In my experience, writing a good story is like baking a cake.
You have to measure each ingredient carefully. You have to know what things taste good together and what to leave out. Put too much liquid and it won’t firm up. Don’t put enough, the cake is dry. Add too much sugar and it’s inedible. Don’t add enough and it’s bland and tasteless.
Finally, after you have a good story, you add your icing. For novels, icing can be the worldbuilding aspects, extra juicy scenes to pander to the fans, or any manner of things. In television, however, I would equate the icing to the acting and atmosphere of a story.
FX’s mini-series Taboo is like a dry cake with excellent frosting.
Naturally, spoilers ahead.
Unfortunately, what I believe happens in instances like Taboo is that the writers got so wrapped up in the “mystery” of the show that they just flat-out refused to tell a story the way that people have been doing it for thousands of years, because for some reason, they thought they knew better. We’ve all seen shows, movies, or books of the like, where it’s so clear that the author wants to lead you around by the nose and never see a twist coming that they actually fail storytelling in general.
You see, Taboo has a terribly interesting premise, and it has strong dialogue delivered by an incredibly talented cast. I fully admit that I am a Tom Hardy fangirl, but it’s true that I gave this show a chance because it had the potential to be unlike anything else on network television these days. Hell, FX is one of my favorite channels for that reason. They like to take risks and explore the worlds outside of the boring lineup of every other channel with its shows only about doctors, lawyers, or cops. Furthermore, the cinematography is Emmy-worthy, and that’s saying something considering the show is set in Crapsack World 1800’s where everything is dirty, cold, wet, and diseased.
Still, this is what happens sometimes when you get big name directors like Ridley Scott who are so concerned with making something unsolvable that they lose the entire reason why we sat down to watch Taboo in the first place.
Let’s start with the big man himself, James Keziah Delaney. Is his part well-acted? Absolutely. Tom’s using his A-game and he’s given us a heavy, disturbing, intriguing performance as Delaney, who is just as batshit insane as a man can possibly get, and is so far into the antagonist role that you could easily argue he is a villain protagonist. Over the course of the show, we really are not given much in the way of redeeming qualities. At the most, we see he has a slight fondness for the madam’s daughter Winter and he has a slight attachment for his father’s servant Brace, but he is portrayed as basically a step below full on evil. He takes Anti-Hero to a whole new level, and it’s the first mistake that the show made: you cannot root for a man who is almost completely aligned with the villain, and so you never grow attached to him, therefore meaning that his fate is ultimately pointless.
As I mentioned before, basic storytelling means that you introduce a character, introduce their motivations, glance over their background in order to help the audience understand them, and then you put them on a journey.
Well, what the hell is James’ motivation? They never give us a full picture of who he is as a man, despite how much time we’ve spent with him. The writers threw us a few crumbs, but there is no payoff for who James Delaney is and why he does what he does. For example, most storytellers would make this a revenge story based around how the East India Company killed James’ father. We would assume as much, but we’re shown that James doesn’t have that much loyalty to his father and isn’t broken up at finding out he was killed for the Nootka land.
Well, maybe it’s about James’ mother, who was clearly a Native of some sort. Maybe she’s the reason he’s fighting the company to go to Nootka and maybe rediscover his roots. Nope. They never go into who his mother was, what she did, why she did it, how it affected him, or if he actually has any supernatural powers. They tease at it constantly and never address it, and it’s worse because it could have been one of the most interesting concepts of the entire show. Once more, it’s because the writers think it’s cool to keep the audience guessing and keep them in the dark, but all it does is make you impatient and frustrated that they’re jerking you around for the sake of jerking you around. James’ mother should have a larger impact on understanding who he is and where he came from, but ultimately she matters about as much as James’ father, which is not at all.
Over and over again, James makes decisions that can’t be predicted or absorbed by the audience because the show constantly holds us at arms’ length in order to deliver “ooh, aah, what a twist!” moments. I don’t know why they seem to think this is enough to keep our butts in the chairs. Without a reason to care or understand or sympathize with James, why should we stick around for a few cheap, paltry writing tricks?
Let’s say for argument’s sake that maybe it’s not about understanding James Delaney. Fine. What about Zilpha or Lorna? Nope. We’re not given any motivations for either of them. Zilpha is living under the greasy boot of her stupid abusive husband until the last two or three episodes. We don’t know how she ended up with him. We don’t know why she puts up with his abuse when she clearly has some kind of self-esteem and thoughts independent of him. Was her husband always an abusive creep or did James’ reappearance change him? Sure, it’s satisfying when she stabs his bitch ass and he dies knowing that she sent his sorry butt to the afterlife, but then the show immediately ruins it by letting her story unceremoniously end with suicide. What? Are you kidding me? Why did James doggedly pursue her, to the point where he was giving her wet dreams, and then just randomly drop her on her ass? They never explain why he just cut her off and then she just dies for no reason. What was the point of telling that story in the first place if there is no pay off?
Alright, then let’s focus on Lorna. Maybe she was meant to be the focus. Nope. No dice. Lorna shows up all proud and arrogant like she’s hot shit in a champagne glass, but she then proceeds to just take up space as the Token Vagina of the group. She contributes absolutely nothing to the story until the season finale when she exonerates James from the murder of Winter—which, by the way, no one was investigating and he was just stomping around London free as a bird in spite of this—but even then that became a moot point because James was escaping London altogether and Winter’s mother dies in the finale. Again, what was the point of this character? They never show us anything about her marriage to James’ father, if it was even legit, or if she knew all along that attaching herself to him would give her Nootka, or why she wanted Nootka to begin with considering she was just an actress. How could she sail to America and expect not to be instantly killed upon arriving? Or was she just going to sell Nootka to the highest bidder? We, as the audience, cannot answer any of these questions, and that is a huge sign that this story is sour.
There are so many points in this show where there is no pay off. It’s just sloppy. For example, we later see that James and Goddard did file the account of the Influence’s sinking and gave it to Chichester, but then James just murders Stuart Strange, who is the reason why Chichester wanted justice in the first place. Stuart is dead and therefore cannot pay for his crime in the justice system. Perhaps it means the destruction or at least the seizure of the East India Trading Company, but those two actions are at odds with each other in terms of the story. You could argue that it shows that James has at least some common decency, but since we still don’t know what’s going on inside his head, it’s not satisfying.
To me, Taboo could have been a delicious cake with delicious frosting, and instead, it is a dry cake with fantastic frosting. Most of the time, you want it to be bad frosting on a good cake because you can simply scrape the frosting off and eat the cake, but Taboo is at its core an unstable story wobbling because the cook was so busy trying to be Avant Garde that he just forgot the right ingredients and the right measurements.
I must admit that I’m not entirely sure if I’ll be back if FX orders another season. It’s extremely clear that the people in that writers’ room just want to dick around instead of doing their job and telling a story so that we care about the characters we’ve spent so much time with. I suppose I’ll have to mull it over and decide if it’s worth it for another go at an extremely overcooked cake with poor flavoring, but excellent frosting.
Holy crap, guys, it’s been three years since I published The Black Parade.
“What it’s like being a self-published author?”
Yeah. Dean’s got the right idea. I think if I could sum up the experiences I’ve had over the past year, since the last post, it’d be with the above image.
If you know any writers, personally or just through social media, most of us tell you the same thing if you ask us that question. Guys…being an author is hard. Like, really. I know it’s not as hard as being a heart surgeon or an astronaut, but people underestimate the fact that it’s literally–and I mean that, not in the overused Sterling Archer sort of way–hundreds of hours of our lives spent pouring our heart and soul into a book and then sending it out into the world, praying that it’s not a tiny garbage fire to be extinguished by the masses.
I suppose the funniest thing about being a self-pub author in my third year is that it simultaneously got easier and harder after I hit year three. That sounds nonsensical, but it’s kind of true.
For instance, the part that got easier is knowing where to search for help. Need advice about where to advertise? KBoards. Need help with research? Google yourself to death and then call someone who is smarter than you and ask them weird questions (in this case, I called an MIT post doc to grill her about her research project. It was as bizarre as it sounds, but she was more than willing to help and super sweet about it.) Need to find art for your upcoming cover? Stock photos. Need advice on how to not be a total piece of crap writer? Chuck Wendig. After three years, I have so many bookmarks saved to point me in the right direction when I get stuck.
On the other hand, the part that got harder is venturing out to try something new. I finished the Black Parade series (for now; there will be other additions to the canon next year, if things go well) and it took every bit of my will power to get it done and make sure it was the right way to end my debut series. It was by far the hardest thing I ever learned to do on my own.
Until this new novel came along.
Truth be told, Of Cinder and Bone is kicking my ass. Thoroughly. If any of you follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve been gnashing my teeth over it for months now, even though I started out super eager to begin a whole new series. Working on it is like pulling teeth. It’s exhausting and scary and awful and I’ve been faced with constant self-doubt as I am venturing into a totally different genre this time, away from my comfort zone of angels and demons and sarcastic loners with trust issues. Science fiction is a whole new animal, and it’s honestly trying to maul me.
But that’s probably a good thing. All writers need to evolve. Some of us can find our niche and stay there, but often authors are called away from their comfy spot to try something new because we bleed words and the words always dictate our actions. The story is bursting out of our chest like a horrible scene from Alien and no matter how much it hurts, we have to obey it.
To that end, here are a few things I’ve learned over the past year.
-To quote a catchy little song from the wonderful Zootopia, try everything. It might be cheesy and sung by an artist I honestly can’t stand, but the song really does ring true with what you should do as an author, especially a newbie. “I won’t give up, no, I won’t give in ’til I reach the end and then I’ll start again; No, I won’t leave, I wanna try everything, I wanna try even though I could fail.” Do that. Is something terrifying and you don’t want to fail at it? Try it anyway. Do your best and push through the failure, because you will fail at things, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still give up on potential opportunities for growth. Do things that scare you. Do things that you would’ve sworn a year ago that you’d never be able to do, and then bask in the glow of being brave enough to try it, regardless of how it turns out. People give up on their dreams a lot in life, and you have to plant your feet and do your best if you want to be an author and share your stories with the world.
–Explore not only your own genre that you write in, but those that are similar, because you can stumble across diamonds in the rough, both the books themselves and the authors. When I was preparing for my panel at Geek Girl Con, I took recommendations for books with people of color in SFF, and I actually found one I really dig even though it’s in a genre I don’t usually read often. I actually love sci-fi and I have since I was a kid, but I’m a very visual person. I tend to like sci-fi shows and movies instead of novels, but I found Earthrise by M.C.A Hogarth and I really enjoyed the hell out of her series. Then I bumped into her on Twitter and I’ve never been happier chatting with her on occasion because she’s hilarious and interesting. It’s hard to find time to read when you’re an author, but it can be very rewarding to branch out and mingle with others who have similar tastes and mindsets. You can even eventually build friendships or mutually beneficial arrangements as a result.
–Allow yourself to be terrible. So I hit a low point about a week ago when I was about 89,000+ words into Of Cinder and Bone. I couldn’t finish Chapter 14 because I felt all this crushing self-doubt and my inner perfectionist was so convinced that my book was the worst thing ever committed to the pages and no one’s going to like it because it’s so atypical of the genre and I froze up every time I opened my Word document to write more. I started looking for a pep talk and of course found this fantastic article by the legendary Chuck Wendig that got me out of my rut.
Writing sucks. It’s the worst. It’s basically you sticking a huge needle into your chest and pumping your blood out onto endless pieces of paper. You’re exposing yourself, and not in a gross way. When you write, you’re putting yourself out there, and so every single author (no matter what they tell you) gets scared and thinks they’re going to be utterly rejected and thinks about quitting. I think I read that Neil freaking Gaiman did that with one of his most beloved books; he tried to 86 the whole thing because he was sure it wasn’t going to work, but then he got a big reality check from the experience and pushed through it. It’s incredibly harrowing to finish the writing process because it’s totally possible that your first draft is crap. However, another great quote I read once is that you can edit a bad story to be better, but you can’t edit a blank page. Allow yourself to write poorly at first. Just get the words down and then worry about making it better after it’s done. It’s easier said than done, but you still have to do it. Don’t give up if you really truly care about your book and know that it’s the story you’re dying to tell. You can always fix a broken story, but you have to finish it before you can save it.
Or, as Chuck Wendig puts it:
–Meet people. This sounds like a no-brainer, but a lot of authors are introverts like I am. A couple years ago, I’d have laughed snottily if you told me I’d be a panelist at a couple different conventions and that I’d cosplay as Lana Kane from Archer in full view of the nerd population. I’d have called you delusional. But I did that. I was on a few different panels where I was able to meet some incredibly talented people, and I’m really glad I did it. It’s not just for exposure, either. Nothing renews the fire in my soul than meeting other authors and sharing experiences in this crazy thing we call a career. You can pull yourself out of a rut by mingling with people from all walks of life and just talking to them about anything. You’ll often find something in common even if it seems like you’re total opposites. Whenever possible, get out of your own way and be with other people who are enjoyable to be around. You never know what can come from it. Life is often full of bad surprises, so that’s why it’s great when a good one comes along.
–Share your experiences, even if you feel like you have nothing to offer and no one cares. I’m guilty of this flaw a lot. I feel like I don’t know anything at all. I’m just a tiny awkward turtleduck floating on the pond. I feel like I shouldn’t give anyone advice because I’m floundering around and don’t know what the hell I’m doing. But here’s the big secret: all writers are like that. You could flag down Stephen King right now and turn the mic off and he’d probably be like, “Dude, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m just as clueless as you are.” All writers think we’re phonies, even super acclaimed bad asses like Stephen King or Neil Gaiman or Toni Morrison. We feel unqualified to teach people things, but you never know that the seemingly pointless anecdote can spark something in someone that helps them on their journey. It’s why I always keep my Inbox open to new authors. If you ever have a question, I will try my damnedest to answer it for you, and I try to tell people the best advice I can when they ask for help. Hell, that’s the only reason I write these yearly blog posts about my experiences. If even one droplet of advice is helpful, then my purpose on this planet has been fulfilled.
–Dumb luck has a lot more to do with this career than you think. I hate saying this, but it’s true. No matter how many books you read about how to be the best author and the best book marketer, no matter how hard you work to make your book look like the best thing since sliced bread and Nutella, sometimes it all boils down to luck. There is no set way to make your book a bestseller. At all. It’s the same as how sometimes Hollywood pours millions of dollars into a project and it bombs, even though they had one of those “surefire” formulas to make a hit. Sometimes it’s just zippity-doo-da dumbass random luck. You could have a runaway hit or your book can sink to the bottom of the slush pile right out of the gate, and it’s no fault of your own. That’s where the “Try Everything” lyrics really become important. Luck won’t always be on your side. That’s unfair as hell, but one of the biggest obstacles for every last author is getting back up after a juicy, painful faceplant into the asphalt. Sometimes the stars align and everything goes perfectly, and sometimes the clouds part and it’s Jesus taking a piss right on your head. Them’s the breaks, man.
…sorry about that last mental image there, my duckies.
For all the good times and the bad times, I’ve definitely learned a ton over these three years as a published author. I hope most of all that I’ve at least been entertaining as I flail around searching for the way to go. I’ve got a lot of adventures ahead of me, and I can only hope you guys still want to come along for the ride. Thank you for sticking around, readers.
To that end, don’t forget that in celebration of my third year anniversary, The Holy Dark (Book #4) will be FREE to download via Amazon Friday, July 22, 2016 and Saturday, July 23, 2016. Spread the word.
Face front, True Believers! Or something like that. Yours truly just trekked up to Atlanta, GA for the first ever State of Black Science Fiction convention! What’s that, you ask? Why it’s a gathering of dozens of black comic book writers, graphic novelists, and screenwriters in one location to fellowship and meet up with the local nerd population about horror and speculative fiction.
I was invited to be on two panels with immensely talented authors: Black Women in Speculative Fiction, seen below, and The Pros and Pitfalls of Small/Self-Publishing.
(Left to right: Nicole Kurtz, Alicia McCalla, Penelope Flynn, me, Cerece Rennie Murphy, and Valjeanne Jeffers.)
“Why, Kyo,” you say, mildly confused. “Whatever are you wearing?”
“WHAT THE SHIT!” I exclaim, for I am cosplaying as Lana Kane from FX’s hit animated comedy Archer.
“Lana. Lana. LAAANAAAAA!”
I mean, I am a tall black woman with anger issues, huge Hulk hands, and a disposition for emotionally distant dark-haired men, so it seemed like the logical choice.
I also had a little table of my own to sell books and chat with readers. I almost felt like a real author and everything.
“Stories about murder, self deprecation, and pretty men! Get ’em while they’re hot, people!”
Further details about the con can be seen on their website posted above and in the Facebook group. It was an unforgettable experience, and if it becomes an annual thing, please stop by and see me! I promise not to shoot you in the foot. Probably. If any footage of the panels pop up, I’ll be sure to post them here for your enjoyment.
In the meantime, gird your loins. I’ll have more news about my upcoming sci-fi crime thriller Of Cinder and Bone coming to a blog post near you. GET HYPE.
In case you missed it, Netflix’s original series Daredevil is like a second Christmas. You wait all year long for it, anticipating it highly, and staring obsessively at the clock the night before hoping you got everything you wanted. And in many respects, it actually delivers. It’s a smart, biting, gritty, (mostly) realistic show that details a vigilante’s struggle against the criminal element while also examining the inner demons he fights along the way. The first season made a huge splash because none of us expected it to be anywhere near as good as it was because we’ve sadly had to get accustomed to the TV-budget versions of heroes where nearly all of their comic book storylines are adapted and changed. (I’ve come to call it “CW-ing” them.) Because Netflix isn’t bound by ratings or having to stay PG-13, it was allowed to take a LOT of risks and to more directly adapt some of the storylines and character beats from the comics. Let’s take a look at what it has to teach us now that we’ve got two seasons under our belts.
As always, massive spoilers ahead. Don’t read if you’re not updated on both seasons yet.
1. The fastest way to a great story is investing time in your main cast. For me, this is the main reason why I love the Daredevil series. Often with superhero-related stories, the writers feel the need to rush to the action, and so you end up with some gorgeous fight sequences but it doesn’t have an impact on your audience because we’re not invested in the character. For me, this was one of the biggest issues I had with Man of Steel. Sure, I liked Clark alright, but I didn’t really know much about him because the story rushed onward to get to different set pieces and introduce the new cast. With Daredevil, we are shown all sides of Matt Murdock, from the pure and holy to the nitty gritty darkness nestled inside him. We see him struggle from childhood to teenage years to college years to his adulthood with suppressed anger at the injustice he’s had to watch in Hell’s Kitchen. We see that he is without a doubt a good man who wants to save people, but that he is also extremely flawed. Therefore, when his life is in danger, you get those “clutch your arm rest and squirm” moments when you see him getting his ass kicked by the scum of Hell’s Kitchen.
But that’s not all. Not only do we see a full-spread of emotions and intricacies for Matt Murdock, but we’re also treated to fantastic supporting characters like Foggy Nelson, Claire Temple, Ben Yorick, and even the freaking villain himself Wilson Fisk. (I’ve left Karen off for now, but don’t worry, we’ll circle back around to her further down.) I can’t believe how amazing the character development was for the supporting characters in this series. We get to learn so much about them and they are so damned easy to love. My personal favorites are Claire Temple and Foggy Nelson, who are both excellent contrasts to Matt Murdock. Claire is strong, decisive, smart, and compassionate, but still vulnerable. Foggy is hilarious, heart-warmingly kind, razor-sharp, and brave, but often shy and non-confrontational. They do so much to smack some sense into Matt (though it doesn’t exactly stick) and even though he frustrates them to no end, they still care for him either way. In the case of Wilson Fisk, we are shown that he is basically an animal in a human suit, but it comes with a solid reason when his background is revealed. One of the best writing rules is that villains see themselves at the hero of their own story, and this is very much the case for Wilson Fisk. He thinks razing the city to the ground and starting over is the only way to save it, and while he’s definitely a brute, it’s easy to understand why he thinks that way.
As a writer, I can attest to the fact that I very strongly believe that getting your readers invested in the characters as soon as possible is the right way to go. The reason is that it will allow you the time you need to set up a great story once you have your audience’s full attention and trust. We are often more tolerant of a story taking time to develop if we immediately are entertained or grow fond of our protagonists and antagonists right off the bat. You can make me believe the most ridiculous premise imaginable as long as I give a crap about the main leads. That’s the honest to God truth about writing.
2. Realism is a double-edged sword, to be used very carefully. Another reason Daredevil made a huge splash with its first season is that we got some of the most brutal yet realistic fight scenes ever. I mean, take a look at the hallway fight sequence.
God. It’s…breathtaking. This is not to say that movies and television don’t have realistic fights all the time, but according to Word of God, this was done in one freaking shot. One. That is incredible filmmaking. I mean, that’s some Emmy/Oscar worthy stuff right there, and that’s pretty much what cemented this series in the hearts of many fans. We love attention to detail with realism in today’s society.
For example, showing all the modern tech available for the blind was also massively interesting to me, from Matt’s alarm clock and ringtones to how he reads information on the Internet. It’s showing us the work that was put in to having a blind protagonist and not making it seem like he’s handicapped or anything less than a normal person. It’s a rarely seen perspective that is much appreciated. No pun intended.
However, the flip side of that is that the show quickly established that it wants to be realistic, but then we still have gaping logic holes in certain character’s actions on occasion that can REALLY snap you out of the story. In season one, we had the beloved Wesley, Wilson Fisk’s righthand man, kidnapping Karen Page and threatening her to give up her investigation…and then he puts a gun with live rounds right in front of her on a table. So guess what happens. I mean, really? Wesley is a career criminal who acts with total logic and discretion at all times and who has gotten out of many a scrape using his brain and connections and he goes out like a bitch. I hated it. I hated it so much, and it’s definitely a fault in the writing.
My second example comes from our recent season, where Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, escapes from prison and everyone is 100% certain he’s going to come after the District Attorney who put him there to begin with. So what do they do? Leave her alone in her office standing in front of not one but two HUGE windows despite the fact that the Punisher’s M.O. is to use high powered rifles to take out his targets through windows. I’m not kidding. She stands with her back to the biggest window ever for the entirety of her conversation with Nelson and Murdock, not wearing body armor and not even having a policeman in the room to check the perimeter. So guess what happens? For God’s sake, it was so frustrating that I had to turn off the episode and find something else to do while I was calming myself down.
If you have a story and you make it clear that you want to stick to realism, then you have to go all in. You can’t pick and choose when things will be realistic as hell and then completely back out on it in order to move the plot forward. It’s one or the other. It’s the same reason why I find Sharknado so utterly confusing, which I know is a weird comparison. The movie clearly is bad on purpose, and yet you still have these bizarre moments where it tries to operate on logic and physics when it is in fact a movie about flying sharks that somehow don’t suffocate in mid-air and still feel the need to eat people. One of these things is not like the other. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You have to be consistent in your writing, whether you lean towards realism or the fantastic.
3. Beware the Writer’s Pet. If you’re unfamiliar with TV Tropes, you should really get acquainted. It’s a wonderful site that collects well-known tropes in all forms of media and provides examples. It’s not only fun and hilarious, but it’s also a great teaching tool for writers. To that end, let’s discuss one right now with Karen Page.
I tried to give Karen Page a chance in season one. I really did. It was very sympathetic what happened to her with the death of her friend/coworker Daniel, and I like her gung-ho attitude about exposing the truth about the cover up and Fisk’s organization. However, as the season progressed, it became more and more clear that she was getting treatment that the other characters were not. Sometimes writers get this attachment to a character that puts them on a pedestal safe from harm even though every other character gets the shaft, or has to deal with the karma from their actions. Karen Page is definitely an example of a Writer’s Pet, of a character who gets the exception every single time and doesn’t have to work at not getting screwed over by the brutality of life. Karen Page has had it rough, but she constantly lucks out of every situation, much like another blonde from a television show whom I hate to the depths of my soul.
Writer’s Pets help absolutely no one. It is a bad habit. It seriously decreases the ability to like a character who can’t get themselves out of their own mess and who gets Deus Ex Machina’d out of every scrape even though the other protagonists are forced to make their own way. To me, Karen Page is a damsel in distress who is delusional and thinks she’s actually a badass investigator with street smarts. This show has been absolutely ruthless with its characters, often killing off sweet old ladies or showing bad guys attached to meat hooks with their guts spilling out, but sweet widdle Karen Page escapes everything without a damn scrape.
The lesson here is don’t wrap your characters up in bubble wrap and rock them to sleep. Punish them. Make them cry. Make them squirm. Make them suffer. You still have the choice to make it all worthwhile and to give them a happy ending if it fits the story and if they deserve one, but nothing will be gained by placing them on a pedestal because you just happen to like them so much. It’ll come through in your writing very clearly if you’re holding back because you have a favorite. It’s totally fine to have a favorite, but don’t get soft. If you love them, hurt them for the good of their growth and for the good of the story.
4. Take “Woobie” out of your writing repertoire forever. If you know anything about me, you know that I believe in the Jim Butcher school of “torture every character equally and make them earn their keep so your writing will be awesome.” Daredevil as a show does very well with this in both seasons, except for two characters so far. The first we’ve already discussed is Karen Page. The second, as of season two, is Frank Castle, aka The Punisher. It’s time to get on a bit of a soapbox in this particular case.
Woobification is basically when a clearly bad or evil character becomes someone whom the fandom dotes all their affection on and claims that they are the victim here instead of the antagonist. They are in fact wrong, and projecting their feelings onto this character for whatever reason. A good example of this is Grant Ward from the Agents of SHIELD franchise. He is literally a Neo-Nazi murderer who constantly excused his actions because of his abusive past, and he had a large portion of the AoS fandom on his side constantly excusing his behavior and “standing with him” no matter what horrible thing he did, from shooting people through the throat in cold blood to crashing an entire plane full of innocents just to get a ride into restricted areas. Grant Ward is trash, plain and simple. Yet somehow, he has fans.
Likewise, the Punisher has Karen Page. Seriously. We’re talking about a man who hung bad guys up on meat hooks alive and cut them open and let them slowly bleed to death and suffocate as they drowned in their own blood. And yet Karen Page repeatedly claims that, “He’s not a psychotic murderer!” every single time someone said that about him. This is a man who opened fire on her with a shotgun. This is a man who pistol-whipped someone until his face cracked open like an egg in front of her before shooting him in the head. This is a man who slits people’s throats with shivs. But no, he’s not a psychotic murderer even though a professional medical examiner proved that he suffers from a psychosis in which he constantly relives the death of his family, which bends his perception of reality to the point where he thinks he is never wrong and so he doesn’t regret any of the hundreds of lives he’s wiped out. Yeah, his family was brutally murdered and died in his arms. But guess what?
Writers of the world, I beg you to stop writing this damn trope.
Karen Page really does somehow think that Frank Castle isn’t the scum of the earth, and even though we know her Freudian excuse is that she murdered Wesley and she’s trying to excuse her own crime inwardly, there is no reason that they wrote her as a Punisher Stan in season two. Do not write a character as a monster and then spend the rest of your time trying to explain away his monstrosity. If you’re going to redeem him, do it. But don’t constantly browbeat us with flawed reasoning that he wasn’t as bad as we think he is. We’re okay with the grey area. We’re adults. Treat us like thinking adults. Most of us aren’t going to swallow this crap that he’s not such a bad guy or that he’s a good man when he hung people on meat hooks and split them open like pig carcasses and let them die in horrible screaming agony. Stop trying to make Fetch happen. It’s not going to happen.
5. Beware the “He Who Fights Monsters” trope and use it wisely. One thing that Daredevil also does extremely well is exploring guilt and doubt about vigilantism. Matt constantly questions if he’s doing what is needed for the city, or if he’s simple satisfying his own savage nature born out of witnessing his father’s death at the hands of criminals in Hell’s Kitchen. This is great. It’s a fantastic theme of inner conflict for him, and it negatively affects his whole life as a result, forcing him to choose between what he thinks is justice and his own friends.
However, season two might have taken it a bit too far.
Matt basically ends up systematically alienating his closest friends and allies in season two because of his ridiculous belief that he needs to cut all ties in order to keep them safe. He plunges Foggy into the worst case imaginable, namely trying to reduce the sentence of known crazy murderer Frank Castle, and then bails on helping with the case because of his private crusade with old flame Elektra. Then when Foggy confronts him about getting himself killed while recklessly running into things headfirst as Daredevil, Matt severs ties with him and refuses to apologize for who he is to the guy who has covered for his ass a dozen times and only chastises him because he doesn’t want him dead. Then Matt receives some rather wise comfort from our resident goddess Claire Temple and he still doesn’t listen to her, and inadvertently causes her to quit her job after he brings her a group of patients who are followed by ruthless ninjas. All of this is on top of the fact that The Punisher thinks Matt is one bad day away from being him, even though Frank is clearly cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and has barely a spoonful of humanity left.
Matt’s actions don’t feel like he’s trying to protect his friends. It feels like he’s just being a cold-hearted dick to the people who love him, the people who comfort him, the people who try to help him at every turn even when he gets them in trouble. What I don’t like about season two is that Matt can’t see that even if he avoids his friends, that doesn’t mean they just stop caring or worrying over him. It’s much easier to deal with that concern if the object of your concern shows that they acknowledge what you’re going through and still tries to support you somehow. Matt bails on all of them, and I like him less for it even though I get where the show is trying to go.
It is a very fine line to walk with the He Who Fights Monsters trope. I based my second novel around it, in fact, and I’ve had to reap both the benefits and the negatives from that experience. Some readers were extremely frustrated with Jordan, but they understood what she did and supported her anyway. Other readers got too angry and threw in the towel, and that’s fine too. It’s not for everyone. I think Daredevil gambled and lost with this trope. I think Matt tripped and fell into the Unlikable category, and that’s why I caution all writers to examine where you’re going with your character and make sure you don’t push them to the point of not being relatable. This is not to say that I’ll give up on Matt, but his actions made me lose a chunk of respect and affection for him because he was so dickish.
6. Let your characters grow and learn from their mistakes. Matt Murdock might be one of the most stubborn sons of bitches alive. Honestly, from season one and on he really convinces himself that punching the problem in the face is the best way to go. In some respects, yes, it works. All the small time thugs and criminals are apprehended and sent to serve out their sentence. The big wigs are much harder to keep in jail, but eventually, even they get their comeuppance, like with Wilson Fisk.
However, season two falls into the same trap that made me dislike season one somewhat. Matt just keeps doing the exact same thing a hundred times and yet still expects a different result. He runs headfirst into every problem and just assumes he’s tough enough to survive the consequences. One thing that I’ve always liked about Batman, who has a vein of similarities with Daredevil, is that he does understand that there is more to fighting crime than just punching dudes unconscious. He also investigates crimes and foils them before they happen instead of just reacting to everything. He carries gadgets that make life easier. He studied criminology and allegedly every fighting style known to man. He prepared himself as much as possible, and then he went out into the streets of Gotham to help his fellow man. And Matt Murdock, two seasons in, is still just punching dudes.
You have to expand. You have to innovate or at least self-correct with your characters depending on whether you write a stand-alone work or a series. It gets repetitive and frustrating if your hero refuses to see the plain logic in front of him that “this is not working and if I’m going to be an effective [x], I need to change my ways.” It’s natural for our protagonists to fail, and most of the time, it’s necessary for their overall growth. But after they fail, you need to alter them somehow. Show them a new path. Make them realize they screwed up and change their course to a better tomorrow. Otherwise, it can make the reader extremely angry with them and sever the connection you made to begin with. Nobody wants that. We all want to root for someone we care about and relate to, so don’t cut corners by letting them stay static forever.
All that being said, Daredevil is one hell of a show and I am already raring for the next season. Pun fully intended.
Happy Halloween, my friends! In celebration of our spooky holiday, I’ve got an all-new, never-before-seen short story for you told from the perspective of everyone’s favorite archdemon, Belial. It takes place between Chapters 10 and 11 of She Who Fights Monsters (The Black Parade Book 2.)
WARNING: This is a horror story. Violence, adult language, minor gore, and sexual references abound. Plus, minor spoilers for She Who Fights Monsters. You have been warned.
Enjoy!
Commission by Sarah Elkins
The list of people whom I have been unable to fuck, manipulate, or murder is very short.
In fact, there is only one person on that list.
One woman, rather.
God always did have a great sense of humor. No wonder I rebelled.
A little dramatic, but hey, it’s accurate. This is my second year as a self-published author, and as insane as it sounds, I’ve actually put in twice the work than I did my first year.
A marketed improvement from last year, no doubt. However, the same thing can be repeated as my first retrospective blog post from last year. Being a self-published author is a slog. It’s a long, arduous journey of walking across a burning desert dragging our books along behind you like Will Smith in Independence Day. And yes, you will occasionally yell at them, stop, and kick them a few times while insisting you could have been at a barbeque.
Very few authors have it made, and the ones who do will still tell you that this is an extremely difficult career path to navigate. However, having tried and failed at several thousand things, I can happily provide a few lessons that I’ve learned over the past year.
-No matter what happens, some authors will always insist that you have to “choose a side” between self-publishing and traditional publishing. You can’t escape it. People seem happiest when they can label something and identify an enemy, and so the best thing to do is straddle the fence. Neither side is “right” or “wrong.” They’re simply different entities. Your life will be infinitely easier if you don’t draw a line in the sand. If you feel strongly enough to do so, sure, go ahead, but don’t be a bully and don’t be unprofessional about it. You can burn bridges you didn’t even know were there if you do.
-Amazon is always going to do whatever it wants to do. We as authors don’t have control over it because we don’t own it, and we certainly shouldn’t feel entitled to certain kinds of treatment or making calls that aren’t ours to make. There are other platforms from which to sell books, and if Amazon makes you unhappy, pursue them, or switch to traditional publishing. You can waste a lifetime complaining on forums about how you dislike their policies and it will change nothing.
-If your work permits it, joining other authors in a boxed set can help get you into the hands of readers that you might not have had access to otherwise. As long as you are treated professionally and aren’t operating at a loss, give it a shot. I’ve been in two of them so far, and it’s done wonders for my discoverability. There is no perfect boxed set, though, and sometimes they promise you goals that are unrealistic or unattainable, but it’s still a rewarding experience and fantastic exposure. Plus, meeting other authors and collaborating with them is almost always a great idea.
-If you’re into fandom-related activities like comic/anime cons, try reaching out to the organizers. All they can do is say no, and that’s the worst case scenario. You might be able to stumble across an opportunity to promote your work and discover a new audience as well as meeting like-minded people for a few days of fun.
-The permafree model is still a good way to go if you are 100% new at publishing and have no following. It opens up doors and gets you the most basic level of readers, the freebie seekers. However, the next step that you’re looking for is people who are mildly interested in your work. This tier is very desirable because unlike the freebie seekers, they will shell out cash for your work, but you have to be very patient as some of them can lash out if they dislike your book and it can take a long time for you to gather reviews. If you reach this tier within your second year of publication, make sure that your work is as high quality as you can make it and make sure that you have multiple works. The permafree model really only works if you have a series, not a standalone or two-book series.
-If you find yourself starting to consistently spend money on editing, marketing, promotions, and other expenses, keep track of them for the sake of your taxes. Unfortunately, royalties are not taxed in the US with Amazon, so when Tax Day comes, you owe the government a fat check and if you’re a low income earner like me, it evaporates your refund. Seriously. I got $77 back from the IRS this April. It’s that awful.
-If you’re writing a series, particularly in science fiction or fantasy, write yourself little notes of characters, plot threads, or premises that could be good spin offs in the future. I wrote a four book series because I feel that this is the length of Jordan’s journey as a character, but the supporting cast does have the potential to be explored as well. Don’t get too focused on just one thing. Most successful authors have a couple of novellas, short stories or short story collections, or anthologies that help line their pockets after they’ve created their own fanbase. Always keep a backlog of ideas for future works in case you conclude one series. Keeping momentum is extremely important.
-The key to staying afloat is consistency. One book a year is the standard, and that’s for traditional publishing. For self-published authors, especially debut authors, it’s actually 1-3 books a year for maximum saturation and exposure. A lot of people hate the long waits between books (seriously, I am so impatient for the release of Peace Talks that I cannot stop writing Dresden Files fanfics) and if you have multiple works drop per year, you can accumulate more readers in a fraction of the time.
-Stay connected to your fans however you can. Social media is taxing, but I’ve had a lot of new readers reach out through Twitter and Facebook to say they enjoyed my work. Say thank you every single time. Doesn’t matter if it’s just a short little post. Do it. Thank every last reader you get and make sure you leave a good impression with them, because while social media marketing and online promotion are powerful, Word of Mouth is still the best way to get readers. It’s the hardest to accomplish, but by far the most successful way to increase your readers. Be gracious and accept fair criticism when it’s given.
-If you have the budget, try creative outlets like having commissions done of your characters or alternative book covers. Fans respond to pictures way faster than text posts, in my experience, and new images from the series are far more likely to get shared than anything else.
-If you start getting negative reviews, only skim them for relevant issues. If it’s just a rant about how much you suck, don’t even read it. Keep on scrolling and don’t get angry. We’ve had too many authors get in needless dust ups with reviewers this year. Don’t respond. Ever. Unless you’re Brock Baker, you are not allowed to mock your critics. You’re an author. Write well and write often and that’s all you can do, no matter how much it bothers you to get nasty reviews. (And yes, one and two star reviews are ALWAYS going to bother you, bestselling author or not.)
-If possible, submit guest blogs/articles to writing sites and other subjects you’re interested in. This year, I had a big success with my article about Natasha Romanoff and feminism on Black Girl Nerds, and while it didn’t immediately reflect in sales, it got me a lot of buzz and some new followers on Twitter from my key demographic of readers. Social media is NOT about selling books; it’s about connecting with other people. Eventually, some of them might give your work a try, and that’s the important thing. Be genuinely interested in something and be entertaining and intelligent, and often, they’ll come to you.
If anything, my second year in self-publishing has taught me that the best thing you can do is expand your mind and understand that there isn’t one path to growing your readership. There are hundreds, and while you may not instantly rocket to success on your first or second try, you can slowly start to push that boulder closer to the top of the hill. And, if you’re lucky, you have a couple good people helping you push, or you can give advice to the people on the hill next to you doing the same thing.
Here’s to another year and another climb up that hill. Thanks to everyone who has stuck by me and enjoyed my work. I look forward to bringing you more of it soon.
As an author and a fangirl, I know full well that it’s possible for heroes to fall. But I never anticipated that the series I recently praised for having some of the sharpest writing on television would give me not only a piss-poor final season, but the singlehandedly worst series finale I’ve had the displeasure of watching in my twenty-six years of being alive. Yes. It’s that bad.
You might be wondering why I’m writing this blog post over a week since Justified’s series finale premiered. That’s because it took me this long to calm down enough to do something other than scream into my pillow (which I did twice during that abysmal finale) or smash my keyboard in incoherent rage. I’ve finally gotten enough distance between its airing and now that I can properly explain why Justified’s series finale is a cautionary tale in every sense of the term.
You don’t need to rush to Amazon Prime and binge-watch the series to understand what I’m about to explain. The show made one of the most common mistakes of long-running series, which is going one season past where it should have ended. It is so very apparent that the writers ran out of material, because every single plot point and character beat in season six is predictable, nonsensical, and forced. No longer is our wonderful cast of characters acting on their own. There is an invisible hand shoving each one of them across the chessboard, making the most illogical moves in a vain attempt to get to the other side. If you’re patient enough to stay with me, then let me warn you that I will have to spoil the entire series in order to explain why this season and its finale were a holocaust of wrong.
For example, we have our main lead, Marshal Raylan Givens, completely giving up any sense of being a proper lawman by pursuing Boyd Crowder for the sake of murdering him, not bringing him to justice like the marshal service is supposed to do. In season six, Raylan and his ex-wife Winona just had a precious baby girl named Willa, and Winona asked Raylan to consider moving back in with her to raise the baby. This is where the inconsistencies with Raylan start. We’ve seen him talk to Winona and the baby via Skype and he is clearly enamored with the precious little girl, and then we finally get an episode where Winona and Willa visit, and Raylan takes her along with him and spends time with them both. Then, out of nowhere, that entire plot point vanishes and Raylan becomes obsessed with nailing Boyd, to the point where he flat out leaves his badge behind and starts illegally pressuring Harlan country residents to locate him. Raylan has always treaded the line between marshal and vigilante, but it’s always been clear that he wants to see these bastards in jail, not in the ground. The only exception was Nicky Augustine, and that was because Augustine held the pregnant Winona at gun point last season in an attempt to get to Raylan, and Raylan turned the other way while a separate party took care of him. Was it the right thing to do? Hell no. Was it in character and believable? Yes. So Raylan going off the deep end obsessed with killing Boyd makes zero sense when just a few episodes ago we saw him seriously contemplating moving in with his wife—whom he still loves dearly, by the way—and raising his daughter with her, and he wouldn’t be able to do that if he murdered Boyd and landed himself in jail.
Next, we have Raylan’s cowboy attitude not only screwing up his chances of actually getting to raise his daughter, but he also manages to screw over one of my favorite characters: Rachel Brooks. Rachel is a fellow marshal and she’s sharp as a whip, so much so that after Deputy Chief Marshal Art Mullen, Raylan’s boss, gets badly injured in a gun fight in the previous season, he promotes her to his position. Rachel is put in charge of launching a full investigation against Boyd Crowder, who up until this point in the series has managed to cover his tracks well enough not to land in jail for more than brief periods of time. Rachel uses the leverage of Ava Crowder, Boyd’s fiancée, to become an informant to give them something solid to put Boyd away for good instead of a mere slap on the wrist. At one point, Rachel gets the feeling that Raylan is soft on Ava (they slept together in the first season) and she is faced with a choice: taking Raylan off the case because he’s been compromised, or letting it slide because he’s still a good marshal who can get things done. She sucks it up and lets it slide, only for Raylan to literally choke at the last second when Ava shoots Boyd in the shoulder and runs off with the ten million dollars he stole from local criminal Avery Markem. Rachel is now faced with a career-ending debacle after Raylan seriously just stands there and watches Ava drive off with the money instead of shooting out her tires or shooting her in the arm or the other ten thousand things he could have done to prevent her from taking that money. And you would think Raylan would deeply regret putting his friend and colleague—a woman he once told, “I think the world of you and I trust you with my life”—in such an unbelievably bad position, but does he? Nope. He just waltzes off into the dark saying he’ll catch Boyd and Ava and not once apologizes to Rachel for having faith in him for nothing and letting her get steamrolled by the higher ups for HIS screw up. Awesome.
Next, we have Boyd Crowder, who aside from Raylan is the most flushed out character in the series and serves as a foil for him on most occasions. Boyd has been hired to steal ten million dollars from a local weed crime boss who keeps it all in a vault below his pizza parlor. Boyd, for some God-forsaken reason, is still in love with Ava and doesn’t know she’s now an informant, though he clearly has a notion that she’s being secretive about something. Boyd Crowder is ruthless, pragmatic, and intelligent, and that is why he has managed to murder people left and right, sell drugs, and steal huge amounts of cash and get away with it. However, when it comes to Ava, Boyd is, for lack of a better term, a baby back bitch. He constantly waxes on and on about his “lady” and how they’re gonna run away together with the money and how much he luuuuuuuuuuuuvs her. Naturally, because he isn’t a complete moron, he finds out Ava is an informant. And what does he do? Nothing. I’m not kidding. Absolutely nothing. He doesn’t hit her, he doesn’t shoot her, he doesn’t do anything but reaffirm his luuuuuuurve for her, despite the fact that every single criminal who has turned on Boyd Crowder in the past—including his own cousin, Johnny, whom Boyd shot in the head in cold blood—is summarily executed. The season has been building up to what might happen if Boyd found out Ava turned on him, and it’s nothing but a gigantic anticlimax. Are you starting to see why I had to take a week off to calm down?
Speaking of anti-climaxes, Boyd and Raylan have been building up to a final confrontation literally since the pilot episode. They grew up together, but ended up taking separate paths: one to law enforcement, the other to a life of crime. They have a yin-and-yang sort of relationship going, and that was one of the show’s strongest points. So after six seasons of buildup, how do things end between them?
Boyd gives up.
Yep.
The character notorious for being all-or-nothing and being one of the fastest guns in Harlan county won’t pull on Raylan and just lets the authorities take him to jail.
Wow. Just…wow.
Wave goodbye to six whole seasons of tension. Wave! Bye bye, excellently foreshadowed final showdown! Nice knowing you!
Last, we come to the real reason why this season and its finale are the worst thing to air on television. Ava Crowder. This will sound incredibly rude, but I’m going to say it anyway: I am convinced that Joelle Carter, the actress playing her, is married to one of the writers. That is the only explanation for why Ava Crowder got the ending she got in this series. Because it makes absolutely no sense.
Let me paint you the picture of Ava Crowder. Ava used to be a cheerleader, so she was popular in high school, and she married a jock named Bowman Crowder, who was apparently an abusive asshole. So after literally decades of putting up with it instead of just leaving him, Ava makes him dinner and then promptly shoots him to death with a shotgun. Ava is acquitted of premeditated murder because…reasons…and then she takes up with Boyd, Bowman’s brother because…reasons…and they start their absolutely nauseating love affair from season two and onward. Now that she’s banging Boyd, Ava has become number two in his criminal organization—not because she’s smart or skilled or has a background in criminal activity, but seriously just because she doesn’t want to get a damn job and do any legitimate work. Instead she just struts around as his arm candy and reaps the benefits of his work, doing pretty much nothing other than overseeing the whorehouse or keeping an eye on potentially disloyal henchmen.
At one point, Ava murders someone and one of the whores, Ellen May, witnesses it. So Ava tries to summon the balls to kill her, but can’t seem to do it so she asks Boyd to do it, but thankfully Ellen May has someone on her side who helps her go into hiding, and eventually Ava gets caught trying to move the body and gets sent to prison. Boyd tries to find a way to get her out, but since he can’t do it instantaneously, Ava breaks up with him to find her own way to survive in prison. Except Ava is stupid and a coward and a hypocrite, so that doesn’t exactly work. For example, apparently this particular prison is a drug ring. The girls get protection and product in through the guards by sleeping with them. Ava finds this out and despite being in charge of a whorehouse, finds the idea of having sex for power to be utterly appalling and unacceptable, so she instead tries to take out the head of the drug ring named Judith just so she doesn’t have to be like all the other girls who either don’t participate at all or sleep with guards to get what they want. Judith is a sixty-something old woman. She proceeds to beat Ava’s ass, but eventually Ava gets the upper hand and kills her, which pisses off Judith’s band of followers, who set their sights on framing Ava for the murder of her bunk mate. Ava is pretty much screwed, and by her own hand, but guess what? The marshals coincidentally Deus Ex Machina her out of prison to become a C.I. while they take down Boyd.
So, fine, maybe Ava will finally wise up and be a proper informant to put Boyd away for good, right? No. She’s useless. She doesn’t find any incriminating evidence aside from a necklace that used to belong to one of Boyd’s henchmen, whom he murdered but of course he disposed of the body, and so the marshals are all but ready to throw her back in jail. Ava proceeds to bitch and moan at Raylan in every single possible moment about how hard it is to be a C.I. and how it’s so unfair that they’re going to put her back in prison for not doing her job as a C.I., and takes zero responsibility for the fact that she was sent to jail for murdering someone. And what’s worse is for some reason Raylan takes pity on this selfish cow and lets her get away with the money…twice.
What really tears it, what made me scream into my pillow twice during the finale, is not only does Raylan let her get away twice, but the second time she actually somehow manages to escape Harlan county and live under an assumed name for entire years before Raylan catches up with her. And then Raylan finds out Ava had a kid and so he doesn’t take her to jail.
Yes.
You read that correctly.
Ava gets away with all of it.
That is precisely what broke the series. Ava has NO redeeming qualities. She is not nice, she is not humble, she is not smart, she is not likable, she is not noble, and she is not a three dimensional character.
But you know what she is?
White, female and blonde.
And so that’s why she got away with all of it. I’m not one to go on at length about white privilege, but this is the most insulting example of white privilege in fiction that I have ever seen in my life. We have hard evidence that Ava Crowder is not only a terrible person but an actual murdering criminal, but just because she’s white, blonde, and allegedly “pretty”, Raylan sweeps all that under the rug and lets her go. She did not earn a happy ending. She absolutely did not deserve to live happily ever after with her bastard son because she has made countless people suffer and doesn’t even have the common decency to take responsibility for her own actions. If this were the case for other characters in this series, maybe it would be less infuriating, but that is NOT the case. Every single character in Justified has to deal with the consequences of their actions. Raylan, Tim, Boyd, Rachel, Art, Winona, all of them have made bad calls that affect them negatively and so they have to bust their asses to right the wrongs and make it out alive. Apparently those rules firmly established by the pilot episode of this series do not apply to Ava Crowder.
And that, if nothing else, is why the Justified’s series finale became the worst series finale in history.
Justified turned itself inside out. We had so many seasons of clever writing and excellent pay off, and yet its last run on television is packed to burst with trite, cliché, contradictory, half-assed writing that derails nearly every single character that it spent painstaking amounts of time getting us to love. I loved this series, guys. Loved it. I praised it constantly for its outside-the-box thinking and genuinely surprising turn of events. Hell, just last season it gave me what I considered to be the best and most satisfying villain death ever to air on television. I cannot express how betrayed I feel that this team of writers let this happen.
And so Justified is now the new cautionary tale about how not to end a long running series. Look, I don’t dispute that it is hard to end a series. My own series ends on Friday with The Holy Dark. But there is no reason for something so witty and groundbreaking to crash and burn like a downed satellite. I can’t even explain to you what could have possessed these writers to let this filth pass through onto the airwaves. I just can’t. I’m at a loss. Every single thing they set up for these characters fell flat on its face and then exploded. I’ve personally adopted a stance of denial that it ever happened. I maintain that season five ends with Boyd dying in a shootout, Ava gets murdered in prison, and Raylan moves to Florida with Winona to raise Willa.
What you can take away from this awful ordeal is that you have a responsibility as a storyteller to consider the gravity of your endings. You have to think of your characters as threads. Will these threads be snipped off or tied to other threads? How long is each thread? Where does it intertwine with other threads? Do the colors of the threads work well together? If they don’t, unravel them and start over. You absolutely cannot let this sort of thing happen to your work, because there is nothing worse than betraying your audience, than betraying people who took the time to invest in your world and your story when they could have easily chosen someone else. Don’t insult them. Write something that not only makes sense but that fits the tone and consistency of the narrative. Don’t pander to one demographic or let an outside force make you shove your characters into places where they don’t belong.
If nothing else, let that be Justified’s final legacy—teaching us what not to do with an ending.
Pictured: Tom Cruise, the most miscast book character since That Chick from Divergent.
(Author’s Note: This is actually a rare re-post of a blog I wrote back in 2013 shortly after sitting through the exhausting, disappointing Jack Reacher. It is two years old, but since I also just sat through the absolutely abysmal Chappie, I felt it necessary and relevant to post this blog. Please enjoy.)
So I just watched Jack Reacher last night because my parents claimed it was alright.
It was not.
And that is an understatement.
However, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve seen a hair-tearingly stupid movie. I have also subjected myself to A Good Day to Die Hard and RIPD this year. Yes, yes, I should have known better, but when you’re wrong, you’re dead wrong. Still, every horrible experience I’ve had sitting in a theater has taught me something.
Respect your audience’s time. Specifically, I am referring to pacing a story. Jack Reacher had abysmal pacing. For instance, the first five or six minutes of the film has absolutely no dialogue. I have seen movies where this is effective and sets the mood. In this particular film, it felt pretentious and exhausting. It didn’t enhance the evil nature of the bad guy and it didn’t make the character we were introduced to seem intelligent or quirky. It was just boring and unnecessary. Pacing means that the events of your story glide into each other, whether it’s a romantic scene followed by a violent scene, a violent scene followed by a humorous exchange, an action scene followed by a quiet denouement, or any combination of different sequences. If at any point during your movie, a non-idiotic audience member checks his/her watch, something is deeply wrong. This is not to say that everything should be fast and hectic—that was one of the main pitfalls Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole—but you have to spend time on things that matter and omit things that aren’t relevant to them.
Write good characters and we can pretty much sit through anything. Think about ten of your favorite films off the top of your head. How many of them have premises that are absurd if explained out loud? I know plenty of mine do. However, if you write enjoyable or relatable characters, your audience won’t care that the plot is silly. Perfect example: Clive Owen’s hysterical action flick Shoot ‘Em Up. About 99% of what happened in that movie was physically impossible and utterly ridiculous. Why did I love it? Commitment, man. Clive Owen nailed every single one-liner with his perfect deadpan expression and I adored his character—carrot chewing, cynicism, and all. What’s the reverse of this effect? A great plot with horrible characters. We’ve all seen it before. Hell, I can rattle off examples with ease: My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Push, Jumper, The Last Stand, and RIPD. In my personal opinion, those movies had plots that sounded interesting that were executed horribly. Some of them failed for several reasons, but the common element is unlikable characters. Jack Reacher had this problem as well. There were exactly two types of characters: morons and douchebags. Some were a combination of both. Terrible writing will strangle a great concept in its crib and you’ll be left there weeping. Many writers advise to build a novel, script, or short story from the character outward. I agree completely. We have to like the guy or gal we’re riding piggyback with or nothing will pan out.
Commit. I have an entirelaundrylist of awful movies that I love with full awareness that they are awful. I am able to freely admit this because 90% of the bad films I enjoy committed to their premise or their characters. For instance, my number one guiltiest pleasure of all time is Hudson Hawk. No, no, don’t close your browser yet! Let me explain. I love Hudson Hawk, if only because everyone—and I mean, everyone—in that silly mess of a film committed to that incomprehensible, ludicrous script of theirs. They just nailed it. No one half-assed any of their scenes and so the movie turned into the beautiful butterfly of horribleness as a result. To me, nothing is worse than being mediocre or half-hearted. I’ve read plenty of books in time and the ones that frustrate me the most are the ones that don’t commit to an idea.
I try not to name examples, but the main offender on my list is ‘City of Bones’. Great concept, great conflict, great world building, but one truly half-assed main character. I just couldn’t get into it even though I liked Jace and Simon and the other Shadow Hunters just fine. Clary was a loaf of Wal-Mart brand bread to me—bland, dry, and forgettable. This is not to say the books are bad. Not in the least. I actually think the writing is quite good and I recommend them with no remorse, but that series is something I can never get into because I feel like the author didn’t commit to making Clary a distinct protagonist. I believe this is possibly the most important part of the writing process—setting the main character apart from her supporting cast and from characters outside of the novel itself. I am the first person to slam the ‘Twilight’ novels, but at least Bella Swan was her own person. True, she was a perfectly repugnant person, but she was still an individual and no one can really replicate her. (Though E.L. James tried her damnedest.)
Weak villains will kill your story. Not physically weak villains, mind you. Villains who aren’t threatening are also something that makes me want to kick puppies. Jack Reacher was definitely guilty of this. Mr. Potato Head—sorry, Jai Courtney—was kind of intimidating if only for being a cold-blooded sniper, but his “boss” was the least scary villain I’ve seen in ages. Oh, gee, he has one blind eye and no fingers! Bring me my brown pants! Building up a good villain is one of the most important parts to a story because otherwise, your protagonist—no matter how charming and funny and cool—will have no dragon to slay. Winning an unwinnable war is what makes someone a hero, whether that war is literal or not. Creating a slimy, obsequious villain is essential to draw a line in the sand and make the stakes as real as they can ever get. Want an example of what happens when you don’t do that? The Happening. ‘Nuff said.
If you’re not watching Justified, you need to reevaluate your life goals. It is by far one of the best, most consistently good shows on television, and after six awesome seasons (including the one starting this week), it’s finally saying goodbye. For that reason, I’m pouring one out to my long-legged, drawling, whip-smart, deathly sarcastic, eternally troubled badass modern cowboy, Marshal Raylan Givens.
First, a brief introduction: Justified tells the tale of Raylan (Timothy Olyphant), a Kentucky-born U.S. marshal who is a living, breathing modern cowboy. He was chasing down criminals in Florida before he faced off with a crime boss in a crowded restaurant. The crime boss pulled his gun and Raylan shot him in full view of the public, prompting a huge investigation that got him into so much trouble he was reassigned to his hometown. Harlan County, the area where his new jurisdiction covers, is absolutely teeming with all kinds of criminals from prostitution rings to drug dealers. Raylan is put under the supervision of Art Mullen (Nick Searchy), and works alongside fellow Marshals Rachel Brooks (Erica Tazel) and Tim Gutterson (Jacob Pitt), whom he has friction with at first but they soon get along.
Meanwhile, things start to get heated when Boyd Crowder (Walt Goggins) blows up a church and makes trouble for his former brother’s wife, Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter) when he finds out she killed him with a shotgun in his own home. Raylan and Boyd grew up together as teenagers, so Raylan is assigned to get him under control, kill him, or bring him in. Raylan’s life also gets even more tangled up as he crosses paths with his former wife Winona (Natalie Zea), a court stenographer, who remarried but they both still show signs of being attracted to each other.
Sound juicy enough for ya? Well, let’s dive in. Spoilers ahead, as always.
Sharp dialogue can be the most effective way to get your work noticed. Justified has a lot of unique things going for it, but what I’ve always considered to be this show’s most valuable asset is the dialogue. The stuff that comes out of these characters’ mouths is nothing short of genius. When Raylan, Art, Rachel, and Tim get in a room together, you don’t need violent criminals to have a good time. These four engage in the most intensely awesome snarkfests you will see in your natural born life. The relationships they’ve built over the years make for some of the best scenes you have the privilege of watching, especially Art and Raylan, who are equally exasperated with each other but still see the value of one another. If you need the highlights, check out the Crowning Moment of Funny page on Tvtropes.
It’s more than just humor, though. Justified has made a name for itself by carving out beautifully intricate characters through words alone. Boyd Crowder would be just like any other drug dealing crime boss if it weren’t for that legendary silver tongue and trademark drawl. He’s constantly cool under pressure and unlike 80% of the criminal underbelly of Harlan county, he uses his brain to get out of scrapes more than he uses a gun.
Similarly, Raylan’s biggest asset is that he just flat out pays attention and listens to the things around him. That is why he’s such an unbelievable marshal who nearly always gets his man. He knows how to manipulate bad guys and how to either talk them down or trick them into giving him the info he needs.
This is tricky for writers. Every author, and aspiring author, has strengths and weaknesses. Some of us are awesome at dialogue. Others are awesome at descriptions, diction, spinning whimsical plots, or creating imaginative worlds. Stick to what you’re good at, but also remember that great dialogue from your characters can set them apart, whether it’s humorous or poignant or terrifying or heartwarming. It also adds extra layers to their personality if they have a particular speech pattern or a quirk, like how in my series Belial insists on calling Jordan “my pet” just to work her nerve, and gives these grand overblown Hannibal Lecter-esque speeches just because he likes the sound of his own voice. Make the words coming out of their mouths matter and make them work for you, not against you.
Know the durability of your villains. One of the things that I’ve always loved about Justified is that they always pick a season-long villain to antagonize the marshals. This is a brilliant tactic because it allows us to get the full scope of someone without allowing them to drag along forever like Percy from Nikita or Abbadon from Supernatural. We get to see what kind of threat the villains present, why they need to be stopped, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what their hubris is if they have one (which they typically do because they are human.)
My personal favorite villain thus far has been Mags Bennett (Margo Martindale) because for me, she’s the most layered and three-dimensional villain of the show. Mags actually had good sides to her, even though we find out she’s incredibly ruthless and scary. Hell, Mags was so amazing the role won Martindale an Emmy, and for good reason. She was expertly used and executed, and by far the best female character in the show’s entire run.
Conversely, Justified is a bit guilty of overusing their villains too. Dickie Bennett (Jeremy Davies), Mags’ wretched son, is still alive and kicking when he wore out his welcome by the end of season two. He’s a despicable coward, but yet he’s somehow managed to hold on to his life despite Raylan having every single reason to wipe that slime off the face of the earth. Thankfully, though, Dickie was downgraded to a minor character in the recent seasons, so while his presence still induces headaches, it’s tolerable.
Managing your villains properly is a hard trick to master as an author. You can’t look at it on a case-by-case basis. You have to unfurl your villain like a scroll and consider both the short and long term effects of their presence in the narrative. If you make their presence too short, then readers question why they were there in the first place. If you make their presence too long, then readers can get fatigued with them. I can freely admit one of the biggest struggles in writing the upcoming Black Parade novel The Holy Dark is that I had a villain who just wouldn’t fall into the category of major or minor character. It took me forever to figure it out because there were so many possibilities. It’s important to remember that nothing bogs a story down faster than a boring impervious villain who lasts longer than they should. You have to know when to fold ‘em.
Make your characters earn their keep. Alright, I’m going to get a little salty for this lesson—I f*@king hate Ava Crowder. I won’t launch into my 3,000 word essay about why, but if you’re curious enough, watch the following video (skip ahead to 12:35). I’m sure people would debate with me why she’s supposedly a good character, but the number one reason I can’t stand Ava is because she isn’t an independent character who pulls her own weight. Almost everything in this show just conveniently gets Ava out of a fix rather than her getting herself out of her own problems.
For instance, her introduction is killing Boyd’s brother with a shotgun after years of abuse. Look, fine, I understand that because domestic violence is pretty much the worst, but he was an unarmed man sitting at a dinner table eating and she shot him. In damn near any other case, Ava’s ass would have gone to jail, but no, she doesn’t. She gets off scot-free, which irritated me when I began the show, but I let it slide with the hope that she would give me a definitive reason why she was taking up time on my TV screen. She then enters a borderline creepy relationship with Boyd, which again annoyed me but whatever she clearly had bad taste in men to begin with, but what tears it is that Ava is basically just coasting off of Boyd’s reputation. She’s his lackey, except she gets to sleep with him and pretend that she’s his lieutenant. They keep up this disgustingly long pretense of being in love and wanting to buy a home and get married until finally the season four finale has Ava being apprehended in possession of a dead body and she’s sent to jail. Finally, Ava will prove she’s worth a damn, right?
Ava gets in jail and immediately gets help from Boyd, even though it later backfires. Then she gets mad that he can’t find a way to help her, so she breaks up with him and starts to learn the pecking order in the prison. It turns out they have a drug ring inside the prison and the guards are in on it in exchange for sex. The girls play along, but Ava—who is such a hypocrite because she ran a whorehouse herself before getting in jail—is too good to trade sex for status and rebuffs a guard. She tries to make a deal with the local nurse to get the product in and out of the jailhouse, but the guard she rejected frames her for attacking him. She is later saved by someone Boyd hired to watch over her. Then, Ava decides to take out the head of the drug ring so she can be the queen bee and it turns out it’s some elderly woman. And they get in a fight. And the elderly woman kicks Ava’s ass for a while before she finally stabs her to death. The woman’s followers suspect Ava and she’s all but tied her own noose because half the prison now wants her dead.
And then the entire season-long subplot is rendered pointless because Raylan gets her out of jail so she can tattle on Boyd to finally send him up the river. That’s right. After an entire season of her skating by on pure dumb luck, she is Deus Ex Machina’d out of trouble. Yep.
There is little worse than making someone a main character and then letting them constantly get away with everything with few relevant consequences. People are flawed, yes, but bailing a character out over and over again is the quickest way to make your readers dislike them. Not everyone needs to be a badass, but they all need to earn their keep and solve as many problems as they create. This is part of what authors mean when they say “kill your darlings.” It refers to more than getting rid of pieces of your work that you like but isn’t relevant to the overall story. It means push your characters off that pedestal they are on and force them to be worth your readers’ time. You can’t babysit them. Make them matter.
Don’t forget to just plain have fun. I am about to introduce the most brilliant moment ever put to television thanks to Justified. If you take nothing else away from this blog post, then you must do me the one favor of indulging me while I set up the best scene in the entire series, and in any series if you ask me.
In our fifth season, we’re introduced to Dewey Crowe’s family—a bunch of horrible, ignorant, slimy, back-stabbing guttersnipes who come up from Florida after they find out Dewey has come into some money thanks to suing the marshal service (long story.) They pressure and bully Dewey into sharing the wealth, and in doing so, cross Raylan and the marshals’ paths as they try to get a foothold on the crime syndicate in Harlan county. The Crowes are led by Darryl Crowe (Michael Rappaport), and consist of his sister Wendy (Alicia Witt) and his unbelievably stupid brother Danny (A.J Buckley).
Danny has been an incredible thorn in the side of everyone he meets for just being stupid as a bucket of shrimp, a coward, and a bully all in one. He bullies Wendy’s son, Kendal, in front of one of their dangerous allies Jean Baptiste (Edi Gathegi), who challenges him to either leave the kid alone or face off with him. Danny shoots him in the back and then threatens to kill Kendal if he tells anyone, and then tries to kill Kendal after he accidentally lets Danny’s beloved pit bull run off and get hit by a car.
At the end of the season, Raylan finally tracks Danny down to try and get him to lead him to Darryl. Danny decides to have a showdown with sharpshooter Raylan by setting up the 21-foot rule, a legend where a person with a knife is good enough to take someone with a gun within 21 steps of each other.
Reportedly, this scene was so amazing that Timothy Olyphant himself simply could not stop laughing in between takes because it is by far the most satisfying villain death ever made. When this happened live, my mother and I both jumped straight up off the couch and gave it a standing ovation for over a minute. You just have to have fun when opportunities like this present themselves. Justified went for it and they knocked it straight out of the park. True, you do need a bit more context to fully appreciate why the aforementioned scene is perfection, but nothing beats just having fun in your work.
No matter what the genre, it’s important to have fun with your writing. You have to love it. You have to put yourself inside it and make your readers turn those pages, the way that Justified is so good it practically demands me to watch it. Be audacious. Be bold. Do risky things or edgy things and make the pay off so great that people are excited to share it with each other. Even if you’re not Stephen King, you have the ability to gain readership by making your work an experience they cannot get elsewhere.
I’m super nervous about how Justified will end—after all, this is FX we’re talking about and they don’t pull their punches—but I’m so glad for the ride. It truly has been a show that no one can touch. It has its own voice and style and I will miss it sorely after it’s gone. If you’re curious, tune in Tuesdays at 10 o’clock pm EST. See you, cowboy.
Left: Jennifer Lawrence Right: Liam Hemsworth Below: Josh Hutcherson
Hey, guys! Do you like my new glass house? Isn’t it beautiful? Well, gonna start throwing stones now, so remember to duck.
Yes, I know, it is hypocritical for me to write a blog post discussing love triangles, especially when it’s focused on one of the most successful book-to-movie franchises in history. That being said, Mockingjay Part 1 gave me a subject I want to discuss anyhow. Spoiler alert for The Hunger Games novels. Sorry.
My sister-in-law and I went to see Mockingjay last night and we came to the scene in what remains of District 12 where Katniss and Gale are in her victor’s mansion and Gale recalls when she kissed him after he was recovering from being whipped. Katniss kisses him, and Gale bitterly remarks that he knew she’d do that because she only pays attention to him when he’s in pain. My sister tapped me on the arm and made a face, pointing at Gale, and I knew why. We later discussed how she felt about Gale’s bitterness at being rejected by Katniss, and I agreed, but I told her I did feel a little bad for him—not because he was rejected because that’s a part of life, but because Gale is an example of a character who is too closely tied to a love triangle and that’s why that scene made him so unlikable.
I feel as if Gale—and this is strictly based on the film adaptation of him—is propped up by the love triangle and doesn’t stand on his own as a character without it. That’s a problem in the writing. His whole existence is wrapped up in Katniss, whether it’s her actions in District 12, her actions in the Games, or her actions after the second revolution happens. I told my sister I kind of wanted Gale to understand that Katniss wasn’t in love with him at the end of the first novel and then just become her ally for the remaining two books because he isn’t given the right amount of attention thanks to the love triangle. He’s not a bad guy, after all, but the reason Gale’s confession about the kiss was so teeth-clenchingly bad is because it’s such small potatoes in the grand scheme of the rest of the film.
I kind of wanted Katniss to turn to him and say, “Dude, we’re in a WAR. They are bombing innocent people into oblivion. I’m the sole symbol of this war and I don’t have time to tend to your wounded male ego. I don’t have time to fall in love, okay? Suck it up.” That sounds harsh, but seriously, having a second romantic subplot in the middle of a war torn saga is unnecessary.
I really think a better source of conflict for Gale and Katniss would have been the propaganda and her position as the Mockingjay. For instance, what if Gale’s recollection of District 12’s bombing became more popular than Katniss’ other appearances? What if they were considering him for their new symbol, which meant Katniss’ leverage to get Peeta back would be defunct? That could have been a better way for them to be at odds instead of Gale being a sourpuss that Katniss is in love with Peeta. As it stands, he just sounds like one of those whiny boys who post on Facebook about getting ‘Friendzoned’ all the time when it shouldn’t matter. Sure, one sided romance is a bitch, but if someone truly loves you as a friend, you should be respectful of their feelings and simply love them anyway. If it’s too painful to do that, then be an adult and tell them that you can’t continue the friendship because of your feelings and bid them adieu. Don’t mope and whine about it because all you’re going to do is make your friend feel like crap for something they have no control over.
Mockingjay’s love triangle is something I feel isn’t a natural part of the narrative. I think that Collins needed an easy way to create tension between characters, and she chose this one. I think Gale could have come across a lot better if he wasn’t in love with Katniss. After all, he’s a strong, handsome, dedicated human being and we don’t get any of his backstory in the movies, and only a little bit of backstory in the books. He is very underdeveloped and so everything kind of slides into the negative category by the time we get to Mockingjay. He shouldn’t be pouting and throwing tantrums because she’s not in love with him. He should be supporting her after all the horrible things she’s seen and done. He should have been the one to race to her bedroom when she had nightmares, but he wasn’t.
I also think this love triangle might have been easier to digest if we knew with absolute clarity how Katniss felt about him, or why she cared for him. It’s not the same as her relationship with Peeta, which was forged in the kiln of the Hunger Games. Katniss is an extremely solitary person and she appears to like Gale because he’s easy company. If we saw more about his actions, his ideals, and how she relates to them, then maybe it would have made more sense for there to be a triangle. After all, Gale was actually right. Katniss didn’t have any romantic feelings for him, and only kissed him out of comfort because she didn’t know what else to do. There is a such thing as platonic love, after all, and I think that’s what Katniss has for Gale. Granted, kissing him on the lips was pretty misleading, but hey, she’s a teenager, she didn’t know any better.
For me, the love triangle in this series falls short because it is so damn obvious that Katniss is going to end up with Peeta that there was no point to drag it out across all three books, and subsequently, the films. It’s not a triangle when it’s just unrequited from one guy while the other two are wrapped up in their own little love bubble. It clogs up an already complicated story with needless bickering and stressing over something that in the grand scheme of things will not affect the ending. Katniss has far too many issues to worry about settling down with someone, especially when they could all be blown to steaming bits by the Capitol at any time. I feel sympathetic towards Gale just because I’ve had crushes on guys who didn’t reciprocate before, but I didn’t wander around behind them like a puppy begging for attention just to suit my own needs. Friendship should mean more than that to him and that’s why his character starts to deteriorate in the final novel and film.
Love triangles in general, however, can work if you write them with enough weight behind the characters. I think it’s crucial that the two love interests vying for a girl or guy’s attention can stand up on their own and just happen to be in love with him/her instead of all their actions being directly tied to the main character. For instance, The Dresden Files didn’t have the typical love triangle situation between Harry, Susan, and Murphy. When Harry started noticing he might have feelings for Murphy, Susan wasn’t around. When Susan came back, Harry was focused on her and didn’t waffle back and forth between the two. Murphy respected his boundaries and didn’t bring up the shift in their friendship. It was balanced. Both of these women had their own separate lives to lead, and we hardly even saw both of them in the same book. It worked because we didn’t dislike Harry for being indecisive because it was never portrayed that way. He loves Susan for a particular set of reasons, and he loves Murphy for a particular set of reasons, and they don’t intersect. That works well for the series since the stakes are always so high and Harry doesn’t have time to worry about his heart when he’s trying to keep some monster for ripping it out of his chest.
For example, in my own series, I sort of made a list of pros and cons for Michael and Belial as Jordan’s main love interests. Michael is who she is in love with, but Belial is that dangerous little voice in the back of her head reminding her she could just be selfish instead of having to work at her relationship. Belial has a lot to offer Jordan if she went in that direction. She’d be sacrificing her marriage and her friendship with the angels if she chose him, but he would give her a life that she couldn’t experience otherwise. Additionally, Michael and Belial’s entire lives don’t hinge on Jordan’s every action, and that’s because I think it’s important they have their own agency. The boys also have a complicated past with each other that’s going to come up in The Holy Dark, and that’s something I think is lacking in Mockingjay between Gale and Peeta. I’d have to reread the novel, but I don’t remember them interacting with each other very much, and it does damage to the love triangle if the only interactions between the competitors is them fighting over the main character.
Love triangles are complicated and overused. That’s fact. However, it doesn’t mean they are impossible to pull off, nor does it mean authors should stop writing them. I do think YA leans too heavily on them, but when done correctly, it can be an enticing addition to a narrative that helps you learn more about the three people involved and forces the protagonist to make a hard choice. I think that’s the reason why they exist and why they’re so prominent in fiction. Like anything else, it just needs to be used in moderation.
…think fast! *throws stone*
P.S. While I’ve got you here, She Who Fights Monsters will be free this Thursday on Christmas. Spread the word or grab yourself a copy!
