Follow Up: Jon del Arroz on Kindle Vella

I mentioned this the other day. Jon del Arroz addresses Amazon's new Kindle Vella initiative below, nice and simple.

I am interested in this, but I am also cautious enough to let someone else take the first wave to the beach. Over in Jon's Discord server we have folks digging into this, as Derek Murphy did, and that's how we're getting the details that Amazon's PR isn't talking about.

So far it is looking like it's worth trying, so I and several others are looking at backlog material that would work in this serial format. Once we see it in action, we'll be able to report back on actual viability.

Managing Expectations: How You Win, Keep, and Grow Your Audience

While reading this guest post by Karl Gallagher at the Castalia House blog, this comment by Monalisa Foster caught my eye. Specifically, this part right here:

While I don’t disagree, especially about the New Wave, which I hold responsible for the “death” of sci-fi (at the same time that sci-fi books died because of the trick/unexpected ending, sci-fi movies and games took off because they maintained, for the most part, the positive endings), I submit for your consideration, that genre is about setting and endings/expectations.

She hits the core point again here: Fantasy outsells sci-fi and I think that’s because readers know what to expect.

And bookended here:

To illustrate how important reader expectations are, I point out Romance. This is big “R” romance, where the ending is prescribed. That ending is HEA (Happily Ever After) or HEAFN (HEA for now). Readers want to know what they’re getting.

I submit that readers want positive endings, heroic characters, the good guys winning, the bad guys losing. No whiny, depressed losers emoting all over the page. I want to see sci-fi get back to that.

This is not the first time I've heard such observations. Many years ago, Mike Pondsmith wrote this into the Game Master advice section of his Mekton Zeta tabltop role-playing game. He cited (then) well-known examples of fulfilling audience expectations, but not necessarily in the straight-forward manner initially put to the audience. He wrote similar advice for his Cyberpunk 2020 supplement, Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads.

The point here is expectation management. People group things they find to be alike and label them for ease of reference; that's what genres are- groups of stories that deliver similar experiences to an audience. People like familiarity because it's reliable; you know what you're going to get. So, if you want to succeed, you need to deliver on the expectations of that audience. Danielle Steel didn't goat-fuck her readers into a multi-media empire of romance, and neither will you. (You'd think the Big 5's current regime would know this, but we know better; they don't.)

However, fulfilling those expectations need not--and some say should not--be as straight-forward as a drag race. Going back to Pondsmith, his example of making good on expectations in an unexpected manner was the original Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross; the promise was that we Earthlings would defeat this hostile alien invader and preserve Mankind thereafter. The swerve was that a good chunk of Earth got blasted and we ended up having to integrate with their remnants after the war. Sure, Mankind won, but not without sacrifice and not without complication after the fact.

See what I'm after here? There's your liminal space, where you can work your magic and define yourself as a writer. Scott Lynch broke out as strong as he did because his debut novel did just that, on multiple levels; as the protagonist Locke Lamora schemed and scammed his way towards fulfilling your expectations of the fantasy caper he set up early on, so did he pull a swerve on you and got you looking away while he pulled a con on those expectations so that what he delivered when he delivered turned out to be not how you got what you wanted, but you got it nonetheless.

Robert Howard's Conan went on adventures, or had them thrust upon him, that fit a general plot profile; it was how Howard executed it that made him stand out as a writer, and in seeing the difference between two different characters in the same scenario (Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword; Kull: By This Axe I Rule) you can observe how Howard's choices differed even when he adapted the latter into the former.

Now, accomplished authors already know this; they can tell you how they made this happen once they put this knowledge to practical use. But you? You're new, or you're struggling and looking for insight, or otherwise dealing with issues in developing your craft or story (or both). Yes, knowing the structure of narrative is important, but being lazy or incompetent about it means becoming like the folks I rant about over at my main blog and that's no good for you personally, professionally, or artistically. You need to master the tools, not to be a tool.

There is no shortcut to be had here. You have to get it before you can make it. Then you have to get it right, and in time you'll become so good that you can't get it wrong. There's no other way to mastery than to make the work, so go on and get on with making your 10,000 pots; the sooner you develop-by-doing, the sooner you will become wise and skilled enough to translate what your mind imagines into stories that your audience cannot wait to pay you for.

So learn what your audience expects from the story you're writing. Then learn how to deliver on those expectations. Then learn how to make use of the room you have to satisfy without failing that fulfillment promise. Remember: Anakin Skywalker did bring balance to The Force. It's how he did it that makes George Lucas rightly revered, not that he did it at all.

The Lost Adventures of the Pulps: The Flying Ace

Over at the main blog, I've spent some posts this past week talking about action in tabletop RPGs and why Lucasfilm is in a position to successfully revive the Ace Pilot iconic figure and his equally iconic form of action-adventure. I say "successfully", because there was a failed attempt since the turn of the millenium to do so in the West: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Sure, I liked this film, but I'm not going to sit here and bullshit you that this film was actually good. It wasn't, and the trailer here was somewhat deceptive as to what the final film's story was about. As is so common with failed pulp revivals, this was an example of a man whose love for the genre overroad his good sense, becoming hubris in the process. That is why he attempted something far beyond his capabilities, turning what could've been another Raiders of the Lost Ark into another Conan the Destroyer.

So, let's take a look at this archetypical character and his typical adventures:

• The Flying Ace is a man in his physical prime, often right at the confluence of youthful exuberance and age-worn experience. Variations on this character often rely on altering the character's age to adjust that balance of influences. For you younger folks, Poe Dameron of The Force Awakens is so typical of the archetype as to be iconic in its expression.
  
• Like his ground-bound counterparts (racers and riders), he's got a competitive streak and a certain penchant for mischief- even as an older, more sober-minded man. This is often the basis for his considerable charisma, as his repeated practice of his core habits and skills instills a mindset of competency in adversity born of seeking and overcoming challenges that test him. He is, very much, an Alpha Male sort of character- and often finds himself in positions of leadership, becoming more formal and important as he ages. (e.g. Roy Fokker of Macross fame)
  
• His adventures feature the display of his skills as a pilot, both in the coming and going to the sites of his adventures, but often in the formulation of the conflicts as well as their development and resolution. While he is capable on his feet (and often is quite capable of two-fisted action, good with his sidearms, or both), he's routinely deficient in highly-specialized skills or fields of knowledge that fall outside his core competencies- he's a Man of Action first and foremost, like James Bond.
  
• He routinely encounters his opposite number in his adventures, either a literal recurring nemesis or simply an enemy ace pilot. If this antagonist is not the chief antagonist, then he will be one of the major lieutenants to that mastermind and his decisive defeat is often the signal that the climax of the adventure just hit. (Otherwise, it's that of the mastermind directly.)
  
• His adventures often involve McGuffin hunts, which drive the plot; this is not a mystery subtype, as the Flying Ace is not a detective. This is often a way to integrate the Ace into an ensemble cast where he operates as an equal on a team instead of a master or subordinate in a (para)military unit. Attacking enemy bases, or defending their own, is a regular part of his adventures; the former as part of the final act, and the former as the initial act if not the inciting incident.
  
• Because he's an ace, even if he's using a known real aircraft his specific plane is an "ace custom" model tailored to his specific qualities in order to maximize performance- a real-life trope turned genre fiction trope that carried over to newer forms, such as Mobile Suit Gundam and the many Ace Custom models used by Char Aznable. His counterparts will often also have their own customs; these will routinely be visually as well as technically striking and impressive.
  

If you want to go digging through the pulps, the serials, and old TV series then do so and learn directly from them. If you want something far easier, then you want to look east to Based Japan, where Flying Ace stories remain regular attractions for well into the present day, and they've done both deconstructions as well as reconstructions of the archetype and adventures over the years so the experiences are varied. Yet the core elements remain, especially in the more popular offerings (popular often for playing it straight). Time to bring this back, because it's a short step from the Wonder of Flight to the Wonder of Spaceflight, and that fundamental innocence--the joy of flight--is something we're going to need going forward.

And I'm tuning my engines.

Your Book Launches Are Your Problem, And Your Opportunity

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, each author is a publishing house unto himself now. For those not in the dying traditional publishing world, this is literally so. It is virtually so regardless of how you play the game, because publishers and agents can only do so much so you might as well operate like the true indie authors.

That means making publishing decisions for yourself. One of them is what format you will publish in, and when you do it: e-pub, print, and audiobook. You should do all three, but you need not do all of them at once. Furthermore, I say that you should not do so. You stand a better chance of overall success by treating each format's release as a separate book launch event, allowing each previous event to push the new one and each new one to promote the previous ones.

What I'm going to do is go with a specific launch order: ebook, print, audiobook. I may break the print section down further by hardcover and paperback, once that becomes something I can bother doing. The reason for the order is this: any errors in the ebook can be corrected and pushed forward free of charge, and the corrected files then be used to for the print book version, which will be the basis for the audiobook VO script.

Now, exactly which thing gets put out when I don't know yet. That I'll announce in a few weeks.

Reflections on the Iconic Hero Story

Following on a previous post, it's time to expand on Robin Laws' Iconic Hero a bit.

Iconic Heroes not only have a Core Ethos, but that Ethos is also the fundamental story structure one can expect when you read one of those stories. When you got a ticket for SPECTRE, you knew damn well that you weren't going to watch Bond do a manners comedy routine. You were there to see the hottest girls, one of the hottest men, serious spy drama and action, and world-spanning adventures in exotic locations. Just as you're a fucking retard to ignore the Iconic Hero as a reliable way to get paid, you're also a retard if you poo-poo the Iconic Story that routinely goes along with them. Let's bring this back to my Iconic Hero, Ken, and his Core Ethos: Ken kills monsters preying upon Mankind to purify a corrupt world.

This, played straight and literal, makes his core story that of a monster hunter. Yet there is a flexibility here that I'm using to inform Ken's overall development in his iconic stature. As I noted previously, the big break is the Cataclysm; beforehand, Ken's an increasingly disaffected vigilante sort whose story would remind you of the Deathwish series and afterwards it becomes a monster-on-monster story that blends my love of Howard's barbarian heroes with Vampire Hunter D. There are influences from the Westerns in Ken's iconic story structure, as one would expect from a man like me, but in essence it is this simple- and simple is flexible:

• Ken encounters a monster attack.
  
• Ken attempts to tell the local authorities so they can do their jobs.
  
• Ken finds that the authorities are unwilling or unable to do their jobs.
  
• Ken finds out why the authorities are useless, or worse.
  
• Ken can't walk away from the situation, so he does the job himself.
  
• Ken leaves having killed the monster, but also unable to stay.
  
• Ken moves on.
  

This is the value of the iconic story; once you have the Ethos, you have the plot and you can then build out your story beats and other narrative structure elements from there. It takes a hell of a lot of worry off your shoulders, and you can then turn that energy towards improving your skill at executing the writing of the story. Just like how the music world as their standards, so does the fiction world have its iconics; appreciate them, especially if you're like me and just getting started, for the benefits that they bring and use them to allow you to focus on honing those basics of the craft.

Why Ken is an Iconic Hero

When I write fiction, I prefer to write using an Iconic Hero as my protagonist. Since Robin Laws gave me the direction, here's a link to his 2012 blog post talking about it in the context of doing The New Hero. Here's the big deal, taken from that post:

What Makes a Hero Iconic

While a dramatic hero follows a character arc in which he is changed by his experience of the world (examples: Orpheus, King Lear, Ben Braddock), an iconic hero undertakes tasks (often serially) and changes the world, restoring order to it, by remaining true to his essential self.

Prevailing creative writing wisdom favors the changeable dramatic character over his serially unchanging iconic counterpart, but examples of the latter remain enduring tentpoles of popular culture. It’s the clear, simple, elemental iconic heroes who keep getting reinvented every generation. Each such classic character spoke to the era of its invention, while also evoking an eternal quality granting it a continuing resonance. We are going to create a new set of heroes who speak to the contemporary world while evoking the inescapable power of the iconic model.

An iconic hero re-imposes order on the world by reasserting his essential selfhood. The nature of his radical individuality can be summed up with a statement of his iconic ethos. It is the ethos that grants higher meaning to the hero’s actions, and a clue to his creator’s intentions. An iconic hero’s ethos motivates and empowers him.

For someone looking to get paid writing fiction, you're a god-damned fool if you dismiss the Iconic Hero as the focal point of an evergreen series. Conan of Cimmeria, Solomon Kane, James Bond, Indiana Jones- these are well-known Iconic Heroes that keep selling for their creators even long after those creators died. Ignore this at your peril.

So, of course when I hit upon The Burning of Hugo I went to my own Iconic Hero: Ken. Sure, he's different in that he's not the fearless slayer and consumer of the undead that he is after The Coming of the Azure Flames, but what defines him as an Iconic Hero--that ethos Laws talks about above--is present and fully-formed.

Ken kills monsters preying upon Mankind to purify a corrupt world.
Before the Cataclysm, those monsters are criminals--often those above the law, or exploiting social norms--that he has no qualms ensuring that they die. After the Cataclysm, those monsters are literal Things That Should Not Be, and he kills and consumes them to put them down for good. He's a Scourge, he knows it, he's good with it, and abides by the consequences of it. Those aware of him rightly fear him.

There's another element to having an Iconic Hero as your focal character. It allows you the option of using supporting characters for Dramatic Character Arcs, contrasting against your Iconic Hero to enhance the process. 2000 A.D. does this wonderfully with Judge Dredd, and has for many years now. That's a very worthy example to follow, adapt, and tweak to fit your needs and preferences in a way that is far superior to the outright fucktarded moves that D.C. and Marvel have done in the same time.

So, as I continue re-writing and revising The Burning of Hugo, know this: the Protagonist is Iconic. Everyone else is not. If you want to see Dramatic Character Arcs, look to the other Dramatis Personae in the piece; Ken being exactly who and what he is will only enhance their arcs.

Administration 2013 Post for Q3

As of this post, the Chronicles' third quarter is done and so is its story: The Treasure of the Iron Range. The fourth and final quarter begins a week from now and will run through the rest of 2013, ending on December 27th--the day after Boxing Day--and I will include an year-end Administration post around that time. The compilation of past serials remains a thing, but it's one thing to ensure that I have all of the files in one place and in usable condition, and another altogether to transform that into a volume of professional-grade prose that's actually worth someone's money. This requires skills and tools that I don't have, and that means bringing others into the project. Bringing others in means paying them, and that's something I don't have at this time- and no, I don't have the stroke to hit up Kickstarter or Indiegogo because there is no way in Hell I'm going that route without an ironclad business plan ready to go. I've seen what happens to those that don't, and I refuse to be That Guy.

The final serial for 2013 will be something that, for me, is experimental. You may not notice it at first, but I'm going to do something different with this story that I haven't done to date and if it works then I'm going to make it a standard practice. I'll spell it out in either the Q4 or the year-end Administration post. I'm going to switch away from zombies and the like for this story, but it's still a story of adventure and action; more details are spoilers, so you'll just have to wait to see what I'm up to.

The other things that I'm now considering is bringing other writers into the Chronicles, posting on days other than Friday, but otherwise serializing their stories on a weekly basis. The reason for this move is because I want to write another novel, and I would like more than just my own content on this blog for you folks to read and enjoy while I do that. I will have more to say at the end of the year.

Administration: End of 2012

This is the last Friday for the year 2012. Time to take a moment out of the fiction and talk reality.

As of this year, I finally settled into a format that works for me. I will continue this format into 2013 and see if I can make it work for a full year. If, at this time next year, I find that it continues to serve me then I will stick with it until it doesn't.

Most of this year's stories took place in the waning years of the Old World, our world, and--as reality didn't see any sort of world-destroying event--the post-apocalyptic milieu created by the Azure Flames is safely considered an alternate future history. In 2013, I intend to return to the post-apocalypse side of that divide, and you shall see that new set of stories starting next week on Friday, January 5th.

Next year there shall be one story per quarter, going 12 weeks long, with a week left as a buffer to post what is necessary that quarter. That makes for four stories by the end of the year, and--as I will be finished with my Master's Degree work by next Summer--I will attempt to do something I've intended to do since I started this 'blog: collect, correct, curate and publish a volume of stories. If I can, I want to publish both in electronic and Print-On-Demand formats.

If I can't make that happen in 2013, then I will for certain in 2014. The traditional publishing world is no longer the default method for writers to become capable of making a living, or even a strong part-time supplementary income, and for those who prefer to be in the driver's seat (like me) making use of the new frontier of e-publishing is the way to go.

Expect a new story about post-apocalyptic Ken next year. Expect stories featuring, in some manner or another, stories about the folks I've posted about in the last five weeks. Expect me to continue to hone my craft, to get better, and to continue to write about that which interests and excites me. See you next year.

Nearing the One Year Mark-Part 2

This week, I talk about things to come and how you're going to see them.

This review series of posts will run throughout May, which means that there will be no story posts until June. That doesn't mean that you should not be reading; you want to see what's coming for the Chronicles. In addition to previews of what I'm working on for this 'blog, I'll also go about how I'm going to expand what's been done so far into new avenues.

Let's start with the stories serialized here to date. While I'm going to revisit "Stalker" first, all of them will be revisited in due course and collected into single manuscripts. Once collected, they will be revised and eventually re-published as single books or booklets; I will post links here to where you can download them. That, however, is not the end of it; I want to put out illustrated books, comic versions, etc. that add value to the story but doing that requires resources and skills that I lack. I'll get into that in detail another time.

Now, as for the year to come, I'm going to change things up again. Start in the first week in June, and running through the end of the year, will be one story. This is going to be serialized at a rate of 1000 words (roughly) a week, so that by the end we've got a novella or novelette of about 32-33K words, and I won't write this like I did the others. I'm going to try a different method yet again, to see if this works better than previous approaches for my purposes. I'll take time next week to do a full and proper introduction.

I'm taking action to expand the reach of this 'blog now, facilitating ease of finding as well as following as best I am able at this time. In the weeks to come, I hope to see the fruits of these actions manifest.

Again: next week, a preview of the new story that will start in June. I may--but as yet can't promise--talk in depth of what I want to do to spread the stories serialized here to other avenues.

About the Chronicles

This is my outlet for the genre fiction that I write. I will follow the concept of the old genre fiction magazines of my grandfather's generation, between 1900 and 1940, and publish my stories in the serialized style of that day. Initially, I will update this 'blog once a week on Thursday or Friday, and each episode in the serial will run about 2000 words; if this doesn't work for you, then I want you to say so and suggest alternatives to me. As this is a genre fiction outlet, but not one specific to any given genre, please expect me to shift gears once I finish one story and begin another. Also, I write without the benefit of an editor; those of you that write in a semi-professional or professional capacity understand the disadvantage that this imposes upon me, and I ask your patience as I get my legs and develop my skills in this discipline.

The format for each serial is that I shall start with an introductory post, giving the story's title and plot summary; this will be used as an anchor for you, the reader, so that when you want to find the story you can go straight to the beginning and start reading from there. Each episode thereafter will be "(Title): Part (X)". If you like what you're reading, then spread the word and link back to here.

The subject of the Chronicles employs a framing device, the "Corinth" of the title, derived from the first username I took when I logged into my first BBS back in my highschool days when 2400 baud modems were state of the art technology. The stories themselves shall range all over in terms of tone, theme, genre and mood; what matters is that I--and, in turn, you--enjoy what I write down and are entertained by it. For that to work over the long term, I will rely upon you to tell me what's working and what isn't- and why. I look forward to a long, fruitful relationship.

--Bradford C. Walker