How This Blog Works

At the risk of spoiling the magic, I thought some of you might benefit from knowing how I do things around here. Here goes.

THE SCHEDULE
A long time ago, I wrote posts whenever I thought of them, trying for a vague "once or twice a week." Now I post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I don't know if you guys care (because of Google Reader, and living 11-15 hours ahead of the US, I never know when people post), but it makes it easier for me to plan and to know I'm being consistent.

THE IDEA LIST
There is no way I could come up with a blog post idea on the spot three days a week. Shortly after I began a schedule, I started a list of blog post ideas. This takes off tons of pressure, and also allows me to cherry-pick the best ideas. They come in waves: one week I'll have a dozen ideas, the next couple of weeks I'll have none.

THE WEEK BEFORE
I've taken to writing my posts a week ahead of time (right now, it's May 23rd). I usually have all three posts written by Wednesday or Thursday the week before, scheduled to go up between 7-8 PM, my time, on their respective days. Occasionally real world news will inspire a real time post, but not as often as you'd think. As with the idea list, this takes a lot of pressure off me.

THE CHOOSING OF THE POSTS
When I choose a post topic, my general rule (that I made up just for this post) is each post must attempt to be one or more of the following: helpful, funny, interesting (in that order of preference). I try to avoid "housekeeping" posts, which is why you usually don't see blog awards and why I've never mentioned the change in my background picture (um, until now). I also try to avoid rants, albeit with limited success.

THE ACTUAL WRITING
Every post is unique to its own topic, but there are a few things that seem to occur often:

1. I make lists and/or embolden key sentences. That's cuz I know how lazy a reader I am, and I figure other people are the same. It's also because I like lists.
2. I link to myself a lot. I link to other places too, but basically I'm self-centered. Partially because I hate to think those posts are forgotten. Partially because linking to an old post feels better than repeating myself. I know you can't follow all of them, but I hope you click on one every once in a while.
3. I add images. I used to do it only where I needed one, but a lot of feed aggregators (like Blogger's blogroll widget, or the blog apps on Facebook) grab a thumbnail from the post. So lately, if I can think of/find a good image, I'll throw it in to help the post stand out.
4. I try to ask you guys a question at the end. Because unpublished-author blogging is more about getting to know people than anything else. And because when you comment, it makes me all happy inside.

THE COMMENTS
Though I read them all, I'm a little sporadic with replying to comments. It depends how many comments I have to respond to and how late the girls are to school and how many boys hit how many other boys that morning. Besides, I'm pretty sure my lame replies aren't why you come here. I've been experimenting with replying to comments via e-mail (for those of you who allow that in your Blogger profile), and I have to admit, it's a lot easier and feels more personal. If I learn anything else useful, I'll let you know.
 
THE TIMES REAL LIFE GETS IN THE WAY
I try to save funny pictures, question/answer times, and short posts for those weeks I need something quick, or when I just want a bit of a break. Once or twice a month I'll remix a post for my sanity (I like "remix" better than "repost," especially since I usually update them before reposting), but never one younger than a couple of years. If I need a longer vacation, I'll go with guest posts or in extreme cases, a 1-2 week hiatus.

There. Now you know what goes on behind the bamboo curtain. Hopefully you can forget you know all that now, so you can still pretend I'm cool.

How do you blog?

When (and When Not) to Prologue

(Remix)

There are three things that make something a prologue:

1. It comes before the first chapter.
2. It is a part of the story (as opposed to an introduction, preface, or forward, which are about the story, but not part of it).
3. It says "Prologue" at the top.

Simple, right? That's what makes something a prologue instead of, say, "Chapter One," but it doesn't explain what makes a good prologue. That's what this post is about.

WHEN NOT TO PROLOGUE
A lot of writers use prologues as a band-aid for a bad beginning. This doesn't work (I'll explain why in a second). It actually has the opposite effect, to the point where some people skip prologues entirely. TIP #1: Don't use a prologue because you need a better beginning. Fix your beginning.

There are generally two kinds of band-aid prologues. The first is the FALSE ACTION SCENE, in which the writer is told he should start with action, so he inserts a scene that has nothing to do with the inciting incident. Sometimes the writer will use a flash-forward, inserting a tense scene from the climax and letting that be the tension that drives the reader through their boring beginning.

The reason this doesn't work is because starting a story is hard, and when you add a prologue, you require the reader to start your story twice. TIP #2: Don't use a prologue just to suck the reader in. You'll only have to suck them in a second time when the prologue's over.

The second band-aid prologue is the BACKSTORY INFODUMP. This happens when the writer is afraid the reader will become lost without all the background. Sci-fi and fantasy are notorious for this. A good genre writer, though, is able to mix telling details into the story so they don't have to put it all up front in one big exposition. TIP #3: Don't use a prologue to explain the world or backstory or any other kind of telling exposition. 

 Once again, George Lucas shows us what not to do.

WHEN TO PROLOGUE
Despite their downsides, I like prologues. Used wisely, they can be very effective. Here are some situations in which a prologue can be useful.

1. To show a point of view that doesn't appear anywhere else, or doesn't appear until the end. For example, if you need to dramatize some event the protagonist never witnesses, like, say, the mysterious circumstances of their birth.
2. To create tension that the protagonist is not immediately aware of. This can be especially effective in mysteries and thrillers, where the real tension (e.g. When will the killer strike next? Will the protagonist learn the truth before the killer comes for him?) is behind the scenes. Then the opening scene, in which the protagonist is going through their daily life, is flavored by the tension that the reader knows something is wrong.
3. To manage the reader's expectations about your story. Have you ever read a story that was all dragons and swords and magic, only to discover the evil villain is a space alien with his own spaceship? Genre blending like this can be done well, but if it's done poorly you end up sucker-punching the reader. A prologue establishing that your fantasy world is a forgotten Earth colony, or that "God" in your story is an intelligent super-computer orbiting the planet, can sometimes go a long way towards easing the reader into the weirdness.

Keep in mind, though, that these are all guidelines. There are no rules in this business. That's why the best tip is this one, from the illustrious Nathan Bransford:

Take out the prologue and see if your book still makes sense. If it does, you didn't need it.

What do you think about prologues? Love 'em? Hate 'em? To the comments!

Time Travel for Writers

Technically, time travel is impossible, but as Isaac Asimov said, "I wouldn't want to give it up as a plot gimmick." Unfortunately, time travel has also been done A LOT, which leaves it open to accusations of cliche. It doesn't mean you can't do it (You can! Do!), but you need to know how it's been done and where your story fits into that (vast) collection.

MEANS OF TIME TRAVEL
Just because it's impossible doesn't mean you can't do it. Four common methods:

1. Faster-than-light travel. If you travel close to the speed of light (theoretically possible), you actually travel into the future. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, you would go back in time. You can't, of course, but this is fiction. See also rules #3, 4, and 5 for space travel.
2. Dial-a-time. You've seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, yes? Keanu Reeves' finest hour (if ever there was one). Their time machine was the soft sci-fi standard: don't explain how it works, just punch in a time and go. See also: Back to the Future.
3. Wormholes. This is probably the most scientifically feasible method. If wormholes can be used to leap through space, then it should work for time too.
4. In the minds of others. Like Quantum Leap, you don't go back in time yourself, but your mind does, implanting itself in the minds of others. You might be a watcher or you can take over that person's personality for a time and change things through them.

RESOLVING THE PARADOX
Most time travel stories must, at some point, deal with The Paradox. That is, they must answer the question: what happens to the present if you change something in the past? The impossibility of time travel means nobody knows, so you have a lot of freedom here. Beware, though, some of these devices are hard for a reader to wrap their head around.

1. Time fork. If you change the past, then you actually create a fork in time. There's the "old" present that you came from, and the "new" present created by the events you changed. If you take your time machine back to the present, it will always be the "new" present, unless you can undo the changes you made.
2. The Butterfly Effect. Like the time fork, except that any change--even your very presence or the butterfly you just swatted away--will have drastic effects on the future. This makes it highly unlikely that you can undo said changes.
3. No change until you return. Say you kill your great-great-grandfather. In this scenario, you will continue to exist until you try to go back to the present, at which point you (and all descendants of your g.g.g-father) disappear. It doesn't make much sense, but it means you have a chance to undo things.
4. Change occurs gradually. Like Back to the Future, your changes to the past become a ticking clock. If you stop your parents from falling in love, it's only a matter of time before you cease to exist.
5. Change occurs immediately. If you kill your ancestor, you cease to exist there and then. Of course that's the true paradox: if you never existed, how did you kill your ancestor? Wouldn't that undo everything? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. This is where stories get REALLY complicated.
6. Events cannot be changed. The opposite of the paradox. Any attempts you make to change the past will either (A) be thwarted (e.g. the gun jams, your ancestor trips and dodges the bullet, your ancestor is saved by a medical miracle after you leave the scene, etc.) or (B) prove to have been a part of the timeline all along (e.g. he never was your ancestor, but his death is what brought your real ancestors together).

PLOT HOLES
The biggest problem with time travel is how powerful it is. If you can go back in time and change any mistake before it happens, it immediately raises the question, "Why don't you just...?" Like, "Why don't you just go back in time to before you made the machine and stop everything from happening?" This is another place where time travel gets all headache-y, and where you need to be the most careful. Some ideas:

1. The machine is broken. So you can't go back and forth until it's fixed. Of course, once you fix it, you could just go back and undo everything, but if everything is right again, maybe you don't want to.
2. It's against the rules. Time travel is essentially magic: you make up the rules, then stick with them. If there's a plot hole, make up a rule to patch it up, but make sure that new rule is consistent with everything else that happens. Maybe time travel is uncontrollable (as in Quantum Leap, or anything with wormholes), or you can get somewhen in a broad sense (say, a certain year), but not close enough to fix details (i.e. the exact place and time where you would have opportunity to fix everything). Maybe you can't change the past. Maybe you can only go one direction (forward or backward, not both) or you can only jump a specified amount of time (like in 5-year increments).
3. It makes things worse. In an attempt to subvert the plot hole, you do go back in time to fix it, but your old self doesn't listen, or someone worse comes back and fixes the machine after you broke it, or you killed a butterfly and spaces monkeys take over the planet in ten years. Whatever.

WHAT'S BEEN DONE
The short version of what's been done in time travel fiction is: EVERYTHING. Nothing's original, we talked about that. If you want to see for yourself what's been done, take a week off of work and read these.

However, anything can be done well again. Mix it in new ways and make it your own. Just don't make the mistake of thinking you're the first person to come up with the idea of time tourism, time police, fixing the future, stopping someone from wrecking the past, beings that move through time, a modern-day teenager stumbling upon a trip to that period in history he can never seem to understand in school (God bless you, Keanu)...

It's all been done, but you can do it again and better. Just don't be boring, and you'll be fine.

So You Want to be a Geek

Fine, nobody wants to be a geek, except those of us who are already geeks and need a way to feel proud about that (God bless you, Internet, for giving us that way!). But maybe you want to hang out with geeks? Understand what's going on at Comic Con? Date a geek?

Stop laughing. It happens.

Consider this an unofficial, non-exhaustive primer on the things you should know to understand the geek world...or at least to be able to visit our world without falling asleep or cringing all the time.

Please understand that the term "geek" is very broad (and yet completely distinct from "nerd"--we'll have that conversation later). The following list will help you with the most common breed: the sci-fi/fantasy geek. Although geek types frequently overlap, this list will not be as helpful with computer geeks, techno-geeks, math geeks, physics-and-other-hard-science geeks, history geeks, or any other form of "useful" geekery.

1. Watch the original Star Wars trilogy. Original theater edition is preferable, if you can find it.
         a) Although you are not required to have an opinion on the matter, know what it means that Han shot first.

2. Familiarize yourself with some form of Star Trek. Preferably TOS (the Original Series) or TNG (the Next Generation).
         a) You are not required to watch more than one episode or movie, but you should be able to recognize (by name or face) at least 3 crew members.
         b) Watching the new Star Trek movie is acceptable (because it's awesome), but assume that conversations about Kirk, Spock, etc. are speaking of the original series, unless otherwise specified. If you, for example, say, "Spock and Uhura are so hot together" without specifying the context, you will be known for a fraud.
         c) Actually, just avoid stating opinions in general.

3. Know your comic book superheroes:
         a) The origin stories of Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man.
         b) The identifying powers/features of the aforementioned superheroes, as well as: Wolverine, Cyclops, the Incredible Hulk, Punisher, each of the Fantastic Four.
         c) Although you should see Nolan's new Batman movies (again: awesome), do not assume the original Batman ever trained as a ninja. Though he should have.

4. Watch or read the entirety of LORD OF THE RINGS. Reading is preferable but, dude, it's 1,000+ pages. We understand.

5. Watch every episode of Firefly. (NOTE: This may no longer be relevant in 5-10 years, but for today's geek it is a necessity).

6. Know what anime is.
         a) Know the difference between "anime" (Japanese animation, which includes many different styles) and "anime-style" (non-Japanese animation that looks like it).
         b) Know the difference between dubbed and subbed.
         c) Never, under any circumstances, assume or imply that because something is animated, it is for children.

7. Watch one or more of the following, preferably subbed:
         a) Neon Genesis: Evangelion
         b) Vision of Escaflowne
         c) Cowboy Bebop
         d) Naruto (one season is acceptable)
         e) Dragonball Z (the cartoon, not the live action movie; one season is acceptable)
         f) Any film by Hayao Miyazaki (e.g. Laputa, Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, My Neighbor Totoro, etc.)
         g) Avatar: the Last Airbender (this is not anime, but I think it counts)

8. Play one of the following RPGs for at least one hour:
         a) Dungeons & Dragons
         b) World of Warcraft
         c) Any Final Fantasy game

9. Know the following terms:
         a) Saving throw
         b) Red shirt (from Star Trek)
         c) Orc
         d) d20
         e) Klingon
         f) Mech or Mecha
         g) Skynet
         h) XP
         i) Grok
         j) Holodeck

10. Memorize some obscure piece of trivia related to any of previous items. Example: "Did you know Neil Gaiman wrote the English dialog for Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke?" (true story).


I know that seems like a lot of work, but nobody said being a geek (even an honorary one) was easy.

Also understand there are many, MANY things that could adequately replace items on this list. If my fellow geeks were to make similar lists, they would all be different and would include things even I'm not familiar with.

So to you: Do you know everything on this list? What would you add/replace for someone who wanted to understand the geek world?

Coming up with Chapter Titles

There is no wrong way to do chapters and chapter titles. Short titles. Long titles. Chapters titled with the name of the POV character. Excerpts of the chapter used as titles. Titles by date or location. Straightforward titles. Obscure titles. Numbers only. No titles (not even numbers). No chapters at all.

All of it has been done, and all of it can work. That makes everything I say here my opinion only. Ignore it as you will.

Think about what chapter titles are good for. Honestly, I think most readers ignore them, especially when so many books have only numbers to designate the chapters. For that reason, if you're not sure what to do, numbering the chapters is a good, safe default.

As both writer and reader, I use chapter titles as markers, to remember what happens and where (in the book) it happens. I don't always flip back for information, but when I do, it's nice to have those markers there. So I think a good chapter title is ACCURATE and MEMORABLE.

ACCURATE means the title makes sense after the reader has read the chapter. A symbolic title like "Red Cats" (for a chapter in which there are no red cats, nor does any character compare plot events to red cats--which is to say, the connection is just an exercise for the reader) might be very clever on a re-read, but serves no other purpose.

MEMORABLE means the title makes it easy to remember what happened in that chapter later. "Vague Omens" might not be a good chapter title, unless the omens were memorable by themselves.

But chapters can serve one more purpose: to make the reader want to know more. I don't know about you, but when I finish a chapter, I often read the title of the next one, even if I plan to put the book down, and sometimes, that title convinces me to keep going. A hint of what's to come, naming an event or mystery the reader has been looking forward to, an implication that something terrible is about to happen...all of these can make good chapter titles.

But as I said, that's just my opinion, and there is no wrong way to do it. How do you title your chapters?

7 Things You Never Wanted to Know

I have been coerced by the hilarious and talented K. Marie Criddle to tell you 7 things about myself. I'll understand if you stop reading the blog after this.

1)
I first beat Super Mario Bros. 2 on Wednesday, February 15, 1989. That's right, I KNOW THE DATE.

2)
The Care Bears Movie still creeps me out.

3)
I learned to play Bryan Adam's "Everything I Do" on the piano to impress girls. It worked once. We broke up 2 months later.

4)
I straighten things obsessively, especially board games. My wife, Cindy, used to taunt me in Ticket to Ride by intentionally bumping her trains out of place, because she knew it drove me crazy. (I do love her, though. Really.)

One day, we were on vacation with my family and teaching them Ticket to Ride. Cindy said, "It's fun to bug Adam with this game. Watch." She bumped a train out of place, and every single member of my family shouted, "What are you doing?!" and moved to straighten it.

4a)
I love my family.

5)
When I was a kid, I stapled my thumb trying to put together my first novel (an illustrated Choose Your Own Adventure). After crying, running to Mom, getting a tissue, and waiting for the blood to clot, I went back to the novel and STAPLED MY THUMB AGAIN.

6)
In order of increasing terror, the creatures I am most phobically afraid of are: spiders, scorpions, facehuggers.

7)
Presented without comment:

Yeah, I think we're done here.

The Power of Story

I sometimes come across the opinion that non-fiction is "useful" while fiction is purely for entertainment. For someone who loves to read, it can be hard to hear (especially when it's followed by an implication that what I write is not useful).

Ah, but it's not true. Non-fiction is certainly useful, just like a history textbook is useful, but it doesn't have the power of story.

Let's start with geography. I'm pretty good at it, but even I have trouble finding most countries in Africa. I can find Egypt, Libya, Madagascar, South Africa, and maybe Ethiopia and Somalia, but the other 48 countries are harder to pin down. I think most Americans are the same. Why? Well think about the countries you know. I know Egypt from the Bible (among other things). I know Madagascar because its the only island nation and I've seen the movie. I know Libya and Somalia because we've fought wars there.

And I know Tunisia because of Star Wars.

I know where these countries are because I have stories--even dumb ones--associated with them in my mind. No matter how many times I've memorized African geography (and I have), the only nations that stick over time are the ones for which I've learned a story.

Another example: I've been to church my whole life, but I'd have a hard time telling you the content of most sermons. Not because I didn't listen, but because they didn't stick. I do, however, remember stories. Like when my pastor went fishing without a line "so the fish wouldn't bother him." Or the story of the bridge raiser who sacrificed his son to save the people on the bridge.

Stories stick, even fiction. I have trouble remembering the details of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, but I will always remember the moment in Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Eustace needed Aslan's help to shed the dragon skin he could not.

We DO write fiction to entertain, but I hope the stories I write also have meaning for those who read them. Because those stories--meaningful or not--will stick in their minds a lot longer than most non-fiction.

What stories mean something to you?