Now that I’m firmly back into writing a new draft of Toric, and have just wrapped up part 1, I wanted to discuss perhaps the most significant reason for why I needed to rework some things. Simply put, the beginning wasn’t working.

This revelation didn’t come as a surprise for me. Before I had my previous draft reviewed, one of the last things I did was redo the first ten pages, for what felt like the fifth or sixth time. Yet, when it came time for me to face the music, it was the same exact song and dance. I had to face the facts, my beginning was broken.

So, let’s take a step back and examine what the beginning of a book actually is. Your goal as an author is to capture your reader’s attention. You need to leave them wanting more. Well doesn’t that sound simple? If only things were so easy. I needed to go deeper to understand why my previous attempts at beginnings were falling flat. I needed to understand the mechanics behind what makes an effective starting point.

Before I go any further, I’d like to credit this episode from the writing excuses podcast with helping to put my thoughts in order as I planned this latest draft of my book. I’ve been a long time listener of the podcast, and I’m sure there are a number of episodes I’ve absorbed over the years about introductions, but this was one that stands out in particular.

Secondly, a quick disclaimer. There are any number of different ways to approach things like this. What works for one writer’s style may completely fall apart for another’s. I’ve attempted to make this as generic as possible, but don’t feel like this is a recipe you have to follow to the letter. These points are simple meant to get the creative juices flowing and help you to examine what might and might not be working well for you.

So, with that out of the way, let’s break down the key components of what I believe makes a good beginning into 5 concrete points.

1. Include appropriate promises to the reader
2. Ground the beginning in a compelling setting
3. Introduce interesting characters
4. Ensure there is a sense of dynamism throughout
5. Leave the reader with compelling questions that drive them to want to learn more

I’m planning to break this down into a few different posts, so I can properly dive into each of these points. In this post, I’m going to cover only point number 1. That of making promises. Promises are arguably the most important thing you need to be aware of when approaching a proper introduction.

What is a promise? In a nutshell, your promises are what you tell the reader they can expect from your book. This is both in a narrative sense and in a more meta/fourth-wall sense as well. If a romance fan picks up your book and sees page one of your book is about an intergalactic robot rebellion, well you are making a promise to them about what they can expect from the rest of your book, for better or for worse. If this is someone you want to grab, maybe because you are writing steamy robot erotica (not that I would know anything about that), make sure to make that clear right from page 1. 

You want to lead early on with what sort of book to expect. Don’t try to rug pull genres or anything else tricky like that. Perhaps if you are a well established author someday, then you might play around. But as a newer author, it’s best to be very up front about the type of book your reader has picked up.

From there we can get more specific with the nature of these promises. I have always been fascinated by heist stories, and I knew Toric would feature thief and rogue-like characters and that my climax would be a sort of heist job. It made all the sense in the world then to drop the reader into a heist in progress in chapter 1. This lets the reader see how I approach this kind of storytelling, and to see if the tone resonates with them.

Tone is a big one. I almost included it as one of the key points above, but ultimately rolled it into the promises point. Some readers may not want a heady and philosophical narrative, while others may crave it. Ensure you properly represent the different sort of tones up front as well, just like genre.

In the Writing Excuses podcast episode linked above, they discuss an author they knew who was struggling to pitch a middle grade book. The problem ended up being that the beginning was somewhat lighthearted about a goofy kid, but then the book gets into its actual story as a dark and brooding adventure novel. By doing this, the people who wanted that dark and brooding adventure never made it past your beginning, and the fans of the goofy beginning will feel somewhat betrayed as that’s not actually what the meat of the book is like. Setting the stage immediately with the proper tone is extremely important.

Lastly, you can make promises about topics within your book. Do you have magic? Find a way to show that. Is there interplanetary travel? Probably should be mentioned. Can animals talk in your world? Let us know this up front.

When I think about my previous versions of Toric’s beginning, and specifically the promises that were made but never fulfilled, and the promises that should have been made but weren’t, the reasons for my unhappiness with it start to come into focus. The old introduction told the very standard story of a group of thieves slipping into a city unnoticed to assassinate a king. It focused mostly on the characters, and had very little else in terms of promises. No wider world or plot relevant things were mentioned. It was a play by play of a scene straight out of every D&D campaign ever.

Now, that’s not necessarily a problem, if I was writing a D&D style group adventure story. But I’m not. Not really. The story I am trying to tell is one I hope that will be continent spanning, eventually. I plan to have lots of factions and races and powers pushing against each other, with my characters feeling a little like they are leaves caught in a hurricane at times. I’m planning on having a fantastical world full of interesting and eye catching magical spectacles. By focusing so narrowly on a few thieves for as many pages as I was, I wasn’t doing a good job of setting expectations for the story I wanted to tell. The first time I cut away to mysterious demi-gods plotting mysteriously, it must have been extremely jarring for a reader going in blind.

So how did I end up rethinking my promises with the beginning then? I looked at what I thought was the strongest part of my previous draft (the climactic heist job my characters end up attempting), and tried to think of ways I could get that same feeling across, in miniature, to craft an effective beginning. A teaser, if you will, for the great parts to come. I even crafted my beginning scenes in a small three act format, hoping to mirror the magic of the strong ending that it would eventually lead to.

I remember thinking in previous drafts that I needed to start simple, and slowly build up to the big reveals about the world and the conflicts facing it. But, I no longer believe that to be true. My opinion now, and the driving force behind this latest iteration of Toric’s beginning, is that I want to craft a spectacle using every tool in my toolbox that I possibly can. I want wild magic. I want incredibly powerful beings. I want to show off some of the coolest ideas I’ve had for weapons and combat. I want to blow the reader away with alien and otherworldly settings. Why hold these things in reserve? Lead with them. Show the reader that this is the kind of story you are dying to tell, and that they should be dying to read.

So, by the end of the beginning, the reader should fully understand exactly the type of book they have picked up. That doesn’t mean they understand all of the nuances of what is going on. We’ll talk more about effectively utilizing a sense of mystery and wonder to keep the reader guessing and wanting more in a future post, probably the one in this series that covers point 5 above about prompting compelling questions.

There’s a ton more I could say about promises. I think they are among the most important things you can keep in mind when crafting any one of your introductions. Whether that is the beginning of the book, or any other moment that fits the idea of an introduction (new characters, settings, subplots, etc…).

However, I’ll let this topic breathe for now. In the next post in this series I plan on covering character and setting, and once again discussing where my previous opening scenes for Toric failed, and what I have done to hopefully remedy those issues.

Until next time!

When we talk about epic fantasy, it can pretty much be assumed that there are going to be multiple viewpoint characters in the story. After all, it’s hard to convey the grand scope of your world from just one character’s perspective. Usually there are multiple countries or races at play, and you typically want perspectives outside of your bog-standard human protagonist person. Of course, multiple viewpoints are not limited to epic fantasy, but it is the genre that I am writing in so that’s the lens through which I will write this post. (Credit is due to the Writing Excuses for their great information on viewpoints. Here’s one episode on this topic).

So, let’s talk about the different kinds of perspectives that we can offer. To me, this is defined by distance. You either have multiple viewpoints in close proximity to one another (think Six of Crows where our protagonists are on the same mission), or are too far away to interact or influence one another directly (like The Way of Kings where our various protagonists are spread throughout the world).

Each of these approaches offers different challenges and advantages, so let’s start with what it takes to do multiple viewpoints with characters who are in the same room, so to speak. I’ll leave the broader scope to a later post (link should be here when it’s done, feel free to bug me on twitter as long as you can read this!).

I’m pretty comfortable and familiar with multiple view points in close proximity. After all, this is a bit of what I juggle in Toric (though it’s a small degree compared to the aforementioned Six of Crows, with Skye only getting a few chapters, and a couple other characters just a section or two). I am sure later on in the series that the scope will grow, but for now we mostly have characters on the same mission together.

So, what are the challenges here? For one, distinctiveness is direly important. You can cheat on this a little bit when the characters are far apart and in very unique settings, but when you are switching between viewpoints in the same room, you have to worry about their voice a lot more. Whether you are doing first person or third person limited, you have to cloud each character’s observations in their background and personality.

My approach is to roleplay a bit. Given a situation, let’s say we’re in a bar and someone has just knocked over a table and drawn their weapon, I ask myself how would my viewpoint character react to this situation? Maybe I’m in my standard protagonist’s head, and I think, yeah, they’d probably spring up and be ready to intervene. Simple. So then, I think what would another character do in this situation. I’m not in their head for this scene, but if I can imagine how they would react in a different way, I can use this as a point of differentiation for my viewpoint character’s actions.

This admittedly works better if you have a character who is weaker or believes in themselves less, because if we are in their head then they can lament their lack of action or ability. It probably won’t sound quite right for a strong character to mentally congratulate themselves as they spring to defend a helpless bystander, so we need a different tack here.

That’s voice and personality. You have to let these things shine through. Again, we are in your viewpoint character’s head, they should be thinking about things through their unique lens. It may be that you haven’t yet identified exactly what sets this character apart from your others, so writing multiple viewpoints can be a good way to force yourself to work it out. I often actually write from viewpoints I don’t plan on including in my book just as a way to get inside of a particular character’s head, to write down their thoughts and let them come to life a bit more.

Well, given these challenges, why would you want to write a viewpoint character so close to another? What’s the benefit? Well, it can actually be very powerful to step outside of your main character to get an objective viewpoint of them. Maybe you’re working through some chapters that are dialogue heavy, and switching your perspective can help keep things fresh and maybe provide more insights to the reader about the current situation. I would hope that your different viewpoint characters would have different aspects of the current conflict or world that they would focus on, and if that isn’t the case, writing from their viewpoint is a fantastic way to force yourself to create that new perspective.

Another advantage of using multiple viewpoints like this is that it allows you to work around the limitations of your chosen perspective (first or third limited) in order to play around with information. When sticking to a single character, it’s almost impossible to present information in a way where your main character is unaware of it, after all we are seeing things mostly through that character’s eyes. But when you change perspective, you can make the reader aware of certain details and implications that the main character may not have realized yet.

The good folks over at the writing excuses podcast talk about this a number of times (one good episode is here). When both your main character and the reader don’t know what’s going on, then you have a mystery. When the reader knows what’s going on but the main character doesn’t then you have suspense. By providing an alternate viewpoint, then you can effectively hide information from your main protagonist and create suspense in ways that you never could with one perspective.

I can’t stress enough how careful you have to be when working through this though. I’m as guilty as anyone of writing an alternate perspective and just hearing the same narrator voice come through in the end. The viewpoint character needs to have a good thematic reason to take over and be that leading perspective, so I know that I have to constantly think about what such a character is bringing to the table that others are not.

As I said above, this is just the first of two planned entries on juggling multiple viewpoints, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this as I continue to write. For now, I hope you find some of this helpful or at least interesting. Please feel free to respond to my tweet below if you have some thoughts on challenges or benefits of this that I may not have covered! See ya!

Welcome to the first post in what I am hoping will be a series of blog posts about various writing subjects. Seeing as this is my first entry, I think it makes sense to begin with the topic of “Getting Started”. Essentially, I want to dive into how I approach fitting together the various pieces of a story when I am planning a new project.

So then, since this is the first post, I have to start with the one aspect of story creation that I consider absolutely foundational. That is, the characters. After all, think about some of the most universally beloved stories out there. When we talk about Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, the average fan doesn’t typically get excited to discuss the politics of Coruscant or the implications of what a magic society might actually look like if anyone really could apparate anywhere at any time. No, instead we talk about how cool Vader or Gandalf are, or whether Sam was really the hero of middle earth. It’s through these characters that we form our personal connections with a work.

So, given that, I think it’s incredibly important to start any story planning from a character centric point of view. Sure, you do need a hint of a setting at least to ground your character decisions. I’m not advocating that just because you love your alien were-rabbit OC then it belongs in your next romance novel. Even still, you don’t need much more than a basic setting before you can get started here.

Given that, here are five things I think are most important when it comes to crafting strong, memorable characters.  

1.       Main characters need to have a defined role

This is especially important early in the story when the reader is trying to figure out who is who. It gives them something simple to grasp on to. It also gives the reader some base assumptions about the character that you can either lean into or subvert. I’m not necessarily talking about roles like “the smart one” or “the funny one”, but more so what they actually do within the context of your story.

Let’s say for example that you want to tell a medieval fantasy story. One simple way to look at character roles is to examine what they will be doing during action scenes. This might push you towards having a character who is a strong hand to hand fighter, while another of your characters focuses more on magic. Additionally, you might find additional roles like a sneaky thief, an artillery expert, or a smooth-talking spy. Of course, you don’t have to look at it from an action perspective. You could just as easily examine the political structure of the entity you are working with. Whether that’s a country or a small company, you will have people on top who are in charge, and those working for or against them in manners that could range from direct to indirect.

One important thing to note is that a character role should not define who a character is, but it should at least inform your character in some sense. While a role gives your character a reason to exist in the story, their personality should become their reason why they exist in your story. Defining this up front can help you to understand where a character fits into the larger narrative as you start to form it around them.

When crafting main characters, you need to be careful about this.

2.       Your character’s personality needs to be grounded

I find that some characters are more believable and convincing than others in stories. That’s not unusual, but the question I’ve had is why? What makes me connect more with one particular character over another?

I usually get attached to characters that feel the most real to me. This means that their personality cannot be a caricature or cliché. Instead, you need to think more deeply. All characters should have some kind of nuance to them.

The trap here is when your characters are too simple, then they become boring. I should have a decent idea how they will respond to various situations they find themselves in, but I shouldn’t feel like I can predict all of their thoughts and actions before they occur. Real people are more complicated than that, and you should embrace that when you are creating your characters.

Back to our generic fantasy example from the point above. Let’s say you wanted to move ahead with creating your hand-to-hand fighter character. The first thing to do is give them a few different personality traits. Let’s just pick a few at random. Talented, subordinate, kind of lazy, loud. From there, we can take these traits and begin molding them into the outlines of a character’s personality.

Maybe this is someone who fights with the sword. They have been gifted with magic power, but in this universe, it takes extensive practice to even be considered a beginner mage, and this character never followed through with their training. So, while they know a lot about magic, and can sense it around them, they primarily fight with their sword and are deployed in battle as a counter against enemy mages. They’re also brash and take risks both on and off the battlefield. They’re a bit rough around the edges, but at the end of the day they will stand by their companions.

There, that’s a basic outline grounded in your world. Notice I haven’t talked about gender yet. I don’t believe in defining that up front if I can help it. I find that as the outline of my character takes shape, the character’s gender just asserts itself in my mind. I am lucky in the regard that I naturally tend to have a pretty even split of character genders. I believe that if you are writing things like fantasy or science fiction, there’s no reason why you can’t have an even gender split, and you should strive for that if you find yourself with an imbalance.

3.       “But” is your strongest tool

As you start to get an outline of your character, you can make things more compelling by constantly using the word “but” to dig deeper. The word “but” can lead you to discover things that are hidden beneath the surfaces of your character’s personality. It exposes contradictions or dichotomies that feel organic and can lead to a more well-rounded character.

This is where you start iterating. Let’s again take our swords(wo)man from above and see what we can discover about them. One thing that stands out is they are lazy. So, let’s ask “but why?” Maybe this character is very naturally talented. They mastered the sword at a young age and grew up surrounded by praise. When confronted with something they couldn’t easily master, in magic, they instead gave up on it. They never learned how to work hard; things always came easily to them.

“But if that’s true, then what? How did they react when things didn’t come easy?” Well, maybe they blame that challenge itself for their hardships. This character takes great satisfaction in fighting against and beating powerful mages, since perhaps they see magic as a whole as the challenge they couldn’t surmount. They also can’t escape the deep-seated shame that they feel for themselves, knowing they had the capacity to master this skill but instead have let themselves down, leading to an outspoken brashness about them to cover up any form of weakness. This all leads to them regularly throwing caution to the wind and exposing themselves recklessly to danger at times, as they don’t believe deep down, they are worthy of what they have.

In order for this character to be part of your story, as we have defined them, they will probably need support from your other characters. They would need someone else to keep them in check, to remind them of their good parts. They are a bit of a wildcard.

I feel like we have a good outline now, but you can keep this exercise going for as long as you’d like. Asking yourself “but if it is true that they take dangerous risks, what does that mean for their personal life? For their interpersonal connections? For their ambitions or future plans?”

4.       Where did your character come from?

We’ve already touched a bit on that above, but if you haven’t thought about this yet, this is definitely the time to do so. Characters don’t just spring into being the first time you write a line of dialogue for them in your story. They have their entire lives behind them, and where they come from can be a great way of rounding them out.

Think about their childhood. Maybe it was relatively normal. They grew up with a middle-class family and were trained to inherit the family business, or left to learn a trade. Maybe they were well educated from an early age. Maybe they struggled, and went through periods of homelessness or hardship on the streets. These are just some examples of how we can help build out their past.

If you get stuck, just like the “but” exercise above, there are questions you can ask yourself that can help guide you. For instance: “Did they grow up with both their parents? Just one? Or did extended family or some other institution take them in? What were their friends like? Did they have any dreams? What are their goals, short term and long term? When they are introduced in your story, are they happy with where they are at in life?”

All of these questions can help to give depth to your characters, and make them feel more real. You, as an author, are in a constant fight to get buy in from your readers. If you are writing something fantastical like fantasy or sci-fi, that task becomes even more difficult. One way you can fight back is by having relatable, complex characters that your reader can latch onto and identify with.

One thing you might have realized is that the deeper we dive into the past, the more there seems to be a limit to what we can do without a plot or developed setting to guide us. When we define the backstory of our characters, we are also somewhat defining the backstory of our world, which should in turn inform our plot.

I’ll be returning more to this point in a later blog post as I examine how plot and character can influence each other.

5.       Identify the fun

The last, and probably most important point. You have to personally enjoy the characters you are writing. If they are boring or annoying to you, that feeling will definitely come across to the reader. I’m not saying you can’t write characters who are annoying, just that you should be at least somewhat excited about them.

If you are struggling to write one of your characters, often times the best way I’ve found to break through is to really dig deep into what about them is compelling. When I do this, I find that characters I’m tired of are usually missing something fundamental. They don’t have that spark that makes them more than a cardboard cutout.

Hopefully if you’ve started with the first four points above, then you have a pretty well-rounded character. But sometimes for whatever reason it just doesn’t work. If you’ve lost the fun of the character, then it might be time to return to the drawing board and reimagine who they are and their place in the story.

It’s a scary concept, rethinking a character who you may have already written in, but I’ve done it more than once and I’m always happier in the end. Go with your gut. Your characters are the most important connection you make with your reader. If you don’t believe in them yourself, then how is the reader supposed to?

Well, there you have it. Five things to keep in mind when constructing characters for your stories. I don’t always go point by point like a checklist when brainstorming characters, but these things can help me when I’m stuck or looking for inspiration, and hopefully it can do the same for you.

This won’t be the last time I discuss character by a long shot, but I’ll be leaving this topic behind to discuss getting started with plotting next week. Hopefully you’ll join me then! See ya!