad.  They will not work, no matter how hard you try and rework them, because as someone who is attached to their ‘baby,’ you can’t bear to cut something that you feel is the lifeblood of your character, or, if necessary, the character him/herself. You will almost always never even know it’s necessary, because the more attached you become, the less flaws look like flaws.

Often, when we find ourselves enthralled by a ‘baby’ project, there are plenty of signs that could but fail to alert us, because they don’t seem like signs. Here is a short list of some of the more common signs:

• A gigantic cast of characters. I cannot count the times I have opened a thread on a comic creators forum that says something along the lines of “Hi! I’m really having trouble starting my comic. I have 45 characters designed, and since they’re all so important, I’m having trouble deciding where to start. It’s a big project, I know, but everything needs to be perfect! Please help me!“
• An abundance of Mary-Sue characters. Everyone is awesome, and no one is just normal. The problem here is that everyone is just so special and cool that you have no idea how to start because you’re not even sure who the main character is, or who should be narrating, or whose eyes the readers will be seeing through, making actually starting scripting or pages difficult.
• An important scene that has to happen. Important scenes are not in themselves bad, but can become bad if they’re all your character has going for them. If everything you do to develop a character is just working up to a particular scene, your audience is likely to empathize with your character less. If you’re really having trouble with a scene and making it ‘feel’ right, you may want to ask any overly critical friends or forums for an input and brainstorming session.
• Critiques feel like a personal attack. Sometimes critiques are a personal attack–the person giving them has something against you, or contains personal attacks, for example: ‘Only a moron would think an idea like this would be worth making into a comic. Don’t quit your day job, stupid!‘ However, if ALL critiques feel like a personal attack, the problem is you, not them.
• You find yourself uttering the phrase “Don’t ask me to change anything.” There is not a single story out there, especially among amateurs, that could not benefit from unnecessary scenes or characters being cut or replaced. If you ever say this, its because you think everything is perfect the way it is, and don’t really want critique as much as you want a slap on the back and a handshake for making something so awesome.

So what can you do? Well, you can change your scenery. Put that project on the back-burner, and work on something else. Change everything–change the genre, change the setting, new characters, new relationships, new everything. And start small–the last thing you want to do is end up enslaved to yet another baby project. Set deadlines for yourself, and get them done. If you can’t meet them, consider enlisting in a particularly motivated and like-minded friend who can keep you in check by working as your partner or editor.

And if you don’t? Welcome to Stagnationville, population: you and your baby.

The following is the second in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

Jinkies, Scoob, it’s time for everyone’s favourite part of writing! Today we get to work on Character Profiles, right? Well, yes, but let’s slow down a bit. Character Profiles are indeed an important step in the writing process, but too often new writers underestimate what is involved in doing this properly, and even more tend to overlook that characterization is but one part of building their story’s Tableau. The term may be a little mystifying and it may sound a touch hoity, but it’s appropriate to describe the next area of story development that I want to discuss. A story’s Tableau is, put simply, the elements which provide a story’s scenario…Setting, Characters, Backstory and Climate…not only the people involved in the story or where it takes place, but everything else that makes the story breathe. If we take an in-depth look at the story’s players and examine their surroundings, you can bring your story to life in ways that a compelling story alone cannot do.

Creating a solid Tableau is not always about making your world believable, though. Your characters and settings can be outrageously unrealistic and still be solid and full, as long as they make sense to the story (see Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy). To the other end, your characters and environment don’t always have to be full and rich if it suits your story better that they be simplistic (see Waiting For Godot). The point is to know how the story elements will serve the and propel the overall story. For the purposes of this tutorial, though, we’re going to assume that the story requires a realistic, fully realized Tableau.

Setting

Where does your story take place? It’s a simple question, usually with a simple answer, and it’s fairly self-explanatory, but let’s take a moment to examine the finer points. When thinking of Setting, you will imagine a city or town, possibly even the neighbourhood or even a single building, the more specific the better. If your Setting is fictional, like Middle Earth or Dagobah, then specificity is even more important because you’ll be painting a world people don’t already know. Even if your Setting is well known, such as Manhattan or London, it’s important to take the time to describe it, even loosely. When you look closer at a neighbourhood or a specific street, be sure to know what’s there…a drug store, a park, an antiques store with apartments over top. You don’t need to know every brick, but what kind of neighbourhood it is. Can you get pad thai at 3am? Is there likely to be a mailbox on the corner? If your story requires someone to buy a bag of nails, be sure to know how far they have to go to get it.

Once you get down to individual buildings or rooms, the level of your description should be high. Describe the walls, the floor, what’s on the walls, what furniture is there, what is sitting on the furniture, what colour is the paint, is there a flowery or a musty smell? Is it quiet or can you hear the cars outside? There is no detail too small to know…you may not have to describe it in your story, but knowing it in your head will help you bring it out on the page.

Be mindful of how your Setting adds or detracts from the effectiveness of your story. A whimsical farce may not be appropriate in a concentration camp, and scifi doesn’t always work on a tropical beach. This doesn’t mean you have to tailor your setting to the story, but it should always work for you, not against you. If you think your political drama is best set in a kindergarten, then set it there. If you think your high school drama isn’t going to play well in a pizza joint, find somewhere else. No Setting is off limits as long as it adds to the story.

And there are other less tangible qualities such as weather, seasons or time of day. A rainy autumn night sets a much different scene than a sunny summer afternoon. Don’t, however, make the mistake of thinking that these things define what sort of scenes can take place (people don’t only hear about the death of a loved one in the rain) but know the power that the right kind of conditions can deliver (break-ups are always hardest on a cold winter morning).

Finally, Setting is not only where, but when. Modern day, Middle Ages, 1000 years in the future, whenever your story takes place will have an impact. Don’t be afraid to play around with the time (how many Robin Hood stories have been set in alternate times?), as long as it moves the story forward and isn’t just done for the sake of quirk.

Characters

Many times, a writer will have an idea about his or her characters even before having a clear idea of their premise, and most have a lot of fun designing them. Character Profiles are very popular, especially in amateur comics, and while I have nothing bad to say about this practise, I have to emphasize that a character’s fullness is difficult to express in point form. Height, weight, eye colour, age…these are important things, but they are only peripheral in making a character what they need to be. Characters should be made of more than an at-a-glance checklist of attributes, there is a litany of elements and facets that go into making someone who they are and defining why they do what they do, and while your readers don’t always have to know every detail, the author should.

• Physical Appearance – This is where you would list all the regular things like hair and eye colour, height and weight, etc., but there are other things to consider too, such as facial features (shape of nose, lips, eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, chin, forehead…all of it), body type/shape (are they athletic? Overweight? Lanky? Stocky?), and of course hairstyle. Also, when you describe their clothing, focus more on what kind of clothes they would wear instead of individual items (punk, goth, hipster, normal, etc) unless it’s something they wear all the time like jewelry, a hat or jacket. Even if you’re going to be illustrating the comic yourself, it’s a good idea to list their physical features well enough that someone else can draw them based on the written description.

• Demeanour – Now you’re getting into the meat of who the character is. What kind of attitude does the character have? Are they friendly or mean or shy? What do they act like when they’re angry or scared? Is this person the life of the party who secretly wants to be left alone? Are they the miserly curmudgeon who is too afraid to ask for a hug? Do they act differently when they’re around one group of people than they do with another? Demeanour is the way your character behaves and is probably the most important part of characterization to get right, and once you do, your characters almost write themselves.

• Speech Pattern – If Demeanour is number one on your list of things to get right, how they speak is easily second, yet the most overlooked. Are they plain-spoken or is their language more flowery? Do they articulate or do they rush through their words? Do they ramble on or are they brief? Do they swear a lot or stammer? The pattern of how someone speaks is intrinsic to the person they are and is as much as anything a signature element.

Backstory

Backstory, the events that not only lead to but also support the beginning of your story, is present in both your Setting and Characters. Perhaps your cop character was once in the military, or maybe the Human Resources Rep was once in the seminary. Has your protagonist killed anyone? Ever been married? Not completed high school? These all add to a richer character. Conversely, was the run-down neighbourhood where your characters live once a more affluent area? Maybe your shoe store was the first to employ African Americans, or is rumoured to be haunted, or won a Best Shoe Store award three years running. Knowing more about the people and places you’re writing about adds depth and makes the reader more interested, or at the very least makes it easier for you to write about it.

In fictional Settings, you will need to know at least the basics about the history of your world. Not everyone has to be as exacting as Tolkein, but what happens in the past affects the present and should be addressed. This becomes less important in real-world Settings, but is still worth considering.

Backstory is very important in creating your Characters as well. When considering who a person is, you have to remember that we are all made up of our past experiences and how we react to them. If you have a very quiet character, it’s important to know why. If your character never shuts up or doesn’t make eye contact or runs everywhere they go, there is a reason for it. This applies also to why your characters will do the things they do in your story, and the choices they make. Even if your characters’ pasts are never revealed in your story, it will help you immeasurably to know at least the surface details of how they grew up and came to be who and where they are and why they do what they do.

Climate

Rather than weather conditions, Climate deals with the atmosphere of your story, the day to day conditions that affect your world and the people who live there beyond the Setting. Is there an oppressive king or a corrupt mayor who allows crime to run rampant? This can create a sense of fear in your world. Is it an idyllic paradise filled with sunshine? Do your characters live under a shroud of paranoia that they will be taken by the government or aliens or monsters in the night? A story of political intrigue will demand a certain type of Climate where a cross-country car chase will demand another. Tension, whimsy, depression, peacefulness, xenophobia…religious indoctrination, social pressures, progressive scientific discovery, widespread disease infection, war…these are what wrap the reader up in your world and they provide the mindset with which your reader will experience the story you want to tell them. Climate is how your story feels, and if you can build it well, your reader will be captured before they have a chance to put the story down.

My final piece of advice on how to develop a proper Tableau is to first gain some insight by doing one for yourself. That’s right, YOU! Get a sheet of paper or open a new document on your word processor and write down a full Tableau on your own Setting, your own Character (yourself), your Backstory and the Climate in which you live. It’s harder to do than you might think, and it will help you more than you could imagine.

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