Today, I’d like to talk about the themes of the story.  I don’t generally get too much into this, but I’ve grown a wee bit sick lately in being  classified as a “fluff” writer.  I tried not to let it bother me, but after a certain point, a guy just has to say something.  I’m not out to defend myself or my work.  I’m just here to give you a perspective of why I wrote it and what it means to me.

To be certain, Emperor Mollusk is an absurd story set in an absurd universe.  It involves aliens, ray guns, mad science, and supervillainy.  I have no problem admitting that these things are strange and generally “not serious”.  And this is an adventure story about our hero, a space squid, attempting to stop our villain, a disembodied brain, from conquering the galaxy.  There is no hard science here.  And most elements of the story exist because I thought it would be fun or interesting to put them in there.

Despite this, Emperor Mollusk is not meant to be a trivial read.  It wrestles with some philosophical and existential dilemmas, and its protagonist is meant to be three-dimensional and nuanced, even if he is a supervillain.  And make no mistake on that.  Emperor IS a supervillain.  While he’s our hero, he also has a bad history.  He’s done some pretty horrible things in the past.  Nothing malicious or cruel.  Just utterly ruthless and morally questionable.

Let’s just put it out there.  Emperor’s resemblance to Minion from Megamind is going to catch a lot of people’s attention.  And since Megamind was the story of a supervillain reforming, the comparisons will be drawn.  Probably often.  I rather enjoyed the film, but while both Megamind and Emperor Mollusk are reformed supervillains, there is a very big difference between them.  Megamind is mostly a harmless villain.  He doesn’t really hurt anyone.  He just menaces a bit before being recaptured and sent to jail.  His villainy is explicitly of societal expectation, and his redemption isn’t all that difficult to buy because he was never truly a bad guy, just a guy who acted bad because he thought that’s what he should do.

Emperor Mollusk is a bad guy.  Or at least, he was.  He’s done a lot of bad things in his backstory, and he did one thing so utterly terrible that it became his transformative moment.  I won’t say what he did (won’t ruin the surprise), but I will say while he considered it a necessary evil, it basically ruined supervillainy as a “fun” thing to do.  It is at that moment when Emperor stops being a bad guy.  However, he’s still not exactly a good guy.  He’s not interested in redemption because he knows he can never be redeemed.

But fortunately for Emperor, he’s not the kind of guy to beat himself up over past mistakes.  He swims forward.  He protects a world he previously conquered until it can defend itself again.  And he tries to keep his own love of superscience in check.  Or at least keep any of his experiments from accidentally destroying the universe.

So maybe Emperor lives in a strange universe.  His best friend is a giant, cyborg centipede from the center of the earth.  His bodyguard / archenemy is a lizard woman from Venus.  And he regularly runs across mutant dinosaurs, giant plant monsters, and mummy queens.  But that doesn’t mean he’s just a goofball.

He’s a not-quite-bad guy with a lot of baggage, and his personal journey is one of self-discovery, mad science, and the quest for inner peace we all struggle with.  And just because he’s a squid from Neptune, it doesn’t mean his story or his universe is a joke.

Just ask the Saturnites.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I write this blog, brilliant as it occasionally is, goofy as it often can be, because I want people to buy my books.  I probably wouldn’t blog just to blog.  I realize there are a lot of people who do just that, and I see nothing wrong with it.  But I’m here on the internet to remind people that I’m here and to encourage folks to buy my books.

Yet I don’t often say this:

Please, buy my books!

I don’t care which format you prefer, hardcover, mass market, or e-book.  It’s your call.  But buy them because I can’t make a living if you don’t.

Yes, I’m sure that soon I will get a comment from someone who says I just wrote two posts about copyright / trademark law being too extensive and how I don’t think piracy is a horrible problem.  And I stand by those posts.  I don’t want  you to pirate my books.  I want you to buy it.  And you probably should because it’s easy to buy and there’s very little excuse not to.  Though I’m sure they will be pirated, and I’m sure I’ll lose some sales because of that.  But piracy isn’t going to kill my career.  I just don’t believe that.

Without getting into the dry numbers, I’ve hit a sales plateau recently.  I have my loyal fans, but growing past that has proven difficult.  I can get people to buy my books.  But I have trouble getting return business sometimes.  My own theory is that this is due to the truly standalone nature of my novels.  It’s a competitive market and when people buy books, they tend to go with something reliable.  I wouldn’t call that playing it safe.  I just think that with so many choices, people will generally aim for something they can count on, with characters and worlds they are at least partially familiar with.

That’s a problem with my books.  Not only are they not part of a series, they’re also not even set in the same universes.  This incompatibility means that when someone picks up one of my books, they are taking a chance.  For those of you who take that chance, I can only express my unending gratitude.  I know there are plenty of choices out there, and I appreciate your willingness to take a chance on the new worlds and characters I create.  Your support is the foundation for any success I get, and I love you for it.  Seriously, if you need a kidney or something, let me know.

But for everyone else out there, for those who are only have a passing familiarity with my work who might just be visiting this website out of curiosity, this is a great time to encourage and inspire you to take that chance, to buy my space squid supervillain story.  EMPEROR MOLLUSK VERSUS THE SINISTER BRAIN is due out on March 5th, and I want it to sell like hotcakes.  Better than hotcakes!  I want it to sell so many copies that I am indicted by environmentalists for cutting down too many trees and the internet becomes known as the Aleenet because it’s primary use will be to support all the fan clubs who love the book.

So I’m exercising my power as a world-renown(ish) novelologist, I am declaring February to be EMPEROR MOLLUSK MONTH!! I know it’s also Black History Month (which I very much support), but it can be two things, right?

In the coming weeks, prepare yourself for a whole lot of stuff on Emperor Mollusk and his universe.  I’m going to approach this from a Mass Effect perspective, meaning that you are going to learn not just about the story I’ve written, but the universe it takes place in.  I’ll also be writing about the story, about the inspirations that helped create it, and about the characters themselves.  My hope is that by the end of the month, you’ll be salivating to read this book.  You’ll see it not just as a novel, but as a doorway into a world of fantastic adventure, deep thoughts, and cool characters.  Kind of like Narnia, but with more rayguns and giant robot fights.

Stay tuned, gang.  I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

“Don’t you make money off of your ideas thanks to copyright?” someone will inevitably ask.

Yes, I do.  And I think I should be able to.  I just don’t think copyright / trademark should be nearly as long as it is.  And I certainly think that after the original creator is long dead, it’s not unreasonable to allow intellectual property to hit the public domain.  In fact, I think it should be well before that point.  Twenty or thirty years after original publication, at most.  If an artist can’t create another successful idea / story / character in that space of time, I have a hard time being sympathetic.  Not because creativity is easy.  But because I don’t approve of the notion that someone can do something really well once (or get really lucky once) and then coast along for the rest of their life.

Anyway, it’s a false dilemma.  If J.K. Rowling lost the rights to Harry Potter right this moment, it’s not like she would go to the poor house.  She’s would still be obscenely wealthy.  Even if all her royalties stopped rolling in, she’d still be set for life.  As well as for the life of her children and grandchildren.

Granted, most creators are not as successful as Rowling.  But it’s my opinion that the artist should create, not just rest on their laurels.  If I were a file clerk, I couldn’t alphabetize all the information, reorganize it in a wonderful new system, and then just sit back and collect a paycheck for the rest of my life.  People might congratulate me on my great job and even give me a bonus if they were feeling especially generous.  But they wouldn’t sit around for the next thirty years telling me what a great job I did that one time and that I was a filing genius.

That said, I’m perfectly willing to accept lifetime copyright / trademark.  It might not be the best system, but no one can complain if someone profits from their creativity.  I’m even for copyright lasting a decade or two after the creator’s death, so that their family has a window to profit from it.  It seems a bit excessive to me, but not unreasonable.

But what I’m against is someone who is not the original creator, someone (or something) who owns a license, profiting from an idea that they had very little to do with.  Granted, this isn’t always clear cut.  Batman achieved part of his popularity in no small part to the efforts of DC Comics.  At the same time, the comic book company was mostly there as a distribution network, not as a creative element.  Comic book companies (and companies in general) are pretty lousy at creativity.  They tell stories that sell comics, not good stories.  They are beholden to their bottom line, and that’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it’s a lousy motivation for creativity.

But, and I really need to emphasis this again, copyright / trademark is important.  Done correctly, it rewards creativity and artistic expression and encourages more of it.  Done incorrectly, all it does is discourage those things.

If I can allow myself to be a pretentious artist for a bit (if I haven’t already been too much of one at this point), art should be about more than making money.  Most art anyway.  I have no problem with a bit of soulless art, a little attempt to cash in.  I don’t care if someone wants to earn a few bucks by “selling out”.  But when even your cultural touchstones have sold out, where is there left to go?

We see it already in our culture.  It seems like more than ever, we have sequels and series and licensed properties.  And some people bemoan this, but the fact of the matter is that these things make money.  There’s no reason for a corporation to take a chance as long as their is more profit to be had in sticking to the same old thing.  If J.K. Rowling kept writing Harry Potter books, people would still buy them.  At this stage, it wouldn’t even matter much about the quality because it’s a habit.  And I have little doubt that the publisher would be very happy with this.  It is Rowling herself who has decided there is a limit to the number of stories she can tell about Harry and his universe.

For me, the worst idea is the notion the “constant reader”, that fan who consumes without question, who willingly surrenders their own judgment.  Not that I expect my fans to turn their backs on me if they read a book they don’t like.  But three or four books they don’t like?  That’s different.  And I’d hate for someone to buy any books (mine included) out of a strange sense of obligation rather than because they think they’ll enjoy it.

When I was a steady comic book purchaser, I used to see folks who would buy any comic with Character X on its cover or written by Writer Y.  There was nothing wrong with that, but often, I’d see a dissatisfied customer come back.  They might love Character X, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to love everything with him / her in it.  And even though you might love a writer most of the time, sometimes, they aren’t just going to do it for you.

Yes, even me.  I admit it.  It’s fine with me if you like some of my books more than others.  Heck, if you end up hating one, I can’t hold it against you.  And while I’d like to think one bad story wouldn’t put a reader off of my work, I would also like to hope that if you’ve read every book I’ve written and hated all of them that you would be smart enough to stop torturing yourself out of some misguided hope that I’m going to win you over.  (Although if you want to keep buying them and hating them, I can live with it.)

It’s easy to blame the corporation or the customer or anyone and everyone.  But it’s a complicated problem.  Consumers often like the same ol’ thing.  It’s okay to admit that.  Corporations like money.  It’s okay to admit that too.  And if these are only your concerns, then there’s nothing wrong with copyright / trademark as it stands.

But I like creativity.  I like encouraging it.  A world where everything is a sequel, where we re-release films in repackaged form because it’s easier and safer than trying something different, that world bothers me.  It’s a world without discovery, a place where finding something new and unexpected is harder and harder.

And that world is a sadder place.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

In theory, copyright is there to protect artists and creators, to allow them to make money off their work, and to encourage creativity.  In practice, it just leads to stagnation and to corporations profiting off of characters they simply are fortunate enough to own.

As usual, I’ll go to a comic book example.  DC owns the characters of Batman and Superman.  Nobody working at DC created these characters.  They are simply inherited property, held by a giant corporate machine.  DC profits because decades ago, an employee created some cool characters and then DC claimed those characters as its own.  End of story.

The system is simply broken.

While the struggle against cultural stagnation is nothing new, the fact of the matter is that when you pass a character or an idea to an immortal corporation, real growth and change is difficult, if not impossible.  Because people create, but corporations own.  And that’s the real dilemma we face today.  Is ownership more important than work?

It could be argued that what keeps Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. fresh is the creative people behind them.  Even if these people didn’t create these characters, there are still talented and capable writers and artists who keep the characters alive and kicking.  But even then, these folks are still employees, still subject to the whim of executives.  If the order comes down to kill character X or resurrect character Z, then this will happen.  And this will be decided by someone who is less interested in telling a good story than in increasing sales.

There’s nothing wrong with commercial success, nor with striving for it.  But if it’s all about sales, then there’s no reason to develop any new characters, new ideas.  And the thing about characters, about franchises, is that they don’t ever really go bad.  Not often anyway.  And hardly ever do they have an expiration date.

Certainly, not every character is timeless and a character or a concept might have a great appeal for a limited time.  But some ideas and characters are so transcendent that they can stick around for a really, really long time.  Batman is a great example.  While he’s had his ups and downs, he has never really disappeared from the public consciousness.  That’s because he’s pretty damn flexible as a concept.  You can do goofy Batman stories, dark Batman stories, sci fi Batman stories, noir Batman stories, and so on.  While he hasn’t always been a cash cow, he is certainly unlikely to be replaced anytime soon.  He’s a product without an expiration date, one that can be repackaged and sold over and over again.  This isn’t so bad if his creator and owner is mortal.  But once that owner is an immortal corporation, you end up with a real desire not to innovate.  If you doubt me, I can only point out that DC has created a new version that starts with his origin all over again.  Because we haven’t seen that enough.

This is a big reason why I can’t get behind the re-release of Star Wars in 3D.  It’s not a new product.  It’s the same old product reprocessed to appear new so that a corporation can make more money.  George Lucas too, I suppose.  Basically, it’s a foolproof moneymaking scheme because it requires minimal investment and is guaranteed to cash in.  But it, frankly, amazes me that we continue to fall for it.

Nobody who created Mickey Mouse has anything to do with him today.  He’s a corporate shill, a face to put on a T-shirt.  And while that’s always been part of why he existed, it shouldn’t be the ONLY reason he exists.

I’ll admit that I’m skeptical that self-publishing is the amazing revolution it often claims to be.  At this stage, it’s still working out the kinks.  I’m hopeful that it will figure the stuff that corporations excel at: namely distribution and marketing, two areas where self-pub rarely can compete against established corporate structures.  If that can ever work itself out, then creator owned works have a better chance.  But that’s a ways off.

As a novelologist, I’m lucky.  Though I moved publishers, I still control my characters.  I could write another GIL’S ALL FRIGHT DINER if I chose.  Or a sequel to THE AUTOMATIC DETECTIVE.  Though Tor owns the rights to publication of the original stories, I own the characters and settings.  Tor can’t publish those stories without me getting royalties.  Not that Tor has ever exhibited any hostility toward giving me my fair share.  They’ve always been accommodating and genial.

On the other hand, if they owned my characters, you probably would’ve seen a sequel by now.  That might be a good thing if you want a sequel, but it certainly wouldn’t be for me.  Not financially.  And probably not creatively either.

It all comes down to financial incentives.  Corporations are, first and foremost, about making money.  And you can make money by taking chances, but why bother when you can also make money with minimal time and investment?  If corporations were genuinely people, they’d be motivated by a desire to be better, to challenge themselves.  But they are NOT people.  They are vast, soulless financial machines that want to make a profit.  And while a desire to profit is not bad, it certainly isn’t good when it’s your soul motivation.

So what does it all add up to?  I can’t honestly say.  It’s easy to demonize corporations.  Usually, it’s justified.  An unbridled lust for profit, unconstrained by any conscience, is just about the most dangerous thing around.  Add to that the near unlimited financial power available to many a corporation (or even some individuals) and you run into a serious problem.

We can’t change copyright law, but we can demand better.  I’m not against Star Wars.  I’m against Star Wars being repackaged and resold to us without any real effort.  I’m not against Batman stories.  I’m just against Batman stories that don’t need to be told anymore.  And I’m not against Spider-Man movies.  I’m just against another lazy and heartless effort created mostly so a corporation can meet a contractual obligation to keep a second corporation from getting those rights.

We can do better.  We can demand better.  Copyright might belong to the corporations, but creativity should belong to the people.

Keelah se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Can I say how much I love the Mass Effect games?  Seriously, I adore them.  Not only are they fun games, but it’s great to enjoy an original universe.  There’s just so much to like here.  What I love best though is that the game seriously avoids the Planet of Hats phenomenon.  One of the most difficult elements of fantasy / sci fi is to not end up portraying all the members of an alien race or culture as one-dimensional.  Whether it’s aloof elves, logical vulcans, or gruff dwarves, the tendency in fiction is to give all the human characters nuance and subtle differences while pretty much assuming that every romulan is a scheming jerk and every dwarf loves fighting and booze.

But in the Mass Effect universe, this is averted pretty hard.  The alien characters you run into exhibit a wide variety of personalities, and there’s every indication that every alien culture, just like human culture, is full of its own sub-cultures and attitudes.  The war-like Krogan are perhaps the most one-dimensional in their portrayal, but even then, they tend to have a wide range of philosophies and personalities.  And even the sinister geth, a race of evil robots, aren’t quite so one-dimensionally evil as you might first assume.  About the only genuinely “evil” race in the game are the Reapers, but even they are portrayed as just so utterly inhuman and different as to view every other species as merely lower animals.

It’s the kind of writing you just don’t see very often.  I just hope that it’s not an anomaly but a future trend.

The other thing about Mass Effect that amazes me is that the game becomes the game you want to play.  It is a truly interactive storytelling medium.  It’s like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, but with no wrong answers, no bad decisions.  You can’t lose because you pick the wrong door or you say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  You can only alter the story into something else.  That it does this so seamlessly is astounding to me.

My own character, Zala Shepherd, is a female Vanguard with dark skin and a no-nonsense approach.  She is deliberately not super attractive because I thought it’d be cool to play a hero you just don’t see in many other games.  I ended up with a woman who is of vaguely Indian descent who charges in, guns blazing.  Her personality has evolved into a strong-willed, ethical warrior who believes in preserving life of all types and doing the right thing whenever possible.  But she’s also no sucker and will do what needs to be done, make the tough choices, when required of her.

She is such a real and vibrant character to me that it seems unbelievable that someone could play Mass Effect and have an entirely different experience.  It’s like picking up a book or watching a movie and having it adjust itself to you and your desires.  It’s both amazing and bizarre.  While talking to a friend of mine about the game, it was like we were  playing two different games.  The framework remains the same, but the execution is everything.

It’s a shame that Bioware went on to make the Star Wars MMO because, while I have no interest in Star Wars, I would play a Mass Effect MMO in a heartbeat.  About the only thing that could top a tauren would be a chance to be a Krogan.  Or a Turian.  Or a Salarian.  Or a Quarian.  Well, heck, I’d even play a human if I had to.  That’s how much I love Mass Effect.

But enough about that.  You’re not here to read my endorsement of a game that everyone already knows about.  Let’s talk about A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!!

It’s tomorrow, but you already knew that.

As is tradition, this is the day when you get friends and family together, play a board game or two, watch a monster movie OR a superhero movie, and then push my books on people.  You can buy the books.  Or you loan them.  Or tweet about them.  Or blog.  Or just mention how awesome they are to strangers on the street.  Whatever works best for you.  The great thing about A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is that there’s no wrong way to celebrate.  Just as long as you take a moment to remember how cool I am and how much I’ve given to you.

And all I ask for in return is your unfettered adoration and a paycheck every now and then.  Now, isn’t that reasonable of me?

Keelah Se’lai, everybody.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Still, the new Batman film looks like it’s even more unpleasant, more full of itself.  If this is what passes for “great” superhero films, I guess you can count me out.  I’d much rather watch Green Lantern fight giant yellow fear monsters or Captain America punch Nazis than have to sit through a movie that is this determined to be mature and intelligent.

In a recent episode of The Office, a character classified the music group The Black Eyed Peas as “Pop for people who don’t like pop, Rap for people who don’t like rap, Rock for people who don’t like rock.”  While I kind of see where he’s coming from, I’m not going to bash the Peas.  They clearly have appeal, even if I don’t really get it.  Not that I dislike them.  Just put me as resolutely neutral.

But it does have me wondering about the evolution of genre and media.  I’ve long felt that the comic book superhero genre has run into this problem.  It seems like most writers and fans would rather read stories about talking, brutality, and gray-and-gray morality than about good guys punching out evil.  I wrote an article for SF Signal a while back suggesting that comics have trouble maintaining their audience because they don’t have enough punching and alien invasions and would much rather devote themselves to obscure continuity nods and some strange integration of realism in universes populated by wizards and flying robots.

Honestly, I’m not so sure I’m right about that.

If The Dark Knight Rises scores as much popularity and commercial success as its predecessor, it’ll just be one more giant step toward superhero movies that take all the fun out of superheroics.  And I believe it’s very possible this will be the future.  Comic book superheroes are relentlessly boring and steadfastly unpleasant at this point.  So why shouldn’t movies eventually follow?

In a way, it could be the very same pattern established with comic book superhero history.  Stories like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns came along and redefined expectations for a generation now in charge of writing superheroes.  And what we’ve gotten is more of the same, an often slavish devotion to recreating and imitating these groundbreaking stories to the point that if a comic book superhero doesn’t have swearing, hints of sexual violence, and some gore, it’s considered a “kid’s comic” by most of the audience.

If The Dark Knight Rises has the same affect on up and coming filmmakers, we can look forward to more of this in the future.  And while I’m in the minority in thinking of The Dark Knight as one of the worst superhero films ever, I still can’t imagine a world where people will flock to see film after film that makes superheroics depressing.

But aren’t we kind of already there?  How many shows on television are about bad people?  How much of our entertainment is devoted to the most unpleasant aspects of who we are?  From Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead to Mad Men, we seem more and more like a culture more-than-happy to wallow in the darkness of our natures.  And put me down as someone who doesn’t like it.

This is not to suggest that these shows are bad.  Taste is such a subjective thing.  Still, whenever I bemoan not having a show I can watch on television, someone will inevitably bring up something like these as examples of how intelligent and deep television can be.  I don’t mean to imply that these shows aren’t intelligent and deep.  I’m just wondering why this is more and more our ONLY version of intelligent entertainment.

It’s why my favorite superhero flick remains The Incredibles.  It’s a beautiful and thoughtful film about what it means to be a hero and a villain, about family, about our own desires versus the desires of the society, and of everything that makes being human both transcendent and difficult.  It’s also has two amazing giant robot fights.  It’s a movie that is about people AND about superheroes, not just about people with some superhero stuff tacked on as a concession.

Part of me assumes that this is merely a phase that we’re going through.  Culture follows trends, and trends rarely stick around forever.  I can weather boring Batman and unlikable protagonists for a few years.  But another part of me worries that there’s no going back.  Once you cross that bridge where a man in a batsuit who fights crime is no longer fun, you have passed the event horizon and there’s only one way to go.  Darker and grimmer and grimdarker until eventually, all our stories are about drug dealers who eat babies and feel miserable while doing it.

There’s a way to things, a certain natural order that seems to pop up.  For example, men’s names can become women’s names over time.  Eventually, those names stop being men’s names all together.  Men’s names can become women’s names, but it is NEVER the reverse.

I worry that the FUN to BORING path is similarly irreversible.  Once the Joker shot Barbara Gordon, he signaled the beginning of a brave new world, one we can never escape.  My only solace is that as long as Batman: The Brave and the Bold exists, there’s always hope for tomorrow.

What?  Canceled?

Oh, well, never mind then.  Game over.

Congratulations, boring Batman.  You win.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I know this because I make a living trading on that gullibility.

Technically, I’m a fiction novelologist, but that’s just a fancy way of saying I lie for a living.  I make stuff up, create characters that have never existed, invent situations that are purely fantasy, and if I do it right, the reader will go along with it, even knowing it’s all artifice, smoke and shadows.  The only reason I’m not considered a liar is because it’s clearly established from the beginning that I am going to tell you lies, but those lies are fun and enticing and somehow rewarding enough you don’t mind.

Perhaps gullibility is the wrong word.  Gullibility implies stupidity.  Or at least naivety.  It assumes that the gullible are dumb because they simply don’t know better or are simply incapable of recognizing deception.  It’s a loaded word with too much negative baggage.  So let’s abandon it for something less inherently insulting.

Let’s say humans are fanciful instead, prone to flights of fancy, eager to believe anything that appeals to them emotionally.  That’s not so bad, is it?  And it is undeniably true.

Fiction is all about this emotional manipulation.  And make no mistake, manipulation is exactly what it is.  Without it, where would fiction be?

Imagine your favorite stories, your favorite characters.  Now imagine them . . . different.  Imagine Batman dressed like a bear, fighting crime in Cleveland.  Imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a grizzled old fat guy who is chosen to kill monsters.  Imagine if the hobbits were actually orcs who loved drinking blood rather than eating mushrooms.  Imagine if nobody died at the end of Million Dollar Baby or if everybody died at the end of Grease.  Imagine every single story ever written ending with a sudden alien invasion.  Just ALIENS from the sky out of nowhere.

All the above examples are fictional.  They aren’t real.  They exist purely in the realm of imagination and as such, any of those things could be the case.  But most would either alter or destroy the appeal of the work.  Why?  Because the emotional appeal is destroyed with it.

It’s not, as most might assume, because it violates the reality of the stories.  Stories have no reality.  They are only limited by their creator’s imaginations.  Ask a child to tell you a story and reality will soon fall to the wayside in favor of whatever cool idea that pops in their head.  As we get older, we begin placing limits on stories because it helps to keep them focused.  But those limits aren’t so much based on reality as on hitting that emotional sweet spot for us.  It’s in striking that sweet spot that a story succeeds or fails.

If a story or character can fill a need then the audience will forgive it almost anything.  But if it stops fulfilling that need, then nothing can be forgiven.

This is why aliens don’t invade Desperate Housewives.  It’s not for the sake of realism.  It’s because the moment those aliens appeared, all the fans of the show would have a visceral negative response.  That isn’t what people watch that show for, and so, the emotional shock would throw everything out the window.

But to be clear, aliens could invade this or any show.  Or everyone on Hawaii 5-0 could become telepathic.  Or CSI could become a show about people who fight morlocks.  The only thing preventing this is the good sense of the creators who understand that this sudden change would destroy the good will of the audience.

At the end of the day though, all stories are fake and we willingly believe the ones we like anyway, even as we mock the ones that don’t speak to us.  I’ll admit I don’t usually get Academy Award winning movies.  They just seem so artificial and ridiculous to me.  But then I realize I’m a guy who wrote a novel about a squid from Neptune who conquers the universe with superscience.  It’s ridiculous, all right.  But what isn’t?

This is why, though I’m not a fan, I usually don’t mock Twilight.  Regardless of whether it speaks to me, it speaks to a lot of people.  It’d be unfair to dismiss those people’s emotional response, even as I realize that all of Twilight‘s sins (it’ stilted writing, its overblown romance, its unsubtle versions of good and evil) are all things that are found in John Carter of Mars books.  And damn it, I love John Carter of Mars.

It’s almost as if we are all blind to our own emotional needs, our own hot buttons (both good and bad).  If not blind, at least willingly oblivious.

Whenever I watch a ghost hunting show and someone says, “I felt really scared so I knew there had to be a ghost there”, I think to myself, “I almost cried during Wall-E, despite knowing that none of the characters were real.  What does that prove?”

Yeah, I almost cried.  I don’t cry.  But I can come close.

Fiction is proof that not only are we human beings fanciful, but we are easily manipulated by that.  It’s like the cheat code to hack into our brains.  Find the right emotional cue and ninety percent of the work is done.  It’s not exactly a secret.  Politicians, salesmen, and undisguised liars such as myself have been doing it since the dawn of time.

The only amazing thing is how so few people have ever caught on to it.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Hey A Lee, I was wondering what your methods are in character creation? Where do you start when you’re in the 1st stages?

Ah, a writing question.  Yes, aside from who would win in fight between Tarzan and anyone (short answer: Tarzan) and why giant fightin’ robots are awesome, this is probably the only subject where I’m comfortable calling myself an authority.  Novelology is my bread and butter.

There are a handful of questions I get over and over again, and this ranks among them.  Everyone has their own technique, and to be clear, my advice here is entirely built on what works for me.  It might not work for you.  And that’s okay.

That said, I’ll say that the hardest part of writing a story for me isn’t the creating characters.  Possibly because I feel most writers work way too hard on it.  At the end of the day, most readers aren’t going to care where your character comes from or what their favorite flavor of ice cream is.  The readers might think they want to know this, but they are wrong.

Just take a look at any prequel or after the fact origin story given to a character.  They are almost always disappointing.  Darth Vader was infinitely more interesting before we found out he was a petulant child.  Wolverine was a badass until we learned that his name was Jimmy and he couldn’t figure out anything better to do over a hundred years than fight in an endless string of wars.  And do we really learn anything special about Indiana Jones by discovering where he got that scar on his chin?

This is only an opinion.  I’m sure you can find plenty who disagree, but I stand by the assertion that most characters work fine as a handful of simple traits with the simplest backstory available.  Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered.  He grows up to be a determined detective crimefighter.  Krypton blows up.  Superman comes to Earth and fights giant robots for justice.  James Bond is a suave superspy.  Wonder Woman is an Amazon warrior.  Scrooge McDuck is a greedy adventurer.  And so on and so on and so on.

Really, if you can’t summarize your characters in three or four words, you’re probably doing it wrong.

There are exceptions.  Characters can certainly be too shallow, but in my experience, most novelologists (aspiring or otherwise) work way too hard rather than taking it easy.  My standard advice for all writers is to only work as hard as you have to.  Writing a story is difficult.  Don’t make it more difficult by putting extra pressure on yourself.

So how do I create characters?

I start with the most basic elements and go from there.  A great character can usually be summarized in three or four words.  Really, everything beyond that is just window dressing.  And too many character traits just end up confusing everything or being contradictory.  I’ve used these examples before but I think they really do illustrate the point.

Batman: Driven, Intelligent, Mysterious

Superman: Noble, Powerful, Friendly

Catwoman: Thief, Rebel, Playful

Joker: Jolly, Sadistic, Mad

These are all comic book superheroes, but this what makes them work so well.  They are characters that are so easy to grasp that they can be shared and passed on with ease.  You could just as easily apply this rule to a thousand and one other classic characters.

What’s NOT important (though many writers seem to forget this) is the backstory.  It’s true that Batman’s actions are defined by the death of his parents, but at the same time, it’s not information we ever really need to know to understand Batman.  If a writer knows Batman is driven to fight crime and determined to save Gotham City, then WHY is a lot less important than people realize.  Most Batman stories don’t talk about his dead parents.  Just as most Superman stories don’t talk about Krypton.  These elements are so immersed in pop culture that most readers are already well aware of them, but even if this wasn’t true, it wouldn’t matter.

We think knowing Bruce Wayne’s tragic backstory makes him more real to us, but it’s his actions in the current story that do that.  I’m not suggesting that backstory is a bad thing, but in ninety-nine percent of all stories, it ends up being irrelevant.

Classic examples abound:

Sam Spade has no backstory.  Long John Silver has no backstory.  Wolverine for the longest time had no backstory.  Most fiction characters don’t have much in the way of background because they just don’t need it.  Time devoted to backstory is time that could be devoted to the present story, which is almost always infinitely more important than anything in the past.

Okay, so this is rambling on and just to be sure I’ve answered the original question clearly:

How do I create a character?

Think of a very simple character and drop them in an interesting situation and see what happens.  And that’s it.  That’s the entire secret of my character creation process.

Inevitably, as the story continues, the character will take on more life and nuance.  But initially, having any character be defined by one or two adjectives is more than enough.  Readers don’t want to know everything about a character in the first ten pages, and neither do I.  As often as not, I’m discovering things about the characters at about the same time the reader is.  Maybe because I tend not to use complicated outlines or do a lot of prep work on my books.  I’d rather just jump right in and see what happens.

I do have to go back and clean things up a bit once the story is finished.  And it’s not unusual for the characters at the end of the story to not fit with the idea of the character at the beginning of the story.  In which case, going back and making a character more consistent is part of the magic of editing.  It’s something as simple as removing a line of dialogue that sounded good when you first wrote it, but three hundred pages later, it just doesn’t sound like something that character would have ever said.  Or perhaps the character is taller than first envisioned or some other triviality.

But ultimately, novelology is a business of adjustments and adaptation.  Never be afraid to NOT know everything about a character, a scene, an idea.  Because if you like it enough to keep writing it, it will eventually make sense.  The pieces will fit together.  The characters will grow into vibrant, living creatures.

That’s how I do it anyway.  I’m not saying that will work for you, but I always like to point out that most novels do not spring spontaneously into existence from a writer’s head.  They are works of time and discovery.  It’s only with practice (and judicious editing) that they seem otherwise.

Hope that helps.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The new Batman video game, for example, has swearing and harsh language in it.  In particular, many people have raised concerns that when playing as Catwoman, you are subject to constant unpleasant language and mild threats of rape by the thugs she runs across.

The hardcore gamers dismiss these concerns as silly because having thugs and henchmen be obnoxious and threatening is “realistic”.  There might be something to that, too.  If this wasn’t a game built upon pretending to be a billionaire dressed as a bat who spends his nights fighting criminals dressed as clowns and Alice in Wonderland characters.  If the Batman’s universe was realistic, then he’d either be shot in the back one random night or be so beat up and burnt out from his double life that he’d be a broken wreck.

Superheroes have always struggled with the fantastic and the realistic.  Batman has struggled the most.  Probably because so many of his fans seem to think he’s more “realistic” than other heroes.  I’m not going to get into that fallacy here.  I’ve wasted too many precious hours on that debate.  Regardless of where you stand on that debate, few people would want to read the Batman story where he trips on his cape and plummets to his death while on patrol, realistic as that possibility might be.

Realistically, Bruce Wayne could choke to death on a piece of pie.

I’m not interested in reading the story (or playing the video game) where ensuring Bruce Wayne chews his food properly is the key plot point.  But if you’re going to pull out the “realism” argument, then you can’t just stop where it suits your needs.

Given his status as Gotham’s wealthiest citizen and the obvious fact that Batman needs to have major funding to do what he does, it seems strange that no one has ever connected Wayne and his alter ego.  Or that a man with a prominent face can hide it behind half a mask and not still be recognized.  Or that a single man could have the time and ability to master every esoteric field of study, ranging from acrobatics to chemistry to art history.

And let’s not even get into his bad guys.  A guy with white skin and a hideous grimace who dresses in purple tuxedos.  A man with half his face burnt off.  A pulp style immortal evil mastermind who wants to wipe out the human race.  A crocodile man.  A shapeshifter.  A plant woman.

Realism and Batman are not friends.

This is not to say that a writer needs to throw realism completely out the window.  But when an unnecessary element of realism is introduced for no good reason, realism is not a defense.  It’s the same sort of half-logic that causes some folks to complain that children NPCs can’t die in Skyrim and that this fact “ruins the immersion”.

Oh, I’m sorry.  I didn’t realize that in the game where you pretend to be a dragonslaying badass who can throw fireballs and slay giants that NOT having roasting children would break the illusion.

OR

Dopey me.  I kind of assumed that if you were going to play Catwoman in a video game, you might get tired of being called a bitch a thousand and one times.  But, no, that’s REALISM.  Thanks for clearing that up.

To be perfectly clear, I don’t care if a Batman video game has (justified or not) hostility towards women.  And I don’t care if Catwoman slinks around in a sexy costume and uses kisses to disarm her opponents.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I do care.  I’ll go on record as saying a Batman game shouldn’t have these things in it.  Certainly shouldn’t have them casually strewn about.  But that’s just one guy’s opinion, and if I don’t like the game, I don’t have to play it.

But on the other end, you can’t just say “It’s realistic” and not expect me to roll my eyes a bit.  If your best justification for something unpleasant in a Batman story or video game is that it serves realism then I feel like you’ve already lost the debate.

Did I mention he fights a guy who has a freeze ray?

Realism in this context always seems to mean something other than realism.  It means a pocket of realism in an otherwise unrealistic realm.  And more often than not, that realism is aimed at shock value and “mature” content for its own sake.  So let’s just call it what it so often is.

Pandering.

I’ll stick with Skylanders myself.  Not only is it apologetically unrealistic, it’s also a game where its female characters (though too few) are not subject to dopey fetishism or “justified” sexism.  Stealth Elf is Catwoman without the baggage (and with the ability to vanish, leaving razor scarecrows in her place).  And Hex doesn’t slink around in a catsuit with a whip and wrap her legs around her foes like some softcore pornstar.  She fires shadowbolts and rains screaming skulls from the sky.  And she does it with style.

And really, I’m just glad to have female characters who are treated with respect.  Though apparently they have to hang out with dragons and boomerang throwing dinosaurs to get it.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

BigHeath2099 on Twitter asks:

If fruit & veggies became sentient & began to overthrow the earth, who would be the leaders among them?

First of all, I think the question is less an IF and more a WHEN.  I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before a nuclear accident creates a race of supervegetables and megafruits that will declare war on the human race.  In fact, this was my college thesis.  Or it would’ve been if I’d gone to college.

My own research has indicated that while the aforementioned megafruits will be more physically dangerous (especially the oranges and pineapples, who are sure to evolve superdense rinds), they will only be as smart as a somewhat intelligent dog.  I won’t get into the science of it, but trust me on this.  Genetically, fruits just will never get much smarter than a chimp.  And even that only applies to the plums, who are obviously the least dangerous of fruits.

The leaders class will be found in the vegetables.  Celery will be the most intelligent of the vegetable overlords, but it will also lack the determination and strength of will to lead.  Carrots, in contrast, are ruthless and dangerous, but also, too vulnerable to sunlight.  Sure, they won’t burst into flame upon exposure to daylight like the mutant potatoes, but they’ll still be too frightened of the sun to be of much threat.  The cabbage and kale will be too effete, and let’s not even get into the savage tribes of broccoli, too brutal and ruthless to be trusted by the others.

Clearly, this leaves only the radishes.  They’ll possess both the cunning and military adaptability to lead the army of supervegetables into battle.  If they can find a way to tame the flying bananas, then Mighty Robot King help us all.

MEVC3 on Twitter asks:

How did you come up with totally brilliant idea for a raccoon god?

If I could tell you where brilliant ideas came from, I’d be more famous than I am now.  Lucky the raccoon god (from my novel Divine Misfortune as I’m sure everyone knows) just sort of happened.  I needed a cute little animal, and raccoon seemed to fit the bill.

While I wouldn’t consider myself a raccoon afficianado, I have toyed with the idea more than once.  I created a raccoon character for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role-playing game (though I never got to use him).  I started a novel with a raccoon cop in it.  Which is sort of where Sanchez, the mutant opossum cop from The Automatic Detective came from.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Rocket Raccoon, the space raccoon adventurer of Marvel Comics.

Basically, I like taking unusual animals and putting them in my stories.  Whether it’s ghost dogs, demonic ducks, or giant centipedes (in the upcoming Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain), it’s just something I do.  I don’t always know why, but I don’t fight it.

Dirksade on Twitter asks:

As an author, what is your opinion on the Internet Blacklist Bill that is working it’s way through Congress?

I think piracy, as a problem, is a bit overblown.  I get the concerns from artists and publishers, all who make their living off of people buying books / movies / etc.  But part of this concern seems a touch antiquated in this modern electronic age.

The fact is media is more and more ethereal, less physical.  And without hardcopies to transport and protect, media theft isn’t quite the crime it once was.  If someone were to hijack a truckload of books or DVDs, then those books and DVDs represent more than just a loss of profit, they represent a loss of investment on the publisher’s part.  Not just the physical product and the time to create it, but the money and energy to transport it.  If you take something like that, you aren’t just stealing a creative expression, you’re stealing a limited physical commodity.

Stealing on the internet is different.  If someone pirates my books (and people have) and posts an illegal electronic version of it, they are stealing.  But they aren’t stealing a limited commodity.  E-books are part of a post-scarcity society.  They basically exist in unlimited quantity.  And unlimited changes the value to some degree.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’d rather no one pirate my books.  If you tell me you downloaded an illegal copy of one of my books, I’m not going to congratulate you on your savy.  Neither will I accuse you of being a terrible criminal who has sabotaged my career.

Basically, I’m pro internet freedom, even if it costs me something now and then.  And I’m against any attempt, well-intentioned or not, to limit that freedom to protect the rights of publishers.

And, really, has a blacklist ever been a good idea?

My real life friend, Shawn Scarber, asks on Facebook:

What is best in life?

As much as I make it a policy not to disagree with Conan the Barbarian, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, the best thing in life is the act of discovery.  There’s something awesome about seeing the world, the universe, yourself, etc. in a whole new light, in glimpsing something fantastic, in that eureka moment that changes things, even if only in the smallest way.

It’s a universal moment of joy, whether found in the studying of science or our own personal revelations.  Without it, I’m not sure I see the point in living at all.

Jeff Glaze on Facebook:

What is the greatest source of inspiration for your stories, and who is YOUR favorite author?

These are two questions, but I will let it slide.

This is among the most common questions I get asked, and I hate that I don’t have a better answer for it.  I can’t point to any single source of inspiration.  Inspiration is where you find it.  My list of influences is long and varied, though mostly it’s found in comic book superheroes, cartoons, video games, monster movies, and so on and so on and so on.

If I had a single “greatest” influence, I’d probably be a one-dimensional imitator.  So I won’t pick any single influence, and just leave it at that.

As for my own favorite writer, there are a lot of contenders.  My first instinct is to go with Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created some of my favorite characters and stories.  Or I could go with Walt Simonson, who wrote the most epic superhero comic book ever.  I’ve also become a big fan of Brian Clevinger.  If you haven’t caught his work on Atomic Robo yet, you’re really missing out.

DRyanLeask on Twitter asks:

How did you find the time to write your first novel, and how did you ever get anyone to read it?

Two questions again, but well worth asking.  Writing isn’t easy.  Especially because the universe doesn’t give a damn about your plans and aspirations.  More than talent, desire, and ability, time is the aspiring writer’s biggest problem.  Namely, finding it.

I was lucky enough that I was supported for much of my early aspiring writer career, so time wasn’t nearly as difficult for me to grab as most others.  But the thing about writing is that you have to find a way to make it work for you.  If you can write twenty minutes a week, go for it.  If you can write only for an hour every other Tuesday, then that’s cool too.  Find the time, wherever it is, and use it.  Even if you can only write one paragraph at a time, eventually, you’ll get there.

Now getting someone to read it, that’s something I can’t pin down.  You have to submit.  Submit.  Submit.  Submit.  You aren’t looking for the ONE person who will read your book.  You’re looking for ANY person who will read your book.  Most of those people won’t want to actually publish your book or represent you, but that’s just the way it goes.

This is where I think a lot of aspiring writers fall short.  They fail to understand that the submission process is long, difficult, and discouraging.  It’s frustrating because you will get turned away a heck of a lot.  But you have to hang in there, keep looking for opportunities, and submitting to anyone and everyone.

Above all, stick with it.  The difference between the writer who makes it and the one who doesn’t, more often than not, isn’t talent.  It’s persistence.

Ozarkee on Twitter asks:

Seamus had a bushy red beard. As a female, he was not explicitly described without it. So, do female goblins have beards?

The question someone dared to ask!  We were all thinking it, sure, but no one had the guts to inquire.

What’s funny is that when I get questions like this, I don’t always know the answer to it.  Though I’m not beyond some worldbuilding, I’m less concerned with the background of a story and more often concerned with the characters and their trials.  But as it turns out, I do actually have the answer for this one.

Goblins in the In the Company of Ogres universe don’t have beards.  Both genders are hairless.  Seamus is an exception because he is part leprechaun.  Female leprechauns don’t have beards though, so neither does Seamus have it in female form.

Hope that helps you sleep at night.

And finally, Wayne Arthurson on Facebook asks:

Ten questions about anything?

Not quite about anything, but close enough.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee