My Life As A Writer: "Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward" Narrative Review

As a game, Heavensward is one of the best experiences you can have in MMORPGs. The strength of that experience comes from its narrative. Not that the narrative itself is something truly unique or amazing, but rather how it is used.

Below I'll review those ludonarrative techniques, but here I'll remind you of the following: there is no spoiler protection for anything older than six months.

Narrative Structure

The story itself has a basic narrative structure. The protagonist comes into the plot as an outsider, vulnerable, and needing succor. He finds a patron with one of the ruling families of the setting, whose hospitality and generosity he repays by assisting in setting their affairs. These affairs include waging a slowly-losing Forever War with a pissed off dragon, all of its brood, and the heretical cults that serve them.

Through the course of these early chapters, the protagonist gets a full view of the physical and moral battleground at stake. Both the dragons and the defenders claim moral authority to wage a war of extinction upon the other party, but soon this is challenged when an antagonist from A Realm Reborn returns with new information: the cult leader Lady Iceheart.

Now we get the real conflict of the story: resolving the reality of the Forever War versus the propaganda that both sides push about it to justify their own positions. At first it is the defenders and their totally-not-Christian church that get skewered. Then when the peace mission gets to the elder dragons, they cough up their side of the story and reveal that they too were utter bastards. Therefore the conflict is Truth vs. Narrative, framed against ending the Forever War by putting down both sides' bad actors.

The narrative's climax ends the defenders' side of things by removing both the master villains manipuating the whole thing as well as the not-Church's corrupt--but utopian--leadership. From there the decending action leads to the final attempt by the dragons' bad actor to push the Forever war, which the protagonist puts down by both banishining the bad actor as well as rescuing the man said actor possessed to make this attempt possible.

After that it's tying up loose ends and introducing the following expansion's narrative; call this the denoument.

Ludonarrative Structure

Heavensward communicates this narrative by making its consumption necessary to access gameplay options. This includes side-stories such as those specific to the new Jobs introduced in the expansion. This is not just making the player sit through (sometimes voice-acted) cutscenes; actually playing out critical moments in the narrative, what would be a plot advancement point where a narrative beat is it, is how the biggest moments--the ones everyone loves--are put forth.

What results here is using narrative to frame gameplay and gameplay to frame narrative, forming an alternating of both passive observation and active participation with the narrative that creates a synergistic psychological effect that takes advantage of both forms of narrative engagement to create a stronger experience with it.

The structure goes like this: narrative frame, ludo experience, narrative beat, reframe. Repeat this structure until you finish your outline. Some ludo experiences are small solo instances, some are actual dungeons or raids, with plot advancement and narrative development being had at the conclusion via a cutscene.

This means that the ludo experience is very much one where the player, as the protagonist, creates the illusion of having a direct and real hand in events that greatly enhances suspension of disbelief and acceptance of the narrative's premises through a form of Sunk Cost Fallacy psychology. As we saw with A Realm Reborn, this is very effective and is the secret sauce behind the game's very fierce following among its audience as well as the source for the affection said audience has for both its lead developer as well as the writers.

In short, this is a ludonarrative model that works, and the development team has refined it to a very sharp edge indeed; the experiences in later expansions demonstrate that refinement.

A Premise Unsettling

The narrative does have troubling elements, but most don't notice them because they have no context for concern.

The one most people miss is the one that drives the entire game's narrative to date--the Hydaelyn-v-Zodiark conflict of Light-v-Dark--that was first introduced in A Realm Reborn via the active agents of the latter: the Ascians.

In Heavensward, we see that not only can one be formally taught how to summon the false godforms called "Primals", but the full nature of how that summoning works. This actually does not require formal ceremony at all; any strong emotion will do, by any number of people, so long as there is either living souls or crystalized magic power (either crystals) in sufficient quantity to power the summoning-cum-creation of the godform into material space.

We also learn that one can use living people as vessels for such godforms, and that one can create godforms out of nothing more than whim and fancy; two examples are Lady Iceheart's "Shiva" being really nothing more than her own self-insert fanfic made flesh (the realization of which breaks her morale as she loses her moral authority), and the aforementioned not-Church deliberately using the mythical versions of their historical forefathers as godform templates to invoke.

The other aspect of Primals--the enthrallment, "tempering", of their invokers and followers--remains evident. While most new players won't know of this unless they went out of their way to find it, A Realm Reborn reveals that even the powers of the purported True Gods of the Twelve are themselves Primals and the behavior of the Ascians is no less fanastical than any other Tempered thrall.

The conclusion then is obvious: this narrative is maltheist and antitheist, not merely atheist, as it implies (and is later confirmed in Shadowbringers) that both Hydaelyn and Zodiark are themselves Primals summoned into being to do specific things. There are no True Gods.

This is a problem because all of the races are Mankind, and Man in hardwired to worship and feel. Therefore it is unavoidable that Primals be summoned time and again, with all of the baleful effects upon the minds of men and the lands they inhabit, because the fundamental nature of Man makes it so.

And, as this remains the case through Shadowbringers, there is no solution offered to this problem by the narrative in any way. That may change with Endwalker, as it purports to resolve the Light-v-Dark conflict, but until then the only viable solution is a refinement on what the purportedly-evil Garlean Empire (which is unable to use magic) offers: extermination of all religion and all cultures of worship, in favor of a technocratic imperial antitheist state.

I will point out that replacing the State for God merely perverts worship into that of the State, and any form of worship will inevitably result in a Primal forming from the shared expectations of the worshippers- the very thing openly weaponized by the not-Church in Heavensward because they too saw this as the only way out of the problem.

To my knowledge, I am unaware that this is even on the development team's radar as being an issue at all. We'll see by this time next year if I'm right or not.

But Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln

This is not to take away from the experience of play. It's a 10/10 experience and I won't say otherwise.

There are also other things I find irksome, such as the Modernist assumption that Democracy/Republican government of a more-or-less secular nature is always the best form of government and that "nation" is synonymous with "state" and "country" (both assumptions being utterly untrue), nevermind the totally-not-Christian church that gets undermined in Heavensward. Japanese games are Japanese, and that means baggage will be in tow whether we like it or not.

The narrative is a fantastic experience, flaws and all, and should be experienced to comprehend how well they merged storycraft with game design to make it so. At the very least, find a livestreamer going through the expansion or a Let's Play series covering it and see how it's done. Folks love this for good reason, and you ought to learn from it.

The Super Robot As Heroic Icon

The Super Robot, as a concept in fiction, uses the same narrative structure as a superhero. This also means that its roots are the same: mythology. The biggest icon of Super Robots--Mazinger Z--explicitly acknoledges this fact at multiple levels. The name means "Devil God", the catchphrase is "I can be a god or a devil" (refering to the robot's power being subordinate to the pilot's morality), the origin story involves Ancient Greece, several villains are re-imagined gods or monsters (not just Greek), and the 2009 retelling (Shin Mazinger Z: The Impact!) even has Zeus appear as both an ally and a material source of the title robot's power (coupled with the fictional Unobtanium power source, Photo Power).

You see similar use of mythological motifs, themes, etc. with all of the successful and enduring Super Robot properties. It's not just because they were early; Tetsujin 28 was even earlier, but nowhere near the juggernaught status that Mazinger Z attained. No, it's because they embraced the mythological roots and used them to tell as powerful a story as they could. In time, Super Robots attained an iconic status that few Real Robots match- and one of those Reals, the RX-78 Gundam, is a retooled Super design.

The Super Robot is not a prototype for a mass production design. The Super Robot is not a customized machine for an ace pilot. The Super Robot is a heroic icon in its own right, and the pilots that sit in its cockpit are the partners it has in executing its core mission. In this respect, the Super Robot is a technological manifestation of the Iconic Hero and his Core Ethos: Mazinger Z is the premiere warrior defending Mankind from the evil traitor Dr. Hell and his horde of Mechanical Beasts (or later the reborn Mycenian Empire under the Great General of Darkness). Getter Robo is the Champion of Life against all that oppose it and its chosen species: Man. Grendizer is a Superman figure defending Earth from the aliens that destroyed his homeworld. You get the picture.

If you think this would not be willfully wielded for deliberate effect, you would be sadly mistaken. If you then think this cannot be so used for good ends, you're doubly-mistaken.

In the far future of Galactic Christendom, this knowledge was not lost.

The Church, knowing how Mankind thinks, used breakthroughs made in the City of God to make real the fictional Super Robot of pre-Cataclysm popular culture. This was not a thing done out of whole cloth. It was a new form of the same use of iconography and psychology that lead to the early post-Cataclysm efforts to contact survivor communities and begin to knit them back into a greater whole, originally called "Project Gandalf (after the Wizards of Middle-Earth and their mission).

As the Dark Lords revealed their true forms and more of the Nephilim stepped out of the shadows, the pre-Flood abominations also stepped out and the survivors--and later, their children and grand-children--saw things in terms dervived from pre-Cataclysm entertainment: Kaiju, Titans, Mutants, Dragons. It took time for the legendarium of old to reassert itself, and as destruction is swifter than healing the Church had to use the language at hand to deal with the issue.

Giants require giant-slayers. Monsters require monster-slayers. Terrifying monsters require heroic warriors to slay them, and--and this is critical--be seen doing it. Men need to be reminded generation after generation that monsters can be slain by ordinary men because there is a constant flow of new generations that come forth and need to witness this truth to comprehend it. Heroic icons, therefore, have a lawful purpose on multiple levels.

This is why the Super Robots exist, and why they are so powerful: they are the heroic icons that go forth to face the monsters that threaten Mankind.

The breed of men that mount up, get in the cockpit, and go forth must be the very best available and not just in strength of limb, but of heart and soul also. Those men made the difference with the early models of Super Robot, and as the reconquest of Earth turned into the Liberation Crusades that pushed the enemy off-world and then out of the solar system the model for not only the Star Knights but of the various noble houses was made and struck.

The Super Robots would go on to become the icons of noble houses, giving them an anchor for the identity of entire nations. They would define the Church's elite heroes. They would be more than just great war machines, but achieve the full morale-boosting power and narrative weight that their iconic status enabled- and so would those chosen to pilot them.

Author's Note: The Writing Playlist for Book Two

Since it worked so well last time, I put together a playlist for writing Book Two.

• "Kaneda Theme", Akira
• "Derezzed", Daft Punk for Tron Legacy
• "Enter Dessler", Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (Azazel's theme)
• "Here Comes Char", Mobile Suit Gundam (Jack's theme, duh)
• "Genya's Ambition (Big Fire's Theme)", Giant Robo: The Day The Earth Stood Still (Qis' theme)
• "Battle of the Underground Road", Giant Robo: The Day The Earth Stood Still
• "Colwyn And Lyssa", by James Horner for Krull (Gabriela's theme)
• "Valyries Love Thy Bravery", Legend of the Galactic Heroes (Roland's theme)
• "Chant of the Templars - Da Pacem Domine (Ensemble Organum)"
• "Yamato Descends", Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (Oklahoma)
• "Oretachi no Funade", Arcadia of My Youth: Endless Orbit SSX (Revenge)

The Business: When Your Teaser Betrays You

One thing that the teaser for the final Reylo Mouse Wars film makes clear is that we who are out to Fork & Replace Mouse Wars can clearly beat them on the writing front.

Holy shit, that has "Bad Writing" all over it.

The setup with Rey backflipping atop a TIE Silencer, implied to be flown by Kylo, and the ending with a piece of the second Death Star on a planet with the implication that some remnant of Skeevy Sheev dwells within like Yet Another Sith Specter are two giant red flags that this film doesn't take storytelling to entertain an audience first and foremost; it is going to be a secondary concern.

What is the primary concern? Count on the Muh Rey Sue arc reaching its conclusion, with her somehow being retro-actively spliced into the Skywalker line and--as the only Jedi--tasked with making a new Jedi tradition to do what, again inexplicably, neither Luke nor the Prequel Jedi could accomplish. Count on Rey taming Kylo despite him being Emperor in all but name purely because of what she is and not by any effort on her part. Count on Leia, Lando, and the rest being wasted on things that ultimately don't matter. Count on the story being nihilistic and pointless, even if Rey wins and saves the day.

Count on the Star Wars Galaxy, by the end of the film, being one where only Rey matters. As she will embody the whole of the Force, since Kylo's odds on surviving to the credits are slim to none, "The Force Is Female" will indeed be the case for Mouse Wars. Expect Finn and Poe to die or otherwise get permanently sidelined by the end, along with Lando, with only Chewbacca still being up and able due to being a glorified morality pet by Mouse Wars reckoning. In short, this isn't a sincere apology; it's insincere bullshit that's still meant to push an agenda--it's still propaganda--but they're going to lay on the Mea Culpa thick between now and December to sucker people into seeing it.

All they had to do, instead, was write an honest Space Opera. You can still have a heroine lead, and she can still be an action girl, without making propaganda; we had plenty of that in the pulps. (We also had action girl villainesses then, and they weren't mouthpieces either.) But no, the ideologues running Mouse Wars can't have that so here we are- and, being incompetent, they telegraph their intentions without being aware of it. Don't expect better from the trailers to come; expect more tells warning you away. The Mouse doesn't respect you; jump away from Coruscant.

The Business: Post-Mortem on the Star Knight Campaign

This post is a follow-on from a post I did at the main blog as the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign approached its conclusion. Where that post is about what I'd expected to be my post-campaign timeline, this is me looking back over what went down.

• Constraints: I had nothing in terms of monetary capital. The campaign's purpose was to raise some. That I not only hit my initial goal, but--at the very end--managed to double it, is a fantastic success. In addition to having no money, I also came into this with little exposure to other campaigns and no experience of my own; I took what advice I found beforehand and followed it as well as I could. I attribute my success in large part to heeding that advice.
  
• Media: I made four podcast appearances over the course of the campaign, and on a few more I got the word out via chatroom participation, but of the four appearance the first--my Killstream appearance--had the strongest immediate impact. It was also my worst media appearance of the four. I had a similar impact just by participating in every World Class Bullshitters livestream I could, and both are equal to the support I got from the Twitch streamers I solicited for support.
  
• Personality vs. Product Appeal: Nick Cole is consistent in saying that readers are loyal first and foremost to genre, and I tried to emphasize in word and image whom I'm appealing to. The problem? A lot of the groups I'm friendly with were far more on board with "#StarWarsNotStarWars" than anything else. It didn't help that I hadn't bothered to break it down to something most folks could grok in a second. "Star Wars + Voltron + Robotech" (+ Deus Vult, for some segments) worked. My personality worked more to my benefit in the later podcast appearances, and that will become an asset going forward, but only if properly employed.
  
• Salesmanship: I suck at sales. I should not be surprised, as I have no experience as such. Advice proffered, publicly and privately, I've archived for later re-reading. Watching Nick Cole's recent video series shows that this writing business really is a business, and nothing was more obvious than how clear it was that Nick scripted and rehearsed each video he's done. I have to suck less at sales going forward until I get good at it, or I'll die of old age before I can buy my own mountain.
  

TLDR: I succeeded, despite the revelation of a significant lack of experience and gap in my skillset.

If I am to build on this success going forward, I must pay the price required to fill those gaps and learn as much as I can from my experiences here. I have things yet to learn about this entire scene, which means trying to learn from others' mistakes on a whole new set of things I need to do.

Some of this stuff I need to delegate to another, and at this stage that's purely due to time issues; I'm getting a good sense of what will require my focused attention and what won't (and when) now, so I'm getting an idea of what needs to be delegated and when- and what I can just rotate to the backburner while I put my energy on something else instead.

Which leads to a book/writing related thing: I'm a pantser by nature, heavily visual in my imagination (which is why my lack of drawing skill frustrates me at times; I'm think that this too is a skill I should just suck up and build up) with outlining usually me laying down waypoints to hit instead of a road to pave, and that worked this time. For Book Two forward, that needs to tighten up; I need to clearly mark out that plot before I fire up Scrivener to write that beast, especially if I hope to attain Pulp Speed and write as fast as the creator of The Shadow- Walter B. Gibson.

Right now, I'm aiming at manuscript sizes of 60K words; that's easily done in two weeks if I can reach Pulp Speed (about 6K words a day) (After listening to Nick's video on Audible and audiobooks, I'm wondering if I should bundle three of them together for the audiobook offerings if I stay at that manuscript size.)

Anyway, the money's making it's way to me now. Soon I'll cut Brian a check and give him the manuscript. At that time, I'll bring up two things: merchandise and a logo. The former I want to set up so I have additional revenue streams going. The latter I know I need for branding purposes, and I think that's where I can signal that--like Legend of the Galactic Heroes--this is a property with old-school sensibility (much like how Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark did 40ish years ago).

World-Building: The Importance of Memory to Culture & Civilization

A world-building note for today: "Ancient History" can be as recent as five years ago.

I'm talking about living memory, the sort of commonly-held information in a generational cohort of a community people take for granted. For you who routinely write in cultures other than your own, or set at times other than your epoch, you've already gotten a far larger body of such knowledge set off with caveats of some sort so it's not hard to see how common knowledge changes over time.

Because that knowledge resides in the living as an emergent phenomenon (which institutions are meant to emulate by storing such lore somehow via artifice), it is fragile as glass. Have you ever seen people emerge from cults who grew up in them, and then had to unlearn what they learned in the cult? This is the same sort of thing; your setting's "ancient knowledge" is only what your culture keeps alive, by whatever means.

A lot of institutions arise out of the need to store, transmit, and retain fidelity of information over a generational basis. A lot of plot twists in myth and literature revolve around recovering, restoring, transmitting, such information- including the subversion of expectation that what those institutions tell you as a child is true.

Post-apocalypse scenarios in particular have to engage in this at some level to make the story hold up under the weight of the narrative demands put to it, as you're having to deal with things like "How do they make gasoline?" and "Where are they getting the means to do basic field medicine?"- both of which is Ancient History in such a scenario, even if the apocalypse happened just recently enough for an infant to age into someone able to do useful labor (which isn't "be an adult" necessarily).

And that isn't absolute; The Last of Us is an apocalypse scenario where you can see how recent the demarcation line actually is between "Ancient History" and "Common Knowledge", with Ellie being the one severed from the past despite being alive at the end of Civilization.

So, for all you dealing in situations far in the future, or the past, a secret world with its secret history (e.g. as posited by the Ancient Aliens crowd), or a secondary world with its own sense of history, keep in mind that what is commonly believed to be true--common knowledge and Ancient History alike--is shaped by the presence or lack of the institutions that act as a culture's external memory (and individuals capable of accessing and retrieving that information).

A culture with no archives, no preservers, no myth-keepers, no ritual retellings of the culture's core stories explaining itself to itself, no art or architecture, or religion is a culture with no memory beyond what those alive possesses and shares. A culture that is among such, but has no one able to get what information such institutions possess and pass it on to those now alive, is a culture that is on the decline and swiftly facing degradation into primitive savagery.

And yes, you'll see some of this applied in my Galactic Christendom tales (or the post-apocalyptic Wars of the Damned that precedes that era).

No Mercy For The Stupid: Against Idiot Ball Tropism

I don't like idiots for major characters, especially if they're supposed to be experienced characters. If I'm not getting some serious duel-of-wits action between Hero and Villain, I am not satisfied. Outsmarting is necessary, but not sufficient, for outfighting the enemy. This means that I utterly despise the Idiot Ball as a trope.

Good conflict requires a back-and-forth of conceal-reveal, where the parties try to outflank each other for a decisive advantage. It's this sort of thing that makes a fight scene, a battle scene, legal maneuvering, etc. interesting and allows you to demonstrate character by action, which can take something cliche (e.g. a one-on-many firefight) into something spectacular if you execute it right. (And I do try.)

But when someone who really ought to know better acts like a moron, someone who--in that situation--should be slain, ruined, or otherwise utterly defeated, that's when I get mad and put it down. I've dropped books, comics, shows, and films over this and I sure as Hell won't put up with it in my own work.

Learn From The Failures of Mouse Wars: Writing is a Business

If you write for anything other than a hobby, then you are in business. If you are in business, you had better prioritize doing good business first and foremost. Crazy Culty Kathy Kennedy thinks that Mouse Wars doesn't have to obey the laws of business, and she's now learning the hard way that she's wrong. The video below gets into this, from a business perspective, and you can do this over your lunch break.

That's why it's here, and not at the Retreat: this is directly applicable to writing as a business. Don't fuck your writing business up like Culty Kathy fucked up Star Wars. The better indie authors already figured this out (see Nick Cole, for example), so for the rest of us it's catch-up time.

Nail That Opening!

I started a new serial this week. I think I'll stick to Wednesdays for updates.

Openings are tricky things. You need to hook that reader faster and harder than you did in previous years due to the massive array of alternative entertainment options these days. With that in mind, it's wise to consider your length and medium of publication when you craft that opening.

I went over that opening over five times. Each revision took it closer and closer to the point I chose, but also changed the lead-up to that moment- by cutting it down to the nothing I used. The reason? The medium. Serial fiction via blogposting has practical limits to readership, which is conducive to training writing habits for short story and serial fiction writing because it trains you to trim your writing down where minimal time gets spent getting to the point.

If this was the opening to a longer work, even a novelette, I would have gone with a more gradual build up; if I adapt this story into a novelette or longer then that's what you can expect. Instead of getting right to the firefight, I'd back up and open with first Garmil's Gate (specifically Gatewatch) seemingly normal activity, then jump the Red Eyes in and shift to Jack's perspective as he launches the raid upon the merchant convoy,let the fight go on and show how the Red Eyes became the pirate menace in action, before I jump in Sir Ramsey and have him make short work of the mooks before putting the fear of God into Dashing Jack in a Big Damn Heroes moment.

Now I've done all of the necessary establishing work: Hero, Villain, and (apparent) Stakes. I can get on with the plot and start layering the subplots via complications, and in the process give the supporting characters (Sibley and Creton) more to do, because I'm made my promises (This is a story of knights, pirates, and adventure on a far-away world.) and the reader wants to see how it plays out. That's what I focused on in this opening segment of the serial: Establishing Shots. That's what your opening has to do, and your circumstances in manuscript length and publication medium check what options you have in getting that done.

Razorfist Presents a Storytelling Masterclass

Learning how to tell a story isn't as easy as it looks once you go from "Dude talking about his fishing trip." to "Entertaining people as a means of making a living." While I--like many of you reading this--deal in the written word (short stories, novels, etc.) we are unwise to not pay attention to other storytelling media.

Today, as part of a month-long retrospective on the franchise, Razorfist revisits the most meme-worthy entry of the Mad Max series: Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

For a writer of fiction, the reason to study film, television and comics as storytelling media is to see and hear what good storytelling looks and sounds like. You'll pick up characterization, pacing, plot construction, narrative threading, etc. faster by putting that analytical eye to more than the written word- and you'll be ready to learn how to write scripts for them in doing so. (You do want more means to make money by writing, right?)

You'll also see how to make an entertaining critical review, something Razorfist is competent--approaching mastery--at doing. Use of language, sentence structure and phrasing, use of emphasis for effect, and so on are all things you can--and should--learn from watching Razorfist's videos. That's incredible value for your time spent watching them, so if you're still learning you will benefit from doing so; if you're already up to speed you can still benefit by seeing how his style can inform yours, something that can only make you better.

So don't just read. Watch. Listen. This is not a world of pure written media anymore, despite what some writers want to believe. Learn from the storytellers in all media if you want to write as well as your talent allows.

You're Competing with Japan, Not WorldCon

If you think that the Pulps are only in the past, you're not looking east to Japan. There the Pulps are normal, and all of their pop-culture juggernauts have some degree of the Pulp aesthetic to it. Sure, it's Japanese Pulp, but it's still Pulp and you're a fool to disregard it- your young audience doesn't, because that's where they're getting most of their satisfaction these days (and have for many years now).

This is your competition going forward, and not the shit out of WorldCon. Your audience already has established alternatives, alternatives that are masters at audience engagement and understand the psychology of fandom well enough to give Lucasfilm cause for worry. Knowing the past and learning from the masters is good, but that's not enough; you need to get familiar with what the current masters do if you want to bring that Pulp diaspora home.

(Not to knock the European comics scene, but you guys are nowhere near the juggernaut that Japan erected.)

I'm not kidding. Watch that Thunderbotl episode and see how shameless they are in mixing up things that Western authors wouldn't even conceive of doing. Meanwhile, they tell stories featuring women being women (and man, that tatted chick looks like she came out of a Return of Kings article; based Japan is based) and men being men- hero and villain alike. No wonder they have so much pull in the West, such that Hollywood's had to play catchup (and still fail): Japan doesn't lie to the audience.

Nevermind the Big 5. Your real rivals are in Tokyo.

The Opening Crawl In Practice

As promised, this is the Opening Crawl in the current draft of Lacann Pell and the Blood Moon of Rammagar:

The Privy Wars are over. The Free Lords lost. The Solar Guard is gone. The Electoral Collage is abolished. Only the Usurper Vidun won. In the wake of the death of Duke Navare's death, most survivors ceased overt dissent for fear of retaliation. Those not willing to surrender went underground.

Young Duke Ireton, a Free Lord in exile, joined with a Privy Lord- Duke Farr. They cooperated on a course of action against The Usurper, starting with establishing a logistical network outside of the Usurper's control. Operating from a former Free Lord outpost never discovered during the war, the dukes and their chief allies organized their campaign and dispatched agents to execute it.

One mission is to establish sanctuaries beyond the Usurper's reach. The lost colony world of Rammagar promises to be such a world, if it still exists and if it remains inhabitable. Veteran scout, former Free Lord commando, and Ireton family retainer Lacann Pell traveled to Rammagar in one of Farr's shuttle accompanied only by a pair of automatons. Duke Ireton stands by awaiting Lacann's report.

There you are. The resemblance to what you see in a Star Wars film is deliberate, as was Lucas' use of this device being deliberate invocations of the serials of the 30s and 40s, summarizing what lead up to the events of that episode so if you missed them you weren't a ship out of water. If you're doing things that are fantastic, or you're looking to establishing a mood quickly, spending three fucking paragraphs setting it up isn't a bad thing.

Yes, even if you end up not using it in the final manuscript. Having that crystal-fucking-clear in your mind makes everything going forward easier, because when you cut immediately to the inciting incident (in media res) (which Blood Moon does, starting when Lacann arrives at Rammagar) you will know what to tell the reader and how to say it to hook them into your story as fast as your skills allow. (Ideally, with the first sentence.)

If you do use it, then going in media res is the go-to follow-up technique to use. No need to spend pages doing this when you can skip the boring shit and get on with the adventure that your reader is there for, and that's why I'm stomping about here- it's a very good tool to identify that point and get you (and your reader) there right away (and from there, for you the writer, to quickly outline the rest of your story and know where to do your beats and likely how and why to do so).

Managing Expectations: How You Win, Keep, and Grow Your Audience

While reading this guest post by Karl Gallagher at the Castalia House blog, this comment by Monalisa Foster caught my eye. Specifically, this part right here:

While I don’t disagree, especially about the New Wave, which I hold responsible for the “death” of sci-fi (at the same time that sci-fi books died because of the trick/unexpected ending, sci-fi movies and games took off because they maintained, for the most part, the positive endings), I submit for your consideration, that genre is about setting and endings/expectations.

She hits the core point again here: Fantasy outsells sci-fi and I think that’s because readers know what to expect.

And bookended here:

To illustrate how important reader expectations are, I point out Romance. This is big “R” romance, where the ending is prescribed. That ending is HEA (Happily Ever After) or HEAFN (HEA for now). Readers want to know what they’re getting.

I submit that readers want positive endings, heroic characters, the good guys winning, the bad guys losing. No whiny, depressed losers emoting all over the page. I want to see sci-fi get back to that.

This is not the first time I've heard such observations. Many years ago, Mike Pondsmith wrote this into the Game Master advice section of his Mekton Zeta tabltop role-playing game. He cited (then) well-known examples of fulfilling audience expectations, but not necessarily in the straight-forward manner initially put to the audience. He wrote similar advice for his Cyberpunk 2020 supplement, Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads.

The point here is expectation management. People group things they find to be alike and label them for ease of reference; that's what genres are- groups of stories that deliver similar experiences to an audience. People like familiarity because it's reliable; you know what you're going to get. So, if you want to succeed, you need to deliver on the expectations of that audience. Danielle Steel didn't goat-fuck her readers into a multi-media empire of romance, and neither will you. (You'd think the Big 5's current regime would know this, but we know better; they don't.)

However, fulfilling those expectations need not--and some say should not--be as straight-forward as a drag race. Going back to Pondsmith, his example of making good on expectations in an unexpected manner was the original Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross; the promise was that we Earthlings would defeat this hostile alien invader and preserve Mankind thereafter. The swerve was that a good chunk of Earth got blasted and we ended up having to integrate with their remnants after the war. Sure, Mankind won, but not without sacrifice and not without complication after the fact.

See what I'm after here? There's your liminal space, where you can work your magic and define yourself as a writer. Scott Lynch broke out as strong as he did because his debut novel did just that, on multiple levels; as the protagonist Locke Lamora schemed and scammed his way towards fulfilling your expectations of the fantasy caper he set up early on, so did he pull a swerve on you and got you looking away while he pulled a con on those expectations so that what he delivered when he delivered turned out to be not how you got what you wanted, but you got it nonetheless.

Robert Howard's Conan went on adventures, or had them thrust upon him, that fit a general plot profile; it was how Howard executed it that made him stand out as a writer, and in seeing the difference between two different characters in the same scenario (Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword; Kull: By This Axe I Rule) you can observe how Howard's choices differed even when he adapted the latter into the former.

Now, accomplished authors already know this; they can tell you how they made this happen once they put this knowledge to practical use. But you? You're new, or you're struggling and looking for insight, or otherwise dealing with issues in developing your craft or story (or both). Yes, knowing the structure of narrative is important, but being lazy or incompetent about it means becoming like the folks I rant about over at my main blog and that's no good for you personally, professionally, or artistically. You need to master the tools, not to be a tool.

There is no shortcut to be had here. You have to get it before you can make it. Then you have to get it right, and in time you'll become so good that you can't get it wrong. There's no other way to mastery than to make the work, so go on and get on with making your 10,000 pots; the sooner you develop-by-doing, the sooner you will become wise and skilled enough to translate what your mind imagines into stories that your audience cannot wait to pay you for.

So learn what your audience expects from the story you're writing. Then learn how to deliver on those expectations. Then learn how to make use of the room you have to satisfy without failing that fulfillment promise. Remember: Anakin Skywalker did bring balance to The Force. It's how he did it that makes George Lucas rightly revered, not that he did it at all.

The Importance of Settling Your Story

BlizzCon 2016 is this weekend, and while I'm getting all hyped about all things Blizzard I have NOT doffed my storyteller hat. The folks at Blizzard Entertainment get a lot of shit, some of it deserved, but they're also showing that they get their genres and the medium they're working within when using those genres.

Alas, the Virtual Ticket doesn't televise the tie-in product panels, because aside from some promo reel stuff about it you're not getting info about what I find to be a major positive development: the production and publication of the Warcraft setting bible, World of Warcraft: Chronicles. The first volume (on sale now

Yes, there's a follow-up coming, which I regard as a good thing for now, but that's not the point. The point is that the mess of inconsistencies behind the Warcraft property is finally getting cleaned up, and this revised bible is the foundation for future development of that property. This is what I mean by "settling your story": know how your fictional setting works, down to the nuts and bolts. My experience with doing this is that stories suggest themselves emergently just from letting the setting operate without interference. There's going to be points of conflict, and conflict is the basis for all drama, so rather than force it just let it be and work out your stories when the lawful conditions permit them.

That's it. Not hard. Just play through your postulates to their conclusions, and you'll get all the story fodder you will ever use.

Tropes I Like: The Break from Everyday Life

One thing I like about the premise of someone going on an adventure after suffering or causing some sort of disruption--plane crash, shipwreck, etc.--is that it so clearly delineates a break from the Ordinary World and entrance into the World of Adventure. Even the relatively tame E.R. Burroughs used to set up A Princess of Mars (which you really should read if you haven't), where John Carter goes into a cave and projects himself to Mars, works well enough to serve this function. (If there's a defined term for this trope, I don't recall it.)

The ambiguous use of this trope, as I note immediately above, is great for when you want to set up either an unreliable narrator or an unreliable narrative. I'm using something like this for another future project, a fragment of which I posted here weeks ago, so that both the reader and the protagonist get that clarity of separation. It allows you to introduce the unreality of the Adventure slowly, which is really important in properly presenting the reader that unreality without snapping suspension of disbelief.

But I prefer to be as obvious as the device itself. Even if the protagonist is someone's whose Ordinary World IS about adventure, making this trope be the "Cut off from his support, can he get back to basics and overcome?" premise we see in some series at some point during their run, it works. As tropes for structuring a narrative go, there are few more reliable than the Clean Break trope in terms of establishing when the fun starts.

It works regardless of genre. Superheroes? Check. Fantasy? Check. Science Fiction? Check. Romance? Check. Historical Fiction? Check. "Literary"? Check. Comedy? Check. Horror? Check. Triggering SJW cocksuckers as if firing a minigun? Check, check, and check. It works regardless of medium also. Film? Check. Television? Check. Radio? Check. Print, in all its diversity? All the checks. Song? More checks.

And it is reversible, as a way of closing the narrative. Leaving and returning to said Ordinary World, sometimes an outright and literal goal, is so basic a device that Joseph Campbell builds his Monomyth model around it. You wreck on an island, have a fantastic adventure, and return to your ordinary life by getting off the island somehow. Change the trappings, but keep the structure, and you can write adventure stories until your hands fall off and your voice fails.

The basics are basic for a reason. Respect that, adhere to the KISS Maxim, and you too can become a Dragon Award winner or enjoy success sufficient to own a mountain, or even have a private island, or whatever you want out of your writing.

10,000 Pots: How I Went From Writing Papers To This Book

I normally don't punt here, but I also don't like repeating myself. To work around my fiction project issues, I'm putting out a non-fiction book first. Go read that post at my main blog for context. Below I start talking details.

It's going to be structured something like this:

• Introduction
• Papers Are Teh Suck
• Forums, Flamewars, and Fuckwittery
• Wait, You Can Go To School For That?
• What Is This Livejournal Thing?
• Blogging? Hey Mikey, He Likes It!
• Whadda Mean "Indie Publishing" Is a Thing Now?
• Puppies at the Gates
• No Perfects (Or How I Embraced Teh Suck)
• I Can Haz Booky-Book (And So Can You)
• Epilogue

I'm telling stories here, and by telling my stories I'm showing you readers how I went from sucking diseased donkey balls at writing to becoming competent at it, enough that I can reasonably sit there with professional writers and talk shop like I know what I'm talking about. (And I have- hi Scott, Brian, and Oliver!) The order above is not a strict chronology; that shit overlaps like the lattice on an apple pie. What you're going to get, if I do my part, is show you that you can get where you want to go without realizing it. In short, you can goof your way to success.

But there's another reason, which I mention in the Epilogue, as to why I'm doing this book now. I need Momentum. Getting that first hit in, and then following it up, matters. It's how I got into this daily blogging habit; I just did it, one hit and then other and another and another. I did not worry about being perfect, just in doing it. I cared only about getting good, and staying good, by doing it on the regular.

What I didn't realize, by doing this as a hobby, is that by not caring about making it perfect and so on I actually got good merely by keeping up the momentum. The doing was the process. The habit was the means. That's why I'm calling this book "10,000 Pots", because I've made thousands of posts and written hundreds of papers and wrote millions of words across multiple media in multiple genres without ever realizing what the fuck I've done.

So, once that popped into my head, a book ceased to be any form of anxiety. It was just a matter of putting in the time at the keyboard before I fuck with formatting and other make-it-pretty adjustments (like a cover). This book, therefore is the start of a book-publishing habit.

Now you see where I'm going with this. From daily blogging (regular writing and publishing, short form) to (interval To Be Determined, but no less than a year and likely less) book publishing. Nevermind awards; awards worry gets you out of No Perfect mindset (Thanks Cernovich for making that a thing.) and wrecking your momentum. I want to write, and I want to eat. Publishing books, in addition to blogging, does that; again, thanks to Cernovich for showing me that this can be done- I just have to do it my way (what he calls "establishing a brand").

Each Writer is a Publishing House To Himself

Earlier this week, I took the time to watch Vox Day and Stefan Molyneux talk about (among other things) the recent history of Science Fiction and Fantasy publishing. It mirrors what I've heard from Mike Cernovich, in that the publishing game is now such that the existing institutions are moribund, rotting, unsalvagable, and therefore worthless. In short, writers are on their own.

With Amazon now being the biggest bookseller in the world, and making it very easy to publish independently through Amazon's outlets, what would have been a terrible tragedy for the cultural development of the world's nation is instead an opportunity for those bold enough to go for it to be in the vanguard of the movement that sweeps away such a wretched old publishing paradigm. It is no longer a place where the writer is an atomized cog in a vast publishing machine; it is now a place where each writer is a publishing enterprise until himself.

That's not hyperbole. Mike Cernovich proved it with the spectacular release of Gorilla Mindset, with over 10000 copies sold within six months. Mainstream publishers shit their pants over such number these days, especially in fiction (including genre fiction), and this is becoming the norm for independent writers who see as Cernovich does: they they are businesses, not just skilled workers, and act accordingly.

Cernovich takes every opportunity to market himself, his books, and his brand to cultivate his audience. Even after striking a deal with Vox Day's business, Castallia House, he keeps at this with the steady pace of a jackhammer. This means that he operates his writing as if he is a publishing house to himself, and that is what you should shamelessly copy and implement for yourself.

That includes me. It's time that I up my game, organize my shit, and be that business to myself. It's the mindset of a professional, and the professional that succeeds has to adopt and internalize the winning mindset that Cernovich's brand bases itself upon. (So, yes, I did buy myself a copy of Gorilla Mindset; gotta start somewhere.)

So, I'm going to take the next few weeks to assess what's what, and then organize a practical schedule that gets shit done and out the door. The covers will not be pretty. Format launches will be separated by necessity. I'll gladly use my existing outlets to get the word out, so expect more posts where I hype my own material. This Autumn in particular should be very productive for me, with Winter being a finishing phase before I get the first of material out the door and available for sale.

You're on your own now, Fellow Writer. The houses of old are slowly collapsing, and there is nothing that can save them. Nor should they be saved, as the rot is too far gone now. You want to succeed? Choose yourself, make the time, build up your own brand, and use the tools available to you to be your own publishing house. Go for it. Fortune favors the bold for a reason.

Respect the Formula

On YouTube there's a user by the name of Razorfist. When he's not talking about videogames and comics, he's talking about movies. He's often mocking in his tone, and rightly so, but he's also not wrong about what he says. However, out of all his action film videos the one he did in 2011 for Segal's Out For Justice most directly hits the salient points I'm after here- how to make commercially-viable genre fiction.

With all the hatred RazörFist has been hurling at the video game industry, we were about due for a good old fashioned '80s / '90s action flick, and this time Steven Seagal provides the ammunition with his 1990 classic Out for Justice. Watch in awe as we witness the mustache bandit's violent homicidal rampage, Steven Seagal's fake Italian accent, and Gina Gershon's perfect melons.

Again, Razorfist's taking the piss, but he's not wrong. What you need out of an action film is this:

• An obvious villain for an antagonist. (No moral ambiguity here.)
• A signature action sequence that sticks with the audience well after the fact.
• A protagonist who is Iconic in nature.
• Protagonist engages in righteous slaughter against the villain until he kills the villain.

To which you can, and whenever possible should, add: a hot chick for the protagonist to deal with. "Story" is irrelevant; the audience demand here is to watch Iconic Hero do Heroic Deeds (which routinely do revolve around righteous slaughter, and have since then Ancient World; read your mythology), kill the bad guys, and get their just rewards (which, often, is what the girl is for- but not always). It's the secularization of old and sacred drama, and you're a damned fool to not see it as such. Same applies to Romance, Horror, and other genres with known formulae at work.

Yes, it's a formula. Yes, it's been lampooned plenty of times. Yes, lots of people deride it as low-brow and crass.

FUCK THEM. SIDEWAYS. WITH A SHOVEL COVERED IN SHIT AND BURS.

The definition of a professional is someone who make a living doing it. Professionals DO NOT BALK at reliable gigs. They may use psuedonyms or some other cover to avoid "tainting their literary credibility" or some such bullshit, but they do it because they like Civilization and want to enjoy its benefits- and that requires paying for shit, which means money. That action movie formula? That's a reliable gig, and plenty of folks who now get Oscars once hustled in the genre film trenches hustling to get fucking paid.

That's you, right now. No sales. One sale. 42 sales, 15 Hugos, and a TV series or two. Whatever, you need to get paid and that means not shitting on reliable forumlae for commercial viability. Being "arty" or "literary" is reserved for people with Fuck Off money or patronage.

This is the practical end towards the "know your audience" maxim. You need to know that audience so you can deliver the goods and get paid. You're not some fru-fru bullshit artist. You're a craftsman, a fucking working-class work-with-your-hands craftsman, and your craft is story-telling. Your job is to make stories that others will spend money to buy from you. You wouldn't shit on a proven formula for making a chair, a shirt, or Mac & Cheese, would you? Fuck no, that's retarded. You'd leap at that shit and be grateful for it.

Respect the formula. That's what makes you the money, because that's what's proven to be what the audience wants. It also takes a lot of work off your shoulders; you can focus on making a very good work of that sort--on your execution--than wasting time on reinventing the wheel making characters that readers don't want to see, or conflicts that get readers to use your work as toliet paper, or other failures to provide the value that your audience expects out of you. They want a bolt-action rifle. Don't fuck around; just make the best fucking bolt-action rifle your skills can manage.

And if you aren't looking to go pro as writer? Respect it anyway. If no one reads your writing, then you might as well not write at all.

Your Future Competition: R. Author

Automation, far more than immigration, is the real threat to the social order of the world's nations. We've been feeling the effects for some time, as robots took more and more menial bitch work away from human hands in manufacturing. Then they took the skilled work, de-skilling it into bitch work, until now where a plant operates on a fraction of the labor it used it. Other heavy labor sectors are feeling that pinch, and now it's coming into the services like a tsunami.

"But Walker, I'm a professional writer! I'm safe!"

Like Hell you are.

Writing is a craft, and that means it has predictable structure to it that can be and has been codified into a program. While it is currently automating the bitch work (Do you see the pattern yet?), once the software is sufficiently refined it will begin deskilling the knowledge workers who currently do analysis reports and similar fact-based (but predictably solvable, due to pattern-based logic) work. Now that one such robot suite is free, expect that time to come sooner than later.

"But Walker, I write fiction professionally! I'm safe!"

Oh please. Go look at that GIF again. The vast majority of fiction, "literary" (what bullshit) or "genre", is just as predictable and tied to a knowable structure as news reporting. That you can sell books on writing fiction, focusing on structure and other craft elements, also means that you can turn all of that into a useful algorithm that takes input like a Mad Lib and spits out commercially-viable fiction. The future crap Syfy Originals will be where this starts, followed by the better horror films, and then blockbusters will come forth that are mostly or wholly written by robots.

Ten years, easily, until R. Author is a real and immediate competitor. Twenty on the outside. The variables aren't even with the software, but wholly external factors behind the scope of this blog post. A child born today will come of age in a world where his new entertainment is robot-written, both the story and (for games) the coding.

Where, for most of us who write either professionally or as a sideline hobby, does that leave us? Don't expect the quality of robot copy to be crap for long; if the Associated Press can plug in their style manual into their bot and get the reliably good results that they do, it wouldn't be hard to do the same for fiction. Polishing may be something left for humans, but most of the dredge work? Robots. Yes, including that first draft and making the covers.

In the end, we may become nothing more than folks playing with online forms filling in blanks and polishing the results before feeding it into the robot audiobook creator and formatting it for Print On-Demand and E-Reader, something that we may be doing for whole manuscripts multiple times per day. It'll be like the days of the pulp magazines once more, only digital and worldwide: still making the same shit pay, while hustling even harder to get it.

It's Not All Wine & Roses

Those days WILL come.

They are the days when you look up from your manuscript, look at the shelf at the store, and wonder why all of these books are there that say the same things and do the same things and differ only in the trappings- and yours is no better.

They are the days when you look down at your manuscript, and all you see is a rancid word salad despite your best efforts to write and edit it into shape, and wonder how and why others like yours got published- nevermind success or failure.

They are the days when you look around to hear reader after reader after reader make your ears bleed by talking about the cavalier manner in which they read and thus miss all that you put into it.

They are the days when you look out for answers to questions of art, of craft, of narrative and you realize that not only have all the questions already been answered, but that the solutions are already known and perfected- that you're struggling with a solved problem, and then feel like a fucking moron who can't tie his own shoelaces.

They are the days when you learn why writers have the reputation of being moody, melancholy, and prone to self-destruction. Writing is a craft, sure, but also an art. Art demands revelation, and revelation cannot be controlled.

You don't go digging into places immaterial, mining the depths, without making discoveries. If the craft is the acumen and discipline that takes inspiration and hammers something others find useful, then the art is bringing forth the ore to be hammered.

Learning how to handle these days is part of the process, and it is initiatory in its nature. Not everyone who makes the attempt survives, and not all those who survive do so on their own. For my part, knowing that this is a solved problem gave me that fortitude; apply solution, sorted, and the problem gets reduced to an irritant.

And that is what I have to say today: you struggle with a solved problem, so all that needs doing is to find and apply the solution.