Start to Finish

As something between a dare and a resolution, my friend Nate and I have agreed to each write a chapter of a new story a week. A new story of our own, not trading a narrative back and forth, because we're both hyper-possessive of our story beats. So this weekend I wrote 677 words, the first new narrative words I've written in... I don't know, a year? It felt good! Which is a relief, since I know the words weren't good.

I'm writing without too much planning. I have a general concept, which is that of the standard Hero's Journey being the villain, I have a fanciful idea of swapping between first-person (Abby) and third-person (Wyatt) with a climactic moment involving Wyatt shifting to first-person, and I have two characters without last names or appearances, the aforementioned Abby and Wyatt. I think Abby has black hair? I don't know why I think that, I just think she does. But those 677 words have already taught me something about my characters and reminded me of something involving my creative process.

The best character I've ever created is Mist Walker, a dancer from Luxuocidad who became a GM-controlled player character in Final Fantasy Omega. Created as an afterthought in the leadup to a tournament years ago and given the name of the creator of Final Fantasy's new studio (Mistwalker Productions), Mist was an occasional mood-lightener and a character attached to another GMPC, Aidan Denun. Then I had a bonkers idea to write interactive fiction and create a spy story, and Mist was selected from a pool of two to become the lead character in that narrative. I wrote in first-person, crafted six guys around her to be part of that spy group she infiltrated, and fell completely in love.

I think what worked for me there was having just a concept of a character. I didn't know where that story was going to go, because I didn't have full control over it. I knew who Mist was, basically -- a dancer, a summoner of low skill, a cheerful smile, someone who always wore something the color green, and a relentless optimist. I wrote Mist like I wrote a gaming session, which was to present a problem, then think about it, and figure out how I was going to respond. Sometimes other people made those decisions for me. Sometimes I didn't do a great job. Sometimes I did. And that was independent of Mist's own successes and failures.

I had a conversation between Mist and one of her friends' fathers to write, and in that he asked her what she wanted to do with her life. I didn't know. So I paused that scene for a weekend, I created Mist and everyone else in The Sims 3, and then I played about two in-game weeks. In assigning jobs, I dropped Mist into journalism on a lark. Playing that, I then saw a future form for her, one where she looked at how blind she'd been to the stuff going on around her, the politics happening in her hometown and to her governor boyfriend, and how she wanted to use her own visibility and growing celebrity status (it was a weird game, y'all) to write about it and make a difference. So I finished that scene the next week with her having made up her mind about being a journalist, and it felt right.

The best characters are ones that seem to write themselves. I don't know if Abby and Wyatt are going to get there, but in writing this near-700 word bit, Abby veered her character out of being too much like Mist, at least as a ten-year-old in the prologue, to be a bit brattier, a bit more insistent, a bit more controlling. And I think that's really valuable in a book versus a game, where character progression is measured more in traits than in stats (but again, it was a weird game). Wyatt's a bit more blank in my mind, but I'm looking forward to what Abby thinks of him and how I can subvert and break that down.

I have another book in the planning status that got the Sims 4 treatment recently, and it confirmed that my original outline lead character needed to change, because Adam Harper was The Most Boring Man Who Ever Lived as soon as I separated him from the plot. I think if a character can't survive without a plot behind them, then they're not worth writing about. I don't necessarily need to know what Abby does in her off-time -- okay, I as a writer definitely need to know what Abby does in her off-time, but you as a reader do not -- but if she doesn't have anything in that off-time, and I couldn't put together a day in her life and make it even a little compelling, then she's not strong enough to be in a book. 

 And now, a collection of thoughts on life enrichment.

I've been playing Final Fantasy XIV again, which has been a lovely way to spend a month. Returning to the game after nearly three years away, I finished A Realm Reborn, ARR's level 50 material, Heavensward, Heavensward's level 60 material, and 30-odd quests into Stormblood in thirty days. I know it was thirty days, because I just got my emailed receipt on the subscription renewal. FF14 is really fun! It's the first time I've enjoyed group content in an MMO, and I've spent time in World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I think that might be it. While my character's original concept, Mist Walker, was that of a dancing archer, I've mained White Mage with Mist because that's how you get into dungeons. (That, and playing as a tank seems terrifying.)

FF14, while lovely, is perhaps not the best way to spend my days. MMOs can be tremendous timesinks, and now that I'm level 63, in Kugane, and ready to explore all the Asian-themed areas, I think I'm going to slow it down with story progression and play around with the other jobs you can play as in there. But more than than, I need to diversify.

I am dealing with depression. I think a few years ago I would have treated that with a little more... respect is not the word. Trepidation? Importance? Secrecy? Whatever. Everyone is depressed. Be open about your mental health, if you are comfortable being open about aspects of your life! As a guy, I find it's more important for me to do that, because there's a stigma about us just 'manning up' and powering through it, like that's ever helped anyone. It doesn't! Trust me, I've tried that.

Depression for me manifests itself in a lot of habit-forming activities. While MMORPGs can really take advantage of that, I play a lot of games that reward that kind of behavior. I've spent 120 hours in The Witcher III without finishing it, and I know I've spent entire evenings just hitting the "End Turn" button in Civilization VI. And since things are legitimately bothering me in my life right now, I need to not just sink into the eternal ditch of the Science Victory and instead figure out what in the world I am going to do with my life.

My wife is getting her Master's degree. That's wonderful! I could not be happier! Meanwhile, I don't even know if it's spelled Masters or Master's in this specific case, because I don't have a degree of any capacity. Which is fine! I work at a very good job, I work from home with this very good job so I'm around my cats and can play my music loud, we own a lovely house, etc etc etc. But that means she has direction (and is very busy), and I do not. And this has not turned into resentment or anything -- I am one hundred percent behind her in everything she does -- but it has turned into "I conquered Sumer and China, but you learned about copyright law, and I'm not dumb enough to think what I've done is anywhere near as important or interesting."

So what am I doing to fight this?

WRITING

I've always wanted to be a novelist. I've written the first draft of a novel that isn't going to go anywhere, called Popular Anarchy, best described as "what if Final Fantasy XII but with two people who think they are witty" and while there is some promise there, and I think I came up with a kind of neat world, it's got at least two characters too many and I would want to completely scrap it and start over. I think there will be aspects of it that live in later books, and I'm still optimistic enough to talk about "later books."

What I am doing currently is creating a new world, and I'm doing that by taking the world I created for my Final Fantasy-themed tabletop RPG, filing all the serial numbers off of it, and then writing it down, making changes, and then asking questions about those changes and answering them. It's all in a Word document and incredibly disjointed, but it is how I get started. And -- okay, this will take a moment, and I'm going to do a thing that I hate because I am proud of this thing that I normally hate, and then I'm going to talk about why that is in the next section.

I do really like an idea I had for my world! I wanted to do something with magic, and while I'm not going to say that "magic is predictable and static and reliable in cities, but wild and untamed and unpredictable in nature" is original, but the concept I'm batting around is that it's because over years and years and years, people have studied, used, manipulated, and programmed this magic so much that it has taken on a lot of the actual personality of humans, and actually wants to help. Kind of like a dog, maybe? We've personified magic to the point that it thinks it's people, and as the people of this world build and spread out and settle and expand, bringing this magic with them to this newer, further-flung areas, the magic still wants to help. But there's a finite amount of magical energy in the world, and as it further collects in these occupied areas it stretches itself thin across the rest of the land, and I don't know about you but when I feel stretched thin I get really tense and anxious, and so we have a natural force that exists through the world, that human civilization relies on, and it is stressed the fuck out. And I like that, because I am stressed the fuck out.

So I'm writing a fantasy novel!

But

I don't actually like fantasy novels.

Uh-oh.

I don't hate fantasy novels! I've read many fantasy novels and liked some of them! But let's talk about why that is and what I'd like to do to fix it (in my incredibly specific, self-serving way).

I get my books from the library now, with few exceptions, thanks to a tight budget. The great thing about the library is that I can grab a book, start to read it, hate it, and then throw it over my head with a 'pfffffffffft' and feel absolutely no remorse for doing so, because I'm not out any money. And when I read a book that I just adore and cannot live without, I am then going to go buy that book, put it on my shelf, and love it forever. 

I find that the books I throw over my head are increasingly from the sci-fi/fantasy section of my library, and the books that I love and keep are from the regular fiction section. Why, my favorite series of the last fifteen years was in the regular fiction section! It's by Marie Brennan and it's about a woman who has incredible adventures learning about the science behind dragons, how they fly, how they breathe their unique breath, and--

Okay, bad example. How about the book about the magical library and the dimension-hopping Librarians within--

Okay okay, how about our half-dragon musician who--

Forget that, let's talk about the incredible love story between two magicians who--

Huh.

Okay, so the Johnson County Public Library has a filing system that I do not understand, but I have considerably more luck getting a book from the Fiction section with magic or wizards or dragons or whatever on it than I do the SF/F section. And that's weird! I do not understand this! But I can at least point to what makes a difference for me, personally.

In all of the above examples, it's about character. And it could just be luck, and it probably is luck, but the books I grab out of SF/F are about setting, and the books I find in fiction are about characters. I have a rule about fantasy books, and it has been broken at least once and I LOVED what I read instead, but that rule is this: if my introduction to your book is you spitting a creation myth at me, or about Ye Olde Gods And Goddesses, I am throwing your book over my head with a "pffffffffffft" and moving on.

(I have read and adore NK Jemisin and I think she does something like this, but what she does with it is like woah)

I treat setting creation the same way I do in an RPG, which is that it's a backdrop for an interesting story or an interesting character. Take that Magic idea up there -- so we have pockets of strict magic around cities for instant communication, all that. Basically magitech. City-states! Can the networks communicate from city to city? No, there's too much wilderness around. So communication is done by having special folks travel between cities, braving the wilderness to take this canister of digital messages from city to city, essentially uploading them into the city's magical network when they arrive. That's a character! And what if one of those messages was designed to bring down the network? That's a plot! I can do something with that. 

And then those ideas will naturally spark more questions -- how does the mailman travel? How different are these networks? Who are these cities? Answering those gives me more ideas for setting creation, but I'm not going to dive into things that aren't important. Not until they are.

I just want to stop writing this post and get back to world design. That's good! But that's not all I'm doing to try and give myself direction.

Like most of the country, I'm a bit overweight. I'm not that bad, but when I bought jeans recently I had to go up a belt size, and that was a bad day for me. So I'm trying to get more in shape. How am I doing this? Two things! One, I'm trying to walk at least two miles a day. This is not always feasible, as the heat index here is getting to be around 110 degrees, though when the weather is nicer I know I'm capable of 3-4 miles per day. I'm also using the rowing machine we have here at the house that I bought a year ago. I am currently at 500 reps a day (usually in 3-4 chunks), and this week I'm moving up to 555. I find it's really easy to get into a rhythm on the rower if I'm watching something fun on TV, and since TV is bad I'm watching Matt Lees's playthrough of The Swindle on Youtube instead. We are also trying to eat better, and while we don't eat terribly now, I need to have my snacking be a salad, not something with carbs. I miss my teenage metabolism, when I weighed 108 pounds as a high school senior.

As someone whose sense of style is "I have three polo shirts," I'm also experimenting with Stitch Fix for a little bit, to try and get clothes that have been made in the last decade and also look decent. Working from home means I am wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt most of the time (the better to use the rower!), but I cycle through the same outfits literally every week, and I don't like that. I want to take better care of myself physically, and that covers all the appearance stuff. 

I'm also considering teaching myself how to play piano? We have an untuned reclamation piano, which is nice but doesn't work for this, but I have a keyboard that I bought years ago when I thought I was going to teach myself how to play piano. It's not starting exactly from the bottom, as I can read music and was a pretty good trumpet player as a kid, but I don't know how to play the piano. But I'd like to. I don't know if I'm willing to commit the time yet, which makes me a little sad.

An addendum to an earlier point -- if your book starts with a woman dying for no reason other than to set up your grim world or your even grimmer hero, I am throwing your book clear over my head and straight into the garbage. That's lazy and dumb and you should be ashamed of yourself.

And I think that's it! That is how one betters a life. In theory. I've had the best of plans before, after all.