Give Them Purpose

It's somewhat tragic when people spend such loving care to build a rich character, but end up leaving them flat when they leave out the vehicle that drives them: purpose.

It probably seems ridiculous-- what would be the point of telling a story if that wasn't the FIRST thing you'd consider? For a writer, of course that would be confusing, but not all people arrive at writing first. I've talked about in my own past how I used to make pages and pages of character profiles, all supposedly for this epic story idea I had boiling up. Oo, I'm mapping where they'll go, what kind of crazy creatures they'll meet.

Only when it came down to purpose, they just didn't mesh as well as I thought they might. Precisely why I've also covered topics involved the complication of overplanning and forgetting to connect those rich yet conflicting ideas.

In many ways, we could learn from the way some mushrooms grow. At first, they spread out randomly, looking for the best sources in a comprehensive network, they send out a thin but fast moving gathering network to start. When the thin veins home in on the nutrient rich areas, they begin to concentrate on setting up shop on all of those key points and letting the smaller networks fade but not completely disappear (if a new source appears in the spread, they can detect it and spread resources to it immediately). Logically, they want to benefit from and even feed the source, so they don't just smother it but expand in as many directions as possible to, in turn, feed the source they are feeding from rather than deplete it.

So yes-- plotting is about a) spreading out to find the best ways to support the initial idea, b) locating the places to best develop it, c) keeping the web open to new possibilities and supporting details, d) continuing to build where needed, and e) feeding the ideas rather than exhausting all possibilities.

As a novice writer, one of the things that made me lose interest in a story was loss of purpose, not in my writing but for my character's sake. I ended up burning through all of the interesting points without holding back or developing the story so, once I'd removed all intrigue and mystery and conflict, they'd be left with nothing, including anything worthy of a story.

Lulls can happen in a story; they aren't unforgivable but they should reflect your intent in writing it. I'd be hard-pressed to find a story that is intentionally meant to bore anyone but it can happen, if you don't develop each part with a purpose. Does an informative section of a story have to be outright boring?

I know that 'purpose' is one of those variable words, much like 'voice' or 'style' when discussed by writers. However, when I talk about a character's purpose, it has to exist constantly. A character who comes back into the picture with no actual purpose can kill a story. It's okay if you haven't used them a while and it's okay if they don't come back if their purpose was served. They don't have to have a climactic exit, no matter how important they are in your head. You don't have to kill off characters to get rid of them. Not every exit has to be emotional-- even those can seem transparent or fall flat. A good way to ditch a stale character can even be to have them simply disappear. Maybe you can use that subplot of finding out why as a fresh lead-in to the main plot. Again, this doesn't have to be a focus, but be careful not to create intrigue if you're just going to drop it. 

One bad example for lost purpose happened in one season of The Walking Dead. My guess is that it was supposed to be an emotional or real moment for the character; even the strongest are weak and exhausted, something along those lines. Yet Rick suddenly becoming a sad sack of surrender for many, many episodes while his annoying son Carl was dragging him around with limp attempts to snap him out of it was excruciating and never quite hit the spot as anything but filler. One thing that I just can't jibe with in entertainment is any attempt to 'real-time' a situation. You're not really going to teach anyone how excruciating depression is by big-brothering it in entertainment. I've seen it done rather well across many forms of entertainment by homing in on very key points, showing how it affects others, etc. so you need never resort to rolling it out like that. The whole tedium of it reeked of losing the purpose of the show, not truly displaying a character that lost their purpose. In a world that constantly penalizes people for one misstep in the struggle for survival, Rick got a big fat fucking Mary Sue pass there.

Honestly, I never even made it to the end of the whole Negan debacle before I stopped watching. Killing off Glenn and Abraham was cheap enough. As much as I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan, I was just fucking tired of the badder than the last bad guy crap. It's the Sailor Moon/Dragon Ball formulaic rinse/repeat cycle that I avoid like the plague. Michonne was one of those characters that kept me hanging on longer than I should have, but even she was really running out of steam.

(I might have a purpose to this post, but don't count on it.)

In any case, purpose is one of those things you can't just keep in your peripherals. You really have to kept a solid eye on it. One reason I plan is because there is always the temptation to gush about the flow of great ideas while writing and I realize that the slow-burn (but not TOO slow) is worth detaching for. Unless you've crafted some masterful way to swap out main characters that are burning out with shiny new ones, then you must keep them relevant. You must leave some reason for conflict, some mystery to explore, some bait to lure them on.

Moving onto the next character color-combo piece, we have Pierait, whose entire point is Purpose.

While this very pale blue might also work for Belias's eyes, this is one I picked for Pierait's 'powder blue' hair. I wasn't going for some anime-blue but a subtle one that still differentiates from just a blue tinted platinum. This may be more of a highlight color were I to paint it, but if I had to choose a 'blue' that better represents the basic feeling I was going for, this is it. Clean slate, pure, even a sort of void on a moral spectrum. 

Now his eyes, no less a struggle to choose, needed a warm yet sunny quality. Yellows are tough to avoid being high-contrast bright without ending up more brown than yellow, but I liked this golden yet lemony yellow for it. It was intentional that I went with a reversal on what you'd find to be colors for hair and eyes. Blonde eyes/ blue hair? But then Pierait is opposite of what you'd expect from a human. This combination was actually not picked to be visually complementary as I did with my other choices. Again, this goes to the conflict of the character himself. His sort even had a history of being considered abominations so it's only fitting that his colors break all of the usual rules.

His 'people' are called the Soulless, although it is not a genetic condition. Due to an imbalance in the ways souls are distributed, some human are born without souls, which also leaves them empty containers when it comes to free will or Purpose. They seem to share the trait of apathy as children, although it's not quite that simple. They are capable of learning, but don't retain emotional baggage nor display strong emotions at all. It is akin to a functional state of autopilot.

Their state of being is dangerous and it was quickly learned that they must be granted a Purpose through a ritual in their teenage years or their deaths will release a fearsome deadly creature known as a Fury, that will leaves chaos and death in its wake. Whatever Purpose they are given must be one that can be immediately and constantly fulfilled, so it is more like a job assignment that makes their life one of contribution. Dying with a fulfilled Purpose is peaceful and without consequence. 

At one point, fear caused Soulless children to be killed on sight. If they never reached the age where they needed a Purpose, then they would never risk becoming Furies.

Where does this leave Pierait? His mother, a troubled young woman, decided to take matters into her own hands and go against convention. She discovers how to give her son a Purpose, but an impossible one: to acquire a soul. It's never been done and if his Purpose is discovered, he would be banished to where Furies flee and left to die. It's a lonely and isolated existence, but a Purpose is a Purpose.

(Next up, I'll have Lyria ready for you, an ordinary girl with an extraordinary gift.)

Speaking of purpose, what gives your characters purpose? Is your favorite current purpose the main plot itself or a fun subplot? My current WIP involves a golem, a blocked tunnel and a cryptic mystery while on the way to looking for dragons. All a subplot at the moment, but one I'm enjoying. Share yours below!

Planning Extravagance

Da Vinci is credited to have said that art is never finished, only abandoned. In truth, who said it doesn't matter so much as the sentiment. Because there is ALWAYS something more to be done, it's just as true that there is a time to move to another phase, let it go, share it. 

Control is another point of dispute. There's no cushy line between the claim that 'the author is too controlling and I wanted to imagine it for myself' and ''his might as well be Mad Libs for all the holes in this story!'. 

What if you're using the wrong medium? I covered an answer on Quora that took on video game dreamers for misguidedly translating that idea into a novel.

It could drive you mad, scraping through a story too much. I suppose. I've read my own work more times than I've read any favorite author, so I court madness with open arms. Not just to edit but I've gotten sucked into my words and worlds time and again when I was supposed to be editing. Planning itself can be a siren call into restructuring what might have been nearing completion.

It happens. Embrace it. I'm still on the task of typing out perfectly legible notes. And not word for word. I'm catching inconsistencies in the plans and is it EVER easier to correct a typed document than the battlefield my handwritten copies would become.

It's a beautiful thing, really. To visit a world, even knowing what comes next and feeling differently about it. Sometimes you cringe at a little mistake or you think of something better or you want to change it. That's where publishing seems scary to some of the never-ending creatives out there. If you really feel ten years is what your series needs, ten years it is. If you're ready to set it loose after a few months, do it.

I'm really enjoying this planning though. It's all for UnHeard when UnSung is still in progress. Yet UnHeard is my NaNo baby, so I'm setting it up to fly. Planning can benefit from extra sometimes. As a teen, it was all about different color pens. Even now, switching to a designated tool for a designated task can be motivational to the process. 

Visit your worlds as many times as it takes. It is never finished and it never needs to be.  The art is about flexibility and the need to return. For writers and readers alike. No matter how airtight and done to death it is, a fan can tirelessly both spot flaws and create reimaginings. Even 'ship' characters, which is a term I won't use often because, while the origin story is cute, the concept itself is applied so thick that it's about as unoriginal as another overused word 'love'.

Heyyyy, let's shoot the shit with that one since I'm here... I almost obsessively avoid using 'love' directly when lovers are confessing their feelings. One of my favorites comes from two characters in the third trilogy of my first series. It tickles me because it's an obvious avoidance and a simple truth, but you know it means 'I love you.' In fact, it becomes an endearment, an emotional running joke between them. Lol if it were anyone else's work, I'd tell you their names and what they said, but at this point, I'm a newly published author and I hesitate to run the risk of my blog being the equivalent of a movie trailer that spoils the best parts.

I love writing romances where there is light teasing and quick jabs of tension. Some fantasies keep romance on the side of solemn and intense. The Arwen-Aragorn romance was a big one there. I've never liked seeing love from the 'til-death-do-us-part angle. I won't just brush it off as being done to death, but there are so many books I've read where confessing love or marrying was the height of the story. Or having a child. I won't deny that those are exciting moments for many people, but ultimately it came off as depressing that these very isolated events were given more weight than than the ACT of falling in love through a rich plot, what it takes to make a marriage work or even the beauty of raising a human being into a good person (or the horror of them becoming an inherently bad one). I have never seen love as a quick prize.

Even some romance novels that attempt to make a rich plot, the MAIN plot often still makes the confession the central point of the story. Maybe this is what most romance readers DO want, but when I started reading books where romance was a subplot, it was noticeably richer to me than poetic descriptions of eyelashes and dimpled smirks in books solely focused on it. I might be an odd one here, but romance isn't my favorite genre for romance. I like a lot of cat and mouse, but the juicy kind where the cat catches the mouse but toys with it to give chase again. Some erotica is annoyingly framed as romance so when I realize the plot is lame, it becomes a hunt for the sexy parts, where all the effort was placed. Yes, erotica can have a great plot, but that makes erotica the SUBplot. If you frame a book as romance primarily, I don't even have high expectations for plot. Still, it can't be boring. Even when I want light and trashy, I want to care about it. More often, I say I want romance to be a subgenre, even fifth on the subgenre list because I don't want solid expectations of it being there. I like when it's present. I enjoy the building intimacy and the private insights. At the same time,  I want to see its fragility, know that it can be cut short, know that it might not be returned, or even be passing or not strong enough with other temptation. I plan my own story's romances as carefully as my world building. If it's going to be there, I need to care.

And hey, some people want romance to be insinuated or absent. That doesn't make me hesitate to tackle it if I'm feeling the vibe as part of the story. I can't really help you. Despite or maybe because of its absence in my life, romance will always have a place in the story. Because I'm not fading to black when there's a veritable gold mine of character development (or fun) to be had.

One of the oddest kinds of comments I see in reading groups is along the lines of how much of a thing is generally accepted as okay. Can you poll that? Lol it doesn't stop people from trying. How much _____ do you like in a story? If you like all or nothing, every time, then you're an easy one. When I see these, I input 84% just to throw a wrench in the logic. There isn't a magic number when something is liked. In fact, someone's claim that they've NEVER seen _____ written in a way they like so they avoid it... Often makes me want to try. Not FOR them, but because I embrace the challenge of truly enjoying reading and writing on prompt. I wouldn't say that I aim to be the one who does it right. Most people who think in black and white will never ever try that disliked topic again. I don't doubt they'll still find plenty to read so that they can easily avoid every attempt to expand their thinking on it. They can have that. However, it's still backwards thinking to have not read anything in that category in decades and still make the claim there can't possibly be anything worthwhile. When they can't even frame an opinion as such, that opinion is usually as shallow as their ability to communicate it.

A guarded opinion is often external (this work is awful) as opposed to a more honest opinion actually focusing on their impression (this wasn't to my taste). I've always found that technical critiques can be external, focusing on grammar, punctuation, style, whereas using that same tact on opinion is always where it comes off as dishonest. I believe that some reviewers probably think it sounds stronger or more professional to leave out personal pronouns and impressions. To change 'I think' or 'I believe' into more definite points (this IS or ISN'T). In fact, it's often used in advertising because it's supposed to sound more confident. ('this product changed my life' as opposed to 'I really feel like this product improved this specific task'.) I'm going to disagree though. To me, bold assertions always sparked my skepticism, had me running to research it myself. Does it work? In advertising, the numbers would say yes. However, most people have neither the actual skill to reframe an opinion (to use actors as a scapegoat for something they never directly said) nor the ability to defend it fully. It is often parroted the same way every time, with no new additions, or extremely cherry picked examples (even to the point of purposely omitting knowledge of an exception).

I think I've found a few things to babble on about well enough so I'll return to planning. Got my notes typed out and printed today. Condensed and refined to nine pages. I have the series-arching plot arching over the subs, the book main plot (each one has a pivotal main character or two and a focus on one God and region), character planning, regional development (some idea of the map), and several of the micro systems planned. I also have a sort of running bestiary, but I need to play with a map. The scope is somewhat 3D like one of my locations in UnSung so it will need a top-down plan. These are just aids for me, nothing I'd ever publish (unless by some weird turn of fate there's ever a demand). Mostly done though. I'm excited to start it, even while finishing UnSung.

For some people who fancy themselves novelists, I wouldn't be surprised if some are actually most in love with planning. Those are the sorts of jobs that are harder to land and do start with a solid display of completed writing. I sit in the middle, the pantser that digs big holes and then plans. I'm not afraid of the holes though. I find a lot of comfort in them. They're puzzles I'm happy to solve. Even in a dark story, I find it cheering to get down to the critical fixes.

UnSung can be pretty dark. I wouldn't say grimdark or dystopian but still goes place light doesn't. Grimdark is really about the focus of narration. In fact, I'd love to try a cheerful narration of a dystopia. It's even been done! Twilight Zone had the infamous episode where a guy with a nagging wife and a joyless job finds joy in hiding in the vault of the bank where he works to read. Cut to nuclear destruction and he's the last man alive. It breaks cheerfully into him carefully gathering and sorting every book he can find, his face distorting with a happiness he'd never known before as he plans what to read next. Of course, he's severely nearsighted so it's a cruel turn of fate when his glasses fall off his face and break. For a loner, a solitary world seems ideal until you meet the grim realization that at some point, you depend on society to support the simplest of luxuries. What is a world without the passions most dear to you?

Of course, I'm not even going for the grim reality with my view though. What if survival isn't quite as bad as you think? What if you are actually good at it and the survivors aren't all morally bankrupt or zombies? I wanted to like you, Walking Dead... I really did. Can someone let me know if they ever actually decide to go to Washington DC to see if the virus center is even a thing? Because really, that was what kept me sticking around a few seasons longer than I should have. I assumed they'd wouldn't just keep escalating with a group sicker than the last and actually have an aim again. At some point, I didn't even care who died anymore because they all sucked.