(There’s a scrape of metal on wood as I drag a chair over and turn it around. I sit on it backwards. I’m clearly uncomfortable but going to push through.)
Hey, kids. Let’s rap. I’m down with what the kids are with it these days. Let’s talk about writing.
So, you have rough ideas of your characters, the setting and concept for your manuscript. But you don’t know how to start or where to go with it. Well, I have the solution for what ails you.
Write fanfiction.
I see you slamming your hands against the table as you jump to your feet. You point your fingers like a bunch of Phoenix Wrights.
Hear me out. What is the purpose of fanfiction? Fanfiction has many purposes, it’s great practice for early writers who haven’t come up with their own concepts yet, you can use it to explore relationships that you haven’t seen in the media you’re fanficcing, add missing scenes that you feel should be included. But most of all, you can use it to learn how to write in voice.
And that’s why you should write fanfiction of your own work. You don’t have to worry about the scenario or place your characters in, you can just throw them in the sandbox and see how they interact with one another. You can establish how they interact, possibly hint at their past and then workshop that into your main work. You can also figure out what the tone is regarding your work. Is it fun and playful or dark and mysterious. That’s how you have fun. Hell, you can try your characters in different genres.
Anyway, that’s what I wanted to talk about today. Stay cool, kids.
(I get up from the chair and I was clearly uncomfortable because I’m walking poorly.)
I listened to the song of the leaves as I crunched along the road. There was a chill running up my back that my coat couldn’t keep out. It was nice to feel, it had been a long walk and I was starting to overheat.
I was thinking of you as I listened to my music. Would you like this song? Would you think it was silly or something that was right up your alley? Would you sing along?
I remember when we sang together. Going down the same road in a car instead of by foot. That car was a lot like our friendship. Dented and old but unstoppable.
Those dents, I could never buff them out. We had done things to one another. Caused each other pain.
Sometimes you just have to live with it. Walk with the damage done to you. Was it unforgivable? Not this time. Would we forget? Probably not.
It’s been about two weeks and I’m fully in my apartment alone, dug in like a tick. Boy, oh boy, do I love it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still on good terms with my old roommates. But there’s just something to be said about coming into my apartment, immediately throwing my pants away and just enjoying having to answer to no one. I’m never going back.
It took me about two days to get my apartment completely in order. I had it all planned out in my head before I started so that helped me get everything in its right place. I have a closet for my hobbies, I have a great utility closet and I have the nest.
The nest is a large futon mattress that I can put up into a little couch or its original mattress form. I did it this way so my bros can come over for sleepovers. The kitchen has the main downside in that the oven is very old and not as good as I wanted. I also don’t control the heat, which is weird.
But a home is like a pet, it’s never perfect but that’s what makes them so special. I’m never going back to living with people until I fall in love with someone.
My mental state just feels so much better too. I have so much more energy and ability to do things. I can’t way to really dig into my hobbies. Last night, I was pushing through my exhaustion to finish a wonderful glitter unicorn puzzle.
I also know that it’s important when living alone to stay social. You can get weird if you’re left alone. Well, I’m kind of getting burned out by people. I’ve been hanging out a lot with people to the point that I could kind of use a break.
If nothing else, I’m going to start doing this blog and it’s only going to get weirder.
Batman prepares. Batman is always prepared. Superman can do anything. These are the reasons that these characters are loved and people think they’re boring. They’ve lasted for so long. But it’s also been said they’re hard to write for.
There is a problem in DC where super powers can become so godlike that it becomes hard to think of challenges for them. The great cry in every MCU movie is “Why don’t you just call the Avengers?” well, in DC it becomes “Why does anyone try anything when Superman is around? Or Shazam? Or the Green Lanterns?”. There are so many massive threats that it’s ridiculous that anything other than God coming down to throw down with the heroes of Earth.
Marvel understands this and has kept most of their heroes “street level”. They are only able to do so much. It’s why people can become fearful of mutants. Some mutants are known as Omega level and that means that they can destroy the world if they so want. In my eyes, that just means that they’re on the same level as Superman.
When Spider-man fucks up, you can say, well that’s just who Spider-man is. He’s powerful, super strong and fast. But you could probably kill him with a small army and some air support. There’s a reason that his villains to bring him down didn’t need to ascend to god level, they just had to come at him all at once.
You can see this in Supernatural, the boys hunt monsters and all these things for near two decades during the run of the show. However, they’re still idiots and that makes them compelling. Because even the best fuck up.
That’s how you should be able to write Batman and Superman but people think of them being too perfect. Too powerful. That’s why one of the most loved versions of Batman is the one from the animated series. He’s a human. He’s smarter and stronger than the average human but he can still get stabbed by the Joker.
We don’t want Gods. We want good people doing good things. A hero shouldn’t stand above you but with you. They should be selfless and kind and inspire you to do the same. There is of course some variation to keep them interesting but that’s what a hero does.
It’s something that I try and put in my writing. I write the person first and then figure out what their power would do to them. Would it make them good? Bad? Corrupt? That’s up to what happens when I put finger to key and pen to paper.
I’ve always had terrible handwriting. Even now as an adult, nothing has really changed. I write down the magic items in my DND campaign and half the time have to read it for my players.
When I was younger, they gave me extra writing homework to try and improve my handwriting. It never worked. No matter how many sentences I wrote. Cursive? Forget it. The only cursive I could handle was the loud band that sang about terrible relationships.
I had a thought today about why my handwriting was so terrible. I think it’s because I get really excited whenever I get the chance to do it. It’s the same reason that my typing is so full of typos. I’m kind of like those dogs that sprain their tails from wagging them too hard.
I thought about practicing it more but outside of the working world and my DND players, no one else reads my handwriting but me. Anything I do creatively I do in a word processor. I keep a diary so it’s a good way to make sure that no one reads that either. I think that was an episode of Doug.
When I have to write a love letter again, I’ll make sure to take my time.
When I walk amongst the shelves of the library it’s like I’m the pretty girl walking into the bar. All eyes are on me. Each book telling me to pick them. Asking to come home with me.
I pick out a few each time, usually returning the others. I have a two week stand with one. I can’t get it out of my head. I want to understand every inch of it. Explore it from end to end.
You never know when you’re going to fall in love. You never know what a book is going to do to you. There are ones that I barely remember. Lovers that didn’t register. But then there are others. Ones that stick with me. Stay on my skin. I can still recall them to this day.
I hold them in my memories. A warm, pleasant thing for cold, lonely days. I don’t know if I’ll ever love a book the way I love that one. I don’t know if it’ll ever come back around to it.
But like others, I’m going to keep trying. I’ll kiss a thousand frogs to find another prince. Because unlike humans, books don’t let you down in the same way. They at least take you on a little trip first. Instead of just leaving you alone in your bed and don’t call you back.
So for those of you in the less nerdy echelons of the world, you might not know what a D20 is. Below you’ll find a picture of it.
It’s the main dice used for the game, Dungeons and Dragons. Everything comes from this dice. The way it works, is that the dungeon master will tell someone to roll for something. They have various modifiers that add or subtract from the roll. The roll decides on how well they’re going to do.
For example, the DM sets the amount that they have to roll over. So, say you want to have your character jump over a small river. He’ll set a challenge of 10. The players roll and if they get above a ten, they jump over it. If they get under, something happens to prevent them from jumping over it.
There are two conditions though that could spell either doom or success for them. Rolling a natural 1, is known as a critical failure and usually means that something terrible could happen to the person. Like they fall into the river and start drowning because they suddenly forgot how to swim.
Then there is a critical success, which is when they roll a natural 20. This means they do a sick backflip over and land like they just won the gold at the Olympics.
Why am I telling you about this? Well, because I think that these mechanics make writing feel more real and random. In movies, we see the heroes fail usually about three times and then they succeed. We know they’re going to succeed. We know that they’re going to win.
But what if we didn’t? What if something so random happens that it completely changes the path of the story? That is the joy of using a D20 in your writing. You can suddenly throw in a twist that no one, including yourself, was expecting.
Another example, in one of my games, I had my players involved in a brutal death race in massive weaponized cars. In a reference to the fact that Speed Racer’s little brother and pet monkey constantly hid in the trunk of Speed’s car, a great ape(pictured below) was hidden in the trunk of the car in front of them. It was supposed to jump at them, land on the hood, obstruct their view and attack them.
Why didn’t you roll better you damn, dirty apes!
Well, it rolled a natural 1.
I had to follow through with the consequences, so it came up short, landed in front of the players’ car and was immediately run over and killed. Excitement averted, plan thwarted.
We all lost our goddamn minds with how funny it was. We still talk about it in the newer campaigns that we’ve done.
It’s things like this that make me keep rolling for my characters when I’m writing. Yes, you have to keep one hand on the wheel so that your story isn’t horrendously unbelievable but I do think that it adds a certain randomness to your stories that can make them truly unique.
It also helps with my character building. I’ll sometimes give them stat blocks like they are DND characters. There are six stats that make up a DND character: Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, Dexterity, Wisdom and Constitution. Strength, Dexterity and Charisma are pretty self explanatory. Constitution is how well they handle sickness and drinking things like poison. Wisdom and Intelligence might seem similar but they’re thought of more as street smarts and book smarts respectively. Or as the common phrase goes in describing them: “Intelligence is knowing that tomatoes are a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that they don’t go in a fruit salad.”
Even if you don’t want to try this in your own writing, I think that playing DND makes you a better storyteller whether you’re a DM or a player. It forces you to think on your feet and improvise through solutions. It can lead to beautiful moments between players, where they can work things out that have been bothering them. It is a true joy.
World building can be a great number of things. Fun, inspiring, difficult and frustrating. It all depends on the complicated nature of your world and how different it is from your normal every day world.
There are a great number of ways to world build and I’ll cover them in this space eventually. Today though, we’ll talk about what I call the Day in the Life method. It’s a simple method, that you take one of your characters and figure out what they’re doing throughout a single day. What it means and how they’re getting through it.
The method involves going through a single character’s day and figuring out things out from a ground level viewpoint. Think about your own life, where would you go for food either a restaurant or grocery store? What would you do for entertainment? For travel? What happens if you get hurt? You know the answers to this so your world is complete. Your characters need to have that same knowledge. It wouldn’t make sense for them to have to figure out where to go unless they were a fish out of water but even then they’re relying on characters who have the correct knowledge.
Okay, let’s take a character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and go from there. Let’s say, Moist Von Lipwig, the gold suit wearing creator of paper money, a working post office, taxes and steam engines. We’re going to take him through his day and back to bed.
Moist wakes up in the greatest city on the Disc, Ankh Morpork in his bed at the post office. His breakfast is made for him by one of the golems and he eats a pretty normal breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee. He heads out onto his day and is immediately robbed because it’s Ankh Morpork but he’s given a receipt for his taxes as the thieves’ guild are professionals. He doesn’t report that crime but he does think about picking up a book about karate to help him. He knows the nearest library is the one at Unseen University but it’s run by the Librarian, a wizard that was turned into orangutan and refuses to be changed back. He doesn’t want to deal with that, so he moves on.
Suddenly, he’s struck by a wagon being driven by a number of drunk dwarves. He’s injured and needs to inform the authorities of this. He informs Commander Vimes and the City Watch and they assist him on his way to the Lady Sybil Free Hospital where he’s assisted by some Igors. He leaves, is hungry again so he stops at Sham Harga’s House of Ribs on his way back home. Having accomplished nothing in his day. He returns home to his loving wife.
Now, in those two paragraphs, I can identify a number of things about the world that Moist lives in.
How he would defend himself
Who upholds the laws
Where he would go if he’s injured
Where he would go for knowledge
What kind of food exists in this world
What the dangers of the world are and how severe they are
A number of characters that can serve as focal points for most of these things
Moist is actually used somewhat to create other things for the characters to use. In Going Postal, we’re introduced to the clacks, a primitive email system, and he revitalizes the post office thus allowing for other characters to use it. Ditto, steam engines from Raising Steam. Sir Pratchett is just such an amazing writer that he’s able to turn his world building into stories in and of themselves.
Because that’s what a good writer does, turns the mundane into something extraordinary.
I chose to make this website today because I’m an animal ruled by my emotions. I was looking up yesterday that it’s best to make a website to help advertise you’re writing. I don’t like to sit back and do anything half assed so I bought a WordPress account and got to work.
In the ten minutes since I’ve made this website, I have no regrets. This UI is easy to use and I’m writing quickly. I think it looks a little too professional right now but maybe soon I can put my own loving care into it.
The fact of the matter though, is my favorite part of Thanksgiving is using it as an excuse to be lazy. To do nothing but lazily eat food and have some time off. I don’t generally like traditional Thanksgiving food so I’m glad we’ve changed up our plans for it.
We haven’t had turkey or ham in the last four years and I’m so happy for it. Who wants to sit back and brainstorm various reasons for eating days-old turkey or ham? I don’t know that many ways to prepare ham and yeah, you could say that’s a personal failing of mine and you’d be right.
What a terrible way to start a blog to advertise myself. How can you trust me with your time, reading my books if you know that my ham imagination is so limited? How can you engage with my characters knowing in the back of your mind that the author doesn’t know how to make a decent turkey sandwich. That he stands there dejected at the mayonnaise, bread and turkey. Wondering where to go from here. He begins to weep. He hopes that death will come for him soon. Maybe then this turkey/ham crime will be forgiven.
No, none of that. We’re having stuffed shells. Now, you realize that this madman might be able to write. Stuffing, not of bread crumbs and spices but instead, ricotta cheese! Tomato sauce! Onion! Basil maybe(I’m not the one making it. My ma is and she knows how to spice it correctly)! Why I should buy all of his books for all of my friends for every Christmas! Guess what, love of my life, you’re getting Secret Keepers again for Christmas! Yes, I gave it to you the last three years. Yes, I’ve given it to you every day to the point that we have one that 1 Terabyte hard drive that’s full of the same copy of the book that is the equivalent of a hoarding house. Yes, we’re vastly approaching the Franklin Cota anniversary we’re I’m going to give you all of his books yet again. It’s every anniversary now. What do you expect, diamonds? Frank’s books are conflict free!
Well, for the most part. There are fights in the books. No one had to suffer for them except when my leg fell asleep and I had to do that slow walk because I’m scared of falling over because my leg is numb.
Anyway, it’s time to make cookies. What a terrible first post. They’ll get better from here. Hopefully.
I’m thankful you’re here and for my friends and family.
Franklin Cota, an author and podcaster 