My original plan was to talk about how I can’t figure out what to do with Tuesdays after the new year. Then, I remembered scheduling a post for that in late December and figured I should leave that as is. So, I went looking for a holiday to quickly put something here . . . I bring to you ‘World Toilet Day’. Apparently, this was made to bring attention to sanitation systems, but they thought ‘toilet’ would be more relatable. Either way, enjoy the funnies and flush carefully.
Not sure why I expected this week to be smooth sailing. It was a crazy double-header of 1) the first full week of the second quarter of school and 2) the last full week before Thanksgiving. This meant my time as a TA and as the father of a high school student took priority. Man, did it every take priority.
As you can tell, most of my time this week was spent helping my son with homework. We got a few Pokemon Go outings in, but it was mostly homework and, if he was with me at night, some cartoons. He was more amped up than usual, so getting him to bed took extra time. This meant, I only had 30 minutes to get myself ready for bed and pass out in order to use my CPAP machine for a good amount of time. Some mild nocturnal anxiety attacks turned up because of certain negative encounters too. All of that combined to leave me fairly exhausted by Wednesday.
Actually, the busy time at work was another factor. Can’t really explain why it was so busy though. The days were kind of normal, but there was this odd energy and speed to the whole week. I mean, it felt like time was going slow even though I also felt like I was rushing everywhere. Yesterday was a big field trip too, which always saps the last of my strength. Not as bad as when I wasn’t sleeping well, but it was enough to have me crawling into the weekend.
Can’t report much on the writing front. Darwin & the Beast Collector is 1.33 chapters away from being finished. Strange number, but a few obstacles cropped up last Saturday and I didn’t get to use the full day to my advantage. So, I came one chapter section short of my goal. It’s for the best though because I kind of wrote myself into a position where the penultimate chapter can’t end the way I planned. Things aren’t fitting into place like I expected, so I took time to reimagine the scene. This resulted in Darwin asking questions and suggesting a path that I didn’t think about. So, it will probably take next week for me to tinker enough to make it work. Not a problem since I’ll have 3 days to finish the book next weekend, so it’s as good as done.
This brings me to the Amazon publishing change I stumbled into this week. Apparently, they made it so that books now get 3 category tags and that’s it. This supposedly stops people from gaming the system and putting their books in unassociated categories because the system checks. Not sure I believe that, but I ended up doing it for Do I Need to Use a Dragon?and Bestiary of Blatherhorn Vale. The latter came up as needing a new price and that’s where I discovered the change. Decided to try it for my newest release since I was curious. Now, do I take time one weekend to go through all of my books to make these changes? Has anybody else tinkered with this new system?
This coming week is going to be rather crazy. There’s a lot going on for the first three days and then Thanksgiving. I don’t think I’ll get any writing done until Friday afternoon. So, I’m going to be focused mostly on maintaining my energy and strength. The CPAP machine requires that I go to bed around 10:15 the latest to make sure I use it for long enough on school nights. I’ll have to make sure I do that, which means I might only be able to do the last of the January blog posts. That’s an easy month since most of it is putting up stuff I already wrote. Speaking of posts, tomorrow is going to be . . . really strange, but I couldn’t resist.
Honestly, 2023 decided to hit the gas for some reason. Next week has so much packed into 3 days and the following week looks to be just as hectic. Hanukkah starts the week after that too. This is why I don’t plan on starting Darwin & the Joy Path until Christmas time or after the 31st. Leaning towards the latter or a combo. Depends on what I do with the December weekends. Maybe I’ll be able to finish off the ‘Phi Beta Files’ outlines after I rewrite the one for Darwin’s next adventure, which is oddly more linear than his usual antics. Wonder if that would be easier or harder for him since he tends to wander away from plans, but doesn’t like being surprised. Guess I’ll figure it out during the outlining stage.
So, what are the goals of the week?
Help son study for tests and quiz on Monday.
Pokemon Go when not studying.
Thanksgiving!
Watch the parade with my son.
Sleep well.
Beat the Water Temple in ‘Ocarina of Time’.
Figure out what to watch after I finish ‘Lupin’.
Finish January blog posts.
Try to finish some ‘Phi Beta Files’ characters during free periods.
One of the hardest things to do with a series is to have a message. This is because you need to play the long game. I mean, you can’t just have it be revealed in the first volume and then never challenged. It needs to appear gradually and be at risk of changing since this is typically about morality or the like. So, what do you do?
Do not make the messaging your focus when you begin writing the first volume of a series. This can distract you from the more important pieces such as world building and story foundation. If you’re paying attention to the message then you the rest can come off as week or convoluted. With it being so early in a story, you might not even want to introduce those types of themes. You can even start with more basic ones such as ‘good vs evil’ or ‘experienced vs rookie’.
When it comes time to start pushing your message, you need to take your time and not let it absorb the whole story. Messages can be central themes, but they work best when they are not sucking all the air out of the room. Entertainment is fiction’s primary purpose and one can get points across through that. For example, a theme about friendship can be better suited to the character relationships, which are not the main story. They will change and grow as the adventure progresses, but they do so on a secondary level.
Perhaps the easiest time to add parts for the messaging is during a rewrite or editing stage. The core story is already written, so you are now putting in the pieces that are lurking beneath. You can focus almost entirely on this during one run, which can result in shoring up scenes that feel empty.
Two of the main sources of message portrayal are the personality and actions of the characters. To get your points across, you need them to speak and act accordingly. For example, if you want to show that power corrupts then you have to demonstrate with at least one character that the stronger they get, the darker they turn. Readers are supposed to connect to your characters, so this makes them the perfect vessels for messaging.
DO NOT HAVE CHARACTERS SCREAM THE MESSAGE!
As a series progresses, you can have themes and messages change. Revealing one early on gives you the opportunity to have it be challenged. For example, if you show that the story revolves around ‘good vs evil’, you can have good lose for a bit. Have a character develop a conflict of faith or turn because of a deep loss. Series allow you to extend and play with messages in a rollercoaster style instead of plopping them down and leaving them alone.
There’s nothing wrong with juggling multiple messages in a long series. Some can be for the whole story while others are for a specific volume. You can even have a different message/theme being portrayed by different characters. This is where it ties into personality and action. Their storyline and background can help establish such things as well. Guess the main point here is that you can have several messages if you use your other set pieces carefully.
I know a lot of people don’t like messages in their stories. Personally, I think there is always something we can learn from a story. It might not be overt or intentional, but it’s nice to glean even a little tidbit of depth from an experience. Even a pure action adventure might display themes about perseverance, friendship, loyalty, continuing through loss, and other life events. With that said, here are some questions to get minds motoring:
What is a story that held a message for you?
Do you think messages are better when they are in the open or hidden?
What advice would you give to an author who wants to include a message? (You cannot say ‘do not do it’.)
Fritz was played by my friend Nate. Beyond that I’m not really sure where to begin with him. He is a gnome who is an inventor, illusionist, monster chronicler, and purveyor of fair maidens’ affections. In the actual game, there were very few female characters before Nyx arrived, so Fritz’s dirty old man side rarely appeared. Once Nyx did show up, he was using magic to pinch her butt every chance he got. Sadly, Nate and Fritz left the game soon after Nyx appeared, so I never got to see where he would go. This posed a small problem for me that the other departing characters didn’t have. Dave who played Nimby was my roommate for a little while, so I got a good idea how Nimby would work through talking to him. Nimby also lasted longer than Fritz. Harold who played Aedyn Karwyn was a stat-based player at the time, so he didn’t have a deep personality. This gave me a nearly blank slate to work with. Fritz had personality, depth, and a spark about him that was so endearing that I was scared to screw him up. Nate created an amazing balance between comic relief and wise mentor that it was incredibly daunting.
So, Fritz began as a character who was there with little depth. I fine-tuned him and evolved him through my years of editing Beginning of a Hero. It wasn’t intended to be this way. It was just that I kept feeling like I screwed him up until one day, he just snapped into place. He is still close to how I remember him in the game, but more inventor than illusionist. In the game, you can’t really be a famous and highly regarded inventor as a first level. Again, the benefits of a book over a game is that a character can start with a lot of experience. This is where I got more of a feel for Fritz and fine-tuned my own ability to have characters who are comical, but can be serious. It’s funny because with all of my work on Fritz, I really grew attached to the greasy, womanizing, wise, old gnome.
Fritz is also the character who flushed out the gnome race of Windemere and turned them into a global force to be reckoned with. They turned Windemere from a Middle Earth type place to something closer to a Final Fantasy world with technology blossoming alongside magic. As the books progress, you will begin to see various high-tech devices such as indoor plumbing and mechanical bridges that can be turned into high archer posts. So, the technology of Windemere is really all thanks to Fritz. He is also to blame for gnomes being able to use half of their mind to do one task and the other half to do another task, so gnomes are true multi-taskers. The final ability that Fritz gave the gnomes was called ‘The Void’. Gnomes work with dangerous materials, but they rarely seem to die in the explosions that they are responsible for. I began to wonder this and noticed that Fritz would occasionally pause while working on something and then go back. The Void is a form of precognition that takes the form of total blackness in a gnome’s mind. It is a warning that they are following a path that will lead to their death. The Void lasts only for a second, but it is the reason why gnomes always know where to stand when something is about to happen.
So, that is the origin and influence of Fritz Warrenberg.
2023 Thoughts– Not much else to really say. Fritz was the character who I used to set the tone and abilities for Windemere’s gnomes. Out of all of the Luke Callindor’s friends from Beginning of a Hero, he really did have the greatest impact on world-building and setting. I can’t have a gnomish character without thinking of Fritz. It was a shame that I couldn’t have him carry on longer in the overall story than he did, but it was the same issue with Nimby and Aedyn Karwyn. The players left the game during the second adventure, so I had to phase out the characters. Still, they all had a purpose and left a lasting impression with Fritz being perfect for the role he played.
I was thinking about this topic when I overheard a conversation. It was a bunch of people making fun of the ‘Martha’ scene in “Batman v Superman’. Many found this to be ridiculous and stupid. I never really understood this since I saw it as something deeper than what you see on the screen. What do I mean?
Well, Bruce Wayne is Batman because of the trauma he suffered from the death of his parents. He has spent the entire movie treating Superman like an unnatural, inhuman alien. Hearing the name ‘Martha’ shocks him and then he hears that it is also the name of Superman’s mom. In my mind, this made him realize that Superman is more human than he realized. He has a living mother who is about to suffer the same fate as his own. An understanding or mild acceptance occurs. Unfortunately, you have to come up with this on your own since it isn’t outright said in the movie. Lots of hinting and a hope that people realize men have an odd habit of becoming friends over some ridiculous stuff. Seriously, men can bond over almost anything.
For those who haven’t rushed to the comments to argue about the scene, I want to talk about intent. This is when an author is hoping to bring a point across. Sometimes, they are blunt and make it clear what they are trying to say. Other times, they attempt to be subtle and depend on the audience coming to their own conclusions. This second method is where you run into the following risks:
The audience creating different messages and arguing about them instead of polite discussion.
The audience missing the message entirely and treating your creation as a fluff, shallow piece.
The audience missing the message and making fun of scenes that make sense in specific mental context.
Effectively adding any message to a story requires that the audience does some of the legwork. Flat out telling them the message ends up removing some of the mystery and depth of the story. People might not enjoy as much and certainly won’t bother with a second reading since you’ve told them the big mystery. There’s no more urge to analyze and see if you missed anything. It has all been revealed. So, you need the audience to figure at least some of the big stuff on their own.
As I said, that’s where the problem can come into play. An author knows where all of the pieces go because we made the puzzle and broke it apart. A reader doesn’t have a clear guide to work with and some of the pieces can be put in differently. This results in a reader using the information intentionally given and some that were accidentally added to create their own message. I’d like to give an example, but anything can turn into a hidden sign if a person takes it a specific way. It’s part of the curiosity that most readers hold since a part of them wants to get a clue about things before the finale. We don’t like to admit this, but being able to predict the ending is seen as an accomplishment.
So, what can you do? I would recommend doing an editing run specifically to make sure there are enough clues to make your intended message be the one most likely to be figured out. There’s nothing you can do to entirely prevent misinterpretations without stating outright what you wanted to say. So, you have to roll with the punches and try to see where people are coming from. Maybe what the audience comes up with gives you an idea for the future of the story. It could very well mix with what you originally meant to say and give it more depth. On the other hand, it could be so far off the mark that you can’t acknowledge it without ruining the whole story. You have to love the challenges that come from readers being individuals with their own thoughts and experiences.
