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Firebeetle In The Stygian Library: Experiments In Solo RPG Storytelling

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Adventures are a hunger, fundamental to who we are. But what makes them work?

Literally everything we try at Grailrunner is about pushing boundaries in imagination. Often, that takes the form of contorting tabletop game mechanics for experiments in immersive storytelling. Then we give that stuff away for free in case it’s entertaining, though we’ve learned bits and pieces along the way about what makes adventures work…and what is missing when they don’t.

Which is the point.

For example, we built wargame terrain and a narrative scenario to play out a story using the game mechanics of Privateer Press’s popular Warmachine. It was a thrilling ride we called…

The Black Ruins Massacre

Turned out amazing – go follow these links to see what I mean:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

One of the more popular things we’ve ever done here on the site was to write up an illustrated recap of a solo Dungeons & Dragons adventure in Wizards Of The Coast’s Tales Of The Yawning Portal. I routinely use a ridiculous D&D character named Firebeetle to try out different roleplaying game rulesets, and in that case, I put him through a harrowing ordeal called Clueless In The Sunless Citadel. Click these guys here to see what that was all about, and download the free pdf. Only takes about a half hour or so to read, but it’s fun.

Clueless In The Sunless Citadel

So anyway, I was in a big old used bookstore called McKay’s in Nashville, TN a few weeks ago. I strolled to the RPG section with no particular goal in mind and found an odd, strangely electrifying, though ultimately unsatisfying hardback called Maze Of The Blue Medusa. I knew as soon as I read the back, felt the weight and texture of it in my hands, as soon as I flipped through a few pages, that this was something special.

Maze Of The Blue Medusa

(I understand there is some controversy around one of the creators behind this book, so I’ll stick to the work itself in my comments.)

The book describes a system-neutral dungeon complete with a detailed map, illustrations, a bestiary and associated encounter dice tables, and intricately detailed descriptions of every one of its over 300 rooms. In every room, something weird is happening, something grotesque and surreal is creeping about, and crumbs of an over-arching story are dropped.

However, unlike so many mega-dungeon books with their Tolkein tropes and endless loot crates and traps, this whopper is written like an art project, with text that reads like it’s for shrewd adults capable of seeing irony and social commentary in its encounters.

I excitedly cracked it open when I got the chance to run young Firebeetle through his paces inside the Maze.

And I wasn’t into it.

It just didn’t click for me. The adventure escaped me, and it was just going through motions with no point. I couldn’t find a story hook that mattered. Each room seemed weird and vaguely interesting, but nothing popped or sparkled for me. The encounters were tedious and amounted to nothing. Here’s a Youtube video of some dudes in an actual play session of Maze Of The Blue Medusa – watch that for a few minutes and I suspect you’ll see what I mean.

Even with a great GM and some funny players, this wasn’t an adventure so much as a haughty stroll through the bohemian part of town where I don’t really fit in. I wanted the awe and danger of exploration inside the covers of a book and found only a meaningless series of weird things. Maybe that was my fault, but the mechanisms available just didn’t work the way I wanted.

That was on my mind when I heard of a little book by Emmy Allen called The Stygian Library, I thought maybe I had found redemption.

The Stygian Library

Pick up the older version of this booklet free here. It’s available in a remastered version here.

The Stygian Library bills itself as a dungeon for bibliophiles, promising a procedurally generated fantasy library you can explore in ever deeper levels. That sounded amazing, requiring you to map your way (though you can run blindly and get lost). Much like Blue Medusa, this wasn’t written with solo play in mind, but with enough dice tables and imagination, I figured I could rewire it.

Emmy delivers a wild bestiary including golems made of paper, animated books that follow you around, mysterious creeping librarians working on enigmatic calculations, even a half-man, half octopus that eats brains. Nice.

You roll for the levels you’re entering, details about them at first glance and also if you search around, as well as random events and, when prompted, encounters of a friendly or a violent flavor depending on your choices so far.

I took this idiot inside.

Firebeetle

Firebeetle was a name I was given for my very first D&D character back in the day. I recreate him in any game system I’m testing out because he amuses me.

He’s an aimless adventurer, in it for the thrill, always ready to take up a quest or try a mysterious corridor, picking up random things along the way and relying on his luck to seem him through. He’s not really charming, but thinks he is. Loves the ladies. Gets into trouble practically at every destination.

Firebeetle has a tendency to stumble into dimensional portals (as I try new game systems), finding himself in underground dungeons in the Middle Ages (D&D), Viking-era Iceland in an impossible city made of clusters of hot air balloons (Ironsworn RPG system), or in the far future on a dying space station (Starforged RPG system).

He just kind of goes with it. And it all works out in the end.

Neither Blue Medusa, D&D, Ironsworn, nor Starforged were delivering on the premise I was searching for: the awe and danger of exploration inside the covers of a book. Maybe Emmy’s Stygian Library would be the trick. I love libraries.

I put this ridiculous booklet together during conference calls in the COVID-19 quarantine, and I treated it as the opening sequence before entering the Stygian Library. It was going to be called Five Days In Boghallow, a fighting romp with a funny undead sidekick. Literally the only reason I’m including a link here is to give you a feel for this character. He’s such an idiot.

Anyway, I’ll give you the airplane view of what went down inside the Stygian Library and make my point for the day:

On what happened inside the Library…(keep in mind, virtually all of this was determined by dice rolls and game mechanics)

Bereft, the undead knight and Firebeetle entered the Library from the pit into which they’d fallen. They were amused by a couple of animated books that followed them around like cats, though the creepy librarians kept appearing to whisk the books away into the shadows. Something they read inside the cover of one of the books gave them a quest to find some machinery in the deep levels of the endless Library. They encountered bees made of paper (swatted them away) and a golem (ignored it) and paid visits to a planetarium, a pile of treasure, the master catalog of contents, and a hall of taxidermy before managing to be entirely lost and stranded inside an ever-shifting labyrinthine library.

Ahh, I thought. Here’s where things pick up for young Firebeetle. He’s stuck now. Looking for some machines or something.

They kept pressing on, ever deeper, picking up all manner of treasures and vaguely defined books that seemed promising. ‘Let’s see Firebeetle’s careless attitude work his way out of this mess’, I said to myself.

Then inside a giant paper beehive, a bird-like bandersnatch started pecking at Firebeetle’s sword to steal it (because it was shiny). Stupid bird-thing. When they finally killed it, the fact that they were killers turned the Library into a deadlier place. This would pick things up then, as the Library beasties got nastier and the hapless adventurers grew more desperate to find a way out.

In an enormous statuary, Bereft and Firebeetle were accosted by a floating skull, attended by floating teeth that were enthralled with its every word. It grew increasingly insulting, commenting on their appearance and bumbling like they were museum curiosities, before it began to smash itself into Firebeetle muttering something like, “See, students, how a skull may stomp a bug without the need of feet!”.

They ultimately shattered the pompous skull, scattered its minions, and dealt handily with some phantoms the encountered as well. And they did, believe it or not, wind up in the chamber they sought with its outlandish calculation engines, where the hooded Librarians worked their mysterious mathematics.

And would you believe it…and I honestly didn’t make this up at all…the dice rolls delivered Firebeetle an intangibility potion. It’s the one thing that would get him back to an escape from the Library, with treasure and books in hand. I mean…I tried to put the guy in danger and make a madcap adventure of the whole thing, and his ridiculous luck somehow just pulled him out of it.

The Stygian Library was amusing, even interesting and novel, definitely worth your attention if any of this sounded like your cup of tea, but overall it failed to deliver the spice I was seeking: the awe and danger of exploration, except in the covers of a book.

So what am I saying then?

Here’s my point. And I learned this through all these experiments with different game systems through comparison with the one I’m testing now – Forbidden Lands by Free League Publishing. The difference has been night and day. And I believe I know why.

Solo RPG game play is absolutely possible. It’s enjoyable and surprising, stretching your imagination and your sense of fun. It may even rewire your personality as you rip and stretch aspects of yourself that don’t see enough light of day. It takes a few things though, which I’ve found in Forbidden Lands more so than with these other systems, including The Stygian Library:

In my day job when we deal with companies making big changes, we use something called The Airplane Model to define the major elements that make things happen, that drives people to do things. I’m applying this to manufacturing adventure. Hear me out:

Adventures work when:

  • (Vision) …there is a meaningful purpose to what the characters are doing – a destination and a clear, important goal that you find interesting. The Forbidden Lands ruleset offers a Legend Generator that covers this well. I believe I was missing this in many of my random exploration experiments.
  • (Sense Of Belonging) …the characters matter to you, fleshed out with formative events that made them who they are. I trusted the Formative Events dice tables in the Forbidden Lands to build a person for me, a hunter named Colter, and he’s starting to feel like someone I’ve known a very long time.
  • (Sense Of Contributing) …the decisions that your characters make have consequences. I felt in the Maze Of The Blue Medusa and to some extent in The Stygian Library that the random conflicts and odd bits of treasure were irrelevant. Curating good dice tables, like the Action and Theme oracles in Ironsworn and others is fantastic for surprises and a sense of wonder and discovery, but what you do has to mean something or there’s no weight to what’s happening
  • (Sense Of Progression) …there is a clear, definable sense that progress is being made against the purpose. Ironsworn, Starforged, and The Stygian Library all three provide an abstract Progress Tracker intended to keep score of how things are going in the story versus goals, but I found that unrelatable in solo play. Boring and meaningless, even. I’ve found I start to give up on the adventure entirely if there isn’t any meaningful progress or sense that things are moving along. In the case of Forbidden Lands, a deliciously detailed map is provided which is incredibly satisfying.
  • (Sense Of Urgency) …time is ticking, and there is a real possibility of dying or losing something precious. Particularly in D&D 5th Edition, I feel like it’s kind of hard to die. One thing I’m seeing in the Forbidden Lands ruleset is that the stats are unforgiving, and there are lots of things able to kill my character. It forces me to make Colter plan more, and think creatively about his decisions since he could die so readily.

And that’s what I wanted to say about all this. It’s been interesting, testing all these systems out and trying to use them to breathe life into a story I can experience.

The awe and danger of exploration, except in the covers of a book. Possible?

What do you think?

Till next time,

Exploring Fantasy Lands: A Builder’s Field Report

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In my day job, I study and coach the imaginative process. In that case, it’s people in factories trying to solve tricky problems that have them stuck, in some cases for many years. Many times, the reason they’re stuck is because of how they’re thinking about the problem. That isn’t my point today; I’m just letting you know that I think a lot about super-charging imaginations – what makes our creativity go off-road and jump out of ruts and tropes into new lands. It’s pretty fascinating, actually.

Take, for example, the massive city-state called The Jagganatheum:

A single edifice sprawling as large as a city, teeming with millions, and buzzing with the incandescent dreams of building an infinite republic. One building spanning as far as anyone could see, strapped to a mountain. It was gorgeous then in the heyday of Naraia, gleaming white and gold with banners flying from soaring towers. And they had to come together in a way never before imagined just to build such a complex, which was entirely the point. Once it fell out of use hundreds of years later, all manner of unrooted and shiftless people moved in and shabbily built upon its framework. Entire towns have grown up inside its rambling and incoherent architecture now. It’s a dangerous place of wild people and best left to them.

Let me tell you what that’s about and take you there. It really gets to the heart of how imaginations work and how they can change our lives.

If you’re new to Grailrunner, our thing here is inspiration, specifically using science fiction and fantasy novels and tabletop games to explore immersive storytelling. Our signature IP is a world setting and sandbox called Salt Mystic. You can find more here. We’re building out the next volume of characters and locations, and I’m working feverishly on a novel to accompany a major development in the tabletop game.

To begin, all I had in this case was a name (The Jagganatheum) and the vague idea of a giant city sprawling across a mountainside that was cobbled together. In fact, the city was just one enormous, hideous building, ages old, and so patched together and crumbling. The name came from the original form of ‘juggernaut’, extended from referring to Vishnu to include gigantic carts pulled in worship through the streets. It meant ‘big’ to me, so I liked it for the purpose. I always loved the image my dad used to describe of himself growing up in Brooklyn, NY in the 1950’s where he’d shimmy up to the rooftop of his school and stare at the sky, dreaming. I was going to steal that too.

That’s where this guy came from:

Envisioning this big, sprawling, wild place and this nameless dreamer growing up in it, I had to ask why he was such a dreamer looking at the sky? What did he hope to find there? Why did he want to leave? This guy, eventually Lamberghast Mazewater, came of those questions and will ultimately be a war marshal in the service of both The Jagganatheum and beautiful Vimana Station (if he survives these crazy vortex glider experiments!).

All this leads me to the first finding about exploring imagined lands, and we’ll let an old inventor introduce it:

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” -Thomas Edison

Finding #1: Gather inspirations and ask questions about them

By just following the questions and the possibilities, without worrying over plot or key events I needed for the story, and especially without considering ‘sizzle reels‘, the notebook started filling up with great locations inside the city that I’d like to visit and both mighty and intimate things that had happened there. My point with this is that I’ve found it so much more enjoyable to just garden these imaginary settings, to let them breathe and grow wild before I have to prune for the tale I’m telling. I wanted these Jagganatheum streets and alleys to be there, for real, waiting on whoever I was to send scampering into them.

How about we let a fantasy novelist and screenwriter introduce this one, as he compares this sort of writing to gardening:

“They don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows.” -George R. R. Martin

Finding #2: Avoid using plot points as mileposts

A few months ago, I caught a terrible head cold and fell asleep with a fever after spending time sketching out this place. I’ll never forget the dream that came about that night. It was incredible. I saw the high ceilings of a train station (looking a lot like Milan’s Central Station) with a mishmash of sculptures and friezes, with all manner of exotic people buzzing about. I saw a red armored ceremonial guard, with intricate filigree on their shoulder boards and chest plates. I was taking this train inside The Jagganatheum’s central complex to its far reaches, which echoed a developing plot point that was still (at the time) only just coming into view.

When I woke up, I rushed to write it all down, because I hadn’t thought of them using trains to get around the city. I hadn’t thought of any sort of guards, and didn’t know at the time what they’d be guarding. And being so focused on the exterior views of this mighty, mad place, I hadn’t considered at all what the interiors would look like. Of course, they’d have old statues and dented inscriptions going back to the city’s founding! It made sense; I just hadn’t gotten there.

Which means it’s time again for one of the most quoted, quotable quotes we go to on this site:

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” -Louis Pasteur

Finding #3: Set your mind thinking about the land you wish to explore and build, then do something else. Even sleep.

In my case, it was fortunate to have such an unsettled mind from the fever, but I often use this trick going kayaking or running. I’ll use it before a long plane trip. Just a framing of the problem, its borders and boundaries, then let the engines run behind the scenes.

What’s come of all this is a fully realized and fascinating city that has started to feel like a place I can travel to. It’s mapped out in broad strokes, but the specifics are waiting for me to visit as the needs arise. I swear, when I sit to write on this book, I’m anxious to get Lamberghast moving just so I can see more of this fascinating place.

That’s what I wanted to offer you today, just a few findings from the field as this book and game volume come together. I hope in some small way, I’ve struck a spark with you. We’ll keep you posted as this wonderful thing builds itself!

Till next time,

So Gene Wolfe Got Me Thinking About Connecting With Stories…

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If you’re a science fiction & fantasy person, you’ve maybe heard of Gene Wolfe’s Book Of The New Sun. It’s a four-part series, tracking the story of a dude from a guild of torturers in a future world, but one degraded into a fantasy-style medieval setting. Armor and swords and whatnot. The reason I bring it up is kind of interesting.

Give me a second here. There’s a larger point about why we stop reading books after a page or two, and why we keep going.

Anyway, people in the know brag about this series like it’s Tolkien or the Bible or Dickens. They go on and on, writers whom I respect very much and who should know dregs from riches. If they say it’s worth the read, even though it’s dense and uses esoteric words that look made-up but are actually in the dictionary (when you bother to look and don’t just skim past hoping they’ll make sense in context), you figure you should give it a shot. Well I did. Four times.

Four separate times, I tried to start reading the first book, Shadow Of The Torturer. “It’s mind-blowing”, they said. “A masterpiece”. I had not found it to be so. In fact, I tried some other Gene Wolfe books (in the library so I wasn’t blowing money on things I expected to hate) trying to see the big deal. I couldn’t do those either. So I figured this dude just isn’t the beans for my java and moved on.

Let me put just a little flesh on the bone before we move on here: The opening scene seemed to me to have some typical fantasy-trope band of misfits at a gate of some kind, whispering about how to get inside. Or something. The word choices were exotic, the descriptions dense, and I hate plain-vanilla bands of misfits doing fantasy thieving stuff. It’s. Been. Done. I honestly never got anywhere with that first book because it seemed like tired content, done in an unnecessarily obtuse style.

I listen to a lot of disparate things when I go running at the lake. Seriously, it’s all over the place. Here’s a good one, if you’re into Harlan Ellison, a collection of all his Sci Fi Buzz appearances called ‘Harlan Ellison’s Watching‘. It’s great to hear him rant or get excited about something, then have the ability to fast forward with a Google search to see what became of it.

But I came across these two intelligent, informed gentlemen, discussing at length one of my favorites…a set of pieces collectively called Viriconium by M. John Harrison.

Here, just click this one to listen to these two, it’s hypnotizing: Books Of Some Substance with guest Brett Campbell of doom metal band, Pallbearer.

I’d never heard of ‘Books Of Some Substance’, nor have I listened to anything from a doom metal band from Arkansas (and likely never will), but Viriconium‘s one of the great ones. That’s a life changer, at least for me. It gets in my head. I can’t read it without it changing how I think, how I choose my words. Harrison’s a genius at mood-setting, at impressionistic fiction, at sending your mind off to flights of fancy. Maybe not of telling a story – he’s not great at that. But otherwise, a true work of art there. These two gents had a fascinating chat about Viriconium, so I heard them out on that count. And towards the end, when these two had completely won me over with a rich, insightful conversation that encourages you to think maybe they’re not all Snapchat-addicted neanderthals out there, the doom metal guy mentioned Book Of The New Sun.

Well crap. He said if you really like Viriconium, you’ll like that one too. He said it’s set in the far future where the old technology is literally a toe-scratch below the dust and shards of decaying cities. He said it was amazing.

So I took a fifth go at Gene Wolfe’s supposed masterpiece. I kept an open mind, telling myself this isn’t a piece of Dungeons & Dragons fan fiction or a bajillionth clone of Tolkien, that the exotic words can be skipped or considered in context without constant jaunts to the dictionary, that this very intelligent, insightful doom metal person who held a series I cherish in such high regard was telling me to give it a chance because it holds some of the magic that Harrison’s work does. He earned my trust, so I dug in with as open a mind as possible.

And honestly, it’s pretty good. They weren’t D&D-style thieves at all, but apprentice torturers. That scene was short and not at all what I thought it had been. They were young trainees basically, and this was going to have elements of coming-of-age tales. It’s super easy for me to connect with coming-of-age tales, especially when they hint up front at the great heights to which this person will reach (as this book does). I like to examine their choices, to question whether I’d make them as well, to see where external factors advanced their cause and when they seized their own fortunes alone. I saw this after a few chapters, beyond where I’d stopped those previous times.

The word choices remain exotic and annoying, but they add flavor and atmosphere, which was his point I imagine. I understand there will be an element of the unreliable narrator as I proceed, so I’m on the lookout for nonsense he pitches at me. We’ll see how that goes.

My point today is just to hand you a few links you might find interesting, and to suggest that our preconceived notions of what a book is about can throw us off the rails, that our impatience and lack of attention span can cheat us of some great tales, and that when you find reviewers or podcasters or other folks whose opinions you trust, maybe listen to them with an open mind.

If you’re into Gene Wolfe’s works, shoot me a note and let me know what you think. I’m anxious that this series will fail me at some point, but so far so good.

Till next time, guys.

Dreams are engines. Be fuel.

Books We Put Down (And Why)

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Pandemonium.jpg

I know, man. Gene Wolfe is supposed to be amazing. People that dig his stuff go on and on about that. The Book Of The New Sun was supposedly voted the greatest fantasy of all time after Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. Whatever. I’ve tried three separate times to read it. Three times, man. I suppose I’m not smart enough to see the big deal. Anyway, after I tried to read a book by Felix Gilman called Thunderer, it got me thinking about books that look amazing but turn out to be fizzlers.

So I asked around. It can’t just be me that this happens to. And it happens to me a lot. I’m a little too hard on my literary entertainment. If I get a few pages in and there’s too much rambling, inane dialogue, or I see no sign of whatever hook drew me in, I’m bailing. Anyway, I got some answers as I posted or chatted about this very point that formed a pattern. Thought I’d let you in on that.

The Gilman book I mentioned said this in the description:

“Gilman takes his readers on a journey through a world of deep and wondrous impossibilities where marvels lurk around every corner. His infinite city and the lives of its people quickly become an irresistible compulsion— I imagine an evening where Dickens, Miyazaki, and Jules Verne sat down to dream up a metropolis and its wrangling multitudes. Thunderer will leave you wide eyed, breathless and hoping for more.”—David Keck, author of In the Eye of Heaven

Let’s break down what caught my attention, because the cover was an embarrassment. (Go look for yourself, I’m not posting that nonsense here.) The quote describes a teeming city, mentions Dickens (always certain to catch my eye) and the genius from Studio Ghibli behind the greatest anime ever made. I love interesting fantasy cities. One reviewer mentioned it reminded him of Jorge Luis Borges. Here’s the point: because of the reviews and cover description, I was hoping for a city with a supernatural twist to it, with some intriguing imagery, and a storyline- any storyline – that took that idea to some kind of fulfillment. I mean, I couldn’t even have told you when I started reading it what the jacket said that story was going to be. I was just trusting it would fulfill the promise of those influences I’d been promised.

Unfortunately, it’s a boring, dreary, rambling incoherent mess with plain-Jane characters and dull ideas ripped from a cosplay convention. I stuck it out just because, which is very unusual for me.

What I heard from a lot of folks I asked about this – books they had to put down – was that there was in fact a hook that caught their eyes, but they just didn’t deliver on it. Evan at From The Wastes said for him it was Dante’s Inferno, which is why I included that picture on this post. A city in hell is a firecracker of an idea; but if that’s why you’re planning to read Dante, you’re going to be disappointed.

Several folks named bestsellers like Girl On A Train or Gone Girl. The pattern I heard from them was similar – with a bestseller thriller you have specific things you expect to see; and the bestseller apparatus should assure that. Here’s what some folks said:

“I want the book to grab me with characters and plot immediately”

“I need movement and plot…and make them interesting”

“Didn’t get into the plot. Didn’t move along. Just blah blah blah scenery and description”

“Someone said it gets better after the fifth chapter. WTF! I have to wait five chapters!?”

You get the pattern, right? I suppose writers should face the fact that within a few pages, most readers have decided whether they’re pressing ahead or not. Look, most editorial reviews on Amazon are paid for. When other authors are quoted, they’re just doing drudge work their publisher is requiring of them.

Leo Tolstoy said, “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity” I suppose as writers we ought to listen to him and to our own experiences with books we’ve put down. Pick one where it happened to you and cypher out what it was that drew you in to begin with, and how the book failed to deliver. My guess is the author overcomplicated a cool idea and decorated it with a bunch of style and ambience. That’s ironic if true, because all the reader ever wanted was to just see the cool idea in its simplicity.

Get back to me with your own experiences or thoughts. I’m curious what you’re putting down and why!

Stock Inversion: Thoughts On Paradigm Smashing

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stock-inversion-control-panel

“Don’t seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” -Matsuo Basho

A few months ago, I posted an article on paradigms that started some interesting conversation; and a recent miserably cold and rainy day in a warm library caused me to revisit the notion with a twist I thought you might find helpful. The gremlin I’m chasing here is lazy writing. If you’re a wordsmith and you’ve caught yourself slamming into your story a dragon or an elf, a robed wizard or a huge command room on a gray spaceship, a two-arm, two leg robot who wants to be a real person, a mysterious prophecy, technology gone bad, wicked corporations,  a protagonist suddenly finding out who they really are, …you know where I’m going with this…then let’s agree there’s possibly more out there.  We don’t have to tweak or to retread old archetypes, it’s a great big world!

The Basho quote above makes my point well. For example, I’m inspired like crazy by Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. It’s absolute genius, in a million ways. There are a few moments in Wizard And Glass that rank among some of the finest writing I’ve ever seen.  Please join me in hoping Hollywood doesn’t pooch it up with their upcoming version – we’ll talk about that when it comes out in July. King turns the mysterious gunslinging cowboy on its head in those books. He breathes fresh life into a trope we all know and that by all rights should be tired and worn out by now. Basho’s point is it’s cool to be inspired by what he did and to follow the way it made me feel, but that it’s lazy and disappointing to simply tweak a little here and there and otherwise take for my own what he did. It’s the same with Tolkein, the 1930’s pulps, and the standard rogue’s gallery of monsters. The racks at the library, at Barnes & Noble, crap on Netflix, and a lot of what I see on social media profiles unfortunately, are chasing the same tropes. I’m no better, I’m just pointing at it and looking for the stairs.

There used to be a magazine called Wizard. It was about comic books, and was how I kept up with storylines when I was forced to become an adult against my will. They had a feature where an artist would sketch something out and explain the thoughts and creative process that went into it. I recall one where a guy was drawing a library, which may fill your head with the picture of an old white woman peering over her glasses and shushing somebody. In the issue I’m thinking of, the guy said he made his librarian a tall, muscular young guy with spiked hair “because that would make it more interesting”. That really stuck with me and came to mind when my very odd daydreaming suggested the steampunk control panel in the image introducing this article.

The idea is to run a standard stock character or idea through an adjustment process that will make it more interesting, that suggests a novel story idea. LET’S BE CLEAR here – just switching genders on a trope doesn’t necessarily make it interesting. I’m not tweaking, I’m looking for a fresh look that brings something new. We’ll try it with King Arthur in a minute. Stick with me.

The panel offers a few principles, here are examples so you get the drift. Imagine cranking the knobs on these concepts back and forth till you dial into something new and fresh.

Male/Female and Ethnicity  – and all the shades between.

Unborn/Ancient  and Historical/Future – Take an old Tibetan monk (tired and been done) and make him the manifestation of a future incarnation, as yet unborn (there’s a story to tell here!)

Illusion/Reality – (spoiler alert) What you thought was wargaming in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game was actually a war being fought – it was reality, not illusion.

None/Many  –  Marvel Comics took the Iron Fist character, which was a stand-alone hero like many others, and made a dynasty of them. Iron Fists through the centuries, passing on the mantle. Oh, and Yoda’s famous quote in Empire: “There is…another…Skywalker…”

Living/Dead –  Neil Gaiman’s wonderful Sandman series has a character who is the personification of a place – Fiddler’s Green. An inanimate place as a person, and all that that entails.

Positive Space/Negative Space – “The usefulness of a pot comes from its emptiness.” I’m reminded for this one of the Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze where the detective’s biggest clue regarding an intruder was that a dog had NOT barked when it should have, because it knew the culprit. It was what was NOT there that was important.

Microscopic/Massive –  Take a gargantuan spaceship that couldn’t possibly be fueled or air conditioned and make it a swarm of connectable pods, ever changing. Greg Bear wrote a book called Blood Music where he turned the alien encounter trope into biological computing cells injected into a person’s bloodstream.

Let’s give it a try and wrap up. I’ll start by listing attributes of King Arthur that I believe give him staying power. Then in bold, I’ll offer suggestions falling out from cranking the dials around, looking for something fresh.

King Arthur: In a devastated land with recollections of a golden age, barbarian marauders invade. While a new and growing religion turns the world upside-down, a prophesied warrior representing the heroic virtues of his day and the new religion comes to power. He’s aided by a mystical and mysterious remnant of the old religion and wages his righteous war with a weapon that is tied to the very land he protects. He sacrifices himself in his victory, but lies waiting for a time of greatest need to return.

Crank the dials:

  • (Negative space)  Maybe it’s the absence of a King Arthur figure that is the story. No one shows up to save the land, so the people write their own fake prophecy and lay artifacts out hoping it will fulfill itself. Then it does.
  • (None/Many)  Maybe the prophecies are real and DO come true, only they do it multiple times. Several King Arthur figures, all legit, all righteous, all working for the same cause and supported by the same mystical doohickeys. But there can be only one.
  • (Historical/Future)   Maybe the King Arthur trope is wired into human instincts, and is supposed to happen every generation by design. Since it hasn’t occurred in so long, the ones that programmed that show up to check why it’s not working
  • (Living/Dead)   Maybe King Arthur wasn’t a person at all, but rather was a place. A place you can still visit.

I supposed I could keep at this, though I’ll never write any of these. My idea was just to offer a slick visual that may help me (or hopefully you) when you worry you’re being lazy and want to contort something around and make it new and shiny. To say something that hasn’t been said, at least in that way.

Let me know your thoughts. If there are any particular tropes that bug you most, I’d be curious to hear them. Good luck with the wordslinging!

 

 

The Well Of Ideas: My 2nd Century Crazy Uncle

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“You are truly home only when you find your tribe.” Srividya Srinivasan

What if I told you there’s a book I go back and read in random places, not even straight through, that doesn’t have a plot, written by a guy who lived 1,800 years ago that wasn’t that great a writer? But I go back over and over because he’s just interesting to me…he liked the same sorts of things I like. He saw things I can’t because they’re long gone. When somebody at a market said there was a cool statue up on the mountain hidden in a grove that you had to climb to see, this guy was up for it. He collected stories. He thrilled at history and listened for hours to old people chatting up about gods and sea monsters and miracles. His name was Pausanius. He has some things to teach wordslingers; but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Let’s back up. When I was in the Navy, me and a couple of other guys had a day in Spain to do whatever we wanted. One of us had spent a semester there and thought he knew some cool places to see, so early morning in a train station we were squatting over a map pointing at things and waiting on him – his name was Keith – to make his pitch on how we should spend this one day we had. One day, get that. Then we’re back to sea for months. Kind of a big deal to get this right.

He said Antequera was the place. Had to go there. Was awesome. When we asked what was awesome, he got vague and lost our confidence. Sounded like he was drawing a big blank and had drunk his way through that semester. But we hopped on the train anyway, with big dreams of seeing something we could tell stories about later. As the train passed a gorgeous valley and some amazing hiking trails and cityscapes I, at least, was really feeling down about the call we’d made. What in Antequera could compete with this?

So the train dumped us off at a desolate wooden platform with a dusty road leading up an empty hill like an old western movie, with a sign saying the next train back would be back at the end of the day. So we’re pissed at Keith, but trudged up the dirt road anyway. And it was one of the best days of my life. Jaw-gaping cathedrals, unearthly Catholic processions, Moorish ruins, some beautiful stone university, probably the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten, and the most amazing view of a harbor from a hillside I’ve ever seen. Pausanius did stuff like that; but he wrote what he saw in excruciating detail to capture fully the ruins and statues and art of his day. He was just always interested.

An example: “A road goes from here to a Sanctuary Of Asklepios. In the colonnade they keep an enormous sea-monster’s skull, with a statue of the Dream-god behind it and Generous Sleep lulling a lion.”

Another: “On the brow over the theater is a cave in the rocks under the acropolis, it has a tripod on it and inside Apollo and Artemis are slaughtering the children of Niobe. I myself have seen Niobe when I was climbing the mountains to Sipylos. Niobe from close up is a rock and a stream, but if you go further off you seem to see a woman downcast and in tears.”

At Cerynea describing a sanctuary of the Euminedes, the furies so terrible to look at that murderers or impious people were said to go mad from terror if even allowed to see the images, Pausanius said he had a look; and the images were made of wood and weren’t that big or scary to him. I think that’s funny.

At Phigalia, he described a sanctuary of Euronyme that wasn’t easily accessible and in a thick grove of cypress trees. Once per year the villagers would open the sanctuary for sacrifices to Artemis. The image was wooden, bound with golden chains, and showed a ‘woman to the hips but below that of a fish’. Some dude carved a mermaid; and these people worshiped it as the goddess of the hunt.

Pausanius is just full of cool sights and stories about all the great stuff he’d seen; and he was always on a journey somewhere. A freaking free spirit, man! I stole at least three locations or ideas from him for my first book, but just recast them in a science fiction setting. The guy’s writings are my muse sometimes; and I really enjoy letting him riff on whatever crazy Greek myth or absurd intrigue tale he feels like spinning. Like a crazy uncle.

What he’s telling aspiring writers is to chase down vague hints of wonders when they show up. Go see something if it sounds inspirational. Let the sights breathe and soak into you. For me, the real lesson of all this – the reason I honestly wanted to sit down and write this out for you – is you should find your own crazy uncle. Is there a book you go back to over and over, to wash over you and that brings the ideas running like a stampede?

I could say the same thing of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium series or Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. No idea what those are about, though I’ve spent hours wandering around inside them. They make me happy; and they put pictures in my head. What on earth more could you ask from crazy uncles? Go find one.

 

Chance Favors The Prepared Mind: Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas?

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Louis Pasteur said that ‘Chance favors the prepared mind’; and that’s a fantastic quote. His point, I’m assuming, is that your mind is your instrument or your weapon, whichever metaphor does it for you. Whatever you’re up to in life, bathe yourself in stuff that will help you get better at it. Let cool, helpful things soak in. Then you’ll be luckier because you’ll notice opportunities you might not have otherwise.

So what does the hot warrior goddess picture I’ve attached here have to do with that? I’ll get to her in a little while. Go with me here.

Recently, I was thinking about where writers get their ideas. People ask that literally all the time. I bought a book years ago called, ‘It Came From Schenectady’ by a science fiction writer plagued by the question so often he started giving that answer when people asked him. Schenectady. That’s maybe a little funny. If you’ve read even a few articles on this blog, in fact, or the philosophy, it hopefully shines through that breaking ground in speculative fiction is kind of a big deal to me. I want to do whatever I can for myself and for other aspiring writers to BRING NEW THINGS INTO THE WORLD.

So I was turning that over in my head while coincidentally making my way through a book on the ancient city of Ugarit. This was a cosmopolitan city full of diverse folks and multiple languages, flourishing in 1500-1200 BC even though it was sandwiched between two superpowers of the day: Egypt and the Hittite Empire. My aim was to learn about the city and what life was like there; but the notion of finding story ideas was buzzing louder, so I was finding them on almost every page.

The theme in my head was very helpful to the writer in me; and it was this: just look for the strain on people. When there is some kind of tension set up, pulling on a person, there is a story to tell. I saw it in the tension between the two superpowers tugging on Ugarit. I saw it in the 1930’s race of archaeologists and linguists trying to be first to decipher the newly found script. I saw it in the very architecture of the city itself.

For example, the main city itself had two massive temples, one to Dagon (head honcho) and one to Baal (fertility guy, had sex with a cow while hiding from the god of death), with a library in between. The palace was on the other side of town and was bigger than the temples. There was a very rich guy named Rapanou whose house had thirty four rooms and his own library. I went dark for a few paragraphs as my mind wandered to the image of a teenage priest in training, leaned against one of the big temple statues and staring up at Rapanou’s house jealously, maybe wondering about one of the daughters who lived there. Maybe one of the statues would start speaking to him one full-moon night…

A few pages later, I came across this bit:

“Priests also had a military function, as is clear from references to them in administrative texts describing auxiliary military personnel; they are also listed in an army payroll text. Their role was that of support personnel, providing advice of a religious or oracular nature to military commanders. They were, in other words, an intelligence corps, purporting to provide divine counsel with respect to strategy and military operations.” -‘Ugarit And The Old Testament’ by Peter C. Craigie

That got me going on my little guy, because I saw him caught up in a rebellion against the Hittites, when all he wanted was to be left to his stone tablets and dreaming. I could see war-ragged army generals desperately shouting for divine insight into a hairy battle when the little priest was coming to doubt his own beliefs. Maybe because of something the statues had said. Maybe because of something Rapanou’s wild daughter had said.

You see how this just kind of gets going, right? Spitballing. Weaving together stuff from everywhere like a jazz riff on whatever I’m reading or whatever I’m doing. That’s how it works for me. The book had just described the little port towns on the sea as having no more than maybe a hundred people in them. I know what little rinky dink towns are like; and so, probably, do you. Then I read this:

“It’s possible that naval conscripts were drawn from the coastal towns where men would already have seagoing experience in merchant and fishing vessels”

I saw a new guy, then, who’ll probably meet up with the other guy. This dude loved his quiet little foggy port-village, though he maybe dreamed of adventures…then he got pulled into this same conflict the priest was in. Now I had a couple of folks stirring into the soup, and the possibility  of massive naval battles, which I love, and talking statues that had offered a mystery of some kind. I’m also reading Patricia McKillip’s “Riddle Master” trilogy, so probably the statues had offered a riddle.

But it was still kind of plain, needed to go crazy. Needed something with pep. Riddles have been done. So I totally lost whatever I was reading and just put it down to ponder…what is REALLY going on with this mysterious riddle?

Ahhh…I had watched a couple of Harry Potter movies over Christmas, so Voldemort’s horcrux dealie-o was in my head too. The riddle was not given to the priest to help him at all, it was given him to become alive…to be spread among the minds of men enough to form a vessel for something to enter into. Something, obviously, terrible.

The warrior goddess up there was to represent Anat, the terrible war goddess of the Ugaritic Mythology who used to storm the throne room of the all-father so angry he would hide from her, and who would tear off so many soldiers’ heads and gut them with such glee she should laugh as she waded through all the blood. You should read some of Baal’s cycle of stories where she appears. She’s fantastic. Maybe it’s her that started all this riddle business, just because she’d be fun to write.

Like a late Christmas present, I realized then that history handed me a nice finish for all this. Around 1200 BC, Ugarit got blasted from history by a mystery invasion of people from the sea. We know almost nothing about all that. Fantastic. It writes itself.

Look, I’m never going to write this story. If you’d like to, have at it. Be my guest. It’s fun to dip into it, though, and make my overall point for today.

If you’re stuck looking for ideas…or if you’re interested in where (at least some) writers get their ideas, remember I said this: look for the strain on people, the forces tugging a person in more than one direction. Bathe yourself in fiction or non-fiction, or travel, or talk to people, or whatever information you can get lost in, and dig up things that shine. Then string them together and turn up the gas.

What I’m hoping…what I aspire to do…is not to forget that last part. Be original. Turn it up to crazy and do something new.

Louis Pasteur changed everything about disease and healing when he did what he did. His quote is a sound one. Let’s live it.

 

Just How Naughty Is It That I Didn’t Like ‘Rogue One’?

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Don’t get offended, man. I just didn’t like the new Star Wars movie. And I was the kid swinging plastic lightsabers at my pillow and floating in the YMCA pool like Luke Skywalker did in the bacta tank. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, in fact; and I don’t think I’m particularly grumpy. My brother suggested something though, that I thought would be interesting to chat with you about.

He said writers can’t enjoy movies.

Before I get to that, let me list for you just a few things about the movie that irritated me to the point of not liking it. Of course there are spoilers here, so do what you need to do.

  1. Forrest Whittaker can act better than that, I’ve seen it. Was horrible to hear the fake British accent and the weird grunting. Horrible.
  2. Felicity Jones offered us one facial expression the entire movie.
  3. Hollywood shorthand overuse:  main character fondly clinging to a memento given them by a lost loved one (Jyn’s crystal necklace). Come on, dude, we’ve even already seen this in a Star Wars movie!
  4. Hollywood cheap emotional trigger overuse:  not one but TWO freaking scenes where someone dies in somebody’s arms after saying something. Ugh. Disney should be above that sort of cheap trick. Also already seen in a Star Wars movie, by the way.
  5. Moustache-twirling villain (with a cape, no less!) stomping through his scenes who can’t see beyond just wanting to rule the world.
  6. I knew the Death Star plans got transmitted when I was six years old. The drama had to come from the characters and their sacrifices; but they were snoozers. I, as always, except Donnie Yen because he could just show up and be my favorite, so that’s not fair.
  7. The Hobbit Effect: they told this story in a couple of sentences in an opening scrawl decades ago, but had to drag out all sorts of obstacles and friction to make something of it. And it felt like it. My son yawned twice. My wife fell asleep.
  8. Shameless cameos: very cool to see Leia, obviously. Also cool to see Senator Organa and Mon Mothma. Those make sense in the story. But did we REALLY need to see the ‘You’d best watch yourself!’ guys from the cantina?
  9. Lazy ‘Braveheart’ speech: Jyn gave a half-hearted and snoozer of an inspirational speech, which even the guys on the mission with her were bored with.
  10. If they have computer files and the ability to store and transmit them, why in the world are they stored on hard drives in a tower where you have to access them with robotic arms? So the heroes could climb around and get shot at? Exactly.

I honestly hope I’m not coming off as too picky here. Maybe you disagree with some of this, but seriously – ALL of it? You’re killing me.

No, I don’t believe writers can’t enjoy movies. There are all sorts of movies I think are genius or just popcorn-munching fun rides. I can switch gears, man. I’ve binge watched about ten Hallmark Christmas romance flicks with my wife in just the last couple of weeks. See, I have depth?

It could be I have a very high standard for ‘Star Wars’ and expect more from them. I was trying to puzzle out, even before the movie was over, what it was that was bugging me so much and what I liked so much about the original movies…you know, whether I’m just getting old.

Harlan Ellison said there’s nothing worth writing about other than people. Chemistry and the dynamic between characters will hook us and keep us hooked with more impact than visual effects or nostalgia or plot twists or slick ideas. In ‘A New Hope’, Han Solo was funny and cocky and bold. Leia was tough and driven and beautiful. Luke was wide-eyed and innocent, but with ties to a deep mythic undercurrent on a hero’s journey. That trinity resonates even four decades later, which is one reason we’re still dealing with shameless riffs off that original story over and over. With ‘Rogue One’ – and maybe this is because of the cheap writer tricks they used to try and shorthand me into liking their characters – I just wanted them to die already so I could get to whatever the big scene was at the end I kept hearing about.

I’m curious what you think. If you loved ‘Rogue One’, please drop me some details on what it was you loved. I just don’t see it. I really, really, really want them to get better at telling ‘Star Wars’ stories.

Oh, and writers can definitely love movies. Maybe they just like to backseat drive too?

Go Be Audacious. We Need You To Be.

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Many moons ago, when I had a vision of traipsing across Europe with only a baguette in my satchel and no idea what I was doing, I had the good fortune to be in Barcelona. Don’t think I’m entitled, my mom actually surrendered a chunk of inheritance money to give me the chance when she couldn’t afford to do that. That’s another tale; and yes – she’s awesome. My point here is how cool the Sagrada Familia was.

Of course, I’d never heard of the place or Antoni Gaudi, the mad architect who designed this melting crackpot of a building until then. It was a skeleton at the time; but the experience sugared my cookies that he was so unlike anyone else. Seriously, look it up. This guy had no boundaries. It struck me even then when my thoughts didn’t … ummm…run all that deep, that the way this guy went after stone was how I wanted to live my life. Whatever other people are successful with is just a floor, but let’s climb to the roof and see what’s there! That sort of thing. Didn’t work out that way, because life. Still, I was thinking today when I was complaining to my brother about how bad the TV show, The Walking Dead has gotten, that I’ve missed something along the way.

I really used to love The Walking Dead. Seriously, it was my jam. I’m sorry if you’re still into it and are insulted; but it’s growing disturbingly unwatchable for me. My overall feeling is they’re not pursuing the story’s possibilities like they should – that there is amazing potential in the world they’ve set up, but it’s not being turned up to the audacious, wild levels it’s begging for. For example, how can this tiny group of people still be drama-dragging (in their second state, by the way!) on back roads with nary a freaking Applebee’s, Best Buy, Home Depot, or Wal-Mart? I can’t throw a dead cat without hitting one of those. How amazing would it be to have a big post-apoc blowout with zombies and raiders in an abandoned amusement park! When you’re popping down the street tomorrow to go to work or shopping or whatever, look around whatever you pass and see if you don’t think it would be more interesting after the end of the world than featureless roads where you occasionally run into a single gas station and a couple of mean people with rifles. Untapped potential, man. Go bigger!

So I started doing flash fiction a while back, posted on Tumblr and Facebook, to drum up some interested parties willing to do reviews or who might enjoy my writing. In doing so, I’ve learned a lot about honing down my wordiness and trying to make words pop. Less fat, more meat. Sharp razor endings designed to make you think or dream your own story to what I’ve begun. That’s the idea; and it’s fun. It’s changing me; and it’s bleeding over into the novel I’m writing.

Now, I can hear all this in my head as I cling to the original inspiration for the book, because that’s what excited me to begin with. It’s hard to kill anybody off or fundamentally change them because I want to be safe and make you feel what I did when I first dreamed the idea or the people up. That’s all balls, of course. I know that; and I need to take my own medicine. The people who read those shorts on Tumblr or reddit or whatever aren’t always kind; but they have a point. Go bigger!

So I’ve scheduled a date with Armageddon. In a couple of weeks, I’m going deep with some actual, honest-to-God free time to sit down and write to push that book closer to the finish line. I have wild plans, that make so much sense given the characters and what they want. They’re finally – after all this time – speaking up for themselves; and I couldn’t be happier about that.

So why don’t you go do the same thing, over the holidays? Whatever you’re wordsmithing, ask yourself if you’re going big enough. Dream up different twists, and secret agendas your folks might have. People are layered, and don’t always do what you expect them to. Engineer that.

Here’s another architect to round home for us:

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood.” -Daniel Burnham

The Coffee And Book People Are Still Out There

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“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” -Ray Bradbury

I travel a lot for work; and it’s easy to get the impression that nobody freaking reads anything anymore. It’s disheartening, man. I want to tell stories – there have to be people out there who want to unplug and hear them! This Thanksgiving, I got into a fairly cerebral chat with some family folks (I didn’t start it, honestly, was just munching chocolate pecan pie and it sort of happened!). It got me thinking, so I’ll hit you with the thought to see where you stand.

I don’t run into many people from day to day who get far beyond Youtube tutorials and whatever management book is in flavor rotation, so when this chat started, I thought it was going to go my way. Wife’s uncle leans over like he’s telling a secret and says,

“I understand you’ve published a book.”

Okay, cool. We can talk about that. And we did. He got a copy, says he’ll read it. I’m in. But somehow the whole conversation veered into the nonfiction he typically reads. Also cool, I read plenty myself. But I got the gist he never reads fiction at all. I’m back where I started. He’s not going to like the book, I know that already. But guys, I just can’t sit down and write a biography about Lyndon Baines Johnson. It’s never going to happen. We covered LBJ in more detail in that conversation than I’d have guessed you could. Apparently the man was complicated.

I enjoyed the conversation, actually. Yet it sent me off on this idea that if most folks do sit down to read, I’m not running into the type that want to get totally lost in an imagined world with gargantuan ideas, flash-bang battles and clashing intrigue. That’s my thing, man. I can’t get enough of getting lost in a great book where sometimes I have to look up and ponder something I read. That’s my baseline for when I’m writing – I want to engineer that. Every time.

Jump ahead a few days. Christmas shopping on-line. To be honest, I was actually looking for cool stuff to put on my own Christmas list so my wife doesn’t just get me more Doctor Who merchandise. Was reading reviews of the Kindle Paperwhite to see if I should go back to e-ink screen readers. Page after page of folks who are apparently of my tribe – talking about the lake, the beach, camping, trains, in bed at night, by fireplaces, in hotel lobbies. Awesome people who love a great book. I was feeling better.

Then I found a guy who put a Cheshire Cat grin on my face. He’s your kind of guy too. Check this out.

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If you can’t read the image, here’s the text:

“I wasn’t planning on posting a review. However, something happened that prompted me to go ahead and post a review of this amazing device.

“I was well into a nice space opera book on my Kindle Paperwhite when I caught myself talking, rather loudly, to the device in response to what was happening in the story within the book. It occurred to me at that moment that the Kindle had disappeared and allowed me to immerse myself in the book so fully that I felt as if I were living inside the story rather than reading text on a screen.” -Rev. Ian MacGregor

Let’s dissect this guy for a second. He was ‘well into a nice space opera book’. Wow. Already my buddy. The man was actually talking to his Kindle. I can’t say I relate to that; but this guy is one of my favorite people on the planet now. He was talking loudly to his Kindle. And he got totally lost in the story. Whatever the crap this dude was reading, I’d like to know. The Reverend MacGregor is not only in my tribe, he’s the goll-darn shaman!

So what do you think about the future of fiction? Interesting, ground-breaking fiction that pushes cool intellectual or narrative boundaries, I mean…not gobbledygook thrillers that software will eventually write, optimized through the bestseller list algorithms. Try this quote on for size:

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries” Rene Descartes

I hear you, Rene. But who are we going to have these conversations with?