Kristen Lamb: 10 Reasons to Become a Writer

I love Kristen Lamb's blog, and her latest post shows why. Witty and poignant, she talks about that most dreaded of questions: What do you do?

Although I have a day job, I consider myself a writer. Whenever I tell people that either their eyes glaze over with disinterest or their next question is: Are you published? Then I have to go through the whole song-and-dance of explaining that I'm an independent author. Usually -- and understandably! -- they don't have any idea what it means to be an independent author and occasionally, horror of horrors, they associate it with vanity publishing and look at me as though I've sprouted a third eye.

Suffice it to say that the question, "What do you do?" has begun to seem ever more unfriendly and I'm seriously considering replying: "I'm a gynecologist. You?" That should end the discussion pretty quickly!

In any case, here is Kristen Lamb's humorous defense of the profession:

I still remember the day I told my family I was leaving corporate sales to become a writer. I think what they heard was something akin to, “Leaving any feasible way to make a living and feed myself. Joining a cult. Kool-Aid.” Or something close to that.

If you are a writer, then you know we share this collective pain.

People ask, “So what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a writer.”

“No, I mean what do you really do? What’s your job?”

Sigh.

So, to repay you for your pain, here’s a laugh at our collective expense.

Top Ten Reasons to Become a Writer

10. Therapy is getting too expensive

When you become a writer, the first thing that becomes clear is that if you are at all interesting enough to be able to write good fiction, then you are seriously screwed up. As in years of expensive therapy screwed up. Writers are not normal.

So why not take all those notebooks filled with letters to your Inner Child and turn those babies into cold hard cash? I say, it is time for us to demand Inner Child Labor. Instead of letting that ungrateful punk float around in our limbic brain, it is high time we make the little twerp pull his weight.

Have anger issues coupled with violent fantasies? You are a born horror author.

Attend sex therapy to deal with a porn addiction? Erotica author.

Have “Mommy” issues? Memoir author.

9. Revenge, Duh

What better way to get back at that jerk who stood you up for the big dance? Or the toad who slept with your best friend? You got it. Become a writer. Surely you can think of a story that is in need of a pathetic cross-dressing hermaphrodite who gets killed by an inflatable doll. Slap the ex’s name on him. Just change the first letter of his last name. Heck, use your newfound power to help out your friends. Surely they can give you lists. Find a need for a character who has a tragically small penis or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Become a writer and no one will cross you again lest they be found wearing hot pants while soliciting prostitution from sheep at the petting zoo in your next story. And hey, with the Internet, EVERYONE can be published.

8. High School Reunion Coming Up

So maybe you have done nothing with your life in the past 20 years. Who cares? All you have to do is find some out of print author and borrow his name for a bit. Hey, not like he is using it. Just tell those jerks you wanted to impress that you write under a pseudonym, and now you are “in between books.” Think of it this way, you can hold your head high that “you” accomplished something they never did, and, since you won’t have to see those jerks for another 5-10 years, no one will be the wiser. If you do get found out, it is just free publicity for the struggling dope you impersonated.

7. You drink a lot and it was either become a writer or attend AA

Enough said…

6. Can hang out with our friends somewhere other than the Renaissance festival

Renaissance festivals and Trekkie conventions can get expensive, especially when you work at the last Barnes and Noble left in your city. And while living with Mom does help off-set the cost of rent, World of Warcraft isn’t exactly free. Form a critique group with your pals and all vow to become famous writers. Hey, you still get to hang out and talk about elves and wizards and what you would do if you were a vampire, only now it is considered “work.”

5. Because what other job comes with a dress code of thrift store jeans and juvenile T-shirts?

Do you just love Superman, Mickey Mouse, or even Mr. T? I pity the fool! Feel like expressing yourself on 100% pre-shrunk cotton? Hey, if you were a 37 year old accountant or airline pilot, others might think that an entire wardrobe comprised of Xena, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica T-Shirts meant you were emotionally immature or “touched in the head.” Now that you’re a writer, you can be…eccentric. Hell, throw in a beret just to be extra annoying.

4. Because “writer” sounds so much more glamorous than “unemployed” or “Starbucks Hot Beverage Consultant”

Refer to Number 8.

3. Because it is the next best thing to having your own reality show.

Have a whacked out family or embarrassing habit? Write about it. The great thing is that now EVERYTHING is a tax write-off. Have an insatiable coffee, book and movie addiction? Then you are writer material. So go ahead and collect action figures, souvenir shot glasses and rare comic books. Do a “Tour of Pubs” and get plastered as you sample every beer under the sun. Or take that trip to Texas and ride the mechanical bull at Billy Bob’s. Just make sure you write about it, and then it is all deductable “research”…and the pictures your so-called friends post on their Facebook page of you being hauled away for Drunk and Disorderly Conduct are less “mortally embarrassing” and more “priceless promotion.” Just make sure you ask Denny’s for a receipt before they throw you out.

2. Because your family told you that you should be a doctor.

Don’t get along with your parents? Hey, go big or go home. What better way to insure your status as black sheep of the family than announce that you are giving up everything to become a writer? Short of announcing that you just converted to Scientology or that you sold all your stuff and are moving to a commune in New Mexico, telling the folks that you want to be a writer is guaranteed to make you the definitive pariah. And the plus side is that there is no studying chemistry or staying up all night to memorize Kreb’s Cycle. Just think of it this way, they will forgive you once you’re published anyway.

1. Because you can be….GOD!

Yeah, now you get a glimpse of how it feels to be the Big Guy. What other job, short of an IRS agent or a meter maid gives the raw power of being able to make or destroy lives with ….a pen?

Did I miss something? Do you guys have a reason you would like to add? Put it in the comments! Just think of this as group therapy without the privacy :D . What’s your favorite of the top ten posted? Can you relate? Share and we promise to laugh at yo-….um, be compassionate and supportive.

Read the rest of Kristen's post here.

Do you remember your very first story?

This is my 200th post! I thought, to celebrate, I would do something a little different.

As near as I can recall, my first story was about a Gothic mansion that was painted red inside. All the rooms, the hallways, every interior surface was painted red. The twist was that the red paint wasn't paint at all, it was blood!

I'm chuckling as I type this. I was in grade two when I wrote that story -- it was for an in-class assignment -- and I know now that dried blood is brown, not red, but that wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic!

My story came back from the teacher a couple of days later covered in red; not blood of course, but red ink. Apparently my skills as a writer needed some improvement. ;)

Do you remember the first story you ever wrote? What was it about?

Stephen King on his new talk show: We're a little to the left, but we're right

Stephen King is one of my favorite writers so this bit of news caught my eye. I'm going to see if I can't tune into the station using one of my nifty iPad apps.

BANGOR, Maine -- Stephen King is offering an antidote to what he sees as the biases of right-wing radio talk shows by hiring a former Green Party vice presidential candidate to co-host a morning talk show on two stations he owns.

In a rare public appearance, the horror writer held a news conference Tuesday in Bangor, Maine, at the headquarters of his three-station Zone Radio network.

"The Pulse Morning Show" will be co-hosted by 50-year-old Pat LaMarche and 43-year-old Don Cookson, a former television reporter. LaMarche ran for vice president as a member of the Green Party in 2004.

During the news conference King said, "We're a little to the left, but we're right."

The show will begin airing on WZON-AM and WZON-FM at 6 a.m. on Sept. 12.

Read more at the Sacramento Bee, here.

Hootsuite for Twitter: 5 out of 5 stars

I'm stubborn, I like to do everything myself. So when I first heard about Hootsuite I thought, "Well, that's fine for some folks, but I don't need it."

Yea. Just like I didn't need a food processor. This is a true story. For years I put off getting a food processor because I didn't think I needed it. I mean, what does it do? It chops vegetables! I can do that. After I broke down and got one, I had no idea how I'd ever managed without it. It saved me a lot of time. Hootsuite is like that; for me, it is the food processor of the Twitter world.

Here's why:
1. Hootsuite shortens my links for me.
Before I used Hootsuite I would go to bitly or tinyURL to shorten my link and then copy and paste it in my tweet. When I started sending out more than a couple of tweets per day this process became tiresome. One of the features I love about Hootsuite is that it has a URL shortener built in. It works beautifully and I don't have to go anywhere else for what I need. For me, this is a big plus.

2. Hootsuite can schedule tweets.
When I decided that I wanted to tweet more than three times a day I started using Hootsuite's scheduler. Wow! Very nice. It doesn't work as well for tweets that are time sensitive -- breaking news, that sort of thing -- but for everything else it is a dream come true. Just cue up your tweets for the day -- or the week -- and you're done. Before there would be, say, three stories that I wanted to tweet about but I didn't want to do three tweets one right after the other. I would try to remember to do one every three hours or so, but I would usually forget. The scheduler is like my underpaid digital assistant who takes care of these things for me.

3. Hootsuite is Free!
There are a lot of other great things about Hootsuite, but one of the things I love about it is that it is free. Yes, there is a professional version which costs 5.99 a month but I have been using the free version and am very happy.

4. Hootsuite Hootlet
A couple of days ago I discovered a browser addon that will capture the title and url of a post and dislay it. Here's what the folks at Hootsuite have to say:

We call the Hootlet our secret weapon because it has the power to completely change how you use Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Want to share a link? Hit the Hootlet button, and automatically, the URL is shortened and text is grabbed from the site.

The Hootlet is truly great, I'm hoping they come out with something like it for Safari.

That's my review of Hootsuite. Other reviews I've looked at have given it four out of five stars and I'll admit that I only tried out two or three different programs before I settled on Hootsuite, but I am truly thrilled with the program and will probably at some point spring for the professional version.

Cheers!

Five steps to better proofreading

Have you ever read your book or short story after it was published and cringed at the number of errors that made it through the proofreading process?

Matthew Stibbe from Bad Language tells us five secrets of better proofreading:

1. Create a checklist. Organize your proofreading efforts by writing down all the areas you will need to cover. A checklist can cover things such as grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and punctuation. Simply check off each item on the list once you have completed it.
2. Do a preliminary read. Rather than diving right into the document, briefly read over it once before starting your actual proofreading. Make a note of what stands out and come back to it when you start. It will help guide your efforts so you know where to focus your energies when you proofread.
3. Work smart. Tackle each problem one at a time. If you try to fix everything at once, you will miss errors. Focusing on a specific area such as spelling or punctuation can actually speed up the process and enhance your proofreading skills because you will be able to pinpoint specific mistakes faster.
4. Allow for breaks. When you are working with longer documents, it helps to divide the time spent on proofreading into small time blocks. Attempting to carry out the proofreading process nonstop can deplete your energy and make it much harder to get the job done. Allow yourself time to take a break every 15 to 30 minutes. Working in short bursts can help you stay focused long enough to get through your document.
5. Perform a final check. Quick proofreading the first time through does not mark the end of the editing process. It is important to read it through a final time after you have finished the bulk of the proofreading. This is simply an insurance policy to ensure you catch any stray errors you might have missed the first time.

Read more here.

On the importance of joining a writers group

Whenever I talk to writers I ask if they belong to a writing group. I am amazed that, most of the time, the person responds with 'no'.

Sometimes it's a horrified 'no', and I feel as though I've asked them whether they run a dog fighting ring in their basement. Sometimes it's a guilty no, as though they're confessing to not eating their broccoli or reading the latest James Patterson thriller (I feel I should mention that I've read one or two; I tell myself it's research).

Being the curious person that I am (in both senses of the word) I ask them, 'why not?' The horrified ones are usually afraid someone will give them negative feedback and they'll get writers block and the guilty ones feel that they should belong to a writers group because all serious writers do and it would be a great way to make contacts but they don't feel their work is quite up to snuff yet. They want to hold off joining one until they're just a wee bit better, until they've had a chance to give their stories one more polish.

I realize that what a writers group does for me may be very different from what it does or will do for anyone else, and that different people want different things out of writers groups, but, still, I think that both these groups of people have missed the point. I think that the single most important function of a writers group for the beginning writer is to let them know that other people take your work seriously enough to not only spend their precious time reading it, but to give you their honest thoughts about it. In my experience honesty tempered by kindness is a rare thing but that is what I have found in my writers group.

To the horrified writers I want to say that seeing your story through the lens of another's soul is worth the occasional sobering comment, and to the shy writers I want to say that joining a writers group is about agreeing to work together to help each other become better writers -- or something like that. Please don't hold off until you feel that your work is good enough, a writers group is just what you need to help you hone it. In the end, we write for ourselves but we also write for readers. Knowing what other people think of my writing has been an enormous help.

So, if you're a writer near the beginning of your career and you're not part of a writing group, what are you waiting for? Join one!

Caveat: I'm lucky to belong to a writers group that is a good fit for me. Some say that belonging to a writers group that is NOT a good fit for you is worse than not belonging to a group at all. Personally, I think that -- especially with the internet -- there is a group out there for every writer, it just might take awhile to find one that is a good fit for you. Don't give up.

Seth Godin: If We Imprison Ideas, We Imprison Ourselves

Seth Godin writes, "governments and organizations are lining up to control ideas and the way they spread."

How is this control happening? Seth Godin gives three examples:

1. Nathan Myhrvold: Patent Troll

Myhrvold worked at Microsoft for 13 years, where he founded Microsoft Research in 1991. Intellectual Ventures, it is alleged, accumulates patents not in order to develop products and reward inventors, but with the goal acquiring licensing fees, often using shell companies.

Technology companies pay Intellectual Ventures fees ranging “from tens of thousands to the millions and millions of dollars … to buy themselves insurance that protects them from being sued by any harmful, malevolent outsiders,” says venture capitalist Chris Sacca.

There’s an implication in IV’s pitch, Sacca says: If you don’t join us, who knows what’ll happen? He says it reminds him of “a mafia-style shakedown, where someone comes in the front door of your building and says, ‘It would be a shame if this place burnt down. I know the neighborhood really well and I can make sure that doesn’t happen.’ “

2. BART: 1st Amendment issues mount over cell shutdown

In 1967, the California Supreme Court ruled that a city couldn't prohibit nondisruptive political activity inside a railroad station.

That was before cellular phones were invented and before the first BART train rolled down the tracks. But it's a precedent the transit agency may have to confront as it defends its decision to cut off cell service at the site of an expected trackside protest last Thursday, and its long-standing ban on "expressive activities" inside the fare gates.

BART says it might pull the plug on phone service again this afternoon to counter plans for a 5 p.m. demonstration at Civic Center Station in San Francisco, where a transit police officer fatally shot a knife-wielding man July 3.

The legality of such a decision may soon arrive in court.

"This is new territory in the United States," said Gene Pilicinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. Although courts haven't addressed a government cell phone shut-off, he said, "historically we have kept our hands off free expression. ... The government has a very high ladder to climb." [Read more here.]

3. How the Legal Fight Over 'Y.M.C.A.' Could Change the Music Industry (Analysis)

Does an artist have the right to terminate copyright?

In 1976, the U.S. Congress lengthened the copyright term, but as a fig leaf to artists who had created works at the early stage of their careers but handed their rights over without much bargaining power, legislators thought it wise to give artists another bite of the apple. So they allowed artists to enjoy the benefits of the latter stages of a copyright term by terminating a copyright grant.

However, in doing so, artists need to adhere to a strict protocol, including sending out precise termination notices during a short few-year window. Artists are allowed to terminate a copyright grant 35 years after first publishing, and since the Copyright Act amendments went into effect in 1978, it means that 2013 is the first year where musicians such as Bruce Springsteen and Victor Willis can effectuate a termination. Since these notices have to go out in advance, it also means that these artists are now under the clock to send out their termination notice or forfeit the right for the foreseeable future. [Read the rest here.]

What should we do about these cases? Wyhat can we do?

A good first step would be reading the rest of Seth Godin's article.

Google fined for refusing to reveal bloggers' identities

Google Brazil had $141,000 US frozen from its bank account for, first, refusing to remove three anonymous blogs accusing the mayor of Brazil of corruption and embezzlement and, second, for refusing to pay the fine the court levied against them.

Go Google!

After the news broke recently of Google's true name policy many, myself included, starting looking at Google differently, they were no longer the good guys. In fact, one or two bloggers used the word "evil" to describe their actions. What Google did here though, protecting dissident bloggers, was a great thing.

Perhaps Google is a bit like most of us, neither good nor bad, evil or a saint.

Read more about this story here: Google fined in Brazil for refusing to reveal bloggers’ identities

10 Science Fiction Books That Changed the Course of History

When I saw this article at i09.com I thought the title was a bit ambitious but after seeing the books they picked, maybe not! What do you think?

Here are 10 seminal science fiction novels that changed the world as we know it.

1) The Tom Swift Series
First appearing in 1920, Tom Swift, the teenage homeschooled genius inventor and protagonist of over one hundred stories — ghostwritten by a bullpen of authors under the pseudonym "Victor Appleton" –- inspired innumerable children to take an interest in science, including futurist/writer/inventor Ray Kurzweil, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Steve Wozniak, who credits the character directly for his becoming a scientist. Jack Cover, inventor of the Taser, was inspired to create a less-lethal alternative to guns after reading about a similar device Swift had created, and then decided to name it after the character: "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle".

2) Neuromancer
William Gibson's classic novel that popularized the cyberpunk subgenre is often cited as an indirect influence in the development of the Internet – in the words of fellow SF writer Jack Womack, "What if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?" More concretely, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, cites Arthur C. Clarke's short story Dial F. for Frankenstein, in which a network of computers linked together learn to think autonomously, as a childhood influence.

3) Gladiator
Philip Wylie's 1930 novel, about the excellently named "Professor Abednego Danner", who invents an "alkaline free radical" serum that imbues those who ingest it with insectile powers, served as the inspiration for the modern superhero. In the story, Danner uses the serum on his unborn child, Hugo, giving him the proportional strength of an ant, the leaping ability of a grasshopper, super speed, and
bulletproof skin. As Hugo grows up, his parents teach him to use his powers responsibly, causing him to be bullied at school, but he finds relief by cutting loose in the wilderness surrounding his rural hometown. Sound familiar? It doesn't end there – Hugo later becomes a star quarterback, but after accidentally killing a football player, he quits in disgrace, joins the French Foreign Legion, and fights in World War I. After the war, he returns home and gets a job as a bank teller, though is fired after ripping off the vault door while rescuing a suffocating employee. He then continues on to two other short-lived careers in politics and Mayan archeology before the story's tragic finale. Although Hugo never dons a costume or sets out to fight crime, Wylie's brief novel managed to predict nearly every classic superhero origin, impacting 20th Century pop culture like nothing else — and now, ninety years later, real-world superheroes are taking the streets, and though none of them have super powers like Hugo, Grant Morrison posits it's only a matter of time and expense until one does.

4) The War of the Worlds
The grandfather of the modern alien invasion story, H.G. Wells' novel has a cultural impact that's staggering, but is also responsible for at least one planetary molding feat: Robert H. Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fueled rocket, decided to dedicate his life to the subject after reading the story as a teenager –- his research eventually culminated with the Apollo program, and man's landing on the moon. It's also believed the Robertson Panel held the legendary fallout of Orson Welles 1938 radio adaptation as evidence why the existence of UFOs should be downplayed, and extraterrestrial evidence withheld from the public.

5) The World Set Free
Another, lesser-known H.G. Wells novel is also responsible for a cataclysmic development: the invention of the H-Bomb. In the story, Wells predicts atomic energy, and the development of a new kind of bomb based on a nuclear reaction, resulting in a "continuing explosive" that would detonate repeatedly for days. Physicist Leo Szilard — another incredible name – read the story in 1932, and the neutron was discovered later that year. In 1933, inspired by the story, Szilard developed the idea of a neutron chain reaction, patented the idea in 1934, and eight years later, we saw the development of the Manhattan Project.

6) Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's novel indirectly helped snuff out embryonic stem cell research in the United States –- cabinet member Jay Lefkowitz dissuaded president G.W. Bush on the concept by reading him passages from the novel describing humans born and bred in hatcheries. Bush, according to Lefkowitz in Commentary Magazine, "got scared". When he had finished reading, Bush responded, "We're on the edge of a cliff. And if we take a step off the cliff, there's no going back. Perhaps we should only take one step at a time."

7) Shockwave Rider
John Brunner's 1975 novel about a man on the run from a networked society who uses a "worm program" to rewrite his identity and escape, proved to be a remarkably prescient text, accurately predicting
large-scale networks, hacking, phreaking, genetic engineering and the computer virus. The book's description of a destructive, self-replicating program capable of eliminating secret bonds inspired Xerox PARC researchers John F. Shoch and John A. Hupp to create their own version – a program designed to seek idle network CPU cycles, but would expeditiously grow beyond the intentions of its programmer. In
turn, Shoch and Hupp named their creation a "worm", and the modern virus was born, leaving untold misery and Super Human Samurai Syber Squad in its wake.

8) Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson's popular novel and its virtual Metaverse inspired both the creation of the MMORPG Second Life, and the popularization of the term "avatar", a Sanskrit word meaning "to cross over" (though was actually first repurposed to mean "digital manifestation" in the 1986 video game Habitat.) As in the Metaverse, Second Life allows users to interact through personal avatars and create communities following agreed upon systems. (Former Microsoft VP J. Allard uses the name Hiro Protagonist- the hero and protagonist- as his handle) Snow Crash's Earth program also presupposed (and according to a cofounder, directly inspired) both Google Earth and Bing Map.

9) 1984
George Orwell's novel shaped forever the ways in which we view Totalitarianism as a system of government. But it also changed the ways we think about institutional brainwashing and ubiquitous surveillance. Orwell gave us a whole arsenal of new words to talk about oppressive systems, including "Big Brother," "Room 101," "the Thought Police," "thoughtcrime," "unperson" "doublehink" and "memory hole." Where would the blogosphere be without Orwell's lexicon? Whenever you end a word with -speak, you're indirectly quoting Orwell.

10) Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's seminal 1817 novel about a mad scientist who creates artificial life has helped to inspire the real-life science of synthetic biology. Scientist Craig Venter and other innovators have created synthetic organisms in the lab, including a complete M. capricolum organism. People regularly refer to the creation of synthetic life forms as the "Frankenstein moment" for biology. And it's easy to see why — Shelley's novel gave us the first instance of the idea of creating artificial life forms.

Jim Butcher: How to build a Villain

I love Jim Butcher's series, The Dresden Files. I marvel at his well-rounded characters, his engaging fight scenes, the way he chains together scenes and sequels to create reader engagement, and the way he seamlessly weaves in backstory. Oh, and his fight scenes are epic. And that's just off the top of my head! Now that's my kind of writer.

Given that lead-in, you can understand why I get excited when I find an article Jim Butcher has written about the craft of writing. Today was a very good day. I found, "How to build a Villain," on a the site: Magical Words: Writing tips and publishing advice for aspiring novelists.

So, how do you build a villain? Jim Butcher writes:

One of the most critical skills an aspiring writer needs is the ability to build a solid villain. Even the greatest protagonist in the world cannot truly shine without an equally well-rendered opposition. The converse of that statement isn’t true, though—if your protagonist is a little shaky but your villain absolutely shines, you can still tell a very successful story.

How to Build a Powerful Villain:

1. Motivation 

"Your villain has to be motivated even more strongly than your protagonist, to move in a direction that is opposite to your protagonist’s goal. The drama and tension of the entire story is based upon those two opposing forces. Buffy versus vampires. Sith versus Jedi. Spy versus spy."

2. Power

"Your villain has to have enough power, of whatever nature, at his disposal to make him a credible threat to your hero. Personally, I believe that the more the villain outclasses the hero, the better. David wouldn’t have gotten nearly the press he did if Goliath had been 5’9” and asthmatic."

3. Admirable Qualities

"Every serious 'big bad villain' you write ought to have facets of his personality that are desirable, even admirable. Perhaps your villain is exquisitely polite and courteous, extremely perceptive, remarkably intelligent, or possessed of a skewed sense of honor that makes him something more than a simple black-hat. In point of fact, a villain might be loaded down with admirable qualities, all of which should serve to only make him even more dangerous to your protagonist. Think of the Mayor of Sunnydale in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Except for the part where he was trying to turn himself into a giant demon and devour the graduating class, he was a great guy!"

4. Individuality

"A good villain needs to be instantly recognizable to your reader, so that even if he hasn’t appeared in a hundred pages, your reader will recognize that character instantly. You can achieve this pretty effectively using Tags and Traits, identifiers for a character which reserve particular props, personality traits, and words to associate with any given character. You can find an article that goes into them in greater depth on my livejournal at jimbutcher.livejournal.com."


Above, Jim Butcher mentioned an article he posted on his Livejournal site. He has actually posted quite a few excellent articles to that blog.

Jim Butcher goes on to say:

"I have a standard operating procedure for creating characters. I keep a dossier on each of them. When the character is created, I open a new file and fill in name, goal, description, tags, and traits. I write down a brief summary of what their capabilities are, and more fully describe their goals and motivations. If it’s a recurring character, I keep a running log of their development: how have the events of the story world affected them? How have they changed as a result? What are they likely to want in the future?

"If you’re going to take anything away from this post, it’s this: Villains are even MORE important to build well than are heroes.

"Spend every bit as much time and effort crafting your villain as you do the hero, and make sure that you motivate your villains every bit as thoroughly as you do your protagonist, or your story risks a lack of depth and contrast. In other words, it’ll be the one thing a fiction writer cannot afford to be: boring."

That is the end of the article but in the comment section Jim Butcher continues to give helpful advice to writers.

Question: “I’m intrigued by this idea of Tags and Traits. I’m guessing these are like the natural evolution of Homeric Epithets?”

Jim's Answer: I haven’t heard them described in those terms, but yeah, that fits, though the goal is to use it with a little more subtlety. Tags are words you use to physically describe any given character. Traits are aspects of their personality.

For example, the tags for Karrin Murphy in the Dresden Files are words like “tiny,” “cute,” and “blond.” Her traits are words like, “tough,” “smart,” and “fierce.”

The goal is to create a kind of mental signature for any given character, so that the reader need not consciously labor to identify who is speaking, and so that a very clear impression of the character is created when that character is introduced.

It all feeds into the idea that the goal, as a writer, is to create a kind of virtual reality in the head of the reader. That works best when the actual mechanics of words and sentences are as transparent as you can possibly make them. Part of making them transparent is to identify a few words or phrases so strongly with a given character that the reader doesn’t really notice the words themselves–they only see the character to which you’ve connected those words and phrases.

Question: “I wonder how important it is to reveal outright the villain’s weakness? Or is that revealed by the demise of the villain in the story process?”

Jim's Answer: Who says the villain has to /have/ a weakness? Though if you are going to go for a villain with a 2-meter exhaust port vulnerable to photon torpedoes, you can certainly do that. I did it with the Loup-garou in Fool Moon, after all. But most of the villains in the Dresden Files don’t have a silver-bullet weakness. It makes their takedown (if they’re going to be taken down) a little too simple and predictable.

“But there are plenty of great villains that don’t have anything admirable about them. They’re just freaking monsters. Like The Joker, or Darth Sidious. I do prefer admirable villains, but i’d be lying if i didn’t enjoy the occasional complete monster. Are they just the exception that proves the rule or what?”

The Joker is crazy brilliant, literally, and he has style. It’s a bombastic and cartoony style, much of the time, but it’s still style. And Darth Sidious just wasn’t all /that/ great a villain, at least in my opinion–but even so, he was intelligent, eloquent, and a capable administrator. I mean, he conquered a whole galaxy. You don’t do that without at least a little talent. :)

“when I write a villain character, I seem to get so into “it” that I sometimes find it hard to not keep wanting to take it further and further (great for future books), but once I get to the point where “hey, it’s time to end this book”, how do you cut yourself off an say enough!”

Just remember that the end of your story is the answer to a question: will your hero succeed in his goals when the villain gets in his way? If your hero has achieved his goals, you’re done, that’s it, wrap it up and start on the next story.

“Is it dangerous to spend too much time with the villain/antagonist up front like this? I have a strong and familiar archetype for the protagonist and I keep saying “ah, he’ll be no problem when I get to his part”, so I keep putting off the details of his development. Conversely, the antagonist, being an immortal, figures heavily into the state of the world and the trials that will be put before the hero. Am I falling into a noob-trap here?”

Possibly, but it’s not one that can’t work out well for you. I mean, look at how well that one went for JK Rowling. When you think about it, Voldemort shaped absolutely EVERYTHING that happened in the Harry Potter books, right down to the scar on the hero’s head and his mysterious ability to speak with snakes. Why did it work? Because Voldemort, with his own actions, forged Harry into the means of his own demise. Harry, meanwhile, is sort of unremarkable as a hero, in a personal sense. He’s brave, but no braver than many other folk in the HP universe. He’s smart, but not the smartest around. He’s not even the best at magic. Voldemort made everything about him that was truly remarkable.

That said, I think it’s /far/ smarter to build your hero with every bit as much attention as your villain. Batman versus the Joker works so well precisely because they were designed with one another in mind, as champions of order and chaos, respectively. More importantly, it gives you double the audience appeal potential. I’ve read books where I just couldn’t stand the heroes, but loved the villains, and so continued. But the books that stay with me the longest are the ones who are solid all the way across the board, who fully engage me with their entire cast.

Question: “What is your approach, or rather your thoughts so I don’t make you feel all spoilery, on hinting at the big bad’s fingerprints in the early parts of your story arc without jumping the gun and revealing too much about them and their agenda?”

That’s mostly a matter of taste, but do yourself a favor and assume that the readers are smart. They are. Drop hints without being too overly dramatic about it, if you’re going to keep the identity of your villain hidden for a while, and make sure that you’ve got a villain to defeat in effigy before the end of the story. Think of, oh, Darth Maul and Palpatine. Palpatine may have been briefly stymied by the Jedi, but Maul got chopped up and thrown down a killin’ hole. His death was symbolic of Palpatine’s demise–literally, since Palpatine got thrown down a killin’ hole too.

“Having read all of the Dresden based novels, I am quite aware that your protagonist is deeply flawed and often those who act as antagonists display character traits that are admirable. Given this near equality, how does one avoid having everyone be candidates for “villian” status?”

Storytelling craft is not about making moral judgments of the relative values, ethically or otherwise, of your character’s actions. The readers will do that for themselves. For craft purposes, the protagonist is the one who is going after his goal. Your antagonist is getting in the way of that goal. “Hero” and “villain” are both separate terms which can overlap with protagonist and antagonist, but they aren’t absolutely bound together. Think of The Fugitive again. Sam Gerard is a perfect example of an antagonist who is, in fact, personally heroic. Artemis Fowl and Megamind are good examples of a protagonist who is personally a villain.

But don’t try to make the call for your readers. Just tell the story. They’ll do the rest on their own.

That's it! If you like my content please consider supporting me on my Patreon account. If you support the blog for just one dollar a month I'll send you my book, "The Structure of a Great Story."

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