[For the sake of thoroughness, I’ll go ahead and put up a spoiler warning for Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in front of this post, though I think the statute of limitations on those series has long since expired.]

Everyone loves a good redemption story. No wait, scratch that. Everyone loves a good fall from grace. Or maybe it’s both?

We’ve already heard Jace talk a bit about why to avoid all good or all bad characters. Giving your heroes flaws and your villains virtues makes them feel both relatable and real. But keep in mind that it’s not enough just to have characters with a little gray in them. Your character has to change with the story. If they end the story in the same mental and emotion place as they started, you aren’t writing a real story, you’re writing a sitcom. An 80’s sitcom.

So static characters are boring, check. Change is good, check. Well-written characters change some by the end of their stories. A protagonist will walk into the fires of conflict and emerge reforged, or some such blacksmithing metaphor. But sometimes readers get bored with a little change. Sometimes you have to go all the way. Think your Jaime Lannisters and your Walter Whites. But how do you do it well?

The rules are surprisingly similar regardless of direction. In fact, they are the same rules as those for any decision a character makes. In order to make a character’s actions believable, you have to plant the seeds at the very beginning of your story. You establish a character by getting the reader inside their head or viewing them from the head of another character. You get across a personality and at least a sketch of a backstory. For every action the character takes, some aspect of their personality and/or backstory combines with an element of the plot and drives them to make a decision that rings true for this fake person you’ve created.

In order to redeem a character or make them fall, you simply turn the stakes up to 11 in such a way that either amplifies their strength of or pries into their flaw. Saruman the White was leader of the White Council until the temptation of the One Ring proved too much for him. The pride that went along with his leadership position convinced him that he could master the ring’s power. Severus Snape, from the viewpoint of the reader at least, went from “he’s definitely bad news” to “he’s a big jerk, but he’s on the right side” gradually over the course of seven books. His redeeming quality, his unrequited love for Lily, burns through all his nastiness and his sympathy with Voldemort’s views and steers him on a path toward redemption.

Other choices can help lend credibility to your character’s journey into extremity. For a character to fall, it helps if they are stubborn and unbending to a fault. They can’t take all moral compromise they see around them, and eventually it becomes too much to bear. They snap, like the tree that doesn’t bend with the wind. In contrast, for a character to be redeemed, the opposite is helpful. If there is a part of them that is uncomfortable with their evil status quo, it provides a seed that can grow into a desire to repent for their crimes.

Handled deftly, this technique can open a reader’s mind in ways that lesser character growth can’t. A villain readers once despised can transform into someone they root for. Or a hero they loved can fall gradually into darkness, bringing readers along in complicity until they realize, with perfectly elicited horror, just how far the character has fallen. If you pull it off, it packs a very special kind of punch.

One last bit of advice. If you turn your main hero bad or your main villain good, make sure you have an understudy character you’ve developed over the course of the story available to fill the now-vacant spot. It helps if they wind up being an even better hero or villain than the character they are replacing. As a bonus, the fresh conflict introduced as former allies turn on one another can add a kick to your story’s climax.

I recently finished a grueling slog through edits to my work-in-progress. It was a finale months in coming, not because it should have taken so long, per se, but because in between receiving the edits and finishing them, my wife and I bought and moved into our first house. As it turns out, I only thought I hated moving before. So I finished up the edits, months behind my personally imposed schedule, and then what do I do? I go right back to the beginning and start through again, because in fixing the manuscript before, I introduced a ton of continuity errors and some (lots of) typos.

Ugh. I am so SICK of this manuscript.

This year was supposed to go differently. I was supposed to be finishing up my beta-ready draft of the sequel, not still plugging away at edits on the first. The constant push to worry about what agents, editors and readers might want, what they’d find acceptable, was beginning to feel stifling. I wasn’t enjoying myself. Then I had a realization. It was okay that I was so far behind where I wanted to be. In paying for professional editorial help for my manuscript (thanks, Joshua!) I learned I didn’t really know how to edit before. I’d thought I did, but Joshua’s edits showed me the light. The painful, blinding, burning light. So this was a grueling but very necessary learning experience.

I am so sick of this manuscript, but I am in good company. Patrick Rothfuss has talked on his blog about how sick he gets of his manuscripts as his editing winds down. So when I started to feel the same way, I took it as a sign that it was finally nearing completion. This book (my third) is going to be my first to be published. I know that, not through some metaphysical sense of surety, but because if I can’t find an agent or editor who believes in it, I’m going to publish it myself. Because I believe in it. It’s finally good enough, finally ready. And that’s a pretty cool thing to consider.

In the meantime, I’ve made myself a promise. In addition to churning through the sequel in 2015, I’m going to work on a project in which I impose no restrictions on myself, creative or otherwise, a project never intended for publication. So this is me, getting an early start on goal-setting for the next year. One book published, two written. I’ll let you all know how it goes. 🙂

I’m going to begin this post by telling you an ironic short story. It’s ironic because it’s about how I don’t really get short stories in a lot of ways. Bear with me and I’ll explain.

I never really wrote much in the way of short fiction prior to my first trip to Superstars Writing Seminar. The instructors there took great pains to impress upon us the importance of short fiction as a way to hone our craft, turn out many completed projects for submission in a short amount of time and as a way to build a reputation as an up-and-coming writing talent. I took their advice to heart and set about working on short stories whenever my work on novels lulled. I quickly learned that I had trouble with the “short” part of short fiction, and not always just in my own work. What most people would read and consider a complete work of short fiction I would read and think “I enjoyed that quite a bit, I just wish it had been longer so I could have felt a greater sense of immersion.”

The problem grew. I began cutting my own stories to a more submission-friendly length (not a lot of market beyond Writers of the Future for that 14,000 word novelette). Don’t get me wrong, many of my stories, most especially the early ones, were quite bloated and desperately needed to be cut. I’d hack them to pieces by half or more, and be quite satisfied with my butchery. Then the feedback would come in. “I liked the writing, but it was too long.” Ack! Talk about disheartening. So I hacked more, and I ended up with stories that got more and more positive feedback, many still in the process of doing so as they search for a home.

But despite the increase in market options and positive feedback, I no longer liked some of my stories as much. I had to set a new directive for myself: cut my stories until I felt they were  too short. In general, the kind of short fiction I love is different than the kind of short fiction most other readers love.

The point of this story gets to the heart of perhaps my greatest fear as a writer. What if I never find my audience because I don’t write stuff that enough people like? What if, in a profession filled with odd types, I am just one degree too odd in my tastes?  What if no one ever picks up a science fiction book that’s more political thriller than future tech? What if no one is interested in a YA fantasy which defies the customs-as-strong-as-laws of YA lit by being set entirely in a bizarre second world with no Earth present, dystopian or otherwise?

I tell myself I can be a trendsetter or someone whose work people could turn to when they want something different. But I also know how difficult a business this is to break into, how every element of a story that carves away a slice of readership makes it that much easier for a reader or editor to move  on to the next book they are considering.

People often say to write what you know, which is impossible if you are writing fantasy and, to a certain extent, sci-fi. I think a better adage is “write what you love.” You’ll get a lot more done that way.

But what happens if you are the only one who loves it?

Our dog is a weird dog. I know pretty much any dog owner would say that. I also know what you’re thinking based on the title of this post, but no, it’s not about how my dog licks himself clean. All dogs do that. But not all dogs carry their own bag of poop to the trash on walks the way our dog does. Have I got your attention yet?

Before I get a bunch of comments below asking for my address so people can ship me their dogs for training, let me up the ante. We didn’t have to train our dog to carry his own poop. He started doing it all on his own.

Let’s back up. As you can see from the picture, my wife and I have a yellow Lab. His name is Riley. He is, if I may be immodest on his behalf, exceedingly handsome and fiendishly smart. He also has a Lab’s compulsive need to have something in his mouth. Carrying things in his mouth on walks is heaven for him. As a puppy he would pick up big rocks and bring them home just to have something in his mouth. We still use one as a doorstop. Nowadays he’s more likely to pilfer toys or tennis balls he finds lying around. If we walk him to the local tea store or the local bakery to get cookies, he carries the bag home for us. He always has to be “coaxed” (bribed) to give up the bag if it’s full of delicious food smells.

Because we live in an apartment with only public spaces around us, we’ve always been diligent about picking up after him. We would carry the bag along, trying hard not to think about what was in it, until we reached the nearest trash can or dumpster. Then one day I noticed Riley staring at the bag after I tied it off. He made eye contact with me, then looked at the bag. He kept repeating the gesture, marveling at my stupidity, and as any dog owner will tell you, this means: “I want what you have in your hand.”

Not sure where this was going to go, I rolled up the loose end of the bag above the knot and offered it to him. He took it, seeming perfectly happy, and we marched on. At the nearest trash can, I told him to drop it, and he did. He’s been doing it ever since, and nowadays he even knows where all the trash cans are and will lead the way to the nearest one.

Most people who see this are incredibly amused. I’m not exaggerating when I say we’ve stopped traffic on multiple occasions. We’ve also met people who’ve never seen him but have heard of him. He’s a minor local celebrity. We were even asked if he could be the mascot for a city ad campaign to pick up after your pets.

We’ve also had a few people tell us it was cruel to “make” our dog carry his own poop bag. What they don’t see is how mad he gets during the times we don’t let him carry it. Sometimes the bag gets torn. Sometimes there is a trash can right next to us when he goes. One time I carried a torn bag to a trash can while he followed me indignantly and tried to steal the bag the whole way. After I tossed the bag, he tried to knock down the trash can to get it back.

So yeah, up there at the beginning of the post, did I say weird? I meant great. Our dog is a great dog.