It was the better part of a year ago when I signed up to organize a Fictorians month around the topic of “Marketing and Promotion.” At that time I was still unpublished, in the phase of my career where I sent out submissions and hoped for the best. I’d chosen the Marketing and Promotion topic in the hopes of gaining knowledge for that far-off time when I’d have something of my own to promote. Little did I know that by the time October 2013 arrived, I would have it…
So here’s an opportunity to see a Virtual Book Launch in action. Tomorrow, Sunday October 27, myself and other contributors to Dreamspinner Press’ Steamed Up Anthology will be on the Dreamspinner Press Blog to celebrate a virtual book launch. We’ll be providing background on our steampunk stories, excerpts, chat and more! Visit us at http://dreamspinnerpress.com/blog/
My contribution to Steamed Up is “Ace of Hearts”: All Aeroplane Mechanic First Class William Pettigrew ever wanted was to fly, but due to an old eye injury, he can only maintain the aircraft and fantasize about the pilots. When Captain James Hinson, war hero and dirigible flying ace, joins the squadron, William catches his eye. But William lacks the confidence to see James’s overtures as anything but friendly interest in his innovations. Then James is shot down over enemy territory, and for William that changes everything. The time has come for him to choose: believe in himself and fly or lose forever the man whose heart he hopes to win.
Join me in celebration of an era of zeppelin aces, clockwork cavalry and mechanical marvels…in an age of high adventure!
Progress rarely happens in a straight line. It isn’t steady. It isn’t stable. Rather, it happens in fits and starts. When you’re trying to lose weight, you plateau for long periods of time. Sometimes it’s hard to understand why those plateaus happen; if you’re doing the same thing that helped drop you from 220 pounds to 200, shouldn’t the same strategy drop you from 200 to 180? The answer is no. And the reason? It’s complicated.
Technology works the same way. For the longest time—thousands and thousands of years—humanity’s technological level remained static. Then came the renaissance! Followed by more static. Then came the industrial revolution, and in the blink of an eye we’re planning manned missions to Mars and walking around with internet-connected sunglasses controlled by rapid eye movement. Or something. I’m really not clear on the details.
Similar arguments could be made for any kind of long-term change—civil rights, human evolution, writing careers… Wait, go back. Writing careers? Well, this one should be obvious. You start writing those first words, full of excitement and promise, and then you hit your very first murky middle. Or maybe you make it past the middle but can’t stick the landing. Maybe you finish your first book easily, and maybe your second, too. No matter how long your roll lasts, I promise you this: it won’t last forever. You will plateau. And not just once, but many times. When these come along, they can be incredibly stifling. If you give in, you may never recover. You gotta show some tenacity.
The most successful people in any field or occupation are those who get to plateaus, realize they’re on a plateau, scope out ways to move on, and then take the next step. I realize how glib that sounds, but it’s basically the truth.
Instead of talking in abstractions, let me tell you about my plateaus. I’ve faced a couple of big ones.
In 1988, I decided I wanted to be a writer, so I began to write short stories. A lot of reputable genre writers recommend starting with short stories, so I was in good company right from the start. Still, I don’t think they meant these short stories; I was five years old, and they contained by own not-quite-in-the-lines crayon illustrations. My most successful literary achievement of this period was my breakout hit, Darryl Gets His Glasses. For the record, Darryl was a giant orange dinosaur of unknown genus. This was a real tour de force; those second-grade girls were weeping in the corners when I read it aloud following afternoon recess.
But those stories only took me so far. Sure, I had my fans, but my career was beginning to stagnate. I wrote and wrote and read and read, and you know what? I noticed that the biggest names in publishing weren’t getting famous off handwritten stories in primary school notebooks. After some serious soul-searching, I decided to take a bold step into the brave new world of fan fiction.
These were heady years, when words didn’t have to be good; they just had to exist. (Which was fantastic practice, by the way.) My fan fic quickly took the form of full-length novels. I wrote a couple of them, two in two years… and then rested on my laurels. I had done it! I was a writer. Welcome to Plateau #2.
By 1995, I was certain of one thing: my books were certainly as good as their professionally published counterparts (they weren’t). This false confidence led me to take the next step: investigate how to submit my fledgling literary Picassos to the big leagues. This was a critical step in mine and any writer’s development, and from it I learned I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Oh yes, I was slapped down good and hard. It turned out my friends and family had lied to me about my wunderkind status, those sons of bitches. It turned out there were actual skills to pick up beyond just writing down whatever came to my head in the moment. Plateau #3.
I took better English courses, I read how-to-write books, I broadened my reading selections. When high school concluded, I went for a communications degree. This made me much better and I started to convince myself again that a writing career was possible.
And yet this was the longest and most tangled plateau of all. It was almost seven years between my last high school offerings and my first serious foray back into novel-writing. I got a lot of education, sure, but that didn’t seem to be enough. Indeed, I was trying to get ahead by following the same strategies as before—and those strategies were no longer as effective as they had once been.
The way forward this time was in meeting other writers, becoming part of a community of like-minded individuals, partnering with other people who shared my goals and aspirations. I found those at conventions and seminars. People and support structures, rather than skill alone, showed me how to get to the next level. That process started in 2010 and inspired me to get back down to business. I’ve written a half-dozen novels since then.
But you can never climb for long before reaching another plateau, as I have learned. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I’m actually on a plateau again right now. My novels have gotten better, my support structures are stronger than ever, but I’m still not raking in the big bucks. Where are the shiny contracts? Where are my stacks of hardcover new releases?
The first moment I realized that I had expectations for what a game ought to be was the moment I first popped Metal Gear Solid into my Playstation. I had read the previews about the game in all the video game magazines I subscribed to (which was every one available) and I had played games similar to it—or at least I thought I had. Metal Gear Solid was, on the surface anyway, a third-person military shooter with emphasis on stealth elements. Pretty par-for-the-course, as far as video games go.
And then I discovered that everything I believed about the world was a lie.
Metal Gear Solid was footage from the International Space Station for flat-earthers. It proved that one need not sacrifice story to gameplay, or vice versa, that not only could they coexist in harmony, but become fully integrated with one another. MGS even takes it one step further: it takes the player experience and makes it an essential aspect of both the gameplay and the story.
An example of what I mean by that. (*SPOILER ALERT* for those who have not played it; shame on you, by the way!) At one point, a character named Psycho Mantis, one of the several villains you must defeat to save the world from nuclear devastation, decides to battle you. The problem is, nothing you do works—nor can it. With his psychic powers, Psycho Mantis is able to predict every action you take the moment you take it, rendering all your efforts to injure him useless. It is impossible to defeat him—until you realize that his psychic powers only extend to controller port 1. Plug your controller into port 2, and you may just have a chance. (*END SPOILER*)
One of the reasons this grinding-to-dust of the fourth wall is so effectively jarring is because the game strives for realism in so many ways. The environments are incredibly detailed, the characters are rich and deep beyond belief, yet even those things are not safe. When the protagonist, Solid Snake, returns to an old military base in Alaska (which is where the bulk of the action of the first game took place) in Metal Gear Solid 4, he also returns to the exact same 32-bit polygonal art style of the original Playstation game.
Kicking down the fourth wall and violating expectations was a part of the series before Metal Gear Solid was even released, though in a comparatively more subdued form. When a traitorous member of Solid Snake’s team tries get him to abandon his mission in 1987’s Metal Gear, he says, “Solid Snake! Stop the operation. Switch off your MSX at once.” (The MSX was the platform on which the game first appeared.)
What these games proved to me is that we need not be satisfied with our expectations, that suspense can be built when we shake the very foundation of our readers’ worldviews. There are times when I’m writing and I realize that my story has taken the expected path—the safer path. It’s at times like these where I wonder, “WWMGSD?” Metal Gear Solid would probably turn my novel into an ASCII flipbook animation, which is a little unconventional for even my tastes, but it can still serve as a guidepost for ways to keep readers from guessing what’s coming.
Growing up, I found I enjoyed most the What Ifs with fantasy or science fiction answers. If the answer to a What If was “literary” or real world, I wasn’t interested.
And always, always, it was the characters of the story, how they answered the What If, who kept my attention. They were the reason I went back and bought another book by that author.
So when I started writing my own stories, answering my own What If questions, I started with a character. Later I learned to use the word “protagonist,” but in fifth grade, it was just the person I wanted to watch in the movie in my head.
Much later, like after college, I figured out most of my What If questions came to mind while listening to stories about other protagonists, and the answer was provided by a side character.
The short story that became my first sale required the opening line “In Pigwell, time is not measured by days or weeks but by the number of eighteen wheelers that drive by my house.”
My question became What If a yeti terrorized the town of Pigwell every winter and a ten-year-old boy couldn’t stop it? (See what I mean about fantasy and science fiction influences?) So while the “hero” called in by the boy fights the yeti, the story is from the point of view of the boy, a side character.
My first novel’s What If popped into my head when my boyfriend told me about an RPG he played which took place in a fantasy city. I have no desire to play an RPG (dice rolls make my eyes glaze over), but hearing about his character’s adventure as if it were a movie can be fun.
The side characters in that kind of game are often referred to as NPCs-non-player characters, like a centaur, who give out important quest information. In my mind, What If that centaur ran a bar in a city overseen by someone who hated non-standard (Human, Dwarf, Elf) races? In the world of the RPG, he was a side character. In my world, he had a larger role to play.
Characters define the point of view of the story. The reader sees through their eyes and through their actions, the reader understands the plot. Thinking of my protagonist as a side character is also a helpful way to start a bigger story, since other players with other motives are then waiting on the sidelines to make their presence known.
Some series do a great job of this, such as the Legend of Eli Monpress. The thief is the protagonist, and as the story develops over the five novels, the reader learns how small he is in the grand scheme of things… and also how vital.
Because side character protagonists are the center of their world. They have to be in order for the reader to care about what happens to them. And you want the reader to care, otherwise they won’t buy your next book.
Imagine looking at a tapestry that spanned the length of a museum wall-huge and detailed at the same time. By focusing on one part of the tapestry, deciding to write from the farmboy’s perspective instead of the emperor’s, you get a different What If to answer. And you still have lots of room to tell future stories that include the other people and places and plot threads in the tapestry.
While every story started with a What If in the author’s mind, whom they chose to be the protagonist defined the adventure that happened.
And side characters can have some awesome adventures.
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Heidi Berthiaume is a side character in an epic story who writes, develops children’s book iPad apps, edits fan music videos, and has almost figured out what her own adventure will be. You can find out more on her website and on Facebook.
